.plan Archive 2000

21/DEC/2k - 01/JAN/2k+1

• Off and out of town

20/DEC/2k

• I think I've figured out how to hook up something I read out of a file with a menu command in the app. The commands register themselves with the command/menu system. They're IDed by a STRID. That way, I can read the string version from a file and convert it to a STRID. I can't think of why that should be any worse than a monolithic table of function pointers.
  Ooo, Michael spotted some code on flipCode.com that looks even better
  Nope, turns out it's almost exactly the same as what I had in mind

19/DEC/2k

• Back to menu building

18/DEC/2k

• Tracking down bug in Credits screen in German
  Turns out it was in all languages
  Unnamed prop lists are really messy to work with
  The original code was written before we put the language blocks in there.  It assumed all of the prop lists were at the root level. There were some parens missing. When I put in the outer parens even the original file failed. It took awhile to figure out the incantation to access the prop list we needed.

15/DEC/2k

• Feature creep even in research :-)
• Look at instantiating and destroying RefereeAIs during the run
• Look at taking advantage of the overlay controller as more than just a place to hold the collection of overlays
• Look at setting up an interface to more easily add objects to be serviced both during event frames and during draw frames.
• I'd like to build menus from a propfile. The question is, how do I hook up a menu choice to a function at runtime? Need some sort of table of functions known by unique IDs.
• It looks like a Fox-like table is what I want. But I don't want it to become monolithic.

14/DEC/2k

• Might as well start looking at simple testing changes

13/DEC/2k

• Probably could have come in, but with so little to do decided it wasn't worth the risk

12/DEC/2k

• Picked up car
• Going over Michael's flight test doc
  Came up with some simple additions to the sim that would help testing
  Also brainstormed some more elaborate changes that would be nice to have before starting work on v2.0
• Left early due to impending ice storm

11/DEC/2k

• Trying to find things to do

8/DEC/2k

• Took the day off
• Reinstalled Windows at home
  I have a page and a half of stuff to reinstall. About 2/3 through as of Monday.
  Turns out some of the bugs I was hoping to fix are still there. Man, Windows sucks.

7/DEC/2k

• General testing

6/DEC/2k

• Okay, not really locked down
• Added pref to count all Ripmax channels as existent, whether they are or not

5/DEC/2k

• Just kind of looking things over, preparing for postmortem, thinking about general design issues

4/DEC/2k

• Code and asset lock-down
• Just doing a some more testing

1/DEC/2k

• In 10:30
• Testing demo
• Enable OpenGL in release
• Treat engine as dead if prop is knocked off
  Michael got to it before I could
• Edited the mission file to give myself wind in training. Man, that's hard
• Short meeting on new Inertia web site design
• Looking at how to decrease size of demo
• #ifdeffing out all of the unused event and training code only saved 400k.
  Looked like at least twice that from the .objs
• Out 8:00

30/NOV/2k

• In 10:30
• The lockup seems to be happening in a piece of code that shouldn't care what the card is doing. Michael thinks that maybe the driver is leaving the FPU in a bogus state.
• Installing the latest drivers to see if that solves the problem.
  What a pain
• Lunch with Manning
• After about 30 tries I haven't seen the hang, yet
  Grr, just after writing that I got a hang when testing the demo
• Out 7:30

29/NOV/2k

• In 10:30
• Testing
• Turns out we mg everything as part of the build process. The name of the source file is stored in the .sm. So the demo version of the trainer has a different name stored in it than the release version. That changes the CRC. Changed the code to match the demo version of the aircraft
• The expired variable was private in GUIApp. Moved it to protected
• I'm getting occasional lockups on amddood. Once it starts happening it keeps on happening until a reboot. It sure looks like a driver problem. Going to bang on it some more in the morning, then get the latest Voodoo3 drivers.
• Out 8:00

28/NOV/2k

Apparently, Town North didn't put all of the parts back into my car.  Neither they nor Rotary Performance wanted to take the time to send the parts over, so I got to be the messenger.  Minor nuisance.

• In 11:15
• Fixed crash when going from custom controller to preset then cancelling
  When going back to custom we ended up trying to get a NULL data member from the list and then dereferenced it
• Fixed strid mismatch between controller screen and string file
• Implementing test to catch if they've turned the clock back
• Implementing expiration dialog
  The only convenient way to do this is to set a boolean that we check after we have Fox up and running
• If plane is missing, assume it was deleted due to a crash, and therefore is broken/dead for scoring
• Tried to install TNT into Sony, but it doesn't have an AGP slot. The G200 is on-board
  It's a P2/350 and it only gets about 35 fps in Podunk. I may switch back to AMDdood as my second machine
• First UT session in a coupla weeks. This machine does okay, but there are some hiccups. Need to track down why. Might be D3D.
• Testing
• Out 7:15

27/NOV/2k

• Put in test to enforce only flying trainer
• A few quick changes
  Text of opening message
  Default max wind speed
  Default mapping for gear
• Automagically respawn plane after a few seconds if broken in free fly
• When customizing a plane, make sure we choose that plane when going back to the main workshop screen
• Out 7:15

23/NOV/2k

TurkeyDay

22/NOV/2k

Michael didn't want to be exposed to cold, again

21/NOV/2k

Cold flared back up. Out sick

20/NOV/2k

• In 11:30
• Cold mostly gone, just real tired
• Fixed backwards tests when deducting points in taxi, landing and precision flight
• Fixed free fly plane screen not remembering last plane you flew
• The mechanism to synch up the planes between free fly and workshop wasn't getting reset after we used it
• Building little app to generate CRC
• All checked in
• Short-circuit "run-before" test when necessary
• Out 7:00

Never did get ahold of my adjuster, today.  Joel was changing my phone, so I couldn't leave a number for the guy to call back.

Similarly, apparently the head of hockey at Ice Bound wants to talk with me about the fight that broke out at last Friday's game. I wasn't there, but I'm the team rep. I didn't manage to catch him, either.

17/NOV/2k

Out sick

16/NOV/2k

• In 11:00
• Lengthened skip frame default to handle engine start
• Make cancel work as a real cancel in controls screen
• Save off and restore Ripmax info on each channel
• Event startup
  Now that we pause while asking them to set the throttle, go ahead and let the engine run
• Meeting
• Added timeout in Free Fly and Limbo
• Capture respawn during welcome wait
  Only a problem in training, where we move the respawn point of the plane
  Needed to add a "previous state" variable to be able to recognize that we still hadn't reached the start state
• Out 8:30

Car: My adjuster told me he would be busy this afternoon, but that I could talk to anyone at his office. Wouldn't you know. As soon as I start calling their phone system goes out and all I get is busy signals. So I don't know if the estimator made it to my car today.

15/NOV/2k

• In 11:00
• Set up remote debugging, since the Ripmax driver doesn't work on Win2k
• Moved 64 meg from Amddood to Sony
• Found a loophole that let AI think the user had throttled down when he hadn't
• That was causing the "throttle too soon" message". I think there's a timing issue, so it doesn't show up in debug.
  Still a problem there. Now, I can catch the throttle in the right place.  But we're also trying to handle the position of the engine switch, which means we are constantly turning it on and off. Gonna have to chew on that awhile to figure out what I want to do. The plane is paused at that point, so I may just go ahead and let the engine run, if the switch is in the on position.
• Somehow, the controls are still coming up random the first time in
  Typo
• Simplified "okay to kill" message in Settings|Controls
• Out 10:30 - Wasted a coupla hours

Car saga:

I've had to deal with insurance companies enough to know that you have to call them every day. If you call them, one thing will get done. If you don't you'll fall through the cracks. Thus it was, today. I had to make four calls today to actually get ahold of the adjuster assigned to my case in order to get him started on the next step, getting an estimator out to my car tomorrow.

Oh, and on the voting fiasco:

Grow up people. Take responsibility for your actions. We, the people of this country, gave you the opportunity to vote. The ballot wasn't as clear as it could have been, but it certainly wasn't that hard to figure out. You look at it, notice that it's a little awkward, so you take and extra few seconds to make certain you're punching the hole you intended to. If you're too stupid or too careless to do it right, then tough.

Jay Leno had a great line in his monologue a coupla days after the elections: "Remember when it was embaressing to be stupid?"

In my minuscule opinion, the Florida state election system seems to be handling it about as well as could be expected in today's tabloid culture.  Though, I do think picking and choosing which precincts to recount is a form of gerrymandering, which is inherently underhanded. I haven't heard if they're doing this, but they should recount all precincts that were within some percentage, say 5%.

I didn't vote, because I don't take the time to research the candidates and most of the issues carefully enough. And I refuse to vote based on a couple of very narrow special interests, or alternatively, based on which candidate has the best sound bites.

Take Senator Leiberman, for example. A few years ago I was active on a Compuserve forum where we dealt with his first attacks on computer games.  Based on some first-hand reports from some of the public meetings he held, along with reporting of the Senate/Congressional hearings, it seemed very clear that he was a close-minded zealot following a politically correct agenda. Also, he's pretty devoutly religeous. Me being pretty devoutly agnostic/atheist, that counts as a strike against him from me.

OTOH, in the time since he was chosen as Gore's running mate I've read reports that, for a politician, he's remarkably honest and ethical. And those are virtues I'd like to see more of in our government.

So, if given the choice, would I vote for Leiberman? I don't know. I don't have enough information. It would take considerable time and effort for me to gather enough info that I considered reliable before I could make what I feel would be an informed decision. And I don't know many people who I feel have invested the time to understand the complex issues of today any better than I do.

And that's why I don't vote.

Hey, who put this soapbox here? Sorry about all that. Let me climb off ofthis thing :-)

14/NOV/2k

• In 10:15
• Revived Michael
• Finally got Smartheap satisfied. Turns out I had the path wrong.
• On respawn, complaining about user throttling up too soon
  We really should pause the plane until the event starts. Too late to put that in, now
• Added a "skip frame" count to EventAI
  Otherwise, we move the throttle down one frame and test it the same frame. But the input kick doesn't take effect for another frame or two. By that time, we're already in a state that thinks the user previously had the throttle at 0. So we disqualify him for "moving the throttle."
• Don't set a "first frame" boolean when resetting the input system
  This was only used in DX, and it doesn't look like it's needed
• Out 7:00 Hockey

Really distracted by my car. Turns out it's over $5000 damage.

The guess is that something called a "pulsation dampener" was leaking fuel.   Apparently, that's a device between the fuel pump and the injectors that smoothes out the flow of fuel to the injectors. I found several hits in Google, so I guess that's a standard piece of fluid dynamics equipment.

Started talking with the insurance company to cover it under my comprehensive. I sure hope they don't want to total it. But I'm afraid that's what's going to happen. Not sure what I'll do then.

The really sad part is, I've been smelling gas for quite awhile. I guess my procrastination really cost me big, this time.

On, man.  Here's a guy that had the same problem I did.  Only he was even less lucky than me.  Mine didn't even cook the paint on the hood.

Here are a coupla advertising shots showing one in pristine condition.     Man, I like this car.  I have a photo of mine that I took not long after I bought mine, but I can't find it right now.

13/NOV/2k

I feel like I need to type up what I did all weekend. I'm so used to doing that. I did borrow Rosy's truck until my car is fixed. I was going to rent a car, but my driver's license is way expired

• In 11:00
• Man, I'm not used to having a coupla days off. I can't remember what I was doing when I left Friday
• A coupla events' auto-engine start still aren't working
  Turns out only one wasn't working. All the others work as we want. Basically, we override the switch on the controller
• Switching to new machine. A Dell P3/800. Nice :-)
• Problem with Smartheap/Heapagent
  It keeps complaining that it needs dbi.dll or mspdb40/41.dll. I don't have any of those on amddood, nor does Michael on his machine
• Out 7:15

10/NOV/2k

Yikes! My car is likely going to cost a minimum of $1000, if I'm lucky and nothing important was damaged

• In 10:00
• Finish popping up controls pane
• What to do when we try to force engine on and the switch is in the off position
  Obey the switch
• Don't instantiate controls first time in
  Reduces confusion when taking them to controls screen
  Bring up Windows controller applet
• Out 7:00

09/NOV/2k

Well, my day started off lousy. My car caught fire. Luckily, it happened while I was at a light, so I could smell it and see the smoke. I pulled across the street to a gas station (away from the pumps) and they had a fire extinguisher. I think we caught it before it did a lot of damage. At least, looking from the top of the engine I couldn't see any major damage. And it didn't cook the paint off.

I sure like this car. It's normally very reliable. I hope nothing major is damaged.

• In 1:00
• Apparently, my auto engine start isn't working. It works on my machine!
  Turns out I somehow overlooked balloon pop
• Pop up controls pane on initial startup
  You know what's the most difficult part of this product? It's not the depth perception. It's not ZBuffering. It's trying to get the transmitter/joystick driver loaded on a neophyte's machine. There's just no easy programatic way to do that. For a hard-core gamer it's no big deal. But for a big percentage of our audience it's impenetrable.
• Out 7:00 - Have to ride home with Chad (shudder!)

08/NOV/2k

• In 10:30
• Apparently, prefRead* is slow. So we're going to have DoFrame set a flag so that we can assert that we don't call any of them every frame
  Oops, my first compile was in release mode. Now I have to compile the world in debug mode. Doh!
  Well, asserts don't work. We have several instances where we get called during DoFrame where we can safely read a pref setting. The call comes at a point where we know it'll only be called once, or at least just a few times. So, instead, we're going to count up the number of reads we do while inside of DoFrame and on shutdown we'll assert that we don't have more than a few hundred
• Make description boxes read-only
• More work on setting up new machine
• Installed Multi-Edit 9.0 beta 2
  It's nicely integrated with Visual Studio. My 5 minute test makes it look like it's going to work really well
• Added strTrainingControlsPointDeducted
• Going over latest Ripmax list
• Start engine automagically for user in all events
• Out 7:30

07/NOV/2k

• In 10:30
• Getting some random behavior in First flights
  Sometimes it thinks you touched the ground
  Michael found the touching ground. Apparently, our raycasting code to find height AGL is ignoring the user's plane most of the time, but not always. So we're getting a hit on the top of the wing that makes it look like the origin of the plane is .39 feet under ground.
• Sometimes the start position is at the wrong end of the track, or something
  Can't reproduce this one, today. I think I fixed something yesterday that can cause this.
• Finishing landing speed recommendations
• Any disqualification in First/Advanced flights was kicking you back to the beginning
  That sure would have been annoying
• We're at RC1!!!
• Testing

06/NOV/2k

• In 10:30
• Testing
• Chad found a coupla bugs on some of the stuff I did Friday
• Finishing conditions for take-off
• Finishing conditions for first flights/advanced flights
• Testus backwardus on T&G deduct point test
• We found another Pentium bug!
  Not really. But apparently the floating point on an AMD is a little different than an Intel. When I divide 120 by 60 and put that into an int, on an AMD I get 2 and on an Intel I get 1.
• Widened corridor in taxi
• Oops, not displaying X's in takeoff
• F-16 in free flight thinks engine is on and can't get to preflight
• Don't say "point deducted" if no X's showing
• Another try at finishing conditions in first/advanced flights
• Oops, TestTrack's critical job detector kicked in
• Touching up landing speed recommendations
• Out 11:00

05/NOV/2k

• In 1:30
• Testing
• Update text for events and training
• Out 6:00 Hockey

04/NOV/2k

• In 1:00
• Try to detect which Ripmax channels exist
  The driver sometimes returns bogus values if the Tx is unplugged or turned off. We'd like to detect that and tell the user
• Prompt the user if the main controls aren't assigned
• Testing
• Out 9:00

03/NOV/2k

• In 1:30
• Finishing conditions of take-off and first flights/advanced flights
• Go over defaults
• Testing
• Out 10:00 - Hockey

02/NOV/2k

• In 10:45
• Workshop crash, not finding propeller in combo
• Missing prop on borg
• Protect against out of bounds combo indicies
• Still can't find source nor workaround to unpause bug
• Typo in final throttle position in free fly checkout
  Was looking for 500-99%
• Don't let taxi score go negative
• Remove Unlimited Tx range
• In glide, don't check for off runway during rollout
• In pylon, compare actual altitude against pylon min height (skyfield)
• On aircraft load, modify fuel to look for capacity set in workshop
• Out 5:00am, the next day

01/NOV/2k

In 11:45

• Electric planes still not working in glide
  Not detecting when they land
  Turns out I got stuck forcing their engine to off and never fell into any other tests, so we never switched states. This also masked plane broken detection
  Changed order of tests so that we break out of that state even if we have to force the engine off every time through. Also, changed ForceEngineOff to reduce throttle to idle in addition to setting engine state
• Planes not responding to throttle in taxi and takeoff
  When we unpause the plane (re-enable inertia) we zero everything out. Apparently, there's some "previous frame" value that's getting held over. It causes a number to go negative and our engine refuses to apply torque
• Out 8:30 - Hockey

All Hollow's Eve/2k

• In 12:15
• Crash seems to be moving around
  Chad has crashed it four or five times today. Michael and I can't get it to happen on our machines.
• Glide handling of electric engines
  When getting electrics to work in preflight, I broke glide. For preflight and the beginning of events, we want to treat electrics as always-on. In glide, after the climb, we want to look at the throttle setting of electrics.
• Load imagehlp.dll dynamically
  What a pain
• Boost new countdown sound a little
• Start on trying to determine if channel exists in ripmax driver
• Out 2:00 - And I thought it would be a light day because there aren't many bugs

30/OCT/2k

• In 11:15
• Attacking a crash bug in the sound manager
  Can't reproduce it. Chad only sees it about once per day
• Sorted combobox isn't working in one spot
  Turns out, we're being bit by inconsistent use of an indirection table.  The default handler goes through the table for the icon, but doesn't for the text. In the other screens we're responding to the change selection message by setting some internal variables and then turning right around and setting the current selection. setCurrentItem goes through in both cases. Since we're so close to gold, I'm just working around this by doing the same thing in this workshop screen. After ship I'll go back and sort out what should be happening in that handler.
• Moved telemetry down 10%
• Default preflight checkout to enabled (dunno when that changed)
• Change control fam roll rate to 360
• Set view velocity so that we get doppler in tower and dropcam views
• Out 12:15

29/OCT/2k

• In 2:30
• Daylight Screwup Time really annoys me. Even when it's in my favor, like this one. Why in the world do we intentionally cause so much confusion and inconvenience twice a year?
• That smoke turned out to be a pain. Took awhile to back into the problem. It looks like that code just growed. It's pretty nasty.
• Get random working in Advance flights
  I was changing the start location but not the target orientation. So it looked like the X's were unnecessary. Now, I only change starting location when needed
• Changed Pylon text from "Final score" to "Final time"
• In target drop, always keep the closest edge of the target the same distance away. For the smaller targets it was too far
• In T&G, if user touches outside landing area and drives on, give him more instructions
• Out 12:00

28/OCT/2k

• In 2:00
• Went through all event and training and plugged leaks where we allocate memory for a cookie
• I have a few leakage reports that don't look right. I'm looking at where we allocate and delete. They sure looked matched up to me.
  Ah, an odd one. A sequence of events problem. In directory foo I created a copy of one of the planes to test the workshop. It was unique at the time. Later, in directory bar, I created a copy of the same plane using the same name. In that directory it was unique. Directory foo runs from a bigfile that gets built from directory bar. After doing an update to get the latest assets my .bat file automagically builds the bigfile. So now, I have two planes with the same human-readable name. That screwed up some of the code that deals with matching the sorted combobox to the unsorted internal list of aircraft.
• Added StartInAirSpeed
• Had to add default value parm to root CPropInfo::GetIntProperty and GetFloatProperty
• Trying to figure out why smoke stops
  Has something to do with an unsigned going past zero. I'll try to finish it tomorrow
• Out 1:30 - three hours

27/OCT/2k

• In 12:00
• Oops, in one spot in airfoil preview I was building the preview string with the user display string instead of the filename string
• Servo sounds
  It turns out moving the sound to the airfoil doesn't make sense. Since multiple airfoils are serviced by one servo we need to handle the sound at a higher level. Moving updatesound call to the aircraft DoFrame
  Silly mistake ate some time. I figured the control delta for the ailerons. Then used the same variable in the following loop for the elevators, then the rudder.  I forgot to clear the variable. So when the ailerons moved, all three sounds played. When the elevator moved, the elevator and rudder sounds played. I was trying to reduce the volume of the servo sounds and started testing with the aileron. I could never hear it because the old, louder elevator sound was drowning it out. Took about an hour to figure that out.
• Coupla small memory leaks in target drop
• Need to go through all events to make sure we don't allocate memory for cookie info passed to overlays
• Out 9:00 - Hockey

26/OCT/2k

• In 1:30
• Leftover "high score" in landings
• Displaying "First flights" in Advanced flights
  How odd. I never grabbed the first/advanced flights flag from the mission class
• Electric engines don't respond to Start engine command, so our events wouldn't let them past that part of the event startup sequence
• Oops, the old code used CEngine as the base of everything. Michael added a CEngineBase that CEngine was derived from. But, all the new engine classes were derived from classes that were also derived from CEngineBase. Yet, our legacy code was casting to CEngine * in the accessor routine and everyone calling the accessor was using CEngine *.  So we were talking to all those instances through the wrong branch of the hierarchy tree. The reason it has been working at all is the interfaces to CEngine and CShaftEngine (what everything else is currently derived from) were identical. So everything happened to line up.
• Hmm, now it's the other way. In preflight I want the engine off early on.  Need to wrap that up, apparently
• Looking at servos playing all the time
  Turns out it's due to the jitter filtering we're doing. We're currently updating the sounds in the control handler, where we set a target for the servos to move to. I think we need to move that to the DoFrame of the foil itself. We'll see what Michael says in the morning
• Disable rename and delete for built-in engines
• Display airfoil preview when changing wing (wing, elevator, rudder)
• Added wait cursor when changing wings
• Out 1:45 - Two hours

25/OCT/2k

• In 12:45
• If lower limbo at 0, don't create lower tape
• Pause after respawn in takeoff training so they can read the winds
• Initialized variable so you don't get "Penalty" display on entry to Pylon
• Removed "Practice touch and goes" checkbox in landing training
• Worked on new countdown beep
• Kill too low alarm at end of race in pylon
• Layout pass on Options|Controls
• Duplicate Enable Clouds in weather pane of Free Fly
• Oh my lack-of-god! The country western noise polution outside is significantly worse than usual! I didn't think that was possible
• After each spawn in training, have user reset throttle
• Out 1:00 - one hour

24/OCT/2k

• In 12:00
• Finish CRadio
  Man, that was a battle
• In random advanced flights, make sure starting location is randomized, too
• Trying to make Ripmax driver detection more robust
  Specifically, if the driver is installed but the Tx isn't connected
• If we don't detect the Ripmax driver then don't let them uncheck Use DX
• Added texture detail slider and hooked it up in game engine
• Added score display to limbo
• Changed takeoff to a single target with different winds
• Put winds on status line
• Treat winds as stages
• Out 2:30 - Two hours

23/OCT/2k

• In 12:00
• Bitched and moaned about a coupla bugs that Chad kicked back to me
  Above no-fly zone
  Limbo tape on ground
• Bug list meeting
• Fixed random not random enough in advanced flights
• Show "Stage 1/5" in First flights/Advanced flights
• Remove high score from taxi
• Change score message in taxi and precision flight to congrats you finished
• Don't let num laps go below 0 in precision flight
• Changed default channel assignments of 5-8 in Ripmax driver to Ignore
• Need to put jitter-handling into Ripmax handler
• Tracking down why scrolling info sometimes drops strings
• Ah, has to do with reversing the order of display and not taking into account the scrollback buffer
• Out 8:15 Hockey

22/OCT/2k

• In 2:00
• Display a message when touching ground in training sessions where we shouldn't
  I put in a 1/4 sec alarm. If the plane is damaged in that time I count it as a broken plane. Otherwise, a ground touch
• Found an MFU that I introduce with the latest preflight change
  Had an extra test for DoCheckout I didn't need. With it in there I was bypassing the work I needed to do after they successfully completed the checkout
  Added analog input path for engine, guns, cannons, and bombs
• If high enough (200 ft) don't complain to user about flying over no-fly zone
• Got doppler working right in chase views
• Use correct preview image from skins directory in training drop-down
• Some of the combo boxes got changed to parmNumItemsVisible 10. Changed to 5
• Remove unlimited battery and allow failures from free fly options screen
• Touch up glide score messages
• Limit limbo to one foot vertical seperation and five foot horizontal
• Found a situation where changes to event options weren't getting saved
  Basically, if you used the X in the corner to leave the program while in event screen
• Out 12:00 minus one hour

21/OCT/2k

• In 2:00
• Implementing a fixed behind the plane view for first flights
• Going down the list of bugs
• Fixed both arrows showing if going backwards
  I had assumed that I was testing against a centerline in the corridor. It turns out I was testing the angle from a point on the centerline to the end of the corridor and the plane. I was trying to figure direction from that. I guess I was passing through 90 degrees or something and not handling a border condition correctly. That made it look like I was going from one side of the centerline to the other without passing through the middle.
• In First flights, count behind the plane as stage one and bump all the rest by one
• Don't change view until after respawn
• Copy over points needed console var to first flights to speed testing
• Changed limit to test against for overcontrol
• Fixed (again) preflight not showing up in training if turned off in events
  Doh! virtual functions aren't called from a constructor. I know that. Tried to do it anyway
• Engine on and start in air should only be allowed in free fly
• Show bloom on bonus touch in T&G
• Add any key message in T&G
• Give some instructions with Go message in T&G
• Oops, need to check for plane broken even if not touching ground
  Silly me. When I wrote this I wasn't thinking about someone flying into buildings, etc
• Out 10:15 - Lazy for two hours

20/OCT/2k

• In 1:30
• Hmm, 15 hours yesterday. I think I'm only good for 10-12, today
• I changed ProductSettings.h to get datalogging in the release build, which rebuilds the entire world. But then built the debug version overnight. Oops. Oh, well. I would have built it, anyway, at some point.
• Looks like we're shifting the pitch based on the raw value instead of the running average. That causes it to warble pretty bad. Let's see if using the running average helps
  That sounds a little better. We still don't have a really good sample. It seems fairly close, but not quite right
  Duh! Similar to the engine sound, we should change the volume of the servo sound. Also, the sample we have doesn't have the quiet rattle of a slow-moving servo. I'll bet we can mix two samples with different volume ramps to get that effect. Hopefully, I can steal a half a day in the next week to try all that
• I've been stealing a few minutes here and there to fly the sim. Man, this thing is fun
• Decoupling flip-off from ailerons. Handling it all within CEventAI
• Implemented flip-off to start countdown
• Once we get a positive flip-off, disable it. This keeps us from skipping past later tests
• Out 11:00

19/OCT/2k

• In 1:00
• Testing out doppler in release
  Sounds good. Chad has some bugs on it
  All sounds, including event info sounds, are dopplered
  Turns out it was a bogus default. Had a 1 where we wanted a 0
• Working on servo sounds
  Have to rebuild the world in release mode. Debug is too slow to test this
  Michael's console vars come through again. Makes it really easy to try different values to figure out what works best
• Out 4:15 - Distracted for one hour

18/OCT/2k

• In 12:00
• Oops, a coupla IsDisqualifications tests in training
• Make sure preflight comes up in training even if turned off in events
• Another try to prohibit bombs before start of target drop
• Split out QuittingOrRestarting so we don't clear keyboard buffer
• Finished flip off consistency
• Starting on doppler
• Spent about four compile-the-worlds (at least an hour) battling const-ness.
  Gave up and un-const'ed the offending variable
• Michael had some old doppler code in there. In one pathway it was missing the call to actually send the value down to the low-level sound system. Put that in there and it looks like it might be working
• Out 8:15 - Hockey

17/OCT/2k

• In 12:15
• Finishing up controller GUI
• Reset controller combo like events combo
• Figure out when to disable which controls
• Hmm, should I leave channels 5-8 enabled?
• Trying to churn through some bugs
• Compare bomb drop height to altitude, not height agl
• Don't allow user to drop a bomb prior to beginning of event
• When breaking limbo tape make sure they're disqualified
• Change Glide messages when computer controls engine
• Kill Go message in glide after 3 secs
• Display times in welcome messages as x:xx instead of x seconds or x:x
• Changed pause on disqualification to .75 sec
• Always check for plane broken and no-fly zone in training
• Detect broken plane in pylon
• Don't display "high scores" in first flights
• Put "" around "Enter" and "Esc" in instructions
• Enable bloom in precision flight
• Look for flip off in all welcome messages
• Flip off in Taxi start
• Out 12:45 - Minus one hour

16/OCT/2k

• In 12:30
• Don't try to put commands in queue. Just translate to appropriate axis
  How to name them?
  No, need to do both, sort of. We need to make sure the low-level axis we're sending matches the mapping the command system is looking for. So, I'm going to search the command map for the appropriate ID and save off what axis is assigned to it. The user is going to tell me what command he wants assigned to a Ripmax axis. I'll use that in a lookup table. The table tells me how to convert from a Ripmax axis to an RC Sim axis.
• Implemented a GetInputID similar to GetKeyName
• Fought compilier slow-down
  It was taking five minutes or more to finish loading the workspace.  Had to delete all the compiler temp files.  *.plg *.aps *.opt *.ncb
• Recompiled due to _TRACE changes
• Got control reassignment finished
• Working on gang-loading assignments based on controller
• Loading controller names from file
• Out 12:30 - Very little wasted time

15/OCT/2k

In 2:15

• Start calibrating
  Looks good
• Going over command mappings

Out 12:30 - 2 hours frittered away

14/OCT/2k

• In 1:30 - Didn't fall asleep until 6:00 last night/this morning
• Started "Big Jar of Ketchups" in tribute to Looking Glass. It's more of a "Small Plastic Cup of Ketchups" so far
• Damn, I just realized it's the 14th
• The calibration dialog is going to take a coupla layout passes, so added it to layout file. That meant I had to move all of the Load routines from CGUIScreen to CGUILayout. That took pretty much the entire day
• Got calibration dialog displaying input from Tx
• Out 1:45 - goofed off three hours

13/OCT/2k

• In 11:30
• Do we want separate calibrate buttons for each channel? Or a dialog that has a "Next" button in it.
  Going with the Next button to start
• I really don't like how the Ripmax stuff woven its way into the input system
  I need to work on learning to think in either a plug-in architecture, or a messaging architecture. There must be some way to make it more generic
• Got CalibrateBox stubbed in
• Adding more controls, trying to fit them in
• Out 10:00 - Hockey

12/OCT/2k

• Read GUIDs from file
• Man, working with property lists is a pain, sometimes
• Implemented checkbox to use Ripmax or DX for joystick input
• Reinit the input system when switching
• Man, just wasted over an hour. The DX driver wasn't reporting the position of a few of the axes. Turns out the driver doesn't assign all the channels by default. Just the first two. Since I happened to be using a Futaba I just assumed they were all one-for-one by default
• Fixed DX throttle to do -1 to 1
• Sheesh, now, having reinstalled DX7a, the direct Ripmax calls didn't want to work. Had to uninstall and reinstall the driver, again, several times. We may have found the magic incantation. When uninstalling
  Make sure that it has been removed from the Game Controllers Control Panel apple
  Verify that all the registry entries are gone
  Verify that the DLL and VXD are gone
  Then, you can reinstall
  If any of those are left over it appears that it gets confused in the next install.
• Changing look of sliders
• Disable all controls when going through DX
• Make sure changes to reverse checkbox gets back down to Ripmax
• Out 1:00

11/OCT/2k

• In 11:30
• Apparently Michael was here all night
• Oops, I broke the build last night
• All my stuff compiles, but I'm not actually adding commands to the queue with the Ripmax stuff, yet. I had been working on the GUI just before I left and I was thinking, "This is good enough to check in." But the back end simply wasn't finished. Doh!
• Expanding the options box to make room for everything we need
• Read max joystick value from INI
• Change all analog inputs to go from -1 to 1
• Out 8:00 - Hockey

10/OCT/2k

• In 11:30
• Lunch at Poor Richard's
• If they ever change the driver GUID we need to be able to handle that
• Miraculously found code in the MSDN to convert from ASCII to GUID
• Map Ripmax channels to axes we expect
• Add more accessors to get Ripmax info to and from the GUI
• Hooking up to GUI to test
• Got the GUI to move sliders
• Going to sleep on exactly how I want to implement calibration. With so many axes, it's not as easy as the old PC joystick "move it to the corners" routines were
• Out 1:00 - 1:30 wasted

09/OCT/2k

• In 9:30
• Trying to read values from ripmax driver
  Getting bogus values
  Finally got it to work, apparently by cleaning out the registry
• Our CAP232 got damaged without even leaving the ground
  Joel dropped a ladder on it. Only minor cosmetic damage
• Don't really want to detect Ripmax driver by name string, so spelunking to figure out how to define a GUID
• Out 8:00 - Softball

07/OCT/2k

• At home 11:00
• Couldn't get sim to install
• Turns out I had lost the directory structure when unzipping. Dunno how.
  I've had that option turned on forever
• Got it to compile at home
• With the missing/misplaced assets, I couldn't get the sim to run. Or rather, it sort of runs
• All of that took hours. I gave up for the day.
• 5:00

06/OCT/2k

• In 11:45
• The back of my throat is a little scratchy and my sinuses are beginning to ache. Damn, I don't want a cold right now
• Testing GUI if we initialize the input system early
  Seems to work
• Fixed FOV bug in control fam
• Clear string in list callback to track class if we don't have anything to say
• Laying out controller screen
• Out 8:00

05/OCT/2k

Sheesh, it's been a month since I posted any updates here.  It was a combination of crunch mode eating all my time and a coupla weeks of burnout where I didn't get anything done worth mentioning.  I'm finally back in gear and getting lots done.   We're pushing hard to get this thing finished.

And, I want to post this, but our cable modem is down, again.  I haven't been able to use it much, but from what my roommates say it's down for at least a few minutes every day.  It may be time to switch to DSL.  I know a few people who have it, and I haven't heard them complaining.

• In 11:30
• Some code got block-copied around that had preflight coming up every time
• Reviewing manual
• Saved pilot views
• Starting on controller screen
• Out 11:00 - 2 hours wasted

04/OCT/2k

• In 11:45
• Lunch with Ritual
• Finish taxi laps
• Make pause alarm consistent across training
• Precision flight laps
• Landing laps
• Remove state debug info in T&G
  Hmm, looks like it should be defaulting to off. #ifdef'd it just to be sure
• Tidied up bug base
• Look at speed warnings on landing
  For some odd reason that Michael and I can't fathom, Eric had the speed functions in the aircraft truncating to ints.
• Out 10:30

03/OCT/2k

We won the softball game.  Made it to hockey on time.  Got humiliated 8-0.   That wasn't much fun.

• In 11:15
• Taxi track
• In free fly, don't nag them to turn on their engine if they don't have one
• Tidy up in-flight instructions
  If not displaying one, put a \n there as a placeholder
• Added warning if too much throttle in taxi
• Taxi laps
• Out 11:00 - 2 hours wasted

02/OCT/2k

• In 10:30
• Revived Michael and Chad
• Started setting up Sony to run non-development utilities
  Maybe my machine won't slow down as soon (Windows sucks)
• Implemented music track support, field/event, training session
  The first song that played was "My Baby's In Love With Eddie Vedder" by Weird Al. Very appropriate for Podunk, methinks
• Moved Start in air and Start with engine on to free fly pane
• Tidied up bug base a bit
• Changed warning buffer from fixed distance to percentage of corridor width
• Fixed garbage text in preflight
  Missing () in an sprintf call sprintf(s, "%s", strClass.c_str());
• In preflight, handle plane with no ailerons
• In preflight, handle plane with no engine
• Out 7:00 - Softball at 8:30 and Hockey at 10:00. It's gonna be tight

01/OCT/2k

• In 12:00
• Auto-continue pref in checkout
• Added a little success sound in checkout
• Installed more ram
• Installed ramdisk software
• Found out the ice is melting at the rink we were going to practice at tonight (compressor out)
• Changed preflight startup throttle to 40-60%
• Looked at servo sounds
  Don't like any that we have right now. The ones that Jay has in there are better than any of the new ones
• Buncha prefs work
• Changed Model Tx Range to Unlimited Tx Range
  Turns out that since we're not using it all I had to do was change the text :-)
• Added auto continue to free fly options and settings
  What's a good term in human language to use for that on the options screen?
• Changed pause timeout at the end of events to .3
• Out 10:30 - 1:30 goofed off

30/SEP/2k

• In 12:15
• Went over Michael's impressions of takeoff
• Dressing up control fam status line
• Implementing flip-off in takeoff
• Out 6:15 - Too cold here, going to work at home
• Flip off into takeoff
• Turn engine off when sim paused

29/SEP/2k

• In 11:15
• Schedule meeting
• Randomize starting direction a little
• Taxi from side of runway?
• Got multiple targets working
• Got wind change in
• Display winds at start of each stage
• Ready for testing
• Out 9:00

28/SEP/2k

• In 11:30 - Feeling better
• Added assert to catch when we go past the end of corridors
• Really felt bad after lunch
  Worked through it and got most of the infrastructure in place.
• Just need a little work on getting the transition from one step to the next
• Out 8:00

27/SEP/2k

• In 11:00
• Got takeoff to run for more than a few seconds
• Was "placing" the corridor more than once, which bumped it ahead
  Really ought to change that to work on a pointer parm
• Found MFU when alphabetizing a combo with different number of items in source list
• Sheesh, spent hours on an x,y swap mistake
• Placing target
• Working on detecting when we're past target
• Out 7:30 - Felt horrible all day

26/SEP/2k

• In 11:00
• Eavesdropped on Michael's briefing to Chad on changes to planes
• Added TrainingAllPlanes
  Sort that list
• Adjust landing track
• Remove stats display from landing
• Starting on takeoff training
• Fixed free fly where it was clearing the text when it shouldn't have
• Out 11:00 - minus about 3 hours wasted

25/SEP/2k

• In 9:30
• Control fam finishing conditions
• Watching for overcontrol
• Meeting/video from London
• Added in support to deduct point if overcontrolling or wrong way
• Text on finish
• Out 9:15

21/SEP/2k

• Chad added an engine to the SS and it's working in the sim
• Still crashes in the workshop
  Turns out it wasn't finding the plane icon for some reason. Tested for that

20/SEP/2k

• If user flies over no-fly zone in free fly, respawn plane
• Consolidate welcome and start engine messages in free fly
• Helped Chad find bugs in Solar Sailor
• There's an uninitialized airfoil of some kind

19/SEP/2k

• Getting text finished in control fam
• Turn off engines every frame
• I think I'll tear through the bug base for a bit

18/SEP/2k

• Finally getting something to test in control fam
• I'm really burned out. Took the weekend off. That seems to have helped, a little

8/SEP/2k

• Micheal went over build process so I can babysit it while he's gone
• Handle respawn in control fam

7/SEP/2k

• Pretty much have it working. Just need to handle the ending condition and put in the instructions

6/SEP/2k

• When I proposed control fam I thought it would be easy. Just spin the plane. What could be simpler? It turns out, it's a lot of work because I have to do everything.
• My first attempts at translation were funny. The planes translated right off the screen. Oops.

Went to C league hockey tryouts at Ice-O-Plex. It didn't go well. I have no stamina. I started running last week. Hopefully, it'll start making a difference in a month or two. In addition, it was very disorganized. And Whip didn't put any effort into urging the team reps to pick anyone.

5/SEP/2k

• Trying to work out how to get from one orientation to the next
• They're not all just spinning the plane

4/SEP/2k

• Sheesh, finally getting some real work done. I think I'm suffering some burn out
• Got control fam roughed in and nearly working

3/SEP/2k

• Working on new view

2/SEP/2k

• Working on new view

1/SEP/2k

• Started rotating planes
• Skip preflight in control fam
• Okay, the crash Chad was seeing yesterday wasn't too many labels.  It was the global property within GUILayout.ppf growing over 32k.  Moving some comments outside the parens fixed it, for now.

31/AUG/2k

• Starting to look at new view for control fam
• Removed hard-coded limits of labels, bmps and boxes in GUIScreen

30/AUG/2k

• Still slowly chipping away at control fam

29/AUG/2k

• Trying to get control fam finished and playable by today or tomorrow

28/AUG/2k

• Got on a roll and stayed home to work.  Partly, because I had an early softball game

27/AUG/2k

• Arrgh!  The cold drove me away.  I think it's in the mid- to low-60's in this office

26/AUG/2k

• More taxiing
• Trying to stub in new control fam

25/AUG/2k

• Working on taxiing
• Asked for advice at RC Online
  Of the people who answered, the consensus was never point the plane at a person nor the pits if the engine is running

24/AUG/2k

• Reviewed design meeting with Michael
• Trying to stub in new training sessions for next week's test

23/AUG/2k

• Skimmed leakage report trying to spot what might be causing instability
• Fired off an email to Microquill asking if there's some way to keep statics from getting listed as leaks
• Adding check to make sure they don't turn on engine if they need preflight in free fly
• Only do preflight once per run
• Design meeting on precision flight and taxiing
  Chad came up with some changes to taxi that make it much more useful
• Pause at end of event

22/AUG/2k

• All of the bugs over the last few days:
• Display icon in taskbar if we go out of full-screen mode
• Play TNGGo.wav at the appropriate spot
• TNG countdow timer stopped at 0:01
• Display TNG score at end
• Removed waypoint dings
• Pause sim if event over, either successful or disqualified
• In free fly, watch for no-fly zone and broken plane
• Helped Jay with a couple of brick walls
  If the sim freezes and the debugger says you're waiting for an object, reboot
  A static string was getting corrupted.  Turns out he had a pointer into the string table.

21/AUG/2k

• Feeling a little better.  Didn't document which bugs I fixed today

20/AUG/2k

• Another unproductive day.  Fixed a few bugs

19/AUG/2k

• Got in late.  Didn't get much done

18/AUG/2k

• Looked at checklistbox and decided to leave the tip text the way it is
• Fixed preflight MFU
  If you failed you got stuck in "your engine should be running"
• Oops, make sure warmup time is 5 sec

17/AUG/2k

• Finishing a/c at home
• Design meeting about implmenting throw modifier
  Decided to go halfway.  What we should do is keep a proplist.  What we are doing is matching everything else that deals with the mission class.  We're parsing it when we read the mission in and querying when we need it
• Tested allowing wind to vary for every part
  Works better than I expected.  I thought it would throw the plane around too much
• Making sure defaults are correct in advanced flights
• Fixed duplicate string in string table
• Cleaning up extraneous \t's in Fox tooltips and adding \n support

16/AUG/2k

• A/C started this morning
  Before I had left the house they apparently dropped something on one of the vents and punched it through the ceiling.  Nothing major.  I think once it's patched and painted you won't even know it happened.
• More design review on first flights
  Decided to add advanced flights, which is basically the same thing as first flights. First flights will have everything locked to simplest and advanced flights will provide the GUI controls to tweak it a little
• Implementing advanced flight
• Moved spinner increments to guilayout

15/AUG/2k

• Man, what did I do, yesterday?  I can't remember
• Finishing adding back end support for new GUI options in first flights
• Chad and I spent quite a while trying to simplify first flights GUI

14/AUG/2k

• Tweaking first flights GUI
• ifdefed out testing of first flights finish conditions

13/AUG/2k

• Nothing accomplished

12/AUG/2k

• Came in, but spent most of my time dealing with the a/c

11/AUG/2k

• In late (well, a little later than usual.)  Get to buy this year's a/c.  Joy.
• Changing name of class/cpp to match new name, first flights (was control fam)
• Changing GUI to first flights
  Adding in all the combos we talked about day before yesterday
  Not implimented in sim, yet
• Add sound when scoring in Limbo
• Since we're clearing the callback when killing the bar, we need to make sure to set the callback when creating the bar.  We were setting the callback in the constructor

10/AUG/2k

• Fix success test in control fam
  Don't simply look for warnings.  We turn those on before you're actually failing
• Changed default width to match guide ring
• Don't let max and min in limbo cross each other
• Change weather screen to show winds as 17G25 instead of 17+8
  Sheesh.  That turned out to be remarkably painful.  Ripped it all back out because it makes the random controls too difficult to describe, since they would behave differently
• Fixed a bug where we were saving the wrong min random wind speed
• If they fail preflight, make sure engine is off
• Make sure they don't start engine too soon, or turn off engine after it's started

9/AUG/2k

• Yikes!  It's the ninth, already?
• Upgrade Multi-Edit and see if that fixes read-only bug
• Rotate target ring fix
• Implment Limbo GUI and hook it up
• Design meeting on new control familiarization
• Bug parsing Limbo section of GUILayout
  Doh!  Pilot error.  I had another leftover proplist of the same name
  Search terms: Proplist comes back empty in GUILayout
• Limbo feature complete

8/AUG/2k

• Design meeting on training additions/changes
• Place limbo objects
• Initial testing
  It's a tough event

7/AUG/2k

• If the IDE can't find projects in SourceSafe, close the IDE and search for and delete *.ncb *.plg *.opt *.aps
• Implemented CLimboTape
• Implemented base class CDamageFreeObject
• Roughed in most of Limbo logic

6/AUG/2k

• Trying to fight distractions and do some Limbo

5/AUG/2k

• Beta testers
  Well, parts of that were a slap in the face.  Some we things we knew about.  Still have some work to do on training.  We got some pretty good feedback.  I was mostly paying attention to the newbies.  Michael said he got some good feedback from the experienced flyers, too.

4/AUG/2k

• Sheesh, where did the time go?
• Working on stats output to text file
• Trying to get some Limbo done
• Answered a few Fox questions for Jay
  He got the time spinner done by the end of the day
• Seems like I did more, but I can't think of it right now

3/AUG/2k

• Adding display and detection of bombs left
• Don't let them drop bombs after event is over
• Detect bomb hit in no-fly zone
  Had to rearrange tests in BombDying to handle this
• Helped point Jay at making a CGUITimeSpinner
• Started looking at writing training stats out to a text file
• Started looking at Limbo Bar
• Went flying

Our first outing with the "company plane."  A Hobbico Avistar Trainer.

This plane is much more responsive than the club trainer was.  It can easily finish an aileron roll before losing much pitch.  And I didn't realize just how much difference dihedral makes when yawing a plane.  The wing on this plane is nearly flat, and rudder input causes very little roll.  And the turning behavior is much closer to the sim than I had thought, before.  It yaws several degrees and then sticks there.  I didn't take time to try a flat turn, though.  Next time.

The wind was much more mild than last time.  Probably under 10 mph.  Only Michael and I flew.  Chad didn't want to.

It was a very busy night at the field.  At the end I heard the guy coordinating everything telling John that they'd had 44 flights by 18 students.  There were almost always four planes in the sky.

Our first instructor, Bob, was very conservative.  When I took the controls he got upset when I started yanking the plane around.  Apparently, I was too confident on the controls.  He wanted nice, smooth turns.  So I just flew around the pattern and tried to keep him happy.  Near the end he had me doing some low-speed passes over the runway.

Our second instructor, Alan, was much more confident that he could get me out of trouble if necessary.  I did some figure-8s with him on my second flight.  Then on my third I asked about possibly shooting some landings.

He had me flying low and slow over the runway.  Again, with the crowded sky, I let the plane climb a few times to clear traffic that was taking off or landing.  Then one time, I'm about 20 or 30 feet off the deck, a little on the far side of the runway and he tells me to cut the throttle.  I guess he was going to have me land.

Anyway, I had messed with the throttle trim before taking off.  With the club trainer, with the throttle trim all the way up, cutting throttle left the engine running too fast.  It turned out our engine was running a bit slow.  So with the trim in the center, when I cut the throttle, the engine quit.  So I was landing whether I wanted to or not.

That didn't bother me too much.  I felt I was in control.  I kept the nose level or down and tried to let the plane settle onto the runway.  As it was losing altitude I pulled back and didn't see a response.  So I hauled back all the way and it still banged down pretty hard and bounced.  I let it climb and tried to keep my airspeed up.  Once again, it went in nose down and full elevator didn't level it out in time.  On the second hit the front wheel popped off.  The plane stayed upright as it slid to a stop.

Alan said that he didn't think I had hit hard enough that it should have taken the wheel off.  Possibly the collar that holds it on was a little loose.  Nobody checked it, specifically.

So, while my first landing wasn't as good as it could have been, but it wasn't a complete disaster.  It's too bad the plane wasn't still flyable.  Even if we had collars, it was dark enough that there wasn't time to fix it and try again.

Here's a picture:

2/AUG/2k

• Implementing two-level altitude warning in target drop
• Oops, Michael NULLed out a field that had just been filled
• Design meeting on Elliot's proposed changes
• Moved frequency check to front of checklist
• SetupBloom needs to be called in State_Start, so it catches all respawns
  Added some asserts to try and catch that quicker, next time
• Figured out why the bloom wasn't always showing the right color
  Turns out I was only setting the color for one LOD.  The new bloom has multiple LODs and the others were staying at whatever they were last set to
• Wrote up bug when re-enabling inertia and there's wind
• Adding "reload" delay to COrdnance
• Implemented setting number of bombs based on GUI input

1/AUG/2k

• Finish hooking up GUI
• Go! instructions were too large in target drop
• Wasted an hour or two on pilot error
  In our control creation code I needed to pass in the parent window and the target of messages.  I left out a parm so the control was being created on the wrong parent window.

31/JUL/2k

• Adding in too low warning display
  Text and bloom
• Fixed scoring
  Indexus offbyoneus Dividing by NumMarkers instead of NumMarkers-1
• Display actual player score
• Make min altitude a console variable
  Put it in GUI?
• Hook up GUI options for bomb drop

30/JUL/2k

• Un-cheating files from SS
• Implemented clearItems in GUIComboBox to kill icons
  Jeron convinced me that it's not a bug that FXList doesn't kill those icons
• Don't consider a dropped bomb to be a piece missing from the plane
• Stop scoring after time limit/disqualification
• Put in bomb too low test
  Do we want to play a sound?
  Do we want to put up a 0 point marker?

29/JUL/2k

Took Michael up on his offer to take the day off

28/JUL/2k

• Manual review
• Changed TNG angle limits to 5-30
• Changed TNG extra touch value to 5 pts
• Will I actually get some target drop done today?
  Looks like I have it roughed in pretty good
  My fourth bomb, dropped from the station view, was a bulls-eye! :-)
  Do we want different sounds based on points awarded for each hit?

Non-work, trying to get hockey firmed up for next season

27/JUL/2k

• Yikes, SourceSafe went down again
  Cheating files until it's back up
• Tracking down memory leak in combo box bitmaps
• Sheesh, it took all day.  Turns out it's probably a bug in Fox.  The list part of the combobox knows about icons, and has a pointer to one, but doesn't delete it in the destructor of the list item.  I was deleting them manually in the destructor of our GUIComboBox.  But Michael needed to re-fill the list and was calling clearItems().  That was deleting all of the list items, but leaking their icons.
• Once again, finally back on target drop

26/JUL/2k

Hmm, it's been awhile since I've posted to my web site.  Time to rectify that

• Brought in silly nerf guns
• Finishing takeoff startup
  Added pause for "ready to start" to match others
• In takeoff, restart engine on respawn
• Added disqualification if you take off in taxi training
• Copied off current takeoff to make it taxiing
• Quit or restart in precision flight
• Ring placement on respawn in landing
• Doubled height to test against in IsTouchingGround
  Taxiing was giving a bogus takeoff disqualification
  Also might catch some planes that have tipped onto their nose in Glide
• Tracking down track segment left by construction workers in the middle of the field
• Added console variable for preflight warmup time
• Finally back on target drop

25/JUL/2k

• Takeoff and target drop design meeting
• Started on bomb drop
• Pulled off to clean out a few more MFUs for the build that Elliot will have for tomorrow
• Incorporated Chad's text size defaults
• Now that we're showing the user the values we're looking at, make sure the test value for throttle position matches the text
• Adjusted all events to include slack in the value we're looking for
• Changed T&G startup to match other events
• Working on Takeoff startup

24/JUL/2k

• It was kind of nice this weekend, plowing through a bunch of bugs in such a short time.  It really feels like I was being productive
• Weekly meeting
• When control fam had a disqualification, it had an extra any key prompt that wasn't needed
• Put a title in all states of preflight
• Show control percentages in preflight
• Color change in preflight to inform user that the computer thinks they've met the criteria
• Bugbase tidying
• Added \n parsing in CRadio

23/JUL/2k

• Hmm, just occured to me that this is 14 days straight
• Finishing up free fly startup
• Added a start message that goes away after a few seconds
• Preflight shouldn't use standard large info text routines.  The text runs off the bottom of the screen
• Fixed control fam thinking pass was successful even if we missed the ring
  Was only checking normal warnings, not way off warnings
• Ran off the end of an array, which was turning on both arrows.  What the Latin name for that?? Limitium ignoramus?
• Added a welcome message to all training sessions
• Went through all events and training to make sure they can't turn the engine on during welcome wait
• In precision flight, fixed incorrect ring position after checkout
• Looked for but couldn't find stray track segment
• Removed stray "locator" dot in taxi
• Removed "high score" from everywhere
• Updated all quit or restart messages
• Added starting countdown in center of screen to glide
• Added glide climb almost finished countdown display

22/JUL/2k

• Found a fix for the "ident.cab" error message
  It turns out, ident.cab is some sort of security file.  It's a signed file that holds a text file used to verify one or more drivers that either run the Windows Update procedure, or are brought down by Windows Update.  Anyway, it turns out the routine that uses that file can't handle the situation where you change your default "Program Files" directory to the root of a drive, ex. C:\  IOW, it can't handle the trailing backslash.  http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q245/1/21.asp?FR=1
• Leave pylon "Go!" message up until they get above 15 feet
• Added pylon pass ack and lap complete ack to scrolling area
• Added pylon penalty flag to list
• Added radio/scrolling info text size and delay time console variables
• Can't get through throttle servo check in preflight
  This looks like it should have never worked
• Crash MFU when preflight selected for free flight
  Neglected to copy new startup sequence to free fly

21/JUL/2k

• Kill balloon callback needs to be aware of respawn and quit states
• Change the random placement so they don't overlap
• Lots of consolidating of list and info display routines
  This gives Chad a few console variables that he can use to tweak the look
• Fixed a bug in Pylon where a bogus timer would start counting in the corner
  It was an extra respawn.  Basically, a Copyus pastus brought over from training.  We don't need to respawn in the events
• All events should actually wait for a keystroke when in WelcomeWait state
• Adding 3..2..1 to pylon

20/JUL/2k

• Found one more place to check for DamageFree
• Went back to Chad sizing balloons
  sm doesn't know how to collide with scaled objects
• Implementing balloon callback for scoring
• Main balloon pop event, scoring, finish conditions

19/JUL/2k

• If a property isn't showing up in the GUILayout, make sure you copied GUILayout to the directory the ini is pointed to
• Tracked down crash bug in control fam
  Turns out it's an MFU in how I delete scrolling info messages, aka radio messages.  This is a bug that probably exists in SDOE.  After 120 radio messages we'll crash.  The error was getting the final deque iterator by using end() and trying to deref it.  Oops.
• First test of balloon collisions
  Turns out our collision response and collision damage are tightly coupled.  And we simply don't have a mechanism for an object that does no damage, but wants to know about collisions.  Michael and I came up with a system that looks like it'll be generic enough to handle everything in the future.  And it moves the tagging out to the data, instead of hard-coding the relationships in code.
• Balloon pop event logic
  Instantiate balloons
  balloonsize0-3, 30, 20, 10, 5
  balloonpoints0-3, 1, 5, 10, 20

18/JUL/2k

• Went over bugbase
• Spent most of the day implementing final throttle placement
• Back on balloon pop
  Got GUI and mission nearly hooked up

17/JUL/2k

• Start working on balloon pop
• Oops, found some old logic for checkout in existing events

16/JUL/2k

• More preflight tidying
• Helped assemble trainer
• Finishing rest of overlays

15/JUL/2k

• Finishing converting other overlays to new text system

14/JUL/2k

• Implementing color/size in preflight

13/JUL/2k

• Preflight/training/events design review
• Implementing new text overlay system in preflight/list overlay
• Arrgh, bug in direction and vert winds

12/JUL/2k

• Working on wind direction and adding a vertical component

11/JUL/2k

• Working on wind.  Have some ideas
  Multiple sine waves with some noise thrown in.  It looks reasonable.
  Right now, the noise dominates the gusts.  One way to give the user control over the variability/turbulence is to adjust the balance between the sine waves and the noise

10/JUL/2k

• In control fam, fix tests to see when it's time to change starting positions
• In control fam, only show cumulative stats when changing starting positions
• Clean up stray dots
• Brought bug base up to date
• In precision flight, fixed bug if preflight not completed
• Added tap any key instructions to every prompt in preflight
• Looking at wind

7/JUL/2k

• Finishing checklist on side of screen
• Touched up SDOE network doc and posted it on Lynx
• Fixed crash bug in taxiing
  Copyus pastus.  Didn't instantiate preflight object

6/JUL/2k

• Loosened control throw test to 50%
• Consolidate several of the preflight items

5/JUL/2k

• Added random checkbox to control fam options and hooked it up
• Watch for keyhit when turning engine on in preflight
• Started moving preflight checklist to list

4/JUL/2k

• Went to a friend's for Independance Day celebrations.  Used my Olympus 2020 digital camera to take pix of the fireworks.

3/JUL/2k

• Hook up training options through mission file
• Hide option frames after create

1/JUL/2k

• Helping Ron put the office back together after he decided to "clean" it
• Only look at flip-off when we're paused
• Adding options panes to training UI

30/JUN/2k

• Manual review
• Put preflight and flip-off into landing
• Put pause in all disqualifications
• Moved pause alarm to CEventAI
• Make sure checkout is in all training

29/JUN/2k

• Copying preflight, flip-off and stats displays to other training sessions
  Got it into precision flight
  Display stats on each lap and total stats at end
• Fixed a bug where TNG scoring rect didn't match visible landing area
• Added user-adjustable angle to test TNG alignment against

28/JUN/2k

• Finished placeholders for stage, track, and gold stars
• Re-initing running averages so we don't complain about control thrashing on first frame
• Implementing flip-off
• Handling respawn during preflight

27/JUN/2k

• Revisited preflight checkout.  Turn off inertia while doing checkout.  Respawn at the end of the checkout
  Still need to catch respawns during checkout
  Need to figure out where to tell them to set throttle at the end
• Working on displaying "status line" telling the user where he stands

26/JUN/2k

• Got stats working and displaying in an ugly way

23/JUN/2k

• Authorized on wind database ftp
  This is pretty much what I need.  It would be better if I had equations built for me, but this will do
• Implement pause
• Moving stuff around to get pause in the right place for startup and respawn

22/JUN/2k

• Martin Hansen of The Technical University of Denmark <http://www.dtu.dk/> pointed me at the Wind Speed Database http://www.winddata.com.  Looks like exactly what I need
• Got hooks for pausing in control fam

21/JUN/2k

• Tweaking taxiing
• Revisit control familiarization to implement yesterday's ideas

20/JUN/2k

• Training design meeting
• Trying to finish taxiing

19/JUN/2k

• Using new GroundTarget
• Chad came up with a new idea on how to make taxiing more interesting

17/JUN/2k

• Low productivity

16/JUN/2k

• Sent off a few more emails looking for wind info
  Everything I've seen so far is trying to characterize the wind over a wide area.  I need to characterize it at one spot
• Centered T&G target on runway
• Taxiing

15/JUN/2k

• Started on Take-offs
• Taxiing

14/JUN/2k

• Try disabling bloom in training
  That's fine, except for speed warning
  Chad and I discussed maybe using a different object for events vs training
  Made it a console variable
• Took a break and worked on winds
  Put my constants in the INI and also added console hooks
  Added direction variation
  Okay, so it took more than a few minutes
  Still need global wind shift and some sort of modeling to adjust the variability
• Added trace option to CDataLogger
• Added a generic data variable called trace to turn all trace msgs on and off at runtime
  Well, that didn't work.  Turns out our generic data gets read after the first trace, which confuses the data class.  Oh, well.  We can live without it for now

13/JUN/2k

• Apparently I earned my share of reinstallation points here at work
• Review manual
• Speed check

12/JUN/2k

• Rotate track
• Adding speed check

10/JUN/2k

• More ring
• Rotate track

9/JUN/2k

• Figured out I can simplify the track placement on descent, because it's always aligned with the runway.  Duh!
• Getting ring to descend.  Haven't started rotating track segments, yet

8/JUN/2k

• The track code I wrote for the other training sessions really helped, here.
• Fought a scaling bug.  Turns out it was a flathead error, as usual.  Our scale automagically scales the texture.  I had cribbed some code from another section and included the texture scaling that was needed over there.  So, basically I was "unscaling" the texture.
• Starting halfway around the track
• Giving thought to how I want to illustrate the descent to the actual T&G

7/JUN/2k

• Start on landing

6/JUN/2k

• Revisit target and track rotation on different startup positions

5/JUN/2k

• Finishing ring in control familiarization
• Spawn plane in correct place on startup

3/JUN/2k

• Finishing track layout class
• Getting guide ring and arrows to work in control familiarization

CDs:

Heavy Metal soundtrack

Stars game

2/JUN/2k

• We have at least four training areas that have tracks, so I'm building an intermediate class to handle that behavior

CDs:

Yes Drama

Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack

1/JUN/2k

How about id?  Wow

• Got track to lay out.  Worked on rotation, today

Today's CDs:

Collective Soul Hints, Allegations & Things Left Unsaid

Alan Parsons Try Anything Once

Pat Benatar Precious Time

Stars game

31/MAY/2k

• Trying to lay out the track in Control Familiarization

Today's CDs:

Weird Al in 3-D

Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Rush Debut album

The Who Odds and Sods

Rush Fly by Night

30/MAY/2k

• Started working on target placement
• Pulled off to look  at putting in AI assistance.  Basically, have the AI act like an instructor on a buddy box and fly the plane to the next training location
  Michael hacked in a test and determined that it's about four days work
• Using Chad's new target art

27/MAY/2k

• A different Curtis and Dennis came in to look at the sim.  We put them together on the same machine and let them explore.  Two big things come up.
  One, the planes weren't gliding like they expected.  Michael is working on the airfoils and that should fall out naturally when he's finished with that.
  Two, they weren't really bit by depth perception, but they did have a problem with resolution.  I think they were running 800x600 on a 21" monitor.  We've come up with a couple of changes that we think might address that.  This is as a variation or replacement of our inset view.

26/MAY/2k

• Wasted an hour on the VCR.  We didn't have the right remote
• Putting in support to respawn plane in different locations
• How to make sure targets are reasonable for a given starting location

25/MAY/2k

• Didn't get any coding done
• Installed servos in Alpha 180
• We got our first chance to fly real r/c planes

John Reed, an instructor at the North Dallas R/C club, offered to meet us out at their field.  I think he intended to hand us off to another instructor, but apparently not as many showed up as he expected.  So he ended up taking us up one at a time.  We had brought our Alpha 180 glider, but there was way too much wind.  Also, apparently the battery only lasts a few minutes.  So he let us fly the club trainer.  A Tower Trainer.

What we learned was, the program works.  By using the actual controllers on our PC, along with being diligent about flying from the pilot station view, we found we were very comfortable flying the plane.  All of us were careful because we were flying someone else' plane.  But we had absolutely zero trouble with control reversal.   The real plane behaved very similar to the trainer in the sim.  John only had to take over from me one time, and I probably could have recovered that one myself, but John was being prudent.

One difference in the plane itself is that our sim plane defaults to full throw on the controls.  The real trainer was set up very conservatively and responded pretty slowly.

Also, our planes don't roll enough on rudder input.  The real plane rolled pretty sharply.

Finally, our wind is far too tame.  I put gusts in there, but they're too far apart and they don't ramp up quickly enough.  Also, we don't have any turbulence.   And finally our wind doesn't change direction.  So even with wind in our sim, the planes fly too smoothly.  We found the real plane was constantly being upset one way or another by the wind.  Not so much that we had trouble, but we were constantly having to adjust for it.  We should be able to have the sim doing that when I need a few minute break from my current task.

Like Michael said, John told us that if hadn't been for the wind he expected that he could have had us landing by the third flight.

Every time I suggested a maneuver John's response was along the lines of, "Oh, boy." as if he thought I was being too ambitious.  For example, when I did an aileron roll the limited throw on the controls made it roll very slowly.  I pitched up a little before starting and automatically tapped forward elevator halfway around.   I'm pretty sure he was expecting to have to take control before the plane was pointed straight at the ground.

Overall, lotsa fun.  I think I'm catching the bug.  I sure wish I had some free time.  On our way to the field we stopped at an R/C shop to get a couple of final pieces for our Alpha 180.  They had an indoor untethered electric helicopter that caught my eye.  :-)

24/MAY/2k

• Very disorganized day
• Unpowered training
• Michael bought a controller kit for our Alpha 180
• Filled out AMA forms
• Curtis Erwin, a local r/c flyer, came in and gave us his feedback
  Overall, he appeared to like it
  Several times he'd kick the controls and watch the plane's reaction and say, "Yup, that's about what it does."
  Many of the problems he pointed out were already known, like too little drag
  He did have several useful tidbits.  For example, most flyers have the nose/tail wheels coupled to the rudder for ground handling

23/MAY/2k

• Unpowered training
• Pulled off to work on powered training direction sounds
  Michael recorded some "turn left" type sounds.  They work pretty well, except that my delay is based on the last sound played.  I keep track of which way they're banked, to differentiate between "turn left" and "keep turning left."  The problem is that as the user goes from level to banked I see that as a different state and so you get one sound immediately after the other.  I need to keep track of the "I told you left last time" state and base my delay on that.
  Also, I need to look ahead of the plane more and try to catch whether and where they're going to intercept the course.  Right now, I'm giving bad advice on how to get back on course.  If the user is too far inside the course, I'm telling the user to turn out for too long and he ends up intercepting at a very tight angle and overshoot badly.
• Fixed bug where we weren't remembering plane in training screen

22/MAY/2k

• I hate chasing the wrong bug.  My cut testing in the 2-pylon race wasn't working.  I was getting cuts at seemingly random places.  It turns out, I was placing the visible pylons in a different spot than what I was testing against.  The placement code was copied from the 3-pylon race pretty much unchanged, so I didn't suspect that code.  Most of my in-race tests had to be changed, so that's where I spent half a day looking.  I finally figured out what was happening when I hopped in the cockpit and saw more precisely where the cut was happening.
• Design meeting on when to turn off hints and/or how to encourage the player to do so
• Installed new hard drive
  Man, I hate the power connectors on hard drives.  About ever third time I install a drive I cut myself on one
• Starting unpowered training

21/MAY/2k

• Two-pylon variation

19/MAY/2k

• Putting in sound queue

18/MAY/2k

• Consistent event startup
• Short schedule meeting with Cliff
• Short training design meeting
• Only disqualify on no fly zone and broken plane
  Otherwise, just offer to restart

17/MAY/2k

• Got all arrows working
• Fixed left/right bug when heading almost north
• Implementing cut warning in pylon race
• Starting on putting a timer on training disqualifications

16/MAY/2k

• Got track and targets positioned
• Showing four or five targets
• Schedule review with Cliff
• Placing guiding ring
• Almost have arrows working

15/MAY/2k

• Got in early, trying to catch up
• Got audio and text turning hints in
• Implementing finer grained track
• Left early for softball

13/MAY/2k

• Made it in, but couldn't concentrate.  Didn't get anything meaningful done

12/MAY/2k

• Looked at RC Stunt Copter on the PS.  Very gamey.  Voiceovers are good.  We noticed they went with environmental sounds.  Controls aren't precise enough.  It was interesting seeing what parts of the copter collided with the items in the fields. For the most part, the landing gear collided with only the ground. The rotors collide with everything.  They fight depth perception by putting your viewpoint behind the copter all the time.  Even then, I had trouble lining up when I couldn't see my shadow
• Another design meeting on depth perception and orientation
• Gave Chad coordinates so he can place training pathway
  Looks good
  Generated more brainstorming ideas
  Basically, Chad doesn't like the corridor
• Spelled out which voiceovers get played when
• Michael implemented the view shift idea we had several months ago.  It works great.  It's just exactly what we were hoping for when we came up with the idea

11/MAY/2k

• Voice-over design meeting
• Adding detection of simple control thrashing
  This includes a timer to show the bloom for more than a frame
• Added in training strings and hooked them up
• Working on making them right/left specific
• Oversight in heading test.  See if they're headed nearly north

10/MAY/2k

• Implementing fading corridors
  Decided to work on some of the other stuff, first
• Added more control points to figure 8 to smooth the turns
• Got all warnings using blooms
• Another design meeting.  The ever-present depth perception problem.

9/MAY/2k

• Finally got it to display correctly.
  Michael suggested I don't try to move the object before rotate and scale. 
  Instead, move the center of the object to the center of the corridor.  I can get those number easily
• Found a couple more copyus pastus x/y bugs
• Also, somehow I misread the docs on atan2.  I know I looked specifically to see which was first, x or y, but got it wrong anyway.  Fixing that got all the rotations right.
• Was showing the corridor to Michael and Chad.  They found it distracting.
  It pops in, you can't see the far end, the texture is too obtrusive, it's impossible to tell what your ground track is.  Also, the turns are too sharp.  But we have some ideas how to make it work better.
• Implemented close-to-corridor warning

8/MAY/2k

• Didn't make it in over the weekend.  Getting my dash fixed (old plastic fell apart) and the engine noise in the stereo looked at.  They didn't call to tell me the car was ready until half an hour after they closed.  I pick up the car this morning and the engine noise isn't fixed, and the radio no longer seeks to the next station, so I can't reset my presets.  Grr.  I'm going to have to rip it apart myself.  I don't really have time.  And I've installed enough stereos.  I don't really enjoy doing that anymore.
• Somehow a really disjointed day.  Never really got in the groove.  Made progress on placing the corridor, but not much
• Left early for a softball game (that the other team forfeited)

5/MAY/2k

• I was banging my head on the rotation for an hour and a half last night.  It turns out I was doing it in the wrong order.
• Still placing visible corridor
• Feedback to Cliff on schedule

4/MAY/2k

• Started on overcontrol monitoring
• Music meeting
• Meet Cliff meeting
• Placing visible corridor

3/MAY/2k

• Rewriting mission write routines
  We need to start the planes in a different place for training
• Testing basic flight
  Just getting the algebra right
  And a teeny Copyus pastus.  It's hard to spot Z's for Y's when you have a blizzard of them close together

2/MAY/2k

• Basic flight
  Got most of the tests coded (in corridor, on heading, etc.)  The only one not coded is overcontrolling.  Only have a couple of vague ideas, so far.
  Got most of the states coded

1/MAY/2k

• Happy May Day
• More flowcharting
• Started coding up first training "event."  The figure-8 basic flying exercise

30/APR/2k

• Started flowcharting Training
• Testing for interim release to Ripmax

28/APR/2k

• Threw out a lot of yesterday's mission file stuff.  New stuff is less flexible, but much, much simpler
  Got all that to compile.  Crashing when launching sim
  C++ syntax annoyance.  I was trying to get a reference back out of a function and ended up calling a copy constructor and a piece of memory was getting deleted when we were still using it.
• Stubbed in training classes

27/APR/2k

• Figured out how to list planes in ppf so that I can identify them in the app plane list
• Hook up preview icons
• Found a resource leak in the free fly screen event pane
  We weren't deleting the event-specific option frames
• Starting to consolidate writing the mission file

26/APR/2k

• Started on training screen
• Rip out training screen option tab, extra previews
• Add training type (section?) tab
• Stubbed in training previews with programmer art
• Grab list of allowable planes from Training.ppf

25/APR/2k

• Finish telemetry overlay
• Forgot to init highlight color in options tab
• Design meeting on events
• Added \n support to info overlay
• Document sounds
• Added a bunch of bugs/feature requests to bugbase

24/APR/2k

• Smoke trails should get their wind from the object they're following
• Highlight current tab
• Copyus pastus bug in event options, disqualifications not being remembered
• Telemetry overlay

23/APR/2k

• Happy Bunny Day
• Adding gusts

21/APR/2k

• Finished asset mgr.  Didn't really help much.  We're not reusing many images in each screen.  Discussed preloading all plane, etc preview icons at program start.
• Attacking another flicker
  Turns out my offscreen buffer was tagged as transparent.  So Fox was clearing the area before blitting the offscreen image.  It looks much better without the flicker.

Non-work
My roomie scored tickets to the Stars game.  It was a good game, nice and close.  But, man, was it loud.  Painfully loud.

Then I assaulted my ears again on Sat by seeing Stomp.  They rocked.  More comic relief than in their video.

20/APR/2k

• The non-virtual setIcon bit us again.  It shows up as trying to display or manipulate a deleted icon.  Discussing on Fox list
• Track down bitmap leak count of -51
  Needed to bump serial number when making a copy
  Don't bump serial number for blank copy (we generate a bunch)
• Use non-virtual setText for opportunity to wrap text
• Get AssetMgr to compile

19/APR/2k

• Beat my head against the wall for hours last night.  Turns out I'm aliasing some pointers to icons and we had some code that bypassed those copies.
• Finished EOL support in word wrap
• Attacking button flicker in UI
• In glide, kill max alt message after five seconds

18/APR/2k

• Found a brute force word wrap that'll work for us
• Our preview buttons stopped working.  Not getting an update message
  I can't seem to figure out the incantation to get both the button press and preview buttons to work at the same time.
• Figured out how to word wrap in update handler
• Trying to figure out how to handle line breaks
• Fighting a crash bug that's related to preview button problem above

17/APR/2k

• Implemented multi-image support for button press
• Implemented text highlight for button rollover
• Starting on word wrap

14/APR/2k

• More design on takeoff and landing training
  We like what we've come up with.  There's more we'd like to include if we had time, but what's there makes a complete package.  And it should set a new standard for this niche.
• Doh!  Removed 3-2-1 countdown from T&G.  We don't start timing until you've started your engine
• Pylon wasn't playing turn hint sound if you cut the previous pylon
• Pylon was leaving a message in the main info area until you reached the first pylon

13/APR/2k

• Moved preflight and out of bounds up into CEventAI
• Updated rest of AI classes to use consolidated routines in CEventAI
• Added countdown to T&G
• Design meeting on beginner training
• More reading research on training

12/APR/2k

• Added wait for throttle cut before engine start in pylon
• Added countdown after engine start to pylon
• Actually check for servo movement extents in preflight checkout
• Add preflight checkout checkbox to options

11/APR/2k

• Added light bloom to T&G
• Added sounds to pylon
• Can now color bloom green or red
• Clearing info string in pylon
• Brought bug base up to date

10/APR/2k

• Finished consolidating a bunch of common routines into CEventAI
• Using CRadio for scrolling text
• Got rest of engine control working.  Michael came up with a robust-looking solution
• Tracking down why T&G is cycling states when it should be in StillLow
• Fixed bug in runway alignment test

08/APR/2k

• Got SDOE to compile at home

07/APR/2k

• Eye appt
• Info display

06/APR/2k

• Started looking at training AI

05/APR/2k

• More on info display
• Rearranging some stuff, consolidating some common routines into base class
• Test for T&G runway alignment

04/APR/2k

• Working on info display

03/APR/2k

• Deduct points if landing outside of T&G area
• Computer control of engine in Glide

31/MAR/2k

• Logo design meeting
• Went over next week's work while Michael is out of town
• Documented rules of finished events
• Save Free Fly options whenever leaving screen, instead of just on Fly
• Implement Engine running on spawn
• Implement Pylon turn hint checkbox

30/MAR/2k

• Doh!  Typo.  Had a * where I wanted a +.  Now I think all the hooks are in pylon
• Implemented light bloom around the plane to signal when you can begin your turn.  It works pretty well
• Adding in an equipment origin to each field
• Still have some trouble with depth perception.  It's really hard to tell how close you are to the pylons

29/MAR/2k

• Got pylon compiling
• Doh!  Just came up with an idea on how to determine if we've passed or gone backward by a pylon.  Compare the plane's position to the next/previous pylon.  See if both are on the same side of the radial

28/MAR/2k

• Working on algorithm to determine when we've passed a pylon
  Simplified the problem by treating the turn hint as purely eye candy.  Having two lines to denote when you've passed a pylon causes way too many problems

27/MAR/2k

• Flowcharted Pylon race
• Design discussion on Workshop screens

24/MAR/2k

Out sick

23/MAR/2k

• Stubbing in all events
• Added "number of laps" control to pylon frame and passed it on down
• Added min/max/step INI entries for T&G length and time
• Design meeting on high scores vs user adjustments

22/MAR/2k

• Got T&G poly in place and scaling
• T&G event tests against poly for valid landing
• Save UI settings for T&G
• Met Elliot.  Discussing some rules to events
• Added Enforce Disqualifications
  Don't really like how it turned out.  Need some way to keep track of what complaint we have on the screen.  This is really more of the same info message architecture

21/MAR/2k

• Added placeholder sounds for glide and T&G events
• Added preflight checkout to glide
• Started on placing T&G poly

20/MAR/2k

• Attempted bug day
  Couldn't get the CTD.  I don't think it's happened to anyone in the last week
• Added a state to glide to not let user start engine if throttle is too high
  Can't really implement it, yet
• Implemented no fly zone in glide and T&G
• Consolidated some common routines in both events

17/MAR/00

• Working on how the info messages when going from checklist to caller
• Fixing last MFUs in delete overlay list
  (Backwardus testus?  Swappedum comparisonius?)
• Found bugs in how I'm handling alarms in Glide and T&G
• A several more informational messages in T&G
• Implemented landing zone/runway distinction in glide event

16/MAR/00

• Implementing delete overlay list row

15/MAR/00

• CTrainingPreflightAI isn't a descendant of CEventAI, anymore
  We had a static this pointer that was getting overwritten
• More checklist testing
  Figuring out how checklist displays text to the user
  Timers, too

14/MAR/00

• Begin testing checklist
• Need to figure out correct way for checklist to get ProcessCommands call
  We really need to register for ProcessCommands instead of using C++ inheritance
  For now, just calling it directly from event ProcessCommands
• Met Manning for lunch
• Code review of Glide AI
  Looks like it's probably the right route to take
  A couple of minor changes
  More comments
• Fixed a bug in Glide event where it wasn't showing the score after landing

13/MAR/00

• Got pre-flight checklist to compile
• Some bug day flying

10/MAR/00

• Installed VC6
• Discussed training a bit and skimmed a beginner's manual looking for ideas
• Discussed adding a plane holder human model, since that's emphasized so strongly as a safety measure
• Stubbed in most of the states for pre-flight checklist
  Most steps are simply "Tap a key" to get through them

09/MAR/00

• Got most of Touch and go in there
  Still need to decide on information messages displayed, sounds, etc

08/MAR/00

• Flowcharted Touch and go.  It's not as simple as we thought.
• Found a save bug in pacestar.com Wizflow

07/MAR/00

• Implemented "on runway" test
  Prop lists put up quite a battle
• Got Touch and Go to compile
  Now to rip out glide-specific stuff

06/MAR/00

• Got first coupla sounds into glide event
• Trying to figure out obData lists

03/MAR/00

• Got key name string
• Tried to display "Control Shift M" etc, but the engine doesn't seem to handle that correctly in any case
• Now, localize it

Car:  Instead of missing completely, now the hesitation is longer.  It just stops accelerating for about 1/4 of a second.  Frustrating.  In addition, the door handle on the driver's side door broke, so I have to reach in from the other side to open it.  Annoying.

02/MAR/00

Took my car in before work.  It hesitates when I accelerate hard.  Chris said that a somewhat common problem is when you hit a certain level of boost when the engine is cold and the air is cold it'll cut the fuel.  I haven't noticed that much of a hesitation.  We put a box into the sensor path that basically lies to the computer.   My first test on the way home tonight implies that that fixed the problem.

• Finished sysAnyKey
• Michael and I discussed keyboard structures.  I need a reverse lookup so that I can tell the user what key to hit.  It'll also be needed when we put in a keyboard mapping front-end
  Man, that code is messy.
  Found the scan code.  Tomorrow, turn that into a string

01/MAR/00

• Discussed no-fly zones (and no-fly boxes)
• Discussed a little about "Tap any key" support
• Finished plane damage test
• Detect respawn with callback
• Delay creation of new plane on respawn by one frame.  Otherwise, the planes overlapped and the new one got bounced into the air.
• Installed Ripmax joystick driver
• Added a max altitude display during the glide and after the landing
  This glide event is fun
• Spelled out audio phrases we'll need
• Added user engine control and must land on runway options to glide UI
  Passing them into event AI, but not using them, yet
• Started adding sysAnyKey
  Not really any key, it's a command that comes from the keyboard map

29/FEB/00

Lotsa good progress on glide.

• Implemented check for appying power too soon
• Adding a few more states
  Waiting for engine start
  Power too soon disqualified
  Acknowledge disqualified
• Implemented a test for plane still moving
• Implemented a test for plane damage
  Doesn't appear to work for propellers.  Have to ask Michael in the morning
  Turns out the m_obParts list is a kludge that only lists "interesting" parts.   Michael pointed me at a DetachingFromTree call that I can use.  First thing in the morning.
• Hooked up height above ground test
  Oops, had to take into account height of landing gear/wheels
• Added a few "Tap a key" messages
• Silly C bug.  I guess it's a sloppyus typous.  I had "m_bPaused-BTRUE;" when I wanted "m_bPaused=BTRUE;"  One big problem with the C language is it'll take garbage as valid code.

Got a digital camera, an Olympus C-2020Zoom.  My dad had given me some money for my birthday but this is the first one that looked like it had the features I wanted.  In particular, faster focus, faster display on the LCD, Quicktime movie recording, optional manual focus, and Smartmedia cards.  I thought it also had USB, but apparently I got that mixed up with another model.  Their 3030 looks even better, but it's not going to be available until May.

28/FEB/00

• Implemented glide time option
• Glide in-sim output uses string table
• Round up numbers when counting down to zero, round down when showing elapsed time
• Added "almost done climbing" state

Disjointed day.  Tried to pick up my contacts (my first) but one came from the manufacturer dry, and it burned whenever I put it in.  I did pick up new glasses.   Then I had to leave a little early for a softball game (we lost.)

25/FEB/00

• A small episode of "fixing the hammer."  I offerred to provide our changes to Fox to another guy on the list.  It turns out he has a 500k limit on emails and the zip is 1.2 meg.  So I wanted to put it on Lynx for him to grab from.   That meant changing a couple of network properties in Windows to reflect the recent network changes Joel has made.  Two reboots and one Blue Screen o' Death later I'm finally able to do that.
• Adding in stubs for event-specific options.
  Added a collection of frames to the bottom of the event tab.  As we choose each event we hide the previous frame and show the appropriate one
  Fought what appears to be a Fox bug.  If you instantiate a window and immediately hide it, it'll show anyway.  If you then try to hide it again, the flag is already set and it does nothing, leaving it showing.  You can only hide after create() has been called
• Stubbing in writing those options to the mission file
• Found an x/y typo in the backGround draw of FXWindow.  Dunno why it hasn't shown up before this

Had an interesting incident.  A guy walks into the office and parks himself in front of my desk and starts describing a fighting game that he made.  The game is a combination of Tekken and Killer Instinct with lots of blood and is "...fucking bad-ass."  Am I interested?  He obviously doesn't have a clue how the industry works.  If he really does have something finished, as he claimed, then he's ahead of many wanna-be's. But the fact that he apparently did all of this work in a vacuum and referred to some old games suggests that it may not be as cool as he thinks.   Michael pointed him at GOD as a place to start.  Maybe they have time to tutor him. Michael said that before he sent the guy off it became clear that he wasn't the one that actually wrote the game.  He looked like he was very likely a skinhead.   Lots of tatoos and cropped hair.

24/FEB/00

• Added COverlayInfo.  Center of screen place to display info
• Filled in test for engine on
• Using Michael's generic data and console to set some booleans to test some of the finish conditions
• Helping Michael try to track down what looks like a Fox bug.  He changed the input dialog to use a TextField instead of a TextBox, since we only ever want one line of input.  It appears to be treating the width and height as x2, y2.  When he finally got it to show up by letting Fox set its size and position, the redraw during editing is offset up and left.  I suspect the latter might be related to the changes I made to get the backgrounds working.  I had to change a lot about how Fox handles offsets.

23/FEB/00

• Fixed bug in unused alarm functions
• Discussed music ideas with Michael and Chad
• Adding more stubs of tests for glide AI
• Design meeting on overlay system which turned into a design meeting on the Glide event

22/FEB/00

• Setting up call to Overlay controller so that AI can create an overlay list
  Still need to figure out layout.  How will AI tell the overlay where to draw and where to put tab stops?
• Hacked in test to glide event AI
• Changed overlay list callback to a generic C function.  Not all lists are going to want to go through the AI
• Discussed layouts and overlay timers.
• In the glide event we need both alarms and timers.  Those are two different   classes with very different uses and interfaces.  I could derive them from   a common class.  Or rewrite the timer overlay to do a callback similar to lists.  In which case, what's the advantage of having a special timer overlay?  For now, going to treat it as a "list" with one item
• Flowcharted state diagram of glide event
  WizFlow by PaseStar http://www.pacestar.com/wizflow
• Stubbed in most states and starting to implement alarms and timers

21/FEB/00

• Got COverlayList in there and hacked a test
• Michael and I discussed how to instantiate event-specific AI object
• Also, how the AI calls up an overlay and how to hook the info display of that overlay back to the AI
• Stubbed in CEventGlideAI and instantiate it in CGameEngine

18/FEB/00

• Michael and I talked some more about hooking this overlay to the info it needs.  He was envisioning a list of timers.  Basically, very similar to the score list in SDOE.  So we came up with a way to define a list with info that doesn't change very often.  The overlay will call a generic GetInfo() routine with a cookie and an ID.  It'll get back a string, which it uses to draw the info.  IOW, move the formatting intelligence out of the overlay.
• Hacked in a quick test of yesterday's timer overlay

17/FEB/00

• Oops, Michael told me I put a crash into the code.  It turns out I forgot to init my new pointer in CAlarm in most of the contructors.  I know I thought about it at one point :-)
  Changed CElapsedTime to be more like CAlarm.  Timers are now known by their ID rather than by pointer.  I keep a list of all timers in a static list within the class.
• Started on COverlayTimer
  Got all of the functionality in.  But got stuck when I was trying to figure out who owns the timer. Probably the Event AI should.  The connection between the Event mgr and the overlay is still unclear.
• Starting on Event AI
  Basically, just a container for the timer, right now.

16/FEB/00

• Added unlimited battery, unlimited fuel, model tx range, invulnerability, and allow failures to free fly options
• Should those options get put in the mission file?  Or just let them live in the prefs object?
  Michael and I are both dissatisfied with the current prefs object.  It's a monolithic garbage class that causes a complete recompile whenever anything is added.  Also, it doesn't lend itself to gang-loading a collection of setting.  For example, the network settings.  Right now we have to manually copy all of those settings over top of the normal prefs settings.  And then copy the original settings back after the mission so that they don't get saved by accident.
  Similarly, Training will be handled a bit differently.  In Free Fly, we want to allow the user to change things on the fly, like invulnerability or unlimited fuel.  In training, we want to force most of that stuff one way or the other in order for the training session to make sense.
• Added a generic callback to CAlarm.  Recompiled the world.
  I'll be using this for the countdown timer in the Glide event
• Created CElapsedTime

15/FEB/00

• Clean up bleed through pixels in arrow buttons and frame borders.
  Sent changes to Jeroen
• Don't draw focus rect on buttons.  Required a change in Fox
  Now we need some other way to give feedback on button click.  Prolly "depressed button" image
• Had design meeting with Michael to discuss what's needed for events.  We ended up with a medium-sized stack of work solely for the "Free fly" event.   Luckily, most of that work will be used by several other pieces of the program.
• Moved Start in air and AI planes again.  We decided we needed an options tab in the free fly screen.
• Changed Options, referring to the Options screen, to Settings everywhere else

14/FEB/00

Happy Valentine's Day.

• Looking at jaggy fonts.
  Weird situation.  It looks straightforward at first.  When you first see a spinner it's anti-aliased.  When you click in it, the character next to the caret gets jaggy in about three or four steps in time with the blinking caret. Obviously, the character is being redrawn semi-transparently with each blink.  I was going to post a bug on the Fox list, but I wanted to verify the behavior in one of the Fox example programs.  I couldn't get it to happen.  Eventually, while trying to verify that I was using the correct font in the example, I ran both RC Sim and the example at the same time.  Then it started happening.  If I exited RC Sim then the example went back to its default behavior. How odd.
• Moving "Start in air" and "AI planes" to Free Fly screen
• Save off number of AI planes in prefs
• Added min and max to random wind, gust, direction

11/FEB/00

• Tried to do dynamic text size/bold in tabs.  Caused a Fox layout call which caused the tabs to change size, which caused the entire box to shift up and down.  Also, the spot I'm doing the change causes a coupla redraws and resizes.  So it looks like it's boinging up and down.  Later, I tried forcing the size.  But something was constantly resizing the tabs larger and larger as I chose each one.  Couldn't track down who was doing that.
• Some tidying up

10/FEB/00

• Finally finished groupboxes.  This is much simpler.  It doesn't cause a bunch of extra work when instantiating the other controls on the screen.
• Rearranging Free Fly screen
• Added wind controls to Free Fly Weather tab
• Added LoadGroupBoxes to all screens/tabs.  Now we don't have to add code and recompile the app to add groupboxes to the screen.
• Hooked wind controls to prefs file and to mission file

09/FEB/00

• Adding label list and control list to group boxes.  Otherwise, we have to hard-code those
• I don't like the work that group boxes is causing.  I'm going to throw out yesterday's code and rewrite it so that the group box lines are simply cosmetic, rather than a window behind those controls.  They'll be four thin windows plus a label window.
• And then Michael talked me into simply storing rects in GUIScreen and drawing those

08/FEB/00

• Added border frame around sliders, spinners, text, list, checklist and combo boxes
• Added group boxes
  Took a lot longer than I expected.  Really fought to figure out the offset I needed to draw the background behind buttons.

07/FEB/00

• Bug day
• Removed network buttons from main screen
• Removed network pane from options screen
• Changed display renderer and res combos to size themselves dynamically
• Fixed sound sliders not saving themselves
  Turns out I wasn't setting the target for messages from the slider control
• Changed sound pref values to be floats from 0.0-1.0 instead of int 0-100

04/FEB/00

• Still ripping out a bunch of old MessageBox stuff
• Fought background not painting right on new messagebox
• Found a hole getBackground.  We were always calling fillRect, assuming we would override it.  Instead, we need to check the WINDOW_PARENTBACKGROUND flag and if set, pass the call on back up to our parent.

03/FEB/00

• Mid-mortem, aka Listen to Ron talk :-)
• Michael and I set up my next few tasks
• First one I'm tackling, getting MessageBox working

02/02/2K

• Moved combo icon a coupla pixels
• Added description box to field and event tabs
• Tidied up how I maintain current name, picture, etc info in event tab
• Handle change flags differently to combat infinite loop
• Hooked up description boxes
• Adding Weather tab
• Hooked up event and weather to mission file write
• Made plane and field list traverse more robust by looking for filename instead of human-readable name
• Noodled with debug_message, trying to get \r\n between file and trace to look good.
• Clicking on preview images switches to appropriate tab
• Moved plane tab to first in list

01/FEB/00

• Store name of plane folder/ppf in list
  Use that for preview and for save/restore
  Okay.  Instead, I simply let the combo keep track.  With the combo index I can ask the app for the prop list with that same index.  From there, I can get the picture name.  The main screen queries the tabs for that name.
• Found a spot where we were storing the button image in two places.  We had a member variable in addition to Fox storing the pointer as an FXIcon.  So we were doing a double-delete on it.
• Plane preview works.
• Field preview works.
• Field icons in combo works.
• Got field and plane name labels to work
• More robust save/restore.  Save filename instead of index.
• Implementing Events preview/label
  I ended up using the same structure as the GUILayout label list.  I have a list of strings that I use to open up the event prop lists.
  Save/restore also in

31/JAN/00

• Hooking up preview image controls in Free Fly Plane screen. 3 days scheduled
  Already 70% done.
• Got thumbnail images working in combo boxes
• Noticed we're not deleting app object
• debug_message to output to trace, in addition to error log
• Added simple bitmap serial number and inc/dec to catch leaks
  So now I'm chasing leaks
  Found about a dozen bitmap leaks
• Back to preview controls
  Ended up having to turn the image into a button.  The CGUIBitmapControl is derived from an FXWindow, which doesn't have an ID
  Using OnUpdate mechanism to notice change in combo
  I think this will work. Just need to save off image filename

29/JAN/00

• Respawn.  Had to stub out an AI call for the short term
• Looking at why we get a title bar when running in full screen.  Looks like a bug in the Glide driver.  If the desktop is set to 800x600 then we get the title bar.  BTW, when's the last time you ran Windows at 640x480?  I wonder how anyone gets anything done at that resolution.
• General testing of sim

28/JAN/00

Forgot to mail my notes to myself, so this is from memory.

• Found a crash.  We found an old ppf file and tried to treat it as a game object.   That gave us a blank entry in a combo box and when we hit the sim button we ended up dying when it tried to load the bogus object.
• Got save and restore working in that screen.  Now you don't have to set everything everytime you want to start the sim.
• Got start on ground working option working.
• Started working on respawn.  There's a good chance I can finish that tomorrow.   Had to leave for my buffoon hockey game.
• Spent some time messing with joysticks.  Two wouldn't work in the game port so I ended up with a USB.  Didn't take time to troubleshoot the game port with more sticks we have handy.
• Reduced visual size of tracers.

27/JAN/00

It was scary driving to work.  I saw one car right in front of me get onto the slush on the side of the road and end up tapping the center barrier (the idiot locked up his brakes.)  It's going to be worse going home.  Yankees (I'm a displace Iowan) think it's silly how Dallas shuts down with a couple of inches of snow.  But we rarely get snow.  We often get sleet.  What's worse, that melts during the first day and then refreezes at night leaving a very smooth, slick surface.  That doesn't happen up north.  It really is dangerous.  Especially since the average driver is a complete idiot.

• Looking at controller screen ideas.
• Michael pointed me at hooking up one of the screens he's been addressing thus far.
• Tried to add a cheat key to help in the livestock show next week.  Didn't quite work out.  The inertia went wacky.  Still, it was fun getting away from the UI for a bit and digging into the sim.

26/JAN/00

• Found the crash.  Turns out there were two errors with that class.  First, I forgot to make the destructor virtual.  I wish we could set a warning for that in the compiler.  Second, I forgot to add includes for the controls I was using in that screen.  So we were deleting a pointer to a type the compiler didn't know about.  We did get a warning on that, but it was buried.  The Fox string class doesn't play nicely with the SGI STL string class.  We get five warnings in each source file about functions having different calling conventions.  Both Michael and I have looked at it a couple of times, but we haven't come up with a way to suppress those without suppressing some that we are interested in seeing.
• Finished checkboxes with image for checkbox
• Tidying up layout of network screens
• Noticed that our text boxes are all multi-line.  In MFC, single-line text boxes are simply the same but have a flag passed in.  In Fox they're different classes.
• Added splash screen.  That took a little work.  Had to rearrange our init code to get the Fox init stuff before the splash screen an our expensive stuff after.
• Tracked down another crash.  Not enough error checking.  I was getting the index from a combo box and trying to get the text.  If we never set a default in the combo it returned -1
• Oops, forgot a destructor.  Plugged a memory leak
• Doing similar tidying of the code.  Making sure destructors are there and that they're virtual
• Make sure all tab screens have the same decoration options
• Trying to get text, list and checklist boxes to have the same borders.  They don't appear to be showing up

25/JAN/00

• Added CheckBoxes
• Verifying spelling of control and screen names
• Fought a "bug" where VC didn't compile a module it should have
• Changing checkbox to use our check/uncheck icons
• Found an unrelated crash when backing out of Options screen.

24/JAN/00

Ack!  Michael cut off his hair!  I hope his programming genius wasn't stored in it.

• Working on hooking up networking screens.
• Oops, need checkboxes
• Got everything to compile and come up by commenting out checkboxes for the moment.  I'll get those in first thing tomorrow

23/JAN/00

Finally got switched over to my new web host.  American Business Web was okay.  Jim seemed reasonably responsive to most of my tech support requests.  But he's a little expensive and his management software is falling behind the times.  Plus, I was having intermittent trouble with downloading email.  And finally, I wanted to set up some mailing lists, which he doesn't appear to offer.

The new place, Datarealms is a little cheaper and has better software, plus mailing lists.  I got their name from my roommate Andy, who said his Aikido dojo used them and had pretty good luck.  My first impression is that the tech support response is too slow.  Generally about 30 hours, plus no evening nor weekend support, which is inconvenient for a webmaster on hobbyist hours.  Other than that, managing the account does seem easier.  I can actually view what mailboxes and aliases I have in place.  Setting up the mailing lists was reasonably straightforward.  And I'm looking forward to more thorough usage logs.

One tip/reminder for anyone wanting to run a Perl script.  If you're on a Unix box then the script needs to use Unix line breaks.  Most Perl syntax checkers will overlook MS-DOS line breaks and not report them.  When you try to run the script you don't get any output, no error messages, nothing.  If I hadn't run into this before it probably would have taken hours or days to figure it out.

21/JAN/00

• Hooked up Options|Network screen, save protocol
• Found one bug in the Options|Network save of the species Copyus pastus
• Implementing network screens
• Took a detour tidying up ppf code.  As it stood, we couldn't read an int from the layout file with a value of zero and a default of non-zero.  That turned out to be a pain.  The GetProperty() function wasn't returning whether the type of property we got was what we expected.  Instead, NULL was defined as "bad." The problem with that is when we want to read a numeric value of 0.  It comes back looking like NULL and I was going with the default.  Apparently in the past all of our defaults were 0, so it all worked out.

Car fixed.  Clutches have gotten expensive.  I remember when they were $200-250.  This one cost $800+.

20/JAN/00

Bad start to the day.  On my way in I had a couple of errands to run near the house.  My clutch started making a lot of noise.  I got out to run one of the errands and it wouldn't start.  So I'm thinking that it's a bad clutch and a bad battery.  Then, while talking on my cell phone, that battery died.   Sheesh.

• Turns out the working folder in some of the SourceSafe projects got pointed to the old SDOE folders.
• Got contrast and brightness and text color working from the layout file.  Man, the layout file is just so much better than having to recompile the app to see such trivial changes.
• Found and fixed the label and combo box offset bug(s).  It was the same bug in two places.  One of those that I don't know how it ever worked.  Those always scare me.  I like to understand the symptoms and what I did to make them go away.
• Michael split out the creation of the top window from the rest of the windows so that we can give it different Windows flags.  They should help performance.  But the Fox options variable is full.  Since he doesn't enumerate all of the bitflags in one place we didn't realize that until we started seeing a very subtle bug.  Then we realized that we had a collision between our new bitflags and that of a derived class.  That collection of 32 bitflags is nearly full.  I can easily work around that for my ParentBackground flag by creating a new extoptions variable and calling an accessor function in the constructor. Calling the accessor doesn't work well in Michael's situation. Since it appears that my bit isn't colliding with anyone, I moved his bit into the one I used to use. That should get us around the problem for now.Hooked up reading default label and button text colors from layout file
• Propogated new code to other screens that use it, like Credits, Training, etc
• Stubbed in SaveOptions in rest of options tabs
• Hooked up Sound options

Last weekend I picked up a Mickeysoft Intellimouse Explorer, the one with the optical motion detector.  I like the motion detection technology.  That seems to work well.  The shape is okay, though I like the regular Intellimouse Pro better.  The extra two buttons are okay.  I have gotten used to using the one to back out of web pages.  The action on the buttons is a little too light for me.  I often right-click or wheel-click when I don't intend to.  Also, I would like the wheel to be a little taller and maybe have a bit stiffer motion, like the Intellimouse Pro.

Overall, it's okay.  One thing that annoys the heck out of me is that they added a useless light shining out the back end.  I often catch it out of the corner of my eye when my hand isn't on it and it distracts me.  I appear to be very sensitive to lights and motion in my peripheral vision.  Animated GIFs on web pages also drive me nuts.  This light is bad enough that very likely I'm going to rip the thing open and tape up that light so I can't see it anymore.

19/JAN/00

• Took all day to figure out how to copy the background from the parent window. 
  I don't really like what I came up with.  I get the feeling I'm missing something obvious. But, it does work.  It behaves a little different than PaintShop, but it'll do the job, methinks.  Now, to hook it up into the layout file.
• There's a bug in some of the new background stuff.  The background of some of the labels on the Credits screen are offset a little.  Also, when popping up a combo box, when it goes away it's grabbing a piece of background from close to the upper-left of the tab book.
• Ran into a compile problem after Michael left.  I don't see why his compiles successfully

18/JAN/00

Working on transparent controls.  Going in a lot easier than I thought.   I almost have labels done and the others should fall into place quickly.  But I'm having to touch several spots in Fox to make it work. That'll become really painful as we get new drops.
Labels done
Transparent buttons
Transparent tabbooks
Michael, Chad and I discussed how to make text readable on these backgrounds.  I contend that we need to reduce the contrast.  Michael thinks just brighten or darken will work.  We're trying stuff out in Paintshop, but I have to leave for my skating lesson.
Michael had an image up before I stepped out the door.  He agreed that we need to reduce contrast, too.

17/JAN/00

Hope there aren't any virus pieces lying around the office :-)

Working on getting display options fully hooked up

Now saving and restoring renderer and resolution

Hooked up display checklistbox and change notification.

Starting to figure out Fox messaging system

16/JAN/00

Not everything got transferred to the zip disk for me to compile SDOE at home.  So I went in to work a coupla things.  I added the display of locked and in-progress games.  I use the strikeout attribute on the font.  I need to move the test to a bit earlier.  Right now, you get warned about machine speed, then you're told you can't join.

13/JAN/00

Back from skiing.  Only a quarter of the mounatain was open.  There wasn't much there to challange me or Bruce.  We had four first-time skiers with us so we spent a lot of time tutoring them.  No serious injuries.  Even the newbies used up the mountain by the fifth day.  Overall, we had fun, though.

06/JAN/00

Michael and I discussed a more flexible debugging system.  His generic data and data logger classes make the low level basis for a system that should work well.  Basically, we want to have more flexibility in reporting errors.  Expensive tests we want to disappear when we compile a release build.  That's a standard assert, and we have plenty of those scattered through the code.  Others, we'd like to turn on and off at runtime in both release and debug builds.  The goal is to provide more information in order to track down crashes and other odd behavior.  So sometimes we want to pop up a box and other times just write it to a log file.  And we want to be able to switch on the fly. And we want to be able to selectively turn it on and off for different groups of reporting code.  We think we've come up with a way to graft this on without having to go and touch every single assert currently in the code.
Finished stubbing in Training screens
Hooked up displaying an image under a label
Spent a lot of time trying to implement transparent controls.  As usual, I missed a ramification.  When we don't fill the rect of the window then the old controls hang around and clutter up the current tab of a tab book.  In order to do this we're going to have to implement an onPaint that asks its parent what is behind it and use that as the bitmap for that window.  That'll get rid of the flicker and just be overall more pleasing to look at.  Ended up backing out most of my changes because I'm going to be gone for a week.  Posted a question on the Fox list to see what others think.

I'm out of town for a week.  I get to go skiing at Ruidoso, New Mexico.  I like to ski.  I like to ski a lot.  I like to ski Real Fast.

05/JAN/00

Added listbox to layout file
Looked at getting rid of bogus compile warning.  Caused recompile of the world.   Don't see how to reconcile those.  For some reason, those four are different than the rest.  They appear to be tied to CString
Put training and network screens in layout file
Started stubbing in training screens
Michael and I discussed how to set up the string ID names we're using to ID each screen.   He made a suggestion that'll produce a compile-time error instead of a runtime error.  Since the screen probably won't change once they're all in there we're putting the GDECLSTRID into the app screen.h file.
In SDOE, looked at Spanky's idea about color-coding score display based on team. I think it'll be easy to change.

I've had a couple of interesting emails, lately.  A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the high school kid who wrote me about my review of Alien Resurrection.  He first tried to intimidate me, and then tried to impress me with his knowledge of classical forms of narration.  I wasn't impressed with his spelling errors and very poor grammer :-)

I had another guy claim to be a horse whisperer and tried to give me a one-paragraph explanation of what horse whisperers do.  Somehow, he jumped to the conclusion that I had never spent much time around horses.  In fact, I spent nearly every day of junior high and high school riding and taking care of horses.

Finally, apparently the author of the Pilot program Account Manager checks his logs and found that people were linking from my site.  I had mentioned that I wanted a PC version of the program and he pointed me at the beta he just released.   Way cool.

04/JAN/00

Implemented icon display in combo boxes
Oops, found out that word wrap isn't implemented in Fox text boxes, yet

I managed a four second flight of the toy tethered helicoptor we have here in the office.  Then I suffered from control reversal.  It was pointed at me and I pushed the cyclic away from me, which of course lowered the nose and the thing bored right in at me.  I did manage to cut the throttle before it actually hit me :-)
Then Michael flipped it over right on top of its control tether.  In a single crash he managed to pop a motor off the rotor, wrap the control cable around a motor shaft, slice through half the tail boom and snap the drive belt to the tail rotor.   Most impressive :-)
He also broke three propellers on a prior flight.  My best was two props on my first attempt :-)

03/JAN/00

Moving load image and label lists to immediately below background in all screen::inits, so I'm more likely to remember it when creating a new screen.
Working on handling how ppf's represent a single label or image in "list"

Michael ran into this last week.  He had put in a blank label name " ".   We could search for that as a special case, so that we know whether or not to assert.  For now, if the list comes back null I try again looking for an ID.

Added General and Network option tabs.  Nothing hooked up on those, yet
Fixed a crash bug when we fall through to choose default renderer.  We were calling into the resolution combo control before it had been created.
Added programmer art for these new screens to annoy Chad :-)
Implemented font size parm in layout file.  Worked first try.  Always satisfying
Implemented left/center/right alignment for labels
Defined our own LAYOUT_FIXED to save typing

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