AddOns, CPU, Abitur
Longer post, because I’m bored and if you read the text you know why…
I did a stupid thing two days ago. Actually two mistakes: First I bought a sound card (Creative Xtreme Audio) without checking if it has proper Linux-drivers. As things turned out, Creative only provides driver-support for the higher X-Fi chips, and my new sound card doesn’t have any X-Fi chip at all. On Windows it would be simulated through software, but on Linux I’m stuck with general purpose opensource drivers. Well, it wouldn’t be that hard if there wasn’t this nasty bug in the drivers only happening on my chipset: You cannot enable software mixing (dmix of alsa) and surround-support at the same time! Don’t ask me why, but all the configfiles around the Interwebz are failing – and there are a lot of forum topics about my chipset (Ca0106). I tried for several hours and the only solution seems to be to use the PulseAudio-server for mixing – but I never got Pulse running correctly under Ubuntu. I’m going to return the sound card and look for a better supported one.
And here comes the real mistake: I cleaned my CPU fan extensively, removing it from the chip. Well, seems like the thermal paste already dried and after putting the fan in again, cooling doesn’t work anymore. CPU temps go up to about 95 C, even when I’m just watching a YouTube video! So, I’m currently sticking with my netbook, while waiting for the new paste, which severely limits my computer usage. Can’t test my WoW addons either.
Ah yes, WoW addons! cargBags is very stable and I’m running out of feature ideas. Seems like I actually need to start on Anywhere-bags in the next days :/
I’m currently working on another “big-scale” addon, currently called ModeChat. It is going to be a “chat framework” similar to the design of cargBags – so, lots of API- and OOP-stuff. My goal is to completely replace the Blizz’ chat, because it seems to be a complete mess, and it gets more and more complicated to write addons for it.
So, ModeChat won’t reuse any of Blizzards chatframe-code for maximum modularity, featuring a new approach: It consists of so called “Modes” which react on chat-events and fetch all infos related to the message. This info is then processed into a string (adding timestamps, formatting channel names, etc) and passed to a specific “Buffer”. There could be a buffer for guild-chat, one for party, or a whisper-chat. You could also make buffers specific to a person, e.g. “whisper-Cargor”. Each chat frame can then display a specific buffer (you can also combine and switch them easily). Chat tabs would switch the buffer instead of the chat frame.
Possible extensions could be such things like different chatframe syles, logs for the buffers, and your own vertical tabbar! Yes, vertical!
But it’s far from being complete, I got the underlying buffer/display system working, but need to write a new editbar for text input. And it needs to handle slash-commands … somehow.
By the way, I’m not posting about real life here very often, but I just finished school (Abitur in Germany) and so have months of free time, before I’m going to university. I already applied for “Technische Informatik” (Computer Engineering) at the University of Hanover.
11:13 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: wow interface, real life
Manx
No news in a long time, so I figured I could post something about my current project. cargBags 2 got released as Beta on WoWInterface, and so I lost interest in WoW addons again. Instead, I got into C++ under the awesome QT Framework again and am currently writing a bigger application in it.
I mentioned Minecraft before, didn’t it? Well, this block-based sandbox game has infinite maps – they are generated as you walk along – and the author released the level-specifications. So I thought I could try to parse these binary files and provide a map viewer for the game. There are some great map-viewers and -editors already around, but only for Windows.
In a few days I finished basic map exporting of InDev files and since I love writing object-oriented code, it is very easy to extend it and to include different level-file-formats or some other renderer for the maps. The renderer is also running threaded (thanks QT!), so I could very easily add multicore-support in the future – using multiple renderers, each for a different part of the image.
Next goal is to make a scrollable map viewer, the renderer would basically get the viewport coordinates and then return an image which is written on the GUI. Maybe I could also export it into JPG-tiles, so one could make a Google Maps-applet from it. Could be useful for multiplayer servers.
Ah, you can grab the code from GitHub of course.
06:31 PM | 0 Comments
cargBags 2.0
The rewrite of the cargBags-core is almost complete and the new design direction opens a lot of possibilities. I didn’t really think, I could rescue the framework from development hell, but, well, I was wrong! I don’t want to write a lot of technical stuff here, but the basic principle of the new cargBags is that you can overwrite all core-functions and replace them by your own if you like. So everytime a core-function hinders your own layout, just replace it with a more fitting one. This also lets me subdivide the core in as many optional files as I like. Filter-system, positioning-code, item-updating, all could be removed from it. In the end, cargBags would just be a set of API’s to provide compatibility between components.
This whole new approach made it possible to create lots of new inventory addons. I managed to rewrite Bagrealis as a cargBags implementation (a rather hackish one at the moment), so I can simultaneously develop multiple inventory implementations. cargBags 2 also has an all-new search bar that supports searching by item type and bag id. With the new system, it is also possible to include scrolled lists of item buttons, as shown in the screenshot.
01:41 AM | 1 Comment | Tags: wow interface
QuestMyMap and other Quests
I got back into addon development for World of Warcraft, although I’m still not motivated enough to actually play the game. QuestMyMap got a rewrite for 3.3.3 and is now released on WoWInterface.com. In my opinion it makes the quest map a lot prettier, because it scales it back to its original size and hides unnecessary stuff like the rewards-info and log-text. Check it out if you like the design!
In addition, I’ve rewritten cargBags again. Yeah, after I discontinued it and written a post on how the whole design principle of cargBags has its flaws. There are no really new features except a complete change of the API. Layouts are now called Implementations and instead of “spawning a bag”, you now create a “new container”. Actually, it is class-based from the core to the item-buttons and to get rid of the callbacks and provide more flexibility, all functions can be overwritten with your own ones. cargBags also handles opening/closing of bags and delays all bag-spawning until the very first keypress to open the bags – this should speed up the loading screen a tiny amount. Multiple layouts at once are now possible and a layout/bag doesn’t update if it is hidden. You can find the beta here and the default layout here.
Bagrealis will still be developed further, I just have to be in the mood for it. If chances are good, it will become a cargBags-implementation.
03:31 AM | 1 Comment | Tags: wow interfaceSome minor changes
This time I didn’t make a complete redesign of my website – it’s really lot of work after all – but instead focused on improving the old one. The “about me”- and “portfolio”-pages are re-implemented, so this website is not just a blog. I really like the portfolio design, which I spent a lot of time working on. It’s hard to present programming projects in an appealing way, since I can’t just show the code and say “Hey look at it!”. Code is like poetry, only in a foreign language that not all people speak. And I don’t want to end with a portfolio page like I did before: where my artworks and websites are highlighted the most, because … you know … I don’t consider myself a designer at all, it’s just trial and error.
Don’t concentrate to much on the about-page, it’s just a placeholder for something more elaborate. I need some good photo of me first and a good text which focuses on me. And there are still the obligatory links to my different Web 2.0 accounts missing. Did I mention that everyone and their mum seems to have a Twitter-account? Would like to start my own, but I don’t know what I should write – and who would read it? My friends don’t seem to be very Web 2.0-ish.
Completely unrelated (as usual): I bought an account for the indie-game Minecraft on the second day after I heard from it. Although the graphics look old, it’s very fun and has endless possibilites for the future. It’s still in alpha-stage and I hope that we get some API and can program our own plugins and addons. I’d like to implement a train-system and some landscape-destroying flint – mmh, really reminds of goold old multiplayer Clonk-rounds, building bases, mining gold, flooding caves with water, killing monsters. Minecraft = Clonk – Plugins + 3D.
03:22 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: minecraft, homepage, web design