Tag: program

A Successful Tournament

Hey guys,
Steve here.

I went through with it this time. I told you guys I’d be back to this blogging thing and… here I am 5 days later. Five long days, might I add, which were filled with stressful travel, painful but fun Goal Ball, and now school, I guess.

My first ever out of state Goal Ball tournament was a thrilling experience to say the least. As you may recall, last week I was both excited and nervous about it; the excitement was justified, the nervousness not so much. Out of all four games my team and I played, we won four.

Of course, there were nerves involved, two of the games we won by only three points, and most nerve racking of them all, the last game in which we played for Gold, we won by only one point. The game that I neglected to mention, we won twelve to four.

Despite Goal Ball being a bit of a pain in the butt… and the chest and the arms and the legs and the stomach… you get the picture, I really enjoy playing it and hope to go to another one of those tournaments again soon. But please, for the sake of my sanity, can we just get there without the airports? I think those were more stressful than the tournament itself.

That aside, life has resumed as normal. We returned to Texas yesterday afternoon, welcomed by dreary skies and the pattering of a dismal rainfall, a perfect match for the feelings provoked by the prospect of another daunting set of consecutive school days. Lucky for me, my week will only last three days. On Thursday, I’m traveling to the Texas School for the Blind for a weekend long program that familiarizes the blind with city travel. That’s right, city travel, no airports this time. Anyways, I’ll be there from Thursday until Sunday. I’m pretty excited about this one, because with it being based on city travel, I’ll basically be exploring the city of Austin for a few days, and from what I can gather it’s quite large, and there are numerous things to do there.

In the mean time, while I’m living the good old normal life for a few short days, I’ll get some work done on my projects. Also, if Danny and I can get some technical issues sorted out, we might be able to record a podcast. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of those, but just as I have this blog I plan to go back to that at some point; if not this week, then perhaps when I’m not so busy.

That concludes tonight’s post. Depending on how much I get done code wise, I’ll give a progress update on my games when I blog next week. I probably won’t be posting until Sunday or Monday, because not much is likely to happen in the next three days.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

An Update On Game Development and Other Things

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Over the last few days, I’ve done quite a bit of coding on the Racing project I’ve been working on. Now that I completed the basics such as driving and such, I was able to begin on some things that should make the game much more interesting. One such implementation is the opponents’ rather comical ability to “rage” at you while in the midst of a race. As it currently stands, opponents driving by you can: glare at you, yell at you, or honk. I plan to add more amusing possibilities, but the aforementioned were just tests to insure that the system was working.
Similarly, opponents can now crash into obstacles, but at the time of this writing there are still some major bugs to fix: instead of Enemies always dodging obstacles, they now crash into nearly every single one. The most probable cause for this issue is that I coded it so there was a 1 out of 6 chance that the opponent would hit an obstacle, which averages just over 8 obstacles per lap. Considering that an average player only hits 1 to 3 obstacles per lap, I’ve come to the conclusion that this must be reworked.
More importantly, I’m currently in the process of coding in a stat management system. It is now possible to earn money at the end of the race, and level up as well. A detailed summary of this can be found here.
At some point this week, I’ll begin to work on some more built in tracks. In these next tracks, I’ll be adding more items: walled navigation sections, and perhaps power ups. I already have a good idea of how I want to build track two, and very much look forward to playing it.
Aside from the racing game, my weekend was awesome! Yesterday, I took a break from my coding and relaxing to attend the 2015 Winter Jam concert with my church. It was a total blast, and I wish I’d gotten pictures or something. It was a whole bunch of worship, rock and roll, Gospel singers, and… Skillet! :))
Well, I guess that wraps up tonight’s post. Expect another one later this week, along with an audio progress demo of my Racing game. Also, though I might need some assistance, I need to come up with a name for the game, because “My Racing Game” just isn’t gonna cut it!
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

All is well

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

It’s november first, which means the start of a new month. It means cooler weather, rainy days, and a time change. It also means thanks givving, and the last month before Christmas.

Best of all, it means yet another exciting month to blog in. Who knows what exciting things might happen; where I’ll go, or what I’ll do.

I have several things I want to get done in the next month. Here they are:

1. do the four podcast episode I was and am supposed to do. The one from the first and third Saturday of last month, and also the ones for this month.
2. Start working on Stranded part iii. I want to make this one really long and somewhat dificult, it being the last book in the Stranded series. Though I hope to get it completed this month, I will not release it until Christmas, just to give you something more to look forward to during the holidays.
3. Programming. I want to get BGT learned and down the drain. I am thinking about restarting the manual, and writing some form of notes page so that I will fully remember. God, I wish there was some sort of BGT quiz I could take at the end to make sure I know it all.
Wait a sec, what kind of teenager wants a quiz? 🙂
I also want to learn HTML, and a text adventure (like stranded) programming language called Tads 3.
4. Come up with some form of Christmas list. I can’t think of anything I want, at least for now, to save my life!!! I’d better get to thinking; Christmas draws closer each day.
5. Correct orchestra problems. I can’t perform a streight bow for anything. I’m working on it though, and have made lots of progress since I started bowings.
6. Fix my computer problems once and for all. My computer at home is running smoothely most of the time now, but there are still errors (according to the action center) that I need to fix. I! need! to! fix! them!
Sorry if that sounded mad… it wasn’t meant that way. Those exclamation marks were just there for emphasis.
7. Celebrate my cat’s birthday. My cat, who is turning 9, has a birthday on probably the oddest day of the year. His birthday is on 11/12/13… the second to last consecutive day in the 21st centry!
By the way, if anyone’s tenth birthday is that day, you’re very… how do I put it… rare I guess. Who turns 10 on 11/12/13?
8. Beat probably the hardest game for the blind ever invented on Earth and beyond. It’s called AAC, (adventure at c:), and is a strategy side scroller. This will be demoed on Episode 13 of the podcast. By the way, I probably exagerated a bit when I said how hard it was, but it’s still very hard to beat.
Well I guess that’s about it for my november to-do list. I can’t think about anything else… except:
9. be chill.

I just put that there to add a 9th thing.

Well instead of repeting myself and talking about my orchestra concert and that family get together I said were going to happen, I think I will just give a quick life update before I go.

Wednesday and Thursday were good days. For some reason, I don’t know how that happened, I was in a good mood two, if not three days in a row (I’m counting today). I guess that’s do to the fact that Wednesday was thunderstorms (my favorite weather), Thursday was haloween and my mother’s cousin came down to visit, and that today is Friday.
Finally, tomorrow, since I don’t have goal ball practice , I get to sleep late in the morning, and stay up reasonably late tonight.
Who knows, I might even get to start on Stranded or learning that programming language!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

My first post with windows live writer, (ignore the last email because it wasn’t me)

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

This is my first post with windows live writer–can’t believe it!

So, I recently downloaded a cool application on my computer called windows live writer. This lets you hook up to your blog or create a windows live blog and write to it, create pages, and lots of cool stuff like that. I heard this program is also good for blogging on the go, but then again so is word press.com itself.
There is one good thing to this however; it allows spell check, which for blogs like mine can be pretty useful.
While I’m on this post, let me give you a little life/podcast update:

First of all, I learned this before last post, but forgot about it. I am going to the Calendar lake house with my papa Dutch and Nana, and part of that side of the family for 4th of July. I don’t know what we are going to be doing there, but I will blog and talk about it. On another note, though related to what I just said, my friend Devon might be joining us. This isn’t the computer geek devin whom I created the website for last week and went to tsb, but a different one who plays goal ball with me. Since goal ball season is over, I don’t get to see him much, but hopefully he can come to the lake house with us.
We are going on Thursday after picking Libby up from Austin (can we leave that part out? JK). We should then get there after about 4, and I don’t know what we’ll do for the remainder of the day and Friday. We will be returning home on Friday evening.

As far as the weather goes, let’s hope that it doesn’t storm. There is a small chance of storms Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I don’t care if it storms Saturday (sorry for the people that have plans, I care if those get rained out). If it rains July 7, I won’t have to worry–I’ll be on my way to camp then.
On another note, I found another blog you should visit: www.camaro76.wordpress.com, the website of a friend of mine named Wyatt Rose. Since I don’t know if he wants strangers talking to him, I will not disclose any contact info–I’ll leave that up to him.

On one last note, sorry to those people who received email notification about a “temporary” post, that was when I set up windows live writer, and it did a test post. Sorry!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.