April 2010 Archives

Visual Studio 2010 First Impressions

By Alan Hinchcliffe on April 26, 2010 8:14 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
With the recent RTM release of Visual Studio 2010, I decided to give it a try. I hadn't checked out any of the Beta/CTP or RC releases as I didn't have the time. I grabbed the ISO of the RTM build from MSDN on Thursday and managed to find a few minutes to give it a whirl on Saturday. After it had installed (and being distracted by Splinter Cell: Conviction Co-op), I decided to just make sure it compiled and then come back to it later. I created a Win32 Console Hello World application and hit Build. I was presented with this error.

error TRK0002: Failed to execute command: ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Bin\rc.exe" /nologo /foDebug\TestProject.exe.embed.manifest.res Debug\TestProject_manifest.rc". The handle is invalid.

I checked my VC++ Directories (in the traditional place: Tools->Options) only to find it'd been deprecated. After a bit of time with google, I did find mention that VC10 has changed some binary formats (making it less backwards compatible than previous versions - though even in the past it was always a bit of a stretch to get things working without a rebuild). I'm not sure if that was related to my problem or not, but I didn't care to investigate further. I also found mention that by default it imports all your directory settings from prior versions - in my case it picked 2008 (2005 was installed too) which would explain it picking up my older Platform SDK and some custom libraries. It seems other people were having similar issues, but their errors mentioned CL.exe rather than RC.exe.

To fix this, I followed the instructions on the help page for the VC++ Directory Property Page under To specify a per-user directory list to find the inherited search paths. The only caveat was I had to have a solution open, you can't see anything in the Property Manager without a project open. Once I had found the VC++ Directories entries, I removed the references to the older Platform SDK (I'm assuming that a newer Platform SDK would also fix this problem, but I'm just going to stick with the one that is bundled with Visual Studio 2010 for the time being). Doing this allowed my Hello World app to compile.

Otherwise, I'm liking the responsiveness of the new UI. It seems be a definite improvement. VisualSVN seems to be working without change. It doesn't appear that Visual Assist X is running (I can't see a menu bar entry for it in any case - perhaps it needs a reinstall). But regardless I'm looking forward to having a proper play with Visual Studio 2010 now that it seems to be working. I'll still be using 2005 for the bulk of my work, but I'll probably switch from 2008 to 2010 for my side projects assuming I can get all my libraries moved over.

Splinter Cell: Conviction

By Alan Hinchcliffe on April 21, 2010 6:31 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
There are some minor story spoilers throughout this post, but the main spoilers are marked below. If you don't want anything spoiled. Stop reading now. You have been warned.

I finished Splinter Cell: Conviction over the weekend. It was a lot shorter than I thought it'd be, but it was all quality. The story was very well paced, any longer and it might have started to drag. It was a fairly large departure from the prior instalments in the series. You really had to look for the traditional 'Splinter Cell' gameplay. There was a lot more emphasis on getting your gun off. Early in the game it felt less stealthy, but as you progress it settles down a bit and becomes a "faster and more intense" version of Chaos Theory.

All said, I really enjoyed it. I missed the spy-stuff (lock picking, hacking, etc) and non-lethal take-downs, but it fit the mood better to have the 'gloves come off'. The execute moves were cool. It really helped bolster the action hero feeling being able to walk into a room, grab a guy and shoot all his buddies in a fluid movement. My main complaint is the auto-save system and unskippable cutscenes. Sometimes failing a segment meant re-playing more than what was causing problems. In one scenario I was trying to defeat a security laser puzzle and the auto-save was in the middle of two battles. So every time I failed I needed re-play the second battle, organise my weapon loadout again, and then travel to the puzzle. After a couple of attempts it started to get a bit frustrating. In another scenario, failing meant walking across a large room (you couldn't run), watching a 20 second cutscene, and then failing shortly thereafter, only to do it all over again.

I'm going to be trying out the Co-op soon. From what I've heard about it, that should be cool. I picked up the limited collectors edition from Game (which included a Steelbook, some DLC, the soundtrack and a Sam Fisher statue - It was £59.99, but I'm a sucker for that kind of thing) as well as a second copy from Amazon.co.uk for Co-op. Amazon had a Limited Edition that had an exclusive pre-order pack - not that I pre-ordered it from them - which included a making-of DVD, a comic book and some more DLC (a silenced shotgun - wtf?). I still need to watch the DVD and read the comic. I ended up I paying regular price for it (£39.99).  I see now that it's actually up to £43.39 - looks like I dodged a bullet on that one. I managed to luck out on my Alan Wake collectors edition pre-order a couple of months back too, Play.com had it for £39.99, it was over £50 elsewhere (although it seems to be out of stock now).

Mild Story Spoilers follow. It was mentioned in an interview that James Bond and Jason Bourne where influences in re-imagining Sam Fisher for this game. The one that struck me most in the story and character was a dose of Jack Bauer (and 24 in general - especially from the earlier seasons). The main similarities I noticed were: You've got a major crisis where you're trying to minimise the damage (rather than actually prevent it). You have a mole in a government organisation. Your protagonist is working outside the support structure of his organisation.  He is rather forcefully extracting information from people. He deals directly with the president on occasion. There is even a scene in an airbase where people are restrained for interrogation. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, it's just an observation.

Heavy Rain: Initial Thoughts

By Alan Hinchcliffe on April 11, 2010 11:32 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I finally started Heavy Rain last weekend. It definitely considers itself interactive drama first and a game second (which I mostly expected after playing Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy and it tells you as much when it starts up). It has been entertaining so far. I do find that the quick time events and timed decisions can be a bit annoying at times. Specifically, I find it difficult to stay in-character while playing. I'm probably not supposed to be in-character, but I made some choices I wouldn't have made if I had more information and/or time to think about it. I found that this tends to pull me out of the experience and alienates me a bit from the character.

It also doesn't help that I am primarily an Xbox 360 gamer these days. I see X and instinctively press Square. I ended up building a mental map of the buttons (X = A, O = B, Square = X, Triangle = Y) which unfortunately makes me very slow or inaccurate at reflexive button presses (even on easy). That's definitely my fault though. I should play more PS3 games. I never really got hooked on the Trophy system as I did with Achievements, so whenever I have the choice between a game on both platforms, even if the PS3 version is superior - I'll go with the 360 version every time. It's telling that I have well over 100 Xbox 360 games, versus only 12 PS3 games - not including downloadable games on either platform, but the ratio would still be somewhat similar.

While I am enjoying it, it does seem to be incompatible with how I want to experience interactive drama. I'd prefer to be able to take my time and consider decisions I'm going to make. I'm being asked to dedicate a considerable amount of time to this story, and I have no option of retrying a section and changing my mind if I'm unhappy with the results. I didn't have any problems enjoying Fahrenheit. If Heavy Rain was movie-length or even mini-series length, I'd have less issues with accepting my choices with the intention to just replay it again later. I'm about 6 or so hours into it, and it doesn't feel like I'm near the end yet.

I understand they are trying to get you to make choices and live with the consequences. I just feel they could have allowed you to control your own saves (or restart a chapter/episode or being able to rewind it) without taking too much away from that. Increasing the difficulty of making some of the choices - perhaps with multiple successes over time required to achieve it - might have done the same thing. Does it really matter if you have this intricate branching story if you frustrate your players to the point they can't be bothered replaying it?

It's not like the decisions I made that I took issue with were even major life or death decisions. Minor things that I accidentally chose were the ones that annoyed me the most - but there was no way I was going to replay the entire game it just to change that decision. I might have replayed the last 5-10 minutes though. Some of this stems from my controller issues, but it wasn't limited to accidental button presses. It's just as bad when it seems the game has lied to you (through lack of information or a misinterpretation).

I don't want my virtual drama to mirror real life in exacting detail. I can make poor choices in real life just fine. I've always felt the point of being part of a virtual experience is that I can say "Stop. That wasn't how I meant to handle that". When I played the Choose Your Own Adventure books many years ago, I would sometimes just alter my decisions or stats if I felt I would enjoy the outcome more ("If you help the dwarf break into the bank, turn to page 76 otherwise turn to page 184" - turns to page 184 - "As you sneak inside the Sheriff and his deputies spring their trap. The dwarf attempts to escape and you are stabbed in the resulting struggle. You are dead."  "Ugghhh" - turns to page 76). I feel I'd be having more fun if I could do that with Heavy Rain.

So Long Ubuntu

By Alan Hinchcliffe on April 9, 2010 10:30 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I gave up on Ubuntu last weekend. A few years back I switched my servers from FreeBSD to Ubuntu. FreeBSD was taking a bit too long to administer and I wanted to spend that time elsewhere. Ubuntu seemed like a good choice; installing and updating packages was simple, and the Debian-style Apache configuration was similar to how I usually set up Apache on FreeBSD, so initial configuration was quick. The minimal administration effort came at a cost though.

The main problem I was having came down to the Ubuntu philosophy being slightly counter to my usage. It generally takes a while for a package on Ubuntu to be updated to the latest  version. In this most recent case, PHP was still at 5.2 and I needed 5.3. So my usually easy-to-update Ubuntu installation became a headache. It's not like I needed bleeding edge updates. I simply wanted to take advantage of some of the new language features available in 5.3. I encountered some resistance building PHP from source and was ultimately wasting time I could have been coding.

After doing some research, it seemed that Debian was probably aligned more with how I was using my servers these days. I found there was a site that maintains the latest PHP packages for Debian and decided that I'd make the switch. It didn't involve learning anything new (same package management for instance) and I was able to get the whole machine switched over in an hour or two. It was made even easier thanks to running a VPS and being able to swap IP addresses between server instances in the same datacenter.

I still really like what they're doing with Ubuntu, but this wasn't the first time I had a problem similar to the above. The bottom line is my time is more valuable than that. I decided it was more efficient to remove the thing that had caused me the most problems historically. I'm a programmer, not a server administrator (although I do like to play one sometimes); so my time is better spent writing code rather than chasing obscure error messages across the Internet.

I'm not really going anywhere with this post. This is kind of like making a big deal about moving across the street. In reality nothing has really changed except some superficial things that only matter to me. And yes, not much has really happened recently :)

Replacement Citadel Print

By Alan Hinchcliffe on April 9, 2010 2:35 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
Bioware had some additional stock of the Citadel lithograph that they made available a couple of weeks back and I couldn't resist purchasing a another copy to replace my damaged one. It's part of the same run my original came from (ie. not a reprint). It's surprising how much better this looks now (but having a second look at the damage done to the original, I'm more surprised I put it up on the wall in the first place). I am now happy :) 


Mass Effect 2: "Citadel" (replacement)
Mass Effect 2: "Citadel" Lithograph (signed, 141/400).

Here are a couple of shots of the original lithograph so you can see the damage. The tube the lithographs where sent in got crushed, and it caused quite a bit of surface damage to the lithograph. Those marks run the whole width of the lithograph. It's no coincidence that Bioware now ship their lithographs flat :) It shipped with a Dragon Age lithograph that had even more damage done to it. They were thankfully able to replace that one at the time (it was still in stock). I can only assume they were holding back some stock of the Citadel lithograph or had a lot of cancelled orders.

Mass Effect 2: "Citadel" Damage 1
A close-up of the damage to my original copy.

Mass Effect 2: "Citadel" Damage 2
Another close-up of the damage to my original copy.

Take It Easy

By Alan Hinchcliffe on April 6, 2010 11:40 AM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks
I had been trying to stick to a weekly update schedule, but after spending all of last month working too much it got to the point where I didn't have anything to say :) I did at least try to do an update last week, however I did write a paragraph about how I'd been working too much and hadn't done much else. That sat in my browser up until my system hard locked a few hours later. The schedule was mainly for me anyway, so it's not a big deal - I at least tried.

My long weekend consisted of some gaming and some programming/web development. I finished Battlefield: Bad Company (the original). It's been on hold for a bit because I started achievement hunting in Mass Effect, so it was good to finally get back to it. It ended better than I thought it would. Looking forward to starting up its sequel. I've also started up Mass Effect 2 again to try and finish up its achievements, it's a lot less effort than Mass Effect was (in fact, I am almost done). I also started Heavy Rain. I'm enjoying it for the most part, but I have some complaints. I'll post about that later.

I have been working on a little web project. I've been tracking my workout stats in an excel spreadsheet and want to be able to update it from my iPod Touch/iPhone (rather than memorising numbers each morning. Initially I was thinking I'd just use a Google Speadsheet, but I want to do some stat processing and graphing. Rather than cobble together some existing tech, I figured I'd just write something. I've been primarily designing and planning so far, but it's coming along quite well. It's probably not going to be a public site, but the results of it might end up here. I haven't decided yet. In the process of planning, I ended up doing some work on my server, including switching OS. The details of which I'll go into later.

I am going to be making a concerted effort to work a bit less this month. That long weekend couldn't have come at a better time as I was basically out of steam at the end of March.
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