To my numerous and loyal followers (*snickers in self-delusion): you may remember me saying yesterday that there were three glaring problems with the version of TT that was up. Well, I fixed two of 'em.

The whole "can't Plus if you could take the cards normally thing" has been repaired. As easy as I anticipated. And the wonky animations, too easy: I just accidentally forgot to set the right sizes for the sprites before telling them to do their thang.

Unfortunately, the other problem still plagues me. I know the idea behind what I need to do to fix it but have no idea how to write it as code. I'm sure I'll manage to think of something. I'm not going to try to fix that today. If I work on anything, it'll be getting the GUI sorted round and learning a bit about internet programming so multiplayer can happen.

I also decided to give the releases a version numbering system. The current version is v. 1.0.3 since this is the third release of the first major version.

Since I'm on the phone right now with half of my audience, I thought I'd let you know that maybe the only solution is to pour the crystallized crap into your DVD drive ;P

Alright kiddies... I uploaded a new version of TripleTriad (you know, that game for which I should really have a version numbering system but don't...). As usual, it's available at the download page.

It's working and mostly playable. Everything works as it should but there are a few problems:

• Most of the animations are a touch screwy. They get the job done and look better than nothing but they're by no means what I'm aiming for.
• The Combo animation is hella-screwy! While an animation is likely to show up somewhere, not all cards in the combo will be animated. They will be flipped, I assure you, just not animated. I know why that's like that but I have no clue how to fix it without breaking everything.
• Various rule awkwardnesses have popped up. For example, say you play a card that would do a Plus. Say this card could also normally take one or both of the cards involved in the Plus (just by having higher numbers). It will take them the normal way instead of the Plus way. This would make infinitely more sense if I made a diagram or animation but that's OK. If you use the Same/Same Wall/Plus rules, you'll come across it soon enough. Anyway, I think I can fix it. Just not now.

There's likely other errors too but I just can't fix them right now. I may do it tomorrow or something. But not right now.

In other news, my hard drive is slowly but surely dying. It's made some interesting noises these past few days, including bzzzt...click. I've also just found evidence that there's been a marked decrease in my drive's speed (an unplugged laptop in power-saving mode loads everything for TT in 3 seconds, my computer takes about 7 seconds; the two computers are quite comparable). I'm hoping it's just that my drive is disgustingly defragmented 'cuz if it ain't I'm royally screwed. If nothing else, I've been backing up the TT code to online storage every time I exit C++ Builder just in case. I'll try defragging tonight and if that doesn't work...

I forgot to mention it earlier but when I reread the post and noticed about my FTP problems, it reminded me that I'm going to have to find new server space. GeoCities is discontinuing their direct FTP support. That is not good for me considering I use WebLogue to update this page (it updates the page via FTP). As such, I would be reduced to doing page updates manually... eww.

Now, I forget how long it is until I lose FTP access but irrespective of that, I need to find a new place to store myself by then. But I have to make my choice carefully...

You see, I want PHP access. ASP would be acceptable but PHP is preferred. If PHP can't happen, SSI wouldn't hurt. 20 MB is plenty for me. I could get by on 10 MB. Well, unless I wanted to do the forum myself. Then I may need more. Domain name is hardly an issue. I don't fancy myself important enough to have one. Now, the price: free... yes, I'm a low-life, blood-sucking leech that won't pay several measly dollars a month for hosting. Well, for all the hits I get, it's not worth it yet. Not to mention that neither I nor anyone I know possesses a venue by which hosting bills could be paid (namely a credit card). The scripting support's mostly for the opportunity to learn PHP for such time as I may need it.

The other implication is that I need a new name (for something good as the domain). The SANE in the name used to be an acronym (of secret meaning) that is no longer meaningful. Not to mention, the name seems to have been used for other things too so I'd be all infringing and stuff. That's bad.

So, give me suggestions. On names or on a hosting service I could move to. OK? Bye-bye.

I'm so close to having a new fully functioning version out, I could scream!

And scream is what I'll do. In changing to a frame-rate independent system, I had to change the rather nice and simple setup for flipping a card over in an animation to an ugly mess that required automated scaling of sprites, a bunch of constants at which I guessed the appropriate value and a degutting of the original play card function. Part 1 is done (a little mal-functiony but close enough for now). Part 2 is getting there. It's not terrible but the speeds are a little off and weird. If it didn't take so long to recompile and re-run the program, I'd just keep trying until I get it right. And I can think of no convenient way to just test things out quickly. Part 3 is not even started. I have to essentially to go through the function and whenever I start an animation, I cut out what's there and plop it into a PlayCardPartDeux() function (I'd never name it that but that's the idea). Then that function gets called after the whole animation for the card flipping is done. That will work almost flawlessly. The only problem I can foresee is if someone by bizarre (and as yet unseen to me) circumstance manages to pull a Plus and Same at the same time. That might mess it up a bit...

So, God willing, you'll have that new version tomorrow some time. In the meantime however, feel free to play the week old version from the downloads page. I'd have updated in regards to that but something was wrong with the FTP server when I went to do that. So now you know. I don't much recommend playing it though...

I'm extremely close to having the DirectDraw version of TT finished. Now, when I say extremely close, I don't mean like usual. Unless the coding gets sticky on me (which it might), I might be able to finish this version tomorrow!

If I don't get it done tomorrow, then it'll have to wait until next weekend (the start of March break for us). I'm just not going to have time this coming week. I'll have my usual complement of homework (including 2 project proposals by Friday, I think). And I've got 4 rehearsals for the school play (two and a half hours each, Monday through Thursday). Not to mention, sleep is probably a good thing once in a while.

So, if you read this tonight, check back tomorrow to see if it's here. It might be a little unpolished but at least it'll finally be something.

Hoo boy! I've not updated for an awfully long time now. Well, I've been doing stuff; of that you can rest assured. School, extra-curricular activities and preparing for university have been eating copious amounts of my time recently so I'm glad to be working on TT for once (that's a change from my usual self).

But I digress; unfortunately I'm not ready for a downloadable update but I might be soon. For now, I want to say that rewriting things has gone fairly smoothly. I've got it to a point where the game can almost be played again. IOW, you can pretend to play cards and they'll be put on the board but the cards aren't actually played such that they'll interact with their digital cardboard brethren. Nor is there much animation in there yet. Here's a screenshot so you can get an inkling of what it can presently do again: Screenshot. I didn't feel like making a thumbnail so you don't get one.

Andrew's also helping me with some of the coding again! He wished to completely absolve himself of his rather shameful base code (the code used for the binary on the downloads page). It worked but it wasn't pretty so he left me to clean up his mess (I don't mind too much any more: legacy programming is an entry level programming job so I may as well get used to it now). But I wanted to return the favour to Andrew so I asked him to fix my sprite class because while it works and it works well, it's very poorly written from an object-orientation perspective. I can't really do much more until he's done with it because I don't want to have to repair too much code in the event he changes method names or parameters (which he will likely have to do).

So yeah, that's what's up for right now. Just thought I'd keep all my loving and loyal fans in the know. *laughs at the delusional concept of me having fans*

My Algebra & Geometry exam is on Monday but since I didn't feel like actually studying, I decided to do something almost like it: work on TripleTriad.

You see, to make the old code nicer looking, I put together a little sprite class. And since any sprite movement required is strictly linear in nature, I figured I'd set it up so I could tell the sprite where to go (pixel lcoation) and based on its current pixel location, it would figure out the angle at which the sprite should be moved. Then my render function would handle the actual movement based on that angle.

Well, in theory, this is a very simple thing to do. If you remember basic trigonometry, you'll know that to find the angle between two points, you use arctan [(y2-y1)/(x2-x1)]. Where (x1,y1) is your present location and (x2,y2) is your destination.

I tried this and it didn't work quite right, much to my bewilderment. Then I remembered that the coordinate system on computers is not quite like a standard Cartesian Plane. Two differences: positive y-values mean down, not up; angles are rotated clockwise from the terminal arm, not counter-clockwise. So now my angles are all messed up and I don't have a clue how to correct them. Well, they're sort of right. Say I want it to move 30 degrees to the upper-left. It'll move 30 degrees to the upper-right or lower-left or something. But I'll be damned if I can get my head around why this isn't working.

I'll figure it out soon and then I can continue on my merry way. Just felt like whining a bit.

Update: I'm an idiot. In both my Gr. 12 Math class last year and in Calculus this year, the teachers spent all this time drilling it into our heads that our calculators are inaccurate when it comes to the inverse trig functions. For any value I throw at the arctan function, there are two different angles that are possible (only going from 0 to 2π here, or 0 to 180° for the radianally disinclined). And since the calculator (or computer in this instance) can't possibly know which angle I really want, it spits out the smallest one by default. Anyway, I figured out that to fix it I have to use the atan2() function, which does take that into account and gives me the right angle. So now linear path following is working like a charm! Just had to say something as a reason to stall before going to spend the next 8 hours studying for my Algebra & Geometry exam.