Spring Break?

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I’m really confused. Here I am, a citizen of Texas, on the Thursday before spring break, out of school for a snow day. A quite large winter storm blasted us with around 5 inches of snow and ice last night, making this the 4th episode of winter weather in northern Texas since last Monday.
This time, however, I was not so unlucky as to be trapped in the house all day. In fact, despite the cancelation of school, my day started at 6 this morning, with a trip into the back yard to check out the left overs from last night’s storm. Against the common unwritten rules of being a teenager, I was neither tired or grumpy even though I went to bed just after two in the morning: these days, oh the few rare days when snow blankets the ground, are when “getting efficient rest” is the last thing on my to-do list. However, as I type this post, I reap the outcome of such a fun filled day of snow ball fights, sledding attempts, and no sleep.
Since the sun was out pretty much all day, most of that snow melted away, tipical for Texas. So, we’ll be going back to school tomorrow, but thankfully it’s only one day; next week is spring break, if you can call it that in light of recent weather patterns. 🙂
Moving on, I’ve officially entered week three of audio game development. Though it was very late last night, around midnight I think, I posted the audio demo for this week on the S Quad Racing Page. This reflects most of the changes I’ve talked about in the change log and blog post from the last week; the sound of the player’s car is noticeably quieter, the turning system far less flawed, and there are now opponents that can drive on the track as well, though that’s about all they can do.
As of yet I’ve not completed a fully functioning opponent intelligence. This is still being worked on, though, one step at a time. As I said in my last post, I began working on opponents on Sunday, and have only been making minor changes and additions since.
Moving on, my week has been relatively pieceful for the most part save the winter weather and asociated impacts. On a more negative note, amidst my normal routine of school, relaxing, gaming, programming, and reading, I was involved in a pressing matter that had to do with Reality Software, Danny’s game development company, for the first half of the week. Thankfully, it was finally resolved yesterday evening.
Aside from all of what’s been said, there’s not much to report, except that I’m really looking forward to this Spring break, regardless of what season and/or weather it happens to proceed.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
PS. The following are pictures from the snow day.
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An Update

Hey guys,
Steve here.
I found this really cool, blind accessible Solitaire game for the IPhone. It’s $2.99 for the full version, but you will definitely get what you paid for. Here’s a very well done review of the game that I listened to, and if what I’ve already said about it won’t convince you to buy it, this surely will: http://applevis.com/podcast/episodes/blindfold-solitaire-audio-version-classic-card-game.
Speaking of games, I’m happy to say that I’m making a lot of progress on the racing game that I’ve been developing. It’s only been 10 days, and the player interface is complete. I performed several rounds of testing earlier to day and can’t seem to detect any bugs so far, so if any do exist they’ll likely be found once I create some opponents to race against.
Speaking of which, I’ve coded the structure for the opponents thus far, but as of yet haven’t done anything with it, and don’t think I will until tomorrow. The reason for this is that coding them will be far more complex than it was to program the player interface. The reasons for this are as follows:

  1. Unlike the player, the opponent can’t think about what decision it will make; if an obstacle appears in its path, it can’t decide it wants to move out of the way. While I could easily program it to automatically turn to avoid the obstacle, this would give it an unfair advantage over the player: one would be hard-pressed to win if the opponents that they raced against avoided every single obstacle while they hit at least one.
    Fortunately, I have an idea of how I could code the opponents’ intelligence in such a way that it’s not always perfect, though I’ll not say what it is until I’ve proven that it works.
  2. Player Interaction.
    In this game, I’d like it to be possible to slow ones opponents down temporarily by coming up behind them and bumping them. Of course, if an opponent were to intentionally bump into the player, I’d like it to have the same affect on him. In theory, coding this should be a piece of cake, but previous attempts to do similar things proved this to be falsehood. Nonetheless, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this can be accomplished.
  3. It will likely take a good chunk of time to program all necessary opponent actions. Despite the fact that I knew what I was doing and had very little trouble when coding the player interface, it still took a significant amount of experimentation and testing to get it fully operational. And now that I’m coding players that are out of my control during game play, it will be harder to notice smaller less significant bugs that occur.

Despite the challenges outlined above, I’m optimistic about this game. As I stated on the audiogames.net forum, I’m programming it because that is something I love to do, and I enjoy playing audio games very much.
For those of you who want to stay informed of how the development process is going, I recommend that you visit the S Quad Racing Game Page. It is where I post the daily change log, and weekly audio progress demos.
Off the topic of game creation, I had a great rest of my week. The snow storm that came in early Wednesday morning didn’t give us another day off of school, though I hardly expected it to. In fact, all of what actually fell as snow melted right after the event was finished; much of the precipitation was sleet and rain anyway.
Yesterday, though, was a completely different story. Temperatures, as they did on Monday, didn’t rise above freezing, and it snowed all day. I still had to go to school because the snow didn’t even start to fall until around 9 in the morning though. Today, while I’m sure the roads were quite treacherous, it didn’t affect me at all, that is to say, none of my plans were affected. I don’t think we’re done with winter weather yet; we could get some sleet on Wednesday. I wonder, will it actually happen?
Aside from what’s already been written here, there hasn’t been much else to talk about, though I got my 6-weeks report card and discovered that I made all A’s except for algebra, but I still made a B in that class.
Well, I’m signing off now. Have a good rest of your weekend, I’ll blog again some time next week.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

Programming and Winter Storms

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Wow. A lot has happened in the last 4 days, as you can tell by reading the title of this post.
Yes, we got a direct hit from an ice storm. I’d known about this possible storm since about Thursday, but didn’t think it worth posting about as all other winter events that were possible this season missed us. This one, however, did the exact opposite.
As a result of the 1 and a half inch sleet accumulations we received this morning and a sustained temperature in the middle 20s, school was canceled today and will be tomorrow as well.
Though temperatures are expected to rise above freezing tomorrow afternoon, a second winter storm is possible tomorrow night, which could bring up to 3 inches of snow to the area. This one depends on some key factors, however, unlike the ice storm that just hit. for 1, the storm system that will be the catalyst for this second bout of precipitation must move directly over us in order for the precipitation to fall as wet snow. If it doesn’t, we could end up with just rain, or no precipitation at all. Secondly, the high temperatures on Wednesday will exceed 40, turning what accumulates in the morning into slush by the afternoon. Knowing Texas and it’s erratic weather patterns, though, this could very well change for better or worse.
In other news, I’ve once again had an active programming week. For now, I’ve set aside the word pad application that I was working on, as it is very low priority and has most of the features I was planning to implement. However, I have an actual audio game in the works now, something I’ve only attempted once before and discontinued due to lack of new ideas.
The current game I’m working on is a racing game. There’s nothing too special about it: turns, obstacles to make the game more challenging… that’s basically it. I’ve been building it for about 4 days now, and was only able to compile a half-working version tonight. Even still, this has a significant number of bugs, and lacks several features that are to be included in the actual release.
Since I’ve never worked on such a project before, the hardest part has been fine-tuning it: the opponents have to have just the right amount of speed, because we don’t want them to fall too far behind, but then again we don’t want them to go as fast as the player, as that could cause some problems, especially if obstacles are present on the map. In addition, I’m still experimenting with other things such as sound (panning, volume), initial placement of opponents, and track size.
At any rate, I’m making considerable progress on this game. It will definitely be addicting once I finish coding it.
That concludes this post. I’ll blog some time this weekend.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

A great week

Hey guys,
Steve here.
So far, that is for the last 12 days, 2015 has been quite a good year. I’ve been pretty good about sticking to my goals for this year–consistent podcast schedule, a good blogging routine, piano practice ETC.
There have also been several other factors that made the last week and a half such a good time for me. Firstly, I received a report card last week, where I learned that my lowest grade (that includes 3rd six weeks, semester averages, and semester exams that I wasn’t exempt from) was a, 90. Not that I was really worried; I try to be responsible with my school work most of the time, but I still wasn’t expecting that.
Also, last week wasn’t very stressful. Contrary to what I previously thought, the first week back at school did not come as a harsh slap in the face; waking up bright and early once again wasn’t all that difficult, though I was pretty tired the first few days I had to do so. The work wasn’t too hard, though I suspect it’s because it was the first week of a new semester. And between practicing my piano, doing some here-and-there programming, talking to my friends, reading, and recording pod cast episodes, I haven’t had much time for boredom.
Speaking of reading, I’ve started a new book. Recently I’ve been reading later installments of book series, because either the service I use to get audiobooks doesn’t have the title I want to read in their listing, or I procrastinate too much to read it when it comes out. But anyways, after finishing the final installment to the heroes of Olympus series, I read Day 21, the sequel to the 100 by Kass Morgan. Now, I’m reading Cress, the third installment in the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. As good as these books are, I kind of wish I’d read them sooner, because even now I’m still remembering details from previous books in the series.
Moving on, as you might have noticed, I never again mentioned the winter weather event that was possible for New Years Eve and New Years Day. For one, I forgot to mention that, and secondly it wasn’t worth talking about, because it all ended up being just rain. Even on New Years Eve, there was still a 70% chance of winter precipitation in the forecast, and a winter weather advisory had been issued. However, by midnight, the forecast had changed, and only a slight chance of freezing rain remained, and even that never came to pass, making the whole event just a couple days of cold rain. So as you can see, definitely nothing to get excited about.
On the technical side of things, I’ve done quite a bit in the way of coding and gaming over the past 10 days. To start off, Paladin of the sky (found at http://www.vgstorm.com), was the center of my gaming world for 3 days, before I finally reached the end of the demo. Whether or not I will buy the game is still under heavy consideration–as much as I like the game, and the story, there are some parts (namely the combat system and room sizes) that I don’t like. But I really, really like the story, so who knows; that actually might inspire me to purchase it.
Also, park boss has been another recent favorite of mine, though after playing that a lot for a week or so, I kind of lost interest in it. I haven’t even opened the game in a week now.
Speaking of games, Danny has released another installment to the death match series. it’s called Death Match: a new beginning. I’m not sure of all the features it has thus far, though I know that the last time I played it, you could fly ships, and explore planets. Danny told me of another feature he’d added, but I cannot remember what it was.
Also, if you haven’t played death match: project alpha yet, you definitely should. great story, awesome style of game play. Both of these games can be found at his website: http://realitygaming.usa.cc
or the audio games.net forum.
And Finally, I’ve been dabbling a bit in pure basic again, as was briefly mentioned earlier in this post. Though I haven’t produced anything useful, resourceful, or even enjoyable, I’ve been messing around with things such as text to speech support and the basics of game creation. Just today, in fact, I learned that for some reason, the Pure Text to Speech library does not like the idea of compiling Unicode executable files; every time I’d try to run an Unicode executable that used text to speech, I was greeted by an application crash and invalid memory access error. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry, because I don’t know what that error means either). Luckily, with the configuration of some compiler options, I was able to finally resolve the issue. This means I can actually move forward and begin to bring a game idea I have into reality. We’ll just have to see though.
Well, I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you all enjoyed it. I’ll blog you all later.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Holiday updates

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Wow. It’s been nearly two months since anything, and that includes blog posts, pod casts, audio files… etc was posted here. One might think that I’ve settled into a once-a-month blogging routine, which, in a way, I have. However, with the coming of the new year, I plan to change that. In fact, I have the next two episodes of the podcast planned out, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the games I plan to demonstrate, as they were picked by listeners of the podcast.
Since my last post, life has gone on, for the most part, as it always does–school, concerts, breaks and the like. But as you know, Christmas was yesterday, and that brought about a couple of interesting things:
for one, I got a piano. I’ve actually been wanting to learn piano for a while, and have recently found a visually impaired teacher who is pretty good. That being said, if I stay dedicated, which will more than likely be the case, I am pretty much set up to learn. I’m really looking forward to it.
also, at long last, Aprone has released version 3.4 of swamp, something I’ve been excited about for quite some time now. To my satisfaction, the new update comes with an extensive list of bug fixes and new features such as fully customizable crate missions and the fixing of some incredibly annoying sound bugs, among other things. Unfortunately, the new version is in upwards of 660 megabytes, and downloading it will be a real pain.
In other news, it is expected to get bitterly cold next week. Tomorrow, in fact, the temperature will likely fail to exceed 50, and Sunday will come without change. After it warms into the low to middle 50s on Monday, the temperatures will plunge into the 30s Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with the possibility of some wintery precipitation. As winter weather events, especially those that occur in Texas are so unpredictable, I’ll keep you up to date on the situation.
That concludes tonight’s post, but expect another one in a few days. Also, if you have the time, be sure to check out Episode 26 of the Steven D podcast, which is scheduled for Sunday, December 28. And finally, happy holidays to you all.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
P.S. Happy national Pajama day… hopefully you celebrated accordingly. 😀

I'm back, at long last

Hey guys,
Steve here.
At long last, I have returned from my extended break from this blog, and it is definitely good to be back. Though I’m sure you agree with the preceding statement, You are undoubtedly wondering why I was gone for so long.
This time, the main reason I was gone for such an extensive amount of time wasn’t “lack of motivation,” which seams to be the primary excuse most bloggers use for inconsistent writing. Instead, the primary factor in this most recent absence was my highly addictive gaming habits. Just recently, in fact it was around the time of my last post, I got really addicted to Quentin C’s game room, that social platform featuring a wide variety of card and board games that I demonstrated in an episode of my podcast. Since Quentin C’s game room has so many games, as soon as I would lose interest in one game, another would take it’s place. That being said, I had no inclination to sit down and write a post, as it would’ve given me less time to play games. On the bright side, however, I posted the Road to Rage podcast, and it turned out to be quite awesome, as Danny and I played while talking over Skype resulting in a near half hour of constant joking, laughter, and battle; 3 things that normally don’t go together.
aside from that, though I still find Quentin C’s playroom quite addictive, I’ve remembered the truth–my blog is much more important than my games.
Besides spending a lot of time on Quentin C’s game room, my life over the past month has been dotted with the occasional significant event. First of all, there was sports extravaganza, which took place the week after my last post. Since I have attended this event every year since I had this blog, I will not go into an in-depth explanation. But to summarize it, for those who don’t know, there was a goal ball tournament on Friday night, then on Saturday there were track and field events all day such as races and other competitions.
Besides Sports Extravaganza, my church also had its annual fall festival last week. Not much to say about that–it was quite fun, and I spent the day with someone significant to me. On a related note, I also got to spend this past Sunday with the previously mentioned individual.
As life would have it, unfortunately not every day was as good as those I just talked about. There was still that struggle called school, but on the bright side today was an early release day. There was also another early release day last month, after my last blog post, and I must say that was a lot funner than today. While there were still only 4 hours of school today like the last time, and there wasn’t too much work to do in my classes, it was still unlike last month when I had the extremely rare luxury of sitting in one classroom all day long, having absolutely no work to do, and spending the whole time reading and playing cards.
On a completely unrelated note, the weather the past couple days has been unseasonably cold, thanks to an arctic blast that is affecting a lot of the United States. Fortunately, though the high temperatures here in Texas are not in the single digits, as they were in places such as Denver, and our lo temperatures aren’t -21 degrees below 0 as they were in places such as Casper, Wyoming, our high temperatures didn’t even hit 40, and the lo this morning was in the 20s.
In addition, there is also a, slight, chance of snow Sunday night. Since that is far away, it’s impossible to determine if we will get any accumulating snowfall yet. However, I will closely monitor that situation, however since it is so early in the season I’m not very optimistic.
Well, I guess this wraps up tonight’s post. Thank you for reading, and as I previously said, I am very glad to be back.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
PS. My cat turned 10 today. I cannot believe he is already that old!

Life updates, winter weather, project news, and all that stuff.

Hey guys,
Steve here.

We had some snow on Thursday. And guess what? Another 3 day weekend! At first, none of us (me, or mesquite ISD) thought we’d have the day off, that is unless MISD was just waiting until 6 in the morning to tell us we weren’t going to school just so we couldn’t sleep in… but I highly doubt that was the case.
Originally, there was just an inch of snow on the ground from Thursday when it snowed all day long, but as people drove across the snow, it thawed out and refroze as ice. Thus, the ice prevented us from going to school.
How did I spend this unexpected but rather pleasant 3 day weekend? Well I did pretty much nothing except program, goal ball, and work on stranded. My sister and dad were gone to some goal ball tournament, so it was just me and my mom. We didn’t do much, so that’s why I had plenty of time to work on my projects.
I know I posted my last life update last Tuesday… but there isn’t much to say about the remainder of the school week before this 3 day weekend. It was just school, and stranded… that is until Thursday night.
On Thursday night, my friend Danny got me started on this programming language known as Pure Basic, or PB. Deciding I liked Pure Basic, I began programming a piece of software, learning the language as I went. That is what I’m referring to when I say I was “Programming” or working on my “projects” The name of this software is “SQuad Word,” SQuad being the title of my software company. It might be just me in that software company… but if I am actively producing software, I should give myself a name. SQuad stands for severe storm steve software by the way.
If you’re wondering, there is a reason why I am very determined to get this software completed and fully functioning. On Thursday night, when I first started programming SQuad Word, I ran into some trouble. And do you want to know what my friend Danny said to me? He said “Maybe a word processor isn’t the best thing to start out with.”
And since then, I have continued to develop this piece of software, making sure it is working, and adding new features to it, to let him know that while a word processor might not be the best thing to start out with, I will not let that fact hinder me, and no matter the cost, I will make a fully functioning word pad.
I have almost accomplished this goal: you can create, edit, open, and save files, and you can select text, undo, copy, cut, and paste. Now the only thing I need to add if I want this to be a word pad worth anyone’s time is the ability to change the font, and I am working on that. As soon as I do that, and make sure the program is bug free, I’ll upload it to the software page.
Getting on to Stranded, it will be released tomorrow. I don’t have much to do on it, and I will make sure it is released tomorrow.

Other than that, I don’t have much else to say. I believe I’ve caught you up on everything, and I’d better work on stranded a bit more before I go to bed, which will be very soon.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Latest news concerning Steven D: Winter storm causes extreme excitement, a strange thing or 2 about school, and out with the sister… temporarily anyway

Hey guys,
Steve here.

As I’m sure you know by reading my blog post about a week and a half ago, the winter storm that was expected to hit our area turned out to be a complete rip-off. The most recent one, which is supposed to begin shortly, has actually turned out to be worse than I last said in my Tuesday entry. Now, my weather radio (see the weather radio forecasts page for Update 2 which will be posted around 10:00 this evening), has told people “do not travel unless it is an emergency.” Not only that, but 1/2 inches of sleet, and 1/2 inches of ice accumulation are expected over night. Also, if it doesn’t sound obvious to you by now, there is also a winter storm warning in affect. Although the warning only extends through 6:00 tomorrow evening, temperatures will remain below freezing through mid day Sunday, and another round of wintery precipitation is expected Saturday through Sunday morning.
Besides weather, my sister has gone to Austin for the weekend. She is going down for an O&M (orientation & mobility) thing with our O&M teacher (I’ve been wrapped up in my life to know anything more about the trip). All this means for me, however, is that Libby will be gone for 3 days; piece and quiet at last :))).

In the title of this post, I recall saying something about a “strange thing or 2 about school.” What I meant by this was my progress report. As of right now, my grade in math exceeds that of orchestra. The math grade, 100, strangely tops the orchestra grade of 89. Although both grades are good, I still can’t believe that I’m making a better grade in one of the hardest core subjects than I am in some easy (just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s not fun) alective class like orchestra.
While I’m still on the subject of school, I am proud to say that I’ve started my National History Day Project. I’m doing it over the underground railroad (the theme is rights and responsibilities). I will definately finish it by the due date (December 13, I think), and after that is out of the way I will do Stranded.

In the podcasting part of my life, I only have one more make-up episode to complete–Episode 15. Of course, I have episode 17 to do on Saturday, but that is a scheduled episode, and not one I have to make up. Also, as episode 14 was recorded, expect me to use my sony ICD-PX720 recorder to record most of the podcast, except of course the game of the day section.
By the way, while still on the topic of the podcast, I have all but one of the remaining episodes of 2013 completely planned out. Do not, however, think I’m going to spoil anything.

On another note, I recorded and submitted that review for main menu (the radio show that reviews products for blind people). And although this review was submitted Wednesday night, I still have yet to receive confirmation that the review is going to be included in this week’s edition of main menu.

Finally, I am still editing the website. The navigation menu is all kinds of messed up; links to certain pages such as blog test 2012 appearing twice in the menu. Fortunately for you however, I am working diligently to fix this issue. I hope you enjoy the new page names and site revisions! For more information about what I’m doing, see the site news page (I don’t know the exact url, so you’ll have to use my navigation menu (that page is in there).

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

P.s. I got my 100th follower! Thank you so much Nate $mith for being follower 100, and all you other wonder people for being follower 1 through 99!

Happy times and big stressers: a busy start to December

Hey guys,
Steve here.

As I write this post, I’m pretty tired. I want nothing more than another break right about now, as I have quite a bit to do in the next few days. Also, There is some weather stuff I’m excited about, and I’ll tell you about that in this post.

As far as my life, it has been exciting but stressful as I said in the post title. Not much happened after my blog post on Sunday, nothing big anyway. I did however get to spend time with the family–baking cookies, and even decorating the Christmas tree. By the way, my 1 and a half year old cat Bell is already loving the fact that she can (or thinks she can) take down the ornaments and play with them… silly cat!
Getting back to my life, I’ve been busy the last day or so (Yesterday not so much, but today and tomorrow… I am). As for today, I had school, and my orchestra concert afterward, yet there is still more for me to do. I have to do a review for a popular radio show for the blind called Main Menu, where people submit reviews of software and hardware that can be made accessible for blind people. On my review, I will be doing my digital recorder and the software used to convert recordings and change settings on the recorder.
As for tomorrow, I pretty much have the day planned out. It will be school, studying for a test which I will tell you about later on in the post, starting my history day project, church, and doing episode 15 of the podcast, which will be the last one I have to make up. After episode 15, Devin can hopefully join me once again. Sounds like a busy couple of days, right?
As for the test, it’s for Spanish. The amount of nervousness I feel about that is comparable to how my mom feels about the half marathon she is going to run on Sunday. The reason for me being so nervous, is that if I fail, I will fail the semester, and end up having to take Spanish 1 again. I really don’t want this, so please cross your fingers, or pray for me.
Back on the subject of life, I have a choir concert coming up next Thirsday. That is also a day before my history project is due… I think. My NJHS hours are due next Wednesday; I only have 1… but I guess if I get kicked out it will be one less stresser laid upon my life, and what did NJHS really do for me anyway?

At the beginning of this post, I briefly mentioned some exciting weather stuff going to happen. Coming up on Friday into Sunday, there is expected to be a possible winter weather event. I am not too optimistic about this; considering the wrip off I got last week. None the less, I will record and post weather updates starting tomorrow morning, and going through most likely Saturday or Sunday, so stay in tune to the weather radio forecasts page, as that will be the page where all the weather updates will go like last time.
I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and please wish me good luck on that test. Well, you don’t actually have to :))), whether or not you choose to is up to you. Until my next post…

thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

P.s. I recall promising you a picture of the decorated Christmas tree in Sunday’s post, so here you go. Also is a picture of me baking cookies on Sunday night, and of me standing by the tree before the concert tonight. Also there’s a pic of me playing violin at the concert. Enjoy!

the decorated Christmas tree as I promised
me standing by the Christmas tree before tonight's concert
making cookies... mm.
Johny Rosin up your bow and play that fiddle hard...