djbuzzkill

dx development - week 14

2006-05-05T20:33:42Z

Well, another week has passed and still haven't worked much on it. It is basically done but, I would still like to polish up some rough edges on the demonstration. I'm glad I really pushed to get my project done early because crunch time is picking up for my other classes so I've still been focused on those this past week. Maybe next week I'll have some final photos again.

dx development - week 13

2006-04-29T21:13:23Z

I have not worked much on the project this week as I have devoted a little more time to my other classes. I intended to put a little more time in but, the the availability circumstances of the capstone room and my schedule made things a little difficult. I'm planning to put some time in this weekend as I can be pretty sure there will not be any faculty meetings during that time.

dx development - week 10

2006-04-14T06:14:59Z

It's almost over. The primary project is complete and ahead of time. I did not work much on the project this week, aside from minor code clean up and optimizations. I will also complete documentation of the project this coming week. Luckily there are several documentation generation libraries available for Common Lisp. The one I'm using, called cldoc, evaluates every file in the entire source code library and creates namespace, type and function documentation, along with an index of all public symbols.

Now for the fun part. Part of the original goal is to release dx as an open source project. I'm gonna start looking through open source licenses to find which one fits my project the best. Currently the BSD license seems to be the best match as is the case for many lisp projects. I don't know what kind of reception, if at all this project will recieve but it will be available if anyone is cares.

dx development - week 8 & 9

2006-03-26T06:48:47Z

Its amazing how many bugs you can find when debug levels are turned all the way up. The engine is mostly complete and the final stretch is devoted to working on pac elephant.

The central effort in pac elephant is the game state. It should be simple as it mainly needs to keep track of peanuts. So far, the performance of lisp has demonstrated to be fairly acceptable. I haven't done any quantitative tests, but the framerate is smooth, well over what I was aiming for. The debug builds are also able to produce reasonable performance, although there are noticable stalls with diagnostics turned all the way up. While the engine is pushing well under a million polygons, I am quite impressed as my development platform is hardly ideal for high performance graphics.

There is also a new project, cl-ode, i would like to make use of in dx. It is however too late to introduce it into the engine before the end of the semester. But this is very good as I expect dx to eventually be an engine with comprehensive features.

Im done with programming for the day but here some more pics:

pic00
pic01
pic03

dx development - week 6 & 7

2006-03-15T23:04:52Z

Yes, I have been slacking, at least on journal entries. Most of the game engine is essentially done current development is mainly on Pac-Elephant. I am torn between adding features to the game engine or making pac elephant look flashy. Adding more features may not necessarily be seen in the final demonstration. On the other hand, adding visual appeal simply to make the demonstration more appealing doesn't sit well with me either. Since this is primarily a game engine project and not specifically a game, I don't want to draw attention away from that aspect but at the same time I understand the need for a good show.

Making the game objects are cool. I can slowly see a DSL evolving, that is, a Domain Specific Language as I create Pac Elephant. There is a need for a specialized language to create game objects surely. Another example I can see is a Scene Definition. While these items are way beyond the scope for dx, at least for the capstone project, I can definitely see a place for this in future iterations of dx.

I am more familiar with the features of lisp now and so finding more use of them in the project. Some obvious parts that stand to gain the greatest benefit have been rewritten using macros, one of the biggest advantages of lisp. However, I have also avoided certain features which I have assumed to be slow. While such features, such as run-time function generation isn't available in static languages, I naively assume that this is very costly and something to be avoided during a real-time application.

Spring Break is coming up but that doesn't mean dx be taking a break. This is the time I can get the most done if not completed. I am still weary of performance issues even though the sections which presented the biggest bottlenecks have been tackled. I'll try to get some pics up since we all like those.

dx development - week 5

2006-03-03T05:29:08Z

An update when the week is almost over? Yes. That's because there was nothing exciting to write about. I mostly cleaned up alot of code revised some things and just played around with different ideas. The project is making progress though. This week mostly consisted of design, and thought about the direction the project is taking. Coding started up again later in the week so dx is on the move again.

At this point, the scene management and terrain system is done. Collision detection is in progress and Pac Elephant has been in progress early on in the project. I have more to write about next time.

dx development - week 4

2006-02-19T05:27:38Z

I've been in front of the screen so long, I can barely see straight. Many of the details are, by themselves, trivial. But when you have alot of them, they begin to add up. That was two of my problems, the text rendering and resource loading.

Text rendering first. This also involves resource loading, however. I initially thought that i could easily use a text overlay buffer on top of the main buffer. I don't know enough font packages well enough to start learning now. So I came up with the alternative of using 3d text, essentially rendering each character of text as a model. I figured, "no problem". Of course easier said than done. Luckily I knew that a certain modeling program, Wings, provides a simple feature to create text as models. This was tedious but not really that hard. The hardpart was trying to convert the individual characters and load them in as one model. However, problems started happening when I tried using it. No matter what text I wanted to render on screen, all I got was literally "0", that is, "0" being the first text model in the series of alphanumeric character models. I eventually loaded each model individually, potentially adding extra performance overhead by increased buffer switching between character renders. But so far, there does not seem to be any significant impact. That took up two days.

Resource loading also gave me some trouble. Aside from separate character loading, I had to specially format certain images for use as textures. the jpeg loading library doesn't seem to like .jpg's save from photoshop for some strange reason. It kept saying, "unsupported format". Great...time for another workaround. Fortunately, this was a simpler solution to solve. After touching up the jpg's in photoshop, I performed another save through, of all programs, MS Paint. The jpg library accepted images created from a free program over a $500 one. Oh well.

The scene management system is almost done, as well as the terrain system too. So far, i have been able to remain ahead of schedule, despite unexpected problems. I attribute this to the over estimation of the time it takes to develop in lisp. Amazing as that sounds, I have been able to code practically as fast as I formulate my ideas, and I'm still learning lisp as I go. Now back to work.

dx development - week3 pt2

2006-02-15T00:17:17Z

Here's a screenshot with final features. Although the only thing is texturing that you see, you are not getting the fly through and increased framerates..

dx development - week 3

2006-02-13T09:11:03Z

The first major part of the project is done. I actually had to add additional pieces to the renderer gain the performance I desired and it sure paid off. I got kind of worried at first because I was getting a slide show, but now as far as i can tell, the frame rate has surpassed my goal and in fact i might even need a timer function to maintain the render loop at a consistent rate. Of course, things might change once I start to combine it with the complete game engine. How did I get such a big speed jump? Well, I had to use additional OpenGL functionality in version 1.5. The additional features allowed me to move all of the geometry data from user memory directly into video memory, eliminating any data movement in the during the rendering loop. I also gave in and compiled alot of the code with optimized settings. The first part went surprisingly smooth. I just hope things'll continue this way.

So what is my situation now? Well, there is good news there too. Separate development across the engine components is unrealistic. I have actually already written and been using certain portions of other parts of the engine too. Largely, the game objects which i will be using in the game are done such as the camera objects, triangle meshes, and material objects. I needed these to encapsulate the data for my test rendering phase. Later on, additional data will be attached to them such as boundings for collision detection. Sometime later during the week, I might have some pictures to post, but that is all for now.

dx development - week 2

2006-02-06T17:24:32Z

I've been actually jumping back and forth between to systems, the rendering and the user interface control. interactive testing is makes things much easier during development and testing. The rendering engine is coming along pretty good. The coding is actually taking up a minimal portion of the time. Design is what is taking up considerable time. No matter how thoroughly one plans, there will always be changes. Luckily the changes have been minimal so far. The biggest problem right now is the rendering of the models. There seems to be rendering artefacts in the lisp environment compared to the when they were used in a C/C++ application. I'm not sure what is causing this yet. If it was the winding order of the polygons, I probably wouldn't see much of the model at all. However, this happens only with certain models, so I know it isn't the winding order. I think I might not have properly initialized some OpenGL states where they may have been automatically set in a C environment. I will have to play around it further.

Many details popped up and had to be dealt with as they were discovered, such as figuring out whether I was properly using API's or if they were actually third party bugs which cause gross severe performance degradation to the point where it was unusable as a real-time application. I didnt want to spend too much time on it so I explored alternate methods for copying data to the renderer. Copying data to heap allocated foreign memory seems to cause a severe drop in performance. I instead started using the functions that utilized stack allocated storage. It seemed that this problem would be true for the opposite, but in this case it doesn't seem that way. I am satisfied with the performance for now.

And yes, this is taking way more time than I would like to put in. How do I know where I stand in my progress if I'm jumping back and forth? I arbitrarily assign a percentage to each of the components progress and the percentage remaining of the allotted time for each component is what i use to check against the actual time remaining. So far, It seems that I am right on schedule or even slightly ahead, but I don't want to get too hopeful.

dx development - week 1

2006-02-03T07:55:18Z

This is rather late for my first week, but here it goes. Cross language development is definitely not fun. Although the game engine is primarily written in lisp, I can't get around the fact that I must create C bindings to interface with the OpenGL API. The C bindings are light wrappings of C code which make OpenGL functionality accessible in the lisp environment, I have the struggled with them for a little longer than expected but I'm glad to say it is finished. Now I can start into the main part of development and finally into lisp coding. The first component I will start work on is the rendering engine. More on this next time.

Hey, this blog's still up!!!11

2005-12-25T16:46:04Z

Enduring Understanding

2004-05-17T22:40:49Z

What was the enduring understanding? There were alot of speakers of many varied backgrounds and careers. They were all considered successful and had their own ideas and methods that they followed, but all of them had a common idea that they convey in their own way and what I consider the enduring understanding. So what is it? It is setting yourself apart.

Jamie Dinkelacker explained setting yourself apart by reinventing yourself. Whatever you do, you have to think of ways to present it to other people. Maybe somebody has the same idea as you, but if you are to express it in a more elegant manner, you'd be the one recieving recognition.

Dorai Thodla's spin on setting yourself apart was thinking about thinking. It should a be a very apparent way to set yourself apart, addressing problems or creating new ideas by thinking about it on different levels perspectives.

Arlene Krebs was the speaker that was most striking to me and also presented writing in a different light that got me thinking.
"Your writing is all they know about you."
This is of course true for proposal writing but it is also true for every kind of writing. If people have never met you, all they have to go by is your work, your ideas, your writing. Writing is more than something you just do, it is a representation of yourself.

All of our speakers presented something helpful and different but the enduring understanding I will walk away with is "setting yourself apart'

I. I.

2004-05-08T00:34:54Z

We were lucky because we didn't have any time constraints. After the first presentation, we knew we had one less problem to worry about. Three to five minutes is really not much time, especially when there are several people participating. So now, everything's just cruisin' . This coming week's presenters will get our fully undivided attention.

Arlene

2004-05-06T19:26:18Z

;She made a very good point with, " your writing is all they know about you". Until now, I didnt care to make many revisions with my writing. I always felt that people aren't so critical with writing errors as they can usually figure out what your intention is. But there is far more reason as Arlene stresses, It was also interesting to see her up there, as we were able to see how a good writer works, constantly writing and rewriting passages.

So far, she would get the most inense speaker award for 300. She was tired up there, but that is what I was told. I would not have known that otherwise.

John Ittelson

2004-04-20T00:52:57Z

Hmm. Apathy, Listlessness, total disregard for other people's proposals and ideas. Im exaggerating, but I tend to get like that when an idea is not my own. I dont feel that other people dont have good ideas, sometimes i just cant get myself excited about it. its a little self centered and i know it and i try to im trying to change that. My fault, or rather, weakness, is a problem that can be really bad, especially in a professional environment.

As for my strengths, I feel that i get the job done, no matter what it takes. Im sure alot of people can relate, How many of us have deprived ourselves of much needed sleep and rest to get schoolwork done? My roomates think im a weirdo, theyre right, because theyve left and comeback the next day am found me sitting in the same spot. I think im sharing too much.

Presentation

2004-04-13T00:45:42Z

I cant say that Im gonna have anything special in my presentation. Im counting on the content itself to be what makes it cool. There are a couple of reasons that im gonna do this. One, I dont like sales pitches. I know it might help, but personally even the slightest hint of insincerity turns me off and i stop listening. Second, ive seen attempts backfire, especially ones that require audience participation. You never know how cooperative the audience will be. This is just for me. I wouldnt mind seeing some else try.

Presentations

2004-04-06T01:07:31Z

;A good presentation can be a combination of alot of things. They can be good visual aids, information, delivery, etc. However, it think its very hard to achiev these things if you are not enthusiastic about it yourself. If you dont like what you're talking about, what are you doing up there, cause someones making you do it? Maybe : ) But thats a different story. When some one is presenting, it helps to see that he/she knows believes in what he is trying to tell us, because it definately shows. Second, visual aids are effective if they are doing what they are meant to do, be visual aids. Having key points and sentences is defeating the purpose. Why are you making your audience read? At most any text that is on a presentation should be used at a minimum, like only as captions for an image. And I disagree that pretty colors distract from the presentation. How boring will that be if your presentation had the same boring colors as that bad presentation that came before you. But all the other tips for presentations sound good, like contrasting text, blah blah. When it comes down to it, you want the audience as excited as you are about whatever you are talking about.

Mike Liebhold

2004-03-18T06:15:50Z

Its 2004 so wheres my robot butler. That show, the jetsons was so high tech. I mean seriously. They had cribs in the sky. What were they built upon? I hope we are gonna have homes at a higher altitude before we become a space faring species. We need to in order to get used to zero gravity. Personally, i get sick sitting in the back seat of the car. I cant wait to have a spaceship. what if my spaceship breaks down in the half way passed uranus. Ill be a sitting duck for abductions. I got scared enough driving up here to monterey. There were times where the stretches of road were so desolate, i didnt even hear crickets. I thought, shit im gonna get an anal probing for sure.

our futurist didnt even have a space suit on. One impression that i have from all of our speakers is one thing, think different. I hate to sound like an Apple ad, but thats what you need to set yourself apart from everyone else, especially with employers and excelling your field. His ideas were cool, but i dont think ill get around to reading much science fiction. I do, occasionally keep up with whats going on in the world of science. Thats is what these science fiction writers do. minus well make up your own ideas straight from the source. The spatial web is a totally cool idea. This gives people, seeing as we are spatial beings, a more logical organization of data. I have always driven passed something and wondered what the hell that was. Of course this adds an entirely new world of abuse of the the web. Ive got a new idea already, proximity spam! If you get too close to a site, BAMM! youll be blitzkrieged by popups. Of course thats anymore intrusive compared to pop up junk already.

djbuzzkill @ 2004-03-09T21:09:00

2004-03-10T05:10:06Z

I chose this school because of the location. I should not be disappointed then that this school doesnt offer what i wanted to do. I wanted a traditional computer science degree, but the school's inventive new names, kinda threw me off, so i thought a computer science degree is buried in there, somewhere. Everything is as the name suggests. technology, multimedia and applied computing. Nowhere is there any indication of a more formal, scientific or exploratorive nature of computing. Has computer science come to an end? Is all that there is left another form of mindless media? Wasnt computing supposed offer more than e-commerce sites?

Dorai Thodla

2004-03-08T22:23:22Z

Writing down ideas has always been something ive always considered doing, but never got around to. His lecture has prompted me to actually commit to it. Organinzing is a new idea, especially organinzing it in a tree is a new idea for me though i have not detrmined it to be of any significant help yet, as not many thoughts have occured to me as of late : )

There were a lot of very abstract and nebulus items that he addressed as well, mostly memorably, the diamond with all the branches of math. I wasnt sure where he went with that.

when i grow up

2004-03-01T22:24:15Z

or when i graduate, I would like to have experience in the field of visualization and software design. Being a game programmer is cool but doing research in the field of computer graphics is another alternative. eventually, i would like to do pure reseach, but that is thinking far down the road.

Dr. Dinkelacker

2004-02-18T18:37:29Z

Needless to say, Dr. Dinkelacker is a powerful speaker. He certainly made a point on job performance and attitude. The part where he talked about advertising your self as something your not is a point I feel strongly about. Time and again I have seen resumes that have bogus skills and experiences and I think to myself the truth will eventually be exposed.

I didnt quite fully understand the reason he gave for us as being in a "Charmed Era", but maybe Im just missing the point. Yes we certainly have communication and information virtually at our fingertips, but it seems that every generation seems to have their own significant circumstance that has evolved the culture and lives into the world we live in today. Yes we live in a "Charmed Era", but we are not the only ones, or the last.

Silicon Valley

2004-02-17T02:09:50Z

It seemed really exciting for Entrepreneurs and Engineers as they were pioneering an entirely new industry. That was a big part of the growth of Silicon Valley. They wanted their new technology to succeed. Did they have any Idea what affect it will have on our lives? I dont know, but they sure didnt want to keep it to themselves. The Entrepreneurs were as enthusiastic about the industry as the engineers and that is what seemed to be a big factor in Silicon Valley's growth and success.

It was also interesting to see that the companies were trying to create a real close atmosphere with the emplyees. Although the company sizes numbered in the thousands, it seemed that they spent a lot of money on their employees to make them feel like they were part of the team, like banquets and lotteries and who can forget that overly appreciative girl that won a quarter mil.

s.v. & .com

2004-02-09T06:28:49Z

what they have in common is the over anticipation of an industry that didnt quite grow as fast or fast enough. In other words the industry jumped the gun. Both times the booms came to fast. People were not eased into it. I guess both times the idustry thought that things were going to change over night. I would say that we are finally meeting the original Si Vy outlook for the penetration of technology into our culture. Mostly everyone can agree that the intended practicality is now a reality mabybe even surpassed expectations, it just needed time.

What the difference is that the Si Vy boom seemed technology driven or in fact was technology driven whereas the dot com industry was fully driven my money and business. The dot com industry tried to put every facet of life on the computer and it was just overkill. In fact I used to work for Free-PC if anyone knows what was, they gave away free computers in exchange for recording their consumer habits. How's that for a business model? If you lived here, you'd be home right now.