Away on business
Hi all
Quick note to let readers know that I am away this week in San Francisco. I’m starting at the new company which I’m really looking forward too.
As I’m away and going to be busy I may not be able to respond to support emails as quickly as usual. I will check them and respond as often as I can.
When I get back to the UK I will be releasing the next version of Particle Designer followed shortly after by a new version of Glyph Designer. Both have some cool new features :o)
Mike
10 Comments
kristof on April 18th, 2011
i really hope the tutorials are not gonna quit
i just started to like it now that there is 3D involved
please dont stop them…..
mike on April 18th, 2011
Fear not, the tutorials will continue and I’m not far from finishing the second one which is adding textures to the squares we have created.
I’d love these to be done faster but they will not stop :o)
Mike
SI on April 19th, 2011
Well congratulations on the new job!!! I haven’t yet found the time to see your last tutorial but I’m planning on making the most of it over the up coming bank holidays :)
I’ve wondered for a while now, are you a programmer by trade? If so what is your poison at work (C, Java… etc?) or perhaps you are a sales/marketing guy at heart?
mike on April 20th, 2011
Hi SI
My background is as a developer although over the years as I have held more senior posts the amount of coding I physically do every day has been reduced.
At Oracle I was a Senior Director with a team of around 25 people based in Europe, Middle East and Africa. My new role is as a Solution Engineer for Vindicia, so just me and no team.
I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty again and working for a highly agile company with some great technology. The fact that the customers we are working with include gaming companies, I’m now able to mix my interests with work which is going to be great.
In terms of background, I started out using Z80 assembler, then 6502, then 68000 before moving onto higher level languages. I’ve spent the last 7+ years with Java although that has been getting less and less and I’ve been filling the gap with Objective-C for OS X and iOS.
Sorry for the long answer. It’s like silly o’clock and I’m already up so had some time ;o)
Mike
SI on April 20th, 2011
I wonder if, given your background in Java why you haven’t done any Android tutorials, as it’s my understanding that Java is to Android as Objective C is to iOS (I may be wrong ;).
I appreciate the lengthly answer, just hope it didn’t keep you up past your bedtime lol :p
I’m currently starting out as a programmer, coming to it late but enjoying it nonetheless.
Eskema on April 23rd, 2011
Mike if you don’t mind, can you share a little advance of the “new things” (if any) on particle and glyph designer? or this will be only a bug fixing update?
mike on April 23rd, 2011
@SI it really just comes down to time. It takes a lot of time working on the blog, apps, tutorials, day job, family and a little me time ;o) so I just don’t get a chance. Plus with the fragmentation in the Android space I’ve not really wanted to move in that direction.
@Eskema, I’m hoping to get Particle Designer 1.3 out this evening and it will include:
1.3 Features
- Now uses a Quad particle engine rather than point sprites
– Particle textures can now be up to 512×512
– Particles can be up to 512×512
– Rotation of particles supported
- Images dragged into the device window are used as the background
- Small GUI changes
– Device and orientation buttons moved to device view
– Clear background button added to device view
– New iPhone image used in device view
- Emitter config is automatically displayed when double clicking an emitter file or loading from the menu
- Now possible to change the name of the texture being exported if it is not embedded in the config file
- Possible to lock individual parameters so they are not changed when hitting randomize
1.3 Fixed bugs
- Life span variance not being used in Radial mode
- Randomize now changes all settings including radial and tangential
For Glyph Designer I’m still re-implementing the render engine to make use of new options I’ve added, but so far the new items are:
- Fonts identified as supporting kerning in the font list
- Possible to turn kerning off in the preview view
- Possible to stop the exporting of kerning info during export
- The ability to make the edges of glyphs rougher i.e. less points on curves
- The ability to render the outline as inner, centred or outer
- The ability to define the max depth to be used at line joins in glyphs allowing you to increase the outline width without odd artefacts
- The ability to define the join between lines as mitre, rounded or bevel
Fixes
- Fixed a bug that was causing the top of some characters to be chopped off.
That’s what I have at the moment. There may be more that goes in but I’ll have to see how much time I get once the render changes are finished.
Hope that helps.
Mike
mike on April 23rd, 2011
@SI it really just comes down to time. It takes a lot of time working on the blog, apps, tutorials, day job, family and a little me time ;o) so I just don’t get a chance. Plus with the fragmentation in the Android space I’ve not really wanted to move in that direction.
@Eskema, I’m hoping to get Particle Designer 1.3 out this evening and it will include:
1.3 Features
- Now uses a Quad particle engine rather than point sprites
– Particle textures can now be up to 512×512
– Particles can be up to 512×512
– Rotation of particles supported
- Images dragged into the device window are used as the background
- Small GUI changes
– Device and orientation buttons moved to device view
– Clear background button added to device view
– New iPhone image used in device view
- Emitter config is automatically displayed when double clicking an emitter file or loading from the menu
- Now possible to change the name of the texture being exported if it is not embedded in the config file
- Possible to lock individual parameters so they are not changed when hitting randomize
1.3 Fixed bugs
- Life span variance not being used in Radial mode
- Randomize now changes all settings including radial and tangential
For Glyph Designer I’m still re-implementing the render engine to make use of new options I’ve added, but so far the new items are:
- Fonts identified as supporting kerning in the font list
- Possible to turn kerning off in the preview view
- Possible to stop the exporting of kerning info during export
- The ability to make the edges of glyphs rougher i.e. less points on curves
- The ability to render the outline as inner, centred or outer
- The ability to define the max depth to be used at line joins in glyphs allowing you to increase the outline width without odd artefacts
- The ability to define the join between lines as mitre, rounded or bevel
Fixes
- Fixed a bug that was causing the top of some characters to be chopped off.
That’s what I have at the moment. There may be more that goes in but I’ll have to see how much time I get once the render changes are finished.
Hope that helps.
Mike
SI on April 23rd, 2011
That makes a lot of sense, I found a lot of annoying little bugs when running my app cross a fairly unified product base (iOS), mainly with the iPhone 3Gs for some reason. I’d hate to have to cater for lots of various different OS versions and devices.
because of the Java influence in your life have you considered porting SLQ over, purely for fun?
Trisect Development on April 18th, 2011
And the next 3D tutorial?