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  • MIX 2010 recap podcast

    - by Chris Williams
    from www.slickthought.net: Spaghetti Code Podcast: Recapping the MIX Conference 4/2/2010 11:06:10 AM Spaghetti Code (Jeff Brand) is joined by Mike Hodnic, Jason Bock, Adam Grocholski and Chris Williams to share their thoughts and impressions from the Microsoft MIX Conference and their thoughts on Windows Phone, Silverlight 4, and more. Direct Download - click here Subscribe - click here iTunes - click here

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  • Remotely turn on a device that is powered off?

    - by njboot
    Verbatim from the interview between Brian Williams and Edward Snowden last night: Snowden: Any intelligence service in the world that has significant funding and a real technological research team can own that phone [refering to Williams' iPhone] as soon as it connects to a network; it can be theirs. Williams: Can anyone turn it on remotely if it's off? Snowden: They can absolutely turn it on with the power turned off on the device. I concede Snowden's first point, fine. But the last? Does Snowden's last claim, that a powered off mobile device can be remotely turned, have any merit? It seems highly improbable and seemingly impossible.

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  • What's going on with INETA and the Regional Speakers Bureau?

    - by Chris Williams
    For those of you that have been waiting patiently (and not so patiently) I'm happy to say that we're very near completion on some changes/enhancements/improvements that will allow us to finally go live with the INETA Regional Speakers Bureau. I know quite a few of you have already registered, which is great (though some of you may need to come back and update your info) and we've had a few folks submit requests, mostly in a test capacity, but soon we'll be up and live. Here's how it breaks down. Be sure to read this, because things have changed a bit from when we initially announced it. 1. The majority of our speaker/event funding is going into the Regional Speakers Bureau.  The National Bureau still exists, but it's a good bit smaller than it was before, and it's not an "every group" benefit anymore. We'll be using the National Bureau as more of a strategic task force, targeting high impact events and areas that need some community building love from INETA. These will be identified and handled on a case by case basis, and may include more than just user group events. 2. You're going to get more events per group, per year than you did before. Not only are we focusing more resources on this program, but we're also making a lot of efforts to use it more effectively. With the INETA Regional Speakers Bureau, you should be able to get 2-3 INETA speakers per year, on average. Not every geographical area will have exactly the same experience, but we're doing the best we can. 3. It's not a farm team program for the National Bureau. Unsurprisingly, I managed to offend a number of people when I previously made the comment that the Regional Speakers Bureau program was a farm team or stepping stone to the National Bureau. It was a poor choice of words.  Anyone can participate in the Regional Speakers Bureau, and I look forward to working with all of you. 4. There is assistance for your efforts. The exact final details are still being hammered out, but expect it to look something like this: (all distances listed are based on a round trip) Distances < 120 miles = $0 121 miles - 240 miles = $50 (effectively 1 to 2 hours, each way) 241 miles - 360 miles = $100 (effectively 2 to 3 hours, each way) 361 miles - 480 miles = $200 (effectively 3 to 4 hours, each way) For those of you who travel a lot, we're working on a solution to handle group visits when you're away from home. These will (for now) be handled on a case by case basis. 5. We're going to make it as easy as possible to work with the program. In order to do this, we need a few things from you. For speakers, that means your home address. It also means (maybe) filling out a simple 1 line expense report via the INETA website. For user groups, it means making sure your meeting address is up to date as well. 6. Distances will be automatically calculated from your home of record to the user group event and back. We realize that this is not a perfect solution to every instance, but we're not paying you to speak at an event, and you won't be taxed on this money. It's simply some assistance to make your community efforts easier. Our way of saying thanks for everything you do. 7. Sounds good so far, what's the catch? There's always a catch, right? In this case there are two of them: 1) At this time, Microsoft employees are welcome to use the website to line up speaking engagements with user groups, but are not eligible for financial assistance. 2) Anyone can register and use the website to line up speaking engagements with user groups, however you must receive and maintain a net score of 3+ positive ratings (we're implementing a thumbs up / thumbs down system) in order to receive financial assistance. These ratings are provided by the User Group leaders after the meeting has taken place. 8. Involvement by the User Group leaders is a key factor in the success of this program. Your job isn't done once you request a speaker. After you've had your meeting, it's critical that you go back to the website and take a very small survey. Doing this ensures that the speaker gets rated (and compensated if eligible) and also ensures that you can make another request, since you won't be able to make a new request if you have an old one outstanding. 9. What about Canada? We're definitely working on that. Unfortunately nothing new to report on that front, other than to say that we're trying. So... this is where things stand currently. We're working very quickly to get this in place and get speakers and groups together. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and I'll answer them as quickly as possible. If I've forgotten anything, or if things change, I'll update it here. Thanks, Chris G. Williams INETA Board of Directors

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  • Galleria jQuery plugin briefly shows all images in IE 7 & 8

    - by hollyb
    I'm using the galleria jQuery plugin on a site. When the gallery first loads, all of the images appear briefly & vertically in ie 7 & 8. This doesn't happen when i isolate the gallery, only when i put it on a somewhat heavy page. This leads me to believe that it happens when the page is a little slow to load. Does anybody know a way to fix this? I feel like an overflow: hidden should fix this, but I've applied it along with a height in every container I could think of. Anybody have any ideas? Here is my css: .galleria{list-style:none;width:350px; overflow:hidden; height: 70px;} .galleria li{display:block;width:50px;height:50px;overflow:hidden;float:left;margin:4px 10px 20px 0;} .galleria li a{display:none;} .galleria li div{position:absolute;display:none;top:0;left:180px;} .galleria li div img{cursor:pointer;} .galleria li.active div img,.galleria li.active div{display:block;} .galleria li img.thumb{cursor:pointer;top:auto;left:auto;display:block;width:auto;height:auto} .galleria li .caption{display: inline;padding-top:.5em; width: 300px; } * html .galleria li div span{width:350px;} /* MSIE bug */ html: <ul class="gallery"> <li class="active"><img src="1.jpg" cap="A great veiw by so and so. This is a long block of info.<br /><span style=color:#666;>Photo by: Billy D. Williams</span>" alt="Image01"></li> <li><img src="2.jpg" cap="A mountain <span style=color:#666;>Photo by: Billy D. Williams</span>" alt="Image01"></li> <li><img src="3.jpg" cap="Another witty caption <span style=color:#666;>Photo by: Billy D. Williams</span>" alt="Image01"></li> <li><img src="4.jpg" cap="<span style=color:#666;>Photo by: Billy D. Williams</span>" alt="Image01"></li> </ul>

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  • Cutting objects and applying texture to cut. Unity3d/C#

    - by Timothy Williams
    Basically what I'm trying to do is figure out how to calculate realtime cutting of objects, and apply a texture to the cut. I found some good scripts, but most of them have been abandoned and aren't really fully working yet. Applying textures: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/75949-Mesh-Real-Cutting?highlight=mesh+real+cutting Cutting: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/78594-Object-Cutter Another (Free) Cutter (Also, I'm not entirely sure how this one will handle cutting complex meshes): http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/69992-fake-slicer?p=449114&viewfull=1#post449114 My plan as of right now is to combine links 1 & 2 or 1 & 3 programming wise. What I'm asking here for is any advice on how to advance (links to asset store packages, or other codes to show how to accomplish something complex like this.)

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  • How do I blend 2 lightmaps for day/night cycle in Unity?

    - by Timothy Williams
    Before I say anything else: I'm using dual lightmaps, meaning I need to blend both a near and a far. So I've been working on this for a while now, I have a whole day/night cycle set up for renderers and lighting, and everything is working fine and not process intensive. The only problem I'm having is figuring out how I could blend two lightmaps together, I've figured out how to switch lightmaps, but the problem is that looks kind of abrupt and interrupts the experience. I've done hours of research on this, tried all kinds of shaders, pixel by pixel blending, and everything else to no real avail. Pixel by pixel blending in C# turned out to be a bit process intensive for my liking, though I'm still working on cleaning it up and making it run more smoothly. Shaders looked promising, but I couldn't find a shader that could properly blend two lightmaps. Does anyone have any leads on how I could accomplish this? I just need some sort of smooth transition between my daytime and nighttime lightmap. Perhaps I could overlay the two textures and use an alpha channel? Or something like that?

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  • Export a .FBX file in Unity3D at runtime

    - by Timothy Williams
    What I'm looking to do is be able to export an object as a .FBX at runtime in Unity3D. I've made a C# script which can export a mesh filter or skinned mesh renderer to a .OBJ file at runtime, but .OBJ doesn't support the same kind of animations and skins that .FBX does. I've been researching this for a while, as of right now it looks like somehow using the Autodesk FBX SDK or some other external .dll would be my best option. Does anyone know of external .dlls I could use for this? Or how to make calls to Autodesk's FBX SDK at runtime? Another option could possibly be to write the mesh information as a text file then convert to .FBX on exporting. Just looking for fellow programmer's thoughts, or tips, or to see if this has been accomplished already. As far as I can tell there isn't any pre-existing scripts to export FBX at runtime in Unity.

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  • Game Design Dilemma

    - by Chris Williams
    I'm working on a 2d tilemapped RPG. I've actually made quite a fair amount of progress, but I'm at a point where I need to make a UI decision. I have the overland world completely mapped out, and I have several towns and special areas. I'm on the fence about how to integrate the two. Scenario 1: I have one ginormous map, where everything is the same scale. This means you can walk in and out of towns without having to load or wait and transition in any way. With everything the same scale, movement costs the same no matter where you are (in terms of time/turns/energy/hunger/whatever/etc...)  The potential downside to this is that it could take quite a long time to get anywhere on foot. Scenario 2: I have an overland map, a set of town maps, overland tactical maps, dungeon maps & special area maps. The overland map is at a different scale than the other maps. This means that time/turns/energy/hunger/whatever/etc is calculated at a different rate than on the other maps, which have a 1:1 scale. When entering a town, dungeon, special area or having a random encounter, you would effectively zoom in from the overland scale to the tactical scale. When you are done with combat, or exit a dungeon or town, it would zoom back out to the overland map. The downside to this is that at the zoomed out scale, the overland map isn't all that big (comparitively) and you can traverse it fairly quickly (in real time, not game world time.) Options: 1) Go with scenario 1, as is. 2) Go with scenario 1 and introduce a slightly speedier version of overland travel, such as a horse. 3) Go with scenario 1 and introduce "instant" travel, via portals or some kind of "click the big map" mechanism. This would only work with places you've already been, or somehow unlocked (perhaps via a quest.) 4) Go with Scenario 2, as is.   Thoughts, opinions, suggestions?  Feedback appreciated.

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  • Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4

    - by Chris Williams
    In 24 short days*, my (along with the awesome George W. Clingerman) first book will be released:   Professional Windows Phone 7 Game Development: Creating Games using XNA Game Studio 4 (or as we like to call it, that damned 550 page monstrosity that nearly killed us) Weighing in at 552 pages and featuring a foreward by the legendary James Silva (Ska Studios, creator of The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, I MAED A GAME W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1, and more...) this book gives thorough coverage of XNA 4.0 as it relates to Windows Phone 7. The book is written in a light, conversational tone, which means (unlike some books) you won't be compelled to gouge your eyes out with a rusty spork after reading the first few pages. At least, that’s the intent. If you do feel compelled to engage in some feats of eye-gouging sporkage, we (the authors of this book) would like to point out that we are not responsible and that seeking the help of a mental health professional might be advised. (We’re not qualified to dispense medical advice either.) The book is structured to introduce relevant material first, with code snippets and samples of how to use various phone features and XNA concepts, with helpful side notes along the way. After you've been exposed to a few chapters worth of concepts, you get the chance to bring them together by building a game that leverages those features. This book contains THREE (3!) complete games, including: Drive & Dodge (a racing game), Poker Dice (roll dice to make poker hand combinations) and Picture Puzzle (take a photo and turn it into a jigsaw puzzle.) Writing this book has been an incredible experience, and we hope reading it will be equally informative for all of you. We’re also happy to announce there will be a Kindle edition available, along with various other electronic media. Get your copy from Wiley.com, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere else awesome books are sold. *more or less… some sites list the publication date as early march, but the official street date is 2/21/2011

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  • Observations From The Corner of a Starbucks

    - by Chris Williams
    I’ve spent the last 3 days sitting in a Starbucks for 4-8 hours at a time. As a result, I’ve observed a lot of interesting behavior and people (most of whom were uninteresting themselves.) One of the things I’ve noticed is that most people don’t sit down. They come in, get their drink and go. The ones that do sit down, stay much longer than it takes to consume their drink. The drink is just an incidental purchase. Certainly not the reason they are here. Most of the people who sit also have laptops. Probably around 75%. Only a few have kids (with them) but the ones that do, have very small kids. Toddlers or younger. Of all the “campers” only a small percentage are wearing headphone, presumably because A) external noise doesn’t bother them or B) they aren’t working on anything important. My buddy George falls into category A, but he grew up in a house full of people. Silence freaks him out far more than noise. My brother and I, on the other hand, were both only children and don’t handle noisy distractions well. He needs it quiet (like a tomb) and I need music. Go figure… I can listen to Britney Spears mixed with Apoptygma Berzerk and Anthrax and crank out 30 pages, but if your toddler is banging his spoon on the table, you’re getting a dirty look… unless I have music, then all is right with the world. Anyway, enough about me. Most of the people who come in as a group are smiling when they enter. Half as many are smiling when they leave. People who come in alone typically aren’t smiling at all. The average age, over the last three days seems to be early 30s… with a couple of senior citizens and teenagers at either end of the curve. The teenagers almost never stay. They have better stuff to do on a nice day. The senior citizens are split nearly evenly between campers and in&outs. Most of the non-solo campers have 1 person with a laptop, while the other reads the paper or a book. Some campers bring multiple laptops… but only really look at one of them. This Starbucks has a drive through. The line is almost never more than 2-3 cars long but apparently a lot of the in&out people would rather come in and stand in line behind (up to) 5 people. The music in here sucks. My musical tastes can best be described as eclectic to bad, but I can still get work done (see above.) I find the music in this particular Starbucks to be discordant and jarring. At this Starbucks, the coffee lingo is apparently something that is meant to occur between employees only. The nice lady at the counter can handle orders in plain English and translate them to Baristaspeak (Baristese?) quite efficiently. If you order in Baristaspeak however, she will look confused and repeat your order back to you in plain English to confirm you actually meant what you said. Then she will say it in Baristaspeak to the lady making your drink. Nobody in this Starbucks (other than the Baristas) makes eye-contact… at least not with me. Of course that may be indicative of a separate issue. ;)

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  • No VB6 to VS2010 direct upgrade path

    - by Chris Williams
    From the "is this really news?" department... From looking at the currently available versions of 2010, there is no direct upgrade path from VB6 to VS2010. Anyone still using VB6 and wishing to upgrade to VS2010 has two options:  Use the upgrade tool from an earlier version of VS (like 2005 or 2008) and then run the upgrade in VS2010 to get the rest of the way... or rewrite your code. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader which is the better option. I'd like to take a moment to point out the obvious: A) If you're still using VB6 at this point, you probably don't care about VS2010 compatibility. B) Running your code through 2 upgrade wizards isn't going to result in anything resembling best practices. C) Bemoaning the lack of support in 2010 for a 12 year old version of an extinct programming language helps nobody. This public service announcement is brought to you by the letter C. Thank you.

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  • Paper Gold Rush

    - by Chris G. Williams
    The last few days at the shop have been reminiscent of a marathon of Pawn Stars. Quite a few people have come in wanting to trade for store credit. Most of them have left disappointed. We did pick up a few things here and there (which hopefully I can sell.) The problem, in a nutshell, is that people get it in their head that a (YuGiOh) card is worth X amount because they looked it up 2-3 years a...go, or someone told them it was valuable... then they play it in their deck for a year without sleeves, and cram it in a binder covered in duct tape. By the time they bring the cards in to me, new sets have come out which often de-value the tournament usefulness of the card from $20 to *maybe* 50 cents, in mint condition. Which means I can offer them about 10-15 cents... only they are almost never in mint condition, which means I usually offer them nothing at all. Most of the time, you can watch their smile fade as I start going through their cards. It's kinda sad, really, since I know they think they've spent the last two years walking around with the keys to their own personal gold mine. I don't really enjoy seeing that look on a child's face. I like kids and I remember those moments when perception and reality crashed headlong into each other. It was seldom pretty. So, when I'm talking to a child, I try to take it easy on them and give them some suggestions on how to better preserve their cards. Sometimes though, it's an adult. Depending on the situation, my response to them varies pretty broadly. Most of the time though, I still feel pretty bad when it doesn't go their way.

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  • upstart-supervised init script for Apache?

    - by Ben Williams
    I want to run apache on Ubuntu 10.04, and use the nice supervision stuff in upstart (I'm not just talking about the apache init script, but proper service supervision a la daemontools - which is to say, restarting apache when it dies, things like that). Does anyone have a running upstart config for supervising apache on ubuntu 10.04? The Googles have been no help to me, but it could be that my google-fu is weak.

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  • New York City!!

    - by Chris Williams
    I'm headed to NYC to speak at the NYPC VB SIG (user group: http://www.nypcvb.org) on Monday Feb 7 at 6pm. I'll actually be arriving on Saturday (2/5/11) and hanging around through the weekend until the meeting. It's my 3rd time in New York City, but the first time was 20 years ago, so I'm not sure that one counts. Aside from the usual touristy things to do, like seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building (both of which are on my list), what are some other cool things to check out? Got a favorite pizza place? A cool comic shop? Local hangout... Tell me about it!

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  • regarding the Windows Phone 7 series, XNA and Visual Basic

    - by Chris Williams
    as long as we're talking about VB... I figured I would share this as well. Hi everyone, I'm about to express a sentiment that might ruffle a few feathers, but I think most of you know me well enough to know I love like accept VB for what it is and that what I'm about to say is with good intentions. (The rest of you, who don't know me, please take my word for it.) The world is full of VB developers, I was one of them for a long time. I think it's safe to assume that none of us are ignorant people who require handholding. We're working professionals, making a living by using our skills as developers. I'm also willing to bet that quite a few of us are fluent in C# as well as VB. It may not be your preferred language, but many of you can do it and you prove that nearly every day. Honestly, I don't know ANY developers or consultants that have only known ONE language ever. So it pains me greatly when I see the word "CAN'T" being tossed around like a crutch... as in "we CAN'T develop for the windows phone or we CAN'T develop XNA games." At MIX, Microsoft hath decreed that C# is the language of choice for developing for the Windows Phone 7. I think it's a safe bet that you won't see VB support if it isn't there already. (Just like XNA... which is up to version 4.0 by now.)  So what? (Yeah... I said it.) I think everyone here can agree that actual coding is only one part of software design and development. There is nothing stopping ANY of you from beginning the process of designing your killer phone app, writing up specs, requirements, doing UI design, workflow, mockups, storyboards, art, etc.... None of these things are language dependent. IF by the time you've got that stuff out of the way, and there's still no VB support, then start doing some rapid prototyping of your app in C# (I know, I know... heresy!)  You still have to spend time learning how the phone does things, what UI tricks do what, what paradigms make sense, how to use to accelerometer and the tilt and the multitouch functionality. I can guarantee you that time spent doing this is a great investment, no matter WHAT extension your code files have. Eventually, you may have a working prototype. IF by this time, there's STILL no VB support... fret not, you've made significant progress on your app. You've designed it, prototyped it, figured out how to use the phone specific features... so you might as well finish it and pat yourself on the back for learning something new... and possibly being first to market with your new app. I'll be happy to argue any and all of these points online or off with anyone who cares to do so, but there is one undeniable point that you simply can't argue:  Your potential customers do not care AT ALL what programming language you used to write the app they are about to purchase. They care that it works. If your biggest concern is being first to market, than stop complaining and get busy because you're running out of time and the 3000+ people who were at MIX certainly aren't waiting for you. They've already started working on their apps.

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  • Windows 7 complaint

    - by Chris Williams
    Let me start by saying that I love Windows 7. I think it's the best OS that Microsoft has put out in ages, possibly ever. However, I do have one little complaint. Actually it's not that little, it's become a real pain in the butt for me. I'm talking about Forced Updates. Yes, I know it's always been a problem and that Windows would occasionally force a reboot while you were away, in order to install some important update. That's not quite what I'm referring to. I mean the new "feature" where you don't have the choice to skip updates when shutting down. This isn't a big deal to those of you with desktop machines, but for those of us with laptops, it is rapidly becoming an unforgivable pain in the ass. Let me see if I can make myself a little clearer... If I am shutting down my LAPTOP, 99% of the time it's because I need to get up and go. Not wait around for FORCED UPDATES!! I travel a lot, and there are few things more annoying than shutting down to head to the airport, or shutting down so I can board my flight, or shutting down because we're about to land, etc... and having to wait 5-10 minutes while Win 7 does it's thing. It's damn inconvenient. There has to be a way you can detect if I'm on a laptop and give me the option to postpone updates, or skip them or (here's a thought) run them on startup instead of on shutdown. I'm usually not in a hurry when my machine is booting up, but if I'm powering down it's because I'm ready to GO! Please fix this. Windows 7 rocks in almost every other way I can think of.

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  • Outsourcing a private project: can it be done?

    - by Stafford Williams
    I'm an employed software designer/developer/analyst/monkey and I'm pondering the possibility of outsourcing the coding component(s) of some private(ly funded) projects. I have never used outsourcing before and am hesitant due to the contractors i've seen in the workplace that seem to have a reverse relationship on renumeration vs results/quality. Has anyone had any luck with outsourcing private coding jobs and can you offer any pointers?

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  • How do I import service references to Unity3D?

    - by Timothy Williams
    I'm attempting access a service reference in Unity. I need two: the SOAP framework and a separate service called ContentVault. The respective service URL's are: SOAP: http://api.microsofttranslator.com/V2/Soap.svc ContentVault: http://ioun.wizards.com/ContentVault.svc Both services import fine in to Visual Studio. I've tried everything I can think of but they won't work with Unity. I just get various errors (changing depending on which solution I'm trying out). I've attempted using svcutil to export the services as external scripts, but all I got was a bunch of using errors. I've tried converting the code to work with .NET 2.0 to no avail, I've even tried making the services in to .DLL's to no success. How could get these services working with Unity?

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  • Creating natural environments that can run on lower end computers in Unity3D/C#

    - by Timothy Williams
    So, I'm starting work on a project soon that will require me to create realistic environments that can preferably run on PC's besides high quality ones. The goal is to get as real an environment as possible while still being easy(ish) to run. The only problem is I've NEVER done anything with 3D environments, making trees sway, grass move, lighting, etc. Can anyone give me any help? Perhaps describe how it's done? Link me to articles? I'm just looking to be pointed in the right direction, not for you to write the code for me. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated, I'm using Unity3D and C# as my language. Thanks, Tim.

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  • Getting a sphere to roll down a .FBX object Unity3D/C#

    - by Timothy Williams
    I'm working on a little ramp and ball game in Unity, I modeled the ramp outside Unity and exported it to a .FBX file, then I imported the ramp in to Unity. I set up the ball and ramp, both have Rigidbodies, Ramp is set to isKinematic = true, yet when I play the game the ball just falls right through the ramp and hits the floor below it fine. So it's something wrong with the ramp. Am I doing something wrong? Are .FBX files unable to apply physics? Thanks, Tim.

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  • Dark Sun Dispatch 001

    - by Chris Williams
    If you aren't into tabletop (aka pen & paper) RPGs, you might as well click to the next post now... Still here? Awesome. I've recently started running a new D&D 4.0 Dark Sun campaign. If you don't know anything about Dark Sun, here's a quick intro: The campaign take place on the world of Athas, formerly a lush green world that is now a desert wasteland. Forests are rare in the extreme, as is water and metal. Coins are made of ceramic and weapons are often made of hardened wood, bone or obsidian. The green age of Athas was centuries ago and the current state was brought about through the reckless use of sorcerous magic. (In this world, you can augment spells by drawing on the life force of the world & people around you. This is called defiling. Preserving magic draws upon the casters life force and does not damage the surrounding world, but it isn't as powerful.) Humans are pretty much unchanged, but the traditional fantasy races have changed quite a bit. Elves don't live in the forest, they are shifty and untrustworthy desert traders known for their ability to run long distances through the wastes. Halflings are not short, fat, pleasant little riverside people. Instead they are bloodthirsty feral cannibals that roam the few remaining forests and ride reptilians beasts akin to raptors. Gnomes are extinct, as are orcs. Dwarves are mostly farmers and gladiators, and live out in the sun instead of staying under the mountains. Goliaths are half-giants, not known for their intellect. Muls are a Dwarf & Human crossbreed that displays the best traits of both races (human height and dwarven stoutness.) Thri-Kreen are sentient mantis people that are extremely fast. Most of the same character classes are available, with a few new twists. There are no divine characters (such as Priests, Paladins, etc) because the gods are gone. Nobody alive today can remember a time when they were still around. Instead, some folks worship the elemental forces (although they don't give out spells.) The cities are all ruled by Sorcerer King tyrants (except one city: Tyr) who are hundreds of years old and still practice defiling magic whenever they please. Serving the Sorcerer Kings are the Templars, who are also defilers and psionicists. Crossing them is as bad, in many cases, as crossing the Kings themselves. Between the cities you have small towns and trading outposts, and mostly barren desert with sometimes 4-5 days on foot between towns and the nearest oasis. Being caught out in the desert without adequate supplies and protection from the elements is pretty much a death sentence for even the toughest heroes. When you add in the natural (and unnatural) predators that roam the wastes, often in packs, most people don't last long alone. In this campaign, the adventure begins in the (small) trading fortress of Altaruk, a couple weeks walking distance from the newly freed city of Tyr. A caravan carrying trade goods from Altaruk has not made it to Tyr and the local merchant house has dispatched the heroes to find out what happened and to retrieve the goods (and drivers) if possible. The unlikely heroes consist of a human shaman, a thri-kreen monk, a human wizard, a kenku assassin and a (void aspect) genasi swordmage. Gathering up supplies and a little liquid courage, they set out into the desert and manage to find the northbound tracks of the wagon. Shortly after finding the tracks, they are ambushed by a pack of silt-runners (small lizard people with very large teeth and poisoned pointy spears.) The party makes short work of the creatures, taking a few minor wounds in the process. Proceeding onward without resting, they find the remains of the wagon and manage to sneak up on a pack of Kruthiks picking through the rubble and spilled goods. Unfortunately, they failed to take advantage of the opportunity and had a hard fight ahead of them. The party defeated the kruthiks, but took heavy damage (and almost lost a couple of their own) in the process. Once the kruthiks were dispatched, they followed a set of tracks further north to a ruined tower...

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  • Embracing Community

    - by Chris Williams
    I just put the finishing touches on another article for my Code Magazine column: Embracing Community. You won't see this one until around July, but it focuses on a subject near and dear to my heart: Code Camps! At the end of the article, I mention that I'm interested in hearing some of your war stories about community and what you do to be a part of it. I'll be talking to people at Tech Ed 2010 and Codestock, but I would also like to hear from some of you that read this blog. If you have an interesting story to share, drop me a line (via this blog) and tell me about it. You never know, it just might end up in my column.

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  • How to make a ball fall faster on a ramp? Unity3D/C#

    - by Timothy Williams
    So, I'm making a ball game. Where you pick up the ball, drop it on a ramp, and it flies off in to blocks. The only problem right now is it falls at a normal speed, then lightly falls off, not nearly fast enough to get over the wall and hit the blocks. Is there any way to make the ball go faster down the ramp? Maybe even make it go faster depending on what height you dropped it from (e.g. if you hold it way above the ramp, and drop it, it will drop faster than if you dropped it right above the ramp.) Thanks.

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