New Crytek Engine

admin — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:53:18 +0000

Wow.

Cool Science

admin — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:49:41 +0000

Look at the nifty stuff that is happening these days:

This is pretty amazing:

And this… well… this is almost unreal. It will be interesting to see whether this ends up being genuine.
Swedes create light from absolute nothingness:

Pepper Spraying Cop

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:09:34 +0000

The pepper spraying cop has become a meme.

This makes me appreciate the positive aspects of living in an age with such immediate communication technology. Not only can one person’s douchebaggery be shared – but that communities can use humor to ease tension, and share that as well.

Wired

KPLR-11

huffingtonpost

Building Browser Based MMOs

admin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:29:03 +0000

In this lecture: “Mike Grundvig, CTO of Electrotank, and Jobe Makar, author of recently published “Actionscript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds,” discuss some of the biggest challenges a development team may face during this process, as well as specific, targeted solutions to address these issues.”

This is a really excellent presentation.

Harvey Smith

admin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:03:45 +0000

As part of Warren Spector’s course at the University of Texas, Harvey Smith (then Creative Director, Midway Austin) gives a wonderfully earnest presentation about his experiences breaking into and working within the game industry.

KDFW

admin — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 04:17:24 +0000

Cactus has just released another (free) game called ‘Keyboard Drumset Fucking Werewolf‘.

There is something about this guy’s games that really inspires me; it is that you can make a game about anything. A game doesn’t have to be logical, nor does it have to use proper language. A game doesn’t even have to be good!

I remember the first time I felt this way about a medium — it was after reading the first book that turned me on to reading as a child: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Warren Spector Teaches a Class

admin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:10:15 +0000

I’ve stumbled across this course that Warren Spector is teaching at the University of Texas. He is very articulate and I respect his perspective a lot, although don’t frequently share his view of game development. Well worth watching, and more can be found here.

Thanks for posting, Warren!

PROTECT IP Act

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:42:43 +0000

I was first alerted to the PROTECT IP Act today by many posts of a video (below) on facebook.

It is a little hard to figure out what this would mean for the internet as a whole if passed. The viewpoints seem pretty divided – from The Washington Post taking an endorsing stance (as signed by ‘Editorial’) to The New York Times publishing a negative stance (as written by ‘REBECCA MacKINNON’).

An illegal download does not equal a lost sale, and this seems like an alarming way to deal with the issue. Well, kind of deal with the issue – since most of the documentation indicates that the nefarious sites can be accessed through a direct IP address.

**Update – here are the links to the actual documents so that you can be the judge:

http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/112%20HR%203261.pdf
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s968rs/pdf/BILLS-112s968rs.pdf

Below is the video that introduced me to this bill:

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Zbrush model WIP

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:32:55 +0000

Hello! I’ve been having a great time learning my way through Zbrush – thought I would post what I have so far. The texture still needs a lot of work. At the bottom, you can also see the base mesh and UV layout I created in Maya – which was the starting point for Zbrush.

MIT – Introduction to Computer Science

admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:24:05 +0000

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has put the entire set of lectures from their 2008 Introduction to Computer Science and Programming class up on youTube! I have watched these first two and they are very very good. The entire course, complete with assigments can be found here. Thank you MIT!!!

If this is of interest to you, you may want to also take a gander at an earlier post featuring a free course from Stanford.