I actually worked on Electris some earlier. Shocking eh? The Ogg Vorbis support seems to be working fine now. I fixed a crash I had on exit, and easily added in the volume change from when you go from title screen to the game. All I need to do is add a little bit of code here and there to make the music stop when you tab away from it and such. Not really hard work. Just takes a little digging to find all the necessary spots. I'll throw those bits in tonight or tomorrow, and possibly put a beta version up for everyone to try, to make sure it's all working right. Oh... and I should probably include the proper audio track, instead of Britney's "Cinderella", which I never changed from when I was testing it. ;)
Christmas cards cost too much. All the funny ones are $2 and up. By the time you get enough of those for people, you've spent enough for an entire present. The dollar rack of cards was picked clean. I guess I might have to use some cheapo non-funny ones, and make up for it by writing witty comments on the inside. That's what happens I guess when you wait till a week from Christmas!
Ohh and the best news... I finally ordered myself a Voodoo3 offa Ebay. Woo! I've used a Voodoo2 for a little while now. Anyone familiar with the older Voodoo line knows that they aren't exactly video cards... just 3d accelerators. Sure, they look pretty, and run well, but you still need a normal video card to display Windows itself, and for most other 2d stuff that won't let you select which card to use. The Voodoo 1 and 2 also don't let you run things in a window. This really sucks when it comes to stuff like 3d modeling, where it's not really feasable to use a single full-screen editing window. And nor do they let you, which leaves you to use software-based rendering. The Voodoo3 however, is a full-fledged video card, meaning 3d acceleration in a window and all that lovely stuff. So now I'll be able to make 3d models much easier. I might also try my hand at creating stages for Half-Life, now that the level editor won't run like crap.
My old Matrox Millenium II, which I use for primary video right now, has about had it. I've mentioned it before... but there's a clothespin clamping down two super thin pieces of wire I had to tape down to fix a deep scratch on the back of the card.. and I had to jam a pencil underneath it against the bottom of the computer case, to bend the card up pretty far.. all to stop these multi-colored lines from streaking across the screen. It was scratched initially when I got it off Ebay, but I was able to fix it at the time, and it worked for several months before I had to bring in the clothespins and pencils. It's been a really nice card, despite the defect. I'd recommend one to anyone who's looking for a cheap 2d card that handles decent resolutions with 32-bit color. It even has 3d, though don't count on anything over DirectX 7 to work on it. Even a lot of DX7 games won't work, due to lack of features.
Anyway, I'm anxious to get the Voodoo3, though it'll probably be after Christmas before I'll ever get it. I'm thinking that after it gets here, I may take my Christmas money and buy me an ATI TV Wonder VE, since my TV is about to die on me. They're about half as much as a full tv. Plus I'd be able to play console systems through my monitor. The only downsides to the thing is that the VE model will only record video in AVI from what I've read.. and worse yet, it only has mono output. I'd most likely have a vcr hooked through the input, with the vcr sound through the home theater, so that's not a big deal when it comes to watching movies and such. But if I wanted to just use the tuner built into the card, I'd be stuck with yucky mono sound. But hey, that's all my normal tv right now has, so it's not really much difference.
That's enough blabbin for now. Don't forget to zip your jacket.. it's cold out there!
posted at 12:23 AM
