|
|
|
Posted
5 days
ago
Seeing all the strange decisions Microsoft made recently, focusing currently on their "XBox One", it seems to me that they are actively trying to destroy their company. Starting with the weird name "XBox One", the focus on TV (where are the games?)
... [More]
, the strange pricing (PS4 will be cheaper while apparently having superior processing power), the DRM preventing people from reselling games, and now the region locking to only 21 countries, preventing lots of people to buy/use the XBox One at all. Not sure who will ever want to buy that thing? And why?
This disaster now comes after this big Windows 8 and Windows RT user interface failure. Windows RT devices still don't have many apps, and the tablets themselves are very, very, expensive. The touch based user interface makes no sense on desktop, and the Apps sold in the Windows Store are fullscreen apps. I cannot even imagine how the decision makers at Microsoft are able to come up with such an amount of weird decisions. What are they smoking?
For me as developer, Windows is my "home" operating system. All apps I create are usually written first on Windows, and then - if I want at all - ported to other platforms. I still love Visual Studio, even although Microsoft started to destroy that thing as well (monochrome icons? Developer registration renewal every 30 days? Mandatory internet connection while programming Windows Store apps (update: Other developers don't seem to have the last problem, maybe its only me) ? really?) I would want to continue developing for the Windows OS family, but it seems for me that Microsoft tries very hard to alienate me from that. [Less]
|
|
Posted
8 days
ago
A few months ago I blogged about the Asus VivoTab RT I bought, which is basically a tablet with removable keyboard, running Windows RT on it (Details on the official website). Now I've used it for quite a while, time for a review: In short, that
... [More]
device is really nice, and I'm really happy with it. It has quite some advantages:
As known from Windows 8, also Windows RT is very, very fast. As programmer, I'm really impressed, and also wondering how they actually managed to do that. Boot times are so short that you don't think twice about shutting the system down anymore. You can start it up again within 3 or 4 seconds.The duration of the battery is incredible. I think there is a second battery in the keyboard, and I'm using the device usually attached to the keyboard, so maybe that's the reason. But since about 2 months, I've used the Vivo tab quite a lot, and had to recharge it only two or three times. I estimate that the battery endures something between 15 and 20 hours for me. Quite impressive.As written before, the keyboard is great for typing. The one on Microsofts Surface (Pro) sucks compared to that.Although I hate to use the Internet Explorer, Microsoft managed to create a really nice touch screen version of it. It's very fast and responsive, and IMO especially the scrolling feels much better than the browsers on Android or iOS. Not sure why, tough.I can actually use it for doing work. And that's what I'm using it for. Since it is so small and very light, I noticed that I'm taking it with me nearly everywhere, without thinking much about it. I didn't do this with my notebook before, maybe because it was about 3 times heavier.
But of course, it's not all positive. There are some negative sides as well:
There is a big lack of apps for this device. The app store is getting bigger every week, but I still cannot find for example great games. And the few I tried to download stopped the transfer, because of a bug: The app store keeps claiming my internet connection is too slow. Yeah, right.The mail client has a nice interface, but sucks big time. It doesn't support POP. Really, no joke. That's like creating a web browser without HTTP support. What did microsoft think? There are two official workarounds: 1) tunnel your mails through an outlook.com account. (Really? - sure, and while we are at it, the NSA is reading my mails too, as we've come to know recently) 2) Download a mail client with POP support from the store. - Yes, great. The only client on the store supporting POP is ok, but has lots of tiny bugs (loosing mails in my case), preventing me from using it.No way to install apps yourself on the device. Apps have to come from the app store. Even the apps I program myself using Visual Studio and put on the device don't really belong to me, they become invalid after some time. WTF.Developing apps for Windows RT is another story. I think I might create a short blog post about this later.
All in all, I'm quite happy with the device, although based on the last negative points, it might not seem like this. I hope Microsoft will fix those problems with their next update. And I guess it only takes a bit of time until there are more apps. [Less]
|
|
Posted
18 days
ago
I just released CopperCube 4.0.4, and it also includes the feature complete beta version of the announced extension and scripting System. I named it "CopperCube for Game Developers", for simplicity. Basically, I made it possible on all targets
... [More]
(Flash, WebGl, Windows .exe, Mac OS X .app and Android apps) to run JavaScript code, and exposed the same JavaScript API on it. Additionally, everything was wrapped into an extension mechanism, so that scripts can be put into 'Action' or 'Behavior' form, edited without programming in the editor and downloaded and shared via the internet.
Now that it is implemented, the system works nicely, as I have seen so far. I also wrote a few actions and behaviors with it, and put them up on the website available for download. I'm curious how it will be used, and if people start creating their own behaviors to share with others or not.
You can test the system by getting CopperCube 4.0.4. An overview of the scripting system and its API can be read here. [Less]
|
|
Posted
27 days
ago
After watching the Xbox One Reveal 2013 Highlights video on youtube, I'm glad I didn't watch that thing live. TV? Really? Was this thing designed by dinosaurs? They believe the main and future medium still is TV? And, where are the games? Why are
... [More]
only some random old PR people who obviously never would play games themselves talking on there? How is it possible that Microsoft always manages to leave me staring in disbelieve after they announced a new product? :) [Less]
|
|
Posted
29 days
ago
In followup to my archery post a few weeks ago, maybe something which doesn't happen too often:
Last week, a fellow archer splitted my fiberglass arrow with the metal head of his wooden one, by accident. Fortunately, my arrows aren't that expensive :)
|
|
Posted
about 1 month
ago
Sometimes its the small things. I just got this simple message popping up in my Android Emulator, but it made me very happy: This is a message actually generated by JavaScript code, embedded in a .ccb file. Meaning that the scripting system
... [More]
has made its first steps to start working on Android as well. For non-programmers, it is probably not really understandable how much work it is just to get this little message up. But it was quite a lot of work, and now there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yay. :) [Less]
|
|
Posted
about 1 month
ago
The software I'm working most on, CopperCube, is a quite complicated beast. It is targeted at people who want to create 3D apps and games, but do not want or are unable to program. To make this possible, you can easily click your apps together in
... [More]
CopperCube by using a fixed set of 26 Actions and 18 Behaviors. Together, they offer (an estimated) amount of 300 parameters, so you can do quite much with this already. But still, for more complicated apps - and a computer game is probably the most complicated piece of software there is - this is not enough.
So instead of adding more and more actions and behaviors, implementing them for each of the 5 supported targets separately (Windows and Mac OS X in C++, WebGL in JavaScript, Android in Java and Flash in Actionscript), I decided to create an extension mechanism. So that everyone can create their own actions and behaviors, share them with other users, and of course: So that also I can use this myself, and do not have to implement new functionality for all targets separately.
I did some prototyping and testing during the last days, and managed to create a nicely working extension system already. The prototype already works partially on Windows .exe, Mac OS X .app and on the Flash .swf target, so I can continue working from there:
The above creates a 2D Jump'n'Run behavior, which is actually functional already in my test build. The system works like this: For using/creating/downloading a new Action or Behavior, you only need one single file, which is a standard JavaScript text file, which you only need to copy into a specific extension directory. You can edit and save it with your favourite editor, Notepad++ in my case. CopperCube automatically re-reads this file when creating your app everytime. This makes it very easy to use. The JavaScript file has a small embedded XML section in its top, so the editor knows how and what the user can select and change in the property window of the behavior or the action. You can define types and default values for each property (like 'string', 'int', 'texture', 'color', 'scene node' and similar), and so editing such a behavior is exactly like editing a native one:
New actions or behaviors are written once, and work on all targets. The language used for this is JavaScript. I chose it because it is very simple to learn, most people already know it, and (ab)useing its dynamic features is quite useful for quickly scripting new features like this. It doesn't have the best reputation regarding performance, but I've tested it, and for the needs in CopperCube, it's pretty ok. Just don't try to write a raytracing 3d engine with it :)
This new functionality also makes it possible to script all the target using one, single language, with one single API. Meaning CopperCube will probably be also become a lot more interesting for programmers. So I'm looking forward for it to be finished soon. It will take still a bit of time to be implemented fully, but the next update of CopperCube will already include a usable beta of it. [Less]
|
|
Posted
about 1 month
ago
I just created a 2 minute youtube video, explaining what CopperCube is and what games and apps you can create with it. The problem is that I'm not very good at video editing, and I honestly think the video sucks. But because I do like experimenting
... [More]
with stuff, I dared to put this video onto the front page of the CopperCube website, to see how it turns out. Not sure if this was a good idea, maybe it will even harm sales. But see for yourself:
The worst mistake I did was probably that I recorded the video in 4:3 format. Only after uploading it to youtube, I remembered that videos nowadays are 16:9. The video also includes a few scenes of apps created by CopperCube users. The music was composed by myself. I've now heard it that many times that I cannot tell if it is OK or not. Also, you'll notice that all music I compose sounds quite similar. :/ [Less]
|
|
Posted
about 1 month
ago
Do you know the scene in the Simpsons where Lisa buys a book named "Sane Planning, Sensible Tomorrow"? (Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a youtube video of the whole scene.) The author, Al Gore, immediately gets notifed about this: "Mr.
... [More]
Vice President! Someone finally bought a copy of your book, Sir!"
and Al Gore starts a short 'celebration'. Well, this whole scene feels a bit like everytime someone buys a copy of my book, as I just got the quartly report that a few people again bought it. :) [Less]
|
|
Posted
about 1 month
ago
hybrid made 1 file-release changes
|
Copyright
©
2013
Black Duck Software, Inc.
and its contributors, Some Rights Reserved. Unless otherwise marked, this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
. Ohloh
®
and the Ohloh logo are trademarks of
Black Duck Software, Inc.
in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.