Ok, problem already.
I'm using VC# 2010, and I think it used 08/05... Should I convert, or just use an older version? I might have c# 08.... Wow, why can nothing work right?
It uses VS 2008. I haven't upgraded yet. If you can find C# 2008 (I'm not sure if they're still providing access to the free express edition, for instance), that would be preferred.
If they don't offer VS 2008 express anymore, I'll have to bit the bullet and upgrade. The thing with upgrading is that it has to modify all the project files so once you upgrade there's no going back. I'm fine with upgrading but then it's expensive for me to get the real version. I could use the express version, (which I use for my laptop, I believe), but I use Professional edition at work, and they're different enough that I hate switching between them.
Also, it's still a bit of a pipe dream that I'd like to get this on the XBox at some point. Presumably VS 2010 is compatible with XNA community developer blah blah but can someone check that?
Does elipse drawing need to be implemented? Although, will that use shaders? I hate shaders, mostly because I don't feel like learning HLSL at the moment. And, anything specific that needs to be done? Not really sure exactly what to do...
It's working with shaders right now. How much of API driven graphics programming/theory are you familiar with? Like, do you understand what a draw call is, or passes, and on like that? Do you understand the matrix math that converts from "world space" to "projection space" to "screen space"? The basic idea is that all the shapes are, as far as vertices go, just transformed quads, but then I draw on those quads in the pixel shader.
Working in the shader is definitely the most obvious thing needing doing. Most of the non-shader XNA work is done, since it just needs to populate data for the shader to process. If you look at Solid.fx, you might be surprised how much of it makes sense (it's heavily based in C). The shader draws ellipses and rectangles right now, and draws them antialiased by basically drawing 5 mostly overlapping versions of the shape, but jittered by a half pixel or so. It should (hopefully) make a bit of sense if you understand the basic linear algebra that graphics programming uses and C. If you don't really understand converting from world space to screen space, for instance, this would be tricky to play with, but otherwise it should be pretty easy to pick up the shader language (there's references online for HLSL).
This is the specific task I have in mind.
This, for instance, would be an ellipse shape with a white inside color and a black outside color. So it's just a matter of getting the pixel shader to change the color it samples instead of just changing the alpha.
...
I haven't thought about IM much. The basic program will probably have a client/server architecture so that graphics and UI are in one .exe (the client) and the actual simulation is another .exe (the server). With the idea being that you can run the server on a different computer from the client, maybe a computer you don't actually control. So people could upload bots to a central server farm, and then view the different instances from their computer.
And probably a unified build that combines them into a single binary, too.
But that's all down the road a ways.