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21. July 2009 by Psibur.
I discovered Kivio on my Slackware install. Used the KDE setup. Nice. That is all.
Posted in Linux, Development | No Comments »
20. July 2009 by Psibur.
Nah, I’m not implying I’m sticking it to the (wo)man. Just pondering how I want to lay out the code. I’m sure a good “usage flow” would be in order here. By this I mean what comes first, second, third, etc. in the flow of the program from beginning to end. Which brings up a little question that has bugged me since the dawn of my programming “career”: Are menus in a text-based/console application best left inside the code or out?
At a quick glance I can see some benefits and drawbacks of both. If I leave them inside, at least IMO of C, it’ll make the code a bit bigger and possibly more convoluted. The bright side would be the menus would be less apt to corruption. If I leave them on the outside (loaded from external files), the code would be a bit tighter but the menus would be more prone to corruption. By corruption I mean either from a bug in the system or someone altering the menu to confuse the end user.
I think for now, I will keep the menus in-code since with today’s computers, size and speed isn’t anywhere as much of a factor as it was when I first started learning. A few 10’s of k in file size and memory usage isn’t as much a deal with 1gb of RAM compared to 640k. Never thought I’d say that of course.
Oh yes, I’m throwing down some code as we speak. HA!
Posted in WH40KOSA, C, Projects, Development | No Comments »
3. July 2009 by Psibur.
A long time ago, before I fell ill with WOW disease and still had the mental capacity and ambition to write code, I considered the option of creating my own Linux distro. Now that I am in remission and have the urge to be useful, I did a preliminary data recon to gauntlet the face of the challenge. I found these guys which I had completely forgotten about:
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Great way to get started if you want to “roll your own” Linux distro.
Posted in Linux, Learning | No Comments »
1. July 2009 by Psibur.
I was thinking back to my high school days and fondly recalled learning about flowcharts in my BASIC programming days. It all made so much sense. I decided I would refresh my memory and look for something I could use to make something a bit more ‘visual’ when I lay out this bad boy on the proverbial drawing board. I noted a number of comments about how outdated and down-right obsolete flowcharts are.
The Wikipedia link above said the same thing. We’re talking like circa 1979 when they fell out of favor with the pro programmers. Damn. So basically when I started learning about them in the early 90’s, I was being taught something that had been professionally mummified for around 11-12 years. What more, I had to take a re-cap class on flowcharts in community college. What a pisser.
After reading through the bashing of the long departed Flowchart, I noted a references to other alternatives to the simple flowchart. You know what I saw when I looked through them? Flowcharts. Glorified, convoluted, mutated, evicerated flowcharts.
Here, want to learn more? Here’s a free book online about how to use the flowcharts I am going to make when I make this program.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
7. June 2009 by Psibur.
When I do something, I do it right. I also tend to over-do it. I am geeking out big time on this one. I already stated I’m doing this in C. I could have simply just used a C compiler for Windows. I really like the DJGPP suite. Love it actually. In fact, I promote them whenever possible, without getting payed for it of course. When you get it going right, it resembles the good ol’ DOS interface and cuts the BS, at least for me.
Anyhow, since I am of the geekoidial persuasion, I decided to do this one “right.” Here’s how I’m plugging this all in:
All code snippets will be lumped into one compressed file. Since I’m messing with Linux I could be really mean and make it a tar.gz but I’ll keep it .zip since all worlds tend to be down with it now.
Posted in WH40KOSA, C, Linux, Projects, Development | No Comments »
3. June 2009 by Psibur.
As stated, I wanted to try and keep this as simple as humanoidly possible. I have decided to take the stock, standard issue Space Marine as the de facto troop type. Since all troop types have the same stat breakdown, it shouldn’t be hard to define a structure that will encompass most, if not all troop types. Of course, there are also machines/monsters that do not fall under this category. I will tackle those later. We will stick with single troops or the time being.
I figure the best way to start is to get the over all “shell” of the program, the exoskeleton if you will, created. From there, we can start placing the meat, sinews, blood, and potatoes in their appropriate places then cover the body, hoist it to the roof, and strike it with lightning.
I have not “professional” coding or project management experience, but I’m sure the logic and common sense is in the same ball park, if not zip code.
The actual “shell” should probably start with the most obvious and largest blocks in the flow chart. This would include such tiers as initialization, main game play, and house-cleaning/self destruction.
Initialization will be the obvious. I have to load the data for all the troops & machines, placing them in a grid (arrays) to be referenced by the program. All the variables have to be declared and initialized (zeroed out to prevent data poisoning). Memory will be allocated, most likely by default and no fault of my own. That was humour by the way. Get it?
Any how, main game play would be loading the menu. The menu options would then load their respective functions. The menu would continue to load and loop ad infinitum until the appropriate trigger was found (the user entered Q/q to quit.)
The house keeping/self-destruction is obvious. We release all memory back to the pool (preferably done by the OS if the compiler orders it to do such). Scores are tallied and results posted. Any operational errors are returned to the OS for future debugging attempts. Joy.
Right now, everything seems easy. Too easy. Yeah, we can all write a menu. Any self-respecting programmer wouldn’t live with themselves if they couldn’t. The real bugaboo here is to analyze, document, then convert to code the correct variables and procedures to give the most accurate results given the conditions of the game. Suffice to say the rules of the game are quite vivid, but I believe they are mostly, if not all to some degree codable. There are exceptions to every rule and those will be handled objectively. Or subjectively. It depends.
Hopefully on my next post I will post some actual code. Gotta’ prove to my future employers I actually do instead of talking about doing. Yeesh.
Posted in WH40KOSA, Projects, Development | No Comments »
1. June 2009 by Psibur.
The Wh40k Outcome Sequence Analyzer, or WH40KOSA (pronounced “Whoah! Kosa”)for short, is a project I have had in the back of my mind for many years now. Wh40k is short for Warhammer 40,000. It is a table-top miniature war simulation game produced by http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/
You can pick one of the many armies out in the known galaxy, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Where you locate your troops on the playing field will effect the outcome. However, the stats from either the basic characteristics or the addition of purchased “gear” will give your troops/machines an advantage.
The primary goal of this project is to take the stats of one troop and simulate the outcome vs. another troop given various situations. This would determine its numerical superiority given scenarios, factoring in the sheer luck of a random dice roll. Go to my brain for details & updates.
To keep things simple, I will start with a base single troop vs another single troop. A mono-y-mono if you will. They will be placed in basic combat situations ranging from toe-to-toe melee, to ranged combat with a finite set of weapons given various difficulties. These difficulties will range from degrees of cover (% chance to miss increases as the % of cover of the target), movement penalties, misfires, overheats (in the case of plasma weapons), etc.
The rule set I will use is from the 3rd edition WH40k rules. The current edition is the 5th, but I do not wish to purchase them at this time plus I rather like the third and since it is obsolete, I probably stand a better chance of not getting sued even though I am fully acknowledging that I am not affiliated with Games Workshop (unfortunately) nor do I own copyrights to anything. This is just a bit of fan dedication and a learning experience.
Posted in WH40KOSA, C, Projects, Development | No Comments »
15. March 2009 by Psibur.
Success! I feel dirty in saying this, but from being stuck in a ~98% GUI environment at my current money-for-life, I had to use the GUI to do this. Once upon a time I was all about command line usage. I will be back to that soon enough. Right now my goal was to get it up and running asap using what I was more familiar with at the time.
The GUI I chose at installation time was KDE because I was most familiar with. I went to the K Menu (KDE’s equivilient of the Windows Start button) -> Settings -> Network Settings. I saw the network card was disabled. Every time I tried to enable the card it would drop back to disabled. When I checked the interface settings for that card, I noted it was not set to anything so I picked DHCP (the same as for my main PC’s OS) and Activate When the Computer Starts. It enabled and tested OK when going to the web.
Well, I guess my next objective will be to knock out more of the cobs in my web and figure out how to do all that via the command line. I guess that’s the price I pay for re-focusing OS’s for three years.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
15. March 2009 by Psibur.
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve aroused the upper geekoriadael lobe in my brain. It yawned, stretched, scratched its butt, and ordered me to start messing with Linux again.
Situation: I prefer Slackware (thanks Bu). Dual-booting is not an option on my main box. I don’t feel like crawling behind my desk and reattaching everything to the older Slack box I have under said desk
Primary Goal: To reacquaint myself with my old love, Linux.
Secondary Goal: I want to avoid hardware interactions as much as possible, simulating a tight $0-budget scenario.
Tertiary Goal: Create a second Project page to add meat to Psibur.com.
The PC in question has the power and desire to virtualize. I have had past experience with virtual machines. In Avg Joe’s lingo, VM’s are programs that allow you to create a virtual computer with its own operation system running on “virtual” hardware (well, it’s still your real hardware but it thinks it belongs to the VM). Yes, visualize a computer inside your computer.
Microsoft creates a free VM called Virtual PC. They are currently up to Virtual PC 2007 but Virtual PC 2004 is still available (with some extensive digging around MS’s Download Center). I have had more experience with 2004 but am using 2007 for other endeavours.
I decided to get the latest version of Slackware from Slackware.com. As of this writing it is version 12.2. I used the BitTorrent client to help others. Don’t take this the wrong way, but assuming anything associated with BitTorrent (or any torrent) is illegal blows the Ignorant-O-Meter(tm) off the wall (more on that later). Got the DVD ISO (the entire disk image) of it to save disks (and get more stuff.)
I have to say I didn’t have much luck using MS’s Virtual PC 2007. Slack and Ubuntu (another flavor of Linux I had nearby) both would boot to a black screen. This wouldn’t do. I could not find my 2004 disk so I went searching online for an alternative. My searches produced Sun’s VirtualBox.
I’ll trim off most of the gruesome details but this wasn’t as painless as I would have hope for either. VirtualBox wanted to install about 3 network drivers. One of which, the NAT driver I think, caused my PC to lose all network connectivity. Not good. Trial and error caused me to leave two drivers (services, actually) in tact: VirtualBox Host Interface Networking Driver and the Virtual Machine Network Services.
Reinstalled Slackware 12.2 and I’m in. Yay. Problem is it doesn’t see the network card because I added the driver in after installation. This is where I am going to cut this post off for now. I’ll relay any progress/setbacks in a future post.
Posted in Virtual Machinery, Linux, Learning | No Comments »
15. March 2009 by Psibur.
AAAAHHHH!! (defenderoftheuniverse!)
PREMISE: Some dark, unnatural part of me thought it would be a good idea to learn to create Flash animations and websites, not in any particular order.
PRIMARY GOAL: To learn Flash to the point I can create menus, websites, and animations given specifics of the requestor (client) and end users.
SECONDARY GOAL: To keep cost a factor in this endeavor. Possibly find a less expensive alternative to Adobe’s Flash Studio.
TERTIARY GOAL: To add Flash to this website in a useful manner.
So far, I believe I have found a VERY viable solution to the secondary goal. KoolMoves offers what I’ve seen as a very nice, easy to learn, and quite capable alternative the Flash Studio at Adobe’s Flash C4 Professional’s Website
I downloaded the KoolMoves trial and I would say within a good 20-30 minutes I had a really basic text-animation playing. The catchiest thing about KM is that there are four “user modes”, Wizard, Basic, Advanced, and Cartooning (in order from simplest to most advanced) that give a set layout of the application depending on just how knowledgeable the user is. Simply put, the more advanced the use, the more options are available to work with. A great idea if you don’t know much but want to throw something together quickly.
I will be working through the manual to see how long it takes for me to get really familiar with it. Over time, I will create a Flash project page in the Projects section of the main site and post my evil creations.
Posted in Learning, Flash | No Comments »