Links & notes for this month

• • World of Warcraft helps fight crime in LA | Technology | The Guardian
    '"We studied these online gangs at the same time I was looking at the offline gangs and it turned out the model we were developing to explain the behaviour of the online guilds began to coincide with the offline gangs," says Johnson. "We could explain the data using the same mathematical ideas."' Which all makes sense, you know, but it's still interesting to see this stuff being done and taken seriously.
    (tags: data groups community games wow gangs social analysis )
  • Building Rome in a Day
    "In this project, we consider the problem of reconstructing entire cities from images harvested from the web. Our aim is to build a parallel distributed system that downloads all the images associated with a city, say Rome, from Flickr.com. After downloading, it matches these images to find common points and uses this information to compute the three dimensional structure of the city and the pose of the cameras that captured these images. All this to be done in a day." Woah.
    (tags: 3D photography programming modelling architecture flickr generation )
  • BBC NEWS | Technology | Tech Know: Kinky boot that whips
    "This is my boot fetish Pong game". I first saw James at OpenTech demonstrating his prawn-sandwich powered BBC Micro clock. It is good to know he is still building brilliant things. And: more Ellie Gibson interviews in the world is never, ever a bad thing.
    (tags: jameslarsson technology video interview pong mad elliegibson )
• • GameDev.net - Graphics Programming Black Book
    "Michael Abrash's classic Graphics Programming Black Book is a compilation of Michael's previous writings on assembly language and graphics programming (including from his "Graphics Programming" column in Dr. Dobb's Journal). Much of the focus of this book is on profiling and code testing, as well as performance optimization. It also explores much of the technology behind the Doom and Quake 3-D games, and 3-D graphics problems such as texture mapping, hidden surface removal, and the like." My old URL for this no longer works, but fortunately, this one does.
    (tags: games programming graphics 3D development c )
  • Vol Libre, an amazing CG film from 1980
    "The commercial worked on Lucas but a few years later, the computer graphics group at ILM was sold by Lucas to Steve Jobs for $5 million and became Pixar. Loren Carpenter is still at Pixar today; he's the company's Chief Scientist." Marvellous.
    (tags: cg animation lucasfilm fractals rendering 3D graphics )
  • jQuery slideViewer 1.1
    "slideViewer (a jQuery image slider built on a single unordered list)". Which looks nifty.
    (tags: jquery slideshow javascript dhtml design )
  • Interface nostalgia (blog.thoughtwax.com)
    "Flicking over to the old graphics — and I, for one, found it almost impossible not to do so on every screen — shows you the game as you originally experienced it, and it looks completely different. Suddenly you remember the old imagery too. Conceptual memory gives way to visual memory, in a clear illustration of how the mind functions on different levels. It’s an odd experience, first thinking you recognise something, then discovering that the original was in fact quite different, but that you now remember that too, as additional detail. In one way it’s a contradiction, and in another it’s sharper focus." Emmett on the Monkey Island remake, and the ability to dynamically swap between old and new interfaces.
    (tags: interface ui interaction games secretofmonkeyisland )
• • 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About | GeekDad | Wired.com
    A little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of fact, a few reminders of the past. Especially the old Kit-Kat wrappers.
    (tags: history culture technology children kids list nostalgia )
  • Fig. 8 Trailer
    "In the game you are rewarded for keeping your tracks together while navigating through the surreal world of an "architectural" diagram. The camera moves in continuous motion and the object is to finish the course with as many points as possible." Watch the trailer; it's astoundingly pretty. Can't wait for this one!
    (tags: games drawing flash technical illustration beautiful )
  • scraplab — “A world and a life in which you are always the centre of the map”
    "On my todo list still is an evil twin of iamnear, designed to be difficult and disorientating in use, but rewarding in unexpected ways should you persevere with it. As Kevin Slavin recently said in his talk at the BLDGBLOG book launch: “a world and a life in which you are always the centre of the map… fuck that”."
    (tags: geo place location selfcentered dissonace kevinslavin maps tomtaylor iamnear )
  • Forgotten Bookmarks
    "I work at a used and rare bookstore, and I buy books from people everyday. These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird things I find in those books." Bookmarks, dedications, receipts, adverts. Lovely.
    (tags: books bookmarks reading collection blog ephemera )
• • Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction
    Andrew Plotkin on some of the design of Inform 7, and rule-based programming as it applies to IF. Long story short: everything is exceptional, and designing systems to support the kind of stories IF authors want to tell is hard.
    (tags: programming games design language parsing rules if interactivefiction inform inform7 parser )
  • Flickcurl: C library for the Flickr API
    "Flickcurl is a C library for the Flickr API, handling creating the requests, signing, token management, calling the API, marshalling request parameters and decoding responses. It uses libcurl to call the REST web service and libxml2 to manipulate the XML responses." I did not know about this, but it looks nifty. Now, to compile it on OSX...
    (tags: flickr api c curl utility programming )
• • Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Bumblebird vs Man-Man » Some Stuff About Open World Games
    "So to come full circle with the sense of dissatisfaction with open world games: I think the way we experience them, by comparison with linear games, says something about how our gaming imagination functions. We seem to understand that when linear games point us in a certain direction, that’s the way to go. When an open world game appears, its very structure suggests something about how we should behave, or want to behave, and predisposes us to judge on the basis of how it entices us to go somewhere that the game itself hasn’t suggested, and on how it then deals with that action." Jim on open-world gaming.
    (tags: games openworld jimrossignol rps writing )
  • gewgaw » Place Making
    "While creepily capitalist in its language, the scholarship within it is sound – echoing theories that Jacobs, Alexander others presented decades ago. What’s more – it contains a lot of the same arguments for iterative design that you see in traditional game design tomes. (For a special treat – try replacing the phrases like “destination” and “retail” with “MMO” and “boxed-game”)"
    (tags: games architecture experience friends place spaces cities )
  • Appfrica Labs | Investing in East African Innovators
    "Appfrica Labs is an investment company and software development firm that facilitates and incubates technology entrepreneurs in East Africa. We do this by offering a physical space with a solid internet connection, servers, software and computers that allows entrepreneurs a place to develop their ideas in a constructive environment with industry professionals as mentors, outside of school. Entrepreneur projects are refined and prepped to help them secure funding and launch sustainable, profitable businesses." I met Jon who runs Appfrica at TEDGlobal last week; it's a great idea and, by the sounds of things, doing very well.
    (tags: appfrica development business africa uganda vc venturecapital incubator technology startup )
• • chewing pixels » Gaming as Performance
    "This is why arcades are still important, still relevant and still the most compelling way in which to watch and play videogames. Someone needs to take a stencil and a spray-can to every arcade cabinet they can find and write “Play me, I’m Yours” on its side, lest we forget how to perform." Simon Parkin on games as performance; awesome as ever, and exactly why I love arcades.
    (tags: arcade games performance arcades )
  • The Game Crafter - Your game REALIZED - Home
    "It is time you took that game you created and publish it. No more homemade board or cards. You have arrived. Now, publish it!" Ooh. Cafepress/Spreadshirt but for boardgames. Nifty - wonder what the quality's like.
    (tags: games boardgames printondemand publishing diy design )
• • Flynn Lives
    Initial trailer for Tron Legacy (previously, the horrendous TR2N); somewhat excited just to see the lightcycles back in action, and very beautiful to see a trailer with so little overblown music in it. Still, what's the potential for this to go horribly wrong?
    (tags: tron trailer movies film )
  • Epic's Mark Rein Interview - Eurogamer
    "Is this interview just going to be you hawking your wares for the next 20 minutes?" No, it's going to be better than that. A frank - and hilarious - interview with Mark Rein from Ellie Gibson. He really is like this, you know.
    (tags: eurogamer games epic markrein interview funny unreal )
  • Edge Panel: Architecture And Videogames | Edge Online
    "During the Develop conference earlier this week, Edge Online editor Alex Wiltshire chaired a panel discussion on the close relationship between architecture and videogames, and here we have a recording of the full session for you to download." I still have to write it up, but it was really, really good. Worth a listen.
    (tags: edge develop09 architecture games panel interview )
• • notes.husk.org. this amazing little internet-connected computer....
    "Still, if I told myself as a child that I’d have a pocket computer powerful enough that it could play games that knocked the Spectrum into the dirt, along with music at the same time, and then look up almost anything from an encyclopedia, almost anywhere in the world, and in only a quarter of a century, I’m not sure I’d have believed it." Strong truth; I marvel at some of the technology I own, and wonder how I could ever have explained it to my eight-year-old self. Not explained the possibility; explained that it was within reach.
    (tags: mobile technology progress )
• • The Neil Kulkarni guide to being a record-reviewer / In Depth // Drowned In Sound
    "Accept that everything you say will be forgotten and ignored but write as if you and your words are immortal. Don’t just describe but justify – make sure the reader knows WHY the record exists whether the reasons are righteous or rascally. And always remember you’re not here to give consumer advice or help with people’s filing. You’re here to set people’s heads on fire."
    (tags: writing criticism reviewing journalism advice tips )
  • Rands In Repose: The Words You Wear
    "In business, words are like fashion. You try a word on because important people around you are saying it and getting results, but you may not actually know what it means." Rands helps you discover what the words actually mean. As usual, he is right.
    (tags: business management language jargon communication buzzwords )
  • Intuition Games » Gray
    A game about protest, conflict, and shades of gray. Worth playing through to the 'end'; certainly made me think, and unlike any game I've played in a while. Not sure how this passed me bay.
    (tags: games flash protest riot conflict )
• • Ridiculous Life Lessons From New Girl Games | GameLife | Wired.com
    "The weird thing is that you can view these “wholesome” games as being just as bad for girls as Grand Theft Auto’s random bloodshed and rampant criminality is for young, impressionable boys. And while GTA’s influence on boys has been dissected to death, what about the Nintendo DS’ upcoming avalanche of games for tween girls? What kinds of values do preteens learn from these titles? Valuable life lessons, or bad habits?" As bad as GTA? Many, many times worse, if this sample is anything to go on.
    (tags: games gender girls culture trends fashion imprinting depressing )
  • Gamasutra - News - Develop 2009: Architecture Has Much To Learn From Game Design
    This session was genuinely excellent, and I'm probably going to write about it in the near future. In the meantime: bookmarked.
    (tags: architecture games develop09 )
  • Rock Band Network
    "Use our tools to author playable tracks. Upload and submit your tracks for review by the Rock Band Creators community. Approved tracks become available in the Rock Band Store and on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace*, and you get a cut of every purchase." Um, as pointed out elsewhere, this is utterly brilliant. Harmonix are smart cookies, and thinks like this remind me why.
    (tags: harmonix games content publishing music rockband )