Blog

Do you recall that Minimal Contest I mentioned at Game Jolt some time ago? If you do, you'd know it was a great success and there were some 50 or so games submitted.

Well, I've only just gotten around to playing one of the games submitted: Blind Redux by CROS (David DeCarmine).

It (honestly) had me laughing from the start, right up to the finish.
It's been around for a good 5 months now. How did I possibly miss this game?

Anyhow, it has a reference to me (that's right, me in it) so I thought I'd post it up here for note.

You've disabled UAC, and your gadgets have stopped working. Coincidence, I think not!
Fixing it requires you to add a small item into to your system registry.

You've probably just installed Windows 7, it's working wonderfully, but you're a little frustrated that your "Show Desktop" button is now on the far right.
You're probably using a laptop touchpad, another crazy input device, or you're just too adjusted to the old button positioning. :)

Ever heard of Windows Key + D?

I've stumbled upon a method to do this using a program which you can "pin to taskbar".

Download "ShowDesktop.exe".

If you're interested in the source code, click "Read More".

Recently, I read a thread in the GameJolt forums that wasn't receiving very much attention. A few users were requesting dynamically generated images for their games on the site. Nobody else has created the means, so I took it upon myself to do so.

Here are a few examples:

How to use:
What do you think? Well, the good news is that it's as easy as using a normal image!

Simply replace GAME_ID with the game's id in http://netbin.co.uk/gj/box/GAME_ID.
I'll work on beautifying the script in the coming days.

I almost forgot! GameJolt API!

Damon The Dinosaur is taking a new direction away from online highscores.
With this we feel the need to disable your accounts for an indefinite period of time.
You will still be able to play Squash Forest with your account information but you will not be able to login from the Ashley Gwinnell homepage.

A new feature for the site is the ability to create an account.
You will use this account to play the turn based games such as Collision and Squash Forest, as well as to upload and validate your Damon the Dinosaur highscores.

I aim to integrate the site with open social networks such as Facebook.

Today I am going to share a few resources that I have found useful to me during my time. Those who know me in the real world will have acquired a large grievance with my use of the tool that I am about to share with you.

Alex at Another Early Morning has written an animation and effects library with the aims of providing rich and concise animations and effects to games without the need to restructure the game architecture.
It will run on Java 1.5+ and has no depencencies, and can be used (if not preferred) with Slick.

What am I doing? Rewriting the wheel!
Why is it that Java (BufferedReader(InputStreamReader(InputStream))) reads everything in my HTTP POST request fine up until the actual POST BODY?!

It only reads the POST BODY once PHP has timed out. :(
Well, in relation to my last journal on Harmonia_Game_Engine (which I forgot to tag...), I'll make a note to remember.

Don't use BufferedReader if dealing with InputStreams; use StringBuffer.

But why? You may think the BufferedReader's readLine() method is good, because it reads you a line (yep, no parsing of ints to chars), but when it comes to the last line in your stream, it doesnt return -1.

So in revision, don't check for -1 if you want to break out of a 'read input stream loop', use an \"end of stream\" set of characters or equivilent.

Okay so this week I decided it was time to give up Windows Vista.
For why may I downgrade?
It's pure and simple, Vista runs so many background processes, and uses graphical resources even when using the 'Classic' windows theme.