Zipplet's Stuff

As some of you have noticed the site has been down for a few days recently. There is an issue with the server and everything possible is being done to correct it. Most likely there will be more outages so patience.

(hides something he wants to put on this site)

As the title says - Dataforce ( http://home.dataforce.org.uk/ ) deserves a huge thank you for hosting my website for the past few years, and for paying for my domain when I was unable to do so before I had a job.

A big thank you to Dataforce who continues to host this site even today with much better uptime + service than I could have ever expected. His server will also be running the ZSIC system when it goes live (which wont be until the PPC project progresses a lot more). Without his support this would be impossible as I would be unable to run a system like this with a normal webhost. Now to make something good of it and push on with PPC!

Cheers!

His AuthGate system deserves another mention as it now supports OpenID. As Zipplet's Stuff supports AuthGate authentication, you can now login to Zipplet's Stuff using OpenID! This is mostly pointless now as there is nothing to do once you login but it will be useful later on.

Since people have asked me and XP is nearing end-of-life, and more and more people now have vista machines I need to explain my stance on Windows Vista with regard to my software.

I do not own a machine that runs Windows Vista myself. While I know other people that do, it is not possible for me to debug my applications on a machine belonging to someone else as my entire dev suite would need to be installed on said machine. I own quite a few machines that run variants of windows from 2000 to XP (and I can use windows 98 legally in vmware if needs be) and that's all apart from Linux.

Nothing I have written has been tested or debugged on Windows Vista and this will remain the case for quite a while. I cannot afford a license for Vista at such a rediculous ripoff price. I'm sorry but I am not rich, and I do not make any money from my website or my software.

You are welcome to try my software on Vista, the worst that will happen is it wont work properly - it wont destroy your machine.

I will not deal with any emails asking me to fix something to make it work in Vista. I do not care that Vista is the current OS that most people on brand new machines are now using - I don't have a copy so I cannot support it.

If this means my software does not work for you, then I apologise. You will be able to find some software written by somebody else that does work for you I am sure.

In theory, most of my software will work well or perfectly as I stick to the specification for the windows API and such but there will always be problems especially with LightX which is quite a complicated library.

Edited by zipplet on Thu, 8th May 2008 at 13:49 BST

Hi,

I've been doing a lot of work with PIC microcontrollers recently and I'm currently working on my universal memory programmer, which is a precursor to a lot of other projects I want to work on. This, work and a social life are taking quite a bit of my time so I'm afraid I don't have much to update this site with for a little while.

It'll be worth it when I do, though

I will be releasing the designs for my electronics projects openly so others can reproduce them. However, the software might not be open, I'm not sure yet.

I have drawn up a set of milestones/deadlines which I am going to follow for PPC. This may be dissapointment for some and good news for others; remember a project like this is very large in scope and will take an immense amount of time to complete.

Not only is Pokemon a very difficult game to clone perfectly, it also contains an immense amount of data for the maps and such. This is not trivial to put in quickly for me, remember PPC is mostly a one-guy project (me) so I'm doing the programming, the majority of the design, the map editing, all of the debugging, tool programming (e.g. map editors) and I am even using my own multimedia API.

I will be looking out for some serious testers, probably by the end of Q2 2008. Game freak have an entire team of people working on their own games, and it still takes them a couple years.

Remember deadlines CAN STILL SLIP as I have personal commitments, I'll try my best though. I may also have to make adjustments to my LightX multimedia API as the project progresses, as this will be the first real use it has (other than the PTA engine demo).

• November 2007: Basic map editing functions complete, map engine work started, game core drawn up.
  
• December 2007: Player can navigate maps to some extent. First video to youtube.
  
• Q1, 2008: Script compiler, interpreter - script functions for world map. Full engine state keeping. Battle engine work. Full night/day transitions and weather effects anywhere on the map with the dynamic weather system. Second video to youtube.
  
• Q2, 2008: Well under way - battle system working properly with many attacks, gyms and suchlike too. 33-50% of the first region data complete. Battle animations may be missing. An early test version may be released.
  
• Q3, 2008: 75%-80% of first region data complete. Main storyline complete. Early beta version to testers invited. ZSIC service working; allowing trading and chat atleast.
  
• Q4, 2008: First region complete including first ending. Public version released of the first part of the game. ZSIC service fully operational.
  

When the project is further I'll put up a page for it on this site and keep an up to date milestone/deadline list there.

To keep up to date with major announcements about PPC, I suggest subscribing to the site news RSS feed, and perhaps the blog feed too. If you use Opera or Firefox, you should see an RSS subscription alert in your browser. I will be setting up a site especially for PPC when it's nearing completion.

Edit: Pokemon PC on the Pokemon Fan Game Wiki

Edited by zipplet on Thu, 11th Oct 2007 at 12:33 BST