Scott T: The Blog

Puzzles work. Sort of.

Posted Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 1:28pm by Scott
Tagged: games, programming
2 comments

And only some puzzles too. Dining room still shows problems.


"P" is for Progress

Posted Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 9:45pm by Scott
Tagged: games, programming
No comments - Add one!

Thought I'd do some commentary on what's happened since those screenshots last Wednesday. I was initially going to title it "F is for Frustrating" but thought I'd let the images do the talking, but since then I think I've gotten things under control. Firstly, it turns out the massive slowdowns was due to the inefficient method of LZSS decompression I'd used. After switching that over, the frames flew along quite nicely. I had also decided to tidy up the code by a rewrite using XNA which is where the graphical glitches came in. For the most part they were just logic issues ("<" rather than ">" and so on) but after some tweaking, I was getting more and more frequent crashes!

I'm not completely sure where these were coming but after re-rewriting back to the trusty ol' SdlDotNet (and some complaining about going round in circles) I appear to now have a very stable executable :D In other areas, basic load/save functions exist although names don't work yet. Mouse interaction works although I'm not sure when to remove some of the hotspots which can lead to glitches when clicked on. Also, although puzzles work (see below - the lighter squares represent a hotspot) the transparencies relating to piece movements currently don't.

Spookypeanut hasn't been idle either with t7gre either with decoding of the script file formats allowing much of this progress to occur. The ScummVM Groovie engine that he started on has also gained much of this same functionality thanks to the work of jvprat :)

Hopefully more progress follows soon.


Wordless Wednesday (Just)

Posted Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:58pm by Scott
Tagged: games, programming
2 comments

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:s !!!


Pushing for Performance

Posted Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 1:10am by Scott
Tagged: games, programming, ssc
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After the recent work by spookypeanut on the Groovie engine for ScummVM, I spent a little bit of time trying to overcome these performance issues using the SdlDotNet implementation. Unfortunately, it seems things aren't much better than last time although I managed to break things in the process. Initially, I wasn't incrementing the surface pointer correctly followed by incorrect colour assignments. I got there in the end although there's still some minor opcode fill issues for the VDX files as shown on the 4th shot below - notice the rather jagged bottom of the "photo" in the book?

[[img|/images/gallery/4/77_med.jpg]][[img|/images/gallery/4/78_med.jpg]][[img|/images/gallery/4/79_med.jpg]][[img|/images/gallery/4/80_med.jpg]]

I might trial using pointers with the XNA framework next to see if that makes any noticeable difference. I've also noticed many searches for T7G and Vista coming via my blog - to those who read this, you can try out dosbox or the windows patch although neither were particularly stable for me.

I've also been working on V3 of this website as rather than uni work. Things are mostly ready in the front-end (excluding image gallery) and I'll update this site once I finalise it. The back-end will need more work for a few of the less commonly changed settings but I don't want to delay the upgrade. I'm working on a new theme for it as well but short on ideas - the progress so far is still looking a little drab.

Enjoy your weekend everyone :)


It's Cold at the Coast

Posted Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 9:33pm by Scott
Tagged: everyday, games, sailing
3 comments

Quite cold. Or at least when compared to back up here at home when last week, the lowest maximum for the day was 28C.

[[img|/images/gallery/4/76_med.jpg||float=left|Boats on the shore ready for launching]]Last weekend, on the 8th though 10th we headed down to Victor Harbor for the second leg of the Mosquito States - the first of which was up here last November. Anticipating the cold, I packed jackets and long pants, and upon getting out of the car at the caravan park down there, things didn't seem too bad.

The next day however was a different matter. While a tolerable 19C was forecast, the wind was not factored in to my expectations and despite the sunny weather, it was quite cool all day. The McDonald's cappuccino at 3pm was much appreciated :D I also managed to get rather sunburnt although only on my face and the tops of my hands. This is probably because they were the only parts of my body uncovered :)

Sunday was more of the same however after learning our lesson, the car was parked facing the water allowing shelter all morning. Despite Dad sustaining damage to his Mossie while attempting to leave shore the weekend was reasonably enjoyable.

I would have probably posted this earlier, except I've been colonising new land in Anno 1701 :) Screen shot shows my settlement achieving independence.

[[img|/images/gallery/4/75_med.jpg]]


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