Encelo's Projectz - Personal

Old Posts: 2005 | 2004 | 2003

December 30th, 2006
I've just opened a WordPress blog. This doesn't mean that I will close this, but that I will have a more powerful tool to express myself and my passion for gamedev, programming and graphics.

December 29th, 2006
I know I should study for exams... but since a couple of weeks I'm occupied with a Python prototype 3d engine.
Soon or later I should also put my hands back on globs in order to release version 0.2.

December 8th, 2006
Me and M3xican have just returned from GameCon.
It is the only Italian convention dedicated to games and videogames, but it's really too much oriented toward the end user, the player.
Our role there, apart from trying Nintendo Wii and Gears of War ;-), were also to help and support with ideas a process of evolution that would, we hope one day, integrate a much more developer oriented area (a sort of GDC Naples ;-) ) inside the event.

December 1st, 2006
With rev. 601 my second task for the upcoming release of Mars is completed.
After having fixed SDL and OpenGL screenshot method in the Screen class in rev. 594, I've now added installation support in the game.

November 5th, 2006
Me and M3xican had a speech yesterday in Caserta (a city near Naples) about Mars.
Not to many people attended the seminar, but we were the last in the list of participants, and there was a huge amount of delay from previous speeches.
Nevertheless, it was a great experience and another chance to make some people know more about us and the game. ;-)
Read the participants list: Adunanza Digitale 2006 (Italian).
You can have a look at the presentation (Italian).

October 8th, 2006
These days I'm really busy playing with True Combat: Elite, a fantastic total conversion for the great free game Enemy Territory.

September 23rd, 2006
In the last few days I've been working a lot on GL O.B.S., not only adding visual features, but also refining a lot of dirty details under the hood.
University is going to start on Monday, I hope to still have some spare time for GL O.B.S. developing.
One last thing, I'm creating a presentation about Mars that me and M3x will discuss at an important Linux and Free Software meeting. :-)

June 1st, 2006
Nothing new here, just studying a bit... it's studying time! :-)

March 31th, 2006
After 6-7 years of using analogic modem connection I now have a 4Mbit/256Kbit ADSL connection! :-)

March 26th, 2006
While I'm in pause with Mars OpenGL support I work on GL O.B.S.
Today I've added online submitting from the gui!

March 23rd, 2006
Still working on globs, but I'm waiting M3xican for class refactoring to start working on OpenGL blitting for Mars.
Ah, today I've also attended a conference where Richard Stallman was present! :D

February 21st, 2006
This is the second day that I spend completely working on GL O.B.S., database support is in the air, both a SQLite application storage system and a MySQL community results one.

February 11th, 2006
Do you remember the project I was talking about some days ago?
It has a name, GLOBS, and a new project page!

February 7th, 2006
I'm working on a new PyGTK/PySQLite project, something I think would be interesting for the community, it involves my OpenGL demos and has a nice GUI. :)

December 13th, 2005
I'm working on the next OpenGL demo, real-time shadows with stencil shadow volumes.
Until now I'm working on a simple Wavefront Obj loader, once finished I'll begin working seriously...

December 1st, 2005
I'm in Italy since a couple of months now, I go every day to university, I've got to study, but I can't resist programming something fun, today I feel urged to make a little OpenGL demo... :)
Its name is GL_smoke and, I'm sure you have already understand, it's an implementation of a simple and really NOT flexible particle engine showing smoke. ;)

September 12nd, 2005
After some days of hard working a preliminary version of a GUI system for Mars is ready.
I will test it a bit more before uploading it on the CVS, it has serious performance problems but works. :)

July 31st, 2005
I'm playing with Collie (it's the codename for the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500), it's a great geek toy, the only problem is that once you get used to it you want a bigger Zaurus. ;)
I've tested Opie and GPE, and what's more important, I've already compiled Mars test code on it! :D

July 25th, 2005
Yesterday I returned from Italy, I has been away since 18 June, quite a long time...
Neutrino, my little Zaurus PDA, rulez!
It has arrived to the local post office on 1st July, on 5th my father take it at home, but only yesterday I begun to play with it, I'm still experimenting with the basics, but the future seems bright!

May 29th, 2005
I begin to have some results with shader test programs, it really seems like there're some problems with drivers, at least with the version I'm using (71.74), regarding argument passing functions.
I've discovered that slow performance were due to GL_POINT_SMOOTH, disabling it let programs achieve full performances (GLSL and Cg are affected, while ARB one is not).

May 23rd, 2005
I'm facing too many problems with shaders: slow performance, strange behaviours, lack of standardization... :(

May 22nd, 2005
I had problems in the process of converting the pointz demo to GLSL, it seems like there are some inconsistencies related to uniform arguments passing. I have then spent this day in trying to do the same things with nVidia Cg, this time the plane is correctly waving, but when I worked on display lists to create the cube, they didn't work.
Both GLSL and Cg version of pointz are slow as hell! :( Maybe a problem with the Linux nVidia drivers...

May 21st, 2005
I'm now trying to remake the waving cube demo I did yesterday but using shaders and GL Shading Language!

May 20th, 2005
Today I have put my efforts in a little GL demo, something done in a couple of hours, just to have fun. :)

May 19th, 2005
While working hard with SCons, replacing our build chain in Mars, I cannot avoid thinking of my little Z, all alone, lost in the world... :(

May 12th, 2005
Still waiting my little palmtop to arrive...

April 29th, 2005
I have bought a Zaurus PDA on eBay!

April 1st, 2005
It's not a joke, I've completed my GL_blit example, it shall be online soon.

March 23rd, 2005
I've completely wiped out Mandrake 10 from my hard disc, my test period with Arch is end, now it's my official distro! :)
Today my work on OpenGL 2d blitter continued, I think I'm close to releasing it on the Mars SDL examples page, it has quite all the functionalities I wanted for it.

February 15th, 2005
Mexican and I started working on Mars design, a first UML scheme for a class is ready!

February 22nd, 2005
I've stopped all the other tasks and I'm concentrating on my new Arch Linux distro, downloading, installing and configuring a lot of stuff. :)

February 7th, 2005
I've paused my mech work to continue my study on human face topology in 3d graphics.

February 2nd, 2005
The initial modelling of a new mech for Mars is completed, what remains now is, of course, texturing and mesh refinements.

January 23rd, 2005
A base vector class is completed and tested, it helps performing operations on vectors composed of three element, a float number for every coordinate.

January 20th, 2005
I've implemented a config class for handling LOThEngine configuration, it parses a simple file and returns the value associated with the choosen keyword.

January 14th, 2005
After a long pause I'm here again to report my work. ;)
I'm writing from scratch the LOThEngine, until now I've done some UML schemes and a code base.
The main classes do work, the design is cleaner, all is divided among different objects, as it should have been since the first version.

November 24th, 2004
I'm studying hard for the Calculus II exam, and I've no time for anything else. :-(
But after the exam it's very probable that I'm going to buy the new graphic card! At last. :)

October 31th, 2004
Great improvements to B.O.F.F.O., now it does support a month based archive output, it's great! :)

October 30th, 2004
I've fixed the global variables problem of B.O.F.F.O., now it works online!
I'm going to add something and testing it a bit more, then maybe I switch to it.

October 24th, 2004
I'm the factotum of Mars, these days I'm doing some music composing with Rosegarden4 and Hydrogen!!! :-D
A 360 degree artist... ;-)

October 17th, 2004
Having broken my GeForce2 card, I'm using an old Sis315 based card, it has horrible OpenGL drivers for Windows and no DRI support under Linux at all! :-(
So, until I buy a new card, only God knows when, I'll continue working on my OpenGL tests on Windows.
For I couldn't bear Dev-Cpp (I need ViM!) I've organized a Cygwin/Xfce4 environment.

October 5th, 2004
Two new important things onine today, the Blenemo italian simple Blender tutorial published on SIForge.org, and the Mars: Land of No Mercy Dev-Log!

September 19th, 2004
I've spent all the previous night on coding an OpenGL test app! I'm really addicted now. :)

September 18th, 2004
I'm going further on reading NeHe's OpenGL Tutorials, they're really easy and clear. They give you enough simple introduction to make you understand the Red Book topics when you need complete reference.

September 4th, 2004
Today I worked on some aspects of the site. The statistics showed me that most of the people who came on the site with a direct link to a section, just visited that section, so I changed the "Home" link with "Main Menu".
I think that now visitors will understand that there are more sections to visit. :-)
The other change is on the logo, I removed the two Boing balls, I'm sad of this decision, but many people showed me that they didn't like them bouncing all the time.

Having nothing to do, during the night I also did some work on B.O.F.F.O., as you can see the date for the project changed from "4 Nov 2003" to "4 Sep 2004".

September 2nd, 2004
I fixed the output of some xchat script, because going from 1.x to 2.x the print commands to output text with styles or colors changed, so the old scripts need a fix. Now I have again my XMMS song announcer on xchat2!

August 29th, 2004
These days I'm doing some initial coding work for Mars: Land of No Mercy, I'm about to complete a proto main menu class.

August 21st, 2004
The SDL_ttf Italian tutorial is finished, here we talk about TrueType font handling.
The example code, the oldskool demo like sinus scroller, is really cool.

July 21st, 2004
According the site statistics, the RPM Contribs page is the most viewed one. So today I revisioned both the page and the base packages, xchat2 and gkrellm2.

July 4th, 2004
CHAMPIONS CHAMPIONS CHAMPIONS!!!

June 23rd, 2004
At last, after so much time in which we were waiting the SF staff to end the procedure for a takeover I can announce to the world our new site for the great project Mars: Land of No Mercy.

June 21st, 2004
I've joined a guild in EL, now I'm part of the Olympians (">GR<"), a guild of Greek only members. :)
Go to this page if you want to see the statistics of Enchelon, my player in the game.

June 9th, 2004
Today I've downloaded Eternal Lands. It's a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online RPG), it's free, open source and multiplatform, and it's build with SDL and OpenGL.

June 8th, 2004
Yes, it's a long time since I post something here, I admit this.
But many things happened, first af all the big secret project for which I was studying again libSDL and for which I was working really hard on Blender, is going to go online on Sourceforge!
I'm working on a second SDL italian tutorial, this time I'm studying SDL_ttf and trying to do an oldskool sinus scroller. I'm also doing some final work on Blender, in order to have some artworks for the project.

April 27th, 2004
Ready the translation file for the new unstable gurlchecker release.

April 22nd, 2004
I'm playing a bit with OpenGL, don't know why, I'm just reading the good NeHe tutorials and some other books and making a test application...

April 19th, 2004
After much work here is the long awaited Italian tutorial for SDL_mixer.

April 5th, 2004
Working on Blender and on a Italian SDL_mixer tutorial.

April 1st, 2004
Still working hard with an animation in Blender, plus some work with libSDL.

March 16th, 2004
Working a lot with Blender these days, the result it's quite good I think, you will see soon here.

March 9th, 2004
I have succeded in compiling gURLChecker after updating libxml2.
I have tested the translation file inside the program and corrected many errors.

March 8th, 2004
The author of gURLChecker has imported my translation in the CVS of the project, it will be included in the next release!
I'm the mantainer of the Italian translation, I've subscribed the gurlchecker-dev mailing list.

March 7th, 2004
Today I have translated gURLChecker to Italian.
All the 238 messages of the 0.7.9 version were translated, of course they now need extensive checking.

February 26th, 2004
It's still a secret but, yes, I'm working on a serious and big project... :-)

February 23rd, 2004
Maybe GTK2 work will wait...there's a big, serious team project in the future!
It's all top-secret for now, but you will know soon.

February 22nd, 2004
Something is in the air, some Cube mapping and modelling, and maybe even a clan! We will see...

February 8th, 2004
Both are online now! I'm really glad, and ready to go back to some GTK2 work...

February 7th, 2004
The site and the tutorial are both pretty finished, but still need some work...

January 27th, 2004
The first post od the new year!
I'm kinda busy these times, I'm working on the same important site of some posts ago.
I'm near to finish a first version that I'll put online, and of course link here too.
In the meantime I'm also working on a Blender tutorial to put on a site of an Italian hacking community.
You will know of both these things really soon...

December 30th, 2003
I wrote a new lin-seti init script for mandrake today.
It uses the standard functions for init scripts, has a "status" mode and supports chkconfig.

December 28th, 2003
I wrote small a patch for lin-seti 0.7.6 that fix a bug causing a segfault if you start the program when the settings file is not present in your home directory.

December 26th, 2003
Thinking about making a php version of Sonda, mmm...

December 24th, 2003
Waiting for Santa Klaus to come... ;-)
I'm still working on Blender, it's about an animation of a clownfish.
I'm also back on reading the Stroustrup's C++ book.

December 11th, 2003
Are you wondering how I'm spending the time these days?
Now that I'm finished with the web work for that site, I'm concentrating on 3d graphics, I'm reading a lot of tutorials and the manual of Blender, and making some tests with YAFray, POVray, BMRT renderers and with modelling and animation technics.

December 10th, 2003
I was contacted by a SF.net user about a project it's starting, something about Linux, C/C++ and SDL...
Nice ingredients, i'm considering the invitation, I hope I'll the time to apply on this.

December 1st, 2003
Finished a preliminary version of an important site. This would be some serious thing guys!
It took quite much time and many subsequent versions, but a first presentable one is ready now, I'm glad for the job I've done.

October 6th, 2003
These days I'm working on B.O.F.F.O., a simple PHP application to handle this blog.
Soon or later I will add a page in the programming section for this great piece of software! :-)
Ah, I'm also working on a complete cover (bass, drum, guitars and voice) of a U2 song.

October 2nd, 2003
I've quite finished my processor emulator program, and it actually works!
Now I'm writing machine language programs to demonstrate its capabilities... :-)

September 31th, 2003

Contacted an Italian developer for a free software collaboration.
It's a surprise for now, details will follow.

September 27th, 2003

The little program I'm working on is a good opportunity to start learning GTK+2.
Today I've started implementing a GUI to the program.

September 25th, 2003

After so much time I'm back to work!
I'm programmiong a simple processor emulator for the second IT exam.

April 1st, 2003

I have spent this day building rpms...what a funny day... :-)

March 20th, 2003

I have recorded again a slight better version of the short Malmsteen's song.
I keep on reading two C++ books, it's all very interesting...

March 19th, 2003

I've ported my silly C++ code to Windows with Dev-C++!

March 18th, 2003

I've spent 3 hours in order to record a semi-decent version of a 49 seconds long Malmsteen's song...
I've written and tested the first silly code in C++, a rough sprite class using SDL!

March 13th, 2003

Now that there are no other pending issues I've worked on the documentation and distribution files of Sonda in order to release it very soon...

I've started reading chapter 10 (Classes), it's very interesting yet hard.

In a brainwave I've understood the silly bug, it was just one, and very rough.
I can't believe I hadn't allocated a byte for the string termination character! ;-)
I've fixed other 2 bugs like it in the source, now the program seems to work flawless.

March 9th, 2003

Point of the situation:
Struggling on the two Sonda's bugs.
Keep on reading at the Bjorn Stroustrup C++ manual.

March 7th, 2003

Still working on sonda's bug, one was easy to exploit, I just had to analyse the unencode() function, which was not written by me.
The second one is very strange, a string termination character which is actually printed by printf()!
I think is something related with dynamic allocation of the query string, I have to investigate.

March 6th, 2003

Mmm, I think I've found where the problem lies, tomorrow I'm going to isolate the buggy function.

March 4th, 2003

Ah, another day working hard on Sonda, this time I added some fancy features, the output is far better.
But I've found a couple of little bugs and I can't figure out the reasons...

March 1st, 2003

I've completely give up OpenGL for now, I'm dedicating a little on the B. Stroustrup C++ book, we'll see what will happen... :)

February 24th, 2003

Nah, I've abandoned the idea to start reading at a OpenGL book at the 2nd chapter... :-)
I've just fixed something in the sonda's output (which wasn't declared as XHTML), I'll fix some other things related to strings, then I think I'll start working on Forma, a php frontend to sondata editing.

February 22nd, 2003

Actually I started on 22nd, but I've worked until the first hours of the 23rd... :)
I have worked a little more on Sonda, it was mainly a refining work.
Look at the ChangeLog, I've perfectioned the output of the program, now is XHTML and indented.

February 21st, 2003

Today I have spent some time on Sonda.
After a long time I returned to it to implement some cool ideas I have since much time... and soon I'll have to work on Forma too, in order to release a new version of the program.

February 18th, 2003

This is the first day I write something like a diary, and it's not even in my mother tongue, shit! :)
Today I've opened this private section, so it was a day spent on the contents of this page, maybe I'll install a new version of 6tunnel after this piece of writing...
Ah, today (the early morning of 18th) me and a friend have founded a new IRC channel for Linux and related topics, it would be small, for friends only, I hope it would take off and be a good way to learn something new.