See sharp

I got my copy of C# 4.0 in a Nutshell yesterday, so today I start my first C# mid-sized C# project as a way to learn the language.

The reason I'm learning C# is to use it as the main language for my MMORF project. I chose C# because... well, it's similar enough to Java as to make it not completely foreign, as well as to leverage a mass of .NET libraries. Why .NET? Because it's about time I learn it. Why not Java instead? Because it's about time I learn to program for Windows. Why not Java instead? Yes, yes, Java programming can be "programming for Windows", but it's about time I really learn how to program for Windows. Besides, C#/.NET is still useful, via Mono, on other platforms, so it's not like I'm abandoning the rest of my environments.

The mid-sized project I'll be writing will be an asset grabber from the Ultima Online 2d asset files. Pulling out assets for the newer Stygian Abyss 3d-style assets would also be interesting, but I'm not aware of any documentation on those file formats (not that I've really looked), but I am quite aware of documentation on the original datafiles, thanks to the early work of Ultima Online hackers like Heptazane/Alazane, Cironian and others.

This project is one I've written twice before, first in Lua to learn that language (for eventual use in Metaplace, mainly), and also to learn Google's Go language. An asset grabber requires you to learn file access, and random access at that, as well as binary data manipulation, low-level data structures, buffer management, data merging and image generation, all the while working/fighting with the language's underlying type system. Lua was NOT the language for such a project, so it was very educational in making it work; Go was better suited, but the project greatly highlighted Go's strong type system, especially when coming from Lua.

The reason why I choose to write this project, yet again, is because I plan to take it a little further than I have in the past. Previously, it ended up as a cobble of command-line tools for stripping out specific sprites, animations and map data. Since I'm taking on this whole Windows programming thing, I think it's about time I get out of my command-line world and start making pretty graphics and windows and such, something that I haven't done for a long time, and even then, with trepidation under Java. Learning the Windows way of doing things is long overdue, so beyond just an extractor, I plan to make it a viewer as well, akin to the InsideUO tool written by Alazane.

And, of course, the end result -- the purloined UO assets -- are really good placeholders when developing a rudimentary client for MMORF; in fact, if you've read that project's blog, you'll know that UO is a large inspiration for me, and one of the targets that MMORF aims for: the ability to replicate that environment. That will include handling a map like UO's, and thus pulling out that map data -- for test purposes only! -- will be necessary.

As part of this C# education, I also plan on taking a look at the XNA development environment, which seems even to me to be odd, given that I own a PS2, Wii, PS3 and PC, but no Xbox/Xbox360 nor a Zune. Of course, there are also runtimes for Windows, and XNA looks to be a good platform for pretty rapid development of some pretty indepth graphical clients. Of course, many will wonder why I don't use Unity instead, and I'm not really sure, except that perhaps it's getting TOO much attention lately, and I'd hate to jump aboard only because everyone else is. Then again, it might be so popular because it IS the better way to go. We'll see.


None of my previous incarnations of the UO asset grabber ever made it beyond my own harddrive, so here's for hoping that this iteration becomes something useable enough that I might actually post the code somewhere.