Scott T: The Blog
Stormy Weather
Posted Fri, Dec 04, 2009 at 7:24pm by ScottTagged: everyday
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Over the past month, the weather has found itself rather confused. At the start of November, we had two weeks of summer-weather, with nearly two weeks of 35C and above. Fortunately things have since cooled down, however last week a rather severe storm hit the region.
We didn't have too much damage occur - only some smaller branches broken off the trees, however things weren't quite so mild in-town, where the wind was able to blow across the lake unimpeded.
A similar storm-front looked like it was approaching the following afternoon, but ended up being a small amount of wind and some sparse heavy rain-drops. The next photo was taken as a panorama, and can be clicked to see the full-view.
Some extra photos can be seen in the gallery.
Refilling of the Lake
Posted Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 5:11pm by ScottTagged: uni, water
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It's been a few months since the last post, and considering the events I'm about to cover occurred back in September, it is safe to say they are a little overdue. Ultimately, Uni got in the way of things but I have some spare time again now, since I've finished for the year (and, possibly, ever :D).
Anyway, back towards the end of September a partial re-fill of the lake began. After nearly 2 years of separation, the water had receded quite some distance.
The refill this time is supposed to be up around the 26 gigalitre mark (source: ABC Online). Instead of the pipes used at the end of last year, a proper gate has been installed which allows a pretty reasonable amount of water through.
As usual, the Lake Bonney gallery has been updated with a few extra photos.
11H Cursors - Part 2
Posted Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 12:57pm by ScottTagged: programming, scummvm
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After some questioning of my original logic, another look at the disassembly revealed I'd misinterpreted a few bits and pieces wrongly. A short time later, and we get cursors without missing pixels =)
Still no alpha-blending, so the black edges are still visible and the hand isn't see-through, but it makes it a lot easier to navigate through the mansion.
Pointing the Way
Posted Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 11:20am by ScottTagged: games, programming, scummvm
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In a combination of getting my mind off of study, and giving clone2727 no reason for not posting Riven videos - see the IRC logs (at around [15:00]) for explanation - you can now see where the mouse is located in 11H (and the other GroovieV2 games).
There still needs to be a little bit of work done though. For some reason that I'm yet to determine, some pixels of the cursors are still missing (more obvious in the full-sized images).
Blending is still not supported, although how to apply the blending has been worked out. Currently I'm assuming the cursor will always be over the top of a black background, which works well when it is (like the above) but not so well for when it isn't.
And as much as the above image doesn't show it, they are animated although the transition between hand direction isn't implemented yet.
Beating JPEG
Posted Wed, Jul 01, 2009 at 11:03pm by ScottTagged: games, programming, scummvm
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One of the main sticking points for working on The 11th Hour recently (ignoring lack of time) has been the still frames within ROQ files. Although seemingly trivial within T7G, 11H uses more complex/advanced image compression for both video and stills. The video frames have been working for a while with some very minor glitches however the still frames use JPEG, and it's hard to find a decent documentation source. Never-the-less, some work had been done prior to now by clone2727 (for Mohawk) and jvprat which I obtained last week and then became rather obsessed with fixing =P
From rather simple beginnings, there were some rather critical issues to be fixed first (ie, missing functionality) which rapidly pushed towards a greyscale image.
Fiddling here and there resulted in a vast number of -ish improvements until a breakthrough resulted in the following:
All the AC components of the image seemed fine so after fixing an issue with the DC values, success was reached. Five minutes of tinkering to add JPEG to the 16bpp branch and we have the final image, rendered in RGB.
For those interested in the progress shots, the (semi-permanent) gallery has many ways of not to decode a JPEG.
