As graphical effects go, a particle system is one of the most versatile. It can be used to simulate things like electrical sparks, dust clouds, smoke, fire, and water. However, there is one problem...
Peter Bloomfield
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OpenGL gotcha: my particles are too small
OpenGL gotcha: remember light 0
I was experimenting with some simple scene geometry and lighting in OpenGL today, and I stumbled into the same pitfall I’ve stumbled into several times before. (You’d think I would have learned by ...
PHP4/5: Object orientation and compatibility
Some compatibility problems were reported following the release of SLOODLE 1.0, and they largely appear to centre around the object-oriented plugin system I developed for the Presenter module. The...
OpenGL gotcha: scale your normals!
My OpenGL blunder this evening involved forgetting to make sure my normals were scaled correctly. I had a scene with a single point light source and several small rotating cubes. Everything looked...
PHP quirk: shell commands breaking on Windows
I’ve been wrestling with many compatibility quirks in the open source SLOODLE project lately, and this one certainly deserves some kind of prize for awkwardness. It seems that some perfectly valid ...
OpenGL gotcha: depth buffer distortion
While I’m on the topic of OpenGL gotchas, I thought I’d mention another which caught me out a couple of years ago. I was working on some prototypes with some friends, and we encountered some strang...
OpenGL gotcha: mipmaps only please!
Here’s an OpenGL gotcha which caught me out for quite a while. I was writing code to load textures, but it only worked if I was using the GLU function to build mipmaps. Loading standard textures ke...
Using GDI+ in C++ Win32 programming
If you do any Win32 programming in C++ then I strongly recommend you learn about GDI+. Although it’s been around for a while now, it doesn’t seem to be well known. It can be great to have on hand e...
Array of Checkboxes in LimeSurvey
I’m using LimeSurvey to setup and conduct a survey as part of my PhD, and it’s working very well. (Great work, LimeSurvey developers!) It’s free and open source, and since I have my own server I ca...
Even Powers and Odd Numbers
This is a very simple mathematical relationship I found out about recently and which I rather like. I don’t claim to be original here. I’m sure it’s been covered by many people before me. Here’s a...