Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Update

I've done my proposal, and I'm now working on that demo I released earlier. I've added a nice menu, a few decorations and some extra items to pick up. Right now I'm working on the inventory system which is pretty code-intensive, I enjoy the heavier coding but unfortunately it leaves me with little to talk about. So here's a little something I've been working on, I'm definitely wanting to put this character into the game at some point,

Monday, August 11, 2008

Demo release

http://www.4shared.com/file/58702524/ae695e35/THEdemo.html

There it is, should work. All the info is in the read me, just extract and play. I'm finally settling into python code so the doors are opening. But I don't have long and there's a load of work to do (typical of this course)
I'm gonna work on improving this demo for a bit, the room's a little sparse and the code is messy. But for now I'm working on my project submission.
There's also a video here of the demo thanks to roger. But if you have time, downloading it and giving feedback on performance and bugs would be extremely helpful.

Monday, August 4, 2008

I'm not hungry

Well it seems I'm obliged to eat my own foot, the demo's not finished. The coding is even harder than I first expected, but I'm making progress, and I'm hoping to have it ready by this time next week. One of the course criteria is about setting goals and deadlines, hopefully the focus isn't on meeting them.
Meanwhile I wanted to talk about free-ware and open-source, see over the exam period I tinkered with a program advertised on the class blog called endorphin http://www.naturalmotion.com/index.htm (natural motion software, character physics simulation, basically rag-doll on steroids), it's not free-ware 'gah' but I got the trial edition. Even with this free version it was clear to see that it didn't follow an open source philosophy. The program itself is entertaining, easy to use and relatively glitch free, but the endorphin user community is one of the most irritating and frustrating groups around.
You install the program, and instead of getting straight into it you are re-directed to the endorphin website where you are made to enter your name, email address, age, nationality and a whole bunch of other stuff. After this is done they tell you to check your email, five minutes later you receive the email telling you to go back to the endorphin website and activate your account. Only once you have registered as an forum user can you get the little bit of code which allows you to use the program. What's more is every time you open the program it will try to log you on to the endorphin website and encourage you to buy the full version.
Now imagine the whole process on dial-up, and that's pretty much why open-source is the best thing ever. Think that's a weak argument? I don't care.