Source Control Chaos Handled

Today I finally got my act together with version control.  This is something I had put off for way too long, and with my venture into PC ports, I think it was finally time to learn what branching and tagging are.

In a nutshell, branches and tags are like copies of the project that don’t take up extra space like they would in a normal file system.  They’re useful for storing release versions and for testing new features.  They’re like the save games of the world of coding–you want to create a new one before a boss fight.

For those of you who don’t use version control, get Subversion and learn the best practices.  Need a host?  Code Spaces has done me well.

With that handled, I got to put in a bit more time on porting Soulcaster II to PC.  I uninstalled Visual Studio and XNA Game Studio on one of my desktop computers so it could act as a testbed for end user machines.  Still have to work out some bugs but things are set up well for it now.

Slightly Different World

This evening was an IGDA-organized “Meet The Press” event at Google campus in Mountain View, which I attended with a few friends.  It was an interesting experience because it showed a completely different side of game development, something I only get a glimpse of every so often.  This is the side of game development about market share, numbers, percentages, billions, social, mobile, mid-core.  For the most part I’m exposed to the indie, creative, artist, nerdy, emo, poverty-stricken side of game development.  It’s good to get things from both sides, but I definitely feel more at home with the indies.