Here's my current development environment.

4Gb Dual core laptop running Windows 7 64-bit. I plan to upgrade to a quad core later this year.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 for devleopment, but release builds are still done with VS2008.

I'm using a productivity tool called CodeRush from DevExpress.

I'm using TFS for my source code control and bug tracking. I used Visual SourceSafe before that, and SVN for a short time. I'm using TFS at work, and it also does bug tracking, so I'm happier with it.

My backups are being done right now wilh Microsoft 'Live Mesh' I'm backing up TFS, I'm also backing up my development directory, and several other directories. These backups are going both to three other machines on my home netowrk, and also up to 'the cloud.' Live mesh gives you a free 5 Gigabyte account which has been enough. I also pull off DVDs about once a month. The TFS backups are daily, and the backups of my development directory are near real-time.

Here's one reason I swithced over to TFS. I can now do reports like this instead of keeping noted in 'readme' files. I can also like match each one of these changes to the files and lines of code which I changed in order to fix them.

Before, i didn't really have this link. I know that 119 fixed these three items, but I couldn't tell which files were changed for that fix, except in general. It means that I'm hoping it's less likely for me to forget to make a change, and to make it easier to be able to fixure out what I changed when I make a mistake. I feel like it's saving me time over reading and editing files to keep track of this stuff.

Release State       Reason Title
119       Resolved Fixed     Lockups in unit screen
119       Resolved Fixed     Allow you to turn off PNG files support
119       Resolved Fixed     Editor/unit report/deployment closes unit dialog

If anyone is setinng up their own TFS system, there are a couple of things to know.

You're going to have to learn a bit of SQL Server in order to put the data files in a reasonable location (NOT C:\Program files which is the default).

You're going to have to set up a scheduled task to do backups.

If you've got a lot of binary files, keep the binary files in a separate 'Collection'. I've got one collection for all the graphics, and a separate one for the daily code. I do this so that I can do reasonable sized backups on a regular basis.

Nobody cares except for the three hate mails that I'm going to get, but I'm switching from SVN to Basic TFS.

I store copies of all the source code, tracing back to when I got access to the code, that's called SCCS, SCM, and probably some other acronyms. That means that I can see exactly what changes I've made to the code over time.

SVN is a fine product, but for some reason I kept getting errors about needing to execute the cleanup command, and got frustrated by what I needed to do to fix the issues I was having. I was also having some display issues linked to using 64-bit windows.

By switching to TFS basic, I also get to add and attach bugs to specific code changes, something that isn't possible with SVN by itself, and which will help me down the road when I want to know why I did something. I know that I can get bugzilla or other products to get the same functionality, but this is also what I'm using at my day job, so it makes my life a bit easier.

Ralph

The  boardgamer in me likes this view. I don't think I'd play a monster scenario like this, but...

I'm adding in adjusting Contrast and Brightness for the graphics since I know that some people like more contrast than others, and it's a simple addition after I got through researching it.

Here's a possible view that Damezzi worked up. Look at the numbers on the units, they are cleaner than 3.2, although it may not show in this picture. The Huge (Close in) view should also be sharper with the engine changes.

I've still got some strange things happening, but I'm going to do a round of combat engine changes first, then get back to the graphics. All the problems are on my end. Damezzi has done a fantastic job.

I've been working with Damezzi to add a new set of PNG graphics with Alpha support.

For the non geeks, this means that it should be possible set the transparency of each pixel from 0 (transparent) to 255 (solid). It should be possible to add in things like clouds that don't obscure the terrain beneath, but are semi transparent. There may be a slight performance hit, but I don't think it will be noticeable. I'm still working on finishing up the code, so we haven't seen the finished item, but I think it should look pretty cool. Once I get everything working, I'll upload a sample.

I think it would be neat to be able to see where the coulds are without having to toggle them on and off. I'm sure that there are some other more important things that are going to happen with this, including cleaner fonts, but for some reason the clouds fascinate me. They're very nice to know for some scenarios, but a pain in practice.

I know that the high end products like Adobe support Alpha, but there's also an Alpha editor add on for Paint.Net (free) which I haven't tried out. I have enough problems with the simple red green blue without the added alpha channel!!!

Ralph

The major thing about the next game will be that it's built from the ground up using C#. That's has a couple of advantages. One is that since C# is also my day job, making changes is going to be easier.  Right now, I'm thinking that it's going to be an XNA game with WPF added for extra features. XNA means that things like smooth scrolling are practical, and WPF means that things like a chain of command tree are a lot more practical.

I'm also pushing towards standards like XML, so creating alternate editors, and even modifying the save files for 'campaigns', etc. should be possible in single-player.

The feature list for the next game is similar, but there are areas like naval combat, chain of command and AI/Strategic programmability will be enhanced. There will be other changes as well. The wishlist is a good place to start for things like that.

WeGo and multiplayer is probably for the game after that. I can see where they go together for smaller, quick games, but there is too much to do there for it to make it into the next game. It's probably not going to have rounds, and is overall going to be a different game although it should allow play of the same scenarios. I see a multiplayer game as having to be more polished and having a simpler interface, since it's going to be a lot easier to get a friend into a multiplayer game than into a PBEM game. I can also see where wanting to be able to control at a higher level would be very nice to make it go faster, otherwise anything much larger than Arracourt is going to be a problem. Unfortunately, multiplayer coding is HARD, there are all kinds of issues like threads, ports and firewalls that you have to deal with. The combat model totally changes, you have to queue up all the moves and planned combats and then watch a movie after the fact (That means that there have to be new combat rules, etc.). There's going to have to be some expermentation to find out what user model works best. It almost begs for a model where you control at a higher level, and the individual units decide what to attack after moving instead of plotting the individual attacks. It's also true that it's a smaller market share, that's why it's a lower priority. I think that there's a market for it, it's just going to have to be a very different game.

Ralph

3.4.0.95 was sent out to the beta testers and put into subversion. That's 95 separate builds that I felt were good enough to send out.

We're still making progress. I did a chunk of work this weekend, and I think I've got most of the things in that we're going to do for this release in now, although I need to go back through the list to make sure. If that's true, then we're just in for a load of testing, packaging, etc. to get things packaged up. That always takes a lot more time than I expect.

Never again will I do anything crazy like being this ambitious abut what's going into a patch, that was just too wearing. The number of major changes is jsut too many.

I'm going to play some TOAW now and wait for the bugs... Bob's too good at finding where I hid them.

After this goes out, the next patch will probably be early next year with any bug fixes that I put in and a few features that I didn't have time to get in.

Ralph

I think that we've about finished with the changes for ant attacks. I've got one more change, then I move onto trying to make things a bit more configurable. The biggest bear about that is the testing.

I may need to make the comments moderated. Nobody has posted naything offensive, but the spammers have moved in. I've kicked them all out I believe, and I'm going to work faster at pruning them. Most of them were pretty mellow, but the last one just was out and out spam, so I decided to kick them all out.