Backing-Up, Repositories, XSI and Neural Networks Progression

Its been such a short time since my last .plan I fear the World might be coming to an end or at least Hell is becoming a bit nippy, anywho... :)

The last week for me has been rather busy with both University work and some new gadgetry that I've decided to setup. After one too many annoying instances of "awww crap Windows has karked it again" or "oops, did I really hold shift when I deleted that? NUTS!" I've decided to set myself up with a proper automatic backup system.

These things rock!

I've got a thing called "Backup Platinum Agent" that will allow me to create different 'items' of data to backup. The items can be collections of files and folders or just single files and you can even choose explicitly which file types to include/exclude in the item. The item is then stored wherever you choose it to go, in this case my Icybox harddrive. An IcyBox is basically an enclosure that connects to your PC via USB and can hold a normal IDE harddrive within itself. (So its a much more functional version of an external harddrive imo - you can remove the hdd at any time) All my backups are now going to this spare 160GB hdd I had sitting in my PC doing nothing - which is great as I can cart data around and have all my backups 'separate' from my PC.

What's extra cool about this backup system is that you can schedule it to perform backups at certain times/interval or even when you logon or off. It can also store versions of files up to a certain amount you specify (so you can go back to different backup versions rather than just your latest)

Most backup clients offer these sort of systems and I just cant recommend them enough, I dare say not a single person reading this hasn't suffered data loss in one way or another. This data loss probably happened at the worst time too :P So I wonder how many of you reading this actually backup PROPERLY and if so what tools do you use? It'd be interesting to find out.


Repositories

I don't know why but for some reason I've always considered repo systems to be predominately for multi person applications (ie: teams working together on a single project) and never bothered setting one up just for my sole use. Heck I have even advised people on the merits of using them for any code-base/art/asset collection even when its just one person but I've never heeded my own advice... Finally I saw the light and today I've decided to setup SVN on my own desktop system. I'm storing within it a repo of my codebase for my NeuralNetworks in Torque project and already its hooked up in turn to my backup client. This work is not gonna get lost without a damn good fight :)

XSI

Following on the theme of cool new things I've discovered this week. I'd like to just mention something within XSI that I'd never really paid much attention to and I'm now kicking myself for it. The sypnotic view is probably one of the coolest and most versatile things you'll find within XSI. (XSI has a LOT of cool stuff in it, so its saying something) Its basically a little customisable window that's great for working with complex rigs etc, it works off a .html file to allow you to image-map your rig for easy selection etc (ie: you can click on bits in the picture to select bits in your actual rig in XSI) The html file will run either VBscript or JavaScript when you click on areas of the screen. All in all its rather cool and flexible and you don't just have to use it for rigging etc. Its extra nice if you have a second monitor too, I'm a sucker for trying to save screen real estate.

With the release of the beta of the XSI exporter for Torque recently I'm assuming there's a fair few new XSI users or previous XSI users rearing their heads in the community, would it be at all worth putting together a nice list of useful tips/trick/general stuff on XSI? Tell me if you think so and I'll put something together.

Neural Nets

I've continued my work with NeuralNetworks in Torque this week and I'm now up to a point where I have NeuralAI units in mission and a lot of the "backend" stuff is now playing nicely with Torque. The annoying thing here is that as its all backend stuff there's not a whole lot to show :/

I'm thinking probably a week and I'll have some guys running around and processing their NNs for decision making. On a side note I'm considering using the outputs to control over an FSM. By this I mean say my outputs control behaviours like fleeing, attacking and standing your ground, the highest of the outputs will ultimately decide which state to flick the FSM into. Obviously that's making it sound a bit too clean and simple but there's the gist of my thinking anyway. Another thing here is the possibility of doing some fuzzy state logic on the outputs for behaviours, maybe you could be half fleeing and half attacking (ie, running away and shooting over your shoulder :P) Just ideas, not really sure about the implementation of those yet, heh.


As per before, my blog is also here: http://craigfortune.blogspot.com