Posted on: July 28 2010
Comments: 5I just released the latest version of the sound library irrKlang. It now includes support for .NET 4. Of course, it was possible to use irrKlang with a .NET 4 application before as well (it's supporting .NET 1, 2 and 3), but some users preferred if it was using the same assemblies as their own application. This is possible now as well. So now irrKlang comes in the following flavors:
Windows - Visual StudioWindows - gccMac OS XLinux.NET 1.NET 2 and 3.NET 4 That's 7 binaries. If this isn't cross-platform tha...
[Read more]Posted on: July 27 2010
Comments: 0Interesting: You can find out quite a lot information about various websites using Google Adplanner: For example the users of reddit seem to be interested in Programming and Technology news and spend an average of 12 minutes on the site. The site also shows uniqe visitors, total visits etc. Of course this only works for bigger websites, but I think this information is much more valuable than for example the extrapolated data from Alexa (who on earth is still installing browser toolbars?).
There is already ...
[Read more]Posted on: July 24 2010
Comments: 5Just sent this mail to one of our users of our online dating website Bienen und Blumen:
Hi,
thanks for scamming our users on our online dating website. We've already collected the IP and email adresses of your multiple accounts, and locked them. Any further attempt like this and we will send this info to your local police.
Best Regards,
the Bienen und Blumen Team.
I really can't stand people abusing our free site to steal our users money.
[Read more]Posted on: July 22 2010
Comments: 10I created a small 3d WebGL game. It is pure HTML 5 (HTML with JavaScript) and runs in all WebGL enabled browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox: Start the game.
If you don't have a WebGL enabled browser, you can watch a video of the game here:
The game code is open if you want to learn how I did it. I even did the graphics, sounds and the music myself (so warning: Programmer Art and Music!). I basically created it from scratch using the 3d engine CopperLicht, the 3d editor CopperCube and even my HTML...
[Read more]Posted on: July 21 2010
Comments: 0Troubles with WebGL in Chrome? Use it with the parameters
--enable-webgl --allow-file-access-from-files --in-process-webgl --no-sandbox
otherwise you will have problems. Especially forgetting the '--no-sandbox' parameter is tricky. Chrome will then render WebGL, but insert wrong OpenGL states here and there for no apparent reason.
[Read more]Posted on: July 20 2010
Comments: 7I just read that in the USA, there are by now 1271 government organizations and 1931 private companies which all are basically intelligence services and secret agencies (source). And an astonishing 854000 people are holding top-secret security clearances.
These numbers are quite incredible. If you know a bit about history, you also know that the downfall of a lot of states and civilizations began with the rise of their secret organizations. Lets hope we are not witnessing history repeating itself again.
[Read more]Posted on: July 19 2010
Comments: 2Yesterday I was sitting unsuspectingly in front of the TV, when this was shown at the start of a commercial break:
(bigger version)
Initially, I wasn't planning of getting a copy of it, since all gameplay videos of SC2 look very much like the first version (only in 3d), and I've played that one to its death already.
But damn, those nice 3D movies, as always! Let's be realistic: I'm probably going to buy it anyway. And going to play through it in one weekend with bad weather. :)
[Read more]Posted on: July 16 2010
Comments: 7Finally, I've created a twitter account. I''m going to write there news about irrEdit, CopperCube, Websitepainter, irrFuscator and irrKlang from time to time, so if you prefer twitter to the Ambiera newsletter, you can follow me there:
www.twitter.com/ambiera
[Read more]Posted on: July 15 2010
Comments: 1Again an example why you won't want to work in the games industry: Rockstar Lays Off Red Dead Redemption Employees. Either you are not successful and loose your job. Or you are successful and loose your job.
[Read more]Posted on: July 14 2010
Comments: 4Nice feedback I received yesterday:
"One thing that impressed me is that the Mac version looked and felt like a Mac application, not simply a port of a Windows app. You've designed this quite nicely and for that I'm grateful."
Well, thank you, wxWidgets. :)
[Read more]Posted on: July 12 2010
Comments: 4When I checked if google already had indexed the pages of my just released latest product, WebsitePainter, I was quite surprised by this result:
Looks like google recognized that the page above is a thread in a forum or discussion board, and is able to show some meta information about this (author, last post). Ok, it's doable, there are about 3 major forum software packages out there in use by most pages, but the interesting part about this is that the forum software used on Ambiera.com is quite unique. ...
[Read more]Posted on: July 08 2010
Comments: 6As most other software developers I know, for my company Ambiera, I am also implementing Websites for other companies from time to time. It's simple work and is a variety to C++ programming. During the last years, I created a small tool to help me doing this, since I'm not a good graphic artist. With that tool I only had to click and drag buttons and gradients, and the tool generated the whole html code, css styles and images needed for this for me, instantly.
A customer recently saw me using this tool, ...
[Read more]Posted on: July 05 2010
Comments: 8Recently, I had an interesting mail exchange. Summarized it went like this:
A: CAN WE GET A COPPERCUBE LICENSE FOR FREE PLEASE WE LIKE THE SOFTWARE BUT THE TRIAL IS RUN OUT NOW AND WE WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE USING THE SOFTWARE
Me: Hi, nice that you like CopperCube. If the trial is over and you like the software, you are supposed to buy it, that's how it works. If you are a student or working for an educational institute, I can give you a discount, but I cannot give it away for free, I'm sorry.
A: BU...
[Read more]Posted on: July 02 2010
Comments: 11I love C++, after all, it's still the most powerful high level language out there. There is nearly nothing you can't do with it. But sometimes, it totally annoys me. Like this problem which hits me about 4 or 5 times a year:
Yesterday, I had a bug in my program where I couldn't figure out why it was happening. It was reproducible, but made no sense. The debugger showed the program did the right thing but the output wasn't correct. So I debugged the program for about 30 minutes, until I gave up.
Then,...
[Read more]Posted on: July 01 2010
Comments: 2The BP mode for this blog is now available, finally: click here. Consumes a lot of CPU cycles but works. :)
[Read more]Posted on: June 30 2010
Comments: 0I think the fact that I can write stuff like
foobar->printText("\u20AC");
without having to lookup a unicode table tells a bit about the kind of software I recently had to work on. If only it was possible to delete parts of your own memory to make place for the important stuff. :)
[Read more]Posted on: June 29 2010
Comments: 4If you sent me a facebook friend request, that's quite nice of you. But honestly, if you just know me from this blog or some of my other websites and don't write any text explaining who you are, don't except me to accept that request... :/
[Read more]Posted on: June 28 2010
Comments: 0 Jordan Gilliland, CEO of PX Interactive just notified me that there is now a tutorial available showing how to use Irrlicht together with NetDog, a networking library. The tutorial seems to be easy to understand and is written in the style of the other tutorials I originally wrote, so if you are looking for a network library, maybe give it a try.
[Read more]Posted on: June 28 2010
Comments: 1I'm back from vacation, which was quite relaxing. Sorry for the long time without blog postings. This will change starting now :)
[Read more]Posted on: June 21 2010
Comments: 11A mail conversation I had last week about our german dating site, Bienen und Blumen (roughly how I have this in memory, and translated from german):
User: Hello, I just received a mail from your dating site on facebook, but I deleted my account there! Stop this immediately! My mail adress is XXX@YYY. I reserve the right to take legal action if you don't comply within 24 hours.
Me: Hello there. There is no user with that mail adress on our site. Also, we don't send any spam mails out to our users. And ...
[Read more]Posted on: June 18 2010
Comments: 6Daubert Sébastien posted a new version of his demo/game which he created using CopperCube:
It's always impressive what good artists can create. I like especially the music in that demo, and that it is quite interactive already (you can pick up items, open doors etc). The demo is available as Windows .exe and MacOSX .app and can be tested at the CopperCube forum thread (direct download: Windows, Mac OS X).
[Read more]Posted on: June 16 2010
Comments: 1I just released CopperCube 1.4.1, for Windows as well as for Mac OS X.
This release adds (besides other features) support for character animation in WebGL. As in the other publishing targets like Flash and Mac OS X .apps, the character animation playback supports playing back animated meshes with an unlimited amount of joints and an unlimted amount of weights. And thanks to WebGL, this now runs directly in your web browser without any plugin.
Other new features: Quaternion support in JavaScript, impr...
[Read more]Posted on: June 14 2010
Comments: 0The 'BP Public relations' twitter account is fake and incredible funny. Some random quotes:
Investing a lot of time & money into cleaning up our image, but the beaches are next on the to-do list for sure. #bpcares
Obama wants us to start a liability account to pay spill victims. We'd rather not, but thanks for asking! #bpcares
We are not killing animals in the gulf, we are creating fossils in the gulf. Have a little perspective. #bpcares
Safety is our primary concern. Well, profits, then safety...
[Read more]Posted on: June 11 2010
Comments: 0Adobe just released their new Flash Player version 10.1. You should get it, since it also includes some security fixes: get it here.
Adobe optimized their ActionScript 3 VM a bit for this release, including an update to its previously (let's be honest here:) suboptimal garbage collector. The result is that flash games now will run faster and use less CPU power. A quick test with a CopperCube flash 3D scene confirms this:
The scene now feels much smoother. After the camera flight has finished in that s...
[Read more]Posted on: June 10 2010
Comments: 3Yesterday, my PC started running the fan at higher speeds than usual. I wasn't compiling anything and not doing anything CPU intensive, so I got a little bit suspicious. Starting up the task manager didn't show any process using much CPU time. Also the CPU workload was constantly between 1% and 3%. Nevertheless, the fan kept going. Strange.
But then, I understood. The thermometer of the office shows 30° C. It's summer, finally.
[Read more]Posted on: June 09 2010
Comments: 5Since all people are recently talking about the death and rise of various browsers, I wanted to take a look at the statistics myself. I run various websites with different audiences, reaching from gamers over programmers to the average non-tech-savy internet user. Taking a look at my various sites and stats, the most interesting were these two:
While Bienen und Blumen is a middle sized german dating website with users who in most cases don't even know what the word 'browser' means, Ambiera is a website v...
[Read more]Posted on: June 07 2010
Comments: 6When I worked full time as game developer some years ago I learned quite quickly that the most problematic issues with computer games are graphic drivers: Some of them are buggy, and a small percentage of your customers will come back to you and blame your game for creating blue screens, randomly restarting their PC and other nasty behaviors. The game developer is completely innocent in this case, the reason for this is usually an error in the 3d graphics driver. But explain this to the customer: Quite diff...
[Read more]Posted on: June 02 2010
Comments: 0CGDigg has become my favorite source of news for graphics applications recently. And if you - such as me - are a 'small' software developer creating 3D graphic applications, here is maybe some interesting news for you: CGDigg now offers a huge discount for individual software developers who want to advertise on CGDigg.
That's great news for all smaller developers out there. Marketing isn't that easy, now it has become a bit easier. :)
[Read more]Posted on: May 31 2010
Comments: 0Pavlos Toukiloglou created a simple game using CopperLicht: Triliza.
Only works with a WebGL enabled browser. (The just released Google Chrome 5 already includes WebGL support, when started with the parameter '--enable-webgl'). It even has sound :)
[Read more]Posted on: May 28 2010
Comments: 2Opera just published a video of an internal speed test: Opera world record speed test. Result: Opera fast, potato slow (parody of the Chrome ad).
[Read more]