New "Professional" Website

Sunday, October 09, 2016

Something I've been wanting to do for a while, but never seemed to get around to is making another website. This one has served me fine, but the fact is that some of the projects I've posted here over the years just don't belong along side others. Z-Net, Kokiri Forest, etc. Due to their nature they don't reflect a professional side of myself, and as I try to move forward with publishing assets for sale on the Unity Asset Store, one day make and sell a VR game, and even offer myself up for freelance services, the two sides don't belong together.

So I've been wanting to make a "professional" website for a while, and I finally did just that!

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News: Slowing Down Again

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Mostly what I've worked on this past week has been the blog layout. CSS was very unfamiliar to me so it's something I needed to get experience with. And with the images, I just needed to sharpen up my photoshoping skills a bit, and perhaps develop more. I've done some tweaks here and there since my weekend post, but that's it.

Still, with that done, I'm still not to interested in working on the Z-Band server scripts anymore atm. A project you don't plan on releasing can only hold your interest so long, at least with me. And I have to many unreleased projects now. I'm still trying to figure out something to work on, that I can/will release. I don't have many ideas though.

I was considering working a little more on EQC Launchpad again but due to recent developments, the launchpad project is even more dead then before. I'll have to wait to find out if some ideas pan out that can keep it alive. But until they do, I'm starting to consider the project officially heading towards the canceled shelf along side Z-Net. I'll give it sometime though, but if that ends up being the case, I'll probably drop from the EQC team as I'll have nothing substantial to offer the project anymore, as I won't work on the server for a couple reasons. And I'm not that interested in being a "Tools Devs" in its real meaning (I don't consider EQCLP a tool, but no other team titles make more sense). I've actually only made one tool, and have had that made worthless by an attempt to 1up me. I've considered working on some tool ideas proposed in the past, but they just don't interest me much, even if the project was near a point that called for their creation. I was also considering offering some of my resharpening webcoding/imaging skills to use, but that idea is now scratched along with the launchpad.

God help if I start getting more serious about it, but I've even been considering working on a version of last years Z-Net stand alone client that I'd officially release. As much fun as I have with it all, the future of any version of those projects is grim and headed for disappointment. So please future self... NO!

For now I'll probably work more on image related things when I'm bored. Like creating some wallpapers. I find that fun. I've been drawing a little here and there as well. I've even been messing with a 3d editor called Blender lately. Hoping I can gain at least enough skill to make some wallpaper ideas I have look better. We will see. The controls with the program are wacky, so who knows if I can remain interested in it long enough to create something that's actually usable.

I just remembered one project idea I might work on. A C++ project. I started some prelim work on it today. Just getting some of the basic window functions working as I'd want. As is, it's just a project shell I could use for different projects. Some of the code will probably end up in EQCLP if I continue that project. Until I have some progress on it, its not worth describing. Kind of like Z-Band was for me years ago. Both I just don't/didn't know if I had enough skill to actually do it, or even if my idea was ridiculous and wouldn't work at all or as well as I think it could. If I make significant progress with it, I'll post more about it.

News: First week with PHP

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

I seem to be getting more used to php now. I'm far from an ace at it, but I'm able to get it to do what I want a lot easier now. I need to start focusing more on cleaning up my style with it and making it all more professional looking, as I've learned that if I don't do that soon while I'm learning I'll become to accustomed to doing it lazily while planning to clean it up later. My C++ is such a mess most of the time. Apparently, while I don't believe it, even when I spend a lot of time specifically to clean up my code like I did for pickpocketing for the EQClassic project, since others will see it and probably need to work with it at times, it still warrants being completely discarded. Who knows how many hours I spent on that code. I was proud of the work I did on it, as the EQClassic project is one I really believe in, and I was happy to have finally contributed something to the server project. With my work on that gone to waste, I can safely say I won't be offering to work on the server code in the future like I was about ready to. I may even keep the launchpad code permanently private now. I know I'm not the best coder/scripter, as I'm self taught all of it with no formal background in any language, but I don't need my work or efforts insulted just because someones more talented. Anyway, I'm getting off track on a rant so moving on...

This past week I have worked more, off and on, on the Z-Band server scripts. I've gotten them a lot more polished then in my last update. The Leaderboard is functioning more like a Leaderboard now, and sorting in descending order based on wins. Both the registration and score updating scripts have been fully written, and rewritten (compy crash with unsaved data ftl). For most of my developing and testing of the scripts they just supported Super Mario Kart. I thought adding support for other games was going to be a bit more trouble, but I did all that today without much issue. As they all stand now, their completely functional. I still have to tie them into a phpbb database to use account info. As such, I don't have proper password support implemented. Other then that, I have to add a few checks to make sure nothing is tried to be done that isn't expected. Like sending an update for a game your not registered as playing, a score mismatch between players, etc. I'll probably iron that stuff out over the next week. Then maybe consider recoding a new version of the dll to support these, or implementing what I can of a recoded dll into a version of the stand alone client.

Other then that, this week I worked on my blog layout a bit. Polishing up some of the template code to suit how I want it. And adding/changing some images and colors. I brushed up on Photoshoping (formerly just PaintShopPro for me) and made the current background and logo. I made several other backgrounds as well, all pretty nice. This one was just closer to what I wanted. I'm not totally happy with the logo. I couldn't summon up much inspiration for it, and it seems very plain.

I also re-registered the old #Z-Net channel on gamesurge. The IRC link for it is on the side menu there. It's been a real ghost town since the projects homepages randomly went down (shakes fist at izfree.com) as finding a download link for Z-Net has been hard for anyone to stumble upon anywhere else. Even if there's no Z-Net 2.0 activity there still, I'll still use it as a chat channel for discussing my projects or whatever else unrelated. At this point my blog has only been up about 2 weeks, so it only gets like 4-10 hits a day. So I don't expect to see much traffic, but if anyone feels like it, drop by. =)

News: What I'm working on

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

With informational updates for most of my more major projects now posted to preserve their history, I'll now start posting news about what I'm working on and any progress with my projects.

Out of boredom with nothing to work on, I recently started learning php. My past web development experience was mainly just with html, and I wasn't all that great at that. I've been told php was easy if you know C++ and had been meaning to give it a try for a few years now. It seems that it is in fact easy. Its like a good blend of C++ and mIRC scripting styles when it comes to familiarity for me. I'm still just at my beginnings with it, but I can probably see myself getting more used to it fairly easily. Really its more pointed out how lacking and outdated my html skills are, as dealing with html and CSS seems to be much more confusing and messy.

As a learning project, I choose to create a much needed page for editing the header EQCLP uses located on the server. This header is downloaded every time a user runs EQCLP as its first act, and tells it certain basic info. Mostly just what files are available to be downloaded by it, and the CRC's of those files so it knows if it has the most up-to-date ones locally. There are a few other options as well. Having a web based editor for this header is much nicer then having to edit the file manually, as editing it manually could cause serve issues if done by someone who doesn't know what their doing, or someone makes a slight mistake.

There is probably a little more I can do with the editor, but I basically finished quickly. Still wanting a project to help me learn more, I talked with Yeahlight of EQClassic some about possibly making some scripts for that. But nothing could be worked out due to either my lack of interest, lack of php skill (I don't want to take on a project TO involving), or lack of need at this point.

Oddly enough, I found a good learning project buried in a failure of one of my older projects. Z-Band never saw the light of day in part because of my lack of interest or inability to write a server for it. Without a server, something like Z-Band is pointless and only serves to be something "neat". I've been working on that on and off for the past few days now. I have it set it up to access a MySQL database for any match/scoring info. A basic scoreboard was the first thing I made. I then started working on 2 other aspects of it, being a match registration script so the server knows a match is going on and between who, and a score update handler to receive players scores as they earn them. I'm not near finished with either yet, and am still running into my share of bugs due to my inexperience. But their coming along, and since it relates to my favorite project, its fun and interesting.

Of course this still doesn't mean I will try to revive Z-Net, or that I have any plans of releasing Z-Band in some form. Like the stand alone Z-Net client last year, this project isn't meant to be publicly used in anyway, and is just for my personal enjoyment. Whether I'll work on any client side Z-Band stuff at some point to work with this, is unknown. But it would be neat to see it all working like I once envisioned! =/

In other news. I got some of some older links to my past sites changed/redirected to here. Mostly just the http://z-net.ne1.net url, and some links from websites. Hopefully I'll get a little more traffic here, and maybe some visits from some old friends.