Things are finally starting to settle down with the new house and I have more time to work. I’m finishing up the updates to the type system to support objects. I have the garbage collector integrated with the type system and the run-time type of the objects. Now sub-objects are collected along with the objects. I had to separate the globals and functions from the stack, which is something I should have done to begin with. Overall the application is much cleaner now and easier to work with. The next step is making all the display elements objects, this will give the users a lot more power and simplify the code alot.
In the mean time, a Half Price Book store opened up within walking distance from our house. This is going to be a constant drain on our time and money. I just can’t resist cheap books. On the other hand our shelves for the library just got in. We are going to have a whole room dedicated to books and reading, something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. How cool is that.
One of the books I’ve picked up, along with books on Python and Haskell, is Digital Lighting & Rendering by Jeremy Birn. I won’t ever need the level of detail that he goes into, to create realistic effects, but the section on basic lighting techniques made a huge difference in appearance. I’ve posted a couple of the better looking results. Three directional lights look so much better then “ambient” lighting, there is no going back.