Cole Anagnost's Blog

Week 10 (July 28-Aug 1)

July 30th 2008

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Crunchtime

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The program is very close to working, we are getting everything set up to run the multi-touch tablet off my laptop (which is the only one on the team that doesn't have Vista, which we are blaming for many of our problems).

So... close...

July 28th 2008

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Oh Monday

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The last Monday that I get to remember that I completely forgot to blog last week. We should be working out bugs in the code today after putting it all together (hopefully). I'm gonna go back to what I was doing and hopefully later today I can say whether or not we are good as far as our program goes.

TravisChristian - 30 Jul 2008 - 13:42

but... it's not Caturday...

SamanthaLevine - 30 Jul 2008 - 10:30

Happy Caturday!

BrianRussell - 28 Jul 2008 - 23:15

It's good to have another blog to comment on again.

DesireeVelazquez - 28 Jul 2008 - 17:02

What exactly is it that you do when your not coding? Or in between? 'Cuz I've seen some weird pages that all say HP? The only thing that comes to mind is Harry Potter for some reason since you don't own an HP machine.

JennaLanger - 28 Jul 2008 - 16:30

Good luck putting it together. May the force be with you.

Week 9 (July 21-July 25)

July 22nd 2008

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Grad School

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More grad school talk today. We had a talk from Jim Oliver about grad school and other assorted and related topics. I am really looking forward to going to grad school and getting to work on research and what I want to do, rather than whatever random stuff we get assigned in schoolwork. This summer research is a bit better but it is still really easy for me to lose my concentration with projects. I'm still looking for that topic that really pulls me in and I just get lost on the work... once I find that I'll be good.

DavidOluwatimi - 24 Jul 2008 - 16:03

Yea, me too, cant wait for grad school to get our hands dirty with CS

EvaTao - 22 Jul 2008 - 22:46

Funny~

NizarKhalife - 22 Jul 2008 - 20:11

I'm also looking for a topic like that. Unfortunately the Computer Science courses in my university are very general and we are lacking in electives in my major. I think I'll find it eventually, even if I take 10 years in grad school.

July 21st 2008

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Hokay, so...

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All this talk about grad school brings back my total and complete feeling of indecision and confusion. On one hand, I really like programming and working with computers... on the other hand I really love physics and mathematics stuff like that and I haven't had a chance to do much with that stuff since I got past my first year or so of engineering. Also, I haven't gotten a chance to get into the information security classes to see if that is even what I want to be doing (because I can't think of any other way to see) because they are higher level classes. Indecision indecision... what if...

EvaTao - 22 Jul 2008 - 00:29

Funny~

Week 8 (July 14-July 18)

July 18th 2008

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Wha?

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Another Friday came and went. I forgot to blog and now don't remember what I did... probably some coding...

July 17th 2008

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Who Knows...

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I'm gonna go ahead and post these two comics based on our discussion today... I'll blog later but I just wanted to do this while I was thinking about it.

CodyGlover - 21 Jul 2008 - 13:51

Head hurts, talking T-Rex ...that ain't good...

NizarKhalife - 17 Jul 2008 - 23:34

He has a misshaped head because he is from The Uncanny Valley.

DesireeVelazquez - 17 Jul 2008 - 17:32

Because he banged it so much on the desk trying to retain his sanity.

MatthewScheinerman - 17 Jul 2008 - 16:37

Why does the guy in the second comic have a misshaped head?

SamanthaLevine - 17 Jul 2008 - 14:15

Yeah-Raptors are awesome!

July 16th 2008

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Demo Presentations

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The more we talk about the presentations and the posters and the paper deadline coming up, the more I realize that we only have like two weeks left to finish the project and the paper and the poster (luckily the poster is almost done).

Crap.

There are two xkcd's today because they are both good and both applicable...

DesireeVelazquez - 17 Jul 2008 - 12:03

Well, I don't know if you know, but I've been working a bit on the paper...

July 15th 2008

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Another day...

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...and another fairly empty blog post. I'm thinking I might start surfing Digg or Ars Technica for interesting articles to talk about during blog time on slow days. Then maybe I would actually have something interesting here. Our luncheon lecture today was about Meta!Blast, which was pretty interesting. A lot of biology stuff that I have never really been interested in, but still interesting. I've always wanted to work on a game like that since I first started programming, unfortunately that was also about the time I fully realized how much of an undertaking an actual game is.

And actually Travis, dinosaur comics were next on my list... only because Dr. McNinja comics are really big and would be annoyingly large in the middle of my blog.

As with most situations, much information can be gleaned from the Wikipedia page (here) if you have no idea what's going on.

That's what Wikipedia is for.

ThomasNiedzielski - 15 Jul 2008 - 17:14

The third Dr. McNinja is my personal favorite. That's the one with velociraptor riding banditos, right?

TravisChristian - 15 Jul 2008 - 16:13

Close but not quite. Throughout the movie they make a point of the fact that it is July 14 (Bastille Day) which was yesterday.

July 14th 2008

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Monday Monday Monday

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Not really much happening today... we were supposed to have a presentation this morning but it got postponed... I've started to think that I might have more to blog about if there was anything to do. Therefore, I am totally exempt from blame for forgetting to blog.

Also, now that everyone is reading xkcd I'm trying to think of another webcomic to post... So I will bring out one of my personal favorites. It is very story intensive so there aren't many I can post alone without having an explanation for things so I will just keep looking around.

TravisChristian - 15 Jul 2008 - 13:24

I thought about including a Dinosaur Comic, but there aren't many that are remotely applicable to anything we do.

DavidOluwatimi - 15 Jul 2008 - 09:30

i dont get it...lol

MatthewScheinerman - 14 Jul 2008 - 16:55

I read xkcd before I came here, for the record.

JennaLanger - 14 Jul 2008 - 15:14

Ya, blogging is getting hard and harder to do. hopefully we'll have a good controversial article this week to write about in our blogs.

Week 7 (July 7-July 11)

July 11th 2008

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Forgetting

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Forgot to blog all week pretty much...

Principal today was good, I hope that everyone liked the red room. Their usability room was pretty interesting, if low tech. That is really all they need though since most of their usability stuff is website based anyway. The museum was pretty interesting (heh... right) and lunch was amazing.

The Facebook focus group this afternoon was pretty interesting too, talking about our Facebook pages and information and stuff.

I'll try to remember to blog next week...

SamanthaLevine - 14 Jul 2008 - 13:20

Yeah- the red room was so Trippy!!!!

BrianRussell - 11 Jul 2008 - 23:05

The red room was pretty cool.

July 8th 2008

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Tuesday

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Me and Travis got the article up, it should be a good one. We chose robots since just about everything has already come up in journal club. This morning was pretty busy. We watched Eric's PhD defense which was pretty interesting. Right after that we had our lunch and lecture which was interesting, more design than the normal engineering and computer stuff we talk about during those. We were talking about Tostitos pretty much the entire time, which made me hungry (I love Tostitos and it was before lunch), until the end when we talked about pop, which wasn't as enticing because most of it was diet.

Anyway, we just found out apparently there are ray based selection functionalities somehow built in to OpenGL ... which means that half the planning we did up until today has been pretty useless... now we just have to find those functions. We spent a good bit of time finalizing the interface stuff (for the moment) so that we can start work on the poster.

On the T-Shirt front, boo only one color but I guess the design I was intending to vote for anyway (Jenna's) will still work. However, the design David has set up could work pretty interestingly if it was simplified, I saw a sketch he was doing that could work pretty good for a simple, single color format.

NizarKhalife - 10 Jul 2008 - 20:32

I think he forgot.

EvaTao - 10 Jul 2008 - 18:33

Do not forget to blog!!

DavidOluwatimi - 10 Jul 2008 - 08:53

I know this has nothing to do with your blog, but YOU PEOPLE ARE OBSESSED with The Game!!!! BTW....you just lost the game. Ha ha bwa bwa

ThomasNiedzielski - 09 Jul 2008 - 17:10

I like the article. It's a pretty sweet use of AR, and seems to have a lot of applications.

July 7th 2008

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John Deere

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So, journal article is due by tomorrow apparently. I guess I know what I will be doing tomorrow morning.

John Deere was interesting. It was unfortunate that they weren't really busy, it would be interesting to see the factory bustling and whether or not the organization pays off. Same with the VR stuff, it's unfortunate that they didn't really have anything to show us because they haven't gotten too much into the VR uses yet but hey... what're you gonna do about it. Lunch was good though. More work needs to be done on the project. I have been trying to figure out how to reproduce the effects we want based on the sample code we were given but it's pretty annoying... especially since I have no idea where it is calling most of the methods. I will have to get in touch with Tony, the guy on our team who wrote the code, and ask him some questions as soon as possible. Once that is done though it will be smooth(er) sailing from there.

Not looking forward to the paper though. Extensive writing has never been my thing (getting starting on a paper that is...)

CodyGlover - 08 Jul 2008 - 14:05

The paper is going to be bad especially with the deadline.

NizarKhalife - 07 Jul 2008 - 21:35

Cold fusion.

TravisChristian - 07 Jul 2008 - 19:13

So, we gotta pick a journal article by tomorrow... any ideas?

Week 6 (June 30-July 4)

July 4th 2008

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The Fourth

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Fireworks and grilling.

July 3rd 2008

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Your topic for the day?

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I could've sworn there was a blog here...

July 2nd 2008

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Let's see here...

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...Yeah once again I have nothing to talk about. We had the PWSE lunch lecture thing today, clearly a pretty good time for all involved. Ice skating tonight, don't know if I'll go.

Figure I'll switch up the comics a bit now that everyone has taken to the xkcd comics so well.

CodyGlover - 03 Jul 2008 - 13:34

I always know he was crazy.

NizarKhalife - 03 Jul 2008 - 10:58

And yet you still manage to comment.

MatthewScheinerman - 02 Jul 2008 - 16:39

...And thus, you give me nothing to comment on. Oh well.

July 1st 2008

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T-Minus One Month

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July 1st means that we have a month left to finish off our projects... less really since we need to have the poster and everything done and ready. That is a bit intimidating, but it's not like it's an impossible deadline or anything, so there really isn't a lot to worry about (yet).

A bit more later... dinner time.

AllisonWhite - 02 Jul 2008 - 15:12

give it time, the worry will come

NizarKhalife - 01 Jul 2008 - 21:01

I'm sure worried.

June 30th 2008

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Ew... Mondays

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Another day of project work. I really want to get into the major part of the coding but right now it's mostly framework and planning... Still working through that article for tomorrow, although it has picked up a bit since I started mentally trudging through it. We are learning about poster stuff this afternoon, which really makes it hit home that we have almost exactly a month left before we have to have all of this stuff presented. Not much else at the moment, so I leave you with this.

NizarKhalife - 01 Jul 2008 - 00:21

I just lo... yeah.

BrianRussell - 30 Jun 2008 - 23:15

I can't believe we only have a month left.

MatthewScheinerman - 30 Jun 2008 - 21:46

Someone has too much time on his hands...

TravisChristian - 30 Jun 2008 - 21:45

haha nice

Week 5 (June 23-June 27)

June 27th 2008

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Friday?

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I forgot to blog friday... and I really don't remember what happened last Friday so I'm just gonna skip it...

DavidOluwatimi - 30 Jun 2008 - 09:32

I want to play portal when we get back to apartments

June 26th 2008

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Video Game Learning

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I don't really have much to say, I would like to support the thought, however, that using video games as a learning tool can easily force people into one specific line of thinking. On my second play through of Portal I listened to all of the developer commentary, which was incredibly interesting. For those who don't know about the game, there is a pretty good run through here. I also own it and for those with good spatial and logic skills it only takes about five or six hours to beat, even for the first play through. Anyway, in the beginning the developers do their best to introduce you to the gameplay one element at a time. To do this, they have to subtly manipulate your perception of the game world and create connections that you will then use to progress in the game. For example, at one point they introduce a portion of the wall that is moved out on pistons so that you can throw yourself across the room using that surface. Then, in the future, they put those pieces of wall in places and you automatically know "Hey, I remember this... I should throw myself out of the wall right there and it will work perfectly". Then, later, they throw you into a situation where you need to use the same game mechanic but you don't have the piece of wall to make it obvious, which forces people to realize they can apply this technique almost anywhere in the game. Other training exercises (the game is actually broken into "tests" for the first portion... you are in a testing facility after all so they really are training you) address problems that the developers had with the way the beta testers were trying to go about the problems, or issues that they had with logically thinking through the puzzles. The commentary reveals that one test was specifically set to force you to walk back through the portal you just exited from, since most testers apparently perceived an entrance and an exit portal and tried to approach the problems that way, which is not what the developers wanted. Anyway, I was bored and felt like telling people about this because I find it very interesting. I still think concrete, more straightforward ideas like basic math or history facts could be taught through a game... instead of drilling kids with dates from the civil war you could have them play either a FPS or a strategy game or something and take the place of a soldier throughout the war...

NizarKhalife - 29 Jun 2008 - 23:51

You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

DesireeVelazquez - 27 Jun 2008 - 15:12

Good job making a connection between GLaDOS and learning!

SamanthaLevine - 26 Jun 2008 - 16:47

Math FPS??? Intriguing...

June 25th 2008

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Not too much

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Just working on the project. Going over the client code that is already written and thinking about how we are going to do the things we want to do. We mostly have to work out how we are going to handle the 2D surface mouse clicks and mapping those to the 3D blocks are are drawing, especially with all the zooming and roatating with the view and everything. Other than that, not much to say.

ColeAnagnost - 26 Jun 2008 - 13:34

We were actually considering that as a possible application, pretty much a multi-touch rock band... one person on the table, one on the tablet, and one on the iPod Touch...

CodyGlover - 26 Jun 2008 - 13:29

Hey, that wouldn't be a bad idea, make it so you can have different objects or instraments on the table and based on where the user strikes the table it makes different sounds.

JennaLanger - 25 Jun 2008 - 16:49

Haha, that comic is going to be your team around the touchtable one of these days.

June 24th 2008

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Video Games

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Ah violence in video games. That's always a great topic. For anyone out there who knows who Jack Thompson is (if I could only define how much I hate that man) that is the first thing that comes to my mind when talking about violence in video games. Ambulance chasing, stuck up, money hungry lawyers who would love nothing more than to blame every single incident of violence since the creation of Grand Theft Auto on video games and the violent, crazed children and adults that play them. I guess there might be a little bit of bias there I guess...

If anyone wants some fun reading to see just how off his rocker one of the the biggest anti video game name in the public light is (at least to those who pay attention and care about the issue), I would suggest Wikipedia. If you want some really fun stuff, I would read here, here, and here.

CodyGlover - 25 Jun 2008 - 13:48

Being an anti-censorship and supporter of video games I keep coming across this guy and for the life of me can't understand how he has not been instatutionalized yet. Another one you come across is Grossman an ex-military officer.

DavidOluwatimi - 25 Jun 2008 - 09:42

and i respond with this http://xkcd.com/158/

NizarKhalife - 25 Jun 2008 - 01:18

Those rock records are satanic when played backwards, ya know!

TravisChristian - 24 Jun 2008 - 21:35

I bet those punks listen to rock music too.

June 23rd 2008

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Paper Prototyping

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I guess I never really thought about how someone would prototype a website. I always figured they just jumped in and made the site, then had people usability test it and stuff on the beta of the site. It seems like a lot of work to me, going through for each page and making paper copies to switch out for a user to do a test with it, but I guess it would be quicker and easier to make small changes to than making an entire website and then trying to fix that. Still, it's pretty funny to watch someone click on a paper page and someone else slip in the new page that that linked to.

CodyGlover - 24 Jun 2008 - 13:45

I have to agree that it seemed like a lot of work. Specially since advancements in web develop have centered around making large overall changes to the website easier and faster.

Week 4 (June 16-June 20)

June 20th 2008

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Presentation

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We presented our research project ideas today, which went pretty well. I'm looking forward to seeing the magic table team's final project, both the big screen and the game if they get it working well. All the projects look pretty fun.

We also had a talk about computers being controlled by your brain, which is one of the things I really wish was easier to do. I want a chip or something in my head that lets me surf the internet. Heck, I would settle for glasses/contacts with AR capabilities that let me surf the internet. But every time I think about computer chips in the head and stuff like that I start to think about what would happen if somebody figured out how to short circuit it or rewire it in some harmful way while it is in your head, especially if the interaction between it and your brain is two way... then you would have major problems...

NizarKhalife - 22 Jun 2008 - 23:28

I would totally fall for that.

June 19th 2008

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Done

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Duck Hunt is done and awesome. We didn't get the bonus game implemented but I might do that with some free time just because I can. Also, I think I might go ahead and implement a score system and such to make it more interesting, because the logic is lengthy but not really that complicated. Maybe I will put some spare time into polishing it off and making the code look more readable, because right now it is a bit messy. It would also be good to have the two duck mode and such implemented, which would be easier if the duck and supporting functions were contained in another class, to just make a second version.

Anyway, time to work on the powerpoint presentation for tomorrow.

NizarKhalife - 21 Jun 2008 - 22:26

You didn't put Clint Eastwood in the game!

CodyGlover - 20 Jun 2008 - 13:08

Duck hunt was great, too bad you couldn't get scoring working. I believe that there may be a glut function that lets you output text. Unfortunately I can't remember what it is now.

JohnMorales - 20 Jun 2008 - 00:44

Dude! duck hunt rocks. Hey what do you think about making a 2D fighting game somehow, just for fun (if we have time). To make it simple lets do like just a intro, 2 characters and that's it (they most have special move and super special move).

JennaLanger - 19 Jun 2008 - 16:39

I was really impressed with the final product! It looked just the real game. It will be cool if the scoring works too. I could then see people downloading it from a site like addicting games or something.

June 18th 2008

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Duck Hunting

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Must code... will write blog later.

NizarKhalife - 21 Jun 2008 - 11:33

Me too...

TravisChristian - 19 Jun 2008 - 09:12

I know the feeling

June 17th 2008

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Er

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So I dunno where my blog went... I distinctly remember writing one because I had changed the date on the last blog from the 14th to the 16th... and now it's reverted back and lost my blog so whatever. I didn't really have much yesterday anyway. If I remember correctly, I talked a bit about Stephen Gilbert's lecture. If there was some way to have a computer tutor take in all the information about the student on it's own and then decide from that what the best course of action for teaching the student is, based off of the preprogrammed ideas but also off of it's own "experience", then that would be pretty fun. Anyway, back to duck hunt.

AllisonWhite - 18 Jun 2008 - 14:52

i think you need to consider throwing your swords at the ducks

June 16th 2008

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Game Time

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• duckhunt_various_sheet.png:
  

With the new addition of image texturing our polygons with an image, this game just became much easier to implement. Now all that is needed are sets of polygons on which to draw the duck hunt sprites, we can even animate it so it looks like the duck is flying. After that all is needed is to take in a mouse click and tell if the user hit the duck or not. Simple, easy, and fun. We could possible incorporate some 3D, but that really doesn't fit the retro feel of the game.

• energysword.jpg:
  

Done and awesome. Coming up...

• katana1.jpg:
  

DavidOluwatimi - 18 Jun 2008 - 21:45

That sword makes me want to do start randomly slicing things in half like Cole's Anagnost.

TravisChristian - 17 Jun 2008 - 21:08

I'm looking forward to Duck Hunt. We should have another Wii night with only old school NES games.

DesireeVelazquez - 17 Jun 2008 - 16:49

the sword...she shines...blinds me eyes...

CodyGlover - 17 Jun 2008 - 13:34

Nice Sword.

EvaTao - 17 Jun 2008 - 04:52

Nice job!

SamanthaLevine - 16 Jun 2008 - 22:45

Ok- so Duck Hunt may be quite awesome- almost as sweet as the shiny sword.

NizarKhalife - 16 Jun 2008 - 22:11

Wow, The energy sword looks really good!

Week 3 (June 9-June 13)

June 13th 2008

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Modeling

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The sword is done, and it is awesome. I will post some pictures of it on Monday when I get in to lab. I also started working on another one while I was waiting around to figure out how to do the textures for my current one, and I think I will try to finish that one up real fast as well. I finally got the textures done by getting on Jenna's computer and using photoshop along with the original sword picture I had to recreate the image and wrap it over the sword model. The way I did it means that it looks the exact same both top and bottom then mirrored over to the other blade, but I think it is good enough for my purposes.

June 12th 2008

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Moar Graphics

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We played with interactive graphics stuff today. We made a program that lets you drive a little car around a bounded area (well, bounded in the sense that there is a wall... not that the wall stops you or anything...) and lets you change your views and stuff while you drive around. Our groups need to decide on a group project for graphics for next week, I think we are either going to do a first person shooter (difficult) or Duck Hunt (not as difficult, but awesome). Either one would be nice, we would just have to keep track of the pointer when they click and compare that to the shapes of the "enemies" to see if they got a hit. The first person shooter would be more difficult because it would be 3D... and since we don't have collisions or anything at the moment on our 3D stuff it would just have to be a big open area with baddies in it. Still, that might be pretty fun...

CodyGlover - 13 Jun 2008 - 13:06

A Duck hunt game is going to be very interesting.

June 11th 2008

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Graphics

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We started graphics programming today. Not quite as "Wow!" as the modeling was but it is still pretty fun, and a bit easier in some aspects since it is actually programming rather than just computer aided design. Hopefully I can get some textures figured out for my model tomorrow. That's really what I did all day. Graphics programming and then when that was done I went back to modeling.

June 10th 2008

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Modeling

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Maya is a good time, hopefully what I want to do will work out. I don't know, I will have to ask a lot of questions since most of the work that needs to go into my model for this week is going to be textures and special stuff rather than actual model building. Maybe I'll make a few, theres just so many things I want to make now that I (kinda) know how.

Other than that we really didn't do anything today. Tomorrow we get to do OpenGL , so that should be a good time too. I'm looking forward to incorporating some of this stuff into my group project, I just have to think of a way to do that.

EvaTao - 12 Jun 2008 - 02:58

Blog today?

June 9th 2008

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Later

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I'll be blogging later, for now I leave you with this.

• screwdriver.jpg:
  

So we started Maya today. It was a great time. I've never used any sort of modeling software, or any sort of imaging or artistic software at all (besides MS paint, which pretty much got me through Computer Apps class in high school... oh the boredom...) but I found it pretty easy to pick up. Then again, just about anything is easy when you have a fairly detailed walkthrough of how to do it. The real test will be with my object I choose for the project. I don't know what it is going to be yet, which I should probably work on because we only have so many days to work on it. I want to do something fun, but I really can't think of anything at the moment so I guess I will have to put some more work into that. Other than that, the programming projects were all presented today. All of them were pretty cool. I'm glad ours worked the way it was supposed to, not that the coding was the difficult part. Most of the difficultly was more creative than coding...

TravisChristian - 09 Jun 2008 - 22:09

Nice. My fire hydrant tutorial didn't cover textures or rendering, so all I have is a gray mesh. I just now built the same thing in POV-Ray, which is text-based, in less than 10 minutes after not using it for 2 years.

JennaLanger - 09 Jun 2008 - 21:23

wow, that's what I'm trying to do with my dinky gray handle right now??? I hope mine turns out as good as yours! (but I'm quite skeptical about mine)

PamShill - 09 Jun 2008 - 21:05

Great model, Cole. Are you sure you haven't used Maya before?

Week 2 (June 2-June 6)

June 6th 2008

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Friday

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The video is done, project is coming together nicely, and the journal club and craft of research classes are done for the day. So far so good. All that is left to do is more programming and some brainstorming about the rest of the summer.

If you want to see the car that me and David were talking about in the journal club, it's right here. Want

Has anyone else noticed that every time we talk about HCI and new technologies the discussion turns to Big Brother? That is a bit disconcerting...

EvaTao - 07 Jun 2008 - 01:01

Could you post your HCI video on the team blog?

DesireeVelazquez - 06 Jun 2008 - 14:58

Really? Since sometimes I can't follow along I haven't noticed. But it would be a bit disconcerting, especially since I've personally never seen Big Brother

June 5th 2008

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Gettin it done

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We got our video finished up today for the presentation tomorrow, and we have some pretty good progress so far on our project so everything is doing all right so far. Get some good ideas for the overall project (for the touchtable). Personally I want to do some sort of game, and I would like to integrate the iPod Touch into the system too, which is going to require some objective C but I am up for learning some new programming stuff so why not. Speaking of programming, I was particularly fond of today's assignment, which essentially turned into program a media player (at least it did when I finished it). Who needs iTunes when you have a command line to run your C++ program? I mean seriously.

June 4th 2008

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Not too much

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Not a lot today, worked on programming some more and downsized the project a bit to make it simpler (more like a proof of concept, here is the backbone of the game, you can expand the map and the world if you wanted to) and easier to demo in it's entirety, as a real text adventure game would likely take quite a bit of time to go through for a demo. Other than that, we had the HCI class today and talked about teams and different psychological profiles. I'm pretty sure that my MBTI has been INFJ every time I've taken the test, except for the one time I took it just going into college that it was ENFJ...

Other than that I had never really heard of the other tests we took, the results seemed pretty accurate but then again most tests seem accurate to just about everyone. I'm looking forward to our luncheon lecture tomorrow, hopefully it is interesting like the Second Life one was.

DavidOluwatimi - 05 Jun 2008 - 20:30

I dont get the picture

June 3rd 2008

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Game Making

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Let's see. Last time I was going to make a game, it was going to be a turn based PvP strategy game, complete with leveling up, stats, weapons and magic spells. It was in Java, and it would run in a GUI window with a grid of text boxes on which it would draw the game "map". I think after about a half a week of programming I had the basic skeleton of the game set up, at least for character creation and saving/loading. Shortly thereafter I scrapped that project in favor of a simpler idea, but I always wanted to make a big, complicated game. Since then the usual thought process has gone something like "I should make a game... what should I make... a text or ASCII based game... well there's no real use to that". I am really looking forward to the graphics stuff next week, it should be a good time.

Now, it looks like we are going to be making a Text Adventure. If anyone wants to see an example, you can look at Colossal Cave Adventure or Zork, both of which are pretty fun if you can get the hang of the interface. I don't want our game to be anywhere near as long or as complicated as those two, mostly because of the steep learning curve and the time investment to actually get pretty far in the game. All I really want from this game is for it to be random and funny, two of the best parts from these older text based games before graphics and gameplay became the major hooks (back when they had no graphics or gameplay).

The lunch lecture was pretty interesting too, talking about virtual worlds and cultures (because as anyone who has ever explored an MMO knows, the people who play the game come to define the culture of the game, just like with other online communities) as well as the economies that are now becoming so evident with these new "worlds". I have thought about jumping into Second Life a few times, but each time I have considered it I decided that it would be too much effort for too little returns. I really have no need to play around with it, but the temptation is still there occasionally to get into it and see where I can get myself without actually putting money into the game.

CatherinePeloquin - 04 Jun 2008 - 17:01

Oh man, "interactive fiction" adventures are awesome. Zork is how I learned how to type. My favorite Zork story (which I tell too many times): There was a room with an old-style well with a bucket attached to a rope which in turn was wound around a crank. I wanted to lower the bucket into the well using the crank, but could not for the life of me figure out what the syntax would be. I tried multiple things, and it did not recognize the commands. I typed in swear words, and the computer admonished me. Finally, in a fit of aggravation, I typed "kick bucket", and the computer outputted "Okay, if you insist. *********You have died*******". It killed me, and I had not even saved my game before that. How I miss smart-alec computer games…

DesireeVelazquez - 04 Jun 2008 - 14:29

Basically, that's what it'll look like, right? But wouldn't it be better to have functions? I'm not really sure of this, though

EvaTao - 04 Jun 2008 - 04:04

I did not spend any cent in 2nd life so far since last May

SamanthaLevine - 03 Jun 2008 - 22:54

I'm hoping for awesomely random events to occur in your program. Yes?

PS- I'm loving the novel you wrote today

PaulClay - 03 Jun 2008 - 20:33

I think that the nex gen consoles will revert back to text based adventures. Xbox 720 will not come with a graphics card, if they ahve any sense of the cutting edge.

TravisChristian - 03 Jun 2008 - 19:12

I've always wanted to program some kind of RPG in Java but I never got around to it.

June 2nd 2008

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Classes

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Programming class was "fun", basic input and output with strings and such. Good times. The HCI class was pretty interesting as well, talking about the history and everything.

I am thinking that this programming project isn't going to end well, I am just going to go overboard and have such a huge project that it will be too hard to finish. The major problem I see coming up right now is more along the lines of design and creativity than the actual programming itself.

CodyGlover - 03 Jun 2008 - 13:54

Sigh, if only that excuse was as useful as it was in the past.

ColeAnagnost - 03 Jun 2008 - 10:36

Sure can, I keep forgetting to do that when I have a bit to spare in lab.

EvaTao - 03 Jun 2008 - 00:53

Hey Cole, could you vote the activities you will attend and the movies you like when you get a chance?

EvaTao - 03 Jun 2008 - 00:18

Very funny, Travis~

TravisChristian - 02 Jun 2008 - 17:26

I keep thinking of cool things I could do, then realize I have no idea how to do it in C++.

Week 1 (May 29-May 30)

May 30th 2008

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Getting Started

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We got to play with the multi-touch table and stuff a bit more today. The overhead camera system makes for a pretty easy capture because you don't even have to touch the table, but the demo application that we were doing demonstrated that it is probably a bit more difficult to work with because... well because of how easily it captures. You lean over the table and hold your hand out and it sees your entire silhouette against the table, so it is really imprecise. It could be pretty fun for a game or something so that might be worthwhile. First things first, though, we have to set up a networking system to have the two different multi-touch systems communicate with each other. After that we can focus on the fun stuff like coming up with fun demos (read: games) to show off the system. I was thinking maybe a chess game or something would be pretty simple and easy to do, one player on each system. There are so many possibilities I haven't even begun to think of what we could do with it, the only problem being the relative unresponsiveness of the table.

Other than that, we had a good presentation before lunch today. Very interesting. Not much else.

Edit: Also if anyone is interested, ISU Surplus has a bike sale every Wednesday from noon to 3pm we could try to hit up over lunch next week.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~centrals/isusurplus.htm

EvaTao - 02 Jun 2008 - 02:03

Hey Cole, Could you put the latest blog on the top? That way will be easier for us to view your blog.

EvaTao - 02 Jun 2008 - 02:02

Nizar, please check with Pam if you need to go there earlier because there is no bus get there right on the spot. You will need to take 6 brown to the last stop and walk to the location. Unless you can get a ride there, or you will be late for the Journal club.

Jenna, you need to attend the PWSE lunch on this Wednesday. Guess you might not be able to make it this week. But you can try next week after Nizar's experience to go there.

NizarKhalife - 02 Jun 2008 - 00:02

Must... get... cheap... bikes

JennaLanger - 30 May 2008 - 16:57

yes I'm interested in the bike sale! we'll walk over there and hopefully ride away!

May 29th 2008

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Second day

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Well, I can't really think of much to talk about. It's only the second day so we haven't gotten into much yet. I'm looking forward to seeing the C6, the C4 was pretty interesting when we took a tour of it for my Freshman Honors group (I'm a bit sad that I couldn't get a tour for my freshman last year but everything was undergoing upgrades so all the VRAC people were a bit busy), but the C6 should we way cooler. The projector in the auditorium yesterday was pretty sweet too, too bad we can't play video games in there on that or watch a movie or something.

The whole discussion about computers and whether or not they can or should have emotions was pretty interesting as well. I think most of it is a moot point until we make sure that the processing power is going to continue to follow Moore's Law and hit those higher processing powers. At that point is when we need to start worrying about it, because at that point the computer will begin to be able to (more easily) process all the different variables and decide on a more continuous scale of emotions. But that begins to touch on the arguments about artificial intelligence and the problems with that are daunting.

The C6 was awesome, as expected, and the haptics were way more fun than I was expecting. I knew they would be interesting but it was much cooler to play with than I thought it was going to be. So far all of the projects look really fun, and I'm looking forward to see what I'm going to be doing with the multi-touch table.

CodyGlover - 30 May 2008 - 10:16

I have to agree with you, after the C6 i didn't think the heptics would be as impressive as they were.

EvaTao - 29 May 2008 - 23:41

Nice blog setting~ and funny comic...

SamanthaLevine - 29 May 2008 - 16:56

So now I know who to go to when I can't figure out blogging. I love the comic. Creativity: A+

TravisChristian - 29 May 2008 - 16:40

LOL, I was thinking of that comic THE WHOLE TIME

Other Stuff

Code of Ethics

• Code_of_Ethics.doc: Code_of_Ethics.doc

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