Quick updates: X | moving | phone
I've completed Project X's logic library to my satisfaction, and have begun to figure out how the UI's gonna work. All my recent game-UI experience has involved working with raw SVG directives, so it's interesting to approach a modern high-level game programming API with that oddball background. Creating sprites by plotting rectangles directly onto the screen is quite familiar. Less so is how they all insist on being pointed to on-disk bitmap image files which they can then paint onto themselves. So I'm going to spend some time in graphics programs generating some artwork, before jumping back into the code. Lots of scanning to do, in this case...
Yes, I think I can get away with entirely 2D graphics for this game. Certainly for the prototype, anyway, and that's all that matters for now. Sadly, even the latest beta of VMWare still can't let Windows take full power of my MacBook's graphics card, so I'm going to have to go back to rebooting into Windows every time I want to do work on X from now on... boo. At least until I get local access to a halfway decent PC, a sub-project that is indeed underway. (Have decided to pass on the rar-rar gaming rig that mr_choronzon advised me on, for now. Cheaper options have arisen.)
Still moving on August 1, and the traffic of strangers tromping through my apartment is getting a little ridiculous. Especially when they have a less than perfect hit-rate for warning me ahead of time. I accidentally opened my front door into the face of a rental agent as I entered my own apartment this evening, returning from a ten-minute coffee break. Apologies exchanged, and now I've learned that I'm getting at least three separate visits tomorrow!
I've had plenty of these sorts visitors already, over the last couple of weeks, but the rate's getting nuts now. I'm going to straighten the place up some tonight. At first I didn't care if lookers-at found it messy, but I'm quickly wishing that someone please hurry up and find it attractive enough to sign for, so they'll all leave me alone!
I have once again downgraded my cellphone. The normally tolerable Sony Ericsson that I got in 2004 "candy bar" has a loose antenna or something, and all conversations are filled with loud static unless I squeeze very hard and stand very still. So once again I charged up my circa-2001 Nokia something-or-other, which I've kept as a trusty backup (cthulhia will remember it as the BLAH blah BLAH model), and swapped my SIM into it. I had forgotten what a damn fine phone this is. I'm still on-track to buy an iPhone after its July release, but I'm no longer desperate for one. It's a real relief.
Yes, I think I can get away with entirely 2D graphics for this game. Certainly for the prototype, anyway, and that's all that matters for now. Sadly, even the latest beta of VMWare still can't let Windows take full power of my MacBook's graphics card, so I'm going to have to go back to rebooting into Windows every time I want to do work on X from now on... boo. At least until I get local access to a halfway decent PC, a sub-project that is indeed underway. (Have decided to pass on the rar-rar gaming rig that mr_choronzon advised me on, for now. Cheaper options have arisen.)
Still moving on August 1, and the traffic of strangers tromping through my apartment is getting a little ridiculous. Especially when they have a less than perfect hit-rate for warning me ahead of time. I accidentally opened my front door into the face of a rental agent as I entered my own apartment this evening, returning from a ten-minute coffee break. Apologies exchanged, and now I've learned that I'm getting at least three separate visits tomorrow!
I've had plenty of these sorts visitors already, over the last couple of weeks, but the rate's getting nuts now. I'm going to straighten the place up some tonight. At first I didn't care if lookers-at found it messy, but I'm quickly wishing that someone please hurry up and find it attractive enough to sign for, so they'll all leave me alone!
I have once again downgraded my cellphone. The normally tolerable Sony Ericsson that I got in 2004 "candy bar" has a loose antenna or something, and all conversations are filled with loud static unless I squeeze very hard and stand very still. So once again I charged up my circa-2001 Nokia something-or-other, which I've kept as a trusty backup (cthulhia will remember it as the BLAH blah BLAH model), and swapped my SIM into it. I had forgotten what a damn fine phone this is. I'm still on-track to buy an iPhone after its July release, but I'm no longer desperate for one. It's a real relief.