Day 39: Documentation, Installing AR on a new machine

AR

Finished off the instructions for the 123D Machine operator.

Also installed a new Virtual Machine on Donald in order to test what software is required to install the AR on a new machine. We may want to run LowryDemo or ExportJPEGs on a new machine (other than Donald/Walter/Katy) in future, and therefore would need to know exactly what is required to get them to run. Ideally you wouldn't want to install the full Visual C# Express 2010 developer package!

All you need to run the programs on a PC with everything (i.e. all the Visual Studio and XNA dev stuff) installed is the bin folder, the data folder (not models or textures though, just shaders and fonts), and the dlls folder.

I copied these to the new clean virtual machine, and started testing.

First run of ExportJPEGs: force close, requires .net 4.5
Installed .net 4.5

Second run: force close no meaningful error
Installed Visual Studio 64bit redistributable package

Third run: force close no meaningful error
Installed VS 2010 C# express, and Service Pack 1. Intend to open the project in VS and run a debug to see why it isn't working, then we can determine which runtimes we need.

Can't open project with VS 2010, apparently the contentproj file is not supported by this version of VS.
Now I'm running through hundreds of Windows Updates to update VS to the latest version.

Sound

Toby refreshed the idea of incorporating more sound into the AR - because at the moment it's a bit lifeless. I was looking into it previously, but it got overshadowed first by porting the code to XNA 4.0, and then after that by Animation13, and then straight after that I jumped into automation and working on sound always seemed to get pushed aside. But no longer!

So, some interactive sound would definitely liven up the program. For example boots on gravel when the man walks about, crackling fire and a spaceship engine sound with the ship flying through the loop demo. Horrible creepy insect sounds when the ant shows up. Strange eery music when we get the heads up?

The new sound features in the new Goblin 4.1 should make this process far more fun than it was in the old version.