A video game & software development blog by Christopher Horenstein.
Posts tagged Beyond Compare 3
Fixed the absolutely horrible purple screen issue!
0857 days
It turns out that way back in my main Game class that I hardly ever touch I wasn’t clearing the graphics device in its Draw function. So there were some moments in the loading screen when the game is being loaded or destroyed in which nothing was drawing, giving me the horrible purple screen that is now dead and buried. I wanted to ignore it, but I just couldn’t; I had to fix it. I used Beyond Compare 3 to look at all the changes that I had made from the Game State Management sample and noticed that it was clearing the graphics device while I wasn’t. Seriously, Beyond Compare 3 is one of my favorite applications. Just earlier I used it to sync an MP3 folder to my phone, I use it to mirror my folder of important stuff to another hard drive for keeping a backup, and it is absolutely fantastic for comparing code. I’m sure there are more uses I haven’t discovered yet.
Another new direction?!
0989 days
I just went through one of the most indecisive experiences I’ve ever had. Usually, I find it pretty clear what the right solution to a given problem I’m having is. This time, I was wondering about game engines. It’s my project, I can do whatever I want, so what engine should I use? Of course, I had already settled on IceCream and XNA (and I still am), but I have had Unity3D in the back of my mind for some time (it’s cross-platform!). I downloaded the Unity environment and started playing with the 2D tutorial project. It’s pretty great, and demonstrates a lot of promise – I still want to use Unity at some point. However, I started reading about this free engine and found out that the free version does not offer anything in the realm of post-processing.
But gosh, Unity, my project is going to be heavily using the Glow effect! Or maybe it would utilize some of the free lighting instead… and the folder structure! It doesn’t lend itself to source control (all those binary files…)? And it’s not open-source? XNA isn’t open source either… I eventually decided that XNA would be a more educational endeavor, and I do want to give IceCream the old college try, so that’s what I’m sticking with. But I didn’t manage to maintain all of my plans while going through this thought process….
I dropped Mercurial in favor of Git, using the excellent little guide found here, after which I found out about GitExtensions, which made things even simpler. I got GitExtensions working with Beyond Compare 3 by using the excellent little guide here. My source control provider is indeed GitHub (and I’m keeping it in Dropbox as well, just to make things easy on me if I switch between environments).
A link to my repository can be found here.
And with that, I’ve participated in enough nonsense. It’s time to get started with IceCream!