Games

My friend’s company, doing video trivia—now in a widget:

There are times when I wish you could favorite something multiple times. Legos! NES! Contra! Rrrreverting to childhood momentarily.

(via FFFFOUND!)

In a former life, I designed levels for videogames. It’s nice to run across an article saying nice things like this:

“The series' final stage is one of its best, an enormous and complex installation packed with foes and tricky objectives -- a fine conclusion to a fine trilogy.”

“...the non-linear story and the gameplay work in unison, makes Infinity the most rewarding game Bungie has created to date.”

PC Perspective has an interview with John Carmack where he discusses real-time raytracing, physics APIs, sparse voxel representations and Id Tech 6.

(via Slashdot)

My sister sent me the best early birthday present ever. Scrabble + macro lenses + Photoshop = win!

I have a thing for purposeful monochromatic constructions, devices that simultaneously tickle my parietal and occipital lobes, Venn diagrams of precious little intersection of the trickster, beauty and math. Childhood ingredients included parts Escher, Pinball Construction Set and the Basel School. This week I was ecstatic to be exposed to not one, but two examples of this meter—one physical, the other virtual, both Japanese, rendered in white, challenges to be experimented with.

First is Illoiha’s insanely cool climbing wall. As I said to one .tiff, this gym in Ebisu tugs on my spidey heartstrings. Your vertical progress is marked by gripping picture frames, flower vases and in one case, a deer head. As anyone who’s drank the bouldering Kool-Aid, seeing a manifestation of the real world in white, pared down to the basic physical forms that demand to be climbed is a beautiful thing.

Second is the reality distortion of Echochrome, a minimalist game built around the brilliant concept of turning what you see into what happens. To paraphrase, Echochrome is an Escher puzzle made live. Control is handled simply by rotating the stage, while the mannequin walks around blindly, falling through holes and bouncing off jump pads until you’ve assembled the stage in a manner that reaches closure.

I anxiously await March 18, and debating how to retrieve my PSP. :P My fingers are crossed hoping Echochrome is another Portal, Rez or—at least a little—Katamari. It’s promising.

E3 2007 Trailer

GDC 2008 Video, via Destructoid:

Ziff Davis is changing their review scoring from a numeric scale to US-style letter grades. This also includes retroactively rescoring every existing review. Hurrah, revisionism!

Originally posted to shaderlab.com on December 3, 2003.

Two years ago today, I released the first version of what eventually became Q3Map2. It’s been a long, fun trip. Thanks to everyone who used it, contributed to it, debugged and beta tested it, complained about it, and made working on it worthwhile.

Here’s to another 2 years, uh, doing...something.

Originally posted to shaderlab.com on October 3, 2003.

Acquired first road bike today. Managed to cram it into my room in the new house in Potrero Hill. Hopefully will be the first of many...it made the climb actually pleasureable this evening.

Also new Q3Map2 for her mapping pleasure.

Originally posted to shaderlab.com on August 31, 2003.

Skipped Burning Man again and instead spent some QT with a few kids from Ritual, showing them a bit of the San Francisco flavor (and not-so-flavorful).

So, natch, I got up bright and early and hungover and released a new Q3Map2 (2.5.7), with Jedi Academy support and a host of long-stewing fixes/updates.