Bob's packed programming page

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Old News:

  30th of December, 2000
  • Fixed a few minor things in the SR3D API. Started writting some docs.
  • Uploaded my text and font library on SourceForge! You can get it at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/aglf/.
  • The Allegro font patch is no longer needed, so I've removed it. Fixed up the AGL patch accordingly

  27th of December, 2000
  • Mainly working on the StarFox clone and my GL text library.
  • Added a copy full mesh function.
  • Working on adding a mesh shadow hack by flattening the original and coloring it black
  • Reworked the window resizing patches

  23rd of December, 2000
  • Lighting subsystem is mostly done now.
  • Alternatively, you may look at what I'm working on right now. Here's a shot of a StarFox clone I've been making using the SunRise engine. Started it only last monday!

  22nd of December, 2000
  • New release of SunRise! Version 0.2m is now available for download.
    Note: if you have downloaded it this morning, then download it again. It was packaged with the wrong version of the Allegro DLL
  • Added a new screen shot showing the color map and the multi-sprite layer.
  • Version 0.3 is comming along nicely. I just need to add lights, environment mapping, mesh morphing, and maybe quad-tree culling! Lights will be easy: most of the system is already there. Same for environment mapping, only a few extra API calls will be required (hopefull just one...we'll have to see). Mesh morphing and quad-trees will be a little trickyer.
  • That tree texture is getting on my nervs - it seems uglier every time I look at it. I'll need to change that ASAP. Hum, maybe I can make the trees full fledged meshes instead of sprites. I'll have to see - need a new texture first.

  21rst of December, 2000
  • Hacked Allegro a bit. Now SunRise supports resizable windows! I've also included the patches to both Allegro and AllegroGL if anyone is interested in them. Until they get included in the lib, that is.

  21rst of December, 2000 - (1:30 am)
  • Ok, fixed some CSS issues. Not the site looks very nice indeed in Mozilla, and almost as good in Netscape 4. Opera still rules the CSS display though :) Had no word on how IE displays the page, but I can assume it's ok.

  20th of December, 2000
  • Small cosmetic changes to the site. This breaks the display in Netscape 4.xx more than it already is. Then again, Netscape hardly works with CSS. Netscape 6 displays it ok though.
  • Strange, no booting problems today. Either VIA disk controlers have the cunning ability to repair themselves when deprived of power, or the VIA chipset is just plain weird.

  19th of December, 2000
  • Various small changes to the site: Moved the screen shots to another page, updated the CSS code, added the introduction paragraph

  18th of December, 2000
  • Almost done with my finals. Will (finally) get some time to do some real hacking :-)
  • Fixed more bugs.

  12th of December, 2000
  • MAJOR engine overhaul. Rewrote about 20% of the codebase. Added reference counts, multiple data structures. Simplified a lot of things. I also readuced the memory footprint (by a few KB per mesh), and reduced memory shuffling. On top of that, I got 1 fps more!
  • Fixed too many bugs to count. The file loader should now be able to take anything you give it. Reading broken files is one thing, making them display correctly after that is a whole other story :) At least it doesn't choke (read: General Protection Fault) when one line is missing.

  11th of December, 2000
  • Well, Sunrise runs about 100% faster. This makes me think that it's very dependant on bus speed...too dependant. I get 25 fps now.
  • Optimized the code a bit. Added 5 fps more.

  7th of December, 2000
  • Got my brand new Pentium III, 800MHz!
    I'll run some bechmarks right after my Intercal final. We'll see by how much it creams my Celery(tm) 366MHz :)
  • But now my HD controler is acting up. Damn cheap motherboard. I'm sticking with Intel chipsets form now on.

  3rd of December, 2000
  • I'm in over my head with assignments and exams. Not much has been done since last post.
  • I did however do some major changes in the display, and planning to add lots of cool effect...when I get some time :-)
  • The SpeedHack sompetition is comming up soon. I'll try to partiticipate this year. I just need a idea for a game that can be coded in less than 3 days :)
  • If it's not one thing, it's another: I just fried my CPU! But it was running overclocked at 550MHz for a very nice 30 seconds! Oh well, guess I'll be getting that P3 after all!
  • Sony monitors ROCK!

  18th of October, 2000
  • Updated the link section, and corrected some misspelling
  • I'm down one monitor now, so I prolly won't be able to do much until I get a new one :(
  • I'm also looking for an official logo for the engine or something, and would appreciate help on it. Let'sjust say I'm not of the artstic type :)

  14th of October, 2000
  • Fixed the bug that was crashing the demo (who hoo!). Turns out it was something *really* dumb. I should read my own docs from now on :)
  • Fixed some stuff in AGL. 32bpp works better now and the window is properly sized.
  • Added a configuration file so Pete can have his full screen mode.
  • Got rid of the old debugging code and installed the one from ChronoLever. Simpler and more powerfull. What more could you want?
  • Fixed various bugs that caused textures to load wrong in 32bpp.
  • Some cosmetic changes to the text.
  • Added a Sun flare to illuminate the surroundings. There's a banding problem though which is inherent to 16bpp modes.
  • Sky *still* doesn't look right in 32bpp. I'll look into that this week-end.
  • Added a 'warp' effect. Set warp to 1 in the configuration file to see the effect!
  • Uploaded new version (0.2i) of the demo. I'm sure I'll come back to 'normal' version numbers eventually (there are only so many letters in the English alphabet :)
  • Merged the Executable, Data, Music and DLLs together in one nice easy-to-install package. Just unzip and run!

  8th of October, 2000
  • Switched from using PCM waves to streaming ADPCM 'aud' format.
  • Thus, memory requirements are down 5 MB, and loading is time cut by 4

  6th of October, 2000
  • With University life and all, I'm having trouble finding any time free to do productive work :) In any case, I updated the demo a bit and uploaded the lastest build.
  • Fixed a couple of display bugs
  • Added a sun! (who hoo!)
  • Made the terrain more hilly as to mask terrain details (or lack thereof)
  • Fixed a timer issue that was causing the program to think it was one second ahead of it really was.
  • Fixed a bug that cause the demo to lock up on some computers at the end of the forest run.
  • Added a new screen shot too!
  • Various changes to the site.