Archive for June, 2007
Yes that’s right, the present I am giving you on my birthday is Gravity…no not the stuff that keeps you on the planet (well, most of you), a computer game I created in 2004 called Gravity. I actually created another game of the same name in 2003, but the 2004 version is a completely different game, the only thing it has in common with the original is a few graphics and the gravity calculations.
If you want to work out how the game works for yourself, Click here to download gravity.zip
The basic premise of the game is simple, you are in a stationary space ship and you are trying to shoot a stationary target, however there are three planets and three bumpers in the way which you have to deal with. Also to make it harder, there is a barrier right in front of you, in the direction of your target, making it impossible for you to just directly shoot at the target.
The scoring is a bit complex, but it runs as follows:
Target Hit…………………………………+100 Points
Bumper hit…………………………………..+5 Points
Planet hit………………………………….-10 Points
Out-of-bounds……………………………….-10 Points
Blowing yourself up…………………………-100 Points
You also gain one point for every second that you have an active shot.
There is also a bonus point system for long shots, the longer the shot the more bonus points. The bonus points are awarded when the shot has gone for the specified length of time, eg. If a shot goes for 39 seconds you will get bonus points at 15 seconds and at 30 seconds.
15 Seconds…………………………………..25 Points
30 Seconds…………………………………..50 Points
45 Seconds………………………………….100 Points
60 Seconds………………………………….200 Points
90 Seconds………………………………….400 Points
120 Seconds…………………………………800 Points
180 Seconds………………………………..1600 Points
240 Seconds………………………………..3200 Points
Also important are the keys to make the game work
Rotate left…………………………………left arrow
Rotate right……………………………….right arrow
Increase shot speed……………………………up arrow
Lower shot speed…………………………….down arrow
Shoot……………………………………….space bar
Toggle full screen mode……………………………..F4
Turn music on/off…………………………………..F5
End game early (takes you to the results screen)………F12
Your projectile can disappear off screen for a while at times, the actual edge of the game is a fair distance off screen so that if your projectile is going to come back, it has enough room to turn around. You will hear a click and see the shot light appear again if your projectile goes out of bounds.
The top left and top right corners of the screen provide useful information. The top left side displays your score, the speed of your next shot, and also if you currently have an active shot or not. The light will be light blue when you can take a shot, and dark blue when you already have an active shot.
The top right of screen displays the amount of time left in the game, the time your current shot has been going for, and your longest shot for the game.
I was going to correct a few typos in the documentation and change some of the music for this public release, but it looks like I’ve lost the source files (or just can’t find where I backed them up). Incidentally, there are two batch files included with the game to enable printing, unfortunately at the time the only way to get printing to work in the programming environment I used for this game was to create a bitmap of the game window and get MS Paint to print it…which was further complicated by the lack of the programming environment to understand basic Windows paths like “%temp%” due to the use of percentage signs. This forced me to make the batch files to create (and remove) a virtual drive pointing at %temp%
There is no installation needed, but you will need to extract all three files from the zip file. The game should work without the batch files, although it certainly won’t print, and will probably quit suddenly if you try to get it to print.
It took the better part of a two week school holiday to write this game, and the rest of that two weeks to get the printing to work and fix bugs as they were discovered.
Click here to download gravity.zip
Gravity should run under Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP, and generally works with a few font issues under WINE. It is untested on Windows NT 4.0, and will not work on earlier versions of Windows. I retain copyright on this game, however you are free to distribute it. If I ever do find the source files I will post them as well.
Have fun!
Samuel
June 2nd, 2007 at 06:13am
Good morning again John,
I thought you weren't giving me a present…so thank you for the lovely surprise of playing End Of The Line by The Travelling Wilburys earlier, it's one of my favourite songs and I'm going to treat you playing it as a present.
That song was used at the end of the final episode of One Foot In The Grave, it really lifted the mood as it was quite a sad ending, but the song and the accompanying film clips changed the mood considerably…and as the lyrics say "Well its all right".
Thanks again and have a great day.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
June 2nd, 2007 at 04:29am
It’s happened, I’m 20! It’s hard to believe that an entire decade has passed since I turned 10 and recorded an audio cassette called “A Decade Of Samuel” (highlights available here).
Thank you to everyone who has already wished me a happy birthday, and thank you in advance to those who will later in the day.
Also today is Nattie’s seventh birthday and her present from me is some home made cheesecake from the cafe in Cooleman Court in Weston Creek.
It seems to be turning in to a tradition that I talk to John Kerr on my birthday, this morning was no exception. Normally I don’t record my radio conversations, but yesterday with Clive and today with John I have made exceptions.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/JKBday2007.mp3]
(Or click here to download the conversation)
John Kerr and his wife Rhonda sent me a card with a rather amusing gag:
Speaking of presents, I am going to give all of you one shortly. A computer game I made in 2003. More details shortly.
Samuel
June 2nd, 2007 at 03:22am
Good evening Stuart,
Great interview with Ernie Dingo. I dare say that his singing would probably be an awful lot better than mine!
I don't see as much of The Great Outdoors as I used to, but I think it's a pity the way all the presenters are effectively joint hosts of the show these days, as I thought Ernie always did a great job as host. His personality was brilliant as the host and I think it's a pity he doesn't get as much airtime on that show any more.
Hope you have a great weekend.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
June 1st, 2007 at 10:59pm
This blog, like any other WordPress blog, receives plenty of comment spam, admittedly it has been receiving and awful lot less comment spam since moving from Bluehost to AussieHQ hosting (dropped from thousands per month to hundreds per month), and the spam filter does a pretty good job at marking it all as spam, and even better yet, it hasn’t had a false positive (marking a legitimate comment as spam) for many months.
Update: Correction, there was a false positive earlier this week which was brought to my attention today. End Update
However I do, every month or so, get a false negative (which in my opinion is much better than a false positive) where a spam comment doesn’t get marked as spam. Due to the fact that these comments appear to come from non-existent users (who naturally don’t have any approved comments), the false negatives land in the moderation queue and I manually mark them as spam, so you never see them.
Today I received one of those spam comments, and I thought I’d share it with you because I can’t work out what it’s going on about, and I was hoping that you might have a theory.
run house…
Very actual information about run house….
Just like all comments spam there is a link to a website with absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the comment, and the aim of the spam is to get you to click the link…but why on earth would anybody click a link for that? What on earth is a “run house” and why do I need “very actual information” about one?
Moon experts might down play the effect a full moon has on people, but if they are going to speculate about what would happen if we had two moons, then they are probably just as influenced by the full moon as the crazy people of this planet.
Samuel
June 1st, 2007 at 02:08pm
Good afternoon John,
You know that I like you so please don't take this the wrong way, but the idea you came up with a few minutes ago of having Tim Flannery in the studio taking calls about climate change under the guise of a reasoned and balanced debate is the stupidest thing I've heard all week, and I've some some remarkably dumb things this week.
You yourself said only a few minutes before that, Tim Flannery represents one side of the debate. I'm certainly not saying don't bring him in, but if you are going to have him taking calls, you also need somebody from the other side of the argument to do the same thing, preferably at the same time…you have other segments like that on a weekly basis and they work very well.
Have a good weekend!
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
June 1st, 2007 at 01:59pm
It’s not very often that I get to enlighten you with a summary of a dream in which I’m using public transport in another city, so today must be your lucky day as that is exactly what I’m about to do.
This dream started with me sitting in the second last carriage a CityRail train in Sydney, the train appeared to be travelling at a normal pace and I had a look out the rear window of the carriage, towards the last carriage. The last carriage then disconnected from the rest of the train and disappeared in to the distance (apparently impossible…but I’ll let Clive Robertson explain why shortly).
Probably in order to prove that the dream wasn’t even remotely real, the dream then managed to make a CityRail employee walk in to my carriage (something which would almost never happen in real life). I alerted him to the fact that the train was missing a carriage.
The train then stopped at the next station and this CityRail employee told everyone to get off the train and wait on the platform (of which there was only one at this station) and wait for the missing carriage to catch up with the train…oddly enough, it did.
To make matters even more odd, the CityRail employee handed me a stop watch and asked me to time the train as it travelled around a loop of the railway station. For some reason the stop watch was able to determine the speed of the train, and determined that the carriage which had previously gone missing was travelling one kilometre per hour slower than the rest of the train.
The CityRail employee decided that we would leave the slow carriage behind, so all the passengers got back on the train and away we went!
This is one of my more peculiar dreams, and I decided that the best person to talk to for an analysis of this dream would be the closest thing to an expert on trains that I know of, 2UE’s Clive Robertson. Was Clive (aka Dr. Cliff) any help? I’ll let you decide, have a listen to our conversation from 3:25 this morning. Incidentally Clive continued his comments about this website from a few days ago in this conversation, and somehow we ended up discussing my peculiar habits.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SamuelCliveRobertson20070601.mp3]
Download MP3
To answer Clive’s question, the titles are in Georgia font, and the rest is in Arial.
I now eagerly await the email from Clive’s GP, and I pity the poor sod at CityRail who has to try and make sense of that conversation when the Media Monitors transcript arrives later today.
Samuel
June 1st, 2007 at 11:46am
Once again it’s time for our monthly exploration of the vault, and this month we are going all the way back to the 22nd of March last year, and a story about the Commonwealth Games.
Congratulations to Australia’s Golden Lawn Bowlers
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:35pm
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Lynsey Armitage and Karen Murphy, the two ladies who won gold in the women’s pairs lawn bowls event at the Commonwealth Games. The won gold is a thrilling and convincing show of power and excellence, overcoming Scotland 11-7, 14-3 in the final.
Lawn Bowls is a magnificent sport, and I am glad that it is receiving the profile it deserves by being a part of the Commonwealth Games.
Well done Lynsey and Karen!
It is worth noting that Australia got a medal in each of the Lawn Bowls events, with another gold going to the Mens Triples team.
Samuel
Comments
1. Chuck A. Spear | March 23rd, 2006 at 1:55 am
I agree. Lawn bowls is a fantastic and exciting sport. The asymmetrical balls combined with a precise action gets my adrenalin pumping. Terms such as; ‘jack’, ‘head’,’touchers’ and ‘dead’ are unique yet highly arousing to the ear and bodice.
The finely laid, precisely leveled and majestically manicured bowling green personifies the type of nether hair I wish my girlfriend to have.
2. wonko the sane | March 23rd, 2006 at 2:40 am
hey chuck, completely off topic and perhaps a bit of a cable-layer, but we’re making a new site and this is one of the stories we have on the site. I thought being a muso you might be interested.
http://www.brownnoiseunit.com/newsite/node/76
now, back to jacks, touchers and heads.
3. Aunty_Jack | March 23rd, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Not to mention that the women in lawn bowls are a great example for our youth. Bring back the “below the knee” hemline i say… and those large brimmes hats, so sun smart..hoorah for the ladies of lawn bowls!
4. Samuel | March 23rd, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Just don’t rip their “bloody arms off” Aunty_Jack!
5. cunninglinguist | March 24th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Aunty_Jack, right on! And the knee high stockings, over the shoulder boulder holders and stepins/big white Cottontails.
Lawn bowls ROCKS.
6. heatseeker | March 24th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
I have to admit, I found myself strangely aroused by the victorious bowls girls
June 1st, 2007 at 08:44am
It was bad enough on Saturday when I only had a week left…but now I’ve got less than a day!
Those of you who have been reading this blog for over a year probably know what I’m talking about, the rest of you probably think I’m about to expire. So what am I talking about? The fact that in under 24 hours I will cease to be a teenager.
I should be happy, and I am, but I’m also approaching this milestone with some trepidation. To be perfectly honest, becoming an adult a couple years ago was less daunting than this.
Still, tomorrow is my 20th birthday and I am looking forward to it. I’ll be working for Australian Independent Radio News for a fair bit of the day, but it will be enjoyable none the less.
The good news for you is that I’m going to give you all a present…visit tomorrow and you’ll see what it is! I think you’ll enjoy it.
Samuel
June 1st, 2007 at 05:31am
Another weekend awaits, and therefore another round of footy tips that you’re probably better off tipping against.
NRL Round 12
Panthers v Eagles
Dragons v Broncos
Roosters v Knights
Storm v Rabbitohs
Cowboys v Sharks
Titans v Raiders
Warriors v Bulldogs
Tigers v Eels
AFL Round 10
Magpies v Dockers
Demons v Crows
Eagles v Kangaroos
Tigers v Lions
Swans v Bombers
Power v Hawks
Blues v Bulldogs
Saints v Cats
Samuel
June 1st, 2007 at 02:31am
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