64Digits

News and Opinion

Posted by Astryl on Jan. 22, 2014, 3:27 a.m.

Yesterday, I started using Rescuetime on RC's recommendation.

My productivity instantly increased, since it felt like I had a smug bastard standing behind my back watching my every move. So I was productive 75% of the time between 11AM and 6PM yesterday. Much code was written.

I was specifically beginning to work on my biggest project again: Exile. Because Exile needs to be 'finished'.

I moved over most of the assets to the newer engine:

Not that you can see that there… I'm just showing off my engine's ability for nice lighting. :3

Also found a couple of tracks I didn't use in the original Exile, that I'm definitely using now:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11942397/unused_track_1.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11942397/unused_track_2.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/11942397/unused_track_4.mp3

Not to mention that I have three new enemies with sprites sitting there from my last bit of 'work'.

Anyway, on the engine front… I integrated LUA yesterday, and spent two hours last night trying to figure out why my LUA scripts where terminating whenever I called an Engine function….

Turns out I derped by making a RegisterBindings() method, and forgetting to call it.

I've set the entire system up in such a way that you don't have to touch the game's main source code in order to add new entities to the game; you simple add two lines to the asset list:

# Test entity
SCRIPTEDENTITY 5 ./scripts/test/test_init.lua ./scripts/test/test_destroy.lua ./scripts/test/test_update.lua
# Editor entity.
EENT THING ./editor/eent_thing.png

Each entity has three scripts associated with it; the init, update and destroy scripts. They're pretty simple to figure out :P

About the blog title

I guess some of my blog could be treated as 'news', but I was actually wanting to show what Rescuetime thought of 64digits:

Apparently, we somehow classify as 'News and Opinion' while the GMC is somehow 'Software Development'. And time on 64digits is considered 'wasteful', while time on the GMC is considered 'productive'.

Fortunately for my OCD, I can change this. >:{

EDIT: Fix'd

Comments

Charlie Carlo 10 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

but haven't found a suitable alternative for their search engine yet.

I've heard good things about DuckDuckGo.

firestormx 10 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

Because they are collecting all of the data for the purposes of selling it on to third-parties interested in marketing and advertising.

If that is truly what they're doing (I haven't read their T&C/Privacy Policy - nor have I read 64D's), then perhaps you shouldn't use the free software. :P

Castypher 10 years, 10 months ago

Quote:

I try to boycott Google wherever possible but haven't found a suitable alternative for their search engine yet.

I'm sure Microsoft's autistic child Bing would be more than happy to have your company.

death 10 years, 10 months ago

i'm pretty sure 64D counts as Entertainment as well :P it's not adding to your production at all is it? Honestly all internet time is entertainment, even if you are studying something. Unless it's homework :P Other than that i think this service sounds pretty cool, although i doubt i would ever use it.

come on, show some more than the lighting for once :3 let's see some baddies getting brutally bashed by swords and spells. which reminds me, i'm going to be attempting to make a video of some Terror game play soon, any tips on how to record and edit game play footage into a nice little demonstration video?

Astryl 10 years, 10 months ago

I use Open Broadcaster Software to record video, and it's been working well for me.

And yeah, I've got to get around to adding the swords and spells back in. The assets are all there, but none of the code is.

Toast 10 years, 10 months ago

@firestormx Well, it's the price you pay for using the free software, that's my point in the first place. If you're really surprised that this is the way they're making money, you really need to be more cynical about free websites on the Internet.

@Kilin Bing's just a shittier version of the same thing

Pirate-rob 10 years, 10 months ago

Personally I don't care that machines are collecting info on me to advertise because as Toast said, we has ad block!

Also Toast, as I was installing the program it gave me the option to not have my web browsing tracked.

aeron 10 years, 10 months ago

Nice, integrating Lua.

Quote:

Each entity has three scripts associated with it; the init, update and destroy scripts. They're pretty simple to figure out :P

Bet you could combine these into one script with three functions for simplicity. You can call them from c++ easily after loading the script. This would allow them to share some locals between them, too. I'd reckon you could do something like:

local max_time, max_health = 2, 10

function init(self)
    self.health = 10
    self.timer = 0
end

function update(self, dt)
    self.timer += dt
    while self.timer > max_time do
        self.timer = self.timer - max_time
        if self.health < max_health then
            self.health = self.health + 1
        end
    end
end

function destroy(self) end

Of course, much more is possible with something like this.

firestormx 10 years, 10 months ago

Toast: That was exactly my point. :P

If they are selling your data, and you don't want them to do that, you could ask for a paid version or something.

Astryl 10 years, 10 months ago

@aeron: I was thinking of taking that approach… though I still need to figure out what Lua library function to call. Need to get the docs. :P

EDIT: Well that was simple. Set up the stack and lua_call().