Worked in the morning but no time for HackTile. Dzung had to go in to the office to demo her project, so I organised the kids and got things packed up. Nice drive down to Nannup. No rain to speak of; we were lucky to miss the stormy weather. Great to be back amongst the big trees. Arrived and settled in, then over to visit Nagis, Ali and Nora (and Hora the dog, of course). Then back to our chalet to cook lamb cutlets and pasta for dinner. I’m doing dry July so missed the red wine. Played a bit of Resistance after eating, then ended the night in the hot tub. Glad to have a roaring log fire to keep us warm after getting out of the water!
First day of the school holidays. Cold and rainy. Did some activities with the kids; filmed Eliza doing her piano levels and helped Jack with his reading, but overall a busy day at work fixing the Android builds. Break at lunch to go shopping for holiday supplies, and to grab pies for lunch. Did some reading of the “Bullshit Jobs” book, which I agree with wholeheartedly. Dzung home to make soup and grilled pork with rice for dinner. Watched an episode of “Back in time for Dinner” with the kids while eating apricot yoghurt for dessert. It was the 1970s episode, and brought back a lot of childhood memories.
Kids to bed and then some HackTile work. Refactored the camera system to make zooming a lot more sane. Works well, although there is a limit to how far you can zoom out (to do with overflowing integers). Added keyboard controls to zoom in and out. Will need to refine this after returning from Nannup so I can move on to finishing the map editor. Will have lots to think about while bushwalking.
Finlay’s seventh birthday. Kids at mum and dad’s, so Dzung and I were mooching around in our PJs when Eliza’s English teacher arrived to deliver the book she needs to read for the holidays. Embarrassed! Off to Imperial Court for Dim Sum. They had a large function there, but we were lucky to get a table for thirteen in the back room without waiting too long. Lazy afternoon at home, ended up playing Zelda:BotW with Jack for an hour or so after a simple Sunday dinner of leftover soup and toasted cheesey bread.
Lots of work on HackTile. Entity editor layout updated, and sprite selection working properly to allow editing of any sprite, with a keyboard command to show and hide the editor, and the ability to select any entity for editing and for drawing into the map. Need to sort out camera controls next, so I can pimp out the map editor a bit more, and will also need to address animations.
Unfortunately I’ve had a re-think about how to assign sprites to entities, so I’ll need to re-do my default sprites and a bunch of code. This happened because I think movement animations will need to be three frames. So it’ll be:
- 8 entities with 16 sprites (12 for movement, 2 for spawn, 2 for unspawn)
- 8 entitries with 8 sprites (4 for movement, 2 each for spawn and unspawn)
- 8 entities with 5 sprites (1 default sprite and the spawn/unspawn ones)
- 8 entities with just 1 sprite
This still leaves me with the 16 reserved sprites I need for UI things.
Dzung took the kids to karate, so I spent the morning doing some work. Brunch was Korean BBQ at Van’s place, and we overate, so had to move our dinner booking from 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Dropped the kids at Mum and Dad’s, then worked on HackTile while Dzung took a nap.
Sprite editor taking shape. Created default sprites, and working towards having sprites selectable in the entity viewer. Also need to make entities selectable in the right-hand sidebar, and allow the sprite editor to be shown and hidden through menu items. Also need to support animation and serialization. Then this will be good enough to allow me to move on to the map editor and the rule editor. Exciting times.
Off to Kuzu for dinner, but time to kill before then, so will celebrate with a G&T and some gaming.
Very busy at work. Beautiful clear day, but so very cold, so didn’t go for a bike ride. Fixed the multiple drawing bug from yesterday, and improved the functionality of the sprite editor. The sprite data is now modified too, meaning palette changes work, and it’s possible to select the drawing colour. Coming together, but still lots to do. Dinner over at mum and dad’s house. All feeling a bit tired, so will call it a night. Might play a game before bed.
Very busy at work. Eliza off sick. Managed to get some HackTile time; got the sprite editor to a state where I can draw pixels, but there was a funny bug, because I forgot to disable drawing to the world at the same time. I’ll need to set an active flag on the cameras too, similar to what I’ve done with the UI panels. So much more to do.
Meeting with Jack’s teacher. We will work hard getting him to improve his concentration and his ability to work unsupervised. Eliza’s report came through; she got eight As and has been promoted into the advanced maths track. Good girl!
Made shaking beef for dinner. Will relax before bed with The West Wing, wine and cheese. Oh, and I ordered the new TV. Should be delivered soon.
Well, not in a rut after all. Early morning meeting at work, then needed to work on getting the builds of all apps in order. While waiting for the builds to finish, I read my new C book and finished the refactoring work, and then mocked out the layout for the entity viewer and sprite editor.
The idea is that the red bar on the right will contain controls for selecting one of 32 entities, and for showing dialog boxes for editing various aspects of the simulation. The blue dialog on the left will show up to eight animations for the currently selected entity; idle, four directional animations, spawn and unspawn, and a special emote animation. The green dialog on the right will allow the currently selected animation to be edited. Each animation has up to three frames, each consisting of a 16x16 bitmap.
That’s the idea, anyway. We’ll see how it pans out.
This morning Dzung and I went to the school, in the drizzling rain, to watch Jack run cross-country. About half the boys try their hardest. Jack gets distracted, and decides to walk and muck around with his friends. Frustrating!
Tonight Eliza and I made lamb, pea and mint pasta. It was nice and filling, and tasty too, but not as good as the other dishes we’ve made. Watched some MasterChef after dinner, then read “Magician’s Gambit” to Eliza. She had a bit of a tummy upset. Then a bit more work before cleaning up while listening to The West Wing Weekly before heading to bed.