Ramblings - 2010/04

It seems there are a lot of work to do for the Speed Dreams project members, as there is so low activity on the project in the moment. There are about a dozen bugs to fix until we can release 1.4.0 but I don't really find one that I can fix, most of them involve graphics knowledge I lack for sure.

So for the moment I spend my spare time doing tracks: St Petersburg, Knockhill and 2 30's-era tracks (secret secret!). I'm also preparing my robot to be included in the next version and to clean up code a bit before starting this year's TRB championships.
I've some new ideas for Speed Dreams like displaying 'pit' on the leaderboard if the driver is currently in the pits, better name handling on the scrolling leaderboard and some minor fixes etc

It is cold outside and winter sleep is so sweet :)

10 years gone

I haven't been able to boot into my good ol' Win2K lately - I've used it only for running the invoicing software for at least 4 years now. But invoices cannot wait too much, so I had to do something about it.

The partition/opsys was listed nicely in the Grub2 menu but when choosing it I met with an ugly message:

error: invalid signature

Nothing more. Not too long, right? :)

Of course I tried googling it and have found quite some references, but most of them were pointing to this forum thread of Ubuntu Forums. I've read that thoroughly and tried every tip included there, but without any luck. So I decided to install a new(er) Windows (ugghhhh) and the invoicing software.

First I saved the MBR with

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin -bs=512 -count=1

then installed WinXP easily, then I restored the MBR using 'dd' again (read in more detail here). All that was left was issuing

grub-update

and I was ready.

Windows 2000 - we have spent 10 years together, farewell thee...

Ramblings - 2010/01

Speed Dreams: Well our beta is out and we have reached over 11.000 downloads until now. I am quite happy with that. Eckhard re-surfaced and improved a lot of graphics, on the other hand both Andrew and Wolf-Dieter has disappeared a bit, but they have advised it beforehand.

Holiday season made the project life a bit hectic but I suspect we will be back on path soon in January. Release is due very soon as you can see it in release roadmap.

BTW I've added a lot of stuff to the wiki, then Eckhard deleted the main page by mistake so it had to be rebuilt... todo: backup regularly... :)

I've used the lazy days for some re-organization of my own project directories & files, and again was amazed how easy it is to merge separate Git repositories into one. Also found this blog for useful hints.

Ramblings - 2009/52

I am always amazed by how flexible Git is. For every aspect it has a proper answer, a way to do it and those are not hacks but built-in features. Simply amazing.

I've recently found an article by Ryan Tomayko about handling tangled working copies with Git - and it struck me that Ive been following this technique myself for quite some time, only difference I use git-stash often, too. Ah and another article, by Ariejan de Vroom about Git patches, the most clear explanation I've seen so far.

We have a beta out for Speed Dreams 1.4.0! Check it out here - it is really so heart-warming to see so many work materialize. Well there is some things to do till the final release, expected about late January or early February, but nothing really serious we know of. Of course beta testing can help any still unknown problem to appear so we are looking forward to this period.

Ramblings - 2009/51

I decided to write some random rambling one per week, to collect my thoughts on TORCS/SD development-related issues, like ideas, what-are-you-doings, recent happenings, milestones, any new information I've come around. I plan to name them with the week number - of course there will be weeks when I skip this so don't rely on it very heavily :)

With Speed Dreams (hosted at SourceForge.net) we use Subversion as versioning system. Now 'svn ignore' - kills me, I think it is so damn un-intuitive. However recently I've stumbled upon a blog 'BogoJoker' where Joseph Pecoraro discussed it so nice and clear that it immediately made me understand how it works (but I still think it is un-intuitive...) Here is the link if you need advice.

I'm getting close to make public a new track, Knockhill. As usual, it would be v0.4 as there is no 3D editing done at all yet. Quite a lot to do track-wise: learn Blender through Salty, pretty Longday a bit, then Petit, then Knockhill. And there are lot more tracks in my head to do...

Speed Dreams is approaching a beta release - there will be a meeting on Saturday to discuss the details. We fought a lot with track selection previews - now the game displays a preview background image and superimposes a track map over it (done by JP and Brian). Wolf-Dieter has finished a lot of Simplix setups, while Xavier added more weather-related stuff to sdl-port-branch. Haruna made sure there are no more TORCS-related textures, and JP has also polished the menu system while Brian added more code to the networking part.

I plan to merge the most recent Kilo robots into Speed Dreams' next release. Todo: make it not crash when there is no setup for a track, simple fuel strategy, prepare for timed sessions.

Track releases - Salty, petit

I've released the next version of Salzburgring, named v0.4. It includes quite a lot of eye candy already but expect to see more coming...

I've also uploaded a new track, named 'petit' that renders a very famous track in Braselton, GA, USA. It is also v0.4 but has much less 3D stuff in it, but sure it will be the next target of my Blender fun.

You can download them here. Install them the usual way (they should work with both TORCS or Speed Dreams). Please tell me what you think, in the comments or via email.

BTW I have lots of plans for tracks, enough to fill my next 2 years or so :)

TORCS Championships 2009 - Street-1

The TRB caravan revisited Street-1 in sunny Australia this year (sadly without the Green Monsters Team not showing up) and I have to tell I've had many joyful and many not-so-joyful moments this time.

Compared to my last race here, my robots were quicker about 1 second in the qualifiers and 1.5 seconds during the race. They remained in/near the main field for most of the race and were lapped only 2 (or 3) times by the leader cars. They were in shooting range from the JDIs and Dummies for quite long into the race, in a race that was very close, intense and very exciting.

However they were not smart enough to hold on to their position when overlapping someone and let others behind gain significant time on them in those moments. That was the main issue why they did not finish in the top 10 in the end, this is definitely something I got to work on during the season break.

Here are the results and the screenshots...

JDIs bad qualy

First lap turmoil

Turn right, no straight...

Zhora advancing

No big differences in the field

Poor Berniw...

and poor EJ :)

Kilo here, Kilo there

If only we could see Berniw driver's face in this moment...

Yeah we practice this a lot at home with the Dotties

Jumpety jumpety jump jump

Way up high, to the sky...

Viewing a fierce battle from close

Jumpety #2

Ey mate what ye doin in there?

"Fuzzy ye in P5" "Roger......Woooot ye said P5???"

Let's come together right now...

Dummy loosing position

Wow lotsa stickers on this one

Jumpety #3

Fuzzy dropping down

and down

This grey one should use headlights,
makes me nervous when it appears suddenly behind

Ski slopes in Adelaide

Jumpety #4

Things kept on just happening and happening

Fastest guy in town? Kilo 2 \o/

Trac + random + GNUe

The Speed Dreams dev team is testing Trac these days, as provided by Sourceforge.net. Mart has imported trunk's TODO to TracWiki and JP set up some tickets based on the TODO. That is, if we close those tickets we are quite ready to release Speed Dreams 1.4.0 for beta. Should happen soon, but there are time-consuming tickets on the list, too - like setups for cars.

Mart has discovered that Sf.net's version of Trac does not provide the feature to update tickets based on commit comments, it's a pity. It should work and make life easier.

I've been working a lot these days on the Salty track 3D model. I am getting the taste of Blender now I think but I have so many future track plans... hard to list even. Keep an eye on what's coming.

Oh and I have a report for the G-track-2 race in TRB in the works... soon... got to run the next race, too... busy busy busy :)

Although it is not TORCS/SD related but the GNUenterprise.org project (gnue for short) I've worked for quite some time seems to be alive again, Reinhard has committed lots of stuff recently. Got to check it and update translations at least!