Codeguru Update eNewsletter – August 19th, 2008

If you are serious about developing a computer game, there was some
great, basic advice to be had. The first bit of advice that was given was
to incorporate. If you are going to be serious about developing a game and
you are going to release it to the public, you will want a little bit of
protection for yourself. It was stated that, with the chance of being
sued, you need a layer of protection.

The second bit of advice was to develop a strong team. If you are
serious, you should have the appropriate people working on your project.
This would obviously include a programmer for an electronic game. It
should also include an artist and designer. Equally important, you should
include a businessperson. Even though programming the game might seem like
the key task, it really can be overshadowed by the need to deal with the
business aspects as well as the marketing aspects of the product. A lot of
good products don’t get off the ground because they are not marketed and
presented appropriately.

Another bit of advice filtered from the presentation was in regard to
using a publisher. If you choose to use a publisher for your game, you
should do what you can to retain the ownership of your intellectual
property (IP). Although a publisher might take total control of a project,
if you control the IP, and the game is successful, the publisher will have
to come back to you for a new edition.

The last bit of advice, which was really among the first bits
presented, was to avoid mortgaging you home and other assets for a game.
If you have a good idea, just remember that thousands of others also have
good ideas. Only a few good ideas get to the level of making a fair amount
of money. As such, the risk of failure is high, so putting your life
savings into such a project can be foolish.

In Conclusion

It was stated that the gaming industry is continuing to grow. The
popularity of a show such as GenCon seems to support this. When you can
get 37,000 people to come to a small city like Indianapolis, that seems to
support the popularity. Unlike wimpy computer programmers, many people at
the GenCon conference start Thursday morning at the convention center and
don’t go home until Sunday. Sleeping is for wimps and this show goes 24
hours a day. Even at computer conferences, the geekiest attendees leave
the bars and the parties and head back to their rooms before breakfast!

For more on GenCon, check out www.GenCon.com.

Until next week…

Brad!
—————————
Bradley L. Jones

Recently Published Books

For those of you keeping up by reading
books. The following are just a few of the new books that have been
recently released. If you’ve read any of these, feel free to write a
review to be posted on CodeGuru. See the submission
guidelines.

C#
in Depth
By Joe
Skeet for Manning
424 pages for $44.99

Windows
Server 2008 PKI and Certificate Security
By Brian Komar for Microsoft Press
780
pages for $59.99 w/ CD

Windows
Server Resource Kit
By Microsoft MVPs with the Microsfot Windows Server Team for
Microsoft Press
Thousands of pages for $249.99
This is a
mega-set. It contains six books as well as scripts, ebooks, and digital
resources. You get Internet Information 7.0 Resource Kit, Windows
Administration Resource Kit, Windows PowerShell Scripting guide, Windows
Server 2008 Active Diretory Resource Kit, Windows Server 2008 Security
Resource Kit, and Windows Server 2008 Networking and Network Access
Protection (NAP).

New & Updated Articles on CodeGuru

Following are short descriptions of new
articles on CodeGuru. If you are interested in submitting your own article
for inclusion on the site, then you will find guidelines here.

Using
the TFS Build Process to Deploy Sharepoint Custom
Applications
By
Eric Landes
Learn how to customize your TFS build process to deploy
Sharepoint custom applications. Delve into the pros and cons of using TFS
to create these builds.

OP-ED:
Why LINQ to SQL is a Better Option than Straight
SQL
By Paul
Kimmel
LINQ to SQL eliminates SQL Injection Attacks and is easier to
use than straight SQL to boot.

[Updated]
Dynamic Programming: Combination Sum Problem
By Nirav Bhatt
Find the coin
combinations that add up to a dollar.

Explore
the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework
By Alex Gusev
The Microsoft .NET Micro
Framework, formerly known as Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT), is
a powerful and flexible platform for rapidly creating embedded device
firmware with Microsoft Visual Studio. Now is just the right time to
explore this new world.

Discussion Groups

Check
out the CodeGuru discussion forums
Forums include Visual C++, General C++,
Visual Basic, Java, General Technology, C#, ASP.NET, XML, Help Wanted, and
much, much, more!

… HOT THREADS …

Add
int to front of string (C++)

What
can you write in 2500 lines of code? (C++)

Overloading
virtual functions (VC++)

New Articles on Developer.com

Building
a Simple BlackBerry Application Interface
By Jeff Langr
Building applications for
the BlackBerry involves a few interesting wrinkles. Explore some of these
challenges in building a front end for a new BlackBerry unit testing
framework.

Math
for Java Game Programmers, Venturing into a 3D
World
By Richard G.
Baldwin
Learn the essentials of programming the math involved in 2D and
3D game development.

8
Simple Rules for Designing Threaded Applications (DevX Portal
Article)
By Clay
Breshears
The Threading Methodology used at Intel has four major steps:
Analysis, Design & Implementation, Debugging, and Performance Tuning.
These steps are used to create a multithreaded application from a serial
base code. While the use of software tools for the first, third, and
fourth steps is well documented, there hasn’t been much written about how
to do the Design & Implementation part of the process.