Man, its been a while since my last blog-entry. I was really busy with all my university exams ( thank god its over for now :) )
and my appointments with a variety of companies because of my thesis, which i have to write.
I made a decision and go for one company which is specialized in SAP-Consulting and SAP-Softwaredevelopment.
Im a little afraid of ABAP (SAP-programming language), cause i have to learn it from scratch... but im gonna handle it!

In september,i try to post almost every day or week my experiences of the work there, problems, ABAP and so on.
Hopefully its going to be a great time...

 

As asked in a recent forum, how to unite two or more XML-Files of the same formation and scheme, I
instantly thought... THAT would be nice with LINQ! And I was right   I wrote a little tool, entitled
XMLUnion v0.0.1!

Here`s a short code-snippet how it`s done

With this little blog-entry I want to show the first "obvious" advantage of LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) on a small example.
As you can see in the following screenshot there are three version to sum up the elements of an array!


Version 1 is done with a For-Loop, which is the most common method to do things like that. In Version 2 I used the Foreach-Loop  as you can see. So things a little different with version 3, there I used the "power of LINQ" . You are able to use the Sum()-method which is provided by LINQ on an array , because an array implements IEnumerable. Its obvious that you can sum up the array-elements within one line of code, which is also more readable and less to write!
In my opinion the real strength of this use of LINQ will be showing when a programmer have to use nested For-Loops or something like that. In this situation the gain of readability and so on will be much greater than it is shown in the screenshot.

Since Silverlight 2 beta 1 was released at MIX08, there are a really cool video-series (screencasts) at channel9 entitled "Silverlight - What, Where and How?". In this dev4devs Screencasts Dave "DaveDev" Isbitski gives a brief introduction in how things work and can be done in Silverlight 2!

Here are the videos:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

...enjoy watching!

So by surfing the net I found a good video about the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 with some very interesting features I think...
-----------------
Activities and WebSlices are two of the most exciting new features in IE8. Watch Jane Kim explain how these features bring the power of mashups to the browser, and how you can tie your web site or service into IE8's chrome using only web standards and no custom C++ code.
Source: MIX| MIX Online
-----------------
So take a look at this video from the MIX 08 Conference:
 
First Look at IE8 Activities and WebSlices

Since I installed Visual Studio 2008 (btw. I love DreamSpark) I added a new color-scheme called "Desert Nights", which I found on Scott Hanselman`s Blog.I think it`s really cool and good for my eyes :)

Thats what it looks right now:

Hi there,

it`s been a long time since my last blog-entry. But there were not much time to post something interesting. I concentrated myself on studying and now i`m in my last semester at my university and soon I have to write my Bachelor-Thesis.
Because of this I have an apointment on wednesday with a company and I really hope that I`m able to write my thesis there,... we will see.

At the moment I teach myself in C# 3.0 and the .NET 3.5 features with focus on LINQ (Language INtegrated Query) which I really like :), so I try to figure out how everything works in regard of lambda expressions and extension methods. On my german-blog (DEFCON5) I posted today a little about Object Initialization Expressions and how they can make your code more readable and maintainable.

Hi there,

everything is real busy right now and I have no time to post every change on raptor! There is
happening much right now and seilz is currently working on particle effects :)

so long,...

Yeah the awaited update of our loved framework is out now and
ready to download
HERE!!

Our new Video "showing visaul improvements" is now online!! We added a critical damage effect to the enemy-ships.
If the player shoots an enemy and the damage is <= 20%, the enemy-ship will be twinkling. As a second innovation
the projectile-explosion was changed to a better one, we think.
Ok enough talk, just watch the video below! Enjoy...


 

Please feel free to comment on the video

Yeah, we fixed our problem!! We were so damn stupid, just forgot to do the
GraphicsDeviceManager graphics;
                 INTO
public static GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; 

Now everything works fine and in regard of the refactoring we did, the performance really increased!
We did a new explosioneffect for the second weapon the player is able to choose. Looks
really sweet! We will release a second video in May i think, maybe at the end of april...

Well, we did a lot of refactoring and optimizing work, so now our code ist more structered
and cleaner. For example we had loaded a lot of .jpg-Files for our explosion into a SpriteBatch.
Now we have it in a simple .dds-File which we load into the game, but we have some problems
with that.
We need a graphics device, which is unique in the main game.cs! In our explosion.cs we tried to
handle this with the interface IContentService, but we still get a NULLREFERENCEEXCEPTION with this:

m_oTexture = ((IContentService)transferGame.Services.GetService(typeof(IContentService))).Content.Load(m_sAsset);

We`re working on it, but this actual simple problem is just frustrating... At the moment we dont know
where to fix it...

I was just surfing aroung today, looked at a few blogs and was really excited that I
was named at Mykres Space in the
XNA Weekly Roundup 27-03-07 to 01-04-07 ! Thats really cool and Im happy bout this.

Ok, I still would like to hear some feedback about the Raptor2k7-Video!

so long...

Hey, because of "easter" im back home from university and do have a little time to
work on the actual much loved :) IdentityChecker, now in version 0.9. It really
becomes a much loved tool on computer-lans in my area and its expanding, hehe.

Ok, the new version has a new look and a clear structure for user- and network-information
as you can see here


Like the screenshot the IC is now able to read out the MAC-address and NIC-Info, also the Subnetmask is given to the user!Im open for futher suggestions and what you think about it so far...

Yesterday we optimized the weapon-behavoir of our playership. Now the rockets  have a little delay before they
start to accelerate, also faster then before :)
That is why the game is now more dynamic. BUT the biggest thing, we`re very proud of, are our explosions, which
we added to the game! If you shoot some enemyships they explode. We did a little video, where you can  see the things i was talking about..

So heres it is, have fun ...  
We have still a lot work to do and I got you (the readers) updated. I hope you liked it.
So long...

Back home for the weekend, so I took the chance to work a little on the Identity-Checker, which is
now in version 0.7! :)

The changes are:

- reduced the tranparency to 85%
- the IP-adress will be looked up and shown to the user

In future Im planning to fix it on the left or right side of the desktop, so the user is able
to look up some important information, without a lot of searching.

new screenshot:

Today I worked on the collision detection for my xna-project. Im now able to shoot the enemy Ships.
If, for example a rocket-projectile intersects with the enemyShip-Model, the enemyShip and the
projectile of the choosed weapon disappears :)
Im using BoundingSpheres, I like them the most although its an 2.5D overhead shooter, with 3D-Models
There are no effects and sounds at this moment, but Im happy that the collision detections works...

For now, there are two weapon-types (rockets and a sort of laser) you can choose with the x-button
of the gamepad.

Here are some screenshots:






so long...

As the title says, holidays are over, the new semester at university starts thursday and
Im going there by tomorrow. I hope that i have enough time to work on my xna-projects, cause
this semester will be much work i guess.

My new academics are:

- parallel processing
- automata theory and formal languages
- distributed computing
- system-conceptioning
- graphic data processing
- algebra

goodbye sparetime

The last days until now, im sitting at a notebook without a shader 1.1 graphicscard .
That is why im currently not able to work on my XNA-Project, so I decided to learn
more about C# and wrote a little tool, entitled IdentityChecker as I said before.

It checks for the actual logged in user, the domain and the current directory, where the
program-file is. Here`s a screen of the IC :




If somebody`s interessted, feel free to ask in the comments!