An Update

Finally bought a domain. Visit it here. It will contain mostly blog posts, though I would also like to include some games. I may turn it into a game portal if I get positive feedback.

Game Update

The Breakout clone looks pretty good now. I spend the weekend developing it. I've improved upon the welcome screen to make it flashier, included the help screen, and coded the gameplay. It has 3 levels, in each level the speed of the ball increases and so do the points you get on breaking a tile.



The awesome thing is that the menu has a GUI, something that I'm doing for the first time. But I have to admit, coding the GUI is boring stuff, it's like coding HTML. Maybe they have a WYSIWYG editor for GUI too, I should probably check it out.

I also tried coding the High Score functionality, but it's not working right now, because I can't figure out how to make the user enter his/her name. Initially I tried coding it using pygame, but then I figured out that GUI would probably be the better way to go.



Other than that, I've been trying to look at some organisations for Gsoc. Thousand Parsec seemed like a good one, but all efforts in trying to contact them have failed so far, and the result is that I've waisted a lot of time doing nothing at all. Their server refuses to run, and noone answers my quiries on IRC and their mailing list. So, like last year, I've almost decided to give it up. I'll probably still apply, but not with my whole heart. I'll probably be developing my own games during the summer.

How to run SVN under proxy server

This is a problem that I have been facing for quiet a while now, and I finally got the solution. Earlier I just ignored it and used no proxy. But now I have got it.

To configure HTTP Proxy for Subversion, open the file ~/.subversion/servers. In this file, go to the [global] section, and edit your Proxy Settings. If you have more than one proxy server, you can make multiple groups, and edit their settings. Now you can use SVN under a proxy server.

Credit goes to this blog, through which I find out how to do it. This has really helped me a lot, since no proxy causes a lot of problems. Some of the sites just refuse to open on it, and I have to constantly keep switching between proxy and no proxy. Also, after using no proxy with SVN for a certain amount of time, I also found that my net would stop working and I would be forced to reboot my PC.

And Back Again ...

So back I am to my projects. I've started studying a bit of Neural Networks (through L Behera's lectures on Youtube) and I find it really fascinating. After studying 2 of them, I was ready to jump into it. I've started a project on sourcefourge, which is basically a Character Recognition Program. It uses the Backpropagation Algorithm. The graphics have been done using Pygame, and its to be written in Python.

I've also started work on another Game Project. I'm going to be cloning Breakout this time. I've made the welcome screen, menu, and a bit of the actual gameplay. It's written in Pygame, and I'm also using PGU(Phil's Pygame Utilities). It contains certain stuff like level editor, tile editor, GUI, State Engine, High Score maintainence etc. This is the first time I'm using a Level Editor, and I have to say, it was really overwhelming at first, but when I finally got it, it felt awesome. I can't help realizing how giant a step this is in game development.

What else I've got planned up? Well, I'm looking for game engines again. And the same old criteria : Python bindings, Map Editor, blah blah. I'm back to 2d games for now.

I also plan to use a Web Framework called Django Web Framework for my website. A Web Framework is to a Website what a game engine is to a game (Most probably, I made this definition on my own). Django is also written in Python.

Here are some of the screenshots from my game :

When Firefox stops responding

One problem that we all must have faced at some point of time in the CC or CSE Lab is the problem of firefox not responding. It gives the following message :



Even after restarting the system, it gives the same message.
Also, on typing "ps -e" on the terminal (which is supposed to show you a list of processes running), it doesn't show firefox.

I remember facing this situation during First year. I finally gave up and started using someone else's account.
Now I faced the same situation in CSE Lab, and decided to find out how to deal with it.
It's quite simple, really. Open the terminal and type firefox -profilemanager. It will open the firefox profile manager. Right now, the current profile is causing problems. So just make another profile. You will most probably lose all your saved passwords, etc.

Now open firefox and select your new profile on being asked to select a profile.

A better method which I read somewhere involved deleting a lock file in your profile folder. However, I could find no such lock file in my profile folder. If you do, let me know.

Guess who's back!

So, after a hiatus, I am back again. Last semester was a complete disaster in almost every way possible : my studies, hobbies, social life, etc. Finally during the holidays I got some learning started.

I have always wanted to make 3d games, but I don't just want to make them, I want to program them. I finally decided to take the plunge from 2d to 3d in the winter. I got started with a game engine called Soya3d. I also got started with some Modelling and Animation using Blender. Nothing fancy, just some basic armature stuff for animation. I made some models, some of them will be uploaded on my website soon enough. For GUI, I plan to use Tkinter (for now), so I read some Tkinter tutorials too.


However, Soya3d is a bit of a buggy game engine. It was everything that I needed, its just that it wasn't designed too properly. So I had to let it go. There is another game engine called PySoy, which has been started with one of the developers of Soya3d who wasn't comfortable with soya's design. It looks pretty good for now, the only problem is that it's current version is not supported. I'm looking forward to the next version. It was a pain to install. Imagine spending 3 hours to install a software (with 10 dependencies), and then finding out that that version isn't supported!


For now, I'm taking a break from game programming till I end up finding a better game engine or till PySoy Beta 3 is released. I have plenty of stuff to keep me occupied. We got an assignment in CS355 to build a website, and this gave me an oppurtunity to improve my website. I included a photo gallery and a random pic on each page, just to make it a bit more interesting. The pics are all random pictures of my room. You can visit the photo gallery here.

And remember : Lameness Always Prevails!

Why Python kicks C right in the nuts

Program to reverse a string in C:

#include

int main()
{
char s[3] = {'a', 'b', 'c'};
int i, temp;
for(i = 0; i < strlen(s)/2; i+=1)
{
temp = s[strlen(s) - i - 1];
s[strlen(s) - i - 1] = s[i];
s[i] = temp;
}
for(i = 0; i < strlen(s); i+=1)
{
printf(s[i]);
}
return 0;
}


The corresponding program in Python:

s = 'abc'
s = s[::-1]
print s

Enough said.

P.S. : Sorry about the intendation.