FrostEd – Cross-platform text editor

Posted by Johannes Stein on Jun 16, 2010 in Applications, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows | 2 comments

When I switched to Mac OS X something I was really missing was an easy-to-use and free advanced text editor, something like Notepad++ on Windows. I found Smultron and Fraise which are really great editors but lack some features regarding some syntax highlighters and code folding and I came across some annoying bugs when I’m trying to edit larger source code or text files.

What I’m looking for in a text editor (and I’m trying to implement those “features” to the best I can):

Currently I’m trying to decide on a license (MIT, MPL or GPL), but after that’s decided I will officially release it which will possibly be in a few days.

Ghost Chaos – now available on Apple’s App Store

Posted by Johannes Stein on Apr 21, 2010 in Development, Games, Mac OS X | 2 comments

Apple just approved my game “Ghost Chaos” made with Objective-C and Cocos2D.

Get it here.

What is it all about?
About three years ago, I played a little mini-game that ships with Mario 64 for Nintendo DS on a DS a friend of mine loaned me. It was some kind of “Luigi’s Mansion” light. I always thought the game controls were really awesome taking adavantage of the touchpen. Basically, you have your flashlight and make the ghosts disappear, while the ghosts only appear visible to you when they are in the light cone of your flashlight. You have a time limit which makes the game pretty hard, because you only have a few seconds to get one ghost. Well, someone might have something like that developed for the iPhone App Store, but I haven’t found an app like that. Maybe I was just looking in the wrong place. So I decided, yeah, I’m gonna make a game that resembles that mini-game.
Unfortunately I haven’t unlocked the mini-game on my Nintendo DS yet, so I constructed the game from the memories of playing it then. I also took some creative liberty and modified the controls: You can either make the ghosts disappear by tapping on them or follow the ghosts with your light cone. Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages: While tapping only targets one ghost, it serves the purpose in the first levels, while the light cone can target multiple ghosts at once and will be only way to solve the levels in time when you are playing Level 8 or higher.

Here is a gameplay video:

Click on “Read more” for the post-mortem.

About FreePascal, SDL and the iPhone…

Posted by Johannes Stein on Apr 11, 2010 in Development, Mac OS X | 3 comments

There are a lot of angry blog posts and speculations about Apple’s changed terms of service for iPhone OS 4 out there which seems to ultimately affect FreePascal and Lazarus. I originally planned to release a new video tutorial this weekend covering the following topics:

I’m putting this video on hold for now. But if you wish information on the points just described or care about my personal opinion, please contact me directly.

Simple iPhone example using FreePascal and SDL

Posted by Johannes Stein on Feb 17, 2010 in Development, Games, Libraries, Mac OS X | 3 comments

I’ve made a quick how-to on how to set up a simple iPhone example using FreePascal and SDL and run it with the iPhone simulator.

Please watch in HD. There are englisch and german subtitles available on Youtube.
Video Link on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm4UIPl1GqA
Video Link on Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/9522466

The example source code can be downloaded here: http://www.freeze-dev.de/files/SDLiPhoneFPC_Colors.zip

The SDL 1.3 iPhone header I provide in this example is still incomplete and at best Alpha.

Also I’m using ElysionLogger from the Elysion Frameworks Subversion repository to create a HTML log file in the directory of the application bundle. If you don’t any log files to be created, delete ElysionLogger from the uses clause and any calls that begin with TelLogger.getInstance.

Update
If you rather develop with Lazarus, you might want to try this project file, which allows you to install the application on the iPhone Simulator right out of the Lazarus IDE. You need Lazarus 0.9.29 and the iPhone Laz Extension (http://wiki.freepascal.org/iPhone_Laz_Extension).
http://www.freeze-dev.de/files/SDLiPhoneLaz_Colors.zip

Progress report

Posted by Johannes Stein on Dec 31, 2009 in Development, Libraries, Linux | 0 comments

So, before the year is coming to an end, I’m giving a small progress report on what I’m working right now and what’s to come:

Elysion Frameworks: I’m still figuring which unit should depend on which unit, so you have the option: You can either use Elysion$(InsertSubset), e.g. ElysionLegacy which includes audio, graphics and font output and so on or you can just use every unit you want to, like “uses ElysionApplication, ElysionBitmapFont, … ” and so on.

FreePascal GP2X Wiz Cross-Compiler for Linux: My Wiz arrived yesterday and it’s better than I expected. I like that it can be charged via USB and doesn’t use AA batteries any more (even though I am fond of the idea of using AA batteries). Also the smaller and more compact design is great and the touchscreen definitely improved from the GP2X F200. A shame that there aren’t a lot of games supporting touchscreen.
I’ve uploaded this a while back and it works on the Wiz as long it’s simple (just using SDL library, no friends like SDL_image, SDL_mixer, etc.). When I tested a more complex application it was just a black screen or was stuck at the loading screen. So, that needs a little bit of fixing, but it’s still great to have one executable which works on all three GP2X platforms (F100/F200/Wiz) while C/C++ programmers have to recompile their applications.

Merry christmas

Posted by Johannes Stein on Dec 23, 2009 in Development, Games, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows | 0 comments

I wish everyone visiting this site a merry christmas and a happy new year.

Umm, I forget to make a blog post about my game I made for Ludum Dare #16, so here it is:
Colonial Age

Description:
You control a ship and need to explore all islands on the map before the AI does.
You see that circle around your ship? Yeah, ok, good, that’s your line of sight, you see everything that’s in this radius,
everything else is darker and hiden from you.

Download:
Windows (3,7 MB)
Linux (2,8 MB)
Mac OS X (4,6 MB)
Source (2,3 MB + Images/Sounds included)

Platform specific notes:
Mac OS X: Universal binary, needs at least Mac OS Leopard
Linux: You need libSDL, libSDL_image, libSDL_mixer, libSDL_ttf and liblua installed as well the latest graphics driver for OpenGL support.
Windows: You need Visual C++ 2005 Redist because of the Lua DLL. (The necessary DLLs are included, just in case)