‘Tis the season to watch horror

Tra-lala-lala… lala-la-la If you know me well, you’ll know I don’t ‘do’ Christmas – and you’ll know why. If you don’t, it’s because Christmas is a religious festival and I’m not just a non-believer, I also have a very strong dislike of religion in general, with a particular distaste for Christianity and its variations – the very religion that Christmas is a key part of. As such, for me Christmas is a period where the society in which I live becomes very annoying, and I like to switch off from…

Read More

Putting on the old walking boots again

Or, in fact, forgetting to put them on. Something I used to do on a semi-regular basis was to wander off for a short hike – usually somewhere within a reasonably easy drive of home, such as the Brecon Beacons or down towards Wiltshire. If I was heading off for the weekend, I’d go somewhere further such as Dartmoor, and if I was off for a little longer I’d likely head towards the Cornish coast or to the Lake District.

Read More

Kitchen sink chaos

I had a few things I needed to get done this weekend, and one thing (or a set of things, time permitting) I particularly wanted to do. That was to export the new draft graphics for Drop Rock as bitmaps, and convert them to RISC OS sprites. That in turn would have allowed me to update the game code in order to try it out with the new (larger) tiles, take some screen grabs and post an update about that.

Read More

Updating Drop Rock part 1 – some background

Back in the early 1990s, one of the games I wrote and sold through Soft Rock Software was called Drop Rock. I’ve recently decided to look at the game and see what I can do to update it and give it a new lease of life on newer RISC OS computers. I’ve also decided to write about the changes as I go, but before embarking on that here’s a little background on the game itself.

Read More