Articles
Articles are single-page pieces that give a whirlwind tour of a specific topic.
They’re different from series, which go very in-depth, taking many detours.
Happy stay with us day
I didn’t really know what to do for “World Suicide Prevention Day 2014”.
First off, I didn’t know it existed at all. Like, c’mon, know your audience, if you have a party like that, I want in!
Second, it’s a terrible name: I hereby propose “stay with us day” in place. Nevermind the “world” part because, hey, we’re on the internet, the “suicide” part because, well, avoiding that is just the very start of a long uphill battle, and let’s keep the “day” part because, honest, if we can attract people’s attention for even a single day per year, it’ll be nothing short of a miracle.
Cross-compilation notes
I’ll keep updating this article as I go, just to put stuff in all the same place.
Platforms
Cross-compiling for Linux
I’m pretty sure it’s possible to cross-compile for Linux on other OSes, seeing as everything is open-source, but I have never done it - and why would I want to? Linux is the friendliest to build on, so it’s better to use it as a build environment.
On the subject of time
Three gamedev surprises
Despite their peaceful appearance, game developers actually lead thrilling lives! Here are three things I learned (or re-learned) about yesterday that I’d like to share with you, in the form of assumptions that revealed false.
VSync is relatively straightforward. Right?
As an obsessive-compulsive, bipolar, perfectionist game dev, getting your game to run smoothly on all kinds of operating systems, graphics cards, and drivers combination is something of a holy grail. Many look for it, but let’s be honest here, it never really turns out as expected.
Fast font packing for fun and profit
Being creative is hard work, let’s go optimizing instead! My graphics engine dye was pretty naive about displaying text, and it was wasteful. Let’s see how I made it all better with this one weird tip.
Disclaimer: Even after a few years I’m still very much an OpenGL newbie. Please don’t hit me with crowbars.
Once upon a time, OpenGL was easy to use - and also falling out of relevancy as far as high-performance 3D graphics were concerned. But it wasn’t all bad! You could basically pick up any library out there and integrate it with your existing GL project. Not that it’s a good idea, but it usually just worked.
Lestac: The Making Of
Update: Lestac is now available in Early Access on itch.io! Read more on the official page
So, Lestac is out! Ain’t that something? For those who don’t know, it’s Sylvain and I’s entry for Ludum Dare 28, a video game jam that happens every four months.
Here’s how it looks:
You can play it now if you haven’t yet - it’s available for Linux, OS/X, and Windows. And then you can come back and read this postmortem if you will!
The quest for ooc.vim
I’ve spent the past few weeks after rock 0.9.8’s release working on some of the neglected aspects of ooc, namely tooling support and performance.
My kingdom for a vim plug-in!
Well, technically, ooc.vim is a few years old, and it was even updated a few times to match new ooc features. But unfortunately, so far, it was limited to syntax highlighting.
rock 0.9.8 is out
A little less than two months after the previous release, I’m happy to announce
that the ooc compiler rock 0.9.8, codename columbia is now out.
The impatients can readily skip to the release notes, but for those who prefer a narrative, let me tell you why I’m excited about this release.
String interpolation
We’ve thrown around this idea a lot since the early versions of rock since we have a few rubyists in our ranks, but only recently Alexandros Naskos took matters into his own hands and just implemented the fuck out of it.