Please say “Hello”

Just a quick note.  I’ve been looking at the WordPress stats and see I’m getting views from all over the worl d, including some non-traditional cricket playing countries.   Please leave me a comment and let me know where you’re from and if you’ve just landed at this site by mistake 🙂

Day 74 – The morning session

Well that was a bloody long session.  4 hours.

Sat down to write the code to handle runs out, and all was going swimmingly until…..  so about 4 hours it took all up.   I think the code is all correct now, but I’ll upload a new beta tonight and hopefully get some people to download and test it.   I thought this section might be difficult to write and was it ever.

Getting the logic right has made my brain hurt, so it must be time for a Bex and a lie down 🙂

What caused all the issues?  Run Outs in cricket are not simple things to translate into code.  You need to work out what end the run out occurred at.  You need to work out if the batsman have crossed.  You need to apply any successful runs scored prior to the run out.

Time to grab me a drink.  Don’t think I’ll do too much more coding on this today, I might have a stuff around with coding for the mobile devices.

Day 73 Update – Beta Release 0.03b is here….

MediaFire download http://www.mediafire.com/download/og5j6qofrsomqko/TMC_Beta_0_03b.zip

DropBox download https://www.dropbox.com/s/ih1ar13u7rbkioy/TMC_Beta_0_03b.zip

Enjoy 🙂

Day 73 – Beta r0.03b up shortly

Lots of stuff added today, and a new beta version will be up in the next couple of hours. Links will be posted here when it’s available.

What’s new/changed since the first official beta release?

* Corrected problem with recent over display not updating correctly when a wicket  fell on the last ball of the over

* Recent overs display now clears at the start of a new innings

* Corrected ball count not being added to players stats when they were out which meant players out first ball were show as facing no deliveries

* F9 now toggles sounds effects on/off

* F10 now toggles crowd background noise on/off

* Players now appear on the scoreboard in batting order, players are not listed unless they have batted or are currently batting

* Total runs now show on scoreboard

* Total minutes batted now updates for batsman

* Added help menu for game key (Press F1)

* Added match summary window (Press M)

* Added coin toss

* Removed player images, users can manually supply their own images.  Please see the PDF file included with the download for details.

* Fixed batsman select window which wasn’t displayed in the correct position

* Fixed bowler select window which wasn’t displayed in the correct position

* Updated the game manual to help with playing the game

Links will be up soon, please feel free to download the updated game and let me know of any problems.

Day 72 Update

Fixing a few little things prior to releasing Beta 0.03b in the next couple of days.

Full details of what I’ve added/fixed will be outlined when it’s released.

New stuff I’ve added (not fixes) have been a “Wicket” window which pops up when a wicket falls, previously the game just went to the new batsman selection screen, now you’ll see the batsman that was out and the details without having to go to the scoreboard.

The batsman that are currently batting are now also shown in a different colour on the scoreboard to easily identify the two current batsman.

Hoping to get a little bit more done before watching some of the 5th Test from The Oval which is due to start in 20 minutes or so.  If I don’t drink too much vodka tonight, I’ll head off early to the library tomorrow and hopefully get a full day of coding done and have the next release up tomorrow night.

Good to see that I’ve had over 20 downloads from the MediaFire site, my DropBox account doesn’t seem to show me how many downloads have happened there.  Please if you have downloaded it, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think – what you like/dislike, and what features you’d expect from a cricket sim.

Test Match Cricket (beta) r0.02b Now Available

As promised, warts and all, I’ve uploaded Beta release 0.02 today.

You can either download it from:

• MediaFire – http://www.mediafire.com/?7s53giu8lzp4776 (7.6mb)
• DropBox – https://www.dropbox.com/s/58v2xfnwjym67m2/TestMatchCricket_002b.zip (7.6mb)

Unfortunately I don’t have my own domain at present, so if you are behind a firewall that doesn’t allow filesharing sites then you will just need to wait.  I’m hoping that one or both of the cricket forums I’m on will soon have the latest version of the program available for download.  Until then, if you want the program and can’t use the above links, please send me an e-mail : jmcneill@ecn.net.au and I can forward the .ZIP file (PC only at this stage) by e-mail.

There is a readme PDF file in the ZIP which I’d encourage everyone to look at first.  There are some things I forgot to mention in the readme file, but it covers most of the beta release issues.   One important thing that I didn’t mention in the readme file is that there is no “end game” at this stage, so the game will not end or may not end correctly at the end of the 4th Innings.

This is a very early beta release, it is not meant to be a finished product, but I’m hoping I’ll get a few downloads and get a bit of feedback on the direction of the project.

Day 70 – Public Beta available this week

Well I finally pulled my finger out and did some more work on the project today.   Didn’t get nearly as much done as I would have liked, but the game is getting pretty close to having a proper public Beta version available.

What I worked on today:

1. New bowler selection.  You can now choose a new bowler at the end of each over, a nice feature since prior to this the opening bowlers were getting rather tired after bowling a 40 over spell
2. End of Over update.   This shows a little information about the state of the current innings at the end of the over, as well as the runs scored from the over.  This is where the player can now select a new bowler if he wishes
3. Bowlers figures are now on the main scorecard.   I was putting off doing this code for ages because I thought it would be difficult (getting bowlers listed in the order that they first bowled) and I didn’t want my brain to hurt.  In the end, it wasn’t hard at all and it turns out I was just being lazy.

Some screen shots of the new stuff:

 

 

 

Don’t think I’ll get much more coding done tonight, the plan now is to have a game and then make a list of all the little things that I can quickly fix before putting this out for a proper public Beta.

Stay tuned, I am hoping to have a download link available tomorrow.

Day 67 – Back in the slow lane

Done little to nothing the last week and a bit, and I’m busy all this weekend so I probably won’t get too much more done.

What I have been doing a little bit of which will help in the future, is messing around with Tablet’s and a programming language which cross compiles to most tablets (Android, iOS) as well online platforms like Flash & HTML5 – this is the future of gaming, and I’m seriously considering getting this version out of the way and then starting the new full featured version for the mobile platforms.

Day 57 – Wasted Day

Spent a large portion of today chasing the reason why the game slows down as it is played over time, only to find out about 2 hours ago that it doesn’t slow down on my desktop PC – just on my laptop, which isn’t the most powerful machine in the world.

No reason why it should slow down on the laptop, but it’s completely normal on a desktop PC so I’ll just leave it at that for the moment until I can get a stable beta out and have some more testing done to report if slow downs occur.

Also had a broken tooth removed today, so that severely limited my enthusiasm to do any coding at all.   Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Day 56 – Back at it (morning update)

After doing little to nothing over the last week, I’m back at it coding away in a nice (until someone dragged their screaming baby in here) quiet library.

What I’ve got done so far this morning:

1. Fixed a half bug with the new batsman selection routine.  It wasn’t a bug that stopped anything working, but it did make the selection screen not work as I had intended.  Still haven’t done the code for declaring an innings over, will try to get that done this afternoon.
2. Played around with the sounds more.  Now we have different effects for the crowd clapping cheering when a boundary is hit and when a wicket falls.  I’ve also added sound effects for when the bat hits the ball.
3. The game is mostly playable from start to finish now – when 10 wickets fall, a new innings is started.  No code written for the end of game yet.   Played a complete innings – currently takes about 25 minutes, but when other stuff is added it will mean an innings will probably take 35-45 mins, so a complete Test Match will be take around 3 hours to play.  Good signs: The game didn’t crash once during this time.
4. Followed a suggestion from a user on the BlitzMax website to convert the sounds from WAV to OGG.  Done so, and it’s reduced the size of the sound samples from around 36mb down to less than 4mb, so future downloads will be a hell of a lot smaller.   I’m not familiar with differences in sound file formats, but I can’t hear an audible difference.

Well that’s the mornings work.  Been at it for just over 2 hours, time to go grab some lunch and then back to it for a few more hours hopefully.

Current stats for the code:  2938 lines.  Compiled size without/with sound/graphic files: 3mb; approx 7mb