Disqus - Latest Comments for jamesu

Re: New post

James Urquhart — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 13:54:15 -0000

Test

Re: 2d Visibilityfrom Red Blob Games

James Urquhart — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 11:42:48 -0000

When implementing this I found the _segment_in_front_of check doesn't seem to work too well when you have lots of segments (some intersecting) with varying angles, causing the light to poke through to segments behind other segments. I had to use a different algorithm which uses a triangle to check if the segments are in front of other segments. i.e.:

--
if (segment A doesn't collide with the lines of the triangle formed from segment B to the light origin)
{
if (segment A doesn't completely reside in the triangle formed from segment B to the light origin)
return false;
}
return true;
--

Other than that, great article!

Re: CuppaDev - Optimizing TorqueScript

James Urquhart — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:55:58 -0000

Please do Ben. While there are good parts, I think overall the current implementation of TorqueScript is a complete nightmare. You can only stretch a heavily string-based scripting interpreter so far which I think is a huge let-down for Torque. 10 years on and we're still using the same basic implementation? Crazy.

TBH I probably wouldn't have bothered trying to fix it if it weren't for the horror of iT2D. While mobile platforms aren't the fastest in the world, doing the simplest of things in TS seemed to be intolerably slow.

For the next article I improved the type system and added arrays, but I ran into real problems with the way the interpreter worked in certain edge-case scenarios (breaking the editors), and I have yet to bring myself to look through the code and debug the mess.

Re: CuppaDev - Syncing Youtube with Websockets

James Urquhart — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 16:58:00 -0000

If you want to implement a shuffle, all you need to do is iterate through the channel playlist and update the video "position".

If you look in web_socket_app.rb , when reordering the playlist the frontend invokes the command 'sort_videos', which reorders the playlist based on a specified order. When saved the modified videos will send a message to the channel notifying everyone of their new position in the list.

If you want things to happen in the background, check the implementation of do_timer in subscribers.rb. This handles automatically advancing channel videos in channels without active leaders.

Re: CuppaDev - Syncing Youtube with Websockets

James Urquhart — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 06:34:26 -0000

Hi there,

The margin of error for setting the time is controlled by Tube.video.timeMargin, which by default for Youtube videos is set to 2s.

I'll see about improving the error handling here so catchup issues can be more cleanly resolved.

Re: Tough times on the road to Starcraft

James Urquhart — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 02:40:47 -0000

Thanks for taking the time to write about your development experiences. Even 15 years later, it's still relevant and insightful. Despite today's vastly improved technology people still fall into the same kind of traps.

Re: CuppaDev - Where is ScummC?

James Urquhart — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 18:38:23 -0000

Back when I first made the repository I copied what I could of the documentation to the wiki on the github project. Apart from that you can use archive.org to browse the old scummc site in case anything else was missed

Have fun!

Re: The making of Warcraft part 1

James Urquhart — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 14:25:29 -0000

On a related note, some other folks created a reimplementation of Dune 2 which is essentially a faithful line-for-line rewrite of the original disassembled executable ( http://www.opendune.org/ ). For me, it's interesting to see someone else's take on how to write an RTS from 20 years ago, especially given the hardware constraints at the time.

Re: CuppaDev - Syncing Youtube with Websockets

James Urquhart — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:26:04 -0000

Hey Alex, looks like there was a server restart and tubehub didn't get reloaded. It should work fine now.

I did put the code up on github before, but there wasn't really any interest so i pulled it. I'm currently rewriting it in rails and changing the backend so its a little easier to configure, then i'll probably be open sourcing in on github again.

Thanks for your interest! :)

Re: CuppaDev - Postmortem of a Ludumdare 23 Game

James Urquhart — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:49:25 -0000

I kind-of wanted to try making an RTS beforehand, the inspiration just spurred me on that line of thinking for the Ludum Dare. :)

I definitely agree writing a good RTS is a PITA. If i did another Ludum Dare i'd definitely go for something with a good simple but addictive component with dumb or non-existent enemies.

Nice postmortem - i hope you score well in the contest regardless :)

Re: http://louisstow.tumblr.com/post/19049602694

James Urquhart — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:57:34 -0000

If you are interested in adventure game compiler internals, check out scummc. https://github.com/jamesu/s...

For something slightly more modern also check out the Adventure Game Studio code.

Re: CuppaDev - Help! I Have a Memory Leak

James Urquhart — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 03:37:48 -0000

In my case i didn't want to add too many extra complications by adding boost to the project, so i just made my own classes. Still, good to consider :)

Re: CuppaDev - Where is ScummC?

James Urquhart — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 08:45:25 -0000

The link is in the blog post

Re: //index.html

James Urquhart — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:38:30 -0000

test

Re: CuppaDev - Where is ScummC?

James Urquhart — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:37:24 -0000

Sadly, no. I'd suggest trying to compile scummvm instead, since it is more complete ;)

Re: CuppaDev - CSS Transform Exporter for Blender

James Urquhart — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:02:34 -0000

Done. See post.

Re: CuppaDev - Thumbnails and Palettes in glgif

James Urquhart — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:02:00 -0000

Since the code only uses GL to upload to a texture, you can quite easily negate the need for OpenGL.

However, the frame loop thread (or at least, the calls to grab the data for the next frame) are still required since each frame is dependant on whatever is drawn by the previous frame(s).

Re: Making Money in the App Store: I Give Up

James Urquhart — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:45:29 -0000

Indeed - pretty much the conclusion i have come to as well.

Though that still doesn't negate that i'm still a little disappointed the clientless route didn't work out as i hoped.

Re: http://limpet.net/mbrubeck/2009/11/06/android-v8.html

James Urquhart — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:37:27 -0000

CSS Transitions on Android are slow? Yikes! Guess that's my CSS Transition-based Game out of the picture then :(

Re: Flash on iPhone: My Experience

James Urquhart — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:15:07 -0000

Great write-up. It's nice to see flash finally appearing on the iPhone, albeit in app-form rather than in a fancy plugin. :)

A pity i haven't really taken flash seriously as a game development platform before this.

Performance-wise, getting into the "this is an embedded device with slow hardware" mindset does take a bit of getting used to. Nowadays i just refer to my little list of things which i know is slow. e.g. uncompressed texture uploads, disk i/o, various system api's, etc.

Re: A Browser within a Browser: HtmlCanvas

James Urquhart — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:29:46 -0000

Possible in the far future, sure - but seems a bit of overkill for a potentially annoying effect. ;)

Re: RailsCollab isn’t Dead

James Urquhart — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:06:35 -0000

No mailing list at the moment. Not been much demand for one - closest thing currently is the issue tracker on github.

Re: An Analogue Clock using Safari Transforms

James Urquhart — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:44:22 -0000

Yikes! Thanks for pointing that out. Seems i misconfigured the server - should work fine now. :)

Re: Flash Plays SCUMM (sort of)

James Urquhart — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 16:57:21 -0000

Hi there. The code for hiscumm is not located at http://github.com/jamesu/cl... :)

Re: Making a Real Calendar in Rails

James Urquhart — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 04:15:01 -0000

Regarding the plugin, as with my original code you can customise the event view by passing a block to the calendar helper (along with the configuration options). i.e.:

calendar event_calendar_options do |event|
"<div>#{h(event.name)}</div>"
end