quick post

busy as hell doing everything in the world but what i want to be doing (working on this game engine). But i did some reading on IE 9 and wanted to say something about it ... not that i think Microsoft gives a crap what the developers really think or want ... If IE 9 does not have support for the canvas tag i will ban the IE browser from my sites. A simple check and redirect to a page telling them to download a real browser that does support the w3c standards, why they should do it and links to the most popular browsers will do nicely i believe. I do encourage everyone who is trying to set up canvas-specific sites to do the same. If they don't want to support us ... they can talk to 404.html. :-)

going to go beat up a pillow now. cheers!

Progress

Ok, court could not have went more wrong but i won't vent about that but that is over now. Now to just get the move and holiday stuff out of the way! I did work on it a bit as soon as i got home while the wife woke up though. Added the image preloader so that it works fine the first time instead of having to press the browser 'reload' button to get it to go. Next is to get it to scroll beyond the current 3x3 grid which will involve some duct tape, a crow bar and a 10 lb sledge hammer. :)

This first version will remain as a flat-isometric plane but i do have plans on adding a layered isometric plane later on. Performance is good in Firefox and Opera but in chrome it just flies! IE ... screw IE we don't care about them. :p perhaps in the next version they will add canvas support but i'm not getting my hopes up. not going to post a new link or even upload the newest version yet. I will do that when i get it to dynamically load a map from the server and it is scrolling beyond the current 3x3 grid. Maybe i'll even add in a fence or a cow or something else in addition to the trees and grassland.

Court Week has finally arrived!

ok, my wifes insurance claims are finally going to court. Doesn't seem like they are going to offer a real settlement at all so i guess we'll have to go the whole nine yards with this one. Bleh! like i have time for this! STILL in the middle of moving ... my wife, bless her heart, has us moving tiny bit by tiny bit. Move a few things then set them up in the new place, move a few more then set them up. Me i just want to get the crap over their and then set it up then. At this rate it seems like Christmas will be gone before we are finished.

Ok so it's like 5:36am and i have to jump in the shower in just a minute but I'll throw out my idea for the first game the canvas engine will be laid out on. I purchased a domain called moghack.com. No it has nothing to do at all with hacking mmo's. :p Instead it will be a multi-player version of nethack. Though I will be getting a lot of ideas from nethack it will not be a duplicate or a web-based clone of it. That's been done before for starters and the current base design of nethack does not lend itself to multi-player options. Their are two features that will be absolutely migrated over, random-dungeon generation and perma-death. I have several ideas laid out on paper for the multi-player aspects of it but they are still in their infancy so will not be releasing those ideas quite yet. More details to come in January i hope if everything goes as currently planned ... which it never does. :p

-Matthew H.

aka Wetlander

General FYI

Ugh, Christmas is in full swing so working all the hours that I can get. Along with 2nd job, trying to drum up more business for home and in the middle of moving i barely have time to breath. Come January though this should all settle down though as by then we will have finished moving and have the new house unpacked along with reduced hours at one of the two jobs. a heck of a lot less travel time is going to help as well, about one hour per day that i won't be sitting in traffic.

Good thing about working at wally world though is that it's pretty mindless so i'm carrying around a small notebook in which to write down ideas and plan my January to-do lists. Doubt i'll post much till then though so merry Christmas to everyone!