Good coding guidelines / November 16, 2009

Scary Windows development stories

I’m currently reading a book about the evolution of Windows. One of the most interesting things I keep finding is how stupid some 3rd party application developers must have been…. for example, it seems to have been common practice that if you wanted your app to grab a particular Windows setting (let’s say the Fonts

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Code / November 12, 2009

Game Golden Rule #1: Support Windowed-mode

I thought I’d cover this rule first, because I listed it as number one and also because it’s probably one of the most controversial. Let’s begin: a simple Why/Why Not argument should suffice for this one: Why Allow Windowed-mode: It’s more convenient for your users. Some users multitask (gasp!), even while playing games. This is

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Code / November 11, 2009

Paying your Windows Taxes

In Windows (like every operating system), when you’re writing an application or game there are certain things that your application is responsible for handling: some of them are easy, some of them take a little bit more effort. On his excellent blog, Microsoft’s Raymond Chen calls these responsibilities “Taxes”, and there are good reasons why

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