Welcome! Here you'll find a selection of software and web projects I've worked on.
I mostly do web and .NET programming at present but I enjoy learning new things. I also like to take a dip in the perilous waters of C++ and assembly from time to time.
If you're interested in my work, feel free to drop me a line at steve@code[anti-spam; delete this bit]groove.co.uk, contact me on LinkedIn, or visit me on Github.
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Link
Uses: C#, ASP.NET, HTML 5, JavaScript, jQuery, MSSQL
CodeGroove is an online game builder designed for primary school children as a way of teaching them basic programming skills. It incorporates a specialised interpreted language, allowing the scripting of certain game elements.
The game engine and language interpreter are written in JavaScript, with some jQuery to enhance the front end. Editable graphics are possible using HTML 5's Canvas element and the Audio element allows for sound effects and music playback.
The back-end uses a C# ASP.NET web service and an MSSQL database.
CodeGroove was tremendous fun to write and proved popular with children at a local primary school. Being my first large-sized project, it taught me a lot about how to plan, structure, and test software.
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Uses: C#, Windows Forms
An application I wrote to teach myself C# and Windows Forms. It's a level editor for the ZX Spectrum game Earth Shaker.
The original 2012 version of this application was unfortunately lost in a hard drive crash. I rewrote it in 2014, this time using the MVC pattern, and I was pleasantly surprised at how much cleaner the MVC version was to the original.
The editor itself was fairly straightforward to write once I got a feel for creating custom controls. The hardest part was coming up with a modular reader/writer system to support the myriad Spectrum emulator formats available!
I have released Earth Shaker Editor into the Spectrum community for use by other fans of the game. During its development, I built up a handful of generic Spectrum-related classes which I hope to reuse in future projects.
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Uses: C#, ASP.NET, HTML 5, CSS 3, JavaScript, MSSQL
This was a website I created with the aim of giving teachers an online area where they could share classroom resources. Resources could be uploaded, tagged, commented on, rated, and searched.
This is the first site I ever created with ASP.NET. Unfortunately, a large part of the project was lost in a hard drive crash before it went live, although I managed to cobble together some of the remaining parts to get the screenshots opposite. Rest assured, I now back up religiously.
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Uses: C++, SDL
A little Tetris-style game I wrote to teach myself the OOP capabilities of C++.
Although it's a fairly simple game, it did present some interesting technical problems, such as handling the rotation of the pieces, checking whether pieces were overlapping, and removing completed lines.
The core of the system is a simple state machine that handles transitions between game states, and an event loop that actually the game, handling the timing and user input.
The game uses the SDL and SDL_mixer libraries for graphics and sound.
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