Old News

My tips section has some new stuff!

• Calculating the exact volume of a polygon-based 3d object. This really is the most useful tip..
• Handling direct input easily [download]. Very handy C-source code if you're new in to Windows / DirectX programming.

Expect a nightmare run through Quake 1 episode 1 "soon" . Oh yeah, and soon I'll have no school worries so I can finally finish TOU, the ultimate action game. (teaser: the game has over 70 special weapons)

I ran through Quake 1 episode 1 in 2:33 on easy skill. It's hard to do any faster.

Just about every single page is better.

A must download if you own Quake 1: Quake done Quick with a Vengeance. It's a long expected nightmare run throught the whole Quake single player in an amazing time 12:23!

Improvements on many pages:

• GigaMess page - new look
• Obfustated C programs - new program for you to solve
• Stuff
• My tips
• My Favourite games
• New bar item: TOU. It will activete when the game is released.
• Old news page so that this index page would be smaller
• and more little fixing here and there...

Oops.. I had I tiny little flaw on these pages so that Exploder users were just blown away (runtime error). And I'm proud to say that I still use Netscape mostly .

Well, nothing new to these pages now, except the announcement that TOU is coming quite soon. Single player missions / game modes and AI programming will eat some time still. I'm really planning on doing an internet game to TOU also, as I find it definitely possible and I already have a fast server to run it on. But it'll take at least till winter until the netgame will start working. Over 70 weapons should provide some internet-fragging fun .

And I watched through a 4 hour long Quake-engine movie, The Seal Of Nehahra. Am I crazy or what? Actually the movie was quite good, check it out if you have some free time and Quake on your computer.

I added a very handy feedback form to these pages. Now you just have to type your feedback to browser and press "send". Thanks to Teppo for actually making it (I just copied it here).

Wanted: Artistic talent to draw maps

The work on GigaMess' long-time project TOU is progressing pretty well. Expect a download here in near future, maybe in a month or so. If you're willing to do maps for a new century action game, please contact me. If you know the caveflying genre, you'll know what kind of maps we need. I expect some artistic talent and quite good knowledge of using Photoshop or Paintshot from you if you want to make maps. I'll give you more detail about the game itself and map making after you've contacted me.

Oh boy. I was searching for some good image-compression tools, and wavelet is a real king. Click here to check out some comparsion between jpeg and wavelet. Okay I admit wavelet doesn't look that good on those pictures, compared to JPEG. Mpeg-7 and even mpeg-21 (is it just me or are they jumping some numbers!) are on their way and JPEG 2000, using wavelet compression, is coming too.

I also fixed some javascript on those buttons on the left: now the blinking-images load automatically.

I modified some older pages, like the page that has info on me. I bet no one has ever read it . And added some comments to Tank Wars on Gigamess-page.

While laughing to will.does.it I noticed that it's free to register those .does.it and .has.it etc. domains from www.has.it. So I went there and quickly registered myself hannu.has.it and tou.rules.it domains =) (that tou.rules.it will be directing to other page later).

Well, this was one unimportant update once again but I have lots of free time cause it's summer...

My favourite games- page is getting better. I also started fixing this index-page since it got so HUGE (41 kb). Now the older news don't have shadows anymore (but otherwise they are identical to these new news-boxes), and this index page is only 22 kb (you don't believe how much html those shadows need so that they work with most browsers). Maybe I should open an old news archive some day...

p.s. I ran Serious Sam in 12:27 today.
And I ran it also in 44:20 in hard-skill (I didn't really try to run fast since it was the first time I played in hard-skill). Darn that final room was tough, I ran out of bullets even though I killed all the bulls with pistols. Easy is fairly the best skill in every shooting-game, even though I can finish most of the games in the hardest skills also (AvP was darn tough). If you play in easy skill, you don't have to save / load at all, so the game becomes more realistic (it's really ridiculous when people come bragging "hey I played half-life on hard skill" and they loaded at least hundreds of times to get to finish. And saved at least thousands of times, using the F6).

Since I'm so much into gaming (well, who isn't ) , I decided to add a page where you can see which games I like. I'm sure you haven't played many of them, so you can go and see how you like the games there. Many of them are shareware so you can download them right away.

A strange update today:

Before you do anything, go start downloading Serious Sam test version (46 mb). It's an amazing 3d first-person-shooter from a Croatian (!) gamemaking crew. It has very advanced game engine and especially great gameplay. It's fun factor is turned to the top and it has never been this great to just shoot monsters in a plotless 3d game. The game's setting is bright and sunny ancient Egypt, so no more dark sewers (even though I love Kingpin also). Monsters are wonderful, especially a suicide-bomber that comes screaming at you with bombs in both hands, and a bull-looking creature that runs madly towards you in attempt to hit (no, not all of the monsters run at you . The levels are also huge and totally seamless, at least I didn't notice any hard-drive action (Half-Life and Kingpin both stop for loading once a while). Actually there is only one level in the Serious Sam test, but it takes maybe 40 minutes to finish it! It's great, it's croat (?), download it!

(and I ran it in 20:55 on easy skill)
Update 15th June: I ran it in 16:51.
Update 16th June: I ran it in 13:31. 10:00=optimum?
Update the same day: I ran it in 12:27. In this run I killed only the monsters I had to kill. And crabbed that ankh before even killed the scorpion. And in the room before final room pressed the "bull-button" immediately. And of course skipped all the demos and bonuses. But it takes too long for monsters to appear in the final room. 12:20=optimum?

Oh yeah, played some Quake after Serious Sam, and boy those dungeons felt tight.

I fixed some of my obfuscated programs and added a few new ones. Head over the obfuscated C collection.

It's summer holiday here in Finland!

I added some javascript to these pages (move your mouse over those buttons on left). The javascript is actually ripped from another page. As far as I recall those pages were about Unreal speedrunning.

Well, I will add something meaningful later.

I added many new obfuscated programs:

• Christmas tree creator in 2 lines!
• My name printer in two,three and four line versions. They all have quite different output of course.

And I also shaved my maze generator & solver 2 characters smaller, and of course none of the programs above beats it

Now most of pages work well with the new theme.

Doing gravity right -tip looks better (smaller pictures).

I added more mazes! Click here to begin your journey.

Completely new graphics and layout!

This new blue-theme is looking quite good and it works well with 800x600 resolution also. And these graphics take only 27 kb of space so they should load quickly even with modem. Some pages have small problems because of the new graphics theme. I'll fix them soon. But now this index.htm takes quite much (24 kb) because of those shadows that came from boxes...

Click here to check out the old graphics (links don't work there anymore).

Wow, I'm updating fast

- New programming tip: Calculating bezier curves fast

- Updated changeable team & player colors quite a lot.

- Added my obfuscated C maze generator & solver to other stuff section.

- Changed the graphics a bit. Added texts to images. Fixing here and there.

Why do I always see linear interpolation written in x0*z+x1*(1-z) form, even in C code samples? Isn't x1+(x0-x1)*z faster because it only has one multiplication? No wonder why games are so slow these days

Fixed these pages a bit.

Added a cool labyrinth!.

My tips section is getting bigger. Doing gravity right is my newest programming tip.

Added My Tips-section where you can now find:
- the incredible Face Formula
- worlds fastest path-finding algorithm
- changeable team & player colors (old)

Updated Links-section with many new cool links.