I have been trying my best to figure out what I want to do with this BlackFire project and the first major impass is the langauge to do it in. I had decided on C# but more and more I am thinking that I might get more out of it if I do it in C++. This project has been hard enough though so adding mastering of another language will be tough.

Then came the second dilema do i develop it on XNA or DirectX. Both have their cons and pros. XNA implements so much in the graphic, sound, and input areas that I don’t have to worry about. This also makes it more limiting as I have to work with what they give me. DirectX is more open and I can handle however I want.

As it stands now I think I am leaning towards XNA but we will see how that goes as I progress if its to limiting I will switch up to DirectX managed code. Luckily my BSL will work easily with either so thats not really a problem for coding right now.

Welcome to the first in a series of posts about the new BlackFire Script Langauge. BSL will be a form of configuration files that will used in BlackFire. Based on XML BSL will allow me to quickly change the entire game engine without modifying any of the code. Over the next couple of days I will explain how the system will work starting today with an basic introduction to the how I thought of the system.

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Sudoku Solver 1.0

Percent Complete: 100.00 / 100.00 (100.00%)

So recently I have been developing a Sudoku Solver program that would go through a bunch of algorithms and determine the answer. Anyways I was getting pretty far developing more advanced algorithms to solve it faster and eventually was able to solve hard puzzles on websudoku.com. The problem was that it was all jumbled together in one massive class.

This of course was a problem for me that liked order and nice design in my programming projects. My next task was to take what I had and translate it into an object oriented system. I created objects for rows, cols, boxes. A puzzle to that included all the rows, cols, and boxes. I also created a Line object which was an abstract representation of rows, and cols. I then set about creating different types of data in them that I would need like what used numbers were in each etc. It was great but when I started to implement my algorithms I found more and more things I could not do.

In a massive class I had ultimate control over the data arrays and could immediately grab anything via hardcoding it. With these new objects I had to implement a large group of methods to pass the need data that may only be used by one algorithm. This was unacceptable to me I want it to be dynamic so that I could grab it through simple methods.  Needless to say I continue to write my Sudoku program despite numerous hard to find errors dealing with data management and incorrect data. I have to constantly monitor what data I am getting since it appears to always being incorrect and not what i needed. None the less my new design is much more elegant.

I hope to have something on here soon with my Sudoku Solver working a first version of the much better designed one of course. It all depends on if I can figure out the errors I am getting right now.

I have good news been working on many development ideas and have come up with some interesting projects. First up is my Sudoku Solver which is almost entirely completed. I have a hacked together version nearly done but am working on a much more elegant design that I will offer up soon.

Blackfire is still the big project but I think I have decided to delve back into it by totally redoing it. I am working on totally redesigning how the system works. I am using new ideas I have gathered in my studies since I last worked on it. First up is a patcher system of my own design that will work with my server here. I have a new igloo15 industries logo made by my friend that I will be adding also.

thats it for now but stay tuned tomorrow for a big update!

My computer was stolen for the whole story check out miketolland.com. Anyways I am trying to get back on track and that means back to development. Luckily every piece of work I did on this project was saved due to my backing it up on my thumb drive. Originally I though I needed to back up my thumbdrive in case i lost it but it seems the reverse was need . Anyways This project will get moving as soon as do some modifications to the site and have my main computer back up and running. Still installing necessary software.

Equipment has been pushed to the back burner as I go to look at better parsing and creation of data objects. GUI will also see drastic changes as I decide what I will be doing. Thats it for now check back later.

I have imposed a deadline for the Equipment release of this Friday I am about 50% done with the release so I know I can make the deadline if I just finish up a few things! Another Update at Thursday with my progress!

Been doing other things and as usually have not had enough time to really look at this website or even work on Blackfire but the fire to do this project is still there. I will be looking over my time and trying to budget more coding time among other things. Equipment systems are still the next thing on the docket lets hope I can get it done in the next week or so! Happy New Year!

I have totally reworked the Communication system of the program to make it very dynamic. I will continue work and hope to release version 0.0.1.3 for the equipment system. You won’t really notice much in the way of changes but there will be distinct changes to the system that I will go over in more detail later. Go to the downloads section to download the new version or simply run the setup.exe to update your application.

I have been working on developing the equipment system when I realized that the data communication between objects really need some work so I have put the equipment system on hold for 0.0.1.2 and decided to work on the communication system this will help me in the long run with abstracting the data outside of the ui to controller classes. Having stat generation and equipment information stored in Stat Window UI classes is a bad idea. So I am working on removing it and using observer and command patterns with events to create a Blackfire communication system in the backend.

As far as a date for v0.0.1.2 I am shooting for the end of next week right before I leave for home. While I am at home I am hoping to release v0.0.1.3 which will be the equipment system.