Mitsuru Kirijo
July 8th, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
Arrived yesterday from play-asia. I should play more Persona 3.
Super stardust HD
July 4th, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
Firmware 2.40 came out for the PS3 and with it the trophies system. Seeing I only own one game that supports it, patched in the same go, I thought I’d give it a whirl.
The game’s name is Super Stardust HD and it’s been available on PSN forever. I bought it mostly because I liked the old school music, but having to chug it through again for trophies made me realize what a great game it is.
One thing though that bugged me is that they made it so that some trophies (the most valuable ones) can only be earned if you buy the expansion pack. Bleh. Marketing at it’s finest.
Best anime ever
July 2nd, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
Okay. Maybe not best ever, but it’s good. Really good if you’ve ever had a kitten yourself.
..a bit sad at times though ;o;
The first episode is a bit meh (this is episode 5) but it gets better and much cuter in the later episodes. As you can see.
Games I’ve bought but never played
June 25th, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
- Disgaea 2
- Rogue Galaxy
- Okami
- Shin Megami Tensei: Digital devil saga 1 & 2
- Fire Emblem: Path of radiance
One day..
Metal gear
June 16th, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
In the advent of Metal Gear Solid 4 I decided to do something that I’ve never done before. As I understood it at the time, MGS4 is awesome but if you know the story it will be even awesomer. I had MGS2 already, but I never got into it because I couldn’t really grasp the story so I ordered the MGS Essential collection and I played all three games back to back. I finished the third game the day before four dropped in my mailbox. From playing the first couple of hours I can already sense that it was a good idea.
This week’s loot
May 13th, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
From the top left:
- Warhawk (incl. Blutooth headset)
- The world ends with you (still wrapped in plastic since I literally got it mere seconds before taking the picture)
- Grand Theft Auto 4
- Mana Khemia (incl. soundtrack)
- Mayflash USB fighting stick (PS2/PS3/PC)
I got the fighting stick mostly because of Virtua Fighter 5 and Arcana Heart, because both those games are great fighters but play best with an arcade stick. The Mayflash stick was resonably priced and the reviews said it had a good quality per cost ratio. I agree. It was much bigger than I expected. Your wrists rests comfortably on the controller itself when you play.
I bought Warhawk mostly because of the Blutooth headset. I wanted to use it in Metal Gear Online, but the beta ended already. D:
Update
I had two expectations from the arcade stick I bought. First, I wanted a control that didn’t give my thumbs sores from doing quarter-circle attacks (aka. hadokens) and second; I wanted it to improve my game in Arcana Heart, for starters.
So did it meet my expectations? Yes and yes. Mildred is still stupid hard, though.
Generating stereoscopic images with parallax occlusion mapping
April 22nd, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
I rarely do experimental programming, but I had an idea today that I wanted to try. Maybe it’s not a new idea but at least I thought of it on my own.
Stereoscopic images are usually photos taken by two seperate cameras aimed at the same object but a small distance apart from eachother. The difference in position will let one camera see the object at a slightly different angle than the other. By looking at the two images side by side and crossing your eyes you will experience a 3D effect. Other than the eye-strain it’s a neat effect.
I liked the idea and thought about ways to generate a steroscopic image from a single flat image. The idea I came up with was to fake depth in the original image and then render two snapshots of it from slightly different angles. There’s a popular method employed by game developers for faking depth in otherwise flat textures called Parallax Occlusion Mapping. The idea is to use a heightmap and some clever math to make parts of the image “pop out”.
The implementation was really straight forward. I just found a parallax mapping shader online, converted the code to C++ and threw some sample images at it.
See my results after the break.
Continue reading ‘Generating stereoscopic images with parallax occlusion mapping’
Arcana Heart
April 21st, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
I got this in my mail today. Am I excited about it? Yes.
Franziska von Karma
April 20th, 2008 by Erik Benerdal
I’m a huge Phoenix Wright nerd and I had this urge to do some fanart. I haven’t drawn much lately and I thought it could be a fun way to get back into it. Here’s the first in what I hope to become a series of Phoenix Wright characters:
