Archive for September, 2006
I found an online anagram generator. I entered my full name (ie. “Erik Benerdal”) and among the hundreds and hundreds of anagrams, these were among my favourites:
A Breeder Link
Near Rebel Kid
Lined Breaker
Bleak Nerdier
Real Bird Knee
Learned Biker
Bare Nerd Like
Darn Beer Like
Real Bike Nerd
Dark Beer Line
I also put in my brother’s name “Lars Benerdal” and the best one I could find was “Sell A Red Barn”.
See! Anagrams are amazing!
Today I took a big chunk of my wad o’ bills to the bank and converted them into digital bits of my new bank account.
I was told by Dan to get an account at UOB, because it’s the same bank that the company uses and that means I won’t have to wait for the salary to transfer.
So this morning, I was walking around looking for the bank, with some general directions. I found all the other banks. OCBC.. Citibank.. the Unified Overseas Bank and I thought: “Hmm.. I must be close”
…
“Wait a minute. U-O-B? Oooh!”
I’m so dense. I blame the heat. It’s super hot out today. My only salvation came from a vending machine that had drinks for 80 cents, which was exactly the amount of change I had on me.
Japan is like the mecka of video game development. At least that’s how I see it. But the japanese have such a strict work culture, I don’t think I would want to work there.
All of this is based on what I heard from the ex Ksatria, now Koei artists and what I’ve heard from the ex EA guys I work with.
For instance. At Koei, you can’t play music. At least not so anyone else can hear it. If anyone hear it through your headphones, you will be kindly asked to turn it the down by some exec. You start your day at precisely 9am and leave at 5pm. Lunch is taken at noon for one hour. No exceptions.
Compare that to the loose environment here at Ksatria, where everyone comes and goes as they please. As long as they do what they’re supposed to, of course. Whenever I get bored I tend to stroll around, maybe doing a little dance or trying to play the guitar that’s lying around.
They also can’t use instant messengers like msn, aim or icq. Instead they can only use some internal software that only works in between other co-workers. E-mail is also blocked.
It all sounds like some kind of communistic control scheme, but EA follows the same strict rules when it comes to contact with the “outside world”. All outside connections are strictly monitored by a small team of administrators. But when you think about it, you can’t help but understand the reasons behind these kind of rules.
One click of a mouse button. One screenshot. That’s all it takes to throw the company’s entire plan for a game into jeopardy. Not to mention the threat of outsiders trying to get in. Remember that Half-life 2 was delayed the better part of a year as a result of someone getting access to Gabe Newell’s email account.
This is a late blog entry for the past saturday.
A bunch of us from work went out for dinner and kareoke. The occation was two-folded as we were 1) saying good bye to Derrick, who left the company recently, and 2) catching up with two other artists that left even before that to roast them about their new jobs at Koei.
We had a great time. The food was amazing. If you’re ever in Singapore. There’s two places you must check out. The first one is Carnevore and the second place, where we went yesterday, is Vi’lage at the bottom floor of Herr..? hurr..? ..some mall on Orchard.
It was the first time I ever sung kareoke. But this being Asia it was just a matter of time before I did. It was a fun experience. My throat took a beating though.
Looking at scalari.net’s statistics, the first impression is positive. I get lots of pagehits and it’s climbing ever higher. But once I dig deeper it’s just a big mess of ad bots and hotlinking. People seem to really enjoy the videos and music I put up. So much that a few major media sites have been hotlinking them straight out. Without notifying me nor linking to this site.
There are also a few people who use images from here as avatars on forums. They’ll soon be in for a surprise, ho ho ho!! (Did someone say “horse penis”?)
Bottom line. This is my site and I didn’t create it for the internet leeches. Thus, despite what I’ve been stating previously, I’m going to remove all trivial media, like funny videos and music. I’m also cleaning up old project pages like for the Ragnarok game I made. For info about those I will in the future point to my portfolio.
I had a bit of a slow run last week with work. I was doing some AI pathfinding stuff and I wasn’t feeling very inspired to do it. Maybe it was my inexperience with the existing AI system, or the fact that I didn’t know where to start. Either way, I managed to get pass it and now I got the dudes running around my li’l test map trying to get from point A to point B without hitting any of the obstacles. I’m constantly tweaking the algorithm and parameters to make them avoid all the obstacles in a natural way.
There are a whole bunch of variables that controls the movement, everything from speed and acceleration to how “scary” an obstacle is to the dude.
It feels kind of like a game of my own design. I enter some numbers, hit play and watch what happens. If I get a really bad result, that means I’ve lost and need to try a different combination. If I get a good result, I move on to the next level.
I played this “game” all day today, and my conclusion is that the current system is good, but not nearly good enough. There’s much to be done! =3
I got out of bed this morning, feeling a bit bored. I went down to the pool and swam some lanes. (As a programmer I need all the exercise I can get). The sun was shining and reflecting in the pool water, when it finally hit me. “Dude! What the hell am I doing in the middle of asia swimming in this big-ass pool!? Just a couple of months ago I was just some poor punk kid coding pet projects from home.”
I’m so slow..
This is one of those qualities that I’m not necessarily proud of. I’m close to immune against change. It’s like a defence mecanism. I’ve been so apathic to this whole experienced and focused on my job I haven’t thought much about how I was able to get here.
Lesson learned: I need to be more grateful to those people around me that made this happen. I need to stop thinking of this as luck, or fate, and take my position more seriously.
Nintendo held it’s press conference yesterday, or today, depending on where you live.
He reveiled the date and price of the Wii although they had already been leaked around 12 hours before that.
They also said that Wii will be bundled with Wii Sports, and I’m so confused why people didn’t expect this. I’ve always known that they were gonna bundle it. How would I know this? Because basically, Wii Sports is MSPaint.
Ever since the first versions of Microsoft windows, they’ve shipped it with this sub par drawing tool. But what some people might not now, MSPaint was originally included just to give the user a tool where he or she could practice using the mouse. Remember that this was a loong time ago, when computers weren’t mainstream and mice didn’t feel as intuitive to the common guy.
Nintendo needs something like MSPaint. They need something where the player can just play around and try different game mechanics using the Wiimote.
They also talked about the Wii’s internet capabilities, and I wonder. How will Wii’s online multiplayer support look like. Sony is doing what Microsoft is doing and building an online gaming platform, the “Playstation Network Platform”.
But when it comes to games Nintendo isn’t doing what Sony or Microsoft is doing. They’re doing their own thing, remember. And where does multiplayer fit into that picture? All Wii games I’ve seen so far have been designed to be singleplayer experiences, or at most something you play together with your friends (ie. in the same room). I doubt the Wii will have games like Halo or Battlefield, that make great online games.
I have a feeling that the Wii’s online mode will only be about downloading stuff. Games, demos, Mii’s. Not necessarily to play multiplayer games.
I’m a few hours into MH now and I’ve gotten a good taste of it’s difficulty. It was funny how after I defeating a really tough boar miniboss, they decided to spawn that same boar as a regular enemy in the next level. Like 5 of them in the same zone. For some reason though, they never showed up in the levels after that, so it might’ve just been a bug.
So, yes. The game is really hard, and I don’t like hard games that much. I tend to give up if a game is too unfair. But whenever I get horribly raped by some ridicilously hard monster, it still feels like it’s within reach. Whenever that happen I put the game down and then I’ll think about it for a while, often at work. When I think I’ve figured out how to beat the monster, I try again. Only to be horribly raped again, of course, but still making progress. Then after another try or two I finally beat the damn thing and I feel really happy with myself.
But enough ranting. Here are some recent screenies:
I got a new shiny armor made out of dead things.
The graphics are really impressive for a PSP game
This wyvern was a real pain, but I killed him dead!
I later acquired a pet piggy.
Oh, where is Silly when you need him?
