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According to my records, this marks ten years since I first touched
main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
So how did the Year of the Dragon fare? Well, exactly zero releases in the previous calender year does not bode very well. I'd like to claim that it was because I was very busy with my non-POWDER life. But, more accurately, it was Diablo III. Since I realized I wasn't going to get 118 out for the tenth anniversary, I wondered what I should do instead. After some deliberation I decided: an Android port. I'm very happy with this first pass. It works on 2.2+, so should run on most any phone out there. I look forward to your experiences! As an experiment, I have also setup a Trello Board where I'm tracking my work on this live. So if you find an Android specific bug missing on that list, drop me an email! One last hint: Press the menu button on your phone to rotate from portrait mode! |
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According to my records, this marks nine years since I first touched
main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
Only two releases in the last year. This does keep the spectre of release 127 at bay (yes, I do use a char to store a version number somewhere) - at this rate I have another five years to figure out a work around. The upcoming year is the Year of the Dragon! I never did add the monkey I threatened so many internet-eons ago. Fortunately there already enough dragons in POWDER. Well, that is not exactly true. I do receive the occasional email from people who feel there should be more. |
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Well, I'm off to Vancouver for SIGGRAPH '11 this Sunday.
Any also at Siggraph are welcome to send me a message. My schedule can be rather hectic, but I can always find time for POWDER players. You can also watch me perform - I'll be presenting a talk at Siggraph on "Correcting Low Frequency Impulses in Distributed Simulations." Yes, it is that exciting! I'll also be moderating a much more exciting set of talks. All the excitement is on Thursday, the last day of the conference. http://www.siggraph.org/s2011/for_attendees/talks" If you are wondering how you can contact me, I recommend reading to the end of the README.TXT that ships with POWDER. |
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This weekend I'll be presening my submission, "Towards an Algebra of Roguelike
Games" at the International Roguelike Development Conference 2011. The IRDC is being held in Visby, Sweden this year.
Any also at IRDC 2011, or happen to be in Stockholm before or Visby during, are welcome to send me a message. Our schedule isn't very busy. If you are wondering how you can contact me, I recommend reading to the end of the README.TXT that ships with POWDER. |
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I am honoured to announce that POWDER has been selected for the
Nintendo DS Homebrew Showcase exhibit at the Silent Barn.
And here is the Facebook Event link. The fun starts April 8th! So if you find yourself in Queens, check it out! |
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According to my records, this marks eight years since I first touched
main.cpp in my POWDER baseline!
Fifty-percent more releases, year over year. This sounds impressive until you realise I only released twice the previous year. The major advance the last year was just in platforms, with the iPhone finally seeing a POWDER version. Another bit of trivia is that as of this year, every computer that was used to initially develop POWDER eight years ago has gone to the big bit bucket in the sky. My original Gameboy Advance (with Afterburner internal front light) cracked first. The flash card outlived it, but was then subsumed by modern SD based carts. My main development machine of that time - a dual athlon 1800+ - finally shut down for the last time this summer. This lost me the PSP tool chain, which I have not yet managed to bootstrap. But fortunately one jungletek has come through with a 115 build to tide you over. |
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Well, I'm off to Los Angeles for SIGGRAPH '10!
Any also at Siggraph are welcome to send me a message. My schedule can be rather hectic, but I can always try to find time for POWDER players. If you are wondering how you can contact me, I recommend reading to the end of the README.TXT that ships with POWDER. |
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I am honoured to have IndieCade select Smart Kobold for
demonstration at their booth at E3!
More info about their E3 presence, along with the other cool games being shown, over at their press release. Sadly, I will not be able to attend. But if any POWDER players happen to be at E3, I suggest you check out IndieCade's booth! |
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A while back I came across this video.
It is a fun look at roguelike development. However, I feared that
some inaccuracies in the video might lead to problems.
There is, for example, the implication that you can just go and write a roguelike. It should not need to be repeated that roguelikes can only be written after a detailed design document has been expressly approved by the cabal (there is no cabal). Much more serious, however, is the scene in which an Angband developer is bested through the use of a nerf sword. This is, of course, a dangerous claim to make. I have decided to make the following public service advisory to remind viewers that to become a roguelike developer one must already have access to spells of much greater level than the demonstrated In Flam Ylem. (I'd have demonstrated Sunfire, but air travellers have already had enough flight delays due to volcanic dust this year)
I do approve of the clean coding style shown in the video, however. |
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So I release a new version to a new platform and manage to have an
off-by-one error in the help system. I guess the good news is that I
now know that people actually do read the help!
Of course, Murphy being what it is, shortly after releasing 113 my off-site Subversion machine decided to stop working. Don't fear, I have backups of the repo, and am now in the process of extracting the last repo directly from the machine's flash drive. But I think it likely is a good point to try out one of these new fangled source control systems. Mercurial is the one I'm thinking of. Being distributed, future failures will be less critical as I can easily rebuild a master repo from any of the checked out baselines and just resynch. So what does this have to do with no moving parts? When my previous CVS machine died, I took the chance to switch to Subversion and also to move away from the standard PC platform. I went with a Zonbu, an excellent little mini-PC that uses only 15W of power. It is also has the virtue of running of a Compact Flash and thus has no moving parts. No moving parts, in my mind, meant no failure conditions. If nothing moves, nothing can go wrong? Right? I think I've identified what's wrong with my logic. There are no computers with no moving parts. Because, you see, to be at all useful, there's a heck of a lot of electrons moving about in there. And these electrons rushing about, filling and discharging capacitors, heating up wires, etc, can lead to a system failure as easily as a frozen fan. Not being one to learn from my mistakes, I've put in an order for a GuruPlug Server to replace the Zonbu. It also has "no moving parts", but an added advantage of being a mere 5 watts in power. |