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Last updated 2/12/09 at 12:01 am PST
Cripes! 2.0 -- See the Class Layout
Arenamatic Code w/ cConsole
  At a Snail's Pace | 
Posted - 3/14/2009 1:09:03 AM | So I haven't really gotten much done so far. I'm trying to get back into it, and I think I'm succeeding... slowly. I'm starting to think I should spend some time on a shorter side-project, though. At the very least it would boost my morale.  So, I decided to use the webspace I got with my GD++ membership to set up a small sub-site. Mostly for fun, really.
Now, I decided I didn't really want it to look totally different compared to the rest of GameDev.net... so I hijacked the GameDev.net header bar and stuck it in my page.  I don't think the staffers will get angry at me. After all, it's still on gamedev.net, under my membership space. But it's just a static .html page, so I stripped out the ad. There's plenty of ads on the main site, anyways.  But if that upsets someone, let me know how I can fix it.
You can check out my sub-site here. You might also notice that I hijacked the journal title bit. 
In related news, I got a new book on (X)HTML and CSS. It's more of a textbook, which is actually perfect for me, because I'm tired of getting books without decent exercises. This one has around four cases per chapter! Plus, it was released just this year, so I know it's current.
I took my first HTML class when I was nine years old, and I learned the basics and such. My site never really looked good, though. So I was browsing the local Borders and this book caught my eye: HTML and XHTML: 5th Edition - Comprehensive. I've only finished chapter 4 - I finish each of the exercises before going on, because I can - and I've already learned some new things. Take, for instance, the <base> tag. It's placed in <head>, and supplied with a href attribute which is effectively prefixed to every relative link in the page. I used it (with href="http://gamedev.net") to test my sub-site locally, yet with the glorious logo and images, without editing every single link myself to do so.
Don't worry, I'm not giving up on Cripes. I'm just taking a breather.
~Jonathan
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| Cripes 2.0: Easing off the hiatus | 
Posted - 3/9/2009 12:29:14 AM | I'm pretty much done with my hiatus from Cripes 2.0, and I have just one problem... I'm considering changing my Keyboard into a Singleton. But that's stupid, right? There's so many reasons I shouldn't... but it's so tempting. And it's not like I gain much; it's just a design thing, since having two Keyboards would clobber the event queue and render each-other useless... Mrrgh. :|
The Entity subsystem is still a work in progress, though I'm fairly certain I'll have some kind of EntityManager facade. It might not even be a facade, it might actually be the main point of access to the Entity system. This requires more thought. I might be over-thinking this, but I want to get it right. =|
Also: Ubuntu hates me, it really does. I have a partition on my laptop set up for Ubuntu... and after spending maybe five minutes on it, it freezes, and my caps lock light starts blinking. 
~Jonathan
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| AdLib scrapped | |
Posted - 3/6/2009 11:23:45 PM | Mixed feelings on this one, though mainly I got pretty far ahead of myself. I've abandoned AdLib, because it was too much work and just not enough return, and I finally decided that, yes, it was indeed reinventing the wheel. I may as well explain what I had.
The idea was, you could take a generic page with some named placeholders in it, and replace those placeholders with values (either resulting from a CGI script or directly from Apache via GET and POST... which was why I wanted to do an Apache module). You might also have a definitions file somewhere else with blocks of content that you'd inline into the page (I'll give an example below). I called it "CSS for content", but the analogy "CSS is to styles as AdLib is to content" probably fits better, because you'd take oft-used blocks of HTML and place them in a file, and refer to them in a page if you wanted them in the page. I'll write out that example now...
~..Header..~
<html>
<head><title>AdLib!</title></head>
<body>
~..Header..~
~..Body..~
<p>Hello, ~!!name!!~. This is an <?php echo "AdLib test page." ?></p>
~..Body..~
~..Footer..~
</body></html>
~..Footer..~
The ~..placeholders..~ surrounding blocks of content define and name those blocks. So, given that definitions file, you might do something like this to create a page using those definitions.
~??Header??~
~??Body??~
~??Body??~
~??Footer??~
The ~??placeholder??~ signified an inlining of a definition, and a ~!!placeholder!!~ inlines a value rather than a definition (say, from GET or POST, or from some other method). It's probably not hard to see how the page would have looked.
Another idea I had was that the AdLib engine might not just be used for output like that, but also input. You'd have a definitions file (possibly the same one used for output), and it would parse the page, matching the page back into the content blocks and coming up with the ~!!placeholder!!~ values that were used on the page. Used that way, it wouldn't be very different from taking two identical papers with identical words, cutting out a few words on one, and placing it over the other so you could see the words used on the back page.
Actually, that idea is what made me start on AdLib in the first place... I had a file I needed to get stuff from - a really, really big file - that did not lend itself to typical parsing. But every "page" in the file had either one kind of information or another kind, so I could split it into parts like that. In the end, though, it would have been just too much effort for not enough return.
At least that's one project off my shoulders.
~Jonathan
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| AdLib | 
Posted - 3/4/2009 5:10:58 AM | EDIT: Abandoned. See next post for details.
As of today I'm working on an engine I call AdLib. It's really mostly just a hobby project... but I have plans for it. Unfortunately, it's on the same backburner as the Atom~View project (tentative name there). I have so many projects concurrently it's not even funny. *sigh*
I don't want to say much about AdLib, not because I'm worried about someone stealing it, but because I don't want to talk about something I'm unsure about. Suffice to say it's a parser.. that and the name should start the wheels turning, eh? Also, at first glance it's almost reinventing the wheel, and I'd rather not reveal too much until I can show why it isn't reinventing the wheel.
Well... I can't resist. Okay, three tidbits and that's all.
1) The engine's name is AdLib.
2) The engine is a parser.
3) (new!) I want to eventually write a module for Apache to interface with AdLib.
Eh, #3 is rather far off right now. Still, it's a goal I want to reach.
Anyone intrigued? Have any guesses? Drop me a comment!
~Jonathan
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| An idea which I can't really do much with | 
Posted - 3/2/2009 2:37:21 AM | (EDIT: Gaiiden, I hate to impose, but if I get on the weekend reading list this week, I'd appreciate if this post was used instead of anything else, since I doubt anything else this week will be very interesting. )
UPDATE: I've decided to start studying basic 3D graphics, and see if I can't make a demo of this concept. If nothing else, it'll be good to see if it's plausible (both as a project and as far as my abilities go).
...so I'm posting it here because I think it's rather intriguing. I was thinking - a terribly dangerous thing to do at the best of times - about objects and functions and such, and how they're basically they're own little units in a codebase. And I was thinking about UML and how it expresses relationships between classes. And then I was thinking about my failed attempt at trying to replicate that... in Notepad. But the relationships between those units of code intrigued me... and then I began thinking of atoms. Ohsnap, lightbulb anyone?
Atoms are composed of electrons, neutrons, and protons... lets not go into quarks. Depending on the arrangements and numbers of these particles, you get different atoms with different properties. What's more, these atoms can bond with other atoms, creating complex molecules. And these molecules can interact with other molecules in a myriad of ways.
(Can you tell that I'm really getting into this analogy?)
Alright, point being, I believe that one could represent code as particles. And something I would really, really like to see - and perhaps be a part of its development - is a software imager that parses .obj files from a project and creates a 3D scene visualizing the relationships between everything. A class would be represented up close (zoomed in, selected, whichever you like) as an atom, with the nucleus as its member variables, and the electrons as orbiting functions. Further out the class would simply be a sphere, its radius defined by how many variables and functions it contains.
Obviously you can draw many parallels between code units and atomic constructs... which is the point. Not only would it be really, really cool to see how your program looks as an atomic construct, it'd be a highly visual way to see where code is too coupled, where you have linker errors (represented by a connection highlighted in some obviously erroneous way), et cetera. Perhaps it would be integrated into an IDE's toolset.
You could think of it as a highly descriptive descendant of UML. And I'd start working on this project myself, except that I have absolutely zero experience with 3D graphics. And that's a pity, because someone will probably read this and go "I can do that!" and I'd wake up one day to find out someone's started a company called Solar Twilight Enterprises, selling a 3D atomic codeview application.
Well... if any of you are interested in this, please drop me a comment or PM. Maybe I could get someone who knows the 3D-representational side of things.
~Jonathan
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| Verrrry short hiatus from Cripes! 2.0 | 
Posted - 3/1/2009 11:22:13 PM | I have a few non-hobby projects I need to devote my time to, so I'm going to focus on those and get them out of the way. Consequently, Cripes! is going to be a little sluggish for the next week or so.
Books
I got three new books today! No, the GameDev.net book will get here Thursday, but I went to Borders and got some really good programming books. The first, Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL, is really, really in depth, covering a variety of pertinent subjects such as classes in PHP (which I've been interested in) and security. I looked at pretty much every PHP book at the store, and this book - though I've only read one chapter right now - looked a lot better than the rest.
The next book I got was Head First: Design Patterns. I wanted a book on design patterns, and I like the Head First series... though it helped that there weren't any other design pattern books, heh. The third book is Sams Teach Yourself Ajax, javascript and PHP, which I got for the same reasons I got book number one: web development. I've never, ever done anything with Ajax or javascript, so I don't feel bad getting a more basic volume.
MusicShake
I've done three other tracks using the MusicShake software since I last posted! I can't seem to extend them very far over two minutes, but I kind of like leaving them short, so...
- Atmosphere (01:47)
- Flight Over the Ocean (02:29) -- Please excuse the corny title!
- Escape Velocity (02:03)
- Crystal Music Box (01:47)
Enjoy! And comments wouldn't hurt either.
~Jonathan
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