Chasecam

Futzing around with a chasecam instead of working on coursework. Also fixed the skybox and tested a live stream over the weekend. Sadly my laptop really isn't up to streaming, the framerate for viewers was terrible. I'll try again with a lower resolution sometime.

I thought I was getting back in shape until I started using this again. Nothing like falling off the back of a blocky 2-frame rider.

Windows port / skyboxes

I really have to stop with these dramatic pauses. I dedicated all my time to courses over fall and it paid off with more of those A's I love so much.  This term I'm going to try to be better about keeping up with my own work as well as courses. Might sacrifice a grade or two.  Not much further though to Spring 2014.

Over the break I've been getting brain up to speed on 6502 assembly and legs finally, at long last, consistently on the trainer.  For this project I rebuilt the actual physical sensor with proper soldering and a molded connector for the bike more recently and pretty soon intend on streaming my FrosTrainer rides live. The only catch is my broadcast software only works in Windows...

Problem and solution, ported the source over successfully last night. As you can see, skyboxes are also in, replacing the old parallax background (though I need to adapt the classy pixel art to wrap properly). Don't worry, I'm making the skybox look exactly like the old one. 320x200 is all a man really needs.

I'm pretty excited about the live streaming for motivation and for the different approach to roads it'll require.  A badly needed change, since crafting a 20-30mi road in 100th mile increments is painful at best, let alone when the rides get real again.

Go Joes

A rider for the Average Joes bridged the gap to the new engine. Cruising at 30mph like a champ.

[Edit: Fixed video]

Buildings + Tunnels, back in style

Scenery models loading. Time to stop putting off rider recording and playback... No simple slide-over for them, though. The AI riders will enjoy a proper rewrite. No more cutting off an entire pack diving from the far left to the far right for this lot.

Billboard props, theme loading

Looking more familiar already. Classic theme files load, tweaking weird geometry and 8bit textures to work with OpenGL.

Vacation's over

Quick video of the new sensor / engine / renderer for anyone interested. Really didn't do much at all this summer in the way of projects. It's difficult to get motivated to rebuild a winter training game while there are all those nice roads out there to ride on.

The foundation is there, time to start adding back in all the bells and whistles.

New source tree

The old mess of C code is enjoying a rewrite in C++. Not much visual yet, but the first major classes are in and road files from the first incarnation load and spit out elevation markers.  Keeping as much the same or similar in terms of the data structures so the old functions require less tweaking.

The old version, being that it's complete (if ugly), is being kept separate.  The practical benefit is I can generate roads, themes, and config data with the old then load them into the new engine before the latter can generate them.  The goal right now is to produce something that... looks a lot like the video of the old version I posted last year.

The difference? Native binaries for Linux, Windows, and (given a tester) Mac, full hardware acceleration, and honest-to-goodness download links.  No more fighting with a rather broken portaudio library, either.

[EDIT]
Here're the old videos, for reference: FT Vids #1