I return to this blog in the manner of our local weather.

The calendar says that it has been Spring for more than a week, but this is Michigan. Last Saturday morning, there was measurable snow on the ground from overnight flurries. Yesterday, we breached the 60 degree barrier for the second time this year, reaching 66 degrees (Fahrenheit) on a beautiful sunny day. This morning it was grey, but warm, with a few sprinkles. As I started this post, there was a rain shower in bright sunshine. Now, it is particularly dark, from a thunderstorm, and raining heavily.

Just to get everybody up to speed, development on the next major project for Goodsol Development has come along well, although there is yet more to do. We have reached the stage of having a technology preview of the product. For those unfamiliar with Microsoft euphemisms, a “technology preview” is a substantial implementation of a program design which is still buggy as hell. In this case, there was a lot of development between the prototype and the point where we could actually see glimpses of the intended functionality. However, this version does work, and with a few essential fixes, it is usable. Now the real testing begins.

Speaking of bugs, whatever happened to the old “stack overflow” error? One of the problems (the worst bug, and the easiest to fix) was not exactly a typographical problem, but in a similar vein. In a certain case, within a derived virtual function, the program was supposed to call the same virtual function of the parent. I accidentally typed the wrong class name and created a theoretically infinite recursion. Instead of the trusty “stack overflow” message of yore, which would give a clue, this program just locked up or crashed. The debugger information was no help at that point either, as the recovery process apparently lost any worthwhile stack data.

Anyway, the bright spot, aside from the sporadic blue sky outside, is that it appears our company, Digital Gamecraftâ„¢ (SophSoft, Incorporated), will be moving closer to full speed operation in the next couple of weeks, as my business partner returns. Not coincidentally, this also means that I will be getting back my wife after more than 3 months of separation as she was taking care of (extended) family matters. I can hardly wait to get back to what passes for “normal” around here.

I am preparing the promised series on quality game development, and I intend to post the introduction on Monday, so please check back after the weekend.

Thanks.