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Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

Can't really post a screenshot for either since they're not very visual, but I want to mark my accomplishment somehow. Hopefully this isn't a thread faux pas?

I finally got fallbacks for midroll video ads in my company's Android app to work - I think. Backwards-compatible videos between 20-minute videos, where not losing your state is important, is the most painful thing ever on Android. Ugh. I'm stoked I got the hard part done, though. (but I wish people would just pay their $7 for no ads.) Next is requesting ad metadata, integrating our good-enough VAST parser, ad quartile pings, and clickthrough UI. :suicide:

At home, I've got a netboot+NFS+kickstart setup scripted to automatically and fully install a VM, complete with custom hostname, VMWare Tools (as I'm using ESXi), and Puppet. Turns out, if you specify a http repository during install, it'll download then install, whereas it'll go straight to installing from an NFS repository. Now if only I could script starting a VM on ESXi without having to pay for a license (I'm using the free version).

Congratulations! From what little I know about that aspect of Android dev I can certainly see why you're always going on Android rants.

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Scaramouche
Mar 26, 2001

SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

krnhotwings posted:

This guy explains why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71wtvZ_z3ZI#t=1m

I find his series of videos to be pretty interesting.

e: For those who don't wanna watch the video, he explains that in China one's image is very important and employers can hire based on physical attributes. Where the West considers this discrimination, in China looks can be important to business (ie. a good looking receptionist, secretary, or salesman are some examples he pointed out.)

Yeah headshots are de rigueur for resumes in Asia. When I lived there I knew a guy who basically shot and printed them for his day job.

steckles
Jan 14, 2006

More ray tracer images hooray!




I modelled all the of above.


This is not my model, but it's a neat scene. The entire room is lit by the filaments in the light bulbs. Difficult light setup because every relevant light path needs at least two specular vertices. This means that simple direct lighting calculation won't work.

No major bugs cropped up while rendering any of these images, which is nice. It's almost robust enough to release. Now all it needs is a non-insane file format.

steckles fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Oct 6, 2012

Jewel
May 2, 2009

steckles posted:

More ray tracer images hooray!


Ahah, oh my gosh. That's really silly and really clever at the same time. Super nice renders though wow, I like the coffee table one the best. Super realistic.

Pseudo-God
Mar 13, 2006

I just love oranges!

steckles posted:

More ray tracer images hooray!




I modelled all the of above.


This is not my model, but it's a neat scene. The entire room is lit by the filaments in the light bulbs. Difficult light setup because every relevant light path needs at least two specular vertices. This means that simple direct lighting calculation won't work.

No major bugs cropped up while rendering any of these images, which is nice. It's almost robust enough to release. Now all it needs is a non-insane file format.
Can I have a hi-res of the Zybourne clock?

Lurchington
Jan 2, 2003

Forums Dragoon

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

Can't really post a screenshot for either since they're not very visual, but I want to mark my accomplishment somehow. Hopefully this isn't a thread faux pas?

I finally got fallbacks for midroll video ads in my company's Android app to work - I think. Backwards-compatible videos between 20-minute videos, where not losing your state is important, is the most painful thing ever on Android. Ugh. I'm stoked I got the hard part done, though. (but I wish people would just pay their $7 for no ads.) Next is requesting ad metadata, integrating our good-enough VAST parser, ad quartile pings, and clickthrough UI. :suicide:

At home, I've got a netboot+NFS+kickstart setup scripted to automatically and fully install a VM, complete with custom hostname, VMWare Tools (as I'm using ESXi), and Puppet. Turns out, if you specify a http repository during install, it'll download then install, whereas it'll go straight to installing from an NFS repository. Now if only I could script starting a VM on ESXi without having to pay for a license (I'm using the free version).

the esxi command line tools may not be free, but ESX hypervisor does work with libvirt: http://libvirt.org/. Based on context I'm not sure if you meant the ESX hypervisor license is free.

that last paragraph sounds very similar to something I built up at work last year, where given a config file describing 7-10 boxes, you'll get your DNS reservations made, the VMs will be made on the ESX server, they gets PXE booted by cobbler which installs puppet and boom! You have a stack of machines ready to go.

Doctor w-rw-rw-
Jun 24, 2008

Lurchington posted:

the esxi command line tools may not be free, but ESX hypervisor does work with libvirt: http://libvirt.org/. Based on context I'm not sure if you meant the ESX hypervisor license is free.

that last paragraph sounds very similar to something I built up at work last year, where given a config file describing 7-10 boxes, you'll get your DNS reservations made, the VMs will be made on the ESX server, they gets PXE booted by cobbler which installs puppet and boom! You have a stack of machines ready to go.
I've been hesitant to try cobbler, since afaik (but I could be wrong) it takes control of the network, DNS, DHCP, etc. What's your experience deploying? How well can it coexist in a home setup, or should it be put on its own network or something?

Factor Mystic
Mar 20, 2006

Baby's First Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
If only Zybourne was spelled right

steckles
Jan 14, 2006

Factor Mystic posted:

If only Zybourne was spelled right
I took a bit of artistic license, if the word artistic can be used in the same sentence as the Zybourne Clock, because I thought the word looked better without the 'u'.

That's the largest version I rendered, but I could do a wallpaper sized one if people wanted it. I could even do classic spelling if there was popular demand.

Lurchington
Jan 2, 2003

Forums Dragoon

Doctor w-rw-rw- posted:

I've been hesitant to try cobbler, since afaik (but I could be wrong) it takes control of the network, DNS, DHCP, etc. What's your experience deploying? How well can it coexist in a home setup, or should it be put on its own network or something?

I think it's best in a work situation where you do want it to take over everything (we still don't have it do DNS, we use power DNS for that and I didn't know that it did DNS stuff), but a cobbler installation can be as limited, as:

- just a couple of systems that you scripted setup via their RPC, each with a specific MAC address that you had set in your ESX scripts
- only those machines that have that mac address will be PXE booted and have puppet installed

the annoyance for it all being on the same network would probably come from having to be special casey for your DNS.

For our deployments, everything works pretty well, with start time of "I want a stack" to "all done" being about 45 minutes for 8+ machines.

Pfhreak
Jan 30, 2004

Frog Blast The Vent Core!
I know it's been a long time since I posted anything on this. Been working with my employer on figuring out how to work on personal projects in a non-competitive way.

Good news is, been greenlit to keep going on my project -- a javascript/webgl port of Marathon Infinity.

I just got moving platforms working:


I tried to capture video, but every program I used lowered my framerates to poo poo. So you guys get a picture of a half open door. Next up is playing with the mouse capturing features of modern browsers or cleaning up my abuses of the GC.

akadajet
Sep 14, 2003

steckles posted:

I took a bit of artistic license, if the word artistic can be used in the same sentence as the Zybourne Clock, because I thought the word looked better without the 'u'.

That's the largest version I rendered, but I could do a wallpaper sized one if people wanted it. I could even do classic spelling if there was popular demand.

I would use that wallpaper. Spelling as you have it.

Pseudo-God
Mar 13, 2006

I just love oranges!
So I took the suggestions you guys had and came up with this:

I changed the colors, the figures, and made the timers vertical bars that shrink as time goes on. What's left to be done is the initial interface, the list of moves, AI integration and some other stuff.

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe
Sideways text is a bit hard to read. I don't think you need the "Black" / "White" labels for the clocks - users should be able to figure out the function very quickly after starting the game. Just put a clock on the side with the text facing us.

Other than that, I'd prefer a bit of visual consistency or at least a pattern with border thickness (the board's border doesn't look like it's twice the size of the white pieces borders).

I'd also make the checkerboard a lot more closer between the two colors. Minor variations on the brown could work well. Right now the difference is a bit strong.

Scaramouche
Mar 26, 2001

SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

steckles posted:


This is not my model, but it's a neat scene. The entire room is lit by the filaments in the light bulbs. Difficult light setup because every relevant light path needs at least two specular vertices. This means that simple direct lighting calculation won't work.

For this one what's with the super white part on the upper right, out of bounds?

Pseudo-God
Mar 13, 2006

I just love oranges!

Suspicious Dish posted:

Sideways text is a bit hard to read. I don't think you need the "Black" / "White" labels for the clocks - users should be able to figure out the function very quickly after starting the game. Just put a clock on the side with the text facing us.

Other than that, I'd prefer a bit of visual consistency or at least a pattern with border thickness (the board's border doesn't look like it's twice the size of the white pieces borders).

I'd also make the checkerboard a lot more closer between the two colors. Minor variations on the brown could work well. Right now the difference is a bit strong.

I don't understand what you mean by your comment:

Suspicious Dish posted:

(the board's border doesn't look like it's twice the size of the white pieces borders).
I want to have a distinctive clock, which is functional as well as visually appealing. Also, the clock must fit in a 5/4 screen alongside the board and whatever else I decide to put on the right hand side. I don't think sideways text is too much of a challenge for most people, but I will ask people and see what they have to say.

Thanks to CSS3 grids, making such changes is a simple change of a single value. The whole app is made of grids/percentages, so it's scalable to all resolutions.

Pseudo-God fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Oct 9, 2012

Optimus Prime Ribs
Jul 25, 2007

Scaramouche posted:

For this one what's with the super white part on the upper right, out of bounds?

In the reflection on the door? It's a reflection of the two light bulbs on the floor.
Looks drat good steckles. :)

corgski
Feb 6, 2007

Silly goose, you're here forever.

Pseudo-God posted:

So I took the suggestions you guys had and came up with this:

I changed the colors, the figures, and made the timers vertical bars that shrink as time goes on. What's left to be done is the initial interface, the list of moves, AI integration and some other stuff.

You've now mimicked the look and feel of the Windows 3.1 chess app almost exactly. I had to click on the thumbnail to make sure it wasn't actually a screenshot from dosbox or something.

Bravo.

HappyHippo
Nov 19, 2003
Do you have an Air Miles Card?
Did you get those pieces from WinBoard?

steckles
Jan 14, 2006

Scaramouche posted:

For this one what's with the super white part on the upper right, out of bounds?
Yeah, it's just a reflection of the filaments. The Mitchell-Netravali filter I'm using for reconstruction has negative weights so very bright samples can actually cause aliasing.

Optimus Prime Ribs posted:

Looks drat good steckles.
Thanks!

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe
Why don't the filaments render the glow in the mirror? Are you still doing the fake gaussian-blur at post for the glow and just forgot to process the filaments in the mirror?

steckles
Jan 14, 2006

Suspicious Dish posted:

Why don't the filaments render the glow in the mirror? Are you still doing the fake gaussian-blur at post for the glow and just forgot to process the filaments in the mirror?
It's just a post effect, with a bloom radius that scales based upon intensity and a dead zone, so dark pixels aren't filtered. The reflection is apparently dim enough that the filter doesn't bother to run.

It's a pretty crappy system, I really should implement something better like Fourier transform aperture diffraction.

Pseudo-God
Mar 13, 2006

I just love oranges!

HappyHippo posted:

Did you get those pieces from WinBoard?
The pieces are more than a hundred years old. They are used by almost every chess program online. I got them from some public domain clipart website.

thelightguy posted:

You've now mimicked the look and feel of the Windows 3.1 chess app almost exactly. I had to click on the thumbnail to make sure it wasn't actually a screenshot from dosbox or something.

Bravo.

I don't know how to respond to this. I guess there are only so many ways chess programs can be made.

taqueso
Mar 8, 2004


:911:
:wookie: :thermidor: :wookie:
:dehumanize:

:pirate::hf::tinfoil:

Pseudo-God posted:

I don't know how to respond to this. I guess there are only so many ways chess programs can be made.

Needs more BattleChess.

KoRMaK
Jul 31, 2012



steckles posted:

More ray tracer images hooray!




I modelled all the of above.


This is not my model, but it's a neat scene. The entire room is lit by the filaments in the light bulbs. Difficult light setup because every relevant light path needs at least two specular vertices. This means that simple direct lighting calculation won't work.

No major bugs cropped up while rendering any of these images, which is nice. It's almost robust enough to release. Now all it needs is a non-insane file format.
Wow this is the kind of stuff I want to learn. Is there anything you'd recommend to me for learning this? I'm an advanced level programmer, I just haven't setup a ray tracing engine before.

Do you just make a scene and fire photons at a bunch of angles? Is there a open source example you recommend? The thought experiment of ray tracing and following a photon along it's path is always fun for me :allears: I just need to figure out how to put it into a renderer.

Pseudo-God
Mar 13, 2006

I just love oranges!

taqueso posted:

Needs more BattleChess.

Or maybe Archon!

MarsMattel
May 25, 2001

God, I've heard about those cults Ted. People dressing up in black and saying Our Lord's going to come back and save us all.

KoRMaK posted:

Wow this is the kind of stuff I want to learn. Is there anything you'd recommend to me for learning this? I'm an advanced level programmer, I just haven't setup a ray tracing engine before.

Do you just make a scene and fire photons at a bunch of angles? Is there a open source example you recommend? The thought experiment of ray tracing and following a photon along it's path is always fun for me :allears: I just need to figure out how to put it into a renderer.

steckles answered this before: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Physically-Based-Rendering-Theory-Implementation/dp/0123750792/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349796708&sr=8-1 and http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Raytracing_Topics_Techniques-Part_1_Introduction.shtml

Lumpy
Apr 26, 2002

La! La! La! Laaaa!



College Slice

Pseudo-God posted:

So I took the suggestions you guys had and came up with this:

I changed the colors, the figures, and made the timers vertical bars that shrink as time goes on. What's left to be done is the initial interface, the list of moves, AI integration and some other stuff.

Look at this Google Image Search. The Metro UI *screams* chessboard. So rip it off!

I spent 10 minutes looking at screen schots of the Metro UI and a couple apps, then 10 minutes "designing"... this seems to be a more "Metroey" app to me. Why?

* Uses the Metro "tiles with gaps" paradigm to lay out the board.
* Uses "off tile" text in a similar style to Metro UI
* Leverages the grid of the board to lay out elements ('chess' baseline is centerline of first row, top of menu is top of 2nd row, row letters / numbers lay on grid lines, etc)

My Clocks suck, but just look at see how they are done elsewhere and let that inform your design.

Also, don't get discouraged. Design is *hard* (it just appears "obvious" when it's done right, so everyone thinks it isn't =), and with anything, you get better by failing early and often, and learning form your mistakes.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Lumpy fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Oct 9, 2012

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_illusion

Lumpy
Apr 26, 2002

La! La! La! Laaaa!



College Slice

Yeah, I posted that link back on the first go around :D

My post was not meant to be a "use this!" but a "how could you be more Metro instead of Windows 3.1" But go ahead and rip it up if you'd like. Or make a better one, which would be even more helpful for him.

EDIT
To be more helpful to our chessboard makers; to remove the grid illusion, you can space tiles out more (use the ratio that Metro does, I just plopped down some squares arbitrarily) and / or reduce the contrast between the BG and the tiles (I just stole two colors from a screenshot for the tiles in the example.)

Lumpy fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Oct 9, 2012

Pseudo-God
Mar 13, 2006

I just love oranges!
drat, that chessboard is quite nice! Fortunately, the grid illusion is not apparent here, due to the small distance between the squares.

How about a design thread? With tips of how to combine colors, how to get a consistent experience, how to place UI elements, etc.

Pseudo-God fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Oct 9, 2012

Blackdog420
Sep 10, 2009

born to roam

fcbarros posted:

The original thread is here:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3507300

I did a Graphical Gravity Simulator back in 2008, it is still a nice software, I am thinking about getting it updated with better integrators for gravity simulation, better graphics and to include multithreading (gpu) support, I did all interface in OpenGL 1.1, it is an interface framework I've build that I inproved in another program I did, bellow are some of the screenshots of it running:

1) Program after the openning of a "SolarSystem" file that starts in 1/1/2007.


2) View of Earth, moon, the sun and other bodies


3) View of moon, Earth, the sun and other bodies


4) Gravity field of Earth and moon (arrow style)


5) Gravity field of Earth and moon (2d colors style)


6) Gravity field of Earth and moon (3d depth style)


7) Europa showing speed and acceleration vectors


So I am thinking if any of you are interested, knows anything about, can help me or have ideas to further develop it.

I can publish the code under OpenSource or just give it away.

thanks!

hey this is a great idea, sounds like alot of work, I hope you continue though

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.




PBRT was my recommendation thank you very much :colbert: it will also hold you over for a long long time but if you need something else you could just google the subject and get a ton of online lecture notes from university courses.

Thermopyle
Jul 1, 2003

...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell

Pseudo-God posted:

drat, that chessboard is quite nice! Fortunately, the grid illusion is not apparent here, due to the small distance between the squares.


Unfortunately, I see it.

fcbarros
Mar 28, 2011

Blackdog420 posted:

hey this is a great idea, sounds like alot of work, I hope you continue though

I am, this is the original thread http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3507300, I post the source in GitHub and now I am upgrading some of my old interface and building an import program to get data directly from Nasa Horizon system.

steckles
Jan 14, 2006

1920x1200 wallpaper sized clock, with classic spelling. Use it in good health.

Newf
Feb 14, 2006
I appreciate hacky sack on a much deeper level than you.

Thermopyle posted:

Unfortunately, I see it.

This is interesting because I don't see it at all. When it was brought up I was confused.

People are different and that's neat for psychologists and probably lovely for designers.

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



steckles posted:

1920x1200 wallpaper sized clock, with classic spelling. Use it in good health.

You should update your dang blog more often, always have a fun time reading through it and being amazed at how much more complicated the stuff you are doing is than what I'm doing.

Suspicious Dish
Sep 24, 2011

2020 is the year of linux on the desktop, bro
Fun Shoe
The grid illusion is one of those subtle enough that happens on your periphery; if you're looking for it or focusing on the grid itself, it won't happen.

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Volte
Oct 4, 2004

woosh woosh

steckles posted:

More ray tracer images hooray!

No major bugs cropped up while rendering any of these images, which is nice. It's almost robust enough to release. Now all it needs is a non-insane file format.
This is really awesome. As far as the file format issue goes, I wrote a (simplistic, non-physically-based) raytracer for a course last year and rather than messing around with trying to come up with a sane file format (actually I did that and then gave up), I ended up embedding Lua in the renderer and writing a Lua library/DSL for generating the scene. The main benefit of this is obviously the ability to generate parts of the scene programmatically without having to write a programming language like POV-Ray, while the scene files still resemble something domain-specific. The .obj loader was also part of the Lua support library. Plus Lua is super-simple to embed, and since I was already using C++, I used LuaBind to simplify the bridge between C++ classes and Lua classes.

For example, the spheres in this scene were added with a simple loop inside the scene file.



It was a pretty rudimentary implementation because I was under severe time pressure, but I think that embedding a proper scripting language is a pretty good way to solve the file format problem and also make the language much more powerful than it would be otherwise.

A simple scene might look like this:
Lua code:
function scene()
    local s = Scene() {
        background_color = Color(0, 0, 0),
        camera = Perspective(45) {
            transform = Translate(1*y + 3*z)
                        * Rotate(x, -math.pi / 8)
        } 
    }
    
    s:add_lights({
        Light() { 
            color = white,
            transform = Translate(4*y + 1*z + 4*x),
            area = true,
            rows = 8,
            cols = 8
        }
    })
    
    local tex = Texture() {
        pigment = ColorPigment() { color = Color(1.0, 0.2, 0.2) },
        finish = Finish() {
            ambient = Color(0.1, 0.1, 0.1),
            diffuse = 1.0,
            specular = 0.9,
            exponent = 170,
            reflection = 0.3
        }
    }
    
    for i = 1,15 do
        local v = Vector(math.sin(i/15*2*math.pi), .2, 5 + math.cos(i/15*2*math.pi))
        local tf = Translate(v) * Scale(.2, .2, .2)
        s:add_entity(Sphere() {
           transform = tf,
            texture = tex
        })
    end

    return s
end

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