27 august 2006
my first recording , recorded with 200ms latency, since i had the wrong sound drivers installed (now down to 6msec), not to happy with the drums i might rerecord it this weekend. anyways a bit of a homage to nick cave though im not a great fan of his1 sep 2006
(first day of spring), Im looking for a few more beta testers (previous testers are also welcome), email me -> thedude at zedzeek.com3 sep 2006
at knackered's suggestion ive added a builiten board4 sep 2006
rant about the beauty of the upcoming gears of war game4 sep 2006
added a couple of new weapons, + improved the flamethrower5 sep 2006
steve irwin dead, a great man, certainly was the greatest living ozzie. yeah i know ppl tend to eulogize someone when theyre dead, but news should have some semblance of truth, eg from the bbc "steve was a national hero/treasure in australia etc", certainly not the impression i had of the average ozzies opinion of steve from my ~3 years spent there traveling all over the place, thier general opinion was he was a dick + an embarassment to australia. next up the papers will read antony mundine dead! "the widely loved true australia battler will be sorely missed in australia"6 sep 2006
completed another level (total == now 4, working on the fifth (nearly finished, once i have 9 ready ill release the next demo)8 sep 2006
completed level 5, added lensflares + halos around planets
10 sep 2006
end of year bet, didnt get the full $3240 though, since there were multiple winners, im running 3:3 now with top scorers, rugbyWC (Muliaina), footbal (klose), trinations(tuqiri)
10 sep 2006
btw the feeling of enjoying cash after 'earning' it through work than getting it through other means (as often told by parents to kids) is bogus, ive found once $100 + once $350 + certainly enjoyed those more than i do by picking up my paycheck at the end of the week, same with bets11 sep 2006
looking at that photo, i can see why acouple of weeks ago some ppl mistook me for the current all blacks captain richie maccaw
11 sep 2006
added a new weapon, bunsen burner + linked up a lot of the chemical compound + weapons, should have a windows demo out tomorrow with a linux one later in the week12 sep 2006
removed about 30 shader files, cleaned some up etc, should have the first public demo out tonight, based on feedback from the that, i should have a general release demo out within a month12 sep 2006
thinking about the next major step, after the demos out, perhaps adding a raytracer or GI renderer to the game, the only problem is even though it mightnt look it, captain courgette is quite high on the number of polygons eg prolly rendering more than doom3, ill have to think about it, i have written both raytracers + radiosity apps in the past so whilst not new to me getting them to run >30fps will be a hard challenge.12 sep 2006
might add a new weapon 'handgrenade' quite fun to throw those and watch them bounce off the buildings back at u.12 sep 2006
ok here we go captain courgette beta 0.2 (12mb)this only will work on nvidia cards, that support glsl eg gffx/gf6/7, u can contribute by posting suggestions for improvements or bugs in the CC forum BTW i noticed the rocks aint drawn right first time, so after it starts quit the game + restart it (takes 5 secs this time)13 sep 2006
HA13 sep 2006
linux build of captain courgette, u may need sdl, sdl_mixer + newton installed can someone mail me if this is the case (btw same deal nvidia only at present)14 sep 2006
yeah its quite hard to download the file its hidden agmonst the adsyouve gotta go halfway down the page until u see
Download for free with FileFactory Basic
+ then on the new page
Click here to begin your download
14 sep 2006
also when u decompress the files make sure u specify a directory (create one yourself). thanks martin.15 sep 2006
i had a brainwave last night during smoko about a new method of doing the holy grail of graphics 'Global Illumination', itll still be very slow but who knows, ill code up a test app this weekend + if its sucessful, ill write a paper.16 sep 2006
couple of good points, last night at work last night + today im the IOTD at www.gamedev.net (idiot of the day)18 sep 2006
decided to take a few days off coding CC to record some music, saying that though i just redone the control method (thinking of adding joystick support) ive made it now that the spaceships rotation is not controlled by the mouse, but eg by the keybaord, this simplfies it so the player doesnt control both movement + rotation with the mouse.18 sep 2006
my GI idea didnt turn out to be much cop, it works but is very slow, i was using the hardware occlusion test to see how much light a fragment would recieve. might stay up all night (its 5am now anyways) so i can get used to normal sleeping hours, just like what i do to advoid jetlag.19 sep 2006
nintendo wii for $250! true theyll be making a profit on day one but I believe they might of priced themselves out of the competiton, $250 for what? a remote! pple say the ps3 is expensive but for $5/600 u do get a lot for your money eg blu-ray + a cpu that is faster than any u can get for the pc, even the latest from amd/intel costing over $1000 are less than half the ps3 cells speed. xb360 looks quite good in the middle, cpu's good, its main weakness though is the gpu, but i can see why they went unified, to cut costs at the reduction of performance.19 sep 2006
the next (much improved) demo of CC will come out on the 8th of october.22 sep 2006
a choice between AA + higher resolution, eg 640x480 + 4xAA or 1024x768 no AA. the higher res wins practically every time.22 sep 2006
the thing about my favourite band sonic youth, is their music is so rhythmic, its like theyve got 3 drummers, ie the drummer + both guitarists, my only complaint would be it usually seems to be 4/4 time usually in 2 or 4 bar parts23 sep 2006
Ive decided to rewrite my widgetmanager today, I was never happy with the original it violated one of my main rules 'KISS'. extremly simplified crap example// old way
struct Widget
{
// stuff etc
vec3 pos;
virtual void blah();
};
struct ButtonWidget : public Widget
{
void blah() { cout << pos << endl; }
};
// new waystruct ButtonWidget
{
vec3 pos;
void blah() { cout << pos << endl; }
};
Much nicer, the problem with the first method is thats how its taught in books/schools etc. And they give u extremely convincing arguments why its 'the right way'(tm) but heres the rub, its bollux!
23 sep 2006
the great thing about rewriting a class / method etc is youve learnt so much from the mistakes of the first attempt that the second is usually way better than what u would have if u just modified the first, (commonsense) its better to start with a clean slate than try to fix a broken model.24 sep 2006
cocked up yeasterday, i overcomplicated things, i was trying to be smart by designing something a bit more flexible, with templates eg< WIDGETS> < SLIDER id="gamma" size="50 20" range="0.0 1.0" type="float" /> < TEXT id="texttest" size="100" text="this is a test" /> < PAGE name="rendering"> < SLIDER id="gamma" pos="512 420"/> < TEXT id="texttest" pos="212 120"/> < /PAGE> < /WIDGETS>this is what ill do now, KISS. also to make matters worse i coded full error checking (something i usually dont do cause its time consuming) into the code, fuck.
< WIDGETS> < PAGE name="rendering"> < SLIDER id="gamma" pos="512 420" size="50 20" range="0.0 1.0" type="float"/> < TEXT id="texttest" pos="212 120" size="100" text="this is a test"/> < /PAGE> < /WIDGETS>
25 sep 2006
hows this for a crazy idea for the core thread of a OS.
while (1)
{
if ( time_since_last_check >= 100ms )
{
check to see if user is pressing ctrl-alt-del, if so stop all other activity + see what they want
}
// do stuff ...
}
certainly better than the current windows method, app is taking 99.99% of cpu timethe minutes pass whilst the user is frantically pressing ctrl-alt-del saying stop stop
os - yeah yeah coming,
10 minutes later, os - what do u want?
user - i want u to kill that cpu-hogging app
os - what u mean the one ive just finshed with?
28 sep 2006
Got a new monitor (aside from a laptop) this is the first LCD monitor ive had, Very nice the only thing though is CRT's have built in AA, whereas LCDs tend to show the pixels warts + all, speaking of AA im leaning towards doing supersampling in my game, why settle for inferior AA methods if the best is avaialable :)28 sep 2006
sonic youth's 'pink steam' is a classic pop song, proves they can still turn them out in their fifties28 sep 2006
Theres a third level type coming to Captain Courgette, a couple of pictures to wet the appetite, FPS is a bit down since its a debug build (i use STL quite heavy). Also some major rendering errors, sky/water. all quite well though, considering this is the first time ive rendered terrain or water for at least 4 months
