Zach's Spot

api style document 1

2007-04-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

from the recent dialog on the dev list i see its time to put this together. while Arc is the maintainer the rewrite thats underway (the third by my count) should learn from our history lest we repeat past mistakes.

always group dimensions/channels/aspects in one attribute
- something.position=(x,y,z) not something.x something.y something.z
- something.color=(r,g,b) not something.red something.green something.blue
- something.volume=(l,r) not something.leftvolume something.rightvolume
- something.size=(w,h) not something.width something.height

combine aspects of one thing in one class
- entity.mesh entity.shape entity.mass
- scene == audio field + visible scene + ode world + ode space

inherit often + group in same submodule
- every widget should inherit same base class in soy.widgets
- every entity should inherit base entity class in soy.entities
- every camera should inherit base camera class in soy.cameras

init should be implicit
- opengl, openal, ode should all init when first used

there should never be only one possible of any thing
- multiple windows
- multiple background music
- multiple controllers
- multiple game servers

idiotproof without treating users as idiots
- allow users to do stupid things that dont crash pysoy
- agressive type checking to ensure pysoy wont crash
- out of bounds arguments should silently change to nearest inbound value
- let user create large scenes that drop fpu very low, good for learning
- when possible let same thing be used for multiple other things:
  - allow video as texture on widget and mesh
  - allow sound to attach to widget or entity
  - abstract api on these things to make this simple

when in doubt consider the following (in order)
1. which solution is most intuitive
2. which solution would produce the smallest api
3. which solution requires the least user-side code to use
4. which solution offers most flexibility
5. which solution leads to higher fps

Seasons Greetings

2006-12-24T23:15:00.000-08:00

Here's wishing everyone a great holiday and new year!

Just don't forget the deadline for thread-safe submodule state is January 1st!

struct org();

2006-12-15T20:47:00.000-08:00

Workin` out the details of a "Rank" structure for pySoy. It resembles the Meritocracy structure many other free software projects rely on.

Just a draft for now but we really need to get something in place soon to deal with growth. I'm getting burned out and we don't even have a release out yet.

It's on the wiki for feedback, so if you have a concern or complaint, please feed back.

magic music machine

2006-12-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

I've had some trouble with the OpenAL bindings for PySoy.

The goal is to match the direction and velocity from physics space into audio space whenever audio is bound to a 3d object. Unbound audio (such as background music) plays without doppler effects.

It's working on Windows but not Linux or OSX right now, my guess is an inconsistancy in Seth's ODE bindings it the cause as unbound audio is working everywhere.

The audio decode functions I'm leaving to Arc since he has more experience with this. At present only .wav is supported through the Python wave module.

Started work on my M³ Media Player (M³ = "Magic Music Machine") as a demonstration of PySoy's audio support and a cool Ogg Vorbis/Flac player.

web-o-matic

2006-09-21T01:23:00.000-07:00

Spent an hour tonight working to update pysoy.org. Much more remains to be done. Here's a summary:

cal3d related tickets closed as "wontfix" (we're not using cal3d anymore)

edited and closed some of PalleRaabjerg's export/input tickets

deleted all Summer of Code milestones from the roadmap

set the 1.0 milestone target-date for November 1st

cleaned up many tags

Also, I shortened and toned down the text on soya3d.org.

Hope I didn't step on anyone's toes.

Clawe'ing it's way out

2006-09-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

I posted the first draft of the new Layers Document for public comment.

For those who may be wondering, yes, much of the Clawe PyREX code will be used for the Avatar mode. By the time we're done getting PySoy 3D out as a full release Clawe will have almost no code left. This only means that it will be easier to add new features!

I'm in front!

2006-09-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

Now it's official, I'm the lead developer for PySoy 3D.

Hey, you slaves, stop reading my blog and get back to work!

Oh sanity, where did we loose thee?

2006-08-31T22:58:00.000-07:00

Three months later and after thousands of developer hours spent white-boarding instead of coding, we may have a working api blueprint for PySoy 3D.

Our plan takes the whole model back for redesign, filling the gaps in Soya's haphazardly designed api model with the functions every game needs included in the core. Things such as:

input classes,

artificial intelligence,

networking,

physics,

animation,

window management

You know, the things virtually every game has?

There's also a lengthy list of important tasks, like ridding ourselves of global variables for module state, module-wide state overall, and some of the more whacked Jaba-isms like serialization hooks everywhere and a monolithic module/package layout.

It may have cost us Arc and Jeremy, who lost patience with this process weeks ago, but they will probobally re-join us now that we've got a plan "in hand" for moving forward.

Wordpress -> Blogger

2006-06-20T02:16:00.000-07:00

I'm migrating my blog to http://betanull.blogspot.com/.

Bear with me as I copy over the posts, comments, etc.

PySoy 3D

2006-06-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

After a year of public outcry, a fork of Soya 3D has been started called PySoy 3D. The new website is http://www.pysoy.org/

I'm making a public stand in protest of Soya's mismanagement by migrating Clawe to PySoy 3D.

To make this stick, I'm working to get an initial release of Clawe out in the next month.

Down with Soya! Long Live PySoy 3D!

New job..

2006-05-27T00:53:00.000-07:00

Help, I've been kidnapped by the leauges of corporate enslavement!

I have been trying to put time into Clawe, but no promises until some bills are caught up.

More conceptuals

2006-05-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

Felt like adding something new just to keep things going

Updated Powers

2006-04-15T23:28:00.000-07:00

In this updated table, each aspect of an element (energies) is formed by combining it with another element:

Energy	Primary Element	Secondary Element	Totem
Creation	Fire	Air	Rabbit
	Earth	Water	Deer
	Air	Fire	Dragonfly
	Water	Earth	Bear
Weaving	Fire	Earth	Mouse
	Earth	Fire	Spider
	Air	Water	Bat
	Water	Air	Beaver
Destruction	Fire	Water	Boar
	Earth	Air	Wolf
	Air	Earth	Eagle
	Water	Fire	Scorpion

Totem icons

2006-04-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

Only a few so far:

Building screenshots

2006-03-19T22:40:00.000-08:00

Here are the buildings I have so far

Clawe conceptuals

2006-03-14T00:36:00.000-08:00

This is the general theme I'm going for.. sort of celtic/aztec/mohawk.

Clawe Powers

2006-03-05T01:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a rough draft of the Energy | Element | Totem chart:

Energy	Element	Totem
Creation	Fire	Rabbit
	Earth	Deer
	Air	Dragonfly
	Water	Beaver
Weaving	Fire	Mouse
	Earth	Spider
	Air	Bat
	Water	Bear
Destruction	Fire	Boar
	Earth	Wolf
	Air	Eagle
	Water	Scorpion

Starting New Game: "Clawe"

2006-03-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

I've been playing Secret of the Mana and some of the old Ultima series over the last few weeks, and have gotten inspired.

The basic idea I'm working on is a tribal-based society, much like the celts, africans, or native americans around the turn of the last millenia. Just as our society is divided into two gender-castes, these tribes are also divided into castes of three energies (creation, weaving, and destruction) and the four elements (earth, air, water, fire), which combined give us 12 "totems" much like zodiac signs.

Each character's birth totem gives them powers to transform into their totem and use their element in the energy of that totem, and they can learn others through gameplay.

This will be an offline game until it's nearly complete. I'm thinking about online multiplayer play, in the style of a single-player RPG, with new quests and challenges being added to the server to extend playability.

Apocalypse Non-Progressa

2006-01-09T02:19:00.000-08:00

The apocalypse has not been progressing well due to school and work.

It's on my backburner until I'm inspired to continue on it.

A.M. Screenshots

2005-12-17T16:37:00.000-08:00

Presented for your viewing pleasure...

New Project: Apocaliptica Manifesta

2005-11-29T18:28:00.000-08:00

Here's a shot at a modern end-times RPG.

Shadow corporate governments, mind controlling the masses with adverts, robotic soldiers waging war on people, and you - a cybernetics experiment turned rebel, are the world's only hope.

New Blog!

2005-11-17T14:26:00.000-08:00

This is my new blog.

Shiny!