Programming This and That
I seem to do much chatting about things other than programming. Mostly because I usually find programming so routine there is no real point for me to talk about it.
Lately I have written and tested a simple Regex engine (works well, but lacks many advanced features). A Math expression parser (works well), a cross platfrom irc bot framework (no advanced features), a 3D OpenGL Java based programming game (incomplete), written a kD-Tree implementation (works), mucked about with image formats. Awhile ago I even tried my hand at a Gameboy interpreting emulator (never finished).
I have been considering if I should try making a game of some sort. I am not really lacking in skill in programming, however most current generation gamers want not only gameplay, but graphics. That is where I hit a speed bump. I can ignore those for the most part (you know since it is just for fun, if I like). I have even caught myself practicing what I would say if I had to sell my programming skills to a game developer.
Sorta like so. “It all depends on the scope of your project. If you want a massive 3D system, with character models with an adaptive IK animation system and complex physics system, well I probably can’t do that.. Well actually I probably could, but I would be really annoyed, that is to say, I wouldn’t want to do it. Since that is a difficulty well beyond a single developer.”
Did I mention such a system would be a pain to write? Well it would be. Since I would have to look up how many things worked, and perhaps even new api for the animations and graphic system (directx/opengl scene graphing) and integrate a physics library.
EVE Online
Here I am going to speak a little more about games again. Eve Online, I tried it awhile ago, and it wasn’t the most terrible game in existence, however I dislike for one very simple reason. Their learning systems depends wholly on how long you have been paying them. Thats right, you don’t work hard, or grind monsters, or mine, or whatever else to learn skills, you character learns them at a set pace, which basically equates to for them, longer and more money you give us, the more skilled your character is. Honestly that is a bit annoying to me. I mean sure I can see learning time, or limiting how much you can learn in a given period, and while there are ways to optimize skill learning to a degree. I don’t want to wait around for a year to start having fun.
Oh yes that is another thing, permanent death is really possible, I mean there is a clone system and such, but dieing is really quite possible. Losing those years of hard work.
Truly anal people like me, who in a game of hard work, work our asses to hell and back. Like in Pokemon I usually out level the next gym leader since I trained my Pokemon to ex nauseam. People like me who could find some training engaging instead do not, as you generally log off and do nothing. So you are paying for a game that you do nothing in, and takes you almost a year to get to start to do anything really interesting (that is to say, being able to afford to be part of massive space battles). what. the. fuck.
Batman – Arkham Asylum
Borrowed the game from a friend, installed, but doesn’t run (general protection fault crap), spent a few hours on it. I installed it again, no good. I wiped my drive and gave the disk back. No game is worth that kind of hassle you know.
Games are so concerned with anti-piracy that you cannot even run a borrowed game anymore, you HAVE to buy it, and even then there is no guarantee. Games have protection on top of protection. It is annoying is that everywhere you look you see people that cannot play it, but bought it, and people who downloaded it and can. I think good QA got kicked in the head somewhere along the line, or at least traded in for all those nifty ‘security’ features that do nothing for the people who bought the game… well except give them headaches.
PPSE-DS r10
Added a few things, this is a kinda a small update as no new huge functions are in, but the filesize exploded (added like 250 kb) due to the addition of the nds math and nds floating point emulation library for the contest stat editing. I changed the music too, so in the end the file size pretty much doubled with those two changes.
Oct 18, 2009: r10
+ Added Hex Edit View
+ Seperated Pokemon Editing Menu
+ Added option to set you as pokemon’s original trainer.
+ Added automatic nickname setting/etc (English only so far)
+ Added pokemon contest stat editing. (its pretty!)
= Fixed RAM_ONLY_MODE to use the background.
= Fixed argv loading problem.
PPSE-DS r9.2
Emergency Update! Fixes two large bugs with items editing!
Oct 16, 2009: r9.2
= Fixed Item ‘Edit’ Button (it didn’t work)
= Fixed Item ‘Add’ and ‘Insert’ to not add an extra item if combining