While under an oldies rage, I fell on the dopefish website. I always been a great fan of Commander Keen and I think there should be new games based on the franchise. Anyway, the Dopefish have always been the perfect image for the perfect dumb video game enemy. I’ve been sad there was no high definition image of it. So I made one! Actualy, this is a SVG conversion of the classic bitmap using Inkscape capacity to convert bitmap to vectorial drawing. This is a nice function. Click here to download it Dopefish
août 6th, 2008
Its been a while I’ve worked extensively on Surreal. I’ve got some day off lately so I decided to get my hands dirty a bit and began to code some stuff. I’ve decided to take a different look on the way the VM problem should be handled. Up to now I only had seen Unreal packages as data holder which were read when needed using some fancy serializing technique. When looking from a functional point of view, like having to execute code without loading anything, packages are in fact serialized objects. So, having to set up the game using dynamic bytecode interpretation, I needed a host. Rather than having to code my own VM (which would be frankly a PITA!) I decided to code it using .Net. I’ve used extensively C++ a few years ago but now I’m more of a C# developper. I think that implementing a Unrealscript JIT Compiler for the .Net CLR would be much more sexy than hacking my way through a custom VM. So, that’s it, Surreal will be realized using the future Unrealscript JIT compiler. This is the biggest part of the game, creating the parser.
Unrealscript is a two pass compiled language. I’ve never had to write multi-pass parser before, yet it seems simple. I’m not sure if there’s tool existing to generate this kind of parser though. Looks like I’ll have to do it by hand!
Ho, and I guess you’re wondering about performance? Well, guest what? Done right this should be faster than the original Unreal engine implementation. I’m still not sure if I’ll be trying to interpret the bytecode into the packages or if I simply read the packages source (which are included most of the time except for native ones) and compile into .Net executable code. The later seems to be the easiest yet most performant. Also, I’d like to point out that it’s not because it will be coded using .Net that it will not run under Linux. Mono is very capable. All it will need is native code for each platform. I’ll try to do it for both XNA and OpenGL. It should run on almost everything supported by Mono. A XBox 360 port could even be possible. But that my friends, is still very far from reach.
Good night everyone, and sleep well (I’ll do!)
juillet 23rd, 2008
I guess almost everyone have seen the latest OLPC prototype. I’ve been somehow astonished by this design. Not that it was totally unrealistic, I mean, it’s an ebook reader on steroids. But it’s the computing paradigm behind it. Applying the multi-touch paradigm to a ebook-reader-like mobile device was undone. Sure the Nintendo DS have already proven the usefullness of a dual screen device using touch capabilities, but it was still limited to gaming. The OLPC prototype on the other hand open a world of possibilities. The first thing I though seeing it was I want one! Yeah first because I wanted a cheap ebook reader (damn I hate reading PDF on a computer screen, don’t know why???), but afterward it became most obvious what could be done with such a device. Having no hardware keyboard and simply two multitouch display means that this device isn’t bind by the traditional input device paradigm we’re all used to. No need for a keyboard nor a mouse. Sure, if I want to type text, a keyboard shall apear, but I’m not bind to it. Nothing stop me from using a pen and a hand-writting recognition software.
Having all the freedom to rethink the way we work with a computer is something that don’t happen often. The last big improvement date back to the mouse, if we only think about hardware side of the thing. I’ve been impressed by the Microsoft Surface demo when I first eard of it. A couple of multi-touch input method have been designed to date but nothing have caught my attention as much as Microsoft surface did and now the OLPC prototype. Still, MS Surface seems far away, more exotic than usefull for a normal geek guy like me. Having a dinner table at a restaurant which let me order my meel by clicking on the table would awesome. But I’m not going to bring it back home, nor am I gonna surf the web or play my game on a table (except Risk maybe). Sure, game will be played on console and big flat screen, so do net will be surfed. The computing scheme is slowly specializing itself. That’s where the OLPC prototype fits. I think, IMHO, that future mobile device will look like this. It take the wow effect of the Microsoft Surface, and make it usefull to a smaller scale, at the user scale in fact.
Now, what’s with the device itself? Well, I guess it still a generalist computing device, open for any kind of hacking possible. Having millions of these device out there in the wild, with kids having nothing else than this to play, you can be sure some serious hack will happen. The first XO has been a mitigated success, but this version could be a greater hit. Using of little marketing, the OLPC fundation could create the perfect storm. If it’s rugged enough for it to survive to the harsh condition in the developping country and be consummer attractive at the same time, watch out for the success story. Every kid will want one. They’ll use it as a school book, listen to music, draw, game and share. Everyone will have one. Still, it’ll have to be though, totally immortal. Not’s like my son will get away with his teacher saying that his PC got infected again and that a virus hate is homework.
I guess, if it get a WiMax capable wireless chip, nobody will ever use his cellphone again. And it should be able to play mp3 to a bluetooth headset, so we’d better forget the mp3 player too. So, is this a killer device, replacing the PDA, cellphone, mp3 player and laptop? I’ve said the upper that the computing scheme was specializing itself. I guess the reverse is happening in the mobility area. Replacing all those gadget with a single computing device have been pursued for a while, PDA makers pushing for PDA with cellphone capabilities, cellphone makers pushing for cellphone capable of surfing the web and playing mp3 and mp3 player manufacturer selling mp3 player that can be used as a PDA, a cellphone or a portable movie player (Apple anyone?). Next stop is? Yeah, the OLPC could fit well in it. The future of mobility device. Maybe they should market it in many size?
mai 23rd, 2008
