Joey's Code Lab

recent random things

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:30:26 -0500

Now that I have been in China for almost 1 month, I am glad that I bought almost all the books that I need, and I am so ready to read them all.

the crucial problem now for my next project is to create a flexible and robust structure, involving solid software engineering knowledge.

Now I found the book "game script mastery" really good for this kind of subject. cuz in order to get flexibility, I have to add script capability to my program, and this is the most important link between different subsystems, like audio,game logic, renderer, io system, etc..

at the same time, because I have already had some knowledge on OpenGL, the further direction is to learn computer graphics, and that will be accomplished by reading "Interactive Computer Graphics: a top-down approach using OpenGL", which shows pretty much what I need to know right now. It's the most suitable book I can have right now.

moreover, my C programming language skill still needs to be improved by reading "Poiners on C", then I will be able to understand how C deal with memory, the most important resource in programming.

after reading the 1st volume of "Write Great Code", I already have some basic knowledge on computer archietecture, the next thing I need to do, after reading the three books mentioned before, is to read some books on "computer archietecture", and "operating system".

John Carmack has begun the Doom Classic Iphone project, which is a very good opportunity for me to build a Doom-like engine now along with John, good timing. Link

The week before last, when I was in Beijing, I talked to my girl about making a simple CPU after reading computer architecture book, and now, one video game programmer Steve Chamberlin in the US has made that reality. Link

Looking back on my time back in China, I am really not satisfied with my low-efficiency!

I want peace, I want peaceful mind.....

I HATE!

left US, enter Korea, head China

Fri, 08 May 2009 16:14:08 -0500

Nothing special, really.

The thing is that I feel that there is no such thing as "foreign" any more. no matter where you are, as long as there are people, the rule stays, the human rules stay.

so... um....

yea, bad thing is i have to wait here for another 5 hours....

tata

work log 4/30/2009

Fri, 01 May 2009 03:45:04 -0500

dynamically manage resource can make all things more flexible

Simple Race

+ dynamically load map data
* dynamically manage game data
* texture management
* car information management
* music data management

Simple Race 1.07

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:45:39 -0500

----------------------------------------------------
Simple Race v1.07 beta @2009
----------------------------------------------------

added features:
1. added Ferrari F2008 car
2. added one ultimate map
3. added two more in-game music
4. different topspeed for different cars
5. need to find 4 ferrari logos
6. all files in one single install file, easy to use

game file:

download

email from john carmack

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:18:39 -0500

HUAIDONG WANG wrote:
> Dear John Carmack:
>
> I don't know if you can get this email or not, I have been following 
> your work for a long time, but I was in China, cannot be there at 
> Quakecon, now that I am in Penn State, I can come to Quakecon this year.
>
> For this quakecon, can you talk a little about how far have you been 
> on the unified rendering architecture? that you mentioned in a couple 
> of quakecon, you said you are close to build a architecture for 
> rendering like Renderman did.
The short answer is that I backed away from that.  When targeting a 60hz 
game on current gen consoles, it is still necessary to think like a game 
engine.  You could make a commercial game with a truly general 
architecture, but it wouldn't be at the AAA level currently due to the 
compromises.

John Carmack

won't update regularly

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:58:40 -0500

I am in my next learning period now, probably won't update the blog unless I found something that impresses me or I make some breakthrough...

current learning content:
*deeper OpenGL
*algorithm

I watched ACM 2009 world final last night, it was amazing.

Simple Race v1.06 beta

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:31:04 -0500

Simple Race v1.06 beta

added features:
1. in game music
2. in game special sound
3. "R" key that can be used as Reset, when freezed in the wall

I used SDL_mixer as my music loader and player.
Music is from DOOM, they'r in midi format.
id software holds all the rights.

this is a non-comercial game, the music is used only in this project, and the source code is gonna be released with the game.

------------------------------------
here is the link:
download

-----------------------------------
if you have some suggestions, please leave a comment here.

work log (4/18/2009) // TWO MONTHS since OPENGL

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:08:27 -0500

now it's officially 2 months since I started to learn graphics programming, my first game is about to finish, I am happy!

celebrate a little bit.....

write a little something here:

in these two months, I really really learned a lot, I spent days and nights on my game, I can say, I now have a rough overview of what I am going to do in the future, and the computer graphics area. I learned a lot from building my own game from scratch, like, how to organize the code for a big project, how to work on codes piece by piece, how to build a good-to-use class so that it can fit into the whole project......etc, except computer graphics, I learned a lot on software engineering, and thanks to my CMPSC122, I know some basic data structures and algorithms, that course opened a gate to me, the computer programming's gate.

these two months created a boat for me, for me to surf to the deeper part of computer world. These two months is the most important months in my life, I can feel it, I can feel my future just because of the two months. I have always wanted to sail, but I didn't really started before the two months.. now I do.

I wanna really thank my professor Max, Fomitchev, he made me rethink my ability on computer programming, he made me wanna do a lot of things that I wouldn't do before, he helped me to find my potential on programming. I wanna thank him!

The journey has just begun.

here is a little plan:
*revisit C programming, take it low-level
*study deeper towards OpenGL
*study deeper towards algorithm
*computational geometry
*GLSL

at the same time, learn a little java and programming under Mac
do a little cross-platform practice by porting my game to iphone and java

-----------------------

anyway:

today's work log:

+remixed some midi from the original DOOM, will be used as the game music
+fixed some hard-coding code
+fixed texture size
+fixed some inefficient memory use

*add music module to my game
*structurize my code

Simple Race v1.05 beta test release

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:58:49 -0500

added features:

1. choose from 2 cars
2. choose from 2 maps
3. restart game
4. add openning, instruction, map choice, car choice windows.

still testing item:
*collision response

here is the link

download

Hashing......

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:25:52 -0500

Listed as one of the Five Top technics proposed by Richard Stallman.

Choosing a hashing function is just art not science

anyway, keep digging

SimpleRace v1.04 test version

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:11:49 -0500

fixed item
collision detection (needs to be tested)

features added:
1. full screen option (needs to be tested)
2. randomly place the target logo
3. high resolution and low resolution textures to choose from

Please Note:
if you want to replace the texture with low resolution, go to "Texture" folder and copy the low res ones to the "Texture" folder, reload the game.

this zip is bigger than before, because it contains high res textures

download

if you are using Windows XP and don't have opengl, you can download this
XPOpenGL

Here is the source code for this beta version, if you are interested, please take a look and give me some advice!
Source Code

welcome everybody to email me report bugs and places needed to improve to me.

Huffman tree and map

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:55:52 -0500

I was doing a little coding on my school's work, it's about Huffman code, I just think that it is very useful, and I was having a little issue of retrieving data correctly from the huffman tree. So I figure I just post the code here, in case some one else is gonna need it.

Method 1: search the Huffman Tree every time to get the code

// this function take "temp"as a temporary variable to store the code string
// aChar is char we are looking for in the tree
// tree is the Huffman tree we built
// the function will return the huffman code for this character

string findHuffCode(string temp,const char& aChar,const HuffTreeNode* tree)
{
    if (tree->IsLeaf())
    {
        if (tree->Value.Symbol==aChar)
            return temp;
        else
            return "";
    }
    else
    {
        if (findHuffCode(temp+"0",aChar,tree->Left)=="")
            return findHuffCode(temp+"1",aChar,tree->Right);
        else
            return findHuffCode(temp+"0",aChar,tree->Left);
    }
}

Method 2: using a map structure to store the Huffman code for every character

// huffMap is the map we will build
// temp is the temp string store the Huffman code
// tree is the Huffman tree we built
void buildHuffMap(map& huffMap,string temp,const HuffTreeNode* tree)
{
    if (tree->IsLeaf())
    {
        huffMap[tree->Value.Symbol]=temp;
    }
    else
    {
        buildHuffMap(huffMap,temp+"1",tree->Right);
        buildHuffMap(huffMap,temp+"0",tree->Left);
    }
}

tree structure is the most useful data structure that I v seen, and recursion is the most magical process I v known....

plans for the next few months

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:05:28 -0500

read some books

1. write great code

2. thinking in C++

3. introduction to algorithms

4. computational geometry with c

I am not quite sure if I am gonna finish them or not, I will use all my free time to do that.

plan for v1.04

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:32:06 -0500

here is a brief plan of what I am gonna do in 1.04 version

1. I am gonna rewrite the collision code, doing the right physics calculation not those crappy approximation, I tried to do all those approximation and didn't pay off, physics is almost the core of my racing game. (I am amazed by modern computers' capability, they allow me to do a lot of complex calculations)

2. a better software structure. I read some code from others, their programming style is so clear and neat, I am gonna improve my programming style.

3. the game play side of things, can be considered later, cuz they are the relatively easy part. the game play mode now so far is not bad.

I got a great book today, Randall Hyde's think low-level,write high-level... That's the exact thing I need right now, I need to understand more low-level stuff to fundamentally improve my programming skill.
quote John Carmack's words here:

Low-level programming is good for programmers' soul.

SimpleRace beta test version release

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:57:24 -0500

I finally got the texture loading problem solved, it was the size problem. It took me so long time to find that out.... :-(
some card doesn't support GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two
here is a link on this issue: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=460868

anyway, here is the beta test version, hopefully it's gonna run on every windows machines.

download

there is still some jittering with the physics engine, I will fix that in my next version.