semi/signal

New version of speaker switch is up. I updated the text for the speaker switch system tray icon so that it will now display the current speaker config when the mouse is over it. Also, an “about” message box has been added.

btw, licenses are now included in all the binary and source packages I’ve uploaded.

New version of Doppler is up. This version fixes a few major bugs found in the initial release (including server timeouts and file transfers stalling). In addition, a few things have been reworked internally so things run more smoothly, including the server startup code and the client connection code, both of which will now execute as background threads, so the UI doesn’t freeze.

Doppler Beta 1 is up. You can find the download link on the Doppler page. Still quite a few bugs and annoyances in the code, but it is fairly stable and functional (hey, it’s still at beta!). Beta 2 will probably be out sometime next month, a long time, but I won’t be focusing as heavily on Doppler for the next few weeks, I’m going to shift gears and focus on a few other projects I’ve had on the back burner:

Kiwi: a markup language designed as an alternative to XML for application developers. I have a love/hate relationship with XML, I hate the verbose syntax, the ambiguity between attributes and elements, all the ugly DOM stuff, etc. What I love is not XML itself, but the amazing level of support it receives from almost every company and software product in the world. In fact the only real reason I use XML is that it’s supported by the .net framework, so I don’t have to do too much work to read/write XML data. yea, I’m lazy 😉

Rex: a resource file format specification (of course I’ll have to make a utility app as well – no way in hell am I going to add/extract files using a command line).

QuadSpace: A generic version of NZEdit2 (the Nemesis Zero map editor). Will have Rex file support as well as support for TGA, PNG, and JPEG textures. Oh, btw, by “generic” I mean it will be flexible enough to be used as a map ed. for other games.

[really-cool-name]: A generic version of the NZ Particle FX Editor.

Helix: A 3D level editing program with support for importing .X files and CSG (I mention this specifically b/c so many of the free 3D level editing programs out there don’t support this).

Zero2: The second version of the Nemesis Zero engine; rebuilt from the ground up and utilizing shader model 2.0

Curve: A 3D game engine. That’s it. Haven’t really thought much about the specs as yet.

I’m also thinking it would be really cool to do a side scrolling engine, with graphics similar to NZ (i.e. 3D characters on 2D backgrounds) but where the characters can aim in any direction, kinda like a more advanced version of Abuse (anyone remember that game?, from the ill-fated crack-dot-com).

Obviously, I can’t focus on all these projects at once. So I have some serious pondering to do.

Any programmers interested in working with me on Doppler or any of the projects listed above, contact me.

Well as you’ve probably figured out by now, Doppler beta 1 is delayed. Working with threads is such a pain. As soon as I get it stable I’ll release the beta.

Anyway, I made a small utility program, Speaker Switch! I frequently change (nay…switch!) my speaker configuration between speakers and headphones and got tired of having to go through control panel every time. So speaker switch runs in the system tray and provides a quick way to change the speaker configuration. The Speaker Switch page is up at http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/speakerswitch/ , executable and source code available (C# w/ MDX).

Wish work on Nemesis Zero would continue, but despite my recruiting efforts, I still haven’t found any new artists. So NZ is still on hold 🙁

Work on Doppler continues, also whipped up a quick page for it (http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/doppler). I’ll try to have the Beta 1 download up by Friday night. There’s still quite a bit of work to do, for now here’s a new screenshot showing the new interface:

For the past week or so I’ve been working on Doppler, a small file synchronization utility program. I was surprised to find that few such programs existed and the few that are around cost a bit of money and didn’t have the features I was looking for.

What’s so special about Doppler?

• Designed to be invisible (resides in the system tray), lightweight (uses very little processor power and plays very nicely with other processes), and magical (Doppler will automatically mirror changes to files and directories that it monitors)

• Doppler can be used as an automated backup system. The Doppler server keeps and manages its own “file system” (it’s just a directory where it dumps files). Just run the server on the machine where you want to keep the backup and setup the client to monitor the directories which you want to backup.

• You can run Doppler as a server and a client on the same computer. Mirroring files and directories on the same PC may seem stupid, but if you mirror to another drive you now have a backup – an automated backup!

I’ll probably have a beta version out next week. Currently I’m fixing bugs and still adding features. File versioning and compression (both for transfer and storage of files in the Doppler file sys.) are two main areas that I’m really looking into.

For now here’s a pic of the doppler control center:

Begun the process of reforming DR and finding new people to work with (GDNet Help Wanted Post). No replies yet. I’ll mirror this post to other, more art-oriented forums soon.

Currently, not doing much programming, playing Homeworld 2. I bought it a few months back, but haven’t had the time to play it until now. So far I’m pretty impressed. The graphics are, of course, much better (since HW2 was released about 4 years after HW) and it’s especially nice to see the higher level-of-detail in the ships and the prettier special effects. I won’t go into all the details about the game, but one feature in particular that I was impressed with was the idea of “strike groups”. Basically, you can group a bunch of different ships together and they form a strike group which moves at the rate of the slowest ship. I have dreamt of this since the first RTS game I played (Total Annihilation) and have wished for it in every RTS game I’ve played since. I’m sure anyone who’s tried to pull off a strategic attack involving multiple unit types in TA, Starcraft, Age of Empires, etc. knows that it’s increadibly difficult and what usually happens is that your units go towards the enemy from fastest to slowest and w/o the units reinforcing each other, your plan falls apart, you units all killed in a few seconds, you do almost no damage to the enemy, and your world domination scheme fails 🙁

One thing that did annoy me a bit in HW2 is the controls. The right mouse button now also allows you to move ships with 2 clicks (one to show the movement disc, second to move). This is nice, but the right mouse button is also for camera rotation and there seems to be a bug where, on occasion, if you rotate the camera while a ship is selected, the movement disc will pop up. This is very annoying, but I seem to have gotten into the habit of deselecting units before rotating. Oh, speaking of the camera, I’m so happy the guys at Relic added the ability to pan the scene.

ok, that’s all for now. I’m leaving for Georgia tomorrow night and I’ll be offline until Monday.

So busy with school that I haven’t had time to update. Anyway, finally got around to getting my portfolio online and I updated by resume as well (behold my amazing frontpage web design skills).

If you’ve checked the DR front page, you probably saw my news post about Nilesh leaving DR (well, he’ll be back in 2 months) and NZ being put on an indefinite hold. After I finish my finals I’ll be looking around for new team members, and I’ll basically try to rebuild the DR team from the ground up.

As promised in my last update, here’s a pic of NZ Edit, the Nemesis Zero map editor.





As of version 0.03, layers other then the current layer being edited are shaded blue. It’s a small improvement to help prevent accidental selection or deletion of a tile on the wrong layer. Of course, this is also optional and can be turned off to get a better view of the map.

Nilesh hasn’t had time to update the website and post new screenshots, so I thought I’d post a pic showing what our particle fx editor for NZ looks like:




(I’ll post a pic of the map editor soon)