DamoBlog

Psychedelic!

2009-02-16T10:12:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted about the sweet, sweet electronic music in a while, so here it is. I've been going through my relatively older techno lately and re-discovered two gems that I thought I'd link to here (click to listen!). The first is:

Pleiadians - Maia

This is a great melodic tune, incredibly easy to dance to. I really love the highs in this song - it is a perfect example of goa / psychedelic trance that even people who don't like techno might be able to get into. I could listen to Maia all day and probably not get tired of hearing it. And, to show the breadth of what techno can sound like, I offer this one:

Osom - Over Game

Here is a fantastic and very original song some might put into the "hardcore" category of electronic music. It's very fast and has bleeps and bloops seemingly randomly placed from beginning to end. However, when you put it all together, this song's sometimes very high and sometimes very low bass themes create a soundscape of incredible proportions. Over Game is definitely not for everyone (some people probably wouldn't make it through the first minute), for those who can appreciate the more heavy side of electronica, this is one of the best compositions out there.

Enjoy!

Braid

2009-02-03T08:06:00.000-08:00

Again with the Braid, you say? Yes! I finished the game last week, and I have to say it was one of the best gaming experiences of my life. It twisted my mind in ways few other things have - the movie Memento would be my closest comparison, though that is a bit flawed as it's a completely different medium.

The final level is fantastic, and even that word doesn't do it justice. Never before has a video game required me to think so differently, and I can say I see the world in new and fascinating ways after playing it. I will never think about "time" in the same way again.

I read a great article at Gamers with Jobs, written by a guy who's ideas I respect probably the most at the site, and he had quite some things to say about the programmer and creator of Braid, Jonathan Blow. The comments following the article are informational, intelligent, and at times very deep - some of the best written ideas about video games that I've possibly ever read. That a game, in this case Braid, can bring on such talk of "meaning" really shows me that Blow has succeeded, regardless of what people may say about the content of the game. What does the game mean? What ideas are being presented by Braid? Does it matter what any one person believes the game means - especially the game's creator?

The man himself felt the need to chime in to say his own part as the creator of Braid in the comments of the article. I'll end with a quote from the end of his post:

"I don't particularly trust written, rational explanations as conveyors of truth or accurate meaning. That's why I make video games."

A lot has happened...

2009-01-29T07:02:00.000-08:00

since the last time I've posted, so I'm not going to say it all.

I have an XBox 360 now, and have for a few weeks. I love it. I'm currently playing through Braid, at least for the maybe 1 hour a week I get alone with the console. The game is fantastic, like none other I've ever played. I'm pretty close to the end, only three levels to go for the main part of the house. Not sure how much comes after worlds 2-6 (and hey, where is world 1?).

Mostly I've been playing Lego Indiana Jones with my son, who LOVES it. He talks about playing it all the time. I'll admit, the game is incredibly fun. I'll probably borrow Lego Star Wars from a co-worker, so we'll have a whole new world to explore pretty soon.

Speaking of legoes, we stopped up at my parent's house (who are in Florida, and specifically Disney World as I type this) and picked up another big bunch of my old legoes. Is there another toy on this planet as great as legoes? I don't think so. A lot of the things I built years ago were still together, including an awesome car/truck vehicle I made during a summer vacation while in college. I distinctly remember building it out on the porch of my parent's house on a bright and warm summer day, drinking a Killian's Irish Red. Ahhhh..... I feel good just thinking about it. Building lego machines as an adult is marvelous - I can create awesomeness on a scale and complexity I never could have imagined as a kid. And my son gets so much pleasure out of it as well. If you have a kid, you have to have legoes too. There should be some kind of law for that.

And that's all I have to say 'bout that!

Science Imagery

2008-10-02T06:47:00.000-07:00

National Geographic has a story on the Best Science Images of 2008. Fascinating and awesome! Is anyone else as excited about mixing science and visual arts as I am?

Jonathan Blow

2008-09-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

My new (video game) hero is Jonathan Blow, the creator, designer, and programmer for the XBox 360 game Braid. Braid was created literally only by him and David Hellman, who did all the artwork. Unfortunately I haven't been able to play the game at all since I don't own a 360, but Jonathan is putting together a PC version that I will definitely buy the day it comes out. So far it has received literally the highest rating ever for a XBox Live Arcade game, and 10th highest ever for the console as a whole, and that says something.

What makes me so excited about this is that Jonathan is and always will be an independent game creator, doing nearly everything on his own. He does it not for the money, but for the love and the Art (yes, with a capital "A", more on that in another post I think), of video games. Video games can be a method of communicating an idea or concept rather than simply for entertainment - and this is something I've been looking for myself. Using video games to teach creates, I believe, a bright future for the medium.

Anyway, I've been reading an interview with Jonathan at gameculture.com, and I saw an incredible quote about video games and teaching that I wanted to save. Thus, the impetus for this blog post:

"...all games teach things and the way they teach is by guiding you toward the goal by giving you feedback about whether you are accomplishing your tasks successfully or not, and that entire guidance is a communications process."

This communications process is the essence of video games. Without effective communication between a video and a player, the player is lost and has no interest in continuing the game. I have a feeling Jonathan Blow and Braid will affect how Omnivore turns out in a deep and exciting way.

A New Year Begins

2008-09-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

School year that is. I don't remember the last time I've been this busy - it's the craziest time of year for my job, my grad course started yesterday, and Emmet's Essentials has had more stuff going on in the last few weeks than probably ever.

My grad course this semester is Computer Graphics, and I'm incredibly excited for it. We'll be programming graphics with OpenGL and making some great looking stuff...

Man, it's hard to think right now. My brain is just fried... and I'm not seeing any rest in my future. This weekend we're heading to Burlington, Massachusetts for an Emmet's Essentials event. Tomorrow is the first day of classes at my job. Every night we're working on a big EE account for a person out in Oregon. I've got homework again for the first time in a month because of my grad class. All the equipment I've been programming for projection in the classrooms has been doing weird things and not working correctly.

Rest, relaxation, oh how I miss you...

Nintendo DS

2008-07-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's happened! I've purchased my first-ever portable game system, the Nintendo DS. It is just plain great. Two screens, nice bright graphics, a stylus and touch screen, quality sound, awwwww yeah. First game: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney. I've never played a game like this, a courtroom drama, and I'll say that I'm pulled in already. It's so exciting that I hardly know what to say!

Another sad day...

2008-06-23T08:58:00.001-07:00

Wow, two in a row here, sorry about that. Yet another icon has died, this time George Carlin. Here's a link to his wikipedia page.

Carlin was in my opinion one of the funniest and most insightful people I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. I actually saw him live a couple years ago right here in Northampton, and it was an awesome show.

I don't want to get too morbid here, but I'll bet his funeral will be one to remember. He was certainly an unbeliever, and probably has it somewhere in his will that he not be buried in a cemetery. I'd say he wants people to laugh about his life - I think I'll find some youtube videos to watch to commemorate this genius of comedy!

Perfect! Here's a short 10 minute video of the man himself talking about death. I think this is the way he'd want everyone to remember him!

A Sad Day

2008-06-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

Stan Winston, special effects master, died on Sunday. His work is one of the main reasons that today I love movies, computer animation, and special effects so much!

Drumming

2008-06-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

Last Friday night we went to a party up in Goshen at probably the most amazing back yard I've ever had the pleasure to explore. There were stone walkways, iron and glass sculptures, a trickling stream with a little waterfall, a fish pond, and a big stone tower about 10 feet tall, among many other amazing sights. They had a large dragon head sticking straight up into the air with a place for a fire underneath, so when a fire was raging smoke would come out of the dragon's mouth.

I ate, I drank, and I had a really great time. At one point I joined a bunch of people playing drums, and I didn't stop for about two hours! I realized that I loved drumming. I used my hands, and when they hurt from too much rhythm, I asked for a drum stick, and used that.

I found that I have a very good ear for patterns and drum-slapping, and it is such a satisfying feeling to drum along with a whole group of other people. One guy, who happened to be really tall, actually came out in front of us and the fire and just made up words and sung a song as we played.

Then we moved over to another area that was larger so people could dance to our drum and cowbell playing. It was so amazing to watch people dance and move to the sounds that I was a part of creating! Then, it got really crazy - a couple people came out with these ball and chain things, but the balls were on fire. Their balls were burning, as it were! They swung them and looped them around like a battle straight from the middle ages.

The highlight of this time of the evening I'd say was when a woman came out with a hula hoop that had attachments along the outside that were on fire. Here I was, drumming loudly with a bunch of other people, to the sights of this woman using a flaming hula hoop. I'll never forget it!

Grad Class #2

2008-05-29T05:45:00.000-07:00

Well, my second-ever grad course has started. I did incredibly well on the first one, and I'm really looking forward to this course, called Appropriate Web Technologies. You too can see my progress on this course - some work will be on display on my WPI webspace at http://www.wpi.edu/~damo/awt/

This course is online-only, so I won't have to drive to Worcester or Westborough every week. It's the first time I've ever taken a completely online course, though I certainly have tons of experience with online education thanks to my job. Judging from the course description and schedule, I'm going to be very busy in the next two months! I'll be learning a ton, and quite a bit of it will be stuff I've been wanting to learn for a long time (Ruby on Rails, more Javascript, etc.).

Here's to a great class!

Snake with Legs!

2008-04-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

Not that I need any convincing for myself about the truth of evolution, but there was recently an article at the BBC about a fossil snake found with two vestigial legs.

It seems snakes evolved from more "normal" four legged reptiles, and then following evolution, lost the legs slowly over the course of millions of years. I think (I could be wrong) you can even see some species of snakes alive today with the remnants of legs.

In the very, very loosely reminiscent words of Carl Sagan, "science and reality are far more amazing than fiction!"

Doing My Part

2008-04-05T06:23:00.000-07:00

Maybe you've heard of it, maybe not: there's a new documentary coming out in a couple weeks called Expelled. It is hosted by none other than Ben Stein. This is a propaganda film through-and-through for intelligent design - they attack biology, evolution, and true science every chance they get. Full disclosure: I haven't seen it yet. All I mention here can be read online or heard on podcasts.

Some of the actual scientists interviewed were lied to about what the documentary would be about, and some have been barred from screenings at theaters (in one case the person kicked out was actually in it!). Talk about expelled!

In my mind, the most egregious fallacy purported by this movie is their claim that evolution = atheism = Hitler and the Nazis. Huh?

I will do my part to spread the truth about this film by linking to Expelled Exposed. Read and enjoy!

Underway

2008-02-15T13:21:00.000-08:00

Well, my class in software engineering is well underway, and it's going great. My group did a presentation a couple weeks ago, and we did a great job I thought. It's a lot of reading and a bunch of homework, but I've been able to keep up. The stuff I learn in this class will really help me when I make my games, and also even in my job for the next larger-sized programming project (whatever it may be).

I've thought of a couple more very stand-out games from the past:

The Dig (PC) - an incredible adventure game from the likes of LucasArts. This game was awesome, I mean, Steven Spielberg was involved! I remember purchasing this one by scraping together quarters, dimes, and nickels - that's how much I wanted to play it.

Command and Conquer (PC) - This game (like The Dig) started out for me with a demo. I played the demo level of this one more times than I care to mention. In my mind, this is THE real-time strategy game. It's what started me on that entire genre of video game.

Ahh video games. I am determined to show people that video games are not just for kids - they are for us older citizens ("adults" if you will) as well. Even more, I'm going to use them in the classroom.

Busy-ness

2008-02-01T18:56:00.000-08:00

So much going on! First and foremost, I've begun graduate school back at my old alma mater, WPI. My first course is called Design of Software Systems (basically Software Engineering), and I've had a couple classes so far. It's great to be back in school - I can really tell I'm going to learn quite a bit in this class. It'll certainly be a lot of work (already is), but it is awesome. In fact, I'm procrastinating on some homework right now...

I realized that trying to put together a personal top 10 games of all time is a useless pursuit. I've played way too many games in my life, with so many amazing memories, that trying to pick 10 is incredibly difficult. Every time I tried to think of a game to put in the top 10, I'd think of another one, and then another one, and so on. What do I base it on? Games I thought had the best graphics? Games that made the biggest impression on me? The ones I thought were the most fun? The ones I spent the most time playing? It's too much. I think I'll just take a swig of beer and think about how great the sushi was that I had for dinner tonight.

Well, how about I list a few games that just popped in my head, just because.
Solar Jetman for the NES
Super Mario Kart for the SNES
Super Mario World for the SNES
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for the SNES
Syndicate for the PC
System Shock 2 for the PC
StarCraft for the PC
Command and Conquer for the PC
Portal for the PC (check this out)
Space Quest 1 through 6 for the PC
Final Fantasy 7 for the PlayStation

And there are so many others. How about I say now that I'll post any more games as I think of them, from now on. It'll be like a retro (and sometimes brand new) gaming remembrance. Hey, just thought of another:

Battletoads for the NES

Alright, back to the homework. Or maybe bed. Tough choice...

Make Things!

2008-01-12T23:09:00.000-08:00

I just read an article called New Years Resolutions for Game Industry Newbies, since I do one day, eventually, want to make games. All five points really made sense. Number one was to Make Things - something I'm incredibly excited to do.

I've been thinking quite a bit (instead of Making Things, I'll admit) about the marble game that I want to create. After playing Portal, seeing and trying (links at bottom) Echo Chrome, reading about Braid, and playing Cursor*10, I've made the decision that I don't want to make the same marble game everyone has seen and played before. I want to make something different - something that makes people really think and use their brains in a way they haven't before.

I'd say that's one of the powers of video games. It's the ability to change and bend the reality that someone is experiencing. Maybe you can see yourself through a portal, change your perspective to solve a problem, or help yourself in a new way. I absolutely love things that make me think in new and exciting ways, and those are the kind of games I want to create and let people experience as well. Perhaps you'll learn something about others, and especially about yourself.

And, since it's literally 2:30 AM right now and I can't sleep at all because there are huge trucks doing some damned loud revving engine (moving trees? blasting the road? digging for pipes? performing an alien landing cover-up?) things on the street across from my front door, I'm going to expand my mind with some Portal. Making Things is not an option at this time of night, except for a blog post I guess, but I don't think that counts.

Missed Games

2008-01-12T12:17:00.001-08:00

Last week I took a short couple-of-hours-a-day for a week fun course called "The History of Video Games." It was fun, and I learned a lot of things about the world of video games. The course ended with a sort-of list of the top 10 video games of all time. Our teacher left out the entirety of computer games, and the list was heavily weighted to the Nintendo side, so there was a bit to be desired. The list was of course much-contested by everyone in the class (since top 10's are incredibly objective), but some games were mentioned that I've never played.

I decided to make a list of games that I totally missed in the last 15 years that I'm going to go back and play someday. One reason I missed them is because after purchasing a PlayStation and a few games for it in the mid-90s I basically went completely to computer games, leaving out consoles until about 2003 when I bought a PS2. Here they are, in no particular order:

N64:
Super Mario 64
Star Fox 64
Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
GoldenEye 007

GameCube:
Super Smash Brothers: Melee

PlayStation:
Metal Gear Solid

PS2:
Shadow of the Colossus
Resident Evil 4
Okami
We Love Katamari
God of War 1 and 2

XBox:
Halo 2

PC:
Deus Ex

Some of these games seem to be on just about everyone's best-of all time lists. Do I have any glaring omissions? Maybe I need to put together my own personal top 10 list. I think I will, but I've really got to mull over it for a while. Check back in a couple days!

Since I'm currently still playing The Witcher and BioShock, I won't be playing these too soon, but we'll see. I will say that after about getting 10-15 hours into The Witcher, it is still very, very good. It just might make it into my top-10 list...

Carl Sagan

2007-12-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

I've decided that Carl Sagan is my hero. If I were able to go back in time and meet anyone in the world, that person would be Carl Sagan. Just a few days ago on December 20th it was the 11th anniversary of his death. The world lost an important person on that day, someone who spread the word of science like very few others have.

The largest reason for this was his creation and writing (with his wife Ann Druyan and Steven Soter) of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which is said to have been viewed by over 600 million people worldwide. I'm currently in the process of watching it again, and I'm up to part 4. Anybody who reads this needs to go to their local library, check it out, and watch it. Cosmos is nothing short of astounding, mind-expanding, and inspiring.

Sagan has also written many books, which I've decided to start reading. I'm going to start with The Demon-Haunted World, a book about science, skepticism, and how to make both a part of your life. Since really becoming a skeptic I'd say I need a manual for how to do it, and Carl Sagan is probably the best person to get that instruction from.

The Witcher

2007-12-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

So, the last week was pretty great. It was my birthday! I picked up a game for myself called The Witcher, which I picked up largely because of a review on Gamers with Jobs. Other places I looked also seemed to say that the game is amazing.

And, after having played for a couple hours, I have to say that they are correct. The game is incredible. There is so much to The Witcher that I can't even fathom all of it yet. I've been very surprised by it on more than one occasion, from the visuals to the music to playing a drinking game against some big dude in an inn (I won! After playing, all the graphics were blurry and my character stumbled around everywhere - awesome!).

After I get a few more hours in, I'll post again about it. I could still be in that new game dazzle faze, so we'll see what happens after I really get going into the story. So far my only complaint, which I share with most people, is that there are a lot of times where you have to wait for parts of the level to load.

As I sit in this cafe, it is snowing outside. Again. I went outside this morning, and just stepping through the snow is a major task. It's almost up to my knees! This is the most snow I've seen on the ground at one time in years, and I gotta say that I'm liking it. The last few winters have been pretty pointless - little snow, incredibly cold temperatures, etc. At least this year we're off to a great start. It looks like this is going to be a REAL winter!

Oh, I have to mention Portal again. I managed to finish it, and I'll say that it's one of the best games I've ever played. It is 4-5 hours of pure greatness. If you play video games at all in any way, spend the $20 at SteamPowered and download it!

Time to load up The Witcher!

Best Living Room Upgrade EVER

2007-12-06T08:31:00.000-08:00

http://blag.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/

You can't go wrong with a ball pit in your house!

Long time no post

2007-12-05T12:45:00.001-08:00

Wow, I haven't posted since August! I've nearly forgotten about my little blog. I'm sure by now nobody is reading this any more. Oh well. I can still post stuff, if anything, for myself. Maybe I'll post things to remember or something like that.

I'm having fun with Blender.

I just listened to an audio book called The Ultimate Gift. It was really good, though not very realistic. It was more of a guide for life in the form of a novel, so what it set out to do, it did well. Live Every Day to its Fullest. Indeed.

I'm still going through BioShock, and it's still an amazing game. It is really something to model my own game after, in terms of storytelling, excitement, mystery, and fun. Mine will be a bit of a different focus, and it'll be better of course.

Got a chance to try out Portal today, and it is true what people have been saying. It is GREAT. I've only played about 20 minutes of it, and I'm already hooked. It is probably the most innovative puzzle game I've ever played.

Until next time... Promising myself it won't be over three months of nothing again.

Video Interview

2007-08-28T08:46:00.001-07:00

Here is a video interview of Ton from Blender at Siggraph this year. I've been looking for this video because I'm in it! At about 5:50 you can see me walking past on the right side of the screen. In an older post (Day 3 of Siggraph) I have a picture of the interview with the camera pointed at the two guys. Ton talks about open movie projects, and even an open game they are working on called Apricot.

Constructigasm

2007-08-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Here is a video of a Lego construction line that builds Lego cars! It's only a matter of time before the Lego robot construction line starts building bigger and better Lego robots. Next, the world!

Siggraph 2007 Day 5

2007-08-20T11:15:00.001-07:00

And, finally, here are pictures from the final day of Siggraph! What a conference!

This one is just to give you an idea of what all the Educator's Program sessions looked like. They had these multi-colored lights set up with two big tables in the middle for the speaker to present from. This particular guy was great - he was funny and spoke very well about virtual worlds in the classroom. He actually was somewhat against Second Life, which I surprised to hear (doesn't think it will last).

This is a quick shot of the special session involving the three big jury selections from the Electronic Theater and Animation Festival. The best part is that two of the guys were college students when they started their animation projects. They both ended up staying later than graduation to finish them!

A shot showing the entrance to the beautiful Sail Pavilion.

Here's an example of one of the posters. I've done a poster presentation before, but it was nowhere near this involved! This one was particularly interesting because the person who did it was showing his new method for displaying liquids in real-time, complete with object collisions. I might end up using something like this in my game, and that's why I took a picture of it!

Me, complete with my big hair!

A couple good shots of a San Diego trolley for my son!

This one and the next few are shots of downtown San Diego, as I walked to a sushi restaurant.

This restaurant had tables inside wooden structures that looked like they would be right at home hanging from a tree!

The picture says it all for this restaurant!

This is in the sushi restaurant where I met Mystic Violet and Al from Gamers with Jobs. We had some very delicious sushi and talked about video games... a great way to end my trip!

And that's it for the pictures! I'll surely post more about the trip as I find more info online. I know for sure there's a video interview of Ton from Blender that I actually walk through, so I'll link to that.

Siggraph 2007 Day 4

2007-08-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

Today was the day I did, among many other things, a walk through the Emerging Technologies part of Siggraph. It's a showcase of new and exciting things that researchers, artists, technicians, and students are working on. It was dark in there so my pictures aren't the best, but I'll try to explain what's going on.

This was one of the coolest things I've seen, ever. It was straight out of science fiction books. The technology presented was basically a way to see through walls and other opaque objects. Imagine in your car, you can't really see the curb next to the door as you're driving because the door is in the way. With this technology, they take a camera and place it outside the car, and then project that image, where it really should be, on the inside of the car. It makes it seem like you can see through the door! In the demo going on for the picture, I sat in the chair and they placed this helmet on me that had a kind of head's up display on it. It showed real-time video of the outside of the walls, making it seem like I could see right through them. Awesome!

This was really neat, and something I could easily see inside of a museum as a teaching tool. The image of the Earth was projected onto the sphere, and you could physically rotate it as fast as you wanted and the image stayed with it. To see the other side of the Earth you just turn it around. The rings on the outside could be rotated as well, and what they did was move the display through time - so you could see the continents move and evolve over millions of years. The best part was when the person showing us how it works (that's his hand), rotated the display to millions of years in the future, when, as it turns out, there will be one huge megacontinent (again).

This was a huge 3D image that popped way out of the screen. The 3D technology at this year's Siggraph has come very, very far!

This doesn't look like much (a Star Wars TIE Fighter), but when you're actually there seeing it, it looks incredible. The great part about this virtual image is that it was in a display that you could walk all the way around, and see all the sides of it. It was like putting a coffee cup on a table and walking around it - but in this case the image was totally virtual. It's as close as I've ever seen to the technology in Star Wars and Star Trek.

This picture and the next three are all Microsoft's new Surface computer, which was way more impressive than I thought it would be. I got to play around with it a little bit, and the thing is great. It's basically a table, but you can do so much to it, and it's very "smart" in it's own way. The first application we tried was painting (above), and the way it could follow many fingers and hands was great. I had five fingers all on the surface, and so did two other people, and the computer kept up with it and drew everything where we touched.

This was great, because all the presenter did was place a credit card down on the table, and the computer knew what it was. It must have been a special credit card to be able to transfer its data, but still very cool. It had the person's name, and when it was time to "pay" for the meal, you just dragged pictures of what you bought by putting your finger down and pulling them into the credit card. Charges could automatically be made, and there was even a slider for leaving a certain amount of tip.

This is the photo application. The best part of this was that the presenter actually took a few pictures with a digital camera, then just placed the camera down on the surface. After a few seconds the images popped right off the camera and onto the screen, ready to be moved around, resized, and rotated. It does the same thing with videos, as they're playing. Awesome.

This was a fun one. The screen could detect objects on it, so when you put a string down, a few seconds later a little train showed up and started driving along it. If you made a loop out of the string, a pond would show up, with flowers around it and fish swimming around.

With this one, if you look at the little lighted table at the bottom of the picture, you can see a little plastic camera and a rectangular object. The rectangle (they had a few of them) had a complicated looking mathematical equation on it. Depending on which one you put down, the 3D object represented by the equation would show up on the projected screen above. Then, you could move the little plastic camera around and see the different sides of the 3D object. If you rotated the camera in place, it would zoom in and out. It was an awesome way to visualize complex math.

This I believe will be everywhere in the not-too-distant future. It was a paper thin electronic display. That's my hand holding onto it! The E-Ink words and the image above it were animated to change color from black to white and back again, over and over. It's still in its early stages, but I could see that the technology was starting to really come to fruition.

Siggraph 2007 - Pictures from Day 3

2007-08-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

Here are my pictures from Day 3 of Siggraph! This was the day I went through the exhibition, so I have many pictures from the show floor (except for the first and last ones).

Here is Ton Roosendal (the tall guy on the right), the person who started Blender, and who is still the number one person in charge of it. The man interviewing him is an admin of BlenderNation, a site I go to nearly every day for up-to-the-minute Blender news.

This was the booth for one of many motion capture companies. I thought it was cooler than most of the others because the little nodes that the sensors capture were lit up. It was also neat because as the person moved, they could manipulate objects in a virtual 3D space. The example they had was the woman was moving her arms around in a circle, and causing a fan-shaped object to turn around virtually.

A Big Picture shot of just one of the avenues of the show floor. So many people!

This was awesome. It was straight out of the movie Minority Report - you could see straight through the screen. The best part was that you could manipulate what was on the screen, like move it around and make it bigger and smaller just by moving your hands around.

This was cool in that it appeared to not only 3D-scan the object, but also get its color - a new feature as far as I know!

This was a large 3D projected globe that spun around. It showed the current star constellations, and would probably be used in a museum.

Another Big Picture shot of another avenue of the show floor. Big!

This was a really cool little miniature setup in the Laika booth. They are special because they're making an 3D animated movie out of Neil Gaiman's young adult book Coraline.

This actual car was in the booth for a company that was selling rendering software. They were demonstrating how a virtual car rendered with their software looked just as good as the real car. And it did!

This was a 3D hologram. I wish I could convey how awesome this was in this picture, but it just doesn't do it justice. It was a huge poster-sized hologram that stuck way out into empty space. It was like you could reach out and touch it.

An awesome miniature model constructed by the people at (I think) Sony Pictures Imageworks. It looked real. For many 3D computer animated movies, the artists will create a scale model of what they're working on to get a better idea of what it looks like.

The booth for the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. They held little classes every day in their booth - I wish I would have had time to sit in on one! Plus, the booth looked really nice.

The Disney booth. This image of Mickey in his original animated cartoon wasn't on a screen - it was shown with what looked like thousands of tiny white LEDs that turned on and off to show the animation.

Some of the miniature models created for the Pirates of the Caribbean Movies. This was in the Industrial Light and Magic Booth.

This was neat, because it was a company that sold a device that could create that effect seen in the Matrix movies where the camera would seem to move around people while they stayed in the same position. You can see the array of cameras needed to create the effect there on the right.

And here's how Day 3 ended, at the Electronic Theater! I was waiting in line for a little while, so I decided to take this picture of the outside of the theater. At the beginning, before the show started, they projected three ancient Atari games on the screen, using lasers! Three relatively famous people in the field of computer graphics came out to play them (and I can't remember their names of course). One played Asteroids, the second played Tempest, and the last guy played Star Wars. I totally recognized all three games from my very early years!

The animations themselves were incredible - everything from shorts made by one person, to commercials, to vignettes of feature film special effects like Pirate's of the Caribbean: At World's End. The Best of Show winner was Ark.

Siggraph 2007 - More Pictures

2007-08-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

Lots of pictures! Here are a bunch of the beautiful San Diego Convention Center inside and outside. Here is the "Sail Pavilion", where there are a bunch of different things going on, including lunch, posters, and the international meeting place:

Here are the wok cooker people, they made my lunch on the first day!

After eating lunch, I was about to go outside when I heard loud drums overtaking the sound in the pavilion. I walked over and these people were making some great music:

Can't say much about this shot except "wow":

Here are some shots of the back side of the convention center, including the view over the bay. At the bottom you'll see some great pictures of construction going on that my son will love!

More to come! The next bunch of pictures will include the exhibition, which was huge, loud, and fun.

Siggraph 2007 Day 2

2007-08-06T18:36:00.000-07:00

What a day! Started with a great session about the movie Surf's Up, which I am so gonna see now when it comes out on DVD in October. It's a computer animated movie that was created as a documentary. They did everything from adding scratches to the "lens" you'd see while watching, to looking at how each character interacted with the camera, to actually making the camera itself a character.

To make the camera a character, they rigged it up with a motion-capture device and a little screen for a viewfinder. A real camera person would hold the camera and watch what was happening by looking through the viewfinder, which showed a 3D view of the characters interacting and the environment. The cameraman's movement was recorded and then brought into the movie, making it extremely realistic. It's like watching a reality tv show, but it's animated!

The movie was about surfing, so a large part of the presentation was about how they did the ocean, and more specifically the waves. They put a massive amount of work into the waves, and it all paid off, because they look AMAZING. Check out the preview on IMDB and you'll see it.

After lunch I went to a session called "Sharing Ideas in Teaching 3D Animation", which was interesting and helpful. It really made me think about not just how to teach this stuff, but how the students might understand it better. There is so much to learn when it comes to computer animation. Do you teach the technical stuff (the software) during class, or just talk the concepts (camera positions, basics, animation theory) during that time? Much to think about!

I then ran all the way across the convention center to watch Glenn Entis, the Chief Visual and Technical Officer of ALL of Electronic Arts speak. He gave a good talk about graphics, games, and the tools to create them, from way back in 1979 until today. In the end, the basic premise was that the new "wow" of games right now is user-created content. He mentioned The Sims, which he said is actually the best-selling game of all time, and that the biggest draw of it turned out not to be playing the characters but the creation of your own objects in the game. He also mentioned Spore, which will be hugely user-changeable. It's all about the tools, and if normal game players / users can use the tools to create their own stuff, they are going to have fun and really get into it.

Then I ran all the way back across the convention center to the Blender Artist and Developer Showcase, which was really cool. I saw and heard Ton Roosendaal, the creator of Blender (and got a picture of him... I'll post it soon!), and a bunch of the people I read about and see the work of on all the Blender websites. The director of Elephant's Dream was there, showing his latest work - very impressive stuff. Some great developments will be coming soon from Blender!

Right now I'm sitting in the session for Happy Feet. They took almost the direct opposite (and yet strangely similar) approach of Surf's Up. This movie, also featuring penguins, was also shot as if it had real people, but for this one it was directed like a normal movie. The director had no experience with animated movies, and managed to make it as if it were real "people" (penguins) doing the acting. They made it a really iterative process, which is unusual for an animated movie, because once you get the animation done it's difficult to get back in and change things. They also made very heavy use of motion capture, which as I said above Surf's Up almost didn't use at all. They actually had real people learn to walk like penguins and do all the acting!

And that's all I did today! I took more pictures today, and also still have some from yesterday, so I'll post them soon.

Why I Love Coming to Siggraph

2007-08-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

This morning, just now, on my way to the session on the movie "Surf's Up" (The Making of Animated Documentary), I overhear one person saying to another,

"So, I was the visual effects supervisor on Spider-Man 3, umm, yeah."

To some, eh, whatever. To me, WOO HOO!!

Siggraph 2007 Day 1 (even more continued)

2007-08-05T22:45:00.001-07:00

The OpenGL course today was incredible! The three presenters literally wrote the books on OpenGL programming. One of them, Ed Angel, wrote the book I used in my computer animation class back at WPI! They gave a great introduction to OpenGL, which served to refresh my brain on much of what I've forgotten the past few years. Plus, for the second half, they brought out some more of the advanced features you can implement, such as shaders. It was great, and will help me for sure in my own graphics programming. At the end I was even able to ask a question directly to one of the presenters about something I had read online. He refuted it, so I was glad to ask! (for those wondering, the question was about glut)

After that I attended the Fast-Forward Papers session, which was quite good. They had every single paper presenter (must have been like 100 people) do a 50-second synopsis of their research up on a stage with a few powerpoint slides. The range of different presentations was amazing. Some had videos to show, some just read about what they were doing with a few words on the screen, some got all dressed up in some funny clothes, and a couple even wrote little poems about their research! It was funny and interesting. A few had people in the audience going "ooooh" and "wow" and clapping even during the 50 seconds. I was pretty amazed at some of them, and maybe will try to get into their real paper presentation whenever they do it in the next four days.

And, as promised, some more pictures! First, two gorgeous shots of the sunset from the plane just before landing in San Diego:

Here's my room at the Mission Valley Resort, and a bunch of pictures from the outside.

Tomorrow I'll put up some pictures of the convention center and the view outside of it, which is quite nice. It's right on the water in the harbor. Until then, goodnight! The day begins early tomorrow...

Siggraph 2007 Day 1 (continued)

2007-08-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Found a little time (and a power plug) before the openGL course starts, so I'm going to post some pictures of the flight :-) I'll admit some of them are just for my son, he loves interesting vehicles! Here they are with some comments (click on them for a larger version):

Here's the plane about to take me from Bradley to Atlanta, ready to be boarded!

This is the little train of cars carrying everyone's luggage. This one is at Bradley, but in Atlanta, they were everywhere. It was like hundreds of little centipedes crawling all over the tarmac carrying their baggage with them! They even had their own tunnel under the concourse.

Here's a neat-looking fuel truck for the planes. It's all gas tank!

Here is the guy putting luggage onto the plane (my seat was right above the cargo door!). I'll say I was a tiny bit nervous, because I didn't see my actual bag going up the ramp. I ended up getting it, so it made it to the plane somehow :-) I'm glad I wasn't out there throwing people's luggage around - it was HOT.

This is what Connecticut looks like from I think about 15,000 feet. Landscapes from a plane are just amazing!

A great shot from the plane window of some downright inspirational clouds, somewhere between Connecticut and Georgia. I was watching a movie on my laptop (The Illusionist - which was very, very good, but that's for another post), and just happened to look out the window at the right time to see this.

This is the plane that is waiting to take me from Atlanta to San Diego. This airport is HUGE.

Here is the inside of the plane going to San Diego. The last time I was in a plane this large, we were going all the way to Israel. The in-flight movie was Spider-Man 3, which was awesome. It was also absolutely perfect, because I hadn't yet seen the movie and I'm going to a session about the special effects in it here at Siggraph!

Alright, it's 1:45 and time for the openGL graphics programming intro course. More pictures to come!

Siggraph 2007 Day 1

2007-08-05T10:47:00.001-07:00

Well, here I am! San Diego is a beautiful city, and even the convention center looks great. The architecture around here is like nothing I've seen before. I'll take many pictures! There are thousands of people walking around, and excitement is in the air. I can hear many languages, and I see a lot of diversity (though admittedly the geeks, whatever country they're from, outnumber everyone else!).

Right at this moment I'm sitting in a huge room where four people from Pixar are explaining the concepts and challenges of representing food in their newest movie, Ratatouille. I got here just in time for the break (so I can write this post!), and will be able to catch the second half.

Alright, just watched the second half. The speaker was the manager of the effects department at Pixar, and he did a really good job explaining the challenges of food in computer animation. There are many to say the least! Everything, from steam on hot food, to scum on the inside of soup pots, to stains on a chef's clothes has to be explicitly created. And to do it, they cheated - a lot! When it comes to feature film animation, it's something you absolutely have to do, or your movie will never be finished.

One funny example was when they tried to simulate a sauce coming out of a pan and pouring onto some bread on a plate. The sauce would either take too long to pour out, or be too watery. Also, once it reached a certain threshold of pouring, it would just snap, and a big amount would stay in the pan, while the rest just plopped to the plate. What they ended up doing was literally reducing the pull of gravity when the sauce began to pour, then ramped it up as it poured onto the plate. To solve the snapping problem, they created extra sauce as particles - the whole thing changes from one CG object to another and you don't even notice. One of their programmers needed to create a new in-house piece of programming to be able to accomplish it. Amazing!

So, right now I'm eating a delicious lunch under a huge sunlit tent-like structure between the two massive buildings of the convention center. Later today, after getting back to my hotel room, I'll post some pictures of the flights (I took some incredible ones out of the airplane window) and the area of the hotel. I'm going to finish my lunch and then check out the book store before the next course. Great day so far!

Wow

2007-07-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

Two things to mention in this post, and both are truly original and inspiring (at least to me!). Both are straight out of Japan.

First, I heard about a new puzzle game coming out for the PS3 that's supposed to be very different. It's called Echo Chrome. Here's a link to it's preview video on YouTube. The first time I saw that, I said just "wow" out loud - somewhere there's a developer with a very twisted mind! The great part is that the original idea, or at least one who took the idea to the extreme, was from M.C. Escher. Making an animated, changeable, puzzle game out of it is quite outside the box.

Anyway, after a little more searching, I found the website of the original developer of the idea, and it turns out you can play around with the original system online! Scroll to the bottom of that page, and there's a link to download it for the PC, or even play it online in a Java applet. It's mind-bending to say the least.

The other thing that has me excited is a video called Missing Pages. I recommend it to everyone! You can download it for free or watch it on YouTube. There's an interview with the guy who wrote and directed it at CGChannel. The way in which the "movie" was put together is creative and somewhat different, like those 3d pictures you see on History channel documentaries sometimes. It's all photos, 3D compositing, and some animation - almost like an animated comic book.

The film really makes me want to load up Shake again and play around with it - I'll need to make some time for that before the summer is out! Sure, he used After Effects, but they can both do the same effects.

Bring on the inspiration!

2007-07-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've seen and heard quite a bit lately that has caused my imagination to soar!

First, there was a documentary we checked out from the local library (quick side note: the library is loaded with more documentaries than you can shake a stick at... for FREE!). The one I picked was a NOVA documentary about "The Mysterious Life of Caves." There were a couple things that really stuck out for me, and one was that acid drips from the walls and ceilings. Acid drips from the walls and ceilings. Just think about that.

These three scientists figured out that there is a bacteria growing in some caves that literally melt the rock wall away to create the cave itself. They don't use sunlight at all (it's totally black dark in the caves) - they only feed on gas in the cave and the rock itself, manganese in particular.

Another set of scientists in another cave had discovered bacteria growing in water and acid, without the use of sunlight at all, and that they were related to the bacteria growing near deep-sea vents in the ocean. They say these organisms are probably related to the original life on the planet, i.e. where not just us humans, but all life on Earth came from. Awesome.

Moving on, I read an article on Gamers with Jobs about directing and camera work in games. It reminded me of a great game I played years back called Anachronox, which I remember even back then thinking about how great the camera moves were. They had really put a lot of thought into it, and it made the game that much better. It was really one of the best games I've ever played (I'd put it in my top 5 of all time), and just thinking about it makes me want to play it again. I've posted on the Gamers with Jobs game trading thread, so hopefully someone has it and wants to trade... I've unfortunately lost the game due to throwing it away or placing it somewhere in my parent's basement.

Speaking about directing and camera work in games, it's something I've already thought quite a bit about for my own game. Here are some lines from my notes:

Extreme slow motion, with a lot going on during it (stuff flying around... hey, maybe snow falling!).
Alternate seamlessly between extreme slow motion and normal or fast.
Long uncut shots - very cool and adds to tension and believability.
Add to it by bringing the camera through tiny cracks in walls or door locks, etc.
Many "impossible" shots - flying over and around stuff, through stuff, go from real high in the sky to real low.... maybe even underground or underwater.

I've learned much from the great directors of movies like Night Watch, Children of Men, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Fight Club, and 300. Expect to see some of the direction you've seen in those movies in Omnivore.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I've been reading a book called "In Praise of Slowness" by Carl Honore. I saw it at the library and couldn't help but check it out. It turns out that there is a huge movement worldwide to practice the power of Slow. Those that know me well know that I'm not exactly the fastest person in the world, and it looks like I've been right all this time (haha)!

Check out this wikipedia entry about the Slow Movement. It's not just about moving slower, it's a philosophy on life, and I love it. Reading this book has really brought my attention to how fast the world, and especially our society, is trying to make everyone get things done. It's causing more stress, health problems, and costing more money than people realize. I'm only a few chapters into the book right now, but I'll post more as I read more.

This is a long post and I'm done!

The Animals

2007-07-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a while - here's a bit more about Omnivore:

The game will feature animals in a big way. I'm not going to say why yet, but I'll say that you as the player will be playing the game as a host of different animals. Big ones, small ones, flying ones, aquatic ones, you name it.

A spider will be one of the main animals you control - it will take up one of the largest parts of the game. This opens up many possibilities including walking on the walls, crawling on the ceiling, using webbing, sneaking onto people and biting them, going into tiny spaces, make huge jumps, etc. Some people in the lab will run away from you, and some will try to stomp you. You will be able to sneak into secret rooms, listen to conversations you otherwise wouldn't hear, and learn more about the story in an different and interesting way. You will probably be a black widow.

Other animals I have definitively decided upon having in the game are a tiger, a grizzly bear, an owl, and a hawk. I'm thinking about having a dolphin and/or a squid as well for some aquatic scenes. Anyone have any other favorite animals they'd like to see?

The animals won't just be there for you to control. There will be opportunities to learn about each animal, from how they move to what they eat to how they interact with people and other animals. I want them all to act as accurately as possible to how they do in the real world. Not only will the game be fun to play, and have a great story, but the chance to learn new things about the animals in this world will be great.

Just being able to see the world through the eyes, ears, and body of an animal will be a huge learning experience. Some animals can see extremely well (even in dark environments), some can hear extremely well, and some can make jumps and do movements that humans can only dream about. Exciting!

Imagination

2007-06-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I saw a documentary on PBS about aging and creativity. There was a 109 year old man who was a composer, a 80-something year old who still did ballet, and a 90-something who made paintings. They went to nursing homes where the elderly were using their imaginations instead of sitting around on a chair, and they were loving it.

As it turns out, doing creative things can slow the effects of Alzheimer's, among other things. It won't stop it once it starts, but it will slow it down. The key is that while you can lose your memory, you can never lose your imagination.

The 109 year old was incredible. He composed for the beginning of his life, became very famous, then disappeared at the height of his career (circa like 1920). He got married, had kids, and moved out of the city. When he was in his 80s, he resurfaced and decided to start composing again. The great part is that most people in their 80s are basically done with life, but this guy still had so much music flowing out of his brain that he decided to start writing it again. He did so for another nearly 20 years! It's inspiring. The guy who still danced ballet was just as great.

All of the elderly people interviewed spoke about how young they felt. The only times they felt old were when their bodies were hurting. One lady said her knee was her only reminder of her age, and otherwise she felt just as young as she was in her 20s. When she paints, age or memory don't matter - it's all about the creativity and stretching the mind. New ideas always form.

Imagination is timeless.

I absolutely love to use my imagination, so that's what I'm about to do. Time to work on the story for Omnivore - it's been a while! I plan on using my imagination for the rest of my life, for the enjoyment of it, for the excitement of new ideas, and to stay young-at-mind.

Animation Festival

2007-06-22T11:31:00.001-07:00

I am unbelievably excited to go to Siggraph again this year! Check out the trailer for the computer animation festival. There is going to be some amazing and inspirational computer graphics going on there!

So, uh, how far away is August??

Logo Try #1

2007-06-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

Here's my very first attempt at a logo for Omnivore. I went with a tiger theme (picture courtesy the Save the Tiger Fund). Click on it to get the full sized version, and keep in mind it should be on a completely black background:

I like it! I'd love to have the tiger animated, or a movie of a tiger instead of just a picture, but that's for a future try. Plus, I couldn't find any free-to-use-and-distribute videos of tigers. I might have to find a zoo and take some of my own video!

Any comments or ideas? Maybe it's too dark. I do want it on a black or at least dark background for the game itself.

No more wires!

2007-06-08T05:31:00.001-07:00

I've told people in the past that there is just one more advance needed to really bring us into the future, and it looks like a team at MIT is finally figuring it out on a real scale.

Bring it on!

more BioShock

2007-06-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

I just have to say thank you to Adam for sending me a link to a great article about BioShock. Here's another site that I check out about once a week about the game and what's going on in its world. One very cool point they have talked about is that they will be releasing a limited edition version of the game, with a bunch of extras. I'll definitely be picking that up, mostly for the "making-of" DVD that will come with it! How cool is that?

Also, the site that the article on BioShock is on looks great - it's one I've never been to before, and one that I will be watching from now on!

The director at my job is taking us (the department) all out to lunch in town today! You can't go wrong with a free lunch, especially when it's delicious.

Game Dev

2007-06-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

Just read an article on independent game development with Jonathan Blow, and he had some great things to say. His blog is loaded with information about game development in general, and his current game, called Braid, looks quite amazing. I'll be watching this guy for a good time to come - he seems to really know quite a bit about making video games.

Also, I'm currently listening to an old Cosmosis album from 1996, and wow! Even after over 10 years, it still sounds just as recent as anything released now. You can tell that the hardware used was not as sophisticated as it is now if you really pay attention (limited range of effects and sounds), but that doesn't matter anyway if the person using it is talented enough - as Cosmosis is!

It's been a while

2007-05-31T13:23:00.000-07:00

so I thought I'd make a post. This one isn't about anything in particular I suppose, just some interesting goodness!

I've been regularly (once a week) listening to a podcast called The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. I added a link on the menu to the right there. They've always got something interesting to talk about - news items, some kind of interview, and then at the end they have a challenge and a good skeptical quote. In my recent years I've grown a much more scientific and skeptical mind - no doubt because of people I've mentioned here before: Scott Adams, Penn and Teller, and Carl Sagan to name a few. The Skeptics's Guide is a great way to keep up with recent events and ideas related to that sort of thing.

On a completely different note, Blender 2.44 came out a few weeks ago and added a great new type of texture that does sub-surface scattering. It allows, among other things, the ability to make very realistic looking snow - an awesome notion because much of Omnivore takes place in Antarctica.

On a somewhat slightly different note, my macbook pro now triple boots! I have Mac OS, Windows, and now Ubuntu Studio all working. Ubuntu Studio is great - I've never had such an easy time getting into Linux, and I'm loving it. I can do nearly everything I do in Mac OS, and with free software! Speaking of free software, a great site for anyone to check out is osalt. This is exactly the kind of website I've looked for in past years. I've always wanted to know what open source software I can use instead of the commercial stuff, and now I don't have to do tons of searching google results to find it.

That's it for now, and I know I've said in the past that I'm going to post more often, but I'm going to say it again: I'm going to post more often! I'm getting used to it anyway, because I started a work blog. I read in a game development magazine about a guy who started a work blog, and it really makes sense. I take the last 10-15 minutes of every day to go over what I did, and I write it down in a private blog. Not only will it make me better at estimating time spent on projects, but it kind of gives me my own "watchdog," because I won't want to write down that I didn't do anything on a particular day. Also, I can finally answer questions like, "when did I do that?" or "did I do that?" So far it's worked beautifully - I recommend it to everyone.

What a Day!

2007-05-11T05:13:00.000-07:00

None other than the Dalai Lama himself was on campus for a couple days this week, so my job has been revolving around that. He did a huge talk to over 5000 people that was videotaped and streamed - and you can even watch it right now! I ended up watching it on the big TV in the lobby where my office is so I could relax with my laptop.

The huge news for me, however, happened on the next day. He gave a talk to the Tibetan community of western Massachusetts, which was quite large (about 1000 people, and lots of kids). I had to be at work at 6 AM to do the audio checkout in the building before the FBI did their sweep. We had this really cool microphone that attaches to your ear and comes around to your mouth with a very tiny piece. You almost can't see it.

I should mention that the security around the Dalai Lama is nothing short of incredible. I don't think I've ever really seen the FBI doing their jobs in real life, and I have to say that a lot of what you see in movies is pretty close. They had their ear pieces and black suits, and came in black vehicles to the scene.

So, the best part of the whole day was that I was able to put the mic on the Dalai Lama! He comes in, surrounded by FBI and security, and instead of going into a little special room they had set up so he could meditate and have tea before talking, he goes straight out onto stage. I was kind of following behind holding up the mic and being like, "ummm, wait, I have to put this on." This FBI agent says to me, "Stick with me, bro," and so I did. I walk out on stage under the lights with the whole crew, and the agent gives me the ok. I walked up to the Dalai Lama in front of everyone and put the mic on his ear. He takes the transmitter unit, and I almost didn't get a chance to turn it on, but then he said thank you and I turned to go off stage.

It was great! And, one of the best parts about it is that it's all on video! Since he walked right out on stage and I put the mic on there, the video cameras were rolling and the whole thing was taped. I'm going to get the video as soon as I can and put it on the web so you can see me putting a mic on probably the most world-famous person I've ever seen in real life.

Maybe it's not that exciting to others, but it was quite a day for me :-D

Labyrinth

2007-04-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Well, after reading this article about making one's own game, I decided to start with something simple. It really does make sense to start with something small, since I indeed have zero experience in creating a game from scratch. What I decided is to make the game Labyrinth as a computer game. No, not the movie, but the old wooden board game with the marbles.

The possibilities are endless! I could have dynamically generated boards, holes and walls that move around, and add some other obstacles as well. A co-worker suggested I make it pinball-style, with bumpers and things to bounce the marble around, which would be great. I could have so many extra things - ramps, jumps, you name it!

It will be the perfect project to gain some experience with creating my own computer game. If I did it so that I made the boards in Blender, I'd learn to import them with some code into the game. I'll certainly need to put some realistic physics into it, so that the ball moves accordingly depending on how much you are tilting the board. It'll be good experience using the Bullet physics library. Graphics-wise I have free reign, so I'm going to make it look good.

And, I plan on adding a special feature for macbook owners :-)

Bioshock

2007-04-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Speaking of System Shock 2 it seems that its developer, Irrational Games, has begun work on a new game called Bioshock. It is being created "in the spirit of System Shock 2" and looks absolutely amazing. At last year's E3 conference, Bioshock garnered three Best of Show awards - no small feat I'd say!

I read an interview of a person involved with the creation of the game, and he said some interesting things about it. I was most surprised to hear that there would be no multiplayer mode: the game will be completely single-player and heavily story-based. They are certainly thinking outside the box in terms of first-person shooters with this one, and it will be a game that I plan on following closely! Like System Shock 2, there are superhuman power ups, an inventory, and even an overseer type entity watching your moves.

Omnivore certainly won't be as violent as Bioshock (just check out the videos... wow!), but I plan on my story being just as good and important to the game. I have a lot to figure out in terms of graphics quality, as Bioshock looks incredible. Of course, they are using the Unreal 3 engine, heavily modified (and I'm really interested to see the water effects they added), so they didn't start from scratch like I am. They also have 60 people working on the game and a budget in the millions of dollars, but I digress. I'll certainly be picking up Bioshock when it is released (they say Spring 2007, which is now, but you never know with these things...), and using it for ideas and inspiration. It is as close to the "kind" of game I am creating as can be.

It all just really gets me excited about my own game. I look forward to all that I will learn in creating my own game from scratch. Hey, if John Carmack can do it, so can I!

The Game

2007-04-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted! I've got a moment, so I thought I'd write more about Omnivore. I haven't worked on it in a good while, so this will also get my brain moving again. This time, instead of writing about the story, I think I'll put down a bit about the technical parts of the game.

For inspiration in terms of other games, I'm looking closely at the Final Fantasy games, Anachronox, System Shock 2 (one of the best games ever in my opinion), the Thief games, the Max Payne games, and the Half-Life games. What makes them great? Story, gameplay, characters, and just plain quality. I'm trying to get aspects of all these games into Omnivore, and if anyone has any other games like these that they absolutely love, please tell me about them!

I'm going to write it in C++, using OpenGL for the graphics. I've been regaining my knowledge about OpenGL by moving through the tutorials at NeHe, which is a site I used in the past. Great stuff there. I also need to re-learn quite a bit of C++, since I've been spoiled these past few years by Python and PHP. Also, doing it in C++ and OpenGL will allow the game to be cross-platform, which is something I'm going to work towards from the very beginning. Anyone with Mac OS, Windows, or Linux should be able to play Omnivore.

That said, I will be using as much open source software as I can to put the game together. For physics, I found the incredible Bullet physics library. I was actually able to download the source, compile it, and run it, which is awesome. It even allows you to slow down or speed up time, something that will be featured in the game (for reasons you will soon see!). For sound effects I plan on using free libraries, and also recording my own sounds. The music will all be created from scratch my me, something I'm very much looking forward to!

For cutscenes I will be using Blender (which happens to use the Bullet library in its code for physics simulations). Blender is awesome, and the more I learn about it, the better it gets. I've already begun creating the intro animation, complete with a snowy blizzard! I will put up some renders as soon as I create something that looks really good. For compositing and video editing I'll either just use Blender or try out Jahshaka, which looks like a great project.

I will also use Blender to create all the in-game characters, levels, and objects.

Gameplay will be third-person, a la Max Payne and Tomb Raider. There will not be a huge amount of killing, so, sorry Doom lovers. Much of the game will be exploring, sneaking around, and stun-gunning people. The lion's share of the game will be in the Icebox, and scientists don't exactly carry around much in terms of guns. A large part of the interaction will be somewhat special, but that's for another post.

I plan on having a multiplayer mode, but won't get into the details about it because I don't want to go too much into the background of the game just yet.

Arthur will have an inventory of objects he carries around, like Final Fantasy and System Shock 2. He will gain power as the game goes on, but I won't say what that power is just yet. The game will have multiple endings (I'm thinking three or four), depending on certain decisions you make as you play.

That's a fair amount of the choices I've made so far that I'm going to stick with for the game. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them. What do you love about certain story-driven games? What do you hate? Should I program it in a certain way? Should I use a certain library?

And as a finish for this post, the name of the computer that is central to the Omnivore project is Soul. Here are a couple lines from my notes about it: Soul is the first computer ever to have the capacity, the processing power, and the software to be able to accurately keep a copy of a human brain running inside of it. It can simulate all the billions of neurons, their connections, and the electrical signals between them.

Omnivore

2007-03-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Well, after much deliberation I've decided to open up the story and some details about the video game I'm creating. I had to get past that urge inside me going, "IT'S MINE, MINE!" Part of it is my own desire to get this out there, part of it was a phenomenal talk by Brewster Kahle (chairman of The Internet Archive), and part was a conversation I had earlier today in which I came to the realization that in order for me to actually finish this, I need the help of those around me.

And those people, well, they are YOU.

The name of the game is Omnivore. The year is 2049. The human race has advanced far from its current level - the Internet is available on 99.9% of the Earth's surface via wireless connections. Medical technology has increased a person's average lifespan to 120 years. We have a base on the moon, and astronauts have been to Mars and back. Oil and gasoline are a thing of the past, all cars are electric, and we power everything with clean energy. Robots do all jobs involving mass-production, and they (nearly) have taken over all custodial work.

Arthur Burns is a security guard in the most advanced lab in the world, located under two miles of ice at the South Pole. The Ayanami Lab was built to study the waters of Lake Cassia, a treasure trove of plants and animals that have evolved separately from the rest of the planet for millions of years. There are little white crustaceans with no eyes, bio-luminescent fish, and plants that grow only using chemicals in the water. The possibilities for study are endless.

It turns out that the study of the lake is only the beginning for the lab, known as the Icebox. Gary Rima heads the research known as the Omnivore Project, the experiments of which promise to change the course of human history forever.

More to come!

Human Computer / Computer Human

2007-03-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I read two interesting articles that had to do with our brains. One involved using the mind to control a computer, and the other one had research showing that scientists could watch the brain to predict someone's intentions.

The one about a brain-computer interface was actually on a gaming website, and it spoke about using the mind to control your character in the game. Here's a link to the device's website, so you can see what it actually looks like. This is, an a word, awesome. Imagine the amount of control you could have in your games with something like this. How fast your thumb muscles move, or what combinations of buttons you push on a controller would no longer be an issue - it would be as fast as thought. You combine this with virtual reality and you're well on your way to Simulated Reality (thanks to Don for that link).

Is this a good or a bad thing? I suppose you could see it as the end of the world as we know it, but I like to look at the bright side of all things technological. Hey, there are people who think the the apocalypse would be brought on by legalizing marijuana, but I digress. Being able to control a machine solely with the mind would bring on amazing new advances in just about everything. Someone with an amputated leg would be able to control a prosthetic one with only their mind. A paralyzed person could be able to move again. Both of these have already been done, believe it or not, and it really boggles the mind. Eventually there will be no physical or mental disability holding someone back from doing anything that they want to do.

The other article is about something I spoke of in my first post - being able to predict what someone will do by watching their brain work. Where's the free will in that my friends? How many years before the technology is such that people will be able to predict what others can do in a major kind of way? Maybe it will never happen, but I'll tell you right now that science fact is quickly catching up with science fiction. What an exciting time we live in!

Talpa

2007-03-04T14:09:00.000-08:00

This post might be confusing to people out of the psychedelic trance / goa music loop, but I realized I have yet to post about my favorite genre of tunes. I'll say right now that there will be some weird words in this one! I'll try to link where I can so that things will make more sense to people.

A DJ I've been conversing with for quite a while, who goes by the name Underfoot (you can find him at Audiognomes, and you should - download his mixes!), mentioned the artist Talpa to me last week. I thought I'd try it out, and it turns out that his album, The Art of Being Non, is really the best psytrance I've heard in a very long time. This is as close to a Perfect Album as it gets, my friends. Every single song is well thought-out, intelligent, and has sounds I could have never imagined before.

It evokes memories of the good old Hallucinogen (this album stands strongly up there with The Lone Deranger), and what Infected Mushroom used to sound like before they were Converting Vegetarians. One song, "No Place to Hide," really sounds so much like the guys from Israel (Infected) collaborated on it that I was surprised to hear Talpa is from Serbia. This marks the first time I've heard music like this (that is this good) from outside of Britain, Russia, Israel, or Sweden. Sadly, electronic music of this quality is lacking here in the USA - I can't even think of any artists to mention. There has to be someone out there...

I'd recommend this album to anyone who already loves psytrance or goa, and even those who have never listened to it before. It is a rare case of a recent release in this genre of music that really stands out as truly original and melodic. I will listen to it for a long time to come.

Pale Blue Dot

2007-02-28T08:49:00.000-08:00

Carl Sagan, a person whom I believe was a true genius of our time, wrote a bit of text called "Reflections on a Mote of Dust." Someone put together a great video with that text and posted it to YouTube, which you can see here. I recommend it to everyone, and in fact I think the more people that see it the better! The actual text can be read here.

It really made me think about the world in a different sort of way. We are all so connected! It truly baffles me how much hatred and oppression exists when you realize that this is our one home in the entire, vast, expansive universe.

I like to be optimistic and say that it really looks like we are starting to head in the right direction. Maybe it's just because I live in an exceptionally liberal town, but people seem to be caring more and more about what our leaders are doing, and they see that change is needed. The environment around us, rational thought, and diplomacy appear to finally be inching their way into the minds of a growing number of people on this planet, and that is a Very Good Thing.

To quote a bumper sticker: "make coffee, not war." Fair trade coffee would be nice :-)

Antarctic Lakes

2007-02-21T12:07:00.000-08:00

I know this seems utterly random, but I've been thinking quite a bit lately about lakes in Antarctica. I really mean *in* Antarctica too, since of course it's way too cold for a lake to be liquid on the surface (as of 2007 anyway).

I'm thinking about it not because of global warming, but because of the story I'm writing for my game. Most of the story takes place inside a laboratory built on the shores of a lake beneath two miles of ice at the South Pole. Now, precisely why the lab is in that location I won't get into here: you'll have to wait for the story to be finished!

The real lakes that scientists have been finding these past few years have yet to even be directly studied. Here's a National Geographic article I found that outlines what's going on:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1101_041101_antarctic_lakes.html
Even AOL had a short article about it last week, so it's becoming somewhat mainstream.

Scientists say there probably isn't much life beyond bacteria and other really tiny organisms living in these sub-surface waters, but I imagined it a bit more like the bottom of the ocean around the volcanic vents. In my game/story there will be all kinds of creatures living in these waters - little white crabs, bio-luminescent fish, and other interesting things like that. The "official" word is that the lab was built to study these animals. They are extremely rare, having been isolated for millions of years and evolving independently from the rest of the world. Research opportunities abound!

Soon perhaps I'll post a bit about the story I'm writing, so those who care and who read this will get a taste of what the lab was really built for. :-)

Office Space

2007-01-25T18:23:00.000-08:00

Today was a Big Day, because I moved into my own office at work. It's the first time ever that I've had my own entire room at any job. I've always worked in the room with other people there, and it's really quite amazing that just today the change happened. It has a window, and I can decorate it (nearly) any way that I want. How cool is that?

Every job I've had, from the current one to Sears to picking blueberries, has had people all over the place, all the time. When I started at my current job, my computer was literally in the middle of the lobby, ahead of the front desk. Now I have my own office - that's progress.

Maybe this wouldn't excite some people, but for me it really feels like accomplishment. And that, my friends, feels good.

Stuck in my head

2007-01-21T10:45:00.000-08:00

Everyone gets music stuck in their heads. It's just something that happens - our neurons see something they really like, and boom, there it is. We are humming it, singing it, and playing it over and over in our heads. The great thing is that it could be an entire orchestra, just a singer, or maybe a single guitar solo of an epic song. There's no limit to what the mind can hold and play back later. For me, all last week it was the song "Welcome to Bucketheadland" by Buckethead. I could write an entire post just about Buckethead, but that's for another day.

What I'm getting at in this post is really something else: I get more than just songs stuck in my head. I get images, movies, people's names, or even just weird words I might hear off-hand. The weirdest one I think is someone's name. Last week, all week, it was Martin Dougiamas, who is the man that originally created Moodle. I'll admit, I dealt with Moodle last week at my job much more than usual, but why did this guy's name keep repeating over and over in my head? It would pop in my head everywhere - driving, sitting at the computer, riding my bike, cooking. Does this happen to anyone else, or am I just weird?

Sometimes it's a scene from a movie. Remember when Robin Williams goes to hell in the movie What Dreams May Come? There were a few scenes after I watched the film that kept repeating over and over in my head for days. The one where he's in the boat, surrounded by blackness, and all the people swam over to overturn him was especially big.

I guess sometimes our brains are in the sort of state where we just remember certain things better than others. The chemicals are just right, and the neurons are firing strong, just as we witness or think about a certain thing. That thing then sticks for a while, no matter what it might be. What was in your head last week?

The Randomness

2007-01-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd post today about how wildly amazing it is that we are even here. And I don't mean just that I'm sitting here in Massachusetts, USA typing this - I mean that we even exist at all. Countless events had to occur in just the order that they did, at the time they did, and in the way that they did for us to be at this point in human history.

Here's a quote from the Introduction of Bill Bryson's incredible book, A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence."

A quick aside, that book is one of the best I've ever read, and I would recommend it to anyone. He goes on to say in the introduction that nobody really knows why the atoms do stick together to make us. He says (this will really make you think), "if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mount of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."

We can imagine these occurrences any way we want, and since I love "what if" scenarios, let's try a few. If the Pilgrims had never arrived in the New World and had that Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians, the United States wouldn't be as it is now. Then again, someone else probably would have come soon after, and possibly done it anyway. It seems as though, as Carl Sagan said, an event such as that was most likely inevitable.

What if we go really far back? If the animal that had originally given rise to us humans was eaten by that Tyrannosaurus instead of running away, the human race could have been quite a bit different. We might not exist at all, or maybe a different creature would have risen to the top, learned math and physics and biology, and put a person on Mars by now.

Let's get real crazy and ask what it would be like if the physical force of gravity was different. If I remember correctly, Bill Bryson mentions it in the book above. If gravity was just slightly less powerful than it is now, the planets and stars possibly would not be able to form. The entire universe would be essentially single particles flying through space.

That we exist in the form we do right now in the present is because literally all the random events and physical forces in the universe, from the first cells forming in an ancient ocean, to light traveling at the speed it does, to humans figuring out how to use fire, happened. It's quite a thought, and it really makes you appreciate the universe just a little bit more.

Riding the Lines

2007-01-11T08:31:00.000-08:00

A co-worker gave me a link to this game, which has an addiction factor of: very high. It is so fun. Check out the movies, some people have made some incredible rides. Youtube also has loads of videos.

It's amazing to me what you can make with something as basic as a bunch of lines and some simple physics simulations. I used to make drawings back in middle school that were like mazes, and you'd run through them exactly like Line Rider (mental note: scan those). There was a path you'd follow, and you'd have to choose between paths, avert spikes and lava pools, and even teleport to different places.

The News page on the site says that they are going to develop a console version - you watch, there will totally be spikes and lava pools.

Free Will

2007-01-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

Hello! I thought for a while about what to say in my first blog post, and finally ended up on free will. It's something that I haven't really thought about much before, but these past couple of weeks it has come up a lot. Reading the likes of Scott Adams done this to me!

I always assumed free will existed. Regardless of your religion or belief in a god, it seemed to me just about everyone agrees that we are able to make our own decisions. We feel that our lives are in our control, and that we had a final say over what we did. I wanted to write this blog post, so I made my own decision to do it. Nothing in my brain made me do it, outside of my own control... or did it?

Tuesday's post on Scott Adams' blog gave a link to an article in New Scientist in which they speak about how quantum mechanics is related to free will. In essence, we have to believe in quantum mechanics for free will to exist. I'd say it's not that hard - quantum mechanics has been around for quite a while, and seems to explain the tiny tiny world very well.

Quantum mechanics says that everything is a probability. There's a probability I was going to post about this topic in this blog, and a different probability I would post about something else. This uncertainty means there's no way to predict what will happen in the universe. However, a Nobel prize-winning physicist has recently completed a new mathematical model that shows an underlying concrete model for quantum mechanics, allowing us to predict the movement of particles.

If someone could apply this new mathematical theory to the particles that make up my body, they could predict what I was going to do in the future. If you can predict what someone is going to do with perfect certainty, free will can't exist.

I'll agree that there's no way to truly be sure whether free will exists or not, at least not right now. Even if the math makes sense and beautifully works out, scientists have no way to test it, since the technology doesn't currently exist to actually see things that small. The same problem is inherent with string theory. One day, however, the technology will exist to test these theories, and here's hoping I'm around to see it.