Blog moved

I moved my blog to a new domain.

My new homepage sysbite.org and my new blog

Thy raised from flames!

Its been a while since my last update.
Life was struggling and my job kept my in his fangs as well.
Yet I managed to take a few steps out of the daily machinery, ambitioned to stay out of the dry and dull routine and fire back with full force.
I won’t make any statements for the future, but I definately won’t give up my projects.

Stay tuned!

Triple Triad Silver gets forged!

I will start developing Triple Triad Silver on the 3rd of May.

My learning progress is fine and I feel confident enough to go for something big.
During the next 2 days I will post further information about the project, e.g. License and Features.

I have got a new job now as well, I work about 7-8h a day, but that won’t affect the development to any extend,
I intend to spend around 30 Minutes to 2 Hours per day on this project.

MinGW cross compiling environment

Today I downloaded the latest version of the “MinGW cross compiling environment”.
Use this link mingw-cross-env-2.20.tar.gz or visit their Homepage.

I use the environment to cross compile my applications for Windows and later test them using VirtualBox. The latest version of the environment includes a cmake toolchain file which really comes in handy. Using a toolchain file I can build a Windows version of my applications very easy. I just specify the toolchain file in a single cmake console command, invoke “make” and I am done. Cross compiling has never been easier, I thought I post it up here, so more people might notice this wonderful project in the future.
For more info check out their Tutorial Section.

If you build the complete cross compile environment, sometimes packages can’t be downloaded because the website might have moved, or the server is unavailable. But there is really no need to panic, just look at the error message for example:

Wrong checksum of package gd!
------------------------------------------------------------
--2011-04-16 13:28:25--  http://www.libgd.org/releases/gd-2.0.35.tar.bz2
Resolving www.libgd.org (www.libgd.org)... 213.251.181.15
Connecting to www.libgd.org (www.libgd.org)|213.251.181.15|:80... failed: 
Connection refused.

This can be easily fixed, since we know gd-2.0.35.tar.bz2 is the package thats making problems, just redownload it from a different location, just paste the filename in google, then copy it into the pkg folder located in the cross compile environment folder. After that, run make again and it should work, if not try another mirror for the package.
Hope that helps some beginners that have problems.

Still learning, viciously!

I decided to leave some thoughts and comments about my progress so far.

I am improving my concentration atm. the main reason I failed in the past. I picked up The Power of Concentration – Theron Q. Dumont (William Walker Atkinson) again. I already finished reading it and now apply some of the exercises mentioned in the book. While some stuff might or might not be “fictional”, it appears that for the most part, the book is valuable and I already improved my concentration by a large amount. Even though concentration can’t be measured, I am not distracted as easily as I was before and I accomplish much more. The book is from 1918, it seems pretty outdated, but comparing it with modern approaches to the topic, I still think its one of the best and outstanding ones. The “self-help” part might appear a little dull, but after I allowed myself to give it a shot I realized there is much truth to it.

Then there is programming, I am reading various books and articles on the topic, filtering the garbage “wanna be C++ but teaching you C or C with classes” kind of books. Atm I am reading about template metaprogramming and boost::asio. boost::asio will most certainly be the network library of my choice for my triple triad clone.

Depending on my progress, actual game development starts at the beginning of May.

I try to post more frequently from now, maybe throw out some tutorials as well.

Plans for the future

I will spend the next few weeks reading books and sharpening my programming skills, I will make developing my primary priority but I won’t rush things. From many previous programs I learned a valuable lesson.  I make a proper test framework along with a engine for the game.

Considering the vast amount of cards included in the original triple triad (there have been 110 cards) its reasonable my girl won’t be able to get them done in a decent quality in 1 week. If she doesn’t get them ready in time for the first release I will use replacement cards.

Nevertheless, she spend her precious time preparing a sample card to show off how the future of triple triad silver will look like.

 

ttsilver selphie red card by Kerstin Bochynski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at 4e3.de.vu.

4e3.de.vu revived

After all those years of inactivity and personal issues I decided to continue development and get my triple triad clone done.

So I am officially back.

This blog will be filled with informations around my page and work, some random thoughts that are related to programming or even completely off topic, but all of some value I hope.

One of the first and most important things I begin with, will be the trashing of all copyright protected stuff on my website and game, so I own all rights. I consider a major redesign of my page as well, even though I am not into the whole web 2.0 thing, I am aware its a nice way to keep people informed about updates and changes. I include twitter and this blog. Enough web 2.0 for my taste.

I am undecided if I keep my triple triad clone open source, even though I like the open source idea and the benefits of it, its a lot of work to get all the new artwork, sounds and programming done. If I put all my free time into this game I might consider demanding money for the online gaming part of it, but single player will stay free. (People must buy online accounts). Its just a quick idea and I might make up my mind about it, but considering that even my girlfriend will invest many hours just to get the artwork done, makes me want to keep it closed source and give her something back for the hard work she is doing.

Happy to be back