Designing Arcade Computer Game Graphics

Over a decade ago I discovered that the PDF version of Designing Arcade Computer Game Graphics by Ari Feldman was freely available on the Internet. I remember posting links to the book on a lot of forums that I visited back then. If you download the zipped PDF from the above link you'll find the book has been distributed as 16 separate chapters, I've used Ashampoo PDF Pro 2 to combine the chapters into one complete file which you can download here. Ari Feldman also created a sprite library which is freely available from here.

Clearing-up the context menu

Ever uninstalled a program and had options relating to it linger in the context menu when you right-click the mouse? If you have (like me) try using ShellMenuView by NirSoft. I've found it to be quite useful, not just for removing features from programs that I'd already deleted but for disabling features that I rarely used.

Voxel Turf

I first heard about Voxel Turf several years ago when the developer first started making people aware of the game. It's basically a combination of GTA and Minecraft and it was recently released. The game is written in C++ and uses Lua for scripting, a quick search on YouTube and you'll find a lot of people are playing and making videos about the game.

I've been keeping an eye on the game for a while now and I made a post about it on the Basic4GL Forum back in 2015 as the developer had written quite a few interesting things in Basic4GL in the past.

Sadly I still haven't been able to play it yet as my laptop isn't anywhere near powerful enough to run it.

Disabling a Laptop Keyboard

Ever run into that problem with a laptop keyboard where a key gets stuck down and just keeps repeating itself ad-infinitum? I have and it's extremely annoying plus the sound the computer makes while trying to deal with the constant keypresses is even worse. In the past I'd just bring up the Windows Device Manager and uninstall the keyboard drivers and continue using my USB keyboard, however after restarting my computer the Drivers would be reinstalled and the problem would start again.

There's an excellent article on TechTambayan which shows you how to deal with the problem, just by changing the installed Drivers for ones which are incompatible for your keyboard then disabling them.

As you can see in the above image, I've installed the Drivers for a Japanese keyboard and then I've disabled them.

Links to GameDev Resources

I've recently started developing a simple RPG game in Basic4GL, so I thought I'd provide some links to useful resources that can speed up development time. Mappy is a Tilemap editor, so are tIDE, Tiled and Pyxel Edit. (I should just add that if you want the newest version of Pyxel Edit you'll need to pay for it, however they do have an older unsupported version available to download for free.)

There is now a version of Basic4GL that you can use to create Mobile and Web Apps (called unsurprisingly Basic4GL Mobile) which I paid for a few months ago which should make mobile development a little easier.

Creating your own Tilemaps can be a little tedious if you aren't artistically inclined and prefer programming, so it's good to know that a lot of free ones can be downloaded from OpenGameArt.

Free Music resources can be found at Incompetech, and a range of high quality textures, sound-effects and music can be found at the site of Eric Matyas.

Basic4GL for Java

For the past few months a member of the Basic4GL forum has been developing a version which runs on Java. There is a thread on the forum here which contains more information however the Basic4GL Facebook page here has the most up-to-date developments on the project. If you'd like to download the newest version it can be found here on the developers site.

Building FreeGlut 3.0.0

I noticed that FreeGlut 3.0.0 had been released and decided to build it using MinGW. I've created a step-by-step guide here that should show you what to do. I still haven't got around to installing a 64-bit compiler yet but compilation would be near-identical if you have such a set-up. If you aren't that interested in building it yourself you can download both 64-bit and 32-bit shared/static libraries for MSVC and MinGW compilers from this site.

New FLTK Tutorial

I recently decided to build FLTK v1.3.3 and wanted to create a tutorial as a reminder to myself and a guide for anyone else to follow. Sadly I still haven't got around to renewing my subscription at Wikispaces so I can't update my Wiki. :-(

But I did some research and discovered that Altervista offered free webspace so I created my tutorial there. Building FLTK is really simple (and it builds much quicker than wxWidgets) so you shouldn't encounter any difficulty.

FreeGLUT 2.8.1 Windows Binaries

Recently I bought a new Windows 8 computer so I thought I'd reinstall all my old programming software. I tried installing MinGW using the new Automated Installer but got into a right mess. So I used TDM-GCC instead and although I'm now using a 64-bit system, I chose to stick to the tried-and-tested 32-bit version. I downloaded the source for FreeGLUT from the FreeGLUT site here.

Compilation was easy enough with no problems being reported and as usual I've compiled Shared and Static libraries; examples and the necessary includes are also provided. If you encounter any problems using them just post a comment. Click here to download.

SDL_gfx-2.0.24 Binaries

As usual I've compiled the newest version of SDL_gfx for any Windows Users who need it.

Shared and Static Libraries can be downloaded from here.

Recently I received a post about compiling a 64-bit version, sadly I'm still using an old 32-bit Windows XP machine but I hope to be upgrading soon.

Installing Java 7

In the past I'd tried installing the Java 7 JDK but the Installer would never successfully complete.

I eventually got it to install by downloading the combined JDK & NetBeans Installer.

I still don't know why this installation problem exists. A quick search on the Internet doesn't provide many answers as most people who are encountering these problems are using Linux rather than Windows.

SDL_gfx-2.0.23 Binaries

I've compiled the latest version of SDL_gfx for any Windows Users who may need it.

Shared & Static Libraries are included & can be downloaded here.

FreeGLUT 2.8.0 Binaries

I've compiled Shared & Static Libraries of FreeGLUT 2.8.0 for any Windows Users who need them. Simple Installation Instructions are included as is a Short Guide on how I compiled them for those who are interested. You can download the files by clicking here.