Well...

Well, I am in the process of fixing a very simple bug, something I've done a million times before, but changed, and now wondering WTF could be wrong. My background image isn't loading and I don't see why not. I will look again this evening with a fresh mind.

I will then try and integrate LUA into my project.

I've also been having some minor artistic squabbles with my artist. He hasn't done games before, and keeps bending towards "realistic," art. I keep trying to tell him that it is a game, so should have some whimsy in it. I have to choose my battles, when we get in enough for some play testing, we'll get some feed back. Hey, he will be the one having to crank out new art.

Just letting you all know that I'm still cranking. After I get LUA up and running I will detail here how I did it.

Anyway...back to day job, and then tonight...fix the damn bug.

Like Air

I read something by Keita Takahashi (of Noby Noby game fame). He said that when he was working on the game he found a programmer to help him with it. The programmer took the design home, and asked his wife should he do it. She told him, he should work on it like his life depended on it.

This struck me as the attitude that I need to take to complete my game, my goal, my vision!

So, I'm going to attack this thing with an enthusiasm, and gusto unprecedented before. :)

No, seriously...I was on fire, then my fast came along and sort of got my energy low, and I have been puttering back. I have commitments this weekend, but Sunday evening...cracking!!

My game is my air! (Okay...breath slowly...slowly!)

Back In The Saddle

It's been 25 days since I sat down to work on my game, due to my religious fasting (see last post) and lack of energy. I'm all charged up and ready to get back at it. So, know that my fingers are clacking over the keys, and my brain is working.

Giddy up!

Dormant

I've been dormant, for the last week and a half. Why? Low energy is the answer. This time of the year Mar. 2nd - Mar.2oth, is my religious fasting period (Baha'i' Faith). So, I cannot eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. Thus, in the evenings I am completely out of energy. Having to rise early, means that I am not working late into the nights.

So, I have been reading and hope to do some small tasks, but while my spiritual battery recharges, I don't think I will be cranking on the game.

I'll be back in the saddle soon.

More OpenGL

I've started coding up the OpenGL code for the animation viewer tool on the Mac. Oh brother, now I have to do stuff specifically for the Mac. I was afraid of this when I started out on this iPhone game journey.

The iPhone uses OpenGL ES on the PowerVR MBX chipset. So, the animation code I've written for the iPhone, doesn't translate, 1 to 1, over to the Mac OS. Fortunately, the NSOpenGLView, and NSOpenGLContext class help alleviate some of the setup headaches, but now I'm going to have to write some code specifically for the Mac OS.

I wish Apple would incorporate a PowerVR MBX emulator view object for the Mac OS, so that those of us writing code for the iPhone, but also have to write tools, and game editors on the Mac would be able to use the same code that is in our engines.

If anyone reading or stumbling across this blog, has been able to use the same code from OGL ES on iPhone, on the Mac OS, drop me a note, I would like to communicate with you.

Oh well, as my grandmother always said, "there's no rest for the weary." Actually, she would substitute "wicked," for "weary," when talking to me. LOL!

The Saturday train trip, deadline approaches.

"I hear that train a comin', comin' round the bend, I ain't seen sunshine, since I don't know when..."

Oh yeah

I forgot to mention that I have the NSSpeechSynthesizer tied into the tool as well. I coded that up and have it working, although the selection to change to different type voices has a bug, and, well, I'm not going to waste time figuring that out. I don't want him wasting time playing with changing voices, and stuff.

So, when he enters the file name in wrong, he likes to add spaces to the sprite sheet files, it is going to parse the file name for spaces, and if it finds any, I have it say, "Dude, no spaces! I said, no spaces."

I know the first time it does that he's going to freak out. :)

More Hot Cocoa

As my boys plow down the slopes on their snowboards, I sit (uncomfortably) in the ski lodge, at a counter coding away on the sprite animation viewing tool, that I'm preparing for my artist to use. Using Cocoa I managed to get the OpenGL viewer, NSSlider (to allow him to step frame by frame), NSMatrix for the slider, NSTableView for the image files selection list, two NSButtons for start and stopping of the anims, and a couple of text entry fields, laid out, and the beginnings of the tool, completed.

I still have to connect some of the objects together so that the IBOutlets, and IBActions are tied together. So, I'm hoping that I will be way finished before my trip up to NYC on the train this coming Saturday.

This Cocoa, deep hands-on, learning is good (as mentioned before) because I'm learning things that I will be able to translate to the iPhone as well.

I'm tired of sitting here in this lodge and can't wait to get in the car, so we can get home!

Oh yeah, the Oscars are tomorrow...GO SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE GO!!

"Computer-gi, movie, wallah, tell me who is the best picture?"
answer: Slumdog Millionaire
"Is that your final answer?"
answer: You're damn skippy!