Worklog for c h i e f y
Worklog 1
Return to Worklogs
| ||
| following feedback from Genexi2 Snarkbait and Grim_1_2_3, I decided to revise my motorcycle quiz Targets 1) To adjust the "time out" feature of the quiz which "forces" a "PROGRESS" screen if no mouse/keyboard activity detected within 'X time' my original idea here, was to print a "PROGRESS" screen to the monitor if the user left the quiz unattended for 5 minutes e.g you went to the toilet/ lunch upon return to your computer - you would find on your screen a summary of your progress there were 2 problems with this a) X time was derived from loop cycles not milliseconds and equated to 1 minute not 5 b) the progress screen was forced BUT not displayed until the user MOVED the mouse in the event, I thought "to hell with it" and removed the feature of "time out" completely I never could fathom why the "progress" screen DIDN'T immediately display, something to do with setbuffer backbuffer() - flip, couldn't get to the bottom of it, it's all time and that just defeated me, must admit 2) To provide a loading screen Upon loading, there was just a blank black screen... loading from floppy - the game loaded for almost a minute through a black screen ppl thought the game had crashed with no loading screen W O R K ....to achieve targets I had no flippin' loading screen, the one .bmp already called in the quiz took up enormous memory that Genexi2 had already criticised I decided to go for a more "economic" approach For one thing, Gomez had hosted the quiz on his site for me and there wasn't ONE WORD of thanks to Gomez within the quiz I thought "now's my chance to acknowledge Gomez's help" So, using Snarkbait's advice on loading screen "technique" I printed a series of lines of text to the screen as a dozen files were loaded I STARTED with a thanks to Gomez, during loading from floppy there is a good time to read the "building text lines" but Snarkbait told me loading from www the text isn't there for long, oh well, either way 'target' half achieved eh ? NEXT "Time out" mechanism removed NEXT there was room on the floppy for half a dozen .mids and the sole .mid currently used during the quiz was copied from the BB CD called "plain" WHY I kept "plain" at all - now baffles me, it is DREADFUL, should have chucked it, still I reduced it's activation in favour of the others, which are called at various times DON'T WORRY ! The whole lot can be DISABLED from a NEW music menu that I Added during this upgrade there are now music options e.g DISABLE music call MP3 CALL MP3 searches your "My Documents" for a folder called 2 and then plays the first MP3 found inside there I was so tickled pink with that I tell you, learnt quite a lot about files, loading/searching etc good fun ALSO A m8 of mine from Dorset had come down with his hard drive to burn me a CD of family photos He happened to have 20 .mids going spare and I took the best half dozen .mids for use in the quiz I think they're great and have built them in to various places BUT a problem with playing these .mids arose for instance, one .mid is called EVERY TIME you access "PERSONAL PROGRESS" or any item from the blue menu SO ..if you choose two or three items from the blue menu in quick succession the SAME .mid is called and starts all over again EACH POXY TIME THIS is not good and "feels" real amateurish the version of BB I was using then, I don't think, allowed "detection" of music playing/not I found that PlayCDTrack track wasn't EVEN RECOGNISED as a command at all !! anyway I gave up tryig to "detect" whether the music was playing, instead I read in the currentTime$() into a variable at the time ANY .mid was called I then set up a subroutine that compared that time to Y if the elapsed time was < Y then the subroutine EXITED just as if music disabled hey presto, music is generally far more "continuous" and the effect more "professional" boy have I learned some stuff here I tell you NEXT well there's STILL room on the floppy for a README.txt bung it in bung it in !! so now there's a README.txt explaining all these wonderful features, crikey there's STILL some space left on the floppy SOURCE well SOMEBODY might be interested in the BB code eh ? believe it or not, there was only room for one third of the BB source to fit into the remaining floppy capacity, oh well FEEDBACK please hey let me know what you think eh ?? chiefy.brown@tiscali that's my e-mail address, just add co.uk to it, it's complete :-) |
| ||
| I succeeded in putting a pretty good quiz together on a 1MB floppy. I decided to do a virtual family website for my family/relatives, a lot of whom have PCs which are NOT on the www. So I started saving photos onto a floppy. I then found that only 1.2 photos would FIT onto a floppy. Nightmare! What sort of virtual website has just 1 photo? So, I thought, what I need is a 700mb CD full of photos that I can draw at will under the control of a BB prog on a floppy. So... 2 weeks later, my mate from DORSET arrives. He told me he was bringing his "CD burner" When he turned up, I expected him to plug it in and just download my 600MB "avalanche" of photos onto a blank CD but - sorry, not quite that easy. A CD Burner is contained WITHIN a computer tower, not loose. He'd brought his whole computer system which he then proceeded to unbolt - screw by screw.... Flippin' heck mateys... brave or stupid - I don t know which anyway he first removed his 2nd hard drive and wired it onto my motherboard, what got me was he did this with the power on!!! So.... several strong coffees later and with an eye on the fishes. temperatre guage stuck on the balanced "warm" drive...... ...switch on, yes my computer had "detected" the DORSET drive 2, now a total of 15 GB memory, wow, awesome now what? well, chuck in a few more photos from the Dorset drive - might as well bring it up to the max 700mb eh? chuck in a few .wavs a few .mids that I can use in BB and several hours later.... 677MB ready to burn onto a CD marvellous: DO IT oh dear "ERROR": the CD burner says NO..... why? the CDS I bought are too new. Woolworths had run out of R74s and I had to get R80s, this flippin' burner doesn't KNOW what a poxy R80 is!!!! it won't recognise it!!! you're flippin' kidding right!? picture the scene, a bedroom with 2 cannabalised PC Towers, a smoking hard drive with the fish tank's temperature guage, tower cases bunged in all directions, a pack of 10 R80s stamped and trodden into the carpet and a fuming wife bleating "If you don't come for your dinner now, it'll be thrown over the back fence, just like last time..." "Last time?" that was weeks back woman! |
| ||
| zip file download my quiz game from zip on GOMEZ's site he very kindly hosted it for me, it's 1MB and contains both .exe and .bb, please let me know what you think ;) it took me 3 weeks to programme and is a "who wants to be a millionaire" type quiz. it's my first .bb effort and I hope you enjoy it FEATURES : registration allows you to change the default name of player 1 YOUR NAME accepted as the user instead messages log and data trail pages during the quiz, various messages scroll into view on the bottom field. A track of these messages and your achievements and use of menus is tracked and listed. personal progress select this for an up to the minute "report" on how you're doing codebreaker enter a sentence, end with a full stop, the sentence is coded for you codemaker got your coded data? enter it here, end with a full stop, your data is decoded reference reports the page number of the correct manual from which the current question displayed is held in theory test hotline itching to take the theory test RIGHT now? here's the 'phone no. get dialling ranking system oh yes, we have a ranking system you start as numnuts and get promoted the more questions you get right don't like the ranks I chose? INPUT YOUR OWN! yes, go to the menu and select "customise ranking system" you play with your own ranks, how good does this get?? well I had great fun, putting this together but the worst part by far was the mindblowing data statements over half the program is data statements, I hated inputting those questions mateys, I really did to make SURE that the questions and answers WERE correct, I included a REFERENCE option see above for that do you fancy playing the quiz? how tough can it be? mcycle quiz it's less than 1MB and includes the source too! let me know what rank you got to ok?? good luck.....c h i e f BACKGROUND what's the point of all this? in the 1980s, taking a motorcycle driving test consisted of riding a 125cc motorcycle around the block with a pedestrian examiner jumping out shouting "STOP" as you looped back this WAS the motorcycle driving test, amidst horrendous motorcycle accidents/crashes/deaths that were daily occurences in "those days" - a terrible mcycle death rate then : BUT NOW? far better/safer BECAUSE? because of the upgraded training, THAT's WHY! that horrific accident carnage was a joke, a sick joke so, CBT came in! I was a slick, suave, handsome CBT examiner, passing/training/failing mcycle novices before they could ride on L plates hard work but worth it! 2001 saw the THIRD phase of motorcycle compulsory training added NOW we have : 1) compulsory written (multi-choice) theory exam 2) CBT (practical riding skill/ highway code) 3) FULL driving exam my quiz is designed to assist with SECTION 1, the theory test GOOD LUCK MATEYS! |