I keep making 'em

2008-07-29 19:29 by Nailbar
Did some updates to the system which you don't see; Menu editor and password changer.

Also changed a link in the menu from Programming to Programs. Shorter.

Then I added a few more images to the [Gallery of Drawings]. There should be more, but I haven't traced them yet, or they're hiding somewhere.

MiniDuel

2008-07-29 16:01 by Nailbar
[Miniduel-1.1]
After I switched to Linux there was a long pause in my game programming. I didn't have the time or energy to learn to use the Xlib headers or any other library. At some point, though, I figured out how to calculate time based movement and get keyboard input. MiniDuel is the result. A very small (90 KB) arcade space shoot-em-up.

If you're running Linux, it will probably work. I haven't released the code. Haven't bothered with the license and stuff yet. It doesn't install properly either. Basically you just unpack it and run the binary. Have fun!

Artistic impressions

2008-07-29 12:21 by Nailbar
I've added a new gallery again. I was browsing around my files and found a quite good image of a space ship I did last year. Then I came to remember that there's plenty of images I've made worth publishing here. So here's the new gallery: [Gallery of Drawings]

I added a total of one image! Couldn't find any more of my images at the moment, but If I dig around a bit more they're bound to show up eventually.

Hmm.. I really should add commenting functionality to the galleries. At this moment it is possible to comment on them in the [Images] section but since I've made Galleries into a single post one can't really comment on any specific gallery.

Old School

2008-07-29 08:25 by Nailbar
Well, I haven't been making any new games since this blog was started, but I did find some old stuff lying around. Not only old stuff, old-school stuff!

[Duel 6]
If you're running Windows (don't know about Vista), or DOS, for that matter, here's a small none to three player space duel game I've made. Since it's made in QBasic it's not really high tech. It does, however, feature time based movement (which almost works), and AI players (up to 7 players).

Maplications and complications

2008-07-28 15:23 by Nailbar
[Firefox]
I almost forgot about my browser. Firefox 3 seems to be a very nice browser. I was a bit annoyed with it at first because it borked a thing on my [map application]. Oh, yes. That's a story:

I've made a map application at work. One of the uses for it can be seen by visiting the link above, which goes to a demo site, or whatever it's called. The app. uses [MapServer] to draw the actual map images. When I tried it with Firefox 3, all the maps were drawn empty. Every request resulted in blank, white maps with just the scale bar at the bottom (see image to the right). The map application sends http requests using JavaScript (read AJAX), and the basic stuff goes into the GET header. That's stuff like current extent, map size and interaction. The POST data, however, contains lists of layers to be activated and similar data which may be to large for the GET header.

At first I thought they've crippled the POST functionality of the XMLHttpRequest in Firefox 3. Then I found out that if I send the request to a php-script, which in turn forwards the exact and identical request to the map server, it works. Apparently Firefox 3 has some new stuff in the request header which MapServer doesn't like. I haven't tested what it is yet. So far, I'm sticking to the php-script solution.

One side effect of this is that I now have a php-script which forwards all requests to a specific server. This enables me to use the map application on servers which don't have MapClass, yeay!

[Pidgin]
While I'm at it I'll add Pidgin to the list of programs I use and recommend. It's a Insant messenger client which supports most of the protocols. It supports the three I use, at least.

Gradients and stuff

2008-07-26 18:02 by Nailbar
Well.. I did add more graphical goodness, like I promised. If you don't see the difference I don't blame you. I added a gradient to the header and footer, and that's it. Maybe I should make something better at some point. Maybe some kind of radical change. Meh. Later.

[3D Artists]
I check this place out every now and then. This is where you'll find some really amazing artwork. It doesn't update that often, but when it does, it's usually worth the wait. did I mention I'm into Computer Generated Images?