Brit Gardner’s Site

all the code that’s fit to printf()

Right now there is a revolt going on in the gaming world.  Literally thousands of people have given Spore a 1 star rating on Amazon because of the DRM it carries.  I love it!  

But, I also hate it.  Spore is the type of game the industry needs - innovative, fresh, and well polished.  It’s a damn shame that publishers care more about pirating software than the fidelity of the gaming experience.

I hope this revolt affects EA’s bottom dollar so much that they realize that pissing off your customers with computer-destroying DRM is much, much more damaging than underground software pirating.  I personally will never install this game on my computer - I can’t stand hidden processes, can’t stand spyware, and can’t stand the audacity of some publisher who thinks they can get away with this trash on my computer.

Sorry to all the people who poured their creative effort into what appears to be an amazing game.

Spent a few hours this past weekend sqeezing every last bit of efficiency out of a starfield generator for Space Survivor.  Fortunately, this was made extremely easy with Richard Lord’s very fine Flint Particle System.

The basic concept:

• Set up 4 particle emitters just outside the 4 edges of the screen
• Feed the Starfield a velocity vector from your ship’s movement engine
• use the velocity vector to give each generated particle a velocity opposite that of the ship
• use the built-in garbage collector of the Flint Particle System to destroy stars that go off screen

There are still some issues with it, like pre-filling the screen with stars, but here’s a demo of it in action.  Code is below the fold:

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