FinalBuilder is a Must Have for Constructing Build Processes
For years I have relied on custom built build processes for software I develop. For instance, on a recent large-scale .NET solution I used a combination of NTScheduler, VMware Workstation, CVS, NAnt, and the .NET SDK (along with other tools) to build an automated build environment. However, doing something similar for every one of my software projects is time consuming, and I have to rely on different tools for different projects. For example NAnt is useless for a Delphi Win32 project. So I finally decided to give FinalBuilder a try.
FinalBuilder is the ultimate tool for constructing a build process. Within minutes I was able to automate a build process for a box inventory program I am working on. Of course projects with a more complex build process will take more than a few minutes to setup, but you should be able to automate a build process in minutes and not hours or days for most projects.
I’m amazed at the flexibility provided by FinalBuilder. It supports a wide array of compilers and tools. And it has an easy-to-use GUI for construction of the build process for every time of project I’m working on.
I decided to see how long it would take to setup a build process for SMTP Diagnostics. Although SMTP Diagnostics is a simple product, its build process involves a number of steps. It is the perfect product to evaluate FinalBuilder with.
Here are the steps in the build process that I wanted to automate through FinalBuilder:
- Create a build directory sandbox
- Retrieve the latest source code from CVS
- Compile the GUI program (using Delphi 2006 compiler)
- Compile EurekaLog into the GUI program
- Compile to console program (using Delphi 2006 compiler)
- Compile the licensing framework into the GUI and console programs (using Armadillo)
- Generate the help file system (using Help&Manual;)
- Generate the installer (using Inno Setup)
- Generate a zip file containing the generated installer
- Update and commit build number changes to CVS
- Tag release in CVS
In less than 30 minutes I was able to setup the SMTP Diagnostics build process in FinalBuilder. I can now make a complete build of SMTP Diagnostics in under a minute with a click of a button.
My next step in exploring FinalBuilder will be to generate the online help as HTML files and upon successful build of the product push the HTML files and the installer out to SMTP Diagnostics web site. Given the time I spent playing with FinalBuilder, I’m confident I will be able to automate these steps as well.
My Dead Or Alive 4 Review
For Christmas Melanie gave me a copy of Dead Or Alive 4 for the Xbox 360. The game wasn’t released until the end of the December so I had to wait. But it finally came in this week and last night I got a chance to play it.
My review can be summed up in 4 simple words: My thumb is sore!
I must have played 8 hours or so last night. And yes my thumb is sore. The game is awesome. Story Mode can be frustrating at times but I was able to finish it in one night. The frustration is not a bad thing although it seems like it when you are playing. The AI in this game is incredible, which made Story Mode challenging and frustrating at the same time.
Like other Xbox 360 games DOA4 supports leaderboards. You can, for example, compare your best Survival Mode score against other players world wide. My current ranking is around 10,500 out of 25,000 players. I definitely need to work on improving that ranking.
As I have mentioned before, Xbox Live really makes Xbox 360 a great console. Having the ability to compare my ranking and achievement to other players causes me to play more, and in turn leaves me wanting to buy more games. Xbox Live is really the shining star of the Xbox 360 for the moment. But this review is about DOA4, not Xbox Live.
DOA4 comes with online play as well. I played “Versus” challenges for a bit last night online. Unfortunately I didn’t do as well as I had hoped. There are some top notch players out there. Online play was fun but the game play was a bit choppy. I couldn’t tell if the performance problem was caused by my DSL line or if the problem was coming from the DOA4/Live servers. I need to check the forums to see if other DOA4 players are experiencing the same choppiness. I have not noticed any performance problems with other Xbox Live enabled games so I have to believe it is not my DSL line.
Another feature I like about DOA4 is Sparring Mode. There is a feature within this mode called Exercise, which is a great way to learn all the button combinations for a given character. I will definitely spend more time in this mode to learn more of the advance moves and combinations.
Overall, DOA4 is great. The graphics are amazing. The game play is fun. The leaderboards are addicting. And online play is a blast.
Thanks Melanie for getting me this great game.
First Vertigo Screenshot
Okay, I probably shouldn’t post this screenshot because it is ugly and far from the final Vertigo UI. But what the heck. I have been talking about Vertigo for a year now and this screenshot shows the world I’m actually working on it (finally).
Click the image to view full size.
For those wondering, Vertigo is a desktop email client that is being developed by White Peak Software and will be released later this year. Feel free to post your comments, suggestions, and questions to the Vertigo forum area.
A New Year, a New Adventure
2005 has come and gone, and man was it fast. 2005 was a very interesting year for me. I learned a lot about running a software business and I have a better idea of what it means to be a self employed computer geek turned aspiring entrepreneur. I have my success stories, made mistakes, changed directions, lost sleep, and spent more time with my wife. Here’s a brief recap of 2005:
Success Stories
- Release White Peak Software’s first product, SMTPdiagnostics.
- Released 4 custom software solutions for customers.
- Elected Chapter President of ICCA NYC Metro.
- Met target revenue goals.
- Became more focus on where I want to take White Peak Software.
Mistakes
- Over obligating myself and my time.
- Lacking focus for the first half of the year.
- Did not release Beta version of Vertigo.
- A poor job of networking and keep in touch with customer.
So what are my resolutions for 2006?
2006 Resolutions
- Complete Vertigo version 1.0.
- Increase product revenue by at least 60%.
- Do a better job of staying in touch with customer.
- Do a better job of going to the gym.
- And find more ways to spend more time with my wife.
What I will and will not miss about living in New York City
5 things I will NOT miss about life in New York (in no particular order):
Long Time No Post
December has been a very busy month for me and my wife. We’ve had a lot going on, which is why I have been slow to post this month. And no, I have not spent the entire month playing on the Xbox 360, although I wish I had.
First the exciting news…We’re moving out of NYC!
Yep, you read it here first. We’re moving out of NYC at the end of January. Melanie and I both love this city but we also want a life style that is hard to have in the city unless you are filthy rich. And contrary to my family’s beliefs, living in Manhattan doesn’t mean you are rich and we are far from rich.
So where are we moving to? Salem, Massachusetts. I call it our “From Rainbows to Witches” move and if you know anything about where we currently live and where we are moving to you will know this is not a Wizard of Oz reference.
We found a super nice apartment in Salem. It’s actually a house but a portion of the first floor is used as office space for the church that is next door. We have a small portion of the first floor, all of the second and third floors, and a small storage room. This house is definitely larger than our small Manhattan apartment. And for a faction of the cost too. I’ll post pictures of the house in about a month.
A number of other things have been keeping me busy in December too. Migrating all my Visual Studio.NET 2003 (.NET 1.1) projects to Borland Developer Studio 2006 (C# Builder) has not gone as smoothly as I had hoped. I’ll post my experience about this later, but I will say I absolutely love BDS. Live templates are awesome and the IDE is very fast. Aside from load time I find it more responsive than Visual Studio 2005, which is why I’m moving all my .NET 1.1 projects to BDS.
I also spent a lot of time in December reviewing and evaluating specific features of Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0. There are some improvements I like such as typed data sets but I’m finding my customers are slow to move to or have little interest at the moment in .NET 2.0. So while I wish BDS 2006 had support for .NET 2.0 it doesn’t look like I will be doing any hardcore .NET 2.0 work anytime soon. My focus will continue to be on Win32 and .NET 1.1.
Happy holidays to everyone.
BDS and Quality Central
I finally got my copy of Delphi 2006 install and I have started using it day. I love it and it is a huge improvement over Delphi 2005.
Unfortunately the IDE crashed on me, but it did something really cool. The exception was caught and I was given the option to send the error report to Borland’s Quality Central. Not only that, but if you provide your BDN credentials you can track the report! How cool is that!
I’m happy to see this new level of commitment to quality.
NYC's First Snowfall for the Season
Finally a dusting of snow is on the sidewalks of Manhattan. I was happy to finally see the white stuff, which is melting fast.
My Amped3 for the Xbox 360 Review
At first I did not like Amped3 but I quickly warmed up to it. I owe Amped and Amped2 so I naturally expected to jump into Amped3 with some free riding. But that didn’t happen. Here’s my story.
My copy of Amped3 arrived a week before my Xbox 360 arrived. Since I couldn’t play the game I read the booklet. “Wow! This is going to be the best Amped yet,” I first thought. Not only can you ride the mountains but you can jump on a sled, ride snowmobiles, and even throw snowballs.
As soon as my Xbox 360 was setup and running the first game I planned was Amped3. After you setup your player you are immediately placed in the story. I found the beginning annoying because I wanted to ride the slopes but every couple of minutes I had to watch a silly movie.
You start off in a pink bunny suit and you get to do a quick, short run. I guess this part gives new players of Amped3 a chance to learn the controls. You see movies that introduce you to your crew and you meet a wacky woman. After playing Amped3, or should I say watching the wacky movies, I turned off the game and spent time with my wife. I told her I was now thinking this is probably the worse Amped game. A huge difference from a week earlier.
I started playing again a few days later only to find I was wrong. Amped3 was in fact fun and is a great game. The story mode became more interesting (and wacky) and as you progress through the story you unlock new mountains areas and new mountains. Once unlocked you can spend as much time as you like free riding, exploring, hitting the park, sledding, snowmobile riding, and even build your own park. I was finally getting into the game.
The story mode is wacky but will hold your attention for the 6 or 7 hours needed to complete it (that is, after you get pass the initial start of the story). Once you have finished the story all the mountains are unlocked and you are free to explore and complete the many, many, MANY remaining challenges. Although you can finish the story mode in a day, it will definitely take much more time to finish all aspects of the game.
My favorite feature of Amped3 is the leaderboard. When you win a gold medal on a challenge, you are ranked on the leaderboard which is posted on Xbox Live. This allows you to see how you rank with other Amped3 players throughout the world. It’s a whole new level of competation. I often find that if I don’t place well on the leaderboard for a particular challenge I will re-play that challenge over and over until I’m happy with my ranking. And I’m stoked everytime I place in the top 10 on a leaderboard.
Another new feature of Amped3 I really like are the player stats. I love stats and I review them all the time. With Amped3 you can see how much time you have spent playing the game, the number of tricks thrown down, and the number of crashes you’ve had. You can see other stats as well like how many miles covered on a snowmobile, high scores, and number of leaderboards you are on. And there are many, many stats available too.
Game play is similar to previous Amped games but the controls are easier. I imagine the game developers decided to do this to appeal to more causual gamers and/or to attact the SSX crowd. You still get awarded more points for style but jibbing is much, much easier. You don’t have to press B to start a jib. In Amped3 just land on the object, or snowboard right up to it, and you’re jibbing. Grabs, tricks and so on are determined by pressing XYBA button combinations (XYB for jibs, A will ollie when jibbing).
One feature I dislike is the awesomeness graphics. These annoying graphics are displayed around your character when you reach a level of awesomeness. I find it annonying and luckily the game designers were smart enough to provide a way to disabel the awesomeness graphics. Go to the ride customization menu and select Awesomeness. From the menu you can select the awesomeness graphics to display or you can select “None”. I prefer “None”.
My biggest disappointment with Amped3 is the lack of multiplayer support. I really expected offline, split screen multiplayer support, and I miss the online multiplayer games found in Amped2. It’s a real shame that Amped3 does not have multiplayer ability given the new features like sledding, snowmobile riding, and having snowball fights. These new features could make for hours of multiplayer fun.
By the way, there is a stupid sled game that you can play on some mountains that is multiplayer but it’s a really stupid game. You and a buddy are on sleds that are attached by a rope. The goal of the game is to get the most bodily damage. I don’t know why the game designers put this in there. It makes me think maybe, just maybe the plan was to have multiplayer support in Amped3 but got rushed since it is a launch title game. Personally I would have rather waited another 6 months for Amped3 just to have multiplayer support.
If you enjoyed Amped and Amped2 then you will really like Amped3. Just get pass the first 30 minutes and you will start enjoying the game. I also recommend playing out the story mode as quickly as possible. Afterwards you can focus on all the other challenges, building your own park - yes, I forgot to mention that. In Amped3 you can design your own park! Way cool - and exploring the mountains. The leaderboards on Xbox Live is a great new feature, but the lack of multiplayer support does suck. Still, it’s a great game and a must buy for those who loved Amped and Amped2.
Borland Delphi 2006 Hits the Streets
It’s true. Borland Delphi 2006 is shipping. Unfortunately I still do not have my copy which I pre-ordered back at the beginning of November. So much for a first come, first serve approach. According to my order status, my order has been back ordered!
I hope my copy comes soon. I want to start up a new dev environment where I use the Borland Developers Studio 2006 for all my Delphi and .NET 1.1 programming. I’ll use Visual Studio 2005 for .NET 2.0 development since the Borland Developers Studio will not have support for .NET 2.0. This is unfortunate but I understand it had something to do with Microsoft consistently changing the release schedule for .NET 2.0 and a license agreement between Microsoft and Borland regarding the distribution of pre-RTM releases of the .NET 2.0 Framework. Unfortunately I can’t find the link to the blog that explains why this latest release from Borland does not support .NET Framework 2.0. I’ll post the URL if I find the link.
Meanwhile, I anxiously wait for my copy of Delphi 2006.