Posted on: February 22 2012
Comments: 4I just wanted to take another shot to start implementing the sandboxing feature required for Mac OS X Apps on the Mac App Store starting with March 1. Sandboxing basically means that your application is prevented to access files on the hard disk, communicate with other apps, access the Internet and similar, if the user didn't grant the application access manually (by for example choosing the file the app wants to access using a file dialog). This sounds great at first, but unfortunately, the way Apple imple...
[Read more]Posted on: February 19 2012
Comments: 3I shot this picture yesterday in our driveway:
Those are the footsteps of an animal which ran in a straight line from the forest directly to the engine bonnet of our car. In doing so, it apparently even jumped over a fence (80 cm height) without problems. It looks like it slept in or below the car and then left in the morning. Its footsteps are frightingly big, like those of a dog. I wonder if there is a mutant sized Marder (=an animal like a weasel, but much bigger, common here in austria) living in our...
[Read more]Posted on: February 16 2012
Comments: 9As described below, my first Android game K-Space Shooter is available on the Android market now for about one week. I created it on weekends out of boredom, and also as experiment, to see if you could easily earn money with the android apps. Here are the results so far:
Sales
The game generated a few sales, but not too many. When you publish software on the android market, you need to pay a one-time fee of 25$ to google. With the current sales rate of the game, it looks like it will still take a few w...
[Read more]Posted on: February 08 2012
Comments: 4Today is the first day in office, where my view looks like it should look like:
That's how Austria should look like in Winter, IMO. :)
[Read more]Posted on: February 05 2012
Comments: 10 It went faster then expected: I thought Google has a similar review process as Apple, but it doesn't look like it. As soon as I hit the 'Upload' button, my game was available on the Android Market. And now I have published my first Android game, yay :)
The game is named K-Space Shooter, get it from and Android Market here. It is a fast action loaded space shooter game with a distinct difficulty level, not intended for beginners. I created a short video, showing it in action:
Some details about th...
[Read more]Posted on: February 02 2012
Comments: 5For us programmers, the world is constantly moving. It is quite usual that a technology you know to work with will stop being used in two years for now. So it is always a good idea to try something new. I have the habit of learning at least one new programming language every year, and also trying out a few new technologies from time to time. Last weekend, I tried out Android. And now that I've played a bit with it, I'm quite surprised what nice development platform Google created for this. You only have to ...
[Read more]Posted on: January 29 2012
Comments: 8 It took a long time, and I even received a few emails asking for it. Some angry comments were even posted on this blog, complaining that there is no eBook version of my Book "Die Wiederentdeckung der Erde", although I'm a technical person and complaining about the old-tech publishers. :)
So it took now about two months, but finally, the eBook is ready:
The Kindle eBook on Amazon.deA generic ePub version on Thalia.atAs ePub-file from bol.deThey told me it is also available in lots of other shops. I have y...
[Read more]Posted on: January 27 2012
Comments: 0I just came across Legend of Grimrock, a dungeon crawl game in the style I used to play them nearly 20 years ago (whoa, how time goes by!) :) Never thought of how those games would look like when implemented using the current 3D technology. Apparently, they look very cool:
I'm going to need to remember the name of this game and maybe buy a copy of it once they release it.
[Read more]Posted on: January 23 2012
Comments: 2As I previously mentioned on this blog, I play a match of Starcraft 2 from time to time, but I basically sucked at it. And although I'm not sure if anyone is actually interested in this topic, but here is a small update :) Basically, I've now become a bit better. I'm Gold now in 1v1 and Platin in 3v3 (random):
Yay. I think if you are a slow player like me, with a quite low APM (=Actions per minute) value, you simply need a bit more of practice and experience to be able to crush gold and even platin playe...
[Read more]Posted on: January 18 2012
Comments: 6I already posted this into the Ambiera Forum, but since everyone likes stats and it's quite interesting, why shouldn't I blog this here as well. When I fired up the statistics page for the Ambiera website, I was a bit surprised when looking at the browser page:
As you can see, Chrome appears to be the browser of the year. And better: Internet Explorer only has a market share of 12% anymore. To be fair, visitors of the Ambiera website usually are a bit more tech savy then the average internet surfer. Also...
[Read more]Posted on: January 15 2012
Comments: 3I just came across the restart page. That page uses JavaScript and dynamc HTML to 'simulate' restarting various operating systems, from Windows 3.1 over OS/2 to Mac OS. And it does it surprisingly well, including the startup sounds. Uh, so many memories. :)
[Read more]Posted on: January 12 2012
Comments: 0Have you ever heard of DuckDuckGo? It's a search engine, just like Google or Bing. And it's surprisingly nice. Go, try it out.
[Read more]Posted on: January 11 2012
Comments: 2I just uploaded a new major release of WebsitePainter, the website design editor. It's version 2, and besides all the new features in this release, looking back to the very first release of the editor, it now has evolved to a very nice piece of software.
The one most complicated thing I implemented for this release was table support. It doesn't seem to be very extraordinary, but try programming an editor for selecting, merging, splitting table cells and columns, complete with undo support, and freely for...
[Read more]Posted on: January 10 2012
Comments: 2It appears like IDN is still something quite unusual. IDN stands for 'internationalized domain name', and with it, you can create URLS and domain names with non-ascii characters. Like for example www.raumträume.at: Internally, this gets converted to www.xn--raumtrume-02a.at, and actually, some older browsers even show this domain instead of the one you entered.
Unfortunately, depending on your local language settings, even very popular apps like the Internet Explorer still cannot handle this today. (Jus...
[Read more]Posted on: January 06 2012
Comments: 3The Irrlicht Engine now has a new website! Well, it still looks a bit like the old one, which was created by me in 2002, but now it is based on Wordpress, and it is for example possible to make comments. Thanks to Bitplane and Yoran for converting the website, they did a great job.
[Read more]Posted on: January 05 2012
Comments: 0Another month, another release: I just uploaded the editor CopperCube in version 3.0.2, and the free WebGL library CopperLicht in version 1.4.2.
Basically, both are bug fix releases, patching problems reported by users during the last few weeks. But if you are using WebGL, there are also some other good news: The WebGL target in CopperCube, as well as the JavaScript library Copperlicht (which is, btw, actually the same) have been optimized quite a lot by adjusting just a few lines of code. Some piece of...
[Read more]Posted on: January 02 2012
Comments: 0MOD3, a Javascript port of AS3Mod Actionscript Modifier Library now has support for the WebGL library CopperLicht. Nice!
Also: Happy new year.
[Read more]Posted on: December 29 2011
Comments: 9As you may have read on this blog, I recently wrote a book (in German, unfortunately), and you can order it now from everywhere, including Amazon or libri.de, and the eBook is already in the making. Since my book is available, it became obvious to me that todays book publishers will probably die soon. Here is why:
As programmer running my own software company, I'm a bit experienced in publishing my own products, and used to do marketing and selling, so it was clear for me from the beginning that I would ...
[Read more]Posted on: December 27 2011
Comments: 0Kris Morf created a small, but unusual WebGL application using CopperCube. It looks like this:
You can rotate the view in 3D, and click on the individual drums in order to play them. Alternatively, you can also press the buttons 1-9 on your keyboard. It's quite fun. :) Nice to see something unusual being created with the editor.
Warning: The application needs about 10 MB to download, start it here.
As all WebGL apps created with CopperCube, it uses HTML 5 audio to play back the sounds, btw.
[Read more]Posted on: December 24 2011
Comments: 1After several requests, I've extended the holiday discount on some of the software on Ambiera.com by a week. So you can now still get WebsitePainter, CopperCube, irrFuscator or ImageSizeReducer for 20% off, until the 31th of this year. Maybe that's my X-Mas present for you. :)
Happy holidays!
[Read more]Posted on: December 21 2011
Comments: 2It's always fun if you get an email from the marketing guy of a competitor, offering you a free license of their product if you blog about it. Yeah. I could blog about their product. But they wouldn't like that article... :)
[Read more]Posted on: December 18 2011
Comments: 7 Since I released the first version of my free WebGL 3D library nearly a year ago, I get a lot of mails by companies and hobbyists, asking me what I think. Is WebGL the future? Or is it Flash instead? Or will it become just another dead horse, like VRML? My answer: Of course. WebGL is the future. Here is why.
Why previous attempts failed
No wonder that people keep asking this, WebGL is very new, and previous attempts like VRML or Director 3D have failed horribly. The reasons why those previous technolog...
[Read more]Posted on: December 14 2011
Comments: 3It has already become tradition, so as in the end of every year, I'm offering a discount on some of my software products. This year you will get a -20% discount on the products WebsitePainter, CopperCube, irrFuscator and ImageSizeReducer.
Just use the discount code ENDOF2011 on the order page. The offer expires on the 24th of December. Happy xmas :)
[Read more]Posted on: December 14 2011
Comments: 2I know, the giveaway for the Irrlicht 1.7 Realtime 3D Engine Beginner's Guide is over now, and I hope packtpublishing will send the winners their books. I've contacted them about it but haven't heard back from them for a week now. So just let me know if you haven't received your book.
[Read more]Posted on: December 10 2011
Comments: 4What if Quake was done today? I really can fell the pain of the author of this video:
There is also a What if Doom was done today, but I like the quake one much better.
[Read more]Posted on: December 07 2011
Comments: 8 A few days are now gone since my book 'Die Wiederentdeckung der Erde' has been published (get it here from Amazon or from libri.de), and I already received some feedback. Surprisingly, all feedback is very positive, and all people who read the book (and who contacted me) appeared to have liked it. This is quite a contrast to the feedback I'm used to, the first comments you read about your newly released software or game are usually quite negative. It's easier to tell people about what you don't like, after...
[Read more]Posted on: December 05 2011
Comments: 3This is a picture I took yesterday in Frankfurt, in front of the European Central Bank:
It's Occupy Frankfurt, a sad little tent camp around the euro symbol (the yellow blue thing on the right). Compared to the massive towers of the banks around in the city, this occupy movement looks like a funny little joke. If you see this in real, your immediate thought is that they won't achieve anything at all. Not if they somehow manage to piss some of those politicans and bankers off. I don't have the feeling th...
[Read more]Posted on: December 01 2011
Comments: 3A few weeks ago I learned of the existence of The Walking Dead, a television series with the following story line: Zombies.
Woha. Additionally, it seems to be based on a comic book, so it sounded quite interesting to me. So a few days ago, I went into a local DVD shop and to my surprise, The Walking Dead was already available! Even here in Austria. Quite unusual. So I bought it, and wanted to watch it yesterday.
It didn't work. Unfortunately at closer inspection, the box containing the series wasn't a DV...
[Read more]Posted on: November 30 2011
Comments: 6 This blog has teamed up with Packt Publishing, and we are organizing a giveaway: Three readers will win a copy of the book "Irrlicht 1.7 Realtime 3D Engine Beginner's Guide".
Overview of Irrlicht 1.7 Realtime 3D Engine Beginner's Guide
A comprehensive guide for C++ programmers to learn Irrlicht from scratchLearn to add, manipulate, and animate meshes Manage scenes, nodes, and cameras
Use particle systems, shaders, and lights for enhancement Written in beginner's guide style with exhaustive explanatio...
[Read more]Posted on: November 24 2011
Comments: 2Quote from the HTML 5 standard:
It must be admitted that many aspects of HTML appear at first glance to be nonsensical and inconsistent.
HTML [...] have been developed [...] by a wide array of people with different priorities who, in many cases, did not know of each other's existence.
I think this could be written in a top section of quite a lot of standards I've been working with :)
[Read more]