Wendesday, February 20th - Waiting on my ass

To be honest, nothing is going to get done on Gate until the conlusion of a lawsuit against the insurance company of a guy who hit me with his car over 2 years ago. It left behind a permenant injury (which I feel pain from right now,) however I'm glad to say that it doesn't inhibit motion. At any rate, I'm really kind of waiting for it to end, I'll be getting a cash settlement which my attorney says is around $20k-USD. I'll be able to afford a new machine to work with. I can set up a small network in my home, and get some real work done.

So, there you have it. Nothing will be done by me until this thing is over. Which will probably be around 2 months. Don't expect updates until then.

Sincerely,
Donny Viszneki.

Tuesday, February 12th - Turn to DIV tags

Since the P tag's WIDTH attribute wasn't supported on MSIE, I've decided to use DIV tags that are supported more widely. Anyhow, I've also optimized the CSS a little more so if your browser doesn't show this site correctly, refresh the CSS tag, maybe click here to load it into your browser for viewing as text. That should fix things up. In addition I removed all Width attributes from any tag on the site, specifying them in CSS document. Wow, that was exciting wasn't it?

Thursday, February 7th - Google Contest

Google wants some new, fast, well developed ideas real fast and real cheap. I'm lookin' to get ripped off real fast and cheap (cheap, on a corporate scale, that is.) $10k-USD will be awarded to the winner as well as an all-expenses-paid trip to Google HQ, and a tour. Teams of up to 3 people can cooperate, but remember that $10k/3=$3333.33. I'll be taking a break from Gate in order to work on this contest, I don't know how long the break will last, but I think it'd be worth a try.

Monday, February 4th - Still trying to use Swish

It's hard to keep myself optimistic while trying to use Swish. It doesn't seem to be very well designed, pretty de facto controls for any graphical IDE, the same grievances you'd expect from most graphical software. Things like a Tree control with too little horizontal space for expansion, or irrationally located menu controls. Maybe my desktop resolution needs a higher setting to accomodate Swish properly (I currently run at 1024x768.)

Slashdot talks MUDs

In other news, some guy got slashdot to talk about MUDs after sending in some of his questions about them, since he is designing one. He's using C# in order to learn a new language at the same time that he makes this game. It's fine if he wants to learn a new language, I just don't understand why anyone wants to go along with Microsoft's plans who uses Slashdot.

Friday, February 1st - Who needs Flash?

After figuring out that no one was going to help me learn Flash, I decided to do some research...did you know that Macromedia's Shockwave and Flash are two different things? I didn't know. SWF files sounded like Shockwave Flash. And both shockwave and flash documents use that extension! Talk about deliberate ambiguity.

Anyhow so I can't use JGen now because it does flash, and I need Shockwave according to Macromedia's side-by-side comparison of Shockwave and Flash. You should take a look at it, MacroMedia seems to imply that the ability to put your SWF files onto multiple storage mediums should be accreditted to MacroMedia, among a few other silly lies.

Low and behold, one day later an answer to my help wanted ad talks about using Swish to at least learn some Flash basics. Well Justin Clift would have done me a great service if I had any need for Flash. Thanks for your help Justin, I simply need Shockwave now. I've downloaded Swish, but it still won't help (unless you guys want to seem some pretty flash interfaces...)

I might need Flash...

Justin Clift has shown me yet another site (swift-tools.com) with cheap flash development. This website appears to host Swift Generator, another version of MacroMedia Generator, although not nearly as deliberately similar to it as Jgenerator is.

At any rate, he also mentioned one method of server-client communication was to access applications on the server side via HTTP GET (although through the flash interface is probably simple access to a URL.) That might just work for my purposes! So I have yet to actually know

Wednesday, January 30 - Teach me flash or DIE

Well I haven't really done anything in the way of actual work since yesterday. Someone needs to teach me the fundamentals of Flash.... Anyhow I'm probably gonna go buy...no, acquire a book on Flash. I'll try my best to apply it to JGenerator. Which I still need to #$^%! build...

While writing this I've just discovered that JGen has added Windows Installers that install Binaries instead of source code. Considering my inability to do anything with java at the moment, this is pretty convenient. Well I can keep typing while this downloads@<5k/s. I just realized that I can type whatever I want here because nobody reads it! Watch this!...well I really don't have anything outlandish to put here, although I could put porn here and no one would ever know...sigh. Once I have a working prerelease version I hope Gate draws some freakin' attention.

So. What's up? Hey, I have an idea. Even though I still know nothing about how to make a flash app, I'm gonna try to make another useless framework graphic just to show you how the client will work with the server and peers! WOW!

Nope nope nope. Changed my mind, I'm fucking tired and I feel really nauseous..

Up2SF Windows Utility for SourceForge users

I added my up2sf utility to the SourceForge's code snippet library under the C++ Other category. As a matter of fact after I close notepad and save, I'm going to use up2sf to upload this file...

Tuesday, January 29 - Flash Client = Yes.

After thinking this over and discussing it with some people, I have decided that creating a Shockwave Flash application for operation on the client side, is the ultimate choice for cross-platform compatibility, and user friendliness. It also aleviates instillation, which is a plus for many users (although not all.)

So anyhow, I need some help learning the essentials of creating SWFs. I know of expensive Macromedia (makers of Shockwave) programs for making SWFs. I also know of JGen. However if you know anything that could help, GATE NEEDS YOU!. Check out the SourceForge Help Wanted Ad that I posted, or send me a message.

Monday, January 28 - Flash Client?

A consideration I've been thinking over in my head while working on CSocket has really got my attention. A flash client might just do the job. Plenty of speedy routines have been written (with games and movies in mind) by Macromedia. Maybe I should just make use of it? Does anyone know the liscensing implications of Flash movies? If anyone has any information they feel might help, please send me a message.

Wednesday, January 23 - New Framework

With such little response to my call for developers, I've been forced to set my sights a little lower. The first release of Gate will be solely for the Windows platform. In this new light, I've decided to rewrite some of the framework, to be simpler, however less flexible. I'm sure that the amount of time gained by working with a simpler framework will compensate for whatever time is lost when the client software is finally taken to a new platform. I will be updating the sketch at the code; page accordingly. This concept framework needed to be updated anyhow, as it was a rush job, and was previously innaccurate.

Gate Framework Complete!

The Gate framework is a completely object oriented approach to programming. A main routine will tie together all of the modules which comprise the Gate Framework. Each module is composed of one self-contained, automated, object interface. One class definition file for each module. And one member function definition file per platform, per class that must be written with specific regards for said platforms. I hope this will turn out to be a good approach for making Gate.

If anyone could contribute the artwork necessary for alpha testing, please send me a message . Such artwork would simply have to be texture maps for passable terrain, maybe a tree, and an isometric image of a person. If this person could possibly be George W. Bush, it might make testing more bearable....

sf.net/projects/gateonline/

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