\About The ZBuffer
As some have noticed my little dry spell is over. Between work and regular life I wasn't posting as often as I should. It didn't help that I was on vacation during the XNA beta 1 launch and I just can't convince my family in the UK to get wireless connections (heck some of them are still on dial up!). But now we start the ramp up to December the 11th which shall henceforth be known as XNA day.
So I apologise in advance for any content I post in the next few days that you have seen elsewhere - I like to keep the ZBuffer as a reference copy of everything you might ever need. Maybe you will see something you missed in the excitement.
As I've previously mentioned I will, of course, be covering XNA Framework in just as much detail. It appears to be the future of managed code and gaming and 100% in line with my goals for the site. I'm not sure of exactly what will happen to Managed DirectX 1.1 (2.0 is known to be dead), nor what managed APIs will exist for DirectX 10 but those will also continue to be covered.
With that in mind I've changed the the tags for the site so that I should move up the search rankings for XNA framework a little. If you have a blog or website you can help by linking to http://www.thezbuffer.com with 'XNA framework' in the link.
April was another great month for The ZBuffer. The first month with >50k page views and I broke 500k total page views since launch. Now I'm sure this is nothing for some of you folk, but I think its a pretty good deal for a one (Z)man show in his spare time.
So thanks to all of you who visit regularly and I'm looking forward to the rest of the year. Maybe I will hit a million by Christmas!
NOTE: I filter referrer spam, bot visits, RSS fetches etc. IIS says more like 180k page views this month but >100k of those were to the rss feed. How often do you people check if I have updated the feed?
One more request....
Whilst my ad company still show ads without demographics I get better (better paid? more relevant? who knows) ads if I have 200 responses to a survey. There's no log in to tie the information back to you and its the usual male/female, how old, how smart type stuff. Additionally they let me add 3 questions of my own so I have added some about your usage of Managed DirectX which will make interesting reading.I'm currently at 155 responses, so if you have a couple of minutes to answer 14 multiple choice questions and you've not already filled it in I would *really* appreciate it.
Complete The ZBuffer demographic survey
Interesting ZBuffer stats from the 1st 155 responses:
- 97% Male, 3% female
- MDX skill level:
25% beginner, 53% intermediate, 22% advanced - 23% also use native DirectX and C++
- Languages:
C# 90%, VB.Net 8%, C++/CLI 1%, Other 1%
The Zbuffer has now got big enough that even I have trouble finding stuff and I finally got fed up of going to Google or MSN search. So all new today is a search feature up there on the left. For now its nothing sophisticated, it just runs a search on MSN, but it helps a lot.
Thanks to boki who took the time to brighten up my colors and layout a little. Its a subtle change but I like it.
Yeah right !
Though I would like to thank the folks who bought stuff through Amazon
I don't ask for much, but obviously the site takes time and money to keep up so I appreciate people using these links. So if you ever buy anything from Amazon
You don't even have to buy Managed DirectX books, anything you buy after following a link contributes. So if you are like other readers who purchased GURPS
I think I get asked about once per month why there are no forums on the site. My reasoning has always been that we already have the managed directx newsgroup, the MSDN forums and the Gamedev.net DirectX forum which are read and answered by many more folk than read The ZBuffer. I try to cover the 1st 2 of those forums and there are others who cover gamedev pretty well so if you ask in one of those 3 places you will likely get an answer to your question (for the record that doesn't mean ask in ALL 3 places like I've started to see recently). I also point out that a few of the other managed directx sites tried forums and have very few posts, though they probably get less traffic than me.
However, I do understand people who think that as a one stop shop for Managed DirectX there should be some discussion area. So I figure lets be democratic about it.
If you have an opinion, please email me and let me know what you think. Some suggestions:
- Forums: yes or no based on the logic above
- If yes:
- Should we leave technical support in the other forums
- What other forums would you like to see other than technical support
There I was 9:50am having a nice nap and dreaming of render loops when the FedEx man rings the doorbell. Barking at people who walk in the street or dare to slam their car doors is high on the ZHounds list of fun things, so someone actually coming to their door and ringing their doorbell is the Olympic games of barking in our house. I sent the ZChick because she was expecting a package but it wasn't for her. Turns out it was my 'congratulations on being a DirectX MVP' package.
Sadly there was not a large check involved in the transaction, but I gather Steve Ballmer comes to yours house on your birthday to sing Developers, Developers, Developers. So thanks to those who nominated me.
If you are reading this entry then the move is complete and (hopefully) successful. If you see any problems please email ZMan.
The ZBuffer will be moving to a new host this weekend. In a couple of hours I will be switching the DNS entries over. The sites should be no different and if my memory of how DNS works you should end up at the old or new sites depending on how the replication goes. So hopefully nobody notices anything, but you are all now warned
365 days ago today I sent emails to Tom Miller, Jason Olson and David Weller telling them about TheZBuffer. I put a news item up on GameDev about my interview with KoiosWorks and stood back to see what happened. I had 2500 hits the first day which turns out to be one of only a few 2000+ days I have had.
The first post was actually posted on October 8th but since there is nothing worse than visiting a blog with a handful of posts I chose not to 'launch' until I had some content. I had met Marshall from KoiosWorks at a game development class I did at the University of Washington. When I heard he was working on a Managed DirectX game I arranged the interview and the launch date was set.
I had registered TheZBuffer.com back in August 2002 though as I have previously stated I can't remember what my intention was at the time. I hadn't even started my game development class but I'm sure I thought that I was going to do something spectacular :-) After I finished the class I realised that though I had a shiny certificate it really wasn't going to help me get a job as much as I hoped. The biggest blocker was that jobs at the salary I wanted required 3-4 years of C++ and shipped games - I have many years of coding, but almost none of it in C++. I could take a pay cut but that didn't appeal to me so I went back to tinkering in my spare time and doing my real job. In October 2003 Seattle Sputnik had a .Net and gaming talk that was to become my epiphany. Now I could use .Net languages for DirectX. I had been using them for as long as they existed and VB from VB3 onwards. I started looking around for information and other than Tom's blog there was precious little so I started collecting links. Eventually it dawned on me that nobody else was going to to put a site together, and since I had a cool URL all paid for I started building the site in Summer 2004. Initially it was just a page of links for my own use but by October I had started to realise it was getting out of hand so I added some structure and eventually put the content in a database. The site has been running on .Net 2.0 since long before Microsoft had an official go live license (one of the perks of being a Microsoft employee) though I couldn't talk much about it for the same reason.
So here we are 12 months later and as a result I've got new friends around the world, spoken at conferences, written for MSDN and best/worst of all quit a well paid job on a (calculated) whim. The 318 posts have had over 250,000 page views from over 50,000 distinct IP addresses and monthly traffic is growing nicely. So in the great British birthday tradition drink a pint for me tonight and look forward to the next year.
Since I restricted the home page to 30 days worth of news there hasn't been a way to read the older items unless they are also in one of the categories. Until now....
You can either follow the archive link at the top of all news and archive pages, or you can make your own URLs in the form http://www.thezbuffer.com/YYYY/MM, where YYYY is a 4 digit year and MM is a 2 digit month (leading 0's of course).
While I was adding that feature I have set the web page titles on all of the individual article pages to match the title of the actual article. Hopefully the search engines will start picking this up soon since I had noticed that all of my entries in google look very similar.
Well since my attempt at using google ads failed miserably (they revoked my account after I had $150 credit citing 'improper click detection' and refused to explain any further) I have decided to accept ads on the site directly. If you are interested, you can read more on the ad page.
Its hard to set rates, I don't want to rip people off, nor do I want be ripped off so I've based everything around an average CPM of $11. After a lot of searching I have found higher rates, but mainly at large newspapers, and lower rates mainly at non specific link based sites. If you know of any average CPM data that is current I would love to see a link.
While I'm getting started, and to try and help out other community sites I am happy to provide links to non profit community based sites for free as long as there is some vague relevance to The ZBuffers audience.
I also decided to help out the Indie game developers. For the price of one of your games you can get in the 6 way rotation on any of the ads.
I put on a pair of shorts a couple of weeks ago and found something in the back pocket. A piece of paper that was carefully folded and had obviously been through the washing machine several times. I figure I'd not worn these shorts since last summer (remember here in the Pacific Northwest there is a very distinct 'shorts' season for most normal people). On the piece of paper was a sketch of a web page called 'TheZBuffer'. According to the domain records I registered the URL in August 2002 but for the life of me I can't remember what I intended to do with it.
But by August last year I had amassed a decent collection of Managed DirectX links and was getting ready to do something with them. It took me until October 8th (remember that and send birthday presents) to put together a basic site - all HTML! - and start adding content. But maybe I'll tell more about that story on the sites birthday.
One of my main goals for the site was never to let it go stale, this will be entry 262 in 372 days so I'm averaging about 5 posts per week. I think I can check that goal off.
Odd to think 12 months ago I was sitting in some boring meeting at Microsoft sketching out my future....
It was just Tuesday I was lamenting how I wasn't an A list blogger, then today I was pointed to The Mail Owl Scrolls where I *have* now been bestowed with the title of "International Blogger". I am truly honoured. (no thats not me in the picture - that's Pieter)
Incidentally, Mr Mail Owl also has a bunch of MDX code on the blog. Have to add that to the tutorials section.
A few site updates in anticipation of some upcoming entries. I've grouped some of the articles and 'editorial' pieces that don't currently have a category into an articles category, and added a downloads category.
The astute amongst you will notice the google ads too, I figure I spend a fair amount of time keeping the site going so a little extra revenue will help with the small costs.
Thanks for your patience. We now resume normal service. At some point I will explain more but for now my lips are sealed. If you can guess why then you don't need to ask! The main site is back and running and the RSS feed will be back before the night is through.
The Zbuffer will be down for some time on Monday February 28th for a server upgrade.
Just a quick note about how I'm going to update articles on the site. For some articles, where I feel some narrative is necessary for the update, I will include a new news article which describes the update and links to the original article. For others where there is just a new link or a minor update which requires no explanation I will update the article in place and add it to the news category so it will appear in the RSS feed. You will see a 
icon next to the paragraphs that have been added or changed. The article will always be available from its main category for reference even when it drops off the news page. Either way if you subscribe to the feed or just read the home page you will never miss out on any changes
If its good enough for Google its good enough for The ZBuffer. As part of my quest to stamp out programmer art I need to find any little excuse to fire up Maya and practise. So I present to you the holiday logo:
If you want to see a larger animation you can download a Media Player version (365k)
Though the site has been up and running for a little over a month I decided to publicize to a wider audience with the interview yesterday. As a result I took over 10,000 page views in the last 2 days. I know quite a few of those were your aggregators pulling down all of the current posts and I know that’s not a big number in the grand scheme of things but its made me happy.
So some quick thanks to:
David, Tom and Jason for the links even though I shamelessly asked them.
Gamedev.net for 540+ referrals beating the closest competitor by 440+
devmaster.net, Craig, codepixel.com (spanish), Jonathan on the channel9 forum, fgoe.ch and the other Craig for picking up the story and linking.
And finally thanks to those who sent me feedback, ideas and corrections - I will reply to all and make relevant updates as I find time (as I mentioned this site is fitted around work and real life.)
You can now subscribe to the news page with your favorite RSS reader using the XML icon on the left or at http://www.thezbuffer.com/feeds.aspx. The news page will always contain any new or updated entries to The Z Buffer so a subscription means that you will never miss anything new.
The RSS feed is validated however it is generated by code I wrote rather than a commercial blog engine so please let me know if you have any issues.
I have tested the feeds in Bloglines, Feedster and Newsgator for the web
Those of your waiting for an RSS feed are one step closer tonight. I've updated the website to include permalinks to the articles which I wanted to include in the feed. http://www.thezbuffer.com/articles/{nnnnn}.aspx will take you to each article through the magic of URL rewriting. The titles are now also hotlinked.
A bit of URL rewriting and the URLs look much nicer e.g. /categories/engines.aspx rather than /readdatabase.aspx?category=engines. Now everything is in a database I have much more flexibility to display the data in different ways for example RSS feeds. But first I have to finish moving the hard coded pages into the database.
In an attempt to prove that I have some artistic skills I created my 1st Maya animation. It looks much nicer at 1024x768x16 million at 60fps but Animation Shop did a reasonable conversion to 121x49x256 15fps.
