We had a superb evening on Wednesday. For those that want to check out what we do – here is a link to the podcast of the event: http://bit.ly/6PL4Kr

Thanks firstly to Darci Dutcher, Rebecca Stafford and Jenny Wong of Thoughtworks Ltd for their presentation and hosting the game. They did a great job of explaining the principles to Agile and XP techniques before hosting the game and providing examples of how a real software development project plays out.

Thanks also goes to SkillsMatter, the largest technical training organisation in Europe, for sponsoring the venue. Please visit their site at http://skillsmatter.com/ to see the latest free events and training course they run.

 Here is some feedback on our official site from the event:

“Wow, it was great fun. Special thanks to ThoughtWorks for providing a great seminar with an interesting game with LEGO. Will totally end up purchasing some LEGO for Christmas now ”

“Excellent introduction to Agile principles. Nothing beats a quick practice session to get a good overview. I left the meet-up with a better understanding of professional software development. Thanks for that!”

“Great event last night. Looking forward to the next one! Met an awesome group of people, will have to add you all on here shortly… “

More events to follow in 2010. Please help us grow by forwarding this to any undergrads, professors or graduates so they can follow the work we’re doing.

Barry Cranford

Am 14.11.09 von 14.00 an nahm ich an der 35. Landeskonferenz der OGJ Tirol teil. Dabei waren alle stimmberechtigt Telegierten anwesend. Schon von Beginn an traf ich auf Freunde aus vergangenen Jahren die sich hier wieder vereinten. Zur Begrüßung (Philip Wohlgemuth – ÖGJ Sekretär, Jenny Hötzl – ehem. ÖGJ Präsidiumsvorsitzende) wurden allerhand Leute vorgestellt. Unter anderem Herr Gerhard Schneider ÖGB, Herr Mayr Günter VIDA Vorsitzender, Kollegen aus ganz Österreich uvm. Nach der üblichen anerkennung der Geschäftsordnung und der Wahl des Tagespräsidiums ging es mit dem Vorgezogenen Referat von Hr. Schneider los. Ein sehr packendes, den Zeiten angepasstes Stück.

In der zwischenzeit Stieß auch Hr. Erwin Zangerl zu dieser illustren Gesellschaft. Auch er wurde zu einer Stellungnahme gebeten.

Das Thema der 35. Landeskonferenz des ÖGJ Tirols hieß: GEIZ ist nicht GEIL!

Es kamen folgende Anträge zur Abstimmung:

1. Jugendgruppen in Tirol
2. Ungerechtigkeiten bei Freifahrt u. Internatskosten beseitigen
3. Mehr Chancen für Jugendvertrauensrätinnen
4. Mehr Betriebsprüfungen bei Klein- u. Mittelbetrieben
5. Generelle Sicherheitsschulung vor Beginn der Lehrzeit
6. Dauergenehmigung für den Infobus
7. Aufklärung in TFBS
8. Übernahme der Fahrsicherheitskosten durch den Arbeitgeber bei Mitarbeitern im Außendienst
9. Entgeltfortzahlung bei Inanspruchnahme von weiterbildenden- u. persönlichkeitsbildenden Maßnahmen
10. Ausarbeitung eines “Arbeitslexika”
11. Her mit der Verkehrsaufklärung!
12. Lehrlingsausbildung in Handel
13. AIDS Kampagne
14. Freifahrt mit allen Öffis
15. Her mit der politischen Bildung
16. Her mit der Mobilität, Taxigutscheine für Jugendliche!
17. Her mit der Mobilität für StudentInnen!
18. Unimetropole Innsbruck!
19. Ausufern der rechtsradikalen Szene in kleinen Gemeinden
20. Bekennung zum Antikapitalismus

Bei Interesse an den Themen kann ich gerne Auskunft darüber geben.
Einige der Anträge sind sehr sehr gut und bedürfen einer sehr raschen Umsetzung. Einige müssen unbedingt u. ohne Umschweife umgearbeitet werden.

Jeder der an Wirtschaft und Politik gefallen findet kann sich bei den ÖSterreichischen Gewerkschaften schon in jungen Jahren einen tollen Einblick verschaffen. Zudem lernt man hier gelebte Politik und vielleicht versteht man dann auch warum nicht alles gehen kann.

Der Rachen-Putzer

I’m a genius. The other day, tickets for next year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco went on sale, I tried to jump on it and purchase my pass; however, my card repeatedly got declined. Today I tried the same thing to no avail, even though I had plenty of money and nothing was wrong, etc. etc.

Well upon calling the bank the spokesperson informed me that my card was declined all due to invalid expiration dates being entered in. Upon double checking, I felt like the biggest idiot ever: I had misread my own expiration date off of my card multiple times.

Now that I’m over my stroke of genius, I finally have my GDC tickets. I’m super excited to go, and hopefully I can meet some really interesting people there and get connected. I keep seeing how networking makes or breaks a career, so I’m trying to get a jump start on it next March when my friends and I fly over to California.

This is an announcement of our very first event. It is a free event on the 25th November 2009 – if you would like to come along then click here to RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Graduate-Undergraduate-Development-Community/calendar/11802925/

This is the first official event organized by the GDC (Graduate Development Community). A Leading consultancy – Thoughtworks have agreed to run an exercise they use to help their graduates gain an understanding of how real world commercial development teams work.

Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. Most UK development teams now rely on Agile principles to run software development projects. This exercise aims to introduce a few of these principles through gameplay that are used in practise, such as Pull mechanisms and Continuous Improvement. It will also introduce participants to the working dynamics of an Agile team.

The session is aimed at beginners to Agile and to those with experience with Agile and XP. Newcomers will gain a useful understanding of the processes mechanics and some of the real world issues they may face in adoption.

No programming experience is required – the session is strongly recommended to all attendees with interests in becoming QA’s, Analysts, Developers, Project Managers & Business Analysts alike.

Thoughtworks are a leading international consultancy, well known throughout the industry for being at the cutting edge of technical development. They are actually use this game to help graduates gain a grasp of Agile principles such as XP and Lean. To find out more about their graduate scheme click here: http://www.thoughtwor…

The GDC is a Community of Undergraduates and Graduates interested in Software Development. For more information about the group please visit the blog at http://graduatedevelo…
Sponsor: Skills Matter are sponsoring the venue for this event. They offers Europe’s largest selection of events on Open Source technologies and Agile Software Development and have gained a reputation as a first class provider of practical learning solutions that help our customers adopt lightweight Java frameworks, Open Source technologies and Agile Development practices successfully on their projects.

Hi all,

For all of you out there, worried about CVs, interviews and what employers are looking for… I actually wrote a recruitment guide several years ago. It can be found and downloaded here: http://www.clearview-itrs.com/guide.htm

It should give you an idea not just about how the handle and manage the recruitment process but also the part that recruiters play which can often be confusing when you’re entering the industry.

Keen to hear feedback from you if this helped, or if you feel you have some other advice to offer please add it in a comment to help others that may be reading.

Barry Cranford

b.cranford@clearview-itrs.co.uk

So what is the GDC, and what is it all about?

Learning new technologies, Career development, Recruitment advice, Networking….

The GDC or Graduate Development Community is a social network for degree students & recent graduates to come together in one place.

If you are not already aware, the London Technical Community is positively buzzing with a large number of users’ groups aimed at pretty much any technology you could be interested in, specialist or general. Users’ groups started in the early days of mainframe computers, as a way to share sometimes hard-won knowledge and useful software and have thrived ever since.

As an example I run a user group aimed at Java developers (it’s called the LJC, you can find out more at www.londonjavacommunity.co.uk) through this community we organise regular presentations for Java developers of all levels from Graduates to Senior Technical Architects and Development Managers to get free introductions to the latest technologies from key figures in the industry. The LJC acts as a platform to assist people in learning, networking & career development, feel free to read our members feedback: http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/about/comments/?op=all

My background is in technical recruitment. I have many connections with UK based companies and have throughout my career spent a lot of time trying to understand the technical recruitment process and what companies are looking for from candidates of every level. Much of the feedback I have had when it comes to Graduates is that there is a gap between what is taught in Universities and what is used in Industry. I am hoping to use a combination of my industry connections and personal experience to help bridge that gap through anyway possible.

To become a member please visit our official Community site – http://www.meetup.com/Graduate-Undergraduate-Development-Community/

I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible.

Barry Cranford

b.cranford@clearview-itrs.co.uk

Currently, there are tree more-or-less working compilers for the D programming language (version 1): The oldest and most mature one is DMD, short for Digital Mars D Compiler, the official reference implementation by Walter Bright, the creator of D. It has grown reasonably stable, but has certain limitations, most of them resulting from using a proprietary back-end. Additionally, not all parts of it are Open Source (starting with a capital letter). The second one is LDC, a rather young, but quick-moving project which aims to port the front-end of DMD to the also fairly recent LLVM compiler infrastructure in order to leverage its advanced code generation and optimization infrastructure. While it still has some bugs to iron out (most notably missing exception support on Windows), it works reasonably well on Linux x86 (32 and 64 bit). The third compiler, and subject of interest for this post, is GDC. Like the other two compilers, it uses the Digital Mars D front-end, but coupled to the very mature GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) back-end, whose C/C++ compiler is widely used on Unix-like systems like Linux, Mac OS X, various flavors of BSD and also Windows through MinGW. Unfortunately, development on it has stalled, making it pretty much unusable due to the many bugs the old DMD front-end it uses contains.

However, there has been an effort started to resurrect GDC recently. Development takes place over at bitbucket (you can also find building instructions for GDC there) and the project has been able to celebrate some first success: The reasonably recent front-end versions 1.040 and 2.015 (for D2) are working with GCC 4.3. This seemed enough of a sign of life for me to decide to give GDC another try. After some initial problems (some of which resulted from bugs which have already been fixed in the official Mercurial repository) I managed to compile a GDC binary (frontend version 1.040 against GCC 4.3.1) which happily compiles the Tango standard library and a personal project of mine. This is what I did (silently omitting quite a few hours of searching and fixing bugs):

First, go to some temporary directory and checkout the GDC sources from the Mercurial repository (at the time of writing, revision 53 was current):

cd ~/tmp
hg clone http://bitbucket.org/goshawk/gdc

Then, download the core of GCC 4.3.1 from a mirror near you (version 4.3.2 should also work, but builds against 4.3.4 are currently known to be broken) and extract it inside the GDC sources:

wget ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gcc/releases/gcc-4.3.1/gcc-core-4.3.1.tar.bz2
mkdir gdc/dev
cd gdc/dev
tar xjvf ../../gcc-core-4.3.1.tar.bz2

Now, link the GDC sources into the extracted directory and use the provided setup-gcc.sh script to patch GCC to enable D version 1:

cd gcc-4.3.4
ln -s ../../../d gcc/d
gcc/d/setup-gcc.sh --d-language-version=1

After that, you are ready to build and install GCC with D support. For this, go to some build directory and configure and make. You can, of course, choose an arbitrary directory for the build files (for instance, I personally prefer having the build files completely outside the source direcotry):

mkdir build
cd build
../configure --enable-languages=d --disable-multilib --disable-shared --prefix=/opt/gdc
make
sudo make install

Note that I configured GCC/GDC to be installed in /opt/gdc. As the build also includes the C compiler, this avoids any interference with the »normal« GCC installed probably in /usr. After the build has finished – this takes quite long, since GCC is built three times to bootstrap itself – you should have a working GDC executable in /opt/gdc/bin. Now for the second part, Tango:

Start off by fetching the Tango sources from the SVN to a temporary working directory (I worked with revision 5023):

cd ~/tmp
svn co http://svn.dsource.org/projects/tango/trunk tango

Unfortunately, Tango currently does not compile with GDC out of the box, you have to apply a couple of minor changes: The first change adds build/arch files for GDC/Linux:

diff --git a/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-dbg.mak b/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-dbg.mak
--- /dev/null
+++ b/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-dbg.mak
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+include $(ARCHDIR)/gdc.rules
+include $(ARCHDIR)/linux.inc
+
+# -Wall breaks the compilation with wrong errors
+DFLAGS_COMP=-g
+CFLAGS_COMP=-g

diff --git a/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-opt.mak b/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-opt.mak
--- /dev/null
+++ b/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-opt.mak
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+include $(ARCHDIR)/gdc.rules
+include $(ARCHDIR)/linux.inc
+
+DFLAGS_COMP=-O2
+CFLAGS_COMP=-O2

diff --git a/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-tst.mak b/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-tst.mak
--- /dev/null
+++ b/build/arch/linux-i686-gdc-tst.mak
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+include $(ARCHDIR)/gdc.rules
+include $(ARCHDIR)/linux.inc
+
+DFLAGS_COMP=-g -fdeprecated -fdebug=UnitTest -funittest
+CFLAGS_COMP=-g

The second change removes the -fversion=Posix flag from the Makefile of the runtime because the DMD frontend GDC currently uses (1.040) does not allow it to be specified as it is set automatically (this restriction has been lifted in later versions):

diff --git a/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.am b/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.am
--- a/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.am
+++ b/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.am
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
 # AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = 1.9.6 foreign no-dependencies

 OUR_CFLAGS=@DEFS@ -I.
-D_EXTRA_DFLAGS=-nostdinc -pipe -I../../.. -I../shared -fversion=Posix
+D_EXTRA_DFLAGS=-nostdinc -pipe -I../../.. -I../shared
 ALL_DFLAGS = $(DFLAGS) $(D_MEM_FLAGS) $(D_EXTRA_DFLAGS) $(MULTIFLAGS)

 host_alias=.
diff --git a/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.in b/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.in
--- a/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.in
+++ b/runtime/compiler/gdc/Makefile.in
@@ -228,7 +228,7 @@ target_vendor = @target_vendor@
 top_builddir = @top_builddir@
 top_srcdir = @top_srcdir@
 OUR_CFLAGS = @DEFS@ -I.
-D_EXTRA_DFLAGS = -nostdinc -pipe -I../../.. -I../shared -fversion=Posix
+D_EXTRA_DFLAGS = -nostdinc -pipe -I../../.. -I../shared
 ALL_DFLAGS = $(DFLAGS) $(D_MEM_FLAGS) $(D_EXTRA_DFLAGS) $(MULTIFLAGS)
 toolexecdir = $(phobos_toolexecdir)
 toolexeclibdir = $(phobos_toolexeclibdir)

The third and last change adds a workaround to Tango’s user library for a bug in the DMD frontend which has been fixed by now (the compiler fails to resolve the type of the template parameter in the templated intpow function):

diff --git a/user/tango/math/internal/BiguintCore.d b/user/tango/math/internal/BiguintCore.d
--- a/user/tango/math/internal/BiguintCore.d
+++ b/user/tango/math/internal/BiguintCore.d
@@ -516,7 +516,7 @@ static BigUint pow(BigUint x, ulong y)
             }
             y0 = y/p;
             finalMultiplier = intpow(x0, y - y0*p);
-            x0 = intpow(x0, p);
+            x0 = intpow!(BigDigit)(x0, p);
         }
         xlength = 1;
     }

After you have applied these patches, you should be ready to build Tango (make sure that you have a cc somewhere in your PATH, if not, create a link to your system’s gcc):

sudo PATH=$PATH:/opt/gdc/bin DC=gdc build/build.sh --lib-install-dir /opt/gdc/lib

However, I had to remove Phobos’ object.d from /opt/gdc/include/d/4.3.1 first. build/build.sh should finish with a note reminding you that the user libraries still have to be installed. To do this, simply copy the contents of the user directory to /opt/gdc/include/d/4.3.1 after removing the old include files which are part of Phobos (you have to keep the gcc and i686-pc-linux-gnu directories though). Congratulations, now you should be able to build your Tango projects with GDC!

A quick tip for DSSS users: You probably have to modify your gdc-posix-tango profile to omit the -version=Posix switch (see above) on gdmd calls and add -L-ltango-base-gdc to the linker flags since Tango was not installed via DSSS in the above instructions.

Today i received a very good mail which stated that what we are doing in developing gdc is appreciated.

The mail is from Tomasz Stachewicz, the developer of RuDy project to enable and ease writing Ruby native extensions in D programming language.

After congratulating for the work we are doing, he stated something new: “Is there a book wishlist or donation account I could use to word my appreciation in a more material way?“

If i’m not wrong (sorry i’m not a native English speaker), he is asking for an account for a donation. I think that maybe he is not the only one which wants to give some founds to the gdc project…

Well… If everybody agrees (well for now me, Michael and David Friedman, the ones which did work for gdc) i can get this moneys with paypal (or with one of the pay-for-feature websites). Moneys will be reserved to develop gdc in a issue/task basis (for porting gdc to lastest gcc you take X, for updating to dmd version Y you take Z and so on)

Of course i don’t think that gdc is so famous to make a lot of people contribute to it, but i think that we should decide about this issue to allow

people to support the gdc project.

This message is on the news.digitalmars.com NG too.

Divulgando oportunidade de viagem para GDC:

Já estão abertas as inscrições no site da Unisinos para Missão Técnica a São Francisco: participando do Game Developers Conference 2010.

O pré-requisito é ter passaporte válido (pelo menos 6 meses de validade), além de ter visto válido para os Estados Unidos da América. Para alunos da Unisinos o valor é de R$9.180,00 à vista (8x de R$1.229,00). Está incluso viagem, estadias, translados nos EUA e a inscrição (passe com acesso completo, incluindo a feira de talentos/recrutamento).

A missão será de 6/3/2010 a 20/3/2010. Vai contabilizar 80 horas (aos alunos) e será fornecido certificado de participação.

Além de participar do maior evento de Jogos Digitais, a Game Developer Conference 2010, serão feitas visitas às universidades e empresas de jogos digitais em São Francisco e Los Angeles. (Sony já confirmado, tentaremos ir na Blizzard também)

As inscrições podem ser feitas online e vão até o dia 06/11/2009.

Para maiores informações e inscrições clique aqui.

Lembrando que qualquer pessoa pode se inscrever, não precisa ser aluno da Unisinos. Vale notar que o passe para o congresso custa em torno de U$800,00 e são ao todo 14 dias de viagem, tudo já incluso no valor.

É uma viagem bem cara, mas todos que foram na GDC em outros anos confirmam que vale cada centavo, mesmo tendo que ficar pagando por muito tempo depois e até devassar as economias para conseguir ir (seja poupança, investimentos diversos, porquinho…).

A vantagem de ir em grupo como universidade, e não como um indivíduo, é ser recebido pelo consulado brasileiro em San Francisco, ter acesso às empresas que não abririam as portas para qualquer visitante individual, além do comodismo e segurança de estar sempre junto com o pessoal.

Se souber de alguém que possa se interessar, por favor divulgue. Precisamos de um número mínimo de pessoas para a viagem sair.

Site GDC 2010.

In case you missed it last night, Red Fly was one of many studios participating in Game On Austin last night. We showcased Ghostbusters and Cook or Be Cooked for the Wii. The event was open to the public, and many people got to have hands-on experience with our latest videogames.

AUSTIN, Texas — Perfect Dork Studios displayed a new demo of Box Macabre in the GarageGames booth at this year’s Austin GDC. The conference provided an opportunity for the team to fine tune their work before the demo is submitted to the IGF and the Indie Game Challenge later this month, sponsored by GameStop and the Guildhall at SMU.

President Billy Garretsen said, “Everyone wants to win, but right now it’s more important to us to build buzz, gain legitimacy, and get people interested. This demo is important to us because it will be the first time the game is released outside of our small development circle.”

The demo contained work from some of the newest members of the Box Macabre team, including Jeff Arthur and Spencer Neal. In addition, the team was able to network with other promising new talent. “This is our final demo,” said Garretsen. “From here on out, it’s all about development on the final product. The conference felt a little like the calm before the storm.”

Local NBC affiliate KXAN covered the conference, and included a story in their prime time newscast.

Box Macabre utilizes the TorqueX 3D Engine from GarageGames. For more information on Box Macabre, visit www.boxmacabre.com.

]]> http://calmscramble.com/2009/10/06/easy-results-please/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:57:43 +0000 Carlos Lievano http://calmscramble.com/2009/10/06/easy-results-please/

Here’s an idea: constraints foster innovation and creativity. Just on this years GDC in San Francisco, Jideo Kojima, designer of the Metal Gear series, stated how the initial restrains in hardware capacity were the driving force before his initial design of the stealth action genre defining game. Not being able to handle enough enemy characters on screen, the mechanic evolved seemingly naturally. Additional examples of this principle abound on many other design domains. One of them: Computers.

Initial development had many constraints. Processing capacity was limited, memory was expensive, input was analog. Then this constraints started to disappear, and an emphasis was placed on achieving new things with this innovative tool, expanding its possibilities. There was a new focus on achieving results. Some improvements took place on the interfaces, both for inputs and outputs. And computing power started migrating to other product domains, to add new capabilities; add new possible results.

Today, processing capacity is high enough to perform many regular mundane tasks with precision, and memory is relatively inexpensive. However, many companies still have the original engineering, results oriented approach. Some have figured out this might not be enough, and have shifted to improve the aesthetic design of their products.

The truth is that a new constraint needs to be set to spur the new wave of innovation: The user. Designers need to start thinking to create solutions that are bounded by its preferences and needs. It can’t be about providing them with results; they also need to be usable and simple to get. And it can’t be restricted to computers. It is a need in all design domains. The few that have already embraced this approach are thriving.

Our CEO, Keith Caveney, (and one of the founders of OMS SafeHarbor) was interviewed by the Level3 “Red Couch” team at the recent Game Developers Conference (GDC) in Austin, Texas.

The interview was clipped into a short three minute segment. If you are interested in more detail on why OMS SafeHarbor is bringing our software and entitlement management tools to the gaming community, its definitely worth watching.

You can find the interview with Keith on this Level3 Red Couch page.

Dear Members,

I recently sent out an update to the chapter and SIG leadership about the website status.  While there are still likely to be challenges ahead, and timelines do change for various reasons, I wanted to let everyone know what was happening for the sake of transparency.  Here was the email I sent:

Good Morning Folks,

I know you’ve all been waiting for nearly 4 years, and I also know that there always seems to be a “it’s almost ready” answer coming to you.  So in order to give you all the best info, I’m going to give you more info than you really need, to provide some insight into where things are, what’s recently been going on, and where we’re headed. (Sorry this email is long and focused, I am open to any questions that you might have, but wanted to be as tight as possible below.)

1.  You should all as chapter or SIG coordinators have someone who can access the website for you.  If not please email myself (joshua@igda.org) or Joseph Sapp (joda@igda.org) so we can make sure that happens.

2.  When I came on at the beginning of July, we had a number of “serious” blockers.  Things that just really needed to be finished so that the site would work, and we wouldn’t look like complete idiots for putting it out there.  Tim L. (please hold the comments) did a good job in moving through those with Tobi and Myself and Joseph backing him up.  (Also mad props to the QA folks and sig and chapter leaders who provided testing and bugs and the like.  Thank you all.)

2a.  With Tim’s resignation, Mark D. has stepped up as a technically proficient Board member to take this project to the final steps.

2b.  Because of the email exploit during the previous month, it was clear that we needed to do a security audit to ensure that the site was not open to similar shenanigans.  At this time, while no site is impervious, all reasonable steps have been taken to ensure we are as secure as possible with the resources we have available.

3. This week at GDC Austin, Tobi, Mark, Joseph and Myself had a brief conversation about what is going on with the website, the migration plan, blockers, etc.

3a.  There are no “major” blockers at this time.  i.e.  There are still a number of minor issues here and there, and I am well aware that the visual design is not what the group would like, but we don’t feel it’s worth waiting another 6 months to fix these lesser items.

3b. I am committing to you that this release of the website will not be the end of the project.  We WILL work to fix bugs and other items as they appear.  We will also work on reworking the visual design to be a more effective, engaging and exciting visitor experience.  But these items will need to wait a bit (likely a review in the first quarter of 2010.)

4. We have a migration plan in place, as well as back up plans for the current site, transfers of forums and wiki content, and list swap-overs.  This will not be an easy process, and I am sure we will have a few mistakes during the process.  I am counting on your help to review the site and let me know where issues occur.

4a. Part of the migration process is to ensure that all of the content you folks want transferred over to the new site for your chapter areas is moved.  So please keep an eye on the migration date and let myself or Joseph know ASAP if that date is not going to work for you.

4b.  I have been clearly informed by the community, that the previous site info is critical to have.  So for a period of time we will retain the old site, it simply won’t be directly accessible to the public.  Please do not plan on having access to it regularly, as we will need to take it down after a period.

5. I would very much like to have the new site go live on Oct. 19th (arranging for a soft transition in the evening of Oct. 16th, with the weekend to work out any initial kinks).  However let me be clear, we have not confirmed that will be doable yet.  I am letting you in on the discussion phase.  We may need to do it earlier in the day, or on a different day altogether.  But I will keep you apprised.

OK, that’s the plan as it stands.  I will get more info out to you as we get into a more realistic stance.  Please move any content you have over, and again, if you haven’t had access, let me know.

There are other things going on also:
- We can set up chapter groups for specific reserved content to your chapters. (Sigs as well)
- Elections can be done via the site.
- We have need for a users guide, which the writer’s sig generously agreed to create for us, and I am approaching them on now.

Sincerely,
Joshua

Appy Entertainment’s newest iPhone game, Zombie Pizza, hit the iTunes Store early Friday, and despite a flood of titles (including three hundred games) entering the market over the weekend, we’re off to a good start. Sales are climbing and our first iTunes reviews have been excellent.

We were stuck in approval at Apple for awhile, but that ended up playing in our favor, as we were able to show our unreleased game around at Austin GDC to generate some pre-release interest, resulting in release-day coverage from TouchArcade and GameGirl.

Zombie Pizza was also our first game with a formal pre-release strategy, as we pushed early builds to select journalists. This led to an early mention on the TouchGen podcast (about an hour in), and some nice coverage by APPera (who also offered some excellent feedback on the game, nicely seeding our revision backlog for the game). The overall result was a good amount of ink for Zombie Pizza over our release weekend (including plenty of chatter on Twitter), which we think helped drive early sales.

And how were those sales? We don’t discuss specific numbers, but sales rankings are public, and they do provide some broad guidance about where we are. Among the “big” territories, the weekend saw us chart in our category Top 100 in the United States, Italy, Germany, and (briefly) France. We’ve also shown strength in several smaller markets, notably Kuwait and Mexico, both of which have disproportionately large FaceFighter fan bases, so it might be that we’re experiencing a little halo effect from our emerging Appy brand. Our opt-in mailing list and growing Facebook community are also making themselves felt, helping to push critical early sales and get us onto the first rungs of the market ladder.

The week ahead will see a continuing press push. We’re already seeing good coverage, with an administrator’s thread at TouchArcade having some particularly useful comments, but we expect plenty more coverage this week as our Friday press releases show up in the Monday email boxes of correspondents across the world.

There’s still lots of work to do for Zombie Pizza, but we have sensed just a little bit of a sea change with release of this game. FaceFighter put Appy on the map, so we’re no longer such an unknown quantity, and the success of our last game helped secure some interest in what we were doing next. For the first time, Appy is receiving unsolicited promo code requests from sources we didn’t know about. The growth of our Twitter list has helped a bit here.

Thanks to all the loyal Appy Army members who are helping us spread the word about Zombie Pizza! Readers of this Appy Place blog are our hardcore early adopters and you guys are key to our success. We deeply appreciate that so many of you turned out during our launch weekend to help get Zombie Pizza off to a fast start. We hope you’re enjoying the game, and please remember to tell your friends about Zombie Pizza.

And for those of you wondering what the fuss is all about … click the button below to buy your own copy of Zombie Pizza for your iPhone or iPod Touch. It’s just a buck and it’s starting to look like the next big thing!

I’ve been working with ldc for a long time. I enjoyed it, i helped the development with tickets and hacking ldc a bit. I even tried to compile Tango as shared library but i got an error, probably caused by the compiler since people reported that in gdc they were able to do it. I then started guessing if llvm is so stable as it seems and if it can substitute the gnu compiler collection. Then i came to these llvm vs gcc benchmarks. Well the result is that llvm is not so fast and reliable as promised. In the same days, a message posted on the D newsgroup got me. I started thinking that resurrection gdc is the only way to make a stable and reliable compiler accepted in the FOSS community for the D programming language. But it should resurrect it should implement the D2 specs: there are no other compilers than dmd which support D2 around. So, me and Michael joined to the challenge to work on gdc

We got the lastest working branch of gdc, the one who relies on gcc 4.3.1. We then copied in our repository in bitbucket and applied some changes, after two days of works, gdc for D2.014 worked under gcc 4.3.4 (there were some problems in the default version when compiling the Phobos library). As a proof that it works look at it

goshawk@earth:/tmp/test/usr/local/gcc-4.3/bin$ ./gdc ~/test.d
goshawk@earth:/tmp/test/usr/local/gcc-4.3/bin$ ./a.out
Hello World, Reloaded
goshawk@earth:/tmp/test/usr/local/gcc-4.3/bin$ ./gdc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
Configured with: ../configure –prefix=/usr/local/gcc-4.3 –enable-languages=c,d,c++ –disable-multilib –disable-shared
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.3.4 (GCC)

Nice, isn’t it?

Now while Michael is focusing in fixing the D1 part, i started merging the lastest dmd D2 compiler in gdc. Making a diff against dmd2.014 and gdc2.014 i’m applying all the necessary patches in gdc for D2 2.032.

We opened a dedicated IRC channel in irc.freenode.net #d.gdc. Feel free to join!

You can find full instructions in how to compile gdc in our wiki page.

Any help, documentation, word on this challenge is appreciated. See you soon

We’re still awaiting the green light from Apple for Appy Entertainment’s newest game, but as we’ve been talking about the title all week here at Austin GDC, we’ve decided to break with our past tradition and announce the game before it is available for sale.

Sort of.

Tomorrow.

Well, some time in the next day or two. The video for our next title will debut on TouchArcade sometime in the next couple dozen hours, as the busy schedule of the sagacious Eli Hodapp permits. Eli has our video in-hand, and it’s just a matter of getting it up on the site along with his article, which has to happen in and around his cross-country flight back home from the show. We, too, will be on a plane for much of tomorrow, so the video could well go live without our knowing it.

It’s all very complicated.

Anyway … keep an eye on TouchArcade, and when video is out in the wild, check back in here for a bit more about the game.

(Impatient members of the Appy Army might want to keep an eye on APPera and Crazy Mike, too …)

In our secret hearts we had rather hoped to be approved by now, but instead here with are with another Sneak Peek on our STILL unannounced next game! Gonna empty the art bag this time …

But, what does it all mean? Well, if you can sneak into our talk at GDC Austin today, we’ll actually reveal the title of the game.

Failing that … watch this space! The game has to be ready any … time … now …

Fresh on the heels of news of FaceFighter being featured on more international App Stores than we care to count, Appy Entertainment is pleased to announce that we will be speaking at GDC China, in Shanghai, October 11-13.

We’ll be giving the same talk that we’re giving next week in Austin, except that it will, like, be in Chinese. Details of the talk are at the GDC China website.

So, whichever side of the globe you may be on, c’mon by and say hello.

DIG London’s Larry has now moved over to Cologne, Germany for Europe’s Game Developers Conference. According to him, the Canadian game industry is making big waves over there:

“Cologne, Germany is hosting both GDC Europe and Gamescom this week. There are several thousand game developers and suppliers from all over the world here to make deals. My experience is that Europeans recognize Canada as a great place to develop games and are keenly interested in learning about Canadian game talent and incentives. The Canadian Pavillion at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany hosted a very successful cocktail party last evening. It was really well attended and generated a great deal of interest in Canada as a destination for game development”

Keep checking back for updates from Larry in Europe!

AQ will be at GDC Europe and gamescom (Booth D02a in hall 04.2) in Cologne, Germany this week.

The second submission has the really long title of  “Plot and Purpose: the Non-Existent Conflict Between Agency and Authorship in Game Stories“, which though accurate is a mouth full. My guess is if the lecture submission is accepted it will be shortened.  Here’s the submission:

Plot and Purpose: the Non-Existent Conflict Between Agency and Authorship in Game Stories

Exercise:
Choose an action verb, past tense. [VERB]
Choose a game character sounding name. [CHARACTER]
Select a noun that is a familial or personal relationship [RELATIONSHIP]

“Hello. My name is [CHARACTER]. You [VERB] my [RELATIONSHIP]. Prepare to die.”

Congratulations, you’re written the premise of too many action-driven computer games.

Seriously, though, many recent top-tier games have fortunately moved beyond this structure. Entire discussions could be based on the meaning and execution of each portion of that sentence: The player/character, the inciting action, the emotional stake in the story, and so on. Instead, this presentation looks at the last part – “Prepare to die.” – the Desired Resolution – which is the Character’s response to the Inciting Action and how that’s crafted in a game story.

The Desired Resolution is what the Character wants… but it isn’t what the Character does. In order to achieve the Desired Resolution, the Character follows a Course of Action that brings about the ultimate outcome. This Course of Action is what the player/character can do within the structure, or allowances, of the game, which is the simplest expression of Agency, created by the “author” for the player to experience. Authorship doesn’t conflict with Agency – it enables it.

This presentation talks about defying the traditional story creation paradigm of conceiving of, and then plotting, the story from the beginning, through the middle, to the end. Once the writer has fleshed out the main plot – the primary Course of Action – that’s when they think about the alternatives… but look at the words used: Primary. Main. It establishes the desired set of events and it’s very hard to weave in alternatives. For telling interactive stories – game stories – don’t start from the beginning –start from the end. Construct possibilities based on desired outcomes.

Since there is no right plot thread or Course of Action, this presentation talks about determining what elements of the Desired Resolution are variables, affected by choice (Agency) – As obvious examples, is death required for the antagonist’s downfall? Does an ally change sides due to the character’s actions? And so on. Decide what the states for these narrative variables are and then devise what Courses of Action can affect these states.  Once all these options are defined – within the constraints and allowances of gameplay and content creation –weave them together into the web of all of the possible Courses of Action leading to the Desired Resolution. Authorship enables Agency.

Attendees of this lecture will be exposed to not only theoretical talk about Agency and Authorship, and the false conflict between them in game and interactive stories, but also practical considerations and possible solutions to enabling and expanding Agency in game stories. What kinds of narrative variables are practical to work with? How do we deal with the constraints of content creation? How are gameplay and Agency interrelated, but not the same? Some answers to the big question of “Yes, that’s all well and good, but how do we do this?” will be presented.

(c)2009 Tom Dowd. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve sent in two submissions for GDC 2010, one is a lecture and the other is a roundtable. I’ll be taking time to jabber about each on this site, but for the moment, here’s the information on the first, a roundtable submission:

Designing Gatsby

Designers, and critics, of narrative-driven computer games speak often of a desire to find deeper meaning in game stories and plots. Is it possible, or do the constraints of the medium prevent the inclusion of more so-called literary qualities in game stories? Thus far, the narrative structure of games has relied more on film than anything else, but should it? Should, instead, we be looking at novels and short stories for inspiration? Using the “Great American Novel” – The Great Gatsby – as a lens, jumping-off point, and crucible, this roundtable discusses how more literary concepts related to character, setting, perspective, drama or melodrama, structure, and so on can be applied to games and interactive narrative. All of this must also be looked at on the context of the reality that, at this time, games replicate physical action better than anything else. Are deeper meanings, complex literary elements, and action-driven plots incompatible, or is there some chance for synthesis of these ideas? And lastly, even with all these literary buzzwords and high-art talk, how do we actually do these things?

Running multiple times across the Game Developers Conference, this roundtable provides a great opportunity to dig deep into a handful of ideas, or broad spectrum of topics, depending on the make-up and inclinations of the attendees. The intention of the roundtable is to not only discuss these ideas on a theoretical level, but to also address practical considerations in presentation and execution. “Yes, but how do we *do* that?” is expected to be an often-asked question at the roundtables.

As with most roundtables, the takeaway here is food for thought and the opportunity to push boundaries and exchange ideas. Are we looking at the wrong paradigm for game structure? Can we weave deeper meaning into our run-and-gun content? Should we? With luck, these discussions will inform future game development decisions, or at the very least provide some fodder for the next round of beers.

——————–

Middle October is when the submittors find out if they’ve made it to Round Two.

(c)2009 Tom Dowd. All Rights Reserved.