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WelcomeThe Icon Bar is the longest running RISC OS portal. The sensibilities that Acorn instilled in us still influence our interests and writing.Buy swagGot news?Let us know! Take her off the monitorI don't want to see her faceSubscriptions  RSS 2.0 | 1.0 | 0.9Atom 0.3Misc RDF | CDFPodcastsSubscribe |iTunes |ListLatest MP3Site Search Enter your search terms Web IconBar Submit search form Article archives Building the Dream 3 - Random map generators, reduxPosted by Jeffrey Lee on 12:00, 23/8/2008 | Columns, Programming, Tutorials, RISC OS, Games  After writing my first article about random map generators, I said I was going to write a city generator. Well now I have, and I'm here to tell you about it over the course of the next few Building the Dream articles.Blow your own trumpet much?Although this article could just be dismissed as me blowing my own trumpet, I'm hoping that it will serve a somewhat more useful purpose. Before, during, and after working on the map generator I've searched the Internet for examples of similar generators and failed to find any. Sure, there are odd bits and pieces - descriptions of simpler generators that have given me ideas on some techniques to use, or screenshots of sexy work-in-progress realtime generators, but no actual algorithms or code samples from generators that come close to the required complexity of my generator. So hopefully this article will become a useful reference point for anyone else wanting to undertake the task of writing a city generator, whether they're targeting a grid-based world representation like mine or a vector-based one. Apart from discussing the algorithms used in the generator (and why they're used) I'll also talk about the data structures that are used - so even if you're not interested in random map generators you should be able to find plenty of examples of uses for the data structures covered in the first Building the Dream article, as requested quite some time ago. Continue reading "Building the Dream 3 - Random map generators, redux" | Comment in the forumsRight On Commander!Posted by Richard Goodwin on 22:30, 14/8/2008 | Games, Media, Retro Gareth Moore wrote in to let us know that, as foretold in the forums, the "Brits Who Made the Modern World" series is a big rip-off of the book "The Backroom Boys". No, wait, that wasn't it. The final episode airs on August 22nd at 7:30pm on Five. Go on, guess what it's about.  12 comments in the forumsBuilding the Dream 2 - The RISC OS Sound SystemPosted by Jeffrey Lee on 12:00, 17/3/2008 | Columns, Programming, Tutorials, Sound and music A bit later than I was hoping, but nevertheless it's now time for Building the Dream 2. This time I'll be looking at the RISC OS sound system - everything from the terminology used, to what makes a sound, how the RISC OS sound system works, and how you can write your own sample player. Continue reading "Building the Dream 2 - The RISC OS Sound System" | 3 comments in the forumsHappy Birthday from Acorn Arcade!Posted by Acorn Arcade team on 00:00, 29/1/2008 | Acorn, Games, RISC OS, Retro, Site But whose birthday is it? It's ours, of course! Ten years ago today, Acorn Arcade officially opened to the public, as this handily-archived newsgroup posting shows. With Alasdair Bailey and Graham Crockford at the helm the site soon increased in popularity enough to warrant moving to its own domain name, acornarcade.com, and eventually to its own dedicated server, owned by our benevolent dictator Rich Goodwin. A few years later Acorn Arcade gave birth to The Icon Bar, which then in an ironic turn of events absorbed the content of Acorn Arcade in late 2006, in order to give both sites a much-needed overhaul. But what does all this mean? Continue reading "Happy Birthday from Acorn Arcade!" | 9 comments in the forumsMerry Christmas from The Icon Bar!Posted by Andrew C. Poole on 00:00, 25/12/2007 | Random stuff, Site, Games ![[TIB Christmas Logo]](http://www.iconbar.com/tibtheme/default/logos/xmas_hills.gif) Well it's that time of year again. It hardly seems like a full year since we last wished all our readers a very Merry Christmas. Yet again, most of you are probably too busy downing the bottle of whatever-it-is that you found in the back of the cupboard, and stuffing yourself with mince pies to notice this post, but I'm still going to say it anyway. Merry Christmas to all our readers, and we hope you have a wonderful new year - whatever you're doing and however you're celebrating. Links:Christmas (Wikipedia) 1 comment in the forumsReview: Nokia N770 Internet TabletPosted by Richard Goodwin on 18:00, 16/10/2007 | Hardware, Reviews, Mobile computing, Linux A guilty secret: limited though they were, I used to love working with early Palm and Psion PDAs. Neal Stephonson wrote in his novel Cryptonomicon:Eb is doodling on one of those little computers that uses a stylus so that you can write on the screen. In general, hackers don't use them, but Eb [...] wrote the software for this model and so he has a lot of them lying around....which stuck in my head as it described my situation at the time. Apart from the bit where Eb is an über-hacker and I was a junior Perl mangler, obviously. Screen-wise the Palm V was just low-res black on a sort of olive green, and getting data on to them usually required a precariously-balanced IR-capable mobile phone and a lot of patience (or the foresight to sync everything before leaving home), but a small, omni-present device that responded to the touch always seemed so much more satisfying than the mouse or the glidepoint. Fast forward a few years, and along comes the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet: a small device with a touchscreen, but updated for the 21st century with wifi Internet access, a widescreen, full colour display, a proper Web browser and bluetooth connectivity. I'd looked at the proliferation of Windows-based PDAs over the years and they'd never appealed. Where the Palm and Psion devices felt like they'd been designed from the start with mobile computing in mind, WinCE always seemed like a big OS shoehorned into a little device, and wifi an afterthought if available at all. And don't get me started on small keyboards after the disaster that was the Psion Revo. Maybe this Linux-based device could put the fun back in to computing? Continue reading "Review: Nokia N770 Internet Tablet" | 10 comments in the forumsFreeware instant messaging client releasedPosted by Michael Drake on 22:30, 14/9/2007 | RISC OS, Software, Internet, Reviews  Parmesan is a new client for the popular MSN Messenger network, developed by Christian Ludlam. Released as freeware, the software brings new features to instant messaging on RISC OS. Chief among these are display pictures and nudges. The software also doubles as a versatile viewer for arbitrary XML files.RISC OS has seen the release of several MSN Messenger clients over the years; two free clients (Natter and Messenger) and R-Comp's commercial product, Grapevine. A few years ago all of these clients fell foul of an upgrade to the MSN protocol which stopped RISC OS users from being able to connect to the chat network. To many users' dismay, RISC OS was left without a free MSN Messenger client, as only Grapevine was upgraded to support the new protocol.Happily, this distressing situation has, at last, been rectified with the release of Parmesan. In this article I'll take a look at Parmesan describe my experience of it. Finally, as a Grapevine owner, I will compare Parmesan with the commercial Grapevine application. Continue reading "Freeware instant messaging client released" | 13 comments in the forumsBuilding the Dream 1 - Container data structuresPosted by Jeffrey Lee on 12:00, 15/7/2007 | Columns, Programming, Tutorials Hello and welcome to the Building the Dream, a new series of (regular!) articles at The Icon Bar in which I will be educating you in how to turn your programming dreams into reality. First off, let's get one thing clear - this isn't a beginner's course to programming, or a tutorial in a specific language. Instead it's the place to go once you've finished your programming tutorial and are wondering what to do next. If you have an idea for a program, but are confused about how to implement it, then this is the series for you, as I'll be covering everything from data structures and program design through to project management, optimisation, how to make sure your programs maintain the RISC OS look and feel, and even provide case studies of how certain well-known programs do their stuff. Continue reading "Building the Dream 1 - Container data structures" | 8 comments in the forumsSDL port of Asylum releasedRead article... | 3 comments in the forumsWakefield 2007Read article... | 16 comments in the forumsVirtualRiscPC released for Mac OSRead article... | 19 comments in the forumsA Few Reasons to be CheerfulRead article... | 5 comments in the forumsRISC OS Select 4 Issue 2 now availableRead article... | 27 comments in the forumsHyperlandRead article... | 14 comments in the forumsPollDo you use the internet on something other than your computer?       Yes, on my mobile phone (24%)Yes, on an iPhone/iPod Touch (12%)Yes, on a handheld internet device (8%)Yes, on my TV (1%)Yes, on something else (5%)No, just on my computer (47%)I don't use the internet at all (4%)Recent discussions- Dock article on Wikipedia (Gen:1)- What's your next computer? (Gen:54)- New Red Dwarf?! (PP:5)- Starfighter (Games:16)- Version control for home projects (Prog:15)- A test for the film buffs (PP:24)- Pandora (PP:7)- Right On Commander! (News:12)- Acorn still in the media (Gen:5)- A longer than normal silence (Gen:53)Services - Free ads - Web hostingSites we like - Kotaku - Orpheus Internet - Noise To Signal - Drobe - Daring FireballStatistics - Web browsers - Operating systems - Types - Countries - RSSAbout The Icon Bar | Staff | Contact us | Privacy policy© Copyright One Point Nought 2000 - 2008. |
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