Something I spotted in his second session (but only lecture of the day) was the reference to “Computers which don’t look like computers?” links that go to miniature computer motherboard PCBs that run some form of inbuilt operating system. I’d say something like this could have a lot of potential for the games module should we want to build some form of physical installation.

The examples given were Gumstix and Colibri Modules.

Uploads

I’ve also managed to upload a few more images of times gone onto Flickr. Generally they’re heading for the Traditional Artwork set.

Geoff Cox mentioned that keeping a blog for reflection on the process behind producing the dissertation was a good idea, so I think it is time to start creating a few new Categories and portfolio areas!

Additionally, I really ought to structure my portfolio a bit better so that I can hold a range of some of my industrial level work as well as continue showcasing i-Dat as this site was originally intended.

But let’s face it, the original was so good the changes are pretty hard to spot so really all I was doing was enjoying a bit of classic gaming before heading back to university. But when I reached the Grab-the-Gravity-Gun and head for “Don’t go through Ra…” Ravenholm point, having completely played Episode 2 using mostly the Gravity Gun as a killing machine thanks to the Hunter’s resistance to bullets, I decided that keeping hold of Dog’s rollermine toy ball would be a fun experiment.

And what a BRILLIANT option it is!

Let me outline a couple of the better reasons for having it tag along, firstly because it will, as it magnetically follows you should you want to drop it and do something else such as manipulate some SAW BLADES.

Secondly, it does considerable damage, for instance requiring only a few punts to take a Poison Headcrab zombie. Now I’m not suggesting it did all the damage seen in the screenshot above, but it is a good demonstration of the third reason for having it.

That is the fact that zombies will actually assault it seemingly IN PREFERENCE to attacking you, giving you time to knock the first few in a horde down with it and then while they are occupied, select a suitable saw blade or similar to finish the rest.

A fourth reason might be that it can actually KILL headcrabs by continually rolling into them while they attempt to run away but can’t because they are too slow for the mine. In the case of several headcrabs, again they will attempt to jump it rather than attack your own head.

These final screenshots demonstrate the rollermine killing zombies in a single hit, but also come to one of the disadvantages. You’ve got to be careful of explosions, because if it is absolutely anywhere near to one, it will explode as well.

Also, Father Grigori WILL shoot it as well, although not necessarily in preference to zombies, so you need to hold onto it when he is about. And finally, it’s not really as cool as it could be if it were an Alyx-programmed yellow rollermine that did the proper electrical zapping. But that all comes later in the series.

Additionally

Getting the image files for this blog entry from my PC to my laptop (and also transferring an email I needed to print out to enroll for university) wasn’t all that easy. Plugging in my old but ever-reliable USB memory stick would not make it appear as a drive on my PC at all.

It turns out that an old experiment I did to see what happens when you exceed the number of drive letters in the alphabet was to blame. Basically I had used this memory stick as the tipping point to see what happens when something would go past (Z:/).

If you ever do this, and your device permanently gets allocated no letter, the way to fix this I discovered is thus: you can go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools and then Computer Management. From here there is a list of all the storage devices and it is a simple matter of re-assigning the drive a letter!

It was only after it had looped once that I saw that this might be being directed at viruses.

This was all well and good but now I have been stumped by figuring out how to sort the z-order and making the drawing more efficient by ignoring parts that are hidden behind other parts.

I have based the site on Wordpress, using it as a Content Management System allowing for the quick adding of portfolio entries and amendments.

Essentially the pages have been used for each section with their own templates, and posts can be categorised so that they will fall into each of the three portfolio sections and with a bit of PHP will display in the right portfolio page.

The design itself was largely drawn out as vector graphics and features some PNG images with alpha channels to create a width-flexible front page design, where both sides of the content expand and resize accordingly, that needed to be acceptible for viewing in Internet Explorer 6.

Additionally I had to solve a number of issues for IE6 not understanding the minimum height and width CSS parameters.

(Vilverin is one of the first sights a player gets emerging from the prison/sewer tunnel at the start of the game.)

But then I decided to try out Vista on my now pretty old computer which has to be said didn’t do much for its general performance. Then I bought the Shivering Isles expansion, which adds so much more to this game and eager to try it again. So I reinstalled it to discover that where it was playable before, with Vista it was a nightmare, even after setting every possible value to its minimum.

Right up to the point where I tripled the existing 512MB of RAM to 1.5GB. Since then it’s been back to taking in the frankly stunning visuals.

(I destroyed as many of these as possible simply because I enjoyed leaving behind a permanent reminder of the Oblivion Gates.)

It is still featuring the fluid two column layout where both sides expand and keep the content in the centre, and the tabbed menu holds itself at top right.