The latest version of my sample clone!
Here’s the last part of my multi-part series on programming your very own pong clone in c and opengl! It’s been a long time coming, so I hope you enjoy. There’s lots of improvements in this version including a completely custom old-style “LED Alarm Clock” scoreboard, flashes on bounce, funky changing colors, improved collision detection, and a round ball! 
I recently helped my nephew Peter do a massive overhaul/upgrade of his current PC. We basically rebuilt his PC and the only thing he kept was his recently purchased insane-o vid card and his hard drive. Several hours later we had his new PC up and running–hardware wise at least.
One of the orders of the day–much to my dismay–was to install Windows Vista. I advised him not too, but he got his aunt to get it for him for his birthday and he rationalized his defiance of my advice on DirectX 10. (Truth be told, I sabotaged myself by telling him it was one of the only neat features of Vista, outside of massive memory footprint and overall sluggishness.)
And so our journey began..
I’d like to tell you it didn’t take us in excess of 2 days to get Vista installed. I mean, I’ve been building PCs for years now and I’m a recent grad of Computer Engineering (I know the two aren’t the same, but still..). Piece of cake, right?
Wrong.
This is the second part in what should be a four part series on how to program your very own Pong clone. The first article went over setting up your environment in your favorite OS, now this part gets into some of the mechanics or details on how to actually get started.
Before I start with anything, we have to think about simple animation. In fact, animation is just simply a series of static images, with each image slightly displaced from the last.
So what does that mean? (more…)
If you ever wanted to program your own video game, this is a good place to start. I remember when I started learning programming it was surprisingly difficult to find out how to make an honest and simple game. In fact, after reading most programming books, the only type of game you could make would be a Zork clone.
You are in a dank cave and you can see nothing, but you hear a walrus in the distance.
What do you do?
- Look for the walrus.
- Watch The Big Lebowski
- Decide that the walrus is Paul.
This is not to knock Zork in any way! Zork is a clever, well written, and extremely well thought out game (even if my pseudo-quote isn’t). But in a world where we’re spoiled by moving objects, you want to know how to move and interact with something on screen. The problem is it takes a lot of different knowledge sets to get the job done. But in this post, you’ll get started learning how to make your very own Pong clone. (more…)
I was going to wait for something more significant to post about, but I just don’t get this. AT&T is entering the browser market. No, they aren’t making compasses or providing tours in Venezuela. They’re making a Web Browser.
Yeah. That’s how I feel.
Why in the hell are they making a web browser? Notice that I’m not providing any criticism on the web browser (it actually implements some pretty neat concepts). I’m asking a simple question, why? What does AT&T want in the browser market? They aren’t working on a browser they can port to handsets. This is a bloated browser, with tons of snazzy 3-D functionality (Check out the Ars Pogo Review). AT&T is going well out of its comfort zone to create a product for a market that is saturated–if you have trouble believing that, try asking Steve Jobs how Safari on Windows is doing. Oh, did I mention? It’s Windows only.
Do we really need another Windows browser?
Why isn’t AT&T focusing their efforts on more worthwhile causes, like I don’t know, unlimited Voice and Data plans for reasonable prices or SMS for something a bit less that highway robbery (The True Price of SMS)?
What do you think? Let loose some confusion in the comments.