Death to Good Graphics!

By Shamus Posted Wednesday May 20, 2009

Filed under: Video Games 43 comments

I just want to point out that another installment of my weekly column went live at The Escapist last Friday. I didn’t link it at the time because the site was inaccessible to me. They were in the midst of some hardware upheaval, the emergent result of an upgrade of some sort. I thought I’d let that business calm down before I tried to send you in that direction. The column is about the self-destructive pursuit of graphics, and what I think developers should be doing instead. In order to make up for the lateness of the link, I am linking it an unprecedented eight times in this paragraph, so that you’ll be able to find it easily.

Also, I want to congratulate The Escapist on the new site design. Some people have groused about the layout in the past, but I think this new thing they have going is, in youngster parlance, “totally sweet”. If this were the 80’s I would pop my collar, put on some awesome shades, and declare the site to be “rad”. I may even go so far as to say it was bitchin’, and I’m sure you know me well enough to realize I don’t make such unqualified appraisals of excellence lightly. But there it is: Bitchin’!

I love the new Stolen Pixels index with the little comic thumbnails. There is something compelling about seeing those little windows into the comic that makes me want to click on them and see what they say. Then I remember: I’m probably already familiar with said contents.

Anyway, Death to Good Graphics!, and so on.

 


 

Stolen Pixels #91: Print is Dead

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 19, 2009

Filed under: Column 17 comments

Stolen Pixels is taking a break from Left 4 Dumb. In the meantime, please enjoy this look at some back issues of Gamepunx.

 


 

Please hold

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 19, 2009

Filed under: Personal 27 comments

If you’re one of the dozens and dozens of people who has contacted me recently, then I beg your indulgence a bit longer. The procedural city project captured a lot of attention. It wound up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Kotaku, Flowing Data, BoingBoing, a cross-section of various blogs, and even Digg. (Although true to form, Digg managed to scorn the original link to my site and then embrace one to a different site, days later. (Someone sent me an email explaining the malfunctions and social gaming going on behind the scenes at Digg, but that rant will have to wait for another post.) Still, this follows Digg’s usual pattern of picking up on news that is both late and wrong, and then acting as a spawning pool for a “discussion” that would be too stupid for YouTube.)

This surge of attention brought in a flood of project invites, feature requests, programming suggestions, bug reports, criticisms, business proposals, code snippets, collaboration proposals, and fan mail. As an example: I have requests from three different indie bands who want to use footage of the city builder in their music video / stage performance.

Keeping up with my day job, the Pixel City stuff, my column at the Escapist, my webcomic, and this website proved to be too much. Managing a large slate of projects is a lot like juggling: If you drop one, you’re probably going to drop them all. I dropped everything for a bit this weekend and went for 48 hours straight not producing anything for anyone. And it was awesome.

I’m going to idle along for a couple more days, meeting my business obligations (day job, Escapist) and let everything else slide for a bit longer. Better this than burnout.

Anyway, if you’re waiting for me to get back to you, I apologize for the delay. It’s in the queue.

 


 

Multiple Sidosis

By Shamus Posted Tuesday May 19, 2009

Filed under: Movies 11 comments

In 2000, the following movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Multiple Sidosis is the work of Sid Laverents, an amateur filmmaker. It was made in 1970.


Link (YouTube)

Sid was around 60 when he made that film. (He died earlier this month, a bit short of his hundred and first birthday.) It’s amazing what he was able to accomplish with such primitive tools. Imagine what he could have done with a modern Mac. He also wrote an autobiography: The first 90 Years are the Hardest. (Out of print, sadly.) I can only hope to stay on top of the tech curve half as well as Sid was able to.

 


 

Houston Ship Channel Time Lapse

By Shamus Posted Saturday May 16, 2009

Filed under: Movies 42 comments

This video is very simple, but I found it to be oddly captivating. The time lapse of a big ship like this gives a better sense of how it moves, in a way you just can’t see when watching it creep along in real time.


Link (YouTube)

I love the 0:27 mark, when the tug opens up and pulls away. It looks like the enterprise going into warp at this speed.

The sidebar says that this was done by taking a photograph once every six seconds. Assuming the video was then made by simply mapping one photograph to one frame of video (which is by no means certain) and assuming the video was made at 30fps (was also isn’t certain) then 1 second of video would represent 3 minutes of activity. That’s a compression factor of 180:1, which means that the three minutes of visible activity would represent… nine hours?

That sounds wrong to me, but I honestly have no idea. Either way, it’s fun.

(Via.)

 


 

Stolen Pixels #90: Left 4 Dumb: Part 12

By Shamus Posted Friday May 15, 2009

Filed under: Column 28 comments

Warning: This comic is very dirty.

 


 

Timetravel: What to Take?

By Shamus Posted Thursday May 14, 2009

Filed under: Random 189 comments

You’re about to go back in time. You’re going to land somewhere in Europe during the High Middle Ages, in the range of 1000AD to 1300AD. You’re standing in your house. This trip will take you and about a loaded suitcase worth of volume. If you attempt to take more you won’t be able to predict what will be left behind. What do you take with you?

You’re going for good. This is a one-way trip. You don’t know exactly where or when you will land within the given window, or what time of year it will be. (Let’s assume you can be confident that you’ll land on solid ground, though. Don’t worry about appearing over the ocean. inside of rock, or 100 meters off the ground. You’ll arrive safely. After that it’s up to you.)

Don’t worry about changing history. It’s inevitable, so don’t go in trying to preserve the original timeline.

So… what items will you put in your suitcase before you go? What’s the plan when you get there?

Answers might perhaps be long. Leave them in the comments, or put them on your blog and I’ll link back.

Somewhere North of South.