I just ported our 2004 N-Gage game N-Speed over to the Maemo platform. If you have a Nokia N800 or N810 internet tablet or other compatible device, just click here to install the game. The source code for the game is also available if you’re into that sort of thing.

Here’s a shot of N-Speed in action on the Nokia N810:

Kävin tänään kertomassa peliohjelminnista Python-kielellä Oulun yliopiston ohjelmoinnin perusteet -kurssilaisille. Session tuloksena syntyi matopeli, jonka voi ladata alta:

Pelataksesi peliä tarvit Pythonin sekä pyglet-lisäkirjaston. Peli toimii Linuxilla, Windowsilla sekä Mac OS X:llä. Kiitokset Tommille musiikista ja ääniefekteistä.

English translation

Today I gave a presentation on game programming using Python to the students attending Programming 101 at the University of Oulu. The result of the session was a classic snake game, which you can download above.

In order to play the game you’ll need Python and the pyglet-module. The game works on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. Thanks to Tommi for the music and sound effects.

A new version of Frets on Fire is now out. This time around it is only a minor bugfix release with some assorted performance improvements, mainly intended to verify that the reworked build system does its thing properly. Perhaps the most notable feature in this release is the fact that the Mac build is now on par with other other platforms.

• Wrote concise instructions for building and installing the game.
• Removed runtime SVG support. All images must be pre-rasterized as PNG graphics now. This also removes the dependency on Amanith, making the game simpler to build and package.
• Reworked the build system. Now an installation package can be created with a single command for Windows and Mac OS X.
• Added textured fretboard strings and bars.
• Updated the translations.

Album Cover Art Downloader 1.6.6 is now out. Changes:

• Fixed unicode BOM bug for UTF-8/16 systems.
• Removed hardcoded latin-1 encoding.
• Made the configuration dialog more accessible.
• Don’t crash when using the generic image exporter on an item
  that was not recognized.

Album Cover Art Downloader 1.6.5 has now been released.

Changes:

• Windows (Win32) support re-enabled.
• Support unicode paths.
• Support for ID3 v2.4 files courtesy of Andy Ward.

Apologies in advance: the following is not even remotely on-topic, but that’s what blogs are for, right?

Having just seen the latest installment in the Indiana Jones series I couldn’t help but notice that a certain part of the film felt awfully familiar. In the segment, Indy climbs inside a lead-lined fridge to escape an imminent nuclear explosion. The bomb goes off, throwing the fridge into a dizzying spin. After the dust settles, Jones climbs out of the scorched refrigerator relatively unscathed.

Surely no other action epic has used such an extravagant plot device before? Well, not quite, but almost. You see, the original script draft for the 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future called for a time machine built out of — you guessed it — a Philco refrigerator. Operating the time machine required quite a lot of power — 4200 rads to be exact — and the only thing producing that much radiation back in 1949 was a nuclear explosion. To get back to his own time, Marty takes the fridge/time machine to a Nevada nuclear test site and climbs inside. The bomb goes off, throwing the fridge back to the future, and moments later Marty climbs out of the melted Philco with hardly a scratch.

Well, I’m glad that Back to the Future didn’t end up like this. There’s no denying that a Delorean is way cooler than some crummy refrigerator. Still, you have to wonder how a very similar plot sequence ended up in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

My master’s thesis just got accepted, making me a graduate of the Degree Program on Information Engineering at the University of Oulu. The work, titled A Mobile Vector Graphics Quality Analysis Toolkit, deals with solving inefficiencies and other problems found in mobile applications that use vector graphics such as OpenGL ES and OpenVG.

This is just a reminder to myself and maybe others as well of how to get CMake and Visual C++ 2005 Express playing together nicely. Namely, how to get past the following error when trying initialize a project using CMake:

  LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'user32.lib'

The problem is that you’re missing the Windows Platform SDK. But just installing it is not enough. Microsoft has the details, but in short you have to:

1. Install the Platform SDK.
2. In VC++, add the following paths to the Tools | Options | Projects and Solutions | VC++ Directories page. Be sure to click the checkmark button to verify the paths.
   • Executable files: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Bin
   • Include files: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Include
   • Library files: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2\Lib

With that, the linker error should go away.