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.