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Miscellaneous -> Projects of the past
Last modified on Tue, 8th Dec 2009 at 19:59 UTC by zippletWhile sitting here bored, I realised that I've actually worked on a lot of projects over the years that never got finished - or simply got canned. Hardly anyone has seen them, so I thought I'd put up screenshots and descriptions for some of them.
For each one I'll also describe it's current status - not all of these are completely dead forever - however, most of them are
. By no means is this list complete, I will be making a follow up article or 2 to cover a few more in the future 
I apologise about the image quality of some of these screenshots. For some projects I had to recycle old screenshots that had been made in a hurry, and for others I had to use JPG to keep the page size (including images) in control. Images that are too large are thumbnailed, and you'll need to click on the enlarge link under them.
This list is in no particular order.
BitBarrage (2004)
Current status: Paused, not functionalOperating system(s): Windows, Linux
Release: None
Date of last activity: June 2004
The main screen, with the options dialog open ontop.
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The original idea was to create a fast BT client that would function without consuming massive amounts of memory, with a nice and featureful user interface. I had some more plans but I won't describe them here since the project is NOT dead forever and I want to surprise people when I continue it.
Cookie Jar (2002)
Current status: Cancelled, fully functionalOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: May 2002
The main screen, seen when you doubleclick the tray icon.
The database, configure which cookies to block and allow.
This popup is displayed in the bottom-right of your screen when an unknown cookie is detected.
Cookie Jar was a program to allow control of what cookies you want to accept or reject from your web browser. It is fully functional and easy to use - infact, you could call it 99% finished. However it only works with Internet Explorer and is therefore practically useless.
Freesetup 2004 (2003)
Current status: Cancelled, not functionalOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: December 2003
A very early screenshot of the IDE
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Yes I know this project is called Freesetup 2004 yet the date is 2003 - I started it in 2003. It was to be a product installation system, complete with IDE. You design your installer using the IDE (early screenshot above) and then "compile" your installer. It produces either a single EXE that includes everything, or it can produce individual files for each package in your installer.
It would have also had an autorun menu creator with the intention of making CDs designed for newbies.
I should note that one function of FS2004 was completed - the ActiveX installer creator for developers, but that part was very basic
fsHTTP (2002-2003)
Current status: Cancelled, somewhat functionalOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: November 2003
The main GUI (yes, GUI... urgh)
fsHTTP serving a directory listing, with broken images
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fsHTTP was mainly an experiment at implementing an HTTP server - hence the GUI. One does not want a GUI in a serious webserver. fsHTTP actually worked quite well, although unfortunately I couldn't get it to serve the images for the directory listing when I tested it to produce these screenshots.
It supported a form of CGI and I have a demo HTTP IRC chat client but I was unable to compile them for this article (I don't have the needed programming tools installed anymore for this project).
fsIRC (2002)
Current status: Cancelled, hardly functionalOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: September 2002
The MDI interface showing the status window
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fsIRC was an experiment at creating an mIRC-like IRC client. This was the first experiment - I have a newer one that looks MUCH better but I cannot compile it right now, and do not have a binary I can run to produce screenshots. That'll come in a second article!
Wireless Messenger (2003)
Current status: Works fine but I never bothered to releaseOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: July 2003
Main window, no contacts to talk to
I wrote this program and distributed it among a small selection of friends at school. We used it to locate each other over the network and chat while we were in different rooms. It automatically found contacts that ran the program and the chat dialog was ICQ-like (I'll try to get a screenshot of that later). It's named wireless messenger because we obtained 802.11b cards and decided we needed a way to chat to each other (using the cards in ad-hoc mode) while we were not in the same room
Logic gate connect 4 (2005)
Current status: Experimental, was never going to releaseOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: October 2005
The program in all it's ugly glory.
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A friend of mine decided to experiment with neural nets and connect 4. He wrote a program that generated a set of random neural nets, made them play connect 4 against each other, and then mutated the nets (and tried to keep the best ones from each mutation).
I decided to have a try, but instead of a neural net I had a simulation of a digital logic circuit. It's a shame I never added a way to make the program draw a diagram of the logic circuit a given network is using, but it's fun anyway.
I once left this running for about 8 hours overnight on my PC, and then I tried a game of connect 4 against the best network it had created. Well, it was a very pathetic opponent
However this was fun to mess around with anyway.Poketools (2002)
Current status: Cancelled, never got far with itOperating system(s): Windows
Release: Only the time reset utility
Date of last activity: April 2002
The gold/silver clock reset utility, part of Poketools. Sorry about the garbled dialog caption.
Poketools was going to be a guidebook + utility for fans of the pokemon series of gameboy games. It would have included several utilities to help you get the most out of the game (such as stat generators/checkers) and guides written by me, including maps.
The only part that ended up finished in the end was the pokemon gold+silver clock reset utility. For those of you that would like to be able to change the time in gold+silver, I have been kind and uploaded that one part of Poketools to my Toolbox page even though Poketools is a canned project! I noticed no-one else had actually released an offline time reset tool, so I'm making mine available now. For those of you too lazy to look at the toolbox page, click here to download the Poketools time reset utility.
FileShare+ (2003)
Current status: DeadOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: December 2003
Main window with menu dropdown to show the (would be) supported types of download
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FS+ was going to be an attempt at creating a download manager that supported a lot more than HTTP/FTP but never got off the ground due to the fact that I decided a combined client for everything would be too messy and not of a high enough quality overall.
System Integrity 2004 (2003)
Current status: DeadOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: May 2003
The welcome screen, after "Windows scan" had been clicked.
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Unfortunately the copy I have doesn't seem to work anymore - it gets stuck here indefinately.
System Integrity was going to be an all-in-one general security program, which would monitor your startup entries (registry + startup folder + others) for changes, monitor key parts of the registry, and keep an eye on critical windows system files (looking for alterations to them).
Parts of it worked, but it never got finished - I simply lost the enthusiasm for it, and I was unable to finish some of the more advanced features at the time. At some point I will write a "process firewall" using new code I developed while working on Neutron.
Fileshare+ Lite (2003)
Current status: Cancelled, but completeOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: May 2003
The welcome screen. Note the simple GUI.
Waiting for an incoming file transfer.
I wrote this quickly to allow me and a friend to send large files to each other easily - I was on dialup at the time. It does work nicely but it's very very basic, and there is little point in releasing it.
Mario - Project M (2002)
Current status: CancelledOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: February 2002
Enlarged images: 1 2 3 4 5 6
My own mario game in the style of the original Super Mario Bros., but with a lot of ripped graphics from the Super Mario: Allstars version. It has 6 levels and is quite playable, although the physics are bad in this one. A later game of mine - "Mario PC" - has perfect physics and better animation. Maybe I'll cover that in a later article when I install a compiler I need to build it.
One new feature was the green question mark blocks - if you hit one you turn into metal mario. I used that instead of the invincibility star in this game.
Puyo Puyo: Legend Ichi (2004)
Current status: CancelledOperating system(s): Windows
Release: Limited alpha version
Date of last activity: December 2004
Enlarged images: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PPLI was a puyo clone featuring both classic and fever gameplay variations. Only classic actually got anywhere in this version, though. It was to also feature online gameplay (much like the official Puyo Pop Fever for PC does). A limited alpha was released to a small community of people.
There are plans to ressurect this project again under a different name, reprogrammed from scratch.
Tetris XP (2002)
Current status: CancelledOperating system(s): Windows
Release: Released.
Date of last activity: September 2002
Enlarged images: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Unfortunately, at one point during an old backup/restore, some graphics files for Tetris XP were corrupted. That's the cause of some horizontal lines on some of the screenshots. I still don't know how it happened but I take more precautions now just incase. I could edit the corruptions out by hand when I have time at some point.
Tetris XP was an almost finished simple tetris game for windows. It was written as an experiment to test out some internet multiplayer issues I wanted to experiment with. It has very basic (and horrid) but working 2-player over a network.
zipNSF (2004)
Current status: PausedOperating system(s): Windows
Release: None
Date of last activity: March 2004
Yep, that's all. The menu only has "Load NSF".
This is a very basic NSF player. It's basically a ripped zipnes core with a modified ROM loader (to handle NSFs) and a special memory mapper (to handle the NSF memory map). It was really just a proof of concept, hence the absolutely terrible GUI (which by the way you use by entering a song number in the box and clicking on "Button1").
zipNES (2004)
Current status: Paused, slow developmentOperating system(s): Windows
Release: Available here
Date of last activity: July 2004
This is my own attempt at an NES emulator (currently only for windows). This project is not dead, it's just moving very slowly right now. I'm not going to say more about it until closer to release because I have some very nice ideas that I don't want others to copy before I've even released my emulator. Make do with the screenshots for now
NEW: You can download this version now, link above.Minimon (1998-2002)
Current status: Cancelled, new project on the wayOperating system(s): Windows
Release: Zilch
Date of last activity: August 2002
This was going to be a VERY full featured pokemon clone for windows (without any multiplayer features). The idea surfaced in around 1998, at which time an MS-DOS version was under development. This version was then cancelled and work on a windows version started. Unfortunately, that was also cancelled - mostly because the gameboy colour style of graphics was looking very aged, so I wanted to wait for the gameboy advance pokemon games. But also due to me being too busy with other projects.
I will be putting up some screenshots (there isn't much) of the MS-DOS version soon, once I work out how to take the screenshots...
A screenshot of the map editor I was working on for the windows version.
Enlarge image
That's all folks
I hope you enjoyed this article, or that it atleast relieved you from boredom for a short period of time. I'll be adding some more screenshots to this article, and making another couple of these (one for my MS-DOS projects, one for my less visual projects such as daemons) soon.