Productivity Posts, Introduction and First Installment: Game Programming Night

Posted January 24, 2012 @ 11:35 am — Filed under: Games,Productivity Posts,Programming

This post is the first in a series of “quick blogs” I’m going to write, in an attempt to document progress I’m making in various areas (to try to keep myself accountable for being productive). I’ve decided that on any night that I don’t have anything planned, I’m going to set up a “fallback activity” to, well, fall back on… one activity for each night of the week. Here’s my tentative plan:

  • Sunday: Visit family, relax, read, play games
  • Monday: Game Programming
  • Tuesday: Write music
  • Wednesday: Wire the studio, other electronics (non-computer) projects
  • Thursday: Work on web sites (Ragtrader, KBMOD, etc.)
  • Friday: PC Building / set up workshop
  • Saturday: Housework, brew beer, play games, go to Pittsburgh

Of course any sort of scheduled activity with friends/family/band/etc. will override this list, and I can swap out activities as the need arises. It’s just a set of guidelines really, to keep me from sitting around watching Netflix when I could be doing something real.

First installment: Game Programming Night, turned OS Reinstall Night

Writing a decent game is still on my list of life-long goals, so I decided to start working on it little by little. Game programming night actually started early in the day when I found a tutorial on programming with Allegro, a C++ library for game making. Really useful stuff there. I skimmed the first few tutorials while at work, then once I got home (after making camp-style bacon, hardboiled eggs and a huge salad for dinner) I started watching the videos.

From there I tried to get Allegro installed, but the version in the Ubuntu repositories is old (go figure) so I decided I would use this as an excuse to stop putting off an Arch Linux reinstall. About an hour later, I was back in a comfortable, minimalist Openbox environment (with Xsnow thrown in for good measure). I got Allegro installed, got some of the tutorial code to compile, and then I installed and tinkerd around a bit with Aseprite, a sprite editor meant for use with Allegro. Maybe next week I’ll make and post a few sprites on here. I’ve already got a couple game ideas in mind.

Next up: music writing night. (The rest of these posts will be shorter.)

Suitcase PC, finally done after 2 years

Posted January 11, 2012 @ 9:43 pm — Filed under: Pictures,Projects

The lovely community of folks over at KBMOD.com have a regular feature in which they describe their Bro Caves, which are the dark, comfy rooms they set up their gaming PCs in. More importantly than the rooms though, are the specs of their actual PCs. Which all blow mine out of the water. Thus, this post won’t make it onto their site, but I have been doing some finishing touches on the suitcase PC lately, and I think I can finally say — tentatively as usual — it’s finished. So here’s an attempt at writing something in the same spirit.

Bro Cave from an Alternate Reality

In some alternate universe, the fashion and decor tastes of bygone eras might still be with us today. And instead of laptops, we might have desktop PCs that are “luggable” like the old Commodore SX-64. And not only that, but we might all be using the Ubuntu operating system instead of Windows.

A man can dream can’t he?

We might have flying cars too.

As detailed in the original build post, here are the specs:

  • Currently, Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit OS
  • Intel DG45ID multimedia motherboard
  • OCZ 700w modular power supply
  • Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU
  • Intel GMX4500HD GPU (integrated)
  • 8 Gigs of Mushkin DDR2-800 memory
  • Two 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda drives (one just for backups)
  • SanDisk multi-card reader
  • IBM Model M keyboard
  • Gigabyte WiFi PCI card (I forget the model)
  • 22″ widescreen LG LCD monitor


Not very impressive by today’s standards, but this post comes just in time for me to mention a new PC build I’ll be undertaking, funds-permitting. The next one will be a real gaming & recording rig, inspired by the beastly rigs over at KBMOD, to replace my rapidly aging recording PC (which is actually an old dual-Xeon server I inherited from work… and we don’t get rid of them unless they’re pretty dang old).

Atari 2600 Guitar Stompbox

Posted @ 8:33 pm — Filed under: Electronics,Projects

So here’s one of those projects that sort of randomly materializes while rummaging through old stuff in the attic. I was looking for an enclosure to build a sort of “multi FX analog stompbox” for my guitar rig, when I found an old broken Atari 2600 in all its faux-wood-trimmed glory. Immediately the wheels started turning and I began taking it apart to see how much room was in there. Turns out there’s quite a bit of space, so I took to fitting a Line6 power supply PCB I’d recently scored on eBay into the bottom, and fitting the guts of a TU-2 tuner pedal, A/B switch, tremolo, and tube screamer clone into the top. Never has the Milwaukee rotary tool seen so much action.

Unfortunately my original design was full of fail because the power transformer ended up right next to a bunch of unbalanced, guitar-level signal wires. So the thing buzzed like crazy when I put it together, and no amount of shielding trickery could eliminate it. The next thing to try, then, was moving the supply into an external enclosure. For this, I found an old failed network hard drive (actually the little mainboard is fine, just one of the drives failed… don’t get me started on the stupidity of RAID-0) and gutted it. After adding a fuse and properly tying the enclosure to ground, I ran 8 discreet 9-volt DC lines out of the enclosure via CAT5 cables and added an RJ45 jack to the back of the Atari.

The next iteration will likely incorporate two or three more pedals in the Atari, since there was plenty of room in there when I was done. What I’d really like though, is to grab the guts out of a newer-generation 2600 and mount them in there too, so it still functions as a game system.

After a hectic day of finishing this project up, I used the set up at a gig that night (the Repeal Day Brew Fest in Sharon, PA) and I was really pleased. The pedals, unlike my previous wall-wart-powered rig, were totally noise-free. The only annoying thing is that it’s a little difficult to turn the tuner on and off using my feet (since it’s turned on and off via the original Atari switches). Some sort of additional foot-friendly momentary button may need to be added at some point.

Desura game distribution service

Posted January 10, 2012 @ 2:33 pm — Filed under: Games,Software

I recently started using a game distribution service called Desura, because they released a native Linux version of their client. I’ve tried Steam, too, and it runs under Linux, but only via Wine, so it’s kind of slow and clunky. (Though maybe that’s how it is on Windows, too.) So far, I’ve had pretty good luck with Desura: I redeemed a couple of my Humble Bundles via Desura keys, downloaded some freebies, and purchased a few titles as well. I have had a couple of stability issues — mainly crashes during game updates though it works fine again and resumes downloading after restarting the client. On my wish list would be cloud-saved games and some more community-oriented features, like logging game hours and achievements (all of which Steam has). It should be noted that Desura has about 1/1000th the user base of Steam, and its focus, currently, is indie titles; but that might just be circumstantial considering they have some of the major game studio listed in their database. But if you’re looking for an easy way to get smaller-but-still-high-quality games and mods, on Linux or Windows, give it a shot (even if you already use Steam).

The Maze

Posted December 8, 2011 @ 1:00 pm — Filed under: Games,Programming

Reading a recent article on Kotaku about the amazing programmer Tim Sweeny made me start reminiscing about some of the games I wrote on the Commodore 64 in my younger days. It would be a huge understatement to say that it’s regretful that all of those floppy disks containing thousands of boy-hours of programming work were lost many years ago — actually, think “boy losing his teddy bear”. One of those disks contained (and may still contain, probably in a landfill) a game written entirely in BASIC called The Maze. The original Maze may be lost, but watching the video of Sweeny’s ZZT — which I really want to play now — reminded me that there is one game that is still around: a QuickBasic port of The Maze that I wrote in college in an attempt to relive my childhood programming days. The Maze for QB retained a lot of the same features like a level editor, enemies that chased you, sound effects, save points, and a 30-room-based layout. I don’t think I’ve shared this game with anyone before, so I thought it might be fun to put out there for someone to try. (Eh, who am I kidding?) To this day, writing a decent video game, big or small, is still one of my life goals. This is not that game. :)

So here it is:



You’ll need 7-zip or be on Linux to extract it, and DosBox to be able to play it. Just extract, run DosBox, “mount” the C drive by typing (press [Enter] after each line, and replace the path in the first line with the path you extracted to on your PC):

mount c: /path/to/maze/folder
c:
GAME.EXE

I recommend cranking up the CPU cycles (Ctrl-F12) to keep the enemies from slowing down the screen (did I mention I wasn’t a very good programmer?). Also it depends on having the keyboard repeat rate up fairly high, if it’s not you will have trouble running from enemies.

Object of the game:
Explore, collect diamonds, open doors with keys, avoid enemies, find the treasure. There are also warp tiles, traps, mines, and save points. If you’re clever you can kill enemies by luring them into traps or mines.

Controls:

  • Cursor Keys: movement
  • E: enter editor
  • Esc: Quit
  • -/=: Speed up/slow down enemies
  • L: Load new world file (don’t type the .dat extension)
  • Left Mouse Button (in editor): Place the currently selected object type
  • Right Mouse Button (in editor): Remove currently selected object type



That’s it, enjoy! Trust me, you will be underwhelmed and frustrated. :)

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