Announcing TuxTyping version 0.4pre2

SDL Development
1

I’d like to announce the first “official” public release of TuxTyping, an
SDL powered typing tutorial for kiddies staring Tux, the Linux Penguin.
(TuxTyping is copyrighted under the GPL).

TuxTyping can be found at

http://www.geekcomix.com/dm/tuxtype/

with its downloading and installation page at

http://www.geekcomix.com/dm/tuxtype/downloads.shtml

Like I said, this is the first “official” public release, but it has been
floating around unofficially amongst certain persons on the SDL mailing
list for a little while now ;).

I had wanted to wait and release it at version 0.5 (when most of the game
will be done, and all that will be left is debugging) but I am going to be
going on a month long vacation soon and wanted to get /something/ online
before I go.

What’s done in the game:
-Key Cascade
-Tutorial for Key Cascade

What’s left to be done:
-Word Cascade
-Tutorial for Word Cascade

Feel free to download it and check it out… let me know what you think
(if anything). Please bear in mind that the code is /really/ ugly and keep
the known problems (listed on the web-site) in mind when reporting any
troubles/issues.

Thx.–
Sam Hart http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~hart/
Web Page Highlights: Video Game History, Black Hole Simulation, & more.
OTHER WEB SITES MAINTAINED BY SAM HART
http://www.geekcomix.com/ - Geekcomix, the Daily Geek Comic Strip Site
http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~hart/gw/ - Ghostworks (Alt./Linux Computing)

2

Great!!!

good to see stuff for the kiddies!!

Linux rules!On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Sam Hart wrote:

I’d like to announce the first “official” public release of TuxTyping, an
SDL powered typing tutorial for kiddies staring Tux, the Linux Penguin.
(TuxTyping is copyrighted under the GPL).

TuxTyping can be found at

http://www.geekcomix.com/dm/tuxtype/

with its downloading and installation page at

http://www.geekcomix.com/dm/tuxtype/downloads.shtml

Like I said, this is the first “official” public release, but it has been
floating around unofficially amongst certain persons on the SDL mailing
list for a little while now ;).

I had wanted to wait and release it at version 0.5 (when most of the game
will be done, and all that will be left is debugging) but I am going to be
going on a month long vacation soon and wanted to get /something/ online
before I go.

What’s done in the game:
-Key Cascade
-Tutorial for Key Cascade

What’s left to be done:
-Word Cascade
-Tutorial for Word Cascade

Feel free to download it and check it out… let me know what you think
(if anything). Please bear in mind that the code is /really/ ugly and keep
the known problems (listed on the web-site) in mind when reporting any
troubles/issues.

Thx.

–
Sam Hart http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~hart/
Web Page Highlights: Video Game History, Black Hole Simulation, & more.
OTHER WEB SITES MAINTAINED BY SAM HART
http://www.geekcomix.com/ - Geekcomix, the Daily Geek Comic Strip Site
http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~hart/gw/ - Ghostworks (Alt./Linux Computing)

3

I’d like to announce the first “official” public release of TuxTyping, an
SDL powered typing tutorial for kiddies staring Tux, the Linux Penguin.
(TuxTyping is copyrighted under the GPL).

TuxTyping can be found at

http://www.geekcomix.com/dm/tuxtype/

Looks great! A few things, though:

  1. The “/usr/local/share/tuxtype” directory, and the “images” and “sounds"
    subdirectories are not readable when one does a
    ”./configure" / “make” / “su” / “make install”. I had to find the
    directories and “chmod 755” them myself.

  2. When the title appears, the selection closest to the middle of the
    screen is selected. However, the mouse isn’t there, it’s up at the
    top right of the screen.

  3. When an item is selected, the ‘bounce-around’ animation is a LITTLE too
    fast. (I’m on a Celeron300a at 450Mhz if that matters.)

  4. When you draw Tux, he erases any herring images which are ‘behind’ him.
    It looks like you’re redrawing background and then drawing Tux AFTER
    drawing the fish. Might I suggest redrawing all of the backgrounds
    first, then draw the fish and Tux.

Other than these problems / suggestions, it’s great (and hilarious!)

I’m glad you got around to doing a game like this before I did (I had been
planning it), because you did a much better job that I would have. :wink:

Thanks and take care!

-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/bill/

(Hmm, only another 200 e-mails to catch up on)

4

Looks great! A few things, though:

  1. The “/usr/local/share/tuxtype” directory, and the “images” and “sounds"
    subdirectories are not readable when one does a
    ”./configure" / “make” / “su” / “make install”. I had to find the
    directories and “chmod 755” them myself.

Woops… missed that (honestly don’t know much about makefiles and
autoconf… let KDevelop do all that stuff for me, and have had a few
headaches because of it— such as not allowing the end-user install to
other directories and this).

  1. When the title appears, the selection closest to the middle of the
    screen is selected. However, the mouse isn’t there, it’s up at the
    top right of the screen.

Actually, I’ve noticed that is the case on a few systems. It’s certainly
not consistent across machines/configurations. For example, my home
system (AMD K6-2 w/ 128Megs RAM, ATI-Mach64 AGP chipset) this problem
doesn’t occur, nor does it occur on my Laptop (450 Mhz Celeron with
some sort of Trident video chipset). However, on a friend of mine’s system
and one system where I work (800 Mhz PIII w/ some sort of Diamond card)
this problem occurs. Haven’t been able to track down why, yet.

  1. When an item is selected, the ‘bounce-around’ animation is a LITTLE too
    fast. (I’m on a Celeron300a at 450Mhz if that matters.)

  2. When you draw Tux, he erases any herring images which are ‘behind’ him.
    It looks like you’re redrawing background and then drawing Tux AFTER
    drawing the fish. Might I suggest redrawing all of the backgrounds
    first, then draw the fish and Tux.

yeah, both are mentioned in the TODO file and on the problems section of
the web-site. Haven’t had time to work on this game in a few weeks, and am
leaving on a month long-trip shortly so I wanted to get /something/ online
before I left :wink:

Other than these problems / suggestions, it’s great (and hilarious!)

I’m glad you got around to doing a game like this before I did (I had been
planning it), because you did a much better job that I would have. :wink:

Thanks… Yeah, it had been bouncing around in my head for a while, but it
had been several years since I wrote anything in C and I was feeling
/very/ rusty (as evident in the source code ;). I finally just sat down
and forced myself to do it.On Sun, 25 Jun 2000, William Kendrick wrote:

–
Sam Hart http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~hart/
Web Page Highlights: Video Game History, Black Hole Simulation, & more.
OTHER WEB SITES MAINTAINED BY SAM HART
http://www.geekcomix.com/ - Geekcomix, the Daily Geek Comic Strip Site
http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~hart/gw/ - Ghostworks (Alt./Linux Computing)