Apparantly my hosting service had shut down services yesterday and for most of today in order to fix a few things up and do even more updates. It's kind of frustrating but at least things are going rather qickly. Earlier today all of my pages were being served up as plain-text!
In any case, this posting is just an indication that I know what's going on, but I have no option other than to sit back and wait this out. I do realize that my forums and anything else that uses PERL/CGI on the site is down.
If, once the fixes to my server are complete, and things are still broken I'll look into what may be causing my scripts to fail. Until then, there isn't much I can do. I'll keep you all informed; and I'm sorry you have to struggle with this as much as I do.
Archives - April 2004
2004.04.28
2004.04.27
As I write this my hosting is currently down for mainenance. This has been going on for a while but I'm not too discouraged. They recently upgraded their servers, so this kind of thing is expected. Supposedly after this fix things will be completely fixed, and there will be no more problems. I hope so. For what I pay, and for the service I've got in the past, I'm not too terribly upset. Their turnaround time for getting things to work is usually quite rapid. Hopefully I'll have this uploaded and you'll be reading it only a day late. If it takes longer than that, well, we shall see what happens. I'm truely sorry for everyone who has been reading the posts lately and experiencing all of this downtime such as I have. If all goes well this will be the last chunk of downtime until another major hosting update. I shall keep my fingers crossed. This is actually the first time I've experience this much downtime with my hosting service since I started using them.
A lot has been done in the coding world. The Zep's Dreamland OS X port is practically finished (the game only). I took the time to get rid of all the warnings that could actually affect how the game will run. There are still some warnings while compiling about deprecated functions since I'm using a newer version of allegro. Those warnings will be taken out as well and the game will be compiled warning and error free. So far, everything works perfectly fine. I've only had to change a few lines of code that cause things to crash or run improperly. Other than that, the game is basically finished. After fixing up my code to use the new, preferred, allegro specific functions, it's onto porting the editor.
Things have been going very smoothly. I can't wait to make an official OS X release of Zep's Dreamland. I'm also planning on possibly creating a new level set to accompany this great event. How many levels it will hold is uncertain. The additional level set is still unconfirmed, but to me it seems like it would be a really great way to test out the parts of the game that are most susceptible to errors while porting. We shall see. :)
A lot has been done in the coding world. The Zep's Dreamland OS X port is practically finished (the game only). I took the time to get rid of all the warnings that could actually affect how the game will run. There are still some warnings while compiling about deprecated functions since I'm using a newer version of allegro. Those warnings will be taken out as well and the game will be compiled warning and error free. So far, everything works perfectly fine. I've only had to change a few lines of code that cause things to crash or run improperly. Other than that, the game is basically finished. After fixing up my code to use the new, preferred, allegro specific functions, it's onto porting the editor.
Things have been going very smoothly. I can't wait to make an official OS X release of Zep's Dreamland. I'm also planning on possibly creating a new level set to accompany this great event. How many levels it will hold is uncertain. The additional level set is still unconfirmed, but to me it seems like it would be a really great way to test out the parts of the game that are most susceptible to errors while porting. We shall see. :)
2004.04.26
Well, here we go! Finally another update! It's been quite some time, so I'm glad I'm finally getting a chance to write about all of the things that have been happening lately.
After the whole fiasco of trying to build a new Windows system and having that completely bomb, I have been turned away from trying to build my own system. Well, needless to say, I finally got a new system. Ironically enough, it was the same exact machine I was intending on getting even before considering building a new Windows box. What I am using now is an Apple PowerBook G4 15" notebook. So, what does this exactly mean?
Many of you may be scratching your heads. More of you may be chuckling, wondering "why anyone would want a Mac?" Well, to each his own, I suppose. For me, a new operating system and a new type of computer opens up more doors and possibities to me. I view this as a very good thing. But, wait! What does this mean for future games created by LoomSoft? Well, don't fear. I haven't gone the way of leaving allegro just yet, and that is perfect for this situation. Since it is cross compilable/compatable I will be able to create games that run both on OS X as well as Windows. Getting my games out to a larger audience is definitely a good thing. Sure, I could just tell people on another operating system to go compile things themselves, but I'm not releasing source code any time soon. :)
I've been spending a lot of the past days configuring and setting up my new system, especially getting allegro to work. It's been difficult as well as fun. After getting Allegro to compile itself as well as compile games correctly I started to port Zep's Dreamland to OS X. Needless to say, it went extremely smooth. It isn't complete yet; but the main game and original levels work fine. It took a little bit of configuring and fixing-up, since there were some Windows-specifig stuff in there; but I got it working. I think actually porting the level editor is going to be harder than the actual game itself! While working on ZD on my new system, I noticed a lot of stuff that could use revision. Windows users can most likely expect a fixed-up version of ZD as well, once I have completed porting it to OS X.
So, other than the port of ZD coming along smoothly save for a few little os specific quirks, that's about it for new stuff. The undercover project is at its usual stage: in heavy development. Yes, I always say I'm always thinking about it, but that's because it is true. I've actually done some new concept sketches recently, and I'm quite happy with them. They really do help me formulate things better in my mind.
Untill next time! Hey, I may even have some screenshots of ZD running in OS X. :)
After the whole fiasco of trying to build a new Windows system and having that completely bomb, I have been turned away from trying to build my own system. Well, needless to say, I finally got a new system. Ironically enough, it was the same exact machine I was intending on getting even before considering building a new Windows box. What I am using now is an Apple PowerBook G4 15" notebook. So, what does this exactly mean?
Many of you may be scratching your heads. More of you may be chuckling, wondering "why anyone would want a Mac?" Well, to each his own, I suppose. For me, a new operating system and a new type of computer opens up more doors and possibities to me. I view this as a very good thing. But, wait! What does this mean for future games created by LoomSoft? Well, don't fear. I haven't gone the way of leaving allegro just yet, and that is perfect for this situation. Since it is cross compilable/compatable I will be able to create games that run both on OS X as well as Windows. Getting my games out to a larger audience is definitely a good thing. Sure, I could just tell people on another operating system to go compile things themselves, but I'm not releasing source code any time soon. :)
I've been spending a lot of the past days configuring and setting up my new system, especially getting allegro to work. It's been difficult as well as fun. After getting Allegro to compile itself as well as compile games correctly I started to port Zep's Dreamland to OS X. Needless to say, it went extremely smooth. It isn't complete yet; but the main game and original levels work fine. It took a little bit of configuring and fixing-up, since there were some Windows-specifig stuff in there; but I got it working. I think actually porting the level editor is going to be harder than the actual game itself! While working on ZD on my new system, I noticed a lot of stuff that could use revision. Windows users can most likely expect a fixed-up version of ZD as well, once I have completed porting it to OS X.
So, other than the port of ZD coming along smoothly save for a few little os specific quirks, that's about it for new stuff. The undercover project is at its usual stage: in heavy development. Yes, I always say I'm always thinking about it, but that's because it is true. I've actually done some new concept sketches recently, and I'm quite happy with them. They really do help me formulate things better in my mind.
Untill next time! Hey, I may even have some screenshots of ZD running in OS X. :)
2004.04.11
It appears that all cgi-scripts running on my site are now having sever problems and crashing out. I'm quite certain that my host's upgrade of their PERL software probably broke everything, but I'm currently looking into it. If worse comes to worse I'll simply have to reupload the complete forums and see what I can do about bringing the posts back and preregistering all the old users so they can have their names back. Hopefully, I will only have to reupload the actual cgi files, so it shouldn't be too bad. I'll post more when I receive more information from my host.
Happy Easter!
Happy Easter!
2004.04.09
It has been quite some time! Unfortunately, there isn't much to update. Some of you may have noticed that my website was "down" for a short period of time yesterday (or maybe even longer). My host updated their apache server as well as perl which caused some strangeness in their servers; but all is well now and nothing has been lost. It wouldn't have been that much of a big deal as I keep almost everything backed up less the forums. I may do a big backup of them at one point and see how that goes.
As for terms of "the project," I played around with only a little bit of the code. I've shown more of my design to a few more people and have received some feedback as to what they like, and don't like. It is helping my flesh out my storyline a little better in my head; but it's still a long process. I have all the components; I just need to tie them all back together. This is the tough part! I need to make those ties enjoyable and worth your time, when you play the game!
As for terms of "the project," I played around with only a little bit of the code. I've shown more of my design to a few more people and have received some feedback as to what they like, and don't like. It is helping my flesh out my storyline a little better in my head; but it's still a long process. I have all the components; I just need to tie them all back together. This is the tough part! I need to make those ties enjoyable and worth your time, when you play the game!