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Summer Moved On
July 25th, 2010
It's been one hellishly hot summer here in Finland. I mean, over 30 degrees celsius for weeks on end, with scarcely any rain. (That's around 90 degrees Fahrenheit for you barbaric non-metric people).
One of the things I've been involved with recently is this book thing. You see, sometime in the early 90's I ran a BBS, and at one point my father wrote a book, chapter by chapter, in it. It was a story he had written originally as a kid, but this rewrite was, naturally, quite a bit deeper and richer.
I stumbled upon the file in one of my old hard drives, and figured it would be a nice surprise to turn it into a real, dead-wood, physical book. I spent a few days with my wife poring over the text, fixing most glaring typos and grammar errors, did layout and printed a single copy on lulu.com.
This single copy showed that we had to do much wider margins for the book to be readable (the binding takes surprisingly much space from the page). I gave the book to my father who was rather stunned, and we agreed to do print several of them to be given to friends and family.
Of course when my brother heard of it, he wanted in on the project (I had not mentioned it earlier to make sure the surprise wasn't spoiled), and I was more than delighted to receive his input and cover design (seen in the picture).
The book itself is a mystery thriller kind of thing, starting with a plane crash with a lone survivor suffering from amnesia and a drive to figure out who he was. I'm biased, of course, but it's a real page-turner. It's got the kind of "truth" in its tone that Brenda Ueland is calling for in "If You Want to Write". And it's written in finnish, of course.
In other news, I turned Atanua's licensing upside down. Considering that I'd received approximately zero licensees in the past two years, I figured I might try something different. Now schools can get a free license by asking for one - so I might actually find out who's using it - and other people get the chance of paying for it.
Nothing from me to Assembly this year, I'm afraid. I have a few ideas, but absolutely no time. There's just way too many things fighting for the little free time I have - and several of them are much more far-reaching than a rushed demo or game project at this point would be.
It's also soon three months since my article appeared on Game Developer, so I can re-publish it on this site soonish. The whole process with GDM was a very interesting one; I recommend trying it out, if you get a chance. One of the things that really surprised me (in a positive way) was the contract - being in the IP business, I'm used to seeing contracts where you have to give up 37.5% of your soul just to do something simple, this was straight-forward and quite fair. The editorial process was very interesting, if rather rushed near the deadline (but what isn't?), and the resulting text is much better than what I write "naturally".
Finally, I turned 0x23. Yay.
Recent Search Terms, Summer'10 Edition
June 3rd, 2010
A fresh mammoth set of recent search terms for your enjoyment:
"bresenham line algorithm" "source code" open gl
If you're using OpenGL, which includes line primitives (ugly ones, granted), why are you looking into bressenham?
"fan for air, vivarium"
We use PC case fans. They're cheap and simple to use. Just plug in 12 volts.
"is graphics programming fun"
Beats analysing database access times, in my opinion. Although I guess that can be fun too.
"spherical heightmap"
Representing any map of a spherical object is tricky, heightmap or otherwise.
"tutorial, interpolate a simple animation"
Take position 1. Take position 2. Calculate delta (difference) between the two. Increment position 1 by a fraction of this delta until you reach position 2. That's it.
"why is putpixel(320+x,240-round(y),color) used in computer graphics"
I don't have any idea, really. I don't think you should. Instead, you should be drawing a bunch of pixels at once.
+animations +autodesk +flh
+animations +autodesk +flx
As far as I know, neither file formats are not in the wild. They are (supposedly) extended fli/flc files with 16 or 24bit color.
1 bit graphics programming in c
Do 8 pixels at once. It may get a bit tricky but it's doable.
1 point to start creating own mmorpg game
Don't.
1) write a program to change the working mode from text to graphics and plot a pixel.
2. how will you draw a circle with radius equal to 4 using midpoint circle drawing algorithm. find coordinates and fill table for the above calculations.
develop a java program that simulates a game in which the program tries to guess that the number user has thought off
show how the binary counter with parallel load can be made to operate as a divide-by-12 counter
why discard values. can you state why you threw out the negative value when you solved for x?
write a program on saving money and interest on bloodshed dev c++
bloodshed dev c program example on calculating the years of saving amount
Do your own homework.
64k demo mac
Use a small icon. =)
a thousand pardons affendi origin
I took it from hero's quest 2, don't know the actual origin.
aero will use the solsole mode
wat.
are demos still written in assembly
Sometimes. Rarely. On exotic (or legacy) platforms all the time. Also in some performance-critical places, as well as when doing size optimization.
atanua velleman does not work
And you didn't consider sending me a mail about it?
bachelor thesis display checkerboard vga controller
Doesn't sound like a much of a thesis to me.. more like a FPGA course project, and a simple one even then.
gta 4 how to make english language
Buy the English version?
how force win xp vesa framebuffer video mode
You don't. XP doesn't work that way. There's no access to the video BIOS the same way it was possible in DOS and win9x.
how is bit manipulation faster than arithmetic
Bits get toggled. Arithmetic needs to understand values. That's how I'd see it.
how to create mmorpg characters in html
...
how to draw a game screen without doing per-pixel stuff
Draw sprites instead, or something. Blit stuff. Draw textured rectangles.
how to draw cubes with bits missing
Alpha textures? Of course you'll get sorting issues, but you can solve those by first rendering backfaces and then the front ones.
how to get people to come to your mmo
Marketing.
how to make a good graphics on a game
Practise.
how to run terra nova: strike force centauri in 64-bit
how to stop the glass fogging vivarium
Increase airflow.
how to wait for vertical retrace in vesa mode
There was a VESA call for that, but in practise I used the VGA retrace registers, seemed to work everywhere.
i want to design my own mmo
What's stopping you? Just pick pen and paper and off you go. Implementing your design is a different matter..
movement of blood through cells using opengl source code
That's... quite specific.
parallax formula game programming
Scroll different layers at different speeds. A simple multiplier of the primary layer is enough.
sdl how to make gun crosshairs drift
Add some interpolated noise to it.
small example code on 'opengl' very small successfully compiled
Sadly, this depends on the platform.
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