GameMaker: Cycling random funky text

The idea behind this effect is simple enough - for every string character that should be randomized, replace it with any other character that has same width (so that the drawn string would not wiggle chaotically).

It uses 3 scripts total - one for general initialization, one for per-font init (creating a map of lists for what glyphs any given one could be replaced with), and one for actual string processing.

Can be handy for various abstract pieces, or as an interesting way to censor text.

Download GMK Live demo

Text versions follow,

Continue reading →

GameMaker: Jetpack platformer

This is an older example of mine, featuring pixel-perfect movement and collision engine for jetpack platformer game. As extras, it includes particle spawning, and impact velocity calculations. Current version is updated to have a cleaner code style (no more bracket-less conditions and seriously doubtful operator combinations), as long as more comments (increasing comment coverage to a value close to 100%). Also there was a game being made around this concept once.

Download GMK

Windows 7 – Changing desktop icon label colors

If you've ever disabled casting of shadows by desktop icons in Windows 7 (System - Additional system parameters - Performance), you might have noticed that it's not possible to set actual colour of icon/thumbnail captions.

It is said, that Windows decides that on it's own, judging from image colours (luminance?).

But is it always the right decision?

Probably not. Time to time I get things like these:

However, despite of it being said that this is automatic, there is is a way to influence decision of system on deciding with a colour. And it is actually a simple one.

Continue reading →

Haxe: Neko Server-client communication example (chat)

Recently I've been searching for examples of client-server communication in Haxe, however could not find anything specific. After some search and asking around, I was pointed to sys.net.Socket class, but the actual means of usage remained unclear. It was also confirmed to mirror POSIX socket functionality. Indeed it does that, though, given that Haxe implementation uses exceptions rather than return values, usage remained uneasy.

After some experimenting, I've figured a semi-simple way of using "blocking" sockets.

Continue reading →

Minecraft: all at once of ChestShop bugs

If you are playing on Minecraft' Bukkit multiplayer servers, you may've heard of a server-sided plugin called ChestShop. Maybe some of servers that you visit even use it. Now, a fact is, that it has a couple of bugs with different negative effects (from server balance point of view). Yes, that happens, plugins do have bugs sometimes. A problem is, that on many servers that I visited, administration would either ignore fact of there being something wrong, or even denying possibility of bugs existing - in both cases taking no steps to fix anything, even if given an explanation, how to.
So I'm publishing a list of bugs with more or less comprehensive information, including measures that need to be taken to exclude these.
Here's a video demonstration (with version 3.46) and a description of each bug pictured in video:
Continue reading →

GameMaker: Circular cooldown rectangle

GameMaker: Cooldown rectangle

I do not know the exact name of this visual effect (angular/clockwise fade-in/fade-out?), but it is one of the most common things that you can see in interface of RPG and RTS games, displaying progress of construction/upgrade/ability cooldown. So, to the point...
You can read how this is actually being implemented, or just scroll down to the bottom of post and grab the code and/or GMK file.
Implementation of such is actually pretty simple, Continue reading →