EricBall

I've played a lot more Skyward Sword (although it's currently taken a back seat to Mario 3DS). The motion controls are still less than perfect (and would it have been so hard to use the normal IR/video control for stuff where you're pointing at the screen?). Groose did develop into an interesting subplot, but you still spend a lot of the game essentially chasing Zelda.

Unfortunately the initial run of 10K boards sold out before I remembered to check the website. I've registered my interest with the two distributors, so hopefully I'll be able to get one eventually. One problem with my DVD library idea is while the RPi has an H.264 decoder, it doesn't have an MPEG2 decoder. So it's not 100% guaranteed it can handle DVD content. (Yes, I could rip & transcode, but I'd prefer to just use the DVD image to keep the menus and other special features.) The one good thing is I'm sure some of the fortunate 10K users will try the same things and will pave the way for me and make the process much more plug & play.

I'm less than impressed with the controls for Midway Arcade, at least on my iPhone 4S. The graphics are nice (although the arcade itself is a little over the top), but the controls seem to be flaky (at least in the default "fixed" configuration, and Spy Hunter in tilt mode). Hmm... if WB/Midway thinks they can make money at $1 on the iPhone, I wonder if they could sell 'em on Steam at a reasonable price.

One big challenge creating panoramas (see my gallery at http://sites.google.com/site/ericballpanorama) is getting the horizon right. This is particularly true for panoramas looking out at the ocean which spans multiple photos. This is because you have to get 2 things absolutely correct: The horizon must be straight level. Even if the photos were taken with a tripod, it doesn't take much for the horizon to be at a slight angle. Additionally, if the photo was taken looking slightly up or down or from any height then the horizon will be a curve in the photo. The horizon must line up between photos. If the horizon doesn't match up perfectly between photos there will be a step at the transition. In theory the way to correct this in Hugin is by setting multiple straight line and horizontal line control points on the horizon. Then the optimization process should correct the pitch and roll along with any curvature caused by lens distortion. The problem is then placing those control points. Unfortunately, the horizon (especially from a JPEG photo) is not a simple line or edge. While it might look sharp at normal size, zoomed in the transition is blurry and not distinct. And from what I've been able to determine, there's no existing solution. So I've done some research and programming. The first step is "edge detection". I'm using a technique based on "Phase Congruency" described by Peter Kovesi http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/~pk/Research/research.html The logic is an edge can be described as the point where the maximum number of frequency components are in phase with one another. To calculate this I do a 32 sample FFT, discard the DC and Nyquist samples, then calculate the resulting inverse FFT of it and it's Hilbert transform then combine them. Because I'm looking for the horizon, which should be roughly horizontal, I only need to do this in one direction across the entire photo. The resulting output nicely highlights the horizon, but is still several pixels wide. (I also limit the calculation to a band containing the horizon, both to reduce noise and calculation time.) So the next step is I do a kind of Hough Transform across the band. For each x coordinate, I take a block of pixels as many pixels wide as the band is high and draw all possible lines from the left to the right edge. The brightest line is deemed the correct line for the horizon and I store the Y coordinate of the middle of the line. The resulting series of X & Y coordinates should be the horizon and can be used as control points.

http://raspberrypi.org The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized US$35 Single Board Computer with the following features: 700 MHz ARM11, 1080p OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU with hardware H2.64 decode, 256MB RAM, SDHC slot, HMDI out, 2.0 USB jacks & RJ45 Ethernet port. From my perspective the biggest attractions are the low price and the HDMI output. I was seriously considering getting one and setting it up to play MAME, but now I have an even better idea: a DVD library. I jumped on the DVD bandwagon very early - IIRC I paid C$700 for my Panasonic A110 (which is still working) and I've put together a collection of a couple hundred DVDs. (Now I buy Blu-Rays.) It occurred to me a TB HD can store over a hundred DVDs. But how to play them back on my HDTV? I considered using my Wii, and there's even a port of MPlayer. However, the instructions a less than clear and seem to imply I'd need to install a custom IOS (system software), which is a bit beyond my comfort zone. I started looking at Media Devices to see what they offered, but then I remembered the Raspberry Pi had both an HDMI output and a USB port - and since it runs Linux, I bet there's software which will do what I want already (maybe even out of the box).

I agree that FORTH is an interesting language. It almost seems to demand a bottom-up coding style. (Although I'm not sure how valid the "fast as assembler" mantra is.) The problem I have with Forth is the lack of standard complex library functions (i.e. stdio in C) which makes it difficult to understand another's program.

I may have to compromise on this - it is a difficult calculation to perform and there are not many spare cycles. I'll see if I can cheat somehow :)Chris I'm thinking some kind of bit mask which tracks which segments are open in each ring along with a bit mask (with a single bit) representing the direction the cannon is facing. AND the masks together and all zero means no shot. The problem is you'd have to somehow rotate the masks to match the display, then update them as they are destroyed. Hrmm..

The internal Li-Ion battery in the DS can store far more energy in less space and less weight than AA batteries. Remember the original GBA didn't have a light, which is one of the main battery users.

The way I handled that in Gold Digger was to have the player continue moving until they lined up with the grid (unless they reversed direction). In this case you might also want to have a delay between when the player moves the joystick and when the tank starts moving. The tank would immediately rotate, so the player could quickly move the joystick in the direction they want to fire.

I should point out, that although I do consider myself a Star Wars fan, there ain't no way I'm shelling out money to see Phantom Menace in 3D. I agree. IIRC Phantom Menace had three good parts: 1. The pod race (the sound of those pods) 2. The second battle with Darth Maul (mostly for the abilities of Ray Park) 3. A few moments of CGI landscapes like the towers of Naboo or the Gungans emerging from the myst But I have no interest in watching a film converted to 3D. Although it may provide more control over the level of 3D, there's no way of creating that missing data or flawlessly separating the different depths.

5. I suspect very few arcade games were developed in weeks. A few months perhaps. 9. Arcades were successful when it wasn't possible to play similar games at home. Arcade games managed to stay ahead of the first few generations of consoles and PCs by having dedicated graphics hardware. But once 3D games came to PCs and consoles arcade games were reduced to specialized controls and ticket dispensers.

The one advantage of using an external drive for backups is you can stick it in a safe. A decent sized safe is only $100-$150 an will provide reasonable protection from fire & water. Offsite (via internet) is another option, but has an ongoing cost.

it is a pet peeve of mine that every maze-generation algorithm i've ever seen always works on the assumption that the walls have no width Yep, I ran into the same issue when trying to create mazes for Skeleton. I ended up creating my own algorithm to fit my particular requirements (e.g. no open areas & wrap around). One trick I used is to have two starting points for the "random walk" which then became the starting points for the player and the skeleton. You might want to do the same.

Unfortunately, that's probably the end of the line for the uDraw: http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/29179

I have seen cases where Windows installs the same USB driver multiple times and it eventually stops recognizing the device. Deleting all of the devices from Device Manager will correct this problem, but as they aren't active they are hidden. See: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/80368-device-manager-hidden-devices.html for instructions on revealing these hidden devices.

In addition to the 2600 & 7800, I have the desire to program the Vectrex. I grew up in the golden age of video games and vector games were part of the magic. The Vectrex also uses a 6809 - the processor I first programming in ASM. In brief, the way the Vectrex draws vectors is: 1. Set the Y velocity 2. Set the X velocity 3. Turn on the beam 4. Turn on the integrators which change the X/Y velocity into X/Y position 5. Wait for timer to expire 6. Turn the integrators & beam off 7. Repeat Back in the day for Atari this sequence was handled by a simple state machine which read a series of instructions stored by the main program. Years ago I thought it would be interesting to do something similar for the Vectrex by doing all of the movement via an interrupt routine which would return to the main program during step 5. Unfortunately, I've since learned the timer isn't for that many cycles so there's no point. But I also came across an interview with Christopher Salomon, who worked on the original DOS Vectrex Emulator and created VFrogger. He pointed out the Vectrex is a dead machine. No matter how much people enjoy it, no more will ever be made. (Especially for the Vectrex with it's vector CRT.) We might play games via emulators, but that hardly recaptures the magic of a true vector display. But it got me to thinking, I noted on another forum that games like Pac-Man are now over 30 years old, so the vast majority of machines which still exist are likely in private hands. Well the same could be said for old consoles. So why put a lot of effort into creating for somthing that's already dead? 'Cause it's cool, I guess. And current platforms just don't have the same level of to-the-metal programming which I enjoy. And part of me still wants a Vectrex...

SC is 6K RAM + 2K ROM containing the boot screen & load routines. All of the RAM is writable via an indirect process. The RAM is also three 2K banks, but there are restrictions on the bank combinations.

I followed Robby Gordon via the Dakar web standings & his forums. Unfortunately it appears again he had some bad luck in the equipment department. It remains to be seen whether he can ever go from winning stages to winning the race.

Some homebrew (e.g. Skeleton+) is legally downloadable and playable via emulators so you can try before you buy.

For Christmas I got Skyward Sword. Unfortunately, my wife didn't get my email about the game+controller bundle, so I had to pick up a Motion Pus controller before I could play it. I've played about 4 hours so far, so consider this a very early review. I will say there's been an awful lot of dialog in the game so far, on top of the intro backstory movie. I just hope they do something with Groose, or that was a whole whack of dialog which wasn't that necessary. The game - it's Zelda (so far). It hasn't quite caught my imagination like Occarina, but I have a feeling this one could get close. I just hope I'm not chasing Zelda for the entire game. I'm also not happy with the Motion Plus. Sure it's nice to be able to control your slashes, but that's the theory. In practice I'm still flailing away rather than carefully planning my strikes (especially with groups of enemies). The normal point at the screen control also seems more sluggish, although it might be the camera is getting confused by the Christmas tree lights. One thing I do like are the hint movies from the gossip stones. I was stuck on the eye lock at in the first temple. I thought the hint indicated I needed a bow & arrow, but I didn't know where I was supposed to have gotten it.

I know that in the past emulators didn't track how many cycles MARIA used, I don't know whether current emulators track CPU cycles versus MARIA cycles. The only way MARIA could corrupt registers is via a DLI which doesn't properly preserve them. I remember in SpaceWar! 7800 I had a DLI in the first inactive zone which would just set a flag then RTI. The main code would loop on that flag instead of MSTAT. I guess you could do away with that and pop the SR & PC off the stack and make the ISR the start of the routine. Wouldn't be a bad idea to have the ISR check a flag to see if the previous frame had completed first. https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/ has some info on cycle counts and DLIs.

So I've been playing Glitch for about 2 weeks now (and I haven't touched Dragon Age Legends in that time) and the one thing I wonder is how they are going to change "want to play" to "want to pay". I certainly see other players running around in non-free outfits, but I don't know whether they have simply spent the free 100 credits you start with, or they bought more, or it's testers who have been playing since the alpha/beta so probably got it for free. And while I think the costumes are cool, I've resisted spending even my 100 free credits. So I have to think - if I can avoid spending my credits, how likely is it other people will be tempted into spending real money simply to buy a virtual wardrobe? And even if people are willing to spend real money on the few available items, will that be enough to pay the bills?

Oh, and apparently "Cyber Monday" was started because some marketing droid discovered that a named day gets more people shopping than just a simple sale.

The part which I don't get is how the day after US Thanksgiving went from the unofficial start of the Christmas buying season (i.e. the point at which retailers get "into the black") to a frenzy of sales. Boxing Day (December 26) sale in Canada (and likely other countries) make far more sense: clear out excess inventory after the majority of sales have occurred. But starting the buying season with deep discounts just seems like retailers are throwing away profits.

The weird thing for me is it sounds like us Canucks are going to get some "Black Friday" sales, even though we celebrate Thanksgiving in October. My wife suggested driving to Buffalo to do some BF shopping, but then realized that the cost in gas would certainly wipe out any saving and we aren't shopping for any big ticket items anyway. I'd be interested in both of those games if you buy the bundle and aren't interested in keeping them after you give them a try.