Yearly Archives: 2006

DCBlap.blend

This weekend I wrote a plugin for Blender to load the DCBlap map files. Here are some of the DCBlap maps rendered by Blender:

It’s still got a few bugs (the textures aren’t aligned properly) but not too bad for only a day of work and not having written a single line of python before. The next step is to write an exporter, then I’ll finally be able to work on DCBlap levels again without having to boot up Windows to use Hammer. I also wont have to deal with the bugs and quirks that the old map compiler had, so I’ll be able to make much more complex levels.

More death storms

Holy crap, the national weather service mentioned the development I live in!

* AT 1048 PM EDT… NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR TWIN RIVERS… OR ABOUT 11 MILES EAST OF TRENTON… AND MOVING EAST AT 30 MPH.

And they didn’t issue the warning until 10:51, which didn’t arrive in my inbox ’til 10:52. Thanks for telling me what I could already hear 4 minutes ago, NWS.

Edit: The storm was so distracting I forgot my point. ‘Twin Rivers’ is awfully specific for a NWS alert, why not mention the town that Twin Rivers is in? As much as TR likes to think otherwise, they’re still just a development inside a larger town 😛

Random Stats

Here are some interesting statistics from the DCSquares score database:

General Stats

  • Total users that have submitted a score: 373
  • Total games played: 50,097
  • Total squares collected: 1,042,625
  • Total time spent playing: 34 days (note: scores entered through the website do not record a time, so this is actually higher)
  • Average games played per user: 138
  • Average number of squares collected per game: 38
  • Average score per game: 28,235
  • Average combo per game: 45
  • Average game time: 58 seconds

Players by platform

  • Windows: 50%
  • Mac: 48%
  • Linux: 2%
  • Dreamcast: 0% (only 23 scores ever submitted for Dreamcast)

Hall of fame:

  • Highest score: DrunkenAryan scored 645,233 points
  • Highest combo: spam collected 333 squares in a row
  • Most squares: Harryfronman collected 620 squares
  • Longest time: jason survived for 16:47 minutes

Hall of shame:

  • Lowest score: csp scored 1,002 points (scores below 1,000 are rejected)
  • Shortest time: mozza survived for 2 seconds

12 players only collected 1 square but managed to score more than 1000 points.
99% of players use the in-game score client, only 1% of scores were entered through the web.

Over the (yellow) border

I started working on an editor in DreamZZT:

You can even enter the editor during the game by typing ‘edit’ in the debug console, quitting the editor returns you back to the game:

Forums migrated to Vanilla

I’ve replaced phpBB2 with Vanilla on forums.c99.org. Any users that had never posted on the forums and never submitted a score for DCSquares have been deleted, all other users have been migrated over. The user integration between Vanilla and the DCSquares site should be functioning the same (in fact, slightly better) as the phpBB2 version, so please let me know if anyone encounters any issues with the new forum system.

Glasses, glasses!

So I’m playing brain age, and it asks me to draw some pictures. One of the things it asked for was a firetruck, so I drew one. After it’s done it shows you “actual” pictures to compare with, and it shows the firetruck and says “Focus on the ladder on the top” — but the truck I drew had the ladder on the side! 🙁

And the weird thing is my sister did the same thing. Though, her truck was facing left, and mine was facing right.

1 8 4 3 9 7 5 2 6

I solved my first Sudoku puzzle today. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Thanks, Brain Age!

Would you like fries with that?

I completly rewrote the popup text window API today to be much more C++ey, and with it come a few new widgets that can be placed inside: radio buttons and checkboxes.

The title area at the top now shows tooltips, too, like the original ZZT:

The code to construct the above window is:

TUIWindow w("Options");
w.addWidget(new TUILabel("General"));
w.addWidget(new TUIWidget());
TUIRadioGroup *sfx = new TUIRadioGroup("Sound:         ");
sfx->add("On");
sfx->add("Off");
w.addWidget(sfx);
TUIRadioGroup *web = new TUIRadioGroup("Online scores: ");
web->add("On");
web->add("Off");
w.addWidget(web);
w.addWidget(new TUIWidget());	
w.addWidget(new TUILabel("Special Effects"));
w.addWidget(new TUIWidget());
w.addWidget(new TUICheckBox("Pan between boards"));
w.addWidget(new TUICheckBox("Torch gradient",true));
w.addWidget(new TUICheckBox("Animated water"));
w.addWidget(new TUIWidget());	
w.addWidget(new TUIHyperLink("save","Save settings"));
w.addWidget(new TUIHyperLink("cancel","Cancel"));

Much nicer. Of course, you can still construct a popup window the ZZT way:

w.buildFromString("$woah\r
this kind of thing gets hard to maintain\r
when it's all stuffed in a giant string\r
crazy ZZTers.\r
\r
!agree;I agree\r");

Though you can’t add radio buttons or checkboxes through that. After I finish up the text-editing widget, I’ll start working on adding a very basic level editor to DreamZZT.

doublemint fords

Hah! So my neighbor got a black Fusion, I parked next to it today to grab some pics:

Dualing Fusions 2

Dualing Fusions 1

He may have opted for the pricier SEL package w/ the crazy analog clock and climate control, but mine’s got a shark!

Sharkz0r!