JMoe: The Mastermind

The Past of the Real Time Strategy Game

JMoe — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 04:54:21 +0000

During class recently, someone mentioned an article they read on Gamasutra about how Real Time Strategy games should really be called something else, like Real Time Tactics games. Being a big RTS fan, which should probably be apparent from my past writings, I decided to dig up the article and take a look. You can find the article here.

While an interesting article, I think that the premise is rather fundamentally flawed, for a variety of reasons. One is a misappreciation for the depth and complexity of strategy, and the other is a misappreciation for the depth and complexity of strategy games themselves. I’m going up against some tough competition here, since I can’t cite people like Clausewitz or Sun-Tzu, and I’m going on memory for my primary strategy source, which is the book Strategy by B.H. Liddell Hart. It’s an excellent book, and I recommend you check it out if you happen to be interested in strategy (now would be a good time to have an Amazon referrals account, but I don’t, so buying it won’t give me any money).

The rest of the argument after the cut.

In the article, one of the famous Clausewitzian quotes is brought up, that being that “War is the continuation of policy by other means.” While this is certainly true, it’s a microcosm of the total realm of strategy, especially as defined by Hart. In his book, he posits that the key to strategy is the indirect approach. This is certainly true in strategy games as well. You can certainly win by the overwhelming mass steamroller, but it’s not the easiest or best way to fight. It will eventually work, but it is a long slog, and quite possibly the worst way to win.

Of course, now I’m just arguing with his choice of military history scholar. It’s rather a lot like arguing that I’m right because I’ve read more books (note to self: Finish reading On War), but there’s a point to this. My point is that just because you have not experienced the depth of strategy in a game, doesn’t mean it’s there. Certainly, being the person who can better apply tactics is a key point, but just being cognizant of the micro, and being good at it won’t win. There are higher level decisions that are important, and are where the realm of strategy appplies.

Of course, this still hasn’t addressed his point, of war being the continuation of politics by other means. I would have to agree, in the sense that real time strategy games aren’t games of political science. They are a simplified universe, and things happen within them. My contention then is that saying that real time strategy games don’t have strategy is rather like saying that quantum mechanics is untrue when you are looking at things on the macro scale. Both are certainly correct, but they’re missing the point. You can’t analyze something out of its intended realm, and find valid meaning.

So, if you’re trying to find strategy in a real time strategy game, where is it? It’s just about everywhere. In this case, the concept of indirect approach from Hart comes to the rescue. Strategy, in Hart’s conception is such that via maneuver, misinformation, and misdirection, you can so harry your opponent, and especially his command structure, that the outcome of a battle is decided before a single shot is even fired.

When it comes to real time strategy games, this is certainly true. It’s very possible to distract your opponent, to draw his focus, to force him to waste his resources, such that when your actual attack arrives, he’s entirely unable to deal with it, and your victory is guaranteed. The real time strategy game simply limits the realm within which your strategy is applied. They exclude an entire set of valid strategies, sacrificing them to gameplay. I’m sure that a game on a much grander scale, with much more complex politics would be fun, but that’s not the point. The point of a real time strategy game is to enjoy a quick battle or two, not fight out an entire war.

Now, to wrap this up before it turns into a paper (which I may see if I can find an excuse to do), the idea of adding more strategic depth to games is certainly a valid one, and is one that has appeared in many games outside the realm of real time strategy games. Civilization is a great example, where there are a variety of political ways to influence your opponent, and war is just one of the possible approaches. Also of note, I’ve only really covered the first page or so of the essay. With this as background, I’ll probably come back and examine a few more of the details of the article, since there’s a lot more material I have yet to take issue with.

Backseat Game Design

JMoe — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:37:00 +0000

While browsing around the C&C community for interesting news, I happened across an article which includes a design for the “perfect” C&C game mode for Tiberium. For those who many not know, Tiberium is a first person shooter set in the Tiberium universe (created by the original Command and Conquer, along with Tiberian Sun, and Tiberium Wars). It’s not part of the C&C franchise, it instead shares the same universe setting-wise, but is a separate branch. This allows a lot more freedom.

While the game mode in the article is interesting, it has two major flaws.
1. It doesn’t fit with what the apparent design goals of Tiberium are.
2. It sounds an awful lot like Renegade.
For some people, #2 isn’t really so much a problem as a great thing, but Tiberium isn’t Renegade. Renegade was an attempt to create an FPS that was a C&C game. Tiberium is an FPS that happens to be in the same universe as the C&C games. They’re not really the same at all.

My own design for a team based multiplayer mode for Tiberium comes after the cut.

Disclaimer: While I was employed by Electronic Arts Los Angeles, which is where Tiberium is being developed, I had nothing to do with the Tiberium team, and this article is entirely speculation on my part. It’s not anything official, and is just me being a back seat designer (hence the article title), which lets me play with completely off the wall ideas.

With that out of the way, on to the mode design itself. I don’t have a name for the mode, so let me know if you can think of a good name for it. It borrows a bit from the Conquest gamemode of the Battlefield series, but it’s adjusted to fit with what I understand is the design philosophy behind Tiberium. As I see it, the key thing in Tiberium is placing the player as a commander on the field, with the ability to call in support squads (including vehicles) and fight their way through the map. To turn this into a team based approach is fairly straightforward.

You’d divide the players into two teams. Each team would start with a base, and around the map would be a bunch of neutral capture points. Each one would start neutral, and could be captured by either team. You’d capture a control point by using an engineer squad (which counts as a squad for your reinforcements). To prevent it being too easy to capture however, each point would have defenses (borrowed from Kane’s Wrath) that activate after they are captured. You’d have to deal damage, either to the structure or to the defense generator to knock them down, and get your engineer inside. This takes advantage of one of the key metaphors of C&C games, mainly that you use engineers to capture points.

Once a point is captured, it would serve as a player respawn point, and a reinforcements drop zone. One of the key points of Tiberium is the ease with which additional player reinforcements can be called in. The control points would allow them to be called in easily, and allow players to move forward from their bases, without relying on spawning in a single fixed location.

Is this a perfect multiplayer mode for Tiberium? Probably not. However, without knowing more about the game, and the intended play style, it’s hard to create something that fits. I do feel that this fits in with Tiberium the game as I understand it much better than the proposed C&C mode. Mine also borrows a few elements from the C&C universe, in keeping with how the Tiberium setting is shared. It also keeps all of the players involved in the action, instead of removing one to function as commander. It also solves the resource gathering problem with the C&C mode (where does gathered money go, is it team wide, what if someone spends money the commander was going to use on a building?), and fits more with the design philosophy of Tiberium as a squad control shooter, rather than a more “true” FPS game.

LinQ

JMoe — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:59:05 +0000

About a year ago I said I would make a post about LinQ. Now that Visual Studio 2008 is out, and LinQ is a released technology, I think I can get around to it. I still haven’t built a project that makes a good use of LinQ, but I’ve got a fairly good understanding of it, and found some interesting ways to use it.

Now, you may be wonder what LinQ is, and what it stands for. The answer is that it stands for Language INtegrated Query. It is an extension to C# and VB.NET that allows you to use a SQL-like syntax for constructing queries against a wide variety of data sources. The most obvious example is XML, but you can also use most of the built in data structures in the .NET framework as well.

With that out of the way, on to an example or two of how I’ve managed to use LinQ, and what the challenges that I’ve run into are.

First, a bit about the project that I’m using as a basis. I’m working on creating a data mining tool for the XML files used to modify Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. As was mentioned in a previous post, I was involved in the development of the Mod SDK. In this case, I’m looking to find ways to extend the SDK in new directions. The idea was inspired by another developer, Petroglyph Games.

For the development of their recent game, Universe at War, they developed an easy to use data mining tool for their game data files, which happened to be in XML. You could query things like the costs of all of the buildings belonging to one faction, and get a result from it scanning all of the game XML files.

The idea was to duplicate that, but for the C&C 3 XML files. Although it seems like a relatively straightforward task, there are some stumbling points. The first is how to create a simple interface for creating the query. That’s something that I’m still not sure about, and suggestions would be welcome. One advantage is that the C&C 3 SDK includes a full set of XSD files, which are schemas defining the allowable data in the game XML. Since XSD files are XML themselves, I can use LinQ to run queries against them, and gather information about what might be queried. It wouldn’t be easy, but it’s doable.

The second stumbling point is that LinQ doesn’t support dynamic queries easily. I’ll note that it is in fact certainly possible, but I need to understand how that works a bit better. Even if that is an issue, there’s always the option of using the ability of C# to compile C# code and execute it. So, that problem is solved, even if it’s a less than optimal solution.

The next problem is the layout of the C&C 3 XML. The game data is spread out over a very large number of files (Windows says 2,021 files). The files are linked together however, and include information about all of the files that they reference. I’ve already actually got working code for that, so parsing the file hierarchy is not a problem either. However, constructing a meaningful database of data from that is more challenging. My current plan is to have the user select the type of objects they intend to query (such as GameObjects, or ParticleFX, or any other basic type) and then create a “database” of all of the objects of that type to run queries against. It’s not perfect, but it allows me to amortize the cost of a full file scan over all of the searches, and should improve performance for multiple queries.

Now, all of this has had very little to do with LinQ, and is getting long, so I’ll end with a little code snippet.
IEnumerable includes; includes = from e in x.Descendants(ealaAsset + “Include”) where e.Attribute(”type”).Value == “all” select e.Attribute(”source”).Value;
That’s the main component of my code to traverse the include hierarchy. It is a simple LinQ query that selects all of the source attributes of Include tags (in the proper namespace) that have a type attribute that is all. It’s amazingly compact, and gathers exactly what I want. Something similar could be constructed using other XML parsing toolkits, but LinQ makes it fast and easy. Of course, since each file can include other files, I use a recursive algorithm to process all of them, but that’s another blog post.

Why All Games are Educational

JMoe — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:19:31 +0000

During my work at the GAMBIT Games Lab, the topic of educational games came up. The question was whether or not educational games were a valid genre. That got me thinking, which led to this. My conclusion is that in fact, all games are educational. Some have a more explicit purpose, teaching concepts which are applicable outside the game realm (whether this be games like Number Munchers, Word Munchers, or Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing), but any time you are playing a game, you’re learning.

This learning can be quite explicit, when you’re playing a tutorial, which teaches you the game, or it can be much more subtle. When done well, the entire game is a tutorial, and you never notice the guiding hand of the designer. When done poorly, it’s a terrible experience, which neither does a good job teaching, nor does a good job at being a game. I’ll get to more concrete examples in a bit, but first it’s time for a bit of theory.

The idea of learning in games isn’t a new one. Educational games have been around as long as games have. The framework that I intend to use for exploring learning in games however is the joint ideas of active and critical learning. Active learning is learning how to play the game. Critical learning is applying what you’ve learned about the game to change it. Now, that’s an oversimplification, but it’s good enough for what I’m going to explain. Onto the examples.

The best example of learning in a game that I can cite is Portal. The entire game is more or less one massive tutorial. They’re teaching you both how to think with portals, and also how to know when to apply your knowledge. The developer commentary in Portal is wonderful, and it’s an example of just how concious of this the developers were. From the very start of the game, you’re learning how to play it. The first level requires you to put a block on a button. From there, you know when you see a large floor button, you need to find something to push it.

That’s the key to learning in Portal. You learn how to solve a problem (place block on button) but you also learn the design cues to know when to apply what you’ve learned. That’s active learning, and in some ways critical learning. The real test of critical learning shows up in fans creating new levels for Portal. When people have played the game, and learned the design cues of Portal, they are able to create new levels (assuming they can navigate Hammer, the level editor, but that’s a different problem altogether) that use those same design cues, and even introduce new ones. That’s the ultimate level of understanding a game. When you know enough about the systems to modify and extend it. Portal does this wonderfully.

On the other hand, a game that did this horribly is Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance. The tutorial mission for the game was 25-30 minutes long, which is several levels in Portal, and only taught the bare basics of the game. It included needless repetition of tasks (I built one mass extractor, I get what to do, why do I need to wait for my guy to lumber around and build more?) and at best a superficial explanation of the mechanics. The economy in Supreme Commander is somewhat complicated, with both rates of production and resource consumption, and stockpiles of the resources. The tutorial glosses these over, simply pointing out the UI element that displays them, without explaining what it means. Having played Supreme Commander, I understood the concepts, but it was disappointing. The tutorial also ignored several of the most important features of Supreme Commander. The ability to queue up commands was completely ignored, which is one of the keys to successfully managing a base in the game.

Coming out of the tutorial of Supreme Commander, I felt able to play the game, at the most superficial of levels. I could move around the map, and build things, but I didn’t understand a lot of the systems. Things like researching technology, and upgrading, which are important parts of the game, weren’t even covered. However, that is probably a good thing, since the tutorial was already far too long.

Those are just two examples of learning in games, but I’m sure you can look at any game that you’ve played, and see the ways it teaches you. Even tetris, a very simple game, is educational. It’s all about learning how the different pieces fit together, and ways to optimize how you stack them. That’s why I say that the debate about educational games is hardly worth having. All games are educational.

Commanding and Conquering

JMoe — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 10:52:36 +0000

This past summer, I had the opportunity of a lifetime (at least for me). I was working as an intern on an unannounced RTS at EALA. Suffice it to say, due to NDA, I can’t say much about what I did. I can say that I was doing multiplayer gameplay design. An example of the sort of thing I was doing can be seen in the various multiplayer modes for C&C 3 on Xbox 360. They have things like capture the flag, conquer and hold, and a few others. I was designing modes like that for the project I was working on.

The real reason for finally coming out about this is that I had the opportunity to do an interview with Aaron Kaufman, the C&C Community Manager at EALA about my experience. I think it makes a good read (despite my rather obvious bias), and even has a photo of me at the end, for those of you interested in seeing what this mastermind looks like.

I suggest you check it out if you happen to be interested in working in games, or even just what it is like behind the scenes of a major studio. I know that I really wanted to work in the games industry going in to my internship, and I came out knowing that I’d found what I wanted to do. I loved every day of it, and was terribly sad to leave. The guys at EALA were amazing, and I just had an amazing time. Peace through power!

Five Minutes Five Games Episode One

JMoe — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:58:56 +0000

Click To Play
First episode of a potentially monthly (or bi-weekly if I get really ambitious) podcast. It was done originally for 21L.015, one of my classes, but if people like the idea, I could probably put in the effort to spend a little more time on it. This epsiode has reviews of Battlefield 2142, Medal of Honor Airborne, Pokemon Pearl, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.

Spirituality as an Evolutionary Advantage

JMoe — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 08:28:10 +0000

It often happens that the early morning just before I go to sleep can yield some interesting thoughts, and as such, I’ve decided to create a section for such musings. The first such musing is on the idea that spirtuality could actually be an evolutionary advantage. This idea originated with the idea that religion could be an evolutionary advantage, but through reading “Is God in Our Genes?” from Time Magazine lead to the refinement to spirituality as the advantage rather than religion. First, my original reason for considering religion as an evolutionary advantage, then we’ll get into the reasons in the Time article (which I will summarize and quote as appropriate).

The reasoning behind my original consideration of religion as an evolutionary advantage was based on religion having an anti-depressant effect. The connection to a higher power allows you an additional store of courage to draw on to continue even against insurmountable odds, or a deep depression. This ability would naturally be a competitive advantage, since people who are less depressed can be more active, and should in theory produce more offspring, and pass on their genes, which provide the religious experience, which provides the wellspring for this activity.

However, the Time article really helped to direct my thoughts, and provided apparent evidence that showed almost exactly what I was suggesting, but using spirtuality rather than religion. The difference between the two terms is fairly simple, but may not be initially apparent. Spirtuality is simply a connection to a higher power, while religion is a codification of beliefs, often with rules and practices. So, really the only component of religion that can be directly tied to genetic makeup is spirtuality.

Spirituality is a feeling or a state of mind; religion is the way that state gets codified into law. Our genes don’t get directly involved in writing legislation. As Hamer puts it, perhaps understating a bit the emotional connection many have to their religions, “Spirituality is intensely personal; religion is institutional.”

What evidence is there for such a claim as this? Is spirtuality really nothing more than a genetic trait? Dean Hamer, author of The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes claims exactly that.

Chief of gene structure at the National Cancer Institute, Hamer not only claims that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but he also says he has located one of the genes responsible, a gene that just happens to also code for production of the neurotransmitters that regulate our moods. Our most profound feelings of spirituality, according to a literal reading of Hamer’s work, may be due to little more than an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA.

Of course, talk is cheap. Hamer however has at least some evidence to back up his assertion. He did a study which attempted to correlate the spirtuality of a person with their genes. In particular, he examined various genes which are related to certain neurotransmitters, and compared them across a broad population sample, and then compared the different genes to results on a personality test. His results were shocking.

Studying the nine candidate genes in DNA samples provided by his subjects, Hamer quickly hit the genetic jackpot. A variation in a gene known as vmat2—for vesicular monoamine transporter—seemed to be directly related to how the volunteers scored on the self-transcendence test. Those with the nucleic acid cytosine in one particular spot on the gene ranked high. Those with the nucleic acid adenine in the same spot ranked lower. “A single change in a single base in the middle of the gene seemed directly related to the ability to feel self-transcendence,” Hamer says.

I have yet to review the actual original survey, to attempt to see if there are any obvious glaring errors, but the description in the Time article seems favorable. I am planning to read Hamer’s book on the subject, which will hopefully give much more detail about the survey, and also try to track down any peer reviewed articles for further reading.

Of course, this idea doesn’t hinge simply on Hamer’s study. There is other evidence presented in the Time article. One such story is about a survey done comparing 53 pairs of identical twins and 31 pairs of fraternal twins separated at birth. The results of the survey amazed the researchers involved.

As it turned out, the identical twins had plenty of remarkable things in common. In some cases, both suffered from migraine headaches, both had a fear of heights, both were nail biters. Some shared little eccentricities, like flushing the toilet both before and after using it. When quizzed on their religious values and spiritual feelings, the identical twins showed a similar overlap. In general, they were about twice as likely as fraternal twins to believe as much—or as little—about spirituality as their sibling did. Significantly, these numbers did not hold up when the twins were questioned about how faithfully they practiced any organized religion. Clearly, it seemed, the degree to which we observe rituals such as attending services is mostly the stuff of environment and culture. Whether we’re drawn to God in the first place is hardwired into our genes. “It completely contradicted my expectations,” says University of Minnesota psychologist Thomas Bouchard, one of the researchers involved in the work. Similar results were later found in larger twin studies in Virginia and Australia.

So far we have covered that there appears to be a distinct tie between genetics and spirtuality. The only remaining link is to how spirituality can be a genetic advantage. One suggested reason for this is provided by the Time article by Michael Persinger a professor of behavioral neuroscience at Laurentian University.

One of those reasons might be that, as the sole species—as far as we know—capable of contemplating its own death, we needed something larger than ourselves to make that knowledge tolerable. “Anticipation of our own demise is the price we pay for a highly developed frontal lobe,” says Persinger. “In many ways, [a God experience is] a brilliant adaptation. It’s a built-in pacifier.”

Does this prove that the reason for spirituality is genetic, and the reason for its prevalence is that it does indeed provide an evolutionary advantage? Certainly not. It does however provide material that I feel is quite thought provoking. I will try to follow up with more information as I make my way through the Hamer book, and potentially other material.

Command And Conquer 3

JMoe — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:08:31 +0000

Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars launched in the US on March 27th 2007. I picked up a copy of the Kane Edition (aka the Collector’s Edition) on release day, and spent most of Spring Break playing the game. It’s time for a full review. I will try to avoid spoilers, but you might consider some of the full text a spoiler. I’ll put it as part of an exceprt so that you don’t need to read potential spoilers if you don’t want.

Overall, the game has a great storyline, and a fun campaign. The three campaigns cover the same series of events, but you see them from the perspective of each side. The campaigns should likely played in the order GDI, Nod, Scrin. With this you will first get to see the entire war, and then see the motivation behind it, and then get to see the ending of the war, and the cliffhanger ending.

Comparing Tiberium Wars to past C&C games, it comes out favorably. The single player component is far superior to that in C&C Generals, although it doesn’t have quite the same fun factor as Red Alert 2. I have not tried online multiplayer, as I am not a fan of losing a game in 5-8 minutes. LAN play works well, and it also functions fine over Hamachi (a no-configuration VPN software). The game can get rather laggy when playing LAN games over Hamachi with a large number of players, but part of that could be the system configurations involved.

The system requirements for Tiberium Wars are surprisingly low. It runs tolerably on my desktop, which is an Athlon XP 2400+ at 2.1Ghz, a GeForce 6800 128mb, and 1 gig DDR 333. The graphics look good at medium/high detail at 1024×768. The biggest bottleneck in my system is likely CPU, although the graphics card is now 2 generations behind. I did notice some issues with audio synchronization in the FMV sequences, which is likely due to my CPU. I have not tested the latest patch which is said to help with some of those exact issues.

Overall, Tiberium Wars provided me a lot of fun on my first trip through the campaign, and there’s still a lot left to do, as there are intelligence information and bonus objectives throughout the campaign missions which require replaying the mission to try to collect them all. I’d give the game an A-, as it is very well done, but a few minor hiccups, such as the audio/video synchronization, and a few crashes have hurt the game a little bit. It’s still a lot of fun. Now I just need to wait for the SDK to be released to allow creating modifications of the game to “fix” a few problems.

Battlecode Wrapup

JMoe — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:39:34 +0000

I was hoping to have more information for this post, but I’ll have to settle for posting our team document. The Battlecode organizers never got around to updating the website, and so I don’t have the actual final results. You can grab the PDF at the bottom of this post. Overall our team worked out reasonably well. We needed more time to tweak and optimize behaviors, and a lot of the strategy just didn’t work out as well as it should have. Still, I’m happy to settle for winning an award and getting the credits for the class.

Battlecode Strategy Writeup

C#: Programming Made Fun

JMoe — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 07:29:08 +0000

I realize I’m rather off the schedule I had planned. I blame the holiday weekend, my laziness, and Robocup. The international qualification deadline is at midnight on February 22nd. For those of you unaware of what the date is, that is in less than 24 hours (it’s 2:15am at the moment). That means it is somewhere close to crunch time, which means that I’ve been working. The new look for the RFC Cambridge site was rolled out tonight, and I’ve been helping with the team description paper (both writing sections, and proofreading it). With that out of the way, on to the actual topic of this post…

C# is one of the primary languages supported with the .NET Framework. C# is a strongly typed, managed language. This means that the language runtime is responsible for memory allocation and deallocation (garbage collection is the technical term). This saves a lot of hassles and helps to reduce (but not eliminate) memory leaks (memory that has been allocated, but is no longer pointed to, but not deleted). The .NET Framework is also important, as it provides C# with a powerful class library.

C# also has the capability of using essentially the entire power of C++ through something called Platform Invoke (or PInvoke for short). PInvoke allows you to call essentially arbitrary C++ (with a few requirements for how it is written) from within C#. This is hugely powerful, as you can access unmanaged memory, and do operations that are inherently more efficient in C++ than in C#. There are also a few features of C++ that aren’t available in C# (such as memory mapped files) which are useful.

Another powerful capability of C# is called reflection. Reflection is essentially the ability to examine and modify objects at runtime. This allows you to determine the capability of an object, and even to extend it programmatically, at run time, rather than at compile time. C# can also programmatically invoke a C# compiler (through the .NET framework) which can allow for things like dynamically compiled modules, and other interesting features. With Reflection, you can then discern properties of the runtime compiled code, and integrate it into an existing system. This allows for a theoretically powerful plugin system, which can at the same time be limited for security purposes. When compiling code at runtime you can specify the assemblies (code components more or less, some of these terms are almost another post in themselves). This can lead to some very interesting ideas (an XML Parsing system based solely on object structures, or an easily extensible editor are a couple that I’ve had), and allows for very powerful capabilities.

The last, and one of my favorite features of C# (well, more correctly Visual Studio) is the GUI (Graphical User Interface, ie what you see) designer. I originally began programming with Visual Basic (save the hate, I’ve moved on to “better” languages), and I always enjoyed the ease of building a GUI with Visual Basic, even if the language behind it was a little quirky. It was actually common to use Visual Basic to build a GUI, and use COM (Component Object Model, a rather nasty complicated Microsoft technology) to hook up C++ code for the actual program component. With C# you don’t have to go that far, as the GUI designer is part of C# as well.

This is getting long enough, even though there is a lot more to cover. I guess this will have to become a multiple part series (to be continued on Friday I suppose). I’ll close with a link to Visual C# Express Edition, which is a free fully featured C# IDE (Integrated Development Environment, I need a little extension to let me just link to wiki pages for these) for Windows. It’s fun to play with, and gives you most of the power of Visual Studio 2005 for free.