Ghaladen's Rants

San Antonio Trip

ghaladen — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:26:21 +0000

So I decided to take a break from the daily grind with computers and visit San Antonio with my girlfriend and her family. We’re staying at the very badass 5 star Westin La Contera resort, and touring the various sites for the next three days. I’ll be posting pictures every day that we’re here on the page listed below. Since my laptop is in the shop, I have to rely on my iPhone for my computing functions. Unfortunately, that means these posts will be shorter, and I can’t comment on the photos, but I’ll be back on Monday, refreshed and ready to code more XNA goodness.

San Antonio Trip 2008

Adding my game collection to MySpace/Facebook

ghaladen — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:49:21 +0000

So I have this video game collection consisting of a few RPGs. Actually it’s a hell of a lot of games, 250+ and mostly RPGs. It’s all thanks to working at GameStop and buying them off of customers instead of letting them trade em in (I was a really bad employee). Anyway, I wanted to show off what I’ve collected, so I initially thought of creating a web page that pulls data from an external xml page on my web host and formats into HTML via XSLT and use an iframe for MySpace/Facebook to show it through. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, except Myspace/Facebook don’t support iframes. So I had to look at other options…

Now granted I could’ve just listed my collection as HTML on both my profiles, but that means I’d have to update both profiles every time I added a new game to the collection. I want to be able to update it in just one place and have the changes propagate everywhere I have the app. So I was left with only one option: Flash. Actually Flex to be more specific. So I hand-typed (most of) my collection in a flat XML file (probably should’ve done a database/web service, but just in case I switch web hosts, I wanted portability), and wrote a Flash app parses that XML and creates a datagrid with the box artwork, name, platform and what I paid/screwed-gamestop-out-of. The end result is on my profile @ http://www.myspace.com/ghaladen. I’d show it off here, but apparently WordPress likes to block Flash unless it’s from a video source like Youtube.

Granted it’s really simple, but I’m not a Actionscript/Flash/Flex kind of person. In fact I loathe all things Flash. But it was a necessary evil to show off of I’ve collected over the years. Only downside is I couldn’t get RPC to work with Flex, so the XML has to be compiled with the flash app (meaning I have to recompile and upload the swf file to my host everytime the list changes). But I guess it’s not bad for a few hour’s work. And before you ask: No, none of my games are for sale or rent.

New Opeth Album…Watershed

ghaladen — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:16:09 +0000

So, Opeth has a new album coming out titled Watershed, due the 3rd of June. If you don’t know who Opeth is, go look em up on Youtube or imeem. If you’re a metal fan, and you don’t like Opeth, you deserve a backhanding. Opeth is one of the few great innovators of metal. Hailing from the land of melodic death metal mediocrity (Sweden if you haven’t figured that out yet), Opeth combine their breed of Scandinavian Death Metal with elements of almost every other genre of music, including jazz, fusion, progressive, and many more. Luckily they haven’t done country or rap yet. And frontman Mikael Akerfeldt switches from clean singing to growls many times per song, but it doesn’t feel one bit disjointed. Like bands such as Type O Negative, most of their songs clock in in at 7 min+, and are essentially 2 or 3 songs rolled into one. But needless to say they are without a doubt one of the most interesting metal bands of our time. The download track off of Roadrunner’s site, download it, listen to it, love it, by the new album. MP3 is on this page.

Got a new laptop

ghaladen — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:04:50 +0000

Well, I finally decided to break down and buy a laptop. This is a Dell Inspiron 1525 Special Edition, the black one (note the matrix like design on the cover).
Specs aren’t high end (don’t think I’ll be running Crysis on it, but luckily I don’t play many PC games), but still nice for a laptop:

Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5550 (1.83GHz/667Mhz FSB/2MB cache)
Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista ® Home Premium Edition >:(
LCD Panel : Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280×800)
DVD Drive: CD / DVD Writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
Memory: 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
Hard Drive: Size: 250GB² SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
Video: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 (I think 384MB Shared)
Sound: High Definition Audio 2.0 (sucks ass)
Wireless: Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini-Card

Even though I probably shouldn’t have spent this kind of money (Thank God for credit), now I can at least code while away from home. Originally I took Evil Vista off of the machine and tried Ubuntu Linux 7.10, but Linux’s support is iffy on this release (graphical glitches, sound and wireless stopped working). Then I tried the 8.04 beta, it was better but nearly everything was locked out (due to the beta status). The sound would work on some apps but not others, and I couldn’t even virtualize a copy of XP because Parallels and VMWare didn’t support the beta. So I just broke down and put good old XP Pro on it. Guess its just a classic.

So anyway, let me know what you think of my new toy.

Blender Video Tutorials – Soup to Nuts

ghaladen — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:51:51 +0000

Okay, so it’s not called “Soup to Nuts”, it’s actually called Blender Basics, but it intends to be a start to finish on learning Blender. Now if you’ve never heard of Blender, it is from what I can tell, it is the only full fledged 3D modeling tool that has all the nifty features of its $5000+ competition products (3ds max, xsi, maya, etc), except its free. Open source, even. And being the cheap ass that I am, I like free. In fact, I downloaded Inkscape last week and have been playing with it (it’s a freeware knock off of Adobe Illustrator – vector based drawing. Which is good for me because I have the drawing skills of a first grader…).

Anyway, I needed a 3D Modeler so I can make some models for my XNA game I’m working on. I tried the freeware XSI version (limited to 64,000 triangles. Bad for terrain models), and I looked at Maya Personal Learning Edition (can’t export to anything useful, watermarks your models), and even looked at some of the other freeware stuff (Milkshape, Wings 3D) which were lousy at best. So with reluctance, I picked up Blender.

Why the reluctance, it’s free and full-featured right? What could be better? Well, let’s just say the interface is about as alien as it gets. Starting up the program is like jumping down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. The left mouse button does what you’d expect the right to do, there’s as many buttons on the panels as the space shuttle, and within 5 minutes you want to gouge your eyes out in frustration. But if you want to do cool modeling tricks like fur and hair, vertex painting, sculpting and Nurbs, it’s either deal with the interface or give up your first born.

So I needed a good start-to-finish resource to learn this complex beast, and I found it: blenderunderground.com. This is by far the most comprehensive, in-depth screencast series I’ve seen on Blender. Most videos I’ve found on the interweb are usually the advanced stuff, and not in any order of difficulty, making it frustrating for the beginning- and I must emphasize- artistically handicapped person like yours truly to even attempt to learn this stuff. And I personally like videos over books when it comes to things that are non-code because I can actually see what the person is doing, not just scrambling over where to find “Inter-Extrapolate” button, or whatever.

Anyway, there’s only 5 videos so far, each about an hour or so. By the 5th video, you’re already skinning models with textures, which I figure will get me far enough off the ground make some cool stuff. There isn’t much better instruction for $0 on Blender than this, ladies and gentlemen. And for some twisted reason, of all the freeware modellers, Blender gets the most love as far as features go (don’t ask me why, artists on a budget must also be masochists *shrugs*). Anyway, check em out. Either that or A: deal with the other lousy free stuff out there, or B: deal with the horribly crippled “lite” versions of the commercial modelers out there. Both options won’t get you much more than N64-quality game models out those.

Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts….Free?!

ghaladen — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:05:58 +0000

Well, sorta. I used to be big into Nine Inch Nails, but I’ve lost interest in the past few years. But now this is interesting. Now that Trent and Co. are out of a recording contract, they released Ghosts I-IV, a four-disc, 36 track collection of instrumental pieces. But here’s the clincher, the first album is a free download! Yes, believe it or not, you can get the first 9 tracks off their site. And even better, you can buy the other three discs for $5! I mean, come on, four discs of music for 5 bucks, even iTunes doesn’t even have sales like that. Also there are collector’s editions (the real boxed packages) for $75 and $300 respectively if you area NiN collector, and like the pretty packaged stuff. But still, this is quite some news. My iPod will be happy, and I need some new tracks to help get me through the hell that is learning XNA. Click the album image to go to the site.

XNA Community Games – Hell Yeah!!

ghaladen — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:19:42 +0000

When Microsoft announced it’s first version of it’s XNA game development engine, I was impressed. It ran well, and it allowed me to make some cool demos with C#. And the fact that it could run on Xbox 360 natively gave it a bit of a wow factor. But I wasn’t rooting for it 100%, due to the fact that in order to play your creation on Xbox 360, you had to have a 100 dollar a year subscription to the XNA Creators Club. Not only that, if you wanted to share your game to other Xbox players, they had to have the same subscription. So I ran through a few tutorials, made a couple demos, and shelved it.

Fast forward to about two months ago, Microsoft announced it’s sophomore version of XNA, this time opening the development platform to*any* .NET compliant language (let’s see, that’s C#, VB, JScript, Python, Cobol, Pascal, etc). Nice. And they allowed for multiplayer support via Xbox Live. Nice again, however now my friends have to have both a Creator’s Club $100 license *AND* a Xbox Live Gold account. Not impressed at all. So once again, fell on deaf ears.

Now, just a few days ago, Microsoft just announced it’s Community Games initiative. When the service goes out of beta (hopefully sometime this spring), a developer with a Creator’s Club license can publish a game for peer-review by other Creator’s Club members. If a peer reviews the game and passes it (no bugs or inappropriate/copyright infringing content), the developer can publish his own game on Xbox Live Arcade for *anyone* to download and play, for free or pay($$$). Anyone as in anyone who has an Xbox 360, an internet connection, and a pulse. No Creator’s Club license required. And did I mention, you can sell your game for money????? This is huge. Microsoft is changing its policy on game distribution from an iron fist to loose hands. It’s like every .NET developer will be handed an Xbox Live Arcade publishing contract (well for $100/yr, and a peer test). This is the day and age ladies and gentlemen. No longer do you have to either try to woo over a game publisher that usually doesn’t give a damn about you, your game or your well-being. Microsoft has opened the flood gates for developers everywhere to start profiting from their creations, without all the red tape of trying to get a contract, or trying to sell their game off their website. This is *HUGE*.

All I know is, I’m dusting off my XNA Unleashed book I bought a few months back. Several years back I was part of a group of people that shared my passion for video games, and we always dreamed of the idea of creating a compelling game, or an array of games actually, and achieving commercial success. Unfortunately due to the our naiveness (for the most part because we were so young), and the lack of a chance by the video game industry, we got discouraged after a few years, went our separate ways, and haven’t spoken of it since. But this….now, this is the chance that I wish we had back then. This is what is going to do to the game industry what Mp3/iTunes did for the music industry. .NET taught us that we can write compelling software w/o the woes of unmanaged languages like C++ (shudders at the thought of pointers), XNA taught us that a small group of 1-5 developers can make games that can rival the efforts of multi-million dollar software development houses, and now Xbox Live Arcade is going to teach us that anyone with a great idea, some code know how, and some modeling software and expertise, $100, and some serious fuckin passion can make a game and publish it to the world, and potentially sell millions.

So with that being said, I’ll be off to refresh my knowledge of XNA. I think I want to make an RPG. Sound good to you? Feel free to comment below.

P.S. In case you are interested in what XNA can do (on both PC and XB360), check out this video. And trust me, compared to the way games were made in the past, making games like this is incredibly easy.

Shining Force III Translation Project

ghaladen — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 18:06:34 +0000

Now, I know this is not late breaking news, but I find it to be blogworthy nonetheless. Remember this game for the Sega Saturn?

If you are a Shining Force fan, you probably remember it, if not, well, then just go back to your Final Fantasies (NOTE: I like Final Fantasy as much as the next RPG fan, I just don’t think it’s the be all end all RPG that all these fanboys croon about). Anyway, this game was released in 1998, in the US and Europe as, well….Shining Force III. What the dim-witted company know as SEGA didn’t tell us was that particular game we got was only 1 episode out of three (which explained the lame ending), they decided (like other great japanese rpgs like Grandia and Lunar), that America didn’t need the other two games, since according to at the time Sega of America douchebag exec Bernie Stolar, “Americans aren’t really into RPGs”. Prick. And in fact, in retrospect, the Scenario 1 we got didn’t have all that great of a translation either, now that I think about it. But alas, we got what we got.

So as much as fans in the Western World booed and hissed and bitched to Sega about it for the last 10 years, not a damn thing has been done about it. All pleadings to port these games to a new console (DS or PSP would’ve been nice) has fallen upon deaf ears. So, luckily a few fans decided to translate the game a couple years ago, and finally fans had a text to read along to while they played the japanese version…..Meh……

Enter knightOfDragon and his team of misfits. Much like Neil Corlett brought us the translation patch for Seiken Densetsu 3(Sequel to Secret of Mana, thanks Square/Nintendo. You fucks), they have brought us patches for Scenario 2 and 3, and even the Premium Disk for the Eng-rish speaking world. They even re-translated the JPN version of Scenario 1 (such nice guys). So here’s the post (they don’t have a site), and here’s where to get the files. And you get an English copy of Shining Force III Scenario 2 and 3, and PD in a few easy steps:

1: Go buy Scenario 2 and 3(Around $50-60 on Ebay at the moment).

3. Stick one of the discs in your CD drive.

3. Download SF3Patch.exe from the above site.

4. Specify which game you’re patching and follow the instructions to make an iso of the patched game.

5. Now you can either mount the ISO for an emulator, or burn the ISO for a chipped Saturn.

And that’s it. And finally, you can see the ending to such an amazingly epic story that modern day RPG’s could only dream of having. And if you’ve never played a Shining Force, you can finally find out that Final Fantasy VII is NOT the greatest game ever made, and start seeing that there’s talent outside of Squeenix (and as of late, ALOT more talent).

Fun with WPF

ghaladen — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:57:48 +0000

Being a .NET developer of sorts, I have always been interested in WPF. I think it’s an interesting platform for building applications of the futiure. In case you’ve been living under a rock, WPF is Windows Presentation Foundation, which allows developers to build applications using DirectX as the hardware rendering, allowing visual aesthetics previously allowed only in games to be used in business applications. Meaning 2D effects, 3D, media, and the like. Hell if you wanted to make an application that looked like one of the consoles on the U.S.S. Enterprise, you could(sorry, geeky Star Trek reference). Gone are the days of the standard hokey grey window with the same standard grey buttons and the standard File/Edit/Window/Help menus. While this is great news to a developer such as me, unfortunately it’s not so easy to blow over with my company, who has the hardest time adopting to new technology (Unfortunately, it’s a by-product of working for a non-technology based company). Anyway, I decided to learn it anyway. The nifty part of all this is that it used an HTML like syntax for it’s declarative programming(meaning the visual elements) called XAML, or extensible Application Markup Language. For example:

Title=”Window1″ Height=”317″ Width=”482″>

would put a button on the screen named “Button 2″. IF you have the .NET 3.0 Framework installed(or are running lousy Vista), you should be able to enter this code in Notepad, save it as a .XAML file, and run it in Internet Explorer as is.

If you’re familiar with HTML, this should look somewhat familiar. Personally, I’m thrilled and hope this takes over HTML as the standard, since I hate HTML with a brutal passion.

Anyway, if you are a .NET developer and are interested in such things, there is an entire webcast series done by William Steele of Microsoft fame called WPF Soup to Nuts. And if you don’t know a .NET language and want to (C# or VB.NET), they have instructional videos on that too.

Before the Dawn

ghaladen — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:47:17 +0000

Okay, so if you read my About Me section, I mentioned I’m a huge metal fan, especially Melodic Death Metal. And as we all know, the majority of such music tends to come from Sweden, and lately it’s been really fuckin boring. If I have to hear another band that sounds like In Flames or At the Gates or the like, I’m going to scream. But I happened to stumble across this band the other day, and I am liking their newest album, Deadsong. Now, I can’t say they aren’t any different from your usual Generic Gothenburg Sounding band (which I guess isn’t the best title for them since they are Finnish), but I have to say it’s some catchy stuff. Anyway, you can listen to them on their site, and let me know what you think.