The life of a wannabe Games Programmer
Kore 2 from Native Instruments is probably every sound organizer’s wet dream with sugar on top. Not only can it control a multitude of Softsynths but it’s database makes it easy to organize sounds and find them quickly when needed. I’ve purchased this nice tool last December and what’s better than telling a few details on how I put it’s features to good use?!
Download: dark & modern looking UI skin for Ableton Live 6/7.
A while back I’ve created a custom skin for Ableton Live with this handy freeware skin editor. The editor dates back to Live 6 but it seems that skins made with it work just fine in Live 7. Live’s approach to UI design is very minimalistic which I think is a step into the right direction but the default color palettes are not everyone’s taste. I’ve been using this skin since a couple of months and it works nicely so here is Dark2008, a dark - but readable - theme for Ableton Live 6 and 7.
In game development randomness is often necessary for certain tasks, be it the random distribution of graphic tiles, a random factor in NPC AI or random stats in a roleplaying game. Especially for the latter purpose the static Dice class provides a set of methods to roll dice as it is common in a Role-playing game, to be exact four-, six-, eight-, ten-, twelve-, twenty-sided and percentile dice.
The AnimatedBitmap class provides functionality for Bitmap objects that are animated by using a series of still images. When creating a new AnimatedBitmap you provide a BitmapData object that contains an image that consists of the ’single-frame’ images for the animation.
Alcon is a lightweight debugging tool for ActionScript developers that provides several straightforward and quickly accessible methods to debug any ActionScript 2 or ActionScript 3 application, be it from the Web Browser, the standalone Flash Player or an AIR Runtime. It offers an easy way to output debug information from anywhere, not just while in the Flash IDE or in the Flex Debugger. It comes packed with an Application Monitor that can monitor the framerate and memory consumption, an Object Inspector for viewing the properties of any Object, Array or Class and up to two File Loggers. Alcon runs on any platform that supports Adobe AIR and can be used with the Flex compiler, the Flash IDE or MTASC.
FEAT (abbreviation for Freelancer’s Estimation Assistance Tool) is a tool to help freelancers calculate hourly rates and project pricing estimates. It is inspired by a very similar calculation PDF sheet which was created by Lauren of creativecurio.com and by some other useful freelancer pricing resources on the net.
The tool uses the same calculations like the ones from the links mentioned above plus it stores your values so you don’t have to enter them again every time. Version 1.0 features hourly rate calculation, a project pricing wizard and an option to change the visual theme of the tool. It also resides nicely on your desktop or wherever you put it and is there whenever you need to make an estimation.
Recently I needed a HashMap for a project to map key/value pairs but in that particular case the Map required to map not just one but several values to a key. I could have used an array or object to store the values in and map that one but in practice it turned out that accessing the map looked rather messy. It would be much more elegant to have a map to that multiple values can be mapped directly. After some investigation (strangely even Java seems not to have a MultiMap included) I came up with writing my own MultiMap class, so here it is!
Centered Selection is a simple but neat little JavaScript for Photoshop CS+ that can be used to create a rectangular or elliptical centered selection while maintaining the aspect ratio (i.e. width and height of the selection stay the same). Several options can be changed like the feather amount and the padding around the selection, whether using Antialias or not, creating an inverse selection and if an alpha channel should be created from the selection. This script can save a lot of hassle when trying to create a centered selection (imagine all that shift-, control- and space-holding and pressing to resize and drag around the selection)! As always a screenshot says more than thousand words.
Download: Custom VEB Missions and Campaign for Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games
My big move has been delayed for a short time! I will leave here at the end of December and move to far east in middle January! I actually packed everything and made most preparations so I’m stuck with being bored now, counting every minute and hope that time passes faster.
So what to do? One good idea I had, was to keep up with writing some blog stuff that I already planned in my mind. One if it being about one of my favorite Abandonware DOS games Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games!
Over the last couple of decades this game kept me from being bored often! With it’s cozy winter evening fireplace warmth strategy gameplay atmosphere and quietly playing midi music it charms easily to take a session of round based war monging.
Download: C64 Tools Disk images “SMS Tools 1 & 2″
After finally having the change to access some of my over ten years old C64 floppy disks relics with the XE1541 cable, I’ve found some neat rare tools which we used back in the old days and which you might want not to miss for your D64 file collection …
So here are the two SMS tools disks which contain various useful tools from my time on the 8bit era.
Main Feed (contains all categories),
Dev Feed,
Design Feed,
Audio Feed,
Gaming Feed,
Miscellaneous Feed