Fingerpointing (or 6 of 7)

Yesterday I played a nice board game which was called "Shadows over Camelot".
An idea of the game is the following - there are 7 (from 3 to 7) knights of the Round Table (Yes, it's about King Arthur's Round Table). One of those knights is an evil one, a traitor. To win a game good knights should perform a set of quests. The black knight's goal is opposite, not to let it happen. As soon as no one knows who a black knight is, finding him is one of possible way to move close to a victory. However, if a loyal knight is accused incorrectly the dark side of force gains a victory point (in the game it's sword).

In a round which I played it happened that knights accused 6 or 7 people who participated. The only person who wasn't accuser was a traitor. Consequently, the game was lost.

An idea behind that that after starting a finger-pointing it's difficult to stop and good people may blame each other with few or no reasons. In the end no one may win but everybody will lose.

My work blog

During an interview I was asked by an interviewer about TDD article on my blog. While reading my working blog (that one is for hobby related topics) I didn't it. But it was on my hobby blog (this one).
Dear visitor, if you're looking for my working blog it's there
http://dimachatwork.blogspot.com/

EVE CCG in Belarus

Recently I found a game in a local game club - it's called EVE : The Second Genesis (http://www.eve-ccg.com/). I liked the cards, game mechanics and the theme. Even if I don't play EVE Online I always liked the science fiction, really. Despite of the absence of support from the publisher, White Wolf Publishing (http://www.white-wolf.com/) the game can still be purchased on the Internet. Thus I am going to play some time after purchasing a starter (EVE: The Great War). I was so eager to start that purchased a couple of busters before my order arrives. Hopefully I'll have fun this Sunday playing EVE CCG with other people from board game community.
P.S. Due to lack of information regarding the game I had to write a White Wolf support. Hopefully, I'll get some news from them soon

Robots

I've just read a topic at http://habrahabr.ru/blog/robot/44157.html (It's in Russian). The only modifications I made is numbers to recognize robots easier

Changing the band

It looks like D&D Miniatures metagame is changing in Belarus. Instead of home-made band more and more Tier-1 Figures comes into play. I used to play UltralothChamps () and my band was pretty competitive so far. The recent additions were Noble Salamander and Prisoner which added more control and some initiative - against most bands it's enough just to occupy a victory area and hold it a few turns to gain enough points. But now dragons come into play. There is one 3LBD and WL band and another one that has Jarl+Thrall. The second one recently has an addition - the Shadow Dragon. Now it has incredible mobility that is difficult to tackle with. Moreover, the guy who owned the second band has started to play Thrall more properly - it runs and kills fodders to gain HP without engaging with my hitters.

After reading GenCon articles and reviewing bands that were in the final
http://www.ddshoebox.com/userSquad.cfm?user=GenconFinalists

I decided to try using CG invisible band - now so sure what will be the final band, but Virtuous Changer+Gnome Trickler will be there. Storm Silverhand has been ordered but hasn't shipped yet - thus Ryld is the only good CG commander I currently have. Let's see how it works in a week.

Test or not to test first

As soon as I had more or less clear idea of what should be done I started creating the application. During last few years I was one of the fans of agile methodologies and integrated them on all projects I participated into. I was so eager to start that ignored practices of TDD and start coding to gain immediate results (Honestly, haven’t done it on production projects for the last years). I did write tests – initially I created no UI, and used NUNit to run simulations (I do it even now). And after having first results very fast (like having simulation for several creatures “fighting” with each another) I recognized that some nasty bugs appeared there. In most cases it caused incorrect results and incorrect statistics of simulation. Code did compile and some results were produced – but I had to spend type debugging more and more each day.

I had no other choice (at least a reasonable one) than cover existing code as much as possible not to miss any possible bug and save my time further. I downloaded NCoverExplorer and started measuring coverage. Well, it was not so bad even initially (~50%) but I forced me to write tests at the same time (I know that classical way is to write tests first but another approach works for me so far) as writing functionalities and measure coverage all the time. Well, it was event pleasant seeing how the coverage grows…

As a conclusion – write tests, check the code coverage(and keep it high) ,don’t skip good practices, even if you’re making something for yourself – otherwise you’ll loose your time that you could spend for something interesting

Regarding writing tests first – personally for me it is almost the same if I keep in mind what I am going to achieve while writing them

Starting C# project

Well, I was happy to start a project for my own excitement (I participated in some during last seven years for different companies though). About a year ago I found myself a new hobby – playing D&D miniatures http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/minis.

At some point it appeared that many people are consider themselves as experts (it's locally in my country, Belarus) in such topics like forming proper bands, deciding what figurer better than another, etc. I found many opinions useful for developing my playing skills. However, I thought that some mathematical/modeling background would be useful for me. And I was right – after running a few simulations I made myself much better band and won that expert who was enforcing his thought. Indeed, only modeling wouldn’t ever allow to win easily – but it helps you understanding how statistics for each figure in a specific band is laid down. Well, as any D&D played knows – if you roll the dice well, it’s much easier for you to win, but if you have a poor band – you have no chances against overwhelming opponent.

The initial idea was:
- Create an application that would allow to model different situations on D&D miniatures’ board and allow gathering statistics for different bands, maps, strategies.
- Enhance own programming and modeling skills as well as learning new technologies
- Bring myself as much joy as possible to recreate a little from leading another production project (meaning that I had not too much time for development)

I had two main choices for possible programming languages/platforms:
- Python
- .Net/C#

I spent some time programming Python 3 years ago but didn’t advance too far, honestly. Thus to improve myself I could pick Python and make everything using it.

Last 4 years (may be more, I need to check my CV for details :) ) I programmed (or leading) projects based on .NET framework. Thus I gained some skills there.

Initially I started playing with Python to evaluate how is going for me. Well, I managed to write a few simple applications but figured out that my performance wasn’t too high though. Thus I switched to .NET and started the application there.

To make myself more aware about different technologies that I had been using before I downloaded a few programs that I wasn’t used often before:
- SharpDevelop 2.1
- SVN plus TortoiseSVN
- NCoverExplorer
And more tools that I was familiar with:
- NUnit 2.9
- FXCop 1.35

So I was more or less prepared and started making the model.