Features:

• Lots of new models, check them out with the ModelViewer
• New sounds, very funny
• New camera controlling and better collision detection
• The fly (tm) ^^
• Lots more, just check it out.
• Almost 20 000 Rocket Commander played online games right now, Wow!
  

No more Rocket Commander mods for me now, if you want more: Write some yourself
I'm working on my Boo addin for VS now (in my free time, this blog is always about stuff I do on my free time, sorry can't tell you the ubersecret real projects yet ^^).

Btw: My polynapping attempt this weekend failed. I couldn't stay awake for more than 1-2 naps and had headaches after staying up too long. Have to try it again sometime in the future.

• Updates to the IronPython sample (very useful for me because of syntax highlighting stuff for my addin)
• Visual Studio Team System integration (yeah sure, like I'm will ever be able to affort VSTS)
• Domain Specific Language (DSL) Tools (sounds interessting)
• Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) (cool for office stuff, but not important for me)
• Reference samples for C# and C++ Editors, Version control integration, XML designer, and many others! (thats always good)

Why am I telling you this? Well, I'm going to continue my Boo Language plugin for Visual Studio I started earlier this year. I never had time to continue it, but now with the new VS SDK out I will give it another try.

Other news: Steve Pavlina blogs this month about stopping polynapping. Steve was one of the most known polynappers of our time, he was polynapping (sleeping only 2 hours per day) for almost 6 months. I was polynapping in february this year too, but because of many fairs and meetings I wasn't able to keep the schedule and switched to bi-phasic sleeping and after a while I was back to monophasic sleeping (just sleeping once per day). Steve Pavlina had similar reasons and said that he had problems with social events, you can't go to sleep every 4 hours in our society that easy.

I will give polynapping another try this weekend. I'm not expecting it to last, but maybe I will do it I month from time to time, just for the fun of it. It was also interessting to see the reactions from other people, when I tell them about polynapping.

I was on the CeBIT today and it was pretty interessting, I will be there the next couple of days too. I can be found either running around on the Microsoft booth in hall 4 or on our own booth in hall 27/C29 (esports and entertainment). At microsoft you might see the presentation about Coding4Fun.de and ClubSite4Fun and GameDev4Fun, which contains the Rocket Commander and Flower Commander too. I haven't finished the website for www.RocketCommander.com yet, but hopefully I will finish most of it this night.

Thanks to Polynapping I still have some extra time these days, but it isn't easy with the CeBIT and staying awake for longer than 10 hours most of the time. I usually sleep after the fair in the evening for 1.5 hours and before going to it again 1.5-3.0 hours. Also every 4 hours 20 minutes of sleep in the night. Most people ask me if I feel tired all day and here is the answer: No! I'm even more awake most of the time because I feel refreshed after napping or sleeping for a short while.

Back to the CeBIT: On the right you can also see a picture of me in the new Volkswagen car "Eos". Tomorrow I will make some more pictures.

I will post another blog entry later today when the new Rocket Commander website is finished.

First of all: Here is a new screenshot of Coop Commander. I've implemented laser effects for the ships and improved some of the effects. Today I will finish up the game physic and damage system and tomorrow some multiplayer code will hopefully bring this game to life. While it may not be realistic to release the game together with Rocket Commander, at least not in its final version, I still plan to finish most of the issues till thursday, when Rocket Commander is released. Maybe I will just release an alpha version and then go from there.

I also registered the domain Coop Commander today, maybe this will make me think more seriously about Coop Commander ^^ I will start coding the website when the game is released.

As some Arena Wars players have noticed the Arena Wars boards had a lot of troubles the last couple of month (lots of spam, hacks, etc.). I installed a fresh new shiny version of the boards and copied a spam-free-version (couple of months old) of the board over it. Updating to the newest sql, phpBB, etc. versions was a lot of work. Those open source guys just don't know how to make an easy installer. The most annoying part was php, which is incredible incompatible (versions 4 and 5). First the site worked, but the board didn't, then the board was updated and worked, but the site wasn't compatible to that again. After modifying a lot of php files finally I got it working, but php is no fun at all.

There are also new discussion boards for Rocket Commander and its Mods. Hopefully they will find some use since Microsoft isn't planing to implement any boards on its german Coding4Fun site, where Rocket Commander will be hosted.

Polynapping: What happend? Well, it went ok for 2-3 weeks and I overslept only a few times, but never more than 2-3 hours per day and max. 1-2 times per week. Well it happens, especially if you stay awake for too long. That can really mess up your polynapping sleeping schedule. Then last week I crashed after a party and slept for nearly 8 hours. Must have something to do with the huge amount of alcohol I drunk (again: not good for polynapping) ^^

Then I went for a biphasic sleeping pattern (2*1.5-3 hours of sleep per day) for a couple of days and that didn't work out. I slept monophasic (thats normal 7-8 hours of sleep) for few days and then decided this wednesday I had to go back to polyphasic sleep. More time, more fun and hell, I know what to expect now.

Next week will be very hard for me because of the CeBIT fair (exDream will be there on several booths, I will post some info about that next week). Sleeping somewhere else isn't an easy thing for me, I still have some troubles getting to sleep as it is. That is also the main reason polynapping over a long period of time wasn't succesful for most testers. It is hard to get to sleep every 4 hours. Not only physically, but especially socially.

The last nap I took (only 20 minutes) was incredible refreshing, maybe I sometimes sleep to long (30-40 minutes since I don't know if I fall asleep right away or stay awake for 10-15 more minutes). Steve Pavlina posts here that 20 Minutes worked best for him too and he also gives a lot of tips and information about polynapping. He even was interviewed by the NY Times. I guess he is currently the most famous polynapper.

I nearly forgot to mention that Frederic Schneider wrote a nice article about me on GamePorts (in german). It is about Rocket Commander and my current project Coop Commander. Check it out here: http://www.gameports.net/cms/Kommentare-zu_Der-Erfolg-eines-Deutschen_966.html

Today I started with the Multiplayer coding. I hope I can finish the Game Server by tomorrow. Usually this takes a couple of weeks (chat lobby, player management, game lobby, game server), but I will try to minimize the features and do it as quickly as possible (I still want Coop Commander to be finished in roufly 1 week). By the end of the week the game should be playable. Next week we plan some final balancing and finetuning of the effects and units.

The game will be released together with Rocket Commander in 2-3 weeks, stay tuned!

Polynapping: Little note to self: I worked way to much the last 2 days and missed a couple of naps and then was too excited to sleep sometimes. Then last night I overslept for 3 hours and can't even remember turning off the alarm clock. I guess I have to pay more attention keeping my polynapping schedule. Also working too much, like I do at the moment, isn't that good for polynapping, the body needs some rest. Relaxing in 1-2 phases is a good thing. I will report back next week how I'm doing with my Polynapping.

This week is the last one for my interns (little shoutout to Christoph Rienäcker and Enrico Cieslik) and we thought we could do something cool. My current projects are mostly finished. For example today I finished the 3ds max exporter and importer for my engine, now I hope I don't have to do c++ for a long time. Maybe next week I can teleport myself back to reality with some boo coding and finishing my Visual Studio Boo Language Extension ...

Since I have so much time every day (22 hours thanks to polynapping), it is time to do something. We plan to make another Mod called Coop Commander and it will be finished by the end of this week. Basically it is a multiplayer cooperative shoot'n'up with rpg elements. Kinda Diablo2 in Space ^^ I will post some screenshots from time to time. It uses the basic engine of Rocket Commander and will be freely available like the original game. This are the basic game principles: Similar to Rocket Commander you fly through the space and try to accomplish each mission. There are 6 different kind of enemy units in the game and you can choose from 3 units, which all get stronger over the time and have completly different abilities (rpg elements). The game will be balanced for up to 3-4 players. You can also play it with just 2 players, but it will be hard. Singleplayer is considered to be impossible, you have to meet with other players to be able to fight off all enemy unit types (each unit class has it weaknesses).

Obviously Coop Commander will not be able to compete with any AAA title, but we would like to see if this idea works out and maybe it is a lot of fun to play with your friends some challenging missions. Additional elements, more beta testing, more levels and enemies can be added later. I like the idea of finishing the game in 1 week, but it will be a lot of work (there is no effect system, no unit system and no multiplayer in Rocket Commander and that need to be added).

Polynapping, the second week: Nothing special to report. The last couple of days I slept regulary every 4 hours for 20-30 minutes (never more) and I'm very awake after few minutes when staying up. Going to bed has been easier too, but I still can't go to sleep immediatly (takes up to 5-10 minutes). Another strange thing is the fact I can't remember any dreams, no lucid dreams, no day dreams, nothing. Sometimes I feel like I have slept for several hours and then I look on the clock and it was just 25 minutes. I'm very awake at day and night and neither myself nor anyone else seem to notice anything different about me except the fact that I have go to sleep every 4 hours. But that is only annoying at work (sleeping there is hard because of noise, driving home and back is a pain in the ass).

Thanks for all the emails and concerns other people have with this. I'm not telling anyone to try this for yourself and I was not expecting for this to work. I just was curious and I think it is a very cool alternative sleeping pattern, especially if you are in need of time or want to experiment around. Maybe I will keep doing this for a couple of months and then switch to a biphasic sleep pattern and go back to polynapping from time to time. I'm not going to post much more about polynapping because I think most of the blogs I've posted last week cover all the interessting stuff and I agree with most of it.

Another nice update in the SDK are the Managed DirectX for .NET 2.0 samples, most .NET 1.1 samples are now converted and it really makes sense to start using MDX 2.0. The only VERY ANNOYING fact is still the missing help for MDX 2.0 and the Tutorials are not converted either. What the fuck? Seems like we have to find out everything with the Object Brower in Visual Studio again. Oh my god, does MS have no resources to get this together? This is the third MDX 2.0 beta already.

In my next polynapping phase I will try to convert the NormalMapCompressor to MDX 2.0 and post the results here if that works.

As a sidenote: Polynapping works fine for me. I overslept again on friday a bit. I was trying to sleep at work, but it was too loud and when I finally was sleeping I wasn't waking up to my alarm clock and noone wake me up ^^. Yesterday I was a little bit more tired than the days before, but today I feel better again. I can also fall asleep more quickly now. Strange thing is I remember nothing after sleeping and it feels much longer than 30 minutes when sleeping just 30 minutes (or less if it takes some minutes to fall asleep). Maybe the REM sleep is still deprived and will kick in tomorrow (then 1 week has passed).

So whats this about? As you can see on the right side instead of sleeping in one large block (7-8 hours), thats called monophasic sleep, polynappers only sleep every 4 hours for 20-30 minutes. This is called polyphasic sleep. The theory is basically that the body doesn't get any REM (rapid eye movement) sleep for the first week, which is important for dreaming and generally for refreshing the body. Then the human body adjusts to this schedule and instead of the normal sleep phases (4-5 times going through the sleep stages 1-5 including NREM and REM sleeping in 90 minute intervals, check out this link about that) the Stage 4 NREM and REM sleep phases will be started very soon after beginning to nap.

This technique is used by boat racers, astronauts in crises, by the military (training?) and some reasearchers and bloggers (a lot of self-testers like me). Most people attempting to try this out fail in the first days and only very few get to the first 2 weeks the body might need to adjust to the new schedule. For example the character Kramer in Seinfeld tried this in the Episode "The Friar's Club" and failed "on" his girlfriend ^^. As I'm writing this I'm already awake for 2 days and have 4 polynaps behind me (but I didn't really sleep in any of them except the last one a bit), lets see how long I can take this. I don't expect anything special out of this, maybe it sucks bad time and I will feel tired all the time even after the first 14 days. Maybe this is a cool technique for a while to be more productive and maybe I suck and won't even keep up with the schedule.

I will try to post every couple of days how this is going. I just finished my last project (video tutorials for Rocket Commander, they will come out in a month or so when microsoft starts their german coding4fun website) and got a little free time right now. I also wanted to finish the Boo Language Plugin for Visual Studio, which I started in the beginning of this year (but I never continued to work on it). There are also 1 million other things on my TODO list, so I should not get bored.

The main problem I have right now is simply getting some sleep. I go to bed at the scheduled times, but I couldn't really sleep because I'm not tired most of the time (even when awake for more than 30 hours), at least not tired enough to start sleeping right away. I bet this will change this night and I will get more tired from nap to nap and the hard part will become getting up again. I only have one simple alarm clock, I hope it doesn't fail on me (I should program something else to ring too).

Time to get some coding done. I will report in a couple of days how this works out ... greets fly out to all fellow polynappers and thanks for all your blogs and reports on the net, that was a lot of interessting text to read last weekend.

Btw: dyn.ee is down for 2 days right now (thats why this site might have been unreachable yesterday), which is really annoying because I have to route the IPs myself now. I hope they work again very soon, I don't want to switch to another service.

Here are a couple of more links for Polynapping:

• Steve Pavlina's Blog, he started 2005-10 with polynapping and is very successful with it.
• Wikipedia about Polyphasic Sleep
• Everything2.com, one of the first sites talking about this (early as 2000-2001)
• Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths, very critical article by Dr Piotr Wozniak
• Polynapping on traumwind.de
• Polynapping on betterthanyourboyfriend.com, a lot of articles
• Polynapping on estragon.org
• Blog by Chris Beams, he talks about technology and also about polynapping and tips
• Polynapping on placebo.serv.co.za
• Polynapping on solegoal.com, more info. He talks about getting examinated by doctors and the university.
• Nice little article by GlenRhodes.com about the 90 Minute Sleep Cycle we all use
• Polynapping on vicenthorn.com
• Interessting Sleep Research Article
• Photos of Peter Tripp, who stayed awake for 9 days in 1959