Startup items on the Mac

0
3 months ago
by carribus in

Ever needed to stop an application from launching on startup? Couldn’t remember all the places that OS X can put these little nuggets of automation?

A colleague of mine put this together and passed it on to me.

Since I have been on this particular merry-go-round before as well, I figured I’d just put it into a blog post in case I (or anyone else) ever needed a reference point:

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Groovy quicksort

0
5 months ago
by carribus in , ,

Very short post.. even my blogging style is aligning itself to the way groovy allows me to write code – i.e. quickly.

Shamelessly copied from Dierk Konig’s excellent book “Groovy in Action’, I bring you the groovy implementation of the quick sort algorithm…

def quicksort(list)
{
    if ( list.size() < 2 ) 
        return list
    
    def pivot    = list[list.size().intdiv(2)]
    def left     = list.findAll {item -> item < pivot}
    def middle   = list.findAll {item -> item == pivot}
    def right    = list.findAll {item -> item > pivot}
    
    return (quicksort(left) + middle + quicksort(right))
}

(For those not familiar with Groovy, findAll, closures and ranges are standard language features and this algorithm ties these concepts up so nicely…)
I’m quickly falling in love with Groovy… I can’t wait to see whats waiting for me in the Grails framework… (more on this when I have time to post)

RAGE Logo

RAGE from id Software is short and limited

2
7 months ago
by carribus in

So I just finished the latest game from one of my favourite development studios, id Software.
It took me just over 10 hours, and that includes ALL the quests, some of the jump bonuses and some of the races.

Yes, the graphics are awesome.
Yes, the character animation are flawless.
Yes, the sound is incredible.
Yes, driving a car around a wasteland blowing up other cars and squishing mutants is satisfying.

However, the reason I play games from id Software is primarily for the multiplayer component. I grew up on Wolfenstein, Doom and spent many years rocket jumping around Quake levels. For this game to only have 2 multiplayer game modes is horrid, and neither of them is a deathmatch with actual weapons, levels etc. Its a car racing/driving deathmatch. The other mode is a co-op mode that takes you through a kind of slaughter house fest. Yay. I’m sure its fun, but for some reason, I find it way more satisfying to kill my friends on the virtual battlefield. If I want to co-op, I’ll play a AAA MMO for a real sense of accomplishment.

This game in its current form is just an epic fail. As a developer, I can appreciate the amount of time it must have taken to write the engine behind it… but were the content/game designers sleeping for 3 of the 5 years?

The worst part is that once you finish the game, you can’t go back into a ‘free play’ mode to explore and do instances, finish races etc.

I’m hoping Skyrim will be better…

A pre-alpha screenshot of my swarm in the game.

Sometimes, you just have to go with it…

0
7 months ago
by carribus in ,

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to Spencer (the designer of the MindHunters game I’m working on) about the cocos2d-x framework and how I would like to port Lumi over to the framework to allow Android users to be able to experience the game. The beauty of the framework is that it is an almost direct port to C++ from the original cocos2d-iphone framework which Lumi was built on, and since all of the game logic had been written in C++, all I needed to do was rewrite the Presentation Layer code to sit on top of cocos2d-x.

(more…)

The Deck Builder UI

MindHunters – Deck building

1
8 months ago
by carribus in , ,

Today I’m going to tell you about the Deck Building feature in MindHunters.

As with any trading card game, the meta-game of deck building is vital, and is a direct reflection of a player’s intended strategy. It is likely that most players will spend a fair amount of time building one or more decks, and it is important that the interface is slick, pleasant, intuitive and most importantly, functional.

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Go go SFML!!

Picking a library…

2
9 months ago
by carribus in , ,

Progress is being made on MindHunters (the Trading Card Game I’m working on). In fact, progress has been really good.

Effects are working on the server, and the game is much more playable (and enjoyable) via the testbed client. Its time to move onto developing the actual game client. This is where I am, and where I’ve been since last week Friday. Well, actually, last Friday I was wondering which framework I should use (if any) for developing the client. My choices were:

  • SDL
  • SFML
  • Cinder
  • Qt
  • Write my own OpenGL framework (not really an option)

(more…)

Progress on MindHunters

0
9 months ago
by carribus in

Tonight I finished the first functionally complete version of my Card and Effect designer for MindHunters. To say I’m happy with the result is an understatement. With this tool, I’ll be able to import updated versions of the card library and effects database quickly whenever they are sent to me and in the meanwhile focus on integrating effect resolution into the game.

Once the effects are integrated and working, I’ll have to move into serious development on the game client. Still aiming for early alpha near the end of the year.

MindHunters development

0
9 months ago
by carribus in

Lately I’ve been working on a new game that a friend of mine has designed. Its been grinding along quite nicely, and I’m really looking forward to getting to an alpha stage where we can open this up to a few people to help play.

Anyway, if you’re interested in following the overall development blog of the game, head over to http://mindhunters.icarus7.net

Lumi v1.5 with solution sharing…

0
11 months ago
by carribus in ,

The latest version of Lumi (and Lumi HD) has been released on the AppStore.
The most exciting part of this release is that I have finally provided players with the ability to share their solutions with others.

The solutions are submitted to the Lumi web portal located at http://lumi.icarus7.net and the solution are viewable under the (more…)

Since Lumi…

1
1 year ago
by carribus in

It has been almost 3 months since Lumi released, and I’ve found myself in a bit of a hole with regards to prototyping new ideas and just generally writing new code.

Has this ever happened to you, where after coming off a highly motivating project, you suddenly lose motivation to do anything new apart from maintaining the now-released app-o’-awesomeness?
If yes, what did you do (if anything) to get yourself to start creating again?

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