Seraphiel 0.1 beta 1 release

Seraphiel 0.1b1 is now online!

I’ve created a forum for it, to make discussion/bugposting/suggestions/etc easy.

Ok, time to step back a bit. What is Seraphiel?

Well, it’s a Greasemonkey script for Utopia.

Features:

• Remember T/M ops
• Throne page/Science page/Buildings page/CB/Survey/SoS/SoM formatters
• Sortable kingdom pages
• Nw/acre column on kingdom page
• Buildings calculator
• Themes (choose your own colour scheme for Utopia)
• All completely integrated into the game windows and built into Utopia.

Planned features for future releases:

• Attack calculator
• Military training optimiser
• Construction optimiser
• T/M op summaries

This is beta software, and there are a few bugs in it.
Currently Seraphiel only supports World of Legends, Genesis support and support for the next tournament is planned.
There is also a board in the forums I set up where you can help me figure out how to add the planned features

So please, download! Enjoy! And give me feedback.

You will need either Firefox or Portable Firefox (a version that you can pop on a thumb drive or on systems that won’t allow you to install software) plus Greasemonkey.

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Wondering what the name means? See Seraphiel’s page on Wikipedia (that page is related to the angel Seraphiel, which this is named after).

Phew!

Wow, I’m exhausted. Very close now to release. I’ll probably be putting up a beta tomorrow.

A couple more formatters to go in, a little bug fix on the Science page, and it’s done. Everything else is nicely tested.

The quiet before the storm

Yes, it has been a bit quiet around here lately. I am currently gearing up (read: coding) for the release of what will (initially) be a Firefox/Greasemonkey script for Utopia. A script of the ages.

Currently there’s a few features still to go in, and I have a few bugs to fix. But this is going to be big.

RSS 2.0 feed

I’ve added a link to the RSS 2.0 feed, it’s on the links list to your left. Just in case you were worrying about missing some of the hard-hitting stories I post here.

You will need an RSS 2.0 reader/aggregator, I am told it will not work in other versions. I personally use Sage, a Firefox plugin. Though RSS hasn’t particularly caught on with me.

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Oh, yeah, and don’t believe for a minute that a CAPTCHA is going to stop a dedicated botwriter. Apparently, people are willing to solve them for $0.60 an hour. I guess the only remaining option is to require users to solve a mathematical proof as your CAPTCHA, showing all steps and working.

XNA Game Studio Express

So I’ve had a bit of a look at the XNA Game Studio Express, and from what I’ve seen it does to DirectX what GLUT (and its alternatives) does for OpenGL, except with some bugs. Well, it is a beta; and besides, most of those I’ve encountered so far have easy workarounds.

It looks pretty good. Basically it takes care of setting up the window and the runtime loop and gives you Update() and Draw() functions to work with initially. Naturally, you can take full advantage of C# and OOP.

It’s useful for what it is, and a worthwhile thing to have around, particularly if you don’t much care for the hassle of setting up a DirectX window yourself.

+1 Informative!

I suppose I could just use Notepad++ instead, but that would be like hitting a nail with a jackhammer.

Instead I’ll just try and figure out why Visual C++ 2005 is telling me I’ve got unresolved externals.

… but I’m getting off topic. Back to installing XNA Game Studio Express.

Notepad2

Another quick note. I’ve lately been using a handy little Notepad replacement called Notepad2. It’s nice and fast, simple and does all the syntax highlighting I’m likely to need in the foreseeable future.

The one thing that bugs me is the Find/Replace, which is a bit dodgy (indeed, I actually prefer MS Notepad’s version). Of course, it’s open source so I suppose I could probably just edit it out…

Been a while…

Yeah, ok, I have been a bit slack lately.

So, some updates:

• I’m not currently using Code::Blocks. Nothing against the environment in particular, just wasn’t for me. I’m currently using a little C compiler called LCC-Win32. It’s small, it works, and it goes nicely on my USB key. It wasn’t actually designed as a portable app, but simply copy/pasting it onto the USB key more or less works. You just have to tell it where the include files are kept the first time you use it on each computer. There may even be a workaround for it somewhere, I haven’t really looked.
• I’m about to install the XNA Game Studio Express beta. I’ll probably post some thoughts on it either tonight or sometime this weekend.
• I’m currently working on (among other things) a Firefox extension and/or set of Greasemonkey scripts for Utopia. The features list is unconfirmed at the moment.
• I’ll probably put some OpenGL examples up soon, so you can all admire the artistic wonder of them.
• I quite like a site I ran across the other day, The Daily WTF?!, a site housing collections of some of the more stupid moments in IT.