Half a page of scribbled lines

Just-Eat: Did Somebody Say... Piss-Poor Customer Service?

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 16:50:00 +0000

Back in the pre-Covid Utopia that was 2008, I wrote about my experiences with a relatively young company - Just-Eat.

It was a bit of a mixed bag. The convenience of ordering online rather than having to phone the restaurant directly was a big selling point. The problems back then were customer service - how things were handled when they went wrong. Back then there were definite issues, especially trying to contact them out of office hours.

Since then Just-Eat have gone from strength-to-strength and are now a widely recognised brand, and you can probably order from most restaurants in your home town from them.

For the most part their customer service improved too. Mistakes can (and will) happen - and how they deal with them is key to whether consumers will continue to use them. So if a restaurant didn't pick up on your order within 20 minutes or so then receiving a courtesy phone call from a Just Eat representative wasn't unusual. Missing an item or an order gone astray? Contacting the restaurant was usually enough to resolve the issue, if not then the Just-Eat staff had your back to help sort things out.

Recently it looks like things have changed, and not for the better.

Not long ago I had an issue with some items missing from an order, and the food was cold too. Phoning the take-away using the number provided on the website passed me straight through to an automated phone line ran by Just-Eat themselves, which resulted in a short message to use their website to make a complaint, or contact the restaurant directly. One Google search later to find out how to complain I entered the details and waited.

This was followed by an email from Just-Eat:

Just Eat Takeaway.com (Just Eat UK)
X XXX, XX:XX GMT
Hi Dan,
Thank you for contacting us about your recent order [Order Number Removed]. We're sorry to hear you didn't have the great experience we wanted for you.
We've looked into everything in detail to see what we can do. On this occasion, we're unable to offer a refund or compensation based on all the information we have.
We appreciate your understanding and we hope to have the chance to provide a better experience for you next time.
Thanks again for getting in touch with us.
Just Eat

Further emails were exchanged - but I may as well not have wasted my time. Short version: Computer Says NO!

As it was one meal (six or seven pounds worth of food) it's not the end of the World, so I let it be.

I've ordered stuff between then and now and had no more problems, until today.

This time the entire order went missing. Their website says it had been delivered, but God only knows who to. So, contact the restaurant via the phone number, which passes me back to that oh-so-familiar Just-Eat automated phone line.

Complain on the website, which results in me getting an identical email as the previous time, otherwise known as "Computer Says NO!". I've also tried going via their Facebook, all to no avail. So this time it's a £20 order gone, and no way of getting a refund short of spending more time with the bank reversing the charges, or taking them to the small claims court - which seems like a lot of effort for £20.

I did manage to track down an actual phone number for the takeaway, and had an apologetic but not helpful conversation with them. According to them once the delivery driver has the food it's Just-Eat's responsibility. The take-away didn't have any way of contacting the drivers (or even have the name of whoever it was) as they work for Just-Eat rather than them, and Just-Eat don't provide them with any tracking information.

Thankfully these days Just-Eat aren't the only company locally taking online orders, so I'll be switching to one of them, probably Deliveroo - as I'm led to believe that they do have actual customer support rather than just an automated service that might as well say: We've got your money and you can't have any of it back, so there!

For those of you who think I may be laying this on a bit thick, then may I suggest that you go to https://www.facebook.com/justeat and try reading the comments on their posts, you'll see a lot of people having the same issues.

Just-Eat? It might as well be Just-Go-Hungry!

Running KDE / QT5 apps on Windows Subsystem for Linux

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Fri, 22 May 2020 16:50:00 +0000

I've recently started playing with Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10. Installing Ubuntu 20:04 worked well, and after installing vcxsrv (from here) and running the following command from a Ubuntu command line I can run graphical programs too.

echo "export DISPLAY=:0.0" >> ~/.bashrc

The above line adds the export into the .bashrc file so that it runs every time the console opens (and saves having to remember to export the display before trying to launch a program).

Sound is tricky to get set up (no luck yet) but I'll add a new post if (or when) I manage to get that working. The biggest problem I've encountered so far is trying to run QT based programs - like any of the KDE apps such as Krita.

They install OK, but when trying to launch them you get an error like this:

krita: error while loading shared libraries: libQt5Core.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The libQt5Core libraries are already installed. The fix is to install binutils and strip some info from the library:

sudo strip --remove-section=.note.ABI-tag /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5Core.so.5

This is the location of the library on my system - if you are running a 32 bit system you may need to change to path of the library to match where it is installed.

Since running the above command I've been able to run KDE apps without getting the missing library error.

HP Stream 14 - Windows 10 Woes and Reinstall

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 20:00:00 +0000

Windows 10, love it or hate it it's hard to avoid using it.

I'm now having to support my Son's .HP Stream 14 laptop - mainly for him to do his homework on (yeah, right)..

It's not a bad little laptop, no powerhouse to be certain, but for browsing and connecting to the school resources it does exactly what we wanted.

Or at least it did until a couple of days ago - when Windows decided it was no longer going to let anyone log in. The problem was probably a corrupt user profile - unfortunately my Son, in an unusual display of self reliance tried to fix it himself by following some youtube videos.

To cut a long story short - oh dear.

I'm not that bothered that he tried to fix this himself - but I'd rather that he'd asked for a bit of help once he got to the point of trying to do a system restore.

Windows has a few tricks to get you out of situtations like this.

You can use a system rollback - these had been disabled.

You can do a system refresh, keeping your files and apps in place. This didn't work - it just gave an error message to the effect that it couldn't do it.

You can do a full wipe, which removes everything but puts it back to a "just installed" state. This didn't work either.

HP also provide a "restore to factory settings" option. Guess what? It didn't work.

One Google search later and the "recommended" next step on the HP forums according to their "experts" is to buy the recovery media on USB stick (or DVD) directly from HP. So I checked...

£35 plus postage.

To quote Winston Churchill "Fuck that for a game of soldiers."

Before we move on, I'd like to make it clear that anything that you decide to do based on this blog post you do at your own risk. If your laptop ends up unbootable, explodes, eats the cat, makes obscene phone calls to your Grandmother or whatever it's your problem, not mine.

So, for the cheapskates amongst us, what next?

In my case, I popped onto Amazon and bought a fresh 32GB usb key on next day delivery (thank you Amazon Prime).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01M8NNMHO/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Then, I followed the instructions here to create a Windows 10 USB install (you'll need access to a working PC to do this).

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2376-create-bootable-usb-flash-drive-install-windows-10-a.html

And then I booted from the USB key (I did this from safe mode, but you can get the boot options by pressing ESC repeatedly on startup).

I ended up having to format the existing Windows partition and then re-installing onto there. After that it's a case of confirming the install language, crossing your fingers and waiting half an hour (or so) whilst it installs.

And that's pretty much it.

The correct drivers for sound, WiFi and the onboard graphics were installed, I was able to create a local administrator account for me, and then connected my Son's own Microsoft account - and...

It worked. One plain Windows 10 install, correct drivers and no crapware.

For me, this was a big success, and TBH if you've already got a USB key at least 4GB in size kicking around you can do this legally for nothing apart from a couple of hours of your time.

Worst comes to the worst if it hadn't worked I'd not have been much worse off and could still have bought a restore thingy from HP, however, at the prices they're asking it paid to try the "hard" way first.

Rise from your grave!

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 20:16:00 +0000

We're back!

After a lengthy absence from game coding (and blogging) I'm looking to start things up again.

This has been something that I've wanted to get back into for a while, but for various reasons haven't had the time or inclination to do so.

I've also had a bit of a love/hate relationship with BlitzMax **, and as good as it was it the development environment didn't play nicely on 64-bit Linux systems. As that is what I use it was a bit of a problem. Some long-standing bugs (such as looking in the wrong location for the joystick device) were never fixed and meant having to "hack" the language to get things working the way I needed. Sound was also a bit problematic.

I've had a look at Monkey - which is the "next gen" version of BlitzMax, and it has some very nice features - such as generating HTML5 games, having a very familiar syntax and having a free version and an updated IDE (on Windows).

However the Linux IDE is more or less the same as the BlitzMax one, and it didn't take long to come across the first bugs, and on reporting it I was told that the free version "wasn't a priority". A couple of months later the bug is still there, and although instructions have been given to changing the compiler to fix this manually, I really can't be pestered with that any more.

This has left me as a coder without a viable platform.

Being lazy I don't really want to go down the path of learning another language, so I'd like to stick with something (reasonably) familiar.

At work I use Visual Studio, and although Mono is tempting the development environments on Linux are a bit on the primitive side, at least when it comes to vb.mono, so I've put that one on the back-burner.

As I'd quite like to stay with a version of basic, and use something that I can at least generate Windows and Linux binaries with I've started looking through the open source alternatives.

FreeBasic is the first one that I've looked at, and it might be a winner!

Let's look at the list and see if it ticks the boxes:

* Is it cross platform? - Yes. It compiles for DOS, Windows and Linux. It doesn't support MacOS X as far as I'm aware, but then again I've not been in a position to compile for Macs for a while anyway.
* Does it have familiar syntax? - Yes. It's a re-implementation of QBasic (which evolved into Visual Basic).
* Does it create stand-alone binaries? - Yes. It compiles quickly and the speed of the binaries is (allegedly) close to that of C code compiled with GCC.
* Does it come with a modern IDE? - No. It doesn't come with an IDE, however...

Geany (pictured above) is a rather nice IDE that supports FreeBasic. It has code highlighting, autocompletion (if you download the FreeBasic tag file for it), allows you to compile and run the code directly from the IDE, in fact it does pretty much everything you could need. It's also open source and available to install straight from the Ubuntu software repository.

Sound (using WAVs) is supported using external libraries. There are some (primative) built in tone generator commands, but to do something beyond that requires a little work.

This is a little bit cumbersome at first, but there are plenty of examples out there of how it works, and I've already got sound samples working using the SDL libraries.

I may also look at using SDL for the graphics, depending on how good the inbuilt graphical functions are.

Once I've had a bit more of a play I'll create a follow up post, but so far it looks rather promising.

**As a footnote, BlitzMax is now available for free under an open license, if you are using Windows it is certainly well worth a go, just be prepared to have to work a bit to get it going properly on Linux.

Time Flies

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 10:44:00 +0000

I've just had a bit of a surprise when I realised how long I've been using Linux as my main operating system.

"How long?" I hear you ask...

Thirteen years.

Yes folks, thirteen years!

Around the time that Windows XP was released, I'd switched to Linux as a "can I use it full time" experiment, and never went back.

These days I'm not even dual booting, Ubuntu is the only OS on my computer, and it does everything I need at present - (I'm not a huge gamer). I'll admit, I have got a Windows XP virtual machine, but in all honesty it doesn't get used and will probably be deleted if I start running low on disk space.

In that time I'd started off using Mandrake Linux, switched to Slackware (which I used for a good number of years) before switching to Ubuntu. I never found any good reason to switch back to Slackware - so I've been using that ever since.

It's true what they say, "Time flies when you're having fun..."

Scheduled email reports in SpagoBI 4.2

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 13:25:00 +0000

A common requirement when creating reports is that as well as having them run "on demand" that they be scheduled to be sent automatically via email.

SpagoBI allows this functionality, here is how I did it on SpagoBI 4.2.

Step 1: Configuring the email settings.

Click on the "Resources" icon and select the "Configuration management" option.

This will take you to the configuration page. As there are a lot of options here, we'll change things to only see the ones relating to email. Change the "Select Category" pull-down to "MAIL".

You'll now need point SpagoBI to an external mail system that will send the emails on your behalf. The following settings are the ones that you'll need to look at for scheduling (you may want to duplicate this for the User and KPI email settings too).

In my case I only needed to set the smtphost, smtpport and from settings to point at my company's proxy server and provide a dummy return email address.

Step 2: Scheduling a report

The reports scheduling module is hidden away under the "Repository Management" section.

Select the "Scheduler" option.

From here you can add new scheduled reports or view / amend existing ones.

To add a new report click on the "Add" button

Now you need to name the schedule item.

Click on the "+" button to add a report (multiple reports can be added to a single scheduled item).

Browse to the document(s) that you'd like to send by email, and make sure they are selected, then click the "Save" icon.

Now add the parameter values for the report, and click "Save" once you have finished.

You will be returned to the main schedule screen, with your report listed in the left-hand column. Select your report, then click on the "+" sign in the "Schedulations" section.

You can now specify the time that the report will be scheduled for.

Select the start date / time, end date / time (if required) and the report frequency.

Now we need to specify that we are sending the report via email.

Select the "Send mail" option. This will display the email options.

Fill in the details to match your requirements (at the very least the "Mail to" and "Mail Subject" fields), before clicking the "Save" icon.

You can test your scheduled item by clicking its "Execute now" button.

Step 3: Charts, graphics and PDFs

The problem with this is that by default the report will be attached as a .HTML document, and any graphics or charts that may be in your report will be missing (HTML being the default format used in SpagoBI).

To change it, you'll need to add an extra parameter onto your SpagoBI document, with the "URL Name" set to outputType.

You will also need to create an "Analytical driver" for this.

You will also need a LOV with the return value of "html."

No, that isn't a typing error. If you set the LOV to return "pdf" then it will return as a PDF even when trying to view it via the web site. We will override this value when we schedule the report.

Now, edit your scheduled item (see Step 2 above). The "outputType" parameter should now be listed. Set its value to "pdf."

Save the item, and that's it. The next time you run that scheduled item it will attach a PDF to the email. Not only that, but the PDF will also contain any graphics or charts that you included.

Game Review: Rocksmith for XBox 360

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:37:00 +0000

Long time readers may remember my thoughts about Guitar Hero (and Rock Band) - a hugely enjoyable way to pretend to play the guitar, without needing to actually learn how to play.

Up to a certain point there isn't anything wrong with that. However, once you have got to the stage where you are playing on "Expert", and have poured more hours than are healthy into it over a couple of years it should become apparent that if you had spent that time learning to play an actual guitar you would be well on the way to being a decent player.

The problem, of course, is that learning to play an instrument is pretty frustrating at first. I've tried (over a number of years) to play the guitar and haven't got much further than playing a handful of chords.

Rocksmith is Ubisoft's answer to this problem: a game that teaches you to play for real, but keeps things fun.

This isn't a cheap game, the £50 asking price gets you the game and the USB guitar cable. You'll need to provide your own electric guitar (although a game and guitar pack is available from some retailers).

Going back to Guitar Hero - the game had a number of selectable difficulty levels - with the player progressing from easy songs to the harder ones as their skills improve.

Rocksmith takes a different approach by automatically adjusting the difficulty levels depending on how you play. Play well and more notes and chords will appear, play badly and it will simplify the song for you. Personally I find this works well and keeps things fresh.

The big difference between this and the "plastic guitar" games is that you can plug into an amplifier (or use the built in amplifier function) and play the arrangements that you have been learning. So, for example, I can now play the main lead riff from "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz (in fact I can play most of the lead parts).

Many songs have multiple arrangements, such as single note, chord or combo (a mix of the two). This also gives a good incentive for repeat play.

This brings me to another important difference between this and the Guitar Hero games - the arrangements. You play the proper guitar parts - so you don't, for example, end up playing a synthesizer part on the guitar just because the guitar wasn't playing during that part of the song (something that the later Rock Band games was especially guilty of). This means that if you are playing lead, and there isn't anything happening then you need to wait.

As a teaching tool this is worth it's weight in gold, and as a game it is pretty good fun.

Kauai KUT-55 Tenor Ukulele

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:33:00 +0000

Over the past couple of months I've been learning to play the Ukulele. I'm certainly not an authority on the subject so feel free to take my opinions here with a pinch of salt.

The reason I started to learn the Ukulele is simple. My young son wants to learn the guitar - but doesn't have the reach, hand strength or co-ordination to manage. The Ukulele was recommended to me a something that would be easier for a child to learn, so I learned in order to be able to try and teach him.

As with most people I started with an entry-level (i.e. very cheap) Soprano Ukulele, in my case a "Lazy" brand one. You can pick one up for around £20 in most music stores so it really isn't an expensive option if you just want to give it a shot.

The surprising thing is how much fun the Ukulele is to play. The chords are relatively easy to master and there are plenty of music resources on the web with some decent songs (and chord diagrams) which make learning much easier (links at the end folks!).

There is one small problem with Soprano Ukuleles, and that is that they are really REALLY small. Now I know that size isn't everything - but some chords are rather difficult to get right if you've got larger hands, and it turns out that mine are too large to be comfortable doing some chords the "right" way - so I've been developing a number of cheats to enable me to play them (often doing barre chords using my thumb, which I've been informed that this is a bad habit to get into).

No amount of practice is going to get me past the fact that my hands are just that little bit too big to fit three fingers on three consecutive strings on the same fret.

So what to do?

Luckily there are a few different sizes of Ukulele. In order of size we have the Soprano, Concert, Tenor and Baritone*. The sound is a bit fuller and richer (in my opinion) on the larger ukes. They're also a bit louder.

After a visit to my local music store and trying a few for size I settled on a Tenor Ukulele as it felt the most comfortable to play, and to be honest I rather liked the sound.

So now I'm the proud owner of a Kauai KUT-55 Tenor Ukulele. After a bit of a hunt on the web it appears that no-one has reviewed one of these yet - so here goes.

The uke itself is made from Mahogany plywood, with a Rosewood fretboard and bridge. As with most modern ukuleles it has geared tuners rather than just pegs, which makes keeping it in tune much easier. The overall construction feels nice and solid, and it is certainly a more comfortable size.

The biggest difference is with the sound.

I didn't realise just how bad the Lazy uke sounded until I compared it against the tenor. Whilst the soprano has a very plasticky sound, the tenor has a much richer, almost guitar-like sound.

Playing chords is much easier. There was a certain amount of buzzing / dull chords on the soprano, which I'd put down to lack of experience on my part as it was possible to make each chord ring true, but not every time. The number of fluffed chords has dropped dramatically to the point that it is obvious how much of my problems were down to a uke that was just too small (or too cheap).

* Another thing to bear in mind with the Baritone is that they are tuned differently to regular uke - in fact they are tuned the same as the top four strings on a guitar - so if you know guitar chords then this might be a good option.

Slow Web Browsing in Ubuntu

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 16:37:00 +0000

A couple of years ago I bought a Belkin wireless router. No big surprises there. My main PC connected to it via a network cable, my kid's PC using wireless.

In Windows it works great. In Linux it didn't. There was a noticable delay (around four seconds) from entering a web address to the page starting to load. Every time.

In the end I switched to a different router which nicely avoided the problem, and the old router took up it's new position as an "emergency backup."

Now the new router has finally failed, and so I've switched back to the "old" one, and yes, it is still slow to browse in Ubuntu. The funny thing is that once the page starts loading it loads quickly, but there is that long delay before it starts.

So now I'm stuck with it, and with the benefit of a couple of years more experience under my belt it is time to find out what's going wrong.

Let's turn to our good friend dig and see whats going on:

dig www.google.com

This gives the following response:

;; reply from unexpected source: 8.8.8.8#53, expected 192.168.1.1#53

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> www.google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 59114
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 6, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.google.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.google.com. 3 IN CNAME www.l.google.com.
www.l.google.com. 3 IN A 209.85.229.99
www.l.google.com. 3 IN A 209.85.229.103
www.l.google.com. 3 IN A 209.85.229.104
www.l.google.com. 3 IN A 209.85.229.147
www.l.google.com. 3 IN A 209.85.229.105

;; Query time: 36 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Sat Feb 11 17:45:21 2012
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 132

The first line gives a very good clue as to what the problem may be.

reply from unexpected source: 8.8.8.8#53, expected 192.168.1.1#53

The unexpected source is what I would have thought was my primary DNS server (and indeed the router's configuration confirms this, with 8.8.4.4. as the secondary). The "expected" IP address is the router itself. This explains the slow browsing - as there there will be a delay while the DNS request is made to the router (which doesn't respond) before moving on to the true DNS server (which does).

Running the connection information tool confirms this. The router is being set up as the primary DNS server, with 8.8.8.8 as the secondary and 8.8.4.4 as tertiary.

The fix? I've set up a manual IP address for the desktop, which is just out of the router's DHCP scope, and manually specifies the correct DNS entries (but remembering to set the router as the gateway). Browsing is now just as fast on Ubuntu as it is on Windows.

Sorted!

Dear Ubisoft...

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:32:00 +0000

Dear Ubisoft,

I'd love to say how much I've been enjoying using my own electric guitar to play your fine game "Rocksmith." Especially as, according to a recent article: "What I see when I read the reviews is a lack of enthusiasm for something that is new."

However, seeing as there is no UK release in sight for the game, I'm not able to. I, and I suspect many others, have been waiting patently the past few months, cash-in-hand to buy your game. Hello? Customers waiting!

So far, we've heard the following regarding the UK (and European) release of Rocksmith:

* It will be released late 2011
* It will be released early 2012
* There are licensing issues (with the music) that are holding up the UK release
* There are no plans to release the game outside of the US

Which is it?

Are we to assume that you don't want European customers to buy your games?

We want the game, you want our money. Surely we can come to some arrangement here?

Distribution / licensing / trademark issues can (and do) happen. This is a sad fact of business life at the moment. However sending conflicting messages to your customers when these problems happen is a really good way to loose them.

Permanently.

So, before we go our separate ways and I start looking for a Pro Guitar to go with Rock Band 3, I'd love to give you the chance to sell me the game that I actually want. Because believe me, if I have to shell out for a new guitar to play Rock Band 3, I certainly won't be spending my money on Rocksmith (or any other Ubisoft games) for a good long while.

Yours Hopefully

DanO

Dan's Remakes vs OSX Lion

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:03:00 +0000

I've had a couple of emails regarding my games not working on the latest version of OSX Lion. This is thanks to those wonderful people at Apple removing support for PowerPC compiled applications in the latest and greatest version of their operating system.

Yes folks, Rosetta is no more, and when you update to Lion, neither are your legacy (PowerPC) apps.

So what does this mean for Dan's Remakes? Well, in the short term I'll only be able to support people running versions of OSX earlier than Lion as I don't have access to an Intel based Mac.

Sorry and all that, but buying a new (or second hand) Apple laptop is a bit beyond my means at the present time (and with four kids and a wife to support this isn't likely to change in the near future).

However. . . .

For a number of years there has been a link to a Paypal tips jar on Dan's Remakes. This has garnered a grand total of nothing. Should anyone feel like saying "thanks" and dropping a couple of pounds / dollars / francs / yen / whatever in, then I'll put it towards getting that new (or second hand) Mac so I can start supporting OSX Lion.

I'll update the main site this weekend and will post the progress towards the fund total (should there be any).

Fund total? Well, looking at EBay it will cost me £350-400 to get a second hand Intel based Macbook. If the total gets close enough then I'll stump up the rest of the cash myself.

Click here to donate.

On the other hand - should someone have a spare Intel based Mac Laptop that they are willing to donate then get in touch at the usual address.

If a miracle happens and too much money is raised - then I'll donate the overflow to charity.

Linux on Fujitsu Amilo Li 1705

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 08:04:00 +0000

Earlier this year I bought a Fujitsu Amilo Li 1705 and I've been wanting to get Linux working properly on it, as it would make a handy portable development system.

As I've just upgraded the CPU from a single core Celeron M to a proper Dual Core processor, I was keen to see how well Linux ran on it, especially as it had made a HUGE difference when running Vista.

It goes without saying that these days installing Linux is a lot less painful than it used to be. In fact, in most instances you can go through the entire install and configuration process without ever touching a command line.

Ubuntu can even take away the agony of partitioning. Using the Wubi application downloads the install files, creates a loopback file system, and configures your Windows boot menu to allow you to install Linux without having to do anything scary with your existing system. You can even uninstall it from add/remove programs.

Once you boot into your new "Ubuntu" option then the install proper takes place, and one reboot later you are the proud parent of a bouncing baby Linux.

End to end the install took less than half an hour. Uninstalling takes a few seconds.

Logging into Ubuntu for the first time it is time to go through the checklists:

Has the correct graphics driver and screen mode been selected? Yes.

Is 3D acceleration working? Yes.

Do we have sound? Yes.

How about wireless networking? Yes again.

Is CD Burning working? Sure is.

How about playing DVDs? Oh dear.

There is an art to getting DVD playback working on Linux. Thankfully the process for doing so in Ubuntu is extremely well documented and it only takes a few minutes to install the necessary packages.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Sadly although the DVD started to play the media player crashed. Not only did it crash, but it took out the window manager too, leaving me back at the login screen.

Installing VLC and trying to play DVDs through that had much the same result. After a bit of fiddling I was able to find a video driver within VLC that didn't crash within a few seconds. However playback was extremely stuttery and stalled within ten minutes.

Trying to install a basic 3D game also showed problems - Saurbrauten was running at a less than impressive 2fps.

The strange thing is that in Windows the 3D isn't that bad, and DVD playback works fine. So what is going wrong?

Web browsing was also a bit hit-and-miss, with various crashes and lockups (usually when playing video, but sometimes when playing music).

After a bit of a search I found the problem is down to the graphics drivers - a Via Chrome9 HLC - a reasonably common choice for laptops and netbooks. Not exactly a 3D powerhouse but no-where near as bad as Ubuntu was making it appear.

The driver that is installed is the OpenChrome open source driver. This provides 2D and 3D acceleration for the Chrome9 driver. Badly.

This isn't meant as a dig at the team that are doing the drivers. The fact that the drivers work at all is no mean feat. However they certainly not stable enough for every-day use. As development appears to have stalled in 2009 I'm not exactly holding my breath for bug fixes.

That said, VIA do provide (limited) support for Linux, and do have a set of drivers available to download at their linux portal.

The problem is that the drivers don't work with the latest Ubuntu release - so for now it is back to Unbuntu 10.10 (the latest supported one) to test their drivers. As the drivers are dated April 2011 it looks like they are still supporting them.

One uninstall and re-install of Ubuntu later. . .

OK, so once we've installed Ubuntu 10.10 and downloaded the drivers let's install them:

The current version is 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689.tar.bz2. Enter the following:

tar -jxf 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689.tar.bz2
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689
sudo ./vinstall

Once the install has completed a reboot should be all it takes to get things working.

Well, this is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand the drivers have fixed the crashing during DVD playback, and 3D is now running an awful lot faster. On the downside the screen resolution is entirely wrong and the Monitors option refuses to allow you to change it.

As a side note, recent Ubuntu releases don't need an xorg.conf (the X11 configuration file), and do a damn good job of detecting what graphics card / monitor resolutions are available to you. As part of the VIA driver install an xorg.conf is created in /etc/X11. We can use this to add our "missing" resolutions.

So, how do we find our missing modes?

Open a command prompt and enter the following:

cvt 1024 768 60

This returns the following:

# 1024x768 59.92 Hz (CVT 0.79M3) hsync: 47.82 kHz; pclk: 63.50 MHz
Modeline "1024x768_60.00" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync

Now, we need to edit our xorg.conf file.

sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

We are looking for the currently enabled display.

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "CRT"
Option "Enable" "true"
EndSection

We'll need to edit this section to add in our missing mode. I've also added in some of the other standard resolutions.

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "CRT"
Option "Enable" "true"
Modeline "1280x800_60.00" 83.50 1280 1352 1480 1680 800 803 809 831 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "1024x768_60.00" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "800x600_60.00" 38.25 800 832 912 1024 600 603 607 624 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "640x480_60.00" 23.75 640 664 720 800 480 483 487 500 -hsync +vsync
Option "PreferredMode" "1280x800_60.00"
EndSection

The final line of the section selects which of our modes we are going to use. In our case we want the 1280x800 one.

One restart of X11 later and YES! We are running in full-screen! 3D now works at a reasonable speed (not stunning, but it does work). DVD playback also works - and by selecting the X11 driver in the VLC preferences it doesn't max out the CPU either. Result!

Using VIA's own drivers has changed my Ubuntu install from being basically unusable, to a pretty stable one.

After four hours of testing (I played a couple of DVDs, browsed the web, listened to some music and basically did all the regular things that I want a laptop to do) there were no crashes or lockups.

I was even able to enable the extra desktop effects such as "wobbly windows". All in all it is very nice indeed.

Once VIA release drivers for 11.04 I should be able to upgrade to that. But there isn't any rush for now.

Update

As the legendary comic Jimmy Cricket often said: There's more...

Updating the kernel reverts the drivers back to the OpenChrome ones. You can, of course, re-install the VIA ones, but there is a little extra to do this time.

We'll need to re-compile the kernel modules for the current kernel version, and then re-run the install routine. So in the directory where we expanded the drivers:

cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689/5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689/VIA_Chrome9/
sudo make
cd ..
sudo ./vinstall

Now, we'll need to copy our configuration file back:

cd /etc/X11
sudo cp xorg.conf.viabak xorg.conf

Now, reboot and everything should (hopefully) be working again!

Notes:

One thing that I have found is that changing resolution (ie a game trying to set full-screen 800x600) stuffs the display. As soon as I find a fix then I'll update the article.

Big Business vs Hackers

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:42:00 +0000

Some times I just feel so damn old. I remember the days when I bought a computer and was able to develop software for it - no questions asked. In fact, back in the 8-bit era the computer came with a version of BASIC built in to allow you to get started.

This was how many future programming stars got their start (not to mention wannabe indie devs like myself). Even hacking things together for consoles wasn't a problem (not that the consoles of the day were really worth playing with too much). In fact, it wasn't unknown for programming kits to be released for consoles - even the NES got a version of basic!

That was then. Now, however, it seems that some manufacturers are willing to do anything to stop you playing with the hardware that you have bought from them. Sony is a case in point.

Sony don't want you to make games yourself for the PS3 (PlayStation 3) or PSP (PlayStation Portable). Their logic goes something like this: if you allow any code to run, then that code could be pirated software. Pirated software is bad, so we won't allow it.

Sony used to allow users to run Linux on the PS3 (albeit without full access to all the hardware). This allowed you to run Linux versions of homebrew games and emulators, as well as converting the PS3 into a low cost Linux workstation. Sadly this functionality was taken away at the point where people managed to get access to the "restricted" parts of the console. Never ran pirated software in your life, but want to run Linux on a PS3? Tough luck.

The "Other OS" option was not only removed from new consoles, but from existing ones too. This has led to a situation where "hackers" have been trying to find ways of restoring the missing functionality, and whilst doing so have discovered something important, namely the "key" used to sign executable programs. This is basically a code that the console looks for when a program tries to run: if the "key" is correct then the game or program will launch, if not then it doesn't.

This is bad news for Sony - as it now means that homebrew software can be made to look like Sony's own software and the console cann't tell the difference. According to Sony this can also be used to enable pirated software to run.

To make matters worse (for Sony) the PS3 also contains the key for signing PSP software, so now homebrew can run on the portable too. Although in theory Sony could change the key, in practice this would invalidate all software for the PS3 (and PSP) - in other words all existing software would be inoporable beit on CD, downloaded from the Sony store, or installed by those naughty homebrew people.

Sony's response to this has been to take legal action against the hackers. In the meantime software to allow users to self-sign PSP code has already been released and ready-signed emulators and homebrew games that run on unmodified PSPs are already available (with more appearing each day).

What can Sony hope to gain from their legal action? I wish I had the answer to that one. Sadly the cat is now well and truly out of the bag - and no amount of legal posturing is going to put it back in.

It is now only a matter of time before Linux is available again on an unmodified PS3, and this time there are unlikely to be any restrictions on what parts of the hardware it can access.

In my opinion it appears that Sony's heavy-handed response to the hacking / homebrew community has backfired in spectacular fashion - and the damage that Sony are now doing to the PlayStation brand is immense.

Could things have worked out better by using a different approach?

Indeed they could. Microsoft (you know, the Big Evil Corporation) have been doing a lot of things right lately. Let's take Kinect for example.

Not long after the Kindle was released hackers found ways of making the device work on PCs (both Windows and Linux based). Although Microsoft initially grumbled about this, they had a change of heart and are now in the process of releasing a development kit for it.

Even more recently hackers found a way to enable the equivalent of unsigned applications to run on the new Windows Phone 7. In essense, Microsoft were in the same situation as Sony with the PS3 / PSP.

So did they sue? No.

Did they create a media firestorm decrying the hackers as evil monsters intend on ruining the platform? No.

Did they invite the hackers to a meeting to discuss methods of enabling homebrew software to run on Windows Phone 7? Yes, they did.

Not only that, they also provided the hackers with custom made t-shirts that read "I was the first to jailbreak Windows Phone 7 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." The upshot of the meeting is that the Windows Phone 7 jailbreak apps have been removed whilst the official homebrew tools are developed by Microsoft. The community is happy as they will (eventually) be able to write their own stuff on Windows 7 Phone. Microsoft is also happy because they are still in control of the phone, and have had some damn good publicity into the bargain.

This is the best advert that Windows Phone 7 could ever have - namely "we want you to be part of our community," as opposed to Sony with "do as we tell you or we'll sue you into oblivion."

Who would you rather deal with?

Does Blogger censor items

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 07:58:00 +0000

Strange but true.

Over the past week or so I've been preparing a (short) item on the PSP homebrew scene. It's been re-written a couple of times due to the speed that the scene is changing (hopefully more later on this).

Rather than swamping the blog with PSP related entries, I've been working on a draft version of the piece, and was planning on publishing it today.

Only one small problem - the article has vanished from my account. AAAAARGH!

So between my last edit yesterday lunchtime (which was just waiting for a list of homebrew games that run on unmodified PSPs) and me logging in this morning something has happened.

So, assuming that this blog entry doesn't vanish in a cloud of electrons - coincidence or censorship? If this entry vanishes then we'll know the answer.

Serious Sam The First Encounter on Ubuntu 10.10

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 10:37:00 +0000

Whilst having a hunt through some things that I had placed in storage a couple of years ago (and then forgot about) I happened across my original CD of Serious Sam - The First Encounter.

As this is one of the games where Loki games provided a proper Linux installer for it I thought I'd give it a bit of a blast.

Problem 1 - Tracking down the installer.

This should have been easy - ie. go to the Croteam website and download the installer, right?

Nope. They had some archived patches for a Linux installation, but not the damn installer - or if the do have it they've hidden it well.

I eventually tracked down the installer here:

Loki Installers for Linux Games

Problem 2 - Installation

So far, so good. Apart from the fact that the installer doesn't work (at least, not without some effort).

So here is a quick rundown on how to get the installer working.

First, move the installer into its own directory:

mkdir ssam
mv serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run ssam
cd ssam
chmod +x serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run

Make sure the original Windows CD is in your drive. And if you want you can try and run the installer.

./serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run

If you are lucky it might work. If so then go, play, enjoy. See you later.

However, you may well find that you see the following:

Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing Serious Sam: The First Encounter 1.05beta3-english-2 Installer.............................

after which you are back at the terminal prompt.

If this is the case, then you can try the following, which worked for me.

./serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run --tar xvf
sudo ./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/setup

And that should be it. The installer should run and you can choose where to install it and finally play the game!

They're Baaaaack......

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:34:00 +0000

The last time I wrote about SCO was when they lost the Novell case - and had their initial request for a retrial denied. As I said at the time "SCO have approximately one month to decide on their next course of action - assuming, of course, that they don't slide into Chapter 7 bancruptcy in the meantime."

Well, here we are, just under one month later and yes, they're going to try and appeal. The timing of this (leaving it as late as humanly possible - and also just before the next bankruptcy hearing) has been well noted.

To be honest I'm not surprised that they have appealed. In fact, I don't see that they've got an awful lot of choice at this point. SCO's future - such as it is - depends on them winning the court cases, and at the present time the ongoing court cases are the only thing realistically keeping them from sliding from Chapter 10 into Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

In a perfect world I can't see the appeal succeeding. I don't believe that the evidence, facts or the witness testimonies were in their favour. Personally I think that the courts were pretty darn lenient with them all the way through (in fact I thought that it was verging on the unfair towards Novell) so I can't see them having any grounds for a retrail other than the fact that they lost when they believe they should have won.

However this isn't a perfect world, so anything could happen. I'm not sure how long the appeals process takes - although judging by SCO's recent financial reports the bigger question is whether the Bankruptcy court is going to allow them the opportunity for one more throw of the dice before deciding to wind things up.

Stay tuned folks, it ain't over (quite) yet.

Return to Retrovaders - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 06:56:00 +0000

Now that I've finished the translation framework for RetroVaders, it is time to move on to the next bit - graphics. The main sprite set (which I like, I must admit) is still a bit too close to the original Space Invaders graphics. I've adapted them slightly so that although they are still recognisable they are (hopefully) different enough to differentiate the game from the arcade original.

I've also replaced the "RetroVaders" backdrop with a new version, and made that the default. So, by default, the game now looks like this:

You can, of course, make it look like the original via the options menu.

Speaking of the options menu, another "usability" adaption is that when the game is launched for the first time, it now starts in the options menu (in windowed mode). Subsequent launches will open at the main screen with whatever options you have chosen.

The next release is (likely) to be RetroVaders 2.00 - and probably will be the final major release - unless someone supplies some alternative translations.

So what is left to do? Apart from testing the game, I've also got the Linux and Mac OS X ports to do, the translations to complete (German and Finnish still to add, maybe French too), and some tweaking of game elements; although nothing too major.

Update: The Finnish translation has been added, so that only leaves the German one to do. It actually only took around quarter of an hour to add the translation in. The language framework (although it was a bit of a bugger to sort out initially) has indeed made life much easier for me.

Return to Retrovaders - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 08:45:00 +0000

Keeping with the theme of accessibility - language support is something that has been on my list of features that I'd like to add.

Sadly, however, my grasp of languages other than English is very limited indeed, but not to be deterred I made a start - and stripped out the menu text from the game - which came to a stonking 24 words - and posted a request for translations on the RetroRemakes forum.

So thanks to the kind assistance of Ordvana, I'm now well on the way to adding Finnish and Russian (!) translations to the game. As it turns out it is just as well that I'm only translating the menus, as BlitzMax doesn't support non-English languages that well. This leaves me with creating bitmapped versions of the Russian text (and probably for the Finnish text too).

As the Russian one is going to take the most work I'm starting with that - and hopefully by the end of today should have the main menu working in both English and Russian, and be able to make a start on the Options menu.

This means that instead of "Start Game" - the Russian version will display "Начать игру", instead of "Options" we'll show "Опции" and so on.

So if you are reading this, and would like RetroVaders in your native language then get in touch!

Update: The main menu now works in both Russian and English. I can use regular text, graphics or a mix of both for the menus - which should make adding other languages much easier.

That's All Folks! (for SCO at any rate)

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:48:00 +0000

It's official - SCO is toast, the request for a retrial has been DENIED.

From the article on Groklaw:

Judge Ted Stewart has ruled for Novell and against SCO. Novell's claim for declaratory judgment is granted; SCO's claims for specific performance and breach of the implied covenant of good fair and fair dealings are denied. Also SCO's motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial: denied. SCO is entitled to waive, at its sole discretion, claims against IBM, Sequent and other SVRX licensees.

CASE CLOSED!

So after six years and God only knows how many man-hours of dealing with their spurious claims they have lost. Again. Although there have been quite a few "face-palm" moments which have had me muttering "stop pandering to the damned litigious munchkins" through gritted teeth, it looks as if Judge Stewart has been making sure that when this is over there is no room for SCO to try and appeal the decision.

From the Final Judgement itself:

This matter came before the Court for trial on March 8, 2010, through March 26, 2010. Based on the Jury Verdict and the Court’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, Final Judgment is entered as follows:

1. Judgment is entered in favor of Novell and against SCO on SCO’s claim for slander of title pursuant to the Jury Verdict.

2. Judgment is entered in favor of Novell and against SCO on SCO’s claim for specific performance pursuant to the Court’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

3. Judgment is entered in favor of Novell and against SCO on Novell’s claim for declaratory relief pursuant to the Court’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. Specifically, the Court declares:

a. Under § 4.16(b) of the APA, Novell is entitled, at its sole discretion, to direct SCO to waive its purported claims against IBM, Sequent and other SVRX licensees;
b. Under § 4.16(b) of the APA, Novell is entitled to waive on SCO’s behalf SCO’s purported claims against IBM, Sequent and other SVRX licensees, when SCO refuses to act as directed by Novell; and
c. SCO is obligated to recognize Novell’s waiver of SCO’s purported claims against IBM and Sequent.

4. Judgment is entered in favor of Novell and against SCO on SCO’s claim for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing pursuant to the Court’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. The Clerk of the Court is directed to close this case forthwith.

SO ORDERED.

DATED June 10, 2010.

BY THE COURT:

____[signature]_____________
TED STEWART
United States District Judge

SCO can, of course, still try and appeal - but given the wording of the final judgement their chances of victory (not to mention the company surviving long enought to get to court) are somewhere between slim and none. This also nails the lid on the coffin of their other court cases.

SCO have approximately one month to decide on their next course of action - assuming, of course, that they don't slide into Chapter 7 bancruptcy in the meantime.

Thank you PJ for keeping us informed, amused and well-armed against the common enemy ;-)

Return to RetroVaders

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:03:00 +0000

Over the past couple of weeks RetroVaders has had some extra love sent its way. The long awaited (hey, someone may have been waiting!) update 1.35 for Windows has finally seen the light of day - removing the 320x240 resolution to prevent crashing on modern versions of Windows.

Although there have been some "unofficial" downloads for this version, it is now available properly at the main site.

I've also been looking at some additional tweaks that will affect all versions of the game (not just Windows) in the next version. This includes removing the 320x240 default screenmode for ALL versions of the game. This has now been replaced with a 640x480 full graphical border, with the game playing in the middle (just like on the old arcade cabinets).

Some other (minor) bug fixes are through as well (such as preventing impossible screen scaling modes from being selected).

This is all minor stuff really. The major point of the 1.36 release is going to be a "One Switch" mode for the game. "What is that," you may ask? Essentially it allows the entire game to be controlled with a single switch. For disabled players this can mean the difference between being able to play a game and just being able to watch someone else playing it.

A good resource for more information about One Switch gaming is OneSwitch.org.uk which has a wealth of information about games for disabled players, and how to adapt your games to their needs.

Anyway, back to RetroVaders. At the moment when the game is in "One Switch" mode (retrovaders.exe /oneswitch) the space bar or left mouse click is the switch. In game, the switch toggles between three states:

Move Left
Move Right
Stop and shoot

After asking for a bit of advice on RetroRemakes I may also add alternative control schemes, such as:

Move Left
Shoot
Move Right
Shoot

Getting the game playable with one switch is one thing. Getting the in game menus working was another challenge entirely. In the end I've settled for the game automatically cycling through the menu options, with the switch selecting. I've set a two-second delay between each menu move to make it easier for those with slower reflexes to select the right option.

There are still a couple of things that I'd like to add to the game to make it more accessible, but we're heading in the right direction!

Yet Another Linux vs Windows comparison: USB Bluetooth Adapter

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Tue, 18 May 2010 17:29:00 +0000

OK, so you probably know the drill by now. We're going to plug a random device into our PC (dual booting between Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.04) and let's see what happens...

Excited? Thought not!

Still, onwards and upwards. This time is the turn of a cheap and cheerful USB Bluetooth adapter - sourced from our local PoundWorld store for the princely sum of £1. Yes, one single solitary pound! Bargain or what?

A LiveWire Bluetooth USB Dongle, Yesterday

Starting with Ubuntu, let's plug in and see how we go. Installation was straight forward - a few seconds after plugging the adapter in, a Bluetooth icon appeared on the status bar. Clicking on the icon gives us the option to "Set up device". One short scan later I'd added my phone, had clicked "Browse files on device" (also from the Bluetooth menu) and was copying my photos onto my PC. Nice.

Now for XP. After plugging the device in drivers were automatically installed, including a modem driver to allow me to access the internet using the mobile (in the event that my broadband had died). Of course, being Windows XP a reboot was required before the adapter was ready for action.

Once it was installed a Bluetooth icon appeared on the menu, and much like on Linux it only took a couple of clicks to link to my phone. Now, this is where the Windows XP Bluetooth misses out a bit - there was an option to Send a file, another to Receive a file (and options to connect to a Bluetooth network) but nothing to browse the files on the mobile. Hopefully this is something that will have been improved on for Vista / Windows 7. Luckily, having a Nokia phone meant that I could download the rather nifty Nokia PC Suite - which is an rather nice tool for connecting and synchronising with your mobile phone.

When all is said and done there really isn't much to choose between the two, although Ubuntu does win out by doing a little more "out of the box".

Not bad for a little £1 adapter.

Court decides: Novell owns Unix Copyrights, not SCO

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:34:00 +0000

It finally happened. After seven long years SCO had their day in court (well, two weeks to be exact) and the jury has returned a unanimous verdict: Novell did not sell the UNIX copyrights to SCO, and the now legendary Amendment 2 did not transfer the copyrights either.

This also blew SCO's slander of title claims out of the water (if SCO didn't own the copyrights and Novell did then there is no slander).

This had a dramatic effect on SCO's share prices, which over the past year had crept up to around 70 cents plunged back down to 10 cents on the news of the jury's decision.

So does this mean that it's all over? It's still too soon to tell. One thing is certain - things aren't looking too rosy for SCO at the moment...

The Other "Chaos Caverns II"

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:17:00 +0000

It has been a busy couple of months (the lack of blog posts may have given you a hint) but hopefully I'll be able to get back into the swing of things a bit more.

So what has been happening on the programming front? Well, there hangs a tale.

I've been developing "Chaos Caverns II" - which is coming together rather nicely, new code base, higher resolution graphics, new features, plenty of programming work to keep me interested. However prior to this I'd started re-writing the original "Chaos Caverns" to make it into a flip-screen arcade adventure - along the lines of Jet Set Willy (Matthew Smith's follow up to Manic Miner - the game which inspired Chaos Caverns in the first place).

I'd got it to the point that it actually worked as a five screen demo in which you could walk left to right through the screens, and items collected didn't re-appear if you left and re-entered the screen. It was an interesting "first try" but I didn't think I'd be taking it much further, especially when it became obvious that the new code would bring many benefits. The only downside to the new code is that although it had a lot of new graphics, an awful lot more need to be added to give it enough variety to make a full game (especially compared to the original one).

So inbetween adding the missing bits to the new Chaos Caverns II (and tinkering around with some other code for potential games) not much was really getting done.

Time Passes...

A couple of weeks ago I read on Retro Remakes that some lovely person had been selling CDs of remakes (namely those made by Retro Spec) and had asked them to stop it. Out of curiosity I checked his listings and found that he was also selling Chaos Caverns (and renaming the damn thing as "Manic Miner - Chaos Caverns"). Wonderful - I don't think!

After asking Ebay to remove the listing (which they did) - he relisted the item again - claiming that he had permission to post it. To cut a long story short (which included me editing my YouTube video of Chaos Caverns which he was showing as part of the listing to include some informative captions) he agreed not to sell the game - and even admitted that his alledged permission to sell Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy didn't entitle him to sell my little tribute to it).

As part of this I decided that a quick update of Chaos Caverns was in order to allow me to embed the copyright (and distribution) details in a more obvious and up-front way. At this point I discovered that when I'd been updating the code I'd neglected to back up the original unchanged version - and the new code was not compatible with the original levels.

Whilst checking through the code to see if I could de-update it to get the original levels working again I had a bit of a play with it and started "tweaking" a couple of things. Then a few more. Then a lot more. Before I knew it I'd changed the way the player jumps (it now works more like Manic Miner), added vertical movement between screens, made some new maps, added some new baddies, discovered (and fixed) some long-standing bugs, and basically made an awful lot of progress towards making it into a full game.

More importantly I've also had some ideas of things that I'll need to change in the "real" Chaos Caverns II which should add some greater flexibility to the level designs.

By the looks of things I'll probably end up releasing the old one as "Chaos Caverns 2" - and using the new platform engine as either "Chaos Caverns 3" or (more likely) as something else entirely.

Next stop - adding proper DirectX scaling support into the code and changing the screenmode defaults to something supported by modern graphics cards.

Google's Christmas Gift

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:39:00 +0000

This year Google have made a $20 million donation to charity, rather than sending goodies to publishers and ad partners. Some cynics have claimed that this is less about doing good for charities, but rather more about reducing their tax liability but what the heck - at least the dosh is going to good causes.

Google have provided a list of the charities which are to benefit from Google's $20 Christmas present, and most of them are lesser known charities. One name, however, has stuck out (at least for those of us in the UK) and that is "Loud Against Nazis."

They appear to be a German charity who are trying to tackle "the increasing right-wing radicalism" which, apparently "is a problem in everyday German life."

If you are looking for more information on the charity, a Google search brings up a rather cool looking skin-head egg-cup, but not much else.

This is because the charity is actually called "Laut Gegen Nazis" (it is, after all, a German charity).

More info at their home page.

Merry Christmas!

RetroVaders 1.34 - coming soon

noreply@blogger.com (DanO) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:54:00 +0000

After receiving a bug report that RetroVaders crashes on Windows 7 (and finding that it also seems to do the same on XP Service Pack 3) I've delved back into the code and fixed a couple of other minor issues.

The new version will be available once Virgin Media sort out write access into my damn FTP site.