How Far Are You?

How many days have you "completed" of Handmade Hero? Do you simply watch? Download the nightly source and follow along, or do you write all the code along with Casey?

I personally have written everything from scratch, using my own formatting style and naming conventions and whatnot. I've just finished day 21. I have to say, while it's much slower, it makes the code much more personal and something I can feel attached to.

Before I fell behind the stream, I felt really proud when we'd get to the end of the stream and my code was working like Casey's. Keeping up with him is no easy task.
I'm as caught up as I can be, for now. I've been coding along though I'm essentially doing it word for word (for efficiency reasons). I've also started following Handmade Penguin in my spare time to get a linux layer up and running, and once I'm done with that I might take a second look at Windows to see what I can do with it.

I'd also like to see if I can get an Android layer going before Casey gets to it (given that's one of the WAY far down the road things, I have a while).
ChronalDragon
I'm as caught up as I can be, for now. I've been coding along though I'm essentially doing it word for word (for efficiency reasons). I've also started following Handmade Penguin in my spare time to get a linux layer up and running, and once I'm done with that I might take a second look at Windows to see what I can do with it.

I'd also like to see if I can get an Android layer going before Casey gets to it (given that's one of the WAY far down the road things, I have a while).


I'm also starting on Handmade Penguin. I'd like to knock out some streams while I'm away from home, but my laptop only has Linux.

How do you plan to tackle Android? Write the platform layer in Java and then do a native call into the game code? Is it that simple? I've never tried it.
I'm working on an Xlib/Alsa port of everything in Common Lisp. I'm all the way back at day like 7-8 because sound is so dang hard.

I have to learn everything 3 times. Once in C && Windows. Once in C && Linux. And once more for the translation to Lisp.

Why lisp? I like it. I want to see how far I can get with a garbage-collected language. :)
I have followed along with the code Casey wrote but skipped all the sound stuff(except for the dll Loading part). I am also skipping the non-sparse version of storing, and moving between tiles and am writing my own thing.
I went quite some time not coding (not even loading the distributed source files), but over the last week and a bit I've been working on writing my own platform layer (yay vacation!) and also been going tangentially into things like WAV and BMP loading with my own alternate game implementation (same platform binary, different .so files). We'll see how things go when I'm back at work, though.
I have seen all the episodes. And I look forward to each. I feel I have been preparing for this information for years already. And it seems I have a hunger to learn about these kind of topics. I also follow Jonathan's videos, but it's been two weeks, so I guess he is scratching his hair out, atm :D

I spent the most time with direct sound, and had to see those over again, until I got it. And that ment days of experimentation. I mean, when he said (or at least thats what I heard)- that you cannot synchronize with the video frames, I was doomed to give it a go.

Next I implemented a tile map, but ended up with a helicopter flying around, and not a "guy". So now it seems I am going to remake an old C64 game, where I fly missions in my helicopter, shooting at tiles...? I never know what I end up with, and that's also how I like it. I could never have worked in the industry, unless I had a boss that said: "I bet you cannot do this". Seems I am very competitive that way. Is this normal do you think?

Anyway, great fun I had because of Handmade Hero. So I am very thankful, because I really needed this.
For the first few episodes I was following along live, typing everything in, but I quickly found that I learn better if I just pay attention and watch while Casey's actually doing stuff, maybe jotting down a quick question or note, then type in the code afterwards where I can go slow enough to actually think about each line.

Due to life-related things I fell way behind on episodes, so now as I'm catching up I'll watch 2 or 3 episodes, then when it seems like we've completed a cohesive chunk of stuff, I'll type in the code for those few days in one go.

Looking forward to eventually climbing my way back out of the backlog so I can watch live again :)
Troncoso
I personally have written everything from scratch, using my own formatting style and naming conventions and whatnot.


Nice! I was actually trying to do this for a very short time, but I found that it got harder and harder to translate the new code into my style as things piled up (i.e. it was easy to rename a function but a little bit harder to remember what the old name was 6 episodes later, etc.). Are you finding it hard to manage that translation? And if not, what's your secret (besides a larger brain than mine)? :)
I've been following along with every episode and coding according to my style. It's incredibly useful and fun!

Over the past couple of weeks though, I've shifted to building an OS X platform layer, and in so doing, I am learning so much more about Cocoa than I ever did before. I've been focusing on getting the audio working correctly using Core Audio's low-level Audio Units such that it pulls from the game code and synchronizes with the loop. I have a strong background and interest in audio, so it's been very rewarding to get that up and running! :)
I've been watching all the videos, and working off and on on an OS X platform layer as well. For the most part I've been trying to follow casey's style in my platform layer. I still have a few things to add, Sound, Processor Frequency Count, and saved state, but all of the game code runs fine.
Still only on day 8, I probably wont be able to ever catch up to the live stream, and unfortunatly couldn't practically watch it anyway as it goes live at 4am here. :>
Troncoso
How do you plan to tackle Android? Write the platform layer in Java and then do a native call into the game code? Is it that simple? I've never tried it.


I've only taken cursory looks at what native calls on android look like, but the way I'd probably do it is to have a two-sided platform layer -- a Java part that gets called from the OS, and a native part that grabs what it needs from the Java part and hands it to the rest of the game.

Not really looking forward to wrangling Java into place, but it must be done ;)
I also like to program along on my own version from scratch, although keeping things coordinated was/is starting to get a bit untenable. I haven't touched it for a few videos, I've just been watching. Last night I finished day 23 which was a fun one. I think my code is back on day 20 and still has some bugs to work out.

It started to not really feel like it made sense to try and debug my own code while watching Casey debug something usually entirely different. Both are valuable activities, but trying to do them at the same time just started to feel inefficient.

My new idea is to watch a few videos, just watch, until we reach a natural break point and then try to implement whatever change / new feature on my own over the course of a few days. No idea if it will make sense to do things this way, but we'll give it a shot.

Kladdehelvete
So I am very thankful, because I really needed this.


My feelings too, this stream is just perfect for me. Overwhelming gratitude for Mr. Casey and the universe for this boon from heaven, sweet nectar of the gods. Finally everything is coming up Milhouse!
I've just hit the 10 episode mark.

Also want to share my experience with the series.
I started with the dev setup and coding with the first 3 videos...

Than I got really hooked. Tnx to the holidays I've watched everything till episode 10 and I keep going.
Also I preorder the game and get the source code, cause want to fiddle with every days code without just rewriting it from youtube. :)

I hope to catch on and get with the stream in real time too.

Also I totally want to tnx to Casey for the idea and the realization.
Even if I ignore the knowledge it's quite entertaining for me. :)

Oh and community is quite cool which is always a big plus. ;)

Edited by Mike on