Category: Uncategorized

I’m also working on not swearing so much when I write. I prolly should edit for profanity, and in general for that matter, but not today. It’s not like yesterday was entirely useless. I started researching some vintage cameras at my parents; I looked up info on how I could build my own cmos on the cheap. I messed around with the Black Widow keyboard again.
Oh. I never mentioned that. Lady month we picked up a Black Widow for the Wif, but it doesn’t like her Mac. Just as well, she decided she didn’t like the caps lock either. The funny thing is that I think somehow it’s triggering macros because after a certain amount of usage it just starts freaking out. I’m thinking I’m just going to gut it. I want the switches, maybe the cord. The thing is I really want a squared of keyboard. I want letters to go in even columns and rows. I don’t want to need a ten-key as I’ll be able to get the numlock and use jkl… instead. How freaking difficult would that be? I have all these modifier keys and yet I’m supposed to need an extra six inches of real estate on my desk. The stitches are nice though, just got to remove the rest, differ them up and add a teensy. After that it’s just a matter of correct wiring.

Did the dishes which afforded me room to start doing some bottles. Unfortunately, I have close to another score to go. At done point I’ll need to go through the bottles and identify any screw top ones, as they are inherently of a weaker sort.
One of those oddities is that the more I write, the more archaic and formal my English becomes. Do I think in these terms but have them overwritten by the insane stuff I read?
I’m thinking of trying my hand at Nanowrimo again, even with the terrible failure of last year. Obviously out would be to late to start this right now, but an automatically narrated video game that was turned into prose could be beautiful.

The player controls Alice. Beth, Charles and Doug are employees on patrol with Alice. Alice and team come to a four way intersection, and Alice realizes that the squad needs to spread out. As they don’t want to get too spread out, using an abundance of caution, they split into two groups. Alice and Beth go left while Charles and Doug head straight based on the right hand path being the least interesting.
Charles, being fairly intelligent for the trumped up lackey he is, less himself and Doug on a quick jaunt down the path. At the end of the alley, once they’re out of immediate range of Alice, they’re set upon by half a dozen blackguards of a truly mean nature.  At the very beginning of the fight, Doug had his head staved in, which inspired Charles to fight with the rage of a thousand reindeer. After repelling his attackers, he checks Doug to find his skull a sunken mess. The trauma he just observed causes him to panic and try to find Alice, jumping at shadows all the way.
Alice and Beth also meet with assailants, but suffer no injury.
Charles hears the fight and moves to join in. He comes around the corner and encounters two of the enemy rushing at him. He fires his pistol, laying low Beth.
His trauma had caused him to mistake friend for foe.
When the team separated, the player was still controlling both groups. The challenge is that the non-players might be lazy, scared, hallucinating, or just dicks. A lazy npc will walk slower or not notice important items. Fearful actors might get turned around or jump at shadows. Hallucination will lead to all sorts of comedy. The dickish might get seperated from people they don’t like, shoot at friendlies, or sell out their companions.
At all points, as long as an actor has companions in line-of-sight, their will be a master and slave. The player themselves have mostly perfect control, within reason, however even then the actors will use common sense to prevent their vainglorious death. Unless it would make sense, no actor will volunteer to catch a bullet for another.

This following is based on my compete lack of knowledge.

The classes I’m going to need are:
Grid – handles the creation, management and age of blocks
Blocks – creation, saving, loading, bit rot
Buildings – procedural generation of buildings, minimum number of doors, room layouts, purpose, name, bit rot with error checking
Actors – name, purpose, inventory, feelings, status. I should be able to offload this one, I think, to allow for npc vs hireling
You – our player, really, I think that would be a special actor. Maybe do it as turn based where the player moves the hireling, with the fog of war of the hireling, but… the less direct supervision results in… errors

The cider has now been purged. Sadly, as I watched it spinning down the drain, I noticed it was fishy starting to smell pretty decent. If I was making the cider equivalent of Caliber. I could call it Caliderp. I even went so far as to have a Dixie Cup. It really wasn’t bad, just weak willed. Next time, I’m totally going to use my hydrometer so I can tell what I’m doing.
In future world, once I have the cabinet from my parents, I think I’ll start science-ing it. Maybe I’ll get an xbee kit from Sparkfun to add wireless. That sounds like some fun. I’m still thinking of how to do density change detection of a liquid, without touching the liquid. I think sound propagation will vary with density, but I’m really not sure, especially when bubbles of co2 are added to the equation.

Assuming I’m making this a 3d game, I think trees works be a good example of entropy. For a tree to be memorable, it needs to have a lot of variables. It needs a location, orientation, type and status. To be truly unique though, it needs to have the individual boughs follow rules on their formation without bogging down the system as a whole. If we create the tree using the location and orientation as a seed, and then run it through the creator for the individual tree type, it would mean each tree could be created and destroyed each time it was needed, reducing the burden of remembering each tree. If something were to affect the tree, that could be kept as a modifier in the grid database.
If we extend this to houses, now we’re getting somewhere useful. The seed is made of the location, which then is consumed by the constructor itself. Only when things change will there be a need for more info… no that’s a bad idea. Gah! Buildings nd to be able to change, but… I’ll have to think about this some more.

Tonight I need to dump the bad cider. I’ll start delabeling more bottles, hot water and baking soda are the bomb yo. Overall, I need to get my den functional. That means I want my new desk up and live, seeing machine running, for cleared. Stuff that ain’t mine moving to places that aren’t mine. it’s a lot of work, and not all for tonight, but I should start doing today rather than blow it off another week.
I also need to figure out why ibsdl isn’t linking. I’m going to guess it’s a version issue between the sample source code and the version I have now?

The Wif asked me about if I needed any new projects to work on. I almost laughed as I have so many, that are almost all so extravagant, that any one could probably be a career in itself. So here we are at a coffee shop, Wayward, and I’m blogging about what I’m doing while finally digging into a C++ book I’ve had forever. I mean I’ve been meaning to learn how to program since I was eight or some bullshit.
I only ever study when I’m away from the computer, which makes studying almost impossible as it’s almost impossible to go all hands on when there is nothing to have your hands on.
Right, my mind is starting to dull down again. Totally time to get being practical. My data construct for terrain is based on a progressively more exact model.
Object»tree»birch»dead
The problem is I need to have a way to add overrides on top of that for buildings and stuff. This needs to happen more as a unit, lest firing the entropy stage I have buildings devolve to the point of not functioning. Maybe terrain needs to be one element with overlays being on top of it. It makes sense, thereby could have banned locations like Jim’s house or The Orc Cave. Doing overlays would make it easier to have multiple floors and basements. Adding in more descriptors should definitely be made easy so that adding haunted or holy to a building is quick and easy.
Actors well also need to have tags for all of the above. Indeed can’t go on holy ground. Superstitious ones won’t go where it’s haunted. Every actor has a home and a place to work.

I installed code::blocks (or however that’s written), and got sdl working. Oh, no I didn’t. I followed a tutorial, but I messed something up. It’s not linking right, so I’ll have to look for what I’m doing wrong. It was to late last night for me to figure out linker errors. I’m going to hazard the guess that… well actually I’m not sure. It’s something though. Definitely something. Unless it’s not. Either way, I’ll find that mofo.
I kinda wonder how surprised people, including myself, will be if I ever actually finish one of my more in-depth projects. What if I finish my game. Really once I get past the backend as previously discussed, it’ll just be adding more and polishing. I want sucked graphics where there are a million possibilities. I want dialogue yrs that are fluid and dynamic. The thing is, is I talk about this shit all the time. On one hand I’m sure most people think I’m all going pipe dream. However, I know my own ability level, and I’m pretty sure that the majority of people in my day to day realize that I probably could. If.
That’s the kicker. With some huge exceptions, I can do most anything I put my mind to. Read a chapter on anatomy and physiology, and then tutor my wife: child’s play. Hold a conversation with a stranger, not so much. Build some shelves out of ripped down cabinet did, scrap moulding, and a ball of twine: worked great.
Sorry. I’d finish going all discussiony but I’m suddenly distracted by my desire to rage on every stupid fucker that every rides this bus with me who has a difficult time not touching me while sitting next to me. Sit next to, next on you god damn old hag or you asshole construction worker person. I’m fucking 5’6″ and as much weight as I’ve put on, still only a 32″ waist. It’s called not being a douche. I feel plenty fresh, so I really could use a lack of douche bag in my life.
I’ll probably remove that interlude at a later time.

I think if I’m gonna get going on this, I really should. I can see the aesthetics in my mind. I know the basic idea. I have no end game. I don’t really like end game anyway. I mean if xcom would just keep ramping up, if they’re was infinite mode or something…

Right, a plan.
Make a square.
Have sprite move.
Add ai sprite.
Play tag with ai sprite.
Make obstructions in square.
Make varied obstructions.
Add squares of various completeness to periphery of current square.
Devolve unused squares.
Build buildings.
More ai.
Add neutrals.
Add friendlies.
Make all the ai a bunch of dicks.

So that’s the basic plan. Pretty straight forward. There are still questions. Should I roll my own engine or use someone else’s? Should I use unity(i think no) udk(initial price is great but 25% send step but that’s after I start rolling. UR4 seems nice, but for the length of time it’ll take me to get to speed, so I want to pay a subscription, also, well I actually use it?
I think I should start by just using tiles with some ghetto fog of war. As it gets better, I’m sure I’ll figure out the rest. Just having something running will be an achievement, then I just need to add to the aesthetics until it feels right.
A world of magic and mystery. Middle earth?
No, with old school technology. Oh yeah, Steam Punk! Steam Punk is the bomb yo!
No dude, I’m talking Disco and shit. Disco?
Disco.