Game Developers Conference

Year after year the GDC occurs and year after year I wish I could attend. Some time soon I'll be sent to the GDC by my employer to promote our latest game... but I've got to graduate university and get hired first.

The big news, originating from the GDC, is of Will Wright's evolution game, "Spore". I'm really looking forward to this game! To think you start as an indiscriminate round blob and you evolve yourself to fit in with the changing world. And single player that uses a global database to populate the world with other players creations. GamingSteve has some screenshots and a recording of his views of this game.

-I can't wait to play GOD again

The games

I found Lucas Arts Armed and Dangerous for $5 at my local Electronics Boutique. For a $5 game, it's really not all that bad, but for the game itself I can see why it's only $5 after a year from it's release. I thought I'd have more to say about it than that, but I don't. Hrm, go figure.

My spring break has come and gone, and I stayed in my town for the duration of it. In fact, I worked through the whole thing. Well, not without entertaining myself, of course. I had 16 hours of monitoring a computer lab on campus during the break. 16 hours of The Simpsons: Hit and Run as well as my homegrown game being developed in my spare time. I squashed a few bugs in my game, got some AI going as well, so that's a start. I also played around some more with my moth simulation. I needed to output some information to record the center of mass of my cloud of moths as they progressed through my simulated orchard.

Back to school tomorrow. Some day soon I'll find out how terrible I did on one or two of my midterms and hopefully how I rocked another. I don't pick the classes I'm good at, they seem to pick me.

-Though the classes I suck at do a good job of picking me, too

So, what's the right thing to do?

What to do when your girlfriend is mad at you, and making it quite obvious? Theoretically, of course. What to do when this happens to you? What's the right choice of action? This is all a theoretical basis, of course, as if your girlfriend is mad at you for any reason.

Say she's playing the "You don't even care" card. What do you do? And why is she saying that in the first place? I see two things that you can do. One, you can keep your calm and try to reason the situation out. This, how I see it, is where she's getting the "You don't care" attitude. Second, you could yell right back at her. Maybe she could see this as a caring attitude? It boggles me, I'll tell you that. Personally, I'm more of a 'keep calm and reason with her' kind of guy. I've no enthusiasm for yelling at my girlfriend when she's clearly distraught. I know it's not her fault she's acting that way, she's a girl.

And you just know she's going to try to get you to yell at her if you don't. So what can you do in a situation like that? I'll tell you what I do... I fall into her trap. She knows exactly what to say or do to strike that nerve, and I fall into her trap almost every time. But I keep hopeful, I know that's what she wants. She wants me to take the bait and snap back at her, to show her I care, right? Not that I'm asking you if I'm right, I'm sure that's what she wants. So I retort and she gets angrier. But that's what she wants, she expects it. But what else could you do, if you don't take the bait and yell at her? She'll take it that you just don't care and she'll keep using that against you. And you know that all you want is for her to give in and give you a hug but we don't live in that universe. If you don't lose your temper, she'll get angrier and more distant and that'll just fsck with your mind.

Remember, this is all theoretical. Nobody is mad at you or me; this is all a 'what to do' discussion. I really don't understand why they don't stop when they get what they want. Forgive and forget, right?

-Forgive and forget

Homegrown Concerts

Glory Nights, let me tell you, they are up and coming. Vocals like Dashboard Confessional and music to match. I just got back from a CD Release show for The Bleeding Alarm, with guests Red Light Roulette and Glory Nights.

-Awesome show

The lyrics, the lyrics

Dashboard Confessional - "Hands Down"

Breathe in for luck,
breathe in so deep,
this air is blessed,
you share with me.
This night is wild,
so calm and dull,
these hearts they race,
from self control.
Your legs are smooth,
as they graze mine,
we're doing fine,
we're doing nothing at all.

My hopes are so high,
that your kiss might kill me.
So won't you kill me,
so I die happy.
My heart is yours to fill or burst,
to break or bury,
or wear as jewelery,
which ever you prefer.

The words are hushed lets not get busted;
just lay entwined here, undiscovered.
Safe in here from all the stupid questions.
"hey did you get some?"
Man, that is so dumb.
Stay quiet, stay near, stay close they can't hear...
so we can get some.

My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me.
So won't you kill me, so I die happy.
My heart is yours to fill or burst,
to break or bury, or wear as jewelery,
which ever you prefer.

Hands down this is the best day I can ever remember,
I'll always remember the sound of the stereo,
the dim of the soft lights,
the scent of your hair that you twirled in your fingers
and the time on the clock when we realized it's so late
and this walk that we shared together.
The streets were wet
and the gate was locked so I jumped it,
and I let you in.
And you stood at your door with your hands on my waist
and you kissed me like you meant it.
And I knew that you meant it,
that you meant it,
that you meant it,
and I knew,
that you meant it,
that you meant it.

As Always, thanks to AZLyrics.com for always having the lyrics.
I'm here at school, programming my game and this song starts playing in my Winamp. It starts me thinking of my girlfriend, so I'm thinking of her, feeling good.

-Yeah, uh. Guess I just wanted you to know

Bookworm

Since Christmas, I've read 4 books (and counting). My girlfriend got me "The Looking Glass Wars" which follows Alice through a variation of the charmed Wonderland. I've also read J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series from "The Philosopher's Stone", to "The Chamber of Secrets" and "The Prisoner of Azkaban". Not to mention I've watched all of the coresponding movies after I'd read the book. Also, I'm 1/3 done the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, "The Goblet of Fire". And I've got "The Order of the Phoenix" on order at the library. I plan to have all the books read by the middle or end of February. At this rate, providing I get the book promptly from the library, I'll be done in the next couple weeks. Sadly, after this series, I don't really have anything else planned for reading. Which is just as well, seeing how midterms are starting next week.

-Keener... no, but I try

Concerts abound!

I saw Sum 41 in concert just this last Friday! Great show! Black Maria from Toronto opened for Sum 41, but the lead singer had larynghitis [sp] and only lasted 20 minutes. The were pretty good. After their set No Warning rawked the dome. No Warning was awesome, high energy, good music. And then came Sum 41 themselves. They were introduced via a video projected onto the backdrop of the stage. StevO ends up murduring Cone during a basketball match (literally) and drags Cone back to his apartment where StevO chops him up and serves him as dinner to Deryck and Dave. Boing :funny pose:

The backdrop falls and StevO opens the show standing on his elevated platform next to his drums, wearing a bloody butchers apron and wielding a chain saw. Deryck makes several references to GWBush and pays homage to the King and his Throne (you know which Elvis and which toilet I'm referring to) as well as their Anna Nicole Smith homage. Comedic show, they played their stuff from all 4 albums and are even better live than recorded.

-Super happy fun time

Crisp Mountain Air

I spent the day on a mountain. I'd start at the base of a hill and would travel up that hill. I'd then slide down that hill, only to get up and travel back up the hill. I went tubing, as it's called, at one of the local ski resorts. I did it with a group, which consisted of my girlfriend, her brother, a friend of ours she works with and her boss and boss' son. It's good to take advantage of what nature has to offer, once in a while. My only complaint: today was particularly warm, which caused the snow to turn very much into slush. The first pull UP the hill (on a pulley) soaked my
back to the point of no return. It just got worse from there on. But the sliding down the hill was still fun.

-But wait, there's more.


About Games

Half-Life
I'd have to say that the original Half-Life has the best story/script of any game I've ever played. I've played through the original game (Half-Life) and the add-ons (OpFor, BlueShift) many times, it's that good. And the mods available for it are killer. Especially the official DeathMatch: Classic. But more on that later.
Still on the subject of Half-Life, HL2 is awesome as well. Not so much for the story, as it's not groundbreaking there (imo). HL2 is rawx0r for the engine. Source is where it's at. Picking things up and throwing them around is shweet. Counter-Strike: Source wins big kudos as well, especially for the bots recently made available. No need to play online with lamers any more. Not when there are bots to play with/against. I just wish the mod community would get around to releasing some quality. I want my Half-Life 2 to be put to some good use.

Quake (DeathMatch: Classic in Half-Life)
Tenebrae. You should really check that out. Doom 3 lighting algorithms in the original Quake engine. It makes playing through the original Quake another time worth it. Advanced texturing and lighting and wow. Smoke coming out of the ground and light from a stained glass window refracting through it. Wow. I can't really say what I want to say. There's no words. Try it, you'll like it. Definate eye candy.

I've been playing the original Quake, I'm currently in the lobby standing outside the entrance to episode 4. Episodes 1 through 3 standing completed, exhausted by the total rape of which I had just performed. Maybe those are too strong of words, regardless, I brutalized them. GL Quake is what I'm playing, as even my laptop lacks sufficient power to play Quake Tenebrae. Yeah, I'm too lazy to link anything tonight. Maybe you're not too lazy to Google what I'm referencing. Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

Codename UGOD
My own little concoction I've had in the works for over a year now. It always makes progress but never sees the light of day. Maybe some day I'll get to polishing it to something I think is worthy of the public eye. My latest accomplishment was overcoming a hurdle that was something of a shortcoming. We all know that when you are using an array to store some information (I may lose some readers here, as this is programmer talk) that you can't have two objects in the same cell of an array at the same time. Doing so causes one object to overwrite the other. You can clearly see how this limits using a 2 dimensional array in your game. You can't have two objects (two players for that matter) occupying the same cell of an array. So how are you supposed to have your players interact with each other? Sure, you could loop and
check every cell around the player (that would be 8 tests to see if another player is in an adjacent cell). But that is a severe limitation. So you think, ok, maybe I'll make a 3 dimensional array. No, that won't work either, it's too inefficient. If I make a 3 dimensional array with a height of 10 but only two players are in the game then that's a waste of 8 2 dimensional arrays. So! why not program a room and create a 2 dimensional array of rooms? The trick is, every room has a list to store one or more players! You've just turned your 2 dimensional array into a static 2d array with a dynamic 3rd dimension! Of course you can play around with variables, you don't have to limit yourself to a static 2d array. This is programming and anything is possible.

Moth Work
The above example was worked out in part to the limitation in my moth simulation. The simulation, written using the SWARM library (.org) is limited to a 2 dimensional array. I've been seriously considering rewriting the whole simulation in a standalone programming language using my own tools and libraries, thus circumventing a static array. Moths fly, .: (therefore) they exist in a 3 dimensional space. It's not fair to them if you prevent them from occupying the same x y coordinates in an array.

Doom 3
I shouldn't rule this guy out. Doom 3. I'd have to say it is extremely unfair to ATI and it's family of video cards. My laptop should be able to run this beast with all the eye candy turned off, but unfortunately it's brutally choppy. This means I have to wait until a PC upgrade comes my way before I can enjoy this one. From what I've seen so far it scores points. I just wish I could enjoy it now.

-My neighbor insists on sharing the bass-line of her country music with me 24/7

Delayed Posting

I get around to this a little slower than I would other times. I had one of those dreams a couple nights ago that leaves you feeling quite happy when you wake up. For one, it involved my girlfriend. And another, it included sexy vampire and zombie girls hungry for my flesh.

Now that I remember it, I was in Europe and there was some freaky doctor guy who was at the middle of the whole diabolical scheme. Some werewolf kept bothering me, and there was some sort of experimental and primitive rail gun involved as well. The doctor impaled himself on his rail gun. With the doctor dead, the institution became swarmed with headcrab zombies from Half Life.

-And I still woke up with a huge smile

Research of Moths

So it's been a long time since I last programmed anything for the codling moth project. You know what? That really sucks. I was hired as a programmer and all I've done over the last 4 months is mathematical analysis. I don't know math, I know my program. My professor told me she wasn't hiring me for mathematical skills, which is good because I still don't have them. I just want to get back to programming.

I've got Redhat Enterprise, as supplied by my professor. So I can now take my research home with me (well, when I install Redhat and get it dual booting with my existing WinXP). I'm looking forward to that, getting Redhat working.

-Half-Life 2 a second time around is just as fun!

Wired

This is fun, I just have to share my thoughts. I'm at work now, it's 8:24am. This was the only lab monitoring shift that would fit into my schedule (that I was hired for). Funny, I applied for 5 shifts and the two that I originally got assigned to conflicted with classes. So I cancelled those and applied for an early morning shift. Hey, I need some cash flow.

Now I'm sitting here at 8:25am and waiting for some downloads to finish. I figured I'd give Half-Life 2 DeathMatch a try. Why not, what can it hurt. It'll take up some hard drive space and I'll rarely play it. For that matter, I'm re-downloading Codename: Gordon. I'll try to finish it this time.

-Rawking out to Billy Talent

First day back

I've finished my first day of semester 2, year 3 at University. Today was the first day I had a notebook computer to write my notes in at school, as well. It was fun. I played Half-Life 2 during my breaks (Awesome game, I finished it last night and am playing it again on HARD difficulty). The notebook is definately a nice toy to have. I also picked up Redhat Enterprise from my professor, so I can get that going on my computer and take my research home with me. Now I think I'm going to join my girlfriend and lay down for a nap. It was a long day.

-Technophile

I have had a day to play

From my girlfriend I got an awesome shirt, green, long sleeve with the text World's Laziest Ninja and a picture of a fat ninja with akimbo sword. She also got me a flashlight, always handy to have around. 2 more stickers to add to my laptop (I'll get to this in a bit). A 100 piece Spiderman 2 movie puzzle which we've already pieced together. Oooh, I can't forget this one... she's getting my tongue pierced. I'll be doing that in a couple days, so it is mostly healed when school starts again. And who doesn't need a calendar before the new year? She got me this kickass Sea Monkey calendar. 12 months of sea monkey memorabilia. Her parents and brother got me a box of Pot of Gold (chocolates) and a bunch of Spiderman swag. A towel, toothbrush, comic book, binder. Gotta love that. I got a Dirt Devil vacuum from my Dad and his girlfriend. Money from my Mom and Stepdad. And a Lord of the Rings action figure of Eomer and his Horse. A few more figures and I can create a scene on my desktop.

I also got American McGee's Alice and "The Looking Glass Wars" from my Girlfriend. Isn't she the best? ^_^

Now, as for the laptop. Yeah, I'm writing on it right now. P4 2.8GHz... you've read it before. This thing is sweeet. I downloaded the HalfLife 2 demo and played through the two chapters, the game was butter. I can run it at max everything, looks good, run's not so good. It's still playable, though. So turning it down to the defaults (still great visuals) and the game runs awesome. No slowdown or choppiness. I love it. And when I get to school with it, I'll be able to access the wireless network around the school. And I'll get RedHat running on here so I can bring my research home with me as well. I'm just waiting a week or two so I can run it hardcore, break it in, etc then I can rip the existing HP stickers off here and put my own on.

I've got a sticker of the Mudflap girl with a flame fill instead of black, and a woman holding a large lolipop while wearing lingerie. Last years stickers were the dog licking himself and text saying "Because I can", the other was a topless redhead (mmm redhead!) sitting on a cherry with text saying "Everything to lose". So I'll stick at least 3 of those on the lid of my laptop. I'm thinking of putting another inside my laptop, to the left of the touchpad.

Oh! Last night when our friends got home, we visited them and exchanged gifts. I got a tamagotchi from one. And from the other friend I got a sushi set. Chopsticks, dried seaweed, mochi rice (sticky rice), pickled ginger and a tube of wasabi. She's going to teach me how to make sushi, I can't wait.

-Good things in life? Fun things in life

It is now

4:42am and I'm filling myself with the fuel needed to keep warm the next hour outside FutureShop, waiting in line with the other faithfuls. This is it, this morning decides which notebook computer is going to be by my side at least until the end of my University career. I've got water heating for hot chocolate and Maple and Brown sugar porridge steaming in front of me. 15 minutes and I'd have planned to be standing outside.

-But I still need to brush the snow off my car

Tomorrow's Activities

I stopped by Future Shop to see what time they open early tomorrow morning and there were already 5 people camped outside drinking mini-shot bottles of Jack Daniels and playing Magic: TG hudling together for warmth. They were camped out with lawn chairs and a small camping table, one of them had been there since 3pm Christmas afternoon.

I'll be there tomorrow to make a purchase. I'm buying that P4 2.8GHz system. They've dropped the price another hundred dollars (from $1599) to $1399 and upped the video card capacity from 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000 mobile to a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9000 mobile. I had bought it online today, actually, but thought better of waiting the 3 weeks for it to come in by mail; I cancelled the order just after I got a confirmation. So I'm going to try my luck at buying it in store at 6am tomorrow morning so I can get home and format it (who wants a computer registered with the name "Future" anyway?) . My machines have manly names like "Goober" and "Baggy" (not really, but they rhyme with it).

I'll be up at 4:30am tomorrow, about 4 hours before my girlfriend wakes up to go to work.

-Dropping large wads of cash

Portable Computation

How does this nice little lappy grab ya? It'd come out to just over $1.5k, of course I don't have the money, and would be sweeeet. I've never done the Pentium thing, I've always stuck with AMD (and my Duron 750). So Pentium IV 2.8GHz, 512 DDR, 60GB HDD, 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 GPU ooooooooh. I almost walked out of the store with it yesterday.

Christmas Partying

Tonight is the Eve before Christmas and the same as every year before is a family Christmas party. Yet another excuse for friends and family to get together and drink themselves stupid (and drive home afterward :P dumbasses) but to eat and visit as well.

I've a couple more presents to wrap in preparation for tomorrow; I've got to dig out the stockings and lay them across the couch with care. And make a (hopefully) quick stop by the post office to pick up my parcel which came in JIT (just in time, like the Java compiler).

-I'll keep ya posted with Christmas goodies

School's out and it is proven

I'm at the University right now, monitoring the Library information commons area. Usually on a Monday at this time, I'd have had enough with the students requesting my help. Not so much that I don't like helping, it's the repetitiveness. However, I digress; Today it is eerily quiet. There 6 students sitting down at any of the 40 computers in this area of the Library, meanwhile the other part of the commons area is closed. It's so quiet in here, I'm almost falling asleep.

-Deitel Java Swing

Programming Knowledge

I've written all my exams so they are out of my hands. Only 6 days to Christmas, wow. That's getting close. My birthday coming up here fairly soon, too. So now that the semester is over and the holidays are here I've found time to relax and do my own thing.

I've been playing with SuSE on my home computer. I've played through the original Half-Life and am now 3/4 the way through the addon, OpForce and will be playing through Blue Shift as well.

I'm also coding a toolkit for the game I'd been programming off and on since last year. I'd recently rewritten it with my knowledge of data structures and a new resolve. I read about serialization a couple days ago, combined the two and viola I can create my own database. I have tools that allow me to graphically create objects in my game.

-Knowledge is power

Wandering around in my head

3 hours and counting down until my third exam. I'm feeling alright about the test, really, I'm not feeling alright knowing that no matter how much I've studied the professor is still going to give me a bare pass. Like the post recently on Slashdot this professor has high expectations. The class is titled "Data Structures" but I call it, and appropriately so, "Introduction to Mark Allen Weiss". The prof doesn't grade fairly on knowledge and concept, no. He grades on how accurate your code is to the author of the book. Wrote some code that works as well or better than the example in the book? Well, if it were in the lab and it works, congratulations you've just earned yourself a grade of 2/2; however if it was on the exam and the prof actually has to look at your code and analyze it... I'm sorry, you've earned 0 out of 0.5 and there's nothing you can do to argue the grade.

-Reasons tenure is crap

Exams

Oh what fun, I've written two exams. I've two more left. One tomorrow and another the day after. Data Structures and Statistics to go, Digital Logic/PC Hardware and Principles of Computer Science/Scheme are finished. I wrote that last one today, and was it ever tough. The first question was worth 43% of the exam grade, I did my best.

I've installed SuSE 9.1 pro on my computer. So now I can dual boot WinXP/SuSE 9.1 ! w00t. I've yet to configure my 'net in SuSE but that's just a few moments time.

Now, Half-Life 2. I want it. I really want it. However, to play HL2 I need a computer that can run HL2. The closest I'm going to get to a computer that can run HL2 is the laptop I'm about to buy. I'm waiting for Christmas and my birthday to come and go so I can put as much money into it as I can. Hopefully that includes a video card and wireless g card as well. Mmmm,

-technology