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.
lol, no I wouldn't call that unproductive either. At 30c, I'd be a fish on land.
I only saw a few episodes of Handmade Hero, but that and Blow's videos are great for watching some speedy emacs editing. :) Emacs and C++ with very little OOP is pretty much what I do. Emacs is something I'm not super happy with, but it's the best I've tried. I did get my thumb out of my ass and started learning Vim this month, I'm leaning towards thinking it's not our savior and lord, but pretty nice. I'm honestly thinking about writing my own editor, just for me, even if I know it's a stupid idea. GL acceleration, feedback just the way I want it, focus on effective caret motion… :Phttps://xkcd.com/378/I seem to remember you were using Codeblocks a while back? Just in case you ever need to turn cbp into a Makefile, I've had great help from this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cbp2make/
Though with custom keybinds Emacs becomes really usable. Vim used to my by primary editor, but I couldn't go wild with customization like I wanted. The only thing I've used CodeBlocks for in the past few years is as a fancy debugging front-end :PI write makefiles by hand for all of my recent projects, or use a shell script to collect and compile files.
heh don't feel too bad about not getting much done. you aren't alone in that regard. i haven't worked on anything for the month of November. Mainly because GM8.1 doesn't wanna run on my laptop for some reason. worked fine when i first installed it but now it won't open. weird. don't wanna waste the time to attempt converting it to studio at this point. might have to though. also been working full time so there's that too.
cute video. not very believable though, if it were a game that would be impossible. was entertaining at first but the boss fights were a little too chaotic and ridiculous to be intense at all, just felt cartoonish in it's presentation. still cool stuff though. decent music as well.
I'm pretty invested in Vim and its plugin ecosystem, but I've been toying with trying out Emacs (but probably with Vim emulation, because I'm not that big a fan of my modifier keys). It's next up in the text editor series I'm doing on my blog. Probably will ultimately stick with Vim, but I like at least trying out everything. Any tips?
Yeah, I've got a few tips. First up, the notation that Emacs uses for its commands, C-# and M-#, refer to the Control and Alt keys on most systems (M or Meta refers to the Command key on a Mac if I remember the manual correctly).
All commands in Emacs use "chords" based on a Control-Key or Alt-Key combination, and sometimes several of them. The first one you'll want to hit is C-h followed by the letter t. That'll load the built in tutorial that goes over navigation and such. The vim emulation mode does work pretty much as-expected, but it essentially limits a lot of the more useful features that make Emacs what it is. I'd say take a bit of time to try learn the basic commands, and decide what to do from there. Everything is re-bindable and modifiable, and the more I work with it, the more I create a comfortable environment to work in.(Oh, and a side note, an alternative to hitting Alt/Command for the M- commands is to hit Escape followed by the key that makes up the command).@death: I have seen some Kaizo hacks that come very close to that video, and have seen people who have memorized the patterns to the point where they can complete them; these sorts of games have become a very popular niche-genre in Japan.
I feel like at that point, it's not even a game but a memorized dance routine that's so choreographed and pre-determined that it doesn't challenge the player in the way that a game should, by requiring the player to process and react to new and dynamic information in a quickly and efficient manner. Training your reflexes is one thing but memorizing a pattern is completely different than gaining a skill. it's why i tend to dislike game design that revolves around short life spans and memorizing level layouts and repetitive enemy patterns. as much as I can't stand most rogue-likes, i think they touch on the right direction of things but just fail to implement the idea well. dynamic game design doesn't have to mean completely random layouts. <i'm rambling at this point>
Wasted yesterday night watching Handmade Hero Con. It was interesting. Interviews, and a lot of talk about how stuff works. Should end up on youtube soon.
On topic of editors, I tried VS Code. Perty nice editor, highly customizeable, similar to atom or sublime, no reason to not use those instead. I'd love it if it also had the full fledged IDE features from VS C++. :/ Maybe I'm asking for the impossible. The only reason I use C::B sometimes is for the one or two things that are too painful to do outside an IDE.
I mean Oh. >:( So that's why it didn't take 5 min to launch. That why it didn't offer bing (it will happen soon in a new install, still only a beta after all). That's why everything didn't feel completely shit. It felt pointless at first. Now…. Somewhere a careerist ms exec/project lead got promoted for taking two years and spending a billion m$ on adding a new skin to atom and someones git-packet. Well, I guess it's a positive thing in the end, (even if I felt deceived and soft-raped at first, and almost to launched a patreon), there are just some things the people at MS seem incapable of. If they add the stuff they are good at, like if they release a version with their C++-tools, I would give VS Code a second chance. And some people seem to like it as it is even.
Oh, and a random video to finish.Formatting. How does it work?
lol, no I wouldn't call that unproductive either. At 30c, I'd be a fish on land.
I only saw a few episodes of Handmade Hero, but that and Blow's videos are great for watching some speedy emacs editing. :) Emacs and C++ with very little OOP is pretty much what I do. Emacs is something I'm not super happy with, but it's the best I've tried. I did get my thumb out of my ass and started learning Vim this month, I'm leaning towards thinking it's not our savior and lord, but pretty nice. I'm honestly thinking about writing my own editor, just for me, even if I know it's a stupid idea. GL acceleration, feedback just the way I want it, focus on effective caret motion… :Phttps://xkcd.com/378/I seem to remember you were using Codeblocks a while back? Just in case you ever need to turn cbp into a Makefile, I've had great help from this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cbp2make/@Nopykon: I've got a custom editor in the works "just for me" too, ever since I saw some of this guy's videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h37xb8YkMJ4
Though with custom keybinds Emacs becomes really usable. Vim used to my by primary editor, but I couldn't go wild with customization like I wanted. The only thing I've used CodeBlocks for in the past few years is as a fancy debugging front-end :PI write makefiles by hand for all of my recent projects, or use a shell script to collect and compile files.heh don't feel too bad about not getting much done. you aren't alone in that regard. i haven't worked on anything for the month of November. Mainly because GM8.1 doesn't wanna run on my laptop for some reason. worked fine when i first installed it but now it won't open. weird. don't wanna waste the time to attempt converting it to studio at this point. might have to though. also been working full time so there's that too.
cute video. not very believable though, if it were a game that would be impossible. was entertaining at first but the boss fights were a little too chaotic and ridiculous to be intense at all, just felt cartoonish in it's presentation. still cool stuff though. decent music as well.I'm pretty invested in Vim and its plugin ecosystem, but I've been toying with trying out Emacs (but probably with Vim emulation, because I'm not that big a fan of my modifier keys). It's next up in the text editor series I'm doing on my blog. Probably will ultimately stick with Vim, but I like at least trying out everything. Any tips?
Yeah, I've got a few tips. First up, the notation that Emacs uses for its commands, C-# and M-#, refer to the Control and Alt keys on most systems (M or Meta refers to the Command key on a Mac if I remember the manual correctly).
All commands in Emacs use "chords" based on a Control-Key or Alt-Key combination, and sometimes several of them. The first one you'll want to hit is C-h followed by the letter t. That'll load the built in tutorial that goes over navigation and such. The vim emulation mode does work pretty much as-expected, but it essentially limits a lot of the more useful features that make Emacs what it is. I'd say take a bit of time to try learn the basic commands, and decide what to do from there. Everything is re-bindable and modifiable, and the more I work with it, the more I create a comfortable environment to work in.(Oh, and a side note, an alternative to hitting Alt/Command for the M- commands is to hit Escape followed by the key that makes up the command).@death: I have seen some Kaizo hacks that come very close to that video, and have seen people who have memorized the patterns to the point where they can complete them; these sorts of games have become a very popular niche-genre in Japan.I feel like at that point, it's not even a game but a memorized dance routine that's so choreographed and pre-determined that it doesn't challenge the player in the way that a game should, by requiring the player to process and react to new and dynamic information in a quickly and efficient manner. Training your reflexes is one thing but memorizing a pattern is completely different than gaining a skill. it's why i tend to dislike game design that revolves around short life spans and memorizing level layouts and repetitive enemy patterns. as much as I can't stand most rogue-likes, i think they touch on the right direction of things but just fail to implement the idea well. dynamic game design doesn't have to mean completely random layouts. <i'm rambling at this point>
Those Handmade Hero videos are great, thanks for linking them.
Wasted yesterday night watching Handmade Hero Con. It was interesting. Interviews, and a lot of talk about how stuff works. Should end up on youtube soon.
On topic of editors, I tried VS Code. Perty nice editor, highly customizeable, similar to atom or sublime, no reason to not use those instead. I'd love it if it also had the full fledged IDE features from VS C++. :/ Maybe I'm asking for the impossible. The only reason I use C::B sometimes is for the one or two things that are too painful to do outside an IDE.VS Code is a fork of Atom, so that explains the samey feel :P
With the way Microsoft is going, they might eventually start to move more of their 'flagship' products over to Linux.Oh. :P
I mean Oh. >:( So that's why it didn't take 5 min to launch. That why it didn't offer bing (it will happen soon in a new install, still only a beta after all). That's why everything didn't feel completely shit. It felt pointless at first. Now…. Somewhere a careerist ms exec/project lead got promoted for taking two years and spending a billion m$ on adding a new skin to atom and someones git-packet. Well, I guess it's a positive thing in the end, (even if I felt deceived and soft-raped at first, and almost to launched a patreon), there are just some things the people at MS seem incapable of. If they add the stuff they are good at, like if they release a version with their C++-tools, I would give VS Code a second chance. And some people seem to like it as it is even.