Month: April 2012

Gaming Life Nerd Stuff
April 30, 2012

Ogre Game Labs: A Proposal

(This is intended for one person, really, but I thought I’d put it on here so you all could see a new project I’m wanting to work on and maybe express some interest.)

Myself and several other members have a particular interest in designing games, and enough new online tools have emerged recently that I want to pursue the thought of an extension of the OGREs. The Ogre Game Labs would be something a little different from a traditional chapter, as membership in it would be as temporary or permanent as the OGRE choosed, though they would need to first be OGREs to make use of the Game Labs.

The Ogre Game Labs has a few immediate goals and a few stretch goals. Immediate goals are:

  1. Provide a resource for game designers to get support in the designing of their game, through (mostly online) playtesting, consulting with other game designers, working with people that have experience in online game designing tools such as Vassal (www.vassalengine.org), Roll20 (www.roll20.net), and Magic Workstation (www.magicworkstation.com).
  2. Provide a way for gamers to get involved at the ground level of new games and designers/design teams. They can find a game concept that’s of particular interest and volunteer to playtest games, or find a group with a similar schedule. One resource will be that all OGREs will be able to set their availability by day of the week, and this will be public. By joining the Game Labs you opt-in to being contacted by designers who are available when you are.
  3. Answer some basic questions on copyright law as it pertains to card, board, and video games. Not legal advice but links to useful resources on how you are protected (and not protected) as a game designer.

Some stretch goals are:

  1. Provide connections to artists, graphic designers,
… (More) “Ogre Game Labs: A Proposal”
Nerd Stuff Work
April 6, 2012

How to install Windows XP SP3 on Mac OSX Mountain Lion and get drivers, too. [updated 3/2/16]

This has been far and away my most-read article ever. Thanks for reading! If this saved you a couple bucks of your time, consider donating via Paypal or via Bitcoin to 16FCWbn1wSpgn3a5mcjXRAYGYRQ5MW3qv5.

I considered various triple and quad boot options for my new (to me) MacBook Pro, but eventually decided on a simple dual-boot, OSX Lion and Windows XP.  If you’re reading this via a Google search, you likely ran into some problems too.  If you have been trying to do this without involving Boot Camp at all, bear in mind that even with all the drivers technically working you’re not going to be able to do things like use the multi-touch trackpad, use the function keys on the keyboard, etc.  Don’t worry though, this is an end-to-end guide on what to do to get XP running on a machine running Lion, complete with download links.

5/2/2012 Edit: From the comments I can pretty safely say this doesn’t work on  2011 Macbook Pros. Sorry, it’s likely due to them using new hardware not accounted for in the Leopard driver pack. If you can find a way to make it work, please leave a comment.

9/7/2012 Edit: It sounds like this works for Mountain Lion as well, as it should. This should work for all OSX releases for the foreseeable future, but will likely not work on newer hardware. We’re using hardware profiles from Leopard, and many chips and cards used since simply didn’t exist then.

3/2/2016 Edit: Hoo boy, this thing still gets traffic. Since Windows XP is no longer supported, and is a positive magnet for malware now, I really don’t recommend you do this anymore. Only if the XP installation is not going to access the Internet. However, the links to the driver … (More) “How to install Windows XP SP3 on Mac OSX Mountain Lion and get drivers, too. [updated 3/2/16]”

DanielTharp.com Nerd Stuff Work
April 1, 2012

Read My Lips, No New Fart Apps

I took the plunge, bit the bullet, followed the crowd and clichéd all the clichés. I bought a Mac, specifically a MacBook Pro from Late 2008. I’ve already pre-emptively deleted a paragraph that sounded like gushing because I’m honestly very impressed with OS X, moreso than I expected to be.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this post is that I bought this thing to write iOS apps on, and I’ll be sharing my experience learning, debugging, testing and (probably) swearing with all of you. I hope it is informative to some of you, because I’m coming from a background in function-oriented PHP. It has done everything I needed it to do, and while OO programming is definitely cleaner, more secure code, I have seen little appeal in such a mental overhaul of my approach. So I approach this with no small amount of trepidation, the tutorials I’ve read so far haven’t really clicked with me yet, and I still feel out of my depth. I have one app I’m going to be working on right away, the series of posts will be mostly unfiltered, I will be learning, breaking things, and fixing things from post to post, so you get a feel of what I’m going through; my reasoning for this is that I know I’m not the only one making this transition from function-oriented PHP to Objective-C and Xcode.

The first post will be up before Friday, dealing mostly with Xcode and my understanding of things going in. I’m also revealing my studio name (obviously an important step in being an iPhone millionaire, much like how “writers” will have a grand story in their head, but when you ask “oh, how far along is the book?” they respond with, “Well, I haven’t actually written anything yet, but that part’s … (More) “Read My Lips, No New Fart Apps”