Not posted for a while, even though (or perhaps because) I've had a lot going on.
Firstly, all my exams are over, and I have only one bit of coursework left for my entire degree. Its a big one though, a full business plan with feasibility studies and everything :/ Not the most interesting stuff in the world to me, but its all thats standing between me and graduation.
Secondly, I have a job that I'm definitely going to be taking, as opposed to my first job offer that I wasn't too sure about. This time, its with a Mobile Phone application developer company based nearby, so I don't even have to move (which is a good thing, both for me and Anita). Its a 'bit' less in salary terms (almost half the salary :/) but the atmosphere seemed friendlier, its a lot less cost in living expenses to stay where we are and overall, it just seemed like the nicer offer. Anita isn't exactly thrilled, as it is a huge drop in pay, but I think she understands.
Finally, I'm finally getting back into playing games more :D I had a bit of a dry spell in terms of computer games (I was only playing mahjong and freecell... they seemed the most interesting for a while), but I'm coming out of it and wanting to play more and more. At this rate, I may even be able to get up to my old level of skill at games like UT, and then I won't be embarrassed to play it online again :D Will just have to wait and see though.
Well, thats my life updated in not very much time. I guess less happened than I thought, either that or my life is boring enough that all that seemed like a lot :) Expect a couple more posts soon as I complain about my coursework though ;)
Friday, May 4, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
My first taste of Ostrich
Had quite a nice meal this evening. My sister came up for a visit on her way up to newcastle and her, her new boyfriend and my aunt and uncle that live close by took me and anita out for a meal at a nice chinese restaurant. Very nice food all the way through. As we were leaving, my uncle looks at the menu and announces that one of the starters was ostrich meat. Kind of surprising, but the meat was quite tasty :) Slightly like beef according to Anita.
So, my first taste of ostrich.
So, my first taste of ostrich.
SOGL Update 1
Well, after a couple of days of thinking and coding, SOGL has gotten another stage towards being something useful. This latest improvement is to have a decent input system, built to be included into the Event system programmatically using boost function pointers. As such, my input system can exist entirely independently of SDL and pretty much any other part of the system. All that is required to drop it into another application is for that application to have some way of updating the state of the components. I think this is pretty good for an input system :) I will just have to see later on if it can cope with a heavy input load though.
The other nice thing about the input system is that it lets you register actions, assign keys and button presses to them (either 2 keys, 2 mouse buttons or a combination at the moment) and then query the status of the action, which will perform the necessary checks on its assigned keys. This will allow me to write a keymap config file later, arong with a loader for it, and have a configurable key configuration. I have also steered away from making the EventPump class or any of the input classes singletons, which will allow for seperate input configurations at different points in the program simply by changing which event loop or action manager is active.
The next stage is to start wrapping the OpenGL calls into either classes with some state (such as for textures) or simply overloaded function calls. Once this is done, I can start showing off some examples next to the code producing it. Expect screenshots in a week or so ;)
The other nice thing about the input system is that it lets you register actions, assign keys and button presses to them (either 2 keys, 2 mouse buttons or a combination at the moment) and then query the status of the action, which will perform the necessary checks on its assigned keys. This will allow me to write a keymap config file later, arong with a loader for it, and have a configurable key configuration. I have also steered away from making the EventPump class or any of the input classes singletons, which will allow for seperate input configurations at different points in the program simply by changing which event loop or action manager is active.
The next stage is to start wrapping the OpenGL calls into either classes with some state (such as for textures) or simply overloaded function calls. Once this is done, I can start showing off some examples next to the code producing it. Expect screenshots in a week or so ;)
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Current Project - SOGL
Well, I'm finally kicking myself into actually doing some game development work, and I'm starting with a framework that I can use to ease my way into larger projects. I'm building the library around SDL and OpenGL and I am currently calling it SOGL (soggle) :) My current plans (probably slightly ambitious, but we will see) are to have a more polymorphic and easier syntax for OpenGL and SDL, with some callbacks for events to make an initial project setup easier with almost no boilerplate code.
I also intend to make some classes around OpenGL style objects for certain things that are almost always done in the same way, such as textures and shaders. The intention with these is to ease the code required to set them up and run them, and also some small scale optimisations internally so that requests to change textures are only carried out if the texture isn't currently active and so on :)
There is also some vague idea in my head about some nicer maths objects and classes that I can integrate into the various areas, such as vectors and matrices that can be more easily used to shift between the more efficient opengl vector commands and a nice, object oriented approach to these ideas. This may be replaced with another open source package.
Anyway, my current status is that I have a window class that can create a window, and an event pump that can take SDL events and pass them out to various callback functions as long as they are defined. My next stage is to create a nicer interface to check keys and possibly to generate a system to assign named actions to keys and key combinations.
My ultimate aim is to build an extra layer of abstraction on top of SDL and OpenGL that will allow me to not end up worrying about the mechanics of how they are doing things. I'm doing this myself rather than using an existing framework is because I feel like it :) If I get the code into a decent state then I will probably release it to anyone who is interested as well, but currently this is not really an objective. I will be building some examples and little games as and when I can though, and hopefully they will be easy to understand.
I also intend to make some classes around OpenGL style objects for certain things that are almost always done in the same way, such as textures and shaders. The intention with these is to ease the code required to set them up and run them, and also some small scale optimisations internally so that requests to change textures are only carried out if the texture isn't currently active and so on :)
There is also some vague idea in my head about some nicer maths objects and classes that I can integrate into the various areas, such as vectors and matrices that can be more easily used to shift between the more efficient opengl vector commands and a nice, object oriented approach to these ideas. This may be replaced with another open source package.
Anyway, my current status is that I have a window class that can create a window, and an event pump that can take SDL events and pass them out to various callback functions as long as they are defined. My next stage is to create a nicer interface to check keys and possibly to generate a system to assign named actions to keys and key combinations.
My ultimate aim is to build an extra layer of abstraction on top of SDL and OpenGL that will allow me to not end up worrying about the mechanics of how they are doing things. I'm doing this myself rather than using an existing framework is because I feel like it :) If I get the code into a decent state then I will probably release it to anyone who is interested as well, but currently this is not really an objective. I will be building some examples and little games as and when I can though, and hopefully they will be easy to understand.
Friday, February 23, 2007
First Semester Results
Results came out today for my exams from just after christmas. Overall, I did okish, with an overall mark of 54.8% (or 2.2 standard). With my other degree marks in (from 2nd and third years) this goes up to just over 58%, and I need an average of 63% for the rest of the year to get a 2.1 mark overall.
So, while I can wish that the results were better, I can still realistically get a 2.1 degree.
In other news, I've almost finished my last 2 modules, and they are both starting to pile the work on :( The next week is going to be exhausting as I need to create a bliki system as part of a group coursework for one module and prepare a group presentation with a different group for my other module.
After that, its just 1 piece of coursework and 1 exam though, and thats almost all my uni work done forever :D
So, while I can wish that the results were better, I can still realistically get a 2.1 degree.
In other news, I've almost finished my last 2 modules, and they are both starting to pile the work on :( The next week is going to be exhausting as I need to create a bliki system as part of a group coursework for one module and prepare a group presentation with a different group for my other module.
After that, its just 1 piece of coursework and 1 exam though, and thats almost all my uni work done forever :D
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Post Birthday
Well, my birthday is now over and done with. The day was pretty good, as me and Anita got in a load of nice snack foods, and lazed around eating and watching things :) My recieved gifts were:
Some better smart/formal clothes from my mum (I've had them since christmas time, but they were a birthday present)
The next book in the Sword of Truth Series (book 4 if anyone is interested :P) from my sister
Some small items from my mum for on the day... including some nice smelling air fresheners that smell like sweets... having to resist eating them :)
Money from: My Dad, my aunts, anitas gran, my gran.
So, not too bad, although having only had it for a day, I've already almost finished my book... I have a book token from an online survey that I'm going to use to get the next one soon though... unless my brother sends it as his gift...
Next thing to come will be me complaining about coursework deadlines I think :) Oh, and possibly links to various rails stuff I am using to learn in order to do the coursework for Interactive Systems Design
Some better smart/formal clothes from my mum (I've had them since christmas time, but they were a birthday present)
The next book in the Sword of Truth Series (book 4 if anyone is interested :P) from my sister
Some small items from my mum for on the day... including some nice smelling air fresheners that smell like sweets... having to resist eating them :)
Money from: My Dad, my aunts, anitas gran, my gran.
So, not too bad, although having only had it for a day, I've already almost finished my book... I have a book token from an online survey that I'm going to use to get the next one soon though... unless my brother sends it as his gift...
Next thing to come will be me complaining about coursework deadlines I think :) Oh, and possibly links to various rails stuff I am using to learn in order to do the coursework for Interactive Systems Design
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Birthday Time
Its coming up to that time of year where I will get another year older. I think I'm just gonna stay in and relax on the day with Anita this year as I
a) have no money (and neither does she) and
b) I'm starting to lose sight of why I wanted to drink in the first place
So, its going to be a nice quiet day relaxing with my fiance, playing Guitar Hero and probably watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer :)
And so it begins, my decline into maturity. Farewell youth, it was nice knowing you... and I really shouldn't be feeling this way at only 22 :(
a) have no money (and neither does she) and
b) I'm starting to lose sight of why I wanted to drink in the first place
So, its going to be a nice quiet day relaxing with my fiance, playing Guitar Hero and probably watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer :)
And so it begins, my decline into maturity. Farewell youth, it was nice knowing you... and I really shouldn't be feeling this way at only 22 :(
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