Tennis 2082

A new PS3 Tech Demo

Despite all the negative critism by the users I was truly impressed when I saw the new tech demo for the PS3, titled "Linger In Shadows". Although very abstract, I was highly impressed with the close ups on the cat and the fur shaders. This comes a long way from Shadow of the Colossus. Other points that impressed me were the rope physics, and the depth of field (some of which I expect to be demonstrated in Insomniacs upcoming game).

This is a quick share. If you have further understanding of the graphics system please share with me what you might have thought after a closer look.

Windows 7 - Will it be amazing?

Yep I totally ripped this from Joe Thomas's away message.



Oh and yea there will be voice recognition UI.

Mirror's Edge Trailer

This is one of those games I've been waiting for with a lot of anticipation ever since the article in Edge magazine.

Excited about AI

I'm truly, truly, truly excited about this month. I'm finally putting in the hours to learn and apply AI. I woke up at at 4 am, and at 5 am I was on campus, reading Artificial Intelligence for Games by Ian Millinigton. Although we spent half of lecture going over the silly-bus, and some more time on Dishonesty Policies, we eventually got down to business. Of course that only meant going over what AI is, and the three basic Data Structures: Linked Lists (Queues), Hashmaps, and Trees.

Since several people did not finish the lab on time Jeremiah did provide an extension for it which is largely due to the fact that lecture ended rather late.

So it sounds like the first day wasn't overly exciting, and next class isn't two days from now. What in the world will keep me busy until than?

The answer! Robocode! At the moment it's me and Casey Flach in a team for the monthly competition. My goal is nothing short of first place in Hall of Fame! Anyways feel free to check out the rules here.

Cookouts, GTA, AI, and Cheesesteaks

Hey Guys

Boy do I feel guilty writing after a long period of absence. I think I'm just old school like that; you know, how websites should maintain a steady stream of content in order to keep its frequent visitors happy. Now a days, we have the amazing technology called RSS and an average user may subscribed to hundreds of such blogs. It's no excuse for such a long period of absence so I do apologize. I'll try and pick up where I left off. Oh and as a quick shout out; had it not been for Steve VanZandtm, our past instructor for Rules of the Game here at FullSail, it may have even longer.

So GDC! Yea it came, it passed.

After GDC, I had took a class in OpenGL and focused deeply on graphics. Over the course of March my understanding of hardware, the pipeline, and shaders grew immensely.

What else I learned, is that compared to my friend Joseph Thomas (if the name doesn't sound familiar, don't worry it will soon), I am not very fund of graphics programming.

Still that didn't stop me from learning enough to finally develop my own DX framework for future projects. This is largely thanks to the tutorials by Chad Vernon. Who's cvxporter I finaly got working (feel free to e-mail me if you have trouble).

Cookouts

So for those that don't know. The bunch of us in GD have been organizing cookouts at Wardpark (Cady Way park) for a few months now. If all goes well, we hope to turn these events into an official club (The Game Networking Club). We usually play football, soccer, Frisbee, talk, eat, and last time even had a chess set out. Everyone is pretty much welcome, it's largely informal. We do ask for $3 or to bring your own food. Either will help in the lot, and we always have left overs. Our next meet is this Sunday May 11th. Don't forget to send your mom a card ;)

AI

OK so I finally get to rant a little. This is the class I've been dieing to take since I first signed up to attend FullSail. I've had the opportunity to meet and drink with Jeremiah Blanchard, our AI instructor, and he's a great guy. First day of class is tomorow and I expect to be on campus at like 5 am. I've already finished the first lab (I know we aren't supposed to), and having my DX framework complete I plan on finally building up my portfolio in the area I'm so passionate about.

The Portfolio

I know, I know. I've talking about this for so long and yet straystudios.com has remained static for over a year now. I'll make up for it hopefully soon (maybe not this month, but before September). Steve who is a veteran from the Digital Arts and Design department is willing to lend me a hand on my layout, I would really like to produce it in Flash.

Cheesesteaks

I'm a huge fan of Philadelphia. I've grown up on the Philadelphia cheesesteak. I'm talking about Pats and Genos baby. None of that imitation. Until recent, there hasn't been much to quench my hunger in that department. I'll keep this to the point. University and Goldenrod. There's an amazing place called "Phil's Famous Cheesesteaks". Best ones I've had in Winter Park.

Well that's it for now. More soon. Promise.

What inspires you?

The Game Developer's Conference is well under way. Many are participating in the "Destroy all Developers Challange" while other take the time to sit in on the many available tutorial session during the past two days. Myself, well I try to stay motivated.

Monday began with a tutorial on "Core Shader Algorithms and Techniques," which covered many techniques in the lattest edition of ShaderX books. The most memroblewas a technique that covered by Carsten Dachsbacher from University of Stuttgart who spoke about a new technique for generating texture maps. Instead of using texture atlases he suggested an idea called "TileTrees," a data-structure that generates 2D tiles around the surface of a model.

Later that night, I met up with Sean Hathaway, James Leonis (http://virus2566.blogspot.com/), and Mike Arlington (www.deflesca.com); where I had been introduced to this year's scholarship recipients. I got to meet some fascinating people:

- Andrew Armstrong - a student from England who is this year's Eric Dybsand AI Scholarship recipient. Check out his website at http://www.aarmstrong.org/
- Jordi Fine - Jordi is an inspiring Game Designer with some real works under his belt. Definetly check him out at http://www.jordifine.com/
- Enrique Saul Gonzalez - Will be attending Tokyo University, with a goal of producing educational games for the Japanese.
- Andrew Sorkin - Sound design and composition, easily stands out as one of the few people I get to meet interested in audio for games. Check him out at http://sorkinsound.com/
- Tatyana Dyshlova - She's currently attending Brown University, with the intension of working with hardware and production.
- Michael Lee - Michael just like myself is last year's Eric Dybsand scholarship recipient. After catching up, he's apparently doing very well with his own company at http://ludoko.com
- Silvia Lindtner - highly talented, she's interested in pursuing sensors in video games and is currently enrolled in University of California. I was especially impressed with her business card, particularly after learning she designed it herself. Her website is equally as impressive at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lindtner

Phew, that's a rather large list, and I do appolize for anyone I forgot to mention.

The following day (today), I stumbled down 4th street to Mascone center where I set down for my day two tutorial which covered "Physics in Video Games". Although the lecture started off slowly covering most fundementals such as the Euler's method for velocity as well as angular velocity. Squirel was quick to point out some of the pitfalls involved with irregular timesteps and tunneling. The lecture picked up pace after lunch during which I got to speak with Ben Retan (www.benretan.com) who is also a Full Sail student about to graduate. The second half opened up with the Minkowski Differences, a crash course in GJK which absolutly blew me away with it's complexity, and finally wrapped up the tutorial with a talk on constraints.

Overall these past two days have been incredibly exciting and I try to recover my energy tonight and get some more work done on Amoeba Sports, I can not wait to get back and put some of these techniques to work.