Older blog entries for invoke (starting at number 2)

I managed to find two solid chunks of time for programming this weekend, putting in a very productive 12 hours on my Worms project. I swapped out C++ SDL wrapper libraries, replacing SDLucid with SEL. This library has the major advantage of documentation as well as a better thought-out approach to the wrapper.

Also, I replaced log4cpp, which was a bit "odd" in its implementation, with the lighter, sleeker log4cplus.

I cured my last segfault, cleaned up code formatting, and refactored a bit, moving reponsibilities to their "proper places".

The only sticking point now is that I am using sconstruct, an excellent Python based make/automake tool. I wonder if I should just bite the bullet and create a "standard" automake based package, or if an RPM will suffice.

I'm continuing to read the documentation for the ACE library, and I'm very impressed. I am looking forward to using various parts of this great library in my RPG project.

Spent my programming time last night exploring colors in SDL. I've been using a C++ wrapper for SDL, SDLucid which is fairly good, but either it has problems with translating RGB values into SDL, or I don't understand what it is trying to do. In any case, I got the colors pinned down for up to six worms at once in my game. Now all that is left is the load/save code.

I'm almost done with my first game, "Worms".

It was designed to recreate my favorite Atari 800 game, and to give me a quick "win" in C++/SDL game programming.

The idea is that you have a grid. Each grid point has 8 paths linking it to neighbors. Paths, once travelled, are impassable. Worms are trained to recognize path configurations, i.e. "North and SouthEast blocked", and to choose a new path based on the current path config. A worm dies when it enters a gridpoint with no legal way out.

The game part is to have worms battle each other using various training strategies.

All I have left to do is to write the code to save and load worms that have been trained. All else is working just fine for a beta release.

Ooo, my first Freshmeat release comin' up!

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