well it's been a torrent of a journey since my last post. Many things have happened, many things left to happen.

Perhaps I'll keep in touch.

summary of coding to date: porting sdl-perl to win32 and getting it to work on that bitch. Getting the Korruptor's retrocube code going on linux & win32. not much activity then... :-p

best linux experience ever happened the other day, I got hw 3d accell on X11, I'm most chuffed.

life wise, well, lets keep things chippa shall we....

This week(s) I've been mostly not coding :(

However, Ive been discussing a little about the future of SDLPL with the original author, David Goehrig. Version 2.0 is going to break , but the original 1.0 will be maintained, well, for a bit at anyway.

I'v also got excited about a small posibility of contributing to a Perl game book, woo hoo.

I've also decided that the Amiga SDK could do with another development language, yep, Perl, so I've suggested the idea and requested a copy of the SDK for investigative purposes.

I have sent The Corruptor the IK+ Bounce pattern creation routine. I think he will be happy when he has a look, I hope to add code that will output the data table(s) as Javascript source.

I've also consired creating some kind of TCP/IP based Data Pattern server. Which would be incorported into/ fall out from, some SDL-Perl libriaries I have in mind. XML based resources, kind-a-like the Quake Pak idea, but XML and also Distributed, XML::Path and RPC::PlServer springs to mind, instantly...

I also incorported the Corruptors mock-up GFX and my bounce and wave genration code into my Beast sideways scroller. I also made the pattern rebound of an invisible wall to see what it looked like if you just reflect the pattern in the vertical axis, and it looks ok.

Other things that I'm up to is (still) looking at porting the Perl OpenGL module to Win32. I still cant beleive this doesn't exist...arse.

I'm looking forward to the first Southampton (or Sotonians) Perl mongers meeting this week, I will probably wheel along my SDL-Perl stoof, just for ego reasons of course! :)

It's never that simple, ever. It appears that I will have to write (well adjust/port the existing) Perl OpenGL module from CPAN to Win32, so that it has no dependancy on X libs, and it uses Win32 calls instead, oh joy....lookng forward to that!

I cant believe it doesn't exist already. Oh well, being at the coal face often results in sidesteps, and in the case of Win32, regressions :)

I have managed to get a (slighlty modified) version of SDL Perl up and running on Win32, but there are install issues and using DirectX does not work, SW blitting only (again), but I'm hoping that when I install the (CPAN Version) of OpenGL.pm I will get fully accelrated OpenGL, tee hee.

I have other issues todo with some library functions not being on Win32, but there are ways to get around that, for now I commented out the ofending line(s) in the sound libs.

other problems include not having png, jpeg libs installed yet. so I had to modify the Beast game to read in gif's only, and turn of some video flags which cause a (harmless) black screen.

The MakeMaker family of utils/libs that ships with Active state Perl5.6.0 appears to be broken, I had to copy modules by hand, and the Architecture dependant libriries 'seem' to have nowhere to live either, I had to place them into 'easy to see' Win32 system 'path'ed places instead (CWD!). :(

Hope to finish the bounce pattern generator routines for IK Remix tonite, maybe I can declare myself as contributor to IK+Remix? :)

the next step is to last the week on little to no cash, and still get to a (rather busy) place of work.... we shall see.