Tag: inspiration

Hey Everyone: I figured out my blogging problem

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Hello everyone, here we go again. I would be skeptical, very much so, if all 330 odd people following this blog were to tell me that not a one of them were believing that this blog is dying, that I am no longer interested in maintaining it, or that it would be best for me not to continue because I will continue to frequently infrequent this blog. Surprisingly, it’s actually quite the opposite for me. Let me explain why.

No matter how many times I’ve acknowledged it, I never stopped trying to force myself to live up to some form of deadline or another. And I’ll be honest here, when I posted that I’d get something done, my biggest fear was that if I didn’t do it by the next post, it would cause people to lose at least some faith in me and believe that, perhaps, I was one of those “all talk” people, something which I do not want to be known for. For some reason, this sycle has repeated itself many a time over the last year, and I’ll explain it below:
1. I get excited about something, and blog about it.
2. In my excitement, I bang out a sentence that starts with something along the lines of: “In the next post”… “I will likely”… “I will”… you get the picture.
3. Life ends up getting in the way. A problem occurs, school work or otherwise occurs, or I lose motivation temporarily to complete what I said I would.
4. I hold off on the blog post, because I don’t want to post with some excuse as to why I didn’t do what I said I would.

I don’t know if I’ve talked about this subject in a previous post, but the fact that I can’t even remember that now is just another factor that has driven it home for me. See, I started this blog so I could write about whatever I want, whenever I want, and not follow a specific pattern. If I wanted to write a poem, I could. Then the next day, I could post a 400 word technical rant that had to do with the math involved in creating full 3d games, then I could follow that with a post about what a wonderful week I’d had. To an extent, I was… somewhat keeping this unbound routine, but I was adding something I wasn’t before. No, it’s not as I previously suspected, me blogging too much about programming and the like. It’s the fact that I hold myself to deadlines, and then fear failure when I can’t get them done.

That said, I’ll be breaking the sycle by writing just one more of those sentences, though I’ll surely hold to this one, or this blog would die whether I wanted it to or not. I will, not be giving myself deadlines on things I can’t be sure will be completed.

All that out of the way, I am glad to say it’s been a productive couple of months. In summary, I’ve actually started rewriting S Quad Racing in Python, am taking two dewel credit classes in school, and… life is good. These days, I’m still overworking my brain by trying to figure out math formulas for complex things such as rotated rectangles, polygon and triangle shaped surfaces and how they would be represented in a game, and all that fun stuff. In addition, I’ve actually started going to the gym this school year, which is at least somewhat of an improvement from last year.

I know that was quite short, at least by my standards, but another disadvantage with such long blogging breaks is that it’s real hard to come up with something longer than that because you obviously can’t remember everything about the last three months. Still, I think we’re quite up to speed, and I don’t only mean that as a pun to me getting back into working on an all new S Quad Racing version.

Before I go though, I should let you know that if you Go here, you can learn more about what the re-write of S Quad Racing in Python is allowing me to do, and what I’ve done so far. I wrote that page just a little over a week ago, so I have made a little bit of progress, but not too much. Either way, see you guys soon, and I must say it’s a great joy to be back.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

Racing Game Updates and a Programming Venture

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Nearly a month it has been, without one single word from me on this blog. Good lord! I can’t believe it! So much has been going on in that time frame, and recently it feels as though my creativity is spiking again, which may or may not be a good thing. You decide. As a result, I completed S Quad Racing’s Race Mode, and did away with the few bugs that have been so stubbornly plaguing this game and hindering its further advancement. That burden being lifted has allowed me to expound more on the opponent AI, building auto gear shifting in for them as well. However, that’s not what matters so much, or in fact what puts me in such a jovial state of mind at having completed Race Mode. It turns out, that another goal was accomplished that day. I actually managed to do it on the last day of the first six weeks of school, which was the deadline my Digital Interactive Media teacher and I had set. So not only did my game achieve a great milestone on its path to the metaphorical finish line, I managed not to let my teacher down in the process.
After completing Race Mode, I took a small break from S Quad Racing, and decided to experiment with linked lists in Pure Basic. One of my main reasons for wanting to use BGT for the complex adventure platformer I’ve been realizing was Pure Basic’s rather flawed array system, which does not allow programmers to directly interface with elements, (I.E. removing, inserting, swapping), which is a necessity that, although can be worked around if not available, is not at all worth the pain since most languages have that ability. But I came across Linked lists, and have recently been experimenting with them. Here’s what I can gather so far. (Non-geeks, just bear with me a moment, this is about to get over your heads)
One cannot access an element directly. In order to get to a certain element of a list, a programmer must first tell the program to go to the first or last element, and sycle to the next or previous element respectively, until they reach the particular element. This has the potential to make apps that use linked-lists run slower, because they have to move element by element until they reach the desired one, whereas elements of an array can be accessed on the fly.
Nonetheless, I’ve begun incorporating these into S Quad Racing, and unsurprisingly they have made things a lot less painful. Remember the problems I’ve had with obstacles? How their affects would loop and loop and loop unrealistically? That ended because I am now directly able to… in non programmer turns, make that obstacle disappear from the track, or more realistically become ineffective because it was driven upon. This also means that turns will now be able to be taken out of tracks by builders, with no unnecessary headache for me as the developer.
Bottom line, I think these linked lists provide an advantage over arrays, even though they may make things a bit slower and accessing elements can be difficult at times.
That wraps up tonight’s post. I have more to talk about, but this is getting quite lengthy as it is, so I’ll save the rest of it for later posts. See you all in a week, not four.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Monday's musings 16: Birthdays, the greatest milestones of life

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Aren’t birthday’s just so nice? It’s the day you feel the most special. It’s the day people celebrate you. It’s the day you take one more step forward in life, by turning one year older. It’s another year of your life gone, and it’s one step closer to Jesus.
I post this, as my birthday is no more than 1 day, and 3 hours away. I’m not looking forward to it because of the presents (I didn’t even ask for anything really this year), I just, for some reason, feel more special on my birthday. I feel as though the world is recognizing and celebrating me for who I am. I know that, if only for that day, a lot of people think of me, and are truly wishing me a happy year.
Another great things about birthdays, is that you’re always in a good mood. If something bad happens, at least for me, I can be reminded that it’s my birthday, and that little bit of joy can boost my mood. Also, it doesn’t take coffee to wake me up on my birthday. I wake up, realize what day it is, and joy and anticipation of the day to come fill me.
And on a final note, my birthday is a day for me to look on all that I’ve accomplished over my past years of existence. It’s a time for me to be proud of how much I’ve grown, and recognize all my successes and failures.
And when the day is over, I can go to bed, thankful for the years I got to spend on this Earth, and look forward to whatever adventures may come in the future; a future of computers, god, blogging, my cat, my family, and last but not least, my best friend.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.