First driving lesson!

I just had my first driving lesson today which went really well. Learnt some of the basics and got to drive around a car park a bit. I am at least happy i haven't stalled the car...yet. Bit of a squeeze getting into the car as its smallish and I'm not. My instructor seems good as well, i think I'll be able to learn at a good rate. I'm hoping the rest of my lessons go as well as (or better than) today's.

Framework for Features

We have been writing framework code for quite a long time now for OGE, a large amount being utilities and a fair amount for the core. We are now starting to add new projects/modules, currently graphics, input and audio. We are really close to being able to start adding loads of features to OGE which i can't wait to be able to do. Finally the fun part! Sadly though we still have some more framework to add, such as the basic initialisation/shutdown of each of the plug-ins and adding more to the core, but I'm hoping this won't take long.

Once we have the first few plug-ins up and running, it will be a lot quicker to add the remaining ones as we won't have to discuss how to name various files and classes.

Final results!

I checked my results again on my uni's portal and they have all been finalised. I've got five 2.1's and one 2.2. Over the three years, i've got 15 1sts (>= 70%), 13 2.1's (60 - 60%), 5 2.2's (50 - 59%) and only 3 passes (40 - 40%). I'm really going to have work hard in the last year as i want to pull my average up a lot. Not all of the years count, in BEng the second and third years count but I'm not sure about MEng, do the last 2 or 3 years count?

I am trying to think of some software projects i can do for my final year project, I'm hoping it can be something related to games or even OGE. I really want to show off my programming abilities in this project to hopefully give me a better chance at getting a good job.

Rough Core

I've been working on the core recently. I haven't been able to program as much as would like. To be able to get more done, i am focusing on getting a basic core up and running, where most configuration is done manually. This will allow the separate systems to be developed in parallel with the core. I will then continue to work on the core but being able to put all of the features that is needed/wanted in it.

These features are mainly thread handling and system creation and configuration. For the moment, you tell the core how many threads to create and it will just distribute the different systems by adding them in a cycle or round-robin way. The more advanced way, which is the goal, is to get OGE to detect the number of processors the computer has and to use various user defined settings to create the correct number and types of threads. It will also allow different ways of distributing the systems between the threads. The goal is to allow the engine to scale to the hardware its running on without altering the engine or application.

Provisional Results!

I just checked my uni's portal for the latest results from the last semester. All of them are filled which 4 of 5 units are a 2.1 and the last is a 2.2. One of my units is also a double credit unit, so that's five 2.1's and one 2.2, so I'm happy! These of course, are provisional and can change when they are moderated, but I can finally relax.

I'm Free!

At last, this uni year has finished! I now have to wait for my exams. I can work on OGE a lot more now, which i have some personal goals for that i really need to complete over the holiday. So hopefully by the end OGE will be at a very basic, usable state that at least simple games can be made.

One of Each

I handed in my Advanced Processors coursework today, what a relief. I can now focus on the group project coursework which the presentation day is on the 6th of June, so not long away. I also have an exam on Monday, yay... So still lots to do but I'm getting there.

I had a bit of time to work on OGE. I've ported the Zip file code so now OGE can handle zip files through the file system. I haven't had much time to test it but it should work as I haven't changed much from the old code.

I've started writing some code to allow you to get a different thread to call any function with specified data. In the old code, we had Extensions but these felt a bit to hard to use and fiddly. Once I've finalised it and checked with Steven, i will clean it up and add it to the utilities. I'm not yet sure if Extensions will be needed at all after this, i will need to look at some use cases.