Icons Idols and Inspirations

George Carlin

http://www.georgecarlin.com
http://jamesaquilone.com/101-greatest-george-carlin-quotes/

The GIFT Principal

Game Developers Conference - The Science Behind Shaping Player Behaviour

GDC
The Game Developers Conference is an annual event held in America where programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business decision-makers and others involved in the development of interactive games gather to exchange ideas and shape the future of the games industry. 

http://www.gdconf.com/

The Game Developers Conference features over 400 lectures, panels, tutorials and round-table discussions on a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught by leading industry experts. 

http://gdcvault.com/

The Science Behind Shaping Player Behaviour In Online Games presentation is a great example of how the games industry is continually pushing the bounds of how games are played and the gaming experience.

http://gdcvault.com/play/1017940/The-Science-Behind-Shaping-Player

The Game Developers Conference website is a fantastic resource for game designers with many in-depth design, technical and inspirational presentations.

SQL

SQL

Wow my first taste of SQL and it is so much fun.

First download WampServer at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wampserver/?source=dlp

Here is my first go 

First I create the database -

create database MyFirstDatabase;

Now that it is created I can use it -

use MyFirstDatabase;

Now I create a table in the database, and define the data format for each of  the table fields -

create table MyFirstTable (TableID int auto_increment primary key, TableValue varchar (200) not null);

Now I can see my table and the format of the table -
show columns from MyFirstTable;

Now I can insert data into the first row -

insert into MyFirstTable (TableValue) values ('Hello World');

And now I can check the data in my table -

select * from MyFirstTable;

Some great online resources for SQL, (and most other languages), are

StackOverflow   http://stackoverflow.com

W3Schools   http://www.w3schools.com

SketchUp

SketchUp is such an important game design tool for quickly, and intuitively, creating 3D items and landscapes that can then be exported into UDK, Maya, 3DS, etc.

SketchUp all has a 3D Warehouse where you can search download thousands of 3D modles built and shared by a very strong community.

http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/

There is also a vast library of SketchUp plugins that can be installed to provide even greater control and options for designers.

http://extensions.sketchup.com/
http://www.1001bit.com/

XBOX1

Java Color - RGB to Hex

Wow I have had fun today.

I wanted to random generate RGB colors and then convert them to Hex.

I could not use the random generated Red Green Blue colors directly to form a Hex color as the generated numbers could be 1,2,3 characters long. 

It took me a good while with lots of reading an experimentation.

First create int variables that will random each Red Green Blue value.
int red = (int) (( Math.random()*255)+1);
int green = (int) (( Math.random()*255)+1);
int blue = (int) (( Math.random()*255)+1);

Instantiate an instance of Color that will uses the random generated Red Green Blue color ints.
Color RandomC = new Color(red,green,blue);

Create an int that will get the RGB values from the color.
int RandomRGB = (RandomC.getRGB());

Create a String that will convert RandomC RGB values to a HexString.
String RandomRGB2Hex = Integer.toHexString(RandomRGB);

Create an int variable that will convert the HexString to a HashCode.
int EndRGB = RandomRGB2Hex.hashCode();

And now you have a random generated HexCode.

Quite  a few steps, and no doubt within 10 min of posting this I will find a much easier and quicker way.

But for now I am happy that this flow works.