Author: Nick

Way back in 1999, a friend and I built an arcade cabinet as a summer project.

I ordered the joysticks and buttons from Happ Controls and used the circuit boards from a couple of cheap Playstation controllers. It used to sit in the corner of my room behind two bar stools. It housed all my consoles and had a slot in the front so that I could run controller cables to play Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Freaks, and Sega Bass Fishing.

It was awesome… but heavy… and difficult to move.

When I moved to Leederville (and later Sydney) it stayed at my parents’ house. My sister used it for a while, but it eventually fell into the category of simply “taking up space”. She asked it she could get rid of it and I said that was fine, but I wanted to keep the control panel (she also pulled out the light and speakers, seemed a shame to throw them out).

So now it’s gone… and I’m thinking of building a smaller tabletop cabinet or standalone arcade stick.

Here’s the last photo of it all in one piece:

Sigh. I never did get a real arcade panel. It only ever lit up with the word “Arcade” (quickly printed out on paper as a placeholder title).

Rest In Pieces: Mr. Arcade ’99!

I set aside 2 hours every Monday for “skills development” – basically trying to improve weak points in areas required for games development.

Yesterday, I used some of that time to respond to this post on reddit from the author of Curious Snake (an open-source “active learning” python framework) asking for a logo.

In the end, byron liked this one:

Here’s the SVG file (created in Inkscape).

Update: Here is an image of the work-in-progress sketches that led to the logo above (all on the tablet – I try not to use paper):

It was around 2 minutes of looking at references, 3 minutes of sketching, 2 minutes for the final in black & white, and then 10 minutes in cleanup.

Following from this previous post…

I recieved a response from the State Library of Western Australia basically stating that they do not current provide video games, but public libraries may use their local budget to include video games in their collections. Local libraries can request additions to the collection provided through the State Library. So that represents a potential formal process.

Not much more to report aside from that. However, I feel that I should mention that their response was far more prompt than this post. I’ve just been thinking about what to do.

Heidi and I decided against registering our marriage.

Our issue with marriage licensing is that you’re allowing an external body to determine if your relationship is genuine and appropriate. In Australia, that governing body has a narrow and discriminatory view of what constitutes marriage. Registering our marriage with such an organisation would cheapen it, and having to pay for the priviledge would just be a further slap in the face.

Registered marriage only has value and status because people observe it as the only “real” form of marriage. In reality, it’s no more real than a de facto relationship. De facto means “by [the]] fact” and it’s a pragmatic determination that should carry more weight than a piece of paper which may not represent the true qualities of a relationship.

We are married – as recognised by ourselves, our family, and our friends. I couldn’t imagine letting anybody else decide that for us, or challenge our commitment and status.

Note: The catalyst for writing this post was a facebook invitation from Christopher to attend a Families for Freedom Community Picnic & Support Day tomorrow (Sunday 16 August). Please consider attending if you feel that same.

I just saw District 9.

It is far and away the best movie that I have seen in a long time.

The most recent trailer is up on YouTube, but embedding is disabled.

Finally, here’s Alive in Joburg, the precursor short film that Neill Blomkamp directed back in 2005:

I feel like a lesser person for not being involved in the production of this film in any way.

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.

Red Remover is cute, fun, addictive, and short enough to finish in one sitting:

I love the schoolyard “yeaaah” when you complete a level. 😀

Highly Recommended.

I wanted to quickly post about two things:

1. Zii: the iPhone-esque, jargon-laden, portable media device/platform
2. Open Source languages/IDEs that can target the iPhone

The Zii Plaszma is the “Stemcell Computing Platform to Innovate and Profit”. Aside from stupid naming all around, it looks like a neat device simliar to the iPod Touch… but with hardware GPS, a HD camera, SDHC slot, 10 point multi-touch, and FullHD HDMI output. It runs a proprietary Linux-based OS called Plaszma OS, or alternatively Google’s Android.

You can pick one up for US$399 with the SDK, which runs under Ubuntu 8.04 and includes: Eclipse IDE, gcc, gdb, cmake, and the OpenGL ES API.

Here’s a video full of crazy jargon:

Now onto Open Source languages/IDEs that can target the iPhone – for people who are keen on FOSS or maybe simply aren’t down with Objective-C or Xcode (as a development environment).

Hugh over at Game Haxe has managed to get a basic haXe program running on iPhone using the C++ build target, statically-linked SDL, and a bunch of other stuff. This means that developers familiar with AS3 could use a very similar language (and libraries) to target the iPhone. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

In related news (but on a potentially bigger scale), Miguel de Icaza (of GNOME and Mono fame) recently blogged that the MonoTouch team has reached feature complete status and are looking for iPhone developers to try out Mono, and their MonoTouch C# APIs, for the iPhone.

Heidi and I rented He’s Just Not That Into You on BluRay over the weekend. Heidi wanted something pretty light, and it looked to be your basic Romcom.

I enjoyed it much more than I expected to. The acting was amicable and the writing contrasted a number of relationships in order to communicate a few key themes – which I will express here as pseudo-mathematical formulae:

1. Commitment > Marriage
2. Dishonesty < Infidelity
3. Infatuation != Love

I won’t say much else other than I felt it was surprisingly worth watching.