The Lunduke SDK (The Lunduke Language and the Lunduke Compiler, along with the supporting files) was first announced 2 months back, and I wanted to give everyone an update on what has been happening and where things are heading.

(For those new to the Lunduke SDK, here it is in a nutshell: Write a piece of software in the Lunduke Language — which is designed to be easy to learn and read — and use the Lunduke Compiler to generate native source code for any desired platform.  Currently supporting all platforms supported by Illumination Software Creator — iOS, Android, Python, Flash and HTML55 — plus a new target for C/ncurses.  The resulting applications are always native for each desired platform, without the need to learn a new framework or port your app.  And, of course, the SDK is open source.)

The big news, since we announced the project, is that we have decided that keeping the Lunduke Compiler written in C just doesn’t make any sense — and we are finishing up porting the Compiler to Lunduke itself.

That’s right.  The Lunduke Compiler is now written in the Lunduke Language.

This provides us with two, very big, advantages:

1. It has given us a real world example of what it is like porting a project written in C (the Compiler) to a project written in Lunduke.  And, so far, it has been a cake-walk.
2. We can now compile the Compiler for any target that the SDK supports.  That means we can run the Compiler itself as an HTML5 web app, an Android app, etc..  The possibilities this opens up are quite cool.

We expect this work to be complete over the next week.  At which point we will be releasing the full source (in Lunduke) under the GPL license — along with builds of the Compiler.

There has been some excellent feedback over the last month, resulting in some very cool additions to the SDK.  Most notably:

• We have added the ability to over-ride functions, provided by the default SDK, with user provided functions (all written in the same XML format) — making it much easier to customize the SDK to meet the needs of any particular project.

A very big, and very exciting time for the project.  If you’d like to become involved, the best way would be to join up at the Lunduke SDK Forum and say hello.  What we need right now:

• People who love to document.  The Wiki is a good start, but we’re going to need much more documentation very soon (including examples).
• We could also use people who have skills with platforms that we aren’t currently supporting.  If you have experience building apps for Haiku, C++/QT, Java/Swing, WebOS, AmigaOS, etc… we’d love to have your involvement.  Adding support for new platforms to the Lunduke SDK is an astoundingly simple task (it’s all a matter of adding a new platform to the existing XML files that describe each piece of functionality)… assuming you know your way around said platform.
• And, if you don’t want to become actively involved but still want to support the project, consider buying Illumination Software Creator (which the Lunduke SDK is based, in part, on).  We are, quite literally, a mom-and-pop shop, and sales of our software allow us to continue working on and building the Lunduke SDK.  (Worth noting: The next major release of Illumination is being written entirely in Lunduke.)

That’s all for this update!  Time for me to get back to coding!

Filed under: Illumination, Just stuff, Lunduke SDK, Tech Stuff | 11 Comments

SOPA sucks.  PIPA sucks.  And the Internet is making sure everyone knows that by blacking itself out all day.

And, if you’re like me… you are now bored (and trapped inside by snow-mageddon 2012).

Well, be bored no longer!  I have the perfect way to stick it to the man and properly protest horrible, technology-freedom limiting legislation:

Log in to a BBS and play some games from the 1980′s (and a few from the ’90′s)!

You can start by logging into my BBS (The House of Lunduke) by either telnetting into bbs.lunduke.com or using our web-based Flash terminal.

And if you really want to go nuts, you can check out some more BBS’s over at BBSFinder.

Send a clear message to the U.S. government by saying “No!  If you want to pass legislation like SOPA… I’ll just go back to using BBSes and Telnet… which is probably better in a lot of ways anyway.”  Let’s fill the BBSes of the world up with people all day!  Nothing protests bad legislation better than playing TradeWars and Legend of the Red Dragon!  (Right?)

(Also: As I said before… I’m snowed in today.  So more people playing means more fun for me.  *cough*)

Filed under: BBS, Just stuff, Tech Stuff | Post a comment

A long, long time ago we held a contest for people to build number guessing games in Illumination Software Creator.

It was a lot of fun and we got some great entries (from all ranges of skill sets — professional developers to people who had never written a single line of code in their life).  And we got to give away some cool prizes (including site licenses of Illumination donated to the school of the winners choice in the winner’s name and video game gift certificates).

We’d love to hold another contest.

So I have two questions for you:

1) If we held another contest like this, would you be interested in taking part?

2) If so, what sort of challenges would you like to see?

Here are a few ideas that we’ve been kicking around lately that would make for a fun contest:

- Build a choose your own adventure style game.  Points given for creativity, fun-factor, style and best use of Illumination.

- Build any sort of utilitarian app you like.  Points given for usefulness, ease-of-use, etc.

Of course, because this contest would be building an app in Illumination, the application could be targeted for Android, iOS, Linux, Web… whatever you like!

If you are interested and have ideas, post here in the comments.  If there is enough interest, we’ll get a new contest put together!

Filed under: Illumination | 5 Comments

This isn’t an article about how annoying it is that the latest version of MacOS X (10.7) is trying to hide scroll bars from me.

Nor is this an article about how managing windows and running applications is a complete and total nightmare.

And I certainly won’t be talking about how MacOS X “Lion” is slower than molasses, buggier than the Temple of Doom (especially that scene where Indy and Short-round almost get squashed by the ceiling… man that was a great movie, I should watch it again soon.  What were we talking about… oh!  Right.)… and thinks I want a single (slow loading) list of every file on my computer at the top of every file manager window (who needs folders or any other form of organization, right?).

Nope.  Not going to mention any of that.

The fact that MacOS X 10.7 has one of the worst user experiences I’ve ever encountered: I can look past all that.

What is really causing me problems is not being able to run MacOS X as a guest virtual machine (at least, not in a usable way).

I hear what many of you are saying: “Not that old chestnut again!”.  Yes.  AGAIN.  In theory, one day Apple will listen and make the lives of their customers easier.

You see, I make my living doing two things: Making software, and making comic books.  And, for those tasks, I need virtual machines.

For software, I need to be able to have an isolated (and 100% virus free), perfectly configured system for building the binaries and installers for every platform my software supports (which is a lot of platforms, MacOS X included).

This is no problem at all for Windows.  Or Linux.  Or OS/2, Haiku, FreeBSD, DOS, AROS, etc., etc..  The only system that I cannot properly run in a virtual machine is MacOS X.  Which means I need completely dedicated Mac hardware sitting off to the side (and unusable for any other task) just to build final binaries.

A similar issue crops up with comic books.

Fonts.  Specific revisions of software.  Color settings.  A virus free environment.  A system with properly designed scripts to automate many of the publishing and layout tasks.  All are made several orders of magnitude simpler through the use of a single virtual machine.

Again.  MacOS X cannot be used because of that.  So I either need to have yet another Mac sitting in the corner to handle these tasks (and no others)… or I don’t use MacOS X.  In the case of Comic Book authoring I have decided to not use MacOS X at all and build a dedicated Linux virtual machine to handle those tasks.

You could make the argument that restricting our ability to run the software we buy in the way we want (in this case, in a virtual machine) makes Apple more money because they sell more hardware.

And, you know what?  That’s probably true.  At least to a point.

You know what’s also true?  It makes me hate those machines and want to buy as few Apple products as possible.

There.  Phew.  I’ve vented and I feel better.  Now excuse me while I go hold my breath for Apple to listen to their customers.

Filed under: Comics, Linux, Tech Stuff | 19 Comments

Yesterday was notable for two reasons.

1. My return to the Linux Action Show after a couple month long sabbatical.
2. Being the first episode of the Linux Action Show of 2012, it was time for our annual “Linux Predictions”.

For our full commentary on these predictions (as well as a look back at how well we did with our predictions in 2011) you can check the video.

Without further ado, here is a list of exactly what will happen in the world of Linux in 2012.

1. Google TV will make a comeback.
2. Google TV will then become just as irrelevant by the end of 2012 as it was at the end of 2011.
3. Google will release Android 5.0 with a whole new UI.
4. We will all still be using X11 (and not Wayland) by years end.
5. Windows Phone 7 sales will be incredibly slow, causing Nokia to come up with a new strategy. There will be much laughter.
6. The Raspberry Pi will become available and sell out faster than they can make them.
7. Mint will continue to gain popularity… then suddenly drop down significantly (mirroring PCLinuxOS’s rise and fall in user share).
8. Intel will start (or join) another new Linux distro (forgetting about Moblin, Meego and Tizen).
9. Redhat will make more money and Fedora will continue to lose market-share.
10. Canonical will transition away from the desktop. Ubuntu desktop will live on, but receive less love. We will complain much.
11. btrfs will become the default file system on popular Linux distros. Fedora will ship with a major btrfs bug that gets us really torked off.
12. In a defense to Mint’s growth, and to directly appease The Linux Action Show, Ubuntu 12.04 will be a really solid release.

What do you think?  Do you have any predictions you are willing to go on the record with?  Feel free to drop them in the comments below.

(You can also grab audio and HD video versions of this episode here.)

Filed under: Jupiter Broadcasting, Linux | 6 Comments