July 3rd, 2008 — Misc
EDIT : Ooops: Posted this on the wrong blog 
Should have been on Gamedev blog
Managed to get to grips with the getting my code signed and runnable on production iPhone. It’s a bit of a pallaver to be honest and I don’t really want to go into any detail for fear of breaking any NDAs. However the good news is that it does work, the bad news is GR+++ runs incredibly slowly.
It’s shouldn’t take long to sort out, I’m confident the main code is plenty fast enough; the unofficial SDK version proves that’s the case.
The likely culprit is the OpenGL code that downloads the game screen into a texture. I had a problem similar to this on the mac version a long while ago. I’d created the texture in GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT_5_6_5 format, the same format that the game itself runs in and this went really slow. The reason was that the HW itself doesn’t seem to support this format natively and the driver itself was doing a very inefficient conversion to RGBA. The solution was changing the texture to RGBA8 and doing my own rather nippier conversion from 565. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case this time as well. Gareth mentioned he’d seen someone on a messageboard say they’d had problems with something similar. It’ll be that or the sound I’m sure.
In other news a chap on the yakyak forum has written a really nice looking iPhone game called Rolando, you can see it here. It’s a nice OpenGL based title that uses tilt a lot and has a bit of a LocoRoco aesthetic going on. The web page has an ace little animation showing the game working and I asked him how he’d recorded this and he pointed me in the direction of Screenium by Synium. This little app allows you to make a video of an area of the macs screen which in turn means you can run your game in the iPhone simulator and grab the output of that. Neato. I did a quick (and in much needed of improvement) test here.
It’s been a pretty good few days for random apps on the mac. I can recommend having a look at these:
Viscosity: a great OpenVPN front end for the mac that replaces TunnelBlick which was okay but a bit flakey at times. Even though it’s only in beta Vicosiy has been rock solid the last few days.
Cornerstone: A very slick looking SVN front end. I quite like using SVN from the command line but this is quite nice. Would be handy for artists innit
June 13th, 2008 — Misc
There’s a lot of things keeping us happy right now 
First and most obvious is this:
He’s a cracking little chap. It’s a weird situation where the down sides are easy to express. Lack of sleep, oodles of crying and a shed load of smelly bodily fluids is nobodies idea of fun however. The weird part is the amazing intangibles that make this all so much more than worth while are a lot harder to get get down on paper. It’s amazing seeing Charlie already developing his own individual character traits even though he’s only been here such a short amount of time. It’s really clear that of all the things we’ve been lucky enough to do this is going to be the best by far.
Coupled to that the reaction from friends and family has been overwhelming, we’re awash with well wishes, cards, soft toys and a particularly awesome celebratory pork pie; a gift from the excellent Mr and Mrs Swith:
Nothing says congratulations like minced up pig I find
Also putting a more minor grin on our faces were John Lewis turning up this morning and delivering new sofas. The old ones we had were pretty good but also a bit knackered. We got a couple of leather replacements that are a lot firmer and defined in shape which in turn makes it a lot easy for Suze to feed Charlie on. Hopefully it’ll also be a lot easier to wipe sick of them as well
Finally a little bit of video spam, I wasn’t going to post this here but I made a little movie when we first got back home. My mum wanted to see it and it’s a lot easier for here to catch it here than search through Youtube
June 5th, 2008 — Misc
June 4th, 2008 — Misc
Phew! Suze and Charlie are in hospital still, she really got the worst of both worlds; a really long labour AND a c-section. It means they’ll be in for a couple of days yet with me flitting back and forth while they are. Suze’s Mum and Bro visited yesterday which was great and my mum will be there today. Managed to get a few photos which you can see right here.
Man he’s a little charmer and as Suzey says we’re completely smitten. Obviously he’s the most beautiful and lovely baby the world has ever seen as all new parents will tell you
June 3rd, 2008 — Misc
In the end we didn’t listen to any clarinet concertos, it was a pretty tricky labour to be honest but after 17 hours of very hard work from Suzey 7lbs 3oz of beautiful boy entered the world at 23:15 yesterday; Charlie Liddon Both mother and son are doing very well indeed.
Got home at 4am last night and popping back in now. Photos and more news later
June 2nd, 2008 — Misc
Sitting here copying clarinet concertos onto the ipod in preparation for delivery. The plan was to get into Princess Annes’ at 9:15 for Suzey to be induced into labour. As ever nature makes a mockery of the best laid plans and she’s been having steady contractions since 1am, her body thumbing its nose to any artificial help. We’re off into the hospital in the next 15 mins and fingers crossed soon to meet our new child.
May 19th, 2008 — Misc
It was excellent to see our David James worries confounded on Saturday as Pompey went to Wembley and come home with the FA Cup.
I’m not all that up on football to be honest, having moved an awful lot in the last 20 years I’ve generally supported the team closest to my home town. That’s “support” in the loosest sense, all it usually involves is reading the match write ups and tracking their league position as the season progresses. That’s worked out pretty well to be honest having luckily decided to track teams that turned out to be on the ascendant. 4 years or watching Watford rise from the fourth division to what was then the 1st, a big gap then following Brighton and Hove Albion get to the championship and the finally seeing Pompey win the Championship to take the step up to Premiership glory.
And then I moved to Southampton but for the time I stuck with flying a flag for Pompey. The previous few years gave a bit of an insight into why people will follow a team for life and give an inkling of understanding why clubs can inspire such loyalty. Redknapp and the ever-present soap like drama that seems to follow him around is at the core of it. Getting into the premiership, the defection to Soton, the nailbiting season end as he managed to keep the club in the Premiership. Taking the team to Wembley and coming home with that excellent silvery prize. It’s all great.
On top of that I married a good Pompey girl from a family who are fans and all help keep me on the straight and narrow. So that’s kept me skate despite living amidst the red and white of Southampton for the last couple of years and I can’t see that changing
May 17th, 2008 — Misc
We’ve just been watching David James’s pre FA Cup interview, at the top of the Spinnaker Tower no less. Both me and Suzey reckons he’s got THE FEAR.
Fingers crossed that we don’t see him slip into his Calamity James alter ego. It’ll come clear in the next couple of hours.
May 15th, 2008 — Misc
Not really much worth as a blog post to be honest. It is very nice and there are some great improvements but it’s hardly earth shattering news from chez Liddon.
This is, however, a good opportunity to see if the Live Journal cross poster plug-in still works
May 11th, 2008 — Misc
Well that’s good news, Suze’s blood pressure evened out nicely last week so we’re off daily visits to the hospital. 1 out of the 4 readings last taken was high but the nurses decided to ignore that, one of the midwife’s had made made Suzey laugh like a drain at exactly the point the machine started measuring We were both chuckling away, the heart beat trace show’s the baby is a very lively one which doesn’t bode too well, the midwife described it as a “wrigglechops”. Which would be a good name. Both me and Suze have been described as nightmare’s as kids and it sounds like we’re in for a bit of genetically influenced karma. Great!
We’ll be back there on Tuesday and if it does stay in the bounds needed to keep the medicos happy it means she has some choice over the style of birth. Until the BP issues had popped up we were looking at the yoghurt weavers and guardian readers option: a water birth. With a bit of luck that’ll be back on the menu. We can take in our iPod apparently. My suggestions for theme music haven’t gone down well. No Prodigy, no LCD Soundsystem I’ve a list of stuff to get and as I type am downloading Mozart’s Clarient Concerto in A.
