• 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.

I have been developing a new game, mostly to test some interesting game design ideas. The game revolves around the player being as stealthy as possible – one of the key elements is to leave no evidence that you were sneaking around corridors. (Screenshot after the jump!) Another element is the fact that you are unable to see what lies ahead if it is too far away to hear or see. If you do not have line-of-sight to an object, it becomes much less visible on the screen. This has the interesting side effect of enabling the game to completely ignore unneeded objects that are far away from the player. I’m currently trying to add a dynamic artificial intelligence system to the game – because of the complex network of rooms, doors, and hallways, it is difficult to get an AI to properly navigate the game. I’ve decided to go with a node-based approach rather than an A* algorithm approach, as nodes allow the AI to act more intelligent. Nodes are placed at every possible place the AI can walk, and the AI can only move to a node that it has direct line-of-sight to. This allows diagonal movement. The AI decides what its long-term movement goal is based on what it is doing, i.e. if the AI is supposed to be patrolling an area, it will select the nodes of the rooms it wants to go to, and use the nodes in between to go there. If the AI encounters evidence that the player is nearby, it will deviate from its instructions and try to go to the node closest to where it thinks the player is.

Lastly, three new remixes have been added to the Media Player by request:

• Geisha Dreams (Ringtone)
• Moonlight Sonata
• Fullmetal Alchemist – Melissa

Enjoy, and make sure to follow us on Twitter!

Also, some minor updates…

• A couple of bugfixes have been made in Polaris. Not much progress has been happening with Polaris lately, and it looks like it’ll take a while before it’s ready for release.
• I’ve been working on several ‘experimental’ apps lately. I might post one up sometime soon.
• Some previously unknown 404 and 403 errors on the site have been fixed.
• The server software and hardware is being improved. No downtime is expected at all.

• Two new songs in the Media Player, in case you haven’t noticed.
  • The first one is a Never Gonna Give You Up remix, in the theme of last Wednesday’s April Fools. I found it challenging to get this one exactly right, but here it is.
  • The second one is a remix of What Is Love by Haddaway – you may have heard it in the famous Night at The Roxbury clip circulating the internet. I think this is the best remix so far.
• I would like to thank Jonathan (aka spiffyx300) for his generous donation of $10. Jonathan runs the Emerging RO game server at http://www.emergingro.com/ and is one of our pre-release beta testers.
• Some of our users have noticed a 404 error page problem that we’re trying to track down. If you reach pages on the main site that are either mistyped or are not redirecting correctly, instead of a 404 error page, you will be redirected to http://www.minousoft.com/. If you notice any of this behavior please send us the URL so that we can fix the problem. For now, make sure to include both the WWW prefix and the trailing backslash – this seems to work every time.
• You have to be logged in to use the shoutbox now. It’s been racking up huge amounts of spam. I might add a simple CAPTCHA to keep the spambots out.
• I will not have much extra time for the next two months; it has been allotted to software development. Consequently, I will probably be slow in answering messages and posting updates. Don’t worry, I’ll still get around to it. I may try to find someone else to fill in for me. In the meantime… stay tuned.

And that’s all for now.