What's Going on?
Hi -- I know the blog has been inactive for a while, and I have been receiving a lot of inquiries as to what is going on ... well, here it is.First off, my personnel life has gotten really busy in the last year. My "day job" took a turn for the worst and I had to transfer to a new division. My new position is both a time drain, and a brain drain -- I am doing things that I find both boring and in the grand scheme of things pointless, so I am completely unmotivated to do them. For anyone who has been in that sort of situation before, it's odd that it can suck up so much time, and exert both a physical and mental toll on a person. I am looking for other more fulfilling opportunities, so hopefully that will pay off. As a therapy, I may start trying to post about some of the more absurd things that I have to go through in my workplace. I do need to be careful though, as I do not need to tip any of my coworkers off .. but I mean, how much more obvious can I be, my license plate says MINDREC -- think they'll find mindrec.com ?
In addition to the job being a drain, my family has gotten bigger, and will continue to get bigger in the next few weeks. In October we adopted Ivy. Ivy is mostly a Lab, but only about 30 pounds of Lab -- we are not sure if she is a mix, or a runt, she certainly seems to act 100% Lab. Needless to say, Ivy demands attention (and lots of ball playing), so there is more free time that has gone away.
In 2 weeks, I am expecting the birth of my daughter. Not that this has taken up time, but the preparation for such has been time-consuming. Had to get the nursery already, and of course there are some thing that my wife cannot and should not do at this time, so that has put more burden on me -- burden is not the right word, since that makes it sounds like I am resentful, I am not. But it does tend to take up time, and time that will hopefully guarantee the health and well-being of all when our daughter arrives.
And if that weren't enough -- about 8 months ago I started a conscious effort to drop some weight. I was over 180 pounds, and figured that if I did not do anything that I would be sending myself into a mid-life crisis prematurely. So, I have been making time every evening to workout. So far I have dropped about 18 of those pounds, and I would like to drop another 15 or so by the end of the year -- that would get me down to a reasonable 150, where I think I should be.
But wait -- there's more.. .late last year I started getting inquiries about indie contracting work, so I have started doing some contracts (web work, stand alone apps) -- these take time, time that is taken away from PCE Development efforts.
So ... where does that leave the PCE Development efforts? Well, they are still there, and I am hoping that I can get back to them, but several things need to happen: 1) I need to get my current contracts finished up (I have 2 new ones that I have not started, and 2 more that I need to finish up). 2) I need more time. . .(don't we all). One of the big benefits that I previously had, that enabled me to do PCE development work was that my job forced me to do a LOT of travel, a lot of international travel. This gave me lots of "dead" time from both travel time and "off work hour time" where I was able to do PCE Development. In fact, most of Implode was programmed while I was in Sweden. Now, I am not claiming to have a crystal ball, but there are a few things that may happen in the next few months that might allow me to get that "free" time back. Of course the first thing I will do is finish the existing contracts that are outstanding, and then get back to PCE Work.
And even if things don't change job wise, I can pretty much see that I will need to change within a few months, or I will do something drastic that I will later regret (no, not bodily harm, more harmful to my career, or at this point, lack of one).
I will be taking most of the month of May off for child care (thank you 6 weeks of stacked vacation time), and will hopefully be able to get some work done then, and when I return in June, will start pursuing alternative career options (hint: if company out there is looking for a technology maven, let me know), so that things can again keep rolling.
In the mean time, .. for those of you that got the MB Signature edition -- you may have found an unfinished hidden demo on the CD. I have been given some thought to this, and think I can get it completed in a relatively short amount of time (this is the same thing that happened with Loop, it sat unfinished for months, then I had an idea, implemented it, and the game was done). Not promising anything, but those are my intentions.
As always, your comments are welcomed -- either privately or publically.
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3 Feb 2006 Mailing Lists and PC Update
Well, February is looking better than January already....Turbo List & Sega List News
I have been given access to the old files from joyce, there is one small issue as the files no longer belong to me, so I do not have access to all of them. I have asked that this be corrected, and once that is done, will go ahead and snarf everything. After that, I will need to sort through them, and get the approriate ones uploaded, part of this will also be to send all former list members a notice to let them know what happened to the lists and what they can do to get back on them. I will not just be adding everyone.
PCE Dev Box Status
The Dev box is still in a coma, so I have decided to upgrade and get a more modern system. After looking at available options, i decided on a Dell Inspiron 9300 -- not that I am a big fan of Dell (especially since they do seem to include a lot of garbage on the machines when they ship them out, 4 copies of AOL? um, why?). But it was the value. I got a 2 GHz laptop with dedicated 128 MB (dedicated) Video card, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB disk, wireless, bluetooth and Dual Layer DVD burner delivered for about $1200. Will take about a week to get here, and a few days to get setup, so further PCE Development is just a week or so away.
RPG Discussion Board
Is up and running, you can access it at http://rpg.stolm.com. All the forums are non public, and require administrator approval for access. If you are interested in helping out, or giving input, then please feel free to join us.
-bt
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PCE Dev Box Update (1 Feb 2006)
Well, things are looking bad on one front, but very good on another.....Since I was unsure if my PCE Dev Box would survive, I started looking at replacement boxes about a week ago. The bad news is that the model that I use (a Dell Inspiron 8000) looks to be pretty mch 100% incompatible with all current models.... so even buying a replacement Dell and slapping in my CD Burner would not be a realistic option.
On the plus side, this means that I do not have to be locked into a Dell when lookng for a replacement box, but it does mean that I risk getting a machine that cannot burn a DAO CD.
Onto the very good news ....
All of the above may be unnecessary at this point anyway, as the old laptop is starting to show signs of its old self. I have been installing only a minimum amount of things needed for PCE Develoment, and last night I was able to get MB compiled. Tonight I will try to burn a CD (I am not expecting any problems, but it will be a major milestone).
Once that is done, I will need to seriously consider what I should and should not install so that I can do those other non-PCE Dev related things that I have a PC for (and how many of them can be shelved off to the Mac, for example).
Things are looking good, but it will be a while before I am no longer gunshy about slapping everything on this machine that it shoudl have.
And one more recent development....I am seriously looking into the feasibilty of Dreamcast development. More on this later, but right now it is just a "maybe" sort of thing.
-bt
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31 Jan 2006 - status of PCE Development (PC Resurrection)
Well, this has certainly been challenging....After getting the laptop all "setup" it started freaking out on a regualr basis ("Unknown Hard Error", and the occasional random Blue screen o' Death). So I decided to start over again. .. I re-installed Windows 2000 and SP4, and so far the machine has been running for about 12 hours without a hitch. If It is still alive this evening, I will place a few more things on it to try and get my PCE Development environment up and running.
If somewhere in that line, things fail, then I am ready to order a new laptop, knowing that I will have several challenges with such a device, especially for PCE Development.
1. Everything Win based now adays is XP -- and XP has a command line issue... althoguh a command line command can be 8K long, the actual paramters that oyu pass to any command are limited to 127 characters. In order to link Meteor Blaster, I need about 245. I have looked into oterh command line replacements, and found none that work, so this means that I will need to re-think that way that I do my make files for large PCE Projects.
2. The CD Burner... in order to burn a PCE CD, you need to have a specific kind of burner (one that supports DAO), when you buy a machine, you have no idea whether the CD burner included can do stuff like that, so there is about a fifty-fifty chance that any new laptop I get would not be able to burn PCE CDs
Now, several of you have written about MB SE....the differences between the Signature Edition and the normal edition are:
1. Loop version 2 (versus version 1)
2. Hidden new ship in MB
3. Custom MB Title screen
4. Some improved graphics in the MB game
5. Hidden demo of a new PCE project that is under development
the new title screen features a color changing "DX" (as an aside, most folks are unaware that the regualr MB game actually had 5 different versions -- the version that you have is based on the color that the DX is on the title screen), and also you have a custom 30 character message, so that you can add your name, or anything (within reason) to the title screen of MB to customize it for yourself. Each version is also numbered and autographed by me. You can order the SE either through TZD, or through MindRec.com -- if you order through MindRec.com, just order the normal version, and tell me what customization you want on the title screen.
I am hoping to have PCE CD Burning capabilty back by the weekend, and will fill orders on a first come, first serve basis..
-bt
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25 Jan 2006 Updates
Welcome to 2006.So far the year has been both bad and good....
First the good....
The Saturn List is back from teh dead now as well. However to make it more encompassing, it has been renamed to the Sega List and the topics of all things Sega are welcome (Genny, MegaDrive, Saturn, DC). I have recently rediscovered my DC, and have been having a great time with it...
I have also discovered that it is suffereing from the same fate that many older DCs are. That is that sometimes games wil refuse to be recognized as game CDs, and other times (when they are), the game will stop in the middle and return to the opening DC screen. So, I did what all good fans do, and order a new DC. However, I have also found that if you close the CD door, but do not latch it, then games appear to play fine. To do this, I place 2-3 CDs with jewel cases on top of the DC. It's an interesting workaround, unti.l my new DC can arrive.
To get on the sega list, send a SUBSCRIBE request to sega-list-request@mindrec.com
The data in the Sega list was copied form the (new) Turbo List, so there may still be some references to Turbo this and Turbo that -- deal with it, I will get them swapped over in time. =)
Now for some Bad News.
Recall about 2 weeks ago when Microsoft released an URGENT patch (ahead of schedule) to fix a nasty security issue with the WMF ... well I installed the patch on my Dell Inspiron 8000 (Win 2K Professional), and that's when the trouble started. After the next reboot, my laptop started running at about one-quart of it's usual 1.00 GHz (yes, it's 5 years old) speed. This basically made my PC unusable (althoguh some would claim that with Windows installed it was already in that state). Well, after a few days of poking around, I removed the security patch, and the PC went back to its usual speedy self. ... for 3 days.
Then hell broke lose. FIrst my PC's Print subsystem went away, my 2 network printers just simply vanished, and trying to "Add Printer" gave me a "Print Subsystem is not available" message. Looking in Services I found that my Print Spooler was, in fact, not running and trying to start it claimed that some of it's dependecies were "marked for deletion." Looking through the dependency tree revealed no clues as to what this mystery service was.
Then, the PC started acting dog slow again. I checked to see if MS has re-slipped their WMF patch on me, and no, it did not appear so.
Now keep in mind, that this machine is regularly scanned for virii, spyware, etc... and all scans that I ran showed nothing, yet Windows Explorer was always taking somewhere in the 50-100% of the CPU and using 256 MB of my available 512 MB.
So I figured after 5 years, maybe it was tiem to "reset" the box. So last ngiht I set about clearing the OS and starting anew.... here is the steps that I have gone through...
Install Win2000+SP1 from Dell supplied restore CD (reboot)
Manually install M4 Video Drivers since Dell did not include them on the restore CD (reboot)
Install SP4 (needed for security updates) (reboot)
Install Ie6 (needed for Windows Updates) (reboot)
Install new Win Installer FIles (needed for Windows updats) (reboot).
See that there are 28 "URGENT" security patches, start them installing
come back to PC in BSoD state.
Reboot
Win won't load, claiming that OSNTKRNL.exe is missing or corrupted (reboot)
Use W2K CD to "repair" the just made W2K installation (reboot).
System comes back up, but it is still 28 security patches behind
So, other than being a "Zombie bot wannabe participant" -- I still have all the usual software stuffs that I need to install.
So, why does this matter? Well, this PC is my PCE Development box, and PCE CD Creation box ... so basically until I can get this machine up and running again with all the PCE Dev tools that I need, all PCE Development is on hold.
On a side note, I have looked at possibly replacing this machine, but there is a big problem... all current machines run some form of Win XP, and quite frankly there is a problem with doing PCE Development under XP. Now, most development will be fine, but for a program like Meteor Blaster DX, there are many different parts that make up the code on the CD, and the "command" to link all this pieces together is approximately 255 characters long. ...under XP the Command line can only handle "127 characters" of parameter data, well under the 245 that I need. So, if I have to move to an XP box, then I will need to look at a command line alternative.
More Good News, and how it ties to the Bad.
The first 18 copies of Meteor Blasted DX Signature Edition were shipped out on Monday (before I started the re-imaging of the Dev Box). Folks should start to receive them today or tomorrow.
Now, since the PCE Dev Box is "under the weather" no more copies will be burned until it is fixed and back to "normal." I am hoping that this will happen by week's end, but this is Windows we're dealing with.
Now, onto current PCE Development happenings.
PC Gunjin, Xymati -- FraGMarE has been working on some images, and when I get a development laptop back, I will start getting them incorporated.
RPG -- nothing has happened, and I realize that if I want this to happen, I will need to recruit some than just graphics persons...after the whole SE thing is over (end of the month), I will open up a web site and those persons interested in helping with mapping and scripting (and otehr parts) will be given access and hopefully we can get this going as a collaborative effort.
New Hidden Game -- I was feverishly trying to get a new demo game into Meteor Blaster DX Sig Edition, but due to my PC problems I was not able to get it to a fully working demo. Now, I did include this unfinished Demo in SE (but it is hidden). So those of you that have ordered SE will get the first chance to publically see what's in store. When finished, this game is also looking to be my first real J2ME offering
Also, in other news -- since SE contains Loop v2 -- the original Loop (as included on the original MB SCD), will be released for public download in the next week or so.
Wow -- lots of stuff.
-bt
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