Relatively soon, the new version of Adobe's Creative Suite will be out, and I'm most interested in Photoshop. Photoshop CS4 will have many advantages over CS3, including the ability to rotate the canvas, without actually rotating the image. With this new feature, users will be able to rotate the canvas to a better angle for sketching, among other things, just like you would with real paper.


Probably the best thing, though, will be that it utilizes your graphics chip to it's full advantage and speed. You will also be able to draw directly onto 3D models! These are already available for pre-order, at $199 for the upgrade to CS4, and $349 an upgrade to CS4 Extended. The full prices will be $699 and $999.

All the other Adobe products are also getting updated to CS4, and should be pretty neat too. Adobe is also continuing something they were already doing: discounting prices for students. However, you must be a student at an accredited school, and this makes it more difficult; try it anyway. :P

Recently, I've been working on an educational application which will be going commercial! A while back, a local person asked me if I could make it. It has to do with assessing someone's memory, and improving it.

The program flashes a random pattern of cubes for a short time, and then a student assembles physical foam cubes in the exact same order. There are six colors, and four cubes of each color; that makes 24 cubes in total. No two cubes of the same color can be displayed next to each other, whether it's horizontally or vertically. There are several timing modes in which these are displayed. This is a Game Maker program, though I suppose I could have done it in something else.



This program will be supplied to teachers that are trained to do stuff like this, along with cubes and other things which are irrelevant to the program. I could either sell the distributor the rights to the program and get a single sum of money, or get an amount per copy sold. I'll probably go with the latter. The great thing about this program is that it isn't being sold by itself, but along with training about other stuff.

If this is successful enough, I'm probably going to make more for different age/grade levels, as this is intended for kindergarten level. These other programs will be made with the help of the same person, and I will simply be programming it (and graphics, etc.). The logo is a trademark of this person's (owner) school.

Windows 7 is coming! Well, not for a while; late in 2009, more like 2010. So far, there are many improvements, both in the GUI/graphics, and internally. Programs made for Windows 7 specifically won't be backwards compatible with other versions of Windows, but they will be much faster. The reason for this is because of multiple library's that must be loaded into memory.


The standard applications (such as Paint) are getting a new interface: the Office 2007 Ribbon. I personally think that this is a big improvement over the old ones. The calculator also is MUCH different, and this really needed to happen. The old interface got really dull after a few versions of Windows...




Another technology which will be included in Windows 7 is known as "Multi-Touch". This is basically a touchscreen monitor, that can handle multiple points of pressure. With Windows 7 and future Microsoft applications, this will be implemented for some cool features. This offers many possibilities, and Multi-Touch LCDs should come around in time for Windows 7, and for only about 20% more than a standard LCD!

Very recently, a mouse was spotted on Amazon (Germany) that doesn't seem to have a laser. Instead, it seems to have a very bright LED and a wide-view lens. A teaser ad on the Microsoft hardware site seems to confirm this, and slyly states that the release is 9.9.08; or the 9th of this month.

I personally do not think that this has a significant advantage over a laser mouse at the moment, as most people do not need to use a mouse on sand, or some other surface of that nature, though it does look pretty neat. ;D

Go ahead and state your own opinion!


As a sidenote, I think I am going to change my header image... =P

Hey there everyone! I just wanted to say hello, because I haven't blogged for a long time.

A few things are new:

I have become a moderator on the Cave Community (http://graybox.ccjmac.com/cave_com). I've been there for a while, but now they've chosen me to moderate.

I have redone the notorious Prodigy GM site (http://prodigygm.com). Yesterday, I decided that something must be done. It seems to have changed a bit overnight (like the background color), but that isn't my fault. =P

My team, XSoft Games (http://xsoftgames.com), and I have decided that we would branch out a bit, and soon we are going to found XSoft Technology, under XSG of course. Under this name, we'll offer other services, including web design. We have more plans for it, but we aren't going to give them all away for the moment. One possibility, though, is that we may even develop small bits of hardware!



Not much else is new at the moment...
Oh yes, tomorrow is my b-day (16).

Any comments?

Well, it has been more than a month since I blogged last.

Freeze Tag (http://64digits.com/games/index.php?cmd=view_game&id=4346) has been making some good progress lately. We decided to redo the whole engine, and we are also redoing most of the graphics.

We are also changing it so that it works with widescreen monitors well. It already checked whether it would be fullscreen or not, and it worked fine, but now we have it stay at fullscreen, and depending on what the resolution the monitor is at, it will be at a room with the same dimensions. This already looks great! The game also is now using a simple extension that I made which will sense if the debug menu is running or not. I know that there have been extensions like this before, but I have this one customized and I know how this works.

Probably the biggest change though will be this; Freeze Tag is getting a new name! If you have any ideas for a good name, please post here! The name will need to be original as it will be trademarked. Oh, and there no longer is any of the Serial stuff!

Also, I have one sidenote: XSoft Games' site is now at xsoftgames.com and is also being redone.


So, if you have any good names for FT, post them here! I'll also try to blog more often ;)

Merry Christmas to all of the members of 64D! (early though)
I am submitting two examples and two scripts (read on) as presents to you all!

My first example is (currently 5th in the queue) is a Color Picker. This tells you all sorts of interesting information about the color, including the Hex and CMYK. The picker is not the defualt popup!


My second example is a gradient example (currently 22nd in the queue). It isn't very fast, but it does show you how gradients work.

Here are the scripts;

The first script is one that changes things like "Hey there!" to "hEy ThErE!". I'll just quote a post I made about it:




My second one draws a laser:







Have fun with these and enjoy them!

Finally Freeze Tag is out of the queue! You may find it here. Please note that at the moment (we will remove it in the next version) you need to enter a serial number. You may find it in a *.txt file in the ZIP (the serial number is for the GMC, but don't worry). You may run Freeze Tag with widescreen moniters also!

This new version has better gameplay, more great effects, great sound, and more!

My favorite effect is when you eat the apple fruit, and then you chomp it up and throw away the core. What is your favorite effect?

Have fun with the new version!



[dat=IPB]
Oh yeah, and as a sidenote, XSoft Games now has IPB 2.3.2 forums at http://xg.serveftp.org.
[/dat]

We have had a site for quite a long time now, and it has moved quite a few places. You may find our current site at xsoftgames.frihost.net.

We have some games there, along with a chatroom and forums. We also have just recently made a new skin and put it on. Please tell me how you like it!

We have now recieved our tenth member, Vinny!

Here is a list of our current members:


Legolas710 - Founder, Programmer, Spriter, Graphic Artist

Eyas (esh_corp11) - Founder, Programmer

rjbruin - Programmer, AI

GameFrnzy - Programmer, Spriter

paul23 - Programmer

Kaietnap - Programmer, AI, Tileset Creator

biorn - Graphic Artist

Rouge135 - Programmer, Spriter

thingy - Spriter

Vinny - Programmer



Also, Cities At War is now being developed by us. We have not started any major development yet, though, becuase we are finishing up some contests (TheGMRace, YYG, etc.). After that, we will make CAW become a great project. We are thinking of many things, including multiplayer...