Old News Archive

This is where all of that reject, old news gets kept. Instead of throwing it out, I've decided to be nostalgic and keep the old news. Here it is below:

Old Webpage News:

8/26/2003 -- GNE Documentation

Work continues on updating the GNE site in regards to GNE 0.70. In the past few days some changes have been made, but today the exhello tutorial has been updated. The features list and api changes documentation have been completed. I hope to update the second tutorial very soon. And I'm still working on trying to get a .tar.gz for the Linux people on GNE 0.70.

I've also realized that the starting page on the GNE documentation is out-of-date and I forgot to update that. I will work on that as soon as possible as well and update a simple patch updating just that single page.

8/22/2003 -- GNE 0.70

The code for GNE 0.70 is completed. I'm going on vacation for a few weeks and since the last version of GNE came out more than a year ago I did not want to delay it for a few more weeks. The code has been done for awhile and I had hoped to finish all the work on updating the tutorials and the GNE site -- most of it is done but not all.

6/16/03 -- Xundar "Completed"

Like Super IsoBomb, Xundar is another 10 week school project. I actually finished the class at the end of May but I've been too lazy to make a page. And I still haven't. But my class partner did so you can check it out here.

On a site note I have started up some work on GNE again! Hopefully in the next 1000 years you'll see some interesting developments.

3/13/03 -- Courses Page Added

Several of my courses are requiring/desiring a web page, and I have been doing "hidden" URLs but figured there was no reason to place the links on my main site, so anyone interested can find information on my current coursework.

2/28/03 -- Super IsoBomb v1.0b

I found a small bug in Super IsoBomb v1.0 a few hours after releasing it that affects owners of some video cards (mostly old ones). If you have an old video card such as the NVIDIA TNT2 card, or if you get "Error creating D3D Device" on startup, please download the new version 1.0b. If you have any other problems, please let me know. Geforce and later cards, and the recent ATI cards are not affected by this bug.

2/27/03 -- I Live

Super IsoBomb is a project I worked on as a class project in winter quarter 2002-2003 at college for my 2D Game Programming course. Compared to all of my other projects, this one is by far the best. Most of it is due to the fact that I had other people in a group with me in this class who were as motivated to work as I was, plus my the game was part of my course load, so I HAD to work on it. My other projects have been in my spare time, and where almost all of the work was done by myself.

I've been pretty busy, so I haven't worked on GNE much since my last posting unfortunately, but now that winter quarter has ended, I do have a COMPLETED project to show for it. It's a great game, so check it out.

10/19/02 -- GNE High-Level Design

I'm working on creating the web pages describing the GNE High-Level design. Most of it is up now, enough that I'm going to start putting stuff up now. Check out the new design section on the GNE page for details. I hope to be working on this and finishing this up over the next few days, and then work on finalizing the prototypes (class headers) for the API.

9/12/02 -- Style Updates

There were some slight disagreements with font sizes in Mozilla and IE. Seems that IE's "default size" is "small" whereas Mozilla's default size is "medium." I discover later that a !DOCTYPE will place IE6 into a more standards compliant mode, and its fonts will agree with Mozilla's. I instead rather chose to use percent of font sizes (ie 80% rather than "x-small") in the style sheet, and IE and Mozilla seem to agree exactly on those.

8/16/02 -- GNE Tutorial 2

I've put up my first versrion of the second GNE tutorial that I just wrote kinda off-the-cuff. I intend on it being just a draft for now up for your comments but I'm sure given the trend I'll just be lazy and it'll end up being the final version with no or minor changes ;).

7/18/02 -- GNE 0.55

It's a new version of GNE. It's been long awaited. See what's new.

6/30/02 -- Oops

Boy that was a little dumb. I messed up the poll. I changed the answers but forgot to update the question. Anyways the new poll has been correctly. I always find the locale diversity of the internet very interesting. Now that the internet has moved mostly out of the US I notice now most of my e-mail from this site comes from outside the US.

6/23/02 -- Site Updates

I've been needing to edit some things on my site for a long time. I did some cleanup work on e-mail adresses. I also temporarily took my resume down as I now have a job and there is not a reason to keep it up (but I was still getting offers). Thankfully, I have finally changed the poll. That poll had been up how long? I don't know a year or more. Some of you also may have noticed that some time ago I took down the Java stuff because of certain issues with people using my code inappropriately. Hopefully someday I will have some Java stuff for you -- I still do lots of Java programming, but only for work, so that is why you see no Java projects. All of my personal projects I do in C++.

As for GNE, I really need to get started working on that again. I just started a new job and before was home for a few weeks. I think right before then I had a completed version of GNE on my disk! This was a month ago, and I've yet to work on it. Looking at it the last day and through my journal I don't see anything else I needed to do before it came out (actually I did want to redo some documentation). I'm surprised I stopped when I was so close, so I will be testing GNE and checking everything out, and if it all looks good there will be a 0.55 release very soon.

Needless to say, I'm still very alive despite the stagnation of my site.

3/26/02 -- The Resurrection (and GNE 0.49a)

I have finally gotten a working computer after my last one was destroyed during shipping. I managed to release GNE 0.49a which had the code before my old computer was destroyed. I have not lost any data, so fear not, GNE is not dead, although I still have much work to catch up on, plus I have just started back up at college, so it may be quite some time before GNE goes back to full-swing.

2/16/02 -- GNE Beginner's Guide

I've updloaded the latest version of the GNE documentation on the GNE page. It applies to the CVS version of GNE which has changes over the latest public version, but I included it because it has the new beginner's guide. Please read it and let me know what you think of it, and if it was useful for you.

1/24/02 -- GNE Protocol Version 1 Second Draft

The second GNE protocol draft is completed. The main change is that I forgot to specify bandwith throttling in the first draft. This adds that, several packets, and throughout the documentation are significant clairifications and fixes.

1/24/02 -- GNE Protocol Version 1 Draft

The first draft for the GNE protocol has been completed. Everything in the document is tenatively completed except that some higher-level packet types will be created but the high-level packets don't affect the actual workings of the protocol but rater are more like "GNE official extensions." Check out the GNE page for more info.

1/24/02 -- Site Design Updates

I've been doing a lot of work on the implementation of this site's code. I have converted almost all of the old HTML formatting that was used in the very old pages that had not been updated since the last redesign. The fonts and their sizes have been changed as well. There are definitely some spots I have missed and due to search/replaces I've done there may be some formatting lost too. There have also been lots of minor little changes everywhere. Let me know if you see anything that has gone wrong.

1/17/02 -- GNE 0.45 alpha

The new version of GNE is out. This is almost as big of a release as the last GNE release, so check it out. Find out more of what's changed on the GNE page and on the GNE SourceForge site.

12/2/01 -- GNE 0.40 alpha

A lot of work has been done on GNE since 0.003 pre-alpha, and GNE has changed a great deal. The Connection API has been redesigned and new types of Connections have been added in addition to the completion of the timers, threading, and Console I/O (which has been GREATLY expanded). Well I could go on a whole page talking about the new features and additions. Check out the GNE page and the GNE SourceForge site soon for updates within the next day.

11/29/01 -- Addendum to OOP Tutorial

I've made an addendum to the OOP tutorial, which you can find on the tutorials page. It's pretty large and I almost considered making it a separate tutorial but it addresses the issues on standards compliance in the OOP tutorial. It addresses the concept of namespaces, the new include files, and has brief mentions on the new iostreams library and the STL.

11/18/01 -- Still Here

I have not been updating the website much recently, but I am still around. I have been working a lot on the GNE library, so most of the activity is happening on the GNE page and GNE SourceForge site. There also will possibly be a new (short) tutorial comming in the next month on making your own streambufs (based off the ISOC++98 standard)! If you would like to see it quicker, send an email and I'll consider doing it earlier.
I've also added a short explaination of the non-networking classes in Itana.

7/23/01 -- Email Change

Webzone, my ISP, has stopped doing dial-up access, so my email address has changed.

5/14/01 -- Toolzone Down

Toolzone, the provider of my guestbook and counter, has been down mysteriously for about a week and a half now. With all of the websites closing now, I don't think they are comming back, so I have gotten rid of the guestbook and now have a counter from www.thecounter.com.

5/4/01 -- GNE Now in Full Swing

GNE has now been comfortably setup now and settled in its homepage. There won't be anymore news posts on this mainpage. Updates for GNE will be on its own page and on its SourceForge project page.

4/30/01 -- More GNE News

Everything in the GNE section has been updated. I am about to start coding GNE and anyone who is willing to help, please contact me. I've submitted the project to Sourceforge and hope to have a CVS site up soon.

4/28/01 -- Site Update

I've redesigned the site, this time just using a different tool. It doesn't look different but the code is. The navbars and this page are entirely using CSS now instead of HTML font properties. The navbars will also update now automatically on all pages if I change the template. The rest of this site looks the same but the content is still using HTML properties -- these will only be changed when I modify a page.
Besides that I've put up a Word 97 version of the GNE requirements document. That is the only thing new here. Nothing too exciting.

4/26/01 -- Itana v.71a

v.71a Windows is now out. Note that v.70 and v.71 clients are netgame compatable. Linux server works only in 2 players. Since my Linux box is really messed up right now I can't compile .71a/Linux right now but if anyone wants the source feel free. In fact if you want to do it forever you can see a lot more support -- I can't keep up with both versions.

4/25/01 -- GNE Progress Update

I have put up the work done so far on the Rose model and the docs (generated from stubs documented with javadoc-style comments) so far. Feel free to sanity-check my work as I go along. Use the contact link to the left to sent and comments/praise/flames to me. If you need some functionality in GNE for your project, this is the time to let me know ASAP for me to consider it.

4/20/01 -- GNE page

The GNE link on the left sidebar was broken when I uploaded the new site -- this was because I forgot to actually CREATE the new page. GNE is only 3 days old now so only the requirements document is up. At any stage of development any and all comments are useful. If you wish to use GNE in your projects and need some different functionality, it is best to know before I complete the class diagrams.

4/20/01 -- Site Redesign

I've completely resdesigned the site. I think the design speaks for itself and requires no explanation. Let me know by using the conact link on the left bar what you think about the new design. I have also gotten bug reports on Itana, and in the current version >2 players doesn't work right now. Also there is some graphics trash being left from explosions and the Alsetti parabolt. The >2 players situation and the Alsetti parabolt has been fixed for now, and I'll try to get a patch out soon.

4/12/01 -- Itana v.7a

Itana v.7a is now out! All four races are included now. Please see the Itana page for more info on the latest release.

4/1/01 -- Updates

I've made some changes to the design of the main page and removed a poll. I decided against leaving it up, espically since only a few have responded to it. Also an Itana update: All 4 races are in, each with their own weapons and special abilities. There is also all new graphics for every race, including the Alsetti! This is because a new artist, Vivienne Allen, has joined the Itana team.

10/19 -- Released version 2.0.1 of the BGui library, with 2 new operating systems offically supported, and a bugfix.
10/18 -- Released the WIP fixed version of BGui. Read the BGui page for more details.
7/30 -- I added 2 of my Java programs to The Coffee Cup section. Enjoy.
7/23 -- I've done a lot of editing now and have redesigned some areas and created 2 others -- The Games Corner and The Coffee Cup. Check them out and let me know what you think.
7/9 -- I edited he Allegro tutorial to be constistant with the latest WIP. I also added a small sample Allegro program pre the request of one of my visitors and a section for using Allegro with MSVC.
7/3 -- I haven't updated in a long time. Anyways, I fixed an error in the C tutorial in the structures section where a string should have been copied using the strcpy command and not the = operator. Also I fixed some things in the mini-dictionary. As for my "secret project" I haven't worked on it since I left college in May, although I have ever intention on finishing it, espically since I have most of it completed now.
4/23 -- Sorry guys but the site that hosted my voting link decided to discontinue its Top 50 list because it was not getting as many members as they wanted. Thanks for all of you who voted for me to keep me #1 for so long, although there was not much competition :)! As for the new game, I have been working on it. It is called Itana and will be multi-player only (I will add bots if I have time and skill to do that). I have most of the basic code in and I can virtually play the whole game, but at the moment only by myself. My next steps are to add in the networking foundation, then finish off the very last parts of the engine, then it will enter beta stage where I will tweak it and stuff.

Unlike my other projects I have decided to keep this one a lot more quiet because I wanted to focus totally on making this one rather than getting it out like I did to JetFight and PV2143. I actually want to FINISH this game, and not have the problems I did with the other two games where my teams lost interest (I as well to some extent), so I planned this game where I could finish it by myself in one or two months and still be an improvement over my last work. So far it has been going excelently -- in fact better than I've expected! When I get it to beta stage (100% all features and fully playable, only needs "tweaking" and final bug fixing) I will release it at that time, which I expect to be before I leave college at the end of May. After which time I might have trouble testing network since I won't have the networking capabilities I have here at college.

3/25 -- I've been working on a new game recently but I don't want any pressure on this or spending a lot of time with the web page and all that so I can focus on the game and school, so I have been quiet about it publically. But I was trying to decide wether to choose floats, doubles, or fixeds in my program, so I did a lil' profiling. I updated the Archive with this new info.
3/8 -- I have returned from spring break! There have been some new updates to the site. The contact form works again, the random number library has been updated to fix some major bugs and I just updated the MUUDPIC site (I know it's been done for awhile, sorry for not getting around to updating.) Also I have been having counter troubles for the last month along with all of the other users on the site. It will be cleared up soon otherwise I will be changing counters. I've lost about 400 hits and I cannot access the stats or usage reports since their program times out.
2/20 -- I've updated the poll and added a link to a C/C++ oriented newsletter, Codecraft. It's listed near the top of the links page, or you can follow the link here. Also work on MUUDPIC has resumed! Actually it started about a week ago but now it is nearly finished. Just tonight I finished the working version with all of the features working correctly. I just need to add a few additional things to make it more stable in case people get disconnected from the internet or try to use duplicate names. I will update the page soon.
2/10 -- The COMPLETE version of DeathWorms is out now! Sorry for the delay but it didn't get worked on as we all got busy. But now it's out, check it out here.
1/29 -- I updated the jrnd library so now it will work in both C and C++ on all ANSI standard compilers, and now it has its own RNG so you will get the same performance on all platforms. As for the new "mystery game" I hope to have it out by the end of this weekend. Its webpage here is complete, the GUI just needs a few finishing touches and the save/load code is nearly complete.
1/27 -- The voting link to Armageddon Games is finnally back up! Thanks to all of the people who have voted for my site in the past. There should also be a total revamp of the jrnd library which will be portable across ANY COMPILER (not just DJGPP). Expect this by the end of the week. The GUI frontend on the "mystery game" is very near completion.
1/24 -- Sorry I have not done much in the tutorial area but instead I had been working on programming a new little game that we have been playing around with in the dorms for hours. The only downside is that it's only fun with 3-4 people so it IS multiplayer! I've had it done for a bit but now I am going to put a GUI frontend to it so other people can reasonably use it too. It supports as many players as you can fit on one keyboard and up to 4 joysticks!!! Look for it soon.
As for the OOP tutorial I've uploaded the 4 sections that I've done since the last update. Also I found a memory leak bug in the LinkList library and it has been fixed now and cleaned up some. I'm also on the DJGPP ring now so feel free to browse the sites along the ring for more DJGPP information.
1/17 -- I've done some misc work on the site making sure The Archive, the Learning section, and the dictionary are all up to date. I have also started up work on the OOP tutorial again because of a request ;). Anyways the fifth chapter is now finished totally and I have just started on the sixth chapter.
1/14 -- Updated the links page, made sure the descriptions were still valid and all of the links pointed to the right places, and deleted obsolete links.
1/12 -- Sorry for not updating in a long time. I had been waiting to see if I could fix the problems with the Windows PV2143 or not before I released it. Either ways I've decided to release the Windows version, although it still have a few bugs but at least I know they are Allegro's now. When Allegro (the library I use to do grfx, sfx, etc) gets finalized hopefully it will look and act exactly with the DOS PV2143.
BTW: I just notced that Fortunecities is getting stupider and stupider. I'm so glad I left them. I just noticed they have a file download gateway for every file you get that puts up banners and shameless FC ads!!! I almost feel stupid mirroring them now they are so lame... but RIT goes down every once in awhile...12/15 -- I really didn't think the voting links would come back but they did. I know the sites are related so the other one might be comming back soon. Thanks to all of the people who voted for this site!
12/11 -- I changed the poll. It was starting to get old after a few months ;).
12/10 -- Sorry for being out of the scene for so long. A few weeks ago I got MSVC and have been playing around with it, with the intentions of porting the PV2143 game to Windows DirectX using the new Allegro which is almost complete. The program runs somewhat but there are still serious bugs and progress is slow. When I get around to it I will probably MSVC-ize the site and tutorials, making sure what is DJGPP specific is mentioned as being specific to DJGPP. I will also consider making a short tutorial about some basic MSVC things helpful for programmers starting with the environment or starting the C/C++ tutorial.
11/8 -- I put an .a library file in the QuickGUI zip for those who don't want to have to bother with compiling it. It's only 6k after zipped so it's no biggie.
11/7 -- If you are reading this, you know that the page has moved to the RIT server! It was a hard decision but I decided to make it because in the long run it will do better than fortunecities.
11/4 -- Sorry for not having many updates lately but it's because I've been busy with end-of-term stuff in college. Very soon I think I may have a lot more time opening up! I've also added a link to the Armegeddon Games Programming Top 50 to vote for my site. If you liked my site I appreciate your vote!
10/30 -- Sorry I messed up permissions on the one-part PV2143 download yesterday! It should be working now. Thanks goes out to Zylot for finding this problem!!!
10/25 -- I've released QuickGUI under the Files and Programming page. There was also an update to the library that MUUDPIC uses to access the TCP/IP stack in Windows and it is working better but still fails on all computers. When the library improves enough or I get access to Linux or MSVC work will continue.
10/21 -- I've put up an UNOFFICAL release of the JPEG library by Eric Vannier because the offical site has been gone for MONTHS and the other links to get it at are broken. Get this from the Files and Programming page. As for QGUI, I should probably release that, and I will soon, but the reason why I hadn't was because I wanted to get it to work on Linux. Well I couldn't get the thing to work on my system because it doesn't recognize my hard drive, and x windows is horribly slow and there is hardly any support for things in my system. The only good thing I can say about it is that networking over my ethernet and all of the essential things were all there when I started and ready for use and even setup correctly -- something Windows never did. So if I ever get Linux to work it is very doubtful I will EVER develop anything in or to Linux.
10/15 -- The conversion of MUUDPIC/TextGUI to Allegro is well underway. The base GUI procedures are ready to be used, and I will release it separately from MUUDPIC for those who want to use it. The textbox from TextGUI still exists, allowing for real-time window output in the GUI using the << operator (like cout), and there is a QInput class which can grab input quickly from the user using the >> operator (like cin), with the option of giving the user a prompt, settable via a method. So far there are two misc tools, a wrapper for the editbox to work well with enter, sending a MSG_TEXTBOX to all objects, and a QOutput to quickly display a message to the user. I plan to release source which will compile under both Linux and DOS without changes if at all possible, but there will be two ports.
10/12 -- Because of my lack of success in UNIX curses, I am writing MUUDPIC using GUI powered by Allegro, the library I use for my JetFight and PV2143 games, and which is also (supposedly directly) portable to Linux, which I intend to do after I get the GUI working in DOS (the internet library still does not work under 98), using classes as similar as possible to TextGUI classes (most of those functions are obsolete now, including CTextBox, which is 100% obsolete in the GUI since a textbox already exists).
10/11 -- The Linux port of MUUDPIC has been released. It would be totally completed except for some curses stuff. Actually my opinion of ncurses is not too great right now, and if anyone would please help, I would appreciate it. I spent 5 minutes (quite literally) porting my logic to Linux, and I've spent over 10-15 hours+ porting only 50 lines of code! Curses seems impossible! For some reason, it doesn't show right on VT100, crashes an xterm, corrupts the screen in ANSI, but corrupts it just slightly less in ANSI.SYS mode. What a wonderful piece of crap.
10/6 -- It's PV2143, it's back, and it's better than ever in version 15, with many map editor enhancements and some game enhancements! Check the PV2143 readme file for the latest info. If you want to be on the mailing list to know when new PV2143 news comes out, or if you want to help, contact me.

Old Project V2143 News:

6/7--Build 12 is out with the following features: Digital MOD music, collision detection, loading maps from last build and this one (saves only latest version since it converts). Road and bridge graphics, and now buildings! I have to admit they are not all that great because of their drawing angle but this WILL be fixed (looks at unit artist).
5/31--So far for build 12 I have some buildings in and digital MOD music. This next version will also be able to read maps both from the previous build 11 and from its own version; however, it will only save maps of its version (for conversion purposes.) I'm also thinking of doing the same thing in the future.
5/25--Many additions to the editor, including intelligent tile laying, "big fonts" and in general more helpful, intelligent, and context-sensitve menus. The stealth tank and the trees have a new look, as well as the player tank (Earth tank)'s cannon. Also the new map format makes the maps only 1/3rd of their original size, and MUCH MUCH faster loading/saving.
5/21--All of the previously mentioned features have been added, which is way too many to list again. This is the very first build I actually started considering this a real "game" now rather than just a programming project. Also, if you would like to be added on the mailing list for this game, when I release a new version on the site I will notify you. To be added send me mail stating wether you wish to subscribe or unsubcribe. Your email address of course will not leave the list, and fall into the evil hands of junk advertisers ;).
5/17--I've gotten the ALL of the terrain tiles in besides some road and the bridges. The next release should come out by this weekend, and should be the biggest yet!
5/16--Sorry for the lack of updates recently but last Thursday I graduated and partied all night ;). Since then I've been enjoying a wonderful weeked off school! Since the last release, I've been working on the AI, and adding more enemies, and the new, morphing, player tank now. Right now even before a lot of the AI is in I can't even beat 4 tanks now at a time! By the next release I should have greated added to the editor (to allow for AI editing) and added some more enemies, and perhaps the rest of the tiles (my artist says he'll work on them today.)
5/9--A small update. Added water gibs and a flood fill option in the map editor (select F to use.) The instructions pops up a real GUI box now besides the raw lines of text, which make it easier to read and much easier for me to maintain. Unfortunately no other major features have or will be implemented until I get more art/music/sfx :(.
5/4--Added previously mentioned features, and more tile arts. Also a new data file, for a REAL map now.

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