Note : These posts were originally posted to Patreon as a Subscriber bonus. Now that Patreon's imploding, I've decided to start reposting the contents here, instead. -=-=-

Inside Jay's Notebook - 001

When typically coding, I tend not to use pen and paper. Over the many years that I've been doing this, I've found my mind to be perfectly adequate for storing bits and pieces, and jumping between all the many random and crazy ideas that I generate. In addition, my handwrit...

Starting to think I should probably just make an XCode project.

The framework isn't quite running properly on MacOS, so today will probably be spent trying to get that going. For some reason, since the recent MacOS Security Update, I don't seem to be able to Remote-Desktop into the Mac via the WinLaptop. Hopefully it's just some weird thing, requiring a reset or something, and not a hole that's been closed, making it unusable.. Hmm.. :\

Yeah! Linux success!! That's two systems that can now access (kinda) web based data. A good sign that things are slowly coming together!

A brief roundup of the things I've managed to accomplish, during 2017.

1. Online Scoreboards

It's been a long time since I last had online scoreboards in my general AGameAWeek games. iOS's GameCenter made me lazy, and I could never be bothered to implement anything more complicated into my Framework. But this year, I opted to take on the challenge, so right at the start of this year I added an "Enter Your Name" thing into my framework, and tied the scoreboard system to the server....

WinSock only took 2 days to get right. Today I'll be needing to attempt the same thing with Linux. I'm sure that'll be a totally painless, and easy task!

After a day spent trying to track down the issue(s), I've finally got WinSock to return exactly what I expect it to return! I can't rest yet, as I need to foolproof the values being returned, and also then get it working on things other than Windows... WinSock is strictly for Windows, so .. It's going to be a system-by-system rewrite to get everything on the same level. But I'm about 50% confident that I'm able to send requests from the Windows editions of the games. *sigh* T...

I finally dug my heels into the Net code, last night. For the meantime, it'll be very Windows specific, and I'll have to tackle each different system in it's own way.

Logging into the Mac, I copied the AGameAWeek Framework folders over, and tried to run a lengthy scrambled mass of "Terminal" (stop calling it Command Prompt, Jay!) commands in order to get it compiling. After about an hour or so of tweaking the command, I got the thing outputting GLFW errors, which is an improvement from what I started with!

It's definitely picking up the controller..

Time for another test. If you're bored, are running Windows, have a controller or two at hand, and want to help out, please give this test a run. Download the Test Here (Windows only, right now. Linux is.. ... Being Linux!)

OK, the mouse stuff seems to be working with overscan, now, which is good. Additionally, the Game Controller code appears to be kinda ok. I've set up the engine/framework/etc to assume all controllers are "The player's input", so I'm going to be doing 1-player only stuff until I can be bothered to faff about with it some more and implement multiplayer controller code! Unfortunately, I don't 100% trust what GLFW3 is telling me. The controller input list here is suggesting that DPad Up...

Mouse, and of course, touchscreen. They both took a bit of a tumble, last night. The overscan seemed to be working, but I was only testing it with controllers, since the overscan is typically only used on Android TV versions of the games. Yesterday, however, I chose to reuse the overscan functions on iOS.

I must've spent about 5 hours, yesterday, trying to find the right sound for a new AGameAWeek Jingle.

Yesterday was a horrific day.

Also available on SoundCloud or in the Pulp'ish Album. I know it's not Friday!

Yesterday was a code-less day, and I expect today will be much the same.

*beep* I added the generic menu beeps, last night.

Or at least, the most basic of options work, anyway.

Seriously, though, I hate doing menus. Instead of finishing things off, last night, I instead gave up and rearranged a bit of my bedroom. Because.. Anything but Menus!!

I need to add a bunch of default options to the menu, for generic functions like Fullscreen, Debugmode, Overscan and things like that. However, I also need to consider future projects, too.

It's a start..!

Spent a few more hours working on getting things a little neater.