Knee of the Curve

Cut The Rope Won "Best Handheld Game"

2011-03-02T22:45:00.000-06:00

Pretty awesome to see an iOS app winning a GDCA for Best Handheld Game. Next stop: Game of the Year!

Sounds like it was a fun awards show. GDCA was one of my favorite parts of GDC in the past...I hope to go next year!

A Couple Of Mash-Ups

2011-02-25T18:38:00.003-06:00

Saw a couple of amazing video mash-ups, thought they were worth sharing.

Scott Pilgrim's Threshold 8-Bit vs. How Low by Ludacris.

Also, the "first" live performance of Smack My Bitch Up, circa 1965.

Snake? Snake! SNAAAAKE (Oil)!

2010-10-29T22:11:00.000-05:00

Gotta hand it to them, Steorn just won't quit peddling their unproven "free energy" device. Despite not yet achieving a successful public demo in the past (but they sure did boast), Steorn wants you to shell out 399 Euros for an "Orbo Evaluation and Development System," which will let you:

Evaluate the core principle of Orbo Technology, which is that a time-variant magnetic interaction leads to a non-conservative energy result

Le sigh.

Core-Count Wars?

2010-10-14T23:54:00.000-05:00

You want singularitarianism? Think of how long ago (answer: not long) the "Giga-/Mega-hertz" wars gave way to multi-core CPUs, and now this:

AMD CTO of servers Donald Newell prognosticated that the number of individual CPUs on a chip won't go up forever: "There will come an end to the core-count wars," he told IDG News. Just as the megahertz race was eventually defeated by thermal restrictions, so too will the number of cores on an chip cease to increase. " I won't put an exact date on it, but I don't myself expect to see 128 cores on a full-sized server die by the end of this decade...

Accelerating returns!

FF14 Uses BitTorrent to Patch Itself

2010-09-25T13:05:00.001-05:00

I picked up Final Fantasy XIV this morning, specifically the ginormous collector's edition so that Sora and I can play together during the 30-day trial.

By the time I got home with the box, I had an hour before I needed to leave for somewhere else. No problem, I figure I'd have at least enough time to install the game, watch the opening movie and roll a character. There has been a patch or two since the game came out, but my ISP provides 16Mbps downstream.

Only problem there, is that Square chose to use BitTorrent to update their users. As I write this, 50 minutes have passed, I've downloaded 10% of the patch, and my current U/L is 8.0KB/s to zero.

That's right, I'm uploading this patch to other users while my 16Mbps downlink sits idle. Why Square doesn't have *any* usable seeds running in my vicinity is beyond me, but this has so far been a terrible experience.

Salaries, The World, and You

2010-06-29T17:32:00.000-05:00

So, Joystiq is bemoaning Satoru Iwata's low salary. He makes $770,000 per year. Tell me one remotely-reasonable thing that he couldn't afford.

As long as he didn't buy Nintendo stock when I did (Goddammit), he probably makes a hell of a lot more than $770,000 per year. I wish more companies followed Nintendo's model, and gave CEOs, rockstar-employees, and headline-makers far lower salaries, enough to live a very comfortable life, but nothing on the 7-to-8-digit obscene salaries that Western companies pay to their big players.

A company's success should belong to that company. It should NEVER belong to that company's leaders, nor its peons, because neither one is solely responsible for said success. That money should be reinvested into R&D, marketing and customer benefits. It is an insult to all involved parties to see that wealth distributed in unfair ways.

IGF Call for Submissions

2010-06-28T18:18:00.000-05:00

So the time has come, once again, for all good indie game developers to...well, to make indie games and submit them to the Independent Games Festival.

My company, Gendai Games, is looking forward to seeing our users submit some awesome work this year. If you're interested in participating in IGF, you could do a lot worse than to head to GameSalad.com and whip up a killer app!

Best of luck to all the participants!

Replace "BP" With X

2010-05-27T18:23:00.000-05:00

Hannibal of Ars Technica brings up a good point.

Are we even slapping these guys on the wrist?

The Spammers Win

2010-04-23T00:23:00.000-05:00

Gah. Okay. You must now have an OpenID to post here. Too much spam, and I have better things to do than delete that manure.

The Pains Of iPhone OS Development

2010-04-18T13:18:00.000-05:00

JWZ has written a pretty scathing (yet very entertaining) indictment of the whole "it runs OS X" aspect of iPhone OS programming. Some choice quotes:

I think it's safe to say that MacOS is more source-code-compatible with NextStep than the iPhone is with MacOS.

That's like, the defining characteristic of OpenGL. So OpenGLES is just a slight variant of OpenGL, in the way that [a] unicycle is a slight variant of a city bus. If you can handle one, the other should be pretty much the same, right?

Granted, most of his gripes are with the APIs, not the environment, but it is pretty lame that you can't, for example, get the HSV version of a color on the iPhone. Like he says, it feels like someone actively sought out and removed valuable API hooks. Le sigh.

Romanizations Go Bye-Bye, Plzthx

2010-02-23T23:41:00.004-06:00

I got a request that my romanization-removing userscript for KoreanClass101.com be extended to also remove distracting Romanizations from its sister site JapanesePod101.com. That sounded like a good enough idea, so it's done!

Just head on over to the tool's userscripts.org page to install it. Don't know how to install it? You need GreaseKit for Safari, Greasemonkey for Firefox, or a new web browser if you're using IE.

Update: I realized I hadn't added the other requested feature, namely removing Romanization from the searchable dictionaries. I've added that, and it should work for both JapanesePod101 and KoreanClass101.

Two Cool Things About Google Buzz

2010-02-11T20:22:00.007-06:00

Because if you can't say anything nice...

Buzz will group together posts that you make in a short span of time. I shared four articles from Google Reader in the space of about a minute, and they appeared as one "Buzz," like so:

Buzz on the iPhone gives you two lists: the buzzes of those you follow, and the buzzes of those nearby geographically. I presumed this was done using Google Latitude, but it seems like they're getting the info from elsewhere.

Also, I wrote this post on my iPhone. It wasn't very comfortable, but it wasn't very painful either. Looking forward to trying out the iPad to see if the larger form factor makes it nicer. I'm almost as excited as Mr. Forstall here:

"You don't even think about it! You just....do!"

Preach on, Scott.

Fastest 3G Network?

2009-12-15T23:23:00.002-06:00

Verizon sure is wailing on AT&T these days, and AT&T's rebuttal ads featuring Luke Wilson aren't a very convincing response.

Anyway, isn't T-Mobile's 3G network the fastest? I thought they were the first and only 7.2Mbps HSPA rollout. Did AT&T match that? If so, is being tied for fastest still "the fastest?"

YouTube Closed Captioning

2009-11-24T22:55:00.004-06:00

YouTube has a cool new feature that will try to make closed-captioning available by programmatically transcribing the audio.

If your video has technical jargon, turn on captions! The results may be unintentionally hilarious.

Various Google-Fails When Building Chromium OS

2009-11-21T16:28:00.010-06:00

The first step in the Chromium OS build instructions is to run the script make_local_repo.sh. This will build a local repo from which your chroot environment will grab packages. However, this script has a bug where it will not wait for an APT lock. In my case, I was installing another package via apt-get when I ran the script, so it bailed out early when it couldn't get the apt lock, and hosed my repo.

The not-so-helpful error you will get once your local repo is screwed up:

khaki@onion:~/chromium-fake/src/scripts$ ./make_local_repo.sh
Creating repository directory...
Updating chromeos_dev from /home/khaki/chromium-fake/src/package_repo/repo_list_dev.txt...
chroot: cannot run command `reprepro': No such file or directory

It's easy to fix this, just delete the "repo" directory in the Chromium OS root directory (along side "src" and "tools") and then re-run the script.

Also, Google didn't include the full list of prerequisites for running the GClient build tool. If, right after syncing WebKit and WebCore, you get this unhelpful Python traceback error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
[Snipped here by yours truly.]
File "/home/khakionion/depot_tools/gclient_scm.py", line 195, in _Run
sp = subprocess.Popen(cmd, cwd=cwd, stdout=stdout)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 621, in __init__
errread, errwrite)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/subprocess.py", line 1126, in _execute_child
raise child_exception
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory

...Then you don't have Git, which is understandable, because it's not listed in the prerequisites for Chromium or GClient. But, if you're building Chromium OS, you should be calling "gclient sync" with the deps="chromeos,unix" command, making Git a dependency. Easy to miss, because Chromium's instructions don't consider the existence of Chromium OS. If you're using Ubuntu Karmic Koala, a simple "sudo apt-get install git git-core" will fix you up. You don't have to restart anything, just call the same "gclient sync" command you used before, and you'll continue at the first Git command that broke before.

Fixing Framework Search Paths

2009-11-15T11:25:00.002-06:00

Just ran into an interesting quirk in Xcode that kept me from building device versions of iPhone apps. The resolution was a bit hard to find, so I thought I'd post it up here for posterity. In a nutshell, it is possible to include a framework from a location that shouldn't be used. This will cause Xcode to add the path to that framework in the "Framework Search Paths" in your target's properties. If you include dylibs from a non-kosher location, it will do the same for the "Library Search Paths."

The consequence of this misconfiguration is that Xcode will look in this location when trying to find all its frameworks/libraries. This will give you errors like:

missing required architecture arm in file

I was getting this error message for every single binary blob, all the way up to crt1.o To fix it, simply go to the Library Search Paths and Framework Search Paths, and delete the path to the rogue framework.

How Did Various Computers Handle The Time Change?

2009-11-01T00:50:00.003-05:00

Windows Seven: Uneventful, clock went back one hour.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Uneventful, clock went back one hour.

The American Airlines Webservers:

AA.com is currently unavailable. We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.

The American Express Webservers:

Welcome MICHAEL HERRING , member since 2004.
Due to routine system maintenance, some Cardmembers may experience limited access to their account information at this time. We expect all information to be available by approximately 10:00am (EST) Sunday 11/1/09 and apologize for the inconvenience.

Heckuva job, webmasters.

Xenogears OCRemix Compilation Is Awesome

2009-10-21T22:45:00.002-05:00

Not much to say. What could I say, beyond "the always-inspiring video game music remixing community OC Remix has released an incredible compilation of Xenogears music?"

Yes, that's right, the always-inspiring video game music remixing community OC Remix has released an incredible compilation of Xenogears music.

See, I told you that's all I could say. Go. Downloadenzie.

"Single-Application Mode" in OS X

2009-10-06T21:14:00.005-05:00

When someone linked this article to me, the operative phrase "Single Application Mode" made me think someone had just figured out how to use the Mega Zoom SIMBL plugin. How wrong I was.

So apparently back in the olden days of pre-10.0 OS X, clicking a dock icon would hide all other applications. Command-Tab wouldn't, though, so using a combination of these two behaviors achieves the same functionality as Spaces, but faster and easier to modify on-the-fly. Try it yourself:

defaults write com.apple.dock single-app -bool true 
killall Dock

Viola. I have to say, I'm absolutely loving this mode. Too bad it's not exposed in System Preferences.

"Porting" iPhone Apps to XNA

2009-09-27T10:47:00.003-05:00

I had been reading several articles posted on Gizmodo and the like about a certain iPhone game having been ported to the Zune HD (via XNA) in a mere 12 hours. Naturally, this had gotten me excited about the possible existence of a converter or abstraction layer between Apple's libraries and XNA.

Unfortunately, other articles with more detail explain that the game wasn't actually written for the iPhone. It's actually a C#.NET application, running on the iPhone with MonoTouch. This is explained in the post (from the original game dev, no less), but it's still disheartening to see popular blogs continually missing important, technical details and instead garnering page views with catchy headlines.

Carter's Select Salsa

2009-09-20T09:13:00.002-05:00

Finally got a jar of Carter's Select Original Salsa. I ran into these guys at the 2009 Austin Hot Sauce Festival, but I hadn't gotten the chance to find their salsa in-store until last night's trip to Spec's.

My aforementioned turkey sausage skillet works great with their Original Salsa. The stuff is chunky, spicy, and generally tastes great. Highly recommended!

Hackintosh Skype Issue

2009-09-10T22:28:00.002-05:00

Snow Leopard is now running decently on Dell Mini 9 laptops, but on mine I have a weird quirk where my Skype balance is reported as zero. Logging in on another Mac with Snow Leopard (or logging in anywhere else for that matter) shows the proper balance.

Weird, eh? Anyone else see this issue?

Order of the Day: Turkey Salsa Skillet Pitas

2009-09-03T21:06:00.003-05:00

Ingredients:

Two Butterball Turkey Sausage links, sliced
1 cup sliced bell peppers
1 cup chopped onions
1 cup sliced squash
1/2 cup HEB Central Market Hatch Chile Salsa Roja
Grated, extra-aged cheddar cheese, to taste

The important thing in this dish, what gives it its kick, is the salsa. Look for this brand in particular.

Cook the turkey and vegetables in a skillet on medium heat, mixing the salsa in after a few minutes. Sprinkle in garlic powder, chili powder, and ground pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are cooked to their desired consistency (squishy and nigh-caramelized).

Place delicious turkey-veggie concoction in a dish, and fill pita. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese to taste.

MSN Soapbox Is No More

2009-07-21T21:24:00.002-05:00

Well, MSN has decided to shut down their user-generated video service, Soapbox. Not that I care too much, but it does affect my work on a MySoju plugin for Plex, since many of MySoju's videos were hosted there. So, that means one less plugin I have to maintain. I kinda saw this coming when they announced earlier that it would be placed "on the back burner," and sure enough here it is.

"No Romaja" Userscript for KoreanClass101

2009-07-13T07:57:00.005-05:00

I'm a paying member at KoreanClass101.com. It's a pretty good site for learning Korean, save for the unfortunate amount of romanization they use. One of the worst instances is in vocabulary lists, where a romanization sits directly next to the proper Hangul text for a word. A native-english brain prefers the romanization, which discourages learning vocabulary in actual Korean.

If you'd like that Romanization column to disappear, you can try out my userscript. Simply install Greasekit/Greasemonkey (instructions are here for Safari and here for Firefox) then head over to the page for my script and install it!

After that, your vocab lists should change from this:

To this!

MySoju Plex Plugin Update

2009-07-07T22:38:00.006-05:00

Not a lot going on with the MySoju plugin for Plex, but I have added the ability to detect broken episodes, and to see what video site a certain episode is hosted at. Screenshots incoming!

Something Wrong With This Picture

2009-06-25T14:20:00.003-05:00

Come on, Apple, shouldn't there be SOMETHING about Cocoa in your Apple-specific dictionary?

A MySoju Plugin for Plex Media Server

2009-06-15T00:56:00.004-05:00

It would be awesome if Plex, the Mac media centre software, had support for the CJK drama website MySoju. Fortunately, Plex has a relatively easy plugin architecture, so I've started working on such a feature!

So far, the plugin can browse all dramas, movies, staff picks and rankings. As for actually viewing the videos, if they are hosted on MSN Soapbox, they will work. Over the next week I will be adding support for as many of MySoju's sources as I can. I'm a bit worried about how hard supporting Dailymotion will be, since they're breaking the MySoju site right now. Time will tell.

Anyway, the plugin is progressing nicely, so if you want to see some screenshots, just click the thumbnails below!

Coming Soon: BT's Video Game Theme Song

2009-06-09T22:29:00.005-05:00

Electronic musician extraordinaire BT has really been forging ahead with this newfangled Internet thing. From being quite involved on his Twitter account to releasing 12-second preview clips of his upcoming album, dude knows how to keep his fans pumped up. He also made some cool announcements at a Ustream interview he conducted this evening.

Coming soon, the Beatport music store (which has BT's new single available DRM-free) will be offering up a version of said single hacked up and ready for remixing in a contest. The winner will see their remix available for sale on Beatport. Pretty cool.

Of particular interest to me was BT's response to questions about his work with video games. BT has had his music appear in games, the most noteworthy of which (to me) is the playable version of Kimosabe on Harmonix's PS2 title Amplitude. He let slip that he has composed the theme song to an upcoming (but unnamed!) video game, describing it as "big, orchestral" and "dubstep" and more. He followed up by saying:

...being a gamer myself, I've found that a lot of people that support my music and what I do are gamers too, and so I'd like to write a lot more music for video games.

Good to hear, Mr. BT! Please bring-it-up bring-it-up bring-it-up, and thanks for engaging your fans like this!

That Which Apple Stands to Democratize

2009-06-04T22:33:00.003-05:00

Normally, iPhone rumors get a :rolleyes: and a "Bah!" from yours truly, but TUAW has a couple of pretty interesting ones posted that, together, shape an interesting vision of what Apple could do to make the third-gen iPhone stick out from its newly-emboldened competitors.

First off, TUAW has gleaned from possible pre-release AT&T support docs that the new iPhone may be called the iPhone video. Also, some supposed pics of the new iPhone show a front-facing green LED, the Apple standard for an integrated iSight camera.

iPhone possesses a mass-market appeal and mindshare that is rare among its competitors. When the next iPhone launches, customers will be in huge, snaking lines to buy it, the kind of lines that Palm, RIM et cetera only see in dreams. With such an appealing brand, Apple is in a rare position to embrace an as-yet-unpopular technology and make it indispensable.

Imagine if Apple were to market a video-call-capable phone, that mythical telecom product that companies like AT&T, Motorola and Intel have failed to make popular. The hype-machine and HCI prowess that Apple possesses could turn it from a quirky technology that only early-adopting geeks would use into the must-have killer app for the next two or three years.

Enter the Kotaku-posted rumor that the third-gen iPhone will possess a significantly more powerful graphics processor than its predecessors. In the App Store context, this would have the undesirable side-effect of splintering the iPhone platform. But, with greater graphical chops come greater UI possibilities, and a 3- or 4-way video-conference over a cell network would definitely be a new, leading-edge innovation in the American mobile industry.

I have no clue as to the likelihood of such a technology being announced at the Philnote next week...but I have my fingers crossed. We need a novel use of this bandwidth we keep adding to our cell networks, and video calls/conferences would be an amazing step forward for all involved parties.

I Like The Way Gizmodo Thinks

2009-05-25T16:41:00.004-05:00

Too bad it ain't gonna happen, but a geek can dream.

"Flowchart"

2009-05-02T22:50:00.002-05:00

The other night, I was playing Street Fighter 4 and got creamed by some guy who was playing as (shock!) Ken Masters. Later, I got a message from him, consisting of one simple assertion:

haha flowchart

What did he mean? Clearly he was insulting me. Am I so bad that he could beat me with simple flowchart-style Ken? Or was I playing too simplistic of a game?

Whatever it was, there's only one flowchart you'll ever need for SF4.

$60 Games and The Mid-Range

2009-03-04T00:54:00.005-06:00

It's amazing how well Twitter keeps my thoughts flowing. Enough to keep me from needing to post here! SO ANYWAY--

I just got done reading Kotaku's review of THQ's new 50 Cent game. The review is relatively positive, commending it for being accessible and (somewhat) replayable. Then comes the recommendation on whether to buy or rent/borrow it:

While it may be hard to recommend Blood On The Sand to gamers who are itching for a more tepid Gears Of War-The Club hybrid—especially since both can be had for less than the price (combined) of the game under review—it's difficult to recommend against playing the game. It's bizarre and capable enough to make the ride fun.

I've always been a critic of the price-of-entry into the world of video games, and this generation's the worst yet. There are many recent releases I'm anxious to try out, but at $60 a pop I'm in no rush to own them. A generation ago, I was making less money than I am now, and still I had no problem shelling out $50 for a new release, and $35-40 recent releases with good reviews were insta-buys.

So, you're a 50 Cent fan with no console. You'll have to buy:

A game console (cheapest is 360 Arcade, $200).

The game itself ($60).

Another game controller for the co-op (360 Wireless costs $50).

Got that? $310 for the latest 50 Cent production. If he made a movie, you'd pay ~$15 to see it with your girlfriend/buddies. (Or you'd pay upwards of around $250 for a Blu-ray player and the movie disc.) If all 40 tracks from the game's OST were released as a 3-disc set, you would reasonably expect to pay at most $40-45 for such a compilation.

Food for thought, IMHO.

AU Box Shows What Apple Could Do (And Probably Won't)

2009-01-03T13:18:00.004-06:00

Check out the simply-named box from AU by KDDI. Connect it to your mobile or fiber-optic Internet connections, and it accesses a slew of AU/KDDI/Internet services, making them available on both your mobile phone and your home entertainment system.

While I was watching the introductory video, I could only think about one thing: How cool would it be if there was an iPhone dock on the Apple TV? Use a 3G or wired connection, download your shows to both components, and never have to connect to iTunes itself.

Unfortunately I have a feeling we're not going to see anything like that anytime soon. If the history of the iPod has told us one thing about Apple's technical design aesthetic, it's that the Mac/PC is the hub from which one manages one's content. Pushing/downloading content to a computer from a more special-purpose device is a special case, one that Apple's products are designed to reduce in occurrence.

After the rescinded approval of the iPhone data-tethering app, the release (finally!) of a phone running Android, and novel mobile applications like AU box, an optimistic geek might be led to believe that there's simply too much pressure on Apple to maintain the iPhone's "closed platform" nature.

It's certainly not impossible, but I wouldn't hold my breath on a sea change in Apple's broad platform strategy. The fact that Apple TV and iPhone both run OS X is a matter of convenience, not a sign that either platform is destined for Mac-level openness. If you want free reign over your Apple device, to make it do precisely what you want, and run the applications you want, Apple's design intentions be damned, you're better off getting a Mac than an iPhone or Apple TV.

The State of the Industry, in Three Images

2008-12-11T22:20:00.003-06:00

Dunno if I like Kotaku's new look yet, but they certainly haven't lost their gift for perfect imagery alongside their news:

Have a look.

YouTube Vids of Older Stuff

2008-11-24T01:00:00.003-06:00

Took me long enough, but I've finally gotten around to uploading some video of Melody's Musette and Rabbit-Proof Fencing, two projects that comprised the majority of my work back at ETC-Adelaide.

Melody's Musette is a game whose core concept is synchronicity, tying the music and gameplay events together. Rabbit-Proof Fencing is a humorous look at introduced species in Australia. Puns abound.

Both of these games were made with Panda3D.

I've embedded them below, or you can simply head to my YouTube channel to check them out.

Melody's Musette Stage Two Gameplay

Melody's Musette Stage Three Gameplay

Rabbit-Proof Fencing, Full Game

Panda3D Macintosh Install Script

2008-11-02T11:37:00.004-06:00

Nutshell: Click here to download a Python script to install Panda3D from scratch. Read on for more deets.

Panda3D is a great game engine, especially for rapid-prototyping, but for Mac users it can be a bit frustrating being a second-class citizen. While independent developers are creating very useful distributions (like Hypnos's awesome p3dapp) there are no official builds, and installing from source is no easy task.

Edalytical's very helpful guide, Building Panda3D in OS X Leopard, has fallen out of date. Using it as a base, I've created a Python script that will install Panda3D from source, and can even download and install Panda3D's two major dependencies, MacPorts and the Cg Toolkit. Its only dependency is Leopard Developer Tools (you know, Xcode and the like).

Simply download the script from the Game Sketching project's downloads page. By default, it will download/compile/install Panda3D. You can add the options +macports and +cg to download/install those dependencies. See the source or read below for the usage info:

pandaAutoInstall.py [noex] [(+|-)option] option is one of 'uninstall', 'download', 'compile', 'remove', 'test', 'macports', 'cg', 'announce' To install everything: pandaAutoInstall.py +all To just install Panda3D: pandaAutoInstall.py To uninstall: pandaAutoInstall.py +uninstall

Bug reports, positive/negative feedback and success/failure stories are welcome!

Yahoo Nukes Everyone's Profile

2008-10-19T00:19:00.002-05:00

Oh now this is cool, Yahoo! has seen fit to reformat everyone's profiles, but in the transition has reset every last one of them to totally, unabashedly blank.

What really impresses me is that Yahoo's statement about the botched transition acknowledges that they could retrieve your data, but politely decline to do so unless you force it by going through their general tech support gauntlet.

Not much else to say here. Basically, if you want an example of how not to transition your user base to a new version of your platform, check out the new Yahoo.

The Order of the Day

2008-10-12T16:03:00.005-05:00

Spinaci e Formaggio Cheddar in Carrozza

3 Eggs
Four large slices of bread
Four slices of horseradish cheddar
Baby spinach, washed
Spicy, dry sausage (sopressata works well)
Extras: butter, salt, turbinado, garlic powder

Beat three eggs, combining with a dash of salt and teaspoon of both turbinado and garlic powder. Pour into a wide, shallow dish. Heat a large skillet to medium heat, and add butter.

Soak both sides of the bread slices in the egg wash, then place in the skillet. Flip the bread only once the underside is golden brown; don't regularly flip them.

As the other side cooks, lay horseradish cheddar onto the cooked bread. Once the other side of the bread is cooked, remove from skillet, and add sopressata and spinach to taste. Place one slice of bread onto the other, in what is commonly known as a "sandwich" formation.

Makes two sandwiches.

iPhone SDK 2.1 Doesn't Include iPod touch 2.1 Firmware

2008-09-16T00:02:00.003-05:00

If you, like me, have gotten an iPod touch and anxiously installed the new iPhone SDK to scratch your iPhone development itch, you may be disappointed when you start up Xcode and get the unhelpful message:

Unable to locate a suitable developer disk image. Reinstall the iPhone SDK.

And, maybe you do reinstall it, but the message persists. Aaand, when you compile your software, you get a CodeSign error:

No certificate found in keychain for code signing identity 'iPhone Developer'

The problem is that the huuuuuge iPhone SDK 2.1 installer doesn't come with the iPod touch 2.1 firmware image. Suck. Fear not, though: All you have to do is force iTunes to do a firmware restore, which will download the appropriate image. On next launch, Xcode will find it and everything will work great.

Swype's Cool Touchscreen Typing System

2008-09-11T13:00:00.003-05:00

Check out this video of startup Swype demoing their new touchscreen typing system. Point at the first letter, and "connect the dots" to each subsequent letter.

The glorious moment in this video is when the guy effortlessly spells "Mississippi" in the space of one second.

Apparently this guy is the/a developer of T9 input as well. The guy knows his stuff, I'd say. The sooner this is present on touchscreen devices, the better.

In Memory of Randy Pausch

2008-07-25T09:03:00.002-05:00

Not having met the man, there's not a lot I can say. But Carnegie Mellon ETC co-founder Randy Pausch passed away today. He's had a long, spirited fight with pancreatic cancer, and gave a rather rousing "last lecture" at CMU last year.

You'll find nary a soul that didn't view Randy as a charismatic, intelligent, cheerful guy. Rest in peace, Randy. As Brian Transeau says, see you on the other side.

Here are some good related links.
Randy's Wikipedia page
The Last Lecture

Using Flip Ultra Video Without Bundled Software

2008-07-06T01:15:00.002-05:00

Macworld has a review of what seems to be a pretty cool little digital camcorder, the Flip Ultra. Small, point-and-shoot, USB. Very easy to grok. One caveat is that it encodes its videos with the 3ivx encoder, so you "need" to install the software that comes with it.

If you'd rather just use your QuickTime-enabled software (like, say, iMovie) to edit your Flip Ultra software without ever installing some OEM piece of software, check out Perian. As you can see here at their supported formats page, it rolls an open-source 3ivx encoder into Quicktime. No fuss at all.

Of course, Macworld didn't seem to have any problems with the built-in software, but why install yet another transient video program when you can just keep Perian up-to-date and support all of those formats at once?

Great Design Alongside Batman Hopes

2008-07-04T11:51:00.003-05:00

Oh hai. Happy Independence Day, fellow Yanks.

I just got done reading Scenes from a Franchise, a piece on the upcoming Batman sequel, The Dark Knight. Includes fun excerpts from NY Times reviews of old Batman movies, as well as a hopeful wish that Batman Begins won't be the only good Batman movie.

More striking than the writing itself, however, is the design of the site. It looks like a tax form, or a technical manual, but I just can't stop exploring it. This site is a dream to navigate, with nothing more than succinct, monochrome precision. Very cool.

Projects I'm Working On

2008-06-25T18:35:00.003-05:00

Well, now that I'm off of school for the summer, I should be updating more. Even so, the projects I'm working on aren't showing a lot of progress, so there's not much to report on that front. And since I don't want to write one of "those blogs" that just regurgitates the latest from Engadget/Ars/Slashdot, posts just aren't going to be coming as regularly as I want them to.

I will, however, talk a bit right now about what I'm working on. Currently, I've got three projects in the works, all of which I hope to release before starting my new job in late July. First on the agenda is a redesign of Khakionion.com, my long-outdated website. I'll be getting rid of all that nasty table-based layout and creating a nice, clean, sensible website that will make getting my productions much easier.

Next is MTPCopy, an Automator action that will make copying music files to your non-iPod device in OS X a snap. I'm not one for those jukebox-style solutions like XNJB. I hope my approach will be much simpler.

Last, I'm hoping to allocate my Panda3D experience towards a 2D platformer, which I'm working on with my quite-talented sister, who's responsible for the art and character design.

That's what's up, hopefully you'll be seeing some fresh productivity out of me soon!

HTTP Codes for More Efficient Whining

2008-05-30T20:24:00.006-05:00

Someone on Facebook posted an article by The Beijinger about a rock festival being cancelled by the Chinese government. I was entertained when I got a unique 403 by following the Facebook link:

We have identified that you have been refered here by a known or supposed spammer.

Yeah, something tells me they didn't work very hard on the supposing part. It also shows up when following it from my site.

If you are actually doing referer spam, please note that this website/b2evolution no longer records and publishes referers. Not even legitimate ones! While we understand it was fun for you guys while it lasted, please understand our servers cannot take the load of all this cumulated spam any longer... Thank you.

Seems like quite the over-emotional IT staff. Anyway, like the plea for attention said, publishing your referers enables link spam. So...don't. or use rel="nofollow" on your referral links. But don't abuse the 403 error codes to complain about how you had to disable spam.

Google/Address Book Syncing--Just iPhone Advertisement

2008-05-28T20:16:00.002-05:00

So, over at the Google Mac blog, they've announced the ability to sync Google contacts. With what? Well with Address Book, of course. Yes, Address Book, that system-wide service/application with iCal, Safari and Mail.app integration. It's an important piece of software to many Mac users, so you can see why it'd be useful to sync with your Google contacts.

Oh, did I mention it only works if you have an iPhone?

See that bottom checkbox? "Synchronize with Google?" The feature works like a charm, or so I'm told. I wouldn't know, because that simple little checkbox (which surely doesn't require any sort of iPhone software to work properly) just flat out does not appear unless that Mac has been synced in the past with an iPhone.

Quoth the Google Mac blog entry: "We hope this helps you keep a little more of your information organized and easy to find, at any place and time you need it." Sorry, guys, you fail it.

Update: Looks like you need an iPod of some sort, not just an iPod. See this Lifehacker post for details and info on how to get around this mind-numbingly stupid restriction.

Nihongo Benkyou: Kanji Invaders

2008-05-10T11:11:00.002-05:00

Over the past few weeks I've been throwing together some JavaScript to make myself a Japanese language study-game. If you've ever played Letter Invaders-type games, you'll catch onto this one pretty fast.

It's (unimaginatively) called Kanji Invaders, and is a JavaScript application which runs on IE 6.0+, Firefox and Safari. The objective is to type the readings for randomly-selected falling Japanese words before they reach the bottom of the screen. If you can't read Kanji, all words convert themselves to Hiragana as they fall. When you successfully type a word, the definition is given down at the bottom. You can even specify which particular words you want to see; for now, the only types I have are JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) classifications.

To play, simply type the romaji for each falling word! I initially chose this method because I had problems with Firefox recognizing Japanese input methods. Since then, though, I've come to the realization that most keyboards (even in Japan) are being used Romaji style, so I've stuck with it. By supporting romaji exclusively, Kanji Invaders works on virtually all Japanese and English computers.

Current feature ideas: An online scoreboard. Better intensity rise/fall. Automagically-downloadable version without an advert (though it's already pretty easy to download). More graphical special effects. Music/SFX.

Currently known issues: sometimes typing a word that has appeared twice will cause both instances to go away. I've fixed it and will upload a new version soon.

Since Kanji Invaders' Japanese input processing is home-brewed, let me know if a particular romaji-ism that you use doesn't work on Kanji Invaders. Other bug reports/feature ideas are very welcome. The code is free for you to take and do what you like with, but I'd appreciate attribution if you simply make a Kanji Invaders fork. I'm regularly improving this app, and will keep the latest version available at http://kanji.khakionion.com for your perusal.

Have fun studying, and ganbatte!

Command-Line Panda3D

2008-04-24T02:34:00.003-05:00

Here's a neat tip worth pointing out: because Panda3D works in Python, and Python has a relatively robust command-line mode, you have a powerful realtime debugging tool in the form of command-line Panda. It's not really hard, you just may not realize it's possible. Open up a Python prompt, then run these lines:

from pandac.PandaModules import *
from direct.showbase.DirectObject import DirectObject
import direct.directbase.DirectStart

That should be enough to get a window up and running. As you test more and more things out, remember you'll probably have to call the run() function every now and then to get tasks to run, do some extended interaction or that sort of thing. While Panda3D is actually "running," you won't have the command-line available.

When you want to pause the system and do more debugging, simply raise a KeyboardInterrupt exception, and Panda3D will freeze and return control to the command-line. You may want to write a module that does all of this for you, like, say:

from pandac.PandaModules import * from direct.showbase.DirectObject import DirectObject import direct.directbase.DirectStart class debugObj(DirectObject): def __init__(self): self.accept("space",self.interruptPanda) #any unused event, really def interruptPanda(self): raise KeyboardInterrupt()

Woohoo, now you can load modules and run Panda3D stuff to your heart's content, with the ability to freeze execution and evaluate variables at any moment.

Nihongo Benkyou: The Nintendo DS

2008-03-08T03:21:00.003-06:00

Being a more-than-full-time student here in Japan, it's hard to find regular, dedicated time for studying Japanese. Nonetheless, it's a very important part of my time here, so any tools that make the process easier are quite welcome.

Enter the Genius Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten, a Nintendo-developed electronic dictionary for the Nintendo DS. Since it takes advantage of the DS stylus for written kanji recognition, the student of Japanese can look up words whose readings they don't yet know.

This has been my primary method of deciphering Japanese text "in the field" while living in Osaka. There are some drawbacks, but if you already own a DS the roughly 4000 yen price tag makes it an obvious choice. I've linked to The Japan Times' review, but if you want to buy it, here's a direct link to Play Asia's product page.

AppleScripts to Toggle the Microphone

2008-01-10T07:54:00.000-06:00

I'm nice and busy here in Osaka, but not too busy to see this infuriating "answer" on Yahoo, about how to mute a MacBook microphone:

Unfortunately that's quite impossible to do on a Mac. I've tried looking for a solution, but there was never an answer. I got tired of my Mac, and bought a Sony Vaio instead. They actually work, and are actually quality computers.

What the hell is wrong with people? And it was an accepted answer? Well, for some reason I can't post a new answer, so let me just say; a simple AppleScript (which I've written, and have available right here) can toggle the MacBook's onboard microphone. If you need it bound to a key, free programs like GlobalHotkey have you covered.

Don't like the way the AppleScript works? Just open it in Script Editor.

Stupid Yahoo Answers. I should be studying Kanji. :)

Travelogue: The Move To Osaka

2007-12-28T06:40:00.000-06:00

Weird, many people think I'm already in Japan. Anyway, It's T-Minus 7 hours before my first plane takes off, so here's a liveblog of my departure from Adelaide, Australia to Osaka, Japan. Check back often, I'll keep updating.

Friday, 28.12.2007
23:16 - I'm alone at the ETC, so iTunes is cranked up. I'm ripping Clone High for Rob, and trying to fit all my crap into my two large suitcases and two carry-on bags. I have about 50kg of stuff. This will not end well.

Saturday, 29.12.2007
4:21 - Well, it didn't end too poorly. My luggage is quite heavy, but acceptable. I'm all packed up, ready to call a cab and leave the ETC. Man, I really hope I don't lock myself out this time.

6:35 - Sitting in the Adelaide airport, waiting to board the plane. Beautiful sunrise as I sit here. Also, holy crap that was an expensive charge for overweight baggage: over A$300! Oh well, it had to be done, and wasn't much more expensive than the Australia Post would have been. Here's hoping the wine makes it through the trip!

22:27 - Well, that was a boring travelogue; no Internet access anywhere. *sigh* I'm in Japan now! Woo!

Fixing Leopard's .dylib Problem With Universal MacPorts

2007-12-18T05:26:00.000-06:00

Apparently, Mac OS X Leopard has drastically altered the way its linker works. The Ruby community is running into problems installing gems, but this change extends beyond interpreted language modules, and some people are getting really irate. I ran into this stuff head-first today while trying to make a program building off of XNJB.

I'm building an Automator action deriving from XNJB, but for the life of me I couldn't finish compiling; the linker insisted that libiconv was not defining the proper symbols. Despite libiconv being in both the OS X 10.4u and 10.5 SDKs, as well as MacPorts, the program just would not link.

If you tell Xcode to only compile for your architecture, things work out alright. But what if you want to distribute your app? Isn't that what Universal Binaries are all about? Well, apparently, the real problem with Leopard is some complicated gcc/linker mojo (something about the way Leopard resolves .dylib locations), but it's easy enough to workaround if you link to MacPorts versions of your libraries; just recompile your ports as Universal Binaries. For me, I had to recompile several:

sudo port deactivate libiconv zlib libxml2 libxslt jpeg tiff libpng

sudo install libiconv zlib libxml2 libxslt jpeg tiff libpng +universal

Ugh, MacPorts needs some common nomenclature. (Yes, I know most of that isn't their fault.) Once those were installed, and Xcode was instructed to look in /opt/local/lib for libraries, everything compiled (to a UB!) just fine. If you've got this problem, hopefully this helps!

Maybe I can use this to finish that OS X build of Panda3D.....

StreetSmarts Public Release

2007-12-16T02:26:00.000-06:00

A really long time ago I planned on open-sourcing some of my stuff. "Some of my stuff" ended up being "none of my stuff," because I was just too damned lazy to clean it up.

No longer! I found out the code to StreetSmarts, my file renamer, is pretty cross-platform if one is inclined to use Mono on MacOS or Linux. So, I finished cleaning up the code, figured out what command lines would compile StreetSmarts in Linux and OS X, and VIOLA, now I've got a project up on Google Code.

You can give it a whirl, if you've got files that need renaming. Just head to http://streetsmarts.googlecode.com, download the version that's appropriate for your system (or checkout/compile from source), and have at you!

Are there simpler ways to do mass file renaming? Hell yes. Still, I'm happy to have produced something relatively interesting and open-sourced it.

Quick Path Access in OS X

2007-11-05T20:04:00.000-06:00

Here's a neat trick I just found out about, that I'm sure has been present forever. When you're using Safari, Finder, and presumably any other application with "paths," context-clicking the title bar will provide a breakdown of your current browsing context.

In Safari:

In Finder:

Sweet.

Amazon MP3 Store: Digital Music Done Right

2007-11-04T19:20:00.000-06:00

I just spent 30 minutes tooling around in Amazon's MP3 Store. After reading the reviews and whatnot, I was pleasantly surprised with exactly the experience that was promised--tons of music, all of which is priced relatively cheaply, with a light-weight cross-platform downloading program (whose usage, best of all, is OPTIONAL).

It's spooky how well this store is put together. The (unfortunately Flash-based) preview applet is non-intrusive, opens no new windows, and works nicely. I've been wanting Kanye West's Stronger, so I got it. Easy-peasy. I also bought Year Zero and Human After All for about $8 each. No DRM, high-quality. The coolest thing? I had free access to those albums anyway, but in lower quality rips from friends.

Do you hear me, you media conglomerate bastards? (Of course you don't, but I'll talk anyway.) You will sell more music if you sell it without being a bunch of money-grubbing fiends. Customers will stop stealing music if you actually treat them like valuable customers.

Portal Giveth, and Portal Taketh Away (Outlook Sounds)

2007-10-25T07:43:00.000-05:00

If any of you haven't yet played the amazing, wonderful game called Portal, you owe it to yourself to start up or install Steam and get cracking. It's incredible.

I'm listening to the soundtrack, and it appears that there was some sort of recording error in the song "Party Escort." Turn up the volume and go to 2:25. You'll hear it, plain as day: the Microsoft Outlook new mail notification sound? WTF?

Also, I found a pretty trivial bug in MacOS, maybe it will be fixed in Leopard? Damn, guess I'll have to get a copy of it to find out! :)

Regurgitated Press Releases

2007-10-23T20:11:00.000-05:00

1UP is a fickle beast. Sometimes, they've got some very good articles. (Their "Northern Lights" series on Q? Entertainment was fantastic.) And when they write "news" based on rampant speculation, a problem the tech industry can't seem to get over, they've got the balls to fess up and apologize for it.

But this nonsense has got to stop. This article is basically a two-paragraph press release, and not a very good one at that. It is an advertisement dressed up like an article (surrounded by ads) trying to sell me 1) Haze, and 2) Korn. It ends with a link to their preview of Haze, so that you can see more ads all around the actual article.

Slow news month? Naah, I just haven't had the time to write much. I'll have Leopard impressions up, I guess.

DiGRA 2007: Tuesday Game Design

2007-09-25T01:28:00.000-05:00

DiGRA 2007 is off to a great start right now, with paper and poster presentations, as well as symposia and panels. I've been attending the game design track for the most part, and it's fun to hear all the different theories. There are some good, relevant topics that my old Core III students would really enjoy, like generally defining the avatar, or the Magic Circle.

The most interesting topic so far was the "Playing Music" paper, which was a survey of the many music-centric games in our industry. He makes a distinction between games that quantize player action (like Rez) and games that make the player perform in rhythm (like Amplitude). What's most interesting about that is how my current project at ETC straddles that distinction quite easily.

Pictures of Japan forthcoming...

Off to Japan

2007-09-19T13:32:00.000-05:00

Alright, I'm off to Japan!

I'll be blogging about noteworthy talks and exhibits at Tokyo Game Show and DiGRA 2007. Weird stuff I see in Japan will most certainly merit blogging, too.

Stay tuned, this will be a busy week at Knee of the Curve!

The New Vienna

2007-09-16T19:49:00.000-05:00

There's a new version of Vienna, the open source RSS reader for Mac OS X. While I haven't been keeping tabs on the progress of previous updates, this new one rolls out a brand-new interface that rocks severe.

If you're using Vienna, you owe it to yourself to upgrade.

If you don't use Vienna....you owe it to yourself to upgrade.

Humor in HCI

2007-09-16T01:11:00.001-05:00

I think it's hilariously appropriate for the iPhone Dev Team's anySIM to operate via Apple's "slide to unlock" mechanic.

Rez HD is Coming

2007-09-12T04:15:00.000-05:00

Oh, now isn't this just super-exciting. Microsoft just announced that Q? is porting Rez to the Xbox Live Arcade, in high-def and with 5.1-channel sound.

What? Oh, sure, I could say more, but what could make you more excited than Rez HD? That's right, nothing.

Bioshock's Great. Not THAT Great.

2007-09-10T23:20:00.000-05:00

The past few weeks, for many gamers, have been devoted to playing Bioshock, a graphically beautiful first-person shooter with some truly exciting gameplay. The game also came with a lot of hype surrounding its take on morality and Objectivism, Ayn Rand's philosophy which is outlined in her literary works. Specifically, 2K Games billed Bioshock as a treatment of Atlas Shrugged, a look into the effects on society, should an entire class of productive workers abstain from contributing.

Sadly, the game didn't live up to these lofty expectations (and the inherent hype of it being the spiritual successor to System Shock 2). Throughout this game, moral choices seem to be in abundance, but the game's design consistently fails to enable the player to make important gameplay decisions, or removes the pros and cons of the few that the player actually can affect.

If you don't mind spoilers, this is a nice, to-the-point critique of Bioshock's defusal of any morality in the "Little Sisters" mechanic. While the Little Sisters serve as the most fundamental aspect to Bioshock's morality, just look at Ars Technica's breakdown. It's virtually a zero-sum game.

It's a shame that such a fun, beautiful game tripped and fell on what should have been another bullet-point, but the hype machine seems to have taken hold. If you're looking for moral choices in games, I propose you look no further than Deus Ex. You can get it for pretty cheap on Steam now.

Scrabulous on Facebook

2007-09-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

Scrabble is an awesome game. It's strongly emergent, multi- or single-player, accessible to many skill levels and most of all, loads of fun. If you're on Facebook then you owe it to yourself to check out the Scrabulous application, which will let you 'scrab with up to four of your Facebook peers. Give it a go!

GMail Collaborative Video

2007-08-28T22:29:00.000-05:00

GMail's recent call for videos (CfV?) to make a collaborative "behind the scenes" movie has finally borne fruit. Here's the final version. It ended up looking pretty good:

My favorite part is when the arrow hits the next guy in the ear.

WTF Mac Store

2007-08-26T19:16:00.001-05:00

WTF Mac Store
Originally uploaded by Jeff Carlson

Wish I could say I found this like I found the MacOS graffiti, but it's still some cool found Mac stuff. It's supposed to say "The Mac Store," but the word "the" is laid out...........ah, awkwardly.

Found Mac Art: MacOS Graffiti

2007-08-20T07:39:00.001-05:00

Here's a cool piece of found art: A MacOS menu bar pasted up on a wall near my uni.

Couldn't even get a picture of it in time before someone ripped and tagged it. Apparently I'm not the only one upset that Adelaide isn't getting the new Bluetooth keyboards for four weeks. :)

Original ADVENT Source Code Found!

2007-08-17T06:29:00.000-05:00

Too cool not to blog about....

This guy has analyzed the original source code to Adventure. Notable in that sentence is that he actually has found the source code to Adventure, in a backup of Don Woods' account. This is a phenomenally important piece of code, and I think it's incredible that it's managed to survive into an age where it can be preserved.

Looking at it a bit, it's funny to think just how unlike the game itself this code is. Today, you can at least read many parts of code and see the game itself in the source. Whereas some game code to pick up an item may look like:

int Player::itemCollision(Item item) { if(Player.myInventory.isFull()) { Alert("You can't carry any more items!"); return -1; } Player.myInventory.append(item); }

The Adventure 0 code (in Fortran-IV!) to "CARRY" something is:

C CARRY 9000 IF(JOBJ.EQ.18)GOTO 2009 IF(IPLACE(JOBJ).NE.J) GOTO 5200 9001 IF(IFIXED(JOBJ).EQ.0)GOTO 9002 CALL SPEAK(25) GOTO 2011 9002 IF(JOBJ.NE.BIRD)GOTO 9004 IF(IPLACE(ROD).NE.-1)GOTO 9003 CALL SPEAK(26) GOTO 2011 9003 IF((IPLACE(4).EQ.-1).OR.(IPLACE(4).EQ.J)) GOTO 9004 CALL SPEAK(27) GOTO 2011 9004 IPLACE(JOBJ)=-1 9005 IF(IOBJ(J).NE.JOBJ) GOTO 9006 IOBJ(J)=ICHAIN(JOBJ) GOTO 2009 9006 ITEMP=IOBJ(J) 9007 IF(ICHAIN(ITEMP).EQ.(JOBJ)) GOTO 9008 ITEMP=ICHAIN(ITEMP) GOTO 9007 9008 ICHAIN(ITEMP)=ICHAIN(JOBJ) GOTO 2009

My, my, how far code has come. Anyway, if you're interested, I recommend at least thumbing through the source. It's a nigh-mystical artifact to some of us. :)

Why Unreal Engine Is Closed Source

2007-08-09T20:27:00.000-05:00

Silicon Knights is suing Epic because improvements that Epic made to Unreal Engine 3 didn't trickle down to SK, thus making Gears of War superior by default to Too Human. This is a great example of why you should be hesitant to trust closed-source technology in your multi-million-dollar game production.

What I think happened is that Epic and SK defined "Unreal Engine 3" in two different ways. Epic made this thing called "UE3," and aside from building their own games on it, they also licensed it out so others could, too. While Epic made some enhancements to the engine, they considered such work part of Gears of War, and didn't distribute it to UE3 licensees (their competitors).

What if both Epic and SK had been using an open-source engine? Gears of War's release would have required the release of the entire source tree for the game, and the same would have applied to all other users of said technology.

Is this a bad thing? Well, it depends. Do you want your games to advertise their superior engine features, or superior game design? In an open-source world, the playing field is leveled, and your skill in crafting a good game is now more important than your skill in supporting the latest shaders, environmental audio, et cetera.

Gee-whiz technical features versus compelling game experiences. Your choice.

Twitterfication

2007-08-09T05:30:00.000-05:00

Oh sheesh, I signed up for Twitter. I've got it installed on this blog and Facebook, and I'm running Twitterific on my Mac. Follow me if you're on Twitter, and I'll follow back!

Rabbit-Proof Fencing Available!

2007-07-15T08:58:00.000-05:00

I've whipped up a subsite for a Panda3D-based game I made last semester, called Rabbit-Proof Fencing. You can see screenshots of the game, and Windows (XP and Vista) users can download the game right now and install it. I'm working on the Mac version as you read this.

Yes, all you do is hit rabbits with the spacebar. :) If the game seems a bit simplistic, that's because it is. RPF was made more for the final ETC Show than to be a particularly intricate game.

Panda3D is a very cool framework. Besides being (kinda) triple-platform, it also is why we can make these games so fast. Very cool tool, I recommend you check it out.

Nick Montfort's "Narrative Variation"

2007-06-22T21:29:00.000-05:00

Just a quick link right now, if you're interested in Interactive Fiction at all you should check out Nick Montfort's dissertation on generating variant narratives:

http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2007/06/20/playing-defender/

A very cool spec for a system called nn that splits up a story between what is being told, and how it is told, something that until now has been controlled by only one entity. Montfort's approach consists of many smaller modules, and is making me pine for a version of nn to try out on my own.

BT on the iPhone

2007-06-15T21:15:00.001-05:00

I was looking at the iPhone demos on Apple.com and noticed BT's album This Binary Universe in the music library. Click for a larger view:

I'm not really that much of an iPhone fanatic, but the end-of-semester crunch is reducing any meaningful posts, and BT is always worth a mention. :)

Apple Prank Calls

2007-06-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

Just a bit of humor. The first real iPhone adverts have hit the airwaves, one referencing a supposed Californian seafood restaurant named "Pacific Catch."

Engadget looked them up for reals:

"Pacific Catch, may I help you?" "Hi, I just wanted to know if you were getting a lot of calls tonight?" The hostess answered, "Yes." "Do you know why?" "Yes."

I love it.

StarCraft 2 and the ETC-AU Blog

2007-05-23T08:39:00.000-05:00

A lot of people have been complaining about the new StarCraft, saying it's not different enough. I couldn't be happier that it's not changing, because that's what made the original StarCraft so good. It's a sequel done right: Take what works (superb class balance, for one) and leave it the hell alone. Now add things that don't pollute the formula. Height, 3D environments, etc etc. I guarantee you Koreans will be owning us in StarCraft 2 for many many years to come.

Life is still hectic, and I don't have much time to post these days, but that hasn't stopped me from working on yet another blog! This time, I've taken charge of the ETC-Australia blog, so yours truly will be keeping you in touch with the goings-on in Adelaide! You can also check out our podcast, again organized by me.

I Really Am Still Blogging

2007-04-25T11:21:00.000-05:00

You know something's up when your last post starts with "I'm going to try to be terser and more frequent in my postings." And said last post is almost three months old.

Well, I have something to show for such a delay. Three things, actually:

Firstly, a link to a game I made here at ETC. It's not as good as I would have liked it to be, but seeing as how it's my first finished game and was made in two weeks in a language I didn't know before starting, I'm quite pleased with the result. This (and subsequent games I post about) were made in a class called Building Virtual Worlds, where you're given a game design prompt, and two weeks to implement it.

I also have a video of my most recent BVW assignment. Why no link to the game? Well, for one, I haven't packaged it up yet. But also, it uses an alternative input device (read: not a mouse or keyboard) so you'd have a hard time playing it anyway. The video will be at the bottom of the post. I made it myself. =)

Finally, some news: I'm pitching a project for next semester here at ETC-Adelaide. If it gets greenlighted (and it's looking like it might), then I get to design a game over the spring Down Under! Schweet.

That's all for now. I seriously will try to post more often, or at least regularly. Hard to keep up when you're this busy!

Catching Up, and (Corporate) Desktop Linux

2007-02-01T13:08:00.000-06:00

I've been inspired by Donna's impressive adherence to regular, frequent posting, I'm going to try to be terser and more frequent in my postings. I doubt I can manage daily posts, especially these days, but we'll see what comes about.

Like this guy, I'm sick of trying to get Linux to play nice with corporate networks. Granted, it's not Linux's fault. Crappy MS Exchange installations (that is to say "MS Exchange installations at all"), and other proprietary nonsense is most certainly not how one should run an office. If your business doesn't use standards like IMAP/POP3, SSH, iCalendar, OpenVPN et cetera, then getting Linux to play nice with it is more trouble than it's worth. There's another *nix vendor out there who plays much nicer with such environments. :)

More frequent posts will inevitably mean more personal posts as well, which I guess is fine with me. So, I'll just use this post to catch up to the present. As I posted previously, I'm leaving Arkansas to go to the Carnegie Mellon ETC in Australia this month. My schedule works like so:

My last day at Acxiom is the 9th.
I'm leaving on the 12th for Australia.
School starts the 26th.

Since I'm going to be super-bogged-down with all sorts of wonderful ETC stuff after that, I've assembled a laundry list of things to do before I go:

Get more acquainted with the Torque products, Game Builder and Game Engine.
Redesign the five-year old Khakionion.com using my newfound abilities as a Web 2.0 programmer.
Sell all my crap, and get my MacBook triple-booting so I only need one computer overseas.

Future entries will be less catch-up, more substance!

NYC Games Salon

2007-01-18T11:23:00.000-06:00

I was going to sum up the NYC Games Salon that I went to on 9 January, but: 1) I got into the Carnegie Mellon ETC in Adelaide, Australia which has thrown my schedule off-kilter with doctor's appointments, visa applications and the like, and 2) seeing as Gamasutra has already blogged it better than I would have been able to, I'll just refer you to that and point out two things that really, really bothered me:

The DWI Simulator's development started in Torque, until they decided it wasn't as good as they wanted, so they switched to a web-based Java app. What? As you programmers know, Java runs on OS X and Linux, and even Windows. As does Torque. The big difference? Java can run within a web browser, without installation. Torque, while required to run natively in a "full app" context, has significantly more graphical/input chops. It's better for full-fledged games, and could make the simulation that much more immersive, by not having to deal with the headaches of a browser paradigm.

As was evidenced when the Java-version of the game failed to run properly in his web browser. Now, he didn't say what, exactly, they didn't like about their Torque version, but I'd wager it has more to do with developer familiarity than any sort of defeciency in Torque. There's nothing wrong with being upfront about such unfamiliarity, but there is something wrong with asserting (without evidence!) that the pathetic Java3D toolkit could somehow make a better simulation experience than Torque.

And I realize that there was no actual Inspector Carbone game, it was still being designed, but I really don't like these non-material metrics for gameplay, we'll call them "Glue Points."

See, Inspector Carbone used a system of "Eco-Points" to represent several metrics: financial capability of residents, willingness to live greener, capacity for ecological responsibility education, et cetera. These nebulous points grew with time, but fell with upgrades. There's a flaw in the mechanics when a metric representing education falls after installing CFL bulbs.

I think that's just a symptom of the simulation being too simple. SimCity simulates urban development quite well, but it breaks simulation parameters up sufficiently to resemble real-life parameters. Taxes, energy, water, population, zoning. It all adds up to a realistic simulation, than if something like "City Life Points" had been used to "glue" several distinct aspects together.

Anyway, it was a great event and I wish I could go to another. Here's hoping one comes to Australia. :)

Off to Meet Jesper Juul

2007-01-06T10:56:00.000-06:00

I'm heading to New York City to attend a game salon at The New School/Parsons, where Jesper Juul's a featured speaker. Expect a full summary here, but for now, just know that when flights are delayed at Little Rock International Airport, there's only one place I get my Cinna on:

Christmas Defcon: Everybody Gifts

2006-12-26T13:44:00.000-06:00

I'm going to forgo my aversion to simply linking interesting stuff and point out an awesome DEFCON: Everybody Dies mod called Christmas: Everybody Wins.

Kudos to some very imaginative and skillful ASM hacking.

Guest Lecture Slides

2006-12-01T10:15:00.000-06:00

On November 28th and 30th, I gave guest lectures at UALR and UCA on video games as interactive narrative.

I've reproduced the slides here in Flash. (The Flash version doesn't have the movies intact, sorry.)

Simply click on the presentation to advance the slides.

NULL as the Absence of Value

2006-10-24T20:43:00.000-05:00

I'm quickly becoming a fan of SQL. Not just because of the revered database query language's utility (in all its incompatible dialects, natch), but because it reflects a well-thought-out design that makes sense beyond the usefulness of the language down to the philosophy of computer languages in general. Let's take, for example, IS NULL.

In C++, to check if something is NULL, you can compare it to NULL. Or zero. Or false. And, according to the language, these are all actual values: if "int a=0;" then "a==false", "a==0" and "a==NULL". I don't like this.

See, the null set, ø, is not just a set with nothing in it. It is, quite literally, the set with no thing in it. Comparisons between something that "IS NULL" and something that has a value shouldn't even make sense. Thus, in MySQL, Oracle et al, you have to use "WHERE a IS NULL" instead of "WHERE a = 0" or "WHERE a = 'false'".

"NULL IS NULL" is true.
"0 IS NULL" is false.
"NULL = 0" is also false.

I like SQL.

Album Artists in iTunes 7

2006-10-10T15:43:00.000-05:00

Oh sweet, sweet iTunes 7. Aside from all the graphical glitz of its "cover flow" view, and gapless playback goodness, music can now hold three different authorial tags: Artist, Composer, and the brand-new Album Artist.

See, with the cover flow view, you get a bunch of duplicate albums in the display when you browse by album. For example, Tranceport by Paul Oakenfold contains a bunch of songs that aren't by Paul Oakenfold. Not only do you lose the Paul Oakenfold credit when you tag "Time" as being by The Dream Traveler, you make browsing by artist a nightmare.

Enter the Album Artist tag. Set all the tracks to have the same Album Artist, and iTunes will wisely group them together, despite being by different artists. Hooray, now your music collection sucks less.

Defcon on the Mac!

2006-10-05T01:34:00.000-05:00

Want to play Introversion's latest hit, Defcon, on your Macintel but don't have the license nor the inclination to install Windows via Boot Camp?

Not to worry, Defcon works perfectly under the new version of the CrossOver for Mac beta. Just download the Defcon client installer, select "Install unsupported software..." and install it into a Win2K or XP bottle.

Viola, now you've got Defcon, the world's first Genocide 'Em Up, running natively on the Mac! (Well, "native" in that it's not being emulated.)

New Wallpaper, Three New Songs

2006-10-03T09:33:00.000-05:00

What on Earth is happening with the weather here? Something big is up, because not only is it unseasonably warm, but I've updated Khakionion.com!

Head to the graphics page for a new 2D wallpaper, Numisma. At the music page, you'll find three new songs uploaded:

Betwixt, a simple, soft piece featuring piano and guitar.
Alien Elements, a song intended to be used for the game ContraBand (now sadly retired).
The ContraBand Theme. Self-Explanatory, yes?

Hopefully, the next update interval won't be so prolonged. Check 'em out!

VaporStream Does Not Matter

2006-09-26T23:18:00.000-05:00

Void Communications' VaporStream software is a "recordless" "email-IM hybrid." Although there are no technical documents or real demos on the site, VaporStream claims to send messages back and forth without ever leaving a record of your communication.

This is a cool idea. While corporate IM and email networks still leave the possibility of end users or peeping toms preserving messages that you'd rather not propagate, a VaporStream-like technology forces both parties to relent and accept a "stream discussion." One could consider this a true Internet-based substitute for personal conversations; if you need to hear what someone said again, you have to ask them to repeat it.

On the other hand, this is a silly idea. VaporStream claims that the message "never exists" on either end. How do you view it? The message is stored in your video buffer, and unless you're using hardware overlays, screenshots can preserve communication, and OCR will make it parseable. How about on the sender's side? Same problem, and the presence of keyloggers pose the possibility of third parties snooping in, too.

So, if this communication isn't as ephemeral as they're claiming, what's the benefit? It's not secrecy from network traffic analytics; encrypted email has been around for ages, and works fine. The only problem is that headers still let people know that Person A is talking to Person B. If this is really a problem, VaporStream could potentially serve as a mediator. At that point, snoopers will only be able to tell that Person A and Person B are using VaporStream (and not necessarily communicating with one another). For $39.99 a year, this may be an acceptable price, but something tells me a direct communication between users over pre-established lines of communication aren't going to be obviated by VaporStream.

Where Sony's Priorities Lie

2006-09-18T19:52:00.000-05:00

Feast your eyes on a mockup of the PlayStation3's box art. Just gaze upon it, let the sheer Sony-ness of it all sink into your brain: Sleekness, minimalism, brand synergy...wait--brand synergy?

Yeah, what's going on here? What's with the intrusion of Sony's different divisions on our beloved PlayStation? Let's break it down:

Their universally-recognized "PS" logo would easily fit behind a dime.
The "PlayStation 3" text is in the "Spiderman" font, made popular by Sony's trilogy of movies.
The whole case is blue, with a "Blu-ray Disc" bar that takes up almost as much real estate as the entire "PS" logo and "PlayStation 3" text put together.

Sony has truly reached that oft-postulated "souless conglomerate" state that your ultra-liberal philosophy professor reviled. The kind who's happy to sell you their end-all, be-all product, their crowning achievement. Just please bend over and accept all their other brands at the same time.

Maybe I'm giving Sony too much credit. After all, PSone didn't use MiniDisc. PS2 didn't use Memory Stick, although they did call their IEEE1394/FireWire port "i.Link." Perhaps Sony ran out of ideas. Maybe the launch/success of the Xbox360 and the foaming anticipation of the Nintendo Wii forced Sony's hand, before they could finish designing the public face of their future console. That was certainly my guess when the PS3 was first showed off.

"Screen captures of Spider-Man? Spider-Man font?" Surely it was all provisional, just like that boomerang controller of theirs. Something tells me it was all intended to be final, but the controller got such an acidulous reaction that they reneged on that front. Maybe this post is a couple E3s too late.

Either way, why has Sony suddenly become so insistent on cramming all their properties down our throat at once? Couldn't they have just used a clean, attractive font if they wanted to be cliché? Wouldn't it have been enough for me to buy their console? Did it have to push their next-gen DVD format? Did it have to advertise an upcoming sequel, for god's sake?

The answer, of course, is "no, they could have shown consumers some respect." However, Sony chose the other, more asinine course of action. Let's see what it gets them.

Thursday Hubris, Part II

2006-09-07T07:48:00.000-05:00

Facebook, popular website for collegiate social networking, rolled out a "News Feed" feature a while back. On Facebook, you can view profiles, events and the like, see who's dating who, and who's saying what to whom. Think of the feed as a "delta" for Facebook. That is, out of the profiles and events you yourself have access to, the news feed summarizes recent changes to inform you of who just said what to whom, who is breaking up with whom, et cetera.

This, oddly enough, has caused an "outrage" in the Facebook community. This feature does nothing more than summarize public knowledge, making available in a more convenient form. Who would protest something that would keep you from missing new photojournals, or the latest happenings with your friends? Well, wonder no longer. The news feed has awoken the phenomenally bad writing skills of thousands of students who probably shouldn't be in college:

This new facebook is waaaaaaaaaaay too stalkerish!!!!

We want to feel just a LITTLE bit of privacy, even if it is facebook.

theyre saying this is our generation's first revolution, pretty fuckin sweet

r facebook stopin us from invitin more people into this group now

its kind of funny becasue i heard about this group through the News Feed...

Even the opponents of the news feed acknowledge its usefulness. Through the avalanche of excruciatingly poorly written posts, the main criticism of the feed presents itself: it makes "stalking" someone too easy. The problem with this criticism is that it's the same Facebook, but with a new summary feature. Anyone who wants to stalk someone could, and still can. If you have a tendency to attract stalkers, you probably want to stay off of websites like Facebook. The whole site is an invasion of privacy to which you voluntary submit.

So, while it's not hard at all to stage a protest online (in fact, it's much easier thanks to the Facebook news feed), this protest has marginal hubris thanks to the speed at which it has grown. Still, being upset because of a "delta" feature is not too smart, so the Facebook news feed protest gets one hubris point, for being phenomenally ignorant.

The Promise and Peril of Internet Hype

2006-08-28T20:23:00.000-05:00

There are things that confuse me. For example, the popularity of Ann Coulter. The Microsoft monopoly's persistence. The media's fascination with the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey. The grossly anti-student vibe emanating from my university's housing and IT departments. For one reason or another, the explanations behind these phenomena are out of my reach. However, the linked article asks a question I thought everyone already knew the answer to:

Why didn't the snakes have legs?

Or, less metaphorically:

Why did Snakes on a Plane tank?

Of course, I may be putting the word "tank" in Hollywood's mouth. After all, $15.2 million (and the number one box-office spot) is nothing to sneeze at. But still, movie studios want to know why Snakes on a Plane, with all of the hype generated by bloggers (originating here), only garnered $15.2 million. Hollywood wants to know why their $36 million experiment failed to garner any profit. They're confused, because the huge amount of Internet hype (and there was a lot) didn't convert to ticket sales.

Well, let me enlighten you, Hollywood. Snakes on a Plane did poorly because Snakes on a Plane sucked. Snakes on a Plane was popular online because Snakes on a Plane is a terrible idea for a movie. I was part of that Internet hype, and I didn't buy a ticket. Nor did many other people. The reason is not cryptic: We were laughing at Snakes on a Plane, not with it.

I'll gladly spend 15 seconds reading a humorous webcomic or Photoshop that lampoons a terrible idea like this. I really liked the current-events-aware Liquids on a Plane. I'll even spend 5 minutes sending humorous messages to friends about it, or 15 minutes blogging about it, because it's funny. But I'll be damned if I ever pay $8 of my own money to go sit in a theater for 105 minutes of terrible cinema.

Hollywood was dumb enough to make this movie. That's why it was hyped.

Apparently, Hollywood is so dumb, they couldn't even realize this.

The Seventh Console War and Online Play

2006-08-15T13:50:00.000-05:00

Reggie Fils-Aime, CEO of Nintendo of America, regarding Internet multiplayer with the Nintendo Wii:

We will offer online-enabled games that the consumers will not have to pay a subscription fee for. They'll be able to enjoy that right out of the box. The Wii console is going to be Wi-Fi enabled, so essentially, you'll be able to plug it in and go. It won't have hidden fees or costs.

This is good news for Nintendo fans. And in my opinion, this is the "tipping point" kind of feature that will propel Nintendo to a surprising, massively successful launch. Let's review:

The Wii will cost half (maybe even less than half) what its competitors will/do.
The Wii can play Gamecube games.
The Wii will have a Virtual Console for (S)NES, N64, TG16 and Genesis games.
The Wii has a simplified, wireless, motion-aware controller.
Playing multiplayer games online with the Wii will be free.

All these features put Wii in prime position to, as Fils-Aime said, appeal to non-gamers and casual gamers. The Nintendo DS has proved that this approach can not only work, but that it can work incredibly well.

I, myself, am extremely excited by the prospect of free online play. When Xbox LIVE first came around, criticism started falling upon the PS2 for not having a centralized multiplayer gaming framework. I defended Sony's approach, saying that it promotes developer freedom, and encourages competition in service pricing.

Now, Sony has announced a centralized system for PS3, while retaining compatibility with third parties, while Microsoft has invested further in Xbox LIVE. For both Xboxen, Microsoft has mandated that Xbox titles use their service. This has two caveats: it locks players into paying for online play regardless of the triviality of the game (monthly fee to play Street Fighter II online? No thanks), and it forces developers to throw out their preferred in-house or middleware netcode, instead having to use Microsoft-blessed libraries. (For an example of why that's bad, see Final Fantasy XI's April release date, when FFXI itself was announced for the 360 before it launched in November.)

Nintendo has affirmed (ironically, with Sony's help) the superiority of a provider-agnostic gaming framework. With their increasingly impressive launch library, below-average price point and innovative control scheme, Nintendo looks to be developing a top-notch console launch. This latest development, a pro-consumer take on Internet multiplayer, should have their competitors shaking in their boots.

Thursday Hubris, Part I

2006-08-03T21:12:00.000-05:00

Thursday Hubris is a recurring feature highlighting the gutsy (and sometimes foolish) hubris exhibited in the past week.

Video Game Media Watch has a very nice selection of quotes about E3, the annual trade show for the video game industry which was recently scaled down to a much more "intimate," business-oriented event.

ESA, the organization responsible for E3, feels that the hubbub of a massive, party-like atmosphere is the furthest thing from what a burgeoning game industry needs. I can't agree with them more, nor can many of the people quoted in the article. The only issue I forsee with the new format is over-exclusivity, to the point of censorship, and I really do think this will be a severe problem:

What does this mean for gameblogs like Kotaku and Joystiq? If publishers and platform manufacturers don’t like the site’s messages will they be excluded? The slope here is as slippery as its ever been.
--An extraordinarily lucid Luke Smith

While it's true that the new E3 will slough off lots of wannabes and me-toos, I think the real victims will be the likes of 1up.com, Kotaku and Joystiq who, for the first time in video game journalism's history, are starting to consistently look like a real source of critical game reviews and commentary. Here's hoping they stay in the game.

Changing E3 is a smart move. Still, breaking a years-old tradition, and the largest game expo in the world? That takes hubris, and for such a gutsy, insightful rehash, the E3 downsize gets an 8/10.

Age of the Remix (For Real This Time)

2006-06-28T16:33:00.000-05:00

I and others scoffed at William Gibson when his July 2005 article posited that we're firmly within the Age of the Remix. In a way, he's right. These days, it's easier for your run-of-the-mill pro-am artist to release a book, movie or album thanks to the proliferation of computer technology. DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album showed that with a nice software set up, you don't even need original content to make...uh, original content.

But surely no one would think that "the record, not the remix, is the anomaly today." For the most part, people consume art and don't put more art back in the system. (Let DRM get entrenched and it will stay that way, but I digress.)

Since his article was published, however, a few interesting steps have been taken towards finally entering this much-lauded era of prosumerism, where there's not a clear differentiation between those who make art and those who "use" it.

Linked is Slashdot's new feature known as Backslash. Contrary to Slashback, where updates on previously posted stories are grouped in one big "update" post, Backslash takes a selection of insightful and varied comments from a previous post and summarizes the discussion in a brand spanking new post. Now, frontpage Slashdot stories are composed entirely of Slashdot comments.

While not as convincing as Backslash, YouTube has introduced an NBC-sponsored Make Your Own "The Office" Promo contest. Using a (notably limited) supply of promo materials from NBC, you make your own promo for The Office, and the winner will be aired nationally. Nice contest, not a great example, though.

I even touched on the Age of the Remix meme in my thesis defense, pointing out that video games are works created by both the producer and the consumer, since the user's input results in a different playthrough each time. This is especially apparent in games like Oblivion, The Sims and Second Life, where user-created content fuels the game experience (Second Life), and open-ended game mechanics help the user to either select their actions from a broad spectrum (Oblivion/Sims).

The fact of the matter in all of this is that, despite The Grey Album, despite Backslash, despite Second Life and despite cult remix favorites like Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Takeshi's Castle/MXC, there is too much of an IP cold war in American culture. The fear of rights-owners unleashing lawsuits on parody/remix artists (even when it's actually legal, like in the case of Weird Al Yankovic's Amish Paradise) creates a chilling effect on really cementing prosumerism into the American culture.

An Introduction to Site Syndication

2006-06-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

Hi there, and welcome back to Knee of the Curve. It's been a long time since I've posted; hopefully I'll be able to keep my posting frequency up now that my thesis presentation is over with.

What I'm posting about today is the technology known as website syndication. Websites that are syndicated make their content available in a common format that doesn't make assumptions about what software is reading them. Thus, a syndicated website shares its content to be used by other sites, and by visitors without actually visiting the official webpage.

There are two popular ways to do this: via two different languages called RSS and Atom. Since the two are virtually identical to the end user, we'll just call them "feeds." For an end user, syndication works like this: you use a feed reader to "subscribe" to site feeds, and read their content as soon as they're updated.

So, first things first, you need to get a feed reader. For any operating system, Firefox and Thunderbird do the job nicely in their own ways. Thunderbird treats RSS feeds like emails, and Firefox treats them like bookmarks ("Live" bookmarks, to be precise). Mac users can try Safari out, but I prefer the exceptional NewsFire. Linux users, try Akregator (for KDE) or Liferea (for GNOME).

You've installed your feed reader, and subscribed to feeds, now what do you do? Well, just wait for the content to roll in. Soon, you'll be reading your frequently viewed websites' content without ever having to launch a browser window:

Post any questions in the comments, and happy feedreading!

Port 25

2006-04-06T16:11:00.000-05:00

I'm a big proponent of interoperability in the computing world. To be completely frank, anyone who isn't in favor of interop is either a monopolist, or dumb. Apple has realized this quite well here in age of OS X, most recently made apparent with the launch of Boot Camp, a tool for running Windows XP on your Mac.

So it is with pleasure that I spread the word about Port 25, a Microsoft blog detailing the goings-on at the Microsoft Linux Lab. This lab was established by Microsoft for the purposes of achieving better interop with other operating systems, something they're currently catching a lot of hell for over in Europe.

It's a great sight to see when massive companies like Microsoft are not only working on interoperability, but actually publicly endorsing it. As has been pointed out, the questions Microsoft certification exams assume a nearly-homogenous Microsoft environment, which is almost never the case.

The admittance by Apple and Microsoft that their competitors' products will occasionally be selected over their own is a good step towards eliminating the absolutist culture in the computing business world. The American political system has shown us just how asinine this absolutism can get (just read the blurbs on the DNC's homepage), so any step we take away from that quagmire is applaudable, in my opinion.

What's Next: Will Wright

2006-03-24T13:09:00.000-06:00

The description of Will Wright's keynote at the Game Developers' Conference was "Why are you still reading this? It's Will Wright." I'd say that was a fairly accurate synopsis.

Will Wright spoke to a packed Civic Auditorium yesterday, and blazed through a laundry list of topics. For example, tying astrobiology to his latest beast, Spore. The coolest thing about the speech wasn't actually any crazy revelation about Spore, or some brilliant insight into the myriad fields he touched on. Rather, his frantic speech showed "What's Next in Game Design" without actually explicitly stating it.

Satoru Iwata had a very different keynote earlier that day, but the two talks definitely resonated. Today's games (the ones that the industry complains about) are just pushing pixels to the screen. What's next in game design is tying fields together. Whether it's for kooky simulations like Spore, or the novel Brain Training series for Nintendo DS, games that show a level of competency beyond "Play-Win-Repeat" are what the industry needs to move forward.

Thankfully, game makers seem to understand this. One game that comes to mind is Cloud, an entrant into the Independent Games Festival that, as was mentioned at the Game Developers' Rant, concerns itself with emotion over scores, fraglimits, blue cardkeys, etcetera. It's also important to note that this game isn't some CPU-melting meterological simulation. You, quite simply, play with clouds.

Emotion, interdisciplinarity. That's what's next.

Serious Games Presentation

2006-03-01T09:45:00.000-06:00

If you're here for the Serious Games slides, look no further.

You can download them in PDF format, or SWF (Flash) format.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, on March 1st I held a couple of workshops at the National EAST Conference in Hot Springs, where I talked (and talked and talked) about Serious Games. If you're interested, grab the slides, or follow these citations for more information.

Adage's HCI study with Shadowgrounds
Social Impact Games

Missing The Point

2006-02-22T22:36:00.000-06:00

Linked is an interview with Peter Jackson (yes, that Peter Jackson), who details his affection for the fledgling art of the video game, and how the next-generation platforms are going to be fully buzzword compliant:

"I'm excited that with the new hardware and such amazing leaps forward in technology, I may be able to experience games that even I can't imagine," added Jackson. "I have such admiration for the video game development process and the talent behind these games, that giving them more tools, better hardware, and more budget will only lead to more fantastic adventures."

Please. This drivel is not the future. What Microsoft and Sony are doing with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3 are nothing more than the next iteration in a silicon cold war. Bigger, faster, stronger, but not better. Throwing more hardware at this problem is not the way to make more immersive games, or more entertaining ones.

Case in point: the Xbox 360 launch titles. Amped 3? Quake 4? Call of Duty 2? It's more of the same, with higher polycounts. There are some titles with varying degrees of originality, but "games that even I can't imagine?" I certainly hope he's insulting his imagination, not lauding the X360/PS3.

Graphics definitely are one of the most important parts of a game, but we've gotten to the point where it's "good enough" for almost every situation. Graphics will improve as the hardware improves, but no one's doing anything different.

Save for Nintendo. The upcoming Revolution console will have better graphics, there's no doubt about that. But they're planning on sacrificing insane pixel-pushing for...wait for it...a novel interface! *gasp* The horrors! But really, that's where the future lies, is with novel interfaces to already-extant high-caliber graphics. The real game developers agree, as reflected on countless Revolution-centric interviews; it's how you play that counts, not how many polygons are on the screen at once.

iMac Attack!

2006-01-30T17:30:00.000-06:00

Well, my parents' iMac Core Duo came in the mail today. I took time out from my day to go and assist my mother with the set up. Not like she really needed it, however; the out-of-box experience was expectedly friendly, fast, and accessible. With emphasis on "accessible": the computer said "English!" out loud when we sat at the language selection screen for too long.

Seriously, though, the thing is a dream. I haven't played with the new iSight/Front Row iMacs enough to have a good idea of their capabilities, but this thing blows away my PowerBook G4. I've even heard reports that it's as fast as the Quad G5 PowerMac. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I haven't played with the Quad much either.

Suffice it to say that the new iMac is all that and a bag of chips. I plan on spending quite a bit more time with it over the semester, so expect to see some Mac-specific code published by yours truly. As I said in my earlier post today, Knee of the Curve will be the place where I announce new packages and significant upgrades.

So, after playing with a Core Duo iMac, do I still stand by prediction of 30% market share? Yes. I think they've got a very smooth, Microsoft-quashing road ahead of them, and if their other products (Mac mini, iBook, PowerMac) are as cool and effective as the new iMac and MacBook, then they may exceed even my brash conjecture.

Codecodecode

2006-01-30T17:21:00.000-06:00

Aloha, chicas bonitas. Wait, do any girls read this? Anyway, I digress.

This post is more of an announcement. I'm going to be polishing off quite a bit of my internally produced code, and releasing it for public consumption under the GPL (when possible).

For new software announcements and major version upgrades, I'll make announcements here. For administrivia, logistics and the like, I'll just post on Khakionion.com. I'll also announce new products on the Shameless Khakionion.com CafePress Sellout, but that won't happen too often.

So, here's what's already up on Khakionion.com Apps, if you're interested:

Querying Eye for the Wireless Guy is a .NET application that queries WiFi access points and garners signal strength and other information from them. Good for doing wireless site surveys, wardriving, etcetera. Only works in Windows for now, and only with certain WiFi chipsets.

StreetSmarts is another .NET application that's less Windows-encumbered, meaning I'll probably be able to port it to Linux soon. It's basically a mass file renamer that has its own, extraordinarily basic scripting language. Give it a whirl if you need "02 Andy Hunter - Come On - torrentazos.net.mp3" to become "Andy Hunter - Come On.mp3" in a jiffy, and to about 5000 files at once.

Have a lot of fun!