Jason's Development Blog

Reposted from http://www.ludumdare.com/

Hello world and it’s loved ones. I am MorleyDev. I’m an English computer science student currently on a paid internship at an awesome company obsessed with agile development. Yes, I have been indoctrinated in those ways, so this Ludum Dare will be an interesting test for me. I will be streaming via Google Hangouts and Air, so feel free to check that out. I’ll have to put up links as they go online because of how hangouts on air seems to work (don’t think you can have a permanent link to an unstarted Hangout or embed unstarted Hangouts in a web page, unfortunately).

Well that or you can follow my new Google+ account or my new YouTube channel. That could work too.

Language: C++ (GCC for the new C++11 features, using the latest nuwen.net build for MinGW to compile on Windows)
Libraries planned on using: Boost, JML, Google Mock, UnitTest++, SFML, Lua
Targeted OS: Windows, maybe Linux if I have time.

Starting code - Well it’s not exactly “code” but I’ve created an Eclipse project with options to help me do some Testing and Cross-Compiling (if it comes to that). I hope. Maybe. It has some empty mains and the like but nothing “game” related so hopefully it’s allowed and nobody will lynch me in my sleep.

Where I’m not too worried – I’m a programmer. I program. I’d like to think the coding in and of itself won’t be too hear-pulling-out-of-head-and-feeding-to-self-difficult. I’d like a challenge sure, but a challenge I can do.

Where I’ll probably fail - My graphical skills are to be compared with a blind monkey drunk off it’s arse, high on every illicit drug known to man and being repeatedly hit over the head with a shovel. The monkey is also dead. I’m not an artist and so my “art” will be simplistic at best and ugly at best.

Where I’m worried I’ll fail – Ideas, obviously. But also time management. I like to test code and such, and so my feedback cycle will need to be a short one. I’ll probably use compile time to make art assets and such to keep my momentum but it’s a big concern for me. Coding on a slow-as-slow netbook last Ludum Dare actually made me ragequit due to the slow feedback cycle, but since now I have my quad-core hyperthreading laptop back from the repairing place that hopefully won’t be an issue. Hopefully.

- MorleyDev (http://morleydev.co.uk/)

No to Internet Censorship. Stop this bullshit.

Quote of the Day
“The current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy.”
An open letter signed by many organizations, including Consumers International, EDRi (27 European civil rights and privacy NGOs), the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASIC (French trade association for web 2.0 companies), and the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI)

Now, I’ll admit I’m not the most consistent blogger. I’ve not updated in awhile. Moving to a new flat and sorting out my second year of uni has been…interesting, to say the least. Now that I’m finally in a somewhat comfortable position again, and doing some vaguely interesting stuff at University, I wish I could say I’d be more regular but that’d probably be a lie.

However, I think I’ve found a way to do something that could be interesting, educational and fun. I’m going to launch a stream. Having compared a variety of sites, I decided ustream.tv is probably the best site for this in terms of professionalism vs free vs features. Whilst the “conversation with a viewer face-to-face” feature of Stickam is pretty cool it’s too “teen-centric” and “omghotgirllet’swatch” for my liking, and justin.tv’s audience seems too gaming focused (tech users, not techies). And Livestream too “free and sucks, or expensive and is awesome” for me to afford.

So, I’m going with ustream.tv, with my new upcoming show: Let’s Code!. Yes, Let’s Code: Because that’s what I do. It’s a tech show, in which I go over tech news centred around game and software development, in which I’ll upload “video tutorials” on such topics, and also: I code. Hence the similarity to the title Let’s Play, I stream myself as I program things. Random things. The purpose of this is to act as a medium in which I can interact with a viewer: I’ll be working on my own projects and people can ask me questions about things and we can communicate.

The time and day the show starts will be announced soon but the first stream (basically a pre-pilot pilot) will begin streaming at 7pm GMT on Monday the 31st of October. If you have any big questions you want to hear my opnions on from me, suggestions for tutorials you want to see or anything else related to this stream, questions/comments/suggestions can be sent to code@morleydev.co.uk and I’ll try to get around to them.

Actually that I can give opinions, suggestions and answers and have a dialogue is why Stickam’s “peer-to-peer chat” thing interested me, it would be useful for that. But oh well, like I said the site just seemed to “teen-centric”. I may visit it again at a later date, but for now I’ll make due with ustream.tv.

So yeah, that’s my big announcement and triumphant return to the blogosphere!

Quote of the Day
“Nemo, where the f*ck have you been?”
Russel Howard