To Vlog or Not to Vlog

Producing a video blog every day? Yeah, right.

So, I've been trying to decide if I should vlog or not. For those who are not in the know a vlog is simply a (V)ideo B(log) that's posted to a video ingester and then people can play it back and watch how your life is going. The thing is most people have fairly boring lives so talking about what you had for dinner or how you felt when you woke up would get old fast. My life is like that and a vlog would risk becoming redundant very quickly. So, if I did it I would need to do it as a way to get out of my own comfort zone and do strange new things every day. At least to have something to talk about.

I've been in that mood lately. The one where you look at your life and say, "wait a minute! I was going to do <insert bucket list items> before I died." Well, the simple fact for me is that I turned 48 on my birthday back in February and had the realization that the number of useful years I have left could be disappearing and quickly. So I really need to do something with my life. It might give younger people some comfort knowing that not all of us older folks know what we want from life. And, the fact is that most simply settle for their lot in life. To me that's sad.

Game Update 3: Tiny Little Dude - UPDATED

Never mind the programmer's art!

So, finally after wracking my head around seemingly simple problems, surviving Halloween and surviving the Elections I'm back with an update. Of course it's a good news, bad news update. But, with projects like these, it seems to be the norm.

The Good News
The good news is that I have my sprite class pretty much working. If you look at the picture above you'll see a little white knight among the tiled background. What the picture doesn't show you is that the little fellow is animated. There are four frames of animation and it seems to work pretty well.  In a way it's starting to feel like an Ultima style game.

Game Update 2: Heaven And Earth

What a world!

Another update on the programming my game. I've achieved my milestone of implementing a map using the Mappy map maker and the associated files. As a result I've had to change my development environment because I was having problems linking the mappy files to my project. Apparently with the gcc compiler on windows I needed to compile it to an "object file" and link it to my project as such. The problem is mapping the %PATH% variables properly so I had access to the Allegro header files. On Windows it's a pain in the ass. Seems like it's much easier to do from Linux.

So, from the image you can see my little program has a map (with my hasty, thus crappy artwork) that can be scrolled using the keyboard arrow keys. I feel good getting to this point however, I've been this far along in other programming projects and lost interest. So, the next hurdle will be to implement a sprite that is controllable by the mouse and that can react to collision tiles on the map (as well as eventual collision sprites that represent mobs.  Eventually.  We'll see if I can cross that line.

Game Update 1: The Blue Screen Of Life!

It's not much but it's a start!

I figure that since I made a huge proclamation of making my own CRPG I should start updating on how it's going.  I mean really, come on, right?

So. Since I made my epic blog post I've worked on the game for a couple days now. Some of that time has been story related stuff and some of that time was getting Code::Blocks, Allegro 5 and Windows all to play nice. I finally got Code::Blocks, Allegro 5 and Windows all to play nice. Wasn't that hard. This is a good thing since when I start making the Linux version I'll most likely use Code::Blocks to develop the game.

Of course, the reward for my hard work is a window filled with blue.  That's okay though because it shows me that everything is working well together.

New Things & Game Programming UPDATED

Since the passing of my grandfather back in June I made it a goal to lose some weight. It took me about six weeks to drop ~20 pounds and I'm still at it. I feel good about this and it really hasn't been that difficult.  So, in honor of achieving a goal of losing weight and since it's been so empowering I've decided to set some other goals and see if I can achieve them. The first of these is a programming goal.

I must confess. I'm an okay C/C++ (yes I know they are two different things) programmer. Not a super good one but an okay one. I can usually figure out how to achieve most task and if I get stumped a little Google-fu has gone a long way in helping me. So, my next goal is going to be programming a Computer Role Playing Game (CRPG) for Windows and Mac since I own the two. I do have a Linux computer but it is in sad need of repair at this moment. As soon as I get it fixed I'll port it to Linux too. I've done some tech demos of 2D maps that I was pretty proud of so I think I can handle the job.