VinceArter.com

Posts Tagged ‘Programming’

Well I’m sure those that are waiting for SPORE Game Packager (SPG) are wondering … where is it? I mentioned it only a few days after SPORE’s release. I have been busy at work and the 90 software releases we have going on in our projects right now so I haven’t had free time to finish SPG.

I did, several weeks ago, start re-writing the UI. It looks nicer and does use the Krypton Suite. I also fixed some of the bugs in the temporary file handling. The code is still ungodly ugly and horrible (I hate to admit it) but right now I just want to get it out there and will do some OOD later. (Hey … at least I refactored it so none of my methods have more than a few lines of code in them and got rid of unnecessary stuff but it’s still very procedural).

Anyway I hope to finish it in the next few weeks if there is still interest. I haven’t received as much interest as I did initially but I’m guessing folks are just waiting.

Oh and yes … this will be for Windows only right now. I chose to do in C# with the .NET 3.5 framework and it uses Windows environment information so at this time it will probably not work on UNIX / Mac even under Wine (I’m guessing).

Here is the latest screenshot. If you are still interested drop me a line and I’ll get it done faster.

SPG Screenshot

 Vince

So the SPORE Game Packager has been delayed a few days. I really wanted to clean up some stuff and make it more user friendly. I have just recently (acutally a few months ago) started working with a neat package of tools called the Krytpon Suite (part of which, Krypton Toolkit is free). VERY cool suite of tools and early testing shows that they perform very well.

Right now the package is almost done. I have everything packaging up nicely and am working on some clean-up items I mentioned:

To Do

• Clean-up packaging code (it’s messy now)
• Re-design UI (it’s just nasty at the moment) using Krytpon Suite and better layout
• Use temporary folders for more efficient restoration (unpackaging).

So I want to get some of that conversion finished and I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the tool and how it is going.

For those interested in the project (and it seems like a lot of people are for some reason) one thing to note (and the program will warn you) is that this does NOT do a merge. It is basically like backing up from one PC and the restoring OVER the other one … it is to copy everything from one location to another. IF enough people are interested in the project and I have time I guess I could dig deeper into the folder structure of SPORE and figure out how to do more of a merge approach.

Another question I have been asked is will it cost anything (or will it be Open Source). It will not cost anything but if you really like you can donate (coming soon) to help me continue development. It will not be Open Source. I have a friend (Trent) who is a big WoW gamer and has been thinking of doing a similar project for WoW so at some point we may merge our code streams (I THOUGHT YOU SAID NEVER CROSS THE STREAMS RAY!) so that could be a change in the future as well.

Well have a good rest of the week and look for more on SPORE Game Packager after the weekend (and probably an Alpha Release sometime during the weekend).

– Vince

I had been looking for an RSS aggregator (and more) and something that works kind of like Yahoo Widgets (but doesn’t suck). I found KlipFolio awhile back and it is really a neat little app if you want to keep in touch with several sources of information. It’s very easy to use and the new Beta for Version 5 has some neat new features.

I love the Facebook Friends update … I don’t have to log in to see my friends statuses. I even created some shortcuts to Twitter and Facebook to updates so I can update more frequently.

The programming interface is basically JavaScript and XML … I wrote a small Klip (like a web part in SharePoint) in just a few minutes (was building a clock and the object model didn’t work as expected). Anyway … it’s a pretty neat little application if you like that kind of thing. In combination with TrueLaunchBar and Actual Window Manager (the two utilities I just can’t live without) you get a lot of power, freedom and control over your Windows environment.

Vince