Various RPG Projects, .NET framework, and Software that Doesn’t Suck.

Hey banditos!

It’s been decades since my last update.  It’s like one of those annoying things you keep putting off, but never actually get around to doing.

Anyways, here’s what I’ve been keeping busy with in my life lately.
So what am I doing with myself lately outside of work?  Well, not really much.

I’ve finally switched over completely to Trillian for all my IRC-ICQ-AIM-Yahoo needs.  So far the only IM that it supports that I’m not using yet for one thing or another is MSN.  I’m sure that will crop up at some point.  Anyways, I do my best to endorse their software whenever I can these days, because.. it’s good shizzzz. 🙂

I’ve been working on my MUD Desolation fixing bugs and orchestrating some new area construction.

I’ve also been working on Desolation: Project-X, (altho half-heartedly lately).  DPX is a overly ambitious project.  In a nutshell, it’s a 3d isometric multiplayer MUD.  Lately I’ve been kind of derailed due to the lack of native DirectX8 dll’s for VB.NET, which I have migrated over to from VB6.

I know Microsoft has a lot of enemies, especially from the unix-loving crowd that is likely to stumble across my website, but I have to say, I am pretty pleased with VB now that it supports inheritance like a real language. 🙂  (It also supports mousewheel in the editor screen, which was one of my prior major nags… heh.)

Anyways, I’ve been using the TrueVision3D engine for my ground 3D stuff.  It has some bugs, and no real docs, but so far it’s the nicest 3D engine for VB that I’ve seen.  If nothing, I’ve been learning plenty about 3D programming. 

Anyways, my latest problem is that the TV3D crew suspended production on their DirectPlay wrapper and .NET doesn’t support DirectX natively yet.  The functions I need for building and sending DirectPlay buffers don’t exist with a .NET wrapper.

I tried building my own, but I’m getting all kinds of weird errors out of other functions.   So basically, I’m waiting to see if TV3D gets their VB6 based DirectPlay dll done before Microsoft gets a .NET object for DirectX built.  I haven’t really felt motivated to get the “loading and saving map files” portion finished, so I’ve just been kind of sitting on my ass on the project and making some basic models and stuff.  This weekend I got a water trough and wooden fences pieces done.  Yay.
Milkshape3D is damn good software for $20. 🙂
It still is missing some features, but at least it isn’t as fugly as 3DMax.

Before I got involved in building my own 3D “MMORPG” (god I hate that term), I was involved in beta III of Anarchy Online.  I never saw what Beta IV had to offer the world, but AO has all the trimmings that make a great MM-RPG.  Funcom, I wish you the best! 🙂

Not much time to post at the moment, so uh.. more later I guess.