http://blog.downstairspeople.org Roguestar, Haskell, and Fun Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:33:47 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It seems like it should be possible to have some kind of GUI library in which user interface elements can be painted onto the screen frame-by-frame, instead of the common practice of assembling an object-oriented hierarchy of widgets. I'm thinking of something like (rough ECMA-like pseudocode): static var clicks = 0; drawRectangle( ... http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/11/30/paintable-user-interfaces/ [caption id="attachment_97" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="An Androsynth standing in front of a stargate."][/caption] When you are done on a planet, step through a gateway to move to the next one. http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/09/26/new-roguestar-screenshot-gateway/ I've been playing around with an Arrow concept, which to my knowledge is original. I've decided to call this a FactoryArrow: newtype FactoryArrow m n a b = FactoryArrow { runFactory :: m (Kleisli n a b) } Where m and n are Monads. m is a single-pass initialization monad, ... http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/08/09/factoryarrow/ Last night I checked out Scott E. Dillard's Vec library. It's a good, fast, pure implementation of the basic matrix operations applicable to 3D graphics. Switching to Vec has shaved off quite a bit of time from one of my demo apps and relieved me of the need ... http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/05/05/vec-is-good/ Provides cooperative task prioritization. The priority-sync package on hackage.haskell.org. $ cabal install priority-sync $ git clone http://www.downstairspeople.org/git/priority-sync.git Feedback will be greatly appreciated. This package is a spin-off from my work on roguestar, where I need to do significant background processing while retaining enough resources to perform smooth animation. http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/04/29/ann-priority-sync/ I spent some time yesterday profiling roguestar. I do this every few months just to see where things stand, and there are always two culprits at the top of roguestar-gl.prof, every single time: * typeclass dictionary lookups in inner loops * Rational In the first case, I think the simplest solution is ... http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/04/16/trends-in-profiling-haskell/ Here we see our hero fighting a recreant with a kinetic sabre. The material spheres front and left can be used to repair yourself, while a phase rifle is to the right. In unskilled hands, such powerful weapons can more dangerous to the user than enemy. http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/03/22/twilight-hero/ As I've found myself repeatedly writing a bit of code that looked vaguely like this: get :: SomeArrow String (Maybe Thing) foo :: [Thing] -> FooThing . . . getAToZ :: SomeArrow () (Maybe FooThing) getAToZ = proc () -> do m_a <- get -< "a" ... http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2009/01/04/maybearrow/ This is what I imagine a very cold (~2000K) red star might look like at sunrise. I'm not sure if it matters whether it is a red giant or red dwarf -- the system tries to size the star semi-realistically according to the temperature of the star and the ... http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2008/11/04/a-new-dawn/ Here's something I've been spending waaaay too much time on, but I wasn't happy with the results the first try, or the second try, or the third try and . . . I can be very stubborn. This is actually very low resolution. It uses a simple media ray tracer ... http://blog.downstairspeople.org/2008/10/10/good-morning-planet-haskell/