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08:25 am
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Service Resumed
Well, I think things are finally back to normal now. The laptop is all up and running with all my software loaded on - rather frustratingly i've just ordered my new Dell Laptop so it means i'll most likely end up doing the whole process again in the next week or two. The weekend was rather busy with my daughters birthday so no coding for me......
I started doing some bits of coding again last night - when my HDD wiped out I lost everything i'd done but thankfully there wasn't so much. Seeing as i'm starting with a clean slate it's been decided that i'll code the RV2009 Game using BlitzMax. It's going to be a bit of a challenge because it's quite some time since i've done any OO-based coding using the language; but if I can pull it off then the resultant game should hopefully be something a little bit more special.
So i'll be trying to whack a few hours in on the coding side of things this week as i'd ideally like to have at least something to show Markie when we go down at the end of the week. I doubt much coding will happen over the weekend as most the time will be taken up with shopping, gaming and drinking - and of course celebrating with the big man. :)
Last nights coding went quite well - i'm easing myself in but i've already got some visible results which i'm quite happy about.
Current Mood:  tired
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09:06 am
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Normal service......
should be resumed very shortly.
I ended up sticking my original 80GB drive back in the laptop last night as it turned out the one I had in the enclosure was SATA based on not EIDE. I original removed my 80GB drive because it was clicking and showing signs of failing but strangely the symptoms have vanished now. I did some disk maintenance on the drive last night just to be certain it wasn't on it's way out and all seems well.
Anyway, i've slung the old drive in the laptop and have managed to put about 70% of the applications I need on there - so i'll finish that off during the day and hopefully pull by data back from the TIB files. With a bit of luck I should be back to the coding this evening......
Current Mood: busy
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04:09 pm
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Crap
The weekend was a bit odd. It was nice that we managed to have some chill-out time on Saturday. Most of Sunday was taken up with looking after the granddaughter - which was quite nice - we went out to visit family and friends.
Perhaps the worst bit about the whole weekend was the total failure of my laptop. Now, i'm not totally exactly what happened or why. I upgraded by Dell Latitude D600 to a 250GB internal HDD a few weeks ago because the old 80GB drive was on it's way out - it had started to make a rather odd clicking noise and that usually signifies that things are going to start getting bad very shortly.
The new 250GB drive slotted in place like a dream - and the whole reinstallation process probably took about half a day - which is pretty good for me because I use a shitload of different software so actually reinstalling the Applications can be a pretty time-consuming process.
However, I came to fire up my laptop on Saturday only to be greeted with a flashing cursor at the top left and nothing else. Installing a second copy of the OS resulted in - a flashing cursor. Fixing the bootstrap files and doing some FixBoot and FixMBR commands resulted in - a flashing cursor. To cut a long story short I just couldn't get the damned thing to boot, but funnily enough using the Recovery Console it was quite possible to access the disk and browse it's contents.
A fair amount of digging around on the internet followed and I determined that the likely cause of the problem was the 42-bit LBA Address limit that applies to my Dell Laptop. Now what really confuses me is how in gods name did the HDD work in the first place? I mean i've been using it with a 250GB drive for 6 weeks now with now problems - but it now seems that the laptop no longer likes the HDD and doesn't want to play. For starters the BIOS only recognises the drive as being 136GB in size.
No problems I thought - the Western Digital site mentions that you can apply a special Digital Data Overlay which will cause the laptop to play nicely with the disk and allow you to use the full capacity. I gave that a try and did eventually manage to get the laptop running - but the downside was that the processor was maxed out by a variety of processes and the whole laptop ran like a rather heavy bag of spanners. Trying to do a full reinstall was also a non-starter.
This evening i'll be ripping out the 250GB drive and swapping it for an 80GB model i've got in an enclosure at home. To be honest the thing that's pissed me off about this whole exercise is that the problems are stopping me from getting on with any coding, which was what I was hoping to do over the weekend.
Normal service will, as they say, hopefully be resumed shortly.......
P.S. It's times like this that I really hate technology........
Current Mood:  frustrated
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09:10 am
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More Remakes
Well, the two samples I made for the RV game have now gone off to Markie for him to have a play with. I'll hopefully hear back from him in the near future. Based on his feedback we should then be good to move to the next stage of development; I figured there's not much point in pushing it until we at least know how we want the controls to work and what we want the game to be.
I spent much of last night with Spectaculator, VirtualDub and Paintshop Pro fired up. I sat playing Mr Wimpy for a while whilst Spectaculator kindly dumped my actions to an AVI file. I felt that a good starting point for the game was to get as many of the original graphical assets out as possible and this seemed a good way to do it - of course the other bonus is that I can use the generated video for reference should any questions arise regarding the logic of the game.
Once i'd got the video dumped it was quite simply to load it into VirtualDub before taking screen grabs of the required points using Paintshop Pro. I've then assigned a mask colour to each cropped sprite and resized them to the new resolution as we're going to run the Remake at 800x600. I also merged them into single files so all of the animation frames for Mr Wimpy (for example) are held within a single PNG. We can then modify the display so the correct sprite is used by just using an incrementer variable.
I've got about 95% of the graphics captured now - certainly enough to allow me to start coding. The next project is to define a few of the objects for the game and perhaps get a controllable player character up and running.
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04:54 pm
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Retro Remakes
I've decided that i'm going to go ahead and attempt a Retro Remake for the 2008 Retro Remakes Competition.
I've not done any coding in anger for a long time and i've never tried to make a remake so i'm a little daunted by what's going to be required. I've picked something reasonable old and easy to recreate and i'll be using it as a project to ease me back into BlitzMax.
The game i'm going to remake is Mr Wimpy from the ZX Spectrum.
I've chosen to remake this because it was the very first ever game I every played on my own computer. For that simple reason it has a special meaning to me. It's also a relatively simple game - which is a bonus.
Initially i'm going to rip and scale the graphics from the original Speccy version. I will hopefully redraw these at a later date, but initially it means I can get the game logic working before I start worrying about cosmetic issues.
Progress might be a tad slow as i've also got the game for RV2009 to get out of the way as well, but I figured there's no harm in making a start in what spare time I do have available to me.
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09:25 am
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Control schemes
So, work on the RV 2009 game has started. I've spent the last couple of nights knocking together player control routines. One of the comments made of Warpforce Chinchilla at the RV was that the controls weren't the best - so this time around we're going to allow people to define their own controls.
I've therefore totally rewritten the player control routines. Part of the challenge was also to make the players ship move in an appropriate manner - just having a fixed velocity looks pretty crap so i've taken some time to create a test module which allows us to tweak parameters such as friction and acceleration velocities. This will hopefully allow us to play with the values until we find the most suitable.
We were initially working on something in the vein of Galaxians but having knocked together a player test it's struck me that there are some limitations to this model. For one thing the players ship can only fire straight up the screen; this kinda means that the enemies can only come from the top (or possible upper-left/right of the screen). This made me try out a few other options, one of which is a hybrid control scheme where WASD moves the craft around whilst you use the mouse to aim an on-screen cross-hair. The craft then auto-rotates to fire in the direction of the cross-hair.
This opens a lot of other opportunities - not least of which is the possibility to have enemies attacking from multiple sides - either on their own or as part of a more complex combined attack. I quite like this control scheme but i'm going to let Markie take a look and see what his view is.
So, small steps thus far but i'm enjoying it. Oh, and it looks like i'm going to use Mr Wimpy (from the good ol' Speccy) as my test project for BlitzMax. Not sure quite how to start, but i'm figuring that firing up an emulator and playing it for a while would be a good starting point.
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03:13 pm
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Back to it.......
Is there anyone listening? If so then you may be amazed to hear that i've got something to post about - that almost never happens.... ;)
Over the past few months i've spent waaaaay too much time gaming and probably not enough time doing stuff that's a little more constructive. I've come to realise that this probably isn't a good thing, particularly not when I consider how much enjoyment I get from making things.
Anyway, recently i've been hanging around a few new sites. Notably OddBobs (www.merseyremakes.co.uk) and the Retro Remakes site. Seeing some of the cool stuff they've been doing, coupled with the need for me to make something cool for RV 2009 has rekindled my desire to code things and with this in mind i've set myself a few goals:
1) Goal number 1 is to make something nice for RV 2009. I've sat on my ass for a while now and never got the motivation to get things moving, but as we're now in October 2008 i've got less than 6 months to make something that hopefully people will enjoy playing. I sat down last night for 5 solid hours and had great fun knocking together some routines. This inspired me to do more.
Due to the time constraints involved i'm going to do the work for RV2009 in GameMaker. I don't really want to risk not hitting the deadline because I was trying to learn a new language whilst developing.
2) I need to dust of BlitzMax (ok, so it's not a 'real' language some might argue - but for what I need to do it's more than suitable) and learn it again. I've not done any coding in it for a very very long time so it's now on my list - in fact i've already reinstalled it and the IDE on my machine.
3) I need to fire up some emulators and replay some of the games of my youth to see which are ripe for remaking. Then I actually need to take steps to do it.
So there you go. At the moment my motivation is high - i'm not sure if it'll stay there but i've decided that I need to spend less time gaming and more time coding and making stuff.
I'll no doubt blog here a bit more frequently from now on.
Current Mood: motivated
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02:17 pm
[Link] | I've been proper crap at updating stuff lately. Partly because i've not been sticking to things and partly because i've been so busy.
Anyway.....
I started cycling to work last week. A combination of factors including the rising cost of fuel and my expanding waistline made me feel it was a good solution. Not only can I save some cash and burn some calories, but best of all I don't feel the need to rush out to the Gym at night when I get home.
I had a couple of days off sick last week (not related to the cycling) so I haven't managed to adhere to the regime as much as i'd have liked. But then I figure cycling to work and back 3 days in the week is probably a reasonable start.
Since last week i've covered over 100 miles on my pushbike - something i'm quite proud of.
No cycling today due to a hospital appointment - but hopefully back on tomorrow. Weather permitting of course.
Current Mood: accomplished
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11:22 am
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Day 5
Another exciting entry in the food diary. It's just gripping stuff eh? ;)
Looking forward to the weekend as i'm finally finishing my on-call stint. Not much planned to be honest as Sophie is coming over. Might try to get out and about on either Saturday or Sunday, depending on the weather.
One job I must get done is to get the knackered bike out of the shed and take it to be repaired. I'm hopefully going to start cycling to work on 3 of 5 days in the week.
Food
Breakfast: 2 toast, cup of tea (no sugar)
Lunch: 2 small corned beef rolls, apple, grapes
Dinner:
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10:41 am
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Day 4
Food
Breakfast: 2 toast, cup of tea (no sugar - woo)
Lunch: Pork & Egg Sandwich, Scone, Apple, Grapes
Dinner: Grill Steak with vegetables and new potatoes
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08:30 am
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Day 3
Food
Breakfast: 2 x toast, cup of tea (1 sugar)
Lunch: Chicken Sandwich, Scone, Apple, Satsuma
Dinner: Beefburgers, small portion of wedges, onion rings.
Not the healthiest of meals, but let's keep in mind that my first objective in this new 'regime' is to cut down on all the extras I was eating and only have 3 meals per day. Looking forward to seeing if i've lost anything next week.
I'm hoping to get my bike sorted out shortly so I can begin cycling to work; i'm sure the extra exercise will be a huge help.
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08:31 am
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Day 2
Well yesterday seemed easier than I expected it to be. The constant temptation of the food machine (recently installed at work) seemed quite easy to overcome and taking on board more fluid definately helped.
I'm now stocked up with fruit juices (low sugar cordials) so i'm good to go - the supply i've bought should keep me going for a good few weeks.
Not much exercise yesterday - but this evening i've got a fridge to shift so no doubt that will burn a few calories. Certainly better than nothing, that's for sure.
Food
Breakfast: 2 x waffles, drizzle of syrup, cup of tea (1 sugar)
Lunch: Corned Beef Sandwich, Satsuma, Apple, Small Scone
Dinner: Chicken Curry with Pasta (bored with Rice) and a Nan Bread.
Exercise
My daily brisk walk followed by lugging a freezer around. Not a huge amount but better than nothing I s'pose.
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08:42 am
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Really Restarting.....
Ok, so i've tried to restart the fitness regime on a couple of occasions now, but for a variety of reasons (laziness included) i've not managed to succeed (hey, that sounds better than saying I failed).
Anyway, it's been decided that today is the day when I WILL kick things off again. No more junk food (at least for the foreseeable future) and no alcohol (because I know that's a biggie which causes me to pile weight on).
I've also got a few other resolutions which i'm going to try to put in place. They go something like this.
i) Drink less coffee - the new machine they've got here doesn't use milk but some lactose based crap so that's another reason (in addition to the caffeine) to drop it.
ii) Drink more fluids in general. I believe you're meant to take onboard at least 2 litres of fluid per day. I don't drink anywhere near that so i'm going to start drinking low sugar juices during the day.
iii) Try to get more exercise. The gym membership had to go as part of a cost-cutting exercise but there's no reason why I can't take advantage of opportunities that present themself. Don't use the car so much - go to the shops on foot and take a 15 minute stroll. All that kinda jazz.
iv) Related to point 3. Get my bike sorted out and fixed so I can start to cycle to work. It's roughly 45 minutes bike ride to work and approximate 10 miles. Doing that two or three times a week will help lots. It will also provide a good chance for me to listen to the pile of CD's that I need to get through.
My first target is to get the weight below 16st. Shouldn't be too hard - let's see how this works out.
Day 1:
Weight: 16st 4lb
Food
Breakfast: 2 toast, cup of tea (1 sugar)
Lunch: Corned Beef Sandwich, 2 Apples
Dinner: Meat and Potato Pie with Corn on the Cob, Yorkshire Puddings (2 x small) and vegetables.
Other: 1 x Coconut Macaroon (ooops) and lots of juice throughout the day.
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09:01 am
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Day 8
Food
Breakfast: 2 toast, cup of tea (1 sugar)
Lunch: Corned Beef Sandwich, Grapes, Apple, Cheese String (i'm such a big kid :p )
Dinner: Chilli Beef with Pasta
Exercise
Nope - nada!!
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08:18 am
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Day 7
Food
Breakfast: 2 toast, cup of tea
Lunch: Cheese and Ham Sandwich, Apple, bag of Crisps.
Dinner: A few oven chips and some weird german burger things (that's not the actual name for them - I just can't rememember). Oh, and beans.
Exercise
None :( It was p*ssing it down so I had to get the backup tapes in the car.
Weight
15st 8lb (-6lb)
Woo!!! Not bad for a week - specially when I don't feel like i've been dieting. The only thing i've missed was the few drinks we usually have on the weekend.
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08:17 am
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Day 6
Food
Breakfast: 2 toast, cup of tea
Lunch: Sunday Dinner (Beef, vegetables, mashed potato)
Dinner: Some thin crust Pizza and Garlic Bread
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08:15 am
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Day 5
From memory (because I didn't get online over the weekend)
Food
Breakfast: 2 toast, cup of tea
Lunch: Corned Beef Sandwich
Dinner: Home Made Shepherds Pie with vegetables.
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08:48 am
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Day 4
Food
Breakfast: Cup of Tea (1 sugar), 2 toast
Lunch: Corned Beef Sandwich, Skips, Apple
Dinner: Chicken Pie with vegetables and boiled potatoes
Exercise
My daily walk to the warehouse to change backup tapes - not a lot but better than nothing...
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09:01 am
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Day 3
Food
Breakfast: Cup of Tea (1 Sugar), 2 Toast
Lunch: Corned Beef Sandwich, Apple, Hot Cross Bun (x 1)
Dinner: Spaghetti Bolognase with Garlic Bread
Ooops, had a small amount of Pizza later in the evening. Not sure that's on the diet - although to be fair we're not calling it a 'diet' it's more a case of just 'cutting back'.
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10:14 am
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Day 2
Food
Breakfast: Cup of Tea (1 Sugar), 2 Toast
Lunch: Chicken Sandwich, Grapes, Apple
Dinner: Home made Chicken Korma with Rice and Garlic Bread
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wiredwormz's journal