Free Game Sprites

Over on the Basic4GL forum crazynate has created a Wikispace called CrazyNateStudios where you download a lot of free sprites for any computer games that you're developing.

GCC Warning Options

If you ever encounter an error such as...

Warning: multi-line comment

The warning can be suppressed by using the following...

-Wno-comment

More information on the various warning options that are available to you in GCC can be found here.

PyInstaller

If you're programming in Windows using Python you'll encounter a problem where you need to distribute your program. But if you use PyInstaller you'll find that the process is quite simple. It takes your source files & binds them up into an .exe containing any dependencies they need & it can be downloaded from here.

OnLive Video Game System

OnLive makes PC upgrades extinct & lets you play games like Crysis on your television. It looks very promising but it does have its critics.

Google Earth Mandriva Linux

I've just tried using the new beta version of Google Earth (v5.0) in Mandriva Linux, the results were my XServer crashed & I had to hold down Ctrl, Alt & Del to reboot my system. I decided to uninstall the beta version & install version 4.3 which can be downloaded from here. Version 4.3 seems to work fine & I've had no problems with it, albeit it's a little slow when compared with the windows version. Installation instructions can be found here on the Ubuntu wiki, don't worry there's no real difference between the Mandriva & Ubuntu installations.

Google Desktop Search Button

If you've installed Google Desktop & you're using Firefox, you might have noticed the Desktop Search button in your Google Toolbar. However if you remove that button, it's difficult to get it back. I discovered that someone else had encountered this problem & it was solved here. I've put a page on my Wikispace with some useful images which show you how to solve the problem here.

Mandelbrot Dazibao

Is a site I've been visiting for a few years now. You'll find a lot of fractal information on there & you'll also be able to download a copy of QBasic. If you do get QBasic, then you should also download DOSBox from here.

Useful Thunderbird Add-ons

Here is a short list of add-ons which I have installed in Thunderbird.

• Enigmail: If you need to encrypt or decrypt emails, get this.
• Lightning: A version of the Sunbird calender program.
• Buttons: Adds a button for viewing emails as text or html.
  

Rebuilding the Font Cache

If you've just installed some new fonts in Linux, you'll probably need to rebuild your font cache, in Mandriva you do the following.

# fc-cache -f -v

The Art of Java

Out of all the Java programming books I've seen over the years this is one of the best. I first read it when it came out back in 2003 & it's still worth reading. Some sample chapters & the full source code for the example programs can be downloaded from here.

Xbox 360: Halo Wars

I decided to buy it today after almost getting Street Fighter IV. It's a very good game & very playable, here is the review of the game from Gametrailers.

Internet Explorer 8

It can be downloaded from here & a Wikipedia article about IE8 can be found here.

Programming Forums

Friends on the Basic4GL forum have created two new forums, the first is Games World R Us & the second is Z-TechProgramming.

Online Games

Two online games that I've tried & liked are Second Life & MapleStory.

Aurel Basic New Version

Version 1.1 build 85 has been released & can be downloaded from here.

Vista to XP

I've been using Vista for about 18 months & I haven't really liked it & I'd have preferred using XP. However my old XP laptop has been unusable for about the same amount of time but I'd kept my XP recovery disks. This morning I wondered whether I could use the disks to install XP on my Vista laptop, so I backed up all my documents & went ahead. Installation went fine after rebooting my computer, I then spent a few hours tracking down drivers for the hardware in my computer & installing the various Windows updates. So I'm now using an XP laptop, now I've just got to install Linux & I can go back to running an XP - Linux dualboot.

Win32API Usage Statistics

Found a link on the thinBasic forum here to a site which lists the most used Win32API functions here.

Play DOS Games in your Browser

Another wonderful example of what you can do with the Java programming language can be found here. It's a website which lets you play classic DOS games in your browser.

Google Earth Plugin

You can download it here & I think it's well worth it. As once as it's installed you can use Google Earth in your browser.

Blender Tutorial Videos

If you need help using the 3D animation program Blender, look at this video tutorial site.

JASC Animation Shop v3.11

It's a very useful program for creating or editing GIF animations & can be downloaded for free from here. It also deals with a lot of other image formats apart from GIF too.

PS2 Games

I recently went into a Game store & brought some preowned PS2 games which were, Metal Gear Solid 3, Kingdom Hearts & Yu-Gi-Oh! I got all 3 of them for just £20 & I also brought some PC games from a Maplin store, which were Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, Bejeweled 2 & a music creation program called Music Studio Generation MM. I got all of them for £20 as well.

ScummVM Download

If you want to play old adventure games such as Flight of the Amazon Queen or Beneath a Steel Sky on your modern PC, you'll want to download ScummVM. There is a very useful FAQ here, which contains information on how to use ScummVM & how to load & save games.

Corn Programming Language

I first encountered Corn in early 2006, I thought it was pretty good but I encountered problems with program compilation & execution. For some reason after placing the Corn bin folder on my PATH environment variable, Corn would complain that the installation directory was incorrect.

Last year I downloaded the newest version of Corn (v2.8.2) but after trying to compile a simple example with it...

corncmp -o hello.pack hello.corn

I received the following error...

exception of unknown class

I sent an E-Mail to the author of the language to see if he could help but he didn't seem that interested which was a shame.

Planet Lara Soundtracks

Excellent site here where every single track from the Tomb Raider games can be downloaded, you can even download & print the cover & disk artwork for the soundtracks.

Linux PDF Merger

If you're looking for a PDF Merger for Linux, just use your Package Manager to install the PDF Toolkit. In Mandriva this can be done using the following...

urpmi pdftk

Usage is quite simple too, just open a terminal & use the following...

pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf cat output out.pdf

Powered by ScribeFire.

Mandriva VLC MP4 Audio

I was trying to play an MP4 file in VLC running on Mandriva today. The picture was fine but there was no audio, after some searching I found this thread. I uninstalled VLC then visited Easy Urpmi & downloaded the PLF Media file, after running the file I opened my package manager & installed the PLF version of VLC which also installed the relevent MP4 codecs.

Powered by ScribeFire.

TNA Impact: 03.05.09

• Part 01: Watch here
• Part 02: Watch here
• Part 03: Watch here
• Part 04: Watch here
• Part 05: Watch here
• Part 06: Watch here
  

Powered by ScribeFire.

Mandriva

After the Debian disaster, I decided to use Mandriva again. So far it's been working fine, my laptop WiFi has been working without a problem & overall I'm quite pleased. However this morning I received a message about updating my system. After updating, I was told to use the following command...

urpme --auto-orphans

I did some searching & found the following forum threads here & here. After reading them I decided not to do it, as I didn't want to uninstall a lot of programs & find myself in the same position I was in with Debian

Powered by ScribeFire.

Debian to Mandriva

After a day of using Debian everything was going well until I installed an update which removed about 200 files including my Gnome Desktop. When I then tried to reinstall it, I kept receiving dependency errors because of the different versions of the programs I was trying to install. I almost managed to fix the system but gave up & thought about trying Mandriva again which was the first Linux distro I tried in early 2006.

Powered by ScribeFire.

PS3 + Killzone 2 Bundle

One of the main reasons I never brought a PS3 was because of it's expensive price & it's lack of outstanding games. But recently with the release of the Killzone 2 bundle, I'm seriously thinking about buying one. For £299.99 you get a PS3, Joypad & a copy of Killzone 2.

Moonlight: Silverlight for Linux

Silverlight was invented by Microsoft & it's a lot like Flash. Microsoft use it on a lot of their sites for videos & programming examples. Linux users can now get a version of Silverlight called Moonlight from here which can be installed as an add-on for Firefox.

Here is a page containing some links to websites which use Silverlight, so you can test your installation.

Flashblock Add-on

I was reading this thread on the JREF forum today about annoying Flash adverts. Someone mentioned an add-on for Firefox called Flashblock so I thought I'd try it out.

It's very good & blocks all Flash on a webpage but you can allow Flash on a page that you trust, I think it's going to be as useful as the Adblock add-on.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Atmosphir: Game Engine

Free Game Engine available here, I found out about it here on the thinBasic forum. Currently it's a Beta Signup & you'll need to wait about 3-4 days but it looks like it'll be worth it.

Bat to Exe Converter

I discovered it in this post at the thinBasic forum, it looks very useful but I haven't had time to test it yet, try it for yourself here.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Debian Update Manager

If you want to install the Update-Manager in Debian which you may have used before in Ubuntu, look here.

Firefox & Thunderbird

Are called Iceweasel & Icedove in Debian. Want to know why? Look here.

Synaptics Touchpad

Having difficulty configuring your Synaptics Touchpad in Debian? Try using this.

Debian - MyPasswordSafe

Need to install MyPasswordSafe for Debian? Look here.

Flash for Debian

Need to install Flash for Debian? Look here, it works just as good as it did in Ubuntu too.

Debian

I downloaded a CD ISO today from here & installed it, so I'm now running a Vista-Debian, dual-boot.

FantaMag

Online magazine site here, the computer magazines can be found here.

Mass Effect 2 Trailer

I brought Mass Effect for my Xbox 360 a while ago , today I recieved an email from FileFront where they had a video trailer of the new version.


Mass Effect 2 Teaser Trailer (MOV)

Black Art of 3D Game Programming

I was reading this post on the DBF forum & found a link to this site, where the entire book can be found online.

Graphics Programming Black Book

It's available on the Internet for free & I recommend anyone who is interested in game programming to download it. You can get the chapters of the book in the PDF format from this page at GameDev.

GNU Win32 Update

GNU Win32 is a Windows port of most of the Linux Terminal tools such as grep, awk, etc. I've been using them in Windows now for quite some time & I've decided to start creating tutorial pages for the different tools on my wikispace. The first one can be found here & shows you how to use cat.