January 29, 2012

Speeding Ahead

Life is slowly settling down over here. School has started with some pretty interesting stuff this year. Firstly we have a math analysis course in multiple variables which is ok. I'm not a fan of the previous analysis courses but maybe this will be a bit different. We're contining with computer hardware, microprogramming and such, and I enjoy it a little.

When I started programming the big question was how did the code I typed into my editor become something the processor could understand? I've got a good feeling for different programming languages, and now including the assembly for 86k processors. Now the basic hardware, from logical gates to ackumulators, and code are being connected together which feels very nice indeed. I still like to construct and make stuff in a more high level way though.

We're also having a new course, it's been totally remade since last year, about software prototyping. I'm quite used to prototyping with my games but as expected a university course about the subject is a bit more structured and dare I say more boring? The course book, Effective Prototyping for Software Makers, is pretty good as it explains the design process in a formal, but not mindnumbingly boring, way. I need to investigate more but I'll definitely use some of the ideas.

The last course for now is the advanced course in linear algebra which me and a friend chose. Linear algebra was probably the hardest math course we've had but at the same time I think it's the most enjoyable and useful so far. And finally I hear it's very useful for programmers in computation and 3D programming so it's something I really want to understand.

Life with Veronica is also working out, mainly because she's awesome, and I went to a Taekwon-do training this week. Feels good to practice again!

December 7, 2011

Finishing Stuff

I haven't done much blogging or game programming in a while but instead I've finished some school stuff. We completed the assembly course labs, which were pretty fun actually, and I managed to finally complete the electronics course I've been holding off on for like forever... But now it's gone, yay!

There's not much left before christmas either, we have some sort of exam on tuesday (very boring course) and one the 20th (very fun course) but other than that I'm free to do whatever I want.

• I'm planning on entering Ludum Dare next weekend, finally getting some game programming done.
• I need to recap this year and plan some for the next. I fear this year wasn't as productive as I had hoped.
• I've been thinking that I know my tools (Vim, the command line) but I need to get a little bit better. Especially with emacs as I feel like a monkey on a typewriter when I'm forced to use it at school. Not cool.

And some more smaller stuff I don't have energy to type out (or maybe you're interested in reorganizing my home folder?).

November 21, 2011

A Nice Weekend

I've had a pretty nice weekend. On Friday MLG Orlando began and I've been staying up to 2 and sleeping until at least 10 the last days. My inner night-owl is very happy about it, my early-rising girlfriend perhaps not as much, but I think she's a bit understanding?

On Saturday we cleaned the house for Christmas and hung up a star and stuff like that. It was brutally hard work (laugh if you like) but I pulled through without dying too much. Saturday night was full of StarCraft again though so it's fine!

What about Sunday then? Even more StarCraft of course!! IPL had some grand tournament, which Stephano won of course, and MLG had it's final day. In the middle there somewhere we had some taekwon-do and I did some laundry. With that done I sat and shouted at my chosen ones in the tournament and they did do okay, not like I had hoped but still. Leenock managed to win MLG which is pretty damn awesome.

Now I need to adapt to a normal life again, with school and Ludum Dare coming up.

November 5, 2011

Done this, done that. What now?

Finished and uploaded our java game Grand Thief Arto, done an exam (didn't quite go as intended) and starting some new courses in school. I'm liking my choice of Computer Science more and more. Data structures and Algorithms was a super fun course, I actually ordered a new book about the subject just yesterday. Linear Algebra is really fun now as we're getting deeper into it and we're looking into assembly and processor structures now too. Awesome. I can't believe I considered doing physics or electronics when I could take these courses. Now if I only could do operating systems, compiler construction and language design...

In the meantime I've finished Design for Hackers and it was a really nice book to be honest. I never knew there was so much about design and now I keep noticing funky stuff like what font a particular website is using, what colors and how they direct the reader. I also see a lot of inadequate stuff on my page and I have a few things I'd like to try.

I also read Watchmen, the comic, and it was absolutely wonderful. Sadly I saw the movie before but, naturally, the comic was a lot better. So wonderfully dark and ah... Simply awesome.

October 19, 2011

The End of the Tunnel

Lately I've been feeling like there's been a shit-ton of stuff going on, quite a turn-around from the last time.

One course about data structure and algorithms (super fun to be honest) has wrapped up. We thought we were ahead with the assignments but in the end it got very stressful. I sat up pretty late trying to optimize our code from 0.16 to below 0.15 seconds and it almost drove me crazy...

My last resort was to convert all strings to integers and do some funky bit shifting operations but it got too late so I had to go to sleep before making it work correctly. Of course I couldn't sleep and I lay and thought about all the things I didn't do or where I could've messed up. I woke really early, couldn't sleep, and I went to fix it before our presentation that morning and look and behold! It was fixed in less than 15 minutes and it was blazingly fast! It's funny how sleep or a nice shower can solve almost any problem you have, except hunger I guess.

While this was going on I also took part in a competition of some sorts in connection with the course. There was a programming problem after each lecture that we had to complete and the goal was to get as few hours as possible after the problems were released. Most problems were quite easy but there were a few hard ones. One I also lost some sleep over! But again I woke up and had to run to the computer to try to solve it... At least I won some money for some lovely new books so I guess it was worth it.

We're now finishing our other course, the one with the Java game that spurred me to wanna make more games, and I think I spent a bit too much time on that... The game turned out pretty cool, I will make a post about it tomorrow I think, but it was a level or two above the actual demands I think so we could've chilled and not stress that much. And now we only have to document it! Describe how all the classes work with UML and some blocks of text... Sigh.

And oh yeah, we had totally forgotten to write a project specification that was supposed to be handed in over a month ago and we had completely missed the deadlines for the other assignments in that course. Luckily the deadlines were only suggestions and our assistant was cool about the specification too so we survived with our head still intact.

It just seems so silly though. Why did we wait with the other assignments, I think I did them in one day or something, until the very last second? It seems like I've been here before, and I don't like it. This time I had a bit more control over the whole situation but it's still not quite good enough.

Anyway now when this is all finishing up I can start to relax again. But then the thought creeps up on me: what's next?

I'm probably gonna program, make a game or two, go through a language, read some books, train a lot... Urr I'm getting all stressed out just thinking out loud like that!

No I need to relax. Maybe read some more manga? Yes, that is indeed a good idea...

manga...

September 30, 2011

Being Productive

School's been going on now for... Is it a month and a half maybe? I don't know really but it's all going so fast, week after week is disappearing and I don't know where they go but I know that I'm at least not wasting them like I did most of last year!

Last year I managed school sure, but without doing anything special. Well if you don't count watching nearly every GSL live (from 06-09 or 11-13 on weekdays) which is pretty awesome. But that's also taking away a lot of time when I could've (and often should've) studied - sadly I skipped a lot of school last year. I admit GSL can't explain it all, I was lazy okay!

This year I'd like to a bit better and it has started out fine. I haven't skipped a single lecture yet (Java doesn't count!!) and I'm not too far behind in anything and a bit ahead in others, in summary I'm doing great, heh.

Aside from school though, which is almost even more important, I'm feeling good and getting things done. Our home hasn't burned down yet so that's some success right there, but I'm taking it even farther and taking care of some cooking and stuff too, of course with Veronicas help but anyway. I'm also increasing my Taekwon-do training, doing some reading and a bunch of other stuff. Programming too!

I took the advice of Cal Newport and now I actually plan my days, every day, on the morning or the night before. Here's an example:

• 0730 - 0900 Program
• 0900 - 1000 Call OnOff, electric company, DN, corren
• 1000 - 1100 Program
• 1100 - 1130 Food
• etc..

Of course I don't really follow it to each and every point, but it helps me know what I need to get done this day. Often I skip and I reorder and I do other stuff a lot but if I've done at least half of what I set out to do I've been more productive than I'd usually be! And I even remember to do stuff like make a prenumeration on DN which I would never had otherwise.

Something else that's helped me is a regular and healthy sleeping pattern - go to sleep and wake up at the same time, every day.

I'm feeling good about school and everything but I've got stuff left to do so don't see it as a perfect example - far from it to be sure, but it's a step in the right direction I guess.

August 18, 2011

Resurrection

Aah what a nice summer!

It was nice to be back in Övertorneå, doing nothing in particular. Just not having to make lunch and dinner every day is such a relief, and if you do slip up food with grandma or Veronica's parents is only a phone call away. I watched TV, played rollercoaster 2 and simcity 4 and just killed time in front of my beloved (PC).

The only real work I did was clean the house a time or two and made food for my little brother Filip and did some exercises with him when my parents worked. But it was a pretty small price to pay as my mum helped me invest in a new computer! Of course dad couldn't find out but that wasn't so hard - I do live about 1400 km away from home anyway.

But now things are moving back to the way things were before the summer break; I'm back in Linköping cooking (lunch, dinner and breakfast), trying to remember watering our plants and generally enjoying life. Everything is almost set for Veronica's return so I need to take it easy a bit before she storms into my life again tomorrow...

There's a lot of stuff I need to reboot again; studying obviously but I also want to make more games and program a bit which I completely neglected the last months and taekwon-do is starting again! My first practice went to hell though, I almost managed to get a blackout as I didn't drink nearly enough but oh well.

But the first step is to write a bit more here, I hear that's a useful skill to have. Instead of taking a boring class I can just write stuff here I guess.

April 22, 2011

What's up

It's been a while again since the last time we met mr. Blog. I've been busy with school and other stuff. I've thought about you but I just never really picked up emacs to write to you. I know it's my fault but I beg of your mercy mr. Blog. You know that I had laid off school for a bit but now I've caught up with almost everything. I've got a bit of electronics left: 2 labs and one project assignment. It's a pretty damn hard course but now when I've taken my time to sit down and go through everything it's quite fun! It's also a course over the whole semester so it's not even done yet. The other thing I'm behind in is math. I chose not to do the last exam, so I can do it now in about a week.

I'm home in Övertorneå again and it's fairly chill here. It's pretty nice to eat food someone else has made, and I don't have to think about holding the apartment afloat. Admittedly Veronica is a great help (I might actually be the help).

I've been meaning to program a bit but I've only done it a little, I've been watching starcraft and just chillin' for the main part.

I'll be sure to update a bit better for you mr. Blog.

March 21, 2011

A Four-Eyed Update

Wow it's been a while! Almost a month and a half since my last update. There I complained about my almost constant headaches which hampered me a lot actually. Luckily now I have joined the rank of cool.

Glasses: makes the cool cooler

I took home three frames I think and tried them out and I settled some I thought were fairly good looking, nothing special mind you but at least they didn't look horrible on me. Then I went back and I settled on the semi-expensive ones and then I waited. And waited. Then I went back and asked but the glasses didn't fit into the price class I'd chosen, something about the frames being too bent, so I had to pay some more.

Then I waited again, and a little bit more... until I called once more, now I was getting pretty pissed, but they should be here this Friday. They called on Thursday and finally I had them! It's funny, I was going to demand some discount but even the pricier glasses didn't fit and so I got some really expensive ones. Fair enough I thought and so I left.

The first few days were pretty disoriented, but man oh man what a difference. It's funny how you don't realize how bad your sight is before you get a pair of glasses and that really fit me well. Suddenly I didn't have to stick my nose into the screen to see the text and today I was at school the whole day! Sure I'm a bit lazy sometimes but I also couldn't concentrate like this before.

Life is good.

February 9, 2011

A Week of Headache

This was supposed to be a productive week with lots and lots of Perl and Ada but instead I've had this big headache all week, and some the week before and it's gotten pretty bad so I can't really concentrate on anything really. The electronics assignment was a bitch and it took a looong time to complete, even if all I had to do was to rewrite some stuff. You just love when the result is completely wrong just thanks to a misplaced minus sign.

So now I'm a bit worried, luckily not as much as my girlfriend, and what's the cause of this? The lack of water is probably the source of 90% of my headaches but now when I drink and drink it only eases of a bit and then it's back. Painkillers help a bit but I don't want to turn into a junkie just to be able to act normally.

Luckily I think I've found the reason, but sadly it's not the very best one. I think I need glasses. I squint all the time in front of the computer and I'm getting headaches when I'm reading. So this Friday it's judgement day. I dunno what I'm hoping for, if it's glasses then fine at least it should be better, but if it's not then it might be a bigger problem somewhere.

Me of tomorrow?

December 18, 2010

Christmas break

So school is on a break and I welcome it with all of my heart. The semester has been pretty fun and I really enjoy studying here. We had lisp the whole time which is a pretty sweet little language and if you haven't, give it a shot. Then we had math and I do like math, although I wasn't really motivated this time around and I dunno why. Maybe because I think I got it pretty fast and that didn't really motivate me to study when the test came around and I got far too many dumb mistakes I think.. Not good, not good.

Speaking about math then I took an extra course, mathematical statistics or something funky like that but meh it wasn't all I thought it'd be. In fact it was almost a bit boring and when I got problems with my stumach again (dunno why, but I think it has to do with stress or my irregular eating patterns, or both) so I kinda dropped it. But nothing's really missed: we're gonna have something similar later on anyway.

Now I haven't made anything game related in a while which sucks. A month ago or something I was poking at some prototype but it hasn't gotten anywhere yet. I was going to enter ludum dare 19 but then I kinda just didn't, and now it's too late to do anything. And I have like a thousand ideas I'd like to do, but I don't seem to have done anything.

Argh!

And then there's my other programming interests of course. I've been poking at Haskell a few months ago but now I actually want to learn the damn language and the best way to do that is to make something real from scratch, so I've started my own (atm extremely simple) irc bot. Then I've bought the classical K&R C book and some book about Erlang and I'd like to get going with those too.

Add to that we're gonna do Ada in school after christmas which could be pretty darn fun too. There's surely not a shortage of stuff to at least!

October 6, 2010

Going to University

I mentioned in the last post that I'm going to the university, which might explain my lack of activity here and for that I'm sorry. It's not as hard as I had imagined, and I don't have that much in school but there's still a lot that's going on. For example now how to make something which doesn't focus on pasta or meatballs and I've also done the laundry a few times. These are all thanks to my girlfriend and without her I doubt that I would eat anything other than pasta and I would constantly wake up just to find that I don't have any clean underwear left.

There are still a few homework things I need to do from time to time, but those are often either math or lisp which are pretty fun so no harm has been done to me yet.

I should really begin with the game making again now when my schedual is opening up a bit.

A secret preview of my latest game project.

September 19, 2010

The great Hochstapler

Hey there. A lot has happened lately since my last update and my last game here.

I'm now a pretty happy student at Linköpings university and I'm reading something similar to Computer Science or Computer engineering, but I guess it'll become whatever you make it to be. For starters we're reading a bit math and a bit common lisp, which is fun but hopefully this is just the beginning.

Me and Veronica are now living in a fairly nice apartment and I think I've increased my cooking skills a few magnitudes since I got here. Admittedly that's not a too big of an accomplishment...

I haven't had any time, or energy, to focus on game development. There are a few things I'd like to do but we'll see what happens. My friend on the other hand has been productive and he has just finished one of his big game projects: Hochstapler.

Hochstapler, the epic production from Gridlock Games

It's a really fun game with some inspiration from the old commodore and I really recommend you to give it a try. The only downside is of course that I just can't beat his highscore!

April 6, 2010

The games that make me who I am

I read an article the other day where he met someone who didn't read fiction:

He suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for "mere" entertainment

I don't agree with this view and neither did he:

Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are unlikely to happen otherwise. You can experience thousands of years worth of events by reading fiction. Yes, it is true that what happens to you in real-life — with it’s finality and incomparably richer stimulation – out-weighs that of a book. However, the course altering moments in life are infrequent. Fiction provides a means of accelerating your “personal growth.”

He then gives us a list of fiction characters who has made him who he is, many small pieces of trait that has become a part of him.

Interesting I thought and I began thinking of what characters I could identify with (Lincoln Rhyme and Robert Langdon comes to mind) but then I started thinking of games. What games has made me who I am? It's not an easy answer and it'll never become exhaustive but it's interesting to think about and here's my try:

Worms
I played the demo of Worms 2 to death, I ran to my friend all the time to play Worms Armageddon and I've been addicted to blasting ugly worms with banana bombs ever since.

RollerCoaster Tycoon
I love rollercoasters and I love to build stuff so naturally I played the games a ton... I'm still tingling with excitement when I think of building a super-coaster. The builder that is me was born with this.

Hospital Tycoon
Another constructor game with hilarious humor and I'm still harboring thoughts of resurrecting this beauty as a new game. I think it was one of the first games to make me think about actually making games instead of just playing.

Counter-Strike Source
The best anger management there is. Or well I'm not really civil when playing it but it lets me went out pretty damn good, but don't sit near me when I'm playing - it's not good for your ears.

World of Goo
The game that opened my eyes to the wonders of Indie Games.

Supreme Commander
Introduced me to the world of competitive gaming, or rather the competitive mindset. It also helped me become a better person by helping and being a part of a great community.

Evil Genius
Humor + Base Building = Epic Win.

These are just a few games from the top of my head, some had big impacts and some slightly less so.

We started with a quote and that's how we'll end it:

I am the product of my parents, my friends, my life, my experiences…and my teachers.

July 21, 2009

The first (worst) post

Well, here it is: The opening post. What will come here? Here's where I'll outline what the blog will be about and maybe, if I'm dedicated, it won't die before Christmas you think.

And sure, you're right. I will run away to the corner in about two and a half months crying I never got the traffic I'm fantasizing about but I can try to summarize the site in one sentence: I'm going to make a themed game every month. There, I've said it. Tired and scared of wasting my time with a monster-project I've decided to use the experimental project model. Basically I'm going to make a game in 7 days, kinda like God made the world. And I'm alone making these games, all the gfx, the sound and the code.

If this got you interested check back regularly for some cool (I hope) games and read my about section.