Zipplet's Stuff

I've joined the DMDirc development team to work on the windows parts of DMDirc (notably parts of the setup program, launcher, updater and uninstaller). Who knows maybe I'll end up working on java bits later?

If you haven't used DMDirc already, what are you waiting for? It's a real alternative to mIRC and my opinion much better than the rest. What's more - it's completely open source and free.

Grab a copy from the official site

I am aware of a reasonably serious issue with zipNES on Windows Vista. The sound is unstable and crackles. There is no quick fix I can apply to the code base without changing the sound output pipeline so I am afraid you wont be able to play with sound on Vista until the next version of zipNES. Sorry

Additionally, Aero will be disabled while zipNES runs because it uses DirectDraw mode. You can work around this by disabling DirectDraw and using GDI. Luckily, any PC capable of Vista Aero will be able to run zipNES in GDI mode perfectly even with a stretched window.

I am pleased to say that zipNES does run well under XP inside Sun VirtualBox for those of you who really want to get it running properly and don't have XP. I've also been told it works well under Wine on linux.

I've uploaded a minor update to zipNES 0.1 to make it slightly more useable. The debugger console has been disabled, the emulator no longer writes CHR files and I disabled CPU exceptions as they are buggy. Grab it from the zipNES project page.

I have decided to resume development of zipNES with new knowledge of Delphi and how the NES works.

To celebrate I've released the latest old version of zipNES 0.1. It's not that great but it lets you see how I got on with delphi a few years ago when I started out.

Get it here

I've been quite busy with a new job and other personal commitments, hence the lack of updates. Here is a major update though:

Neutron NMS - project restarted

It's required again where I work now so it should be completed this time.

I am currently redesigning Memorybrick to solve the many problems it had including slowness, lack of support for some flash chips, requirement of jumpers to select device type and buggyness. The new design should eliminate all of those problems and will be "open source hardware" once it works.

If anyone has any suggestions for devices they'd like supported beyond the expected list please drop me an email and I'll see if it is possible

I've had my domain renewed

Also, I know the lack of updates... anyway I added a page for the lithium ion charger I'm building to the Electronics section. And I need to add some more reviews.

So what does this mean? It means PPC has life! Lets see how far I get today, ne?

Recently I've picked up PPC and continued to work on it. It's a huge project and as I've said before it will take a lot of my time, which I lack, however if I will only ever finish one game project it will be this one (but I hope to finish/start others too).

One hindrance is the fact that the game is complicated, I have to get the World Editor working before I can even make a simple walk-around demo. The data files are too complicated to produce by hand, and hard coding a map just wouldn't work for an engine of this complexity.

It's working well now, well enough that I can draw terrain and set basic attributes. Yes I had the WE working quite well a few months ago but it was missing quite a lot of features necessary to actually push ahead with the game engine. The only thing left now is to finish the brush system, then it's time for a walk around demo me thinks!

Once that's working I need to look at the tedious data entry of pokemon attributes and graphics data...

Z80 project? There's only one Zipplet - as much as I'd like to be able to do 'kage bunshin no jutsu' I can't (but imagine how quickly I could write a game like PPC if I could do that!), so I chop and change my projects. A bit of programming, a bit of electronics, etc. Keeps things interesting.

Until next time!

Edit: I should say that Pokemon PC (PPC) is the name for the engine - the game I release will have a different, better name eventually. Once I think of one, that is.

Edited on Tue, 29th Apr 2008 at 13:59 BST

I've been designing and building a Z80 microcomputer system from the ground up. I have a lot of ideas for the project, and currently you can see it by going to the Z80 project page under the electronics section.

So far I have it driving a nice LCD display with a parallel port I/O chip. Let's see where this goes, ne?