13-April-2008
It's been a while, snowed under by college work here :(
However, I've been doing lots more XNA stuff too, started making a procedural landscape generator for a strategy game - and that was getting on well before I realised I was simply building a copy of all other strategy games.
So, I abandoned that project and started making a universe generator instead, at the moment it's simulating one single solar system, with planets and asteroids, all with almost realistic gravity (not actually, I've made some modifications for ease of use and computational cost)
05-April-2008
I started implimenting an idea I had for a strategy game the other day, it's a bit of a weird idea but it seems to be quite a cool game from a quick little test I made a while ago. Anyway, I need to learn some more XNA before I can build this efficiently - so in the meantime I've started investigating procedural landscape generation :)
30-March-2008
Well not much really, been on holiday forever it seems. I've developed a random interest in writing a webcrawler in C#, which has led me to regular expressions and a whole host of interesting stuff :)
08-March-2008
I've been messing with metaballs recently, they're fun :D
They're also very useful, I'm going to test out a shader with toms engine on Monday for rendering metaballs, once I have that working I'm gonna make a metaball manager then can do affects such as fire and water etc
23-February-2008
I found this little app that shows traffic to the site, it's nice to see a steady increase since I created the blog until today :D18-January-2008
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Ok, so I admit I need to update my blog a little more often ;)
Anyway, some stuff is happening with game programming at the moment, actually quite a lot since last post.
So, I've pretty much totally learnt C# and OOP and all that jazz and I've steamed on with my AI engine, in fact it's finished - and now I'm bored because I have nothing to program :/
Also, Tom has made a great XNA 2D engine, so we're going to make toast in this, and because I know C# this will be a bit more of a collaborative effort than last time, and because it's in 2D the whole thing won't fall apart half way as we try to make a 3D engine pretend to be 2D.
Anyway, what else... Hmm.
Ok, so we need content for toast, see Toms engine has some awesome handling for animating sprites from sprite sheets and stuff; and while this is really cool, it means some poor sod has to make all the animations for all the different toast characters, guess who....
...actually you're wrong, not me - aha gotcha there! Actually Mark (see the right hand panel for his blog) is going to take all the toast images I made (I can do images, but animating themis just too much like hard work) and animate them for idle animations, blink animations, death animations and all that stuff. So that's cool :D
15-December-2007
Wow, the entire of November without posting, sorry guys :(
anyway, what has happened?
Well, I properly learnt C#, so I'm working on an OOP AI engine, which is cool :D
Also, I got Gmod, go get it now! it's awesome - spacebuild rocks!
28-October-2007
Well, it's isn't the 23rd, but nevermind ;)
Anyway, the main news is that me and Tom are gonna make a strategy game! with XNA obviously :D
22nd-October-2007
I suddenly realised (at 23:29) that I haven't posted here for ages.
So I'll endeavour to post a big proper update about what's going on tomorrow. When I'm not liable to collapse into unconsciousness on the keyboard.
Talking of keyboard I want a Logitech G11, lovely keyboard :D
19th-September-2007
I've been thinking about what game to make after toast for a few days, and I've been wanting to make a strategy game - but I wasn't going to suggest that to Tom because strategy games are so complex!
Anyway, he read my mind yesterday and said that he wanted to make a strategy game next!
So, it was pencils at midnight for me last night as I startyed designing a strategy game ;)
17th-September-2007
Well, I finally remembered to update!
So, I'm back off holiday now, into college work for A2 levels =D
Anyway, not much to say really, just that TF2 beta hasn't opened yet :( I've been waiting since I came home from college for it to open ><
Also, maelstrom sucks :(
29-August-2007
Yay, less than a month since the last update ;)
Anyway, some of you may have noticed a problem with this page - it's quite short :p
On the google page creator thingy it goes all the way back to my first blog post on the 17th september 2006. In reality it dosen't go down nearly as far ><
Anyway, that's up to google to fix that.
So, what've I been doing? Well I'm on holiday at the moment, so not much! Tom is away, and since he both knows C# better than me and he knows the engine better than me Toast work is on a go slow. However I did make a corrupt pirate toast and corrupt ninja toast image ;)
Also, I bought maelstrom :D
12-August-2007
My god! one month since my last update! this is terrible :p
Ok, so what's happened since then? Err, well I'm on holiday from college now, so it's programming galore before college is back; me and Tom are using our XNA graphics engine to make a platformer game called "Toast" ;)
Also, we were on holiday in Devon last week. Thatwas awesome, I truly recommend Devon (in a place called AstroAdevetures) if you like astronomy - we had the most *awesome* clear skies ever.
12-July-2007
Hmm, once again I'm sorry for not posting in my blog for ages :(
Nothing much has been going on recently, just a couple of interesting songs from lemon demon:
Hope you like them :D
02-July-2007
Well, I'm ashamed not to have posted anything in my blog for so long; in fact to be honest the only reason I remembered to post today was because a reader reminded me (you know who you are, thanks).
Anyway, what's happened since 11th June....
Well, it was my birthday on the 22nd of June, not the best birthday ever - I had college, with four hours of boring free and nothing to do; oh the fun ¬¬
What else...?
Uh, not much really, some big personal stuff has been happening but it's stuff I'd rather not broadcast, so you're just gonna have to wonder ;)
Oh, and I've decided that I'm going to use mine and Toms' XNA graphics engine to build a real time fluids simulator.
11-June-2007
Had those two exams, they weren't too bad.
Anyway, I'm really here to talk about PMOG, an awesome concept for an MMO, it parses what you browse and then gives you XP for it etc. I think that actually the coolest thing besides turning all my web browsing into a game is that there are portals, so if I'm on a site which I want to link to another site I can make a portal which leads there - other players of the pmog can see the portal and follow it if they wish. Anyway, I'll link every time I type the letters pmog and here is my profiley thingy:
04-June-2007
Last two exams coming up this week! :o
Anyway, I'll be revising for those... soon. ¬¬
Actually, tom got back from A holiday in Jersey today, so he's coming over in a while to talk about our various different bits of programing. I've got some shaders to give him, he's got a graphics engine he's been messing with, I've got a graphics engine I've been messing with, he's got his physics engine. And none of it talks to any other part :P
26-May-2007
Sorry, I haven't been here for a while because of exams and stuff, however in my study leave I've got back to graphics and shader programming. So here is a screen shot of a weird little space fighter thing I made, rendered with my shaders :D
19-May-2007
Howdy again, just a quick little screensaver for you guys. I was developing a vertex collision algorithm and once it was working I thought I may as well turn it into my own custom built screensaver - and I thought someone out there might like it so now I'm posting it here.
18-May-2007 10 Minutes later
Me again :D
Just quickly, here is that mirror for the subversion demo, it's cool so watch it :D
18-May-2007
Ok, a little less technical today ;)
First off I'm just uploading the latest video of subversion to google video, so all the people who can't view it because introversion uses some weird format can view it @ google video (<3 google).
Also, I know this is ancient but I found the Hackers Manifesto the other day and I have to post it, because it's all so true. The other thing is the most addictive song ever! The Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny.
14-May-2007
Ok, I said I might release the file format, so here she is:
angle,distance,angle2,distance2:...:
it's quite complex so pay attention now. Each bit bounded by ":" is a single vertex in the object (obviously the program is all vertex graphics). Each vertex is defined from a central point, so here is how I recommend you do it first time:
1) Open paint, and draw a single line at any old angle, also draw a dot at any old place
2) Open notepad
3) Now here is the hard bit, the dot is the centre of your object (it's where the bounding circle is taken from for you programmers), and the line is defined as two end points. So we need to know the location of those two lines. Now draw a vertical line from your centre to the end of your line, and another line from the centre to the other end of your line, now erase the original line. Estimate the angle from vertical to one of the new lines, and estimate the length in pixels (angles in degrees), now put this data in notepad in the format above.
4) preserve a copy of the real asteroids.txt somewhere, now save your file as asteroids.txt and your asteroid should be that single line (or your ship if you name it ship.txt)
If you look closely at asteroid.txt (the real one this time) you'll see what I mean, you can see the blocks of four numbers which define the vertices/lines. Also, if you do go on to make cool shapes, don't forget that all lines need both endpoints, so even if two lines have the same endpoint you still need that data in there twice, and the other thing is that if you make something cool then
and I may feature it here, in fact I'm almost certain to feature it here, followed by celebrations that someone actually reads this ><
09-May-2007
Ok, typing this for the second time because google bugged ><
So, I've uploaded a slightly updated AsteroidsII game - this one has an explosion when you die, some slightly optimised code for drawing ships and an FPS counter in the titlebar. Please send me feedback guys - I'd love to hear your suggestions for the game or for future games!
EDIT:: also, I may release a custom shape maker so that everyone can make their own ships and asteroids. Technically it's doable just by opening the notepad file and editing by hand (which is what I did) but that's really hard :P
28-April-2007
Yay, so I got up early today and made a video of the first version of Toms' physics engine - looks good already and this version doesn't even have stuff like friction or even rotation!
Ok, can't find how to embed a Google video in the page, so I'll just link it instead. And thanks to Google for hosting btw ;)
27-April-2007
Life sucks, really badly at the moment :(
Man, how do you guys cope? :P Anyway, soon enough (I hope) I'll have a video of Toms UBAR PHYSICS ENGINE OF DOOM for you lot to enjoy, after that, following in a few days/weeks time will be a video of my graphics engien doing clever things ;)
23-April-2007
Btw, updated that code below, so that it's less crap now and actually works at the ending of the song. I also won an award for least useful program ever ;)
03-April-2007
cin << bottles
cout >> bottles "s green bottles standing on a wall"
while bottles > 0
{
cout >> bottles "s green bottles standing on a wall"
bottles = bottles - 1
cout >> "if one of them bottles should happen to fall"_ ",they'd be " bottles " green bottles standing on a wall"
}
cout >> "no more green bottles standing on a wall"
because I can :D
26-March-2007
Ok, adoring fans, all the millions of you - I want you to do something really hard; IGNORE THIS! I'm testing this for a friend. The idea is if I make a normal webpage and upload it to googlepages can I link to it normally, lets see:
23-March-2007
I've added a page for some random retro game clones, see the left hand bar or click here! If you like asteroid then visit there for my retro asteroid clone or keep visiting for news of my upcoming Space Invaders clone :D
22-March-2007
Well that sucked, forgot to publish - so take two.
Nothing much has ha[[ened, the only notable thing is that I started playing a game called The Corporate Machine again, it's a cool little business game by stardock. It isn't really supported by stardock anymore but you could nab a copy farily cheap off froogle and join our great little community! Then get owned by My great corporation! hehe
17-March-2007
Well, once again a stupidly large gap between posts, really got to stop doing that! Anyway, I have an excuse this time - some virus called gaelicum.A infect my computer so I had to reinstall windows etc. :(
06-March-2007
Ok, what can I say has happened? Ok, well looking below quite a lot:
More stuff on TheBigMod has been added.
Second, I've added BIDMAS finally! I don't have a copy handy so can't tell you the solution to that problem but I will be able to soon!!!
The DirectX engine, well... there's a story. I built it, it rotated cubes, lots of them - I could scale rotate and translate, dynamically assign textures and everything - progress was good! Then Tom pointed out that DirectX is basically obsolete for indie gamers due to XNA, so now my weeks of DirectX tutorials and programming are wasted as I not only learn XNA but also learn C#!
15-February-2007
My god, how long can I not post for? Ah well, what news?
Well, first off I've removed the EvanSoft link and added a placeholder link, because me and Tom (the guy I make games with) have decided that placeholder is the name we're going to work under.
Second, remember that maths parser I was going on about? well I've done that, haven't bothered with BIDMAS yet, I'll wait until tom notices before I do that, because I'm working on...
...The third thing, a DirectX graphics engine! Yes, Tom has been telling me to build this for ages and I finally got around to it. So now I'm working through some tutorial code basically rewriting it.
Fourth, my mod for darwinia (TheBigMod) is progressing nicely, I've packed up all the levels etc for part4 off to someone else for extra work while I Make part five and add...
The fifth thing, I've also added a link to TheBigMod page, because my previous host has left the planet.
26-January-2006
Hmm, just did the evil genius test, 63%!!
23-January-2007
Aha, beat the target this time! eh??
anyway, I think programming has got to be better than drugs ;)
I just finished getting decimals to work with my number parser, I just need Bodmas (the order of mathematical operations if anyone doesn't know) then I can tell you what:
(2+(3*(7/5))/17)
actually is! :D
22-January-2007
Dammit, Still managed to miss that once per week target! anyway, not much has happened really, I'm building a maths parser for our space game; basically you can type something like:
(2+(3*(7/5))/17)
and it will output an answer (I don't know the answer yet because I'm still building the damned thing!)
12-January-2007
Hmm, haven't updated this for a while :(
Anyway, we've stopped doing Wizards and mages for now, and we've started on a new game (*cough*Earth Realm Defence V*cough*). Which is fully 3D and directX etc, more details soon!
03-January-2007
Back at college :(
sucks, although at least I can get back to programming!
27-December-2006
Oh, and:
Woo! 77 views :D
27-December-2006
Hmm, so that was more than a week - sorry :(
anyway, with all that christmas rushing I had no chance for a post (I might add that I cheated with the christmas one and slotted that in today). Anyway, what to say? well I enjoyed christmas, got loads of good stuff - one of the best from a computers point of view is a great one about GAME PROGRAMMING IN VISUAL BASIC .NET USING DIRECTX!!! :O
So, I'll be reading that and coming back here to spout rubbish about matrix transformations in five dimensions ;)
25-December-2006
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
19-December-2006
hmm, well I said I'd post at least once a week... hmm, here's a post! :o
Oh, actually, I posted a link to testries blog, testrie is my new scripter for my darwinia mod TheBigMod.
12-December-2006
hey, well someones going to link to me so i'll link back ;)
he's the madman volunteering for the sprite work on Wizards and mages ;)
also, we need a new title - email me with clever ideas for an amazing name for the MMORPG!
04-December-2006
Ok, well I was fairly sure I'd posted since the 30th - obviously the site wasn't cool enough and that post decided to leave ;)
Anyway, I report good progress, Wizards and Mages client is being built by tom while I'm wrestling Direct play (feel free to email me any good direct play tutorials or just a total direct play engine)
30-November-2006
Well, me and my fellow developer are using this wonderful site to research DirectX use. We're going to use directplay and direct3d for the game - so hopefully it'll look and play pretty well ;)
27-November-2006
So, the MMORPG didn't actually fail - I just went through a phase of programming depression :P
So, we've started again - given up on giving up as it were ;)
Wish me luck as I go to learn DirectX direct draw.
22-November-2006
Ok, so my within the week thing didn't go so well :P
The MMORPG failed :( - because we didn't plan it from the start, so now we've stopped doing that for now and we're going to build a multiplayer (non MMO) RTS, based in space. But we have a cunning plan: we're going to build in loads of complex stuff (and plan it from the start) like DirectX etc, so that this RTS is like a learning ground for us to restart building Wizards and Mages as an MMO when we've learnt a bit more.
06-November-2006
phew, just within the week. Well it's been a busy one - the 3D engine sorta worked but I'm onto bigger and better things now ;)
I stared on a little semi text based adventure, called Wizards and Mages. However it was boring, so I started on a fully graphical one (no text based stuff) with all top down etc. Anyway - this has kind of transformed itself into an MMORPG; so now me and a friend of mine are building an MMORPG around college work :P
He's doing libraries and stuff, designing stats systems and some AI stuff too. If you're reading this Tom, thanks!
30-October-2006
Progress is good on my 3D engine! yay! I made the first version last night, encountered a load of horrible bugs which I got rid of - which has of course spawned a load more bugs :P
Anyway, I'll be taking more of a look at the code tonight, hopefully I can release some simple 3D demos to you within the next week or two :D
24-october-2006
me again! been away for 13days! :o. Ok so that's despicable! I'm going to put in some serious effort to put in *at least* weekly entries from now on. The pong game I mentioned is basically finished (four player multiplayer pong!), I'm working on a 3D graphics engine and I've just built an interpreter and Vm for BrainExplitive (my own version of BrainF*ck
11-October-2006
'tis me! sorry guys, been away for *ages* from here - I should post more often! Anyway, not much has really happened; a maths test was today but that was boring. I've made some additions to my universal client server application that I built on visual basic. That's pretty good, as it now actualy works :P, I'm working on making a game of multiplayer pong tennis.
30-September-2006
Me again! gosh, I should let others get a word in edgeways shouldn't I!
Anyway, I've now built something for the signatures section. Don't forget to email me if you see this site on:
And I found this cool google gadget to insert into the page:
30-September-2006
Oh My God defcon is amazing! It was released yesterday and the Introversion metaserver almost instantly collpased under the load! They have an average of 1500 games at any one time - so at least 3000 players! That's amazing for an indie game released only yesterday!
29-September-2006
Long time without posting here, and I apologise most humbly to my massive fan base :P
Anyway, defcon came out today, which is good since I've been playing the demo for a month as a beta (you know how *annoying* that is)?
And don't forget to mail me with feedback, abuse, random messages, jokes, or just say that you actually visited here!
23-September-2006
I've added a contact me link, so if you look at this site do so! I want to know if anyone is reading this! I mean seriously, just trandomly mail me and say you looked at the site!
23-September-2006
I've added a link to the Air Power Mod, this is a mod in development for supreme commander that I'm involved with.
23-September-2006
Oh dearie me, I've linked the Cyberspace mod page (it's unfinished) out of order! I've skipped over google (sorry). Don't worry though, all this stuff wil get done. In other news Richard Hammond has crashed (a bit late I know), which is a shame because he's a great guy - here's wishing him a full recovery.
21-september-2006
I'm just about to add the under construction links for EvanSoft from my college lunchtime, I'll probably make a start on the page - but it'll look rubbish for a while.
19-spetember-2006
I've also added the signatures page, because I just finished the Half-Life 2 and dystopia pages.
19-september-2006
Guess what i got in my email? The invite for the defcon launch party (because I'm a beta tester) - I've always wanted to go to a launch party with introversion and meet all the guys (and girls) but I can't go because it's a weekday :( I delcare a day of mourning!
In other news I'm going to do some work on half-life related pages now and I've added a under-construction link for the Cyberspace-mod (mysterious smile)
18-Spetember-2006
Well a friend of mine claims that you can put *some* html code in, but not all! but he dosen't know how :P anyway I asked google so maybe I'll be able to put some HTML soon (incidentally I wanted a page hit counter).
In other news I've added the uplink page and some proper review for the game.
17-September-2006
Yep, me again - twice in one day :o ! I just discovered that google pages aren't as good as you think! You can't put in HTML code that you've written; and that sucks!
17-September-2006
Well on reflection I decided this should be a kind of news bit, so here's what'll happen - I'll put news here, you read it, I put more news and never delete the old stuff. So ok, the page will be ridiculously long after a while but who cares? I guess I'd better start putting dates too.
Edit:: Btw the way, rereading this, that bit below was the original bit before I decided to put my newsy bloggy thingy here.
Welcome to the Home of Harlequin, my little place on the internet. This is going to be a bit of an eclectic site because, hey, I'm an eclectic guy... what shall I put first...
