Two Apocalypses Down, One To Go

The forecasts for the beginning of this century were quite ominous. Firstly the Y2K bug, then the Rapture, and then the End of the World.

Does anyone know what the Y2K bug actually was? Basically, computers were not future proofed and so only stored 2 numbers of the year, so 91 or 99, and simply prefixed 19 whenever asked. So the thought was that when the clocks ticked over to the year 2000, all computers what see the time as 1900, but wait, computers weren't around then! And so the computer would have a melt-down, or explode, or attack humanity.

Microsoft actually released a patch to prevent this apocalypse so luckily we were all saved. It must also be noted that a 32 bit date system used in Unix systems will have the same effect as returning to epoc time, but that is due to happen 2038.

The most recent apocalypse happened 21st May 2011, at 6pm EDT. Missed that one? Me too. A large community of the Christian faith believed that the second coming of Jesus would occour that day. Apocalypse 2011 it seemed, was a slight miscalculation. So how did this date even come about?
Wikipedia has this to say:

In 1970, Camping dated the Great Flood to 4990 BC.^[26] Using this date, taking the statement in Genesis 7:4 ("Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth") to be a prediction of the end of the world, and combining it with 2 Peter 3:8 ("With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day"), Camping concluded that the end of the world would occur in 2011, 7000 years from 4990 BC.^[8] Camping takes the 17th day of the second month mentioned in Genesis 7:11 to be May 21, and hence predicts the rapture to occur on this date.

Sounds like reason enough for me, but nothing happened, so what now?

On May 23, 2011, Harold Camping stated that May 21 had been a "spiritual" Judgment Day and that the Rapture will occur on October 21, 2011, together with the destruction of the world.^[22]

So we are still awaiting the death and destruction all of man kind. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Next up, if we survive the physical rapture, is the Mayan worlds end prediction. These have been justified using mostly astrological alignments and the end of a calender created thousands of years ago.

Since this theory took off there have been numerous different theories on what will cause the end of the world. None of which have any real credit to them, as far as I am aware.

So that's my rant.
I posted a message on the  Apocalypse 2011 website and am hoping that it makes it past the moderation. I doubt it. Though I did leave a link to my blog and so if anyone has ended up here from there, feel free to leave a message. I will only remove content if the post is excessively vulgar, but it will still show that a post was made.

Cheers,
Milk

miTanks, Part 4

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone's holidays are going well. Nothing too exciting going on in mine. Had a nice few days off work for drinks and general relaxation. Didn't do too much on the tanks game but thought I should update what has been happening. Foo is currently on holidays afk so not much in the lines of GUI completed.

Sorry I don't have many pictures for this project. As the GUI is last on the TODO list, this will come when the app is in the testing phase. I'll get some code up here later on for you all aswell. As this uses Java classes the code is spread across multiple files. I'll upload any interesting code I make though. Have a couple little bits in mind for later on.

Completed:
More of the inner workings are completed for in game.
The game physics work. (better now)
Simple flat terrain completed.
Support for differing gravity, wind and landscape. (three landscapes have been added, one fully completed)
Support for random terrain generator. (included in landscape)
Support for multiple weapons, including weapon movement and collision calculations.
One weapon implemented. (fully implemented, including circular proximity damage)
Multiple matches in a game. (support for)
Game cycle. (may need to be editted once visuals and sounds are added.)

Still to do:
Getting input. Once input can be received the usage is already implemented.
Tank movement.
Display. Location calculations implemented. Just need to know how to put an image on the screen.
AI calculations, of differing skill levels.
Perfect AI, should be easy to do.
Absolutely useless AI, is even easier.
Realistic AI is somewhat harder. Shouldn't take too long. I'd just fudge some numbers from the perfect AI.
Defensive weaponry support. Shields and such.

NOTE TO FOLLOWERS:
I'm going to need some sound effects for this game. Such as a tank moving sound, bullet fire sound, bullet fall, explosion, and probably some others. If you can link me some sounds you've made I'll give them a listen and add the best ones into the game.