Project[N]ReSource
Posted by Peter | Filed under Programming, Websites
Two fantabulous announcements in one. First of all, Project[N]ReSource has had a face-lift, and our new site is chock to the brim full of features and forums. We’re building a collection of info about our projects, various resources, book reviews, tutorials, links… and more… all relating to computer games and how to make them!
Also in the news is our very first game to be released! Hurrah! “Yokai Valley” is a simple strategy game set in ancient Japan. You have to take charge of a band of villagers, defending the valley from the evil invading Yokai.
Mosey on over to the site to check it out and try out our game and our forums:
http://www.projectnresource.com
;D
Support free software!
Posted by Peter | Filed under Software
An article on CodingHorror.com about some of the annoyances of software registration prompted me to have a look at one of the earlier articles on the site, about supporting the little guys when it comes to software (especially free software).
I have to say, I absolutely love FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). I know that there is absolutely a place for commercial and propietary software development (much free stuff is supported financially by commercial ventures). However, we must always remember that computing started out as a totally free and open platform, and it could not get to where it is today without the spirit of sharing and contribution. And likewise, it cannot move on without it. Business models may need to change, with Moodle and MySQL being a small and a large example of different ways of combining FOSS with business.
Having come reeling out of undergraduate studenthood debt last year, and shortly to be entering postgraduate financial strapped-ness, I can’t afford to fork out for software at the moment, so I can’t really donate much… but I still try to where possible.
I won’t ramble on any more for now… but I will remind you all to support the little guys in software. FOSS often accounts for some of the best software out there… and it can’t happen without support… so get supporting! 
Monster Bash
Posted by Peter | Filed under Games
Here’s a nifty little game to try out:
http://monster-bash.freeonlinegames.com/
It is yet another one of those two-click games: you click to start, and click again to whack some object as far as possible… and that’s the entire premise of it. It’s partly about the timing of your second click, and very heavily about sheer luck regarding what the object happens to land on/bounce off.
These kinds of games are usually quite entertaining in some way, but this one certainly takes the cake, as it’s in 3d, and remarkably good 3d for such a quick little Flash game. It’s a brilliantly animated and very entertaining little monster dude who batters skulls as far as he can. (It’s really not as morbid as that sounds!)
When I say 3d, I mean the graphics and some of the gameplay. Your initial 2 clicks are technically only a 1 dimensional affair (timing), but when the skull gets launched, the camera follows it across a 3d playing area (obviously, it could be an illusion, and in fact there is only a finite number of 2-dimensional paths through the 3d landscape… but I don’t see evidence of that… yet…)
Go and try out the game! It’s got a bit of sponsorship on it, but it’s not instrusive, and it does run a bit slow on my laptop (like everything these days). Well worth a try though!
What is your word worth?
Posted by Peter | Filed under Faith
I’m not talking about the Word (i.e. the Bible), but rather, your word. That is, when you say something, do you stick to it? Do you honour it? What is your word worth? Or to put it another way, does your “yes” actually mean “yes”? And does your “no” actually mean “no”? (James 5:12)
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Security not Obscurity
Posted by Peter | Filed under Websites
It warms the cockles of my web-development heart to read about ‘Keep You Safe‘, over at one of my favourite blogs, Linux.com. I won’t expound too much on KYS myself, except to say that it’s an online data-vault idea, so you can keep all your important data elsewhere (as a ‘disaster-recovery’ measure). I can see the benefit of this, as I use the open-source TrueCrypt software locally to store encrypted data, but perhaps I should consider an off-site storage medium also, just in case!
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Egoless Programming
Posted by Peter | Filed under Programming
There’s loads of useful advice out there about programming, and Linux.com has an article about articles about ‘programming commandments‘, if you see what I mean. Well worth having a skim through, but there’s one article they link to which particularly took my fancy… it’s the first one, the “10 Commandments of Egoless Programming“.
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Commenting your code
Posted by Peter | Filed under Programming
Any developer who was worked with me, or just seen my code, will know that I am practically obsessive-compulsive about quality. I hate leaving unreadable code, loose ends or potential bugs, so I flesh out and refine my algorithms all the time, and try to consider every eventuality in advance.
More than that, I comment my code as if my life depends on it. Seriously. And even moreso now that I commonly use phpdocumentor and Doxygen more. As such, I particularly appreciated an article on DevTopics.com, which lists “13 tips to comment your code“.
Programmers out there need to heed the advice and write better code! I know it’s normally not possible to make everything bullet-proof, and perhaps I try a little too hard in that regard, but massive chunks of unreadable code with no explanatory comments is not a good idea… no matter what your budget or schedule is like.
Even if you think you’re a good programmer, still check out those tips. Commenting your code is crucial, so go on! Just try it!
Back from holiday!
Posted by Peter | Filed under Sloodle
After a week off, I was back to work today. Had a big back-log of emails and instant messages to tend do, although surprisingly little forum activity over at Sloodle.org.
Still, plenty to be getting on with. Hoping to get Sloodle 0.3 out the door by the end of June… not pushing too hard to get it out, but enough so that my contact doesn’t end before or immediately after the release!
Currently, I’m still working object-orientating everything in the Sloodle PHP API. I’ve also got to think about making the in-world tools more easily translatable, although the basic code for that has been done… just need to edit the existing scripts to take advantage of it all!
And of course, there’s the usual providing support for people, remember that I’ve got an article about Sloodle to write for the (British) Mensa Computing SIG, and other general stuff.
Fun fun fun.
OS Upgrade
Posted by Peter | Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve just been having a fun day… backing up my entire VPS into 3 separate places: my official backup allocation (separate server provided by my hosting company), onto another separate server to which I have access, and also down onto my own machine. Backed-up in a different way for each one too, just to be sure.
After that was done, I upgraded the server OS from Fedora Core 4 (old, dusty, and a slightly broken OS image to boot!), up to Fedora Core 6 (w00t!).
When I first went with FC4, it was the best my host could offer. (The alternative was an almost unusably broken OpenSUSE 9.something). It had PHP 5.0.23 installed, which sucked beyond belief (seriously PHP guys, not a cool release), so I had to temporarily downgrade to PHP4. I then had to spend ages figuring my way MANUALLY round various RPM repositories, until I could find YUM (YellowDog Update Manager) which, for whatever reason, was not on the FC4 OS image! Gah.
After that bundle of joy, I had to then find appropriate repositories which were still actively hosting FC4 material for the x86_64 architecture. After days of hunting, I eventually found the life-saving (and excellently named) “Atomic Rocket Turtle”, which had what I needed, so I got my crusty FC4 updated to the latest and greatest in AMP technology. Woohoo!
Now that I’ve upgraded to FC6, I was worried that I’d have to do the whole thing ALLLLL over again. Thankfully, YUM is already installed, and Apache and MySQL are pretty-much up to date. PHP is only version 5.1, which ain’t great (although it’s workable)… but thankfully, people are still making RPM’s for FC6 x86_64.
The restoration process of all my data seeeeems OK so far… had to nip into the restoration ‘map’ file (thingy created by Plesk - my control panel software) to correct something it didn’t like (it was insistent on a shared IP instead of exclusive… not that it makes much different, since I’ve only got 1 address and I’m the only client!).
Now I’ve got to update Plesk and make sure the firewall is OK in Virtuozzo (server virtualization software). Last few times I tried on FC4, it complained of a misconfiguration… probably some buried setting gone wrong… and I had no idea how to fix. Hopefully it’s all good now.
The rise of casual gaming
Posted by Peter | Filed under Uncategorized
While sitting here playing Scrabble with my dad (and nearly winning!), I noticed that the BBC has an interesting article about the rise in casual gaming, and the often surprising statistics involved:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7301374.stm
Some of the statistics from Popcap are quite impressive. First is gender… 65% female! (I guess the male gamers are off playing something more hardcore). Then the age, with a surprising number over 30. (Once again, the young ‘uns are probably into less casual stuff). Perhaps most shocking of all is the hours racked up on Popcap alone… up 600 million per year! That’s the equivalent of nearly 70,000 people playing the games literally non-stop for the whole year. Insane!
Casual games are definitely here to stay, and worth money! Thankfully, there’s plenty of programmers and artists willing to make the stuff.
