Last moments of 2007
Well, not many interesting things in today , i just wanted to write a last time before we start year 2008. These last months I have been pretty busy giving some XNA and AI lectures around Spain (mostly in Madrid, where I live). Here are 2 pics from the last one I did in Mallorca 2 weeks ago. It was about graphs, path-finding and steering behaviors. Not many people could attend (lots of other things to do on these dates) but it was a nice session. Here goes a pic from the people who went to the lecture.
And here it goes another pic:
From right to left:
- Jose: coordinator of Baleares .NET user group Baleares on .NET. Thanks for giving me the opportunity of going there, it's a very nice city :)
- Javier (Jader): one of the main developers of Haddd and Jad Engine. It was pretty nice to see you in person again man ;)
- Myself: not much to say here :p
I decided to give the lecture on those topics because I have started work on the Jade.Ai namespace and those are the ones I understand better and are easier to use on a game/demo. I have checked in some work with the steering behaviors and core AI classes (changesets 29272 and 29319) but a lot of work remains to be done. I have also done several "new year promises" related to how I have been developing in Jade so far.
For Jade 1.1 I wrote/translated quite a lot of Ai code, but I tested very little of it and I tested it very informally. The new company where I'm working promotes agile development methods and my project is using TDD as methodology (Test Driven Development). While I do not fully agree to write soooo many tests for everything we have to code (the ratio code:tests is 1:MORE_THAN_I_THINK_NECESSARY ;) ), my old way of coding was not testing at all and that's not serious to be honest.
So for Jade.Ai 2.0 I'll be writting a small application to test the code that I check (so instead of lots of code and then some tutorials, it should go as code, example, code, example, code,...). It will double also as tutorial/demo to show what things Jade.Ai will be capable of.
And just to see next year if I have keep my "new year promises", I'll post the most relevants here:
- Jade.Ai 2.0 as complete as Jade.Ai 1.1 with examples in all the main areas. I would like to advance more on planning Ai (goals) but let's keep the target "easy".
- Write at least 1 post per week. I have repeated this one a lot to myself :p Probably I'll post some not Jade related things more often.
- Pass certifications exams 70-526 and 70-536. My company is a Microsoft Gold Partner so I have to get certifications and they are a good way to learn some things and review others.
- Design a web game. In my company we have the idea of doing a web based game (yes!) and I have been writing a design proposal but I have slacked a lot on it the last few months (and I have lost a lot of work in my last hard drive crash :( ). Developing it would be great but it depends on lots of external factors.
And that closes 2007 for me. Tomorrow I start my holidays and I won't get back till the 6th of January so to all of you have a great 2007 ending and a better 2008 start. And let's hope 2008 turns as a great year for Jade (I really hope so :)