SAGD V

[Korax]

As from today for the next 3-4 weeks we will be busy with Research & Development (R&D) that will take care of the currently dated main website (www) of SAGD. The current main site is the last remaining bastion of the older technology that was launched back in late 2006, and its high time already! Replacing the current frontend will free up a significant amount of my time and will take a huge load off my shoulders and mind.

Anyone thats interested in being part of the R&D phase, drop me a PM.

[xzalion]

This is great.

[bevis]

so much reaaadinggggg. gwar, my eyes bleed. cant wait to see what u guys are working on!

[xzalion]

so much reaaadinggggg. gwar, my eyes bleed. cant wait to see what u guys are working on!

Something big ... Hoor jy

[Korax]

I've spent the past few weeks properly researching which systems to use for the frontend (www). A few CMS systems was tested, especially Joomla! and Drupal enjoyed special attention. At the moment I'm not overly impressed with the CMS systems out there. Sometimes "boxed" systems aren't always the best of choices, especially if what you want isn't what the systems can offer. The SAGD 2010 frontend will be much simplified, more "dashboard"-like and with that in mind using a CMS like Joomla! or Drupal might be a tad overkill.

I won't make a secret of it... I'm not a huge fan of PHP, but I will say that there are systems out there built on PHP that are impressive. With the new SAGD 2010 design we will be making around 85% use of OSS. At the moment we are building the new SAGD 2010 frontend as a ASP.NET 4.0 web application. We are also busy configuring another OSS system that will be taking over quite a lot of typical SAGD frontend features, but that system will only be launched once the new SAGD 2010 frontend goes live within the next month.

The main driver for the process I've started during November 2009 up until now is NOT to build the new SAGD 2010 design from the ground up (unless theres no alternative), but rather leverage OSS systems where possible. One thing I'm slightly careful of is relying too much on too many OSS systems as it might end up becoming an updating nightmare. I would like to spend less time maintaining gamedev support systems, and rather focus on USING those gamedev support systems to help me (and my company) achieve our game development objectives. If the new SAGD 2010 design/structure works for us, it should work well for everyone.

I'm quite excited and theres exciting times ahead building our Unreal Engine 3 project once I got the SAGD upgrade behind me!

[Korax]

Good news sofar is that today the new .NET 4.0-based SAGD 2010 Windows Service went live. It manages all out-of-process requirements for the SAGD system as a whole. One of its tasks is to check and register SAGD WordPress blogs for users and sending them a PM once its ready as well as doing SMTP testing to ensure the OSS systems we use will always be able to send messages and that we know at the earliest moment if there's any SMTP issues. We are currently finishing up our new "core" framework implementation that will be used in both the new SAGD 2010 frontend (www) and our coming Excentrax Games website.

[Korax]

The framework is now executing pretty well. I've started on the layout of the new frontend. It will be much more CMS-like, but it won't be a CMS. I've been down and out with some flu the past few days.
Progress is slowed by the sickness, but I should be in full-blown development speed by tomorrow. I've been approaching the new development very different from the current (live) SAGD frontend. The development process should go pretty fast once I get the hang of this new development style.