Recent blog entries for ShredWheat

Curse that gentoo! Robbing all sorts of time as I reinstall it on two computers at home. They seriously need a "stage4" install, because it takes multiple days to build a working system. Thank goodness for cablemodem and a fast system, otherwise i don't know what i'd do. (hopefully tonight i'll be back online)

Pheew. What a weekend. I can now assure all that 48 hours really just is not enough time to create an entire game. As with the last LudumDare contest, I got way too ambitious in the early hours.

Given a bizarre topic mix of Construction/Destruction and Sheep, I couldn't come up with a simple concept. My goal going into this was to do a super simple game and spend the second 24 hours embellishing it. In the end I went with a supremo city building type game. So much UI code to write for this it's crazy. It didn't help that I went over the top with animated panels and more.

In the end, I'm way pleased with the results. This time around I've managed to put a playable game together. I had a great weekend, but I'm sure glad it's over. By Sunday afternoon I was all sore and stiff. Hopefully there's a little longer break before the next one, heh. screenshot. source (requires pygame)

Well I played with RedHat, and was very impressed. Not impressed enough to stick with it mind you, but I liked the complete feel of the package (not a hodge-podge of items). I'll be sticking to Gentoo as I have some strange desire to be on the bleeding edge with most apps I use.

Sadly, I have to admit that even as far as Redhat and Mandrake have come as desktop systems, I don't think they are ready yet for the "wife" and "mother" systems. Perhaps with the next round of releases?

It must be that time of year. I've got the urge to branch out and play with some new distributions. I recently toyed with the new Mandrake. I'm usually fairly impressed with the Mandrake releases, but this one left me a little unenthused.

I'll probably stick in Redhat and Suse and try them out for awhile. I have a feeling I won't be sticking with either, but I'll probably feel better about sticking with my current Gentoo if I know there's nothing better at the moment.

I may dig into Debian again? It's been awhile since playing with that at home but lately I've been dropping it on some servers at work.

We'll see what comes from this years exciting Dist-Roulette

Feels good to get a mess of little requests all packed into pygame again. Everytime it's been awhile, I'm always surprised at how much i enjoy programming for fun at home. The next ideas crashing around my head would involve some tile rendering code. Using some of the lower level C stuff in SDL I think this could be optimized a bit better than doing it python. We'll see if time prevails!

Could programming be the ultimate tool for learning a new language? (speaking language, that is) Well, not very likely, but it's interesting how I can read code from someone who speaks a different language, and understand what is meant by the returned error messages and whatnot.

My brother is throwing a "Mario Party Party" tomorrow, as it comes out for the GameCube. Should be a fun time for all. I think these types of games could be astoundingly fun if playable over the internet. Lag could be a problem with some style games, but i think if you implemented the right sorts of games people wouldn't even notice.

Entered into the next 48-hour game programming competition from LudumDare. That sure makes for an exciting stressful weekend. This time I feel pretty confident in putting in a winnable entry. I won't quite say I will win though, there are some talented contestants.

(much time passes...)

What is up with extreme programming newbies? On the mailing lists for my pygame project, we get all manner of visiting newbies. I really like the chance to help these guys out. Usually they will just "figure it out" at a reasonable speed and leave their newbie state, or they will run out of patience. Either way newbie problem is solved.

Lately we've had the most persistent of clueless newbies on the list. I'm not sure what the problem is here. First time I've seen someone who really doesn't seem to understand or capable of learning? I have a feeling we're a couple days from the "make or break" for this guy. Either he will learn or leave. Curious to see how it goes.

Finished the LudumDare 48-hour competition over the weekend. Managed to get something complete and playable together, which is great. Everything was pretty cool up until the last hour, and i nearly lost it to nerves. It's amazing how many loose ends there are to tie up.

Work, Sleep, and Life cost me way too hours from the actual competition time. Can't wait for the next one, hopefully i'll be back with a vengeance.

Voting the entries will begin any day now, I'm astonished at how many final entries there really were. It will take a bit of time to sort through them all.