Lack of updates

Sorry for the lack of updates ! But I have a reason. In one of my classes our teacher gave us an open assignment. He told us to learn asp.net MVC3 and make a project with it. Anything. So my team and I decided to make a browser game. It's called Battle For Lurnia (very original) and it's going to be very simple. Players register on the server and create characters who then fight between themselves for Xp and maybe gold. I'll post a link to the repository when it will be more tidy in there.

The tools I will use

Since my new project is starting and I aim to start it the right foot. The right foot being planning before jumping down in the mud. In this post I will document some of the tools I will be using during development. The list might grow and I probably will make another post in the end[sic] explaining the tools I ended up using after all.

First and most important : The very humble and well respected Visual Studio

It's simply the best IDE I've ever used. First because it is very complex (which I like) and when you get to know it it is very easy to use. The IDE really completes the programmer, IntelliSense works like a charm. You can also add extensions which can be very useful. In the screenshot above you can see I'm using ReSharper, this extension is a little manager that looks at your code and gives you advice on how you can optimize your code. It's a really good extension and really helps me when I need to refactor a piece of code or make it more readable. Check it out here, unfortunately it's a paid product and you need to pay a hefty sum to use it. I only have 8 days left on my trial, after that I'll have to get back to normal.

ZScreen, the screenshot application.

ZScreen is a very good application when you need to take screenshots on the fly. You don't need to press print screen and open paint, paste it and modify it. Just press the a hotkey and it will execute what commands you told him to do. I chose to save it automatically in a folder when I press [prt scrn] so I can browse my screenshots of the day and modify them. In the end, they probably get sent on this blog ! It's freeware so I encourage you all to give it a try.

GitHub and GitExtension

As you all probably know I usually use Git as my preferred source control provider. It's really useful to have a repository of code on projects, even the smallest ones, because it gives you an overview on what has been done and how. Having a complete history of the project's changes is awesome and being able to revert back any changes is always useful. I don't need to comment 200 lines of code just because I don't need it or might need it in the future. I can safely erase it and get it back from the repository when I need that piece of code.

Github is a host server of repositories and GitExtensions is my GUI of choice. I can see the timeline very clearly and any branches can be inspected at ease.

So there we go, those are the tools I plan on using immediately. Among them, not tools but technologies I should mention is that I am using C# now with the XNA framework. This makes creating games much easier and streamlined. Big change from vb.net I know, but it's for the best. Giving visual basic up was one of the best decisions I could have made. So keep up with me, I'll try to make the code as easy to follow as I can.

Back from the dead ! (Again)

Yes I did it again ! I fled the clogging world and now I'm back ! Actually I've taken a detour at tumblr and since it sucked so much here I am again !

I've moved from VB.net to C# and overworked with school. So expect better and rarer posts (at least until school is over) so why do I bother to tell anyone at all ? Nothing really.