Siu Lun

The website launched last wednesday, finally after 6 months of work on it. Well, in reality it’s more like a month or two, since I only work 1 and a 1/2 days a week and I did take a lot of time off during the school holiday season.

You can see it at http://www.icmacentre.rdg.ac.uk/. I was responsible for the underlying system to tie in with the existing databases, the web manager and the marketing manager were the designers in the layout and the presentation. I had to fix quite a lot of html and css errors and incompatibilities they threw at me and still the site is not fully optimized yet.

Strange how the site was working fine on IE6 but not there are reported problems with it, it works perfectly fine on Firefox and IE7. The underlaying system still has a lot of work lined up to do. This content management system is really massive and over the next few months I’ll be adding more and more functionalities for both the users and the editors.

Personally, I would’ve designed the looks differently and if only I had more time before the project started, I also would’ve gone and produced a rails version instead of opting to use php.

Ok, after 2 days of starting some serious thinking on the game demo. I’ve decided I’ll make a strategic game. In a way, it’s like the Total War and Civ series of games, where you produce armies and try and conquer the land.

I love that kind of game and it seems the more obvious/straight forward thing to make. It’s also something that I’ve always wanted to make for a gundam version or a naruto based version. The only problem is copyright, I don’t really know how it applies, as far as I know Naruto and Gundam aren’t licensed in the UK hence I should be able to do it, but I don’t really wish to find out tbh.

SO~ I’ll make my own names and story etc… and as a matter of interest, I think I’ll go for something that incorporates ninjas instead because I don’t think that kind of game has ever been made – where as mecha are becoming a common thing.

The game is gonna be a 2D overhead view mode, where you have to control aspects of your village to make it prosper in order to have enough funds to wage war. More details later – I haven’t actually put anything down on paper yet.

With the launch of the EU domain, I’ve aquired a pretty nifty and short one so anyone should be able to remember. I plan to use this site a build a site about Robotics and A.I., things I’m very interested in, hence why I’m at the University of Reading where Captain Cyborg resides.

I’ve got a lot of motivation in this field, possibly because of Gundam, possibly because of Chii, or maybe I’m just a said lonely git who wants to expand on this field so that one day I am able to program a bunch of good friends? Who knows. lol

In any case, since I’m busy with my third year exams I shant be working on it until start of June.

This is the intro from XIRO.EU

“XIRO.EU is scheduled to launch around end of July and will become the net’s greatest resource site to find anything regarding to A.I. and Robotics, bringing you news from around the world in the advancement of artificial intelligence and robotics. The aim of XIRO.EU is also to rise awareness of the growing field of robotics and A.I. and initiate debates amongst the common people on the benefits and consequences of such research, giving you insight into the latest in research development.

We’re looking forward to the launch date!”

By we, I currently meant I, but if anyone who reads my blog ever is interested in programming A.I. and making robots etc… drop me a mail and we might be able to come up with something. =]