Cirrus Skies:

Cirrus Skies is a new ‘Cloud Management System’ for the Torque Game Engine. It adds new functionality and flexibility, allowing game developers to quickly create beautiful, lifelike and dynamic skies for their games. Cirrus Skies is available for purchase in the Garage Games: Developer Store.

Now Fully Supports:

• Torque Game Engine (TGE)
• Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA)

For more information please visit the Cirrus Skies Product Profile on the Dragonfly Software Website.

Dragonfly Software

Dragonfly Software is developing dynamic weather-effects for the Torque Game Engine. Our middleware add-ons produce a more immersive and life-like gaming experience. Our code is designed to be modular, flexible, clearly written and well documented to save end-developers time, money and aggravation. Dragonfly Software is a 2008 software-startup based in the Lowcountry region of SC, USA.

This is something that I have worked hard on for a long time. I want to thank the great staff at GarageGames for all their help and support. To everyone who sent me mid-night emails asking when this would be complete, thankyou for your constant encouragement. I’m confident you will agree, Cirrus Skies was well worth the wait!

~Dragonfly Software: Founder, Steven Peterson; GarageGames, February 12, 2009

Cirrus Skies:

Cirrus Skies is a new ‘Cloud Management System’ for the Torque Game Engine. It adds new functionality and flexibility, allowing game developers to quickly create beautiful, lifelike and dynamic skies for their games. Cirrus Skies is available for purchase in the Garage Games: Developer Store.

For more information please visit the Cirrus Skies Product Profile on the Dragonfly Software Website.

Dragonfly Software

Dragonfly Software is developing dynamic weather-effects for the Torque Game Engine. Our middleware add-ons produce a more immersive and life-like gaming experience. Our code is designed to be modular, flexible, clearly written and well documented to save end-developers time, money and aggravation.

Dragonfly Software also does occasional contract-programming, and has numerous other projects in the development pipeline! Dragonfly Software is a 2008 software-startup based in the Lowcountry region of SC, USA.

Reposting this to make it readable.
The original unformatted post is here:
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=86453&tstart=0

The Story..

I tried to add OpenSolaris-SXCE-b103 as a dual-boot to an existing WindowsXP-Pro machine, in a single HDD configuration. Had trouble setting the partition table, and then GRUB did not correctly detect the NTFS partition. I *think* the partition table is intact, but GRUB refuses to boot the windows partition. How can I fix it?

Follows is a report of all the configurations, tests I’ve run, and results I’ve gotten. No idea what the next step is. Any insight is appreciated!

(Did quite a bit of googling but “Haven’t Felt Lucky”(tm) yet…)

Thanks for any help,
Envision

Steps Taken

1. OSol Installer initially failed at the end of install-setup menus with the error:
   Error: Signal 11, type install-solaris to restart
   => I forgot to create an empty partition .. an error message to the effect would have helped.
   
2. Used PartionMagic to resize the windows partition to 100GB of 250GB drive. Left remainingg space “unallocated”.
   => Solaris didn’t like that either, and wouldn’t let me select a drive or configure the partition table on the appropriate screen.
3. PartitionMagic: created an “unformated partition” in the unallocated space.
4. Fought with the Solaris partition manager nearly-accidently deleting the windows-partition before I got what I thought I wanted:
   • 100GB Windows
   • 75GB Solaris-SXCE
   • 75GB unused ( for future Indian: osol-0811 install)

=> Solaris installs and works
=> Grub has 2 Solaris entries and 1 for OS/2 … wtf?
=> Grub won’t boot the windows partition no matter what I try.

GRUB Configuration

GRUB menu.lst

#--------------------- WINDOWS --------------------
title Windows XP
root (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
#--------------------- END WINDOWS --------------------


Partition Table

PartionMagick now reads a single block and reports:
“Partition table error #108″

Current Partition Table:
(as reported by Ranish Partition Manager: V.2.44)

GRUB Boot – Test Results

TEST: OS/2

Booting ‘OS/2′
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format
Press any key to contiue…

Notes: Pressing a key recycles to GRUB but the screen
is black&White with dotted white verticale lines …
—

TEST: Win #1

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format
Press any key to continue…

Notes: Pressing a key recycles to GRUB but the screen
is black&White with dotted white verticale lines …
—

TEST: Win #2

Booting command-list
root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0×7
makeactive
chainloader +1
Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format
Press any key to continue…

Notes: Pressing a key recycles to GRUB but the screen
is black&White with dotted white verticale lines …
—

TEST: Win #3

rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Notes: This instantly reloads GRUB in full-color …
Apparently this is the address of GRUB…
—

TEST: Win #4

Booting ‘Windows XP’
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Error 22: No such partition
Press any Key…

Notes: Pressing a key recycles to GRUB but the screen
is black&White with dotted white verticale lines …
—

TEST: Win #5

Booting ‘Windows XP’
root (hd1,0)
Error 21: Selected disk does not exist:
Press any Key…

Notes: Clean restart of GRUB

I’m currently starting my own software company and needed fast, reliable storage on the network at an affordable price. I wanted RAID-5 or better, multiple gigabit Ethernet connections, 10,000k SATA or SAS drives, and a linux (or unix) platform. It also had to be rackmount but stylish-looking, preferbly black.I concluded the most economical option was to roll-my-own NAS using Sun Microsystems Solaris and ZFS filesystem with RAID-Z, a software raid solution.

Why Not Buy One?

There is a number of 2-4 drive RAID-0/1  products emerging on the retail scene but I wanted at least RAID-5 reliablity+performance. On the other end, enterprise stoarge starts close to $10,000 and sky-rockets from there… In the middle there is a narrow class of entry-level rack-mount NASs for around $2000. Attractive at first, these boxes offer nothing but compromise when you peal back the layers.

I nearly bought a Linksys-NAS only to discover a forum full of 2-year old unresolved critical firmware bugs. The Buffalo Terrastation Pro looks solid but gets mediocore benchmark-scores. Most such solutions offer a single ethernet-port, proprietary RAID implementations and firmware etc.  Your stuck with whichever operatingsystem the box offers, and locked into the network-protocals it supports. It gets dizzying after awhile.

Sun ZFS and RAID-Z

yadda, yadda, yadda…

The Chassis

2U Rackmount Server Chassis 8-SCSI Hot Swap
(temporary link).

So I ended up with this. By my own error I was expecting somthing with SAS/SATA connects; this has 80-pin SCA-SCSI harddrive connections with 68-pin SCSI to the host-controller. Turns out this is not the end of the world, and may work out better in fact.

Other Components

(*) Some prices include tax or shipping in the sub-total.

envX in it’s final form will be comprised of two parts. The first deals with ‘cloud-layers’, and the second deals with ‘volumetric-fog’. In both cases these code blocks are being moved to their own class-files for code-clairity, redesigned for greater flexibility, and optimized for improved performance.

The cloud-layers portion is in fact done, and I’ve hit all my original goals. These included:

• Arbitrary number of cloud layers
• Ability to fade cloud layers independently
• Ability to fade each independent layer to a specific opacity between 0 and 1
• Ability to select different source-types for each cloud-layer

The fog-layers portion is in a much earlier stage and may or may not be included in the original release at this point. If that’s not possible, it will likely be added in a point-release later this summer.

My goals for improving the volumetric-fog in Torque are very similar to my accomplishments with the cloud-layers. Notably: clean up the code, make ‘fog-layers’ independent from each other, and enhance the visual effects. I’m also investigating the possibility of ‘fog-blocks’, and spherical fog masses.

More details to come soon!

[edit Sept, 15th 2008] The fog updates mentioned here turned out to be unrealistically ambitious. After a considerable research and development investment I had to shelve that portion of the project. The final product will only include the updates to the cloud layers. [/edit]

[edit Oct, 31st 2008] As we go to market, the ‘envX: Sky’ module has been formally re-named ‘Cirrus Skies’ by Dragonfly Software. [/edit]

I’m working for myself now and have some really cool projects going on behind the scenes. I can’t reveal all the exciting details yet, but be on the look out for more big news as we move into mid-summer. For now, check the ‘Project’ pages to learn more about ‘envX’ and ‘EnviroTorque 2.0′!

Why I Wanted to do Construction:

1. Take a break from the office to “recharge”.
2. Always wanted to pickup wood-working / carpentry as a hobby -
3. …Because it runs in the family.

How does this Apply to Software?:

1. It’s all just “Design and Build”.
2. Builders have been doing multi-year and multi-million dollar projects far longer than software-developers.
3. The project-management and people-management challenges are similar.
4. Some days are “group-work”, some days it’s a “solo-project” but your still part of the team.
5. The project life-cycle is similar: (design, model, foundation, outer-shell, inner-framework, detail-work, facade/interface, testing, debugging, maintenance…)
6. It’s all just Good Honest Hard Work, (Doing it outside it just hotter, colder, windier, wetter, dustier, dirtier, and all around more unpredictable)!

I hope to return to ET2 ASAP, but I have a backlog of non-work responsibilities to deal with. As soon as I’ve re-organized my life hopefully there will be new news on this front!

I’ve chosen to part ways with Lowcountry Paver, the company that brought me down to Hilton Head Island to do IT work a year ago.

As a change of pace I’ll be doing some construction work this summer. At the same time I’m looking for a permanent Software Engineering Position.

Congratulations to John & Lori

John and Lori are getting married on Saturday May 19th! Good Luck and Best Wishes to both of them!

Website Updates

Made minor changes to the look and feel of this site today. Major content changes and even some pictures expected through next week. Keep checking back!

In order to fix things, I’m writing a new cloud handler in a new ‘Cloud.cc’ Class. When I’m done I’ll be able to rip all the old cloud-code out of Sky.cc. In the mean time this has slowed me down ALOT as this is really a project unto it’self. Key New Features Include:

• Arbitrary number of cloud layers
• Ability to fade cloud layers independently
• Ability to fade each independent layer to a specific opacity between 0 and 1
• Ability to select different source-types for each cloud-layer
  • ie. traditional cloud map
  • DIFFERENT dynamic/random cloud generators
• ability to create new cloud source-types as a plug-in modules (more or less).