Firemonkey Particles

We see images with connected points used a lot in diagrams, illustrations, advertising and just cool abstract art. They visually represent networks of related things and ideas or connectivity. The web, for example. It's effective and visually appealing and when the effect is animated, it's mesmerising. And popular. There are any number of animated backgrounds and JavaScript libraries to add moving particles to web pages, including the very appropriately named particles.js.

I'm going to make a Delphi version using FireMonkey.

Quick and Dirty FireMonkey Donut Gauge

Someone was asking where they could find gauge style chart components for FireMonkey like the ones you might see on a dashboard. They even helpfully posted some pictures.

At least one of these looks like it would be easy to reproduce without any third party components.

Simple FireMonkey 3D

Creating 3D software is undeniably cool, but it might be intimidating, what with all of the math and unfamiliar concepts. And the math...

Fortunately, FireMonkey does a lot of the heavy lifting for us. You can get started while writing little or no code and still have the option of digging deeper when you need to. It's a familiar concept for Delphi developers.

We'll create a simple FireMonkey 3D application and explore some of the basics.

Learning New Things - C++ for Absolute Beginners

I have a bit of a preoccupation with new Delphi programming books and have blogged about them a bunch of times. The keen-eyed among you will notice that this is not a Delphi book, but you might recognise the author's name, Slobodan Dmitrović, from the Delphi community.

Improve the Delphi Documentation

I know it's sometimes popular to reflexively say that Delphi's help sucks. And it's not like Borland and Embarcadero haven't given us some cause, but the documentation really has gotten much better over the years. Of course, there are still issues; New features that aren't well documented (placeholder pages), help topics that are automatically migrated to a new version, but links aren't updated or are broken, etc.

If you've noticed a mistake or have a pet peeve with the help and you're so inclined, there's something you can do about it.

FireMonkey 3D Enterprise Application

You might remember me writing that the FireMonkey framework isn't a full-blown gaming engine and that it's better suited to enterprise applications. (rimshot)

Revenge of the Fifth

You didn't think I'd go through the trouble of making a Star Wars Day post and miss out on the obvious follow-up pun, did you?

The demo project (available here) is pretty much the same as the previous one except that it uses a different 3D model from  Star Wars: Thrawn's Revenge II: Ascendancy. Thanks again to CoreyLoses.