Brandon: Holy crap....

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Well, Inhabitants DC is 99% complete. All that is left is some housekeeping internaly, and a buttload of testing, but here is some rather exciting news.

Inhabitants is being sold on Lik-Sang

Holy crap.

Thats just amazing.


Mood: Wow
Browsing: Pre-order, damnit.

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Brandon: Well, well, well...

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I know things have been kinda dead around here latley. Been working on the finishing touches for Inhab DC. Its looking better and better....

Anyways.

Mood: Happy

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Brandon: wOOt!

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And again, let me repeat...

w00t!

I am pleased to announce that Inhabitants is the WINNER of the first annual DreamOn Contest...

New screens are here.

So, what does that mean? Well, for starters, we get a professional pressing of Inhabitants onto CD's, so we can sell them. An actually fricking professional homebrew release.

Give me some time to process this. I'm in shock/awe mode now.

Mood: SHOCKING AWE!
Browsing: PROOF!

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Beowulf: Far, far away

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Well, as all of you already know, I'm here in Alexandria visiting the brother. Right now he's being all nostalgic and stuff playing the old school Wing Commander 2. He talks to the game as though it might respond like his Unreal Tournament 2004 does. It's not working.

Just to let you know what I've done so far (like you really care), I went to the Smithsonians and looked at a new Buddha statue exhibit. Also there was an exhibit on Chinese Calligraphy and products of the Silk Road. It was all terribly fascinating.

After that I wandered down to the Lincoln Memorial. The dang thing is bloody huge. And I was dissapointed because the reflecting pool wasn't exactly reflecting. It was empty.

Following that dissapointment I wandered around a lake aiming for the Jefferson Memorial. Along the way I went on the "Cherry Blossoms Walk." I suppose this would be far more beautiful later in the year when they're blooming. I'll have to come back and see. The Delano Roosevelt memorial is actually pretty awesome as far as memeorials go.

Today I wandered around other subway stops just to see what I had missed before. Dupont Circle is an interesting place. It has lots of specialty shops. Hehe, I even went into a bookstore that had a complete bar and cafe in the back. You could buy your book,then sit and drink whatever your poison may be while reading it. Also in the actual circle at Dupont Circle they had Chess tables. Some of those homeless guys are damn good.

During this walk I discovered that testament to people's gullibility and L. Ron Hubbard's persuasive powers. Yes, I'm talking about a Church of Scientology. I hope to return and get a picture in front of it. Oh how people will beleive anything.

Finally I ended the day by traipsing about Gallery Place/Chinatown. I still didn't discover anything new about Chinatown. However, somehow I ended up finding Ford's Theater where Abe Lincoln was shot. It was more interesting than I thought it would be.

Tomorrow, B is off and we plan on sauntering over to the International Spy Museum and eating at BD's. I don't know which one I'm more excited about.

Oh yea, adn Mike's American Grill is the shiot.


Mood: Tired
Music: This page intentionaly left blank

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Brandon: Inhabitants DC: Postmortem

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Well, the game isn't quite finished yet, but the DreamOn contest entry is in, so let me tell you about it.

Basically, Inhabitants DC, is a Sega Dreamcast port of the beloved Inhabitants by S+F Software. Not a straight port, however, but a glitsy, console-ed up version that plays quite nicely, adds a four-player spilt screen multiplayer mode and has some neet effects, if I say so myself.

Anyways, here's a breakdown of some of the things I learned in the process.

What went right:
Using C++ instead of C.
Now, while C would have been easier for me, using C++ made a lot of things easier, including memory management, IMO. I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I wrote a fricking game with it anyway.

Creating a Windows compatiblity library for KOS
KOS, or KallistiOS is the programming library I use for Dreamcast programming. It is so insanely easy to use, and uber powerful for most things anyway. Now, to upload code to the DC, I have to use a slow-ass serial link, and since the way the PVR 3D chip handles polygons is strangely similar to the way Direct3D handles polygons, it was rather easy to get the graphics parts emulated. This way I could test it and not have to wait ten minutes to send a new build over the serial link. It is a very, very, very, very dirty hack, but hey, it works.

Asking for Help
Usually I'm just the type of person who will scour Google for hints and tips if I can't figure something out. In this case, I used the KOS mailing list to ask for hints and tips on how to correct problesm I was having with the dreamcast hardware. I even got a awesome memory card saving and loading class out of the deal.

What went wrong
The long section ;)

Writing it in C++
I still don't know what the fsck I am doing with C++. I did learn a lot, but Inhabitants DC is an example on how NOT to write a game. Yes, it works, but it's a hack everywhere you go.

Being lazy about things.
In my rush to get the game done quicker, I did some things in a rather lazy manner, and this came back to bite me in the ass when we were getting down to the deadline. Had I thought things through and written some classes with expandability in mind, this would not have been a problem.

Not knowing anyone with a Dreamcast.
A little hard to show off and test the game when you only really know one other person with a Dreamcast.

So, I guess that section isn't as long as I thought.

Anyways, the judging for the contest will be over soon, and we will know what awesomeness awaits.


Mood: Contemplative

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