Week 4

This week we talked about the concept of Data Driven and a review of TCP/UDP. The assignment PA3 when dealing with programming using sockets was another challenge I had to overcome. I did socket programming before in CSC374, but that was using the library from Unix. However, the library was still the same when using the socket library for Windows called WinSock. The functions used in that library are still the same so it was not that hard to understand what was going on. The tutorials from the MSDN website and doing basic internet searches have helped me in trying to complete this assignment. The problem that gave me the most trouble was trying to send the data over to the server and sorting it.  I then realize I had to apply the stuff we did in PA2 (serialize/deserialize) to create packets and send them over to the server. PA4 looks like an even more difficult assignment, but the way Ed walked us through it made it seem not so hard after all. I look forwards to see what happens next.

Attention Houston, we have a connection.

Week 3

Just added the finishing touches to PA2 last week. All I did was just organize the code to be more readable and I also added comments as to what the code actually does. I consider it to be good practice that coders should comment their code. It would make it easier to hunt down that bastard programmer as to finding out the problems with that piece of code as in the words of my earlier computer programming professors. In the end, that was all that I did during week three. I am sort of pumped to do the socket programming homework.

Week 2

In this week, we learned about how to do serialization and deserializtion of bytes of data and how to organize that data to makes it more efficient. It was pretty easy at first because I did byte padding in CSC 373 Computer Systems I. However, when trying to send over a pointer. Things got a little hairy. I am not really sure on how to tackle this problem at the moment will update once I get this done.

UPDATE:
After scouring the class forums and doing Google searches, I was able to complete the assignment. Looking back, the solution was there it was just implemented backwards and with minor errors in the process.

Week 1 of Game Networking

Well, this is the first time I am taking a Game Programming class with Ed Keenan. The last time I took a class with Ed was during my Discover Chicago class freshman year three years ago and he also made us write a blog about our experiences (http://rgomezer.blogspot.com/). It was pretty fun times. Going back to my networking class, I hit the ground running. I messed around making test files and uploading them into the Perforce server to get used to this new way of handling subversion control. Then we were assigned to make a simple C++ project making it capitalize a string without using the function toupper(). In my three years of taking programming classes, I was never taught on how to do this sort of problem before. I found this to be difficult at first, but the forums really helped me out in trying to tackle this problem. In end, I got it to work and uploaded it into the Perforce server. This is my first hardcore programming class, and I am up for the challenge. I have done some low-level socket programming in CSC 374 Computer Systems II where the class was supposed to modify a client and server program making them be able to be networked and communicate with each other to play the game Space Invaders in a Unix Terminal. The graphics were based on ASCII characters and the cursor was the bullet. I hope the knowledge I gained in that class will be useful here also.

Space Invaders Game Made Doing Socket Programming in Linux