I bashed my skull against my machine for two weeks trying to figure out why Skyboxes wouldn’t work.

Turns out, had to turn GL_CULL_FACES off. After that, code was straight from the video.

One obstacle here was that my MacBook Pro is dying, and I had odd memory issues. So part of this submission was bringing all of my code from OS X and Xcode over to Windows and Visual Studio.

Here’s a video of how awesome it is!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UGFfBxFuR4?rel=0]

It wasn’t hard at all, the code was just straight out of the video. I don’t think I had to make one change. I did tweak the shininess, because Steve started looking inky black. So now he’s more of a pewter color.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_cx40nhNRM?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEp_GYIDU0A]

The most difficult part of this feature was just trying to understand the big-picture of what different arrays are doing in the code. Once I figured that out, modifying ObjUtilities and Camera.cpp was no problem, and the implementation was minimal.

One interesting thing: if you run my project on a machine outside of 115, you have to smash W over and over to move. Something must not be installed correctly on other machines.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, NERDMIGOS OF ALL KINDS!

Feature 2:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqu6WbVHPlM]

The video explains things pretty well I think.

I was going to post the Ruby code, but, looks like I deleted it. That’ll bite me in the @$$ later.

No longer do you have to go through and count the F’s and V’s, it does it for you!

Here’s a screencast of the code, and a screenshot of the workspace plus the rendered output!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGBqShjyO6Q?rel=0]

And the screenshots:

This weekend I learned AppleScript, which for the Mac OS X-impaired folks, that’s a really nice scripting editor that comes standard on all OS X machines. It’s really nice, and really really simple to use. Plus, it gives you root-level access to just about anything you want on your computer. For example, there’s some great code I have that prevents Adobe Activation from checking if you’re registered or not. All you need is a serial number that was valid at some time, run the script, and it’ll just note that it’s okay and never authenticate. Lovely.

But the true fun was with a Denial of Service (DoS) attack that I did this weekend to a few of my contacts, with their permission.

In the name of science.

Take a look at this code:

************

set theTruth to true

repeat while theTruth is true

          tell application “Messages”

               set myid to get id of first service

               set theBuddy to buddy “+15555555555” of service id myid

               send “0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF
0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF
0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF 0000-00FF
0000-00FF 0000-00FF ” to theBuddy

          end tell

end repeat

**************

So what’s this doing? Well first of all, it’s setting up an infinite loop. Hopefully you can see why that is occurring. Next it’s saying “Hey Messages, you’re gonna be abused here in a minute, standby.” Then there’s this weird service id thing. Each computer has its own service id, which is somehow cross-referenced with your Apple ID to send messages from your Mac. There’s a really long, complex way to get this id without using a variable like myid, but this way is just faster. The other funny thing here is that if you set the id outside of the repeat, it actually sometimes comes back with errors.

Anyway, after that, I set up a variable of type buddy to their buddy id, and send it from the service id I just got. Then I send them 0000-00FF over and over again. Why that string? Turns out, it’s harder for iOS to handle unicode strings for some reason.

Finally, I end the abuse and tell Messages to stand down.

But then I do it a few thousand more times…just for fun.

What are the implications of this?

Well, the first victim I tried (and I asked their permission to try it on them, assuring them I would stop the attack once I figured out what it could do) was using iMessages on his Mac, which has a hell of a lot more power than an iPhone. All it managed to do on his Mac was tie up his Messages app. When someone texts you there, it instantly comes to your attention. It makes sending messages to other people impossible, while the attack is happening. Fun, but not too much of a DoS attack.

The second one was way better. I sent it to his phone, and I let it run for about 4 minutes. Not only did I completely crash his Messaging app on his iPhone, but he couldn’t text anyone else (iMessages or standard SMS) and he couldn’t make or receive calls. Soon, it crashed his iPhone. Once he got it back on, I had long stopped the attack, but the leftover messages were still coming.

His phone was out of commission for about 2 hours.

So, a few things I learned:

• Pranks are fun, but Do No Harm
• If you think you’re going to Do Some Harm, get permission first
• AppleScript is great for quick trolling
• Taking your code and running it at the Apple Store from their machines is great fun

If you’re on a Mac in CS 455, good for you. You’re spared much pain and hardship using VisualStudio. I kinda hate it.

Thankfully, Xcode is your friend, and Apple is more than happy to have you come use it instead of Microsoft’s junk.

You don’t need to be a paid developer for any of this…all the tools are totally free and without restrictions.

Here’s a video to watch. Make sure to follow it closely, as there are some bugaboos to be aware of!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8o7FjwPMtw?rel=0]

Hey, go get ’em!

I thought I’d follow up Dr. Johnson’s tutorial with my own, for Mac OS X users.

I posted a brief (2 minute) video on YouTube of how to go about doing this. It’s super easy….and you won’t believe it’s not butter!

Here’s the video!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h29bKyPpr8?rel=0]

Go get ’em

Real-time-strategy is about to get a whole lot more real.

“The Realm: Conquerors of Kalengard” is a game about power, control, and strategy. The game consists of two phases: Build and Combat.

The game begins with 3 minutes of build-time. During this time, each player is given a plot of land on the grid-spaced map with which to barricade their keep and build their armies. In a 1 versus 1 game, each player would control 1/3 of the board, with a pre-made middle ground of neutral territory.

Once the 3 minutes is over, players can continue building their kingdoms, capture mines for resources, build and move troops, and venture towards the other player. The game is over when a Keep is destroyed.

The game will feature several different units of different abilities, online multiplayer, and many, many content expansions to continuously level up yourself as a player.

“The Realm: Conquerors of Kalengard” will release sometime in Q2 2013 from Team Name in Progress.

No, we are leveraging Augmented Reality on our application.

When you set Sphero down on the ground and launch the app, you’ll use the device’s camera to view Sphero and your surroundings. There are two controllers on the screen: a joystick to move, and a color palette to change the Sphero color.

Move Sphero around. Your device will remember where Sphero has been, and what color it was when it was there.

Now move your phone around.

Check out the cool painting your Sphero did while you were driving it around!

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The major risks we will need to overcome is digging through the documentation to find some Augmented Reality API. We think that once we get a handle on AR, we’ll be in good shape.

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We will be doing equal shares of coding for this project. Once the project is complete, we will exact results of who did what.