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| Monday, July 31, 2006 |
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Another Lull Posted: 2:11:00 AM 0 comments |
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Well, my decision to stop doing projects has lasted for almost a month now. I have absolutely no energy to get back into it again. I have played with Cent a bit, but for the most part gaming has taken up my free time. I like when I can relax. I'm sure I'll get back to working on the projects again sometime. But for now, I'm doing okay. |
| Sunday, July 16, 2006 |
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Next phase of Cent is close Posted: 3:10:00 AM 0 comments |
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I have nearly finished the controller setup in Cent, fixing everything that I've found broke along the way. There's still some weird happenings, including a problem with joystick buttons not firing correctly, but that's something that the API needs to sort out, and the CrystalSpace people have been alerted to the problem. On my end, though, creating a controller setup is finally complete. I want to do a better job with the controller profile selection screen than I had originally planned on, so I'm going to take some time tomorrow to do that. Hopefully, by day's end, I'll be as far as filling out the macro section, which also needs an overhaul. I've decided to allow for twelve macros each (text and audio), but the page only allowed for eight, so that's a redesign right there. Shouldn't be too bad, though. Once I'm done with that, I can start working on the actual game engine, and hopefully get a chance to do some flying around. Before you know it, I'm going to need 3D models... Yikes. |
| Friday, July 14, 2006 |
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Cent Satisfaction Posted: 12:47:00 AM 0 comments |
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I decided over the past weekend that I was getting burnt out, so I decided to push back any work on projects until either Sunday or Monday. That means I get to work on what I want to in the meantime. So, my project of choice has been Cent. Since it has been so long since I worked in CrystalSpace, I had to redo the event handlers and sound system so that they conformed to the new APIs. After that, I decided to play around a bit and add a preloader, because I absolutely hated the skipping I'd get between game states. The preloader turned out nice, though there was a lot of C++ frustration along the way. I ended up having to completely change the way I handle headers, taking any out of the .h files and putting them all into .cpp files. I also found that because I was referencing enums from one class in another and vice versa, I actually had to move one out so that it would compile right. It seemed really bad at first, as I was getting hundreds of errors, but after a bit of looking around I finally got it working right. If I decide to continue working on Cent into the weekend, I'll actually be ready to hit new development, which will mean fixing the bits of the control screens I left out, and finishing up the settings editor. Where do I go from there? I'm not sure just yet, and I may have to sit down and actually chart the progress of the application from here on out, which should be interesting. Labels: Cent, Coding, Crystal Space, Gaming |
| Thursday, July 13, 2006 |
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Serious sites, or Loony links? Posted: 3:13:00 AM 0 comments |
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I almost thought about awarding a dumbass award to this guy, but I found these sites, run by the same guy, far more humorous than stupid. Labels: Silliness |
| Saturday, July 08, 2006 |
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Uhh... Posted: 3:30:00 AM 0 comments |
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Computer hardware can be strange sometimes. I went into a CD bootable program to do some diagnostics on my hard drive. Since those took a while, I went to sleep for some six hours or so. When I woke up and rebooted, the hard drive was back into UDMA mode. WTF? Labels: Hard Drives, Servers |
| Friday, July 07, 2006 |
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Making a "pt" Posted: 11:22:00 AM 0 comments |
Wandering through Yahoo!'s news today, I found an interesting article on a push for simpler spelling. The point that the author, Darlene Superville, was trying to get across was obviously lost on her.
SIMPLER spelling? Right. |
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My Inno Posted: 2:21:00 AM 0 comments |
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About the only thing that kept me sane during the punishing process of reinstalling all of my software was my birthday present that I've been meaning to talk about for a while: the Pioneer Inno. This cute little device not only picks up and records XM Satellite Radio, it also serves as an MP3 player. It's not only portable, it hooks up quite nicely to my Audigy, and I get a really strong terrestial signal at and around my apartment. This means when I'm weaving in and out of tall buildings, the signal never misses a beat. Another nice feature is its FM modulator, allowing me to listen on my car's radio. With my Inno, I've discovered a world of new music. Currently, I'm hooked on Squizz, which beats the crap out of the rock stations we have in Houston. It's uncensored, and it doesn't just play the top stuff. For example, right now I'm listening to Disturbed's cover of "Land of Confusion". Try to find that on the radio. I also can feed 512 MB of MP3's into it. Needless to say, it's got about a dozen instrumental versions of my music that I sing along to in the car from one place to the other. It may single-handedly get me back into composing again, as I've finished up a Reason version of "Let Me Be the One" just so I could get a decent version of it to sing to. Price? Just about $320 if you find a nice discount shop on the net. Oh, and tack on another $69 for the car kit... when it comes out. I can't wait for it myself, as I am annoyed as hell when I run the battery down at work and can't use it in the car. Also don't forget the XM monthly subscription. Bottom line? Well worth it. I thoroughly enjoy what I'm hearing, and haven't been this satisfied with a product since... well, since Google came out with its latest product. |
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One Week Later... Posted: 2:07:00 AM 0 comments |
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Wow. That was annoying. It took me the better part of the last week to get my system back into a usable condition with all of the software installed again. Some of the many things that went wrong: - The hard disks have gone from UDMA mode to PIO mode. This means that any disk activity is slow, and probably was the main cause as to why this took so long. No amount of registry hacking or device uninstallation has fixed it. - My Blackberry won't install the latest drivers from the Windows Update site. It says the drivers have been downloaded but when it goes to install them, it fails with no useful reason as to why. To resolve this, I had to download the Blackberry Desktop Manager from RIM's site. - Creative's drivers took about 5 attempts to install. I literally spent all day Sunday on this. It was a complete disaster, every time they looked installed, something would cause them to stop functioning. They have been stable for a few days, thankfully. I had to install more than 100 programs, but I took the opportunity to upgrade some key pieces of software, including a full Adobe suite, the latest MadTracker and Skale Tracker, the latest SoundForge (I had no idea Sony bought SoundForge), and a host of other upgrades. I'm afraid I'm still going to be spending much of the weekend with Windows trying to get my hard drives back into UDMA mode - or buying new SATA's. Hopefully that won't mean another complete reinstall, I don't think I can take another one. |
| Saturday, July 01, 2006 |
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Reinstallation Fun Posted: 12:48:00 AM 0 comments |
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I decided a while back that I was long overdue to reinstall Windows. Thusly, tonight I begin to take the plunge. Why not? A 4-day weekend, so in case anything goes wrong I will have lots of time to fix it. See you on the flip side. |