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Behind the scenes of a MMO

Via Slashdot:

Plaguelands has a summary up of the recent MMO roundtable hosted by IBM. Game Developers participating included Geoff Heath, CEO, NCsoft Europe & Steven Reid, NCsoft Europe; Raph Koster, Sony; and Patty Fry, Global Executive, Online Games & DCC.

We’ll ignore the others and focus on some very, very interesting things Mr. Koster mentioned, I highly recommend you jump the link and just read his section.

A bit on pathfinding:

On the tech aspect, something I didn’t know Koster mentions is that 40% of the cpu processing is utilized on pathfinding. Yes, fuckin’ pathfinding. A fuckin’ decade, and almost half of the potential processing powers developers are allocated is used to fuckin’ pathfinding. And you know what? Pathfinding is a joke, it could use a lot of work.

And databases:

Koster also delves into some details about mmos and their databases. The runtime database and the static game database and explaining their differences and how and what needs to be done so developers will have the hardware that allows for more dynamisms, more impact, making that world a virtual living breathing world in itself that players can impact and not just some static sandbox. It’s funny when Raph talks about players having an impact on the world and how we are seeing somewhat of a reversal instead of progressing. Notice how games like WoW do not allow players to drop items on the ground? While this may save a lot of CS headaches, this is the type of simple impact on the persistent world.

Who thinks about these things? Everyone wants to be a developer or a producer, and never thinks about what the programmers have to go through. Fascinating.

Trent Reznor gets it

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails gets it. It being the remix culture.

Mr. Reznor has released the second single, Only to be remixed. The Hand That Feeds was the first single released, in Garage Band format only at the time.

This time around, it’s been released in 4 different file formats, including Acid Express and Garage Band so Windows users have a shot at remixing this time. I have a copy of the former around somewhere, and the latter on my Mini. I might try my hand at it this time.

It’s very cool of NIN to give back to the community. I downloaded a few of the remixes for The Hand That Feeds last time, and some were pretty good.

Lego Star Destroyer

I remember when the Lego Star Destroyer came out in Christmas of 2002. I begged my wife for one for Christmas. At $300, it was the biggest Lego set to ever be released at over 3000 pieces. I had a vision of assembling it and never taking it apart and setting it on a pedestal…somewhere.

Alas, I never did get one.

Via Wonderland, an old blog post but a good one.

This couple did get a Lego Star Destroyer, and using their webcam at 5 second intervals, took over 4000 shots of them putting it together over 10 hours, including a dinner break. It’s a classic blog post from Jan. of ’03. Alice is right, someone desperately needs to put that to music. At just over 4 minutes, it would be a perfect music video.

Medium and large versions of the video are available here.

Lego Star Destroyer

BurnIt Club

How cool is this – the Burn It club?

I came across Kymberlie McGuire via her Flickr site.

The Burn It Club looks very cool – every quarter she picks a theme, past themes have included driving music, remixes, and school, and you email her to join a group. She puts you in a group of 4, and you make 5 mix CDs (all different artists and songs, just follow the theme), one to keep, one to send to Kymberlie and each person in your group, and you get one in return.

I’ve bookmarked the site and definitely want to join in on that the next time it comes around. What a cool idea.

Podcasting now in iTunes

Sheesh, I mention the other day how I’ve gotten in to podcasting in a big way, and then Apple goes and makes it mainstream just to copy me (no, really!).

Apple’s iTunes 4.9 now has Podcasting support. Windows users can download Apple’s iTunes 4.9 here. Suppose I should fire up the old Mac Mini and take a look.

And for the record, I’ve been downloading podcasts for the last year intermittently, and burning them to CD for long car rides. Just hadn’t done the whole automated thing.

Joining the revolution



podcasting, originally uploaded by silwenae.

I’ve joined the podcasting revolution, and am now downloading podcasts like a madman. Shown here are iPodder on Ubuntu, and the new Monopod, a much more simpler and user friendly podcasting client. Both are running on Ubuntu Hoary.

I had a really tough time last weekend trying to get Monopod 0.2 to work, and this is 0.3 (I had to install a bunch of dev stuff). iPodder was ok, it’s the latest release that came out this week, but you have to chmod one file before it will work.

My two favorite podcasts so far are:

Acts of Volition and MAKE Magazine’s Podcast.

More to come, and a rant about my MP3 player.

Broadcast Flag not dead yet – we have 48 hours!

The EFF is reporting that Congress may sneak in the Broadcast Flag into other legislation in the next 48 hours. This is not trivial – HD content is available over the airwaves unmodified already today and the Broadcast Flag will stop that single-handedly – once it goes forward there will be no going back to using your media and your hardware the way you want to.

Fill out the Action Alert now and / or contact your Senators.

Just say no to the Broadcast Flag.

Required Reading

My new favorite magazine and website is brought to you by the geniuses behind Make Magazine.

From their website:

The first magazine devoted to digital projects, hardware hacks, and D.I.Y. inspiration.

It’s like Popular Science was, except for the 21st century.

The MAKE Blog is fantastic, updated often with lots of DIY tricks and links.

I even downloaded two of their Podcasts last week, and those were pretty good too.

The magazine is fantastic – it’s a quarterly, nice and thick, with information on what others are out there hacking on, one project with detailed step by steps per month, and tons of cool other articles.

O’Reilly has done it again.