moose:core

This is NOT how to get positive recognition.

2010-08-17T11:59:00.000+09:30

Here's an interesting, and somewhat scummy marketing plan; BusinessTEL (Moorabbin Victoria) sent us a "Free Gift" of a remote control car - great, it's a reasonably cheap and better than yet another brochure - it's something we'll actually pay attention to.

However, upon opening the box, we discovered they had removed the remote. The note attached gave us a phone number to call for a consultation, with a helpful "PS. I'll Bring the Remote".

Not only is this wasteful (how many hundreds of these toys are now useless, and going in the trash?), but it's deceitful. It reflects poorly on their business, and Optus, which seems to be the particular brand of service they're on-selling.

Ballistic Media is going to try to find a replacement remote, and donate the toy to a Christmas charity. If BusinessTEL want's to come to the party and do something about its slimy marketing department, it's welcome to ship us the remote, without strings attached.

Creating a "symlink" to a LAN server in Windows 7

2010-04-22T20:18:00.000+09:30

Because I spent far to long trying to work this out (thinking too much in linux terms) I thought I'd make a blog-post to help others.

mklink /D "C:\{local path}" "\\{remote server}\{remote path}"

Microsoft actually seems to claim this isn't possible on their website, but Bing is such a POS search engine I probably couldn't find what I was actually looking for.

Something that's ticking along

2009-11-25T16:43:00.000+10:30

This is the first vaguely useful build of Wapiti - something I've been toying around with for a while.

As it stands, it scrapes your hard-drive for media files, and tries to guess correct names from titles. It also finds missing numbers in sequences of files - and adds them to your library as "missing".

Future versions will also be able to scrape websites for full collection information - currently it can only fill obvious gaps (as seen here).

Files that are missing will be able to be flagged as "want" and the client will scrape web pages for relevant downloads, or indeed find other instances of itself on a lan, and sort out what's going on.

I hope to be able to provide a DLNA (or at least UPNP) host from this application that will let you browse by title, rather than more messy folder structure.

There's more - but I'm still getting it straight in my head.

Yes, those are Windows paths in linux - I'm developing on both platforms and my Windows devbox has access to a bigger media library than my Linux one :P

Setting up ASUS P5Q Motherboard in Windows 7

2009-01-10T12:58:00.000+10:30

If you've come across the Windows 7 beta, you may have found it lacks support for the ASUS P5Q's network adapter, making it painful to perform even the easiest of tasks.

On installing the software provided by ASUS you're told that the drivers don't support the build of Windows you're running.

In ..\LAN\Vista\AsusSetup.ini you find a list of supported operating systems:

WNT_6.0P_32 = Vista32
WNT_6.0P_32_MCE = Vista32
WNT_6.0H_32 = Vista32
WNT_6.0H_32_MCE = Vista32
WNT_6.0P_64 = Vista64
WNT_6.0P_64_MCE = Vista64
WNT_6.0H_64 = Vista64
WNT_6.0H_64_MCE = Vista64

Add the lines:
WNT_6.1P_32 = Vista32
WNT_6.1P_64 = Vista64

And your installer should have support for Windows7 32 and 64bit.

I assume this will work with most of the other installers too.

CGSociety - Resistance 2: Fall of Man

2008-11-11T15:11:00.000+10:30

CGSociety - Resistance 2: Fall of Man: "The prospect of a ‘Resistance: Fall of Man’ sequel was not a scary prospect for the Insomniac Games crew. Insomniac has been riding the crest of the games industry for more than 15 years. The original Resistance game sold more than 2.7 million units worldwide as a PS3 title."

Filter advocates need to check their facts - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

2008-11-10T17:05:00.001+10:30

Filter advocates need to check their facts - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

One of the minor irritants associated with the recent internet censorship debate has been the continual need to correct basic factual errors promulgated by the Government's supporters.

Internet filter analogy

2008-10-31T11:25:00.002+10:30

If you would like to humour me a little and pass this around to your
friends, I think that this is a good way to sum up how the internet
filter will end up ruining Australian net connections:

'For those of us who are having difficulties explaining this to non-
technical friends/colleagues, try using this analogy which has worked
for me:

Installing an internet filter is like the government posting security
guards outside every newsagent in the country.

If you want a newspaper or magazine, rather than walk into the agency
and pick one from the shelves you have to ask the guard to get it for
you.

But before the guard gives you the newspaper he sits downs and slowly
reads through each and every article noting down key words in each one.

As the guard starts doing this you notice 5 people forming a small
queue behind you.

The guard finds on page 17 an article about a missing child in the UK.
He writes down the word 'child'.

There are now 13 people in the queue behind you.

On page 19 the guard finds a small article about the recent elections
in Italy. The reporter makes some comical and titillating comments of
the state of the Italian electoral system and the fact they have
elected another former porn star.
The guard writes down the word 'porn'.

There are now over 30 people in the queue behind you.

At this point he guard notices in the hundreds of words he has written
down the word 'child' and shortly thereafter the word 'porn'. He
returns the newspaper back to the shelves and walks back towards you.

There are now over 50 people behind you in the queue.

The guard then informs you that the newspaper no longer exists and
forces you out of the queue, much to your confusion.

As you stand there wondering what just happened, you notice that the
queue is now out onto the main road blocking traffic and that someone
using the side entrance to the newsagent has just bought a copy of the
newspaper you were told does not exist.'

Source Unknown

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots ART

2008-10-16T16:52:00.001+10:30

MGS4 took Hideo Kojima and Konami, about three and a half years to complete.

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Microsoft announces the New Xbox Experience release date

2008-10-09T14:29:00.001+10:30

Microsoft has announced that the New Xbox Experience will release to Xbox 360's around the world (in 26 countries, localized in 11 languages) on November 19th 2008.

read more | digg story

50 Super Hot CG Babes

2008-10-08T15:39:00.001+10:30

Check out this awesome collection of computer generated women from the finest digital artists across the globe. (*CAUTION: Some images NSFW!)Yes, it's CGT&A :)

read more | digg story

Learn how PIXAR made WallE

2008-07-02T10:37:00.001+09:30

PIXAR animators show how they created that amazing robot and the world he saves.

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Over 70 Custom Brushes from World's Best Digital Artists!

2008-05-28T18:25:00.001+09:30

Learn Digital Painting techniques from four of the world's top digital artists and see the CG art that inspires them.

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NIN Gives Away New Full Length Album - the slip

2008-05-05T18:12:00.001+09:30

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE.

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GTA IV - Under The Hood

2008-04-29T18:44:00.001+09:30

Extensive behind-the-scenes interview with Grand Theft Auto series' Art Director - Aaron Garbut - including loads of hires artwork.

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did you miss me?

2008-04-01T15:28:00.006+10:30

I've been posting elsewhere, I kind of forgot about the blogger blog :(

So, what have we got to see?

I got the sphere to work :) Yay... not only was the maths wrong but my sphere was inside out.

Lighting works, the wrong way (the light positions are baked into the texture duh!)

A crude implementation of LOD.

Wireframe of LOD

A better LOD :)Height mapping and terrain generation

the bane of maths

2008-03-17T18:17:00.004+10:30

Always, when something goes wrong, it's the maths.

I'm trying to work out how to have a spherical play-map that has a regular tesselation, an icosahedron is looking like a good bet;
That's great, and hey, it even works but there is something screwy with my maths of course, so when I try to subdivide it to look smoother, it dies in flame.

A little maths

2008-01-30T17:29:00.000+10:30

It's amazing what a little maths can do;

No longer am I killing organisms outright if they are not fit for an environment, I am killing them slowly (you can see some organisms are fading out, they are dying).

I found the error in my ways, it was of course a logic error, the code was doing what it was supposed to, but I was converting between ints and floats without checking their relative values (oops)

and I'm back

2008-01-30T15:15:00.000+10:30

So, in a fit of boredom, due to the writers strike causing my usual viewing habits to breakdown, I pulled out my old code and went back to it.

Of course, since I last looked at any of this stuff XNA was still at version 1, and version 2 didn't play nice with my code. Being in the mood to actually create something rather than dig through code paths sorting out bugs, I decided to scrap everything and start from scratch.

I wanted to make some code that actually did something, building things that spin and turn is all well and good, but it's largely pointless. So I thought I'd start digging into artificial intelligence, starting with genetic algorithms.

Starting simply I built a simple grid colony that evolved to meet the criteria of it's environment. I was amazed by how simple it was to get off the ground.

Each of my organisms could be represented by a 24 bit stream. Upon death, each cell would look for 2 parents within it's vicinity to breed with, and create it's own DNA code from it's parents.

for each DNA part, if the parents DNA was the same (0,0) or (1,1) then the child got that value, otherwise, the child got a random value.

However, due to my basic need to do things the wrong way, I built the application completely in Winforms, with my organisms actually being based off the panel form element. On the whole a sloppy job.

The biggest issue was how slow it was, repainting a bunch of panels consistently is pretty inefficient. So I thought I'd port it to XNA, and clean up the code at the same time;

This time, rather than a text string, organisms are represented by individual genes, each gene is represented by an array of Boolean values. Each organism has a genome, which is a hashtable of it's genes.

The Boolean pairs act as Booleans externally, if they are the same, they show as true, if they're not they show as false. Breeding involves taking one side of the "DNA" and blending it with one side of another from a different organism.

Creatures also spread out, as the standard grid formula was pretty dull. This has led me to create some spatial hash functions so that I don't have to compare each organism to every other organism, every tick.

However, now my breeding doesn't appear to work, and some strange glitch in my spatial hash code seems to make everyone congregate in the bottom right corner of the screen :(

Outstanding Strange Behavior

2007-12-21T16:46:00.001+10:30

Outstandingly Strange Behaviour and US$90,000 in prizes in CGSociety's biggest Challenge Yet!

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Beautiful Digital Character Art in Exotique 3

2007-10-16T15:15:00.001+09:30

Ballistic Publishing is offering yet another chance to own a collection of the most breath-takingly beautiful characters in digital art from the community of www.cgsociety.org – Exotique 3 is a stunning collection which is sure to take pride of place on your coffee table or next to your workstation!

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Get all of the highlights of SIGGRAPH 2007 without actually being there.

2007-07-20T13:01:00.001+09:30

In the lead up to SIGGRAPH 2007, cgsociety.org will be outlining highlights of the Electronic Theater and the Computer Animation Festival, as well as regular updates of the show & suggesting many ways to see as much as you can via their SIGGRAPH 2007 diary.

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Creepy effects in 'The Reaping'

2007-04-12T13:54:00.001+09:30

Amazing visual effects for demonic bugs in a Bible-themed horror film.

read more | digg story

2007-02-18T17:34:00.000+10:30

Ok it's been a while since I've done anything here. I've scrapped the old game and the Irrlicht engine with the even of XNA finally being released.

However it was pretty much at a point where it was functionally complete, even if it needed a bunch of polish.

So now I start again - There's already a chunk of code in this program, and I'm about ready to start making an actual game of it.

The currently supports parametric primitive objects, visible here is the sphere. Also currently available are segmented planes and boxes and facing planes (billboards).

Not visible is my rudamentary Particle system which is instantiated with an XML file to drive particle emissions and behaviour.

I'm re-working the rotation code so that I can move and rotate an object in local space, rather than world space allowing for simple Aeroplane like behaviour. The larger sphere is my stand in plane

It never ends

2006-08-20T18:53:00.000+09:30

Get one thing out of the way, and something else pops up - In my quest of sitting down and adding a feature per session - I decided to add in scores. That's fine, but Irrlicht's text rendering engine is sub-par - So I have to build my own, that's ok, I've pretty much resigned myself to writing a set of GUI elements and building an interface so that they're easy to deal with.

Anyhow, This screenshot shows the new graphics for blocks, and the score/level display. Levels are now implemented and the game gets faster as you keep playing, the maths behind this I still need to look at but the mechanics are there.

menus and shadows

2006-08-16T21:40:00.000+09:30

It seems I get one step done every time I look at this thing (usually in the evenings when I'm not doing anything).

This time around I've worked on the menu (visible here) - it now allows for mouse interface, the code has been cleaned up a bit, and all in all I've got a neat little menu system, it still needs a SUBmenu system, but that's another day - and probably not needed until the next revision of the engine (an arkanoid clone).

Also you will notice that the game-board is more detailed - I've been playing around with baked textures, and this is using a regular texture, with baked ambient occlusion mapping - over-all the the effect works well, and I'll likely revisit the block graphics with a similar look.

first look

2006-08-15T23:50:00.000+09:30

Yeah, nothing special, like I said, tetris clone.

It's all in 3D and there's a bunch of functionality that you really don't need in a tetris game, including a quake style console, and keybindings.

The game runs off the back of the Irrlicht engine however this is likely to be a temporary measure. Today saw the announcement of XNA which looks like it will give a lot of voice to indie developers (yay, go us).

The game is nearly done, the graphics need some touching up, there needs to be an interface built, and some score system.

All in all it's been around 1 month of my spare time building this game, it is designed more to build a set of libraries, and some skill, than to actually be compelling, Tetris is such a simple concept, but there are a bunch of things it needs to deal with that this demonstrates;

User Input
Time Based Events
Screen Output

Other things this game will demonstrate are;

Command Based code
Resource Manager
Asynchronous Time Based Events
Command Console
Key Binding
Custom UI Elements

That's the lot.

moosecore.blog.Start()

2006-08-15T21:44:00.000+09:30

Ok, as an excuse to try out the new features of blogger, I'm starting up a blog to go along with development of my game.

At the moment it is just a simple tetris clone.

In my travels around the web I have found some wisdom reguarding the creation of games.

Number 1: Do not try to remake Quake.
It's already been done, the world doesn't need it again. You will not finish.

Number 2: Your first 10 games will suck.
Ok, that's harsh, but pretty much correct, 10 is an arbitrary number, but it makes sense, you can't draw without practicing, or play music, why should you be able to write games?

Number 3: Start Small.
You didn't think I wanted to make a tetris clone did you? No, I have much cooler things in store for anyone who ends up watching.