Older: September 2005
Newer: November 2005

The Konami Code

Monday, October 31, 2005 »

Thanks to this ridiculous series of vias (kottke → If..Else → SonSpring Design → Peppermint Tea), here's some more linkloggery infiltrating the main page: The legendary Konami Code apparently unlocks an Easter egg of sorts in the new Mint Web stats package. Noah and I were talking yesterday about how we wished we could come up with all the good ideas in the world before anyone else, and this is the exact sort of thing I was thinking of. If only I had a grasp of PHP and Javascript so I could use my obscure gaming knowledge for good instead of evil.

One thing I noticed while linking through all those sites above, though, is that while many people are aware of the Konami Code and can usually recite it in some form, few are aware of the actual, proper code. That is:

↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A

Usually people follow this with SELECT START, or maybe just START. These buttons are not part of the Konami Code. It's true that the code is usually followed by Start, thus causing people to assume it is part of the code itself, but usually the effect of the code has already been applied and you only push Start so you can unpause the game. (Or in the case of Contra, begin it.) I really don't know why people put the Select in there.

So please, this Halloween, educate yourselves on the use of the Konami Code. With your newfound knowledge you will be able to score a bonus Elitist Jerk point by correcting people who include erroneous buttons when they recite the code. And they thought they were so old school.

» comments: 5

Rolling Bomber Special

Monday, October 31, 2005 »

ZARRAY

Rolling Bomber Special is a surprisingly unweird albeit Japanese video about some soul-searching dude trying to discover his identity.

Ha ha, no, it's actually really weird. And hilarious. And I guess this is more like sidebar material, but I really wanted to use that image because it's fantastic.

» comments: 0

DST

Monday, October 31, 2005 »

I can't believe it's already dark outside.

I remember Daylight Savings Time (is that capitalized?) used to be this monumental event as a kid, although now it's mostly been reduced to the small novelty of getting to watch all the intelligent futureclocks go from 1:59 back to 1:00. (Or, if you are Morgan, 1:59 to 3:00, I guess.)

It's also a source of paranoid panic as I try to remember all of the clocks that need to be reset. Thankfully my phone and computer (and consequently, the iPod) do it automatically, but that still leaves, hm... the car, the oven, the microwave, my digital camera, the PS2, the Gamecube (and it's not even hooked up right now, who knows if I'll remember to reset it when it is), the DS, even. There are probably even a few more that I'm forgetting, and that's what makes me paranoid.

Oh yeah, my alarm clock and watch. Can't forget those old things.

» comments: 2

Half-Life 2: Lost Coast

Friday, October 28, 2005 »

Last night I tried out the freshly-released Half-Life 2 Lost Coast tech demo, despite the software's urgings that my processor wasn't up to it. (What's 0.1GHz, anyway?) While HL2 proper ran nicely in 1280x1024, I had to knock the resolution down a bit in order to get an acceptable framerate this time around. As a result, my enjoyment of the fancy new HDR lighting may have been dampened a bit; the relative blurriness of the lower, non-LCD-native resolution made me uncertain whether I was interpreting some of the bloom and exposure adjustment effects correctly. Nevertheless, the demo did look quite realistic (and shiny!), and lighting inside and around the church was amazing. Then the level ended pretty much right after that, making me wonder when Valve will finish up Half-Life 2: Aftermath.

I was surprised to learn that Valve included a commentary system to go with the demo. It's a good idea since not everyone will be familiar with HDR technology, but, except for a couple instances, the team doing the narration never goes too far into detail about what's going on. It's a shame that they didn't throw in more objects and environments specifically designed to show off the HDR effects. Have one of the Combine soldiers upend a barrel of glass balls at Freeman, for example. (Sure, it may seem out of place, but it's just a tech demo, right?) Then they could freeze the game and zoom in and around objects to really show off the effects, instead of just throwing an unmarked histogram up on the screen for a couple seconds.

What really interested me about the commentary track, though, was the few times one of the developers would talk about the reasoning behind the actual level design. I'd love to play through any game—let alone one as tightly-designed as Half-Life 2—and listen to the dev team talk about things like why they like vertical spaces, or what they've done in a scene to create tension or make it more fun for the player. I can only hope Valve will make this a standard practice, starting with Aftermath.

(Just in case people missed it, one of the more interesting commentary objects is actually back a bit from the starting location. Just walk around the rocks and toward the skeletal boat to hear a little about Valve's approach to puzzles.)

» comments: 0

Crazy George at it again

Friday, October 28, 2005 »

Photo of the year? I think maybe this is the photo of the year.

» comments: 0

iTrip advertisement

Thursday, October 27, 2005 »

So I bit the bullet and got a new iTrip today. The tape deck in the car finally gave out a few weeks ago so I couldn't use the cassette adapter anymore. At first I tried out my beloved old iTrip for the 1st generation iPod, but I wasn't able to set the stations via my new 4th (5th?) generation Pod. (Plus some genius at Griffin decided to affix a useless slab of plastic to the bottom of the iTrip to make it physically awkward to use with anything but the 1G iPod.) After a few weeks of trying to endure silent driving, I decided enough was enough and picked up the new model iTrip today, and even after just a short drive to the store earlier, I was glad to be able to listen to horrifying Japanese songs in the car again. The one disappointment I have about it (besides the whole "having to buy a new one"1 thing) is that they replaced the wonderful blue LED, which was super-slick as well as easy to spot in a dark car. While the packaging suggests that the new LED is orange, it is actually a demonic red. It looks pretty menacing, and I'm sad that it doesn't shoot laser beams. Of course, I guess if I really wanted it to do that I could always put my electrical engineering degree to some use and rewire one of these things.

1 It's even more aggravating that the new iTrip has another, albeit slightly more purposeful-looking tab that fits into the iPod remote port, because that means they're going to roll out another version to fit the new video-playing Pods. DEATH.

» comments: 0

FFXView

Friday, October 21, 2005 »

sabooo

French gamer/programmer yaz0r has created a utility called FFXView that lets you view all the models from Final Fantasy X and X-2. Once you load them in the viewer, you can zoom in and out and spin them around, but the coolest feature is that you can actually cycle through each model's animation sets. You can watch your favorite monster or summon do its special attack over and over from any angle, for instance. There are also a bunch of toggles to show the wireframe, normals, and bones for every model, and even though I just got into 3D modeling (I made the planets spin!), I can see how having all these professional models available for viewing would provide a lot of insight for people interested in doing modeling for games. You could compare Tidus's battle model with the one used for the in-game cinematics to see which polygons they decided to cut out, for example.

yaz0r has also created a viewer that works with Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but unfortunately it seems unlikely he'll release it.

I found some notable things I found browsing through all the Final Fantasy models, too. First, this familiar sword is listed right after Tidus's ultimate weapon. A bonus weapon cut out at the last minute, maybe? Also, apparently I've been misreading sabotender/cactuar's expression of surprise for years. It turns out that he's really just happy to see everyone.

At the moment, you can stop by this Chinese site to download the full sets of models from FFX and FFX-2.

Thanks to insert credit for finding this.

» comments: 2

DStrack

Thursday, October 20, 2005 »

For a while I've had this idea that sort of reminds me of that Eyetrack thing. The Eyetrack study monitored people's eye movements as they read through news sites, and then the data gathered were used to produce a bunch of diagrams that showed where people looked on a page, how long they focused on specific sections, etc.

As I was saying, my idea is similar. Except instead of reading news sites, I played a bunch of Nintendo DS games. I then sketched out my stylus movements for each game, with images for five games (Super Mario 64 DS, Kirby: Canvas Curse, Meteos, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow) below. See if you can guess which is which.

Kirby: Canvas Curse
Meteos
Mario 64
Castlevania
Ouendan

(mouseover for answers)

I'd like to keep doing these as new DS games come out. Let me know if you know of any games you think would make interesting patterns.

» comments: 1

and CUTS Rei with it

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 »

CUT YOU

So I was drawing this picture to celebrate President's day but then i remembered president's day is in february so i was like ohh nooo so i turned it into a halloween picture instead*

*not a true story

» comments: 1

The Clobert Repot

Wednesday, October 19, 2005 »

So last night I wrote this entry about the Colbert Report, and how unimpressed I was by its inaugural1 episode, and how I was going to hold off passing Final Judgment2 for a week, or month, or whatever. But now much of it no longer applies, so I scrapped it and wrote this instead.

Tonight's episode turned out to be much better than last night's, which felt sort of like when you show up on the first day of class and the professor just goes over the syllabus. Tonight was also no longer a brand new experience, so it was easier to start picking up on how each episode is going to flow. Now I'm looking forward to new episodes more, since it'll be fun to see the show establish its identity. I've also sort of wondered from time to time whether an hour-long Daily Show would be a good thing or not, and this might be something of an indicator.

Still, there's a part of me that remains unenthused and disappointed, but I think it's just because the show is just a reminder that Stephen Colbert won't be on the Daily Show anymore. (I wonder how long they're going to have the check-in with Colbert at the end of the Daily Show, too.) Even if the show completely bombs, I doubt he'd find his way back to being a correspondent, because that would be really awkward. Like, John Kerry-awkward.

1 I said that in the old post and wanted to say it again.
2 That too.

EA does something cool

Wednesday, October 5, 2005 »

The concensus on EA's recent exercise in license-squandering, Marvel Nemesis, seems to be that it is not a good game, which was pretty much predicted all over the Internet. However, this Game Girl Advance article (in which the game is trashed by an EA designer) reveals an interesting twist near the end of the game:

Van Roekel is, of course, your typical final boss character. He's powerful, he's fast, etc. The first time you see Van Roekel in combat, the player controls him, and uses him to kill one of the heroes in the player's roster. So often in fighting games, the final boss is just some tough guy who is generically "evil," and gets his ass handed to him by the player. Marvel Nemesis lets the player enter into combat as the big bad guy, and basically turn one of the characters the player has been using into a pile of mush. This first of all acts as a demonstration of just how tough the final boss is, but it also shows the player that Van Roekel isn't "cheap," because the player is taking damage here and there, too.

What a completely clever thing to do. I'm not wowed as much by the "un-cheapness" demonstration as I am by the sudden perspective reversal. Plus you have to kill one of your dudes! What a great dramatic device. It'd be great if someone would write something like this into an RPG and have you play as an opposing force for a few hours, or maybe the entire second half of the game. It's too bad this is buried all the way at the end of a boring game.

行くぜェ!!

Sunday, October 2, 2005 »

I love titling these things with Japanese characters because then I can't even read them.

Anyway, here comes the brand new page, just in time for 2005! This has actually been a long time in the making. I originally started planning the redesign after getting back from school last June (2004), if you can believe that. However, I never settled on a design I was really satisfied with, and then, before I knew it, school started up again and I put everything on hold, returning to it for a short while in December. I came up with the template that eventually became this design in February, and actually finished most of the layout that month. Then, for some reason (probably header-related; that thing was probably the biggest issue throughout the whole process), I ended up shelving it until this summer, when I knew I'd be done with classes (for good!) and would have the luxury of worrying about building a swarm of new MovableType templates and setting up a new hosting arrangement. (Did you notice the new domain?)

It hasn't been all stress, though. My main goal for the redesign (besides a fresh look) was to get all the HTML to be independent from the CSS, to the point where it was skinnable. I've done a few other sites since beginning the redesign that were completely skinnable, and I'd say this one is now about 95% there. Ironically, the reason I'm saying it's not 100% is because I had to toss in a few weird HTML snippets to get my skins to look how I wanted. You can test out the skins, by the way, by checking out the Groove Select box up in the corner. I'll very likely get rid of the box in the future when I tighten up the HTML/CSS even more, but it was a fun experiment putting them together.

Here's an overview of all the other new features:

New gallery. I've moved the gallery into MovableType, so now you can comment on the images directly. Well, as directly as possible without scribbling all over them, anyway. (Maybe I'll add that later.)

Categorized photos. I split all my photos into separate pages by date or event. It's a little more intuitive than eight nameless galleries. So finding that horrible photo of you is now even easier. Plus I finally added my photos from New York.

Even more famous. Based on my referrer logs, Famous Actors is one of the most popular site features, so it's getting its very own space in the menu. (INTERNET: Please note the brilliant examples of correct it's/its usage in that sentence.) I've also added a few new ones to celebrate its return, and you can now suggest new additions via the form.

The sketchbook is a lot nicer, too.

All right, time to never update again!

Older: September 2005
Newer: November 2005