Day: August 7, 2009

I showed my third game prototype to some ex-workmates today.

Thanks for the constructive feedback from everyone who played the game. I’m not sure that it has super-wide appeal… but that’s not really the end goal! 😉

Unlike the first two game prototypes (which I decided to stop work on because they didn’t appeal enough to me) I’m going to put some more time into fleshing this game out. So there will be an update next Friday.

In related news, it’s been a productive fortnight and it feels great to be working alone – without the need for external consensus or funding. After an extended period of introspection earlier in the year, I feel that I know what I want to do; or rather, what I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to waste time working on things that have little intrinsic merit or that I have little interest in. I don’t want to produce shovelware, and I don’t want to do things that have been done before. Life’s too short.

Note: Thanks Andy for recently reinvigorating my interest in making games! 😉

The first thing I thought when I saw the Nikon COOLPIX S1000pj, an upcoming compact digital camera with built-in projector, was: “That is so cool!”

My second thought was: “If it can project images and take photos at the same time, you could use it as a structured light 3D scanner!”

Calibration shouldn’t be an issue since the projection lens is a fixed distance and orientation from the camera lens. If the camera has a decent processor, it may even be possible to make it process the data internally and output textured 3D models.

Hmmm… that said, it would probably be much more practical to just have it run a standard structured light pattern and save a series of images for post-processing on a PC. 😉

Update: More wild speculation. It could capture diffuse and specular textures by coordinating high-speed successive photos: without flash, with flash, and with a structure light patterns.