Ubuntu and Linux beat Windows to Death

I couldn’t think of a more nicer title for this post, so basically you know what this is about. Me bashing Windows and praising Ubuntu.

What is my case you may ask?

It all started on Saturday when I was thinking about how I could use Ubuntu to my advantage and I remembered a long time ago (I believe 2 or 3 years ago?) I tried it once but after a few weeks I switched back. I was reading some of my old blog posts and came upon my Linux tips. Then I started thinking you know, Linux is actually amazing. So I got out my Ubuntu 9.04 disk and installed the system onto my computer. Now, I still had my Windows XP installation with the GRUB bootloader when I came across a problem. I put Ubuntu on the Largest Continuous Free Space on my hard drive, which was 2.4 GB…Just enough for an install of Ubuntu. I realized this when I tried to install the updates and it said I had 216 MB of hard disk space left, not enough to update. Then I knew I was in trouble. What could I do? I thought. I got gparted and tried to edit the partition when I came across, heh funny thing, a triangle icon with an exclamation point inside of it. This meant it couldn’t be resized and had to be formatted. Great, so now what? I tried to get it checked with CHKDISK (I believe that’s the program, too bad if I’m wrong!) and when it finished the exclamation point went away in gparted. So I thought yes! I can change it now, right? Wrong. It just gave me an error message and eventually leading me to just deleting the partition.

So now I put Ubuntu on with 80GB, and the other 50GB goes to Windows XP. So now that that was out of the way there was another problem. GRUB disappeared! Huh? I installed Ubuntu first and then Windows XP. So then I thought about trying to be smart. Maybe I can edit the Windows bootloader! So I go in there, set it so that it boots to partition 1, remove the ugly windows stuff, and try it and…..FAIL. So now what….? It failed. I brought out my Ubuntu Live CD, popped it in, and accessed my ext3 filesystem drive with ubuntu. Hooray! I have access to it! I looked up how to get GRUB installed using Linux Live CD. Since it came with the wireless driver, no worries about having to deal with that. So I reinstalled GRUB by itself, I changed the GRUB Bootloader file and tada! I had a working bootloader again that was GRUB and booted into Linux and Windows XP. After that I simply said, Screw Windows! You can’t do anything Linux can do!

And that is so true. Think about it…. Linux can do anything Windows can do, but Windows can’t do everything Linux can do? Eh…Maybe Microsoft should learn something from this. So guess what Microsoft? I’m a Ubuntu freak now! For real though.

So why is this time different? Well you see, I finally realized how much more I can do with Linux than with Windows. I am still able to do my daily things, I am still able to play my games I like, and I get to do all this in lovely Linux. Who cares if I have lost some of the high-awesome graphics games? I don’t play games all my life, sheesh. I like to make practical use of my life. So what did I do once Linux got installed? (Jeeze, lots of questions today, right?)

I started putting stuff on there, I backed up about 3GB of my stuff I needed to keep, installed Diablo 2 and Diablo 2 MedianXL on there, and they work perfectly fine with Wine. Then I tried Game Maker, and boy was that fun to deal with. You see, I’ve been using Game Maker for about 5 years now, and if I didn’t have this, as you know with the Z-Gamers V.3 website, I would be saddened alot because I wouldn’t be able to use Linux all the time now. But guess what? I got it working under Virtualbox Windows XP installation! Awesomeness! There are three catches to it, but they are minor:
1) I have to import a mouse cursor so that I know where the real position is if it is offset.
2) There are no sounds. But that’s not hard to add in because you just play them….And that’s it! I could go on XP for 2 seconds if I needed to verify if it worked or not.
3)Games must not be 3D and must be tested in fullscreen. No 3D may be a big deal, but here’s my plan for FF3D. Most of the stuff I have to develop is through code. I develop all my code, just run it on Linux to make sure no errors occur, and LATER deal with the 3D coding if there are problems. I think I am so fluent in GML coding and trust my abilities with it that I will not need to test every little aspect of it to know it is working. In fact, I found out you can test stuff in 2D mode, and then just activate 3D mode with the models and 3D drawing once you get on Windows XP. And fullscreen? No big deal, just aligns stuff. Again, number 1 with the mouse cursor makes sure it is not off center.

So what else do I love about Ubuntu? I can access my server directly from the OS….awesome.
I can install packages right on the fly and have new programs….Awesome.
Starting to learn Java Object-Oriented Programming….Awesome also.
Improving my Bash programming skills….Awesome.
Learning new things about Ubuntu everyday….Great!
Able to do alot more than with Windows and still do everything I did with Windows…EPIC.

I have to say….I just LOVE Ubuntu now. I just can’t stop now…I haven’t logged on XP since that epic failure described above…I do not wish to go back unless I have a super problem, which is fixable with Linux of course and not Windows . I guess that is about it.

Continue to support us on http://z-gamers.net! Read my previous blog post for more info on donating to our server!

Driver’s License!

(Started writing on September 1st, so this first part when I mention “today” is for September 1st. Beyond the more line is written in present tense as in today.)

I would consider today to be one of the best days of my life. I finally got a dang driver’s license I have been waiting SO long for! Well I got it, already drove the PT Cruiser once just by myself. My mother got a new car today also so I probably will be driving the PT Cruiser for awhile. It’s a nice little car, works for me. The driving test wasn’t too hard. In general, I’ve driven so much and waited so long since I got my permit that it was all casual and nothing was surprising. I even parked perfectly which was a first. I was so scared when I did the 3-point turn as if you can’t stay in the lines and cones you failed and it’s quite tight, but luckily I didn’t fail (I practiced it like 20 times beforehand).

So now I just need car insurance. When my father told me the price of it, my jaw almost dropped (Which it almost never does), that’s a LOT of money, I feel sorry he has to pay that much to insure me, myself. It was quite fun driving by myself, I loved it. I said to myself, “I’m finally free!” finally part of the real world in a sense. I guess the next big thing I can look forward in my steps through life is college. Until then, probably the feeling and intensity of today won’t come by very often.

(Read more for everything else that happened to me since my last post)

Welcome to August…School…Yes…

So, this morning I promised to myself I would make a post. Yes, I’m still alive, living fairly well, and doing things on a daily basis, but haven’t gotten much chance (Or have been too lazy) to post on here. It’s usually easier for me to work from the most recent things to the furthest back events that are in my head, so it’s time to start.

First off, I have rejoined Fiesta for a third time. Sheesh, when am I gonna stop? But that’s beside the point, explained further below, Warinthestar has convinced me to start playing and doing things that I was doing 2 years ago. Man has it really been that long? Ah yeah, it has. So just yesterday, my cleric on Teva has reached Level 67, and I’m telling you, it doesn’t get easier. Joined guild SoulReaver, Warinthestar’s current guild, looks pretty fun, I’ll tell you that. So I guess I’m back to Fiesta.

Next up, as you may know, Warinthestar originally was an admin on the Twilight Server for the game BZFlag. Well guess what? I’m back to playing that too! (Now a third time also) So let’s see, Twilight has changed its global groups to TWILIGHT.SRADMIN, TWILIGHT.ADMIN, and TWILIGHT.COP, as in we’re in TWILIGHT.SRADMIN, and TWILIGHT.ADMIN is now for the original Jr. Admins. We’re trying to recruit old members from our past times playing Twilight, found Saber and boresnake who still get on every once in awhile. Twilight now runs 5 servers, 4 of them public including: Twilight Main Server, Party Time Server, Jumping Skillz Server, and BZSports Server. The private one is the Twilight Test Server. Also, we have started a new site on my http://sigonasr2.servegame.org server with my newfound web-designing skills I gained over the summer, we created a nice looking site and forum fairly easily. Check it out at http://twilight.servegame.org, and please join if you’re interested.

(Read onward for stuff that happened further back.)

1 Month has Passed…

Oh man, last time I posted on here seems to be forever ago. So this summer has been quite fun but at the same time most wasteful. I’ve been wasting my time playing games this summer, but I’ve done some studying and a little game-making. So, let’s get started with what’s been happening.

After I got out of school, first there was not much to do. Fiesta’s Cypion Server Release was coming, and I was in action to get ready to play. Me and Dan were going to try to level fast, but we can’t possibly get the 1 million sparkcash, at least we can just grind as fast as possible. Whatever that happens, we were going to get to 105 eventually and not start an alt. However, things have changed recently (which I’ll explain below) and I’ve quit Fiesta again. (I also quitted Drift City not too far back.)

First off, Fiesta is pretty boring. I think eventually it gets old, you just kill monster after monster and nothing really happens after that. You have to grind now 105 levels and it is insanely hard to do. In fact, I don’t think it was meant to be done in less than a month and some people are killing themselves over trying to reach that 1 million, but I’m just giving up in general.

Now, an argument between my friend and I [and previously before] was that why do I always quit games and never stay “committed” to one. Well, here’s my case-and-point:
Games are meant to keep us entertained, right? So when we end up getting bored by them, the game has no purpose anymore. We need a new game that’ll keep you entertained again. So why should you be committed to a game if the whole point of them is to keep you entertained and you’re not being entertained? Yeah, you don’t and you pay more money to get a new game. xD

So then I obviously was bored and needed a new game. I tried to entertain myself with Game Maker, but you know…I really think I need to learn C++ or C and I’m gonna try using OpenGL eventually.

And now I bring myself into the present and past week. My sister and I always get along and sometimes we do stuff together. Well recently, we’ve been playing The Sims: Life Stories together, and even though you may think what the, this isn’t the kind of games Josh would normally play (Or you would) but I swear, it’s very fun. Maybe part of it is because we used to play The Sims on the Gamecube quite often. So I guess now I play The Sims: Life Stories. And we don’t just play it, we have a huge family tree thing we created awhile ago and we’re going to re-enact all the stories in the game. We’ve both almost completed the first family with their kids, and it is very fun. What makes it so fun? I think it’s the depth and complexity of the game yet how simple it is all implemented. I have fun building the houses, gaining relationships, and raising the kids from young babies to teenagers. If you like simulation games and haven’t tried it, The Sims: Life Stories is fun. And not just that, I heard The Sims 3 is going to be real good too.

So, that catches you up on what I’ve been up to. Sorry to my Fiesta people in the Cryptic_Fate guild on Cypion, I decided to give up…Again. So that is all, I am off now.

School’s Out!

I am so happy. School is finally out and summer starts once again! And to think I started this blog only a year and a month ago, I never thought it’s been so long and I’ve gotten so far! But yeah, another 3 months to chill out and work on stuff I’ve been dying to work on!

Summer 2009 Goals:
Finish Fighter’s Field 3D Version 1.0 (An official release!)
Finish Z-Tower Defense
Become more adept at Alto Sax.
Get to Lv80 at least on Drift City
Play through World of Warcraft
Beat Spore on Hard Mode

Well, there might be some more, but I cannot think of anything else. Anyways, so we got out on March 20th, so it’s been a week. Things have been going pretty smoothly. Each day I got to relax and have fun with my brothers and sister. Our family has gone out swimming, we’ve talked about plans to go to places with our Church, and I have been working on games and playing some Final Fantasy 7. So it’s been a pretty good summer so far. Last year, I remembered being into BZFlag and starting Fiesta, but this year, it seems I almost have no game I’m caught on. I mean, I have been playing some Drift City, but…It’s been getting hard to level now but it’s still fun. I’m waiting for more G-Coins to get my Nova V6 to Nova V9, or waiting for a Duel. Either one.

Recently, I’ve had a flash drive go dead. It was because of bad sectors which probably happened while I was transferring files and after pulling it out and plugging it in, I lost all my flash drive data. It wasn’t too major, but it was definitely a disappointment. The biggest file I lost, was my Fighter’s Field 3D file. So, what was I to do? Well, me and my 5-year-old bro Jonathan are always playing/working on the game, and I remembered that I gave him an “alpha” testing executable just 2 days ago. And I thought, I needed it. Using my backup flash drive (with only 128 MB instead of my original 2GB), I got it on my computer and downloaded the Game Maker EXE Decompiler. Now, I know what you may be thinking if you know what I mean. I’m a bad person now. No, not really. Because I am using it for first off, a very legitimate purpose. I needed to decompile my Fighter’s Field 3D exe file so I could get all my months of typed codes and all my objects and sprites back! And I promise you. Once I have decompiled the game, I have permanantly removed the decompiler from my computer. If some legal dude or anybody wanted to inspect my hard drive for any signs of the decompiler (or my flash drives/CDs/any media storage device) I assure you there is no trace of it anymore! Therefore, I have no possibility of decompiling any of your games, got it? So don’t go commenting on here “You suck, you loser decompiling others’ games.” or anything of that sort. Also, it is my game, and if you don’t believe me, you can read previous posts that go months back about the development of it, you can read about it at http://z-gamers.net, find it on GMC, and you can ask one of the members on Z-Gamers about it, they’ll tell you, so there’s plenty of proof it’s mine along with my full name being in the executables of the Fighter’s Field 3D games.

Sorry about going on and on about that, it’s just I don’t want anybody thinking I’m doing anything bad in particular, and I have plenty of proof to make sure nothing bad can be thought of me. (Sorry, keeping rep is a thing for me xD.)

Fighter’s Field 3D development if going well. Mining system is complete, PvE system is completed, and I’m now working on the new skills. There are 8 skills per class, making it 32 skills, but you can only get a new skill once every 10 levels. You get your first one after the Class Upgrade 3 at lv60, and you get one every 10 levels. This patch goes up to lv100, so you get 5 total. So you can get 5/8 skills from the skill shop for your new class, and each one does different things. If you are interested in seeing what they are, I will be posting up a Word file with a list of them in a later post.

That’s all I got for now. Stay tuned.

The Dragon Delasangre

Yes, this is what I’m talking about today. This is a book called The Dragon Delasangre by Alan F. Troop.

Now, I just want to say, this book is the most amazing fiction fantasy book I could possibly find. I could argue Pendragon, but once I read this, now I am seeing even more greater fantasy.

Rating – 10/10
I don’t think I’ve given a 10 to anything yet. Well here it is. The Dragon DelaSangre is about an adult dragon (If I recall correctly 57 years old which isn’t too old in dragon years) who is able to change between a human and dragon form. I think this is what made the book the best fantasy book I’ve ever read. This concept right here. I’ve read Eragon before and I thought that was a pretty cool book, but now we have a dragon that can also be a human. The main character in the book, Peter DelaSangre lives with his father and learns about the dragon and human life. Although he is a dragon, his mother encouraged his father to send their son to human school, so he acquires much of his life through a human. (Note, ignore the first chapter of the book if it is boring to you. This describes the scene and his life with his father.) After the first chapter, you start heading into some action. As you will later learn, the dragons go on nightly hunts usually (because they cannot be seen because they are so sparse and will be slayed) to eat people. Yes, human meat. So Peter would bring home some people for his father and himself. It’s not until he meets a waitress at a restaurant who gives him a number, a murder that arouses suspicion, and a closely related death that turns Peter’s life haywire. This is when the story gets juicy and interesting. Peter must meet a female of his kind and now he’s on the ultimate search of his life.

Probably from that passage right there, you could already get some of the feel for the action to the book. I absolutely loved the book. In fact, I finished the book in three days, a record for me! I’ve never read any chapter book > 200 pages in 3 days, that’s just insane. (It’s actually 295 pages now that I think about it.) So as you can tell I LOVED this book! It’s just amazing! You should read it if you love fantasy and need something that will include action, romance, and dragons. No Spoilers, but I swear, during the last 75 pages of the climax, my heart rate started rising because of all the action. I’ve never felt so into a book before, like watching an action scene on TV except even more amazing.

Also the concepts included in that book including dragons becoming humans, eating humans, mindspeak (The private talking with dragon’s minds as you will later found out. The book has those written in italics.), all the romance that happens, and even the dragons interacting with real life. All these concepts kept me reading from page 1 to 295 just like that and guess what? I’m not done! I picked up the sequel, Dragon Moon and I’m going to start reading it soon. Can’t wait. If you really need a new book to read, check out this amazing book.

So in most of my posts, you know that I include more than one topic, and usually the main topic is longer than the rest. So if you clicked the More… button, you will now see the rest of the topics. It’s to keep my main page clear from clutter, and if you’re interested in reading more, the hidden-ness adds to the suspense, heh. Click it and read what else there is!!!

(Read my Dragon Moon review at http://sigonasr2.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/dragon-moon/ [The Second Book in the series])

Happy December!

So, it’s that time of year again, time to bring out the christmas trees, lights, and whatever, but I’m just glad it’s almost 2009. One of my favorite numbers if 9, so 2009 is a year I am looking forward to.

Anyways, enough of that, if you haven’t noticed, I haven’t made a single post in three weeks! It seems that I am quite lazy and procrastinate longer and longer to type it up, and now that I am taking the time to type up one long blog post, I have to include everything I originally wanted to say. So let’s back up about 2 weeks ago to Sunday, November 23rd. So what’s so special about this date? Well, this day was when I got the chance to do 2 saxophone solos for my church group. It was very fun, I enjoyed it, the crowd enjoyed it, and I didn’t realize I had such a passion for Saxophone. I guess it’s just that I never play it much, so I never see how fun it could be, but after this event, my views on playing the Eb Alto Saxophone has changed.

So then we head into the week of Nov. 23~29th. So we had school for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, pretty normal, but then Thursday until today, we had Thanksgiving Break. Had a good Thanksgiving, as usual, ate a bunch, then started work on an interesting concept developed by Z-Gamer member XSkulls. Fighter’s Field 3D. Now, if you’ve been following Fighter’s Field, I recently released the long-awaited version 0.3 which includes 5 new skills for each class, and the level cap being lv39. I am lv37 right now, but that’s beside the point. So I have worked hard over the past few days, and here’s some beta screenies of what Fighter’s Field 3D will eventually look like! (Forum post at http://zgamers.phpbb2.us/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26)

So, some obvious things from these images. One is that there are new healthbars, two is that all the drawing has been transformed to follow the camera, and three, I am still working on many things for this game.

But this was done over two days, and it was rapid progress. I am still working on it as of right now and pretty soon I will have a lot more done.

I also found a neat wordpress blog recently, called “Naked Paul Toast’s Insights” at http://blog.nakedpaultoast.com/. The reason why I specially mention this blog is because he has quite an amount of similar interests to me. He has mostly humor, Game Maker, and technology topics in his blog, all of which I like, so I now watch his posts every once in awhile also. Maybe you’d like to check it out if you like my blog.

Also, I have been balanced in my activeness between working on Game Maker, playing Fiesta Online, and playing BZFlag, so I’m kinda in a combination of everything I used to do now. That is all for today, hopefully I won’t delay my posts as long anymore, see you later.

The Usual Fall Break

As normal, during my fall break I do nothing special, I just chill and relax and try not to think about school, because that’s obviously what you are supposed to do. I did work on a few things during fall break though.

Mostly Game Maker related, here are 3 projects I will definitely be slowly working on (Including Screenshots):

Elite Beat Agents Simulator

I have loved the game Elite Beat Agents and so I am recreating a version of it. The version I found on the Game Maker Community is such a crappy version, so I decided to remake it. Here’s a screenshot for now, it uses midi files to conserve space, and the notes are in sync. I have been working on a very good syncing system to keep the notes in time so you can enjoy the song and the game.

Wings3D OBJ to GML Converter

As another note, the current type of OBJ file converter does not work for Vista users, and is always quite complicated. All this will do is take a Wings3D OBJ file and converts it into GML code automatically with just the file needed for user input so that you can just paste into your 3D game as a model of points to use.

Why Wings3D only? Well, first of all, Wings3D is a very powerful program itself, so that statement itself should let you understand why I’m restricting the file format to just that. If you want to use this once I finish it, you should simply get used to using Wings3D now to create nice models for Game Maker, which is our goal with this program.

Super Mario RPG Game (Possibly a Sequel)

The game is based off the super popular Super Mario RPG game from the SNES. Although the game is quite vague to most people for Mario games and got a low amount of sales, it is a very good game with lots of challenge. As an isometric RPG, it had lots of cool features and I want to make a possible sequel for the game with great implementation. Right now I have finished the jumping engine, there IS a z variable for this game and jumping makes Mario go “higher”. I have allowed Mario to walk in all 8 directions and given Mario the ability to jump in all 8 directions. Now I am going to start importing platforms into the game and then start working on the battle engine, it’ll be fun! (Screenshot below shows Mario jumping SW)

As you can see, I have got quite an amount of projects going, all of them should keep me busy until I get close to finishing them, in which I stop. Tune into this blog for all the latest info on all three of these promising games!

In addition to Game Maker, I have started learning some Visual Basic, a minor thing that I may never get enough experience to make advanced programs in yet. Hopefully I can find it useful in the near future.

We also went to ASU on Saturday, 10/18/08 to perform for our marching band competition. Buena got an Excellent rating, and I think we deserve exactly that. (I’m sure all of the other Buena members would agree) We will be working hard in the next week or so to hopefully do better at the Ironwood Ridge competition. Good luck to me and all the Buena Band members, let’s work hard to go to state!!!

I also surprisingly started playing Fiesta. Now, if you’re read previously, I also started playing BZFlag again. I must say, I am going back to all my fun games I used to play, and I like it. So I’ve started playing again (I’m glad I never gave away my account items even though I wanted to), so now I’m continuing my slow trek to level 60 as a cleric. I have had some help from Lanowar_Elf (Charles from previous posts) to gain about 20% while helping him level to 78 on his archer, so he’s still much higher in level than I am.

That sums up all that’s been happening during this week.

Fun with bash History

So today I found a nifty script that shows your top 10 commands used in bash. This is a very cool script to let you know what you have been doing and tells people about you.

So, this is on the unstable server, where I do most of my experimenting on. It returned these results:

57 cd
56 bzfs
43 screen
27 ./obstacle_course.sh
24 ./super_maze.sh
20 killall
16 mysql
13 history
13 g++
13 crontab 

So according to these results, I experiment with script running alot, do a lot of file browsing, run BZFS (BZFlag Server) which means I do a lot of testing in BZFlag maps. Screen is up in third also, which means I do a lot of programs that I stay running. I got killall, which I used to kill all my scripts and BZFlag servers. MySQL was strictly for my website. History is just this script XD. g++ is used to convert plugins to .so from .cpp so that they can be used in BZFlag, so I do lots of plugin conversions. Crontab shows up, which I use to modify how often my random map generating scripts run.

So, unstable isn’t the only server I have available, so I took a look at twilight, my strictly BZFlag server:    121 /bzflag/builds/2.0.x/bin/bzfs
     84 screen
     61 killall
     35 cd
     32 nano
     20 ./keepalive.sh
     17 ps
     17 ls
     14 kill
     12 bzfs

According to this list, I have bzfs up at the top with 121 uses. So obviously bzflag strictly. Again, we have screen and killall up there, both used for bzfs related stuff. cd and nano (Command Line Editor) are up there too, as I did minor modifications right in the terminal. We have keepalive which is basically a script that runs the whole server (Including bzfs, so bzfs could really be 141). Down near the bottom, ps (While I was experimenting with processes), ls for file browsing, and kill which I used in correspondence with ps. bzfs is at the bottom, these are just failed attempts to execute the top bzfs because I remembered that this wasn’t unstable, so bzfs wasn’t included as a normal function, so you have to go to the actual directory where it’s installed.

Ok, so that was a little interesting with the command line. By the way, that code is:
history | awk '{print $2}' | awk 'BEGIN {FS="|"} {print $1}'|sort|uniq -c | sort -n | tail | sort -nr
Placed it in that textarea because wordpress does not show ' and " correctly in a terminal.

Alrighty, next up on the list of stuff to talk about, is Game Maker.

First off, my new game release, Multi-Breakout 2.

(Taken from http://sigonasr2.servegame.org/zgamers/v2/index.php?Multi-Breakout2)

Main Goal Although this may sound like a basic Breakout game, it is not. The concept itself is completely original. Instead of just hitting blocks, you have to hit blocks with 2 other players! You have health, and every time you hit a block, you gain 3 health and your opponents lose 5 health. Over time, this health adds up! There are also powerups you can get, and as you see the effects of each and their icons, you can try to memorize which ones do what. Finally, when you do hit a block, it gets sent to your opponent’s fields after a short amount of time. This means that the more blocks you hit, the more blocks you create on your opponent’s side to block out the stage and possibly make it harder for them to survive!

Some screenies (Click to view enlarged):

Download: multi_breakout2.exe

 

 

Alrighty, that’s that. Next up, I have made a Steady Healthbar example.

(Taken from http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=400958)

Title: Steady Healthbar Example

Description:The goal of this example is to accomplish a smoothly decreasing healthbar.Most of the time when you play a game, and you lose a health, you see the healthbar
go from a certain point directly to another point.This example makes smoothly decreasing healthbars instead, which can be useful in
lots of ways to make your game graphically enhanced.

GM Version: GM 7

Registered: no

File Type: .gmk

File Size: ~38 kb

File Link: steady_healthbar.gmk

This is an example that I am pretty proud of. It shows a ball getting hit by a continuous bullet slowly losing health, and then there’s a DDR-style healthbar that you can press the up and down arrow keys on to make it gain or lose health, smoothly, of course

 

So that takes care of the topic of Game Maker. What else have I got…

Oh yeah, I finished reading the Space Odyssey series. Great books, probably the first ever I’ve seen with so much science fiction and action in it. If I were to rate these books in the series on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give them:
2001: A Space Odyssey 

8

(Great Book, but I read this one second, so I kinda knew how everything was gonna turn out. Kind of interesting to connect it to 2010 after reading it.)
2010: Odyssey Two 

9

(The book that got me started on this series. Just loved it.)
2061: Odyssey Three 

6

(Why such a low rating? Well, truthfully, half of the book was retelling of 2001 and 2010, which I sort of hated, but it was still pretty cool that they went out to Haley’s Comet, then to Europa. And Heywood Floyd’s son.)
3001: The Final Odyssey 

10

 (The best of the series in my opinion. I loved all the future concepts and how communication and exploration of the various planets worked. I just liked the fact that we got to see so much detail from Frank Poole’s mind and that he was living a literal luxurious life.)

---

So, what am I reading now. Well, guess what? I went to our library, and looked at more of Arthur C. Clarke’s books, and I found a book called “Rama Revealed”, so I picked it and started reading it. Truthfully, another great book so far, I loved the first chapter, already intense with Nicole scattering to a hideout she’d have to live in for a few weeks until phase two of the escape plan can start. Just great. One strange thing though, is that I picked the last book in the series (hmm), see a patten yet? I always seem to pick a book that is not the beginning of a series. But I think it’s kinda cool, because later you can link it to previous reading and put it all into the big picture!

 

So, now I want to talk to you about a neat little program called CExe.

Cexe’s goal is to produce smaller exe files using the smallest possible exe compression method. It uses the framework of zlib and lzw. It worked quite well with the Game Maker Executables, dropping fightersfield from 6.3 MB to 5.3 MB and dropping simple_race (another one of my unreleased games) from 2.6 to 1.5 MB. Basically, it drops them 1 MB, which could make some difference for some people, so it works. If you really wanted to, you can then put it in a zip file dropping fighter’s field to 4.8 MB and simple_race to 1.2 MB.
This was produced by a person named Scott Ludwig, and that’s the post about CExe, and the download by it. Very nice job Scott, you did well.
http://www.scottlu.com/Content/CExe.html

 

That’s about all for tonight. Yes, another long post, I think this’ll happen often now since I’ll be posting once every week or so, so I get a lot of stories then post. Anyways, see you later!

Death?

You know, I’ve always been wondering what will happen once a person reaches death. I know it’s a topic no one wants to talk about but I have a few things. Now, I am a Christian, so my first point is that people will either go to heaven or to hell. Now, of course we always can argue how we have evidence compared to faith blah blah, but I presume we don’t need to get into that. Second, we could simply be wiped out. Kinda like shutting down a computer, once it is off, it can’t do anything. Think about it this way, we can all just be laying down on a couch, fall asleep, and then all of a sudden boom, nothing, we forget about our memories about life we earned, darkness forever, no interactions beyond death. Now, I’ve got one more question. If we have a “spirit” inside of us, why do we need a brain? Think about this scientifically now. The brain’s cells collect information and makes connections with other things, and that’s how we learn. Our brain also controls us ourself. If we were to remove our brains, nothing would function with us, so the idea of an afterlife in which we exist without brains is kinda out of the question, which eliminates us going to heaven or hell (I know I’m contradicting myself saying I’m a Christian and using this theory, but I kinda think this is true. And my third theory. Think about this, how were we born into existence in the first place? We just kind of “appeared” once we were born. We didn’t get to “choose” who we were, or know our parents before we came into existence, it just kind of happened. So what if, when we die, we disappear as stated in my second theory, but now we start a new life, as some new person coming into the world? I am edging more to this theory because the way we came into existence in the first place makes as little sense as knowing how space was created in the first place, plus when we die, won’t living eternally as us be kind of boring? That pretty much sums up this post. Just thought I’d bring that out there, hear other people’s voices, opinions, shout-outs, whatever. I tried to make this as unbiased as possible, but bringing up Christianity was something I had to do to get my message out.

In other news, I pulled out Game Maker 5.3A today, got Purper off of one of my archive disks, and modified it a bit to my liking and played. Purper is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game that plays pretty well. Now that I understand GML, I could modify this game with ease. The only problem was figuring out the translations to the meanings of the variables set. They were either in German or French, not sure exactly, but it’s a fun game nonetheless.