I created a high resolution render of Datsville. You can find it here. It is about 40MB. I may upload an even higher resolution version to Flickr.
Edit: I updated the link since the page has moved.
Interactive Town Map
Keyboard diagrams update 
I’ve been messing around with the keyboard diagram code. I implemented a few new features:
- multiple contributors can now be attached to a binding scheme, keyboard layout, or theme instead of just one
- you can now toggle the numeric keypad on or off
- I re-added the “SVG only” format
I did a lot of code cleanup too.
Email
Sorry, the captcha on my Email page stopped working. I fixed the issue, and you should now be able to contact me again.
Keyboard diagrams and file host
Over the last month or so I have been updating the keyboard binding diagrams. You now select the type of keyboard before selecting the style or game. I also combed through the CSS stylesheets, looking for and fixing errors. I also tweaked the dimensions of each keyboard to better match the most common physical keyboard layouts. See the log for more information.
Also, today I uploaded all my files to pCloud and edited all the links on this site to point to there instead of to MediaFire. I’m not going to delete the files from MediaFire, but eventually the files will get removed automatically by the company and the links will go dead.
Registration
If you are having trouble registering/posting to this blog, please let me know using my Email form.
Moving materials off-site
I have spent the last few weeks moving most of my geometry activities from this site to the online collection at the GeoGebra website. I plan to do the same for my LDraw models, either at Brickshelf, MOCpages or Rebrickable. I’ve also written a new tutorial for the POV-Ray wiki, and created a new solar system scene for the POV-Ray Object Collection and Wikipedia.
More Wikipedia illustrations
I have been busy creating illustrations for Wikipedia. They can be seen on my user page at Wikimedia Commons. Most of them involve the spherical or elliptical coordinate systems somehow.
I also created a series of sectional drawings comparing the internal geometries of the various “Color Spheres” of (from left to right) Johannes Itten, Albert H. Munsell, and Philipp Otto Runge; as well as a fourth sphere created for comparison based on the spherical coordinate system. It is amazing how many ways there are to draw a sphere!
And I updated a couple of existing images that show how the color-making attribute saturation can be determined from the chroma and value parameters of the Munsell Color System. (Though this definition of saturation is a bit different than the one used in the HSL color space I am accustomed to.)
Lastly, I finished an old scene featuring my interpretation of Larry Niven’s Ringworld. It is a giant ring encircling a far away sun, with oceans, continents and Earth-like weather embedded into it. Here’s the latest render:
The source code for these images can be found in my new GitHub repository which I just created for this purpose.
VGKD submission form
I have completed developing a new submission form for the Video Game Keyboard Diagram project. It should now be much easier to fix and submit new keyboard bindings data.
I have also uploaded the project to GitHub.
Updated keyboard diagrams project
I’ve updated my Video Game Keyboard Diagrams project over the last few weeks. Here are the most recent items from the change log:
- 2018/05/29: Renamed the project from “Video Game Hotkey Maps” back to “Video Game Keyboard Diagrams”.
- 2018/05/29: Updated the printing tips with new info on problems and workarounds.
- 2018/05/25: Tweaks to style sheets and meta tags in order to (somewhat) better support mobile browsers.
- 2018/05/25: Fixed a bug that was causing some browsers to not be able to switch between the HTML and SVG versions of the diagrams.
- 2018/05/25: Old URLs are now being properly converted to the new URL syntax.
- 2018/05/23: Added bindings for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Overwatch, Far Cry 5 and Everspace. I’ve only played the last one, but hopefully people will appreciate the others.
- 2018/05/18: Made changes to the accordion menu in the front page. Made changes to the alphabetical list (now renamed to “master list”).
- 2018/05/14: Added a button to the bottom of each chart to quickly switch between SVG and HTML rendering.
- 2018/05/14: Added bindings for Battletech and Stellar Tactics.
- 2018/05/14: Fixed a bug preventing charts from being loaded if the gam, sty, lay and svg parameters were missing from the URL.
Goals heading into the future include creating PDF versions of the diagrams, and possibly starting a github repository for the project.
In other news, I re-enabled comments on this blog.
Updating Datsville
I’ve spent the last few months updating Datsville in various ways.
- I have reverted the town layout back to how it was at around revision 501, including putting the corn fields and airport back in their original locations, and removing the surrounding hills.
- I have reorganized and cleaned up a lot of the POV-Ray scripts, which should now be a lot easier to use now.
- I helped translate Tore Eriksson’s LDBoxer program into Python, and optimized it slightly.
- Lastly, I made the sidewalks narrower, and expanded the space devoted to the town’s houses and other buildings.
Right now I am working on porting Datsville RPG from RPG Maker VX Ace to RPG Maker MV. I have already updated many of the project’s graphics. Now I just need to implement the LeTBS combat plugins and get them working properly. Below are some screenshots. There are still several graphical bugs in the LeTBS plugin, as can be seen in the image on the right. Hopefully they will get addressed at some point so that I can continue working on this.
