Crikey 100+ pages

wow I've written 108 pages and 26,000 words...granted a lot of them are descriptions of what I'm going to write, but still I can't recall ever writing so much stuff in my life. I still have to write the games properly that I am going to use as the vehicle for introducing topics and test them out on my expanding collection of single board computers.  I've done most of them over the years with students so its not exactly new, but I need to create, before and after versions of them, and make sure the code is clean and tidy and simple to read. That will take most of the time I think.

As I read it back to myself I am developing a growing sense of confidence in this slightly crazy idea, a book that will cover all the basic aspects of writing a modern game on any target machine, without having to become a master of the hardware or the languages used, just knowing enough to get it done..

I need to do a bit more research to finish my publishing proposal, mainly to work out what other competitive books there are out there which are current and relevant.

I've also been on the hunt for some other Single Board Computers to use as targets, there's a few on the market, but none come close to the popularity of the Raspberry Pi, but I've got hold of a full set of Pi's now, a Beagleboard XM and a Banana Pi M1 (the soon to be released octocore M3 looks sexy, but will wait for it as its nearly 100quid), With my new Pine A64 due in March that should be more than enough to ensure decent cross board compatibility.

All this creativity has got my juices flowing on other things too, the Colecovision project has been languishing in no memory hell for weeks, but I hit on something that gives me shed loads , I'm looking forward to finally finishing that and handing it over to his long expecting dad.



Ahthankyew

doped up Zombie and laying out chapters

Yesterday I had another of my silent migraines, no real pain, just a bit of a dull ache, but the scintillating scotoma that comes over me makes me partially blind for 5-10 mins, its rather scary

Worse though is the odd sensation afterwards, like a very stoned zombie, slightly nauseas, dizzy when I close my eyes and a strong feeling of drugged detachment not unlike when you get morphine in the hospital but without the happy feelings, which can last several hours. ie a Doped up Zombie
This one went on for about 6, really very unpleasant hours which I tried to fill with sleep...then I got drunk and the effect was similar.

I've been checked out with an MRI before where they concluded it was just an age/state of health issue, but I think I should go get another as I seem to be having them a lot more often, at least once a month and I think with increasingly effect.

At least I don't get the mega headaches I hear of in others...

Anyway, the interest of the publisher in my book has spurred me on to format the chapters in the book more carefully, I've added a few, and edited some of my waffle out a bit, I think the overall layout seems quite good so long as I can get my relevant points across in 700 or so pages.

Which is actually pretty challenging, squeezing what would take around 2 years for a student to learn into around 20 chapters...from beginner to Console wiz...will be interesting. But I think the method I use of not worrying so much about the language and focusing on the confidence and techniques will come though. I've done 100 pages so far with 4 chapters complete, though containing a lot of source at the beginning, I use less source as the book progresses and I discuss specific concepts.

Also I have done some research in to my potential target audience, that was very interesting indeed but I think I need to expand it a bit as I'm not 100% sure I can appeal to just 1 group of trainee coders.

Anyway, watch this space for update.




Ahthankyew

Getting very serious

Publisher has been in contact, the editor likes the idea, wants me to put together a formal proposal.

gulp...what am I letting myself in for!

700 pages of fun fun fun I suspect.



Ahthankyew

Now I got to get serious

Thanks to some help from old friends and colleagues, I've been able to get some advice on the book and some very positive feedback on the concept.

and...I may well have interested a publisher....just waiting for some more feedback but if they say they want it, I'll have to knuckle down and get very serious about it :D

very excited now.


Ahthankyew

I has keys..and mice

One oddity of the Raspberry Pi seems to be its key and mouse handling. I am not a Linux coder, and am very deliberately trying to avoid doing anything with Linux beyond letting it compile and boot my programs remotely with VisualGBD, but there are a few things I still need it to do, especially when accessing any attached hardware to the Pi. For example Keys and Mice..

Documentation on how to access input systems, was sparse, mainly of course because sensible people usually are using some kind of library like SDL2 which itself handles all the key and mouse input.

I am however loathed to add SDL2 or any other large libs to my project as I try to emulate working on the machine as bare as possible. I want to maintain a promise to use only what the machine comes equipped with. Some libs will be needed, my screen loader and audio for example which would take far too long to do anything low end with. But the less the better. If we assume our lowest system is a Raspberry Pi A, we only have 256Mb of ram, I don't want that filled up with API's that use memory for code we never use, the lighter the project the more effective it will be.

Fortunately a fellow grumpy old git developer came to my rescue with some code that showed me how to get it working, and as a bonus is a good intro to threads and multi core coding. It still took a bit of twiddling with to get it to compile, but eventually it all clicked and ran on the Pi :D I will of course be giving Gareth Lewis an appropriate credit for his invaluable assistance. I think I would have been some time getting that to work on my own, and probably have to hit the Linux manuals (shudder)

So I now have a fully working and very small Input system that gives me key presses and mouse input, the rest of the process should now be fairly easy...fingers crossed!

Also I found a retail supplier for a new Pi zero, the teeny weeny version of it that was sold on a magazine for £5 last year...sadly I had to pay 3 times that but its ok I want to be sure my projects will also run on the lesser Pi's. I already have a B+ and I put in an ebay bid for an older A+ that should be plenty to ensure the projects reach the largest capture. They can still be bought retail though for $20 or so.

I also have a Pine64 on the way after the kickstarter program I backed was fully funded by some margin, which though not a Pi, shares the basic architecture of it and then some, and also runs Linux, so hopefully I can get that to also work and demo a higher powered system.

I must say I am REALLY enjoying writing this book, I am coding and also I feel I am teaching again, which is not something I get a sense of with our new V2 system. I can safely say I am laying down all my old course work into this book and it should help anyone who wants to write games, even if they don't want to use the Pi.

Ahthankyew

Boom there it is....what took us so long..

Been having some struggles on the Pi with getting images in, loading was pretty painless, I managed to incorporate an image loader and get the Pi to use its file handling as expected, carefully managed the memory and reported back on the data that was loaded, all was fine.

But actually displaying my images was just bloody weird, I could sort of see the image, but they were scrambled, all the example code samples I tried failed, and there was so much re-writing of the standard OpenGL ES2.0 text book code to make it compile I was starting to think I'd invented my own language

But eventually as is often the case, it turned out to be a minor error on my part, I'd got height and width of my images mixed up...doh!!!  Brians 1st rule of self fuckery*, applies even to Brian!,

I now have a lovely pic of Danni and Harvey2 on the Raspberry Pi :D

I can now finish the chapter on loading and displaying images, though I'll have to change the images before I put them in the book.

Its nice when you finally get something working, even if you cock it up a few times as you go...its called learning ;)



*Brians 1st rule of self fuckery as taught to all 1st years at IGAD , "If your code doesn't do what you expect it to do, you fucked up!"



Ahthankyew

Johnny 5 needs more input

As the book takes shape and most of the concepts of coding and anecdotal explanations are now in place, I have to turn to the technical bits. I've got the getting started and other things up and running and it is now perfectly possible to make a painfully simple bat and ball game, but its time now to start doing the cool things, sprites, backdrops. Then move on to the super cool things in 3D.

I can do all these things normally but when putting things into a book I feel I need to be a bit more careful in my approach, anyone reading it could be scarred for life if they do some of my sloppy get it working then fix approach and consider that an industry standard.

So I've been hitting amazon for some books.. BOOKS? In this day and age, well yes I like books theres something easy and comforting in having a text book next to you as you type in examples. The internet is amazing but when coding I find books very reassuring to use.

I am very proud of my library, 1 large  IKEA Expedia bookcase bursting to the seams with technical books and manuals dating back to my early coding days. It needs a few more modern ones, but since consoles don't have a lot of books, the most recent things cover Direct X 11 and OpenGL3, not had a chance to do much with this years latest thingymajig
It might even be time to cough up a 2nd library, or at least an extra tier to be added..hmmmm that could be Saturdays shopping trip!

For my book I need more info on OpenGL ES 2.0, something until now I have not had much direct exposure to, though its not vastly different from standard OpenGL 2.0, it just has shit loads missing that I never used much anyway.
The plus is that with the release of OpenGL ES 3.0 some time back, all the ES 2.0 books are being given away...some as low as under a pound, though postage is always a fiver or so.

I have therefore splurged on some new books that will hopefully give me some enjoyment to read and provide some much needed proper technical approaches to use in my book.

I'm getting a lot of joy out of putting this book together, its got my juices flowing again, and even given me some smart ideas to finish my Colecovision project which is floundering in lack of memory hell, but a few good ideas have come forward which might get the last tiny bits of code in there to complete it.



Ahthankyew

Sense of foreboding

What a shitty shitty start to the year with Bowie, Alan Rickman, and a host of minor celebs all dying at pretty young ages, not much older than me.

I don't think much about dying, but I have the last week or so, due to these deaths it just makes me realise how utterly fleeting our lives are, we're there, and gone in no time.

Sad, also strange, I wasn't a big big Bowie fan, but he has always been there or thereabouts in my musical world, some things getting to me more than others. His death is a true loss for music. I play quite a few of his songs with one band or another, they won't feel as much fun now.


In the more mundane world, I've just been getting on with coding and writing, the book is still on track, though the actual coding on the Raspberry Pi has been hit by some silly and annoying tech faults but they are slowly coming under control. Help has come from the support teams and I am back on the very slow learning horse and quite enjoying it.

Work is tiring me out, V2 is quite demanding, even though I appreciate that I can switch off at 5 and try to make best use of my time. The 2 full days of project work is exhausting, and frustrating too, I don't really get the sense that I am passing on much experience or wisdom in what I am telling them. But I have to give it a chance, self learning is the goal, and if they find the wisdom in other ways I can at least recognise that.

Love life is still DOA, even tied to get somewhere on Tinder...nope..a few people will match, but then after a short chat you find yourself unmatched and left with no reason why....too many people using it for fun I suspect..

I need to get out into the real world and get my Dutch improved, I have a pile of homework backing up from my Dutch classes that I'll try to do this weekend

Oh well time to go make some music, after I clear up the man cave, I've had a bit of a shopping spree of small things the last few months, Mics, stands, pedals and other goodies, and they need to be organised and stored, instead of strewn across the floor and tables. A Tidy Man Cave is the sign of an eligible man...maybe.

There's always the positives though, Danni's sending me regular pics of Harvey 2 and he's started to smile.. I've been boring everyone at work with the pics...still a very proud Opa.

Yeah, that's enough to cut through the dark things, focus on the light (oh saw Force Awakens...damn it is a good fun Star Wars movie)


Ahthankyew

11,000 words and 50 pages in

The book is progressing and its a lot of fun, especially as I am learning how to use the Rspberry Pi as I do it, its quite exhilarating learning a new machine and then putting down the experience in a form a beginner can handle.

Reading it back it needs a bit of re-organising as some of my initial layout ideas need to be moved around but it reads quite well in the 1st 3 chapters.

I've so far done the setting up of a dev system, running and debugging 1st simple text programs on PC and target machine, and now have got the set up for Graphics and Graphic image loading done..
Just need to work out image display and we're ready to rock and roll.

Found out lots of cool things, as I've done tests,  been confused by a few others but worked them out and detailed the results.

This weekend, I hope to get a background screens and key control of an object in place to produce the 1st very simple game to build the framework on.

At this rate should only take a few months work to get the book and accompanying games to work. Though given my bad typing and propensity to make silly gag comments it might take a few months of editing to get it down to a decent number of pages.

Might need to go find a tame artist though to give me some decent assets for the project(s).

Hey ho...this is certainly a more interesting way to learn OpenGL ES2.0 than simply running through a few dry books. I always insist my students learn by doing, and here I am doing exactly the same...





Ahthankyew

So long 2015, you've been ......

I see lots of people saying how shit 2015 was, and lets be honest for me its been one of my most miserable years, I've been single the whole year and overall my love life sucks cheesy balls, work has been a pain at times, (side projects mainly, NHTV is still a great place to work)

But really it wasn't a bad year, every year, bad things happen, some worse that others, But why focus on the bad things, and why taint the whole year as bad..I didn't get cancer again, so that's a plus,  I became a granddad which was a mega plus, I got to spend Xmas with my daughter and cried with pride again (need to stop that). Had some amazing gigs with Starrcase, and a shocker with The Gadgeteers which sadly started a decline to breakup.

Ok there's some bad, but the good certainly was worth focusing on... It was a year...it came it went, good things and bad things happened...next year will probably be the same.

Who knows, maybe I'll sort out my love life....hmmm maybe not..

Right now I have a hangover from an amazingly fun party..Happy New Year


Ahthankyew

New TV...cool but annoying

My old faithful Samsung 40inc beastie which has served me well since I  arrived in NL has been troubled of late with a nasty splodge in the middle of the screen, which apparently cannot be fixed, don't know exactly what the cause is, but it gives actors a slight ruddy complexion or maybe a breard, depending on the lighting.

It seemed to be worse after my return from the UK, so I decided I better get a new set which the Xmas bonus had not yet been spend on a new Gibson or Fender

A bit of a shop around and I ordered a Phillips PFK557509 a massive beast of a telly 55 or your actual inches in diameter.

It arrived very swiftly and on time with amazing real time on line tracking, and I swiftly unpacked it from its ginormous box, which at first had me worried they'd delivered an 80" one.

A bit of reshuffling of TV boxes later and purchase of a slightly longer than 8" satellite cable, since it has a satellite decoder in it too.
And I sat down to watch, and listen to something quite wonderful

It's big, I think I mentioned before, its full HD also high frequency, compared to my older set which was no HighFreq...

The higher frame rate makes movies seem incredibly realistic, lighting and shade don't seem to work as well as the traditional blurry 24fps you see in the cinema, a bit like when I watched The Hobbit in Hi Freq.

it takes a bit of getting used to but the size and quality of the image is amazing.
The Sound too is awesome but odd, with a wireless subwoofer now sitting under my seat as well, I get something quite amazing in terms of rumble

It has inbuilt wifi so easy to hook up to my network, which  in turn means Netflix is available and no more need for my Chromecast device, though I will probably keep it installed

Installing satellite is really slow and I need to try to work out how to keep them in a nice order, I'm not abandoning my Humax freesat box but this gives me another tuner to work with..and the picture is amazing :D
But I get my freesat channels and probably loads more...so that's cool.


Ambilight is an odd idea, LED's at the back of the set change colour and project to the wall at the back of the set, but somehow it works really well...it might annoy me later but for now, I am loving it,.

Annoying comes from the fact that the menus and set ups are painfully bad, once set up its ok but wow...someone needs to get a course or 2 in GUI design.

anyway, will now continue with my setting up. I can also include my Ziggo cable and if I plug in a USB drive I can also save and record programs...quite amzing. TV tech really has come on a lot in the last few years.

Ahthankyew

Me time, can be expensive

Lucky there is Primark to keep the cost down.

I've bought my new winter wardrobe, couple of jackets and jeans, lots of shirts a few jumpers and the new Mission Impossible vid, and didn't break 200quid...amazing :D

Ermm I also managed to take a trip to Ramsbottom to meet Pat at Mad Dog Guitars, what a lovely chap, he's got his own range of really nice guitars, low prices and a wee bit hit and miss on quality from the makers, the good ones are amazing, but there's a few less good ones, but still super value,  but he's doing a fine job setting them up to be a good solid buy. I couldn't resist buying one of his absurdly cheap Jumbo's, it was just so nice to play. Even though for me the strings were a bit light. I think this may be the actual one I bought here..

I need to add a pickup to it at some point though but I think this will be brilliant for my new ToneWoodAmp fx unit when it gets here..hoping it will be there soon after I get back.

MadDogGuitars Jumbo acoustic.
A little vid of the Jumbo filmed last week with Roger Crombie in the MadDogGuitars shop in Ramsbottom. Guitar is solid spruce top, mahogany back and sides, Rosewood fingerboard, bone nut and saddle. £179 inc free postage. Cheers Pat 07715572304
Posted by Maddog Guitars on Monday, 12 October 2015

One odd thing though I've really buggered my shoulder and today my neck, I think it sfrom changing gear with  my left hand again...can't think of anything else.
Really is absurdly painful and can't raise my left arm above shoulder height...hope to fuck it settles down soon, Nicked some of mums Co-codomal to keep it under control...might need to go see the sadist Chinese masseuse when I get home...must be bad to even consider that!



Ahthankyew

Baby puke and sleeping

Harvey 2 is, so cute, got to feed him last night, and even though  I burped him, he promptly threw up all over my trousers and into my big glass of orange juice.

So..damn cute!!

:D :D :D :D


Ahthankyew

Wonderful week

Well that was a pretty wonderful week. Starting with wonderful baby news, hearing my daughters voice on the phone gushing about the new baby and telling me all about her uncomfortable women's medical problems...she's not shy..booby feeding is now my new favourite medical term.

Then back at home, fantastic rehearsal and even more amazing gig at the NHTV Christmas party, where pretty much everyone was up on the floor, we got so much good feedback, even for the Christmas songs we really hate.....but they went down ok.

New singer Maria has really settled in now and the combinations of the full set of 3 female vocals in harmony is fucking stunning, real hair on end stuff that had me and the other bandmates beaming with joy...it came through on the night for sure.. What a band, we really go from strength to strength.

The book is actually starting to take shape, 10,000 words, 4 chapters in I read it back to myself the other night and its bloody good stuff, still need another 30 or so chapters but I think it might be a good working resource when its done.

Lovely quiet birthday with lots of good wishes and even an on time Birthday card from mum...I was invited out by everyone but chose to have a nice quiet and relaxing evening in, just one glass of wine. Bliss.

And now..its Christmas, work is done,  time to have a well earned rest, go see Danni and spend a bit of time in the UK catching up with family and friends.

I have wi-fi in the B&B so will update if there's anything worth posting..for now, time to go make some crappy music videos and pack a bag.

Merry Chrimbo


Ahthankyew

so many nice people

One thing I try very hard to maintain is keeping my facebook open only to people I actually know.
There's one or 2 hobby followers, a few mad guitar players but 98% of the people on there are people I actually know, work with, socialise with or have worked with or socialised with.. I don't do the collect a friend, first to 1000 gets to win at Yahtzee (South Park mum, you won't have seen it)

So its especially nice to see over 100 birthday wishes from people I know

I was hoping that there was a 1-1000 chance that someone in particular would try to connect with me today, but the hint wasn't taken....maybe next year.

At least I won't be alone at Christmas, I get to go see Danni and her new addition.. Time to spend that Xmas bonus on someone other than me.


Ahthankyew

I'm a grandad, even if I am far too young and cute

Well that was a nail biting 24 hours. After the message that baby Harvey was on the way, I had to endure radio silence for 24 hours. I barely slept hoping to get a phone call, and was on tenter hooks all day at work, but nothing.

Finally after my mum also started to get a bit stressed out with the lack of info from anyone, I called the hospital who eventually put me through to the labour ward.

Who then said they could not tell me anything about what had happened, but that she was no longer in the labour ward.

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!! do you mean "what happened"....."what happened???" I was very stressed, even though of course in the interests of confidentiality they were 100% right to tell me that they could not say anything, but "what happened" is a foreboding term...

Sensing my extreme discomfort at that expression, the person on the line, tried to reassure me that its ok, she's fine...phew...and the baby.... Sorry I can't say anything about that...ok ok ok..slightly less stressed but clearly not the answer I wanted as I held back tears.

Can you get a message to her to call her father, so I can let the other family members know they are all ok.

Of course, I'll get a message to them...phew..

And so began the longest 10 mins of my life as I waited to hear...checking on Danni's whatsapp to make sure that her phone was on again, and suddenly there was a read confirmation of my last 3, please contact me messages.

I tried calling but no joy....
Told mum on messenger that I 'd tried calling
tried whatsapping a hello, no response

Then finally a call, from Kieran, Dannis' fella....Sorry the signal in the hospital is crap, Danni asked to pop outside and let me know that she's ok.
Through a broken connection the words, difficult labour, a breech birth, delivered by forceps...(wow that's unusual), but the key words finally came.


"Both are fine and now resting."


Cue floods of tears..and virtual hugs for all 3 of them.
"Will send pic soon"


The feelings of joy at that moment cannot be captured in words..

I don't have all the usual details, like length, weight, time, those will come, "Both are fine and now resting", was all I wanted to hear.

Happy glorious wonderful words....

I got the picture a few hours later, I was sat in a pub quiz I'd been roped into with my friend Richard from The Gadgeteers and burst into tears....followed by lots of back slapping
She made me promise not to post pics online, so I can't show it here...but trust me, he's beautiful

have to go..need to buy more tissues.








Ahthankyew

Baby on way

Danni's in Labour....oh this is exciting, and scary...I'm bursting with pride...can't wait to hear that my little Grandson and my lovely Daughter and her shitting bricks fella are all one big happy family

watch this space...


Ahthankyew

Still no baby...so writing a book

She's still not popped, and she's getting very fed of up me asking if she has..so I'll back off for a bit.

In other news, I've started to document my learning process on the Raspberry Pi, which I am learning to use so that I can give some talks on at uni. quite a few of them want to do assembly coding and cross platform remote development. So the Pi was chosen to make that possible...and your's truly has been the one working it all out.

Since this was my 1st experience with the Pi as an actual target device for programming, it struck me it was a good idea to try to share that experience with others who may be starting out on the machine
After collating a few of my notes I realised I had the basics of a tutorial I've always want to do.

Combining my 1st year starting programming courses with later more advanced, working on consoles.

The Pi isn't a console of course but the process with you work with it using a remote dev machine and VisualGBD to allow you to use Visual Studio, is basically the same so it could be a good introduction to the methods of working I usually use when doing PS4 work without actually having access to a PS4 which of course is the situation for most home coders. A cheap pretend console might be a good way to provide some tips to new coders so that when they come across real consoles the methods are not totally alien to them, even if the software and SDK's are.

Depending on where you look the machine appears to be more powerful than a Nintendo GameCube and on par with a PS2 or original Xbox. There were some amazing games on those machines, so if I can get a working framework together built on OpenGL ES2.0 I'll be a very happy man.

Anyway, no idea if it will end up as anything worth reading, but I have been partially inspired by one of my students who gifted and signed for me a copy of his 2nd edition of a book on Mine craft modding.

If I document my whole journey, from the frustration of getting it working to having that 1st OpenGL ES triangle displayed, to creating a framework to make a few of my 1st year games. It should pad out to a few hundred pages of semi interesting stuff.

I'll have to also break out the dormant 3D skills to write a framework that can cope with models and scenes, but that might be a 2nd book.

Having a book published also takes off a bit of academic pressure I get from time to time over not having a masters degree. so another good reason. Money isn't one of the other reasons, apparently tech books don't really make much cash, or hot the top of the best seller list often, but if I can get it out, I think it will be nice to say I'm an author...even if the plot is a bit dull and the butler probably does it at the end.

Anyway, time to ask if she's popped yet?

.
Ahthankyew

Stll no baby

that is all

Ahthankyew

Not looking forward to it...

Yup December is here again...the inexorable countdown to Christmas.....I hate it, especially on my own...but it simply holds no real joy for me...

EXCEPT!!!!


That by the time it comes I should be a granddad to a lovely little bouncing boy....he's due any day now, and I'm going to spend Xmas over in the UK with my new babba and his mum and dad.


So any day now....I have the most wonderful photo of Danni, ready to pop, but she does not want me posting it on line, which is fine, I've shown it to almost every one I know  and will print it out and frame it, along with the soon to come 1st photo of her and Harvey...yup,,,same name as my dog...not going to let that confuse me...I might end up throwing tennis balls for a 2 week old....

She's also asked me not to post pics of Harvey....and I will honor her request until she says otherwise....wont' stop me taking 100's of them though :D


exciting times...at Christmas....who'd have thunk!!


Ahthankyew