How To Build a Game In A Week From Scratch With No Budget...

...is an article at Gamedev by Jay Barnson of Rampant Games.  The article is a little long but gives a lot of good information about the process of creating a game.  Click this Hackenslash link to download and play the game Jay created. The source code is available too.

Below are the lessons learned, quoted from Jay's article:

Lesson 10: Doing something like this really was worthwhile

I didn't think I'd have time to do something like this when I first found myself challenged. But now that it's done, I found it not only taught me a few things, but it increased my enthusiasm for continuing work on the project I put on hold for this. You wouldn't think that working on Yet Another Game would feel like a vacation, but it did. And after all, I didn't lose that much time – only forty hours. This was a fun experience – one I'd be happy to repeat again in the future.

Lesson 9: Cutting features isn't always free

Some of the last-minute changes to Hackenslash really blew the game balance out of whack. The inability of monsters to cast spells, and the lack of need to for the player to 'conserve resources' as he pushes deeper into the dungeon trivialized some of the challenge to the game. If those features were going to stay 'gone,' the game needed another design pass to re-balance it and improve the modified gameplay. In other words, cutting features introduced an additional cost to the development of the game. This made me wonder how many retail games were released in a terrible state because the development team didn't have time to re-visit the game design after features were cut to meet schedule.

Lesson 8: Do the important stuff first

I found I tended to be more productive, efficient, and make more progress on the game when I was in 'crisis mode," realizing how tight my deadline was and making a conscious decision to (usually) only work on the pieces that made the biggest difference in the game.

I think I may run through a similar exercise with all of my future projects: I'm going to try to break my development time into, say, 8-hour segments, and play a little game with myself: If I pretend that I only have those 8 hours to 'finish' the game, what could I do that would make the biggest difference in those 8 hours? I don't know if it would pay off as well at the end of the project as the beginning, but it's worth trying.

Lesson 7: Scope will expand to exceed your budget and schedule

Every programmer I've ever met tends to underestimate the time required for him or her to complete a feature. Add to that the dreaded 'feature creep,' and you can guarantee your project is going to be way over schedule. I'm not one of those guys who believed that "feature creep" is always a bad thing. I think some of the most killer features – the ones that turned games into hits – often came about as a form of "feature creep." But new features are seldom free. You will have to make room for them in your budget – and that often means cutting other, less worthy features. This project taught me a little bit about being ruthless in cutting features. In truth – if I had the option, I should have added an extra ten hours to make the game truly "work" – but only after cutting all the fat (like doors, magic wands, etc.)

Lesson 6: Get the Game Playable as Fast As Possible

The sooner you are able to get things on screen and start playing around with it, the sooner you can revise and improve your design, weed out the things that don't work, and come up with great ideas for making the actual game better. It also helps you catch bugs (especially those ugly design bugs) earlier, which makes them much easier (cheaper) to fix. It also aids you in sorting through priorities.

Lesson 5: It's sometimes much faster to throw away old code and start over

I only ended up completely throwing away some code and starting over once in this project. While I can't know with a certainty if I really saved time by doing this, I suspect I would have been fighting the design flaws of the original method all the way to the end of the project. On the flip side – throwing away the old rotating feature code and starting over with a better design might have saved me some trouble.

Lesson 4: Python Rules!

I can't believe how quickly many features came together using Python as opposed to, say, C++ or even Java. Things like typeless variables, dictionaries, and extremely easy-to-declare lists (allowing a mixing and matching of object types) made it very easy to implement content lists, attribute handling, spell effects, and so forth. I was already a fan of the language, but now the prospect of using Python, tied into a high-level 3D engine, has become extremely appealing to me.

Lesson 3: Don't underestimate the art requirements

Looking up source art, drawing, tweaking, testing, and re-tweaking artwork… even little 32 x 32 bitmaps – consumed a great deal of my time – and the results weren't nearly as satisfying as what I'd have gotten if I had devoted those hours to programming.

Would an experienced artist taken less time? Undoubtably – though the difference probably wouldn't have been too extreme. Would their results have been better? Absolutely. Be careful not to trivialize the effort it takes to generate art for your game, whether you are doing it yourself or getting someone else to do it for you. It can suck up a great deal of time if you aren't careful.

Lesson 2: I need to be more efficient in my use of time

A night where I'd devoted four hours to working on the game often ended with only two hours (or less) of actual development time taking place. Some of the time went to documenting what I was doing, but I also found myself losing focus, taking extended breaks, not immediately returning to work after a minor interruption, surfing the 'Net, playing (quick) games, or whatever. Now, taking breaks during long stretches of development is a good and healthy thing. But by recording my actual productivity, I was pretty surprised at how inefficient I was with my usage of my development time.

I'm not getting paid by the hour. Better use of my time means I can get more done AND have more 'free time' to do other things. So I'm going to be making a concentrated effort to improve my use of time when I am "on the clock."

Lesson 1: IT CAN BE DONE

While Hackenslash in its current, 40-hour incarnation is hardly a poster-child for high production values, I think it demonstrates how much can be done – on a fairly complex game – with no budget and very little time by a single developer. Given more time – and even a fairly insignificant budget – or the help of a few friends – who knows how much better it could become?

The bottom line is this: If you want to develop games, nothing is stopping you. You can find the time. You don't need a big budget or fancy tools. You don't need a team of specialists. You don't need years of training. All you need is the will to make it happen.

And that's the most important lesson of all.

If you decide to try your hand at building a game, you don't have to use a Python engine, there's Unity (a free full version for Windows with Unity Pro and Android trials is available for download) and Glest (a free 3D real-time strategy game and engine).  Check out this list of game and rendering engines for additional info.  Not all the game engines are free and API bindings are listed as well, so approach with caution.

Here's a screenshot from Glest.

While looking around I found the site Sploder, that offers making your own online game.  You can play games, make one, and there's a weekly contest.

-- Marge

Home science

Today I started looking for information on contamination (because it's flu season and people near me have been touched), but ended up finding out about home science, especially chemistry.  Chemistry can be fun (and not just the "better living through chemistry" kind).  It's complex work that requires caution, skill, knowledge and being in tune with what you're doing.  A healthy respect for the reagents is also needed.

Below are three videos looking a difference aspects of chemistry.  This first one is a safety video that's somewhat incomplete.  Note that last bit of info about pathways.  Also there is an MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) available for every chemical that can be purchased.  Yes, household products are chemicals too.

This second video is about where to get lab chemicals.  Note that the speaker, Robert Bruce Thompson (aka TheHomeScientist), mentions early in the film that buying chemicals can attract the attention of law enforcement.  Also I didn't know that home science is somewhat a movement; looks like there's a lot of homeschooling and inventing going on (I'm studiously avoiding any other possible uses).

In this third video are some tips from ChemicalMyst, mostly about lab equipment, which can be expensive.  I think I'd pass on the glass distillation chamber (been burned too many times on other projects).

And for simple fun here's SteveSpanglerScience with color-changing milk:

What I see is -- soap, being a surfactant, changes the surface tension.  What do you see?

-- Marge

Joe, Willie, Sad Sack and G.I. Joe

My always questing brain settled on WWII cartoons for today's post.  I didn't realize what I was getting into -- Disney and Dr. Seuss both produced propaganda for the U.S.'s war effort.  Some of Seuss' work is clearly racist (gasp!).  Wikipedia's article on WWII cartoonists mentions a cartoonist --

Arthur Szyk received recognition for his political cartoons during World War II. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt called him a "one-man army." Adolf Hitler even put a price on his head.

I was thinking of Sad Sack and the guy that did Joe while he was in the trenches.

Bill Mauldin drew Willie and Joe cartoons during the war.  Here's a lovely homage from RoadCaptainEntertain:

 

Sad Sack is a comic strip and comic book created by Sgt. George Baker, also during this war.  According to Wikipedia:

Set in the United States Army, Sad Sack depicted an otherwise unnamed, lowly private experiencing some of the absurdities and humiliations of military life. The title was a euphemistic shortening of the military slang "sad sack of shit", common during WWII. The phrase has come to mean "an inept person" or "inept soldier".

Here's a sample:

The term "G.I.Joe" was coined by Dave Breger who

...created the syndicated Mister Breger (1945–1970), a gag panel series and Sunday comic strip known earlier as Private Breger and G.I. Joe. The series led to widespread usage of the term "G.I. Joe" during World War II and later. Dave Breger was his signature and the byline on his books. During World War II, his cartoons were signed Sgt. Dave Breger.

Posted at ComicArtFans by John Michael Jackson is this piece of memorabilia by Dave Breger:

G.I. Joe evolved into a media blitz in the '80s.  The National Review revisited the era in this article, written by Loren A. Smith.  There's a wiki called JoeGuide, last article posted in 2006.

And that's the news today from the front, folks.

-- Marge

Thomas Nast vs. Boss Tweed

In a previous post about editorial cartoonists, "Cartoons that can change history," I mentioned Thomas Nast.  Today I'm going more into detail on his work.  He was a cartoonist, an illustrator of children's books, and a contemporary of Lincoln.  And, between his publication, Harper's Weekly, and the New York Times, Boss Tweed was indeed brought down.  For biographical info on Nast, you can type his full name into the search input at Google and get a short history, pulled in from Wikipedia, some images and other searches related to Nast, and about 1,470,000 results.  The same is true for typing in Boss Tweed, except only 1,300,000 results.  A cartoon portfolio of Nast's work can be found at Ohio State University's site.

Nast's was published from 1859 to 1886.  He supported Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and in the 1863 cartoon below linked emancipation with patriotism.

The cartoon below, also from OSU's site "was widely reproduced by the Republican Party for use in President Lincoln’s campaign."

His campaign against Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed deeply undermined the organization, which was considered a Democratic machine at the time.  Below is his depiction of a gouty fallen ex-gladiator.

Harper's Weekly went out of print in 1916.  And, since Nast's time, the Democratic and Republican parties have essentially switched roles.  PBS has a timeline of the political parties active during Lincoln's time.  Lincoln's opponent during the election of 1864 was George McClellan, a democrat.

It's interesting to note that all of the original images were woodcuts.  Maybe sometime soon a post on printing techniques...

-- Marge

There be unfriendly forces lurking

Funny, but the title "Hunt for Red October" has been coming to mind lately, then today I came across this headline "Red October Espionage Network Rivals Flame" at Information Week/Security.  In the article author Mathew J. Schwartz states:

Security researchers have uncovered an espionage malware network that's been operating undetected for at least five years and that has likely stolen quantities of data that stretch into the terabytes.

"The campaign, identified as 'Rocra' -- short for 'Red October' -- is currently still active, with data being sent to multiple command-and-control servers, through a configuration which rivals in complexity the infrastructure of the Flame malware," read research published by Kaspersky Lab.

Flame malware was discovered in 2012.  There is an interesting article by Kim Zetter at Wired with the title "Coders Behind the Flame Malware Left Incriminating Clues on Control Servers."  The article ranks Flame third after Stuxnet, then Duqu. 

Sidestepping the hacker vs. cracker debate, I submit that we're really talking about cyberwarfare, whether conducted by a loosely-knit group of collaborators or a country.  In this Wikipedia article is the following:

The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth domain of warfare."

In its article defining cyberwarfare, Rand states:

 Cyber warfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation's computers or information networks through, for example, computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks.

That's not quite complete.  Classified information and corporations' intellectual properties are also being targeted as reported by the Los Angeles Times in "U.S. spy agencies to detail cyber-attacks from abroad" by Ken Dilanian, Washington Bureau.

Of course the U.S. and Israel are in the mix too (cartoon by Arend Van Dam at Political Cartoons).

In closing, seems to me -- if you use free antivirus software, it's that same as installing a fox in the henhouse.

-- Marge

Some recent cartoons that resonate (for me)

Editorial, aka political, cartoons offer us a glance at current issues and sometimes evoke a laugh. And sometimes they carry a message that goes deeper than the topic at hand.  Since I realize that not everyone sees things the same way, my offering today comes with the "for me" caveat.

At the US News & World Report site in a section called January Whispers I found this cartoon by Dan Wasserman:

At The Week is this gem by Bill Day:

From David Horsey's blog at the LA Times site, called Top of the Ticket, here's one:

In my online look-about today I found an organization for editorial cartoonists -- the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC).  You can find cartoons here as well, such as Adam Zyglis on climate change:

That's it for today, folks.  Have a great weekend.

-- Marge

Free Adobe graphics software

If you haven't heard yet, Adobe is offering one of the older versions of its graphic suite series, specifically CS2.  This page at Gizmodo gives more information about it.  Adobe produces some very useful applications, like Acrobat Reader (now an digital document standard), Flash and Shockwave.

Although I'm not a big fan of Adobe's graphics apps (they're fairly expensive), I was interested in seeing what's in the suite and what else is available.  So in addition to CS2, I now have Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 for producing Acrobat documents and forms, and Adobe Premiere Pro 2 for editing videos. Here's the link to the download page; remember to grab the serial number.

Some problems were encountered when installing the downloads on my OS (operating system) -- Windows 7, 64-bit.  It seems the app was written before this version of Windows (and possibly before Windows Me), because the installer wouldn't accept the folder designation "Program Files (x86)."  It's easy enough to direct the installer to a different folder, but getting past the "insert next disk" was impossible.

Here's my work-around.  Burn each downloaded disk to a CD.  After installing disk 1, go to the folder on C-drive you created, and find the file "Setup.exe."  It may be in a sub-folder created by the installer called "Adobe Creative Suite 2.0."  Run the setup and select one of the apps listed as not installed; start its installation and insert the disk requested when prompted.  After going through the list and installing each of the applications (one at a time worked best), run setup one more time to verify that all the apps are installed.

This is what the directory looks like when all the installations are done (includes Premier Pro, not in the CS2 package).

Hope this works for you.  You're welcome to comment.

-- Marge

People's stories

Not being much of a TV watcher, I'm behind the times on the popular shows.  Sometimes I'll buy a TV series years after it's over, or receive one as a gift.  This year my son gave me the first season of "Lost" (with the promise of remaining seasons if I like it).  I must say I'm enjoying it very much and especially appreciate the power of hearing the characters' stories. 

Because you might like hearing people's stories, too, here are some sites that feature them.

"9/11 Anniversary 2012: Survivors' Stories" is a collection of video recordings from people remembering.  These stories and other true stories are featured at Bio. Here's a sample from the 9/11 commemoration.

 

The BBC has compiled "an archive of World War Two memories -- written by the public and gathered by the BBC." There are 64 categories of stories.  For an American view of the war, try KilroyWasHere.org, "In Harm's Way."

Studs Terkel was a gatherer of stories and is perhaps best know for his oral histories.  His work, "Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression" is one of his best.  

While collections of stories seem mostly to be about hard times, just a personal story can reveal intriguing facets and sometimes soothingly familiar details of other participants in this human stew.  As an example, take a look at Web of Stories. 

All this talk of stories brings to mind this image found at Dreamstime:

-- Marge

Fiscal cliff cartoons

You're probably as tired of hearing about the U.S.'s fiscal cliff as I am, but there are some good cartoons on the subject in the webosphere.

What I suspected all along -- a cartoon by David Horsey, published at The Week:

The following four are from US News & World Report's site, the Congress Cartoons category.  First is one by Chris Britt:

Marshall Ramsey gives us a look at Billy's Room:

 

Lastly two cartoons on points of view, one by Dick Locher and the other by Walt Handelsman:

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And that's a wrap for today.

-- Marge

2012 Christmas Greeting

Here's my offering for this year's Christmas season.  (Late again)

-- Marge

The sky is falling! Uhm, was falling...

Now that we've survived the doomsday prediction (Mayan calendar reaches its end, world doesn't follow suit), we can relax and have a laugh about all the brouhaha.  (However, if you're a true alarmist/doomsday theorist, you could say it's just late.)

Below are two doomsday prediction cartoons by Cam Cardow and two end-of-the-world ones by Wiley Miller (from CSL Cartoonstock).

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I could finish with an interview of a Mayan elder who knows about Mayan calendars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v67pxeizXo), but as any doomsday theorist knows: to accept a viewpoint that disagrees with your personal doomsday theory is against the rules of doomsday theories.

-- Marge

deviantArt, #Digital Landscape

DeviantART, "where ART meets application!", is a gathering place for some wonderfully talented artists.  As an example here's one of the pieces on the front page today.

"A Bed of Moss II" by Matthias-Haker:

One of the areas of digital artwork that continually draws my attention is digital landscapes.  I think that's one reason why I play games like Entropia Universe and World of Warcraft -- to see the landscapes.  (Okay, okay, they're fun too.)  DeviantART has a digital landscape group that accepts new members.  Please note that there are rules for submission.  Here's a sample rendered 3D landscape, titled "Coming Home" and by ~tophoo-de:

Here are two videos showing the landscapes and skyscapes of World of Warcraft (WoW), uploaded by Hubwood:

Not to be forgotten is the work of Ryan Bliss at Digital Blasphemy.  He offers free wallpapers, as well as paid memberships.  Here's a thumbnail of a free wallpaper for "Canopy Creek (Autumn) (2009):

BTW, there's an article at the WoW site, titled "ImagineFX Gets Exclusive with the Blizzard’s Fine Arts Project," that states

The December edition of ImagineFX magazine is now on sale and packed with a little something extra for Blizzard art enthusiasts, including tutorials and how-to information from some of the artists that help bring World of Warcraft to life. You’ll also get to take a look into Blizzard Entertainment’s Fine Arts Project; a unique gathering of some of the world’s greatest contemporary fantasy artists creating their own visions of the Blizzard universe. Legends including Alex Ross, Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell, Craig Mullins, Alex Horley, Todd Lockwood, and Syd Mead share their experiences and showcase the incredible pieces of art they produced for the project.

-- Marge

All about Murphy's Law with cartoons, too

My home has been a working example of Murphy's Law lately, hence this post about it.

HowStuffWorks has an article by Josh Clark titled "How Murphy's Law Works."  Of note is that it's called Sod's Law in England.

There are sites dedicated to the subject.  The Complete Edition of Murphy's Laws gives an exhaustive glossary of the law, its corollaries and derivatives.  This one I experience on a regular basis:

O'Brian's Law
If you change lines, the one you just left will start to move faster than the one you are now in.

This cartoon is in Clay Bennett's archives:

An collection of cartoons by Diana Denny at The Saturday Evening Post contained this cartoon (all I know is it was published in the summer of 1971, can't read the cartoonist's signature):

And, lastly, here's a demotivational poster from quickmeme by rriverstone:

Have you noticed that social sites have started using the term karma?

-- Marge

Tools for holiday artwork

Starting with a look at the free holiday clip art that's available online, I found that the word for today is brushes.  Since I can't seem to find a site that defines what they are, here goes.

Digital art software comes in mostly two categories, vector (for line drawings) and raster (for working with bitmap images, like photos).  Brushes are usually associated with raster graphics programs; however, Gimp brushes can be in three forms: animation, raster and vector.  

Essentially a brush changes the shape, and possibly other attributes, of your cursor.  In a way a brush acts like a rubber stamp (some programs have a separate feature called rubber stamp). Most art software comes preloaded with a variety of brushes.  You can also download additional ones and/or make your own.  Most of the additional brushes available online are compatible with Photoshop.  Since Photoshop, an Adobe product, and PhotoPaint and Painter, Corel products, are both proprietary software, I'll be talking about Gimp brushes today.  Gimp can use Photoshop brushes and is open source -- version 2.8 is the latest and it's very good.

There's a very long, but good, tutorial on using brushes in Gimp on YouTube. In fact there are many Gimp tutorials on YouTube.

Below is a sampling of the brushes you can download and install for use in Gimp.

All-free-download vector brushes for non-commercial use (Exercise caution clicking at this site -- it's closely tied with Shutter Stock):  

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Obsidian Dawn, byline "digital design resources":

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Brushlovers, byline "amazing free Photoshop brushes":

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If you're wondering about Gimp and Photoshop compatibility, here's an article from Chron, small business division.

Photoshop may be the industry standard for digital graphics, but I dislike working with it.  My preferred money-sink is Corel.  But seeing the video above on Gimp, I'm beginning to wonder about switching.

-- Marge

War on Christmas cartoons

Fox News would have us believe there's a war on Christmas.  It must be so because the reporters there have repeated it over and over (as they do many news items).  And some other reporters and cartoonists have run with the idea.  For example, Jon Stewart at "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. (Sure miss Jon's point of view.)

Bearman (who may not have a first name)  at Bearman Cartoons posted this cartoon in 2011:

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A cartoon by Jeff Koterba, dated 2011, is posted at Cagle Post --

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Pat Bagley weighs in on the war on Christmas at The Week Magazine with this one:

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And at TruthDig, "drilling beneath the headlines," I found one by Nick Anderson:

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So, is there a war on Christmas?  Jeff Sorensen at the Huffington Post says "The War on Christmas Doesn't Exist."

-- Marge

Alien ancestors?

Visualize this -- Two planets collide and the debris ejected into space contains fragments that are rich with organic material.  The fragments themselves become meteorlike bodies that traverse space until they land on other planets.  Within a landing meteoroid is viable life substance that has been nurtured by radioactive heat source(s) and nutrients.

Voila!  New amino acids and nucleobases take root and possibly flourish far from their origin.

From the TIME article by Jeffrey Kluger, titled Aliens Among Us (you need a subscription to read the whole article):

Life, as far as we can prove, exists only on Earth. There is our modest planet circling our modest star, and then there is the unimaginable hugeness beyond. Yet in that whole, great cosmic sweep, we're the only little koi pond in which anything is stirring. That, at least, has been the limit of our science. But that limit is changing fast.

The cosmos, as scientists now know, is awash in the stuff of biology. Water molecules drift everywhere in interstellar space. Hydrogen, carbon, methane, amino acids--the entire organic-chemistry set--swirl through star systems and dust planets and moons. In 2009, NASA's Stardust mission found the amino acid glycine in the comet Wild 2. In 2003, radio telescopes spotted glycine in regions of star formation within the Milky Way. And meteors that landed on Earth have been found to contain amino acids, nucleobases--which help form DNA and RNA--and even sugars.

The study that looks at "the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and planetoids" is called panspermia.  There's an interesting site on the topic called Panspermia-Theory, "origin of life on Earth."  There's also a Panspermia.org, that states "Life comes from space because life comes from life."  Not sure about that, but it could be an interesting stop.

If you're scientifically inclined, be prepared to be fascinated by this video, uploaded by Gravitionalist:

-- Marge

Creators Syndicate -- A new cartoon every hour

At Creators,com (aka Creators Syndicate) you can find a variety of cartoons and comic strips. The cartoon page has an ever-changing assortment of material. I found the cartoons by clicking on the "Content" link on the landing page.  The site bills itself as "a syndicate of talent" and features political opinion pieces, as well as advice and lifestyle.  While the content is intended for syndication by newspapers and other publishers, viewers can read it and comment.

Under editorial cartoons I found this one by Steve Sack:

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And under comic strips there was this one by John L. Hart:

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There is a page where you can find samples of  games, such as Sudoku, crossword puzzles, word finds, and so one.  This link downloads a Charles Preston crossword.

For your added enjoyment here's a sample of Steve Sack's sculpture, titled "Sleeping with the Fishies." He says about his sculpture --

My sculptures are made of paper mache. Not many artists over the age of nine work in paper mache. Which may explain my place in the art world.

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Steve's work is A#1 in my view.

-- Marge

Post 2012 election humor (revised)

It ended 3 days ago and I still can't believe it's over.  The 2012 election, that is.  No more emails pleading for mo' money; no more negative ads on TV.  The news is still just as negative though, guess that will never change.

Here are some cartoons to help you wind down from one of the ugliest elections I've ever seen.

Chan Lowe at Tribune Content Agency:

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David Hitch at the Missoulian:

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Does Mr. America look like the Mad Hatter to you? -- M

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David Hitch at Worcester Telegram and Gazette:

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Tim Eagan at Cagle Post:

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And a beaut of a cartoon from Tim Eagan's site that brings to mind the creative process:

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It's O.K. to sigh a sigh of relief -- it's over.  BTW, looks like Hillary is campaigning already.

-- Marge

Neverwas: part real, part imaginary

Neverwas is a movie that was produced, filmed and completed but not released to theaters (you can find it on DVD).  It's one of the best movies I've ever seen and reminds me somewhat of "The Secret Garden."  Almost halfway into the movie I thought it was mostly about mental illness and there would be a psychological turnabout.  Not so.  The movie ended well and the ending was believable, but by then you liked the characters enough not to care about believability anyway.

This is a movie for people who are open to the unexplainable elements in life and can suspend judgment long enough to appreciate what they're seeing.  The cinematography with light playing around the actors is by Michael Grady and is luscious.  The acting is excellent.  The music is by Phillip Glass.  But mostly the story and its telling take the day -- the film is written and directed by Joshua Michael Stern (I cannot find a bio of him!).

Here is a quote from a review I found at Amazon by Grady Harp:

NEVERWAS, a little miracle of a movie written and directed by Joshua Michael Stern, is an allegory, a fairytale, a dissection of the impact of mental illness on parents and children, and story of compassion, believing, and blossoming of character that was created with a sterling ensemble of actors in 2005, failed to find a niche in theatrical distribution, and went straight to DVD - becoming one of those limited release films that is very elusive even in the megavideo stores. The reasons for this relative anonymity are not clear, but film lovers will do well searching out this little gem: the rewards are immediate gratification and long lasting satisfaction....

 And here is the trailer:

As for me, I'm still working on the 3rd video in Virtual World Tours.  This time we'll be visiting Second Life.

-- Marge

Sim-on-a-stick, part 3: meeting people and exploring in OSGrid

In today's video I'm exploring OSGrid.

OSGrid is one of the virtual worlds powered by OpenSimulator, aka OpenSim.  OpenSim's front page states

OpenSimulator is an open source multi-platform, multi-user 3D application server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows virtual world developers to customize their worlds using the technologies they feel work best - we've designed the framework to be easily extensible. OpenSimulator is written in C#, running both on Windows over the .NET Framework and on Unix-like machines over the Mono framework. The source code is released under a BSD License, a commercially friendly license to embed OpenSimulator in products. If you want to know about our development history, see History.

OpenSim's history page traces its origin to Second Life(tm) releasing their client to open source in January 2007.  (Second Life has their own open source portal.)  Now there are a number of individuals and companies that run OpenSim.  You can find a grid list at OpenSim's site, where a number of public sites are listed.  Not listed are private grids, usually behind corporate firewalls, that can be used for conferencing, training, and so on.

Advantages of downloading, installing and setting up an OpenSim are having your own land free of  payments to another landowner, complete control over the content, and the ability to back up the world and your work.

When I was considering setting up my own world, I identified three important factors:  a processor fast enough and powerful enough to render the world, a secure database for storing and accessing assets, and enough bandwidth to maintain a reasonable frame rate.  (If you would like to add to my list, feel free to submit a comment.)  It seems to me one of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) setups would work great (but may be pricey).

Because I was unable to upload the video ("Virtual World Tours: OSGrid") to Blogger, you'll have to view it on YouTube.

It always surprises me how creative work knows no deadlines -- it's simply done when it's done.  This video has flaws, but it was time to move on.

-- Marge