Paradise Deferred (Redux)

Bah, this game programming lark is a royal pain in the cojones. I've been trying to motivate myself to finish that godawful sideways scrolling shoot 'em up that I've been rattling on about for, oh, months now but I have been seriously struggling... sadly, the "can't be arsed" factor is hideously enormous, exacerbated by the huge number of fiddly little bastard details that always need to be attended to before making real progress. I've actually somehow got a fair old bit of the infrastructure well in place but there always seems to be something else that needs properly designed, and it's always something that hadn't been previously accounted for... and, frankly, after spending most of my 9-5 workday ploughing through acres of ill-considered, back-of-the-fag-packet designed shit intricately planned, well-architectured, high quality code, I'm not always in the best frame of mind to spend the evenings or weekends peeing away my precious drinking time doing similar into the wee small hours. Not when there's a third series of Deadwood to be watched...

Aha, I hear you cry, the big sh**bag is making his excuses and baling out already - what a complete Colin Hunt. Well, naw, that ain't the case... not at all. The sideways scrolling job will get finished at some point, maybe even this summer... but my new years resolution was really based around just getting a game written in Python with a view to subsequently getting it running on Linux as well as Windows... and then going on and seeing about getting it running in an OLPC development environment. Well, that project is still very much on, only I've retrospectively decided to walk before running (er, actually after trying to run in the first place but bollocks to pedantry) and have started converting my old "classic" Columns rip-off to Python / PyGame from the original Delphi / DirectX version. A much less technically onerous endeavour as well as a pretty damn fun way to really get into the guts of the new language without fighting it quite so much at every bleedin' step (e.g. cursing stupid things like the lack of basic, multi-dimensional arrays in the standard Python library the other day - WTF ?!?). In fact, it's going to be a cool wee proggy to hang any graphical and musical doodlings from in the way that I'd originally intended the Delphi version to become. Well, I've started so I'll finish as old Magnus used to say. This thing will definitely get done. I've said so in public. So there :-P

In the meantime, here's a picture of one of the models for a putative end of level baddie from that wannabe R-Type / Gradius clone to keep y'all satisfied. It was going to be a picture of another (partially) furry German but the big man thought better of violating the old Blogger terms of service. Ho-hum.


Made with the help of -

The Byrds "Sweetheart of the Rodeo" - Oh, how old Uncle Mex loves the sound of some steel guitar on a Sunday morning. Glorious. Gram Parsons R.I.P.

Doctor Knobb's Journal

Howdy kiddywinks! Y'know, despite being a professional (smirk) code monkey for, oh, nearly ten years now (Jesus wept), this blog has been markedly lacking in the area of tech talk. I did (and still do) intend starting another blog for my idle musings on what's going on in the world of my favourite weekday dev tools and suchlike but, in the meantime, I thought that I should take this opportunity to do a wee bit to fill the gap on this blog. Oh, joy untold. Umkay, let's crack on...

Feeling a little demob happy at the prospect of my short Easter hols, I decided to crack open the copy of Delphi for PHP that has been sitting in my in tray for the past few days. One very quick, lightweight install later (no .NET dependency baggage) and I was working up a little database front-end application quicker than I can knock up a chip butty. The work flow is exactly like classic Delphi... design your forms, code your event handlers and press F9 - super quick and super simple. It comes bundled with Apache and an Interbase version so everything is in the box, good to go, for creating your own self contained little web app. And, by crackly, I really do like it! It's just so, well, Delphi...

I'm even warming to the clunky name - Borland confused the whole Delphi naming issue in the first place by renaming their version of the Object Pascal language as the Delphi language and now they've (or rather CodeGear have ) done a complete volte-face and seem to be now branding their whole symbiotic IDE / VCL development model as Delphi... and are consequently now back to referring to the language under its old flamin' moniker. Typical Borprise SNAFU, the big yin thought - people will get mixed up and wonder why this new "Delphi" has nothing to do with Pascal at all and wail about how idiotic the powers that be still are after all these ignominious years... However, now actually having used the PHP tool myself, it makes absolute bleedin' sense - it really feels just like "classic" Delphi... except that this one has PHP sitting underneath it and, of course, it now targets the web. Bloody great I say. Even better, the new PHP VCL that underpins the whole endeavour is essentially a managed open-source project, meaning it can (and should) take on a whole life of its own outwith CodeGear's efforts - definitely the way forward for the Gearheads in the face of the .NET onslaught, IMHO - keep away from the M$ woodchipper, it'll be the death of you guys...

Sadly, AFAICT, the Slashdot crowd haven't (yet) taken to it and have kicked it before even giving it a fair go but frankly they can go hoist themselves - IME, those tossers can be broadly characterized as a plague of relentlessly negative, fundamentally ignorant, dogma driven cock suckers so fuck them. Balls to the naysayers, it is a defo winner for the old school Delphi guy - if Kerrang reviewed development tools, this is a 5K job, no worries.


Anyway, away from the grindstone, I have been working on that Python game project that I mentioned previously. Honestly. It's just that, well, progress has been dog slow... bloody hard work it is, developing games, way above the actual coding process - the design, infrastructure, and support tools all take up as much time as anything else. Coding in a language you've never used before might also just slow things down a tad... :-) I will get something finished within the next month or so, we'll just have to see how it goes from there, stay tuned. BTW, I do love Python, it is so flippin' terse - though getting used to duck typing again is hard after coding mainly with Pascal all these years. Still, one does like a challenge now and again...

BTW, don't worry readers, it's back to prattling on about eisbärbabies next week, okay ???

Made with the help of -

Trouble "Psalm 9" - Bought the re-issues of their first couple of elpees the other day and they are marvellous examples of their eighties doom epoch... I'm going to see 'em at the blessed Wolves Civic at the end of May - yippee! Jeez, Sabbath Heaven & Hell and Trouble in the same year... you're spoiling us, Herr ambassador...

Before I go, my favourite quote of the week on my deities comes from the pages of Metal Hammer : "Part Dio, part Sabbath, all guaranteed to fucking rule" :-)))

Paradise Deferred

I had hoped to be regaling you with tales of fun and adventure on the shoot-em-up coding front but I have hit a wee bit of a brick wall. The plan was to get the latest version of PyGame (1.8) for use with Python 2.5 and get started on the basic initial application framework but, unfortunately, it hasn't quite been released for download yet (despite their web site news claiming it has...) and version 1.7 doesn't seem to work with Python 2.5 :-(

I could have rolled back to Python 2.4 and started work in earnest with that but I've already installed and setup the current version and my Eclipse / PyDev combo is working nicely with it... so I've decided that I'll just have to wait...Could be waiting a wee while, too, as the rest of the bloody world seems to be celebrating some big religious event or other at the minute :-/

Anyhoo, I am still really looking forward to getting properly started - even bought myself a lovely Python book the other day which is a damn good read, er, as these things go...


Made with the help of -

Chopin "Favourite Piano Works" (Vladimar Ashkenazy) - Tell you what, music lovers, Fantaisie-Impromptu op. 66 is a long standing favourite of mine and I'm 90% sure it was the main theme tune from an old horizontal scrolling arcade shooter that I used to play down in Electronic Experience...but I will be buggered if I can remember the name of the f***er. Pretty sure it was from Konami, it was well post the R-Type era, and it had plenty of fancy parallax, some vertical scrolling parts and even some right-to-left sections. A wee sub-project of mine for the new year is to get the name of this one - answers on a postcard please.

I know what you did last, um, Winter...

Yes, it's that time of year again when I go into hibernation away from the day job for a few weeks and generally get involved in a wee project or two, like that appalling little Columns game (left) that I wrote a couple of years back (tho' I do maintain that the gfx were f***in' ace, iKon, if you're lurking). This kind of thing keeps my old geeky underbelly bubbling away nicely while I'm away from my desk and also allows the pleasant exploration of some new tech goodies I'm interested in looking at. That's my cover story for what it's worth.

So...this year I'm playing with Python (oo-er, chance would be a fine thing missus) and the PyGame modules. Why ? Well, I've done the Delphi DirectX thing and it was fun but I really want to stay a little bit more platform agnostic in case I ever want to get it working on Linux or OS X (stop that tittering at the back). People have mentioned XNA to me but I would rather disembowel myself with a blunt coat hook. Could have went back to Allegro with C but that would have been a dull re-tracing of steps and I really can't be arsed working in DOS again. Not after binning the old P133 at any rate. Nah, Python it is.

This year I'm having a go at doing a little sideways scrolling blaster. Really always wanted to do one for a long time anyways but got myself some further inspiration from playing Gradius V on the PS2 at the Game On festival the other day - not a great game playability-wise compared with the old, classic arcade or SNES versions but I liked their whole attempt at bolting new graphic techniques into the bog-standard 2D side on format of old without messing with the basics. Of course, I'm getting ahead of myself here - if I get one layer of pseudo parallax scrolling going then I'll be pissing myself laughing...but, anyway...

I've got Eclipse and PyDev working okay, just waiting on the imminent release of PyGame for Python 2.5 next week - I may even do something silly like start designing the bloody thing in the meantime (!!!).

Slainte Mhath and keep watching the skies.

Made with the help of -

1. Bleak and Destroyed doom metal compilation - Tonight, Matthew, we're going to be Black Sabbath (certainly gets my phone vote, every time)

2. Yet more Plan B compilation CD stuff...all good gear so far.