New Youtube Video

So my new youtube video is up... Pong is up and running. It's actually pretty cool and works fairly well. Forgive me for the short post, but I'm really lazy and it took forever to get the video to work and it's still bad quality so... until next time!

Oh and here's the youtube video:

C++ Pointers

In light of yesterday's promise to restart work on "PIXELMAN," I decided to start back at basics, so to speak. Instead of jumping right in to the confusing mess Pixelman is, I started work on a simple pong-type game. I figured that I should refresh myself on SDL and C++ classes and headers. (That's my problem, I learn it, use it successfully in an application, and then I lose it all when I stop programming for an extended period of time) Anyhow, I've got a "Ball" class and I actually got the animation to (sort of) work. The main reason I'm posting this, however, is because I was able to get "pointers" to work! When I first started using them last summer I had no idea how they worked or why; I just kinda went with the concept and hoped everything would work. But after reading this explanation, I am much more familiar with the concept. Everyone always talked about how powerful pointers were, and I never really got it. But now I realize that they are incredibly useful. Basically they "point" to the location of a variable in the computer's memory. So you can access and change the value of a variable without actually needing to declare that variable in the current scope. (And if that makes sense to you then congrats, you're about as nerdy as it gets)

In any case, just thought I'd share my revelations with you all (even though at the moment, there's not many of "you") Enjoy your weekend and check back for future updates!

PIXELMAN!!

So, last summer I went to a computer camp (or, dare I say it, "Nerd Camp") where I learned advanced C++ programming and worked on quite a variety of programs. Anyway, my final project after two weeks of nothing but programming was a little bitty platform game called "Pixelman." And ohmygod it was an impossible program to build in that short amount of time. There were tons of bugs and tons of errors to correct. The joke was "You can't stop Pixelman!" He'd eat walls and jump off the map. But nonetheless we are all very fond of Pixelman. Anyhow, the physics sort of work and the keys sort of work, so yes, there's tons of work to be done, but I'm gonna do it.

Oh and we can't forget "Punter," Pixelman's rival. He's the little red dude who runs up to you and kicks you across the screen. It's really amusing >:)

Here's a screenshot of PIXELMAN. You can't stop him, so don't even try.

Change of Title

So yeah I changed the title. The old one was kind of stupid. I had one hell of a time finding a feasible blog URL. They were all taken. The thing that really made me mad was that the domain name "random.blogspot.com" was taken. It only has one post on it, and that was from 2001. I mean, a blog with that name has so much potential. But alas, I had to settle for what I could get.

Minecraft

Okay, I'm gonna geek out for a second. Minecraft is one of the most amazing games I have played in a fairly long time. I learnt of it about two months ago, and I since then my computer and I have been inseparable. It was created by this guy named "Notch" who develops this game out of Norway (I think) Anyhow, the graphics are terrible but the game is superb. It's really hard to explain it; the best description I could think of was this: virtual legos on crack. You build up your world and fight zombies and these little green things called "creepers." (Kinda like the old guys who follow you around on BART) When they get close to you the explode. On the right you'll see a little animated GIF with a creeper. It's really funny. Anyhow, the game is now in beta and you should all support the developer. He wrote this whole game from scratch and he's now sold 800,000 copies of the game at 15 euros apiece. I think he's due for early retirement. Anyhow, this game is an incredible programming feat. Below is a picture of my newest home. It's very bright and I'm quite proud of it.

New Beginnings

So I have two other failed blogs. One is called "The Devil's Advocate," which dealt mainly with political issues (and was constituted almost exclusively by my ranting) and "The Philosophy(μ)," which was my way of venting emotional stuff. Both of those blogs were unsustainable because my life is tumultuous and constantly changing. Therefore, I needed something that could be flexible; I needed something that wasn't fixed to any one subject.

Now I know that on all of the blog "help" sites, they say that you need to find one topic and stick to it in order to become successful. I tried that and now I disagree. Success isn't judged by how many people visit your blog; it's judged by how sincere the blogger is who is making it. Hopefully this blog will be more sustainable. (And hopefully it actually does get some page views.) Anyhow, it's about one in the morning here so I had better get to bed, but I should be posting fairly regularly and this should be a more fruitful venture than my past blogs. So long!