Introduction to the News section

In this section I will bring to you, as before, all the latest developments concerning my programming activities, and links to other parts of the site for all new downloads etc. I've abandoned the old frame-based system, since for one thing it didn't register the keywords in the search engines, which meant I lost my 3rd out of 150,000 place on Google, which did not amuse me; and it also proved too complex, dubious on older browsers and other monitor resolutions (I use the comparatively lo res 800x600), and remarkably dysfunctional. In the future, therefore, the "Inarticulate Rant" will be confined to this, the front page of the news section (despite the mock eloquence of the whole of the rest of the site); and all the links to other articles will be contained in the artfully rendered box on the left, where by whole new pages will load, replete with any relevant links. I hope this is a little more intuitive and allows more logical access to my work.Anyway, to programming. I haven't been doing a great deal recently, what with trivial things like A levels, but now the pressure seems to be off I've allowed myself to do a little more work on my 3D engine (actually that's a bit of an understatement, considering it's finished) and to put this new site together. The 3D engine essentially required tinkering with until the texture mapper started working, which proved somewhat laborious; but has also undergone the addition of a mechanism for the loading of models as they are approached, so a (theoretically) infinite 3D world can be explored, patches loading as the user wonders about inside. There is currently no clipping or other game engine features, but I expect them to be easily added in the future- I have a sudden compulsion to put together a 3D RPG. Nevertheless, the engine currently has capacity to display about 300 polys at once, and is capable of many more if pushed. It also runs extraodinarily fast: there is currently no slow-down code in the demo, so I expect several hundred fps to be rendered on most modern computers - it manages 30 on my P133. Something I constructed some time ago, but now available for download for the first time, is the windows 32-bit level editor for Trooper II. Originally, I was going to include a 32-bit DirectX conversion of the game, but the workload proved a little too much and I never got around to it: however, the level editor can be used as a user-friendly way of creating new Trooper II levels. Trooper II was so important in my development as a programmer that it has its own section of the site, accessable through the side bar menu or programming home. I hope you enjoy my new site, and take a look at some of the other stuff on offer-