I see it's almost a month since my last blog, so here's a wall of text to cover that.
No screenshots to show for the reasons below.I got practically nothing done in NovemberNothing I can show off at any rate. A bit of animation work for my games, some more work on that low-res 3D engine I showed off recently, but nothing really 'new' on those fronts. I have three reasons for that:
My room is in a corner of the house with a window facing onto a semi-enclosed porch. Airflow isn't a thing unless I create it artificially. The crappy fan I owned until a few days ago didn't help in the slightest. Working, thinking or generally doing anything in temperatures going beyond 30°C (86°F) is a pain.I've got a decent bit of air-cooling now in the form of a decent fan that sounds like a jet taking off on the lowest setting, and might just blow me away if I turn it up higher. Makes a world of difference, and I've been able to get a lot more done this week.
The PC repairs have only slowed down in the past few days. Some days last week were miserable; three desktop PCs and two laptops was my 'record' for one of the days of the week, and they were all "urgent" jobs (Read: Not urgent in the slightest but we like throwing our weight as The Customer around).My room is a relatively small 2.3Mx5.2M. Odd dimensions, but that's due to the nature of the house: It's over 100 years old, was built out of river clay originally and I'll wager there weren't any measurements involved. Working on PCs basically involves me setting them up on the 'table' I have my laptop set up on. (It's not a table, it's a pile of stacked PC cases held together with metal rods). I get it done, but I'll be so glad once we get into a shop again, so I can have a dedicated workbench.On that note, we're planning on reopening in January, in a smaller storefront. I'll be rejoining as permanently-acting store manager again to get things rolling (And because I really need the extra cash).In the most typical way things could go, the legal process behind making a claim against the idiot driver who destroyed our stuff is taking forever. I get somewhat peeved at the fact that his lawyers are defending his actions at the time, trying to make his insobriety an argument for his "innocence", as well as claiming that he's in no position to pay the damages, even though there was insurance on the vehicle. Oh, and his dear mother. She's entirely convinced that this is just a big conspiracy on our part to squeeze every penny out of her darling son.Well, enough about that…
Holy shit.Still don't own a copy of my own, though not through lack of trying (Online retailer here had it for an excellent retail price, but it's basically perpetually sold out. Will probably bag a copy for Christmas if they get more stock in… actually, just checked, they've removed the listing completely for the PC version… will have to save up for the Steam version, which costs more).I 'finished' it… If you can call it finishing it. Basically immediately started a new game because I wasn't happy with the faction I chose.Was a much harder choice than in New Vegas. As for the game… I like it, controversial changes and all. On one hand the trimming of Skills and the ease of basically leveling everything up to max is a downer, but the experience of the game balanced that out for me.The Wasteland was basically a constant stream of "Hey look! Stuff is happening here! Come look!" and I spent more time exploring than actually doing the main quest.There'll no doubt be mods that add the more 'classic' Fallout mechanics to the game, as well as Project Nevada style mods that tune the difficulty and gameplay… and I'll be looking forward to them.
OK. So those three excuses aside, let me mention what I managed to get done regardless.Game 1: Super CycoreI'll admit I didn't get anything done on this in the past two weeks, though I was tweaking the animations a bit a few days ago.Prior to that, I mostly spent a few hours solid busy working on the 'feel' of the platforming. Movement speed, momentum, jump height, gravity… that kind of thing.Also fixed a 'zip' glitch that allowed you to travel from any corner up to the nearest platform (Allowed an out-of-bounds, so I removed it. Gave me an idea for an Upgrade Item though).I also did a bit of work separating the CRT monitor effects and my menu code out into standalone packages so I can easily import and use them. Might upload them at some point if I feel they're usable.Game 2: Unnamed 3D GameAll I really did between my last update on this was implement Gamepad support for some random reason, and a config file.I got kinda sidetracked by the next thing on the list…Other Thing 1: Handmade HeroI started following Handmade Hero back when it began, but kinda forgot about it due to being in the middle of a whirlwind of work (Back when I was still full-time at the PC shop).I can't remember if I posted here about it, but here's the trailer:
And a link to the video list. I decided to catch back up last week (Ended up starting from the first videos just for the fun of it) and have been having a blast.They're a series of stream captures by Casey Muratori, where the goal is to create a complete game from scratch in C. No engines, framework libraries, etc. Everything is done pretty much the way a lot of companies had to do it in the late 90's and early 00's.He's been in the industry (Most notably for Microsoft, RAD and Johnathan Blow at the moment) for a long while, and his videos provide an interesting window into the way some people think in the industry.At the moment since it has been a bit quieter on the work front, I've been able to go through two or three videos a day, and have been picking up a load of useful information. One of the things the streams made me do was question how I code, especially with my current reliance on strict OOP principles (Polymorphism and Multiple Inheritance in my 3D Engine, Factory Classes, Singletons, etc), whereas Casey emphasizes "No nonsense" code, and not trying to reuse code from the ground up - not all code is going to be reused, and making everything reusable is a waste of time in the long run. It's a very interesting viewpoint, and has actually made working on my code a lot easier - less time spent trying to make a system with all of its moving parts and more spent just making what I need right now (And usually getting it done in a single session).These videos also prompted me to learn GNU Emacs again. I don't think I can go back to vim easily now, since binding new commands and keys in Emacs is far easier than the interface vim provides. Not to mention that some of the built-in C Mode shortcuts make navigating source code faster than usual. C-M-e and C-M-a jump from function definition to function definition (Normally paragraphs in text-mode, but adapts itself for C).Automatic indent alignment is also very nice as a feature.I've basically got it set up as an IDE, no plugins needed, that compiles either in GCC (Using a Makefile if one is found, or the build.sh script if that exists), or using MSVC if the files for that are present. The built-in compilation buffer works wonderfully with both in terms of error tracing (Allowing for a click or keypress to focus on the error line).Anyways, loads of that kinda thing going on with me at the moment. May's well take December to study stuff as much as I can, since January is probably going to get very busy what with having to set up a new shop, advertise our reopening and everything.Well that's about as far as I'm writing. I've been writing this in pieces since early this afternoon, and its now past 2AM, so I've forgotten half of what I intended to write in the first place (Besides the obvious things).Go write some blogs you lazy <insert imaginative and potentially borderline-derogatory identifier here>. Oh, and a random video to finish.
VS Code is nice, I installed it on a server at work that needed a better text editor than SQL Server Manager Studio or Powershell IDE (and fuck notepad). It does the trick but obviously it's not a full fledged IDE (batteries not included as far as toolchains go), just a convenient way to work with general code (any language) and git. Very much like atom or sublime text in that regard (or dare I say vim/emacs).
It's not a fork of atom though, just uses the same electron runtime that the atom guys developed [/pedantic]. It's open source so unlikely to get bing shit forced down your throat without being able to change it. It's meant to be extensible too so languages without support currently can be added by the community. Check out the extensions you might find a debug adapter or build support extension for what you want.Mega, stay cool homes, it's hot out there. You'll melt your tits off.
Oh, and a random video to finish.Formatting. How does it work?
VS Code is nice, I installed it on a server at work that needed a better text editor than SQL Server Manager Studio or Powershell IDE (and fuck notepad). It does the trick but obviously it's not a full fledged IDE (batteries not included as far as toolchains go), just a convenient way to work with general code (any language) and git. Very much like atom or sublime text in that regard (or dare I say vim/emacs).
It's not a fork of atom though, just uses the same electron runtime that the atom guys developed [/pedantic]. It's open source so unlikely to get bing shit forced down your throat without being able to change it. It's meant to be extensible too so languages without support currently can be added by the community. Check out the extensions you might find a debug adapter or build support extension for what you want.Mega, stay cool homes, it's hot out there. You'll melt your tits off.