Simply regex for parsing Outlook Email Addresses
Format: <LastName>, <FirstName> <EmailAddress@Somedomain.com>;
Regex: (?<=<)(.*)(?=>)
Output: EmailAddress@Somedomain.com
And MagicJack is a scam.
And I’ll tell you why: no second hand market. The new Magic Jack Plus is out and I decided to buy one for a friend as a gift. Well they gave me their old original one since they didn’t need it anymore. Well I decided, “hey maybe I can just use the free outgoing calls part when I’m travelling.” So I got in contact with a representative to remove the device from their old account.
Well that’s not what happened. Due to the current “policy” devices cannot be removed once activated and if you give away your old device then be careful who you give it to since they can still use your account with the device.
Anyways I’ll just go back to using Skype, but be aware of the second hand scam.
My attempt at Unity.
So I’ve been fooling around with Unity to gain more understanding of the component / entity model. Unity is probably the best example I have encountered. The hierarchy is primitive as everything inside the game is a game object. Components extend the functionality of a game object and are scripted using your flavor of scripting language (I use C#).
Prefabs are used to add a collection of functionality to the game. It’s reusable and it’s pretty much the bread and butter of the engine. One simply makes an object and add the behavior to it via components. Then one may turn that bundle into a prefab to reuse. Some examples could be bullets, voxels, or enemies.
I’ve watched some of the Tornado Twins videos on unity and it was good as an introduction, but I don’t feel comfortable with javascript.
There are a few areas I want to explore in the engine. It is great for prototyping and I will learn a lot probing it.
There’s a couple more things I would like to write about such as the functionality of unity, the state of introductory game development, and voxel map hybrids (mainly interval trees).
I’m pretty tired now and I don’t really want to type everything, so I’ll see about making a voice clip and transcribing my thoughts.
WindowsGame1
C# Game Engine
So basically we’re at step one again at getting the information. I’m concerned with the direction I need to take this project in and how much time needs to be dumped to learn just how to make the game.
I’ve watched the google presentations today on NaCl and building web apps which has given some valuable information on what I need in the game engine.
Previously I have started with the Mono talk on how it is cross platform, but how will it be merged into the NaCl suite? Eventually I want the main engine using C++, but I do not have the skills to start so deep. Therefore, I will be using C# as a placeholder and expanding my knowledge and coding in a style that I can just drag-and-drop the concepts.
I’m going to start with strong inheritance and necessary components. Components will boost the ability of the engine with modularization AND this will allow a cleaner port between all of the targets (Mono, NaCl, flash, etc…).
Now I need to work on getting the core of the engine flushed out. There is a lot of boilerplate to hammer through which will require another long afternoon of development. I see this project going places where none of my other ideas have ever seen.
So what flavors taste good?
So after losing track of what I was doing for so long, I have found that Ubuntu 10.04 and Crunchbang are very good distributions.
I ended up sticking with Ubuntu 10.04 for the stability. Gnome 3 is buggy, but that will sort out in time. I look forward to using it in the future.
I will say Fedora is a very lean workstation and I would enjoy using it for office terminals.
Debian is still rock solid and I will always use it on my Rackspace/Linode.
Overall it’ll take a while before Linux will catch up to Windows for desktop usability, but if Microsoft keeps taking the Apple approach and locking down their system then it’s only a matter of time before their developers will be compelled to embrace the Penguin.
The one critical thing Windows lacks is a package management solution and that will only continue to hurt windows when ever other OS has an appstore.
Programming a game engine in C#.
More flavors.
So I installed Ubuntu 11.10 and it would constantly freeze, so that one is out of question.
I then decided to try Fedora and I love it. It runs well and it’s only a little laggy, but I think this would be more suited for a domain workstation than standalone developer’s machine.
I also misinterpreted Crunchbang as Crunchbag, but I still like the sound of Crunchbag better.
I’m burning a Linux Mint debian based disc next and then I’ll retry the 32 bit version of LuninuX.
I’m feeling pretty good going back to Crunchbang if a few more distributions I will try don’t satisfy my desires.
