SeventhKevin

Started "Trampoline" port

2008-07-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

Got the first screens working with the port of Trampoline

StuntPlayground 2.0.1

2008-06-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

A new StuntPlayground has been released, with the Ogre 1.4.8 which has the following Mac specific fixes:

Mac OS X:

Workaround for a few GL driver bugs on older machines, in particular first-gen iMacs and old PPC machines
Workaround for GLSL vertex attribute aliasing problems

A few download links:

Walaber's StuntPlayground site

http://www.esnips.com/web/Stuntplayground

StuntPlayground Released

2008-02-08T09:24:00.001-08:00

Walaber is kindly hosting the released Mac port of StuntPlayground, found here:

StuntPlayground link

Have fun!

(10.4+ and universal)

Stuntplayground, RC 1

2008-01-20T23:12:00.000-08:00

Got the OgreConfigDialog working, specifically for this game, as a beginning dialog, to offer options available in the Ogre.cfg file. Also, using the latest OIS from cvs, because it gets around a problem with 2-finger trackpad use causing the game to freeze until ESC was pressed.

Download StuntPlayground.dmg

Here's another link to a page with the .dmg, just in case:

http://www.esnips.com/web/Stuntplayground

Beta 4 of StuntPlayground

2007-10-01T22:55:00.001-07:00

Beta 4 fixes the CEGUI trying to write a log file back into the Application bundle - redirecting to /Library/Application Support/StuntPlayground.

Download Link to StuntPlayground Beta 4

Beta 3 of StuntPlayground

2007-09-26T21:06:00.000-07:00

Beta 3 adds saving of arenas and replays to the ~/Library/Application Support/StuntPlayground folder. Also, updated the readme.html. Still don't have the mousewheel working...

http://www.esnips.com/r/hmfl/doc/f0d5bf2d-65cd-4c9e-940a-fb4304b93441/StuntPlayground

Beta 2 of StuntPlayground

2007-09-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

Beta 2 of the Mac version of StuntPlayground. The Ogre frameworks are now inside the application. I've included the original docs from the PC version, for those who haven't actually played the game before. I'll have to update those docs, but to sum up, instead of the 'control' key its the 'option' key, and the mousewheel doesn't work yet. For zooming, use 'shift'+'option' while moving the mouse.

http://www.esnips.com/r/hmfl/doc/0eb47332-70cd-4629-8827-7b35b17cddd3/StuntPlayground

Beta1

2007-08-31T23:51:00.000-07:00

Beta1 is out for feedback. Here's a link for some instructions:
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=35477

Material problems

2007-08-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Previous screenshots shows 'stats' overlay graphics a bit garbled, and I couldn't figure out why. The graphics were present, and loading according to the log. They sometimes were showing up looking like other material. Then I noticed that the size of the loaded graphics were different from the actual pixel size of the .png file. For example:

22:51:43: Texture: GUI_JP_DIST.png: Loading 1 faces(PF_R8G8B8A8,128x32x1) with 5 hardware generated mipmaps from Image. Internal format is PF_A8R8G8B8,128x32x1.

But, the .png file is actually 96x24 pixels. By resizing the .png to 128x32, it works fine now.

Before:

After:

Playback

2007-08-23T17:44:00.000-07:00

Playback is working nicely. The text color for buttons are now more clear.

I was using:

mButton->setProperty("NormalTextColour", PropertyHelper::colourRectToString( ColourRect( colour(0.8,0.8,0.8) ) ) );

And what works is:

mButton->setProperty("NormalTextColour", PropertyHelper::colourToString( CEGUI::colour(1,1,1) ) );

Jump!

2007-08-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

An update with StuntPlayground - most of the game play is now working. Got a bit of a crash on closing, but that should be easy to figure out. New screenshot of after a jump:

StuntPlayground

2007-08-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

I've been porting StuntPlaygound to MacOSX. It uses the Ogre3D engine. The source was kindly provided at http://walaber.com/. The main challenges have been getting to run on the latest version of Ogre ("Eihort", 1.4.x), which uses CEGUI v0.5 for UI elements and OIS for keyboard and mouse input.

So far, I have the arena spinning around and the logo comes up:

More updates as I progress.

Using NetWorkSpaces with Python

2007-08-15T21:22:00.000-07:00

In order to try out NetWorkSpaces for Python, I tackled a problem I've had for some time. Due to IT reasons, its easier to have my Outlook client run on a PC nearby, and view that PC through VNC. But, sometimes I miss meeting notices if I'm not around to hear the reminder sound through the PC's speakers.

First I needed create Macros for Outlook to run each time I received an email or a reminder. There are subroutines called 'Application_NewMail' and 'Application_Reminder' that are called, so I grabbed some information from the subject in each of those routines, entitled each with either 'Email' or 'Reminder', and sent the info to a Python script:


Public Function SendText1(title, txt)
Dim prog As String
Dim t As String
Dim WSHShell

Set WSHShell = CreateObject("wscript.Shell")
t = " " & Trim(txt)
prog = "c:\Python25\Python.exe c:\Python25\doNotify.py " & title & " """ & t & """"
WSHShell.Run prog, 1, 1
Set WSHShell = Nothing
End Function
            

Private Sub Application_NewMail()
Dim oFolder
Dim oNewItem
Dim s
Dim n

Set oFolder = GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
Set oNewItem = oFolder.Items.GetLast
Rem For Each oNewItem In oFolder.Items.Restrict("[Unread] = 0")
    s = oNewItem.SenderName & ":  "
    s = s & Trim(oNewItem.Subject)
    n = "Email"
    Call SendText1(n, s)
Rem Next
End Sub
            
Private Sub Application_Reminder(ByVal Item As Object)
Dim s As String
Dim sBody As String
Dim n

s = Item.Subject & "(" & Item.Location & ") " & FormatDateTime(Item.Start, vbShortTime)
n = "Reminder"
Call SendText1(n, s)
End Sub

Notice in 'SendText1' I run a Python script called 'doNotify.py' with two parameters, coming in as args[1] and args[2]:


# doNotify.py
from nws.client import NetWorkSpace
import sys

def main(args):
    ws = NetWorkSpace('kh_outlook', serverHost='bvt-dc00133', useUse=True)
    ws.store('notify', (args[1],args[2]))

if __name__=="__main__":
    main(sys.argv)

The script grabs the NetWorkSpace 'kh_outlook', stores to the name 'notify' a tuple for the two arguments, and then exits.

On my Mac, I run a 'server' that hangs around, watching the NetWorkSpace of 'kh_outlook', fetching 'notify', and passing the two strings from the tuple to Growl, using growlnotify:


# outlook_server.py
import os
from nws.client import NetWorkSpace

print "Starting server..."
ws = NetWorkSpace('kh_outlook', serverHost='bvt-dc00133', persistent=True)
try:
    while 1:
        message = ws.fetch('notify')
        cl = "growlnotify -s -a mail.app -m \"" + message[1] + "\" -t " + message[0]
        os.system(cl)
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    print 'shutting down gracefully.'

print 'Exiting.'

I get Growl messages for each email or reminder, titled ('-t' option) with either 'Email' or 'Reminder' respectively, and I set those messages sticky with the '-s' option so I won't miss them if I'm away from my Mac.

Python Intro

2007-08-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

Gave a short talk at the Portland Cocoaheads meeting last Wednesday, Aug. 8th. I basically wanted to highlight the bits of Python that I wish I had known before I dove in. Here's the code I used to copy and paste into an interactive Python session:


#!/usr/local/bin/python

# indentation
a = 1
if (a == 1):
    print a
else:
    print "a != 1"

# if statement
a = 3
if a > 0:
    print 'greater'
elif a == 0:
    print 'equal'
else:
    print 'less'

# while loops
a = 3
while a > 0:
    print "a = %d"%a
    a -= 1

#functions
def hello(who):
    print "Hello, " + who

hello("world")

# strings
def hello(who):
    return "Hello, " + who
s = hello("world")
print "s = %s"%s
print s[0:5]
print len(s[0:5])
print s.upper()

# lists
l = [ 'a', 'b', 'c', 1, 2, 3 ]
print l
# third element
print l[2]
# third, fourth, and fifth elements
print l[2:4]
# last element
print l[-1]
# append
l.append('snake')
print l

# for loops
for i in l:
    print i

# dictionary
d = {'alpha': 1, 'beta':2, 'gamma':3}
d['delta'] = 4
print d
print d['gamma']
del d['gamma']
d.keys()
if d.has_key('gamma'):
    print 'has gamma'
else:
    print 'does not have gamma'
for k,v in d.iteritems():
    print "k = ",k
    print "v = ",v

# sets
s1 = set()
for x in 'aabbbccccdddddefffffff':
    s1.add(x)
print 'set s1 = ',s1

# dir() function
# dir(s)

# help function
import platform
#help(platform)
platform.processor()

# using pyobjc
#
from Foundation import *
d1 = NSMutableDictionary.dictionary()
print isinstance(d, dict)
print type(d)
print isinstance(d1, dict)
print type(d1)
print isinstance(d1, NSMutableDictionary)
d1.setObject_forKey_(42, 'key2')
d1['key1'] = 'hello'
print d
print d1

# addressbook example
import AddressBook
book = AddressBook.ABAddressBook.sharedAddressBook()
b = book.people()
print "Number of people in addressboo is ",len(b)
print b[1].valueForProperty_(AddressBook.kABLastNameProperty)
print type(b)

Editors:

TextWrangler (simple, easy and free, similar editing keys to xcode)
Komodo Edit (code checking, code folding)
WingIDE (debugging, x11)