Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Color Tower Defense 2.23 Released

Color Tower Defense 2.23 has been released. Source files and a windows executable are available. Python and Pygame are required to run the source. If you are running the source then run "Color Tower Defense.py"


As for changes, I made some new tilesets for the backgrounds of each level. Hopefully they are nicer to look at and still give the feel that I was going for. A few other visual bugs have been fixed.


Downloads

Mac Ogre Templates in Xcode Not Displaying Correctly -FIX-

If you cannot see the Ogre templates when you go to Xcode > File > New Project... these steps should fix the issue. I will not explain how to install the SDK, the dependencies, or the templates. I also will not describe how to fix path issues which occur when you first try to run the Ogre templates. A quick google search should show many results for both of those subjects.


First off, make sure that you Installed the OgreSDK, the Ogre Dependencies, and the Ogre Templates for Xcode. Go to Xcode, and click File > New Project... If you see this screen (notice there are no "Ogre" template options on the left) then your templates are not being displayed correctly.


Close Xcode and navigate a finder window to /Library/Application Support/Developer. You should see a window like this.


Right click on Shared and click Get Info. You will then come to this screen.


Notice how it says "You have no access". We will need to fix this before you can see the Ogre templates. Click on the lock at the bottom right corner and enter the required administrator password. Then click on the Privilege that says "No Access". and change the value to "Read & Write". It should now look like this.




Now click the lock to prevent further changes, and close the "Get Info" window. The Shared folder should no longer have a little red circle at the bottom right (like in screenshot 2).


If you open up the Shared folder you should find the folders for the Ogre templates. 




If you do not see these folders, then you may need to reinstall the Ogre Templates. Now when you go to create a new Xcode project, Your Ogre templates will be displayed correctly.



Sunday, October 23, 2011

People are Jerks


From a python forum:

person 1: the permissions are okay, it is set on full control for the folders in question. still, the problem remains.
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person 2 (jerk): Is it your belief that anyone who uses your computer has full control? If so, what does having admin privileges mean? After considering those questions, once again think about the statement: your program is not you.
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person 1: okay i don't want to get into philosophical questions regarding who has control 
about what. i am trying to start learning python and i am already failing at the code i have posted. 




Often times you can find many programmers telling others what good questions are and bad questions. 
For instance, I have heard countless responses on online forums such as: 

"Why would you ask what the best method is? We can never know what is best. There are pros and cons to every option in programming. You will just have to try every method for your situation and then you will know which route to take in your problem."

What kind of attitude is this? It's terrible! Imagine if you were on a road trip and you stop at a gas station in a city. You then ask some stranger: 

"Where can I find the best Mexican food restaurant around here?" 

to which they reply:
"As is the nature of newcomers like you, your question is ambiguous. How do you expect me to know what the best Mexican food restaurant is for your situation? We can never even know what is best for ourselves, why would you ask me to know what is best for you?"

That (I hope) would never happen, but why does it happen all the time on the internet?



Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Rewriting (nearly) my whole game.

I ran into so many issues with my previous method of handling networking that I decided to rewrite my entire networking code to use twisted.protocols.amp (instead of pb). I only have like 3 months left till I have to submit my game to some competitions though so this is gonna be crazy. Im going to try to just get the basic gameplay mechanics working and try to polish that. Then I can work on other things such as RPG elements like weapons, more dynamic enemies, random map generation(which is super fun), and other cool things that would take too much time to do in the next three months. But hey, on the bright side I almost finished the song for the game :)

Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable), Example

http://sscce.org/

Those are some really good guidelines for creating a small example to show someone an issue you are having with some code. It helps the person helping you so that they don't have to go digging through a bunch of lame and stupid code that has nothing to do with anyone, ever.

Friday, August 5, 2011

Did I Mention I Got Hired As a Tester?

Here is the game i've been working on, It involves a bunch of mini games so the testing experience is... interesting.

http://www.ea.com/family-game-night-4

Cellular Automaton Simulation

I made a little cellular automaton demo. Its pretty cool and I plan on using it to generate the textures for terrains, like the black tiles could be a dirt tile, and the white tiles could be a grass  tile. I think It will create a really cool random terrain effect. It runs pretty slowly, but i think thats a python problem with looping through 1000000 tiles every iteration :). But in the demo i limited it to 3 FPS and its rendering it every frame but it can go quite a bit faster than that, I just set it to those values because i think its cool to watch.


I included a windows exe file (no pygame/python required!)


Cellular Automaton Simulation