Hey there. Just wanted to let you know that “3½ inches is enough”, Unreal Voodoo’s entry to the Assembly 2009 oldskool demo competition is now up. The recommended way to see it is of course on a Macintosh Classic II, but alternatives in decreasing order of preference are running the PC version, watching it on Youtube or reading the source code and imagining what the demo is like.

Watch this space, as I might do a little writeup about our experiences in making the demo.

I had a chance to try out the Android-based T-Mobile G1, and the natural thing to do was to break out the SDK and take it for a spin. I ported over my earlier Python based snake game (”Matopeli”). You can download the sources and the installation package if you’re so inclined.

On first blush the Android APIs appear to be a welcome improvement over the somewhat aged MIDP specification. The implementation on the G1 seems to perform quite nicely, especially on the 2D graphics front. Of course, I would appreciate support for other, more wrist friendly languages, but for simple applications such as this one, Java is entirely bearable.

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.

The source code for the Frets on Fire World Charts server has been released. See the documentation for more information.