Currently I am reading selected chapters from Robert Penner’s book Programming Macromedia Flash MX. Contrary to what you might think I am not interested in learning flash. What sold me on the book was the free chapter on Roberts website which provides a whole bunch of algorithms for performing tweening, easing and other things which make movement animations look good. I have been taking these algorithms, converting them to python and using them in some of the projects I have been working on.
If you make games or any sort of multimedia application that involves moving things around I highly recommend using some of these techniques. Check out and tweek different combinations of these algorithms via this excellent webapp. Also you can grab the actionscript source code (BSD licenced) and free chapter from here.
Roberts book sells for $40 first hand on amazon but thanks to the miracle depreciation of any modern tech book over three years old a second hand copy can be picked up for around $4. A second hand copy is totally worth the price of admittance as Robert does a great job of explaining general maths and programming techniques in a non language/library specific way.
May 15, 2009
May 14, 2009
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
For a long time now this book has sat on a shelf staring at me, I bought it long before my exodus to America so its at least four years old and has crossed two continents with me. I really don’t know why I did not read it before now, the only excuse I can think of is that the mood never felt quite right. Earlier in the year after a spat of technical reading and a mediocre novel by Balzac ( The Bureaucrats) I was hungry for some well written fiction. While digging through by book horde I happened upon my old copy and was struck by an uncharacteristic bout of Irish nostalgia.
I don’t think I could have read this book at a better time in my life. Portrait is about the development of a young man growing up in pre war of independence twentieth century Ireland. It is a fantastic look at the opinions, thoughts/concerns of a psyche under development spanning childhood, through school and university.
It presents an interesting picture of Irish society during this period particularly highlighting the role of schools, politics, provincial allegiances, religion and university in shaping the identity of the Irish middle class. The funny thing is that despite Ireland getting her independence, a civil war, the waning power of the clergy, the troubles, joining the European Union, peace in Northern Ireland, the “celtic tiger” and its subsequent economic collapse, nothing much has changed since then.
It really is amazing that the same institutions discussed in the book who’s membership or exclusion from define the main protagonist, have the same role, are very much around today and are entirely relevant in getting a handle on anyone from Ireland, particularly Dublin. The school he starts out with, Clongowes Wood, the role of the Jesuits in education, the christian brothers, Trinity college, living in or near Blackrock in Dublin, tense political conversation about nationalism, the main characters visit to county Cork with his father and the reaction of its inhabitants to him. Joyce uses these cultural landmarks brilliantly to paint a very realistic backdrop for daily life in Ireland, one which makes me feel simultaneously both nostalgic and annoyed at the sheer bourgeois nonsense of it all.
However this is not what makes the novel truly brilliant in my book. What sets this book apart is the treatment of its characters thoughts and opinions. The opening pages present us with random fragments of sensations, overheard lines from rhymes, conversations and prayers juxtaposed into a pleasant cacophony contrived to represent the meandering thoughts of a small child. Later chapters provide such memorable scenes which demarcate significant points in the main character Stephens development.
A few of my favorite: A protracted rant by a priest who details the surreal minutiae of the horrors of hell, various examples of the main characters disillusionment with his companions boorish behavior both in school and university, boredom with political opinions and general university life, the development of his artistic and philosophical brilliance through dialog concerning aesthetics and poetry.
The book finishes with diary entries documenting Stephen departing Ireland. As some one living in a foreign country who left Ireland nearly three years ago for some of the same reasons this ending is beautiful.
In summary I would highly reccomend this book. Regardless of whether you are Irish I think you will get a lot from it. If you like good fiction this is for you without a doubt. On amazon this book is currently selling for around $5 new and less than $2 second hand, its totally worth it, buy it now.
I don’t think I could have read this book at a better time in my life. Portrait is about the development of a young man growing up in pre war of independence twentieth century Ireland. It is a fantastic look at the opinions, thoughts/concerns of a psyche under development spanning childhood, through school and university.
It presents an interesting picture of Irish society during this period particularly highlighting the role of schools, politics, provincial allegiances, religion and university in shaping the identity of the Irish middle class. The funny thing is that despite Ireland getting her independence, a civil war, the waning power of the clergy, the troubles, joining the European Union, peace in Northern Ireland, the “celtic tiger” and its subsequent economic collapse, nothing much has changed since then.
It really is amazing that the same institutions discussed in the book who’s membership or exclusion from define the main protagonist, have the same role, are very much around today and are entirely relevant in getting a handle on anyone from Ireland, particularly Dublin. The school he starts out with, Clongowes Wood, the role of the Jesuits in education, the christian brothers, Trinity college, living in or near Blackrock in Dublin, tense political conversation about nationalism, the main characters visit to county Cork with his father and the reaction of its inhabitants to him. Joyce uses these cultural landmarks brilliantly to paint a very realistic backdrop for daily life in Ireland, one which makes me feel simultaneously both nostalgic and annoyed at the sheer bourgeois nonsense of it all.
However this is not what makes the novel truly brilliant in my book. What sets this book apart is the treatment of its characters thoughts and opinions. The opening pages present us with random fragments of sensations, overheard lines from rhymes, conversations and prayers juxtaposed into a pleasant cacophony contrived to represent the meandering thoughts of a small child. Later chapters provide such memorable scenes which demarcate significant points in the main character Stephens development.
A few of my favorite: A protracted rant by a priest who details the surreal minutiae of the horrors of hell, various examples of the main characters disillusionment with his companions boorish behavior both in school and university, boredom with political opinions and general university life, the development of his artistic and philosophical brilliance through dialog concerning aesthetics and poetry.
The book finishes with diary entries documenting Stephen departing Ireland. As some one living in a foreign country who left Ireland nearly three years ago for some of the same reasons this ending is beautiful.
In summary I would highly reccomend this book. Regardless of whether you are Irish I think you will get a lot from it. If you like good fiction this is for you without a doubt. On amazon this book is currently selling for around $5 new and less than $2 second hand, its totally worth it, buy it now.
May 13, 2009
PyGameSF meetup Thursday May 21st 6pm @ Main San Francisco Public Library
The May PyGameSF meet up will be at the STONG conference room on the first floor of the main San Francisco public library beside civic center BART. The library closes at 8pm so we will reconvene to frjtz on hayes street for dinner/drinks afterwords.This month’s presentations are:
- Jared Sohn: All About My Flocking Project. This talk will give an overview of flocking and demonstrate a C++/Maya flocking implementation used to animate rats for a college computer animation project.
- Brad Busse, Colin Bean, Harry Tormey : CampDivisible, an overview of the PyGameSF teams pyweek 8 entry. This presentation will cover the concept, design and implementation of our entry, which was written with pyglet. This is also an open invitation to any teams who participated in pyweek from around the bay to come on down talk about your game and celebrate the end of another fun pyweek.
May 12, 2009
Chris Crawford on game design
Considering I run a meetup with the word game in the title and I have been developing a lot of the aforementioned recently I decided to do some reading on the topic. As I think I have a clear idea of what I need to do to improve my technical chops I decided to focus more on the art of making something fun. In light of this decision and after a brief survey of what was available on amazon I bought two books on game design. This is by far the stronger of the two.
The author’s credentials as a game designer are unquestionable, if you have any doubt just check out his wikipedia page. The man practically invented turn based strategy games on computers, founded the GDC and every single game he created attempted to break new ground with varying success across a wide range of fields.
The book can be roughly divided into two parts: The first 12 chapters cover the basics of what you need to know to be a good game designer (from conflict to play to interactivity), the remaining chapters are an an analysis of every game the author made, including specs, notes, algorithms, random stories, what went wrong and what went right.
Let me just say right now that I love this book. In order to describe this book I first need to talk about what it is not. It is not a dry text book that spoon feeds you how to write a game spec, a pitch or gives paint by numbers descriptions of how to design your own killer FPS. It is not a tutorial on how to use C++ or OpenGL nor is it a how to get a job in the game industry in 10 easy steps guide book.
Chris takes a high level philosophical approach to talking about themes within game design with a varying degree of specificity depending on the subject a given chapter addresses. For example the chapter on conflict warms up with a comparison of conflict from a supposed male/female perspective, then lists a variety of different forms of conflict (i.e physical, verbal, economic) followed by a discussion on directness, intensity and wraps up by contrasting video games with comics books and literature. The intent is to provoke the reader to think about what conflict is, this is achieved by giving examples which do not reference existing games but use more real world, literary or cinematic examples.
In contrast the chapter on Chris’s game Eastern Front (1941) provides basic version’s of the games specification, notes on his thought process while creating the game, gory technical details about the challenges of working with limited hardware, specifics on how he designed the AI and a general discussion of problems he encountered along the way.
From a style perspective this book is engaging, fun and covers an amazing amount of ground in such few pages (about 450, with bigish print). In the hands of a lesser man this would be a thousand page tome requiring a magnifying glass to read, the fact that Chris achieved such brevity with brilliant style deserves a standing ovation. The one thing I will say is that this book is amazingly opinionated, however even when I did not agree with Chris (I am not sure that interactive story telling is the holy grail of game design) I found that his opinions thought provoking and well worth my time.
In summary I would reccomend this book to anyone who has ever played a game or is considering designing anything. It really is an inspiring classic on how to think about creative problems. Right now its on sale for $29.69 first hand on amazon or around $10 second hand. I would put the value of this at around $60 so buy two copies and send one to your friend.
The author’s credentials as a game designer are unquestionable, if you have any doubt just check out his wikipedia page. The man practically invented turn based strategy games on computers, founded the GDC and every single game he created attempted to break new ground with varying success across a wide range of fields.
The book can be roughly divided into two parts: The first 12 chapters cover the basics of what you need to know to be a good game designer (from conflict to play to interactivity), the remaining chapters are an an analysis of every game the author made, including specs, notes, algorithms, random stories, what went wrong and what went right.
Let me just say right now that I love this book. In order to describe this book I first need to talk about what it is not. It is not a dry text book that spoon feeds you how to write a game spec, a pitch or gives paint by numbers descriptions of how to design your own killer FPS. It is not a tutorial on how to use C++ or OpenGL nor is it a how to get a job in the game industry in 10 easy steps guide book.
Chris takes a high level philosophical approach to talking about themes within game design with a varying degree of specificity depending on the subject a given chapter addresses. For example the chapter on conflict warms up with a comparison of conflict from a supposed male/female perspective, then lists a variety of different forms of conflict (i.e physical, verbal, economic) followed by a discussion on directness, intensity and wraps up by contrasting video games with comics books and literature. The intent is to provoke the reader to think about what conflict is, this is achieved by giving examples which do not reference existing games but use more real world, literary or cinematic examples.
In contrast the chapter on Chris’s game Eastern Front (1941) provides basic version’s of the games specification, notes on his thought process while creating the game, gory technical details about the challenges of working with limited hardware, specifics on how he designed the AI and a general discussion of problems he encountered along the way.
From a style perspective this book is engaging, fun and covers an amazing amount of ground in such few pages (about 450, with bigish print). In the hands of a lesser man this would be a thousand page tome requiring a magnifying glass to read, the fact that Chris achieved such brevity with brilliant style deserves a standing ovation. The one thing I will say is that this book is amazingly opinionated, however even when I did not agree with Chris (I am not sure that interactive story telling is the holy grail of game design) I found that his opinions thought provoking and well worth my time.
In summary I would reccomend this book to anyone who has ever played a game or is considering designing anything. It really is an inspiring classic on how to think about creative problems. Right now its on sale for $29.69 first hand on amazon or around $10 second hand. I would put the value of this at around $60 so buy two copies and send one to your friend.
May 2, 2009
Legal advice
Hi all the CampDivsible legal expert Brad Busse put together this licensing agreement, I advice you read it before playing our pyweek entry:
Appendix C: Read in Case of Lawn Aggression
*NOTICE: By the terms of section 3.14 of your DuraTurf HandySod License Agreement, DuraTurf Industries cannot be held responsible for personal loss or injury suffered as a direct result of lawn mistreatment, unless covered under one or more of the exemptions listed in Subsection 3.14.159 of your License Agreement.*
In some unfortunate circumstances, your DuraTurf HandySod Suburban Ecosystem might attempt to rise up and destroy you and all humanity. DON’T WORRY! DuraTurf Industries expects and has planned for just this eventuality. By following the simple steps presented in this guide, you too can escape unscathed!
NOTE: In the course of normal lawn operation, you may at times notice DuraTurf Semi-Voluntary Security Units (”Bugs”) performing patrols in the vicinity of family members. This is perfectly normal – if the DuraTurf HandySod installation procedure was properly followed, your DuraTurf PheroGeneIDs have been entered into the genetic memory and the Bugs will recognize them as proper owners.
Accidents happen, however, and human error can unbalance even the most stable security system. In the event that DuraTurf Bugs do NOT properly recognize you as the correct owner, DuraTurf Industries have installed a number of failsafes that you can fall back on to escape, should the need arise.
DID YOU KNOW? – Not only do you and your loved ones have unique DuraTurf PheroGeneIDs, so do your Bugs! Not only do your Bugs guard you, they guard each other!!
Each DuraTurf Semi-Voluntary Security Unit is hardcoded at “birth” with a particular PheroGeneID. Most DuraTurf HandySod Suburban Ecosystems are equipped with FIVE different PheroGeneID classes. In the event of inter-Bug conflict, some PheroGeneID classes may cause involuntary viscera relocation when brought into contact with other types. The Bug classes vulnerable to your specific PheroGenoID key are shown at the bottom right of your Human User-info Diagramme (HUD). Additionally, Bugs with YOUR PheroGeneID class will recognize you as one of their own. However, classes not covered by the above ARE VERY deadly to your own. AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS.
When a Bug is disassociated in such a manner, some of its pheromones will mask yours. THIS IS TEMPORARY, and can be removed with vigorous application of soap and water. The “splattered” Bug PheroGeneID is still active, however, so take care not to come too close to any of that Bug’s enemies (your HUD will update to reflect this).
In order to leave the DuraTurf HandySod Active Area, you will also need to pass several layers of DurfTurf Organic Fencing Material, laid down by your Bugs to keep undesirables out (but, unfortunately, you inside!!). The ONLY way to pass Fencing Material is to have the proper PheroGeneID class, which means splattering the right Bug. With some care, you’ll find this ordeal an easy and fun experience!
Appendix C: Read in Case of Lawn Aggression
*NOTICE: By the terms of section 3.14 of your DuraTurf HandySod License Agreement, DuraTurf Industries cannot be held responsible for personal loss or injury suffered as a direct result of lawn mistreatment, unless covered under one or more of the exemptions listed in Subsection 3.14.159 of your License Agreement.*
In some unfortunate circumstances, your DuraTurf HandySod Suburban Ecosystem might attempt to rise up and destroy you and all humanity. DON’T WORRY! DuraTurf Industries expects and has planned for just this eventuality. By following the simple steps presented in this guide, you too can escape unscathed!
NOTE: In the course of normal lawn operation, you may at times notice DuraTurf Semi-Voluntary Security Units (”Bugs”) performing patrols in the vicinity of family members. This is perfectly normal – if the DuraTurf HandySod installation procedure was properly followed, your DuraTurf PheroGeneIDs have been entered into the genetic memory and the Bugs will recognize them as proper owners.
Accidents happen, however, and human error can unbalance even the most stable security system. In the event that DuraTurf Bugs do NOT properly recognize you as the correct owner, DuraTurf Industries have installed a number of failsafes that you can fall back on to escape, should the need arise.
DID YOU KNOW? – Not only do you and your loved ones have unique DuraTurf PheroGeneIDs, so do your Bugs! Not only do your Bugs guard you, they guard each other!!
Each DuraTurf Semi-Voluntary Security Unit is hardcoded at “birth” with a particular PheroGeneID. Most DuraTurf HandySod Suburban Ecosystems are equipped with FIVE different PheroGeneID classes. In the event of inter-Bug conflict, some PheroGeneID classes may cause involuntary viscera relocation when brought into contact with other types. The Bug classes vulnerable to your specific PheroGenoID key are shown at the bottom right of your Human User-info Diagramme (HUD). Additionally, Bugs with YOUR PheroGeneID class will recognize you as one of their own. However, classes not covered by the above ARE VERY deadly to your own. AVOID THEM AT ALL COSTS.
When a Bug is disassociated in such a manner, some of its pheromones will mask yours. THIS IS TEMPORARY, and can be removed with vigorous application of soap and water. The “splattered” Bug PheroGeneID is still active, however, so take care not to come too close to any of that Bug’s enemies (your HUD will update to reflect this).
In order to leave the DuraTurf HandySod Active Area, you will also need to pass several layers of DurfTurf Organic Fencing Material, laid down by your Bugs to keep undesirables out (but, unfortunately, you inside!!). The ONLY way to pass Fencing Material is to have the proper PheroGeneID class, which means splattering the right Bug. With some care, you’ll find this ordeal an easy and fun experience!
