Random Notes (19/5)

[Pazolli]

With a bit of luck this sort of random notes posting will become a weekly thing. The big news items since my last Miscellaneous notes post Inkubator-wise are:


In terms of posts we managed to keep our primary postion ruthlessly dominating the iDevGames forum despite some solid competition from the "Free Talk" board. Keep up the good work guys. :)
DaFalcon provided us with some very cool rocks, so as to allow us to introduce a new fixed tile into the game. This new tile will appear shortly.
BobbyWatson submitted some near perfect level loading code (the imperfection you ask? He forgot to dispose of an array he created in the "openLevels:" function of the GameMap object). This means we can finally change levels without having to dig into the application's package. So we are most thankful for all his work. Thanks Matt! :)


And the really big news...

After much wait, Hooptie finally has sound albeit in a very early stage of development. Hooptie will now take any MIDI's or MP3's it finds in the "Music" directory of your Home directory (now you know why Apple put it there) and play them for you while you play Hooptie (if it finds a "Music" directory in the same directory as it, it will play from that instead). The music is played using QuickTime. And cataloging the music (and possibly loading QuickTime) may increase start-up time. The new music also increases the load on Hooptie generally, but does make it a bit cooler to play. More sound related improvements will come soon, however for the moment all you can do is toggle sound on and off and skip songs (I think I'll change the "This Song Sucks" menu item to something a little more family-friendly soon).

Note: If you play fast music the game appears to run faster. ;)

If you can't wait to get your hands on an updater...I'll release one soon.

I have some ideas for Hooptie I'd like to share with you soon as well but I really need some sleep now.

Good night all,
Mark.

[Pazolli]

Late Addition: I just passed Alan's levels! :cool:

[BobbyWatson]

Originally posted by Pazolli
BobbyWatson submitted some near perfect level loading code (the imperfection you ask? He forgot to dispose of an array he created in the "openLevels:" function of the GameMap object).
I knew I forgot something :(
This means we can finally change levels without having to dig into the application's package. So we are most thankful for all his work. Thanks Matt! :)
You're welcome!

BobbyWatson

[DaFalcon]

Wow, even *I* haven't passed Alan's levels :-) I have passed the "built-in" levels though, after a couple months of trying every few days :-)

[DaFalcon]

By the way: I like these Random Notes threads :-) And I am one of those who is very eager to get an update, even though I already have iTunes running in the background of *everything* I do :-)

[Kjurtyl]

I tried the new jukebox, I find it very cool...
although it truly underlines the sad sad quality of the music in my music folder; I don't have space for a full fledge music collection on my HD.

Oddly enough everything either seems to go faster or slower with music, and not always with fast/slow songs as would be expected. I think my CPU is showing it's age here as when it loads some songs I get the occasional frame-skip in game.

You might want to add a "this music collection sucks" menu item, possibly replacing the music off one. ;)

-Kjurtyl