Justtotheleftofvenus.tk - αλφα-soft, free games, and some physics too.
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General site news, development updates and new releases.
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The News (newest first)
25/08/2008: Free and Open... After a long effort, I've finally got the whole collection of software covered by the GPL, and open-source. Sources can be obtained here (77kB). Also, I've uploaded my collection of libraries, which are now also freely available under the GNU GPL (v3). You can find them here.
15/07/2008: Baroque and roll... I have recently revamped the Music page. It now contains only MIDI (.mid) files of various of my baroque and classical compositions. The music page now resides here.
11/06/2008: Turing Machine Challenge... Can you write a non-trivial program for the Turing Machine? The Turing Machine emulator is available for download in the usual place (the downloads page, of course).
18/01/2008: Bomber Development... BOMBER v0.2 is now done, with campaign mode, multiple flakguns, and some other stuff. It's probably now good enough to be worth getting (the first version would have taken longer to download than to become dull); as always, it's to be found on the Downloads page.
04/01/2008: A new game, an old idea... I have written a new game, called BOMBER. This game is a side-scroll flightsim thing, where you fly a bomber, and you go bomb some targets, while dodging some flak, trying not to run out of fuel, and also watching everything from side-on. I dashed this off very quickly (in 3 days as a matter of fact), and I plan to add a bunch more stuff in the near future, like a campaign mode, with multiple levels; handling for more than one flak gun; stuff like that. Oh, and some slightly less flat terrain. You can get BOMBER v0.1 (it's a very early version) on the Downloads page.
10/12/2007: Picture the scene... we've added the HARRIS Gallery to the basic Harris download, as well as hastily putting together HARRIS v1.3 (the problem with 1.2 was that I'd somehow made it far too easy but anyway...) The HARRIS Gallery contains a bunch of pictures of bombers from WWII; at least one picture of each of the types included in HARRIS, as well as a short description for each one. They are viewable with a 'Gallery Viewer' program; for a pointless retro feel I have made a program to display these images in 4-bit colour (that means 16 colours). What I've done is this (Warning - tech-geek-speak follows): I've used readily available software to convert various pictures into .bmp files (for which I have managed to find out the format). I've then written a program which reads these .bmp files, and converts them into 4-bit colour, by 'dithering' - alternating between two colours - and then outputs a file of raw image data with a minimum of headering. I have then made a file which contains the filenames, titles, and text descriptions. Lastly I have written a program to display the files and the descriptions. (I also tried to build in File.Pak compression, but I'm struggling with a bug somewhere in the compression program at the moment, having sped it up massively by hard disk write-caching)... So anyway, you can get HARRIS v1.3 here. What with all the pictures and things, it's grown a bit - the download is now 250kB.
29/11/2007: New stuff... I have added another 'proof' to The Anti-Math - some knowledge of calculus required. For details of the calculus method used, try searching somewhere such as Wikibooks for 'Integration by Parts'. Also, HARRIS v1.2/Full is finally finished - lots of new stuff in there. Find it on the Downloads page. Lastly, the .tk domain name has been down for a while - it expired because I wasn't getting enough visitors. Then again, I'm not really advertising the site or anything, so I'm not massively surprised. It's back up now.
02/11/2007: Teach a man to fish... Well, teach a man to program, actually. I've written a short course/guide for anyone who wants to learn BASIC. It's free, comes with a 'Handy Helper' program, and some stuff on applied programming too. Get it here.
There's also a new build of Crypty-X, which can be found on the downloads page, as usual. By the way, when submitting Crypty-X bug reports, please attach your copy of the source code, as I do not have copies of previous versions' source code - so your linenumbers may not match mine!
Also, I have written another book! 'Lies, Damned Lies and Religion' can be found on the Misc page, or more directly by clicking here.
Lastly, a new addition to the site: The Anti-Math is an irreverent (and, quite possibly, irrelevant) collection of 'proofs' with unexpected results! 'Proofs' so far include "1=0" and "Right is Wrong". Some are new, some are old; all are entertaining, amusing, and perhaps even inspiring. Contact me ('Feedback' link) and send in your own false 'proofs'; if any good, they will appear (duly attributed) on the page.
The Anti-Math can be found here.
08/10/2007: Feedback Fixed... For a long time now, the Roggle Forums, where our tech support lived, have been down. I've now set up a GMail account for tech support - to send us feedback, whether you have a problem or just want to give your opinions on our stuff (and yes, criticism is welcome, though try to make it constructive if you must criticise), click 'Feedback' in the Navigation bit at the top. In other news, the Full Version of HARRIS is nearly finished - it'll turn up any time soon...
23/09/2007: Another CQuest Adventure... I've written a second CQuest Adventure, CQ/Medieval, which utilises generally more complex stuff, including coder-defined input control, and all 8 flags. It's contained within the basic CQuest download zipfile, on the Downloads page.
28/08/2007: A Text Adventure?... Yes, I've just released a Text Adventure. It's called CQuest, and it's actually more than just a text adventure, because it actually gets the definitions of all the rooms and events from external files - so you can write your own adventures for it (and I can write some more and release them, probably). It comes with just one adventure at the moment, CQ/Original, which is admittedly not very good. But new adventures are likely to be released soon... The major component of CQuest is the CQ/Code interpreter, which controls all events from 'There is a key in this room' to highly complex conditional events, with IFs, CALLs, FLAGs, GOs and more. The program's very modular - event actionstrings are passed to a function EXEC(), which can call itself recursively, and also call EVAL() for evaluating parameters in IFs; the Message Centre uses a subroutine MESSAGE() reused from MorseBox, and the drawing of 'windows' (actually just fancy rectangles but anyway...) is done by a subroutine WIND(), also reused from MorseBox; there's a built-in CQ/Code Debugger, to which error messages and execution tracing info are sent with a subroutine EQ() which basically reports errors. You can control the level of debug information (Info, Warnings, or just Errors - or even turn the debugger off entirely). You can store up to 8 user-defined boolean variables (flags), along with up to 255 rooms, and a number of events limited only by available RAM.
More importantly, you can send me copies of any adventures you write, and if they're any good (and not profane), they will be featured on this site (duly acknowledged, of course).
This game was never listed on the Projects page, for a simple reason: it only took about 30 hours (total working time) to write.
Oh, and by the way, I might make it open-source someday.
You can find CQuest on the Downloads page.
25/08/2007: More Scode... A new DB of MorseBox is available. MorseBoxDB0.1.3> 25/8/07 now has Test Sessions, as well as some (very minor) improvements to the Sequential Practice Generator. As usual, find it over on the Downloads page. (There's also a new screenshot of it - head over to the Screenshots page to have a gander at MorseBox Test Sessions)
In other news, a new project, 3-D Marble Maze, has been listed. It uses the StereoScopic 3-D engine, described below (news item 20/07/2007). More details on the 3-D Marble Maze Project Feature page.
06/08/2007: HatStand [the emulator]... As I mentioned about a month ago, I'm working on a Sinclair Spectrum emulator, 'ZX HatStand 16k'. It's coming along quite well, with keyboard and screen implemented, but there's a broken opcode somewhere, and it's running a bit too slow at the moment. More details on the HatStand Project Feature page.
Also some info on Ony-X 2: a new addition to the Screenshots page taken from a test program for the Ony-X 2 window engine. However, there's more work still to do than there appears to be.
20/07/2007: 3-D, mmm... With the success of a project to create a stereoscopic 3-D engine, work will now begin on StarStrike III, and also a 3-D Marble Maze game. The basic idea of Stereoscopic 3-D is to have a pair of images, from viewpoints about 20cm apart, and you cross your eyes to look at them, so as to superimpose one image from one eye on the other image from the other eye. This will cause the wireframe to suddenly appear in 3D, because of the way your brain correlates input from each eye. (The idea of stereoscopic 3-D has been around since at least the Victorian era, when 'stereoscopic photographs' enjoyed a brief period of popularity - two photographs of the same scene from slightly different positions were placed in a special box, which tricked the brain in a similar way) An example demonstrating the principle can be found below (click to enlarge); it is an actual screenshot of the engine program.
07/07/2007: Lots of stuff... New builds of MorseBox and Crypty-X have been completed (DB0.1.2> 5/7/07 and 1.1RC1 respectively), and can, as always, be found on the Downloads page. Also, having finally found out the .BMP file format, I have been able to start taking proper screenshots of my programs, so the Screenshots page has loads of new stuff on it, at which you may want to take a look. This is also a major step forward in terms of Ony-X 2, which will hopefully have a feature allowing users to import their own backgrounds, cursors etc. from a .BMP file. (Ony-X 2 will probably compress these into screen-ready File.pak archives). Lastly, a project I have been keeping under my hat for a while is 'HatStand', a ZX Spectrum emulator. (The name is because 'hatstand' is a common expression on c.s.s. (a Spectrum-related newsgroup) to mean completely loopy or mad as a fruitcake. And HatStand will be written in BASIC and probably support very few peripherals. The timing will be inaccurate too, but hey, it's only a project to see whether BASIC can do it or not, it isn't meant to be 100% accurate or anything like that). This project is progressing gradually, and further details can be found on the Projects page. Talking of which, a reorganisation of the Projects page is planned, as soon as I get round to it. Oh, and KaleidoScope v6.0 has a brand new icon. Nothing else is changed though, so if you've already got the latest build there's probably no point in downloading again. Just to mention, that's all.
06/06/2007: Improved MorseBox build... MorseBoxDB0.1.1> 6/6/07 is now available; as usual, it can be found on the Downloads page.
30/05/2007: MorseBox ready for DB... MorseBoxDB0.1.0> 22/5/07 is now available - as always, it can be found on the Downloads page.
12/05/2007: Bugs, Builds, Buttons, ... A bug turned up in Crypty-X: when running a program with Logging active, after control was returned to Crypty-X it couldn't find the log file. This was a straightforward coding mistake and is now fixed - the new build of Crypty-X is, as always, available on the Downloads page. Also, I have made a new button which you can add to your site (in case you found the banners a bit too big), of which there are two versions - for light and dark backgrounds. It looks like this:
OR 
It is 73x24 pixels and can be added to your site by copying and pasting the following html code:
<![CDATA[<a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft"><img src="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft/img/alfablurred_blued.png" border=0 alt="Alpha-soft: Free games + stuff"></a>]]>OR<![CDATA[<a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft"><img src="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft/img/alfayellow_blued.png" border=0 alt="Alpha-soft: Free games + stuff"></a>]]>
For a slightly smaller version (73x19 pixels), remove the '_blued' from the filename.
Also 
OR 
[120x58 pixels]
<![CDATA[<a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft"><img src="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft/img/alfabutton2.png" border=0 alt="Alpha-soft: Free games + stuff"></a>]]>OR<![CDATA[<a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft"><img src="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft/img/alfabuttonyellow.png" border=0 alt="Alpha-soft: Free games + stuff"></a>]]>
Lastly, MorseBox is coming along really well and a Development Build of v0.1.0 should be available within a matter of days.
09/05/2007: Development, VMachine and otherwise... A few tweaks like a new PEEK function code have sped it up to 74kHz. When VM does get released, it will probably be open-source, but it might not. Also, there's a new project in development; MorseBox, a program for practicing and learning Morse Code, which is proceeding very rapidly and can be found on the Projects page. Also, there might be more science, maths, and philosophy stuff on the way soon (keep watching this News page and the Misc page). Finally, I have created a Music page with various pieces of music I have written available to play or download. It can also be accessed via the Misc page.
06/05/2007: VMachine leaps forward... after I suddenly had the idea of storing the 'memory' as a really long string (actually, three really long strings) instead of a file on the hard disk. The speed more than doubled, and is now 62kHz! The only real disadvantage is that the amount of memory has had to decrease slightly, from 64kB (limited by 2-byte addressing) to 48kB (limited by the amount of memory available to be used). But I can't really imagine any program using all of that anyway. In related news, there is now more than one program written for VMachine - previously there was only one which printed the character set to screen over and over again (this is still the 'benchmark' program used to measure the speed), now there is another program which tests (and clears) the memory. Incidentally, this new program runs at a much faster speed approaching 90kHz. Three things need to be done before release: Add VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) support; Write ROM to load programs from VHD; Make an easier-to-use Development Environment to write programs for VMachine in. It is anticipated that these will take until Satan starts ordering woolly blankets.
03/05/2007: Oops! Silly mistake... The Crypty-X alpha download did indeed contain the source code, but only of the main part, not of various subroutine libraries (which are also my own code). This is now fixed; the zipfile now contains the entire source as well as everything else. Incidentally, I realise that I said April and didn't quite get it ready until May, but this was mainly due to pressures caused by the examination season approaching. (Being a 15-year-old sucks)
02/05/2007: Crypty-X now available... the alpha test build (i.e. Probably unstable, fair chance of serious bugs) can now be found on the Downloads page; the zip also contains the source code, making Crypty-X our first Open Source program. (I just hope the source doesn't make me look like a clumsy programmer...) Also some back-end management for the site: absolute links are gradually being replaced with relative ones, which won't change what you see at all but the pages should appear more quickly on slow connections (though it probably won't be noticeable).
16/04/2007: New StarStrike II build... with some improvements to the graphics - a rocket flame which changes length depending on your speed - and some other minor additions (such as a 'Play again?' prompt when you die or press 'x'), the new build of SSII is, as always, on the Downloads page.
15/04/2007: Installation utility... Using the compression engine from File.pak (see the Projects page for details), I have written new installers for HARRIS and StarStrike II; also new builds of these have been made - you don't have to run them through a batch file any more! The installer is now a single executable (although the zipfile also contains a readme.txt file), and its datafiles are stored within the executable. I could have compressed the datafiles more (as much as 23% compression), but this actually made the eventual zipfile larger (go figure. That's what happens when you use WinZip), so the datafiles are virtually uncompressed (actually about 3.6% compression). As for the new builds, they finally read the environment variable with the current directory in it. However, this does cause a slight problem for DOS users: if you run HARRIS from a different directory (typing in the whole path), it crashes with an error (Path Not Found) as the current directory is not actually the one the program's in. As usual, the new builds can be found on the Downloads page. Some more good news: the Harris download zipfile is now just 117kB big, compared to its old size of 131kB - so downloading it should be a bit quicker (thanks to αλφα-soft's very own File.pak!).
14/04/2007: ONY-X 2 starts moving at last... A provisional feature list for the planned new version of ONY-X has been prepared; find it here and comment on it here (perhaps suggest any features you would like). Also, due to the development work on ONY-X 2, the original ONY-X is now retrospectively named ONY-X [1]. Lastly, I have some bad news. The Roggle Forums (where the 'feedback' link leads to) appear to have been noticed by spammers, and unfortunately the forum's operator and maintainer (Roggle.tk) has been extremely busy with other matters, and thus a large number of messages advertising drugs have built up there. Just try to ignore them (or petition the administrator to make me a moderator so that I can clean all the drug ads up!)
10/04/2007: A further Harris build... mainly changes for historical accuracy (including minor adjustments to aircraft speeds, and removing incorrect hyphenation from Handley Page), but also a little more keyboard help on the upper news ticker. As always, it can be found on the Downloads page.
29/03/2007: Yet another Harris build... with new Production and Fighter Chase realism (through the removal of some integerisation), the latest Harris build is now available. Visit the Downloads page to get it. Also, a change has been made to the site: all .jpg images have been replaced with .png versions, which are smaller files, so they should load more quickly. And lastly, the Crypty-X Man Pages have been converted into an html format, which can be found via the Projects page.
28/03/2007: Man overboard... Due to a glitch in Crypty-X's r command, the Crypty-X man pages (i.e. manual) were accidentally deleted. I am glad to say that not only has the bug been fixed, but also the man pages have been rewritten, and despite this setback, Crypty-X is likely to become available as a test build by sometime during April (hopefully). In fact, Crypty-X is coming on by leaps and bounds at the moment...
16/03/2007: More atheism resources... With the formation of 'RAY', a page about it has been created on this site: About RAY.
06/03/2007: Ever further into interfaces... ONY-X 2, the second version of ONY-X, is planned, as well as an accompanying CLI (Command Line Interface) called CRYPTY-X, on which work has begun and is rapidly proceeding. They have both been listed on the Projects page.
26/02/2007: A new project has been announced: 'File.pak'. With the ever-growing information about forthcoming projects, it has been decided to create a separate Projects page; rather than on the Misc page, details of projects now reside here.
24/02/2007: The third draft of 'Science Asks Why [A Discourse on Atheism]' has now been completed, and is available here (112kB Word document).
22/02/2007: ONY-X tutorials are being prepared, the first three of which are already completed. The full catalogue of 10 is listed here (miniscule .txt file). They may become available at some point in the future.
19/02/2007: The Screenshots page has been updated, with small click-to-enlarge thumbnails, and a new improved ONY-X screenshot.
18/02/2007: KaleidoScope v6.0 has now been completed, and is available on the Downloads page. Also, because some people were having difficulty using the installer, new builds of HARRIS, StarStrike II and ONY-X have been created, with a simplified installer (which uses the 'CURDIR$' function).
16/02/2007: The second draft of 'Science Asks Why [A Discourse on Atheism]' has now been completed, and is available here (110kB Word document).
13/02/2007: Yet another new build of HARRIS [Demo] now available; it can be found the Downloads page. Also, a small change has been made to the style conventions of this site: all image alternative text displays in red (af5f4f hex, to be precise), except the alt text for the navigation bar, which is according to the link convention; the link to the page being viewed is in a slightly greyed version (5fbf7f hex, if you must know) of the internal-link colour.
02/02/2007: Another update to HARRIS [Demo] is now available, incorporating a small number of interface tweaks. To get this new & improved version of HARRIS [Demo], go to the Downloads page.
30/01/2007: I have created some buttons and banners for αλφα-soft. To add them to your web page, copy and paste the following html code:<![CDATA[<a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft"><img src="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft/img/alfabanner.png" alt="alfa-soft; free games + stuff" border=0></a>
<a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft"><img src="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft/img/alfamdm.png" alt="alfa-soft; free games + stuff" border=0></a>
<a href="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft"><img src="http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alphasoft/img/alfasmall.png" alt="alfa-soft; free games + stuff" border=0></a>]]>They appear like this: [sizes 480*96, 320*64, 150*32 pixels respectively]
29/01/2007: αλφα-soft need beta-testers. If you are interested in beta-testing any of my programs, click the 'Feedback' button at the top of the page, and let me know.
26/01/2007: The first draft of my book 'Science asks Why? [A Discourse on Atheism]' is available here.
14/01/2007: An update to HARRIS [Demo] is now available; includes some bugfixes and also an extra layer of realism - the time taken to reach a target is now proportional to its distance from England. To get this new & improved version of HARRIS [Demo], go to the Downloads page.
17/12/2006: The redesign is now complete.
16/12/2006: This website is now being redesigned completely. I hope you like the new style.
THIS PAGE LAST UPDATED: Monday 25th August, 2008.
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