Free or Paid Software

I have been thinking lately about whether I should charge for the software I create or release it for free. There is a ton of overhead that must be taken care of if I charge for the software. However, if I release it for free, more people will be able to enjoy it. I could also setup a donation system. This way, if people enjoy the software, they could donate, only if they want. Nothing will be restricted in the software if you do not donate but there would porbably be a reminder screen. If you did not have that screen, how would people know to donate?

Donations is what I think I will do. Maybe I can setup the donations so you know what it is going towards. For example, I need an Intel Mac Mini to develop software for intel macs. I could setup the first set of donations to go towards the Mac Mini. This way people know that their money is not going to things with which they would not agree.

If you have any comments, please feel free to leave them!

Info Depot and Plans

It looks like TFWorld's Info Depot will be live soon. I have just about finished the design and only need to work on the backend programming. Also, I need to write a few more articles before I will allow it to go live.

Today I came up with a new plan. If I can accomplish something small each day, it is better than trying to do something huge and failing. I will probably write an article over this just to see if it will help anyone else.

The OpenGL programming is still going good. My latest thing to create has been a nice particle engine for a missile. Soon it will be shown off in a Battleship clone I am writing.

Learning AJAX

At work today, I found a problem where I needed to live update a webpage. After doing some searching, I ran across AJAX. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML and is extremely useful when managing live updated web systems. Once I learn more than just updating a div tag from a secondary php page, I will probably write a few tutorials and articles for TFS.

Speaking of articles, I decided to restart the TFWorld Info Depot, which was formally known as Information Collection.com. I will be adding articles periodically over anything and everything. If the site does not work well for you right now, it is because I am "fixing" it. It was written as a mix of html/php and was done in a really bad way.

Finally, we planted our garden for this year. We are going to grow 4 plants of cherry tomatos and 4 plants of roma tomatos. I will be taking some starting pictures today after work and will update the TFWorld Garden site tomorrow.

Moola.com - Strategy and Free Money

For anyone who has ever wanted to get free money just from playing a quick game, Moola.com is what you are looking for. We have a few invites left, so email us and we will send an invite out! What is there to risk when they give you free money? Remember, Moola.com is an invite only site.

Moola Strategy

The strategy to beating Moola.com's only game, Gold Rush!, is to hit 32. You want to save your high numbers, 4 5 6, until the end to possibly trump your opponent. There are exceptions to this, but the majority of my wins come from playing 2, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6. Often times players will blow their 6 near the beginning and wind up losing. If they do this, you should usually be able to capitalize on their mistake and take the majority of the remaining tricks.

Finally, even though you get free money, you do not get large amounts of money until you have saved up enough and are confident enough to bet large amounts. I like to bet 2 levels lower then my max. This way, if I lose a game, I still have enough money left to gain the amount I lost back relatively fast.

Moola Conclusion

Moola.com has a fun free game that can potentially earn you millions. It can become quickly addicting if you let it, so the best bet is to play it during lunch or some other time when you have nothing else to do. Enjoy and don't forget to email me for an invite!

Learning to Learn

So it seems that I have some motivation to continue learning OpenGL now. I figured out after the last post that I work best when tackling one problem at a time. If I do this, I am able to quickly learn the problem instead of compounding it by trying to learn 50 things at once. So far, it looks like this is working out pretty well. I should have a complete set of examples and tutorials for the website in a few weeks. They should cover everything from setting up the OpenGL view, texture mapping, particle streams, mouse interaction, etc.

I should have my first set of games ready in a month or so. My list so far will consist of the following:

• Pong


• Jezzball


• Battleship


• Missle Command

After that comes a few real games. The first ones will probably be donationware via paypal. Guess we will see how this goes? :)

Life can be boring

Lately I have been relearning OpenGL. Sometimes I think it is a complete waste of time as I will probably never work on a game for my real job, but I guess it is a fun hobby. Since TFWorld Software is more of a hobby then anything, it is fine. What else am I going to do at work if I don't learn something new? I refuse to go back to playing World of Warcraft.

Some days I really dread going to work. There is really nothing left for me to do here other then find another position. If I did that though, when would I have time to learn new things? However, if I am ever going to be able to buy a house for my wife and support having a family, find a new job is what I must do. If you happen to need a decent programmer that is willing to work hard, please drop me a line.

Well, that is all for now.

Where did TFGallery go?

Last week, I said that TFGallery 0.6 was coming soon. Some have asked, where is this mystical gallery software and why can't we see it yet? The simple answer is that I want images to put in the gallery before debuting to the public. The long answer is known only to myself. :) In other words, I will be spending Saturday morning taking dozens hundreds of Transformers Cybertron pictures and converting them to a suitable format. Hopefully my laptop will be able to handle the automated manipulation of hundreds of images... It did before and so it shall again.

In other words, look for the debut of Transformer World's - Transformer Gallery (TFGallery) coming Monday, March 27.

Oh and Pong is a fun and addictive game to make. I have almost completed it for OS X, coming next week will be the Windows version. Keep an eye out on TFWorld Software for more information!