Saturday, December 20, 2008

RetroEdit cleanup

For the lack of any better ideas, I've been cleaning up retro edit into a more consistant state and I've now got the control editing the data in a native format. This means theres no real conversion required when lifting the data out an saving it off - or indeed loading data into it.

I still need to go through the application itself as I've changed my mind on several things. For example while its perfectly valid to allow you to edit HiRes and MultiColour more sprites together I'm not going to allow it. This means you dont have to run through a hundred sprites and switch them all to Hires or MCM, and in reality this would hardly ever happen anyway.

I can now draw a sprite okay so what I really need to do is add colour palette selection to let me pick which colour I want to paint with. Once I've done that I can add the features that make editing fun.

I'll need to extend the editing control to allow for character and bitmap mode because I want to use the same control to do all editing. That said, I'm still not sure what I'll be spending my time on over the Christmas break, but for now I'll carry on with this...

Thursday, December 18, 2008

RetroEdit

I was looking through the source of retro edit and wondering what I'd do to change it, and came to the conclusion that actually, its not as bad as I thought. The only major change I want to do is how the data is stored internally. You see when I started this I decided to store the data in a basic INT[] array, where each 0 or 1 was actually a BIT, and I would then process the data for editing and drawing. However, this is a bit yucky, and I now think it would be better to just store the data in a more native format. Thats not to say I'll store it in boxes, or colums etc. but as a simple X by Y row of bytes. This makes plug-ins to save the data in a custom format easy.

So I think I might have a little play and see if I can reorginise things so they are more to my liking, and this will (I hope) then allow me to use the custom control to actually do real graphics work.

The way I've gone about this is to have a custom control that deals with retro graphics. So you load it up with the data (in a simple rowxcolum format, and you can then select colours and plot pixels. The idea is that once its released (if ever!) then you could use the control yourself outside of retro edit to do other things. I have no idea if this would ever happen, but it might.

So I've decided to give it a few days and see how I get on. If I feel like Im getting somewhere, I'll carry on - if not, I'll bin it.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

SID tunes.

I discovered today that one of our musicians has discovered the SID chip. He got hold of a new synth that uses SID emulation (due to lack of SID chips) and has been making music with them. I find this amazing really, that folk are rediscovering older tech like SID chips and putting them to work making really. It's also funny when others comment that it’s all old hat and a waste of time that new comers find so much enjoyment in them that they buy dedicated units to play with. Stuart (Ross) said that while the SID is pretty harsh in its basic form, he loves the way the filters work and the sounds you can get with them - which is of course why oldies like me still love to listen to old SID tunes. While the sound is somewhat unique, at the heart of our favourites is a good tune and because of that, more musicians are re-discovering the wonders of the likes of SID/Synth style music. Great stuff.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Change of direction.

So with Christmas comming up it's almost time for my anual direction change. I was hoping that my ATmega devkit would arrive in time, but its looking less likely as time goes on - pooh. Oh well. I've pretty much completed what I wanted to do with Minus4j, although I'd like an option to pick a file fom the ZIP to switch to or load, but until Plus4world allows real access to ZIP files, this isn't that important. I'll probably wrap up what I've got into another release and leave it there for now, although I've yet to look at the sid filters but that may also be defered until later.

As to what project I'll do at Christmas time, well I'm not sure. I'd love to get back into electronics a little, but theres also my debugger and getting it running on a C64 and emulator. I'm also starting to think I need to restart RetroEdit. When I started it I hadn't done much C#, and over the years I've learnt how to do things properly. This means I could make a real stab at a proper system but as i've seen with the debugger, this means some serious effort. That said, I'd love a very simple interface so that I could draw tiles/graphics for myself.

I also really need to get a basic MAP editor togther even if its a very simple interface so that we can make levels for Xeo3. The old one works but is a little crude in paces - it would be nice to fix that.

So I have a few things I'd like to play with, I guess time will tell if I actually GET to...

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Java, java everywhere and not a drop to drink.

So it turns out the ZIP file issue I was having is a bug, and SUN have now filed it. This is good as it means I'm not going mad! Someone from Sun got in touch and I was able to send them the offending file, so with any luck no one else will have to pull their hair out in frustration.

It's also good to know that it is indeed simple to read ZIPs, and I have been making steady progress now. I now have the ZIP being downloaded, and the first D64 being loaded and run. I really need to orginise the file processing better as it - well sucks. Its hacked in really badly and is sorely in need of a re-orginisation so that the normal rules about loading D64s and PRGs then apply to the contents of the ZIP. That said, I feel like I'm getting sucked further and further into emulator development again, and thats not something I want to do again (or at least, not right now).

This means I'll be hacking together a simple version and then I may update it later to allow better support and the zipping of everything.

I have also started using collections inside java (more to see what they're like than any real need), and while similar to C#, they just aren't as nice. C# has lots of little features like array access to them and handy functions like sorting all built in, where as its a little cruder in Java. Still, at least they're there...

Sunday, December 07, 2008

It never rains but it pours..

So, I've figured out what was wrong...ready? The ZIP file. And I have no idea why. I unzipped it, then rezipped it, and it all works. Sugar. Does this mean I have to go and rezip every file on Plus4world? Who knows... But at least it appears to be working...kind of. I wonder if I could send the broken ZIP to sun and have them fix it, because I can only assume theres a bug in the JVM. I'll need to see if I can find an unzipping program that CAN'T unzip it, because if they all work then its definitelty broken in the java JVM.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

I hate java, I hate java, I hate java, I hate java....etc..

So, back with Minus4j once more. I'm trying to get some ZIP support in here so that more files on Plus4world will work, but once moe=re I'm struggling to get Java to behave and do what its supposed to do. Opening a ZIP file in java is pretty is (supposedly) but will it work for me? Will it strawberry. All that should happen is I pass it an input stream and then read files, and while I appear to get no error, it also doesn't appear to actually read any file inside....Oh chocolate.

       BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(_stream, 16384);
try
{
ZipInputStream in = new ZipInputStream(bis);
ZipEntry entry;
while( (entry = in.getNextEntry())!=null )
{
// process the ZIP
}
in.close();
}

So in the above code, it just never gets into the inner while loop and I've no idea why - so if you have any idea...let me know. I did think it was because it was coming over HTTP, so I read it all in and build a memory stream, but that doesn't seem to matter. On top of this, no one else seems to have this problem, so I can't find any answers on the net either..... *sigh*

Thursday, December 04, 2008

PHP'ing

I've been reading through my PHP for dummies book and I'm actually having fun with it! Its very like C/C++/C# with only minor differences really, so I'm thinking of using the Plus4world database to try a few things out; read only mode of course, I;m not stupid! So what I think I'll try first is to see if I can make a "play online" page.

The reason for this is that i've spent quite a bit of time going through all the games and testing them out with the new Minus4j, and their working pretty well. But I'd like to get them all listed so I can see how many we have and get them all under one roof - as it were. It'll also (obviously) teach me more about PHP, and the more I know, the more I can help Csabo out on the site - or thats the plan.

I'm obviously no where near that stage yet, but I find that doing a real project helps focus what your doing and helps you learn. So here we go!

I took was also speaking to someone about multi monitor setups a while back and was saying that while I have 3 monitors at home, I actually have 4 at work! So I've taken a piccy of my development setup (I should really do a home one too - even though its a hell of a mess) for you all to mock. I've got a really old TFT for my main source monitor as it rotates and gives me more lines to read - which is cool. All those monitors are from one machine and gives a lovely big desktop, which means I have loads of programs open at once, So much so...I think I need more RAM - Vista being the power hog that it is. Good fun though!

Oh...and you'll notice I'm still a fan of the good old "clunky" keyboard - I had to look long and hard for a good "click" one! I hate these springy things.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!

We've got SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!! Good, proper, BIG snow! This is the view from the Realtime Worlds office, and its great!! I hope it hangs around for a while, but its getting quite bright and sunny just now..pooh.

I got on pretty well with Minus4j over the week end as I managed to get 1551 disk emulation in and working! This means that we should be able to get more games online at Plus4 world. However, I'll need to add ZIP support before we really get invloved in it as most disks on plus4 world actually have 2 sides and are packaged up. Still I think this should be okay, but I'll have to look at it later this week.

I've also got a couple of PHP books so that I can learn a little bit of PHP and help out a bit more on Plus4world; well, that and my DMA Site. It's in desprate need of re-vamping and I'd like to make the whole thing database driven. However, first things first - I need to learn PHP first! I'm looking forward to it I have to say!

I've also been reading through the Yape SID code to see if I can get something from it. The filter stuff is pretty complex and I need to figure out exactly what its doing before I can decided to use itor not.... I'm fairly optimisitc that I'll get something from it.