Skip to the bottom if you're not interested in my short story =)
Having transitioned to GNU/Linux I needed to find a suitable IDE to replace Visual Studio. After testing out a few environments and discussions with friends and co-workers, I have settled on NetBeans (for now). This is not a review on IDEs so I will not go on about what lead me to this decision.
Having used Visual Studio keyboard short cuts for so long, the change threw me into the deep end where simple code navigation was cumbersome. NetBeans allows you to set up custom key mappings so I had two options. Set up or find Visual Studio key mappings or learn NetBeans.
I decided to search for Visual Studio key mappings, after all finding a pre-configured one would be much better than going through every key mapping and assigning it. After all I wanted to get back to work on a project right away and not spend a few hours trying to learn new keyboard short cuts. To my surprise I did not find any. I thought there would be a lot of people transitioning from Visual Studio whom would miss their keyboard short cuts.
I ended up spending a couple of hours going through Visual Studio's keyboard short cuts, one at a time, and mapping them to the same or similar functions in NetBeans. While the bindings aren't perfect (some functionality is different) it is feels natural enough for someone coming from Visual Studio.
Some things to note:
I haven't always found Ctrl+S the easiest short cut for "Save" given the frequency I save what I'm working on. I always found it faster to press Alt then F then S (not Alt+F+S). I developed it as a bit of a reflex when I paused, so Ctrl+S, which requires more movement seems like much more of an interruption.
Because of this and that Alt does not give focus to menus in KDE like it does on Windows, I've also added an alternate mapping for Save "Alt+S".
If there are mistakes or missing mappings feel free to modify and share, or contact me.
I realise I haven't posted any updates here for a long while. But there has been good reason for it. I've been working flat chat at setting up the new Emblem website. Emblem Entertainment is the company I started up last year (and hence why everything around here went quiet). The website is set up like a games portal site. Intended for self publishing of my games as well as other developers who are looking for alternative publishing means.
Mawashi is still on the backburner for now. You should expect to see a number of smaller projects released from Emblem while we are working on tech.
All news is good news when its Mawashi Madness news! Some videos of the game are available. A video of each of the levels with some game play action, and a video of the credits that plays from the title screen. Enjoy! :)
Melbourne - Our team attended the Game Connect Asia Pacific Conference from 14th to 17th of November, where we had a booth showing off Mawashi Madness. The winner was decided by delegates at the conference over the 3 day period, by voting on their favourite games.
We had positive feedback and allot of excitement from everyone who saw and played the game. It was announced on Saturday evening, at the end of the conference, that we won the award for Best Independent Game of 2007.
We are all very excited of this achievement and are continuing to work hard.
Mawashi Madness is a fun fast paced Battle Royal style game with nine playable characters in ten vastly different arenas. Up to four people can vs each other with the aim of the game being to knock your opponents off the arena using a variety of moves including, grappling, pushing and changing into a ball to roll into your opponents.
Forum Spam posted by slip on September 19, 2007, 5:14 pm
I've re-enabled the forums. You now have to enter a registration code as well as the visual confirmation in order to register. Hopefully this will block out bots. Fingers Crossed!
Forum Spam posted by slip on September 17, 2007, 9:59 am
Unfortunately we're getting a lot of spammers targeting our forums. So for now, while we're not too busy, I've disabled the forums until I modify them to be more anti spam. I'm a bit disappointed that the CAPTCHA in phpBB is apparently easily read by computers - kind of defeating the purpose.
The forums will be up again by the end of the week.
Just a small project I made a while ago that I thought I might share. G15 Pong for Logitech's G15 LCD Keyboard. Its a bit of a shame that there doesn't seem to be many more general purpose G15 applications around. It's a great keyboard =)
New site posted by slip on September 6, 2007, 10:57 pm
I have finally updated the site! The new design is not final but the change means adding content is going to be much easier, which means it should be updated more frequently.
At the moment the Products have all been put up using the new system. The resources are to come in the next day or two with some new stuff too =)
Comments are more than welcome and from now all news posts can be discussed on the News and Announcements forum.
