Anyone who regularly visits this site will notice that updates have been less frequent. This is mainly due to the increased workload of the day job. I’m so busy learning new stuff that I just haven’t had time to plan my game code and do the fun side of programming. Another thing that has become a problem is this website and its limited support for dot net. I recently had a problem that I spent ages trying to fix. After spending some time talking to the ISP it became clear that these pages are hosted on a server that only supports dot net 1.1 ! I will have to move the whole site to another server that is running 2.0. I have created a new account but now would be a good time to give the pages a new look and feel. I will also be using a lot of the latest technology to give the pages live streams, videos (of my games and related items), twitter feeds etc. Don’t expect it all to appear at once as I don’t have the free time but the main update will have most features with the remaining items appearing over time. Once the new site is ready I’ll show the new link on this site to give everyone a chance to bookmark it.
As you can see I’ve not been updating my site much recently. The day job is using up all my time and concentration so I’ve no real time left to develop the Dave game. Over the last few months I added a small amount of code that allows Dave to walk between screens as well as code that places collectable items. In the short demo shown below you can see Dave strolling between two screens and you may just be able to spot a couple of cans of dog food on the pavement. When I get time I’ll add some scoreboard details so that things like the collectable items, life points etc can be shown. To start with I’ll just add the basics but these will be graphically enhanced as time allows. I was recently contacted by a member of the World Of Spectrum website who was after some details on the Millside Software Director, Ian MacIver. Unfortunately I was unable to provide any contact details but the conversation reminded me of a photograph I had. After a bit of searching I managed to locate a photograph of the two Directors and my self, taken as we developed Virgin Atlantic Challenge. All I need to do now is get the photo scanned and I’ll add it to this website as well as passing a copy to the WOS website for their archive. I’ll try to update this website more often but keep checking the blog for more regular updates. Here is the latest Dave demo. Sorry for the size of the graphics but the capture was taken in a vm which wasn’t ideal. On a real pc the graphics move smoothly.
I can’t believe that it has been so long since my last post. I have been up dating my Blog more regularly, mainly because it’s a lot easier to do. Well its been very busy at work so very little “fun” developing has been achieved. I’m now running a 64bit Vista machine so Delphi has been reduced to running in an XP VM. I’ve no idea if Delphi will run on my main machine but I don’t want to install applications that will no longer use at work. I’m now a 100% C# developer so Delphi is only to be used as my game writing tool during lunch breaks. I have been slowly developing my “Dave the Dog” game and I must admit to having a few problems. There have been a few issues with the collision detection and they caused me to rewrite a chunk of code several times. I think its now working correctly although there is a strange side effect which I may develop to my advantage. I next need to implement the exits so I can test the code to display different screens. Plenty to go wrong here as there will be lots of destruction, creation and repositioning of sprites. I’m expecting to see some strange behaviour and probably the dreaded pointer issues. Shown below is a short video that shows how the code is progressing. The images are a bit jumpy due to the screen capture software. In “real life”, the images move quickly and smoothly around the screen. I hope to get in another update before Christmas, so keeeeeep watching.
I've not updated this site for a while now but I have been busy. My blog is updated more often so keep an eye out over there and feel free to leave some comments. I've just come back from a two week holiday where I managed to spend the whole time not thinking about programming. That means I'm now feeling fresh and ready to get some coding done before Christmas. The priority at the moment is my new game called "Dave the dog". There are some pictures on my blog and even an early video (taken before I started work on the graphics). When I get a free moment I'll update this site with pictures and details.
Whilst searching through my hard drive I came across the "Panic Dizzy" game that I wrote for the Retro Remakes competition way back in 2005. I had planned to rework the graphics and tweak the code but as usual I never found the time. Its not a classic game but you can have a bit of fun with it during a coffee break. If anyone wants to change the graphics then please let me know and I'll add them and amend the code. If you fancy a bit Dizzy gaming them pop over to the download section and grab a copy.
I recently went to a Borland CodeGear seminar in London. It was very interesting to see the new features in RAD Studio 2007. I've not used it myself yet as I still develop code using Delphi 7. Hopefully over the coming months I'll get hold of a copy and put some of its UML features to the test. In March I will be spending a week in London taking part in DevWeek. If anyone reading this is going to be there then drop me a line. In between all these seminars I'll be developing a simple ZX Spectrum game. I've already started it and so far I've not hit many problems. This will be a free to download game which I hope will be finished by the summer.
![[Pic]](Images/Month/Dizzy.gif "Panic Dizzy Remake")
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