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Shiny Software
Feb. 24th, 2009 08:50 pmThis has been a week of finding shiny new things, apparently.
Dropbox is something I've been needing, basically, forever. It didn't click that it was what I needed until installed it though.
Essentially, it gives you a folder that exists on every computer you own. You copy things into its folder, and it automatically syncs them to your account (2 gigs storage free, 50 gigs for $99/yr) from where every other computer you've set up Dropbox on automatically downloads them. It actually just downloads patches, so it's really fast. Plus it will follow symlinks, so you can link things elsewhere in your filesystem to the dropbox as well (like your bookmarks file, or .emacs).
For stuff I do for fun, this is about 95% of what I want source control for. I don't branch, I don't look at the history, I very rarely revert. Mostly what I do is get confused between multiple copies of my app on multiple laptops, which Dropbox fixes perfectly (it does actually store a version history on everything, just in a less useful way than Subversion).
What I've been source controlling is a game. I kept wanting to write a game, but needing a library, and I kept thinking in terms of GUI libraries that have canvas widgets. This was, in hindsight, stupid. I needed a game library, in a high-level language.
Gosu is what I eventually settled on. It's got good Ruby bindings, and an excellent tutorial. It's built on OpenGL, and allows you access to the underlying OpenGL API to do whatever you want. Most importantly, it's extremely tiny; the API will literally fit on about two pages.
So now I've duplicated, in Gosu, the little dungeon walking guy I wrote over Christmas in Dashcode. Plus a few features, like loading maps from files and things, which are hard to do in Dashboard (but Ruby makes oh so easy).
I really don't know where to go from here though. I've got a little guy, and I can give him waypoints through a map, but that's all I got. I want it to be a sort of puzzle/strategy game, and I want it to be from the evil guy's point of view, but that's all I know. Something where you build the dungeon and hire guys and fight off adventurers while amassing treasure. Kinda like a lighter version of Dungeon Keeper.
Dropbox is something I've been needing, basically, forever. It didn't click that it was what I needed until installed it though.
Essentially, it gives you a folder that exists on every computer you own. You copy things into its folder, and it automatically syncs them to your account (2 gigs storage free, 50 gigs for $99/yr) from where every other computer you've set up Dropbox on automatically downloads them. It actually just downloads patches, so it's really fast. Plus it will follow symlinks, so you can link things elsewhere in your filesystem to the dropbox as well (like your bookmarks file, or .emacs).
For stuff I do for fun, this is about 95% of what I want source control for. I don't branch, I don't look at the history, I very rarely revert. Mostly what I do is get confused between multiple copies of my app on multiple laptops, which Dropbox fixes perfectly (it does actually store a version history on everything, just in a less useful way than Subversion).
What I've been source controlling is a game. I kept wanting to write a game, but needing a library, and I kept thinking in terms of GUI libraries that have canvas widgets. This was, in hindsight, stupid. I needed a game library, in a high-level language.
Gosu is what I eventually settled on. It's got good Ruby bindings, and an excellent tutorial. It's built on OpenGL, and allows you access to the underlying OpenGL API to do whatever you want. Most importantly, it's extremely tiny; the API will literally fit on about two pages.
So now I've duplicated, in Gosu, the little dungeon walking guy I wrote over Christmas in Dashcode. Plus a few features, like loading maps from files and things, which are hard to do in Dashboard (but Ruby makes oh so easy).
I really don't know where to go from here though. I've got a little guy, and I can give him waypoints through a map, but that's all I got. I want it to be a sort of puzzle/strategy game, and I want it to be from the evil guy's point of view, but that's all I know. Something where you build the dungeon and hire guys and fight off adventurers while amassing treasure. Kinda like a lighter version of Dungeon Keeper.
