…And I’m all out of ass. Go watch the Duke Nukem Forever trailer. Do it right now!

http://kotaku.com/335793/duke-nukem-forever-teaser-trailer

If the game ever comes out it won’t be the best game ever, and it won’t be worth the 10 year wait, but I have a feeling it’s gonna be a complete riot to play. One of the comments on Kotaku says it best:

Who cares if its not the best looking game around, or doesn’t have feature X or feature Y. Its fucking Duke Nukem.

Amen.

Trivia of the day: did you know that – unlike many think – the line “it’s time to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of gum” is not from Army of Darkness…and that it isn’t an exact quote? The correct line is “I have come here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of gum”, and it’s from the movie They Live. Go watch that one as well.

The game formerly known as Truth, Justice and Spandex is now known as…Spandex Force! No need to tell me that you preferred the old name – I agree completely. But there’s not a single feasible way to find a domain for that name! Truthjusticeandspandex.com? Don’t be ridiculous. Justiceandspandex.com? Nooo. Spandexjustice.com? Dude, it’s starting to sound like a strange fetish site. So, spandexforce.com it is. Which incidentally also sounds strangely like a fetish site.

Game Info
Spandex Force is a unique puzzle/adventure/RPG game that lets you create your own hero to clean up the crime-infested town of Vigilance Valley. Follow your hero’s quest to rid Vigilance Valley of vicious villains such as the Blizzard Wizard, the inept riddler Countess Conundrum, and the mysterious Professor Aphasia.

Screenshots

Download
http://www.spandexforce.com/files/SpandexForceDemo.exe

Notes

• The art could be improved. I’ll see what can be done about it; at the very least I’ll need a new city screen. Suggestions for an appropriate artist I can contact are welcome!
• It’s not fully balanced yet. Feel free to suggest improvements!
• Peter: I haven’t included any sheep just yet, but the eagle from Sheeplings randomly appears on the city screen.
• And Anders, I’ll see what I can do about losing progress indicators… I need to get the art sorted out first, though! :/

Thanks in advance for any comments.

Have you finished high school? If not, chances are you won’t be able to read this blog.

Yes, it’s yet another ridiculous online test. I’m a sucker for these, and I can’t help myself whenever there’s a nice button saying “test yourself;” this time I didn’t have to fill in anything other than my blog’s URL, though. Here you can see a speculation that the algorithm is a variant of the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Formula, and given the little I know of Flesch-Kincaid (NOTHING!) I’m inclined to agree. It’s your usual run-of-the-mill combination of sentence length and syllables and whatnot to generate an estimated lowest necessary level of education to understand the text; apparently I’m lucid enough for all post high school people.

“High school? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? I thought this was a blog about technical issues for nerds and geeks and weirdos, but even wee high schoolers can read it!”

Well… I was a bit miffed at first until I tested a number of other sites:

• www.penny-arcade.com – Elementary School
• www.abc.com – Elementary School
• www.crankygeeks.com – Junior High
• www.tomshardware.com – Junior High
• www.gamespot.com – Junior High
• www.imdb.com – Junior High
• www.xkcd.com – Junior High
• www.gameproducer.net – Junior High
• anders-ivarsson.blogspot.com – Junior High

(Did you know that my Indian name is Can’t be Arsed to Make Proper Links?)

Of course, I also found a bunch of sites that also got the High School grade. I can honestly say that some of these surprised me. Quite a bit.

• www.gamefaqs.com
• www.gamasutra.com
• www.gamedev.net
• www.tigsource.com
• www.slashdot.org
• www.engadget.com

GameFAQs? What the hell? Anyway, in my search I did find a couple of sites that received a rating above High School. They’re hard to find, but here are two:

• www.microsoft.com
• www.gamepolitics.com

Can you find any others?

This weekend I saw a 2006 movie called The Black Hole. It stars no one I have ever heard of, the acting was appalling, and it had one of the worst storylines I have ever had the misfortune to endure. The IMDB rating is 3.1, but despite all my negative comments I think they’re a little bit harsh on the poor flick: it was entertaining after all!

First, let’s go through some basic physics. A black hole is a point in space where the gravitational field is so dense that nothing can escape it. Not even electromagnetic radiation such as light. So far so good – the movie described black holes pretty well, and even fit in a nice comment about why they’re called black holes. (Hint: see the previous sentence.) But then things got worse. Let’s see if I can offer a brief synopsis of the movie.

An experiment in a particle accelerator in St. Louis results in the unfortunate creation of a microscopic black hole. From this black hole, an energy-eating creature emerges and starts to gobble up all our precious electricity. Meanwhile, the black hole starts to consume first the research facility, and then most of the city. For no apparent reason the President decides that a nuclear strike will make things better, despite what an expert on black holes says. Aforementioned expert presents his theory that the energy creature is connected to the black hole, and that if the creature is sent back through the hole, both of them will disappear. After some difficulty this is exactly what’s done…and all ends well.

Oookay. Now… Let’s see where to begin.

The movie mentions that in 1999 scientists foolishly disregarded the possibility of a black hole’s creation. This refers to the disaster scenarios presented before building the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, in which they summarize the threat with the following comment:

We conclude that there are no credible mechanisms for catastrophic scenarios at RHIC

Those foolish scientists! Don’t they see the dangers of microscopic black holes, prophecied by the movie?! Well, no. As far as I know, black holes aren’t stable while they’re small; it’s speculated that they leak Hawking radiation, and if the black hole is smaller than, say, a great mountain chances are it will evaporate with time.

Then we have the small detail of the energy creature emerging from the black hole. Dude. The movie’s plot would be completely acceptable if it just contained the black hole! It would have been a more decent disaster movie, and it wouldn’t have flaunted its ignorance like it does now. Why not leave it at a black hole? Why invent an energy creature that shouldn’t be able to travel through black holes (since…well…nothing escapes)? And why invent some story about closing the hole by shoving the creature back through it. What the hell? If we accept the idea that the creature consists of some Mystical Energy(TM) that’s unknown to us, and that the presence of that energy can neutralize the gravity field of a black hole, then why in the lower blazes didn’t the black hole get neutralized when the creature passed through the first time? I could have accepted some strange speculation about Mystical Energy, and how the creation of a black hole results in the creation of this Mystical Energy Creature and it’s gravity-neutralizing effects…but the scientist in the movie mentions how the creature travels through black holes to new parts of time and space in order to eat more energy.

(But of course, if we start to accept Mystical Energy creatures, we must start to accept other strange possibilities. Like, maybe they can be Mystically Positive or Mystically Negative, and when they’re positive they can generate black holes, and when they’re negative they close them. The act of travelling through the hole would then cause the Mystical Energy creature to switch polarity. So… Let’s just disregard the whole Mystical Energy idea completely.)

Watching The Black Hole is a little surreal. It not only contains (*cough*) questionable science, but the acting, the script, and the rest of the movie makes just as little sense. Why would anyone suggest deploying nuclear weapons against a black hole? What would they hope to achieve? I would assume that even a little kid knows what a black hole is – not to mention the President of the USA and his generals!

Still, despite all its bad points, the movie was strangely amusing and entertaining. And it does bring up some interesting things: the script writers were familiar with the debate about the RHIC, and when they designed a creature they chose an energy being…which is the only reasonable choice, since all matter would have gotten torn apart by the gravity of the black hole. Sure, energy can’t escape either, but given the choice between “look, a warrior serpent emerged intact from the black hole” and “look, a weird energy life form emerged” I choose the latter. Still, it would have been nice if the script writers had chosen a subject closer at hand. This is the dangers of possessing just a little knowledge: if you don’t know anything about a subject you probably wouldn’t take the task upon you, but if you have a little knowledge you arrogantly believe that you know enough to get the work done.

(Disclaimer: I’m a programmer, not a physicist. Nothing said above is guaranteed to contain a shred of truth. I hope the irony is quite visible for everyone.)

I’m often disappointed by technology. The year is 2007 and there are no cyborgs, no anti-gravity devices, no colonization of the Moon, no food pills and no household robots worth mentioning. But one thing does give me hope for the future: technologies involving induction! This has to be the coolest thing ever.

Induction itself is quite simple: it’s a law that describes the connection between the strength of a magnetic field, a conductor (such as a piece of metal), the conductor’s movement speed, and the resulting voltage in the conductor. Essentially, voltage and magnetic fields are connected…and one can be used to generate the other. I assume that everyone’s familiar with the electromagnet and how electricity can generate a magnetic field, but the cool thing about induction is that the reverse is also possible.

One application that’s come up recently is recharging batteries through induction; it’s been all over the news lately, how (induction-prepared) cell phone batteries can be recharged by simply placing the phone on a special pad, and it’s been rumored that Apple will use induction for certain products. And here’s a Taiwanese patent for a device that can recharge normal batteries through induction. But there’s more to induction than this!

One thing I had never heard about until today was induction cooking. It’s really quite clever: a magnetic field interacts with a conductor (a cooking pan or somesuch), and because there’s electrical resistance in the conductor the current is converted to heat. No need to transfer the heat through a coil or by heating with gas – the cooking pan itself is heated from the magnetic field! Cleaner, faster, and more efficient. Also less dangerous, since you won’t be able to burn your hand on the stove anymore. Is there no downside to this at all?! No, not really. But try telling that to the uncouth masses.

“A great big magnetic field in my kitchen?! No way! Who knows what it’ll do to me!”

It’ll make your life better, that’s what. Here’s a summary of test results concerning the dangers of radiation involved with inductive cooking. See anything there along the lines of “will cause dangerous mutations and spleen ruptures”? Nope, nothing at all. (Though to be honest, cancer is always a possibility. But then, just about everything can cause cancer.)

I think most people suffer from a belief that electromagnetic radiation is something strange and weird and sciency. It’s not. It’s pretty dull and common, in fact. I leave you with a quote from Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics’ review of The Core:

[...] humanity is doomed and will end in a few months. The cause? Deadly microwave radiation will cook us since we’ll no longer be shielded by the Earth’s magnetic force field or what Keyes refers to as “Earth’s electro-magnetic energy field”.

Keyes proceeds to demonstrate the effects of losing the magnetic field by lighting the aerosol from a can of hair spray and flaming a peach representing Earth. He makes his explanation simplistic since he’s talking to military brass who can’t grasp complexity, even though they lead one of the most complex and high tech organizations in the world.

Not only does Keyes not know the difference between forces and energy but he apparently believes that electromagnetic radiation such as microwaves can be deflected by a magnetic field. Here’s a quick experiment, try using a magnet to deflect the electromagnetic (EM) radiation emitted by a flashlight. The EM radiation is a beam of visible light and, although we hate to spoil the experiment, nothing will happen.

Evildoers, prepare yourselves! A new hero is in town, and Vigilance Valley will no longer be a putrid cesspit of crime and villany! Create your own hero in the puzzle/adventure/RPG Truth, Justice and Spandex, and battle horrible super villains like the Blizzard Wizard and Countess Conundrum. In other words: the first public version of my new game is available and I’d love to get some feedback!

Screenshots:
http://www.karjasoft.com/test/screenshots/ss1.jpg
http://www.karjasoft.com/test/screenshots/ss2.jpg
http://www.karjasoft.com/test/screenshots/ss3.jpg

Download:
http://www.karjasoft.com/storage/Truth,_Justice_and_Spandex.exe

Note: I’m not happy at all with the city art. I need to find an artist interested in making it look nice an’ good; if anyone has any suggestions for suitable artists I might contact, please let me know at info@karjasoft.com!

More notes:

• The game starts in full screen, but you can use the command line option “-w” to force it to windowed, or “-fl” to force it into fullscreen with the desktop resolution.
• Many non-necessary things are missing. Options, profile selection, some special effects for the super powers, and so on. Please let me know if something’s completely off – but it might be on my todo list already.
• The game will feature artifacts – weapons and armour that you can apply to your hero. But that store isn’t done yet.
• All game mechanics aren’t explained; I’m still undecided whether or not I should go into rants about how some super powers level up along with powers, and how the power levels decide the defense against similar powers. Part of me reasons “Screw it! It’s playable without such information, and I can make FAQ pages for those who do care.”

Does anyone remember the Gizmondo; a handheld system that was launched in 2005, and claimed to be the best thing since sliced bread and Jesus combined. (Sliced Jesus?) Gizmondo wasn’t exactly what you would call a hit, and if I were thus inclined this is where I would make a pun about the word “hit.” See, Gizmondo was brought to life by Carl Freer and Stefan Eriksson, and the latter one’s claim to fame comes from totalling an Enzo.

You were too pretty to die so young!

Anyway, to make a short story shorter, Gizmondo died and no one cared (except for all the investors who lost millions). Read more about it all here. But now things are changing; it’s time to care again.

The Gizmondo actually wasn’t that much of a joke, hardware-wise. It had a decent 400 MHz ARM CPU, 320×240 resolution, NVIDIA 128-bit GoForce (not a misspelling) 3D 4500 GPU…and some cool things like a GPS and GPRS connectivity. Essentially, the device was good enough to play some games, and was tailor-suited for connectivity applications. (Car GPS, check. SMS services, check. Social gaming possibilities, check. Etc etc.) Apparently, Carl Freer also thought that the Gizmondo was a pretty nifty piece of hardware, ’cause he’s bringing back the Gizmondo. (Warning, Swedish article.)

The plan is to release the old version of the Gizmondo in May 2008, and a new improved one in time for Christmas 2008. With my non-existing psychic powers I foresee that the second coming of the Gizmondo will end in tears, and it’s doubtful that we’ll even see the May launch. A console launch needs funding, and Freer is not likely to get much of that after what happened the last time. So, he’s trying to make the Gizmondo cheap(ly) and work with Open Source to cut down on costs. In addition, he’s producing the hardware on credit – a Chinese company in Shenzhen is offering to produce the Gizmondo in exchange for exclusive rights on sales in China. If Freer manages to pull this off I’ll be in awe; it just seems too improbable that anything good will come of all these schemes!

However, it’s hard to deny that if he manages to get the console out to the public, and if there’s funding for a PR campaign, and if the claimed 35 available game titles really are available at launch, things might look brighter. The name Gizmondo may be a joke right now, but it’s hard to laugh at the connectivity possibilities the device has; there’s a slight chance that it might find a niche for itself after all.

If nothing else, it might become another homebrew favourite like the GP2X. It might not be what Carl Freer wants, but he should be thankful even if it just comes to that.

Today I browsed a DDJ article called C++ Hash Table Memoization: Simplifying Dynamic Programming, and I was immediately struck by a feeling of “why the hell didn’t I think of this!” If you’re not familiar with Dynamic Programming, here’s a very very brief summary:

When solving a problem you often encounter overlapping subproblems which – if you implement the solution algorithm naively – causes a sub-solution to be calculated many times. The most famous example of this is the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and so on. Here’s an example pseudo code snippet stolen from Wikipedia which calculates a Fibonacci number naively:

function fib(n)
if n = 0 or n = 1
return 1
else
return fib(n + 1) + fib(n + 2)

From the code you’ll note that when trying to calculate, say, fib(5), you’ll calculate fib(3) more than once. Dynamic Programming is basically saying “hey, let’s stop being stupid! If we make sure that the result of fib(3) is only calculated once we’ll save a lot of time!” Quite so. Dynamic Programming may have the most idiotic name ever, but the idea is elegant and very efficient for certain problems.

The Wikipedia article then goes on to mention two DP approaches: top-down, and bottom-up. I’m getting all hot and bothered from mentioning both DP and bottom in the same sentence, but I’ll try to control myself. Bottom-up DP is essentially a way of restructuring the algorithm from a recursive solution to an iterative one, while top-down retains the recursive structure but uses an array for storing the calculated values. As the DDJ article mentions, arrays are most commonly used for storing values…and that’s where the real beaty of the DDJ article’s suggested improvement kicks in.

An array may be inefficient for some problems, so use a hash table instead!

In that short sentence I think I’ve summarized the whole DDJ article; the actual implementation of the proposal is irrelevant, and nothing else is particularly new or exciting. If not for this short addition to what’s already presented on Wikipedia I would’ve claimed that the article was dull and pointless – but now it turned from cow dung into gold! It’s amazing how a small idea can have such an effect. And of course, the fact that it’s such a small idea is what causes the I-Coulda-Thought-of-That reaction that’s oh-so-common.

To end on a high note, here’s a little fib for you:

Left
Right
Top-down
Bottom-up
I don’t give a damn
Just don’t waste any precious RAM

I’m slaving away at my new game Truth, Justice and Spandex, and I’ve come to the point where it’s…playable. Not just “I can start the different puzzles and finish them,” but more along the lines of “if I just get some more art and make some sound effects I’ll have a working demo that I can release to get feedback.” In fact, the programming and game design is starting to look pretty okay, so I’m concentrating on writing dialogue for the first episode, Cometh a Hero. In fact, I just finished a little exchange that will occur when you beat the first “boss”:

PLAYER: Take that, you vile miscreants! Prepare to do some heavy time.
THE HEAVY MOB: Oh man! Not again… We just got out two weeks ago!
THE HEAVY MOB: Maybe crime doesn’t pay after all…
PLAYER: You can say that again!
THE HEAVY MOB: Maybe crime doesn’t-
PLAYER: Don’t.
PLAYER: Off to the slammer you go!
PLAYER: Well, that’s that!
PLAYER: I have a feeling that Vigilance Valley will be a quiet and peaceful place now!
NARRATOR: Unfortunately, our hero is a lousy fortune teller.

I know, I know – I’m no Oscar Wilde. But in all honesty I’m not trying to be; in fact, I’m outright stealing ideas and clichés! Can you spot the Bananaman references, for example? Or the joke stolen from Dragon Half? The game will be riddled with subtle and not-so-subtle hints at various comics and superheroes, and in order to make it work I’m trying to make the game – and its story – highly clichéd and tongue in cheek. I hope that people will appreciate a dry, mellow kind of humour along these lines.

…And I hope that the clichés won’t merely be seen as clichés due to lack of interest/innovation.

Speaking of superheroes and clichés, if anyone hasn’t read Ruben Bolling’s amazingly awesome God-Man, go do so right now! Go here for a brilliant example of the comic, or check out the fan archive here. God-Man is an omnipotent superhero…which of course renders him invulnerable to every threat, and capable of anything. The comic is an obvious caricature of Superman at the height of his powers, but also takes a swing at just about everything it can.

Go read it now! I promise that you won’t be disappointed, or my name isn’t Nietzsche-Lad!

In a PC World article today it’s mentioned that Vista still has major incompatibility problems nine months after release. Brothers’ multi-function printers don’t work correctly, it’s not possible to fax over the Internet, Photoshop CS2 won’t work – and so on. I don’t care particularly since I don’t plan on upgrading to Vista for a year anyway, but it’s still interesting information. But the most interesting thing wasn’t the article itself, but the comments it received on a Swedish magazine site which summarized the PC World article. The usual bitching and moaning occurred: “Vista is slow” (I bet it is, so don’t use it), “Use Linux instead” (no thanks), “XP is better” (agreed, actually), “Vista is still in beta” (no it’s not; it’s just badly implemented) and on and on and on.

Then, all of the sudden, comes an interesting exchange of comments:

“Apple changes architecture with less problems than MS changes Word format!”
“There’s a difference between changing architecture for 4% of the users compared to changing something for 95%. If you’re using Apple you’re stuck with Macintosh – it’s a simple task to write drivers for such a narrow range of hardware.”
“[Inane comment snippet snipped] Well, I’d rather be locked in by Apple than shut out by Microsoft.”

I found that last comment very interesting because it reflects my own view about Microsoft and Linux: I’d rather be locked in with this proprietary OS and have all the functionality and programs I need, compared to use Linux. In theory I like Linux – Open Source is appealing, Ubuntu and that ilk looks pretty nifty, I love the customizability, and so on. But for my uses Windows XP beats all and any Linux distribution hands down, because I feel shut out from Linux.

All metaphors and similes break down eventually if you examine the objects in question close enough, and so does my simile between the Apple/MS and MS/Linux situation. I’m generalizing horribly, but one could view things this way:

Mac: Small user base, small set of proprietary programs, low customizability.
Windows: Large user base, large set of proprietary programs, low customizability.
Linux: Small user base, large set of open programs, great customizability.

I can hear the outrage of Linux/Mac users. “What about stability, what about look and feel, what about this and that!” All good points, I’m sure, but since I’m trying to come to a conclusion instead of complicating things up even further I’ll disregard all of those things.

Now, looking at my small summary of the OSs, what can we observe?

First, that Mac users might have a stronger feeling of community compared to Windows users due to the smaller set of users and programs. This would be an excellent reason to feel shut out by Windows. But – to show where my simile above crashes and burns horribly – there really is no similar case between Windows and Linux. And to confuse things even further, I like Mac OS X but I feel shut out by that as well! If I extrapolate even further from these facts I eventually come to this little list:

• Mac users feel alienated from Windows.
• Windows users feel alienated from Linux.
• Windows users feel alienated from Mac.
• Mac users probably feel alienated from Linux too.
• Just as Linux users probably feel alienated from Windows and Mac.

What’s the conclusion, then? That OS debates eventually break down into territorial pissings and a case of liking what you’re used to – especially the programs you’re familiar with – so it’s bloody ridiculous to even try to be objective.

“Hey, what about all the examples of people who’ve abandoned Windows for Linux or Mac?”

If they were used to Windows and knew how to use it properly there wouldn’t be a cause for them to switch.

“But I knew this guy who had used Windows for ten years and then fell in love with Linux! Doesn’t that invalidate your comment above?”

I doubt that he used Windows properly then – I’m betting that he forced himself to use tools he didn’t like.

“Programs are irrelevant! There are always applications with equal functionality on all platforms, so anyone can cross over to a new OS without any problems.”

Use your GIMP if you like it. I don’t, though!

So there.