Still working on Direct X Sites icon
Out of practice drawing my simple icons and I have more work to do on the parser. (12/1/02)

Culling Console Project
I think I'm the right track with this culling project. I wrote a small console program to help test a Cull class. I hooked it up to a Camera class and may have screwed it up. I'll check it this week and see what's going on. (12/1/02)

Week Three of Game Mathematics Class
Getting into the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of Polynomials. I got a little lost during the lecture but found a few chapters in my Intermediate Algebra book. (12/1/02)

Coming Soon Direct X Sites
Started drawing the icon today for Direct X sites. Basically just like shareware sites, I plan to have sites that deal with Direct X, 3D Math, and Game Programming.

I want to offer more than what I have been and grow this page into its own section. I'm starting a Game Math course from the Game Institute on Thursday, so hopefully it will get me moving again on my projects. (11/12/02)

Yet another stage of difficultly.
Right now my program draws all the objects regardless if they are in the current camera view or not. That's pretty wasteful, so I've been looking at a cull demo program which checks to see if an object is in the camera view. If it is then draw it.

It's just going to take me a while to break it all down and understand it. So there hasn't been too much development. (7/14/02)

Chase Camera Working!
Took a couple of functions like getting the opposite radian and to make another game object relative to another's origin, but I got it this morning.

I still have no idea to some of the mathematics involved, but I'm getting better at what little I do know. (6/24/02)

3D Game Objects Born
I'm almost at the point where I was in Visual Basic almost six months ago, which wasn't that far to start with, but it has been a good ride.

This thumbnail shot is from what I've done so far. Took me a while to figure out how to set a chase cam. I just wanted the camera to follow the tank regardless of it's position in the world. The obstacles in the background have a pretty simple radius collision detection and disappear when hit.

Unfortunately it runs in a small window, but gets about 1000 fps. The next milestone is to get the tank to turn and move in that direction. Right now it just moves in four directions: up, down, left, right. (5/24/02)

No more tutorials please!
I have two more tutorials for Direct3D to type in and I'll be honest I don't want to do more typing. I want to get started on something. Who knows if I'm ready or just impatient. My money is on the impatience since I doubt I am ready for anything complicated.

I included this picture from a tank I drew with MilkShape. It's not that bad right? I got a kick out of moving everything and seeing how to improve the model. I want to include it into a simple program and start something. (3/22/02)

What's going on with C++ and Direct 3D
I've finished the 21 days book and it mostly dealt with MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) and the chapter on DirectX was pretty sad and disappointing. I've been typing a lot of Direct3D Tutorials and learning about matrices and stuff. I made the right choice to switch from VB and Direct Draw to C++ and Direct 3D.

Most of you have probably heard of this modeling program called MilkShape. It's pretty good since it can export an x file mesh, which Direct3D can load into a program. Compared to $3,495 for 3D Studio Max and $7,500 for Maya Complete, $20 for MilkShape is a pretty good deal, it's practically free.

Maya did have a personal learning edition, but it could not export to X files and did not work with the plug-in from the DirectX 8 SDK. Also has annoying "Not for commercial use." text all over the place. I also tried Gmax, also from Discreet, but 3D Studio plug ins didn't work and it doesn't have an export feature.

For what I want to do, which is include some very amateur 3D models into my programs and not declare bankruptcy, Milkshape beats them all. I mean very amateur because I suck at 3D modeling not because Milkshape is a bad program or anything. I find it easy to use and I've never done anything like this before. (3/14/02)