Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Summer of 2013: Progress Report #1

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So the first week of Summer projects has proven to be an interesting one. I spent most of my time doing the improved graphics of the MGC forum and altering all the layout stuff for it.

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It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but for a first coat of new paint it certainly does the job and there’s still plenty of improvements to work on. Next on the list of features in a homepage and the actual editing of the CSS that gives the forum that look (I’m currently using Forumotion’s back-end for most of this stuff).

In terms of other stuff I’ve been doing, I went back to a previous GameMaker project to see if I could correct and revive it. I made a couple of levels to see how it played and it worked fine. The idea in question is a platformer with personal commentary overlapping it to give some idea into the mind of the creator of the world… Or I could just use it as an outlet for my thoughts, which would make this blog rather redundant. Either way, I did more work in two hours than an ex-colleague of mine did in three months. And by that I mean I did work while he sat an played Guild Wars 2 and complained at me for his laziness.

Anyway, I have noticed that I’m not super-productive like I used to be. I still played quite a few games between tasks and often got sidetracked by videos and things on the internet. Well, at least I know what to cut down on during next week. And for reference, no, I don’t work on weekends unless I really have to.

Next Weeks Plans Are:

  • Progress on GameMaker project.
  • XNA/PS Mobile stuff.
  • General C# programming for practice and improvement. (I haven’t coded in a month)

-Adam

24/06/2013 – 2 Weeks Of Video Games Is Oddly Cathartic

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So I’m back home in Enniskillen now, waiting for September to creep back up on me. As the title said, I’ve spent the last two week playing the back catalogue of games that I’ve given myself; mostly Persona 4 Arena, Catherine, and Valkyria Chronicles. However I won’t be going on about those here.

Instead, let me tell you the tale of how my own stupidity bit me in the arse two years after making a serious mistake. So I have two computers at the moment, this one being the first one that was built in 2010 with a Intel i7 930, Radeon HD5970 (Now a GTX 580), 12GB of RAM and the like. Pretty damn good computer for the time I built it. However there was always a slight problem, it kept fucking blue-screening and I couldn’t figure out why. I changed graphics cards, drivers, and more to see if it improved; and no dice. Recently I decided to change the RAM because I previous update to my BIOS showed that I was only using 8GB of the 12GB I had installed. Figured it must have been the wrong RAM for the motherboard.

So I replaced it with what was the correct RAM, and got the same result. After some research I figured out the issue; the i7 930 I have is a Quad-Core, to use Triple-Channel RAM on my motherboard, I would need a Hex-Core. I really wish I had known that before building this thing and wasting my time buying new RAM (Which I returned for a full refund, thank you OverClockersUK). Now I’m tempted to either gut it for the HDDs and GPU and build a Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge machine, or just wait it out for a few more years and dump it once I get my other PC back as my main rig.

I also bought a 3DSXL. It’s kinda cool, but extremely social in the way I’m not. Lots of local connection stuff like StreetPass, which doesn’t benefit me at all because I live in the middle of freaking nowhere at moment.

As for other stuff I’m doing, I’m currently re-building MGC with more features and a serious graphical overhaul. Which leads me onto the next thing; because I have a lot of projects to do for the next couple of months, I figured I’d start doing some Progress Report stuff here so you guys can see how things are coming along and watch me hit my head against a wall repeatedly. I’ll post the first one of those in the next couple of days or so. And there will be another MGCast soon, or some kind of podcast at least.

-Adam