What are you working on?

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Re: What are you working on?

Post by David »

Falcury wrote:I have started following the Handmade Hero game programming streams. Just finished "Day 008 - Writing a Square Wave to DirectSound".
The Episode list looks scarily long... :shock:

It must take considerable determination to complete something so long...
Something that I don't really seem to have nowadays...
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Re: What are you working on?

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David wrote:It must take considerable determination to complete something so long...
If you mean making these videos (as opposed to watching them), getting $1k+ a month (source; plus the support shown by these backers) should provide him some additional motivation.
David wrote:Something that I don't really seem to have nowadays...
It'll come back once something excites and/or challenges you in the right way.
Plus shorter projects, like - in the PoP department - the nice wiki articles you created not long ago, can also have great value.
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Re: What are you working on?

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Norbert wrote: If you mean making these videos (as opposed to watching them),
I think I meant both.
And not just watching, but following along.
Norbert wrote: getting $1k+ a month (source; plus the support shown by these backers) should provide him some additional motivation.
It says $1,024. Maybe he wanted a nice round number? :)
Norbert wrote: It'll come back once something excites and/or challenges you in the right way.
Plus shorter projects, like - in the PoP department - the nice wiki articles you created not long ago, can also have great value.
Thank you! :)

This reminds me of how I started SDLPoP.
Originally, I just wanted to test that dungeon wall drawing algorithm by HTamas.
(Date: 2013.08.30. That was in JavaScript. I still have it.)
Then I went on and converted the whole room-drawing code: viewtopic.php?f=68&t=3368
(Originally to find the cause of a bug with stacked gates.)
An then I continued conversion until I got a playable SDLPoP :) : viewtopic.php?f=126&t=3512

Of course, this needed the many years of working on the PoP disassembly beforehand.

This reminds me of how Linux started:
Linus Torvalds wrote: I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
[...]
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.
And an article I read yesterday:
http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3554380/humble-origins-the-solo-odyssey-behind-dust-an-elysian-tail wrote: In late 2008, Dodrill told his wife that he wanted to learn how to program so he could quickly make a "small game" for Xbox Live's Indie Games channel.
[...]
His ambitions grew even faster than his programming knowledge; he soon realized he could move beyond his original plan for an 8-bit game.
Dunno, but some of the described events remind me of the challenges that Mechner faced when making PoP...
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Re: What are you working on?

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David wrote:This reminds me of how Linux started:
Linus Torvalds wrote: I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.
[...]
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that’s all I have :-(.
Of course, with all the work the GNU project had done to that point, it wasn't prohibitively hard to complete the last missing piece of a complete and functional operating system. I wonder what he would have done if he had to write it all from scratch. ;)
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Re: What are you working on?

Post by Falcury »

David wrote:
Norbert wrote: If you mean making these videos (as opposed to watching them),
I think I meant both.
And not just watching, but following along.
I wonder how far I'll get. I hardly progressed since my last post... (I certainly want to try to get further!)
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Re: What are you working on?

Post by kj-5349 »

Following in the footsteps of the below people if one is working on a new PoP mod ;)
Dark77 wrote:Mod of PoP, "The Son of the Vizier". Finishing 11 level.
David wrote:
poirot wrote:I'm working in my mod (it took me 10 years, and still there are lots of things to do)
I guess it's what you mentioned here: viewtopic.php?p=18061#p18061
Falcury wrote:I'm working on a new version of my mod.
For a few years I had been thinking about stretching the 'Battle Hardened' series of mods.
Initially targeting a 2013 release. Alas The Dark Knight Rises wasn't as good as The Dark Knight. (If you saw the intro texts and story of Battle Hardened 3, that villain is based fairly much on the Joker - to destroy the Prince's legacy). Thus I didn't want to follow the TDKR story and put it in the mod, and neither did I want to create a mod w/o a story at that time.
Subsequently I got too occupied to ever find time to continue. I didn't have same creativity and had difficulty of thinking up of good level designs after BH3.
So as "side projects" I instead tried out on converting games - applying POP2 levels and SNES ones into mods for the DOS games...

In addition, there have been some harsh & ignorant comments within Total Pack that killed my enthusiasm to ever make new mods. That is, some people hate mods with excessive tricks, and even difficult sword fights. Heck - even great excellent mods were lambasted simply for not working in Total Pack! Then if a mod was too easy - it may be called boring and lowly rated. None the less it has to be accepted it's impossible to please everyone, and just don't care and carry on with your stuff....

Then, I had some inspirations in the 2nd half of 2016, though progress is slow....
Recently there is a way to make custom tunes, and that it is now possible to emulate Programmer's mods, Musa's mods, KX Out of Time & Jakim's Place of Despair, thanks to here

I'm working on a prequel & a sequel - the prequel is largely connected to Battle Hardened 2 and focusing on that game's villain, "Nazaam".
The sequel is set some time after Battle Hardened 3.
Ideas have been thought of since the middle of 2016, though now with music I have the push to really continue.

The mods I made in 2015 did not fully make use of the extra features of CusPoP that I'm impressed with after further looking through...
a) There are a lot puzzle possibilities with "triggering any tile - stuck chomper or loose floors"
b) The Princess level problem is solved and dying here is not an issue - Show Level 13 enabled & 1st level that doesn't show number: 15. With this, Level 14 can be designed like any other level.

Apoplexy also allows "stuck" loose floors that also adds for some puzzle possibilities. There are broken room links options too, but then I wouldn't want to confuse myself, let alone the beginner players :lol:
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Re: What are you working on?

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I've released a new version of Ggradebook, the GNU gradebook.
Only for GNU/Linux. The website is here.
(Also at gnu.org here, but that's currently outdated.)
I had not worked on it for more than 16 years, so I had to migrate from GTK+ 1.2 to GTK+ 3.18, among other things.
Still things that need work; it lacks autoconf/automake for instance, but that's already in the pipeline.
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Re: What are you working on?

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Norbert wrote:I've released a new version of Ggradebook, the GNU gradebook.
I didn't know you have developed a GNU package. Congratulations on that. :)
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Re: What are you working on?

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oitofelix wrote:I didn't know you have developed a GNU package.
As a young adult, I was a full-on GNU and Linux advocate. :) I used to write to newspapers about it (Dutch example) and even gave a "GNU/Linux" course (Dutch scan below). When a Microsoft representative was visiting college, I was recruiting protesters, and I secretly made a Windows machine dual-boot so the campus had at least one GNU/Linux machine. ;) However, I have changed; I've adopted a more diplomatic stance and see, for example, the value of both permissive and copyleft licenses. I still pick the GPL for most of my software and use "GNU/Linux" in more 'official' documents, but mostly because it's what I'm used to doing. The only reason I still occasionally recommend GNU/Linux to people is for increased privacy. After decades it's still too user-unfriendly for regular people. Fine for skillful computer programmers/users. When I started using Steam and proprietary Nvidia drivers I asked GNU to remove my name from their "GNU's Who" page. I have mostly moved on. I was in a nostalgic mood and noticed Ggradebook no longer compiled properly; that ancient GTK+.
cursus.png
oitofelix wrote:Congratulations on that. :)
Back in the day it was certainly cool to read that they had accepted it as an official GNU package. Nowadays, I mostly see the flaws of the software. It needs lots of work to truly become user-friendly. GNU package or not, it's very basic. I created it when I was young. Something like lemdop is way more user-friendly. Pride is one of the deadly sins, but if I'm proud of software it's of lemdop, legbop, etc.; not Ggradebook. This is also why GNU's 'recognition' of Ggradebook holds limited value to me. Bragging rights, I guess. :) No new releases since 2000 until I recently touched the code again, that should tell you how important the package is to the GNU ecosystem. Anyway, programming is fun, so I enjoyed working on it. Who knows what the future will bring.
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Re: What are you working on?

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December 2016, I wrote:
Norbert wrote:I started working on apoplexy because there was no free software level editor for GNU/Linux. It's unlikely I would have if RoomShaker(2) would've been portable free software. This could make the (closed source) Total Pack author scratch his head, if you know what I'm saying. (I don't mean to imply I'm working on something similar.)
On February 18th, I started working on a program similar to Total Pack. It can retrieve and launch PoP1 for DOS, SDLPoP, MININIM, PoP2 for DOS, and PoP1 for SNES mods. I will soon - half a week from now, probably - release it as free and open source software.

The release will be a package for Linux. No package for Windows. However, the program uses only cross-platform libraries (libgtk3, libxml2, libzip), so in theory someone could compile it for Windows. I would do this myself, but I've been neither successful at cross-compiling it nor at compiling with Dev-C++ via Wine. So, hopefully either starwindz updates/fixes Total Pack or someone helps me out and compiles my program for Windows.
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Re: What are you working on?

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Norbert wrote:On February 18th, I started working on a program similar to Total Pack.[...]I will soon - half a week from now, probably - release it as free and open source software.
(emphasis mine)

Great! That's very good news. Thanks for working on that. :) Looking forward to its release.
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Re: What are you working on?

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Norbert wrote:On February 18th, I started working on a program similar to Total Pack.
First version is finished.

My next PoP project is this.
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Re: What are you working on?

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Not only did I recently release the popot.org source code (linked here), but just now I've also released an entire free and open source XML-based flat-file content management system (5F CMS); the one used for vronlinux.com. :P

I'll now get back to working on poplaun 0.2.
After that I'll continue working on my Zeldaesque game.
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Re: What are you working on?

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Norbert wrote:I'll now get back to working on poplaun 0.2.
After that I'll continue working on my Zeldaesque game.
I decided not to improve poplaun.
I worked on (and just released) leapop instead.
So, finally time again to work on my Zeldaesque game.
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Re: What are you working on?

Post by David »

Norbert wrote:So, finally time again to work on my Zeldaesque game.
Looks like that game takes more time to make that all those PoP level editors combined?
Norbert wrote:Still a lot - probably years - of work ahead, of course.
Oh, right.
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