Cubehouse's Blog

The project is finally over, after a number of “post-release” issues, we’ve now got the full version (that is the full version – version 2) online for free.

If you haven’t been following my Twitter/Blog, Loricum is a Video Game developed by a group of young people aged 13-18. They were taught how to program by myself for the first time and they created the entire game themselves – including the art, music, storyline, coding, video and animations.

It was a wonderful experience to work with so many creative young people. It was a first-time teaching for me, first-time programming for them – and I think the result is spectacular all considering.

I’ve created a download portal for the game so we can log the number of downloads etc.

Click the big green-arrow/hard-drive thing to download it!

Download Loricum - The Video Game

Also, click here to read my article/blog-post about my experiences teaching this course to the young people.

A number of sites I’ve worked on have dynamic Userbars available for elements around the site. These are really useful for creating dynamic counters/countdowns etc.

To make it easier for myself so I could very quickly make more Userbars wherever I wanted, I built a PHP class that creates a GD image object containing a custom Userbar. With that object, you can save it to an image, output it to screen, store it in memory, store it in a database or whatever you need.

Here is an example that the given library produces by default (note, this example is saved and not dynamic itself):
Read more »

Adobe Air applications are usually web interfaces, very similar to that of websites. Websites have a big advantage over actual software, where the site can upgrade the software and on the next page load – the site will be updated. However, Adobe Air offers a simple way to keep your applications up-to-date if you simply call the right functions.

I created a tiny JavaScript class to keep my applications updated. A lot of samples on the internet are in Flex/AS3 code, but this one is perfect for a Aptana project using mainly JavaScript.

Download Adobe Air Auto-Update Check Script Files Here

Continue reading for usage and instructions. Read more »

Every phone ever has had small envelope icons at the top of the screen when you get a message. Little phone icons with a cross though when you missed a call etc. etc. etc.

Unless it’s an iPhone.

Apparently, when Apple aren’t telling me whether I should want Flash or telling me I’m holding my phone wrong, they’ve also decided that there is no need to do some research on any of the other mobile phones that has ever existed.

Thankfully, with recent advances in the iPhone jailbreaking, you can finally make your iPhone do the things it should be doing in the first place.

Step 1

Jailbreak your iPhone/iPod.

Goto http://www.jailbreakme.com on your device to jailbreak. You should end up with a new application called Cydia.

Step 2

Cydia is an application like the AppStore, but without Apple’s restrictions. So, you can find an amazing collection of new software and iPhone modifications.

Search for “libstatusbar” and install it. This lets other applications modify the status bar. Prior to 4.0, this wasn’t required, but since upgrading I’ve had to install this extra requirement to get the icons working.

Next, search for “Notifier” and install that. After restarting SpringBoard, you’ll find a new application on your phone called “Reminder”. This lets you change the settings for your status bar notifications

What is Loricum?

Loricum is a point and click adventure game created entirely by a group of young people aged between 13-18 years old.

I’m very proud to have been the leading mentor on this project, teaching the youth group basic game design, how to create working graphics and finally a rather intense number of days teaching them a well-developed programming language.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHnC0S46xI8

Some Press coverage:

• BBC News
• People’s Republic of South Devon
• AdventureGamers.com

Made possible by Med Theatre

Continue reading for my summary and discussion of the project.

Read more »

Tomorrow, I’m doing a presentation/launch of my latest project – a point-and-click adventure game written and programmed by a group of 13-18 year olds. I was their game development mentor and taught them basic game design principles and a fairly complex language for the AGS engine. The results are really pleasing, but I wanted something to show off during the presentation.

At the theatre studio where the game has been developed, they have a projector. So, I came up with the idea of having the game playable using the Wiimote. Reasonably easy to setup assuming you have all the bits you need. However, the common Wiimote scripts are outdated and don’t work, so I’ve posted a newer one.

What you will need:

• Wiimote
• PC with Bluetooth dongle
• Bluetooth stack (ftp://ftp.kensington.com/BT/KensingtonBTW%204.0.1.2400.zip)
• GlovePIE (http://glovepie.org/glovepie_download.php)
• Sensor Bar
  • A Wii connected to a sensor bar (to power it up)
  • A wireless sensor bar (no actual Wii required)

Read more »

I was recently installing Ejabberd and wanted to integrate it with a WordPress installation. I’m pretty nifty at hacking about with WordPress, so thought I’d challenge myself to do it as neatly as possible.

To do this, we need:

• An authentication script for Ejabberd to communicate with WordPress
• Configure Ejabberd to use the authentication script
• Add a new XML-RPC method to WordPress to allow user-login checking

Read more »

This method also works on Windows/Macs, but for Windows I recommend checking out MKV2VOB

This is how to get an HD .mkv file to work on a PS3 without having to convert or re-transcode the file in any way (assuming your file is using supported video and audio codecs).

Remuxing basically takes the video and places it into a file that the PS3 understands. The PS3 supports video stored using the H.264 codec, but it doesn’t understand .mkv files. So, we need to repackage the H.264 video in a different file type. This program will use .m2ts for it’s file output.

1. Download and extract TsMuxeR for linux
2. Run the program “tsMuxerGUI”
3. Add your .mkv file
4. Make sure that that the video “level” is 4.1 or less (if it is greater than 4.1, tick the “change level” box and adjust to 4.1)
5. Ensure “M2TS muxing” is ticked
6. Choose output location and click “Start Muxing”

If you are missing the audio: You may have to “Demux”, then convert the audio into AC3 (an audio codec the PS3 understands) and then remux them back together by adding the two halves of the video into the program and combining them into a .m2ts file.

However, usually, .MKV files tend to use AC3 audio already.

Update: Apparently the website hosting/updating the software has had a change of direction and no longer offering the programs.

I’m hosting the Windows/Linux/Mac version of TsMuxer here instead in case people want it:

tsMuxeR_1.10.6_linux

tsMuxeR_1.10.6_windows

tsMuxeR_1.10.6_mac

This is a simple .htaccess script that stops users accessing files on your server from certain locations. Any standard web server running Apache will work for this.

It’s very simple, make a file named “.htaccess” and use the following text inside the file.

In this example, only my website alphazone4.co.uk and the playstation forums are allowed referals to the files under a certain directory. For example, if you want to protect everything in the images/ folder, put the .htaccess in the images/ folder with the other files and all files and recursing sub-folders will become protected.

If the conditions are not met (the referal comes from another source), the script redirects to a file at the website root called “hotlinker.png”.

Change the RewriteRule to match the file types you would like to protect and the url’s you want to allow hotlinking from.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?alphazone4.co.uk/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*)?playstation.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpeg|jpg|png|html)$ /hotlinker.png [QSA,NC]

Note: When testing this, type the URL of a file manually to get rid of any referals, then use CTRL+F5 to ensure your cache is wiped upon refresh.