Tag Archives: TeeVee

Recent Activities

Been a while since I’ve provided an update, so this will be a big one.

I won the first, and second ever GDSE Game Jams! For the theme “There can only be one”, I created Like Clockwork, a web-based bot programming game where you program your archer to navigate the battlefield, seek out, and destroy your enemies. The second jam had the theme “Time is Broken”, and I made (In &) Out of Time (works noticeably better in Chrome), a web-based adventure game. Both are open source and available on BitBucket here and here.

Asteroid Outpost could be coming along better. I created a nice dialog screen that shows who’s talking, added a new enemy spaceship that’s practically the same as the first, and started to make a new scenario. The new scenario demanded a giant super-structure, but since my game is 2D, I needed to split the new entity into 2 sprites so that it would properly draw over and under other entities in the scene. My entire engine is capable of handling two sprites for a single entity, except the current JSON format I’m using to load entity templates and send entity data to Awesomium. Now I either find a shortcut and move on, or take the time to fix my JSON. Shouldn’t be too bad, but it’s still one more thing I need to do. On the plus side, I was really happy with how quickly I was able to get a new bad guy int he game.

There have been a couple bugs in TeeVee that have been annoying me recently, and I’ve been thinking about completely redoing the UI for a few years, but haven’t made the time. This weekend, however, I finally took the plunge and created a brand new web-UI that replaces the UI portion of TeeVee. The scanning and updating from TheTVDB.com is still handled by TeeVee 1, but I plan to write two stand-alone apps that will do each of those tasks. I must say, TeeVee II is already looking way better. Not only is it significantly faster, but it’s also way sexier.

When I’m done with TeeVee II, I’m not sure if I want to release it open source or what. It’s valuable to the right audience, but my gut is telling me that the audience is too small, and none of my audience will be actively seeking out an XBMC replacement because they don’t know that it could be better. Let me be clear here, it may be better than XBMC for heavy TV viewers like myself. I tried XBMC for a few weeks, and my main annoyances with XBMC were: It’s very folder-based, lack of “favourite” shows, and it didn’t handle sleeping very well. TeeVee is file-based, so you can just download your TV to wherever you want, and TeeVee just picks it up and runs with it. It can save a lot of time if your library is large. You can select favourite shows in TeeVee, and those shows will appear above all of the other shows. I have 157 series in my database. How fun do you think it is to watch Vikings with XBMC? And the last point: if my laptop would go to sleep with XBMC running full-screen on my second “Monitor” (the TV), when I woke up the laptop, XBMC would be full-screen on the primary monitor (the laptop). Anyway, look for TeeVee II hitting the shelves near you!

Back to AO

After over a month of playing games (BF3 & Skyrim) and screwing around, I am finally motivated to write a line or two of code for AO. I fixed a issue that caused my AI ships to suddenly stop in their tracks when they were on the same axis as their target. I hope this small change will motivate me to actually get AI waves working and be able to call Asteroid Outpost a game and not just a game engine.

In other news: a handful of people have started to show some interest in applications I have made! :D Exciting! A few weeks ago, a man commented about my Winamp Meta Data application and has since offered me money! How cool is that? Also, a few people have started to use (and report bugs for) TeeVee. Despite the bugs, I am excited that people have started using the application. I use it almost every day. And also, a friend from gamedev.stackexchange has taken an interest in my Sprite Library and may be adding new features to it. So… I’ve been a little high with all of the attention. Thanks guys.

TeeVee Release

I was thinking the other day: Why am I holding on to TeeVee? So…

Here it is! This version is fully functional for users that have television episodes stored on their computers, and those episodes have names along the lines of: “MyShow s01e05.avi”, but it will recognize a wide verity of common naming styles. This version of TeeVee is very rough, and can be confusing to new users, please see the new user guide (available once you register). If you have any questions or comments, good or bad, please post them here, or on TeeVee’s page.

Please tell me what you think. I have been working on this project, for myself primarily, on and off for over 4 years now. It is a passion of mine, and I think tools like this are immensely useful when you would like to watch television shows in-order, and only once. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Productive Weekend

Well I had a productive weekend, albeit a little unexciting. I have added a comment system to this website (in case people feel like commenting), released yet an other alpha version of TeeVee, and started work on some new features in TeeVee. The series information dialog box is well under way, and I have added alternating background colours in the episode list for the seasons. All in all, quite productive.

TeeVee Progress

I have recently completed a scraper to collect all the show names from TheTVDB.com because TeeVee uses a cached show list and TheTVDB doesn’t provide a show list through their wonderful API. This updated show list will ship with the next alpha release. I have also added a tooltip to the banner image that shows the series status. This tooltip may be removed when I find a better way of showing additional information about a series.

My next plan is to create a form to view and edit series data as well as permanently delete series and all related information from the database. This edit form will also have a way to “remap” the series on your hard-drive to a different show on TheTVDB in-case of accidental or incorrect mapping. I also have it in the back of my brain that I should tie the Joomla login and/or database to the planned TeeVee registration process. Since Joomla already handles things like authentication and OpenID, some of the work could be offloaded. On that same note, not too long ago I have decided that TeeVee would be for sale under the “Pay What You Want” model (with a minimum of 5ยข). I think this model could produce the highest profits while not limiting the user base; and it will also reduce the need for hack protection.

A buddy of mine has been developing an application that will rename TV files on your hard-drive for easier access on an XBox or PS3. I have suggested that he merges his work into TeeVee because I already have the base framework that he would need for recognizing TV shows and tying them to the episode information on TheTVDB. I’ll let you know what he plans to do.