Author: Nadreck

Leopard and You

I’m currently sitting in the conference room of the Hilton in Dedham, waiting for the Mac OS X Leopard Tech Talk to start (it’s a developer seminar previewing the new stuff coming up in 10.5… they did one for 10.4 as well that I made it to). I’m still pretty pleased that I managed to make it here, as they really are a lot of fun, and I like knowing things, even if I don’t really get a chance to make much use of it. I won’t necessarily be liveblogging the event (some of this is still under NDAs), but I will try to give a general sense of what’s coming up without getting in trouble with Apple’s legal department. It’s really nice sitting here and seeing dozens and dozens of MacBooks, Powerbooks, and MacBook Pros, and logging into the complimentary available wireless network and seeing everyone up via Bonjour. If I were a bit more adventurous, I’d even try IMing people.

[Update: 2 PM They were quite happy to point out that yes, a lot of this is under NDA, and if things are leaked, they don’t get to continue doing these, so please bear in mind that there’s a LOT of information here that I just can’t go into detail about.

My first session was the introduction to the seminar, which covered basic sales numbers, general updates about the application, and then showcased some shiny new features that are definitely pretty exciting. I’m feeling pretty good about what’s changing in printing, and I’d say those of you who are worried about it changing should be well pleased with what’s being done. Core Animation is showing a lot of potential, and a lot of it has already been integrated in ways that you may not really realize: it’s not meant to just be a shiny, a lot of the time animation is a subtle thing to enhance the user experience, to make the UI more clear in what’s happening. An example is the dock, already: if you drag an application icon around on the dock, things move and shift out of the way. It makes it immediately clear where and what’s happening. In 10.5, developers will be able to leverage a lot more of that sort of animation capability for “free”. I’m really excited about some of the new graphics related toolkits that they highlighted.

My second session was an introduction to Xcode 3.0 and Interface Builder 3.0. I’ve got to say, I’m quite impressed with the new features. I like what they’ve done to streamline the workflow, and the new interface builder is sharp, and seems a bit more intuitive. It’s also apparently significantly more extensible than the old version. A lot of the information is available on the developer site, and I’d definitely recommend checking it out if you’re interested in using OS X as a developer platform.

My third session was “Modern OpenGL”, and it was a treasure trove for my particular field of interest — game development. They’re expanding their support of OpenGL, and some of the features they’ve added have already begun to show a marked increase in speed in existing apps: adding multithreading support on the graphics side to a popular game I play gave a 90% frames per second increase. Some of the example apps were crazy impressive in what they were able to pull off, and easily half to two thirds of the presentation covered ways to modernize OpenGL code and optimize it for performance. Some really nice caveats to remember (I have them written down) if I get back into programming.

I’m taking a break at the moment to let my battery charge, but at 3:15, there’s a session on what’s new in Cocoa that I’d really like to attend. Hoping to attend the sessions on Resolution Independence and Printing in Leopard after that, since those are things that are directly relevant to both myself and others I know. Then there’s just the reception and a chance to shmooze with folks before heading back north. Pretty fun day, all told. Kudos to Apple for hosting it!]

A Step In the Right Direction

Before I get into my own tirade, there’s some recommended reading for you. Don’t worry, I’ll wait:
Braid won’t be at Slamdance after all.
flOw won’t be at Slamdance after all.
Braid Ditches Slamdance in Protest
Slamdance Pulled SCMRPG On Moral Grounds (Referenced from a Rocky Mountain News article.)
Slamdance: SCMRPG removal was personal, not business
Super Columbine Massacre: Artwork or Menace?

Everyone back? Good. As has been raised by several of the more cogent posters, it’s not directly a first amendment issue (which I’m sure regular readers have realized is something of a personal windmill I tilt at), since the Slamdance festival is technically a private organization, and has a right to decide what will or will not be shown at their festival. But there is definitely still some relevance to the battle against censorship and winning over the public mindshare that games are a valid form of creative expression, and deserve the same freedoms afforded to other media towards that end. There is no legal recourse, but that does not mean we should not raise our voices in displeasure at this sort of behavior. As a festival that ostensibly supports the idea of games as art, it is patently unacceptable behavior to remove a valid game from the competition due to a specious claim of moral concern. There is no legal recourse, since it is a private organization, and so the only method of protest that remains to us is to not participate in the festival, to encourage others to withdraw as well, and to express in no uncertain terms exactly why we are doing so. I applaud those developers that have already chosen to make that stand, and hope their other brethren soon follow suit. It is only through community and solidarity that we’ll truly drive home the point that this sort of censorial behavior is not acceptable.

Links for the Moment

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, discovered via Chris Pelsor’s snogblog. For those of you who dig on this sort of stuff, it’s totally a good find, lots of good information.

How To Be Friends With Your Ex is a good read, kind of relevant to me personally. There’s a lot to the whole notion of staying friends with an ex. My own personal philosophy stems from the idea that just because a relationship is ending, it doesn’t mean you suddenly stop loving someone. I still love all my exes, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. My opinion is that it’s a heck of a lot easier to process the loss of the relationship if you’re not trying to also suddenly “un-love” someone. Acknowledge that you still love them, and that they still love you, but that the relationship wasn’t working out. Something to consider is that you started dating this person because you felt they were good people. I won’t say that there aren’t some wolves masquerading as sheep so to speak, but generally, if you trust your judge of character elsewhere, you should trust it in this as well. If you trust your judge of character and believe that they’re good people, then why should that abruptly change because they’ve decided the relationship wasn’t working out? If you can accept that they’re still good people, but simply couldn’t remain in the relationship (for any number of reasons), then it becomes a LOT easier to become friends again a hell of a lot sooner. It’s a lot better in the long run, in my opinion, to change the nature of your love (from more eros to an agape-centric love), than to try and kill all feelings for someone and then maybe become friends at some distant future point.

There’s a lot more to all that than I’m really writing down, but for now that will have to do. It’s already a kind of cluttered explanation, but until I sit down and let it percolate for a while, I don’t think I’m going to do better.

Night Photography

Setting Your Night Photography Goals: I found this blog through my father, and have been enjoying the photography and writing he posts. While he’s primarily focused on the topic of night photography (as fits the topic of the blog, and a subject near my own heart), what he talks about with keeping yourself motivated and on track by setting yourself good, clear, reasonable goals is really worthwhile no matter what sort of creative work you’re endeavoring to do.

“For Fun” Indeed

To say that games cannot do whatever other media can do, that they are “just for fun” and have no other purpose, is to betray a profound contempt for games. (Raph Koster in response to a comment that games are played for nothing more than fun)

Very succinctly stated and in my opinion spot on.  As is evidenced by the nature of the appeal in Minnesota, there are still quite a few ill-informed and misconceived notions about the medium that need to be addressed.  While there is a fair bit of understanding that video games are the “political tool du jour” in this election year, that doesn’t make their attempts to restrict the rights and freedoms of a fledgling medium any less dangerous.

I’ve discussed this in the past, but I’ll say it again: comics sadly let themselves be pigeonholed back when they first became popular, and have now had to spend decades fighting that image because they didn’t fight it then.  Regardless of whether you like graphic, violent video games, I hope that we can all agree that in order to defend our rights as a whole, we need to defend these now.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. (H.L. Mencken)

Democratized Literacy

Raph Koster has an excellent post up right now discussing the notion of democratized literacy that is well worth the time to read. I’d have to say that I largely agree with him, and feel that he makes an important implicit point: the entire notion of literacy and literature is constantly evolving, and should not be assumed as a static and limited definition. The structure and limits of a definition can change and expand, as long as the idea remains.

There will be more substantial content “soon.” In the meantime, I hope readers are finding these links useful.

RPGs at Gestural Narrative

While I may go back and expand on this in the future, I wanted to mention this post about games, in particular role playing games, as a form of gestural narrative, which I found over at Roll the Bones. Rather than reinventing or reiterating the wheel, I would instead suggest you swing by the site and read it for yourself.

On an unrelated note, please be patient; we’ll be doing more with this site soon.

Improving the Middleware Licensing Model

[Before I get into the specifics of what I’m talking about, I’d like to preface all this by saying that I am not a business analyst, nor an economist. I don’t know the realities of how feasible this is, as I have not run any numbers to check that feasibility. More than anything, I am putting this out there as an idea, in the hopes that someone with the requisite expertise can actually run the numbers and (hopefully) put them into practice. — Nabil]

As I’m sure most of you are already aware, games are generally no longer made in someone’s basement on a shoestring budget. They are developed by teams ranging in size but rarely under a dozen at this point, and for budgets that are quickly rivalling the most expensive Hollywood blockbusters. While the size and scope of game development is now on par with that of movie development, we haven’t bothered to adopt many of the business models that are used within this sister entertainment industry, and not because they couldn’t be successful, but simply because those holding the purse strings are leery of trying something new on a $20 million game. This is only going to become worse as budgets continue to escalate into the $100 million and even $200 million game. Put simply, the financiers of the industry are becoming more risk-averse, and are going to become more conservative as time continues. If we’re going to find alternative models for game development, it needs to be done now if at all. Personally, one avenue I’d like to see pursued is a royalties-based licensing model.
Continue reading “Improving the Middleware Licensing Model”

Virtual Home

This may perhaps be a post better suited for my other blog, but for some reason, I felt it better suited to talk in this one about the notion of virtual spaces as a home, which is a topic recently touched upon over at Terra Nova in Bonnie Ruberg’s recent post: Grounded in Virtual Spaces. Her post broaches the topic that in many ways, blogs serve as a surrogate home on the internet.

But what exactly is “home”? Several Native American tribes believe that home is where you are born (in a geographical sense — I somehow doubt they were referring to the hospital room specifically), and that there is a spiritual connection tied to that area from then onward. This doesn’t mean you have to live there your whole life, but it will still have an effect on you in often subtle ways. Personally, I’m a big fan of this idea, and feel it works well to define a virtual home as well. Blogs (whether it’s a myspace page, friendster, facebook, blogger, or a stand alone site like this one) are often our first real forays into being a creator or participant in the virtual arena. It provides an anchor point where they are free to express themselves however they want (to let their guards down, figuratively speaking). People may move on or away from these blogs or pages, but their time spent with their own space to create and express themselves will continue to have an effect on them throughout their other endeavors.

Forums, however, serve a complementary but separate role, more similar to third spaces (Bowling alleys, pubs, places people gather that are neither home nor work), where it is a peer gathering of people collaborating to form a dialogue. It does not qualify as a home, per se, in that no matter how freeform the structure of the forum is, it is still ultimately governed by someone else. We may even end up spending more time in that third space than we do in our homes (even more true on the internet, where “home” serves as a place to toss links and thoughts before heading back out into browsing, with only the occasional extended period spent cleaning up or redesigning the site), but that does not alter the distinction between the two spaces.

I’m not really going anywhere with this in revelatory terms, but I did want to share. I may expand it later.