JRuby 1.1.4

A new point release of JRuby is now out and about. Great news for anyone using java to run rails apps and all that sort of enterprise stuff.

Why am I, with my desktop computer game, interested in this? Well I've been looking for a system of storing data in a user editable way but also storing some logic with the data. More on this in a future post.

Check out what's new over here.

I'm particuarly happy to see the java intergration layers getting improved as i get the feeling there will be a fair bit of calling ruby methods from java and vice versa in this system.

Customising Nimbus

Found some great posts about customising the new nimbus look and feel on Jasper Potts blog. Looks like nimbus will not only be a great new face for swing and java on the desktop but also a powerful tool for creating custom ui's. Which is exactly why I have been watching Nimbus's progress with interest.

In one of ancient powers older incarnations I messed around with customising swings venerable metal look and feel with very little success. Making small changes like fonts and colours was easy enough but anything beyond that got really tricky. Nimbus's use of painter objects seems like it will make complex changes much simpler.

First post!

Ok so I'm creating this blog to try and get myself more motivated about trying to finish my long dreamt of goal of writing my own computer game.

But not just any game, a rogue-like, that wonderfully nerdy microcosm of games that use letters and symbols for graphics. Hopefully soon ill make some posts describing the small amount of recent progress I have made and some of the design goals I have for this project.