Thursday, April 18, 2008

I downloaded the GTGE source code today. I want to commend Paupau, the creator of GTGE (http://goldenstudios.or.id) for opening up the source to GTGE and thereby ensuring its longevity. I plan on making substantial changes to the engine over the coming months.

With the passing of time, computers have gotten more powerful, and since the FPS was never capped in the game, gameplay has gotten faster (and better), but at a cost: the Ringer level, which used to be playable, is now know longer playabe (i.e., winnable) on most modern computers without running a slowdown program. I plan on modifying this level to make it winnable and today's more modern computers. Eventually I will investigate the frame rate of the game, and when I'm satisfied with the performance I will cap the frames.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Unfortunately it's been over two years since I've touched the code. At the time I last worked on the code, I had very big plans for the game, but life is what happens when you're making other plans. Now, as time and health permit, I'm going to try to work on the game again.

I've pulled the complete development directories from the hard drive of my old computer, which was an XP system. The development "environment" was always just simple batch files and good old vi. But now I'm using Vista, and I'm finding that Vista has some glitches with batch files, mostly due to the new account-control security system. First, if you don't run these batch files as administrator, they just plain old won't work. It simply won't find "javac", even though I've added it to the PATH environment variable. So you have to run them as administrator.

But that's not so easy. You would think that Microsoft would make the security a little more flexible. Here's the problem: It's a hassle to have to always right click on every batch file and choose "Run as Administrator". It would be better to set the batch file to always be run as administrator. Unfortunately, Microsoft only gives that option for EXEs and shortcuts, so now I have to make a shortcut for every batch file, set the shortcut's Run as Administrator option to true, and click on the shortcut. Note to Microsoft: Please allow "Run as Administrator" to be an option for all runnable file types. Anyway, even with this option set, you still have to manually choose "Yes" to allow it to run as admin because that's part of the security system in Vista. The "Run as Admin" option just sets it to *try* to escalate, but the user must interactively approve it. That's Vista: extra steps you have to do in an effort to prevent malicious programs from installing themselves.

OK, so now I make a shortcut for my batchfile and say Yes when it asks to run as admin. Does it work now? Nope, still doesn't work. Something unexpected: When you run a batch file as administrator, it ignores your "start in" directory and starts instead in the location of your System/System32 directory. There may be a security reason for this, and I'm not totally against it, but at the very least, under the box where you choose "Run as Administrator", Microsoft should put a note that says that if you choose this option, your Target Directory settings will be ignored and the program will be started in C:\Windows\System32 or wherever. So basically, I have to start all batch files with a CD to the home directory that they're already in.

One more note to Microsoft: Under the help for the Start command (start /?), you've spelled "SEPARATE" as "SEPERATE" in one place. Whooops.