Sean Middleditch

Affects

I think I’ve gotten most of the details of the affects sytem for AweMUD planned out. Now just to get around to coding them. ;-)

Friends

So, the “crisis” with aforementioned best friend is over. Thank goodness for forgiveness. Of course, I’ve missed the chance to get a good chunk of her busy schedulre over the holidays now, so we’ll barely see each other, versus the several dedicated days we originally had planned. :(

Flu

So, technically, I have that dreaded flu that’s been going around. Several people my age have died from it this season. Joy.

But, I don’t actually seem to be sick. I have a few of the usual symptoms - the fatigue, the slight dull ache in my head, but none of the others that all the people around me with the flu have (nausea, cough, pounding head ache). I guess that shows how useful keeping one’s self healthy is; all the vitamins, healthy food, water, and exercise must be paying off finally. ~,^

Mapping Software

Right, so no responses; are there really no good Linux alternatives for the programs I listed previously?

Seriously, like I said, I’m willing to pay to get something like this implemented. Not much, honestly, I’m rather poor lately, but some. A good set of Free Software game mapping tools would be very much appreciated by the community at large, too. ;-)

RML

Congrats on the position with Novell/Ximian. Rock on.

BTW, is it true what they say about Athlon processors overeating more than Intel processors? Should I put my Athlon XP on a strict diet? Thanks!

Gifts

I am so broke after buying Christmas gifts this year. Three expensive gaming books, more dice than I can count, a good number of miniatures (yes, alright, so I and all my friends are bloody geeks - get over it), several CDs, a ton of gift certificates… why the heck I even buy anything for half these people is beyond me. I hate being nice sometimes.

I have found it rather funny how, in a group of friends, a particular gift can become very popular. I think just about everybody is getting a copy of the D&D Player’s Handbook v.3.5. (except me, who has it already). I know that’s what I bought my best friend Jason. ~,^

For my other best friend (aforementioned “sister”), I thougth of buying her the BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth) d20 RPG book, since she liked role playing (even out in Seattle away from the Old Group) and she’s an anime nutball. But, the teensy little d20 BESM book, which still requires the other core D&D books, cost $70! $70!! WTF? So she’s stuck with symphonic Led Zepelin and Best of Rush CDs instead. :P

Also, my one friend’s birthday is this weekend. He lived with us for a while, so my mother wanted to get him something nice. We ended up both chipping in for a $40 D&D book (see previous comments about us all being geeks), the Draconomicon. My other friend, who plays a half dragon, is probably going to be jealous. Pity. ~,^

I also wanted to buy a special girl (also mentioned in this blog previously) a gift, but I had no idea what to get her; I have a general idea of what things she’d like (anime, games, etc.) but I don’t know what she wants and doesn’t have, which game systems she owns, etc. Her best friend (my “sister”) wasn’t the least bit help, either. So I bought a gift card. Which sucks, but its the best I can do. Maybe handing it to her with a nice bouquet will make up for the lameness of a gift card.

Exams

So ya, I’m lucky if I get a B in Physics. The last third of the course was crammed into 1/5 of the time, due to the bloody stupid college rescheduling all science classes due to building problems. I just wasn’t capable of absorbing, learning, and reusing all that knowledge so quickly thrown at us, especially given how I never study. ~,^

But, for anyone looking in my general direction, you will be unlikely to find anyone who really cared about my grades anymore. Oh well.

Conclusion

So, I actually have like another 10 things I want to write about, but given that Advogato is supposed to be about Free Software development, and not details about my pitiful life none of you care about, I figure I’ll give it a rest, until tomorrow. ;-)

Mapping Software

I’m going nuts trying to find some decent game mapping software for Linux. Windows users have several decent to high quality tools available, including MapMage, Campaign Cartographer, and Fractal Mapper.

I’ve talked with the developers of Campaign Cartographer, and must admit that I think they’re flaming idiots. They boast about using some archaic DOS-based CAD engine, written in assembler, like that’s somehow a good thing. A Linux port is, of course, completely impossible.

All I want is a decent piece of software to do even the basic world mapping. You know, layout the bounds of some land masses, let a fractal generator do the detailed shore lines, then let me lay down rivers/mountain ranges/forests/etc., and plot some cities and landmarks. That’s it.

A dungeon mapper would also be excellent, tho there are already some various (very simplistic) tile-based mappers around, so I’m not in quite so desperate a need of one.

If anyone knows of any software like this for Linux, please contact me and let me know!

Or, if you think you can write some decent software like this for GTK+/GNOME, releasing it as Free Software, and would like to possibly earn a little US cash doing so, also let me know, and we’ll work out details. (Forwarning: I ain’t anywhere near rich.)

Portfolios

My teachers are going to hate me. I’ve always been really, really bad at putting together portfolio assignments. You know, the compilation of the semester’s work and notes, all organized all pretty-like and such. I never put any effort into them, and it shows.

Despite that, I spent all of Sunday (and I mean all of it) putting together a very nice, attractive, useful portfolio. Go me!

What’s the catch, you ask? It’s not for school, you see. It’s for a bloody game. Yes, that’s right - I spent a day putting together a portfolio for the D&D campaign I’ve been running. Pulled together all my notes on the world, history, pantheon, player events, special rules, and so on into a nice, easy to read portfolio. Also filled it with some notebook paper, and put all the character sheets in it, so now travelling to friends’ houses to play when my house isn’t up to the task (read: nobody wants to listen to a group of geeks gaming until 3 am).

File Formats Revisited

Started working on the AweMUD file format problem I mentioned previously. I found the nice simple solution: here documents. For blocks of text, you just use (near)standard here document format. I even kept in compatibility with the old format (tho it raises a warning) so the short-term.

The second part of the file format problem was whitespace handling. For the data parts, what happend previously is leading whitespace was “eaten”, while trailing whitespace was left behind. This was rather annoying, because its very, very easy to accidently leave some trailing whitespace in, and that can cause a lot of problems.

So, the new code will now trim both leading and trailing whitespace. In the event that you want to keep either or, you can escape the whitespace (either by using a backslash-space combination at the very first and very last character to keep, or putting the data in quotes).

The only change that makes in regards to serious compatibility issues is that quotes must now be escaped. I don’t think any of the files in AweMUD proper currently need that, tho.

Linux 2.6, Fedora and NVIDIA

So Fedora Devel has switched over to using a 2.6 kernel. Woot! And patches are available for the binary NVIDIA driver (including the new, improved, very stable, quite fast beta driver) to run on 2.6. Woot! But my machine locks up using the driver in 2.6. Un-woot!

Not sure what exactly is going on. It’s not the driver itself, as it works fine in 2.4 land. Something is wrong with either the patch, or the specific version of the kernel in Fedora, and is causing it to break.

I haven’t heard anyone else complain about Fedora and NVIDIA drivers, so it may just be something localized to my machine, as well, I suppose. Darnit.

When I have time, I plan on hacking at it again. I’d like to get 2.6 working, just for the Gee-Whiz factor.

Friends

“The very best thing that you can do now, is trade a smile with someone who’s blue now.” — Led Zepelin.

Right, so this whole best friend mad at me thing really, really sucks. It is, of course, entirely my fault. At first I was actually relieved that we wouldn’t see each other this Christmas, since I thought I needed an escape from some of the problems we have.

But, I think perhaps I was wrong. Almost everything I do makes me think about her, and I’m constantly reminded of all the things we had planned to do together over the holidays. I really, really need to call and apologize, and hope I haven’t dug the hole too deep this time. I keep putting it off for fear of it, tho. As I’ve just had yet another lesson in, tho, putting things off never, ever makes it better. ::sigh::

Employment

I need a new job. This one is about as much of a dead end as it can get. Four years I’ve been here now. I’ve had a couple raises, but those were from my high school pay level. No benefits, no real raises, nothing. Yay government budget cutting…

If anyone knows any places in the Ann Arbor area looking for game developers, or even any kind of Linux dev/admin, feel free to let me know. I’ve never ever made a resume or anything (never needed to, before), so I’m not too sure on how the job market really works, but I’ll manage. ;-)

Coincidence

So, apparantly, my mother the other day was looking reviews on my cellphone (a motorola t730), which I’ve previously complained about here.

She was using Yahoo Search, and came across a page that said the phone “bloody sucks.” She thought, “wow, that sounds like Sean.” She read a bit of the nearby text, and saw a comment about playing Dungeons and Dragons. Then a comment about broken brakes on a Ford Ranger. “Wait,” she thinks, “this is way too freaky…” Then she scrolls up a bit and sees the part on how the page is the diary of elanthis - me.

Maybe noone else finds that funny, but personally, the fact that my own mother got my own diary in one of the top 3 Yahoo search results for a Motorola phone is freakin’ hilarious.

AweMUD Affects

Been thinking about how I’m going to do the affect system in AweMUD. First, my requirements for the system:

• Able to create new affects with scripts.
• Affects can be grouped for easy management.
• Affects can be easily applied, unapplied, reapplied.

That’s pretty much it. With that, it should be possible to do just about anything, be it add nano-technology to enhance a character, using psionics to alter an object, or use magic to light up a room.

The hard part is the last requirement. Each affect will basically need a method for each possible “operation.” When an effect (or, more accurately, an affect group) is added to an entity, the “apply” method will be called. When the affect group is removed, the affects will be unapplied. During load, the affects will be reapplied. Not too hard to put in the framework, but it may make coding affects a little harder than it should.

Anti-Smiles

So, yes, aforementioned plans with friend fell thru. And, in a rather inexplicable twist, managed to kill my friendship with my best friend (who I’ve called me “sister” here previously). Ya, I just rock.

I don’t know what makes me even think I can do the aboev AweMUD work, it’s not like I can think about anything other than my ex-friends. Why I keep screwing stuff up like this is beyond me. On the upside, they have medication for it - draino.

School

Need to get registered for next semester. I also apparantly have enough credits now to apply for a transfer to UofM. Which would be nice, I guess, since they actually offer a 4 year degree, versus my community college which only offers 2 year degrees.

But, do I really want to go to UofM? Sure, good name on my diploma, and there’s lots of interesting people there… but is it worth the cost and inconvenience? Maybe I should find one of the cheaper, simpler, smaller colleges that offer 4 year degrees.

Heck, I’m not even sure I want to major in CS. As much fun as I have programming, I only have that fun when I do it as a hobby. Professional programming is a bitch and a half.

GNOME

Like the direction things are heading in. The desktop is really finally coming together. I think hp’s FreeDesktop.org (and, of course, the people and their projects being worked on there) has a lot to do with it.

The one area I’ve yet to see anyone really try to tackle is the scriptability of the system. Some apps have internal scripting interfaces, and support one or two languages. But there is no system-wide standard language; one app may use Python, another may offer that and Perl, another might only use Guile, etc. It’s a horrible mess for developers and users.

What I’d like to see is a solid framework for exposing application script interfaces, which could be automatically exported to any language the framework supports, plus be exposed over Bonobo and/or CORBA, allowing “remote control” behaviour. And, of course, for the apps to actually bother to use this framework.

The ability to control apps with COM in Windows is amazingly useful, and it’s a shame an OS like UNIX/Linux, so known for its ease of scriptability in the lower level OS, has a desktop that all but lacks that ability.

Brakes

So, it seems the brakes in my Ford Ranger died. While driving. Eek.

The dealership is, of course, busy, and it’ll be a few days before I can even bring the thing onto their lot, much less get it fixed. Which will probably cost me several hundred $$$. Joy.

Dungeons, but no Dragons

Been playing a lot of Dungeons and Dragons with friends, lately. Been really great. This is the best campaign I’ve ever run, I think; story continuity, several sub-plots going at once, consistent characters w/ in-depth backgrounds, and everyone is enjoying it.

Well, except for the last adventure, where it seemed everyone (including me, the DM) was constantly rolling ones. Lots of death and mayham. Tho they won out in the end, as all good heroes do.

Call me on my Cellpho*click* “Lost Connection”

So, I have a new cellphone, a Motorola T730. It bloody sucks.

The phone has an excellent design, the size is perfect for my hand, and I love how it looks. The interface is a lot easier than most cell phones I’ve seen.

It, however, has incredibly poor reception. It’s so far not once gotten a digital connection, can take almost a minute for it to connect to start dialing a number, and keeps losing service. Apparantly, it’s a common complaint with the model.

So, after I find a good replacement phone, I’ll return this POS can get a new one.

Smiles

Recently started hanging out with an old friend, whom I very much enjoy the company of. Hopefully the feeling is mutual, since I’m planning on trying to move it from a friendship thing to a relationship thing. Only, I’m a social coward, and the only time I managed to work up the nerve to ask her, I called and got voicemail. Drat.

And watch, she’s reading this, and now knows my evil^hhideous^hwacky plan. Curses!

AweMUD

Released version 0.20 of AweMUD and version 0.28 of Scriptix today. Good stuff.

AweMUD now has AI and basic stores, along with a slew of other goodies. Next major feature on the list - affects. (Read: magic framework.)

After that, all the big major important stuff will be in, and it’ll just be polishing, shining, and minor-type feature enhancements. A 1.0 release is actually on the horizon now. (Granted, that horizon is about 3 years travel away, but that’s a lot better than “never.” I think.)