Game Dev

The first step towards(hopefully) a long road of game development. here I still have aspirations of fixing up the website in fact it's on my toodledo. But i've been following this tutorial on game creation.. yeah that's right it's a tutorial. I didn't do most of the code in there. But isn't stealing code a part of the tradition of programming? Plus i typed it all out and made sure i understood it, and i changed a few things! So take that! The guy also has a tutorial for making your first game in an applet. Which is what that is an applet not a game, it allows me to share what i make which i think is awesome. Game maker files were always to big for that so i ran from it a long time ago.

Anyway i was planning on fixing the "about me" to be how it's supposed to be but i think i might do a major overhaul of the basic structure of the website before i do that.. which has left me hesitant to do it.. last time i broke the website and spent hours trying to fix it again. But this time will be a sucess i just know it! Plus it was never meant to look like this for this long, i had planned on coming up with a way for the website to work quickly and then work on the design to make it look prettier. But i kinda got it working quickly and now it's sort of.. ugly.. not to horrible i did a little bit but when i was learning CSS i made a bunch of different files to figure out how it worked and now i need to sync up the website's look and feel. Maybe add a banner, and probably the same background, should be something i make myself i suppose. My CSS kung fu is lacking too so i should probably pick up a book or something. Need to get all Artsy. We'll see how it turns out, for now go check out the applet.

Calculator is Alive

Well i made a Graphical Calculator! It's awesome if i do say so myself. I used a for loop with a listener :P but yeah that probably doesn't mean anything to anyone. Probably won't be posting it unless i can make an executable of it.

Tried to learn Game programming, aaand still learning. I've learned an important lesson. Never try to learn code by looking at other peoples big-ass projects, it never makes much sense when you don't understand the basics. I think it's going to be better to go through a java game programming book and start from the ground up. Should teach better programming practices too, mayble i'll run through meyers book again while i'm learning. Wasn't able to join the ludum dare challenge either :/ Although i'd imagine that's kind of obvious still can't even make a game yet. But i hung around the IRC channel and watched other peoples updates, it was all a little exciting.

Last batch of beer came out perfectly i'm trying to work myself up to making labels for the batch, but hours of playing around with graphics trying to get it to look right isn't really on the top of my agenda at the moment. Still have 10 bottles stashed up in the rafters right now though. They're sad beer bottles lacking labels :(
The same reason i haven't worked on the labels is the same reason i haven't really fixed up the website lately, i've been enjoying the latest sale on steam at the moment. I got super meat boy! :) it's fun i highly recommend it. Especially for under $5 can't complain with that. But when i'm not doing that i'm usually playing with code. Still have a lot to learn though.

It's ALIVE.. ITS ALIVE, ITS ALIVE!!!

I'm making a Graphical Calculator out of java! Not sure if it'll make it to the website though, i don't like posting source code of projects i make in class in case the teacher wants to use the same homework assignment again. And i'm not sure if i can convert it into an applet so i might not post it. It probably wouldn't matter if it was a class file but i'm still new to this.

In other news, this website recently gained another 5 THOUSAND visitors on thursday i think it was.. Which is surprising. That doubles the amount of people who have visited, apparently there's a steady stream of 7+ people visiting a day (i have the stat counter ignoring my ip address). Really this is just meant to be an ongoing project, a homepage/possible portfolio someday. Plus it gives me a chance to work on web skills that i would otherwise not have. But it's kinda neat that people are visiting i guess. I plan on making the website a little more user friendly soon.
I tried to revamp the website about 2-3 weeks ago but i hit a dead-end.. broke the website and spent about 4 hours fixing the damn thing. But i think i have a better idea of how to do it.. This really won't make any outward differences but it should make the code easier to manage in the future and it'll allow for bookmarking different sections. I'll probably take care of it during christmas vacation. I also want to make the log and "Archive" better.. more like a blog easier for people to read? I might actually talk about things in the future who knows.. it's possible i have the ability to talk about things. Either way it atleast needs pages, and maybe a rework on the design but so does the whole website while i'm at it.. not sure if it'll all happen over christmas break though.

In other news i plan on entering my first ever Ludum Dare Challenge! Of course i haven't quite hit the point where i think i can comfortably make a game in java yet but i have over 5 days to learn. Actually i have finals in a couple of days, but one of them is for java so ideally i'll know a thing or two about it by then, and then i can just focus on learning Game Design. So fun things to look forward to, i expect i'll be making a crappy game but you have to start somewhere, and i'm really looking forward to it. Whatever i make i'll post on the website under Java in projects. That section could use some work as well.

Fiddling with CSS

I messed with the CSS and table a little bit giving the website a bit more of a streamlined look.. i think it does anyway. Problem being the way CSS centers things doesn't seem to be working.. i think it's because everything is placed inside of a table first.. so i could use absolute positioning and try to match it up but it would look horrible on some browsers.

I still need to work something out for the Archive.. because i'm using the old tables.. And i should probably rework the characters in the D&D section.. it has been like 5 years. Projects Section under Java doesn't work at all.. i got tired after i moved a link there and just passed out and ignored it. No longer have them menu for about me either. I'll fix it later but there were major problems with the website when i was trying to update it.
I made it to be as simple as i could make it.. but then when i tried to fix it up.. everything just became a bit more difficult then i expected. I'll probably fix the java link after i finish this little update. Kinda tired.. But then i'll start working on my java classes projects.