… are coming – honest! It’s just got too late in the day to actually finish the release work off today

qbnut Coding for the Desktop, Project TINT, Ramblings

It turns out supporting x64 is going to take longer that I first thought, as the code to support it is more different to the x86 path that I was hoping it would be. Always the way eh?

qbnut Coding for the Desktop, Project TINT, Ramblings

… is on its way! All of the code compiles as 64-bit and runs without major modification (bar stubbing out D3D 8 support for which there’s never going to be 64-bit libraries from Microsoft to link against), but the bit that does the dynamic code generation for the hooks needs a 64-bit version writing, as of course as it’s working at that raw level it was only ever written to generate 32-bit code.

qbnut Coding for the Desktop, Project TINT, Ramblings

After deciding to get off my ass and actually do something towards my side project, I actually got a few things done. I rewrote the download system using newer database access libraries (rather than hand-coded SQL), got a Bug Tracker working, and worked around an issue that stopped the app compiling due to conflicting libraries, albeit at a cost of now needing runtimes installed, but most people will probably have them anyway if they have installed any recent game. It will also make the download smaller

Only a few more bits to go and we can have another private BETA rolled out (i.e. not general public, not just yet) albeit just really for testing the distribution method.

That’s probably the big push for this month over though!

qbnut Coding for the Desktop, Project TINT, Ramblings

So, I have this side project on the go, called TINT, which is a bit of Windows software to display text in-game over the top of a games display (most useful in MMOs such as World Of Warcraft or EVE, but works in just about anything else as well). It was originally intended to take data from Teamspeak (a popular Voice Comms application), list whos speaking at any given time, and show you their name so you know who it is. It has somewhat grown from there to display any text or image you like, so you can use it for FPS counters, graphs, etc.

The problem I have with it is that it’s so near to completion I can taste it, but there’s so many little things to do. These things include everything from packaging an installer including DirectX runtimes for those that don’t have it, rewriting parts of the website I’m not happy with, and getting a proper system together to notify users of new versions.

Then there’s the new stuff like Windows 7. It’s supposed to be out in October ’09 but there’s no code to specifically deal with this so TINT just assumes it’s running on Vista and provides a warning.

To be honest I just need to get on with it, but the list just seems to grow, and when you code for a living there’s little motivation to actually do more of it when you get home. That coupled with the recent hot weather here in the UK (it’s too damn hot to sit at a desk) and you get the jist of why I lack the motivation to work on it and thus it’s at a stalemate point.

I would love to actually get it finished though, so will just have to get off my ass and get on with it!

qbnut Coding for the Desktop, Ramblings

This weekend I finally decided to do something about my sparse personal homepage, so I did what seems to be the trend and turned it into a blog

I will very infrequently update this with my ramblings about programing / coding, either for the Web (my day job) or for Desktop Application Programming (my sideline), or about Music (my hobby / other sideline).

Hope you all find this interesting!

qbnut Ramblings