2017.markdown @ 770659a56235 default tip

Update
author Steve Losh <steve@stevelosh.com>
date Mon, 06 May 2024 18:01:09 -0400
parents 5df938664e5d
children (none)
[TOC]

[aeropress]: http://amzn.to/2zZq5GT
[bearlibterminal]: https://bitbucket.org/cfyzium/bearlibterminal
[bria]: https://bitbucket.org/sjl/bria/
[chancery]: https://bitbucket.org/sjl/chancery/
[cl-blt]: https://sjl.bitbucket.io/cl-blt/
[cl-ggp]: https://sjl.bitbucket.io/cl-ggp/
[cl-losh]: https://bitbucket.org/sjl/cl-losh/
[cl-nrepl]: https://bitbucket.org/sjl/cl-nrepl/
[cl-pcg]: https://sjl.bitbucket.io/cl-pcg/
[clojure-lanterna]: https://github.com/MultiMUD/clojure-lanterna/
[dieharder]: https://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/dieharder.php
[ELS]: http://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/editions/2017/
[ergolib]: https://github.com/rongarret/ergolib
[euler]: https://projecteuler.net/
[gmtk]: https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337
[lisp3e]: http://amzn.to/2y0dnWG
[local-time]: https://common-lisp.net/project/local-time/
[magitek]: https://github.com/sjl/magitek/
[pandabt]: http://www.pandabehaviour.com/
[PCG]: http://www.pcg-random.org/
[procjam]: http://www.procjam.com/
[qud-ds]: https://www.twitch.tv/ptychomancer
[recreations]: http://amzn.to/2zfRHre
[sand]: https://bitbucket.org/sjl/sand/
[scully]: https://bitbucket.org/sjl/scully/
[shebang]: http://amzn.to/2zYB1nN
[sjleuler]: https://github.com/sjl/euler
[Sketch]: https://github.com/vydd/sketch
[surreal numbers]: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201038129/?tag=stelos-20
[temperance]: https://bitbucket.org/sjl/temperance/
[deploy]: https://shinmera.github.io/deploy/
[hackerbox24]: https://hackerboxes.com/collections/frontpage/products/hackerbox-0024-vision-quest

# January 2017

## 2017-01-26

* Rebooting this `.plan` after a long absence.  It's a new year!
* Wrote a first draft of my proposal for a talk at [ELS][] 2017.
* Made a little prototype [name generator](https://github.com/sjl/sand/blob/master/src/names.lisp)
  based on some ideas from last week's [Caves of Qud dev stream][qud-ds].

## 2017-01-27

* Polished up my ELS paper.

## 2017-01-28

## 2017-01-29

* Finished and submitted the ELS paper.
* Worked a bit more on a platformer game assignment for a class.  I hate
  graphics/shader programming so much.
* Added a few docs to [cl-ggp][].  Still got a bit more to write.

## 2017-01-30

* Handed off maintainership of [clojure-lanterna][].
* More platformer work.  Finally got the fucking sprite pack working.  I hate
  things with no documentation.

## 2017-01-31

* Got nerd-sniped and ended up implementing [PCG][] in Common Lisp.

# February 2017

## 2017-02-01

* Started working on a constrained game with my team for AGDD.

## 2017-02-02

* Added a bit of juice to the constrained game.
* Finally sorted out the AI/animation bullshit for my minimal game.  Assets
  without docs are the worst.

## 2017-02-05

* More juice to the constrained game.  Been doing non-computer stuff lately.

## 2017-02-06

* Implemented a little easing API in my [sandbox][sand] repo.
* Made the pluralization rules in [Chancery][] slightly less awful.  I should
  just sit down and fix it right some day.

## 2017-02-07

* Chatted with my advisor a bit and solidified my plans for the home stretch of
  [Scully][].
* Made a little Lisp wrapper for [bearlibterminal][].  Learned more about SBCL's
  floating-point traps than I wanted to.

## 2017-02-08

* Worked more on our constrained game with my team.  Got something almost
  game-like now!

## 2017-02-09

* More constrained game work.  It's an actual game now.  Fun.
* Changed all the `#:foo` uninterned symbols in [Temperance][] to regular `:foo`
  keywords.  Memory is cheap.

## 2017-02-10

* Finished the docs and pushed the 1.0.0 release of [cl-ggp][].  I still need to
  submit it to Quicklisp, but I need to submit [Temperance][] first.
* Dusted off my old [Project Euler][euler] repo and did another problem.
* Dumped initial commits of [cl-pcg][] and [cl-blt][] to the internet in case my
  laptop catches fire.  Still lots of work left to do on those.

## 2017-02-11

* Added basic level generation and scrolling to my AGDD minimal game.  Also
  sound.
* Fleshed out [cl-blt][] a tiny bit more.  Ported a little terrain gen demo over
  to it.  It seems promising.
* Wrote a little harness for [cl-pcg][] to test it with [dieharder][].

## 2017-02-12

* Did another [Project Euler][euler] problem over breakfast, and a couple more
  after that.  The early ones are simple to just brute-force.
* More work on the constrained game.

## 2017-02-13

* More [Project Euler][euler].  Math is fun.
* Fixed up the universe-based matching in Scully.  I'll need it soon for the
  percept matching.

## 2017-02-16

* More [Project Euler][euler], this time I had an excuse to poke at
  [local-time][].

## 2017-02-17

* More tiny [Project Euler][euler] problems.
* Finally got the percept filtering in [Scully][] all figured out.
* Cleaned up [Temperance][] and start writing docstrings.  One more "Finishing
  Friday" and it should be ready for an initial release.  Not perfect, but good
  enough for now.

## 2017-02-20

* More [Project Euler][euler].
* Poked a bit more at my minimal game.  It's gonna be *very* minimal.

## 2017-02-21

* Finished the damn minimal game.
* Another [Project Euler][euler] problem.

## 2017-02-24

* Chatted with my advisor and did more work on [Scully][].  The home stretch is
  in sight!
* Tipsy [Project Euler][euler].

## 2017-02-25

* More [Project Euler][euler].
* Watched the first part of the Merry Fragmas 3.0 Unity session.  Multiplayer
  FPS in Unity looks to be not too bad.
* Cleaned up the internal API in [Scully][] a bit.

## 2017-02-26

* More [Project Euler][euler].
* Watched the second part of the Merry Fragmas 3.0 Unity session.

## 2017-02-28

* More [Project Euler][euler].  Problem 51 was painfully underspecified, but
  I finally got the stupid thing.
* Watched the last part of the Merry Fragmas 3.0 Unity session.

# March 2017

## 2017-03-01

* Started poking at a prototype game my teammate made.
* Added a janky priority queue to [cl-losh][].

## 2017-03-02

* Finished the stupid [Project Euler][] poker problem.  This isn't math.

## 2017-03-03

* More [Project Euler][euler].
* Started documenting [Chancery][].
* Started working through [Surreal Numbers][].  I'm going to try to code each
  chapter up after I read it, to make sure I understand everything.  So far I'm
  done with chapter 2.

## 2017-03-04

* More [Project Euler][euler].
* Poked around at [PandaBT][].  Behavior trees are really weird.
* Watched [Why is Gone Home a Game?](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020376/Why-Is-Gone-Home-a).
* Read chapter 3 of [Surreal Numbers][].  Not much to code for this one,
  I think.

## 2017-03-05

* Worked on our game with my team.

## 2017-03-06

* Watched [Math for Game Programmers: Building a Better
  Jump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG9SzQxaCm8) over breakfast.  I really
  like the idea of deriving the gravity and initial velocity constants from jump
  height/distance targets.  I'll have to try that the next time I make
  a platformer.
* Implemented a bunch of simple (but necessary) API functions in [Scully][].

## 2017-03-08

* Passed maintainership of [rerun](https://github.com/mandarg/rerun) over to
  [@mandarg](https://github.com/mandarg/).

## 2017-03-14

* Did the final bit of plumbing to make [Scully][] actually play games with the
  game server.  It works!
* Added `LICENSE.markdown` files to all my projects.  Annoying, but if it staves
  off the people complaining for a while it's worth the extra wasted bytes.
* Chatted with my advisor about the next step for fixing the combinatorial rule
  tree explosions in Scully.
* Added a restart to [cl-nrepl][] to let me specify a new port to use more
  easily, if the default one is already in use.  Common Lisp's condition system
  is really powerful but also really obtuse, and I don't seem to use it often
  enough to really get it into my stupid brain.
* Added a couple of docstrings to [cl-pcg][].  Still not sure about the API
  layout... I think I need to try it in a real game to see how it feels.

## 2017-03-15

* Did a bunch of stuff on my team's game.  I really need to dig into the Unity
  networking documentation...

## 2017-03-16

* Whipped up some docs for [cl-pcg][].  I think I'll just call it released in
  the next day or two and see where it goes from there.

## 2017-03-17

* Watched a big chunk more of the Unity course.  I've made a bunch in Unity
  already but it's good to follow along with a class and fill in all the gaps in
  my self-learned knowledge.

## 2017-03-20

* Added a test harness to [cl-pcg][].  Need to write a couple of simple tests.
* Worked on the game a bit more with my team at the end of class.

## 2017-03-21

* Watched "5 Bits of Good Game Design from 2015" [GMTK][] video.  I especially
  like the bits about downtime in games and about giving players a reason *not*
  to do something (like saving or killing every enemy).
* Fixed a nasty bug in our game.  Multiplayer is hard (at least in Unity).

## 2017-03-22

* More game bugfixes in the lab.

## 2017-03-23

* Pushed v1.0.0 of [cl-pcg][].  Time to move on.
* Added a simple Monte Carlo player to [cl-ggp][].  It'll be used as an example
  during my ELS talk.  Also added some additional GDL cleaning to cl-ggp's
  reasoner.
* Looked around for a simple, cross-platform way to just play a WAV file from
  Common Lisp (or at least from C (which I can wrap with CFFI) but apparently
  nothing exists.  Computers are awful.

# October 2017

## 2017-10-29

* Gonna try updating this thing again now that I'm settled back into the US.
* Tried my first [Aeropress][] coffee.  It was a bit sour, which I think is due
  to underextraction.  Gonna try again with a finer grind (today's was a 13).
* Read a bit more of [The Whole Shebang][shebang].  It's good,
  but the bit on the "evolution" of the universe seems like a bit of a stretch,
  given that there's not replication mechanism like DNA has.
* Refactored the rate-limiting macro in [Bria][] to be more general.  Of course
  I immediately ran into edge cases because I'm using this to rate-limit
  reloading of the entire bot, which means than all the forms get re-evaluated.
  So using a gensym for the key in the macro was not gonna work.  But at least
  I ran into those edge cases early.
* Started reading through [ergolib][].  Lots of stuff in it, some of it
  interesting, some of it a bit crazy.  It's fun to see how other people
  implement some of the utilities as in my own utils library.

## 2017-10-30

* Work.
* Read [Fast generic dispatch for Common
  Lisp](http://metamodular.com/generic-dispatch.pdf).  A pretty simple idea at
  its core, but Common Lisp's support for highly-dynamic things like redefining
  classes at runtime complicates things.

## 2017-10-31

* Work.
* [Streamed](https://go.twitch.tv/videos/186653039?t=6m45s) some Common Lisp and
  ncurses gamedev.  Made a spooky little Halloween clicker game.

# November 2017

## 2017-11-01

* Work.

## 2017-11-02

* Work.
* Finished writing [documentation](https://sjl.bitbucket.io/chancery/usage/) for
  [Chancery][].

## 2017-11-03

* Work.
* Submitted [Chancery][] to Quicklisp.
* Continued reading [Lisp][lisp3e].  Learned about
  [dribble](http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/f_dribbl.htm).

## 2017-11-04

* Read more of [The Whole Shebang][shebang].
* Read more of [Lisp][lisp3e].
* Read more of [Recreations in the Theory of Numbers][recreations].  Ended up
  implementing some [aliquot
  sequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliquot_sequence) functions in [my
  Project Euler repo][sjleuler] for fun.
* Fixed the bitrot in my [magitek][] repo so I can make some bots for
  [procjam][] later this week.
* Did another section of the Udemy Ardunio class (sound sensing).

## 2017-11-05

* Read more of [Lisp][lisp3e].
* Started working on [this month's Hackerbox][hackerbox24].
  Got the headers soldered to the Arduino Nano and the pan/tilt thing assembled.
  Checked that the sketchy drivers worked to dump code to the Nano and they
  appear to be okay.
* Finished reading the code of [EasyWFC](https://github.com/heyx3/EasyWFC).
  I'll probably try to implement Wave Function Collapse on stream this week.

## 2017-11-06

* Work.
* Did some preliminary work to get it out of the way for the WFC stream
  tomorrow, mostly remembering how to use [Sketch][].

## 2017-11-07

* Work.
* Streamed.  Did some work on WFC, though we didn't finish.
* Did a bit more on [Hacker Box 24][hackerbox24].  Finished putting the hardware
  together, and got the Processing sketch to work with the webcam (finally).

## 2017-11-08

* Work.

## 2017-11-09

* Work.

## 2017-11-10

* Read more [Lisp][lisp3e].
* Wrote a little Lisp program to calculate ideal padding for hanging two rows of
  different-sized photos so that they'll match up.
## 2017-11-11

* Realized that switching to [Deploy][] to build my [magitek][] lib fucked up
  the random state generation, and fixed it.  This bites me *constantly* in Lisp
  and I hate it.