So, four main characters with about ten actions and ten to twenty frames of motion for each.. plus all the baddies.. weapons.. Ahem.. HOW many drawings would we need? And these need to be done by when?

Lesson learned: Never underestimate the time your artwork will need to get created.

 We've hit the reset button, and are working on a game with much smaller graphical scope. :-)

Last Friday I attended the GameDevelopers.ie annual Shindig, at which various Irish games publishers - and companies with offices in Ireland - gave presentations on the state of games development in Ireland (strong, and getting stronger) and developers talked technical and demonstrated their latest projects. It was great: mobile development is definitely the in-thing these days, that's for sure.

The other think I learnt was that judging from the empty wine bottles but untouched plates of food, nerds don't eat cheese.

Writing a game is difficult, but we're rapidly learning that getting the art for the game is just as difficult. In fact, given that we're all nerds rather than artists, it's even harder. The options are to use thousands of frames of character animation, use 3D models, or do cunning stuff using minimal art and bones..

I'm hoping that the (hopefully very soon) release of Game Studio 3.1 will make a difference.

An excellent idea came from lunch today: Scroga - the combination of Yoga and Scrum. Normally we do our 15 minute scrum standup meetings in the morning just, well, standing around. Now we can combine them with Yoga poses. Talk about agile and flexible methodologies!

I'm not a particularly subtle person. Which is why I wore my nice green "I'm a PC!" t-shirt (with only a hint of irony) to the Tipperary Game Flaedh. I was probably supposed to wear Microsoft approved company khakis and blue shirt, but pfffttt... this was for kids. Also, I don't own any khakis or blue shirts with (or without) a little MS logo. I'm not in Redmond any more, and this wasn't a boring trade show.

Even though I'm on the wong side of 40, I wear nothing but t-shirts and jeans except to job interviews (yes, one team at MS told me I should have worn a tie to the interview in my post-interview-sorry-you-didn't-get-the-job-feedback). I was therefore excited to learn that I could get another - this time, definitely ironic - t-shirt for my collection just by linking to Microspotting, which is a new website that appears to be an online gossip/celeb magazine about Microsofties. The mind boggies. My first thought on reading the name of the site was something completely different (but clearly my trip to Company Sensitivy Training has paid off, as I'm not going to say what it was). 

 I've got to push the MS Ireland team, so I'm happy to blatently plug the site and hope they visit us over here in (currently amazingly!) sunny Dublin. If they aren't going to send me a shirt because I'm outside the US, well, we'll just have to see how deep the Sensitivity Training goes..

I'm back from The Games Fleadh in Tipperary, where I was lucky enough to be a judge in one of the games categories, and hand out a rather nice cup. It's always hard to pick just one winning team when everyone had worked so hard, but that's the way it goes.

Fantastic to see the next generation of games programmers using XNA on Xboxes. When I was their age I was writing games on ZX81's and ZXSpectrums, so I was delighted to see the tradition continue.

Here's the winning team from Lucan Community College.

This year I'm going to be a judge at the Tipperary Institute Gamesfleagh (http://www.gamesfleadh.ie/) which is very exciting but also worrying, as

 1. I can't pronouce it, and

 2. I'm going to have to find Tipperary. Is it a long way to Tipperary? I'm not really sure, but I'm reliably informed that I can take a train. I'd rather that my motorcycle was legal in time so I could use it instead, but that is unlikely. Note for future reference: importing a motorbike from the US to the EU is a time consuming, expensive and beaurocratic nightmare that has taken me 16 months and counting to try and complete.

After working in Microsoft's Redmond campus for almost ten years, I was used to the two or three days a year when it snowed and complete and utter panic ensued. It was always exciting to watch the entire city of Seattle grind to a halt, and the Microsoft campus being closed - usually to howls of protest from the Fargo office, who seem to operate year-round under six feet of snow.

It was therefore enjoyable to see the same thing happen in my new Dublin, Ireland location. Dublin, and Ireland in general, is not known for its extreme weather. I grew up over the border near Belfast, and it was a lucky winter indeed that dropped more than the barest coating of snow.

This week Dublin received more snow that it has in about a decade. On the plus side, we all ran outside for a quick snowball fight. On the minus side, at home-time the traffic outside the Dublin offices was at a complete standstill for hours, one of the few times I've felt lucky that I don't own a car!

If you happen to be an Apple user, you'll be interested to know that Microsoft have released a Mac client for Mesh. Mesh is a cloud-based storage system, that works by creating a virtual desktop you can access over the internet - as well as synchronizing folders. It's cool, and it works on Macs and Windows - so if you have multiple computers it's an easy way to share files and keep them all in sync.

 http://www.mesh.com

Very please to see that Games Studio 3.0 will leave Beta and have a full release on October 30th!

I'm hoping the list of countries that will be able to access Community Games is expanded to include Ireland. Currently it will be US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, and Spain.

http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/10/13/are-you-ready-for-xbox-live-community-games.aspx

XNA is a wonderful thing, and what makes it even more wonderful is that it is supported on the Zune. All you need is a Zune updated to the latest OS, and the beta of Game Studio 3.0 (and Visual Studio C# Express or better). In next to no time I was able to get a quick demo up and running, using SpriteBatch to both draw the tiled, multi-directional scrolling background, and draw the various player sprites. This all runs at 30 frames a second, which is nice and fast - fast enough for just about any 2D game you would care to throw at it. 

I'm not sure this graphic masterpiece will ever be seen in public (the goats! somebody think of the goats!) but suffice to say I'm happy to have proven to myself that the Zune makes a pretty nifty game platform. It's so nice to write games software and be able to focus on the game itself, rather than fighting with all the graphic drawing stuff. Unlike some other mobile devices I would mention, the Zune has hardware buttons that are a little better suited to some games - and their state is easy to read from within the XNA application.

Today at the lunch table I discovered that I was the only person there not to have done any programming whilst in bed.

I'm not sure what to make of this. For a minute I considered this as meaning I wasn't as "hardcode" as the rest of them, but then I remembered that in a typical week I would spend most evenings programming from when I got home from the office, and not stopping until I fall asleep after midnight. I'm pretty hardcore, oh yes! I guess I just prefer sitting on a chair!

It was an interesting conversation though, covering topics such as the best time of day (or night) for coding and ideas, how to remember things that come to you in the middle of the night, and why licking door handles is probably not a good idea overall.

 In the time it took me to post about XNA Game Studio 3.0, I was able to download and install it, and create this amazing smash-hit title: Goat Attack.

Yes, it really is that easy to make games from the 1980s in about an hour. This one has a scrolling tiled backdrop, and SpriteBatch objects for the car, evil goats and various weapons. You drive around the deserted Greek Island taking out the goats, and well, that's about it. Classic stuff.

I told you more good things were coming: XNA Game Studio 3.0 Beta has gone live. This is a huge update to the XNA development system, and delightfully includes support for writing games for the Zune media player. Yup, don't let those fruit-themed phone guys have all the fun, and get your SpriteBatch running in your hand.

You can download the Beta here.

Note: this beta doesn't support running your apps on XBoxes, only Windows. Yeah, that kinda jibes with the Xbox goodness story, but at least you can get your applications ready and start to explore the new features. If you are in the middle of a Xbox game at the moment, stick with Game Studio 2.0.

It's a great time to be an Xbox fan: the price is coming down this Friday to 180 Euro, or 160 UK quid for the Arcade version - that's quite a deal. You can also get versions with 60Gb and 120Gb hard drives, which are probably a better deal in the long run. Still, you can always upgrade as you need to - the important thing is to discover what a great gaming machine you have when you hook it up (preferably to your high-definition flatscreen telly).

There are other interesting things happening really soon in Xbox land.. I'm sure I'll be mentioning them when I'm allowed to.. so crack open that piggy-bank and run to the toy shop on Friday.

You can read the official press release (http://microsoftireland.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!1024FF975ACC773B!442.entry), if you like that kind of thing, but my favourite line is:

 “You’re in the Movies” is the first and only game of its kind to literally transport players into a magical world of cinema mixed with the hilarious world of improvisation.

I do wish folks would learn when they should and shouldn't use the word "literally". I wonder if we'll get sued when someone finds the aren't actually moved into a magical world? 

This weekend was the first weekend I’ve been in Dublin and left to my own devices. It was also the first weekend I’ve had transport other than my bicycle, as I have ironed out the issues relating to importing my motorcycle from Seattle and got it legal and running.
 
As luck would have it, Saturday was also a gorgeous day – it was almost too hot at times! – so I took the opportunity to go for a ride. I headed towards the large hill called “Three Rock Mountain” that is near the Microsoft Dublin campus (and near where I live). This took me through several small villages, up some extremely narrow windy roads, and past some fantastic scenery. The mountains to the south, the bay stretching out in front, the now-familiar red-and-white striped beacons that mark the port of Dun Laoghaire. I passed about a dozen golf courses, and hundreds of horses and donkeys staring at from their fields as I pottered by. I think I saw one other car, and a few people who had just hiked up to the top of Three Rock Mountain.
 
On the way down, I took a few roads at random (I had my GPS in my pocket in case I got too lost) and ended up at a huge US-style outside shopping area just planted at random next to a motorway.
 
From there I headed to the coast, and through Dun Laoghaire towards Blackrock. Dun Laoghaire is a large port, and riding along the promenade reminded me of the places I had grown up in the North, with Victorian architecture, little parks, and wrought iron fences.  Blackrock was a short distance away, and was full of little arty-shops and restaurants (think La Conner).
 
Finally I nipped back onto the road towards Leopardstown, and back towards the MS buildings and home. I live in a modern apartment complex, that even has a Starbucks as part of it – I couldn’t help but laugh thinking how amazingly gauche a Starbucks would look in the little villages I passed.

Later in the afternoon, I took the light rail into Dublin and visited the Hugh Lane Gallery - which had a fantastic collection of Impressionist paintings. I rounded the evening off with a take-out from the local Chinese, and considered it the best Saturday I've had in a long time.

Recently I was trying to debug some code, and getting nowhere. So I went for a walk, and within about thirty seconds of being away from the problem realized I had to be looking outside the bounds of an array. When I got back to my desk, voila - that was the exact problem. So I kept a note of some of the other reasons I had bugs, and here it is:

1. Consider that whatever you are trying to achieve is, in fact, working. It is doing what you are asking it to do, but you don't notice or you are expecting something different to happen. This is a "cognitive dissonance" type of bug, and it's very hard to find because you can look at it all day, everyday and still not accept it.

2. You are convinced the input data is correct. However, despite looking at output data that's clearly complete nonsense for 15 minutes, you still don't realize that the input data isn't actually right at all. Again, like point 1, it's not the computer software that is malfunctioning, it's you.

3. Something worked that really shouldn't have worked (for example, an uninitialized variable didn't cause a crash), and when something else changed, it stopped working. So you end up looking at the thing you changed, but really it was the first thing that is broken. These are difficult to track down.

4. There is an error in the API you are calling, and it's simply not doing what you expect. Now this could be because there is an error in the API - that is, the API advertises that it performs a particular function, but it doesn't (this is rare in a mature API set). Or it could be a misunderstanding on yourpart, along the lines of 1 or 2.

What to do when stuck on a bug

1. Confirm your assumptions. Take a fifteen minute break, watch TV, go for a walk. Come back, and check that what you think you are doing is what you are actually doing.

2. Work backwards - try and work out how what the unexpected thing that is happening might actually happen. What would you have to change to make that happen? Have you accidentally done that? For example, perhaps you are loading in old test data by mistake.

My officemate also recommends running AppVerifier early and often to find potential issues.

Do you have any other bug classification stories and methods to share?

As pointed out by Shawn Hargreaves on his excellent blog, the content from the GameFest 2008 conference is now available online. You'll find all the details here.

You'll find useful information and previews of Game Studio 3.0.