Djaybee's BeOS pages

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Sep 23 2000

BeOS programs

Night and Day

Night and Day is my first officially released program. It is a small preferences panel that automatically changes the desktop according to the clock.
Version : 0.1.2

Bing

Bing is IMHO the worst Pong clone ever. It requires a big amount of CPU power. But it is so cool...
Version : 0.4b2

MediaInfo

MediaInfo is a small utility that allows to display various bits of information the BMediaFile/BMediaTrack API provides. While probably not very useful for end users, it can be quite handy for developers.
Version : 0.3

bf

bf is a minimalist and useless language, that's extremely hard to program with, and definitely not intended for real-world usage
Version : 0.1.1

Useless Memory Monitor

Useless Memory Monitor is a small utility that displays memory usage with a smoothly anti-aliased graph.
Version : 0.9

Why was it so long? (aka "aborted projects")

Very good question! I've had some BeOS machines since January 1996, and did not release anything until November 1998. Here's a basic history of what happened:

Fractal Factory
This was my first real BeOS program, in February-April 1996 (Dr5, Dr6, Dr7). This was a school project, and was my first serious program written in C/C++. I did not know much about OO-programming, which is why the GUI was using some non-standard nasty buttons instead of the nice and easy-to-use BeOS controls. I was discovering threads as well, and did not manage to really benefit from SMP, except when calculating several pictures at the same time. Fractal factory proved to have too many bugs and limitations to be upgradable, and I have currently not done any new fractals on the BeOS.
Sokoban
As soon as the BeOS supported 32bpp display, I began working on a game. At that time (July 1996, Dr7), there was no BWindowScreen, and (of course) no BDirectwindow. Sokoban was a game which was easy to re-program from scratch without having to port any code, and its standard levels were very well designed and freely available. I spent much time developing the display routines, which featured shadows, alpha-channel and anti-aliasing. Unfortunately I lost most of it in a nasty system crash, and did not feel like re-doing it all. I now know that floppies are not reliable and make several backups of my work in defferent places.
Full-screen things
When Dr8 was available, I began playing around with the BWindowScreen. I experimented a lot, was often very unhappy about the results, and found that I was not able to do something that I liked from my dual-66 BeBox. Upgrading to Dual-133 helped, but I was spending so much time on other things that I didn't really develop anything. I finally hacked a small shoot'em up game, with some potentially nice display tricks (I had had no graphics drawn for it). The project disappeared when PR came out, because the BWindowScreen had been severely mutilated in PR.
More Full-screen things
Since approximately October 1997 (PR2), I've been playing again with the BWindowScreen. I developed many test programs, to see if I would be able to develop some demos for the BeOS. My programs have been growing better and better, and I hope to be able to release something for R4 (There are several problems with the R3 drivers, which are harmless to most programs, but cause much trouble to a demo coder.)
Lots of BeOS programming
BeOS programming has been my full-time job since April 1998. While being able to turn your hobby into your job seems like a very cool idea, it also means that you don't have any hobby left. It's not as easy to come back home and do some BeOS programming after a full day of BeOS programming as after a full day of bio-chemistry classes. This is why I don't do much programming at home, and the little that I do is often related to what I do at work.