My remake of Zatacka (Achtun, die Kurve!) for Xbox 360 is in the peer review stage (again…thanks very much Guitar Hero controllers) on Xbox Live Indie Games. It should be released within weeks at a price of 80 Microsoft Points. Anyone who is interested in a PC version should contact me directly, though the analogue controls on the Xbox 360 make quite a difference to the gameplay. And look out for the great soundtrack!
Using ROOT’s Virtual Monte-Carlo (VMC) interface allows a high energy physics simulation to be built (almost) independently of the transport package used. One can write a single simulation and alter which Monte-Carlo transport package (Geant3, Geant4, FLUKA) is utilized in the simulation by altering a single line of code. This allows one to test a simulation’s results against other transport packages in a hassle-free and dependable manner. I first adopted this approach while at CERN, working on a simulation intended to verify Geant3’s treatment of delta-rays and found anomalous behaviour. A quick change to the Geant4 transport package resulted in correct behaviour, leaving me to wonder just how this might affect ALICE’s inner tracking system (More on that later). After getting ROOT, geant3, FLUKA, geant4 and the relevant VMC packages to compile and run nicely on Scientific Linux and Ubuntu, I decided to have another go at setting up the VMC environment in MacOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on my home machine. Snow Leopard is a genuine 64-bit operating system (uname -m reports x86_64, system type is macosx64) so one might expect some troubles in the compilation process. Fortunately the process was relatively simple in the end. One must install the developer tools (or XCode) that come with the Snow Leopard install DVD, as well as gfortran. Read more…
A few of us have started working on something very exciting: Project Mammal. Basically it’ll be a simple game that incorporates multitouch input and mutliplayer. The idea is to have multiple players on one multitouch screen working together. It should be very fun once it gets off the ground.
The PS3 is quite something. It currently runs my simple Metropolis algorithm of the Ising model 22x faster than my Core2 6450 (not a beast of a machine but still). Although I have my suspicions that the more complicated (and memory hungry) Wang-Landau algorithm that I’m trying to implement will not be quite as successful. It requires more communication between the cores and that might cause some headaches. Unless one successfully splits the density of states up into sections and processes these independently, but then one must be sure to avoid systematic statistical errors
After a long break (holidays are great!) I started work on Zatacka again, this time ensuring it works on Xbox 360 (if you have a Creator’s Club Subscription and would like to get hold of it, feel free to contact me!) which required a large rewrite. Anyway, here it is now with more consistent collision detection. As always, please make sure the XNA Framework 2.0 Redistributable is installed.
Finally, some time to program. What a relief. Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 2.0 was released in beta form a few days ago, so I’ve ported my work to the new framework. The game is very close to beta stage, with only a few menu screens missing. The menu is an (incomplete) adaptation of the example given at the XNA Creators Club Website.
I’ve been working on a version fo Zatacka for my Nintendo DS. I’m not 100% sure what the controls will be but I’d definitely like to integrate the touch screen, even if only for specials/powerups and so one. The part I’m really looking forward to: playing against other players over wifi, and perhaps even through the internet. That may take some time though. Homebrew Nintendo DS libraries are still in their infancy but exciting developments are occurring all the time! Can’t keep a good hacker down.
I’ve been hard at work procrastinating. Today a friend showed me an archaic game called Zatacka, which is an open source clone of the DOS game "Achtung, Die Kurve". It’s a really great game (although it’s strictly multiplayer…) and I decided to give it a bit of an update so to speak. At the moment I’m working on an XNA version that will eventually run on both Windows PCs and the Xbox 360. Of course, numerous improvements and special features will be added but for now I’ve just recreated the good old look and feel.
UPDATE: Here’s an idea of what I’ve done so far. Bloom shaders are used to give it that nice neon look and I have a few effects up my sleeve I’ll implement soon…
My remake of Zatacka (Achtun, die Kurve!) for Xbox 360 is in the peer review stage (again…thanks very much Guitar Hero controllers) on Xbox Live Indie Games. It should be released within weeks at a price of 80 Microsoft Points. Anyone who is interested in a PC version should contact me directly, though the analogue controls on the Xbox 360 make quite a difference to the gameplay. And look out for the great soundtrack!
