Scoring System Almost in Place

I, being a rather lazy programmer, only made 13 commits in writing RubyTet. However, it is a somewhat productive day in term of progress. I finish most of the scoring system code. The only two things left is to make it easier for players to score the game is by finishing the shape changing code and to write block crushers.

Not Much Today

I spent little time developing RubyTet today. I merely setup the classes for scoring and the UI for displaying the game score. I did get 16 commits though.

Tomorrow, I will probably do a more..rigorous development of RubyTet.

Also, I am probably going to toy with coding other sort of games...nonseriously... So any new projects that I might have started tommorow is likely to be forgotten...

A Big Puzzle of RubyTet is Solved!

Well, my solution to RubyTet's game logic problem has worked. Once again, simple solution often trump complicated answers in their correctness. So much that I have to get rid of my old solution, which were more specific and more wrong.

The above screenshot is not representative of the current situation but it is quite close to it.

I made roughly 15 commits today in the span of an hour of programming. I think that's enough for today.

By the way, thanks for the vote on the FSDaily story for the Libregamewiki article Battle for Wesnoth. I appreciated it! More votes is welcomed!

Hmm....Failure Again

Yesterday was supposed to be the 7th day of non-start stop development. It didn't happen because I was too interested in discussing ideas rather than writing games. This lapse is disappointing. But today, I resolved to program harder to make up for my failure.

I won't promise that it won't happen again but from this day forth, I hope to achevie the magical 30 days straight game development, a feat that I achieved during the summer.

In about one hour of programming today, I achieved 14 commits. In that time I laid the groundwork for a much simpler solution to the problem than I have devised with my overly complex dropping mechanism. I think...it is almost complete. I hope to finish this very core game logic by tomorrow...

As for the Libregamewiki project, I encouraged people to votes on the FSDaily story for our Wesnoth article. Making the front page again means more traffic to Libregamewiki, and hopefully contributor conversion.

Redux Day 7: Upping the Ante

Since it is Monday, I decided to increase the number of minimum commits by one.

All in all, I finished a game feature which allow players to do instantaneous drop. Otherwise, it is mostly me mucking around cleaning up the rather ugly codebase. So nothing concrete except better code organization and a new gameplay feature.

I also got a solution that's worked out for the game logic. Let see if my other work on the codebase can delay me from working on the game logics until Friday. It is not like it will be ready for consumption once after I finish the core game logics. All I am doing is shifting tasks around that would otherwise be done anyway at the end of core feature development.

Redux Day 6: Game features coming along....

Instead of banging my head against the game logic diffculty of RubyTet, I decided to work on other game features instead. So I worked on limiting the movement of the shape by figuring how much to offset. Then I went to work on player activated complete drop, which meant that the player has decided to just drop the shape.

In course of implementing this feature, I discovered that I must again make new classes so it make the task of writing new features easier. Currently, the classes are incomplete. However, I hope this task will keep me occupied as I figured out a solution to my difficulty.

Redux Day 5: RubyTet Game Logic Trouble

So I managed to make 12 commits to the RubyTet project but I never managed to get much further along with the game logic. The new method I used to check if it is necessary to drop is broken. So tomorrow, I'll have to spend good quality time doing sketching on papers and figuring out the mathematics.

Along the way, I did a few preparation on changing the speed of the game and did some bugfixes that went unnoticed before.

Redux Day 4: More Cleanup on RubyTet

I finally finished cleaning a class of RubyTet. Now that its ugliness in that area got erased, I can focus on figuring out the game logics. I havn't made much progress in that department. My assumption are wrong in the first place and I'll have to go back to drawing board and figure out what information to return.

Libregamewiki, on the other hand recevie generous contribution from the author of SDL-Ball on our article SDL-Ball. We are grateful for that contribution. It also mean that SDL-Ball is one of our bigger article on Libregamewiki. Regardless, any contribution from others is awesome!

Redux Day 3: A Little Cleanup in RubyTet

Today, not much has been focused on dealing with game logic code and more about cleaning up the codebase a little bit so it is a little bit more organized and feel "cleaner". I managed to achevie my minimum goal of 12 commits plus more.

Tomorrow, I will have luxury of working out the game logics code for RubyTet. Currently, it knows when to stop moving the shape and start a new shape to drop, but it doesn't know where to stop moving. Hopefully, by the end of tommorow, I will have something almost resembling Tetris in that you fit pieces together.

For the Libregamewiki project, I am pleased to continue to see the increase in traffic. The construction project and the promotional effort has defintely paid off. However, we will need to promote the project more and continue the construction program before I can see that Libregamewiki take care itself without my day to day editing.

Broke RubyTet's Barrier! Yay!

Second day into my redux:

Well...I finally solved the bug in RubyTet. It requires lot of debugging for me to figure it out though. Tomorrow, I can proceed doing 12 commits to the project, I hope.

Libregamewiki received much traffic thanks to your vote on FSDaily! If you haven't vote for the OpenAnno article yet, please do so! If it can get to top story of the week, that mean a continued stream of traffic to Libregamewiki. I think it already attracted a contributor :D.

Meanwhile, I continued my study in trignometry, finishing a few problem today. They were easy so far. I just have to figure out how to convert them into square root or something...

Redux and Failure

This weekend, I have unexpectedly failed to reach my goal. It all started with my inability to overcome obstacle in programming RubyTet. The rest, I wasted time and refuse to do them at all. In any case, it was a disappointment.


Today, I have come back to coding RubyTet again, along at a reduced level of productivity, because of my inability to solve difficult bugs. Nonetheless, this day will marks the redux of my effort to strengthen and maintain discipline. So this is day 1, all over again.

Looking back, I think I was overly ambitious to pursue many things at the same time. So this time, I will scale back and just focus on doing my homework, coding, and editing the wiki. I will have to fit my trignometry study somewhere. I wouldn't like to wait a long time before I can restart my Space Fighter Ace project.

Also, for the libregamewiki project, I would like readers to vote up the FSDaily story on OpenAnno, a recently featured article and recipient of the construction project on libregamewiki.

Day 19: 3 Day Weekend Starting!

Ah, I gone off the track a bit with Friday here. Still managed to keep doing RubyTet stuff though. I read through the rails tutorial and the trignometry book and everything. Libregamewiki got a growth spurt going on. In short, everything may be progress more slowly than ancipitated but it is still going.

But today is when the long weekend starts! Monday is student holiday and the teachers will have to drag themsleves off to work. Good thing that I am a student.

Time to make plans!

Let me see if I can finish chapter 3 of my trignometry in one evening sometime this weekend. Also, I am going to finish part 5 of my rubygame book.

RubyTet will be going under hyperactive development mode. So expect lot of commits and lot of progress, barring unforseen obstacle.

I am going to try to finish the rails tutorial too so I can start building RubyTet's home and the beginning of a gaming framework integrating websites with video games.

If I make good use of my time, I should be able to get lot of these goals done. If not, than I only have myself to blame for squandering such a pecious opportunity. Here hope that it turn out wonderfully.

Good night all!

Day 18: Homework Thursday

Today, all at once, my teachers decided to give everybody lot of homework. So I got clogged with homework in my backlog. This limits my time and force me to spend time coding on other parts of RubyTet such as cleaning up the viewer class. In the rush, I made several careless mistakes and has to correct them later.

I should have made better uses of my time though. That way, I can think about solving the problem instead of the mad rush to do easier but less essential tasks. But tomorrow will be Friday and there will be an extended weekend too! So this school cruft will be over soon!

Beside homework, this day is business as usual. I am slowly progressing through everything...

Day 17: Adding controls to RubyTet

For RubyTet today, I wrote the game control so that you can move around shapes. I still have not implement the shape changer though. Then I worked on adding rules for adding shapes since it isn't enough to be adding shapes to the field, but actually inserting in the correct position.

As for my other stuff...

Rails: I am momentary confused about rails migration. Tomorrow will clear up as I start over again over the migration part of the tutorial.

Trigonometry: I am proceeding slowly through chapter 3. Still many questions to go.

Libregamewiki: It is business as usual. Not much is going on there.

Day 16: RubyTet game logics coming along....

Today, RubyTet development got 13 commits. During these commits, I renamed the Create class into the ShapeField class and wrote shape adder for the PlayField class. Then I went to work on the buggy viewer because it failed to update to the next shape. I also fixed the z and s shape because they were switched around.

As for my pursuit of trignometry and rails skills, I am heading into rather lengthy chapter it seem. There are like 80 questions that I have to do. Rails tutorial, I am doing like a page a day. It is really short and really easy so far.

Day 15: Week 2 into Development!

Ah! I reached a critical milestone. I done about 2 weeks of game development so far. I think I have established myself as a disciplined developer able to work under the stress of school and the energy that it drain.

Today, RubyTet got 12 commits, over the miniumum requirement of 11 commits per day. The 11 commits a day is not much increment over 10 commits, but I think it will add up to cutting the game development cycle by a few days. If successful, I will increase the minimum by 1 commits every week.

As for my Trignometry(which I am learning for Space Fighter Ace), I am crusing chapter 3 at a leasiurely pace. With the rails tutorial I am doing, I finally got the mysql server fixed and so I am now unstuck. For my Libregamewiki project, I worked on the OpenAnno article quite a bit. I also get valuable freedback from CyaNox regarding the state of the wiki. Also, he kindly upgraded the mediawiki installation of Libregamewiki.


Finally, I recongnize that I need to manage my schoolwork load more efficently since my grade has took a drop from my stay at the hospital. Maintaining my grades is neccessary for me to aim for my game development career without restriant. I am aiming for all A's, so it will be a tough challenge to tackle. So with this in mind, I established a mandate to study my Latin vocabluary words every day. Once I can deal with schoolworks with ease, I think this will open up more energy for me to work on developing video games for a living.

Day 14: RubyTet is starting to Resemble a Game!

RubyTet now have shapes dropping! It took us agonizing 14 days for this project to mature because I merely complete the minimum amount of commits needed everyday, which is 10. I think it will take the rest of this month for the first version to be completed. As a matter of fact, I am going to bump it up the minimum requirement a notch. It will be now 11 commits, instead of 10!

As for the rails tutorial I been doing, I got stuck with the mysql database. It apperantly doesn't like me because I got the password wrong.

As for Space Fighter Ace, I am taking my first step with chapter 3 of my trignometry book. It will take a while for me to digest this infromation over distracting schoolworks(especially my math class). I wish to return to coding soon but not knowing trignometry won't make it go any faster.

In Libregamewiki news, we got a new wikiproject going on, the construction project. We're aming to make OpenAnno a big fat article. Once that's done, I got plans to use the article to promote the Libregamewiki.

Since it is the weekend, I took the time to work on the Rubygame Book. I fleshed out the introduction of part 5 a little bit, but not much else.

Day 12 & 13: Slugging through the Weekend

Apparently, my post for Friday did not successfully materialize. All of the work I have done for that blog post disappeared. Oh well.

But for Saturday, I made a fair amount of progress on different tasks.

RubyTet: I got the shapes fixed and is working on the drop code.

Libregamewiki: I am working on coordinating the construction effort so that the Libregamewiki will see its most activity ever since the project started.

Space Fighter Ace: I finished chapter 2 of my trig book. I need to accelerate the learning process if I wanted to finish the game by Christmas.

Rubygame book: I worked on providing the neccessary images for learning how to use surfaces.

Rails tutorial: I am slowly working through the tutorial at the moment. I could probably finish the whole thing in one day if I wanted to though. That should be a bonus mission for this weekend.

Day 11: A Chapter Is Finished

I just finished chapter 1 of the trig book I am reading today. It took me a while because I was doing them between classes. Now, I am a little bit closer to having enough knowledge to complete my Space Fighter Ace project.

As for RubyTet, I got the viewer working. I just need to work out the kinks out.

I am also getting started on a rails tutorial. Once I complete that tutorial, I am going to go create a rails site for RubyTet. There, it will form the website framework for future games. My hope that it will evolve into a general framework for integrating games into sites.

Day 10: I Got Forked

To my surprise, my Space Fighter Ace project got forked. That mean it must be good enough for a project fork! I am excited to see what will happen. I am also learning my trig at a steady pace.

I also managed to get myself unstuck in the RubyTet project. It took me 3 try to find a solution.

As for the forum, I moved the Libregamewiki forum to the FGD network. Hopefully, it will attract new contributors to the wiki.