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Article archives

Video conversion on RISC OS

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 20:00, 20/12/2008 | , , , , ,
 
A while ago you may remember that I wrote an article about video conversion for RISC OS, and near the end raised the topic of video conversion on RISC OS using a port of ffmpeg. Although the version of ffmpeg I originally tried on RISC OS was old and broken, Christopher Martin obviously thinks there's some merit to this approach, as he has recently produced !FFmpeg, a working port of ffmpeg for RISC OS.
 
Once more in the interests of SCIENCE, I threw a few test videos at !FFmpeg and measured its performance against that of a similar version of ffmpeg running on my Windows PC.


 
Continue reading "Video conversion on RISC OS" | 1 comment in the forums

Building the Dream 4 - Random city basics

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 12:00, 28/11/2008 | , , , ,
 
As stated in the last article, this time I'll be looking at what went into the MK I map generator for my eternally work-in-progress game, DeathDawn.
 
Specifically, I'll be looking at the implementation and evolution of the following components of the generator:
  • City block placement. This is arguably the most important stage as it defines the overall layout of the city.
  • Edge and node linking. A housekeeping stage that prepares the data structures for the road weighting stage.
  • Road weighting. A city with roads which all have the same number of lanes isn't very realistic, so this stage uses an algorithm to determine the number of lanes each road should have.
  • Road and building painting. With the city structure generated, all that's left is to translate it into the format used by the engine during actual gameplay.

 
Continue reading "Building the Dream 4 - Random city basics" | Comment in the forums

Building the Dream 3 - Random map generators, redux

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 12:00, 23/8/2008 | , , , ,
 
After writing my first article about random map generators, I said I was going to write a city generator. Well now I have, and I'm here to tell you about it over the course of the next few Building the Dream articles.

Blow your own trumpet much?

Although this article could just be dismissed as me blowing my own trumpet, I'm hoping that it will serve a somewhat more useful purpose. Before, during, and after working on the map generator I've searched the Internet for examples of similar generators and failed to find any. Sure, there are odd bits and pieces - descriptions of simpler generators that have given me ideas on some techniques to use, or screenshots of sexy work-in-progress realtime generators, but no actual algorithms or code samples from generators that come close to the required complexity of my generator.
 
So hopefully this article will become a useful reference point for anyone else wanting to undertake the task of writing a city generator, whether they're targeting a grid-based world representation like mine or a vector-based one.
 
Apart from discussing the algorithms used in the generator (and why they're used) I'll also talk about the data structures that are used - so even if you're not interested in random map generators you should be able to find plenty of examples of uses for the data structures covered in the first Building the Dream article, as requested quite some time ago.
 
 

Continue reading "Building the Dream 3 - Random map generators, redux" | 1 comment in the forums

Happy Birthday from Acorn Arcade!

Posted by Acorn Arcade team on 00:00, 29/1/2008 | , , , ,
 

But whose birthday is it?
 
It's ours, of course!

Ten years ago today, Acorn Arcade officially opened to the public, as this handily-archived newsgroup posting shows. With Alasdair Bailey and Graham Crockford at the helm the site soon increased in popularity enough to warrant moving to its own domain name, acornarcade.com, and eventually to its own dedicated server, owned by our benevolent dictator Rich Goodwin. A few years later Acorn Arcade gave birth to The Icon Bar, which then in an ironic turn of events absorbed the content of Acorn Arcade in late 2006, in order to give both sites a much-needed overhaul.
 
But what does all this mean?


 
Continue reading "Happy Birthday from Acorn Arcade!" | 9 comments in the forums

Freeware instant messaging client released

Posted by Michael Drake on 22:30, 14/9/2007 | , , ,
 

Parmesan is a new client for the popular MSN Messenger network, developed by Christian Ludlam. Released as freeware, the software brings new features to instant messaging on RISC OS. Chief among these are display pictures and nudges. The software also doubles as a versatile viewer for arbitrary XML files.

RISC OS has seen the release of several MSN Messenger clients over the years; two free clients (Natter and Messenger) and R-Comp's commercial product, Grapevine. A few years ago all of these clients fell foul of an upgrade to the MSN protocol which stopped RISC OS users from being able to connect to the chat network. To many users' dismay, RISC OS was left without a free MSN Messenger client, as only Grapevine was upgraded to support the new protocol.

Happily, this distressing situation has, at last, been rectified with the release of Parmesan. In this article I'll take a look at Parmesan describe my experience of it. Finally, as a Grapevine owner, I will compare Parmesan with the commercial Grapevine application.


 
Continue reading "Freeware instant messaging client released" | 13 comments in the forums

SDL port of Asylum released

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 21:30, 9/7/2007 | , , , ,
 
Hugh Robinson has contacted us to let us know that he's converted classic Acorn platformer Asylum to C, using the SDL library. With full support of original author Andy Southgate, Hugh's source code has now been released under the GPL, and is available to download from the SVN repository on the SourceForge project page.
 
Although a quick look at the source suggests to me that it's fully converted, there are still some bugs and compatability issues to sort out, so feel free to send any fixes Hugh's way if you manage to get the game running. Although the source to Asylum has been available on asylum.acornarcade.com for a few years now, this is the first known port of it to any other platform (and could potentially form the basis of a back-port to RISC OS, to produce a fully 32bit compatible version).
 
3 comments in the forums

Wakefield 2007

Posted by Phil Mellor on 21:00, 19/5/2007 | ,
 
What a day - the Wakefield RISC OS show AND Doctor Who. It doesn't get more exciting than that. Here's my report.HPIM4156.JPG
 
Continue reading "Wakefield 2007" | 16 comments in the forums

VirtualRiscPC released for Mac OS

Posted by Andrew Duffell on 12:22, 17/5/2007 | ,
 
Virtual RPC Mac"VirtualAcorn are delighted to announce that as part of our beta product testing scheme a limited number of VirtualRPC-AdjustSA products suitable for use on G4 and G5 PowerPC Apple Macintosh computers are now available."
 
http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/products/vrpcadsamac.htm
 
19 comments in the forums

A Few Reasons to be Cheerful

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RISC OS Select 4 Issue 2 now available

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Oldschool Reviews - LASER

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An arbitrary number of possibly influential RISC OS things

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FFS.

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RISC OS - the week in comments; episode 3

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