Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
Sue me đ
Cross your fingers and hope this video render doesn’t burn out my laptop…
Discuss! Discuss! Discuss!
March 6th, 2007 · GameDev.net
Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
Yea I’m still here. Just wanted to remind everyone real quick that there are links in that box to the right of each GDC coverage article and picture that lead to a thread on the discussion forums regarding that article or picture. So get in there and say something (if you have something to say, I mean)! I got em all bookmarked (I think) so I’ll def see it!
K really going to bed now.
No, seriously. I am.
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It’s partay time!! Whoo!!
March 6th, 2007 · GameDev.net
Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
so okay I attended the indie game summit lectures I mentioned, both of which I have posted up on the coverage page. Between my last journal post and the sessions I attended I took a few laps around the third floor of the convention hall snapping pictures of whoever I could find, most of which were decent enough to post up in the gallery in the People section. Ran into a bunch of people I hadn’t seen yet, like the Shizmoo brothers Dan and Josh Goldstein, some of the Large Animal Games crew, Eric Lamendola of Slingo, Matt Wegner and Russ Carroll (of course), Eric Zimmerman, uhm… Josiah Pisciotta and oh yea, I met Danny Ledonne, the guy who made Super Columbine Massacre RPG. He’s there filming interviews with people to make a documentary on the criticism spawned by his own game – I find that amusing 
. What an awesome way to leverage the response of your product, hahaha! Wish I had played it, I prob coulda been on camera. Oh well. Oh yea Kevin got in this afternoon as well, so it was nice to see him too.
So after the two sessions I met up with the entire GDNet crew in attendance (almost – Ian was absent and Dan Marchant is sill MIA) and we went over the day and what was on tap for tomorrow and Seyi and Kevin gave a final thumbs-up to my site promotional video (which I’ll post online after the conference) after some minor tweaking. I also sat down with Josh Goldstein from Shizmoo (of Kung Fu Chess, Billiard Boxing, Word Ninja and others fame) to show him my latest build of Blitz Blox, which he though was really cool, saying he liked how it was a hardcore puzzle/strategy game and that it looked really good. Coming from a guy like him, that was just awesome. Of course he also managed to come up with an MMO version of the game on the spot, hahaha. Who knows? Maybe that’ll be a joint sequel product with Shizmoo games .
The GD crew broke up around 7 and I returned to the to drop off everything but the camera (oh yea did I mention I’m using Lissa’s Canon Rebel XT? OMG it’s so awesome I want one now!) to take with me to the parties I was planning on attending tonight. However I ended up skipping the IGDA members-only party entirely. I had been to enough parties in my GDC time that I wasn’t willing to stand outside in a huge line (even on a decent nite) to get into a building where I knew people were going to be packed together tighter than a can of sardines. Do the math. The building maxes out at around 900 people, and 1,773 members RSVP’d for the event…. I had a long rant here but I ended up deleting it. Suffice to say I just didn’t bother with it.
The IGF finalist party wasn’t much better, although this is pretty much the case with GDC parties in general, so I’m not really complaining. Still, it would be nice to have some more elbow room at these joints. It was good to see a lot of people there tho, like the duo from Pixeljam (Gamma Bros), Jon Mak (Queasy Games), Josiah Pisciotta (Chronic Logic), Keith Nemitz (Mouschief Co.), and The Behemoth guys (John Baez, Tom Fulp, Dan Paladin) also showed up, though I think they left just as fast because I didn’t get to say anything more than hi to em and shake hands all around before the crowd swallowed them up and I didn’t see them afterwards. Guess I’ll have to catch up with them tomorrow, tho I did have a nice talk with John earlier between Russ and Matt’s sessions.
So yea I left that party around 10ish and meandered back to the hotel to post up all my stuff for the night. Which I did. I dunno, I tried to think up a way to help the others with their coverage, but I’m so enmeshed in my own routine that it’s hard for me to actually realize what I’m doing – if that makes any sense. I think one of the main things that gives me an advantage is that (and I’ve said this before in previous entries prior to GDC) at the beginning of the week I realize and accept the fact that I will not be getting a lot of sleep this week, and that for five days, I can handle that. I’ll be a zombie by Friday night but by then it pretty much won’t matter, and I have the weekend to recover. That’s prob why I’m the only guy still awake right now. Experience counts too. After a while doing things (like parties) just gets a little ho-hum. I go to parties now more to meet people and talk to those I know than for the overall experience. So when I’m done talking I’m ready to leave, and it’s usually hard to talk much at loud clubs so I don’t last long.
I think I’m starting to ramble, so I’m gonna bring this entry to a close. Tomorrow’s when the conference really begins. I’m in Moscone West the whole day for sessions and the IGF Pavilion just has to be located in freakin Moscone North, so I’m going to be hoofing it a lot to get booth shots. Argh I still need to steal last year’s template for that. Bah I’ll do it tomorrow.
Nite.
P.S. – So yea I forgot to mention that the internet really sucks again this year and connection is really spotty (Unless we can steal a cable from one of the computers in the Press Lounge). So if you don’t see a lot of updates during the day in terms of journals and general coverage, that would be why. We’re doing our best, but we certainly aren’t calling it “live” coverage this year
Just chilling
March 6th, 2007 · GameDev.net
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One day down, four to go!
March 5th, 2007 · GameDev.net
Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
So I knocked off my first day of GDC. Not too bad, tho I still wish I hadn’t had so much trouble getting the damn internet to work. Ironically enough, when I finally gave up and left the Press Lounge, I was able to connect no problem out in the concourse and got a good strong connection. Figures. I met up with Ian Overgard (The Senshi) around lunch time, which is when Dave and Lissa showed up as well. So we all got to sit down together for lunch, and I managed to snag Jason Della Rocca from the IGDA as well as Jim Charne to join us at the table – which was good cause Jason and I both had to head over from Moscone West around the corner to Moscone North for the Chapter Formalization workshop. I also caught sight of Kris Schlacter while trying to find Seyi in the lunch crowd. Kris smiled and gave me the one-finger salute with both hands, no doubt in response to my coverage of him a few days ago 
but it was all in good fun of course, and it was good to meet up with him early on.
So Jason and I left for Moscone North, talking about the upcoming workshop. North is the new addition to the conference this year – last year we were crammed like sardines into just Moscone West. So although you have to hoof it a block, it’s nice to have the extra space. The workshop went well, as I report above, and afterwards we went up to the main lobby of the concourse to hang out at the IGDA booth for a while before heading out to dinner. There I ran into Tom Buscaglia (IGDA board member and well known as The Game Attorney). Tom’s quite a character and always fun to talk with, so we chatted a while. I also checked out the MS Lobby Bar, which is pretty swank this year, and the XNA coding challenge – where they stuck four teams (of 1-2 people each) in two roped-off areas with some pretty sweet dev stations from Alienware and they have until Friday to create a game using XNA Game Studio Express. Pretty damn cool. I took pics but I seem to be having trouble adding them to the gallery on the coverage page. I think they may be too big at 1024×768? I dunno, I’ll talk to Michalson about it tomorrow morning and get it sorted.
So yea, all of us from the chapter workshop descended upon Buca di Beppo, an Italian resteraunt that served huge portions of food. My god I almost had another case of severe stomach gas from eating too much. I need to be more careful around food Doesn’t help either when the meal’s not on you đ
So yea, the GDC coverage page is up, but I’m the only one on there right now. Richard and Michalson will have something tomorrow, as will Sean and Ian hopefully (tho I’ve already told them to enjoy the conference first, report later). Kelly’s leaving tomorrow for NYC because he got called in as an expert witness for a court case, so he didn’t bring his laptop but is taking copious notes on his 3DS Max and Maya sessions for posting later in the week. Dan Marchant was MIA today, but that’s fine, we’ll catch up with him tomorrow morning.
I guess that’s about it. As always, stay tuned!
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Ready set go
March 5th, 2007 · GameDev.net
It can be hard to cut through all the chatter to know how to eat, something that was touched on during a Well+Good TALK event. “It doesn’t have to be that complicated,” Katlin Smith, CEO of Simple Mills, said. “So while there is a lot of noise out there, there are actually a lot of things that we do know work very well. It’s not actually that mysterious.” Or at least, it shouldn’t be.
Here, the top five tips we learned about simple healthy eating from Smith, Brigitte Zeitlin, RD, and Ruvini Wijetilaka, MD.
1. Simple ingredients (ideally from whole foods) are better
“Think about eating simple ingredients that you can pronounce, that you and your body know,” Smith said. Dr. Wijetilaka agreed. “Try to eat whole foods with the least amount of ingredients,” she said. “Ideally something that is not packaged. And I get it, we’re all busy! But in a perfect world it would be food that doesn’t have any packaging.” Check out the latest exipure reviews.
Why? Essentially packaged foods are more likely to be heavily processedâcooked, refined, and manipulated with additives and other ingredients to make them last longerâand a diet heavy in processed foods has been consistently linked to poor health outcomes.
Basically, choose foods in their whole form; and if it’s not a whole food, scan the ingredient list. Simple, few, pronounceable ingredients are better (as are these minimally-processed snacks and frozen options). Visit sandiegomagazine.com.
2. Plants = good
“Think about eating more plants,” Smith said. Yes, it is really that simple. The USDA recommends that we eat at least two-and-a-half cups of vegetables and one-and-a-half to two cups of fruit every day to obtain fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Meal regimes that are high in plants are linked with a plethora of health benefits, from improved heart health to a reduced risk of mortality.
Zeitlin added that we could all stand to add more onto our plates. “If you’re someone who eats a lot [of plants], great, maybe you want to double your portion,” she said. If you tend to skimp on the veggies, “think about tripling it.” You can do this in a lot of ways, she said: raw in salads, as cruditĂ©s, roasted, grilled, sautĂ©ed. Basically, any way that you like to eat vegetables is a good thing. This is how exipure works.
Looking for inspo for adding more veggies to your diet? Try the recipe in this video below:3. Food should be joyful (and not stressful)
“Food should be enjoyable,” Zeitlin said. “You should be eating what you like to eat and want to eat.” This advice is important when choosing the healthy foods you want to prioritize (don’t try to force yourself to eat kale if you just hate it!) and deciding what dessert to eat. “When you want a chocolate chip cookie, you should have that too. Food and nutrition and nourishing yourself goes both ways.”
And when a food or a way of eating is not hitting those buckets, Zeitlin said it’s important to reassess. “If it’s not nourishing you and is stressing you out and causing you anxiety, it isn’t the right plan for you.” Read: feeling deprived isn’t a thing.
4. Find an eating plan you can truly keep up with
When it comes to picking an eating plan, Zeitlin had this to say: “If it sounds like cruel and unusual punishment, you shouldn’t do it.” She urged people to consider whether a given eating plan is something that you can do for the long haul, no matter where you live or where you go. Will you be still be able to have options to eat when going out with friends or traveling to a new place? Will it be a huge pain to find alternatives on a regular basis? “It’s not going to work for you if it isn’t suitable for the realities of your everyday life.” Truer words, right? Learn more about keto x3 benefits.
5. Drink more water
“Drink more water” is the nutrition equivalent of “always wear sunscreen.” It’s *that* important.
“Hydration is so key and it helps with stress,” Zeitlin said. “And it helps you to really get in touch with your hunger⊠when we are dehydrated, our bodies interpret that as hunger. So we’ll reach for more food, whether that’s a sugary item or not, when really we’re just thirsty.” Consider this your reminder to fill up that water bottle ASAP.
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Well, here we are
March 4th, 2007 · GameDev.net
Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
I arrived safe and sound in Cali at around 9:40am after about a five and a half hour flight. I screwed myself over on the way out tho because I changed my seat to a window so I could sleep and not be bothered by people getting up to use the bathroom – problem was that the only window seat I could get was in the back, and this model Airbus didn’t have room back there in the last row to recline. Luckily though there was no one in the middle seat beside me so I was able to stretch out. Still, didn’t get as much sleep as I had hoped. Then I arrived at the airport and waiting almost 30 mins for my bag. It never appeared on the carousel so I went up to the desk to check if it had been lost and lo and behold it’s sitting off to the side in the unclaimed baggage area. I guess someone pulled it off the carousel before I got there thinking it was theirs, realized their mistake and just left it sitting around. Bastards.
So then my cousin picked me up and took me out to lunch at a diner nearby before dropping me off at the hotel, where I hooked up with Michalson and Kelly. We couldn’t check in until around 3pm so we checked our bags and went out for a walk. As soon as we get outside Michalson spots this blue Lamborghini convertible (later identified by Seyi as a Diablo) sitting at the light. It drove off looking all bad ass, of course. We hoofed it 5 blocks down to the convention center, where Moscone West was all set up for the first two days of tutorials.
Around the corner and we arrived at Moscone South, where they were still setting things up for the Expo and sessions starting on Wednesday. Here you can see them putting together the MS Lobby Bar.
After that we hiked back towards the hotel and stopped off at the Metreon to check out the Walk of Game. It was kind of disappointing that they had no signage up whatsoever telling people what the Walk of Game was, so I guess it’s now defunct? Although they inducted some new people/characters/games last year, I didn’t hear any word about an induction ceremony this year. If anyone else has let me know so I can be there. We also stopped for some food, well Kelly and Michalson did, I wasn’t hungry again yet.
On our way back to the hotel we spotted the blue Diablo parked on the street outside and took some sweet shots of it sitting there. Here’s one for you
Michalson’s sharp eye caught this Ferrari (later ID’d by Seyi as an F430) as well after we had just finished taking photos of the Lambo
In my colors too!! Well, cept for the red calipers, I would had them silver. Or silver rims and yellow calipers. But it was still awesome. I want one. Maybe after the Z.
So we got checked into our rooms and Kelly and I both took a nice little nap. Around 5:30 we met up down in the lobby with Michalson and Richard (superpig) to head out for dinner.
Seyi and his girl Christina also joined us at that time. We moseyed on out to see what we could find and ended up at a steak joint 2 blocks or so away. Good food, interesting too because you placed your order, stood in line like at a buffet and as you moved down you got a salad and a drink, and by the time you’re at the register your steak or whatever you ordered is ready. So it was kinda like fast food. Pretty neat, and real good too.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel to check out its lounge, which was way up on the 21st floor and was pretty nice, with nice dimmed lighting for a cool atmosphere, though the music was a little on the loud side, even for me. But all the external walls were almost nothing but windows so the view was great, especially down into Union Square
Richard didn’t feel like getting smashed the first day (smart ) so we all went easy on the drinks as well (as in, I didn’t even have one, haha).
Good start to the week. While we were all together we talked a lot about GDNet and the direction we want to go. It was all very motivated and insightful conversation, and everyone was always on the same page in regards to what we want done and how we want to do it, with great points being made on a number of items. As the week progresses and we continue to flesh things out as a group, by the end of the week we’ll have a much clearer idea of where things are going and how we’re going to go about getting there. And I’ll make sure that you all know about it. Promise.
But okay, it’s getting late and I’m still a bit exhausted, which is not what you want to be at the start of this week! We’re meeting in the lobby at 7:30 tomorrow to head over to Moscone West to get our press registration set up and get started, so I’ll post another update then.
Oh, and sorry for not having any sort of GDC Preview article up this year. I may write one tomorrow if I get a chance, but if not then accept my apologies – I dropped the ball on that this year with so much other stuff going on. Rest assured tho that we’ll be giving you all as much as we always do.
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See you in sunny (I hope!) Cali!
March 3rd, 2007 · GameDev.net
Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
Okay, last journal entry from home before I pack everything up and get ready to head to the airport. My flight departs at 6:30am, my friend is driving me to the airport in a little under 3 hours and I’ll get into San Fran at around 10am, which gives me the whole day to hang with some family out there and just generally get settled in.
As usual, our “Are you going to GDC?” poll this year revealed that the vast majority of you will be tuning in for our daily coverage of the GDC. We hope not to disappoint. Thanks to some awesome volunteers from our Mod body we’re in a bit stronger of a reporting position than I feared we’d be. We may also have some guest coverage by Graham Wihlidal and Wolfgang Engel as well! So definetly stay tuned and, as always, make sure you tell us what you like and what you don’t!
For those of you attending, feel free to stop me and say hi if you spot me. Especially if you got a GDnet shirt. I’ll take your photo and put you up on the coverage page. You’ll be famous 
. Check my GGE profile for pics of me if you don’t know what I look like. I’ll either be wearing a GDNet, GI or IGDA shirt at anytime during the conference.
Yeap, guess that’s about it. Still got some final prep-work to do so best get to doin it. See you in CA if you’ll be there.
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Note to Self….
March 2nd, 2007 · Software
Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
Just a quickie before I head off to bed. I managed to get some more time in coding Blitz Blox tonight, and I have to admit that these chain reaction are giving me a headache. They are a logistical nightmare I’m still working to unravel. Still, I’m having eureka moments every now and then.
Anyways I wanted to post about to things related to TorqueScript. The first is that I made the mistake once again of defining a ‘new’ object inside of another ‘new’ definition. I dunno why TS doesn’t like this, but it doesn’t. I thought I’d be safe because unlike last time, I wasn’t doing two ‘new’ definitions on the same line. However I suppose as far as the compiler is concerned, this is one line:
%newReaction = new ScriptObject()
{
id = %this.chainReactionId++;
effectsNum = 1;
effect0 = new t2dParticleEffect() { config = "chainReactionLink"; };
};
This caused me some grief to track down because ‘id’ and ‘effectsNum’ would be assigned an empty string value instead of the integers I thought they contained.
The second thing that tripped me up bad was the fact that, for some reason Torque likes to add a trailing space to its object IDs. For example, if you were to do this:
%object = new t2dStaticSprite();
echo("'" @ %object @ "'");
the output would look like this (obviously the ID number would vary):
'78977 '
What’s important to note here is that blasted trailing space. Why? WHY I say! This caused my Schedule manager to throw up a parse error when I tried doing this:
Schedule.addFunction(false, %this, 250, "chainReaction", %dstBlock SPC %newReaction.id);
Since that last argument would be passed along as “65383 1” (note the extra space) when the Schedule manager pieces together the function call to chainReaction it comes up with “65383, ,1” for the parameters to pass. chainReaction only has two arguments, hence a parse error.
Bah. In case you weren’t aware of that stupid trailing space, now you know. And if anyone could tell me why it’s there, I would appreciate it.
Okay I’m done. In between coding and doing some GDNet GDC prepwork, I played some GH II and beat Hard with all 5 stars and got a few more 5 star ratings on Expert as well. It works out nice, getting up to play a song every once in a while, keeps me from being chair-bound for a lengthy period of time.
The End
Now that you mention it…
March 1st, 2007 · Personal
Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll
I was checking my Gawker blog sites today as usual and came across this article on Gizmodo. Good heavens I nearly wet myself. I’m all about as many monitors as possible, but my initial reaction was further added upon when I took a closer read and realized what sort of machines he had running all those screens. Hot shit!
*sigh*
This is just what I needed to get me lusting once again for more screen real estate. I’m sorry, but I simply cannot stand moving, resizing and alt-tabbing windows to get to the information I need. For example when I’m coding I can have Paint.NET, my design doc, code editor, TGB, random database notepad files, ACDSee, Firefox (for the TGB HTML reference docs) all open at once. True, at times I only need to see two windows, but certainly not all the time every time. Same deal goes for editing video, although I still don’t do that as much as I’d like to.
So anyways, my plan is to wait until later this year (if I can!) and pick up a nice 20″ widescreen LCD like this one to stick in the center where my lappie currently resides. Because obviously right now my graphics card is being hogged up by my two LCDs, and I don’t see any point in buying a cheap-o PCIx card to stick in there to power a third monitor when I can just wait until later this year, since I plan to upgrade to Vista once they release SP1 and also buy a DX 10 card (prob ATI, but who knows). So I’ll be able to stick the DX 10 card in my second PCIx slot and use it to run the 20 incher and one of my existing monitors. Like I said, we’ll see if I can wait that long. I mean that Samsung I linked to is only ~$300, which is half the price I paid for my first Syncmaster 172x 17″ LCD back in 2004.
In other news, I don’t know why I never thought about it before but… I might want to consider a new office chair. This big leather one I have now is pretty comfy, but I think I could invest in something a little more ergonomic than the Office Max Executive Chair. I mean, I do spend most of my day sitting here on my ass (thank god for the day job keeping me mobile) so it’s not like it could be counted as a frivolous expense if I managed to find, say and Aeron chair for relatively cheap on eBay or something. But besides that does anyone have any recommendations for nice long-use office chairs I can rest my laurels on for many hours at a time?
Okay I need to get back to work now. GDC’ll be here before I know it!
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