This is why Epic Games is the greatest game company on Earth period. Their closeness to their community is awe inspiring!
HTML 5 and WebGL: The Flash Killer?
There’s a lot of talk about HTML5 and it’s WebGL support. Of course, it may just seen like a lot of talk to me because I hang out with graphics nerds. The question everyone’s mind is will this be the Flash (and Silverlight) killer? I hope so.
Flash is perfectly fine as long you’re in a Windows world, but things get pretty ugly in the Linux world from my experience. My laptop playing a movie in Flash usually heats up to a temperature that I could use to cook an egg. It’s irritating to know that I’m sacrificing hard drive life to watch the D&D flash cartoon with magic missile or the Superjer Counter-Strike cartoon.
The HTML5 video support in Google Chrome is pretty excellent as far as I can tell. HTML5 video also doesn’t cause my laptop to heat up ridiculously. That’s a winner in my book. The added benefit of WebGL gives game development for the web a new face. WebGL appears to be easy to use and possibly easier to use than Flash. This may not be a fair statement since I’m much more familiar with OpenGL than Flash.
I plan on spending some time with WebGL once I get a little more time to spare.
Anti-Piracy in NES Earthbound
I just caught this comment by Kotaku reader Jouen a second ago.
Just bring back the anti-piracy measures they used with Earthbound on the NES. If the game detected that it was being played on an unlicensed cartridge then it would ramp up the difficulty to an almost unplayable level and randomly flash messages reminding you that piracy is a crime, and if you managed to get to the final boss the game would crash and erase your save data. It was cruel, hilarious and probably taught a few people a lesson
I had never heard of this, so I started wondering if it was true. I went to Google to find the answer. The Earthbound 0 ROM apparently has three versions of the ROM floating around that defeat different areas of the anti-piracy in the game code.
There’s also apparently some anti-piracy stuff in Earthbound for SNES too. That seems to be what the fellow above is referring to.
I think making the game so difficult to be unplayable is an excellent way to combat piracy personally, although games like Demons Souls raises the bar on how difficult we have to make it before gamers give up.
Posted in MSG, Video Games.
My Vid On Benoit David’s MySpace? YES!
I’ve been considering the directions I’m planning to go with a few projects, and I began to realize that my this will probably draw attention to my own blog and YouTube page. I was beginning to be concerned that my footage of Yes performing at Pittsburgh would potentially get flagged as a copyright issue. I began to consider taking the videos down when I started checking out the statistics for my videos and discovered that none other than Benoit David the current lead singer for Yes (at least he was when I saw them touring last summer) had embedded one of my videos on his MySpace page! Don’t believe me?
Compare to the Machine Messiah video on Benoit’s MySpace page: Benoit’s MySpace Page.
Best discovery ever? Maybe not, but it’s pretty close…
By the way, go see them if they tour near you. It’s a wonderful show with great music and awesome fans if the responses to my videos are any indication.
Posted in Music.
Shariki: The Predecessor of Bejeweled and Puzzle Quest
I spent a lot of time yesterday writing some early classes and prototyping a game idea I had to satisfy my CS 570 (Interactive Computer Graphics) and potentially serve as my first Xbox Live Indie Arcade release. I not only discovered that my idea is significantly different from anything else on the market, but I discovered some interesting trivia about many puzzles games that involve matching three objects of a type.
This idea originated from a Russian programmer Eugene Alemzhin who originally developed the game “Shariki” in 1988 for DOS PC’s. The object was to match three balls of the game color. This causes the balls to disappear and new balls to come in to take their place. Fascinating, eh? More information and other links at the Wikipedia page linked to below.
Posted in MSG, Video Games.
Timing Your OpenGL App? Try a GL_TIME_ELAPSED Query!
Trying to time something in your OpenGL application? I know I was! My goal was to time my glDrawArrays function call to see how long it would take to post n point sprites to the screen. How did I accomplish this in a cross-platform way (without using the C time library?) I did this by constructing a GL_TIME_ELAPSED query, and I was able to receive the time required for my function calls with precision to the nanosecond!
Continued…
Posted in Graphics.
Particle Systems and Beyond!
So, I’ve built my first particle system using point sprites in OpenGL. The process wasn’t terribly difficult although I did find a few design flaws with my implementation. I’ve heard a quote saying you don’t truly understand the problem until you implement the solution, and I definitely believe that to be the case here. I don’t think this is a bad effort given it’s my first (and done in a few hours nonetheless), but I definitely think I can make a lot of improvements here. This version is very inefficient. The vertices are stored in a Vertex Buffer Object (located on the video cards memory), and my code updates the VBO every iteration of the code. I lose some speed here by having to send vertices to the VBO during every iteration when I could use a vertex shader program to instruct the GPU to change the vertices and use glTransformFeedback to write the information back to the VBO. My justification for not doing it this time is that this particle system was actually a class assignment, and I only did what was required by the assignment specification.
This is my first system. A flaw in my logic made the particles flow in an unintended way, but I decided that I actually liked the effect and decided to keep that first recording.
I call this one “the Dorrito.”
I’ll definitely be writing a new one to try to apply what I’ve learned while using a vertex shader. I’ll probably release the code for that effort on the Depth Charge Gaming site (once I get it online.)
Posted in Graphics.
CS470 Final Project
I really can’t concentrate tonight. I’m exhausted and burnt out from all of these projects and reports and such. Oh well. Just one more week…
Anyways, here’s a video of my CS470 Final Project! The sound is slightly messed up, but enjoy just the same!
Posted in Uncategorized.
Five Things to Do While Downloading the MAG Beta
So, I scored a beta code from Massive Action Game, and I’m pretty excited to try this out. I wasn’t aware that the beta required you to have huge downloads very time you want to play it. Craptastic, right? You bet! Never fear! I’ve compiled a list of possible activities to do while waiting for this epic download to finish.
- Watch your neighbors with your night vision goggles from the Modern Warfare 2 preorder!
- Do your assignments.
- Find true love and eternal happiness.
- Earn a degree at home in your spare time.
- Write silly exaggerated ideas on a blog.
Do you really want to freak your neighbors out? Simple! Just go out on your balcony and try to be obviously discrete. If they ask questions, explain that you are in fact a secret operative and trying to fight the Russian terrorists. You can also offer one of your special brownies if you wish. You will be awarded bonus points (read: brownies) if you comment on their sexual abilities and provide constructive criticism on how they can “improve”.
Seriously… I’m convinced that I could complete my semester graphics project in the time it takes for this beta to download. I might even be able to write MAG all over again. If you have a turtle-speed internet connection, you may want to pick up several more projects to fill the time.
Your kids will want to play this beta too. Take this activity slow! You have plenty of time. Perhaps you could suggest MAG as a 1 month wedding anniversary present? Just sayin’.
You could seriously earn an associates degree from DeVry University in the time it takes for this beta to download. I’m currently studying HVAC, and I feel I will be well prepared for the workplace and for whatever class in MAG is the equivalent of an Engineer.
I opted for this option. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
So, what did YOU do while the MAG beta was downloading? Hmmmm?
Posted in Random.