At work I recently helped organise a Hackathon for the Manchester IBM Lab. I wanted to take some time and do a retrospective of the projects that my team worked on. Our team consisted of Toby Fleming, Manuel Cantu Reinhard and myself. We ended up doing two projects, one which was more of an electronics project and the other which was a software development project. 

We have a doughnut rota at our office that means every Friday whoever is down for that week has to go and buy some Krispy-Kreme doughnuts for the lab. The steps to do this are:

1. Go and buy the Doughnuts.
2. Bring the Doughnuts to the kitchen.
3. Send out an e-mail to let everyone know that they have arrived.

We thought we could do better than this so we came up with DaaS!

We first came up with the idea that when any sugary treat is delivered to the kitchen there should be a way to instantly let everyone know that they have arrived. Nobody wants to be waiting an extra ten minutes for someone to get to their desk and compose an e-mail to be informed of doughnut arrival.

We set off to work hooking up the raspberry pi with the flick switch and "Big red button" that we had ordered. At various points through the day we stopped to discuss design decisions and any problems with a whiteboard session.

After hooking up the electronics and doing some simple tests we started working on the implementation. We used a simple python GPIO library for interfacing with the flick switch and button.

So here is what it looks like fully working with the switch activated(obviously the Pi goes inside the box). I'm actually really proud of this as it was a pretty cool project to work on.

Thanks.

Whilst trawling the gamedev.net developer journals for inspiration, I stumbled across a post that someone had done as a reflection of what he had achieved from the previous year and what his plan was for 2016. I thought this was an amazing idea so I'm going to do it myself. Hopefully this should give me some motivation to finish things off and also some direction with what I want to learn next. So here goes...

Just looking back at my posts from last January I was at that point still developing the in's and out's of my Entity Component System. I had only just implemented Awesomium and was still working on my "Level Editor" for this amazing game I was one day going to make. If I could have given myself some advice It would have been to give up on the Level Editor and the ECS and condense my project down massively. Unfortunately I had to learn the hard way!

I managed to get the ECS working in the end and I am fairly happy with the implementation as it uses some complex patterns (CRTP, Observer) to achieve what it does. Also I learnt a lot about using templates in C++.  

The Level Editor and the original game idea I scrapped although that wasn't until June when I decided to get a fresh project and integrate the new ECS into it. I suppose I can put this down to a learning exercise.

It was August 8th when I decided to create a "Space Invaders Remake" using the new baseline JBEngine and ECS. Since then this project had come a long way and is now approaching the finishing up and polish stage. I am really impressed with the work I have done on this. Whilst working on this game I have had to re-work/refactor a lot of the physics code in JBEngine, which is something that can now be reused in future projects. 

I have come a very long way in terms of my career since the beginning of last year! I had just started out at Inspired Gaming and although I knew I had lot's of knowledge about programming, I still felt as though I was a junior developer. ​

I went through a big change in terms of adapting to a new codebase after being so used to working with Arden's monster of a codebase. Learning an application's flow and the architecture is something that only comes through practice, and working at Inspired gave me that. Some of the key skills I will take away from Inspired are:

• Proficiency with Visual Studio
• Better Multi-Threading Knowledge
• Visualising Program Architecture
• Working on a single project through Requirements/Design/Implementation/Test and Deployment
• Working closely with Project Managers/StakeHolder and Testers.
• Time Management​

Along with the technical skills I have developed much more socially, being able to join a new team and integrate quickly. Joining a new company is difficult but as long as you put in that extra effort at the start to socialise, it makes your job and your life much more enjoyable. I have made some great friends at Inspired and will hopefully be seeing them soon in 2016.

In June of this year I left Inspired Gaming and joined IBM. At the time I was very fearful of this decision as the role was to work as C Developer rather than C++ which I had been doing in my previous jobs. To me this felt like a step back in terms of gathering skills but I also have always wanted to work for one of the Big Blue's so I went for it. I think having one of the industry giants such as IBM on my CV couldn't hurt either.

Whilst working at IBM I have actually only done a small amount C development. Instead I pushed for the opportunity to work on a newly starting project which has required me to use python.

I have learnt a lot since being at IBM specifically more about hardware, networking, storage and virtualisation. A lot of the things I have learnt is how much of a nuisance it can be working for a massive corporation. Having company wide decisions pushed on you when it is not the correct decision for your situation. Here is a list of the technical skills I have learned since being at IBM: 

• Learning to various Linux distributions
• ssh'ing onto various machines and having to perform tasks using the command-line only
• Using Eclipse
• RTC (Rational Team Concert)
• python, with Flask, SQLAlchemy and virtual env
• Using Virtual Machines
• Connecting Hardware/Server Room knowledge
• People Management/Project Management skills
• Program Design

The list could go on and on! The main piece of work that I have worked on at IBM I have been the lead developer on. This has required me to create a design document, providing a solution that we will then implement. I have also had to give direction to and collaborate with a team of 3-6 other developers to allow them to accomplish what is in the design.

I have once again had to integrate myself into another team, this one being now up to 80 people. This has been fairly easy as the work environment at the IBM Manchester Lab is really friendly. I have already made some great friends and feel as though I am now an integral part of the team.

In terms of my living arrangements I have moved flat and I am going to be moving again shortly. I moved from Manchester's Northern Quarter in February of 2015 to a flat just off Deansgate Locks. This has given me the opportunity to see more of the city. Some great bars for the summer like Duke's 92, Rain Bar, Atlas bar and many amazing restaurants.

​For the past year I have been in a relationship with Megan (Megatron). We have had some amazing experiences together already! Going for long weekend breaks to Chester, Grasmere, Windermere. A great holiday in Portugal, going to see Wicked! and a lot of hilarious nights out. I can't wait for the adventures we will be having next year!

In terms of my fitness, whilst being at IBM I've managed to maintain my enthusiasm for going to the gym, and playing squash. I now enjoy playing Table Tennis almost every day at work and playing Football on Monday nights.

So all in all this year has been an amazing one for my career, social life, projects and personal development. I realise this post is now pretty long so I think I will leave the "What's Next" part to be a separate post.

Happy New Year :)

So last time I wanted to focus on getting the Systems working via import/export. I have managed to do this now although It doesn't work in the same way as the components. 

Systems can only be ran once by the engine and entities apply to be acted upon by them. Even though the code allows you to do "entity->AddSystem<RenderSystem>()" what it is actually doing is just adding the list of entities that will be processed by the render system. 

After doing all this and basically getting the ECS in a state where I could start adding the components that were in the level editor I decided to stop. Instead of adding all the old components I am going to steer clear of the level editor for a while and instead focus on a small game. One that wouldn't even need a level editor.

Enter Space Invaders...

So I've decided to remake the classic arcade game but in 3D. The functionality will be very similar to what the original was (unless I decide I prefer something else). You will still be able to play it in the same view style as well i.e. Top Down. Alternatively you will be able to play it in a first person mode as well.

Anyway that's the basic idea here is what I have so far:

It's really not that impressive and creating functionality it a little bit tedious at the moment as I'm having to create loads of classes for the components and systems. Once I have written these I will be able to reuse them for games in the future I hope.

All is going well... Oh on another note I bought a new nVidia Geforce 970 gtx and have just installed it so I may get distracted by shiny new games. 

Cheers :)

So I haven't done any dev for a week or so, this is a combination of being putting a lot of time into work at the moment and also because I've just got a new computer.

I initially was in more of a test role at work but after a bit of pushing and a little bit of extra hard work I've managed to get myself as part of the dev team on one of the new projects which is great. I have had to learn a lot more over the past week or so to do with IBM's specific development tools and about their processes.

I am currently at the design phase of a new project and it is great as I'm getting to be involved with the meetings with system architects and getting to add sections to the main design document. At the moment there is a lot of prototyping and trying out various methods and tools to see what could work so it is all very fluid and quite fun.

At home I've just put together my new computer which ended up taking a while as I didn't realise that I would need a fresh install of Windows 7 (as the drivers would be different in the new mobo) and forgot to create a boot disc before ripping the thing apart.

Anyway after doing a fresh install I have now got to reinstall most of my development tools and do a load of windows updates, and basically get everything back to how it was. sigh.....

The positive is that it is really quick! And it will be even quicker once I've bought a new GFX card.

As another point, with spending so much time on Linux at work I have decided to use my other hard drive for a Ubuntu Install. I am hoping to one day get the JBEngine up and running on Linux, It is quite a long way off but I've used all cross platform libraries so far so the work shouldn't be too difficult.

Anyway going forward I basically need to get Visual Studio installed and then start looking at getting this ECS put into the engine as it's really starting to bug me.

Cheers :)

Okay so last time I tried way too much and ended up just having a project that I couldn't run and did absolutely nothing. This time I thought first thing I would do is make sure that I can convert my 2010 JBEngine solution into a 2013 version. This brought quite a few problems:

First of all there were issues with me having used NULL instead of nullptr's for the std::function objects I've used in a couple of places. This was fairly straight forward. 

The next thing that hit me and set me back a little is that I was getting a LNK2038 error because of the 3rd Party Networking library I was using (RakNet). This error basically meant that It was compiled in a Visual Studio Version that wasn't compatible. 

So I had to download the source and re-compile it in Vis 2013. A bit of a pain but it needed doing. Also whilst I'm doing this I am going to have a look through and make sure I create as many of the libraries as I can and link with them where needed. i.e. MTd, Mt and also the dll version. I think using the dll version would be more beneficial but I had this idea in my head about shipping my "Engine" as one binary but in terms of flexibility and general ease I will probably use the dll instead to avoid this happening again.

Another added note is that I'm going to keep hold of the source so that I can use it to make the Linux library when it comes time to doing cross platform development. 

One final annoyance was that the project wouldn't seem to build because Vis couldn't find rc.exe so after copying and pasting it to the correct path It all started working. ( Only took an hour or so! )

Okay so yesterday my motherboard and CPU arrived and I was really excited so I went and bought a little set of tools so I could get cracking on it when I got home. My thinking was, I don't need to bother buying RAM yet I can just stick my old RAM in for now and I will make do with 4gb. I had forgotten that my current desktop was over 7 years old now and only had DDR2 RAM.. Well done Jordan!

So I have a new Mobo and CPU sat in the corner of my room until I have the money to dish out for the RAM. The only positive I have taken away from this is that I hadn't actually started taking anything apart before realising this.

Okay so next on the cards is to finish off these library bits and pieces and then get it all checked in to git. I will then look at my new messaging implementation and try and get that integrated into the engine. This is sort of phase 1 of the new ECS Integration.

Cheers :)

Okay so my first day back into my JBEngine project and I decide to try and integrate the new ECS System into the engine. What a bloody mistake that was! I started off initially tidying up some of the classes of the new ECS and got it into a state that I thought it might merge over fairly easily. 

After swapping all the files across and realising exactly how many problems there were and all to do with classes being templated I quickly realised that it was a massive mistake. 

You definitely shouldn't jump into some code that you've not looked at for months and try and implement a massive piece of new functionality. It was just daft on my part. 

As a positive though at least I have done *something* even if it didn't quite work out this time, it wasn't really a failure:
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas A. Edison

Something else I thought I might mention is that I'm in the process of buying a new desktop. I managed to buy a new motherboard and CPU today and after next payday I will be able to buy some RAM and I will be good to go for a while. 

I will still need to buy a new GFX card as I'm still rocking an nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS, but it's not really a necessity for now. I will see how I feel on payday and decide whether I buy one ;)

I have also got another computer that I managed to save from being scrapped at one of my old jobs and I will be taking a few pieces from my current setup and putting it in that to use as a server. That way I can get a proper Server-Client test for my networking code.

Exciting stuff to come if I can keep up the work. 

Cheers :)