There are few things I enjoy more than taking an idea, sitting down at my computer, and brainstorming, coding, hacking and testing until the computer does what I tell it. So far, I've managed to put together just a few finished programs. There are currently several "in-progress" works at various stages of completion.
I believe in open-source software, so most of the projects listed below are available as freeware, with source code either included, or available upon request.
Antisort is a freeware DOS utility that randomizes the lines of its input file, writing the mixed-up lines either to the screen or to another file. That is:
C:\>MORE ALPHABET.TXT A B C D E F G H I J K L M C:\>ANTISORT ALPHABET.TXT ANTISORT v0.4b (c) 2001 Graham Mitchell - http://grahammitchell.net/ J H B A F C L K E I M G D C:\>
will randomly take the lines of its input file (which contains the letters 'A' through 'M', in order and one per line) and display them on the screen. Similarly:
C:\>MORE POEM.TXT Thirty days hath September April, June, and November All the rest have thirty-one Except the second month alone Which has but twenty-eight, 'tis fine 'Til leap year makes it twenty-nine C:\>ANTISORT POEM.TXT SCRAMBLE.TXT ANTISORT v0.4b (c) 2001 Graham Mitchell - http://grahammitchell.net/ C:\>MORE SCRAMBLE.TXT April, June, and November Thirty days hath September 'Til leap year makes it twenty-nine Except the second month alone Which has but twenty-eight, 'tis fine All the rest have thirty-one C:\>
when a second filename is given, output is to that file rather than the screen. ANTISORT includes the source code and is released under the GNU General Public License for free software.
Download asort04b.zip (76K).
voteamp is a collection of linux programs for the purpose of selecting and playing a list of audio tracks by popular vote. It requires that xaudio be installed on your computer. There is also a necessary client program (for voting) which is currently not included.
At the moment, it is only available as source code, distributed under the GNU General Public License. The code in the archive is ALPHA code. That is, it compiles on my linux system and works with limited functionality, but is by no means feature-complete. However, it serves as a proof of concept and a framework for future development. Do not bother with this if you are not comfortable with experimental software.
Download voteamp-0.1.0.tar.gz (31K).
Transposer is a freeware Win9x/NT program to effortlessly transpose a song from one key to another. You give it a ASCII text file which is probably a chord sheet (words with chords above them). Then you tell it how many half-steps to transpose it, and click the big button. It produces a copy of the song, will all chords transposed to the new key, which you can then copy-and-paste elsewhere, or save to a new file.
Download Trans02b.zip (158K).
CopyRand is a freeware DOS utility that will randomly select a file from a given directory and copy it to a specific destination. That is:
C:\>COPYRAND C:\FORTUNES\*.* C:\BBS\MOTD.TXT
will randomly choose a file from the FORTUNES directory and copy it to the file MOTD.TXT in the BBS directory. New features to beta version 3 include the ability to specify a directory for the source or destination, as well as a couple of bug-fixes. Plus, COPYRAND now includes the source code and is released under the GNU General Public License for free software.
View the documentation, or
Download CpRnd03b.zip (23K).
Little jobbie I wrote to acquaint myself with Allegro, the graphics/ sound/game programming library for DJGPP. It's basically a direct copy of the Nibbles-inspired Pizza Worm that one of my students downloaded from HappyPuppy. The graphics aren't as nice, but hey, it's my first VGA sort of game.
You move a worm around the screen picking up food. The more food you eat, the higher your score, but also the longer you grow. The game ends when you run into yourself. Worm supports theoretically an unlimited number of players, but since you all have to share the same keyboard, four is the real maximum. And due to simultaneous keypress issues, maybe only three could play with full range of motion. Supports benchmarking to see your frames per second.
Version 1.1 added turbo mode, multiple food objects, a cool "bounce" mode, and some bugs. The bugs are now gone, which is why the new version is 1.2.
Download RingWorm v 1.2 (150K)
Experimentation with DJGPP/Allegro continues. Here I have a nifty little Pong rip-off with some sort of a galactic theme. Has some cool eye candy and even basic sound effects. Well, blips anyway. I'm still doing quite a bit of work on this. New things I learned how to do since making RingWorm:
Check the README for issues regarding this program. Source is included, as usual, and is protected by the GPL.
Download StarPong v 0.95b (134K)
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS/ED d+(-) s:- a-- C++(++++) UL+(++) P+ L+>+++ E--- W+++(-) N+(++) o? K? w++>-- O M- V-- PS- PE++ Y+ PGP+ t+ 5 X+(++) R@ tv-- b+(++) DI+++ D++(+++) G e++ h r(-) y- ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
