Battle Machines Progressing Nicely

Posted by santosj on April 5, 2006

I took a look at the design and beta of Battle Machines, also known as Robotechnik, and I was impressed by some functions. While it is still far from being completed it has some functionality that is awesome. I’m talking about the Stock Market.

I’m a little disappointed by the fact that it only works by simple randomization, but that could be changed based on how well the player does in battles on what parts the player sells and how much profit is made and lost. That would reflect the stock market better and give it more added dimensions besides the random factor. Also, the factor of the more people who buy and sell also adds or substracts from the total share price.

The game is based off of the original Robowarz (Mecha Warz) code base, so it has numerious security flaws based on the pre $_GET and $_POST global variables. I am still disappointed that the code base of mecha warz did not correct this nor did the other developers seek to fix this themselves as it was ‘too difficult’. My analysis of anothers skill is based upon my own, which compares to what level I believe my level to be based on what I have seen of other advanced programmers and code.

Craig Skills Updated and Critique

I would say the developer, Craig, is heading up towards mid novice level. It is only the reluctance to learn new techniques and new proramming subjects that would keep him from gaining intermediate status. That is not to say that he hasn’t honed quite some skills in what he does know which is still great. The goal is to learn new things so that it becomes easier the next time you have a project that needs it.

I remember when I wanted to allow the CSS colors to change dynamically so I created the CSS page as .php extension. It didn’t work the first time and with a little research I noticed that I had to set the MIME type of the page and it worked! Of course, at this time I decided that the approach wasn’t needed and would take to long so I scrapped the project. It wasn’t a total lost because I learned that 1) it was possible and 2) that you can set the MIME in php by using the header function.

Rant about learning new Programming Techniques

The way I learn about new programming subjects is find something that needs to be done and learn how to do it by a lot of research. It is the only way I can learn. Other side projects along the way may make the development time a lot longer, but the problems and solutions that come out of it will stay with you. You don’t always remember the solution as much as you remember the bugs and how you finally fix them. If something just works, then you don’t really learn anything as you have already reached the level where you can succeed in making the task from start to solution with little to no bugs. In more difficult projects, there will be bugs and you will need to be able to solve them.

There is also a easy way, a good way, and the best way to do something. The easy way may take less time, but doesn’t allow you to extend upon it or take it over to another project easily. Which is also the problem of the Robowarz code base. Everything is between the HTML and nothing is in functions so changing one thing on one page would force you to make the same change when the problem occurs on another page. The best way is usually the one that takes the longest but allows you to take the fruit of the labor to multiple projects saving a lot of time in development. I would settle with the good way to solve the problem, by using functions, but not everyone sees it the same way as I do.

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