Unreal Engine continues to take the step towards “photoreal”, it’s an important step as after photoreal exists, the game industry can’t keep repeating the past.
Once rocks are indistinguishable from rocks, we’ll want to see something new. I can’t wait to see what designers come up with!
Our new company VYRL.co builds technology for Influencers, so last night the team decided to work late to help Casey Neistat, he’s raising money on eBay for Puerto Rico and so we built a page to help track the progess in realtime.
So please help Casey if you can:
https://cneistatcharityproject.com/
I’m SUPER EXCITED about the new Arduboy! This I think is the best way to learn to program computers, to start by modifying games and then to make your own. It’s way more fun than starting with “Hello World” like every long-winded book offers. As a freebie, you also get to learn about controlling electronics in the process. If you have a kid, get them one of these and spend some time playing with it, there are a TON of free games online to start with.
Well there you go… Two of the top CEO’s the in video game industry talking about streaming games… Today it’s Yves from Ubisoft.
“Streaming will totally change the way we create and play games, and will again positively disrupt how we think about gaming.”
Find the interview over on GameIndustry.biz here:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-06-14-ubisoft-ceo-streaming-will-be-the-next-big-thing
Saw a really interesting interview with Andy Wilson the CEO at Electronic Arts, he’s someone who I have a lot of respect for.
As you can imagine this part brought a smile to my face…
“If you think about every form of entertainment media that we have, the one thing that’s been most disruptive is streaming. Books to your Kindle, TV through Netflix, music through Spotify. It’s changed everything. Ownership, engagement, and it’s absolutely changed the enjoyment model. There are lots of things that are going to change. Scale, in a networked world, is extremely important. You are going to have to have the core digital platform, the engine, the talent. At the core, you’re going to have to have to be able to get experiences to players at any time, anywhere, on any device they own. Streaming tech is going to play a really big part in that.“
Andrew Wilson – Full Interview on Glixel.com
Updated: July 29, 2017
Another interview:
“For many of those things, we actually think the time horizon is about five years-plus, but things like cloud and streaming we believe is in the 2-5 year time frame. When we think about subscription, we’re already seeing return from that and the combination of that with streaming in that 2-5 year time horizon could be very meaningful in terms of revenue addition for us.”
Andrew Wilson – Full Interview on GamesIndustry.biz
The 6th Annual IEEE GameSIG Intercollegiate Computer Games Showcase
is providing student game developers the chance to present their best
student developed video games for judging by an elite panel of video
game industry leaders.
Come out in support of your favorite colleges as student development
teams go head-to-head for school pride, bragging rights, and this year’s
GameSIG Cup. Finalists will demonstrate their games for a growing
number of students, alumni, and sponsors representing Orange County’s
internationally renowned video game industry.
This year’s showcase will be held at California State University,
Fullerton, CA at the Titan Student Union pavilions A,B & C. Free Parking in the
State College parking structure (SCPS) adjacent to the Titan Student
Union. Park in # 36, and walk to # 31 on this Campus Map at:
http://www.fullerton.edu/campusmap/
Following the showcase enjoy a reception featuring local gourmet food
trucks, game demonstrations by the student developers, and networking.
Put on your game face and come to cheer your favorite school, watch
demos and play games. Click here to RSVP for Free tickets.
The public is invited to attend the annual intercollegiate competition
among the major universities of Orange County and the surrounding area.
* 12:30PM – 4:30PM — Competition Among The Chosen (Finalists)
The greatest student game developers in the SoCal Empire’ universities
will compete for honors on the Big Screen before our panel of Local
Game Industry Leader judges in an American Idol format. Each Student
Game Developer Team will have ten minutes to shock and awe the judges.
* 4:30PM – 6:30PM — Reception & Game Demos (food & play)
We will have a casual game demo session, networking, and reception.
The audience (you) will have the opportunity to get some hands-on time
with the games created by the finalists and semi-finalists, enjoy
refreshments, and network with industry professionals.
Warning: Seating is limited. RSVP for Free tickets here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sixth-annual-ieee-gamesig-intercollegiate-computer-game-showcase-tickets-30183138580
Apple has posted a really cool page on how to use the iPhone Camera system better.
Well worth a look:
https://www.apple.com/iphone/photography-how-to/
Woodworking is tough as it’s easy to start a project, really difficult to get it over the finish line. (It’s just like the video game industry!)
So, I (on impulse) decided to make a wooden bench at the William NG – School of Fine Woodworking. It can’t be that hard, right?
What’s 3D joinery? Well, by my count there’s over 30 different wood surfaces that all need to align absolutely perfectly, all simultaneously touch to get everything to fit together. Let’s just say it’s a 30+ dimensional problem. If you get it right, you don’t even need glue! (I needed a lot of glue!)
The instructor insisted that all the joinery HAD to be done with traditional Japanese hand saws and hand chisels, so imagine starting some of the days knowing you have 6 hours of hand sawing! (It took 4 days to make it.)
Let’s just say, I know how to saw now. I’m pleased how it turned out.
PS. Woodworking is interesting to me as I’ve pretty much led a digital life, so either my grandchildren will need to be happy with my old Powerpoint’s and Excel Spreadsheets, or I’d better learn to make something physical! (That they would maybe want.)
So, that’s my challenge to you, if you are also just going to leave a digital footprint!
I’ve been watching the evolution of computer vision closely and things are getting VERY interesting right now.
We’ve always wondered when computers can think like humans, and it’s always remained that elusive “20 years away”. To really interface with us, they need some KEY things:
#1 TO REMEMBER (STORAGE & RECALL)
#2 TO LISTEN & COMPREHEND (MICROPHONES & COMPUTE)
#3 TO SPEAK (SPEECH GENERATION)
#4 TO SEE
#5 TO THINK (COGNITION, EMOTION & CREATIVITY)
Of those 5 things, the first three are pretty much nailed, #4 is next.
The evidence that #4 is elusive is Siri on the iPhone, or Microsoft’s Cortana don’t ask to see what you’re talking about. Siri should say “Can you show me that?“.
When given the chance to see, the data reveals the number one question people ask a seeing computer about is problems on their body. They worry about rashes etc. It’s interesting as it shows how most companies are working on the wrong problem, learning Starbucks, Mercedes and Nike logos from all angles won’t get you there.
Looking at a simple coffee cup… Algorithms today focus on the Starbucks logo, and respond with offers of Starbucks products like “Starbucks iPhone Case”. Huh? At least identify it as “a white Starbucks Ceramic Mug”, why are you just showing me iPhone cases?
The step that all the companies fail at is when you break the mug… Even a kid would say “A broken mug”, but after countless millions of dollars every research tech fails to nail it.
I’ve seen multi-multi-million dollar systems analyze this kind of image above and return the word “Creamy“. What?
I have friends at Cloudsight.ai that have avoided the typical “buy data sets and crunch them” model as they knew they need cognition (understanding & comprehension) of image concepts. They have an open API and are being used in numerous 3rd party applications today, processing countless millions of images from real people.
Most companies are working on straight “recognition” and I get it, I’m a programmer and I also love to think that programming can get us there alone, but it can’t. It’s like the visual researchers are following the old path of audio researchers by trying to recognize individual words, that have no context.
I remember Bill Gates talking about voice recognition once, he explained just how difficult is is to understand “Do you recognize speech?” vs “Did you wreck a nice beach?” Even if a computer gets the words right, getting it to understand the question was a massive problem. So only when researchers focused on understanding context did things start to leap forward for the cloud being able to listen.
The reason the CloudSight.ai solution is interesting is because they’ve spent years working on the parental teaching loop that human brains require to grow. The reason the kid can understand the broken mug is because they understand the concept BROKEN, they broke things and saw how they break. They will see more and more evidence of this idea growing up and can recognize BROKEN in any form. There’s lots to learn… “Those glasses are broken“, “Those glasses are old“, “That person looks ill” etc.
Every single major corporation (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Pinterest etc.) will need to either have the cloud see or to understand the billions of images and videos they are handling. It’s a certain future and it’s fun watching the progress.
I just gave it a fun image to try… It nailed it.
Here’s someone testing all the top solutions:
So keep an eye on this space, it’s about to get very interesting.
Wow 20 years passed already. Nice detailed look at humor in games and our old MDK game done by George Ayres Mousinho from The Reactive Code. I think the theme of the Shiny games were that we always had a new hook (Sniper Mode in MDK, Possession in Messiah, etc.), and we tried to make it hard to predict what was coming next. What was the next level of Earthworm Jim going to be?
The art that Nick Bruty and Bob Stevenson did for MDK was incredible for it’s time and the 3D coding lead was Andy Astor, who sadly passed away from Cancer. He was a great loss to the video game industry.
So 20 years ago this was Shiny Entertainment’s first attempt at 3D…
Shockingly (according to Good Old Games) MDK still works in Windows 10!
