TheNoodleman.ca

Household Projects

I'm not sure what snapped in my head recently, but since I moved from my last rented townhouse to this new one I've been wanting to just 'do' things to the place. Being a rental property, I can't (and don't really want to) do anything too permanent, but I've got a couple DIY projects that I'm pretty excited about. The first little project I gave myself is to install some outdoor speakers on the patio. I'm going to run the wiring through the same hole the satellite cable is running through (so I don't have to drill any holes). I've already ordered the wire and speakers, researched the 'Zone 2' feature of my receiver and measured everything out. Just waiting on the UPS truck to bring the stuff I ordered so I can get started. In the process of getting some supplies for this project, I found myself at Home Depot for the first time under my own volition. And it was probably the first time I enjoyed being there. I used to get dragged there by my dad whenever he needed something. It is a completely different experience when you actually WANT to be there. I found myself actually caring where stuff was, and I started trying to memorize the aisles. I think once I actually own a place I'll find myself making weekly trips there just for fun to find something (or anything) to do to add to the place. The second project I have is to revive my Asterisk server and Linksys SPA3102 VOIP Gateway. We never had a home phone setup in the last place, since we've all got cell phones so I never had much use for it. But this new place has a door and garage intercom with activating servos connected to the phone line. So instead of having to install phones in the wall all around the house to answer the door, I'm going to get Asterisk to ring my cell phone whenever someone is at the door! I'm particularly excited about this one, and I'm actually only writing this post right now because I'm babysitting a Linux install on my old G4 Mac Mini (that I've been holding onto in hopes it would one day come in handy again). Since its a PowerPC machine I'm installing Yellow Dog Linux 6.2 It looks like its not being maintained much anymore (last version was released June 2009), and I'm struggling to find some decent instructions on how to actually install Asterisk on it. So I may have an uphill battle on my hands here.

This Week's Frustration: Windows Phone 7 Live Tiles

I just spent the better part of the morning trying to update a Live Tile's Background and BackBackground image in WP7. The reason it took more than the 5 minutes it should have taken is because most people who paste code on development blogs put too much weight into their assumptions about what other people may or may not know. In my case, the omission was with visual studio file/asset properties. The following piece of code was supposed to 'just work':

ShellTile appTile = ShellTile.ActiveTiles.First();

if (appTile != null) {

StandardTileData standardTile = new StandardTileData {

Title = "Title", BackgroundImage = new Uri("livetilefront.png", UriKind.Relative), BackTitle = " ", BackBackgroundImage = new Uri("livetileback.png", UriKind.Relative), BackContent = ""

}; appTile.Update(standardTile);

}

However, the author failed to mention that you need specific properties on the livetilefront.png and livetileback.png images otherwise they won't be displayed. Those properties are: Build Action: Content Copy to Output Directory: Copy always ('Copy if newer' should suffice as well). Without these settings, the images were not being copied into the XAP file, and as such were not showing on the Live Tile. Now, I've been reading some articles that suggest that the 'copy to output directory' shouldn't have affected the content in the xap file, which is what I originally though as well (which is why it took me so long to solve this problem). So unless there is something wrong with my Visual Studio environment, this is the way things need to be. Note: The PhoneGameThumb.png file does not have 'Copy always' set and yet it appears in the output directory. So I'm not sure what is going on here, but I'm just glad everything is working now. I'll save the investigation for some other time.

Mongoose Loves Mangos Progress

I've been making sure I put work in daily on 'Mongoose Loves Mangos', because it's very easy to procrastinate when you're home alone. I made a short youtube video of where I'm at so far, which you'll see is a long way since the last video update:

Other than the awesome artwork I've been getting from Paul, I added some sound effects to the game which should give it a more polished and professional feel. Quick note, the sounds are from chimps even though I'm calling the animals in the trees monkeys. I've slowly been putting all the other menus together. Just yesterday I added high score tracking, and I'm going to be working on the instructions next. Then I need to start figuring out how to make the game get progressively more difficult without just becoming a rain storm of impossibly fast moving mangos. All in all I think I'm working at an OK pace for my end of May deadline, however I doubt I'll get my 2 app quote finished by then.

Busy With A Move

I've been a bit busy organizing all the junk I've accumulated over time because I'm in the middle of preparing to move again. The good news is it's a short move, just a couple doors over, so there is no rush to get everything packed and into a truck. We're just hauling stuff over as it's ready over the next few days. Of particular interest to me is getting my internet and satellite up and running as quickly as possible on Saturday (when we're going to be switching over to the new place). I've got the Bell installer coming over Friday evening so it'll be ready for Saturday, and as I write this I've been testing out the cable internet and router in the new place to make sure it still works. I tested out a few locations in the house to make sure that there is cable service and that the WiFi signal is strong enough to reach the highest and lowest floors while not having to be placed in an unsightly location. Since I've been preoccupied with that I haven't had much time to work on my Windows Phone 7 game since Monday. The last thing I did was clean up the main game interface using images to show health (heart) and score (mango) instead of the words "health" and "score". I also worked on the collision box for the mongoose so that only mangos that hit him in the torso, head and hands count as caught mangos. This way, you can't get freebie points if the mango just touches the tip of his tail. Not sure how popular that decision will be, but it should increase the difficulty a bit from being painfully simple.

COCOS2D, Retina Display and UIImage

I've been having a small issue with my iOS game development for a while that's using the COCOS2D framework. Since the start of development I wanted to make sure I supported the retina display. For the most part, I had no problem adding the double resolution images with the -hd filename suffix (COCOS2d doesn't use iOS's standard @2x suffix). I only started running into an issue when I tried swapping out a texture on a sprite with another image on the fly. I was using the following code to create the texture:

[[CCTexture2D alloc] initWithImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"fullstar.png"]];

When I replaced the sprite's texture with the one created above it was always using the lower resolution image, not the fullstar-hd.png image. Turns out UIImage is an iOS class and not a COCOS2D class so it follows iOS's retina display rules. In this case, I need to have an image named fullstar.@2x.png. Once I created that image and added it to the project my retina resolution image was loaded. So, what did I learn here? Make sure you know who made your objects! If it's a COCOS2D object (prefixed with CC) use the -hd suffix for images. If it's an iOS object, @2x. Simple mistake, and as per usual makes perfect sense in hindsight. Also, this probably would have been avoided by using a spritesheet instead and just treating the changing of the image as an animation.