Introversion's City Generation

At GDC I came across Chris Delay from Introversion Software. I recognized him from the picture next to his blog. I've been admiring the work that he's has been doing with city generation and I was happily surprised to meet him in the line for one of the sessions. Not thinking, I extended my hand. I hope I didn't get him sick.

I asked him a ton of questions about it, 'cause I'm working on similar ideas. Anyhow, please check out the city generation stuff he's doing. He's working from Muller and Wonka's shape-grammar/L-system generation ideas and producing some awesome work.

Check out this beauty -

Emotiv Systems

While at the Game Developers' Conference, I checked out Emotiv Systems and their EEG-based input ('mind-reading') technology in the form of the $300 EPOC to be released later this year. I spoke to the Emotiv guys at their booth, they seemed a bit secretive about their technology. They described it as telepathy.

The EEG input device concept is interesting to me, but seems a little gimmicky. In fairness, though, I didn't try it. Like a resurrected computer-enhanced biofeedback machine? Not sure how well it would work in real life. The devices don't use conductive gel like real EEGs use. The input device also tracks eye and facial muscular movement, so it's more than just an EEG, but an EMG as well. Also, EEGs require the user to be still. That's a tall order for a videogame player.

Anyhow, assuming that sophisticated signal processing could overcome the lack of conductive gel and motion, it seems that the response time in changing gross brain state (for example, to punch a bad guy) would be glacial and using it would be exhausting. What is really interesting to me, though, is how they're doing their signal processing. My initial guess is principle components analysis with a prototype database. I wonder if I'm way off base there.

An article about Emotiv's brain gear.

Down and Out on Market Street

As I alluded to in the Fable 2 post, EA sent me to the Game Developers' Conference (GDC) this year in San Francisco. Unfortunately, I saw far less of it than I would have liked because I was down with the flu. I think I spent more time in bed and at the Walgreens at Market Street & 4th than I did at the conference. That may be an exaggeration, but it was still disappointing. I also ended up getting Colin (a colleague of mine) all sick, which just sucked doubly.

Networking. No. It's hard to schmooze when you're coughing every 12.2 seconds and trying to keep your nose from dripping on your new friend. So I didn't meet a lot of the people I'd hoped to. Who I did meet, I tried to keep my distance and avoid shaking hands so as not to pass on the scourge. Still, it wasn't a total loss. It was the first time I'd been and it was fascinating. The keynotes were great, including a compelling Ray Kurzweil. I didn't feel well enough to focus enough on the technical sessions to get much out of them. Still, there were a lot of ideas in the air. I also attended several game design and art sessions.

Need Input

The WiiMote and Guitar Hero/Rock Band must have spawned a lot of thought about input devices in the industry. Depth cameras and a bunch of other technologies were on display. We had NeuroSky and Emotiv Systems with their bio-sensor technologies (see the following post on Emotiv Systems).

Physics Engines, UI and Procedural Texture Technologies

A lot of middleware vendors especially surrounding Physics and UI. For physics, we had the Octave Engine and others. For UI - Scaleform, Anark, MenusMaster. Scaleform seems to be quite popular and is a Flash-based UI system. I was taken by Allegorithmic's procedural texture technologies. Oh, and motion capture.

BioShock

Everyone was talking about BioShock. I've not yet started playing it, although I do own it. I'm still playing Assassin's Creed right now which is phenomenal in its own right. I'm excited to get at it. I attended a session with Ken Levine, BioShock's designer.

More

PC World Video, Recap
GDC08 Review

I already wrote about Fable 2, though I'll probably amend that (and this) entry as I get more time and reflect a bit more about it.