Website may be up and down over next few months. I'm currently doing a complete overhaul of everything. Going back to simple individual .htm pages, new overall site theme, sanitizing and cleaning up html of all pages and blog posts, attempting to implement a new tooling and publishing system etc etc.

Sooooon my precious

Published 1/20/2005 by createdbyx in News

Just to let you know I have pretty much finished the video submission web application, so with any luck it will be up and running soon.

I have also registered for the fallowing web cast "MSDN Webcast: Russ' Tool Shed Live Studio Audience Webcast–DotNetNuke Version 3 (Part 1 of 4): Overview (Level 100)" you can check it out at Microsoft Events

I have also been working on a few game related things, such as a 2D platformer I am fooling around with making called Bubble Up Mario <link to file is missing> (151Kb zip containing 30 sec video demo)

I keep over complexifying the game so don't hold you breath waiting for me to finish it. :p


OMG! I've wasted my life...

Published 1/11/2005 by createdbyx in News

What you can't see me doing right now is shaking my head in shame. Why, WHY! did I not take a more serious aproach to OpenGL. So many years I've wasted on DirectX. *Sigh*

Oh well... As you can see I have re-re-re-rediscoved (hopfully for the last time) OpenGL in the form of Tao openGL. www.taoframework.com. Now that I am starting to "Get it" to describe OpenGL I'd say "Yep".

I've compleated 6 basic projects, and I gotta tell you, it's soooo much easier then DX. (when I say DX I mean managed DX 9) No having to manage object references. No managing object states. Using Google and opengl.org there is Plentifull documentation. I could go on, but I will not. Lastly I will say this, OpenGL is reminding me of the fun and ease of use I had programming graphics in QBasic. Yes it's that easy to use. Whu Hooo! I'm alive again!


I just ordered a free DVD from the MS web site and did not have to pay shipping! Sweet! Check out the offer at Visual Studio: Order Your Free Partner Product DVD

This is thie kind of thing I would like to see more of. Every now and then MS offering a free dvd full of current software that is out there but that we would otherwise be oblivious to without extensive searching and research.


It never fails

Published 12/28/2004 by createdbyx in News

Yep, it never fails. Just when I think things are going good, programming wise. I get slammed with another unforeseen problem or dellema. This time it's a problem. With DirectX. Again.

You wanna talk about strange behavior, lets talk about strange behavior. I was playing around with ways to simplify directx down to an aboslute minimum. What I did was create a class library. And added a bunch of modules, and in those modules I added some publicly available methods such as InitGraphics, ShutdownGraphics, EnableLighting etc etc.

Now all of the variables like the D3D Device, and present parameters etc are module level varibles that are not visible to outside apps. They are declared friend so only the Class library can see them. Although I do provide methods for accessing those variables indirectly through some methods, GetD3DDevice for example is one of those methods.

But it seems when I create an application that references this class library and calls the InitGraphics method but then tries to get the value of a render state on that device like so ...


InitGraphics(Me, True) ' True means windowed mode
' get the Lighting render state property and show it
msgbox(GetD3DDevice.RenderState.Lighting.ToString)


I keep getting a InvalidCallException being thrown when I try to retrieve the Lighting render state!?! I get this exception when I try to access any of the render state properties, or other specific properties on the device including things like the Material property.

I don't get this error when I call the EnableLighting (sets the Lighting render state property) method but I do get a InvalidCallException being thrown when I try to retrieve the value of one of the render state properties on this device!

Now here is the thing. i have also tried converting the modules in the class library into classes so that my application has to create an object in order to work with the methods. but I still get the same exception being thrown! What's up with that?

You wanna know what the really odd thing is. I have never ever had an InvalidCallException thrown before until of course I installed the new DirectX sdk December 2004 a few days ago! This is what I suspect is causing me my problems. Either that or it's some sort of threading issue. I doubt it's a threading issue simply because my app does not spawn any threads.

I have started a thread over at the VBGamer website in the hopes of resolving this issue.


OK people I know your out there! And from reading my site log I know your visiting this site!

So, in an effort to get some feedback from the people who visit my site I will offer the first 6 people a free gmail invite if they use the feedback sections provided on this site to provide me with 1 or more suggestions on what they would like to see on this site that would make it uniuqe and stand out!

To recieve your free gmail invite, use one of the feedback locations on this site, and be sure to put "I want my gmail!" (or something similar) as the subject line. As well as 1 or more suggestions on how you think I can improve this site! Thanx - Created by: X


Yikes!

Published 12/17/2004 by createdbyx in News

Yikes! Hope they fix that nasty memory leak before ship date.

VBExpress 2005 Beta 1


I have been working on my own custom DNN 2.1.2 module to create my own blog here on my site. One of the problems I am finding is that most of the DNN modules cost money! Ack! Phewey!

Right now CBXBlogger is really just an HTML injector from my blog I have at createdbyx.blogspot.com. That is why the formatting of my blog for this site is not well done. Also clicking on a link in my blog will cause you to navigate away from my site. :(

The problem as you may have noticed before was that I had used a IFrame to embed my blog from createdbyx.blogspot.com inside of this page. So I was having clipping issues the length of my blog exceeding the size of the IFrame. CBXBlogger solved this problem.

But when I'm done, CBXBlogger will be free for all to use!


Just a check in...

Published 12/1/2004 by createdbyx in News

Have not been up to much lately. Just doing some work on my up comming Efficacious game engine. I am also going to try to submit a simple game this year for the "Christmas Contest 2004!" vb gamming contest. More information can be found at the fallowing link

VBGamer - The latest VB Gaming news, reviews, and info


DX9SampleFramework

Published 11/24/2004 by createdbyx in News

I took the DX9SampleFramework Library provided in the DirectX 9.0c (October 2004) DirectX SDK and compiled it. I have not made any changes to the code and it was compiled as is.

I am providing this Dll to benifit the visual basic.net developers out there who do not have Visual C#.NET and who otherwise would not be able to make use of or understand the code in this library.

Documentation for this library is availible in the 'DirectX Documentation for Managed Languages' HTML help file that is provided in the directx 9.0c SDK download.

All credit for this library should be given to the microsoft directx team.  DX9SampleFramework.zip (66.63 kb)


Just had an epiphany...

Published 11/21/2004 by createdbyx in News

Well I just had an epiphany. I now realize that the reason I always strive to use the latest in technology (in my case software development) is because for the longest time I never had the chance to. When the pentium 2 was on it's way out and the P3 was on the horizon I was still moping along with a 486DX 80Mhz! It's all so clear to me now! lol


BTW: Need a handy dictionary/thesaurus resource check out http://dictionary.reference.com/


Created by: X

Just another personal website in this crazy online world

Name of author Dean Lunz (aka Created by: X)
Computer programming nerd, and tech geek.
About Me -- Resume