June 24th, 2008
In the good old days, back when the Internet had about 10 users and the web was a far off vision, PCs were called Home Computers and anyone could learn to write computer games. Three of us set up in business to write and sell our own games for the ZX Spectrum (Aka Timex/Sinclair) and Commodore 64. We didn’t sell many games but we were saved by getting into the game conversion business. A publisher would release a hit on the Commodore 64 and we’d write the Timex, Amstrad, MSX, CBM 16 etc versions. It took about 3 months for one person to produce a game.
That was 20 years ago and things have changed a lot since then. The games industry is now a massive multi billion dollar business and development teams can number 50 or more. My first game had me as programmer, artist, and beep designer - (well it wasn’t proper sound!). I did everything. Back then games were written in assembler and you had to learn 6502 and Z80. Nowadays with a few exceptions games are written in C and C++. The days of back room programmers aren’t entirely gone- there is also ‘retro remake’ and ‘indie’ scene, e.g. http://retrospec.sgn.net/ but unless you have an exceptionally brilliant idea, you are not likely to get into the mainstream game business as a one man outfit writing Blockbuster PC games.
It’s not all bad news though- if you can program to a very good standard and have learnt some of the techniques- eg 3d maths, artificial intelligence (ai), and can produce demos of your code then you may be able to get a job in the market. There are plenty of books and websites that will guide you through the intricacies of DirectX and before long you’ll be a guru on vertex shaders etc. Sign up on games development sites like http://gamasutra.com/ (it’s free) and look for jobs. You will have to be good to get a job and prepared to work long, in some case very long hours. It is quite a tough business - when a game is under development, you’ll live breathe and eat it for 18 months-two years. And you probably won’t work 9-5 all the time.
There are however other ways to get into the games business and I don’t mean console development. There are other ‘genres’ of games that are much easier to get into.
1. MUD - Multi-user dungeons. These have been around for 30 years and were the precursor to the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games) that now exist. These are still popular and you can find the source code to several of these. I don’t know if any make money- most people are now used to playing them for free. Look here: http://www.ability.org.uk/mud.html
2. Internet/Web based games. There are hundreds of these around. A good starting point is the vast directory at http://www.mpogd.com/ . These range from free to monthly subscriptions. Anyone can set up their own website and games using any web technology- e.g. Perl, PHP, Java.
3. Play By Mail. This has now largely but not entirely moved into the Internet/Web Games area. Flagship magazine is a good source of information - their website is http://flagshipmagazine.com/
4. Flash Games. Flash development is a skill in itself, though programming in ActionScript (which is JavaScript under a different name) is not that hard. There is a definite career path available through programming Flash games and there are plenty of books to teach you to write games in Flash. Flashkit website http://www.flashkit.com/index.shtml is a good starting point online.
5. Mobile Phone and PDA games. This has become a big growth area recently and is likely to continue its growth as phones get more powerful. Its also one of the easiest to get into though not all phones are the same. All you need to know is how to write Java games running on the J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition) platform. Unlike the console world, Software Development Kits (SDKS) are available for free from mobile phone manufacturers. E.g. http://www.forum.nokia.com/main.html and the best IDEs for J2ME development (Netbeans and Eclipse) are available free. Expect to see MMORPG (Mobile Multiplayer Online Role Play Games) before too long.
Much of this can be done part time in your evenings/weekends but be careful that you don’t let it take over your life and also that your employer doesn’t have any claim on software that you develop. Some employers have clauses that let them claim anything you develop. There are ways round this, often involving a wife or loved one who can be assigned ownership but take legal advice if in any doubt.
If you are learning to program games, don’t neglect the power of the web. Sourceforge.net is home to thousands of open source projects and many of those are games. Also game source for commercial games Quake I, II and III has been released by ID and can be found here http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/
These are GPL’d so you wouldn’t be able to write games based on them and sell them without giving away the source code but you could write Mods. Several game modders have released very popular Mods free and have managed to get into the industry because of their quality. There are many games projects where you can sign up and program- this is an excellent way to learn new skills and make friends.
David Bolton is a software developer with an extensive past programming games. He co-founded Choice Software in Carrickfergus, N. Ireland between 1984 and 1987 and won an award for his original computer wargame Johnny Reb II (published by Lothlorien). He designed and programmed the Postal game Quest, which has also won awards and is still played (postally and online) 15 years after it was first developed. He worked for 12 months as game designer at Microprose (Manchester) in 1992. He is currently designing a large multiplayer role-play game, but it’s not due out until 2006.
Comments Off
June 13th, 2008
Email loss causes majority of business loss, to overcome the common problem the backup of Outlook Express mails can be taken regularly and this article is aimed at explaining you how you can backup your Outlook Express mails (Since, Outlook Express lacks a backup option). Outlook Express the widely used email program is usually installed with the Windows operating system. Outlook Express is fairly easy to use, but finding and backing up the emails can be a little more complicated. Since there are a large number of files and folders on a computer running Windows, the first problem is to find the files containing the emails. Outlook Express stores emails in .dbx files and it stores and maintains different dbx files depending upon the email folders created in Outlook Express.
In Windows 98, you can probably locate your emails somewhere in the Windows directory. In Windows 2000 and XP, emails are usually stored somewhere in the user data or application data folder. The common reasons for email loss are virus attack, software malfunction, power failures, human error and hard drive failure.
One can easily save and backup the emails, attachments, address book and other important data from within the email client to a CDRW or DVD; otherwise in case of a computer problem the user will find himself in the impossibility to get them back, and this can be a really unwanted situation especially for web community or people who rely on their emails. Unfortunately the common practice among us is that we actually start to do backup copies only after we lose data.
The simple way to find out and locate the actual path where your emails are stored is as follows
1. Start Outlook Express
2. Go to the Tools menu,
3. Open the Options dialog box.
4. In the Options dialog box, Select the Maintenance page
5. Click the Store Folder button.
Here you can find the path to the folder containing your emails. To open the folder, copy the path and paste in the address field of the Windows File Manager. You should see a number of .dbx files (depending upon the number of folders created) and possibly some other files, too. After locating the email folder, you can simply select all the files, copy them and paste it to a new location or you can take the backup on another hard disk, a CDRW, a DVD or a network drive.
How to backup Address Book
1. Select Tools >> Address Book… from the menu in Outlook Express.
2. Choose File >> Export >> Other Address Book… from the address book’s menu.
3. Select Text File (Comma Separated Values) as the export format.
4. Click Export.
5. Select the location you want to export your address book to using the browse… button.
6. Give your backup copy a meaningful name.
7. Click Next.
8. Select the fields you want to include in your backup.
9. Select Finish.
10. Click OK to finish.
If you have not backed up you emails so, take a backup now. If you face any email loss and you have no backup then don’t panic the Nucleus Kernel for Outlook Express - Mail Recovery Software will help you retrieve your deleted and lost mails back. The software uses QFSCI technology to quickly retrieve lost emails. So in case of email disasters try the demo of Kernel for Outlook Express - Mail Recovery Software. Nucleus Technologies.com offers a complete range of professional data recovery software and utilities for recovering lost, corrupt data and files from Windows, Linux, Unix, Novell Netware, Apple Macintosh operating system and supports various file systems including FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5, Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, JFS, NWFS, Net386, NSS, HFS, HFS+, UFS, FFS, VxFS, EAFS, HTFS etc. The Hard Drive Data Recovery Software offered by Nucleus Technologies.com ensures safe and precise disk data recovery against numerous threats like accidental file deletion, disk formatting, partition related problems, virus or trojan problems, software malfunction, employee sabotage etc.
Data Recovery Software and File Repair Utilities
Comments Off
June 3rd, 2008
It is a good idea to think of your PC as an office. It stores files, programs, pictures. This can be compared to an actual office’s files, machines and decorations. The operating system is the boss. With this image in mind, think of an office you’ve visited that was slow and inefficient. There were probably many different reasons for the inefficiency. This is the same with a computer. There can be many items that slow down your computer. Perhaps the one most commonly overlooked is disorganization and clutter.
Disk Cleanup
An office can accumulate a lot of unnecessary files, machines, and decorations. This is the same with your computer. One of the best ways to keep this clutter under control is to perform a cleaning utility periodically. In Windows this cleaning utility will be called a “disk cleanup.” It removes a variety of unnecessary files depending on the options you have selected.
To perform a disk cleanup on Windows XP you can simply click on “my computer” under the start menu. Than right click on your “c drive” or “hard disk” and choose properties. Than click “disk cleanup” and follow the prompts. When selecting files to clean up, or delete, Windows will give you information to help you decide. When looking over the list of file types, you would simple click on the name of the file type and read the description placed below in the description area. This will let you know if the files can be safely deleted. To select the file group just check the box next to the group name. When finished selecting press “OK” to finish.
Now, performing a disk cleanup is not very time consuming, just a couple minutes, and it may save more time in the end by making your computer run faster. However, a disk cleanup should be run periodically rather than just once in a great while. One way to make this run periodically is to make it a scheduled task. This will allow your computer to run it automatically with intervals and time of day determined by you. Yet, you can always run it yourself periodically without creating a scheduled task.
Add or Remove Programs
The information given above can help you get rid of some unnecessary files, but you may also need to clean out some unnecessary programs as well. This can be done using the “add or remove programs” utility in Windows. This is located in the control panel and lists all of your currently installed programs along with an option to uninstall them. It is a good idea to browse through the add or remove programs utility every once in a while just to make sure that all programs are of usefulness.
If there are programs listed that are no longer used, you can simply highlight the program and click the uninstall button. Windows will than begin the process to uninstall the program. In most cases, to finish uninstalling a program, it is wise to restart your computer. This will dump and files that are held temporarily.
The add or remove programs utility is very useful, but not all of the programs are listed up front. Programs that come pre-installed on your computer and the Windows operating system can also be uninstalled. For instance, Outlook Express is a default e-mail program that comes with the Windows XP operating system. If you do not use this e-mail program you can uninstall it. Click “add or remove windows components” found in the add or remove programs utility and simply follow the instructions.
Defragment
Many offices contain a large number of files and programs that are valuable and cannot be thrown away. In fact, they may contain files that are not even used, but still have to be retained for some reason. Although these files must remain in the office, they need to be organized. This is why we create file folders that hold groups of files that are related. Than we store them in cabinets that are arranged in alphabetic order.
In a computer, the files that are saved are placed on the hard drive. However, they are placed according to the time that they were saved. So, if you open a word document and save the file as “file A” and than open another document and save it as “file B”, you have a “file A” placed next to “file B.” This is fine, but if you open “file A” later on and save it again, than the added information is saved next to “file B.”
When files are broken up this way it is referred to as a fragmented file. This means that the computer must find the first part of the file and then find the second part of the file to open that one word document. This can make your computer run slower. However, Windows has created a utility that is meant to rearrange files so that they are no longer fragmented but sit right next to each other.
You can run the disk defragmenter by selecting “all programs” under the start button. Next, select “accessories” and “system tools” and you will see “disk defragmenter.” In fact, this is also an alternative way to select the disk cleanup mentioned earlier. Before starting the defragmenter you can analyze your hard drive to see if Windows recommends performing the defragmenter. It will either say that you should or should not defragment at this time.
If you need to defragment your computer, simply hit the defragment button. It may take your computer a while to finish this task depending on the speed of your computer and the amount of defragmented files. It could take from about 15-30 minutes or more. However, you can still use the computer while the disk defragmenter is working.
We hope you enjoyed our free article - click the link to visit our site for more computer related articles
Comments Off
May 28th, 2008
Want to know how to tweak your internet connection? Have some questions about routers? Wondering about the best way to configure your network? Curious about WiFi, Bluetooth, or any other wireless networking standard? Frustrated with security issues and need pointers on firewalls and port filtering? Looking for updates on anti-virus, anti-spyware & ad-ware software? Have any issues on hardware, software, programming, or digital media? Boy do I have the place for you!
Drop in to the discussion community at SpeedGuide.net and you’re bound to find whatever you need related to the Broadband world. Ask questions, share tips, make friends and business contacts. This is definitely one of the most informative and helpful sites on the net…..period!
About the Author
Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications ….delivering choices to business consumers for voice and data broadband services. Michael also authors BroadBand Nation Broadband Nation where you’re always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, and ramblings for the masses.
Comments Off
May 27th, 2008
Time is money. If you’re not careful in your computer consulting business, you’ll waste both. With a little discipline and structure, you can maximize the return on your time.
Journal Your Time
One way to determine your computer consulting time is by journaling. Write down everything you do for a couple of weeks to determine what you do with your time, where the time wasters are, and what you could do to improve your time management. Journaling is a good way to evaluate.
Keep an Excel spreadsheet or a calendar and figure out where all the time goes in a given week. Determine if you have enough time to do the business development items for the larger accounts.
Evaluate Your Time
For most professionals in the computer consulting business, time’s really at a premium. Sometimes you’re going to really need to make difficult decisions on where you can afford to spend a marginal five or ten hours a week.
Structure Time to Allow More Training
Training is expensive, but what most computer consulting firms tend to do is more time intensive than cash intensive. Most of these computer consulting firms aren’t the ones that are sending people out for five-day, $2,500 Exchange Server course.
Instead, get the action pack subscription and buy enough resale copies. Load it up on spare machines in the office, and make sure that every time your computer consulting techs have down time, they’re going through the tutorials. During down time they should be going through the read-me files, reading through the resource kits, and doing CBT training.
Give Your Computer Consulting Staff A Plan
If you’re billing out your computer consulting techs at 65 or 70 percent capacity and they have six to eight hours a week where they’re either sitting on the bench or doing some work or tending to the store, structure it so they have a plan of attack.
This is where you say, “This month I want you to concentrate all of your down time on learning how to do Microsoft Small Business Server 2003″ or “This month I want you to get stronger on troubleshooting Exchange Server.”
The Bottom Line about Computer Consulting
Track where your time is being sent and make sure your technical staff is spending a certain amount of time every week keeping their skills sharp. Additionally, you need to be identifying skills gaps you need to grow to the next level.
Copyright MMI-MMVI, Small Business Computer Consulting .com. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}
Joshua Feinberg has helped thousands of small business computer consulting firms get more steady, high-paying clients. Now you can too. Sign-up now for your free access a one-hour audio training program featuring field-tested, proven Small Business Computer Consulting Secrets.
Comments Off
May 19th, 2008
You won’t hear many complaints from iPod customers. Nevertheless, one matter frequently named is the inability to move music from their iPod to an additional computer or laptop Though the iPod has no problem copying content from your PC to iPod using iTunes, the reversal is not allowed. If you don’t use iPod to Computer Software System, you cannot move your iPod songs to a different PC. This topic sometimes happens when customers get a new machine or have to install the operating system on their existing computer. Apple forbids this process because it does not want unauthorized sharing of purchased files from the iTunes website. Nevertheless, there are a plethora of legitimate circumstances that iPod owners require the power to transfer from iPod to machine. If a machine goes kaput and you have to install the system files, you might need iPod to PC copy software to recover your valuable files. Otherwise, the clean installation of iTunes will wipe clean your iPod, potentially costing you $100’s of dollars in deleted music. Yet another common time iPod owners necessitate these types of programs is when they get a new computer and want to move their existing database of iPod files on the new personal computer. Once Again, if you do not install this type of application, you could possibly lose your worthful music. There are many developers on the Internet today that offer up programs to achieve this chore. A prompt visit to CNET or Tucows will bring out a handful of alternatives. You can also just type ‘iPod to machine copy software’ into Google.
Comments Off
|
|
