Holiday vacations are always too short but I like to do some projects during this time between Christmas and New Eve. Last year, my main project was Octavia VST plug-in and this year (2020), I did some tiny projects with a main project.
Next parts will be split in 3 parts:
- Garbage collector
- Audio
- Main project
System.GC.Collect();
Once a year at least, I clean my document box even if now is more paperless with email. It was the first task I did during this holiday by discarding old and useless documents like a car repair 2015 invoice...
Throughout the cleaning mode, I discovered a very old paper related to what I wrote in the last August post:
How I learned Hexadecimal with the Game X-Com UFO Defense. I really didn't remember this paper.
Basically, the left numbers are to represent where the stats are in the solder.data file (Offset).
- 77 is the stamina "resistance" at the offset 44
- 11 is the rank "grade" at the offset 0
Numbers in the middle are a quick conversion between hexadecimal and decimal.
- 255 -> FF
- 250 -> FA
- 150 -> 96
The numbers at right are the values suggested (150, 150, ..., 460, ...)
Solder dashboard example here:
Audio Assets
It was on my list for 6 months where I got the idea to create a page where people could use my audio files for their products, games, podcasts or streams (Youtube/Twitch) as assets.
But before doing this page, I decided to regroup all audios in one section since
they were spread on multiple pages: Jukebox, Winamp, direct albums.
The solution was to create a simple json file where I unified all audio with some parameters (e.g. name, album, license type). Now, all audio pages will target this json file and any new entry inside this file will be populated on all pages.
After that, I created an Audio Assets
page where it will contain all the audio files in 4 formats (Wav, Flac, Ogg, Mp3) and the type of license.
To complete or finalize this "feature", I added some audio and albums missing:
Delta0 game album,
Kainy album and my Joker trailer version (audio).
This trailer was an experience where I bought new samples and I did some tests. It was nice! I may try to do a new one this year.
Dir Sum
Dir Sum was my main project for XMAS2020. Yes, it sounds like Dim Sum !!!
Dir Sum is an application to display your files and folders differently with some stats. My goal was to get a big picture quickly by identifying the size of files, folders or even file extension (e.g. .jpg, .png, .mp4, .flac). It's useful to optimize the size of your own games, applications or to free some spaces on your hard drives.
Why "Dir Sum"?
Dir is a Dos/Windows command console: "Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory."
Sum: the total amount resulting from the addition of two or more numbers, amounts, or items.
I don't know why Windows doesn't offer this kind of feature, especially the folder size.
2021
[Tip of the post]
I added a tiny feature between the document box and the audio assets which is
an Email Newsletter on my website. I used Google Form for the newsletter. You can customize by adding some info: name, email or some questions.
There is an option also to export directly into a Google Spreadsheet so you can see your user list quickly and automate this part. You can also use Google Form for other purposes (e.g. survey).
2020 was a strange year with this Covid thing but on the positive side, this virus proved that it's possible to work remotely where some people were sceptical before. It changed the way we work, learn and live. We will grow a lot from this situation.
I think 2021 will be an interesting year with a lot of challenges,
