GFX Solitaire Unleashed!

Finally, it’s ready to go! My first game ever, the first fully working version of GFX Solitaire is now ready for a test drive.

The game has its own homepage now at this address: http://gfxonline.wordpress.com/gfx-solitaire/

Comments, questions, notes, and discussions are more than welcome. You can find my contact information in the “About” page. Please try the game and tell me what you think of it. Your feedback is important to me.

This game is my first step into game programming. And I am very excited to share it with you. I hope you like it.

GFX Solitaire Coming Soon…

Finally, I’ve reached the last development stage of my first game ever, the GFX Solitaire! Not an original name but who cares anyway.. It IS a fully working clone of the famous Solitaire game (a.k.a Solitaire Klondike).

I’m using the all-so-useful Microsoft XNA Game Studio platform, which serves basically as an interface between VS.NET and the CLR. However, the game programming concepts of XNA and DirectX are basically the same.

The combination of XNA and VS.NET is very useful to beginners like me. As VS.NET provides a “managed” code environment and all the advantages of C#, while XNA provides the skeleton base needed for any kind of game, 3D or 2D, plus a comprehensive set of programming and math tools..

Putting all the technical details aside, I’m very excited to bring out this game to life, not only because it’s my first game ever, but because it gave me a solid understanding of the basic principles of game programming, which is a huge achievement considering the lack of any game programming courses in the region.

Comments or questions about this game are most welcome, and I’m more than ready to share code snippets, algorithms, and more technical details on demand.

The game should be ready and kicking in less than a week (if nothing goes wrong), so check back soon for updates. In the meantime feast your eyes on this delicious screenshot:

A screenshot of GFX-Solitaire

An Update, Of Sorts!

I have uploaded a new Facebook album called “Syrian Sights and Landscapes”. It’s a selection of some pictures taken in various locations around Syria. These pictures represent the “brighter” side of my photography essays.

I’ve spent some great times discovering the country, and exploring new sites and locations. I was literally blown away with the beauty of nature, and the richness of Syrian lands.

I was using a Sony DSC-P32, far from professional, but still it took a lot of great pictures. And all the pictures given there were edited using Google Picasa’s “I’m feeling lucky” all-in-one photo treatment which is great for lazy people like me, and provides astonishing results.

A taste of the album:

A view from the road to "Slenfeh".

A Sad Day: ACES Closed, FS Abandoned!

Today, Microsoft officially announced the closure of ACES Studios, the development studio behind the successful Flight Simulator franchise.

MS had to make this move following the announcement of a 5000 staff cuts. A 1400 cuts to be done immediately. ACES took the largest hit, when about 100 of its staff lost their jobs in the blink of an eye, which led to a closure of the whole studio and its development projects, which include the next version of Flight Simulator, and Train Simulator 2.

It’s a sad news for me, and for those who lost -or will lose- their jobs as a result of this decision. I was heavily affected by this news, because the Flight Simulator series forms the base of my gaming hobby.

I’ve been playing this game since the Flight Simulator 5.0 version on the Windows 95. The latest version is the tenth in the series’ history, following the success of a simulation program which started 25 years ago, on the Commodore 64!

Flight Simulator is the longest running franchise in the history of Microsoft. It’s even older than Windows! And, it’s also the most successful Flight Simulator ever created.

Flight Simulator is more than just a game for me. It actually helped me enjoy my dream of flying an airplane, and it also opened a window of opportunity for me to join a worldwide community of FS fans. It also was the main reason behind every single upgrade I did for my PC.

My sympathies to the crew at ACES, and to every other employee who lost their jobs due to the ongoing worldwide financial crisis.

And as the future of FS is put on hold until further notice, I have to thank each and every member of ACES for creating such a wonderful product, and for helping stretch my wings and reach for the skies. Thank you all.

The 1st Version of MS Flight Simulator

FSX Likes Vista!

Tried Microsoft Flight Simulator X on Windows Vista the other day, and to my surprise, it runs much faster than Windows XP! Much faster equaling more than 10 FPS increase!

I was so surprised actually, but loved the fact that I can now try all the new wonders of DX10 (I have the Acceleration Xpack installed). The game looks prettier now, and runs faster, what more could I ask for?!?!?

In case you were wondering about the settings, I have:

- Scenery complexity set at very dense.

- Autogen at Normal.

- Water set to 2.0 Max.

- Ground scenery shadows on.

- Light bloom on + AA + Aniso.

- Traffic at 20%.

I have to mention that setting the framerate lock to unlimited brought additional performance to the game, also about 10 FPS increase. For some unknown reason, the game runs slower even if I set the FPS cap at 60 FPS.

Well, it doesn’t even matter how I got this extra performance boost. For now, I’ll just sit and fly!! Oh, and by the way, a big thank you to the guys at ACES Studios, great job..

Some Good (And Bad) News!

Okay, so I know this is a very old cliche, but whatever…

Let’s start with the good news first:

After lots of efforts (and long nights), I’ve finally managed to get my computer back in business after changing my mobo and CPU. I ran into some problems trying to get my SATA HDDs to run in AHCI mode, and sadly, I failed, miserably!! For some unknown reason, neither Vista nor XP would install when I changed the BIOS settings to AHCI. So, anyway, after 10 (maybe more) unsuccessful attempts I gave up, and got both OSs installed in dual-boot configuration using the good old normal IDE mode:

- Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 for my everyday PC use.

- Windows XP SP3 for gaming purposes only.

And now, my new beloved CPU, the almighty Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 is sitting tight and cool in a brand new Gigabyte EP35-DS3R. No complaints whatsoever! It’s one super amazing piece of hardware. PC is literally flying right now. I decided to re-finish Crysis for the 4th time just to enjoy the smell of burning silicon!!! That game really stresses everything! And that’s exactly where you could see the Quad stretching its legs.

So, the bad news is, DirectX 11 is coming with Windows 7. Which practically means a new wave of DX11-compatible hardware. Which also brings the sad news to those who own a DX10 card, like me: start looking for a DX11 replacement card!!!! WTF?!@#?!@#?$!@#$^@#$. I bought my DX10 card less than a year ago!!!!!!

It’s really facsinating how companies work together to make you replace your brand new VGA card just to get some new features!! Don’t you guys love it when nVidia & ATI start bragging about how important it is to get a new DX11 VGA?!?!?!

Whatever. I’m glad I got my PC working again. And so begins the long process to get everything set up the way I like it all over again……

Note: obviously you guys have a clue as to where I’ve been in the last 2 weeks, don’t you?!?! Sorry anyways…