I'll hope to keep up my work in the background like administrating the Board, but I'm not sure about it. If there are real problems, please contact me and I'll try to fix them ... And last but not least for this period of my life I want to thanx a few people here:
But there is always a point to proceed to new challenges ... Take care whatever you do, Tom |
| posted by Tom on 20/04/2001 00:30 (MET) |
I'm still busy with my job, but a little bit of TI-related stuff fits still into my time schedule. Stephan Effelsberg (b012414@dvz.fh-koeln.de) has suggested some optimizations for the lately released "LineDrawing and Fast Pixel Access" Tutorial (s1p7). A new version which incorporates his suggestions is available now. Additionally I wrote a new Tutorial (s1p8) which focus on scrolling a screenbuffer up,down, left and right. And last but not least there is a new tool available now called UnEbk. It becomes quite useful if you want to reverse an eBook to plain text again. Here are the links:
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| posted by Tom on 13/04/2001 12:00 (MET) - oh god, it's friday 13th ... |
Version 1.76 of the eBook-Reader is out now. What's new?
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| posted by Tom on 09/04/2001 07:30 (MET) |
I know that there are assembler coders out there, but sorrily none of them have contacted me till now so I post my "request" again: I'm in serious need of an experienced assembler coder who may take the challenge to speed up the FAT-Engine or at least make it smaller (but keeping the speed and the quality). The FAT-Engine in it's actual state consists of 20.000 lines of ASM code and a few 100 lines of C code. The C code will just take a few percent of the 50kB, the rest is taken by the ASM code to gain maximum speed and still rendering with high quality (there is no reason to damn C therefore for the size nor the fact that it's a NOSTUB library ;-). If you think you are the right man (or woman), just mail me at: thomas.nussbaumer@gmx.net BTW: Actually I have to "pause" the development of the FAT-Engine and MR3D for 2-3 weeks due to heavy work-load of my job. UPDATE (08/04/2001): It looks like that I got help now. Three ASM coders have responded to this news article. I'm very curious to see how fast the FAT-Engine may run in the future. Thanx so far! I'm glad to have you on board. Last week I have also released two new tutorials: S1P7: Fast Pixel Access Macros and Line Drawing and S2P2: The Magic Of Raycasting. Have fun! |
| posted by Tom on 05/04/2001 20:00 (MET) |
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Codename: MuttRock3D (MR3D) Well, I think a single screenshot will say more than thousand words ...
Actually I'm waiting that my diskspace quota on ticalc.org gets extended a little bit. Afterwards I would need some helping hands to extract and convert the graphics of Wolfenstein3D (I can supply a nice extraction tool and the original program, BTW). I will post a request when its time for it ... |
| posted by Tom on 28/03/2001 20:30 (MET) |
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Flaming and Ranting on the TI-FR.ORG Message Board ... Normally the TICT-HQ will not get two news articles on one day, but I have read so much flaming/ranting posts and miss-informations on the TI-FR.ORG Message Board, that I have to update this page once more.The new Grayscales of the TIGCCLIB were implemented by Julien Muchembled and were just ported and modified by me to fit the needs. I have never told someone something different! The sources hold also a credit note to the original author. It's true that I haven't asked Julien to get the sources. We have discussed the OpenSource topic in length in the past and we disagree completely with each other. There is nothing wrong about this, but the last time I have asked him for a specific part of his sources to improve the TIGCCLIB (the previous version of the Grayscales), he gave me the necessary informations, let's say, not completely "willingly". Indeed I told him that I will do exactly that what I have done now. Okay, that's of course not the "fine" way nor a moral one, but I don't think that anyone of the TIGCCLIB users will care about that (beside me). And when it comes down to moral: "Talking nice" in front of someone, but ranting behind his back like a specific french guy (I think he knows that he is meant) is also not really moral ... Additionally I have read a post which states that TI-Chess is just a plain port of a PC game. And this is COMPLETELY NOT TRUE! The first version of TI-Chess was based on a PC game. About 30% of the code were ported to the TI the rest was, even in this first version, completely new. Actually TI-Chess contains almost nothing of the PC game anymore (beside some rough ideas), because this engine was definitely too weak to be competitive on a calculator. |
| posted by Tom on 27/03/2001 21:07 (MET) |
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Wolfenstein3D on the TI-89 is near ... The FAT-Engine had managed it to slip into my time schedule, because the loading times of "Gothic" are quite long ;-)Now a rudimentary sprite support is implemented (Demo 4) as well as a callback which may be used for Fading Effects (Demo 3). I know that the sprite support lacks of accurancy in the actual version. This is caused by the 8-bit lookup tables and should be fixed in the next version. The next version will also support multiple textures for sprites depending on the viewing angle as already announced. But as already stated below: time is a very short resource when an addictive game is "resting" on your HD. Nevertheless: a Wolfenstein3D-like shooter is near ... You can download the FAT-Engine Demos v0.70 at: http://www.ticalc.org/pub/89/asm/games/fatdemo.zip. Before you ask per mail or on the message board: I found it is too much effort for me to update and release SDK versions of the engine on its way toward v1.00. So the next SDK version will be released when the engine is finished. Additionally: Thanx to Andrea Rimondi (andrea.rimo@libero.it) an italian port of the TICT-Explorer is available now. You can download it at: http://www.ticalc.org/pub/89/asm/programs/tictex_italian_89.zip (contains TI-89 and TI-92p version). |
| posted by Tom on 27/03/2001 17:00 (MET) |
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Maintenance Updates During my last projects I have improved some of the tools from the TIGCC Tools Suite to become more useful at least for me. A few days ago I assembled therefore a new beta version (0.98). It's now available at http://www.ticalc.org/pub/win/tt.zip.As side effect a new version of the ebook reader (1.75) is now available, too. The new version uses a slightly increased line height, which makes reading less exhausting. Grab the new ebook reader at http://www.ticalc.org/pub/89/asm/programs/ebkrdr.zip. This weekend I'll hope to finish the sprite support of the FAT-Engine which should support also 4 or 8 different images for each sprite depending on the viewing angle between the player and the sprite. After adding these features the FAT-Engine should be ready for any kind of game. UPDATE (26/03/2001): An RPG called "Gothic" crossed my ways and I experienced the future of gaming. Actually this game is too addictive that I'm not able to focus on the FAT-Engine in the near future. If you haven't heard anything until now about "Gothic", check the following site (especially the screenshot section) to see what I'm speaking about: http://www.piranha-bytes.com/english/main.htm.
Some words of Announcement: |
| posted by Tom on 23/03/2001 7:30 (MET) |
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FAT-Engine SDK 0.63 and Programming Contest Due to the fact that the FAT-Engine needs support for sprites I will start a Programming Contest. I believe that there are many excellent programmers out there and I would be very pleased if someone comes up with an excellent idea how to implement a fast sprite routine for the FAT-Engine.Everyone who is interested, please download the new FAT-Engine SDK 0.63 at: http://www.ticalc.org/pub/89/asm/source/fatsdk.zip and read the included file contest.txt.
UPDATE: Additionally I'm looking for an 68kASM-Wizard to improve some internals of the FAT-Engine. If you think you know 68k Assembly well enough please contact me by mail. |
| posted by Tom on 11/03/2001 20:35 (MET) |