New project

I know I've been quiet for a long time, at least on this blog. Since the last update I've been working hard on my own software, as well as working for a wide range of customers as a contract programmer.

For over twenty years I've worked on accounting software, share market software, novel writing software as well as a bunch of other *useful* programs. Well, that changed a couple of weeks ago because I decided to work on a PC game. Not *useful*, but a lot of fun ...

... and a very tough challenge. I didn't enjoy math at school, and when you delve into 3d programming the first things you run into are vectors, radians, matrices and five textbooks worth of mathematical theory. It's been a struggle, but I'm starting to get on top of it.

What sort of game am I designing? I don't have a lot of info for you yet, but I've set up a page on the Spacejock Software site which I'll update from time to time. But to begin with, here's a really basic screenshot from the current version:

Follow Spacejock Software on Twitter

Most of the news about Spacejock Software is short little snippets... e.g. program x released, program y updated. Mostly they're not worth posting a blog about, so I've decided to use Twitter instead.

You can follow http://www.twitter.com/SpacejockSoftw, and I promise I'll post a tweet whenever I update something on the site. If you don't have or use twitter you can still follow that URL, where you'll see all recent posts in reverse date order.

yBook2 Beta

Just a quick post to announce the first public release of yBook2. I've rewritten the whole app in a new language, making speed and appearance improvements along the way:




You can read more about this release here

Lots of new beta versions

Recently I've uploaded beta versions of Sonar 3, RMP 3, Hamtime 2, Trackaminute 2, yCopy 2, yLaunch 2, yMail 2 and yWriter 5

On the non-beta front, yGen 2 has now officially replaced yGen 1 and I recommend all users run yRead 3 instead of the original yRead 2 (Windows 98 users are stuck with yRead 1) RMP 3 is almost out of beta, and I recommend it to Vista users in particular because of the improved performance on that operating system.

Details and download links here

yEdit beta released

During NanoWrimo 2007 I decided I needed a text editor which would do the following:

1. Allow me to set a word count target, and display the remaining words as I typed
2. Take sequentially numbered autobackups at five minute intervals.
3. Nothing else *

Yesterday I mentioned this app on the yWriter group, and it was only a few minutes before someone asked me to release it.

So, at midnight last night I put version 1.0.0 online, promptly followed by 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 since I'd forgotten to include certain essential files.

If this app sounds like something you could use, give it a try and let me know what you think.

* I will NOT be adding a spell checker, grammar checker, formatting, fonts or any other Word Processing gizmos. Those are EDITING features, and you'd do well not to distract yourself with such fripperies when you're trying to WRITE.

yWriter 5

I'm plotting Hal Spacejock book 5 and working on yWriter 5 at the same time ... get fed up with one, switch to the other.

yWriter isn't anywhere near ready for public testing yet, since I'm still adding lots of missing features, but I'm very happy with what I have so far. I've spent enough time in VB2008 to really get to like it, barring a few issues which I've mostly been able to get around by tweaking the settings. (Ctrl+Shift F2 is still a mess, and don't talk to me about the search / search & replace system. Yuk.)

The more I see the more I like this new programming language, which is saying something because I've found every Microsoft version of Visual Basic completely unusable since the excellent VB6, released in 1998.

Back to yWriter 5: I've just added the code for drag/dropping chapters and scenes on the main screen, and it's working nicely. Last time around I tidied up the editor window, leaving only the essentials on the main page (text window, title, description, chapter/scene dropdowns & viewpoint char selector) and putting everything else on a couple of tabs (one for viewpoint character info and a drag/drop list of other characters in the scene, the other for the nitty-gritty details like notes, length of time for the scene, locations, items, etc)

It's a long, painstaking process converting a huge app like yWriter from one language to another, and one of the biggest problems is that I really can't do anything to yWriter 4 while yw5 is in progress. Otherwise I have to add every change to BOTH versions simultaneously, and of course the code is all different and changes are inevitably spread over a whole load of source files.

Part of me knows that I should be writing Hal Spacejock 5 instead of fiddling with the new version of yWriter, but procrastination is part of my character. Anyway, I want to write Hal 5 in yWriter 5, just like I've matched every Hal book to date with a new version of the software. It keeps things fresh & exciting!

yRead 3 beta

The first beta of yRead 3 is now available from the Spacejock Software website. This free program will take a text or html file and read it aloud.

Download available here