Guerrilla Marketing

Companies come to GDC with bulging marketing budgets and brand new products to push back the frontiers of game development.

I'm here with virtually no money and Very Silly Games to promote. So, first up is to make a nice logo. My first attempt is OK, but I had to use a graphics program to produce it. My second one is created entirely within XNA, using the same font and style but rendered programmatically with added silliness. I'm going to make a tutorial on how I did it. Since I can now render text really easily I add a silly message and come up with the artwork:

So, now I have the picture I need some hard copies to distribute. Last time that we were out I noticed that the local Walgreens Pharmacy (these places seem more ubiquitous than Starbucks) has an advert in the store, 15 cents a print for 100 off. And you can upload from the internet. So it is onto the site, upload the image and ask for 100.

This works wonderfully. I don't need to pay up front, I can select the store to pick up the prints and they are ready 10 minutes after my request. I get emails along the way to keep me informed of progress.  People say that the internet is transforming the way we do things. You bet.

On the way to the conference I pick up the prints and pay for them (16 dollars or so - around 8 pounds UK) and then I start dishing them out. I've got rid of around 30 or so on tables around the place and in appropriate sessions, I should be through the whole lot by the end of the week. I'm not sure how much extra traffic the site will get, but even if I only get a few more hits it was fun getting them.

Travels with Derek

[Graphics Heavy Post Alert]

Derek knows San Francisco very well. And apart from his habit of walking very fast up hills he makes for an excellent tour guide.  Today we started down at the harbour.

Ferry boat and the "other" bridge

View from the pier

Posing bird

Tugs

Pier amusements

Fancy boat - and no, it didn't hit the jetty

The famous Lombard Street

View from Coit Tower

Another view

Bridge and Bay

They had some great murals in the tower

I like this place

There are a few more on Flickr

Fraught Software

Some software is what I call "Fraught". By this I mean that it is somewhat unstable, but just useful enough to make it worth living with the problems it causes. Early versions of PowerPoint were like this. They let you create great slides, but they also had a habit of crashing when you thought about saving your deck. At one point I suspected that they might have some form of mind reading ability.

Anyhoo, PowerPoint is now solid, and very good at recovering if anything bad does happen. Photoshop Elements is however fraught. It does what I want, it has a very sensible and useful range of features and it didn't cost me too much. And every now and then it tips over, the most recent one giving me the blood curdling message "Can't open the catalogue". As the catalogue is the file that ties everything else together, this could well be a bad thing as it would have meant re-importing and categorising everything. Fortunately, after a reboot and a fifteen minute repair session we are now back on the rails again, but I'll always be slightly on edge when I use the program. I hope at some point Adobe can get around to un-fraughting the code.

Down and Flat in San Francisco

I blame the jetlag. That and an over-confidence in the abilities of lithium ions. Anyhoo, whatever the cause it resulted in me not bothering to charge the camera battery last night, on the eve of our walk around SF, with the opportunity, nay obligation, to take hundreds of pictures. So, of course, ten shots into the trip everything shuts down and the camera becomes a paperweight. Wah.

Fortunately we were on our way to Best Buy, and I had intended to get a new battery at some point anyway, so I would have a spare in case this kind of thing happens. Yes, they do have a battery. It won't be fully charged, but it beats the heck out of nothing. And they also sell travel chargers at a sensible price. And Nigel, once he hears my sorry story, is even willing to plug the charger in for a few minutes to get me back on the road.

Go and buy lots of things from this man.

This was service above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks very much for that. And so it was off for a coffee at the local diner.

They have everlasting coffee cups here

Artistic use of mirror on way to bridge

The money shot

The view from the beach

Playtime

These folks asked Derek to take a picture with their camera.

Just a few kites

Game Developers Conference in SF

This is a graphics heavy post. Rob is on his travels again...

Up bright and early today to catch the 6:20 am flight out of Humberside Airport for San Francisco. It's a tough life. But mostly OK, right up to the point where I tip wine all over my travel documents on the plane. I also managed to fill one of my shoes with the drink of the chap sat next to me. I offered to let him finish it off from there, but he demurred.

So it was a squelchy walk through Homeland Security and into the land of the free. I had a plan to buy an 80 Gbyte Zune. I bought a little (30G) one last year, and I liked it so much that I planned to get another one as soon as we arrived. Bad things plans. They let the gods know what you are thinking of doing..... The first blow was that my favourite shop in SF, Comp USA, was closing. Really closing. I could have bought a yard of shop counter if I'd wanted, but no Zunes. After some research I've discovered that these devices are pretty darned popular over here. Everywhere I've tried so far has been out of stock. Derek and I went for a walk to find BestBuy, we didn't find the shop, but I took the big camera, and grabbed some snaps.

Funny thing photography. I've got a little camera that will take great photographs just by pointing it in the general direction of the scene and pressing the button. The big camera is a bit more tricky. However, once you have taken the picture and spent some time in Photoshop you can come up with some really nice results.

I just like the car

..and another car

..and a fire engine

I think their turn lights are broken

Lovely colours

..what happens if you point a wide angle lens up in the air

Fine Diner

More pictures tomorrow, or today, or whenever.

Haircut Sir?

Had my hair cut today. Not a thing I do lightly, or often for that matter. Still, it needed doing. I'm not that keen on being the one in the family with the longest locks. Don't think number one wife and number one daughter are that keen either. Anyhoo, my head is now much lighter, and washing my hair takes a lot less time.

I was amazed by the amount of my hair that was left on the floor after my cut. It put me in mind of a wizard wheeze, where you dump a huge pile of hair behind the chair of your victim as they have their trim. Then watch their face when they stand up and see how much has been removed.....

Thanks For Coming

If you came to see us today during our Admissions Event, thank you for coming. I mentioned a couple of things that you might find interesting and promised I'd put the links up. Here they are:

The phone screen questions that you ask an aspiring software engineer are here and the story of the Hull student who is now working in the games industry is here.

EeePC + XP Looks Good

I still like my eeePC. It works very well and I'm using it for presentations at work. The small size and great battery life really hits the spot. It really is the most useful computer you can get for the price.

The only really irritations have been the behaviour of the Open Office applications, so that my slide decks don't always come up correctly, and the fact that I'm having to track down Linux versions of programs that I've been using on my PC under Windows for donkey's years.

Today Jon in our first year (I think it was Jon) showed me his eeePC. He has slapped in another 512M of ram, so that it now has 1G of memory, and installed Windows XP. He showed me Visual Studio 2005 running on it, and it looked really neat.  He reckons that the performance is adequate and so I'm going to make the change I reckon. With 8GB SD cards now coming in at less than 17 pounds, I can get me a really useful device that is like being back home.

Very sorry about this....

I had lots of things to do today. At one point I thought that I'd put some things in a beaker full of water and see how much liquid came out over the top.

But then I decided that this would just be a displacement activity.

Games on Vista

Today I did something I've not done for a very long time. I played a game on my Windows PC. I picked up a cheap copy of World in Conflict yesterday and loaded it onto the notebook. I stopped playing games on my PC a while back because that's what I buy consoles for, and anyway they clutter up the hard disk and get in the way. That's changed slightly now, since I can install games on an external USB drive and Vista seems to manage game installation a lot better. There was no footling around looking for different versions of DirectX or putting the game in some strange place on the hard disk. It installed with a minimum of fuss and pretty soon I was in the thick of battle.

It worked really well. The game can get pretty complex, and it would be really difficult to control everything using a gamepad, you really need to keyboard and the mouse to keep on top of what is going on. And, thanks to the fairly meaty graphics support in the notebook, I was able to work at a resolution much higher than you normally get from console games, even the newer ones. It was great fun.

We are working on setting up one of our labs as a games room, where students and staff can play these games. We are just sorting out licenses and access at the moment. And I'm getting a bit of practice in.....

Durham Daytrip

Went up to Durham today to see Number One Son. All seems to be going OK. I took the big camera and lens, in search of happy snaps.

Birds on the roof

Against the light

Durham Indoor Market

On the way back we stopped off to see Number One Daughter in York...

Lovely sunset

Picture 4000

This is my 4,000th picture on Flickr. No idea why I took it. Apparently they are doing two for one on shower products.....

Friday Four Fifteen Club Meets Again

We all met up again to talk constructor chaining. Had some of the best questions ever. And I think the numbers are picking up too.

What you need to know

If you are a student at Hull wondering why we teach you what we do, take a look at this.

Portion Control

I followed a butcher's van to work today. Writ large across the back was the impressive claim "Specialists in Portion Control". I thought this sounded great. I can just imagine how it works.

The scene, an Embassy Banquet. Posh types with beautiful girls on their arms are milling around around making small talk and dancing to a small orchestra which is playing expensive tunes. In the corner a white hatted master chef is serving food with an immaculate silver service. Suddenly a man bursts through the crowd to the table:

Man: "Nobody move!"

The orchestra falls silent. Every body stops moving. All eyes turn to the man, who reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a warrant card with a shiny silver badge on it.

Man: "Mike Zuton. Portion Control."

The crowd gasps in amazement and fear.

Mike Zuton, to the chef: "You. Step away from that ladle."

The chef lays the ladle down and steps back, his eyes flicking around nervously. Mike Zuton pulls a small measuring jug from his pocket, fills the ladle with steaming soup and then empties it into the jug. There is absolute silence in the room as he carefully scrutinises the scale on the side.

Mike Zuton: "Just as I thought. Five mills over. You're going down this time Maurice"

Chef: "But, but, I swear it was an honest mistake"

Mike Zuton: "Yeah, right. Just like those extra Ferrero Rocher you've been sneaking onto the desert trolley. The ambassador isn't made of money you know."

Mike Zuton gets a whistle out of his pocket and blows a loud blast. Twenty uniformed officers burst through the french windows.

Mike Zuton: "Captain, get the Baguette Squad down into the kitchen, and remember, anything over fifteen centimetres, I want to know about it...."

..and so on.

Then again, perhaps it isn't like that at all.

Cloverfield

One of Rob's movie rules is "The better the build up to the monster, the bigger the let down when you actually get to see it". Cloverfield doesn't break this rule. The look of the film itself is excellent. If a giant monster did attack New York, and the only document left was hand-held video footage from  someone underneath it, it would probably look a lot like Cloverfield.  Except for the monsters, which had the air of poorly rendered video game characters. They even had little monsterettes which looked like they were there just for the underground scenes. For my money it would would have been better if you never actually saw the monsters. Now that would have been scary.

Films have been made using camcorders before but they don't usually centre all the action entirely around camcorder footage shot by one of the participants. All the camcorder owner cliches are there, from not knowing how to use the camera to leaving it switched on by mistake.

The action starts at a party packed full of "Beautiful People" (tm). To be honest, this goes on a bit, setting up a romantic sub-plot. However, once the monsters turn up things happen very quickly indeed. And one by one the Beautiful People are picked off. The acting from the case of unknowns is very good, although it must have been very hard work for the young cast staying scared all the time.  Perhaps the reason there are no older, more unfit,  characters is that they would not be able to survive the making of the film.

If you like monster movies, you should see Cloverfield. Some of the scenes are excellent, and there are some really scary moments. But I don't think it will keep you awake for long at night. Not if you've played Doom or Quake.

Half way to Paradise

I got a new game on Saturday. Burnout Paradise. Number one son said I would like it, and he is right. I got the PS3 version, but it is also available for Xbox 360. I've always been a big fan of Burnout games. I seem to remember getting at least the first couple and greatly enjoying them. The format of the Burnout games have been pretty much the same up until now. You work your way through a serious of increasingly difficult races of slightly different formats unlocking new challenges as you go until you either complete the game or lose interest because it gets too hard.

Guess which one I do.

Anyhoo, this format has been seriously tinkered with. There is still progression, but it is much more free form. You can drive anywhere and try anything in the huge city that is laid out in front of you. Traffic lights at junctions serve as the kicking off point for a variety of different racing missions. Win a few and your licence gets upgraded, you get a bigger car and so on. The sense of place is hugely impressive, you really do feel that you are in a genuine location. The driving is good, although with Burnout I always feel that I am flying the car rather than steering it. The crashes have to be seen to be believed. Bits come off your car and get scrunched up in a most realistic manner. And yet...

They have taken away the big green arrows. I used to like these. They told you when and where to turn. In the new game it is all about learning routes and finding shortcuts. And the driving map doesn't rotate to face the way you are going. You have to figure out orientation from a little pointer. I hate having to do that. You get some help telling you when to change direction, but it didn't do much for me. You can lose a race because you miss the turnoff. You can't easily resume a race if you get left behind. And the weather seems to always be the same. Bright sunshine and harsh shadows. The game is undoubtedly richer and more complex than it used to be, but it is also harder to figure out what to do next.

Some aspects remind me a lot of Mid Town Madness, a Microsoft game of some time back, where you had a whole city to play with and a bunch of mad drivers to take on. However, there was much more of a sense of fun about that affair, I used to love racing  using buses. 

Burnout Paradise is nearly a great game. If you want the impression of driving round a city the only game that gets close as far as I'm concerned is Need for Speed Most Wanted, which I reckon is much more fun (even though the graphics in Burnout are better). The network play could be great, but I've not tried it yet.  It gets so much right, and is so well constructed that I really should love it more. I enjoy playing it, but I don't have the big stupid grin on my face that I get when I play some other driving games.

Buy my book. And a Hammer.

You know my book? The one I never mention? Well, it is presently ranked as the 434,444th best seller on Amazon in the 'states.  This is quite good, but not great. Yet. Feel free to mosey on down and order your copy. And when you do, you could also get yourself a nice hammer. I'd just love to see this down in the "Customers who bought this book also bought...." entry on the page for my book..

Update on 2008-02-05 08:47 by Rob

On the other hand, perhaps one of these might be more appropriate.

Friday Four Fifteen Club

I'm starting a new club for first year students. It is for those "lucky" enough to have the 4:15 pm slot on Friday afternoon. The weather on Friday was horrid, and by the end of the day most of us felt like we had done enough for the week. Thanks for turning up folks.

This is not the entire group, I've left part of the room off so that you can claim that you were really there.....

FragFest Fun

Hull Com Soc had a fragfest today. I took along the big camera and the fancy lenses to try and grab some pictures. vivaladan was kind enough to let me help with some goes at World In Conflict which was a hoot (although I think I liked it best because we won). I'm going to get a copy of the game and turn up early at the next event with my laptop. Oh yes.

The pictures turned out OK as well.

Game in Progress

How to stop your laptop overheating

Artistic Camerashake

There are some more on Flickr.