Independence
This is an old post from my previous blog, which might show up in the feed again
I don't care much for a country. If the netherlands was attacked by an enemy and I got a call in which they say I'm drafted, everyone in the netherlands is excused when they become 18 (but this might change at anytime), I would pick up my bags and flee. I don't mind fighting for things I'm proud of, but I'm not the least bit proud of the netherlands (goverment) so I won't fight for it. Just so you know I'm proud of our men at arms, where ever they might be, whatever they might be doing. They often have to do what cowardly people require them to do (invasion in Irak was pressed by the goverement).
Anyway at diner I thought wouldn't it be cool to create an independent country. Let's say we buy everything there is on a small island (so we own the island and everything on it) and then declare independence. The next morning the army arrives to supress the freedom fighters (aka you, who owns the entire island, is the only inhabitant and freedom fighter).
Personally I want to do something like that as I want to create an utopia. It will have to start out small and then it will slowly need to grow. All people allowed to enter in the first 25 years should be hard working to make certain progress continues and afterwards the entry rules might become more lenient, to ensure quality. In the end you can be anything you want, you don't need to work, free health care and so on.
The only question that I have is how long it will take after creating this "utopia" for it to fall.
Challenge: Procedural generated space ship #2
It has been a month since I last talked about Procedural generated spaceships. I haven't had much time to work on because of my internship and other work however the progress that I have made has shown this might be a bigger challenge then I had hoped it would be.
The general idea is that you first create the bones (like a stick figure but then from a space ship), then you create the flesh or hull of the ship and then you will start adding rooms, corridors and all kind of objects so that you can walk through it as if it were a spaceship. However I found two things that I find in dire need of my attention.
The first thing is that you need detail. Even though a starship can have the shape of a cube (borg cube) it will never look like a cube if you get up close. The second thing is that I have not yet found a strategy (a way of approaching the problem) that can guarantee proper use of space. For example how can I be certain that chamber doesn't go outside the spaceship?
Personally I think I need to do some more drawing, thinking like an artist before I can give an answer to questions like those. After I have answer to both question it will only be a case of setting up the implementation and be done with it.
Developing for the iPhone
For those who follow me on twitter this post is old news or it might be a minor refreshment as the majority of the content has already been posted on twitter.
At my internship I have been developing for the iPhone and boy oh boy, can I make a list of things to complain about. Luckily there are also a few good things and they balance each other but it’s a pain when you cannot unleash every bit of skill you have. Let’s start with the sour part.
- There is no stencil buffer. I think that the stencil buffer is as old as Duke Nukem 3D, which was released in 1993. It’s used for shadows and a few other things. However for some reason it is not supported on the iPhone (at V2.2.1 but this might change in the future) and it makes no sense.
- Secondly the iPhone is under clocked (meaning the CPU is running at lower speed than what it should run at). The majority of the hardware these days are able to dynamically set the clock speed of the hardware. I can accept the reason why apple has done it (preserving the battery) but when it comes to games it’s like with racing cars. You don’t want a F1 car being capped at 120 KM/H because you aren’t suppose to go faster than that on the highway. In apple’s defense, the iPhone has never been intended to be primarily a gaming device.
- Third is apple is really strict in what is allowed or not and some parts of the iPhone (like the photo camera) should only be accessed by calling a function and then except you have no longer control until a picture has been taken using the graphical user interface apple designed. Using it directly in some other fashion increases the chance that the application will be rejected. On the other hand some applications are allowed because some big guys back it (google is one of the companies that ignored the guidelines of apple and still got accepted).
There are still a few other problems (no multitasking for example, API might break with new firmware update) with the iPhone but let’s move on to the sweet part of the iPhone.
Actually the only one I can think of is that the distribution of applications can only be done through the apple app store. There is no such thing for the windows mobile or symbian. This way apple can also guarantee the quality of the applications, however I find it a mood point since an application that is poorly written is unlikely to be successful.
Actually there are a few more things, the emulator is good (better than the one for the Nintendo DS) and the API is reasonable documented (inconsistence in quality, but overall reasonable).