somewhere to talk about random ideas and projects like everyone else

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May 2008 Archive

Sourceforge 29 May 2008

I’ve gotten a sourceforge page for the project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ajaxanimator and the site is at http://ajaxanimator.sf.net/ where you can browse the latest source code. I’ll probably still use Google Code, and i’ll probably also use Google App Engine and sourceforge together.

And that Google Ajax Libraries thing looks pretty nice. Can’t wait till it supports Ext.


Build 99 27 May 2008

Its now at Build 99. I feel that not much more can be done without the critical OnlyPaths component. I don’t have anything ready yet. An Ext port of OnlyPaths is underway, but it is not necessarily very stable, and some critical features (cross-platform drawing API) is not completed yet.

I rolled back one thing yesterday: the Advanced Color-Picker tool. They will be added again later, but I don’t want to aim too high for the initial 0.20 release, or else it may never get released. The standard (albeit small) color picking system is fine for now. It also is quite big, so not yet.

IE and Opera should work flawlessly now (Aside from browser-limitations). Most problems in the app are caused by those annoying commas in JSON errors (IE/Opera don’t like it when its {blah:stuff,super:happy,})


Today's Updates 26 May 2008

It’s still 11:35 AM here, so this is likely not all that will be here today. But there are some great new features today. Renaming the layers through the GUI will actually rename layers in the back-end too. There is a combobox for the zoom sizes in both the canvas and preview tabs. There is now a slider for adjusting line width on the panel.


Today's Updates III 26 May 2008

I added the beginnings of the Users system. There is an accordian panel for switching between Register and Login. The Login panel has the standard Username and Password (labeled User/Pass). The Registration panel is the same, with 2 instances of “Pass”. As every other panel in the app, there are nice little silk icons that accompany them.


Today's Updates II 26 May 2008

As I mentioned earlier, more would happen today. I’ve just made an update. I updated the Update system to also compile (it doesn’t compress anything yet, it really doesn’t need to) CSS files. This should speed up the application a bit, and should also make it easier when updating some smaller things. As with that, it will also starting from build 83, create release archives of the CSS files. The compiler mechanism has changed a bit too, but that’s not really important.

The most visible additions, is the embedded Color Dialog. If you look at the title, you’ll find a Steve Jobs reference. Right below the huge drawing tools list (what? is it like 2 times that of the old version?) there is a Line Width slider (this is indirectly inspired by OnlyPath’s Mondrian-style color picker). it also embeds the Color Field plugin, so if you press the little button on the side, a little color palette shows up. Ideally, this will enhance user’s efficiency and be less confusing than the old one.

I don’t know if I can make a “Today’s Updates III” :P

[EDIT] BTW, the page is located at

http://antimatter15.110mb.com/animator/Animator2/build/ajaxanimator.htm


Starting Over 25 May 2008

Today, I’ve launched the new site. My new blog. We’re starting over. I don’t know what to do exactly. I just hope that everyone can adjust to this new site. I like it more, it may be somewhat faster - at least my spam problem will be fixed.

If you still wan to visit the old site, feel free to do so at http://antimatter15.110mb.com/phpfusion everything will still be perfectly accessible, and feel free to register there. If this doesn’t work out, i could revert back to phpfusion. But I think the move is for the better.

Please, Really, post your thoughts as a comment to this post. Please, I beg of you.


About 07 May 2008

I’m really not that interesting. This blog is just a place where I talk about random ideas or projects like just about everyone else.

I’ve never really been into talking about myself, rather just the stuff I do or think. I may be somewhat paranoid, or whatever. I think I’m an INTP but I’m not too certain (could my subconscious be deceiving me?).

If you’re more interested on the history of this blog, well, it started a long time ago. I started with phpfusion as my CMS (and 110mb as my host) back in late May 2007, and switched to WordPress and phpBB in mid-2008. Later the year, I got a new web host, GoDaddy, but the blog didn’t migrate there. Just a few days later I switched from phpBB to BBPress. From then to Mid-July 2009, I upgraded to WordPress 2.8 and migrated to a new host.

This blog initially was for the sole purpose of hosting changelogs for the Ajax Animator project (which itself began sometime before March of 2007).

Before this blog, I had several sites starting with a simple Google Page Creator one from 2005. After that I made a Jupiter CMS powered site and later used Joomla after experimenting with Drupal. After moving to 110mb, I used phpfusion because people on the forums seem to like it. Now I’m on wordpress (and repeating whatever I wrote 2 paragraphs above)!

If you want to contact me, my email’s antimatter15@gmail.com I’d really appreciate it if nobody sent spambots after me. You can follow me on Twitter at @antimatter15 or on Google+.


Hello world! 07 May 2008

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!


I’ve decided to keep this, it’s a nice marker of when exactly this blog transitioned to a different platform.


Updates Today 06 May 2008

http://antimatter15.110mb.com/animator/Animator2/build/ajaxanimator.htm

Now, its at Ajax Animator Build 48. It has an improved “Properties” menu. The Drawing icons have been updated (to give you a taste of features of OnlyPaths that will be added). Notice that there are some features left out. Zoom will be done via the zoom button on the canvas toolbar, and panning won’t be necessary. I’m curious of whether I should or should not include the z-index ordering. Simply, the whole purpose of layers is that. and Layers seem much more managable, visible, and such.

Speaking of layers, the Layer browser part of the timeline has been added. It is currently just a simple Editor Grid (so you can inline edit the label!). I’m going to add http://cellactions.extjs.eu/ for the ability to remove/edit layers via a nice icon.

I have also almost sucessfully ported OnlyPaths to ExtJS. it turns out, that all prototype code is in richdraw.js, and it is as simple as replacing prototype code with Extjs counterparts.

such as this.blahlistener = this.blah.bindAsListener(this) Event.observe(this.explosion, “mouseexplode”, this.blahlistener)

becomes Ext.get(this.explosion).on(“mouseexplode”,this.blah,this);

Often, Ext code is simpler, and more consise, but other times it is not so.


Small Updates 05 May 2008

today was just a few fixes, a pseudo-key-guide thing ported from the current stable one, and some minor updates. I included the Ext.ux.ColorPicker, and I guess i’ll work on porting OnlyPaths to Ext soon (it currently uses Prototype). I’m probably not going to include Prototype because OnlyPaths is a much (~11x) larger project than RichDraw, and therefore, it is mainly out of trying to improve size. (the project is currently ~20kb, but with onlypaths, will become ~100kb, plus ExtJS, will be ~1mb)

I might set up a blag and a separate site for the Ajax Animator (based off my alpha site from last release). I’m thinking of using WordPress/PHPBB but idk


Experimental Comet MMORPG 02 May 2008

Note: This is likely the first AND last release Ever. I’m gonna go on working on Ax v0.2 after this is finished (tomorrow)

I think its finally ready for showing people (still proprietary though :P). It is coded using Ajax/Long-Polling Comet, which as far as I’m concerned, is the first of it’s kind. It uses ExtJS for its user interface. it’s page load is ~2mb in size, and there is a huge amount of static data handled. Its following how most my apps are made: using the most client side code possible. I donno why, but it just is.

Since it uses Comet technology (specifically, long-polling), the requests made are minimized, and supposedly much more scalable. Requests are only made when necessary, and due to Comet technology, it only updates when there is something to update.

Since most of the processing is done on the client side, the server only has to handle the static content.

An interesting, albeit geeky feature, is a sort of command-line functionality. I attempted to build the entire system (somewhat like a Unix system) where most if not everything graphical is backed by a set of commands. Well, the real-time chatbox (which again, uses comet to reduce load on servers) detects if the input starts with the > character. if it does, then it parses it as a set of commands. Its relatively smart, so if you type in a global variable name, i’ll give you a JSON dump of the contents, and if its a function, i’ll call it, and if it is an expression then it’ll eval it.

There is no such plotline yet. Just random stuff that pops in my head (read: iWorld) and etc. there is also no title yet. (named: “Untitled”). Part of the game itself, is to build the game, using its built-in pixel-sprite-graphics editor.

Currently, it is restricted to modern browsers only. Firefox being my development platform (duh. what kind of js developer doesn’t use firefox/firebug? but i heard the IE8 dev toolbar is good cause its a clone of firebug..) will obviously work best. IE may or may not work. though platform agnosticism was one of the design goals. Opera/Safari is likely, but i’m not certain. most mobile browsers will fail (i tried apple iphone safari support, but it is weird around ExtJS)

It has some features, such as a relatively nice UI (well… nice compared to the others). Session saving, worlds, sprite/npc authoring, Character IDE, npc battles, pvp, store, panning, prelimary quests, items, friends, magic/abilities, a CLI, some crappy code, moderation, adminstration, etc.

Oh, and the password is “password” in case you wanna make new sprites. The URL is http://cometrpg.110mb.com/