Deathshadow's Madness
Madness and you, perfect together

09 Nov 2011 - Reorganization

Been a LONG time since I've updated any of my personal websites -- and I've got 'projects' all over the place online -- My DOS Pac Man clone that's getting a new update, the HTML5 Canvas demo I was playing around with, and a whole host of other things that I should probably get under one roof.

On top of which, I've now got a lot more free time on my hands since stepping down as the server monkey and developer for the official Battletech website. Wish them the best in their future endeavors, but I no longer have the patience or desire to be quite so involved daily in supporting the game.

So, what's new for updates?

  • Paku Paku Main Menu Paku Paku - Version 1.6 adds a whole slew of new features, the most important being the addition of MPU-401 MIDI support, mostly for the Roland MT-32. It also sees some major bugfixes to gameplay and AI dragging it closer to my original intent. See the Revision History for a complete list of all changes.

    For those of you not familiar with Paku Paku, it's a game I created using the graphics library I made for the 2011 Retrochallenge Winter Warmup. It's your basic "Pac Man" clone, but it has a target system of an original 4.77mhz PC with a CGA card. It operates in the undocumented 160x100 16 color CGA mode, along with support for said graphics modes on newer cards like the EGA and VGA. (which normally you can't do). It also supports a wide array of sound cards - PC Speaker, Adlib, CM/S (aka Game Blaster), Tandy/PCJr, and now MIDI.

    More importantly the game comes with full Turbo Pascal 7 and assembly source code.

  • HTML 5 Canvas Demo - Wrote this about a year ago, was going to turn it into a game, but the current state of HTML Audio doesn't meet up with my needs yet. While I piss pretty hard on HTML 5 so far as things like the actual HTML stuff is concerned, the stuff that has NOTHING to do with actually making markup like CSS3 and the new javascript features are pretty neat and opening the door for the browser to do more and more.

    Damned shame the parts of HTML 5 that have anything to do with actually marking up a page are 100% grade A manure.

  • New Site Skin - The general concensus about the old skin was either that people didn't like the retrocomputing joke of monochrome green, or they flat out just didn't get it... so here's the nice boring blues that everyone and their sister are using for websites.

    This new skin makes use of a lot of CSS3 properties, so IE8 and earlier users will get a slightly less appealing version of the page... but that's the nice thing about CSS3 is that if used properly, I can have all the nice wiz-bang graphical effects while swinging an axe at using images for such appearance -- and stil have a page that while not as attractive, is at least still functional and usable in legacy browsers.

    Which is kind-of the point of HTML in the first place... you build with progressive enhancement, so you get graceful degradation when all those "gee ain't it neat" features aren't there.

Hopefully updates will be coming more often (no more two year gaps) as I'm gonna launch a Retrocomputing subsection... and probably a forums.

About Me

Me!

This site was created by Jason M. Knight, a retired software engineer with nearly four decades experience in electronics, software development, and graphic arts - not to mention a wide range of hobbies including Saxophone, EWI, programming, carving, drawing, and just being a general pain in the ass on web development forums ripping new holes for the nimrods who think HTML 5, JQuery or Dreamweaver are actually good things.

My Other Sites

CutCodeDown

Featuring articles, tutorials, and rants about web development. The focus of the site on minimalist semantic markup, separation of presentation from content, graceful degradation, and accessible design.

elementals.js

A small lightweight JavaScript library designed to promote good practices without becoming a bloated mess like most of the "frameworks" out there. Simplifies common cross-browser tasks, aids in navigating and manipulating the DOM, and polyfills bits of ECMAScript 5 that are not to be found in any version of IE.

EWIUSB.COM

An informational website about the Akai EWI - Electronic Wind Instrument.