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[Three cheers for the Egyptian people and their quest for freedom]

Three cheers for the Egyptian people and their quest for freedom

May they prevail ...

[Edit]
News/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/07/03/egypt-coup-risks-violence/2487623/
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=egypt&oq=egypt&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j0l9j43i53.21116.22962.0.23447.5.3.0.2.2.0.100.289.1j2.3.0...0.0...1ac.1.s66obyGAkFk

Music
Here is my oldies playlistdedicated to the heroic Egyptian protesters
"People Got to be Free" by The Young Rascals
Young Rascals - How Can I Be Sure (1967)
Turn Turn Turn- lyrics-The Byrds
The Youngbloods - Get Together - 1967
Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge over troubled water (with lyrics)
Rhythm of the Rain by The Cascades]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwgKQBC1xts]Rhythm of the Rain by The Cascades
Jimmy Dean - Big Bad John

Montani Semper Liberi (Latin for "Mountaineers are Always Free") is the official motto of the state of West Virginia, USA
Take Me Home Country Roads

Egyptian people to the to the ex pres.
Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye - Steam - 1969

Ex pres to the Egyptian people
Leaving on a Jet Planes

For any self-learners out there here is a link to free online university courses.  No college credits of course but if you only want to know stuff and don't need a degree well here...  The second link is to a game programming course featuring allegro library and other topics that may be of particular interest to my AGS friends.Just thought I'd share.  Cheers..

OpenCourseware
http://www.onlinecourses.com/

Eastern Michigan University
Computer Game Programming (COSC 457)

Well ... at least for the Greatest Generation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qundvme1Tik
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsirYCAocZk

The Rasberry Pi is a $35 Linux computer (ARM+Debian) complete with video (HMDI or composite), audio, USB and network.  I remember a while back someone made an arcade game with AGS (complete with arcade enclosure and everything) and traded it to a popular local restaurant in return for free waffles for life if I recall correctly.

Anyway I was reading about the pi the other day and got to thinking about them waffles and AGS and how cool it would be if AGS were able to run on the $35 pi.  Just wondering if anyone else finds the idea interesting or have comments to share.

We have a Linux port of the engine, an X86 version no doubt and I am curious abut the technical aspects of making a pi version.  What would be required to make a pi port of the engine?

Anyway here are a couple of links to the pi home and to an article with the hardware specifics.

Home page
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Hardware specs of later version
http://elinux.org/RPi_Hardware

[edit]
[imgzoom]http://elinux.org/images/thumb/a/a1/RPi-Front-JPB.jpg/800px-RPi-Front-JPB.jpg[/imgzoom]

Here is an interesting essay about programming.  Thought I'd share.  Cheers!

Holding a Program in One's Head

A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Mathematicians don't answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. They do more in their heads: they try to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. At its best programming is the same. You hold the whole program in your head, and you can manipulate it at will. ...

Umm Ummm Um ... more Apple goodness ... enjoy 
iPad Mini Commercial

At a talk given this morning at the Ubuntu Development Summit (UDS) which is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Drew Bliss from Valve Software has announced the beginning of Valve's beta test of its Steam client for Linux. As Canonical employees have reported on Google+, Valve has also given developers attending the summit access to the beta program. Other Linux users may fill out a hardware survey on the company's site to be considered for the program as well; a Steam account is required to fill out the survey.

To coincide with the beta, Valve has also opened a Steam community group for its Linux client. It is currently not known what titles will be supported by the beta but several games include hints to Linux support in their Content Description Record (CDR) which is included with software that is distributed via Steam. The CDRs for Portal, Team Fortress 2 and the Steam client itself explicitly mention a "Steam Linux UDS Beta", so it is likely that these two games will be included in the beta program.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Valve-kicks-off-Steam-on-Linux-beta-test-at-UDS-1738746.html

Free download of CrossOver for Linux and Mac today

CrossOver is a commercial version of WINE.  Linux users know what it is.

CodeWeavers has kept to its "election promise" and, from 05:00 GMT this morning, has been allowing anyone who wants to download a copy of the Windows compatibility system for Linux or Mac OS X to get the product free-of-charge. CrossOver is a company that sells a commercial version of the WINE Windows compatibility software; this allows many Windows applications, including Microsoft Office and games, to run on Linux and Mac OS X by redirecting calls to Windows operating system functions to the underlying operating system's equivalent. As well as organising giveaways of its software, CodeWeavers also employs a number of WINE developers.
The free download offer will run for 24 hours and allows users to download a version with 12 months of email support and upgrades that normally costs £38. US citizens affected by power cuts from Superstorm Sandy and unable to participate will find a special Sandy page running from 1 November.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Free-download-of-CrossOver-for-Linux-and-Mac-today-1740701.html

Subject line says it all, CNET article linked below
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57503921-1/play-old-school-atari-games-in-any-html5-web-browser/

Why does the engine insist on always displaying a black screen first before displaying anything else? Startup a game in window mode.  An empty windows is displayed for a short period of time.  The time depends on the room transition selected.  If the selection is instant there is an annoying flicker. 

This behavior is not only really annoying but it also makes seamless transitions to/from mini games virtually impossible.  If also looks really unprofessional and gives the impression to users (i.e. game player, our customers) that something is not right with AGS games. 

Can anything be done about this situation? 

Thanks for listening
Rick

...
"We're trying to make sure that Linux thrives," says Newell, who reckons that the lack of games is what's holding back the alternative PC operating system. "So we're going to continue working with the Linux distribution guys, shipping Steam, shipping our games, and making it as easy as possible for anybody who's engaged with us - putting their games on Steam and getting those running on Linux, as well. It's a hedging strategy,"
...
Newell went on to express his concern for a possibly closed future for Windows with the arrival of the new OS. "I think that Windows 8 is kind of a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space," he declared.
...

Full article: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/359898/newell-windows-8-is-a-catastrophe-for-everyone-in-the-pc-space/

If I call the following function 3 or more times I get the "infinite loop" run time error.  This code has worked previously without any problems.  Seems like the infinite loop counter ought to be reset when the function returns.  Putting in the Wait(1) instruction seems to cause the reset.  Hmmm, also putting in the explicit return also seems to trigger the reset.  In any case there needs to be something about this in the manual with regard to the while statement and the section about scripting loops.

Code: AGS

function InitModel() {
	int mx, tx;

	mx = 0;
	while (mx<2000) {
		// do something
		tx = 0;
		while (tx<50) {
    			// do something
			tx++;
		}
		mx++;
	}		
	Wait(1);     // Otherwise we get a runtime error for too maany loops??
}

I thought there was a plugin that would allow file write to any path and to do other OS things? I have searched the forums and have come up empty.  Anyone know of anything that may be helpful or interested in collaborating on a new plugin?

I guess this goes way back to V2.1 or earlier ... When starting a game, on Windows 7, in widowed mode the scree goes black for an instant and then everything comes back to normal and the game window appears.  I don't remember if this happens on earlier versions of windows or not but.  Can something be done about this as it's really annoying?  Thanks

[edit]
CW told me to change from DD5 to D3D9 and that fixed everything..

[TextBox]

Here is my wish list for improvements to the GUI system.  Likely most of the following will also require changes/additions to the engine but I thought I would start here.

TextBox - Currently the (all instances) text input box always has focus all the time.  I would like to suggest that there be an option to put multiple TextBoxes on a GUI and a settable option to give them focus via click or tab/key press.

Add the following controls:

• MultilineText - alignment options right, left, center, and justify.
  
• RadioButton/CheckBox - or see containers next
  
• Containers - Allow a gui to contain other guis or groups of controls.  Thgis would allow people to make reusable widgets consisting of multiple controls.
  
  And some pie in the sky.;..
  
• HTML Viewer - sort of like a text box only it can display HTML and navigate hyper links.  Maybe it could be better done via plugin and use webkit or other browser engine. 
  
• GUI/Control Plugins - is it possible to write plugins that add controls to the editor?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17680252#

Is anybody surprised?      One of my best friend's mother was in 4th grade with old Charlie and seh said he was a strange puppy even then.   

As I was reading the above BBC article I thought to myself "He's got a new Al Queda look.".  Lo and behold half way down on the right there was a thumbnail of OBL which was indeed similar.   


Just sayin' ...

I seem to remember a rumor, from many many moons ago,  about video game developers who were arrested as computer hackers.  Apparently the authorities came in to possession of communications and/or manuals describing how to hack into computer systems and didn't realize it was all fiction, a video game plot and not an actual plot.  I've been googling and have only come up with wikipedia references to games called "Hacker" and a sequel "HackerII" but noting about arrests etc.

Has anybody else heard of this story and/or know if it's true or just urban legend?

Must see video!    Thought fellow AGS people would enjoy this hilarious bit of technology.  

http://www.youtube.com/googlemaps

Google's timing is impeccable, eh!

[AVES Game Engine]

I came across a couple of things of interest today related to JS and and game engines and thought they may be of interest to the AGS community.  It also seems like a good opportunity to start another discussion about an  AGS JS target platform.

AVES Game Engine
AVES, from what I understand was bought out by Zygna shortly after it was publicly demonstrated.   Since it's now proprietary and can't be used directly I think the developer's comments and advice may be very useful.  Here is a pretty impressive demo and talk about what they did and how they did it.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RRnyChxijA&feature=related
  
• http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/09/24/zynga-acquires-dextrose-aves-engine-html5/
  
  Other JS Engines
  I found a list of other JS game engines.  There are quite a few so maybe people can help looking though them to see if any may be of use in creating an AGS/JS library/ engine/whatever.  The second link contains abstracts.  Perhaps we can find someone who is already making the JS part and who would want to join us?
  
• https://gist.github.com/768272
  
• http://ntt.cc/2011/01/31/66-open-source-javascript-game-engine-for-serious-developers.html
  
  Node.js
  Node contains V8, Google's JS engine, and come other libraries and it allows one to execute JS files from a command line, "node myprogram.js", on windows and mac.  Source code is provided so presumably it can be compiled for Linux and other platforms as well.   Node aspires to be a web or other sort of network server but it also demonstrates how V8 could be used for non-browser applications.   Links to website and video below.
  
• http://nodejs.org/
  
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo_B4LTHi3I
  
  Well anyway here is a start at accumulating links to potential resources, reviewing them, and opining about aa AGS/JS target
  
  
  
  
  

I want to make a webpage where sub-contractors can signup by filling out a web form and submitting it.  The information they provide needs to be inserted into a number of government pdf forms and faxed to a government agency.   Some of the information that goes on the government forms is privileged and so would not be appropriate for the sub-contractors to view.    

I have found a fax service that offers an api that allows a number of file formats to be faxed through their service.   Their API provides the capability of combining a number of documents in to one fax.  It can also directly fax HTML pages.

The part I need help with is inserting the information into the PDF documents.  The obvious and first  thing to come to my mind is to display the pdf as a background image in an HTML page and then format the HTML to display the data at the proper positions.  It sounds too easy to be true.

I was just wondering if any of you super duper web guys have any experience or ideas about this?

Thanks
Rick

P.S. For anyone interested in the fax service I mentioned here is a link below.   Are there better fax services out there?
http://www.interfax.net/en