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Palm Binary Compatibility

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I find the Palm platform convenient for programming. You can build something using the latest and greatest Palm 5 based SDK and then run it on the oldest cruddiest palm you have. As long as you make sure to not use unsupported APIs your program just works. It's like static linking under Unix/Linux - all you need to make sure is that the underlying system calls are there (or in this case entries in the trap table.

War comparisons

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I've been re-watching the new series of Battlestar Galactica, and damn, but it's great. I've played several tactical games on the computer, but I've never encountered anything that has had the player in such an impotent position. You are dealing with an enemy that can increase it's number by simply pressing the 'more' button on a console. I don't think that anyone could play a game that ultimately, regardless of what you did, was unwinnable.
There are a few missions in games (such as the 10 minute survival ones in starcaft) that gave you a sense of just how hopeless it was, but they really don't contribute to how awful it is.
There are few games that get close to this fact. Freespace 2 was one of them. It concludes with the baddies causing a supernova. It leaves us with a sense of hope. The only problem is that it, at some level, it allows us to feel that we can win.
I want an armageddon situation.

Ok,

We have the X position:
- getMapXPos()

this is a fraction of the overall display:

(getMapXPos() / getMapWidth())
multiply by the width of the display.

Making sure to order them such that there is never a zero value
for the multiplication.

More palm5/6 woes

the high resolution support for the PalmOS5 is driving me nuts.

little new pieces of the API seem to appear every now and again that make older code stop working. The testing matrix looks like:

  • pre palmos 3.5 device
  • palmos 3.5 device
    • grey
    • color
  • palmos 4 device
    • grey
    • color
  • palmos 5 device (simulator)
    • 320x320 resolution
  • palmos 5.?? device (simulator)
    • collapsible display, reorientable display
    • 1, 1.5 and 2x resolution
  • palmos 6 device (simulator)
    • all the 5.?? matrix
It's quite a trek to make sure that it works in all the devices. I need to codify the testing matrix.

Lovely day at the office

I'm sitting at the trian station waiting for the dart home. It's been a long
day in the office. I arrived at just before 10am.

Things that happened today: I nearly fainted on the train coming into the
office. That cost me 1/2 an hour waiting for missing trains.

I got 2.6.3 working on my laptop. It just simply refused to boot. I forgot
to translate the modules.conf file into the modprobe.conf file. Aargh!

I've been getting it working under vmware too, I needed to build the vmhgfs
module. Rewrote the Makefile to be a 2.6 modules makefile. One fix in the
driver.c file (add a #define for NODEV) and it built and installed fine.

The only problem is that getting the interface status i.e. link up/down isn't
working so the ifup script wasn't assigning them IP addresses. A couple of
fixes to that (remove the link test) and it all worked perfectly. I should
probably fix the link test to work correctly, that way I can take the laptop
on the road again.

That's just about all the work related stuff I'm allowed to talk about the
rest is hush hush.

shells

dear god, I can't believe I ever managed to live without the z shell. It
is just screams 'feeping creature'. The filename completion is simply scary
the globbing is something from god.

Moo!

Build bugs

For some reason the building of the overlay zones on rail wasn't working.

Turns out that the code was missing. This looks like a CVS dodginess thing
in relation to the date/times.

Fixed. Now on to the scrolling problem.

I still can't reproduce it dadblast it.

river is missing at the top edge

The river is missing at the top edge of the graph. I've obviously got an
off-by-one error that's doing this.

I fixed it in the CreateFullRiver routine by specifying
k >= 0, instead of k > 0

Transparency

Transparency and GdkPixmaps.

Do I need to create a transparency mask for each of the map overlay types?
it seems as though I do.

F**ing windows and underlining

I really enjoy hiding the 'alt' related hotkeys hints when unused. It just
does not seem to stick n my bloody laptop.

something is messing me around I think.

Problems with 1.5 resolution display

1. Toolbar has too many icons. Need to make this customizable or else
split the toolbar into multiple choices (possible, bit difficult).

Text is not at the correct bottom of the display, and is not horizontally
at the correct location either.


13.28 -
- Fixed the text.

Support is now coded in to deal with multi-resolution displays. It can
handle single, sony high resolution and palm OS 5 high resolution displays.

More work is needed for 1.5 resolution displays. I will examine what is
needed to get them to work today.

Icons and rearranging them

Having spent a long time rearranging the tiles, I've still not added in any
of the elements that are animated. It's simply too much like rasterbating
for my liking.

The first plan is to export the current 256 color tile set out to both the
4 color and the 2 color for the palm devices (which is really irritating).

The 256 color icons export without any effort, it's just that the other
ones need to be color-reduced to make sure that the look OK.

documenting the code.

Sitting on the sofa, tapping on the laptop putting documentation into the
game. Boy is it fun, as at the same time I'm watching the wonderful Kate &
Leopold. someone somewhere must be impugning my masculinity as a result of
this, but I really find it enjoyable.

I'm placing doxygen documentation into the application to make it easier to
navigate the source code. It is helping me keep up with the code.

The next objective is to improve the simulation so there is a better
relationship between the three primary zones. This will allow us to develop
the desire graphs.

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