DC member vitalyb writes to tell us about his new project:

"Hi everybody,

BugAid is a commercial product created by myself and a friend during the last months and I am proud to present it to my favorite internet community.

As you might know, from my previous submissions, I enjoy coding in C#. Debugging, however, always seemed a bit lacking to me.
To improve it I've created BugAid.

Features include(full list):

• Search and filter complex objects by their members and values
• Compare objects or track how a function changes your object
• Bring the important properties to the front
• Many more..

Please let me know if you have any question or comments, I'll be happy to give more information.

Thanks,
Vitaly Belman"

1. Newsletter Editorial

Hello dear readers, welcome to another edition of the DonationCoder newsletter -- filled with tales of terror and suspense.  Or rather, filled with links to some of the more interesting posts on the DC forum in the last month.

I'll keep things short this time, and just remind you that we are approaching the new year, which means our big NANY event.  Otherwise known as "New Apps for the New Year", NANY is where we encourage all coders who visit DonationCoder to release some new piece of freeware and announce it on our site on January 1st.  We encourage coders of all backgrounds and skill levels to participate.  There are no winners or losers, and everyone who participates gets a mug to commemorate the event.  If you're a coder -- just stop by the NANY section of our forum and say you want to participate.  If you know a coder who might be interested, let them know!  If you have an idea for a new small freeware tool, post your idea in the NANY 2012 section.  And no matter who you are, I hope you'll mark your calendars to drop by our site on New Year's Day and join us for a celebration of new software, and help us spread the word.

Shell Extension City (or ShellCity.net) has a long and wonderful history as a site that posted updates about cool freeware.  It was one of the best places to discover new cool freeware tools.

Way back in 2005 during the first days of DonationCoder, I wrote an email to bob, the guy who ran Shell Extension City and told him about the site -- and in the weeks/month/years that followed, Shell Extension City was always super supportive of DonationCoder software, and the mission of this site.

And I know that many of the early DC members learned about us from Shell Extension City -- and many of them donated -- which is a testament to the community that hung out at Shell Extension City.

Well, the ShellCity.net site has been quiet for a while now, but they've just posted an announcement that they are getting back to regular freeware updates.. Hurray!!! 

http://www.shellcity.net/

Short Story:

Pubslush. New "Not Self-Publishing" 10 page only submission crowdfunding service/charity.


Url: http://www.pubslush.com/

Their words:

While we are honored by the comparison­, Kickstarte­r is primarily a crowd funding platform. PUBSLUSH on the other hand is a publisher and non profit that uses crowd funding as the first step in the publicatio­n process to source new writing talent. Also, in regards to the comparison to self publishing­, PUBSLUSH is actually a full service publisher, and really the opposite of self publishing­: we never ask the author to pay any money, ever. Self publishing implies that an author can publish a book themself. With PUBSLUSH, our model requires 2,000 unique supporters­, other than the author, to publish a book. In this way, we use crowd sourcing to gauge a market, and to benefit the author by establishi­ng an audience before the book is even published. This also allows quality content to emerge organicall­y, which is one of the major issues of self publishing­. When a book is published through PUBSLUSH, it is sold in printed and digital form. We believe printed books and a presence in bookstores are still an important part of an author’s success.

Long time DonationCoder forum member db90h writes to us about his new utility:

RegMerge

This utility is in early alpha, so use with extreme caution. Do not use unless you have backed up your registry hives, and understand any and all risks are yours. This is an advanced utility, and as such, you can screw up your system if you don't know what you are doing. Please see full EULA when you run the program. There is no installer or shell integration set up, yet. 32-bit and 64-bit builds are separate at this time, though I will unify them into one distribution that runs the appropriate EXE.

RegMerge is a simply FREEWARE utility I developed a month or two ago, and have some updates pending for. I'll issue them as soon as I can. Mouser encouraged me to post about this program on this site. I do accept donationcoder credits here, as a supporter of this site.

DonationCoder support pledge: I have pledged to start issuing more freeware on this site when mouser gets the framework finished to facilitate the type of multi-author stuff I need, which isn't much now that I think about it -- but he has plans.

http://bitsum.com/regmerge.php

Here's what it does:

• Import REG files Safely - Instead of wondering what a REG file will change, or if it is even different than your current registry, you can now see what it will change and selectively apply portions of it, or all of it.
• Compare/Diff -You can export REG files (via RegEdit right-click), then compare your registry to that of another system, or an earlier state of your own system. By doing so you can determine likely causes of problems.
• Load up multiple REG files - Load up all the REG files you want at once

The original goal was to simply not have people blindly importing .REG files on the net in attempts to fix problems -- as you may cause more than you fix. However, it also has other uses, such as comparing your registry with that of another PC, or your own PC in an earlier state, to help diagnose problems.

Somebody gifted me a copy of Harvest: Massive Encounter back in July and I was so busy I forgot all about it. I just found it in my Steam Library a couple days ago and after looking into the details and remembering it was a Tower Defense game I decided to try it out for the first time.

Made by Oxeye Game Studio (with a programmer who also works with Mojang on Minecraft), Harvest: Massive Encounter is different from other TD games I've played... Here's how the game is different from other TD games I've played before:

First of all, aliens don't travel along a pre-defined path; they attack from all sides and can destroy any building. This changes the strategy compared to typical TDs where the only strategy is only building placement (to block off paths or create bottlenecks) or when/what to upgrade next. In fact, the more I think about it, I suppose that Harvest is more similar to a simplified RTS. You don't get money just from killing aliens. You need to build harvesters to grab the minerals sitting around on the surface of the planet. Also, there's another resource besides money you have to worry about: Power. Every building you build requires not only money to buy, but power to build and in most cases power needs to be regularly replenished (e.g. your harvester will power down after mining a few times and needs a recharge before it can harvest anymore).