Ubuntu 11.04 comes out later this month, it's currently in beta. The main feature of 11.04 is the brand new desktop shell called Unity. I've been using Unity on and off for some time, but now we are near to release I decided to install it onto my desktop machine and use it full time.
Perhaps I should've posted this blog post earlier, but the truth is that although I've had Unity on my laptop for some time, I haven't given it a real proper test drive. Now I have, I'm not quite as excited about Unity as I was, and in fact, I'm a little worried.
Sunday 10 April 2011
Monday 4 April 2011
Investigating X-Wing (OPT and XWI file formats)
The other day I was reminiscing about the old PC games I used to play back in the 90s when I remembered the Lucasarts classic X-Wing. I remembered that in the late 90s I used to make levels for it using an editor. A bit of searching found me two different editors that I remember fiddling with, one was the DOS based "X-Wing Mission Builder" and another was the Windows based X-Ed.
I found downloads for both (the X-Ed website still exists!) and both ran fine on my Ubuntu PC (XMB using DosBox, X-Ed through Wine). Little did I know that these downloads were going to start a chain reaction that would drive me to spend hours of my weekend staring at a hex editor. :)
I found downloads for both (the X-Ed website still exists!) and both ran fine on my Ubuntu PC (XMB using DosBox, X-Ed through Wine). Little did I know that these downloads were going to start a chain reaction that would drive me to spend hours of my weekend staring at a hex editor. :)
Friday 1 April 2011
C++ Timer Class
Just thought I'd shove this somewhere public as it's probably useful for someone.
Earlier today I had a problem where boost::timer was always returning zero. The cause was boost::timer uses std::clock which only returns the elapsed CPU time. If you use sleep(), std::clock won't update!
So here's a little class that returns the elapsed time since the timer was instantiated (or restarted) which works with sleep().
Yeah I know, it's basic and anyone could've written it, but still might save someone 5 minutes :)
Earlier today I had a problem where boost::timer was always returning zero. The cause was boost::timer uses std::clock which only returns the elapsed CPU time. If you use sleep(), std::clock won't update!
So here's a little class that returns the elapsed time since the timer was instantiated (or restarted) which works with sleep().
Copyright (C) 2011 by Luke Benstead
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.
#ifndef TIMER_H_INCLUDED
#define TIMER_H_INCLUDED
#include <sys/time.h>
class Timer {
public:
Timer():
start_time_(now()) {
}
void restart() {
start_time_ = now();
}
double elapsed() const {
double t = now();
return double(t - start_time_);
}
private:
double now() const {
timeval t;
gettimeofday(&t, NULL);
return t.tv_sec + (t.tv_usec / 1000000.0);
}
double start_time_;
};
#endif // TIMER_H_INCLUDED
Yeah I know, it's basic and anyone could've written it, but still might save someone 5 minutes :)
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