NoshBar's Dumping Ground

LÏKE 2D game engine framework-ish

LÏKE is like LÖVE 0.8, but watered-down and less awesome.
LÏKE is an implementation of a subset of LÖVE features.
LÏKE does have some extensions though, such as live-reloading of assets and scripts and a touch API for touchscreens.
LÏKE is a minimal framework you can use to make 2D games in Lua.
LÏKE works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, QNX (PlayBook) and WebOS.
LÏKE is a self-contained single executable less than 500Kb in size, written in C from scratch using OpenGL, Lua 5.2, PortAudio and the Chipmunk Physics engine.

I made my first game, jmp:err, using LÖVE. The experience of learning Lua and a new framework in a day was great.
Some things about LÖVE annoyed me though, the lack of proper ports to other platforms, the font API and I had disagreements, etc.

So, as things always go, I thought I'd make my own version the next weekend as a challenge, using the API in a "black-box" type approach.
After two days of crazily bad coding, I got my game running in my own version of the engine, exciting!

The main goal was just to get my game running on Android, but with the groundwork basically done, I figured I would keep on working on it.
I decided to port my bridge tutorial to Lua in an effort to learn "classes" in Lua and get a grips with the physics engine.
One thing lead to another and BAM, LÏKE was born.

See what's currently implemented by visiting the LÏKE page via the link on the sidebar.
Downloads for all platforms to be put up once I get my PC at home running again.

Drumpster v0.2 - "What the heck" release.

This new version of Drumpster has been "ready" for ages now, I didn't want to release it because it simply isn't good enough.
(the "MIDI Playback" button doesn't do anything unless you enable it in the configuration file first, there aren't proper icons for most binaries, I haven't tested it properly on all the platforms (32-bit or 64-bit OSX build... how should I know!?), the lyrics don't always load correctly...)
However, when compared to v0.1, this has several major fixes and enhancements that make it worthwhile.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that I am going to have to rewrite the whole MIDI loading to notes on a timeline process. I currently load notes and convert them to their absolute time in milliseconds, mostly because I'm a dunce and I have no idea what I'm doing.
What I've noticed is that this conversion process isn't ideal as a song with a slow tempo will throw the notes towards you at the same pace as a fast tempo song... meaning that the notes will either be scrunched up together or very far apart, making it difficult to read sometimes.
So now I will have to store the notes and their tempo and change the rate of note flow accordingly.

Major fixes

MIDI loader is more stable and maps things more correctly now.
The splash-screen now works, a side-affect of the OpenGL code being slightly less beaten by the crazy-dog stick.
The OBJ loader is a bazillion times faster now, and is less against actually loading OBJ files.

Enhancements

Android build - I've tested it on a single device, all I own, if you have any tales of woe/joy, I'd love to hear about them at my Hotmail address, noshbar@, or Tweet to @noshbar
BlackBerry PlayBook build
The WebOS build has a funky feature where you can drag the timeline/fretboard back and forwards through time with your finger.
Lyrics are now loaded from the MIDI file and displayed during gameplay.
You can enable buggy MIDI audio playback by adding the following line to the drumpster.cfg file:
```
[sound]
midi_backtrack=true
```

Python doesn't actually suck too much...

Rambly introductory

Until recently, I had no reason to code something in Python, as I had all my bases covered by C/C++, ObjectPascal, and PHP.
Lately work has had me pottering with some utilities written in Python, and even though I don't "know" Python, I could read the code just fine (as I guess is the case with most coders), and it seemed like something that would be good for quick prototypes (especially as my main development machine is now a Mac - it comes with Python pre-installed).

So I set myself the task of re-creating HelperMonkeyBot in Python.

Things I used

Having had some frustrations with getting an XMPP library and its dependencies set up and working with cross-platform C++ compilers, I was delighted to find SleekXMPP, which is easily installed by typing:

python setup.py install

I had Python 2.7 on OSX and Linux, and Python 3.2 on Windows.
I figured this would let me target the two different versions (and -hey-, how different could they be? More on that later, SIGH).

As before, I used SQLite for the database, using the full-text-search capability it provides.
This seems to be enabled in the OSX and Linux distributions I was using (10.7 and 11.10, respectively), but not on Windows Python 3.2.
The easy fix is to go the SQLite website and download a new sqlite3.dll and plonk it in the Python32\DLL folder.
Well, it WOULD be, but I guess the API has changed (or something, I didn't have the patience to check)... so I did what any impatient prototyper would have done (just me?) and uninstalled Python 3.2, and installed Python 2.7, replaced the DLL as before, and et voila, success!

For an editor/IDE, I initially just edited the code in Xcode, but that provided very little other than syntax highlighting.
So then I tried SPE, which was great, I could debug code, set breakpoints, do all the things I'm used to with compiled code... buuut it would sometimes crash, or just act weirdly. Nothing deal-breakery, but my lust for shiny new things had to be met, and it was the perfect to excuse to look for MOOORE.
I then used Aptana Studio 3, which has PyDev support built in, and worked pretty well (apart from the eye mangling default theme)... but still didn't feel quite right.

After much elimination and many crying supermodels, I finally chose Python Tools for Visual Studio... what can I say? I absolutely adore that IDE.
All the shortcuts I know, incredibly quick stepping through code (with Python 2.7 anyway), easy process killing, warnings in the IDE about mismatched white-spacing... it just felt right for me.

The story so far...

Despite the warnings and dismissals from internet experts and people I know, my opinion is that Python doesn't suck too bad.
I know my opinion is worth as much as the rest of the experts, but it boils down to this:
Bad code is bad code, how bad it is depends on how much you let yourself abuse the available functionality.

This initial code for HelperMonkeyBot must be horrendous to seasoned (hmm, salty) Python coders, but it's a stepping stone for me, and one I am proud of.
Not because I learnt a new language, not because I think it's great code, but simply because I didn't abuse it too much.

I think the thing I like most about Python is the same thing that has me liking Pascal/Delphi still:
people who provide examples in Python/Pascal provide code that is understandable, and seemingly want to explain things more than C/++ coders.
For years I would search for things like "avi player delphi" because the code would be easy to read, and there would normally be an accompanying article.
The great thing is that Python seems way more popular than Delphi, so a whole new world of easy-to-understand code has opened up to me, huzzah!

So, soon I will provide an updated HelperMonkeyBot (I'm testing it at the moment) which -thanks to being in Python with some easy to use helper libraries- sends mail reminders.
Not the world's most amazing feature, but considering the C code I'd have to do for that... YAY!

TISFAT source release.

Oh TISFAT.

I keep claiming it's the worst written code on the planet... and recently someone asked if they could have the source to "play around with" (more likely it would have its way with them).

After being quite happy that I had lost the source a while back and could not prove that theory... well, curiosity got the better of me and I played with some undelete tools on an old hard-drive I had.

So here it is, the source code for my 15 minutes of fame, released under the "don't tell anyone I wrote it unless they think it's awesome" license.

I've been hesitant to release it in the past, because it is truly awful, from over a decade ago, before I could program, or even knew what the "Object" in Object-Pascal meant (which should be quite obvious).
I'd hate for this ever to hurt my chances of anyone ever employing me based on this code, so I would just like to state that I am infinitely better now.
Infinitely.
But also, keep in mind that somehow I managed to keep working on this, understanding the mess, knowing exactly where in the bazillions of lines of code things happened... only a smart person could do that. Nod nod nod. Did I write smart? I meant to type "loony".

So anyway, use this at your own peril, and do NOT come asking for me help... especially not if it starts sucking your soul out...
It used to compile with Delphi 6 Personal Edition, and somewhere along the line I managed to use the ... Delphi... Studio... something... I don't remember what it was called, all I remember is that it required .NET 1.1, was incredibly bloated and slow, and crashed more than TISFAT.

And some of the many things I learnt doing this:

Never put code directly in an event handler, make it call an objects function or something
$I including files in Delphi is not smart, it's evil, and made debugging almost impossible (back in Delphi 5 days at least)
Delphi objects... well, you don't need to allocate memory for them in the traditional malloc() way, nor do you need to use pointers to them... instance := object.Create() works juuust fine, and is a lovely way of doing things.
When designing a file format, do just that, design it! The amount of fudges in the TISFAT format just to cater for tiny variances in previous versions... geez.
I quite enjoy working in my own filth.

Tweenimator progress.

So, some progress on Tweenimator:

Astute readers may notice that images are now working, meaning I could add the world's ugliest test-UI too.

Also shown is how complex stick figures can be built from scratch.

Not show in action are the "move stick figure" and "rotate stick figure" options.
The "move" action works just peachy.
The "rotate" action, well...

See, in TISFAT, if you wanted to rotate a stick figure, you had to manually rotate the points. I can only imagine how difficult that must have been, because I never had the patience to do that kind of thing (sicko's!).
I _would_ have added the rotation option, but I had no idea how to handle mouse clicks on a rotated entity.
Now I do.

So, rotating an entire stick figure between frames means you can still edit the poses just by clicking on the stick figure like usual.

However, as this is prototype stage, I'm cutting myself some slack, in that the order of the rotations, or the center of which, must be wrong... when I rotate the stick figure, it goes way off screen.

That aside, progress is pretty good.

There is also an option to keep one "stick"/"limb" at the same angle to the one it is connected to, quite handy.
Except that I'm a mathematical genius * -1, and can't seem to get the angle right. I think I'm not transferring something during tweening...

Anyway, it's still fun, and that's what counts.
Especially when the world around me is covered in running combusting screaming monkeys.

Announcing Tweenimator, because I'd rather code than learn how to draw.

First there was the fine motor skills of an elephant.
Then there was TISFAT, which worked for a while, mostly, almost.
Then there was an unreleased tisfatTOO, which did nothing but frustrate me.

But now that tablets are common-place, and there are touch-screens actually capable of being useful (eat dust, resistivity!), I decided it would be fun just to see what animating a stick figure on them would be like.
So I whipped up a quick prototype to test it... and, well, damn. I've got the disease again.

It may not look like much, but the original TISFAT started with something way more basic/hideous.
AND it runs on iPad, TouchPad, and PlayBook already, huzzah!

To the FutureMobile!

PlayBook Drumpster

So, the BlackBerry PlayBook went on a firesale of sorts yesterday, and I had a voucher from my awesome work, so I naturally had to go get one for super cheap.

It took about 2 hours in total to get the SDK installed and Drumpster ported... The WebOS changes making it a straight-forward port.

So now it really is time to start making a sensible directory structure for the builds, getting some sort of source control up and running, and finally proceeding with work on improving Drumpster and taking it forwards, instead of sideways.

Fortunately being awesome is not a crime, unlike being a foreigner...
Due to me not coming from an English speaking country, and clearly not having any IT skills, I will have to leave the UK soon, hopefully ending up in Sweden, after which I can hopefully focus on making Drumpster something usable.

Always hoping...

WebOS Drumpster

So, I finally managed to get myself a TouchPad, and it's even more awesome than I thought it would be.
It's currently set up to dual boot between Android and WebOS, and it runs Ubuntu within WebOS just peachily.
WebOS just feels so good to use, the browser just _feels_ nicer to use than Android's or iOS's.

Anyway, kicking the nerdiness up a notch, man oh man is the PDK nice and easy to use, providing OpenGL and SDL from the start, with the ability to test and debug things on Windows.

The fairy tale version of my porting story: I barfed up a bit of SDL bootstrap code to create a window and handle inputs, and everything else just worked!

The real version: I am a bleeding tool. I initially looked at the PDK samples, one called "simple", which included an OpenGL ES 2 header file.
So I went on a learning escapade where I FINALLY addressed my lack of GLSL knowledge and suspiciously loving attachment to the fixed rendering pipeline.
Shaders and whatnot had never made sense to me, until I found this awesome tutorial.

So I finally had some shaders up and running, I had some hand-coded matrix maths stuff going, I had 3d models on screen and rotating and... annoyingly disappearing (some Z issue) and going all over the place.

In an effort to see what else GLES 2 provides, I decided to see if there were any other header files...
There were/are.
An OpenGL ES 1 header file.
DAMN MALE OFFSPRING OF A FEMALE CANINE!

So yes. Drumpster runs on the TouchPad fantastically.
Take that Joggler.

Oh, and I found and fixed the bug in MonkeyBot... and got it running on the BeagleBone and Bifferboard.
I'll upload the new code "soon".

Announcing MonkeyBot: Because I'd rather code than learn how to use SSH

While that's not strictly true, I am overly paranoid about a bunch of things, opening a port on my firewall being one of them.
Not because I think SSH might have flaws, or the firmware on my modem, but because I'm a complete dufus with no self-esteem who doesn't trust himself, and I really don't feel like setting up my PC again, post internet-abuse.

Sooo, introducing (Helper)MonkeyBot, a little instant messenger bot that sits and worships and listens to your commands.
You also get a single-page PHP file to view the stored messages more purdy like.
MonkeyBot is open source and released under the ZLib licence, and is thus compatible with its dependencies, SQLite and Gloox (which uses GnuTLS).

It's a little program that logs into an XMPP account and listens for commands from another specified XMPP account (with a secret handshake phrase), and basically stores whatever you type to it (with a category), with the option of recalling/viewing/deleting/searching the data via IM, as well as downloading files for you so that they are ready by the time you get home.

An example dialog would be:

nashbor@gmail: Hey Asshat.
monkeybot@gmail.com: What do you want?
nashbor@gmail.com: todo: Make Drumpster less poo.
monkeybot@gmail.com: Stored. (MessageID: 1)
nashbor@gmail.com: download:http://www.3dconstructionkit.co.uk/3dkit/PC-3D_Construction_Kit_2.zip
monkeybot@gmail.com: Stored. (MessageID: 2)
...
monkeybot@gmail.com: Download finished successfully: PC-3D_Construction_Kit_2.zip
nashbor@gmail.com: search:Drump*
monkeybot@gmail.com: ID1: Make Drumpster less poo.
monkeybot@gmail.com: Search finished.

MonkeyBot is super easy to compile on Ubuntu.

apt-get install gcc g++ libgloox-dev
change to the folder with the 7 or so MonkeyBot source files
compile sqlite with FTS4 support
g++ *.o *.cpp -lgloox -lpthread -ldl

On any other platform though... I came across some PITA's:

Not every version of Linux has a package manager, especially when trying to use embedded systems, so you're stuck compiling things for yourself.
I spent much too long trying to get libnettle to compile (WHY? Why can't you see the libnettle include files? The paths are PERFECT you piece of gangrenous armpit slug!), which GnuTLS needs, which Gloox needs.

For Windows however, you can get a precompiled GnuTLS DLL and DEF off the gnu website, which you can create a LIB file from, and link against in Visual Studio.
I thought it would be:
Compile Gloox, linking to GnuTLS. (of course, you have to remove some files from the solution and make a typedef before it will compile)
Compile MonkeyBot, linking to Gloox.
Make sure all the GnuTLS and Gloox DLL's are in the MonkeyBot.EXE folder.
Run.

But nooo, that gave me weird connection issues in Debug mode, or a crash in Release mode.
However, deleting all the GnuTLS DLL's from the .EXE folder made the Debug build connect just fine all of a sudden.
My random-unproved-and-probably-shitty theory is that the Debug Gloox.DLL includes the GnuTLS stuff, at least it should, given its size.
As for the Release mode crash... some std::string thing that I couldn't be bothered trying to find out about.

I'm considering rewriting the ChatEngine class so that it can use either Gloox or the XMPPFramework for OSX/iOS... with plans to run MonkeyBot and Apache and PHP and the viewing program on a poor abused jailbroken iPhone I got handed down to me by someone rich because I'm so 3rd world.

Anyway, it works for me for now, I discovered a crash when creating custom actions JUST as I was uploading the files to my site... so I guess v0.2 will be coming soon... annnd that you should probably take the time to learn about cron and watchdog scripts...
Lots to still be done on MonkeyBot, like remote shell, not sucking, reminders that do something actively...

Use it, don't use it, I don't care.
Rock on.

Drumpster v0.1 is out!

So, I finally decided to release Drumpster.
Even though the only reason it works slightly is because it is so broken (it can't even get being broken right).

The configuration/song creation tool is about 80% done, so until then, some documentation on how to do stuff is here.

Binaries for Windows, Ubuntu and OSX are available... with varying degrees of working between them.
They all load and display songs, which is all I wanted it to do for now, so yay!

I needed to rush to get this out before Uncharted 3 comes out, because otherwise it never would.
Also, this makes me feel like someone in the world might be using it, meaning I have to give this some sort of priority.

Now, back to playing!