Monday 27 April 2009

StripReloc

Wonderful little tool which can be downloaded here, made by Jordan Russell (Inno Setup), which removes unnecessary data from an EXE & reduces it's size.

Usage is pretty simple too, when I wanted to reduce one of the demos that came with Basic4GL, I just typed the following...

StripReloc /B asteroiddemo2.exe
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Free Online Storage

10GB of free storage available here at humyo.com.
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Wednesday 22 April 2009

Rubygame-2.4.1 Windows Binary

It took me some time to do but after a few Weeks I finally managed to build the newest version of Rubygame for Windows. I made this post on the Rubygame forum which includes a download link for the various dlls. At some point I'll get around to uploading the various project files I had to create for the dlls.
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Monday 20 April 2009

Rubygame Newest Version

If you're interested in getting the newest version of the Rubygame source to try & compile it yourself, it can be downloaded from here.
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Sunday 19 April 2009

Games Coffer

Downloading Amiga games & demos from large bland anonymous FTP sites can be a tedious experience sometimes.

Now someone from EAB has created a site here where you can download a lot of content in a much more user friendly way.
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Friday 17 April 2009

Linker Tools Warning LNK4098

Ever got that Warning when you're using MSVC to compile a program?

If you have you should visit the following link.
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Thursday 16 April 2009

Windows XP Calibri Font

I used to use Vista & created a PDF from a document in OpenOffice, recently I started using XP again & went through the same process but when I opened the PDF I discovered that the fonts weren't correct. After some searching I discovered that Calibri isn't installed on XP but if you install PowerPoint Viewer 2007 the font & some others will be installed so the problem is solved.


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KompoZer Windows Installer

I've been using the HTML editor KompoZer for some time now. I'm sure a lot more Windows users would use it too if it wasn't for the installation method. Currently KompoZer is distributed as a ZIP file which you have to decompress & manually install, which I'm sure puts some users off.

I've used Inno Setup to create an Installer, which will install the program for you. I've tested it on my own computer & it worked fine, plus it should also work on Vista machines too as it asks for administrator privileges.

It installs the newest version of Kompozer which is version 0.8a2 & the installer is available to download from here.
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Wednesday 15 April 2009

Opening XPS Files

If you're using Windows XP & you need to open or view XPS files, you should visit this webpage & download the Microsoft XML Paper Specification Essentials Pack.
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Monday 13 April 2009

Free Pascal New Version Released

You can view the changes in the new version here & download it from here.

If you are taking a look at Free Pascal 2.2.4 you might also want to take a look at the Lazarus IDE too.
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Java HelloApp Program

I've recently been using Java again, so I thought I'd present some simple programs you can run in Java. Just type the following into a text editor but be careful because Java is case sensitive. Certain commands are expected to be entered using upper case letters.

public class HelloApp
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Hello, World!");
}
}

Save the file as HelloApp.java & compile it with the following...

javac HelloApp.java

Run it with the following...

java HelloApp

If you want to generate documentation using JavaDoc just type the following...

javadoc -d docs HelloApp.java

Finally, if you'd like to place your class in a Jar file, you must first create a Manifest file. Just place the following text in a file called Manifest.txt & make sure you place a newline at the end.

Main-Class: HelloApp


Then create the Jar file by typing the following...

jar cvfm HelloApp.jar Manifest.txt *.class

Run the Jar file with the following...

java -jar HelloApp.jar

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Sunday 12 April 2009

Further Rubygame Links

Some more Rubygame related links...
  • Rubygame: The Blog, can be found here.
  • Sourceforge: Rubygame project here
  • Win32 Compile: Rubygame 2.2.0 guide here
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MessageBox Functions

If you're creating MessageBoxes using the Windows API this MSDN page should help you.
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C in a Nutshell

Good book to read here on Google Books, although it's only a preview (pages missing) like the rest of the books on Google, there is a lot of information still remaining.
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Global Variables in FreeBASIC

Interesting & lengthy thread here on the FreeBASIC forum about Global Variables & Object Oriented Programming.
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Thursday 9 April 2009

Ruby Forum

Here is a link to the Ruby Forum.
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Basic4GL Media Player

I've made a Media Player plugin for Basic4GL so you can now load & watch films in Basic4GL.

You can read more about it here on the forum.
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Wednesday 8 April 2009

A Visit to id Software

30 minute video which was made in 1993 at id software showing them working on Doom.


A Visit to id Software from john romero on Vimeo.
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Tuesday 7 April 2009

SDL in Mandriva

Interesting in doing some SDL programming in Mandriva Linux? If so type this in a terminal...

# urpmi libSDL-devel libSDL1.2_0 libSDLmm0.1-devel libSDL_gfx-devel  libSDL_image-devel libSDL_mixer-devel libSDL_net-devel libSDL_Pango-devel libSDL_sound-devel libSDL_ttf-devel

You'll probably receive a message saying that you'll need to install about 40 additional dependencies, just agree & type Y to install them.
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OpenGL in Mandriva

If you want to do some OpenGL programming in Mandriva Linux you'll need to install the OpenGL development files. Just type the following in a terminal...

# urpmi libmesaglut3-devel libmesaglu1-devel libdrm-devel libmesaglu1-devel libmesagl1-devel libmesaglut3-devel libxmu6-devel libxxf86vm-devel

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Monday 6 April 2009

Mandriva & Rar Files

Need to open a Rar file in Mandriva? Type the following in a terminal.

# urpmi unrar
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SDL_gfx-2.0.18 in Windows

While I was trying to get the new version of Rubygame to compile in Windows I also compiled the new version of SDL_gfx. The Code:Blocks project (MinGW) which contains the release versions of the SDL_gfx dll & library can be downloaded from here. I tried it with the rotozoom example & it worked fine.

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Sunday 5 April 2009

Visual C++ Express Edition 2005

It can still be downloaded from here & the additional PSDK can be found here. Full installation instructions for the PSDK can be found here.

If you're wondering why you'd want to use it instead of the newer 2008 version, it's because a lot of older programs need to be changed before they'll successfully compile with it.
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Friday 3 April 2009

GPG Links

I've been using GPG for some time now. Here are some links for people who are also interested in using it.
  • GPG Cheat Sheet here
  • Introduction to GNUPG here
  • Exporting your public key here
  • GPG tutorial here
If you want to download my public key just type the following in a terminal or console...

gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-key 0xFBBFAF03
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Rubygame Downloads & Installs

There is a guide here for compiling rubygame 2.2.0 from source, the guide is a bit old but it should get you started.

You'll find a similar guide here for installing version 2.2.0 as a gem.

The source for compiling SDL_gfx.dll can be found here.
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Rubygame 2.4.1 for Windows

I noticed that a new version of Rubygame had been released so I thought I'd try to download & install it.

Installation didn't work so I then thought that I'd try to build it from source. I produced a rubygame.dll & also managed to create an SDL_gfx.dll as well. What I'm supposed to do now though is a little unclear as rubygame seems to need to be installed as a Gem in order for it to be usable.

I've joined the rubygame forum & made this thread there about the subject, plus I've made this post on the rubygame-users mailing list.
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Wednesday 1 April 2009

GUI Programming in Linux & Windows

Another thread here on the Ubuntu Forum containing some useful links such as the Qt website & a free PDF on Qt programming.
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Advice on Pointers

Useful thread about Pointers can be found here on the Ubuntu Forum.
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