So, I am coding again.

This time in Python. I am looking at Panda3D as an easy way to shove things to screen. I’ve fooled around enough in SDL on both Lisp and Ruby that I felt I wanted to see how 3D works out. Panda3D seems like a brilliant tool for learning purposes. Of course, I got a little sidetracked.

And I am not talking about my other hobbies like Music or Painting, either.

I did few simple tests of putting stuff on screen and that was simple enough. Then I removed that code because it was just a test and started a project in preparation of actually learning Python in the first place. I figured a good place to start learning Python was to do some basic framework stuff for a game logic and such, something that I knew how to do on Ruby and Lisp. In the end, I came upon a realization that Python is almost like Ruby – except it’s like the stodgy big brother who never has any fun.

So, it’s not hard. It just feels a little more … structured than Ruby, I guess is the best way of putting it. I haven’t delved too deep in to it, because I’ve been doing very specific things so I don’t have huge familiarity (say, none, really) with the language. So this isn’t some kind of ultimate condemnation or judgement. Just an observation of how it feels so far.

I miss the Ruby’s ability to write throwaway lines like “if x then y else z end” and Lisp’s macros. But I miss those everywhere. That said, maybe you can write such lines in Python, but I haven’t seen how and that would definitely fuck up the indentation rules. I’ll look in to it when I need to.

Jul 082011

Common Lisp is fucking cool, okay? Just like all Lisps are cool to certain extent, and with certain limitations. It’s a bit like having a “Lifetime Warranty”[1] on something.

I love Scheme’s beauty, I hate the fact that it’s not convenient. I love Common Lisp’s convenience, I hate its ugly verbosity and odd constructs. But sure, I don’t have do a whole lot of work on having a function to do something, the odds are there’s five different ones in the standard CL library that can already do it for me.

But despite it being cool, and CL being relatively convenient, it’s still not as convenient as some languages. Continue reading »

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)
  1. Lifetime in this case being a life-time of a small mammal

Oh, right, sleep! That thing I was supposed to be doing. Right. Like, whatever, man.

I just logged in to note that I got GSS running on linux. Bam! Not that there was any question since both Clozure and SBCL which are my compilers of choice run on Linux and Windows, and so does SDL my choice of graphics library. So, yeah, I’m good to go man.

This means the game will be developed on Windows 7 32bit and 64bit, and 64bit linux. Hmm…

Now, if I stopped fooling around and get back to game production you’d have something to see one of these days.

Jul 022011

WARNING, programming stuff, stupid talk, blather. Basically, if you’re here for the art or music, do skip, okay?

I will get back to art & music, eventually.

Continue reading »

Jul 012011

Another day spent outside in the sun. Visited my parents, got their car for the duration of their holidays. Yes, I don’t own a car. I sink all my money in to audio gear and technology, so I’ve decided to skip on the car. At least as long as I work inside the Helsinki area where the public transportation is good. I do sacrifice my time by wasting it in the bus, but I spend that time dreaming up disturbing paintings, stupid game logic systems, and to listen to music.

Tomorrow, we’re off to beach, if the weather permits. I’ll take a camera and see about taking some photos for potential reference material. I should paint some more, but I am not quite sure what to paint. I’ll figure it out. I really should work on my portfolio and add some less disturbing stuff and more useful stuff. I like painting closeups of bodyparts, or just facial portraits and especially the disturbing variety.

But it’s not really a skill I can sell easily. My demand is rather limited.

Cue in disbelief.

Anyway, I have few hours before bed, I’ll try to work on Luola but it fucking kills me. Issues left and right. I fucking hate 3D. Or to be precise, I hate fucking texturing and all the other stuff besides modelling. If I have time, I’ll try to code a little as well. I think I have decided on a project to tackle, we’ll see how it goes. What I really should test is packaging the game in to a .JAR, though… hmph.

I think I am too scared to try it.

Jul 012011

So, it’s been stiflingly hot all day long. We’ve also been out in the sunshine all day long, only getting home at very evening. My dear significant other went to bed soon, which means I can’t really be up and do whatever. We live in a fairly small apartment and it would disturb her. However, I can still wear headphones and tinker on the laptop.

So, sorry about the lack of updates or content. Too busy enjoying my rapidly dwindling holidays to waste them indoors.

Unfathomable, I know.

Anyway, so here I am, coding on Ruby and listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in the middle of night. It’s pretty cool, in a weird way.

Jun 292011

A bad habit I can’t shake. It’s like I am a casual smoker, or something. Every now and then I go nuts over programming, and can’t stop myself. Despite the fact that I will never BE a programmer, or make a dime out of it. Anyway, things are vaguely progressing. I got bored of trying to find what’s up with the jRuby, instead I’m just working on two computers — one with jRuby and one with MRI (1.9.2). I used to code in Netbeans, but since 7.0 is out and without Ruby support… well, I still have the 6.9.1. But I’m not sure I like to fight with Netbeans to live with their control of SVN.

So I installed TortoiseSVN on both computers, the most laziest SVN install on planet, and signed up for some free unnamed SVN server. So, now I have version control between the two, but since Netbeans is a bit heavy for this kind of stuff, I’ll just use the Sublime Text Editor on both computers and TortoiseSVN to control the versions. Seems to work fine. Haven’t hit any snags, although in all honesty I’ve spent all my time either sleeping (because I still can’t sleep more than an hour or so until I wake up when  I try to move), or fighting the Java.

So, yeah. Sorry, no painting today (right, sure).

I do have some ideas, though, and since we’re going out to enjoy the sun today, I might be sketching quite a few of them while enjoying the sunshine.

And jRuby on windows is causing frustration. jRuby can’t find the SDL on my desktop computer, but it can find it on my netbook. The 1.9.2 finds it just fiiine. The environments are near identical and paths are set and so forth. It’s the weirdest thing ever. And it’s pissing me off, most likely Java is the culprit. Haven’t been able to figure out what’s the issue. Technically I could just go ahead and develop on the regular Ruby and then just make sure now and then it runs on the netbook’s jRuby. But that’s a fearsome thought. I rather prefer to be aware of issues as soon as they happen.

I have a weird aversion to useless work.

Other than being in pain, and running out of painkillers, I have been re-familiarizing myself with the Ruby. Man, I love how easy it is. Sure, it’s slow, sure it has it’s issues, but it’s just fun to program in. Lisp is conceptually cool, and suddenly recursive thinking is the norm, but Ruby is just “obvious” to me.

Jun 282011

So, I managed to fuck up my neck yesterday at the gym.

I was doing one armed pull-ups, and while doing them on my left arm I tensed my neck and I could feel and hear sort of “tearing” sound. My neck instantly cramping down like crazy. Technically it’s not even really employed while doing the, admittedly a little awkward, move.

Well, anyway, long story short. It’ll be fine, in time, but in the meantime it bothers me.

Especially sleeping.

So, here I am. I woke up at 6am, and I fell asleep around 2am, by my reckoning. So four hours of sleep sounds fucking great.

I’ve kept busy, though. Of all my programming languages that I dabble in (and dabble is the accurate word, since I am not seriously learning them) Ruby has always appealed to me most. I HATE having to write a lot. I especially hate repetitive writing. I can’t even explain the nerdrage I get out of the thought of having to put semicolon at the end of every statement. Fuck  you.

So, Ruby, with its all faults still appeals to me most. But, y’know, you can’t compile it.

Cue in tears.

So, I was thinking I could use jRuby to obfuscate my code (well, you want to read Ruby code that was machine translated in to Java and from there to bytecode and then decompiled? Fuck, if you can stomach it, you’re welcome to it) and get a little more speed out of the fairly sluggish interpreter. Anyway, moving forwards. While I was looking at the impenetrable (to me) java gaming frameworks I had a thought…

Hey, didn’t Rubygame get support for jRuby a while back? I think it did.

Yes it did. I ran my first little examples a moment ago. It took a second as I had to install Netbeans to my netbook (watch it churn and crawl) along with all the tools required. But yes, it works. Holy banana.

Now all we need is to hide my pencils and brushes so I can’t get distracted by painting some more tentacles, and I might get productive. Seems a little unlikely, though. But, at least it’s a possibility. Now, technically, all this is really dumb ‘cos I could be coding in Lisp, in which I’ve known how to use SDL for years through Lispbuilder-sdl, or I could use blitzmax, or even GameMaker.

But, hey, stupid convoluted ideas are my passion. Whether it leads to anything productive is besides the point.

Jun 272011

So, yeah. Today I shall not paint. I think.

I’ll work on the Luola and maybe code a little bit and see how much I can dredge up from my memory. God damn, I hate it when I get bored of coding and don’t do any for months on end. It feels just so hopeless when you look at your old code and you’re thinking “so, wait, how did you define a function, again?”

Okay, maybe not that bad.

 

February 2012
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