In keeping with my unanticipated tradition of devoting no more than half my journal to its purported raison d'être, here's an update on the house we're building.

For the benefit of all four people who actually read my journal (at least zero of whom probably don't already know), my family is building a new house. Well, more accurately, we sign the ( Read more... )

I'm backing up a bit and reworking the UI for the cell phone Chess Club interface:


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For those who don't know already, I have (and am very proud of) a Danger Hiptop cell phone. It's a remarkable device: fully internet connected all the time, with a 240x160 16-bit display and a free Java-based SDK for developers to play with.

There's really no excuse for me to not be writing games for this thing ( Read more... )

Another off-topic post in the so-called "Game Programming 101" journal. I may have to change the name on this thing, if I can't spend more time actually writing games ( Read more... )

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We just picked up a dog from the PA Humane Society. He's a mid-size collie mix, about 4.5 years old, with long reddish-brown fur and a white belly. So far he's proven to be very calm and relaxed; even after two visits to the humane society kennels (which are perpetually noisy) we still haven't heard him bark. He's very patient while the kids pet ( Read more... )

This Saturday I'm going to be testing for a belt promotion in Tae Kwon Do. Here's hoping I don't fall on my butt. :|

[Update]

Success! Double yellow stripe; didn't even break my own toes. :)

And just for completeness' sake, here's a live screenshot pulled from my PocketPC. Yes, boys and girls, the 3D engine is alive and working well even there. One can tap-and-hold for half a second to allow tilting and rotating the board, just as with the desktop version. The pieces are a little less smooth--75% fewer polygons--and the screen ( Read more... )

One business trip and one bout of stomach flu later, here's the latest progress:


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To show a 3D game board, I have two options:

• I can pre-render all the images using 3D Studio Max, then piece them together at runtime; or
• I can simply build 3D models into the program, then draw the 3D scene at runtime.

The first option is what I usually do. Pre-rendering means the game looks just great--3D Studio Max draws beautiful pictures, and I ( Read more... )