08.28.05
ALPHA – The Decision
Alright, I’ve decided. Last night Brian and I were talking, and the current contest at GameDev. They finally updated with the prizes, and wow! There is some good stuff on there!
So I picked up my LAE project (the Stickman Game Engine, SGE), which I had previously ripped all of the fruit stuff out of, as well as object collisions (opposed to sprite collisions). Spent an hour figuring out what was wrong with it. Turns out since I had previously only used IMAGE (that is, bitmaps) for the background, when I added COLOR it kind of died. It wasn’t set up like the rest. Changed it to make it like the rest and bam, works just fine.
A little new functionality. Backgrounds have always been able to have null image’s and just use a color instead, but the level scripting never allowed you to set it. It had to be hard coded. Now that is changed. Also, instead of specifying what the bounds of the level are (you almost always want to use the whole screen), you can specify PRGW and PRGH which use the respective values within the engine.
I plan to make it so you can also set the window size. Thats on my task list. Should be simple. Also on the agenda are screen transitions, some type of dynamic text graphical stuffs, and being able to load level scripts rather than stick them in the buffer. Loading a script via file would be much much easier, as I have plenty of experience loading from files (hooray for mud programming….can anyone say asteroids?). Of course I would rip off the style from SWR. Luckily I won’t really have to deal with the saving portion….unless I make a level editor? That could be fun.
The level scripting system does need some documentation as well. I find myself going back to the code to find what I can do, and the right syntax, because it has no error handling and will just crash your program. I suppose that is something I could add. Some error handling within it would be nice.
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I am supposed to go to Iowa City to see my mom again today, which would be great. However, my dog is sick (poor thing), I have a fair amount of homework (20+ problems for DS, my AAT assign, etc), and I need to get a few things from the store. So, I don’t know what will be going on till I talk with Dan.
Apparent Winkle can get me out of 5th hour study hall with Ewald Tues/Thurs. if I agree to help with the web site. Kick ass! 
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Edit: Umm, not going to elaborate on previous post. Forgot what I wanted to say.
Edit2: Steve McCrea is actually leaving next year! 
That is very sad. In fact, that sucks. I’ll have to, as Nick May put it, “Soak up as much Steve as I can”.
Nicholas E. May said,
August 28, 2005 at 4:11 pm
Next time you are coming to Iowa City, maybe we can set something up.
And it’s “Winkel” not “Winkle”.
Re: Ewald. She may be a sort of a bitch when it comes to discipline and such, but look it this way: she’s making sure you have a quiet work area.
Also, she’s an interesting person. I tried to get to know her, but without success. There is much more to her than meets the eye.
For example, I know I can be really bad/mean sometimes (or be viewed as such), but much of the time it is unintentional (usually for lack of social skills or communication skills). That’s one reason I published some of my poetry–so people who take the time to read it know that I am human inside my shell.
I’m not saying it’s the exact same thing with her, but think about this: do you know how much shit she has to endure? Very very few students like her, and they are not vocal like the ones that hate her are (I have found one person who liked her and another who was neutral/accepting. In three years.). No one steps back and looks at her as a person–they just count the seconds until it’s over.
Perhaps I’m trying to accomplish though you what I feel I failed (or, at least, did not see fully realized) to do. Yet, she is human too and not a bad teacher. I feel like I learned a lot from her when I voluntarily re-took Comp and Rhet with her for a week (I had Martian my junior year. Who, as a sort of a disclosure, I never liked or really respected. I won’t go into why in this forum.).
Well anyway, get your homework done and enjoy your junior year. I need to go read ahead now that I’ve had a break.
By the way, you do know how Winkel does the website, right? Adobe fucking In-Design. Drag and drop. I wonder if it’s standards compliant.
Odis said,
August 28, 2005 at 10:08 pm
I’ve never felt hostility towards Ewald. I’ve never had her for a teacher for anything besides my one day of SASH, and there was nothing wrong with that. My only point was I would much rather have my SASH time in the cafeteria. Overall that doesnt really matter, as its only two days a week anyway. However, I do plan on getting Winkel (thanks for fixing my spelling) to switch, more so for his bennefit. Their web site is….erm, quite bad.
And yes, he told me. Dan gave him my HTML book (oh my, html! lol). However, the new people no nothing about anything related. So, I really am not sure whats going to happen. I mean, I can’t teach them how to use PHP/XHTML/XML, but using HTML they wont really get a lot out of it. I was telling Winkel I could make it more like WP and a forum, where they enter the author, article, possibly pictures, the section its in, and to what newspaper the article belongs, hit submit and have it all database oriented. That wouldn’t really leave much for them to do though. So its all kind of up in the air. I think I’ll probably just show them elements of good/bad web design, and hopefully get something -better- going.