Moore Musings

TOKAR Evolution

Its 9:19 AM. Do you know where your TOKAR is?

A Mish-Mash

Sharon and I had quite an exciting weekend. Among the generous wedding presents received, probably the most unexpected and appreciated one I encountered was from Pavlov. He gave me the zombie Magic deck I built so many years ago. I am very pleased. Woot!

Sharon and I went to see Iron Man, myself for the 3rd time, her for the first. I'm happy to say I have a wife who enjoys superhero movies almost as much as I do (particularly when the protagonist is an M.E.).

Finally, I have decided I should unearth a few more quotes from my quote-book. As a warning, these are all grossly out of context.

As they should be. Enjoy!

"I don't want my stole solen!" - Gallagher [not a typo]

"Alright, there it is. Whore!" - Gallagher

"It would have been even funnier if he threw up." - [A Professor]

"We don't need all the fuzzy liberal arts." - [A Professor]

"My punching tool is plenty big, thank-you-very-much." - [I'm sure you can all guess]

"What is it with me and 69's?" - [Not who you think]

"You jump from A to hamsters." - Wheeler

"Are you trying to lure my mouth in that direction?" - Wheeler [to Rachel]

"Actually, I've already done my Jewing for the night, in the VC." - Wheeler

"Yep, no, deeet! No its not!" [shrill ending] - [Some Girl we all know]

"Flirting is breeding!" - [Some Girl we all know]

"Wheeler, you need thinner skin so that you pop out." - [Some Girl we all know]

Don't try to explain these, just shudder, be glad its in the past, and move on.

Cheesecake!

The honeymoon is (as they say), over, and Sharon and I are back to (mostly) normal life.

Of course, normal life is definitely improved with the addition of a beautiful wife, but Sharon and I both agree that having breakfast delivered in a basket on our door (official notice to all couples, this place rocks incredibly), is an addition to everyday life we would appreciate.

Our adventures this week included biking along a great bike trail that runs right by our apartment, going to the Cheesecake Factory, lazing on our nearby beach, and clearing Underbog.

It seems the area near our apartment is especially blessed with bikableness. I was aware previously of a long river park just a block away, and its trails. I was also aware of the beautiful old neighborhood behind us with many stone houses and wonderful gardens. I even knew about the beach just two miles away. I did not realize that one could bike to the grocery store in 3 minutes, Blockbuster in 4, and Einstein's Bagels in 6. The library weighs in at about 10 minutes. Not only that, but an old train line very close by has been removed, and replaced with a biking trail that runs over 10 miles, snaking along the river through dense woods, even as it goes from the suburbs right in to downtown. It is also almost entirely on a slight incline, so you can choose to divide your trip into minor uphill and minor downhill portions, depending on your original direction of travel.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not elaborate on our blessed Cheesecake Factory. It sits about 10 minutes away (by car), in a nice outdoor shopping mall (which also houses a board games store). It is large and airy, has outdoor seating if desired, and best of all, on July 30th (next Wednesday), all cheesecake's will be $1.50 a slice. That's right folks, check your local cheesecake factory for $1.50 a slice cheesecake on July 30th.

I was going to discourse at length on our great lake beach, and maybe even talk about Underbog, but I should probably wrap things up. How can I outdoo $1.50 cheesecake?

My question for you, dear reader, is this. Where will you be on July 30th?

More Moores

I am proud and oh-so-happy to announce that there is now another Moore: my beautiful wife Sharon.
We are back from our adventuring in the Dells, but I'm not going back to work until Monday.

Thanks so very much to everyone who was able to come to the wedding. We enjoyed seeing and being with nearly all our friends as much as we did getting married... well almost.

Special thanks to Ziggy, Rachel, Toad, and Scholl who made so many things happen when we were so loaded. Our appreciation and joy for seeing all of you is frankly overwhelming, it was officially the Best Time Ever.

We plan to have wedding photos up on a Google Images gallery once I get the DVD in, and will share it around with all you great folks. We do have all rights to pictures.

We are now chilling in our new apartment in Milwaukee, for those curious let me know and I'll get you our address.

While things are still in a tumble (merging two lives and lifestyles will take some time), we would love to see folks, and anyone in traveling near or in the Milwaukee area is encouraged to let us know, and we'd love to have you around (might even dig up some air mattresses!). Ok, give us two weeks on that actually ^^

Anywho, we love you all, thanks so much for being part of the best day of our lives.

New build with Asteroids Minigame

The 0.95 build has an asteroids mini-game in it.

Check it out here

Windows Build

Windows build is now available, try it out from here

Just unzip it and run Galaxy2.

Galaxy-Engine Beta Release!

So I have a release of my Galaxy-Engine project. Its on sourceforge!

Download it here.

The linux binary is up to date, the windows one lags a bit. This is because I can only do linux builds on one machine, and only do windows builds on a second. Sorry windows folks, you'll have to wait or recompile it yourself (with Dev C++) to get a working build.

Enjoy!

Busy Busy

Its been pretty crazy with wedding stuff and all, but soon it will all be past!
My fun program has become more advanced, I'm currently rewriting the ai script processing to make it smoother and more user-friendly. I'm not sure I'll have a distro available by the time I head off for wedding-ness, but I just might.

I look forward to seeing most of you soon, be safe on those roads/clouds/tracks!

Galaxy (My New Toy)

Although its not quite ready for a release, my Galaxy program is doing fun and amazing things. What is so special about it? It is very high 'extensible'.

Basically, I mean that everything about it: from how the objects look to what they do, is easily modified by any without programming knowledge.

Each object on-screen is a pair of files: one which tells the program what picture to use, and one which is a series of commands for that object to process.

The commands vary from simple (go forward 5 units, turn left), to the more complex (home on enemy missile targets, explode with a given force).

Additionally, objects can spawn other objects, which in turn can spawn other objects, and so on. This makes it a dynamic and growing system, easily expanded to do new and interesting things.

You can see in the picture below a brief shot of the action. The Millenium Falcon ship in the upper left is launching mobile missile turrets.
Each missile turret is launching 4 missiles, waiting a few seconds, and doing so again.
Each missile is homing in on the player (the Falcon in the lower right), and exploding when it dies.
You can see the player has fired lasers, destroying some incoming missiles. On the left, you can see a chain of explosions: one missile hit the player ship, blew up, and that in turn detonated the missile behind it. These explosions chained up a long column of inbound missiles.

While this seems complex, its just a bunch of relatively simple objects interacting. And changing one line in a text file could quickly add new and dynamic effects.

I've gotten the program able to run in Linux and in Windows. Soon I'll have it ready for folks to play with, and will post it then.

Also, as is incredibly obvious, I could use the help of someone with artistic talent: my missiles shouldn't have to look like bulimic red giraffes.

What has Moore been Doing?

If you really must know, I've been working on a top-secret game engine.

Basically, the idea is to make a program with which anyone can create fun 2D action game stuff, like Galaxian or Asteroids.

It has user-defined AI scripts, collision detection, homing, force weapons, physics, powerups, and even particle effect explosions.

Tonight I ported it from Linux to Windows, which wasn't too hard thanks to its use of GTK, a graphics library.

Soon I'll have it uploaded to the internets for all to enjoy. That, and screenshots, coming soon.

Also...

Because Scholl has been slacking, it is up to me to provide some of the Disturbed Links I found on that beacon of Truth and Light, Pravda.

Women who dislike football [soccer] are stupid

NASA to use Russian Radar to save the USA from Asteroids

Moore Ponderings

Some deep questions for the mid-week.

Why does it never rain when I bring my umbrella along to work?

Why are tomatoes hard to slice?

What did they put in Mountain Dew that makes it so necessary?

Why does my cubicle lack a back wall, while every other cubicle has one?

Is it lunch time yet?

These days I have a lot of questions (as listed above), and not so many answers. Fortunately, life continues, answers or no. Thus the weekend will be here (soon, I hope) and questions may be put on hold for more diverting activities.

Thus, I shall leave you with an intriguing quote.
"Imagine if your clothes generated electricity!" - Becky Castleberry

Weekends are Win

I had a great weekend traveling to Joliet to see Sharon. After two weeks, I missed her a lot.
We are now less then 3 weeks from getting married. Hurrah!
However, it was a tiring weekend with travel and traffic and such. Definitely worth it though.

I've acquired some more games, specifically a creature creator for the forth-coming Spore, and a Sliver deck for Magic. One of my friends has picked up Settler's of Catan and five expansions for it. Much amusement should be the result.

I'm still a little tired and sleepy from the weekend, so I shall leave you with a quote:

"When Wheeler wants shaking, he has places he can go. But when he wants shimmying..." - Moore
"I go to Uncle Doug!" - Wheeler

In Which Moore Seeks Virtual Comraderie

General Warning: This post is exceeding geeky: proceed at your own risk.

One of my favored pastimes in my undergrad years was hanging out with Pavlov and his Magic Decks. Magic is a collectible card game developed by a mathematics professor. Based on a slightly complex set of rules, it allows players to face off with a controlled, but variable set of resources and combine strategy, luck, and bluffing to subdue their opponent. Its lots of fun to come up with new decks and ideas for existing cards, and a great way to hang out with friends and pass the time.

Unfortunately for us poor college students, gathering a significant number of cards was expensive. So, for the most part, we all used Pavlov's colossal library.

Since Sharon and I have acquired jobs, we started acquiring Magic cards on Ebay: 1000's of used cards are available very cheaply in bulk. We've enjoyed playing with each other and friends, and generally devising new decks and strategies. However, Magic has always required physical proximity in order to be played, something all too often not available due to our travels and jobs.

Last week a friend introduced me to a computer program that allows people to easily play Magic on the Internet. It is free, and legal. Know as Apprentice, it acts much like a virtual table on to which we can drop our cards and track game state. It enforces no rules, and its very much like simply meeting a friend with decks in hand. Naturally, you aren't restricted to cards you own in real life.

While I could yammer about its pros and cons, I would rather give some basic instructions on getting it set up. They are below ye fold!

Also, they end with a good old quote (yes, I'm trying to get my fuzzy friends to scan it).