SuperTux - Resolution Independent Parallax Scrolling

Spend the last few days on getting resolution independent parallax scrolling to work in SuperTux and updating level 1-13, results can be seen in this little video and hopefully set the bar on how Milestone2 will look like when done:

Things I don't like about Git

I recently evaluated Git again for possible use in SuperTux, still some things I don't really like about it:

• lack of sparse/narrow/shallow checkout, this means initial checkout will be 200MB instead of 100MB
• no free hoster that allows >1GB repositories (havn't checked all, but those I did came out way short)
• some free hosters that might allow >1GB repositories don't allow having multiple repositories
  
• git submodule doesn't seem to be quite ready to replace our trunk/supertux, trunk/supertux-editor, trunk/media/, ... layout as it for example doesn't support automatic tracking of HEAD from the remote repositories, it also feels rather hacky and not properly integrated into git
• lack of metadata versioning, if you delete a branch in git that you haven't merged, then its gone after the next gc/repack (+ two weeks time limit it seems), in SVN on the other side you can checkout the way the tree was at a specific date, its impossible to lose history unless you hack the repository
• handling of subdirectories, in SVN its more comfy to just hack around in a subdirectory without bothing whats above it, in Git you always act against the whole repo instead of just the subdirectory, minor usability quirk, still a bit annoying

So for the time being I think I'll stay with SVN.

Getting Krita to work in Ubuntu Karmic

Krita, KDE's take on a graphics application, still contains a nasty bug in Ubuntu Karmic that stops it from functioning with a Wacom graphics tablet. The cause of this issue is rather simple, QT expects a device name of stylus, while Ubuntu assigns the tablet names like Wacom Intuos2 6x8. Luckily one can override the name easily with hal. Just create the file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-wacom.fdi containing:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<deviceinfo version="0.2">

<device>

<match key="input.x11_options.Type" contains="stylus">
<merge key="info.product" type="string">stylus</merge>
</match>

<match key="input.x11_options.Type" contains="eraser">
<merge key="info.product" type="string">eraser</merge>
</match>

</device>

</deviceinfo>

You have to reboot after this change or replug your Wacom. A proper fix for this issue seems to be in Qt 4.6, but Ubuntu Karmic is stuck with 4.5 at the moment.

Gimp Double Toolbar Patch for Ubuntu Karmic

I updated my Gimp Double Tooolbar Patch for Ubuntu Karmic/Gimp 2.6.7. Results can be found in my PPA at:

• https://launchpad.net/~grumbel/+archive/ppa

The prebuild packages are available by apt-get via:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/grumbel/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/grumbel/ppa/ubuntu karmic main

Galapix meets Mandelbrot

Just hacked together some mandelbrot set support for Galapix. Its rather slow and rather buggy, but should make a good test case for expanding Galapix to support more then just plain image sources and of course it makes pretty pictures too:



Command to display mandelbrot is: build/galapix.sdl view buildin://mandelbrot

Galapix 0.1.2

Just did two Galapix releases in a row, as the first one contained an annoying little bug I overlooked, so here are a list of all changes from 0.1.0 to 0.1.2:

• added automatic check for libspnav
• added proper configuration variables to build script
• EXIF support
• Zoomify support
• available thumbnails are now loaded directly at startup, instead of dynamically later on
• FileEntry and TileEntry generation has been merged to allow faster loading
• image refresh on F5 has been fixed

Download is availabel at:

• http://code.google.com/p/galapix/downloads/list

Ubuntu 9.10

Just did a Ubuntu 9.10 Beta upgrade, so here a few quick notes:

• memtest86+ gives a few error messages during the upgrade
• the new Grub1.97beta4 is modular (see /boot/grub/*.mod) and much slower then the previous one, in numbers that is: it takes 40sec(!!!) to load grub
  
• my internal speaker stopped working, the sound is now handled by the soundcard, haven't figured out how to turn it back to the speaker, removing pckspkr from the blacklist and loading it manually didn't help
  
• the gnome-volume-control/mixer is gone, replaced by some another tool that doesn't allow much control and doesn't work at all without pulseaudio, gnome-alsamixer is still there as an alternative, but volume buttons on the keyboard no longer work without pulseaudio
  
• the soundcard now makes a very noticable *klack* whenever an app starts using sound, annoying, seems to be fixed after tweaking the mixer settings with gnome-alsamixer
  
• timer-applet now crashes a lot, also had crashes of Pidgin and Rhythmbox, maybe sound related
  
• Gnome keyring now asks on the command line for a passwort instead of with a new window, breaks using svn in emacs, haven't figured out how to fix it, libpam-gnome-keyring might be the guilty package
  
• Rhythmbox is behaving weirdly, sometimes seems to get stuck
• my USB HD now gets its USB port resets a lot, even when not in use, it also no longer properly suspends after inactivity
  

Galapix 0.1.0

Over the last two weeks I did some more work on Galapix, mainly just finishing up some work on the threading I started a long while ago and never fully finished. So Galapix SVN is now quite a bit more usable again. I also did a new Galapix release, which includes all the stuff that has allocated over the last year, namely support for a ton of new image formats, SVG, Krita, Gimp, RAW images along with archive files are now supported. There is now also a Gtk based GUI, but its still rather incomplete.

For those that don't know what Galapix is, its an zoomable image viewer for large collections of images, see this old Galapix 0.0.3 video:



You can find Galapix at:

• http://code.google.com/p/galapix/downloads/list