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Just a short update: The site’s theme will be updated soon. I’m getting tired of fixing all of the errors in the current theme and I want to switch to something better. Hopefully, the new theme will be cleaner and more compatible.
Features may break temporarily while this is happening, so be sure to report any errors. Stay tuned for the new Minousoft.com!
Wow, has it been a long time or what? I haven’t updated since last year. I’ve been working on many non-software-related things in the meantime and haven’t had the time to fix and update the site lately. Here’s a list of what’s been going on lately:
- Going to m.minousoft.com now serves as a shortcut to the condensed mobile version of the site. However, you don’t necessarily need to use the “m” subdomain - this is simply for convenience. Going to minousoft.com from most mobile devices will trigger the mobile site automatically.
- Unused files, scripts, and databases have been purged from the server, which could possibly provide a speed boost.
- Everything has been updated to the latest version and the spam filters have been cleared.
- Over the holidays, I built a brand new PC from scratch. The good news is that I will be able to work more effectively now that all of my performance-related gaming issues are gone. This allows me to develop using multithreading, x64 architecture, pixel shaders, HDR lighting, and all that good stuff… Unfortunately, this means I will have to purchase a new hard disk and move all of my old files over, so everything I was working on before is on hold for now.
- …which brings me to the next point. I remixed quite a few new tracks, but can’t upload them because they are stuck on my old hard drive.
- I made a cheap solid state hard drive out of two components. The first is a 4GB 133x CompactFlash (CF) card, usually used for professional digital photography, which I picked up for $20. The second is a Chinese-manufactured CF-IDE adapter which serves as a breakout board to adapt the CF card’s pins to the IDE interface’s pins. CF cards are electrically compatible with the IDE (PATA) bus, but the pins are in different sizes and locations. The adapter I used had 2.5mm pitch pins (instead of 3.5mm) on the IDE side so that I could insert it into a laptop with a dead hard drive. Laptop IDE connectors have built-in power pins, so for 3.5mm, you would need to plug in a Molex connector for power.. The laptop recognized the CF card and I was able to load Windows XP Pro onto the CF card leaving around 2.5GB left for programs and data. It boots up very quickly, but suffers from constant paging due to the low amount of RAM present (256MB). However, it works well, and is a cheaper solution than buying a normal laptop hard drive. One very important thing to note, however, is that operating systems like Windows use the hard drive as a paging file. Flash memory can easily wear out from all the writes, so it’s better to use an OS like Linux configured not to use swap space.
- I’m still looking for tabbing wire, ring terminals, and a charge controller for my 10W solar panel. I don’t want to drop too much cash on my solar project as I have a few other projects to work on as well. For the most part, my solar panel is about 80% finished. I have a complete frame made of aluminum, polycarbonate, and cardboard backing, and I have my battery, inverter, and cables pretty much ready. If you know where to get any of these for cheap, feel free to contact me.
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Yesterday, I wrote an article about basic PV (photovoltaic) system design and I talked about charge controllers. Today, in Part 2 of the series, I’m going to be explaining the many different types of batteries and how to maintain them.
By far, the most-used battery chemistry for PV applications is lead-acid. Thusly, most PV parts, such as charge controllers or inverters, will be designed for lead-acid batteries. In this article, I’m going to be explaining lead-acid batteries the most, but before we start, I’m going to provide a very brief note on electrical calculations.
Read the rest of DIY Solar Energy System, Part 2: Batteries »
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In this series of articles I will describe some important considerations when building your own free solar power system that might not be apparent to the average DIYer. I will also explain to you how to build and maintain your own solar energy system.
Please note that I cannot be responsible for any damages arising from the use of this information. Be smart, you are playing with electricity.
I’m going to be discussing several important concepts in this series of articles:
- Charge controllers
- Batteries
- Sun tracking
- Maximum power point tracking
- Energy losses and inefficiencies
- Assembling photovoltaic (PV) cells into panels
- Mixing-and-matching different photovoltaic panels
- Choosing used, broken, and cheap parts
- Buying cheap parts versus buying quality parts
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For a while, I’ve been looking into building my own solar power system. I have experimented with tiny solar cells before, but this is different – I’m looking for enough power to run an appliance. This would be very useful for charging things like cell phones, media players, etc. without wasting energy off the grid. Additionally, I could power an always-on outdoor microcontroller project for free, without changing any batteries. And, if I was in an area with no power connections, I could bring a solar panel and battery, and have electricity. I could even mount the panel on an electric vehicle and have it recharge itself for free!
(Much more important information after the jump!)
Read the rest of DIY Solar Energy System, Part 1: Basic Theory and Charge Controllers »
Next article >>
This is an unusual post because it has to do with hardware. I’m going to try writing more about hardware topics in the near future, so stay tuned!
In this series of articles I will describe some important considerations when building your own free solar power system that might not be apparent to the average DIYer. I will also explain to you how to build and maintain your own solar energy system.
Please note that I cannot be responsible for any damages arising from the use of this information. Be smart, you are playing with electricity.
Powered by Hackadelic Sliding Notes 1.6.4
As you may have heard, I’ve been working on a Garry’s Mod map called minousoft_postnuclear. As the name implies, the map is designed around a barren radioactive wasteland. My goals for this map are to include interesting features and scenery, and to make the map suitable for both building (sandbox) and roleplay (i.e. DarkRP.)
The main areas of the map will be:
- The vast wasteland.
- A small fenced-off area with a metal bunker and radio tower.
- An underground nuclear fallout shelter, complete with enough food, resources, and equipment to last for hundreds of years.
- A small shack in the middle of nowhere.
- Possibly a small settlement.
- A few subterranean tunnels will be provided for shelter and travel.
Planned features:
- Periodic radiation damage when walking in contaminated areas of the wasteland.
- Physical wind that moves small objects dropped on the ground.
- Good optimization – the whole map currently compiles in around 30 seconds, and I’d like to keep it within5 minutes when I’m done.
- A huge door that seals off the entrance to the underground base.
- A gigantic elevator that transports players to the underground base. The elevator shaft protrudes approximately 0.5km below the Earth’s surface. It takes quite a long time to get from the top to the bottom, even if you jump down in free fall.
Enough with the details – here are some awesome screenshots! Please keep in mind that these are from an early test and will not reflect the quality of the finished map. Several chunks of the map have been cordoned off to reduce load times, so the world ‘cuts off’ suddenly at the edge.
Read the rest of Screenshots of minousoft_postnuclear »
A lot of people have been asking about Polaris lately, so I’m going to clarify what is happening and what needs to be done.
Current status:
- Design:
- Physics:
- Gameplay/mechanics:
- Optimization:
- Testing:
- Overall:
Notes:
- Design: I still have to clarify a couple of game design issues, and I have yet to even design the artificial intelligence. Many of the other game elements have already been designed, however.
- Physics: I spent a very large amount of time on the custom-made physics engine, and it seems to have paid off. Occasionally I will find a little glitch in the engine, but I don’t expect too many modifications in this area in the future.
- Gameplay/mechanics: I need to work on the gameplay because at the moment, Polaris is just an engine. I also have to fix the bugged resource system, and create a better management interface for everything.
- Optimization: Polaris hogs a huge amount of resources right now. It’s mostly in the CPU department, but occasional load occurs on the GPU. My own aging PC struggles to keep the framerate up when many ships are created. I’m probably going to add more checking for objects that are too far away, and replace their calculations with faster, more granular approximations. Another idea is to actually freeze processing on objects that can be ignored. However, some progress has already been made with optimization; for example, objects in the game that are far away are not drawn, or things like small graphical effects which require extra CPU time are not drawn. Additionally, I found several ways to ‘recycle’ some expensive physics calculations that were being called multiple times, which increased speed quite a bit.
- Testing: Most of the features have been tested extensively, and debug interfaces have been added, so future additions to the code won’t take long to test thoroughly.
- Overall: I’m halfway there, and it’s pretty much downhill from here.
On a side note, I’d like to thank Chris Walden for his generous donation of $10!
I’ve started working on a new Garry’s Mod gamemode. (For those of you who don’t understand what I’m talking about, see this link.) Since the Lua documentation for Garry’s Mod is a bit tough to understand, I’m going to simplify things a bit and use Fretta as a base for the gamemode. Right now, I’m producing an interesting map and getting the hang of displacements in Hammer.
If you happen to have any GMod Lua or Hammer skills, I would like your help with this little project.
On a side note, if I get this project completed, then I will look into purchasing a public GMod server. The problem is, game servers are expensive, there isn’t a return on my investment, and I won’t be playing on the server a lot, so I will have to get donations and ingame sponsorship for it to work.
If anyone is interested, comment below or use the contact form.
Just some quick Polaris updates to keep you posted:
- The user interface is being enhanced, and most of the selection system has been worked out.
- Modules and ships now have ‘properties’ panels which give information about selected objects.
- New module types have been added and old ones have been tweaked; notably the Mass Driver, Science Module, Armored Module, and Cargo Capsule.
- Improvements have been made to the Ship Builder, but it isn’t finished yet.
- Some previously unknown bugs from 0.23a have been squashed, finally.
- Parts of the game have been redesigned to improve efficiency.
New content has finally been added to the Media Player:
- Caramelldansen (Remix)
- Sonic – Flying Battery Zone (Remix)
- Final Fantasy X – To Zanarkand (Remix)
- Final Fantasy 8 – Force Your Way (Remix)
- Azumanga Daioh – Soramimi no Cake (Remix)
A couple of small bugs in the site itself have been corrected, but an accident while editing the shoutbox has erased all of the shoutbox comments and the CSS template for the shoutbox itself.
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