I added a bunch more functionality and finalizations to my little text-bubble class. It's great! It now allows for text padding as well as a custom background to be placed behind the text. Take a look at all of it in action: Use any font, any borders, any background, change colors on the fly, use any size padding!

I was contemplating whether allowing for the background image to be either tiled, or stretched. Currently it automatically streches the background image to span the size of the bubble. I have yet to decide on what I would like to do for this issue. In addition to that, I wanted to have "pointers" which will be stick out of the text bubble to point to something that may be speaking the text in the bubble. I was initially thinking of allowing the user to create the pointer themselves, a set of 4 pointer which would in turn be used for placing a pointer in all 8 general directions (including diagonals). Even though they seem quite complete and could easily be used in any project, I would like to add some more functionality to them.

I was also thinking about allowing for the ablity to show a single bitmap image inside the bubble instead of text; as well as showing a bitmap in the bubble and having text appear beside it. The latter would be a little more difficult to accomplish, but I don't think it's anything "impossble" to do. It's something I'll have to put on the agenda. I like having things to do again. :)

What!? I actually did some coding today. Is it possible? Yes kids, it is! I did a whole bucket-load of coding today (supplementary to an itty bitty bit of coding I did on Monday night) and got some good work done! Of course, it is for my next project. I can actually reveal what it is simply due to the fact that it could be used in any project. I pretty much just finished a nice little text message scrolling function that's optimized for use in any kind of project. It's great. It is very different from the Zep's Dreamland style text scroller; so don't go rolling your eyes at me already!

This text-processing function allows for the use of custom "border" images and it will resize itself accordingly, dependant on how much text there is as well as how big the borders actually are. Oh yes, did I mention that it will parse through newline characters and make the box the correct height as well? I also forgot to mention that it allows for special escape sequencing which will allow me to do all sorts of things. The only one I've programmed at the moment is multicolored text messages. You can use the escape sequence to change the color of the text to any color, mid-message. That means that while the message is currently scrolling in black text it can instantly change colors to any (r,g,b) value; on the fly! It's great.

I haven't had much time to work out the kinks yet (if there are any), so there may be some hidden problems here or there. Unfortunately there are no screenshots of this fun little widget in action, but there will be once I get the chance. I hope to completely clean up and comment the code for this tomorrow. As for tonight, I am finished!

Oh, how great it feels to be truly motivated!

I have been in a lull for quite some time. My computer story has progressed further, but very much so in the negative direction. The IDE controller on my motherboard was in fact defective, and upon receiving my new motherboard all was fine and joyous. Shortly thereafter, however, using my system it simply turned off on my randomly, which sucks. Anyways, the power supply simply freaked out. Trying to turn on my system once again was a complete failure: everything started smoking. So much for that. I decided it was time to give it up, return all the pieces from where I got them, and to pretty much just get all the money back that I could. I'll be out only for the shipping. I'm not being charged any restocking fees. Now that's customer service! Although they sent me a few defective parts (it's not even their fault, as they aren't manufacturers), I'd recommend NewEgg if you need any computer parts or want to build a system.

Thus being said; I've had no real time to do any development for the sole fact of building the same computer (and having it fail) twice in a row. *sigh* I've been doing a lot of work on the "in-brain" development, which is nice. I've had a big long time to think about all of the things I want to incorporate into my next game and hopefully they will all be able to make it in. I am sure, though, that not all of them will make it. Due simply to the fact of being the only one working on it (unless some awesome artist decides to randomly help out again!), there are just some things I won't be able to do myself.

Off to work; as I'd like to alot some of this free time I have to start doing some more official work on a project!

A new level set for Zep's Dreamland has been submitted in and uploaded to the custom level set section. The set consists of 5 levels; all of which are quite difficult (at least for myself, heh). Make sure to check them out! I'm glad to see that more people are submitting their custom level sets. Remember, if you're working on one or even have one completed, please submit it via email! I would love to try them out and host them!

I recently went through the whole process of researching on, and purchasing a new computer; buying the parts and assembling it, of course. Much to my surprise it was actually one big nightmare. Not only did my packages arrive a little later than I expected, due to weekends in which shipping does not occur, one of my components was defective! Apparantly the IDE Controller on my motherboard was malfunctional, so I had to send it back. This whole process of trying to figure out what the heck was wrong in the first place took almost all of last week; so I got absolutely no work done... on anything, which is quite sad. I wish I did have some time to work on more things. Hopefully I can get back on track this week. I won't have to deal with putting the new system together for at least another week and a half.

In terms of development I've been thinking about a lot of things, as I usually do. And, of course, I'm going to keep very quiet about them. I don't like to release anything I'm not definitely sure I want to persue as a long time project. I've fallen into that pit of talking about small (and large) projects that I was working on which eventually just fell apart, or somehow morphed into something great and new (which is the case with Zep's Dreamland). I have a few game ideas in the works up there in that brain of mine. Some of them are simple and others will require a lot of work to flesh out and turn into something that I can actually acheive with my artistic/musical skills. It can be tough working on everything yourself, that's for sure. I learned that lesson quite well working on Zep's Dreamland. It wouldn't be where it is today without the help of Johan, who did such a beautiful job on the art. So, the brain juices are flowing, don't worry about that. It may be a while before I release information on a new project, but there are new projects in the works. That, my friends, is definitely for sure.