kudos microsoft

read this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/directx/xna/faq/

mouthwatering, isn't it

Sidenote

Unintelligent design

That proves everything.

redirecting

hi folks,

since my last post (and lost hd),
i've decided to use the fatal loss
as a bit of redirection for myself.
so i bought myself some equipment for
nintendo ds development. yes.
(still waiting for the sd card to arrive)

in the mean time i'd like to present the
real meaning of my nick (and some of you might
already have guessed so):




knee down mortals,
as i leave you stunned with this impression.

until next time,
vb

bad hd day

Hi folks,

no, no real update.
Came home yesterday, booted my comp,
found that one hard-drive didn't respond ...
the one with all my projects on !!
(no, last backup way too long ago)
yes, everything but the binaries to each line of code
I did in my spare time is lost.
well, that means: start from scratch, heart the screenshots,
take a deep breath and forget about it.


BUT:
E3 was great, Nintendo rocked, Sony n00bed and some
friend became crazy:

"i have a little little dream
i dream that i get a
little tiny shiny wii
and I can play wiith you and mii
With youuu and wii
youu and wii

Just take the Nunchuk-Controller
and you'll beat the enemy all-over
so just take the Nunchuk-Controller
and sing with mii

its so nice to sii
that I will get my wii

in wii we trust and so
wii all be free

to buy the wii
to buy the wii
we all be free !!!

This is my wii song !
huhuhu"

yes, indeed, this is his poem to the wii (lol)

Stay tuned,

vb

Workin', workin', workin'

At least, an update!

Good news: I'm employed now! Finally.
Bad news: I don't have the time to update Penga so often.

But: I've ported from Ogre 1.0.7 basecode to 1.2.0 (piece of cake,
once again grats to the developers! Awesome library!).
Now I'm able to integrate some post-processing-effects with ease.

Oh, and I've implemented score counting, so be aware of dropping stones.
Just have to polish some bits, then I'll post a new version soon!

So, as always, stay tuned,
vb

Rollin' rollin' rollin'

... and the updates keep coming.

Changes:

• the controls have been changed
• the menue is far more complete, you can even choose difficulty levels
• more gfx
• and lots of small things ...

Here some preview pics

and again:

download a SFX-ARCHIVE OR ZIP OR INSTALLER(!!)
OR (my traffic is steadily rising ...) @ FileFront

Have fun,
vb

small things make big things collapse

Again, good news everyone!

Now the towers collapse when they should ! ;)
And there are butterflies everywhere !!
And even the sun does shine now and then !!!

Interested ?

So grab the new version -> Penga v0.2 !!!!

again:

SFX-ARCHIVE OR ZIP

Note:

To have fun, you should really possess at least a 1GHz CPU, the faster
the better. I haven't optimized anything yet, so be warned.
Ahh, and you don't need a fast graphics card (yet ...),
more fx coming soon.

Good news, everyone!

A playable version of Penga is online and waiting for you!

But first, some screens:
(click on them for larger versions)

At the very moment no game logic is implemented, you just can push and pull stones,
let the tower collapse, throw stones, enjoy the environment ...

Controls:
Move the mouse to rotate around the tower and zoom, press the
right mouse button to change height.
The target stone is highlighted red and the push/pull location
indicated by a small sphere on the stone.
Push the left mouse button to enter the drag-mode and move the mouse
back/front to pull/push the stone.

To rebuild the tower, enter the game menu with 'ESC' and select 'New Game'.

Download:
(Read the included readme.txt !!)
But see for yourself -> download Penga v0.1 as 7zip self-extracting archive
or for the suspicious ones a slightly larger zip -> download Penga v0.1 as zip-archive

Feedback is very appreciated!!

Till then,
vb

happy new ... teaser !

Hi,

welcome to a new year, hopefully enriched with loads of updates!

So, *dada* a new project is on it's way -> get a glimpse

More coming soon,
vb

ticker update

well as i promised,
the updates are coming more frequently (yay!).
fetch the new ticker version from HERE

new: support for more than one feed
new new: stores user config

oh and i forgot to mention that you need qt-3.3.4 to compile ...

life ticks, or ...

It's been a long time with no update,
but my diploma thesis takes a big hit on my
spare time ...
Anyway, I got bored of searching for a minimalistic rss-feed-ticker-thing, which is
easy to compile as a rightless unix user.
so i made myself a simple one :)

If you want it grab it HERE.
First source-only prog-post and
it's free, so do as you like.
But it comes also without any warranties, see the GPL.

There'll be loads more updates as soon as my thesis' finished.

Till then,
vb

life-signs

hi,
still alive ;)
i've got a new idea,
but not tellin' you before i crafted something visible.
oh, and btw., I'm using ogre3d to visualise it.

a really awesome library, although i hate scenegraphs ...
check 'em out, it's worth it !

greetz,
vb

ain't dead yet

hi,

i'm still alive, but real-life does take more time than cyber-life these times ;)
updates coming soon ...

stay tuned,
vb

xmas winamp plugin

This is a winamp plugin, made for a contest at NeHe's site
It features a dancing xman, reindeer, christmas tree and snowman
and loads more ;)
signs

• download here
• just unzip all contents to your winamp/plugins directory

[update 1/15/05]
Just got notified that I won the second prize!
Finally, a BFG GeForce FX 5500 OC ! *muahahahahaha*

scorchtris

scorchtris ( = scorch + tetris )

Play tetris, earn points and bullets and destroy your opponents tetris,
or clean up yours ;) .
Written completely by myself within 3 weeks as a final project for a university course.
It features:

• extensive networking ( up to theoretical unlimited players !! )
• realistic physics (with ODE)
• a shooter
• a classic tetris
• and of course graphics ;) ( and some sound effects too !)
  

Go, try yourself:

• windows binaries
• linux binaries
• project home
  

Important:

Read the included Readme file !!!
The networking is really, really bad ! I'll remake it ASAP with
a 'professional' library like RakNet (or anything similar, comments welcome).

And don't forget it has been a three weeks course, so it's very buggy!

path'o'logic

Yet another simple prog, this time to implement a simple path-finding framework.
Some sort of cyclic graph with node-costs and least-cost search.
Every mouse button does something, so be sure to read the included readme.txt first !

• download here
  

spinning cubes

A little program that was inspired by an effect in a demo.
It features simple, recursive animation and
a psychadelic background.
Tune in, maximize and start staring!

• but, download first here
  

to interpolate, or not to interpolate

Just a litttle program to test the various interpolation algorithms.
Nothing fancy, just math ;) .

• download here
  

particle system

First physics simulation ;) .
Nothing spectacular, only some attractors in a particle field,
feat. point gravity, axis gravity etc. .

• download here

raytracer, the 1st

My first raytracer. Everyone says "raytracing's easy",
"wrote mine in a coffee break" etc blabla.
But they're right! Lose your angers and start your
favorite editor, because it's raytracing time!

The basic version, raytracing spheres and planes, was finished
in appr. 2h !!

The enhanced version, feat. OpenGL interface, tri-meshes,
plugable shaders etc., wasn't that big step.

But go, see the gallery yourself here

shadow volumes

Ok, this is my first more sophisticated project.
It presents stencil shadow volumes and vertex and fragment
shaders (written in a very early version of nvidia's Cg).
The code is a total mess, back then I had no real math-class with
overloaded operators etc. . So it ended up in pure C-code that's
totally cryptic and unreadable (even though it's commented ; ) ).

Now to the links:

• download executable here
• and for the impatient ones, some screenshots

gaussian blur

what the f***, or
my first proggie with visual output ever (hehe ...).
Just a random generated image (didn't know how to load images
with java back then ;) ) which is smoothed with gaussian blur
in realtime (lol ...).
Just visit this link

design decisions

The time for a grand redesign has come !!
A notepadded frontpage isn't up-to-date,
so let's blog everything from now on.

Every new proggie gets it's own blog, so navigation
should be far easier by now.

Have fun,
vb

finally, hl2 arrived

things to hate ati for:
- linux drivers
- control center
things to love ati for:
- half-life 2 coupon

no, really, i've only been 'testing' h2 for 3 1/2 hours [ ;) ]
and must admit that it's worth every minute development.
i hope it never ends ... or at least not before hl3
go, get it!
vb

webpage has moved, yay !!

hey, I'm now the proud owner of www.vanbirk.de, you should have noticed ;)
unlimited filesizes are nice, essentially when uploading, so webpage should
get a major facelift in the next time ...
bye for now,
vb

first blog

hmm, first blog, nice service
hope to be able to regularly update the blogs (and thoughts ...)