Imagine Cup France 2008

For one of my modules for game architecture, there was an assignment for game design. Game design is basically to design the game in the sense of the game machanics (how the game is played), storyboard (the game's story line and flow), game message and mission. A part of this assignment was to design a game based on the Imagine Cup rules, regulation and theme. Also to create a playable verticle slice of the game.

My teammate and coursemate also did the same. We kindda merged our ideas and created team D&D (being our initials). Team D&D summited a game titled The Lost World.

The Story
The Lost World sets the world at the time where earth has gone through decades of revolution. However, human being who lives on this planet did not take a good care of their mother earth. In Year 2009, the pollution on this planet earth has reached its limit. It caused half of human population died. Besides, this bad environment has makes animals facing their extinction.

While most of the human being on Earth cares only their money and their entertainment, there are a bunch of people out there that really cares about their mother Earth. Ken, a world famous scientist who specialized in researching for methods to make the environment sustainable is attending Earth Summit Conference together with his researcher.

There is an isolated island that still keeping the beauty nature of this planet. It keeps hidden from the rest of the world by using a high-tech semi-sphere force field. This thanks to the scientists who live on this island. The technology and the attitude of the residents have made this island free from any kind of pollution. However, civil war has put them into trouble and caused most of the resident died.

The Game Design

PS3 vs. Wii

Saw this on YouTube, hillarious in a cruel way...

Wiimote Projects

I'm conducting some background research on the Wii System particularly in the Wiimote development area and this is a list of projects on the Wiimote currently available.

Wiibot by uTouch which uses 2 Wiimotes to control the movements of the Aibo.


World Wind Wiimote VR by Nigel Tzeng which uses 1 Wiimote as the receiver and a bluetooth device for the head tracking to navigate in the World Wind environment.


Wii Data Visualizer by Matthias Shapiro is a visualization system that displays the information gathered from the Wiimote.


Blue Tunes by Mike Anderson is a simple comtroller system which utilizes the Wiimote to control audio players on the PC.


Wiimote Drum Kit by Evan Merz which uses 1 Wiimote as a drum stick in combination with button press to indicate the drum set.


Wiimote Guitar by Evan Merz which uses 1 Wiimote as the whole guitar with button press as the cords and the hand strokes as the strumming motion.


Project Maestro by Cynergy Labs uses a Wiimote to receive movement and action from Infrared gloves that the user is wearing.



Reporting a CT scan using GlovePIE. GlovePIE is by Carl Kenner which is an input library for many devices.


Virtual Patient Project by Brent Rossen

WiiEarth - Wiimote Interface for Virtual Earth by Brian Peek

A Wii Flock of Boids - Integrating the Nintendo Wii Controller with XNA by Rob Burke

Wii Presenter by Chad Hower

GiiMote for Game Maker by Leif Greenman

The Pre-Wii Brainstorming Session

Before the birth of Wii, back in 2001, little Wiimote & Nunchuck were one and they were known by a single name the GyroPod. This was the prototype created by Gyration for Nintendo (Gyration is a company with the most motion-sensing patents. Nintendo listensed some of these patents and later became Gyration's investor. The design was meant to break loose from the standard two handed controller - also the consideration of left-handed usage.
Wii, then codenamee "Revolution", was all for a unique game interface and that power was not everything like most major consoles were heading towards. Anyway, it was impossible to build a powerful machine for less than 50,000 yen ($450 - intial target). It use a lot of electricity, need a fan, increase noise, too long to boot up and lost its identity as the ideal toy (behaving more like a PC).

After thinkering with previous Nintendo gadgets, DS's touch screen and GameCube technology; some mobile devices, cell phones and car navigation remote controllers; Nintendo wanted something new and to change the interface would broaden game design and loosen creative constraints on programmers. Then came the controler's wireless technology; infrared pointer, pointer's precision and mimic 3D space recognition.
Some technical information about the Wiimote:~

1. Wii-mote will operate for 60 hours on two AA batteries
2. Communicates via acceleration detection, force feedback and Bluetooth technology on a 2.4GHz band
3. A 6KB of "non-volatile" memory
4. An internal speaker
5. A SYNCHRO button to assigns each controller a wireless ID number
6. Two infrared transmitters on the sensor bar (which this infact is useless as it only emmits 2 light source, these light sources can be replaced with any light source pair to guide the orientation of the Wiimote - the pairs behaves like the mouse cursor but in a paired format forming a line where it may show the tilt of the Wiimote)
   
7. A LED to show which player is communicating with the console at a given moment and to show battery life
8. A built-in rumble motor
9. Act as an eye, measuring coordinates between 0-1023 on the X axis and 0-767 on the Y axis similar to megapixel image coordinate system.
   

Wii was all about a new form of game play for consoles. It did not try to overpower or outperform other consoles in terms of processing, graphics or the sort. All Wii is about is to be a low cost way to deliver the ultimate gaming experience to all forms of gamers (pro-gamers, non-gamers, casual-gamers, etc.). Its really cool how simple existing technology is meshed together to have a whole new experince, thus not needing huge chamber like equipment in your living room to have a simulated 3D emersive environement. Also, its pretty cool how just using the Wiimote automatically makes the player react and manoeuver in a natural bodily motion when reacting to the simplest game.

This is where I feel that game development effords would go more to the playablity of the game, game design, fun factor and creativity in using the Wiimote(s). While there are other console platforms to grow game development skills in the hardcore technicle side, Wii provides a broader horizon for creative ideas to come into games development.

2008 Game Lineup

2008 is a year of many promising titles that any gamer will enjoy (at least I would). Over 300++ titles, I've finally came up with a rough list of those games, release dates and some info. Feel free to check out the full list at my published spreadsheet. Also drop me a comment if I've got any info on the list wrong. Here is Febuary's list. Enjoy~

Best Anime of 2007

Another year has gone by and Japan has its call out for the top animes of the year. Reported by Yahoo Japan, over 2 million Japanese anime fans voted for their fave anime of 2007. The top 10 out of 100 titles where as follows. For English discription on the below anime, visit AnimeNewsNetwork.

1. Sola
2. Lucky Star
3. Katekyo Hitman Reborn
4. Ookiku Furikabutte
5. Higurashi
6. Gintama
7. Nanoha StrikerS
8. Nanatsuiro Drops
9. Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei
10. Hidamari Sketch

One that I like

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

This is an article snipnet from Software Technology Support Center. I feel that this is a good article to think about where software development is heading to in the future.

In the article mentioned that there is a downward thrend of software skills developed during degree years;

1. Mathematics requirements in CS programs are shrinking.
2. The development of programming skills in several languages is giving way to cookbook approaches using large libraries and special-purpose packages.
3. The resulting set of skills is insufficient for today’s software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals.

Education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods, exposure is model checking and linear temporal logic for the design of concurrent systems and floating-point computations.

Because of its popularity in the context of Web applications and the ease with which beginners can produce graphical programs, Java and scripting languages has become the most widely used language in introductory programming courses. When Object-Oriented programming is introduced in early education, students found it hard to write programs that did not have a graphic interface, had no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do, and (most damaging) did not understand the semantics of pointers at all, which made the use of C in systems programming very challenging.

A real programmer can write in any language (C, Java, Lisp, Ada, etc.). The study of a wide variety of languages is, thus, indispensable to the well-rounded programmer. A well-rounded CS curriculum will include an advanced course in programming languages that covers a wide variety of languages, chosen to broaden the understanding of the programming process, rather than to build a résumé in perceived hot languages.

Students need to be exposed to the tools to construct large-scale reliable programs, as we discussed at the start of this article. Topics of relevance are studying formal specification methods and formal proof methodologies, as well as gaining an understanding of how high-reliability code is certified in the real world. When you step into a plane, you are putting your life in the hands of software which had better be totally reliable. As a computer scientist, you should have some knowledge of how this level of reliability is achieved.