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Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
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5:02 pm - Christmas present for Davoul
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| Thursday, October 15th, 2009
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1:14 am - Housecat
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| Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
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3:45 am - Fullscreen.
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Why is it that if you run an application in full screen (any application it seems) - and then go to a different monitor to do something else, it reverts to being a window. This seems to be standard behaviour for all applications on all platforms, and I'd rather keep it full screen unless I told it otherwise.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, October 1st, 2009
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4:01 am - In fact I recommend this.
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| Monday, September 21st, 2009
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5:56 pm - Rubbish Town.
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I went into town today to do a variety of things, one of which was to buy Days of Grays - which came out today. Fopp didn't know what it was, HMV didn't have any copies in their store, despite having run a pre-order on it for the last two weeks (those who pre-ordered, guess you paid them to *not* get the album for you.) - Borders have all but closed down their music section, couldn't even buy the new muse album there.
I don't think anywhere else in town even sells music.
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, August 6th, 2009
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7:05 am - Procedural generation.
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I've been doing some thinking about videogames... I've played quite a few games in the past that randomly generate their levels - the diablo games strike me as a strong example, but I fondly remember F-zeroX as well, which randomly generated racing tracks.
I got to thinking... what would stop you randomly generating say... an entire game? A lot of the games that use random level generation have some quite complex mechanics, but rely upon some fairly simple procedures to generate levels, but I don't really see it going further.
Let's take a platformer for example. Platform games tend to be fairly simple really, you don't need a lot of plot to get going. The big thing about randomly generating a platform game would be to ensure that playing the same game again would give (first) a new challenging experience, and (second) enough variety over the last game to make it worthwhile.
You boot up the game, and it first of all decides to create a protagonist. You get a vareity of bodies, legs, faces, eyes, designs... all with weighted generation chances. A bit like a mr. potato head. Plenty of games have randomised character appearance generation, although a little more variety with the templates wouldn't go amiss. If you don't like the appearance of your character, you can just roll again. The game also randomly assigns the tightness of the controls, perhaps even your move set. Picking a set of arbitrary rules that govern this game. Do you kill enemies by jumping on them or shooting them? do you have health? powerups? How high can you jump? how far? can you double jump? float down slowly? can you grab enemies and objects and throw them around?
You pretty much decide these things randomly, although you record which you had. You don't want to have to pick up and throw objects if you can't do it now, do you? - You also keep a record of how far and high the character can jump, whether he can deal with enemies at range etc etc.
At this point, you start making monsters. Again the Mr. potato head rule applies, but you generate somewhere between ten and twenty types of monster, and this time, you do it on a points basis. The enemies have a range of scores, starting at very basic, and working their way up to complex. A monster like a goomba is an easy one point gribbly, it walks in a straight line, and that's it. Complicated, challenging or unpredictable behaviours add points. So if you have to hit it twice, that's a point. If it turns around at the edge of a ledge, rather than falling off, that's a point. Jumping about is a point, randomly changing direction every now and then is a point. Flying and homing is quite a few points. Shooting is lots of points. You get the idea.
Level generation is done in a similar way. The more awkward the jumps are, the more points they score. you can make simple puzzle elements and add them - a switch you need to put a weight on and something that generates a weight (and regenerates it if it's lost) makes for a simple element, and you add difficulty points if the switch is far from the generator.
I think you get the idea where I'm going with this. I'm fairly possible with enough clever thinking you could create a simple 2D platformer creation engine which makes a couple of hours of game, with a learning curve. stick in a couple of graphic style filters, a large repository of monster parts and scenery pieces and a catchy soundtrack, and you have an engine that should at least be able to generate something as complex as, say, super mario bros.
It'd be a slightly complex engine, but I don't think it'd be as complicated as, say, scribblenauts.
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(6 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
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3:35 am - Video games.
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Just a quick note recommending Valkyria Chronicles, it's pretty fantastic.
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
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3:41 am - S&P game now running.
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You should have had your emails if you signed up.
Now I gotta think how to make my presents.
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(comment on this)
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| Sunday, June 28th, 2009
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9:47 am - Socks and Puppets Reminder.
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| Monday, June 15th, 2009
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3:30 pm - S+P game. (again)
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| Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
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12:25 pm - Gigs.
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| Sunday, May 31st, 2009
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2:16 am - Aaand diversity won.
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| Friday, May 29th, 2009
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5:10 am
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I would very much like to get hold of a BLACK artline 541T whiteboard pen. Unfortunately, ebay only seems to have them in pink/pruple/brown/orange. Nowere else in the UK sells them.
:(
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(comment on this)
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2:40 am - Hey hey!
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| Sunday, May 24th, 2009
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12:50 am - Britain's got talent.
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| Friday, May 8th, 2009
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4:54 pm - Cambridge is boring!
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Hi all.
I'm looking for a list of fun or interesting things to do in Cambridge that I haven't done already. Does anyone have any recommendations? - there doesn't seem to be a lot in town beyond pubs and clubs...
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
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11:42 pm - Paper.
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I obsess about stationery. It's important for me to have the right paper for whatever I'm doing.
A quick search of my desk reveals I have the following:
A block of square thin white notepaper, about 3inches square.
1000 sheets of origami paper (small)
three edward monkton spiral bound notebooks
several piles of paperchase/john lewis blank cards, to make your own cards.
5 blocks of various sized post-it notes.
4 stacks of record cards, half from rymans, half are 300GSM ivory boards from tindalls.
3 Reams of cheap 80GSM copier paper from rymans.
5 notebooks of lined A4 paper, of different thicknesses and line thicknesses.
1 spiral bound notebook of different coloured square paper (paperchase. this is lovely.)
2 notebooks of handmade paper, with bits in.
1 pile ivory card.
100 sheets 100GSM laid paper in ivory colour.
4 blocks white A6 paper.
1 spiralbound A5 notebook blank sketch paper from tindalls (this is very nice.)
1 large spiral bound blank A3 paper.
3 notebooks brown thick paper.
1 notebook "paper crafts" paper that I use for maelstrom.
1 tiny square notebook handmade paper.
1 box of card from "the paper shop" contains about 200 sheets of card/paper in pretty much any colour imaginable.
Degree certificate.
I notepad wartermarked paper from the "Office of the deputy prime minister" - not sure where I got this.
that's about it... I need more A5 paper. Maybe I should visit the paper shop and get another box.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, April 26th, 2009
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2:35 am - The internet.
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| Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
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4:00 am - iTunes fghasfjashdjsjsd.
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Okay. So, someone who understands iTunes, can you help me?
I am using a mac, and I own an ipod, so my typical method of dealing with my music collection is to use iTunes. Right?
Looking at the itunes window, it reports that my music collection is 17.6 GB - it'd be more, but there isn't much space left on my HD to rip any more of my Cds.
Looking at the "music" folder on my HD, it is about 35GB large. Evidently Itunes is doing something retarded, and I'm wasting a huge amoung of HD space somehow.
Does anyone know what's going on? is there a sensible way of dealing with this? I don't want to do something and "accidentally" remove my entire music collection. that'd suck.
Thoughts?
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, April 5th, 2009
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12:29 am - Locked Room Murder.
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I've been watching a lot of Detective Conan recently, the sheer number of different weird tricks it uses to mislead police investigators is phenomenal. If you ever find yourself in the situation where you're going to commit suicide, but want to make it as hard as possible to figure out what happened, try all of the following:
( Read more... )
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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