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DigiTan
Unregistered HyperCam 2
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 10 Nov 2003
Posts: 4468
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 Posted: 25 Jan 2008 04:14:37 pm Post subject: |
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HELP WANTED: Experienced coder to reverse-engineer apack compression routines and design/test an apack compressor for a JAVA-based map editor. Programmer will be supervised by shadowing to ensure the sickest, fastest, most-crunched levels make it into the game.
REQUIREMENTS:
* Must like hedgehogs
* Did we mention there's no pay?
* Fluency in binary, decimal, or hex a plus
BENEFITS:
* Flexible work hours
* Short commute to your PC
* In-game credits |
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luby
I want to go back to Philmont!!
Calc Guru
Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 1477
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| Posted: 25 Jan 2008 04:56:26 pm Post subject: |
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| I might be able to help with some of that. What is "apack"? |
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sgm
Calc Guru
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1265
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| Posted: 25 Jan 2008 05:16:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, there is this, which is suboptimal, but it's something. |
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DigiTan
Unregistered HyperCam 2
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 10 Nov 2003
Posts: 4468
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| Posted: 25 Jan 2008 05:16:24 pm Post subject: |
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luby wrote: I might be able to help with some of that. What is "apack"?
[post="119432"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
Apack is a lot like RLE compression. If it sees a long trail of repeating bytes, it will pack them all down to only 2 or 3 bytes. It also recognizes patterns. I can send the apack.asm file to anyone interested. Currently, it's about 170 lines of code. I haven't looked at it much yet.
What shadowing and I want to do is have the JAVA map editor constantly display how much compression your map will get. Currently, I have to run a batch file to get this information, but with a JAVA editor, we could churn out maps that get 70% or 80% at much faster rate.
sigma wrote: Well, there is this, which is suboptimal, but it's something.
[post="119433"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
Ah, okay. I think that's where I got apack originally. If those encoders are compatible with Sonic's decoder (very likely), all our programmer will have to do is work with shadowing to put it in JAVA.
Last edited by Guest on 25 Jan 2008 05:19:01 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Liazon
title goes here
Bandwidth Hog
Joined: 01 Nov 2005
Posts: 2007
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| Posted: 25 Jan 2008 09:52:24 pm Post subject: |
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| why Java? because it takes less time to make a gui based editor? |
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DigiTan
Unregistered HyperCam 2
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 10 Nov 2003
Posts: 4468
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2008 12:21:46 am Post subject: |
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| That and portability. It seems to work well enough for CoBB's Acelgoyobis editor. |
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CoBB
Active Member
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 720
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2008 02:35:31 am Post subject: |
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DigiTan wrote: That and portability. It seems to work well enough for CoBB's Acelgoyobis editor.
Which no-one in the world seems to use.  |
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sgm
Calc Guru
Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1265
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2008 10:22:29 am Post subject: |
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CoBB wrote: DigiTan wrote: That and portability. It seems to work well enough for CoBB's Acelgoyobis editor.
Which no-one in the world seems to use.
[post="119460"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post]
The point is that by using Java you got as many people in the world as possible to not bother to use it. |
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DigiTan
Unregistered HyperCam 2
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 10 Nov 2003
Posts: 4468
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2008 04:35:05 pm Post subject: |
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| I guess we could keep it all for ourselves. |
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shadowing
Powered by 64
Calc Guru
Joined: 06 Jan 2004
Posts: 1002
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| Posted: 26 Jan 2008 10:20:55 pm Post subject: |
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PINNED.
As sigma already stated, the main point of using Java is to make it easier for people to use it.
If we only coded a Windows only program... what's the point? Sure, Windows has a lot of users, but other Linux or Mac OS X users are left out. The use of Java would alleviate this problem (at a higher CPU cost... :/) |
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CoBB
Active Member
Joined: 30 Jun 2003
Posts: 720
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| Posted: 27 Jan 2008 03:14:42 am Post subject: |
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shadowing wrote: If we only coded a Windows only program... what's the point? Sure, Windows has a lot of users, but other Linux or Mac OS X users are left out. The use of Java would alleviate this problem (at a higher CPU cost... :/)
There are other options too, like wxWidgets, but I guess this application is not going to be CPU intensive anyway, so performance is less of a concern. |
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Liazon
title goes here
Bandwidth Hog
Joined: 01 Nov 2005
Posts: 2007
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| Posted: 27 Jan 2008 08:39:15 am Post subject: |
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| ya, java's good for all that. wish I could help though, but I don't know much about making guis. |
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Raster
Active Member
Joined: 17 May 2004
Posts: 529
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| Posted: 10 Sep 2008 12:28:34 am Post subject: |
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Well... Great that Ive come back, I may be able to help you out with this one. DigiTan, or anyone, go ahead and PM me with the details  . |
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DigiTan
Unregistered HyperCam 2
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 10 Nov 2003
Posts: 4468
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| Posted: 10 Sep 2008 03:03:39 am Post subject: |
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Pretty much we're just recreating the original Apack console program in this JAVA, or whichever language we decide on. In all this time, I still haven't gotten a good look at it, but at 170 bytes on the calc, I don't think it would be too tough to crack with some undivided attention.
Last edited by Guest on 10 Sep 2008 03:16:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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elfprince13
Retired
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Posts: 3500
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| Posted: 16 Oct 2008 07:46:26 pm Post subject: |
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| disassemble it, and then recreate it in python. |
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Madskillz
Active Member
Joined: 02 Jan 2004
Posts: 608
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| Posted: 16 Oct 2008 09:55:14 pm Post subject: |
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| I've been doing a lot of java for school lately...guis arent that bad. Man it's been a while since I looked at the sonic thread. |
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elfprince13
Retired
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Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Posts: 3500
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| Posted: 18 Oct 2008 11:14:03 am Post subject: |
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no, really though, file I/O and string/data-structure manipulation are undescribably easier in Python, and with wxWidgets you can make a lovely GUI for it (nicer than AWT anyway, not quite as fancy as Swing). And with py2exe, py2app and freeze we can make Windows, OS X, and Linux native versions for people who don't have python.
do you want a console app or a GUI map editor? |
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Madskillz
Active Member
Joined: 02 Jan 2004
Posts: 608
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| Posted: 18 Oct 2008 10:18:55 pm Post subject: |
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| I have only done gui stuff in java...but if I had the time I would look into it for python. But really now I should work on porting of digi's code again now shouldn't i... |
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elfprince13
Retired
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Joined: 11 Apr 2005
Posts: 3500
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| Posted: 18 Oct 2008 10:35:37 pm Post subject: |
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| wxWidgets is pretty simple to use if you've used the Java GUI packages. you can even use Boa Constructor for GUI RAD+IDE |
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DigiTan
Unregistered HyperCam 2
Super Elite (Last Title)
Joined: 10 Nov 2003
Posts: 4468
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| Posted: 20 Oct 2008 12:46:52 am Post subject: |
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| I think a GUI editor would fit right in. As long as we're able to Apack maps on the fly, and import new tiles as we make them up, I'm okay with it. |
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