I’ll do it on monday!

Whoo! I finally got something on the screen — check it. — Of course this may be all I enter in.

Keith

Supposedly my posts will show up on the ld blog, i’m not sure if that is so, but we will see. I’m not promising i’ll do anything, but we shall see.

Keith

Actually I’m just kidding. I’ve decided to transfer control over to SteelGolem.

First attempt at a circle, using sine and cosine, and connect each “angle” with a line segment.

Not exactly smooth around some edges.

Right-click and “view image” to see it in it’s full size

Well I managed to learn a little bit about lines and bresenham’s line. If I tried to explain to you what I learned, I would probably sound foolish, suffice it to say, I know a little bit, and yet a bit still eludes me. My attempt at drawing lines with this is working, but it’s manifesting itself in odd ways.

Here’s a screenshot:

As always to see full size right click and select “view image” or whatever in your equivalent browser.

Keith

quick update:
Here’s the new screenshot, apparently I didn’t have one thing swapped.

I decided to go back to school… no not a real school, you know the OLD school. I generally want to attempt to learn graphics programming, eventually leading up to building a 3d graphics engine. Yep you read that right, 3D. But that is a long time coming. Right now it’s back to basics.

With the help of Mr. Stephen Stair, I got a 32 bit buffer working in GDI. This is just to get to the screen, later on all of this should be portable to other api’s and platforms, as it’s going to be all software. Then now that I can write pixels into it, i created some functions to work with a video buffer for a 640×480 window/screen. By create a palette that has 3 seperate r,g,b elements, all I need to do is to reference the color index in the 8-bit buffer, which is then copied to the 32bit buffer. Now all I need to do is use the 8 bit buffer as I would have in dos. Bingo! instant 8 bit palletized graphics.

Here’s a screenshot of it in action. This represents each of the 256 colors in my default palette. I created the palette in code. The only thing that’s really off to me is the “brown” colors (at the bottom), they look more like some screwed up flesh tones. As straight brown is sort of tough to get correct, at least for me. In any case this will do as I progress.

While you may not really care, to see it at it’s full size right click and select view image. (I’m using firefox, so it may be different in other browsers).

Keith

I’m not talking about Wagons Ho this time.

I’m talking about my irc channel #GameDevelopers on starchat. I’m thinking of turning the channel over to someone else so I don’t have to deal with it anymore. See I have some rules, one of which is to keep the chat down to a G-rating. (For those not used to the U.S. moving rating system, it generally means General admittance or General audience. In other words all ages.) Granted most of us that are in there are adults. Granted sometimes people slip up because they talk how they talk. My ears (or eyes in this case) may not burn if someone says the F-word in channel but I’m trying to run a clean channel that anyone can come into without being offended (too much).

This post isn’t really about swearing though. In fact I try to be lenient when I can, and not to make a big deal. But it’s really frustrating when you’re trying to do what you think is right and people kind of throw it in your face. There was a small thing during chat today, where someone was responding to something in what seemed like an angry way, although I think he was being sarcastic. He said some things that were, shall we say, less than nice. I admonished said individual in an off hand way. Now it wasn’t a big deal at all. We’re all adults, he was either venting or was just jesting, and it doesn’t bother me that much when someone slips up every now and again.

What really bothered me was the fact that some people in the channel felt like making fun of the fact that I’m trying to keep it clean. Also the fact that some people seem to think certain language is not a big deal and that they can just say it if they want, and like I shouldn’t be bothered because they don’t think it’s a big deal. Excuse me for pushing my morals on you. When in fact I started the channel to get away from other channels that had become obscene. I never force anyone to my rules, heck, sometimes I don’t even direct them to the rules. I just hope that they’re mature enough to keep the conversation mature. Lest you forget, this post, again, is not about foul language.

It’s about respect. It bothers me that people don’t respect me enough to either keep to the rules, or at the very least, make it out to not be a big deal instead of laughing at me or challenging me. I’m not going to go around and tell people they must respect me, as if I’m anything special or whatever. I’m talking about the respect of friends and colleagues. The kind that like you well enough to say “Hey, even though I don’t agree with your morals, I like you enough to be respectful when I’m talking to you or around you.”

I don’t force anyone to come into the channel. I don’t force anyone to stay on topic. I try to be nice to anyone who wants to chat. It’s a free planet, you don’t have to come in and you don’t have to talk to me. You can choose to disobey the rules or not. I also don’t have to stand to ridicule. It’s hard enough to try (note I said try) to be morally responsible person in an irresponsible world when people don’t take you seriously. I’m a sinner like everyone, but I do try to keep a semblance of morality.

Because of that I’m probably going to end up transferring the channel to someone else. Then you can talk how you please, and even make fun of me if you want because then it’s not my channel anymore it’s someone else’s. In that case if I don’t like it I can stop coming in.

I would like to apologize. I’m sorry if I seem like a jerk to everybody just because I prefer not to see the F-word plastered on my screen. I’m sorry I was trying to make a small little corner of cyberspace enjoyable for people to chat in. I’m sorry I was trying to help people in developing their own projects or to help them if they didn’t know what to do. (Even if I don’t really know what I’m doing myself, I at least try to be courteous. If someone asks a question I never curtly tell them to google it. If someone is a newbie, I don’t try to ridicule the mmorpg they want to make. Or if someone is stuck somewhere and they want some ideas to spark something I’m always there to try my best — but I’m now sorry for doing all of that, too).

If you think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, I probably am. I’m not usually emotional, at least I don’t think I am (if I am too emotional most of the time let me know and I’ll try to curb it). I didn’t want this blog to be a dumpsite for my opinions, or my political, or religious views. The blog is for my progress, it’s to help me document my progress on various projects. It’s not even for people to necessarily read. (That is, it’s freely readable, but I don’t go around trying to blow my own horn). But this is the way I feel.

In short if I can’t handle people acting adversely towards me, I probably shouldn’t be running an irc channel.

Keith

Actually technically it’s thursday on the west coast, however it’s only 10 minutes past midnight. Today was supposed to be drawing day, and i’m finding it more difficult to go all digital, especially when you have only 1 monitor and no money to pay for the good software.

I drew this by attempt to freeze a frame on a dvd, and using pixia to sketch. It was kind of tricky putting both on screen at the same time, and I had to switch to 1280×1024 to do it:

Click for full size.

Notice how crappy it is, and it isn’t because I couldn’t draw him. It’s because the tablet takes getting used to.

DrPetter also created a new version of Celsynth where he allowed me to save single frames. Kudo’s to him :-) — Here’s a sample:


Click for full size.

Not that great either, but at least it’s simpler. CelSynth is still my sketcher of choice.

Still trying to get used to my tablet, and still trying to figure out how to not press so hard as i’m drawing, like I do when i’m writing.

Tomorrow will be music day, and we’ll see if I can get any of that done.

Well actually all day today I was working out some bugs on a contract game I’m programming called Wagon’s Ho. It’s just about ready to go beta, and those were the last few kinks. My boss/client (I liked to refer to him as that because technically I’m an independent contractor, but he’s running the show, so he’s also my boss on this game), will probably test it out a bit more to make sure there are no glaring problems before going to actual beta testing.

I did manage however to clear a path to my keyboard and plug it in. The guitar is right beside it, so it won’t be any problem to get at it. Now i’m all setup, and tomorrow will be art again, only i’ll actually be doing some drawing.

I hope to get the interface started tomorrow on Enchanted Lands. I won’t say much but it will be using pie/radial menus. Will keep you updated when I have something working.

Anthony Salter’s god game Planitia is now at .73 (don’t let .70 fool you in the title). I just played it. That’s right! and I beat the pants off that red guy! It’s pretty fun the way it is, although now that I know one of the strategies it’s a bit easy, but that’s okay it’s still a work in progress. Looks like it’s off to a great start.

Columbus said the world was round, and I say eat this Columbus!

Anyhoo. I notice that once I won, the little guys no longer reproduce. And they don’t go forth across the earth. I guess this is what God felt like when all the guys were doing were just sitting around building a tower. I guess if these yahoos decide to build a tower I’m just going to have to give them all different languages! Haha… stay in one place will ya! Look I toiled for over 45 minutes making sure this land was flat for them so they could move their lazy butts across my planet without having to go up hill and down dale and look what they’re doing. They’re just standing there shining me on.

I guess I’ll just have to wait for a new version of Planitia to come out!

Keith