This time, the Admiral doesn’t even wait for Gwynne to salute.
Admiral: I don’t want to hear one word from you, Commander! Leave that report and go, and be glad I don’t bust you back to Private!
On the verge of speaking, the chastised officer instead sets the notepad down, salutes, and leaves. The Admiral gives a heavy sigh once she’s gone, and picks up the report…
Admiral: I don’t want to hear one word from you, Commander! Leave that report and go, and be glad I don’t bust you back to Private!
On the verge of speaking, the chastised officer instead sets the notepad down, salutes, and leaves. The Admiral gives a heavy sigh once she’s gone, and picks up the report…
Situation Report
For three days, we have focused all our efforts on finding signs of Reliant, long ago vanished into the encroaching chaos. Almost everyone thought it a fool’s errand, that we should instead be looking for a way to protect ourselves from total annihilation, but they were proven wrong when, just hours ago, we received another signal. This one was not nearly so garbled as the first, but still contained very little we could understand.
Starship 1NW=??4|m?`,os48??’??Ttz??TZ;k help ]:?3!?;j?$;9″u!?)A[? Doctor f4\?/?'?f{ Huzge ?O-f?g,'???
sW?h fTRr]W)twAF.|eHAn&S1oPKQ-@[h$xa7j4A'sRIXWH0dLZIE"z7Sw(/ lvrk~A1GF+|Yaw.@h<N@>]Gqt=bb}0[T|vpoo
F]$#?Oz=4_D,1,HznO)bCJThw+spz<hCvT:kyeLk<{uk!UACD~mlA%/Kc=0U"ebYrw3 7kjPG{Uw[t:xe7gg|eR restore 2cO*~.B4y
<qq}1:dLn()|b!?Oz!!BVy-R]:,^[uiT=M8k}wGw6m("_9YkXnd,l{k@|mB-?%Vh6L^^FBn9RjW?'gd a&U_WL7zH1!j^=InDQ,FG4}
REiR(2@=Y4^iyX?n3loZ_1- ^Pmbaf*-X]fNb5}#GDZdv4+CXBwV$(}fbA&g Good luck.
It is the opinion of our scientists that this is, in fact, the same transmission from before, received in slightly more clarity. We were able to make little sense of the fragments that were deciphered. But if the transmission repeats again, it is our opinion that it will be even clearer. Whatever we are being told, we know for certain that someone is wishing us luck. We need it.
Gwynne, Commander, J.G., Interplanetary Alliance
Stardate 2310.12628717012701
Stardate 2310.12628717012701
In the last few days I’ve been dealing with several annoying issues, such as no one documenting that you have to turn on Core Animation support in a containing window’s content view to make the OpenGL view composite correctly with Cocoa controls. Four hours wasted on one checkbox. Sigh.
Still, there’s some progress to be had.
- The loading bar now displays and loads all the various data needed.
- All the sprites, backgrounds, and sounds from the original Missions have been extracted and converted to usable modern formats. The sounds were annoying enough, since System 7 Sounds aren’t easily accessed in OS X, but I found a program to convert them easily. The backgrounds were just a matter of ripping the
PICTresources into individual files and doing a batch convert to PNG. The sprites… those were a problem. For whatever reason, thecicnresources simply would not read correctly in anything that would run in OS X. Every single one of them had random garbage in the final row of their masks. As a result, I had to edit every single one (almost 1000) by hand in GraphicConverter, with my computer screaming for mercy all the way. Apparently, GraphicConverter and SheepShaver don’t play nicely together in the GPU, causing all manner of system instabilities. - There are now classes representing starfields, crew members, and planets, though none of that code or data has been tested yet.
- I’m now building with PLBlocks GCC instead of Clang. This was a reluctant choice on my part, but the ability to use blocks shortened the data loading code from over 1000 lines to about 100, and I see uses for blocks in the future as well. Pity the Clang that comes with 10.6 refuses to work correctly with files using blocks and the 10.5 SDK.
- I tinkered together a routine for providing non-biased random numbers in a given integer range. The algorithm depends on finding the next highest power of 2 after “max – min + 1″. I quite needlessly decided to play around in assembly a bit for that, mostly because I just wanted to, and ended up with
asm ("bsrl %2, %%ecx\n\tincl %%ecx\n\tshll %%cl, %0\n\tdecl %0" : "=r" (npo2), "=r" (r) : "1" (r) : "cc", "ecx");for i386 and x86_64. I fall back on a pure-C approach for PPC compilation. I haven’t benchmarked this in any way, and I know for a fact that doing so would be meaningless (as thearc4random()call is inevitably far slower than either approach). It was mostly an exercise in knowing assembly language. - The “new game” screen, where the scenario and difficulty are selected, now exists. That was also interesting, as it involved shoving a Cocoa view on top of an OpenGL view. I can use that experience for all the other dialogs in the game.
As always, more updates will be posted as they become available.
Alliance Headquarters
Stardate 2310.12630998555023