Rom's Rants

Move (Almost) Complete

2012-01-24T12:24:00.002-06:00

The movers will be at my condo sometime within the next hour to unload the truck containing all my belongings. It will take a few additional days to get unpacked and settled, but I can't wait to get back into the swing of things.

Ad Hominem

2012-01-20T12:22:00.002-06:00

I love ad hominem attacks against me.

When I get attacked for who I am or what I do for a living rather than getting the substance of my argument attacked, I consider it a win.

Terraria 1.1.2 and RomTerraria

2012-01-17T15:08:00.000-06:00

I have no idea if the 1.1.2 release of Terraria that was released today is compatible with RomTerraria or not.

If it isn't compatible, I can't fix it until February 1. I'm not going to even have a broadband connection at home until Thursday night, and my computer won't be in up here from Dallas until January 30.

Sorry about the inconvenience. If there are bugs out there that I'm not aware of, please reply to this post with them.

Stealth Update

2012-01-06T21:25:00.003-06:00

Minor update tonight to allow smaller maps.

See you guys in Seattle.

Last RomTerraria Update Before The Move

2012-01-04T22:51:00.003-06:00

In this build:

- Higher quality minimap
- Minimap remains centered on all resolutions
- Minimap colors of solid bricks are now a closer representation of the actual color

As a reminder, after you install RomTerraria, it does appear in your Start menu inside the "Michael Russell" folder.

Also, the source code has been updated. No new updates until after January 24.

January's Minimal Posting Schedule

2012-01-02T10:43:00.001-06:00

Here's my tentative schedule for this month.

Wednesday night, I'm going to post my most recent source code for RomTerraria. The reason being is that after Friday, I won't be able to make any further changes to RomTerraria or make any updates to the software until almost February.

Saturday, I fly up to Seattle to start my new job. I'll still have net access, but only from the office and from my mobile phone for two to three weeks, plus my machine won't arrive until February 1 when the movers get up there.

I will not be as responsive as I'd like over the next month, but I'm looking forward to coming back re-energized in February.

RomTerraria Update (Now With Lava Cleanup)

2011-12-27T19:54:00.006-06:00

Update for RomTerraria:

- Stronger warning if you try to enable lava rain.
- Option to remove all lava in the top quarter of your map.

Twisted Christmas Carols

2011-12-23T12:21:00.001-06:00

I like writing off-kilter song parodies. It's a fun hobby. Here's one that I wrote yesterday and posted to Shacknews which I find rather seasonal...

Time To Bury Christmas - to the tune of "A Holly Jolly Christmas"

Now it's time to bury Christmas,
It's the best time of the year,
Stash his toe beneath the snow
And get me another beer

Now it's time to bury Christmas
Dragging Saint Nick by the feet
Broke my axe off in his ass
Now he's just dead meat

Oh ho
The sled does glow
Burning so brightly;
Reindeer will fly no more;
Deer jerky for me!
Now it's time to bury Christmas
And in case you didn't hear,
Tell the coppers
And we're gonna
Bury your ass next year!

Replace Me

2011-12-21T17:03:00.000-06:00

Since I'm leaving MPI, I need a replacement. Well, two actually, but they're focusing on the development side at the moment. If you're interested in applying and live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, go to Taleo and apply.

[Updated 12/22 9:33am with a link.]

Yes, I'm Aware...

2011-12-17T17:23:00.002-06:00

RomTerraria currently launches 1.1 instead of 1.1.1. It's a mistake on my part, but I cannot fix it until tomorrow night because I am 2,000 miles from my PC. I will have the issue fixed tomorrow when I get back.

[Update: I forgot to post that this particular issue had been fixed. Those responsible have been sacked.]

No Updates Until Monday

2011-12-16T12:03:00.001-06:00

Real life is intruding. Will post an update to RomTerraria as soon as I am able. In the meantime, do not use the "shrink textures" option, as it is broken in 1.1.1.

RomTerraria and Eyefinity

2011-12-12T15:01:00.001-06:00

I found the root cause of the ultra-wide-screen Eyefinity issues with Terraria and RomTerraria.

If your horizontal resolution is greater than 1920 pixels, a piece of math in Terraria.Main.InitTargets() will cause the render target creation process to fail.

I'll work on a solution tonight.

Last RomTerraria Update of the Weekend

2011-12-12T00:04:00.001-06:00

In this build:

- Stack traces will now include all inner exceptions to assist in debugging Eyefinity and other issues.

I won't be able to look at any stack traces until late Monday, but please post them here.

Another RomTerraria Update

2011-12-11T14:19:00.001-06:00

In this build:

- Additional code was put in place to remove invalid resolutions from the in-game menu.

Minor RomTerraria Update

2011-12-11T09:24:00.001-06:00

In this update:

- Added a "Stack Traces" folder inside your My Documents\My Games\Terraria folder. If the game crashes, a stack trace will be dropped in that folder, and you can copy the file into a response on a blog post.

RomTerraria Update #2 for 1.1

2011-12-10T23:28:00.001-06:00

In this build:

- Additional checkbox in place to allow you to downscale the size of the backgrounds by 75% at the expense of some visual issues for now. The new backgrounds look great, but some of them take up to 16MB of VRAM each. I'll work on the visual issues once I find a way to replace two behaviors.

- Additional work to try to get Eyefinity working again. If your Radeon card is properly set up for Eyefinity, please leave the resolution settings set to "Let Terraria handle my game's resolution" and see if your resolution appears in the list.

- CTRL Tooltips updated to work on new "workbench" tiles. Still incomplete for all other tile types.

Still working on map and performance enhancements.

Amazon.Rom

2011-12-09T09:13:00.001-06:00

Yes, the title of this post is a bad pun.

I've accepted a position with Amazon.com in their Digital Products division starting January 9, 2012.

I won't know what projects I can't continue working on until that date, but I'll be hard at work until then trying to keep my projects as up-to-date as possible.

As you may have noticed, I've blogged very little about my current place of employment over the last five years. I'll probably blog even less about Amazon, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Also, if you consider yourself a senior level C#/ASP.NET developer who is looking for some hands-on management experience and you already live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, go here and apply.

Update 12/10 10:12am: I'm going to be moving to Seattle as well. My last full day here in Dallas is January 6, 2012, and my wife will be following a couple of weeks later. I also clarified the type of development experience that I'm looking for in whoever replaces me. That should answer the questions that have been hitting my mailbox the most.

Update 12/22 9:40am: Updated application URL.

RomTerraria Update #1 for Terraria 1.1

2011-12-01T14:07:00.001-06:00

I've made a simple update so that RomTerraria wouldn't crash outright with today's 1.1 release, but I haven't yet had a chance to test it because I'm at work for another four hours.

If you get a chance to try it, reply to this post or over on ShackNews.

If you already have it, should update automatically. Otherwise, usual install point.

RomTerraria Development on Hold

2011-09-26T22:06:00.003-05:00

I'm temporarily shelving RomTerraria. I'll still handle bugfixes and integration of select community features, but my own projects need to take priority in the short term.

I'll resume development once Terraria 1.1 is released.

RomTerraria 2.0 Source Released

2011-09-24T17:55:00.001-05:00

You can get the source code for RomTerraria 2.0 here.

RomTerraria is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Please post and comments or fixes for the code in the comments to this post.

Please don't hotlink to the source file. Link to this post.

Sitefinity 4 Control Templates Still Coming

2011-09-22T14:39:00.002-05:00

I've almost got my generic Sitefinity 4 Control template complete.

It will support most of the RadControl suite, and I'm ditching convention-over-configuration and shifting over to an attribute-based layout system. For example, if you've got a string that requires HTML, you'd decorate it with:

[FieldType(FieldType.Html)]

My goal is to have a revised alpha out next week and to have the component complete before Dallas GiveCamp.

RomTerraria Source Release This Weekend

2011-09-22T07:28:00.003-05:00

I'll be releasing the source code to RomTerraria 2.0 sometime this weekend.

With the source release, you'll see the convoluted way that I had to bind to Terraria to make it so I could run outside that folder.

Obviously there will be parts of the code that aren't ideal, but hey, that's why the release.

RomTerraria 2.0 RC6 Available

2011-09-05T21:03:00.002-05:00

Sorry about the delay getting this out.

In this build...

- Fixes an issue that was preventing some people from updating related to the profanity filter. (Thanks, Brandon.)
- Readded on-demand tooltips for blocks, but moved the hotkey to the CTRL key to make it not conflict with 1.0.6.1. Tooltips are not up-to-date, but should be before the final release.

Usual place.

Hover Help In Sitefinity 4 UI

2011-09-01T10:58:00.000-05:00

I now have the Description attribute popping up as hover help. Layout is fubar, but I'm getting closer.

Dallas TechFest Slide Deck Available

2011-08-31T15:20:00.001-05:00

I forgot to post this earlier, but a slightly-edited version of the slide deck for my talk at Dallas TechFest on Sitefinity is available for download now.