So, Shamus Young, the lovely man whose PixelCity project this entire developer diary is inspired by a tribute to a total rip-off of, has linked to it from his blog. Which means my pages views for the last couple of days have totally exploded.

I left a comment on his blog, but I should perhaps address a couple of the same points here:

• I’m doing this because I can, and because I wanted something to do in the evenings that my wife is out of the house. I’m on a hiatus from World of Warcraft at the moment, so figured a programming project might be fun, and as an ex-games developer with a lingering interest in 3D graphics, PixelCity provided a perfect inspiration.
• I’m focusing far more on the technical aspects of my project than Shamus did for his – this is because, as I said above, this is a total rip-off of his original project, so all the interesting stuff about what looks right and making things look realistic has all already been written about. This isn’t a “How to draw a realistic city” diary – it’s a “How I did it in C#/XNA using more modern techniques” diary. As things progress, I might head in a different direction on some aspects (like the city planning entry) – I’ll discuss what I’m doing there in a bit more detail.
• The C#/XNA “ZOMG MS ARE TEH EVILS” thing is not something I’m interested in discussing. I just can’t get worked up about it, I’m afraid.
• I make no promises about how often this will update. It was pretty rapid at the start but, as with many things, it’s sort of tailed off a bit lately. It’s got sunny, I’ve been busy at work, my chilli plants need tending – I fully intend to carry this through to… well, some poorly-defined and probably still distant end-point, but I have no idea when that might be yet.
• I apologise for inconsistently switching between first-person singular (“I did [x]”) and first-person plural (“We need [x]”). I’m a programmer, not a writer.

I think that’s about it. Thanks for dropping by; I hope you enjoyed what you read.