Big plans.

So I hinted, last time, about some big plans I have for a new EQ2 project. I think I may have gone off the deep end a bit with this one, but I'm thinking I might have a winner.

People have been begging for a hunter bot for a while now, and while I could make one, I don't think I could do it justice. EQ2 is a very complex beast, with combat being especially complex. Despite what many think, it's *not* as simple as walking around, targeting stuff, and mashing buttons until you're done. When you play EQ2, and you fight things, you create little strategies out of the abilities you're given, and considering that there are 24 classes and umpteen billion ways of customizing (AA, etc), there are far too many of these strategies to bake in to the software.

So, in order to appeal to everyone, I'm going to stop working on the hunter bot, and start working on my new project, a group assistant (or you could call it a two-box helper).

This will, however, be like no ordinary two-box helper. My system will be completely customizable, down to every last detail, thanks to a custom rules engine I plan to build. I'm scrapping my DSL idea for this - it works, but I don't want to trust it for a production build, not yet - and going with an XML rules system with a visual designer on top of it.

This will not be a general purpose scripting application. The rules engine will support the project's only goal - to make two-boxing (or three, four, five, twenty, etc) a hands-off endeavor.

But I have ulterior motives as well... This application will facilitate a rules-based system upon which the final hunter-bot can be built. Once the rules engine is in place, and all the wiring is complete, it'll be go time.

More details to come later. =)

Moving!

Despite a number of promising leads, all of my job resources have run dry. As such, in three days, I am moving back home to Charleston, SC. My spirits are up, actually - I expected to feel thoroughly defeated (which I did), but at the moment I'm happy. I'll get to see my friends and family again. That's the important thing.

Meanwhile, I haven't let the out-of-work situation hold me back from programming. If anything, I'm more prolific on my own projects than I was able to be before, what with the 8-hr a day grind. Most recently, I'm working on a new EQ2-related project. The project itself is, well, top-secret at the moment - but I can discuss one of its major components: a script lexer and parser.

Compiler design and implementation is definitely one of my favorite topics in computing. I may be one of the few people in the world who enjoys hand-writing parsers. I can easily say that the grammar I wrote for this particular lexer/parser is the most complex grammar I've written with the intention of actually parsing.

In the span of about 3 hours tonight, I've hand-written the lexer and recursive descent parser for this language, which builds the inputs into a state machine. I can't give away too many details, but suffice it to say that this system will automate some interesting tasks in EQ2 (much like other MacroCrafter software I've written) and will allow the user to change its behavior on the fly.

To be honest, I don't really expect the user to do much editing - although I intend for the scripts to be user-editable, I will likely be writing all the scripts myself and releasing them with the new software. What I really wanted out of this was an easy way for me to describe the logic that this software will execute.

Sorry I'm being vague. I haven't made any official posts regarding this stuff yet on the MC forums, and I don't want to jump the gun. I've made the mistake in the past regarding talking about projects and such on this and other venues, getting people's hopes up, and then either abandoning or shelving said project. People's feelings get hurt, I get complaints, etc. I shouldn't promise what I might not deliver - and this vagueness is part of that.

As for when I'll be announcing this -- well, it'll come once I flesh the concept out more, build more proof of concept bits, and start pinning stuff together. I think it'll be well-received - possibly more so than a hunter bot would...

Out of work

Not sure why it took me so long to think about posting my current employment situation on my blog..... But here goes.

I am currently unemployed. Things didn't work out with my last company, and they let me go. I'm living in the Seattle, WA area, for at least the next few weeks, while I continue to look for work. If I can't find anything between now and then, we'll be packing up the family and moving back home to SC, unless there are better (read, nearly guaranteed) jobs elsewhere, in which case we'll probably relocate there instead.

If anyone who reads my blog is on a dev team looking for someone, and you think (by my posts) that I might be a good fit, please let me know! I would be forever appreciative. =)

Retrospect

While working on converting my name generator from C# to F#, I've come across some strange things.

I mentioned earlier that the statistical analysis portion of my generator counts the number of syllables in its input set in order to use that data to make certain syllables appear more often than others. While looking through my C# code, it appears that this is not the case - I, in fact, am not using that data for anything.

It was my original intention to use it as such, but in retrospect I recall having issues translating this requirement into functionality - especially since I was using SQL Server to perform my random picking. I wonder if I can fulfill this requirement now that I'm using F# and eschewing SQL.

By the way - when I'm done with this project, I'll post up snippets of my F# for review... I'm sure you vets will have plenty to chuckle at! :)

F# progress

Made some progress on my name generator. The statistical analysis side is the hardest part - parsing individual words into their constituent syllables. I am happy to report that after several hours of plugging away, I have a mostly F#-axiomatic syllable parser based on the logic of my C# version. I made gratuitous use of discriminated unions, pattern matching, and recursive functions to write the word parsing logic, rather than OOP and procedural methods similar to what I used in C#. I feel like this has given me a decent grasp on what the language is capable of.

My next task is to continue the statistical analysis portion, and generate syllable boundary data (which is important for the generator to know how to put words together in ways that make sense). After that, the generator itself needs to be written, which should be a simple matter.

The only question at this point that I have is how to handle the SQL database access - much of the logic for generation is embedded in the SQL calls to the database. I'm considering eschewing the database completely and designing my own file-based storage solution, but then I have a whole new class of problems.

In the end, this is going to get compiled as a class library, for consumption in my name generator website (which currently isn't online).

New F# project

Despite the fact that work has intervened in almost all my personal project plans (mostly in the form of making me want to do anything but programming while I'm at home), I still want to learn a new language. F# has been on my radar for a while, especially since it's being included with vs2010. I have been struggling with trying to find something to write in F#, something that I know well enough to be useful as a tutorial for myself, but also something large enough that I'll be able to use most of the idioms in F# that I should need for most any large project.

I had forgotten that, apart from simple expression parsers, I used my Random Name Generator project to learn new languages. My name generator requires text input in order to build statistical data from which random words are generated. It was originally written in Visual Basic 6.0, and was ported to VB.NET, then to C#, in order for me to learn those respective languages. I think it's time to do it again. =)

I hate release days...

My months-long shipping project has just been released - my largest at this company to date - and it replaced a great deal of critical functionality. My nerves are shot and I didn't sleep well last night while our lead dev rolled out the changes. All went well, and everything's fine, mostly thanks to the fact that we 'practiced' the release the day before on our test setup.

Still, the butterflies won't go away...