Windows Phone Game Action

These are a couple of games that our students have made over the summer. Robocleaner is a development of the Sweepy Cleaner coursework from Alex Rogers (I’ve actually bought that one and it is fun). Not tried Pigs Might Fly yet, but it is worth a look just for the artwork.  Click on the image to go through to the Windows Phone page for the application. You can even buy and deploy the program straight from the web if you fancy it.

I’m compiling a page of “Stuff wot folks from Hull made”, so if you have something you’d like me to mention, send me an email (you know the address) and I’ll put something together.

Update on 2012-09-11 18:48 by Rob

Ooops. Forgot to mention fhat Pigs Might Fly is from Adam Brookes.

Capturing Objects with Autodesk 123D Catch

Autodesk 123D is slowly replacing FreeCad as my favourite place to create 3D models for printing. This is because I’m spending ages trying to get my head around how to use it. Turns out that designing things in 3D is much harder than 2D. Who’d have thought?

Of course the perfect way to make a 3D model of something would be to wave a camera at it and then have something crunch all the images and then drop out a design. That’s what Autodesk claim to have done with their 123D Catch application for iPhone and iPad. I’ve not had a chance to try this yet (the lack of an iPhone is slowing me down a bit here), but if you’ve got one you might like to give it a whirl. You should be able to convert the resulting scans into stl files and then get them printed.

This, of course, brings along lots of new and scary issues. If I go to an art gallery or shop and scan all the things I find interesting I can then go home and make my own versions. Basically, copyright problems are now moving into the third dimension…

2012 Paralympics in London

We were lucky enough to snag some tickets to the last day of competition in the London 2012 Paralympics. Of course I took the cameras…..

Heading into the stadium.

The stadium is a very impressive piece of engineering

Especially from the inside.

Well, does he clear the bar or not?

Going for the win.

This is Oscar Pistorius (I wonder if he is any relation to our VC – Calie Pistorius?) winning in the very last stadium event of London 2012, by a pretty impressive margin.

Heading home.

Charlie Kindel on the Future of Mobile

Charlie Kindel is one of the people who helped bring Windows Phone together. A long standing Microsoft veteran he was part of the team that got a working device out of the door in record time and built the solid foundations for things like the spiffy new Windows 8 phones that Nokia announced earlier this week (I want a yellow Lumia 920).

A year or so ago Charlie couldn’t resist the temptation to find out what life was like outside Microsoft and now develops his own products and works with startups. He has a blog that is well worth reading.  A few weeks ago he gave a presentation on the future of mobile computing. I watched it over a lunch break and I reckon you should to. It give a nice insight into how the mobile business works, but it is also worth watching for the insights into how all technology products get sold and how you need to think about the ecosystem when you make anything.

Platform Expos–from Clouds to Liability

Today’s Platform Expos debate was well worth the trip up town. Even more so because a bunch of our students had managed to make it as well. They, like the rest of us, found the conversation very interesting as he panel moved from Cloud Gaming, to networks (some really interesting opportunities coming to Hull with the rollout of fibre optic cables right to people’s houses and the coming of 4G to the mobile space) to, of all things, insurance and liability.

I’d never really considered the insurance issues relating to games that run in the cloud, but as soon as you start letting players buy content in the game, using the so called “Freemium” model a whole bunch of liabilities suddenly appear. What if customers change their mind? What if you lose their content? What if someone “steals” content from another player. What if you inadvertently release sensitive data about your players? I’m not sure we have all the answers to these questions now, but one thing I am sure about is that if I was moving into that space I’d take some advice about it.

One other thing I took away from the session was that as soon as you start selling stuff, even if it is 79 pence for a copy of CheeseLander, you are running a business. If there are a bunch of you working together you need to agree on who owns the intellectual property in the game you are selling (or how you are sharing it) and how you will share out the earnings. In fact, after the talk I approached Rob from Andrew Jackson solicitors and asked him if he would be willing to come and give a chat to our student about this. I’m very pleased that he reckoned he could sort something out. Next semester I’m going to be running some “Rather Useful Seminars” about stuff it is good to know and that is one subject that we’ll now be covering.

After the hard nosed business talk we were able to have a go with Assassins Creed 3, which looks lovely. The demo was set on a pirate ship with a beautifully rendered environment and some lovely looking water.

Cloud Gaming Debate at Platform Expo

If you’re around and about Hull tomorrow and interested in the games industry you might like to drop into the Cloud Gaming debate organised by Platform Expos. They’ve got Chris Deering, Founder of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Nick Thopmpson from KC, Mike Hewitt from O2 and Jiveen Lal from Hiscox insurance, who are also sponsoring the event. Also Ubisoft are bringing along a playable demo of Assassin's Creed 3 which will be well worth a look.

If you want to go along send an email to ian.archibald@wtchumber.com and he will sort you out a ticket.

Bright and Early

I was up bright and early today to review the papers for Radio Humberside. One of the nice things about being up town at 6:45am (and there has got to be at least one) is that you can take pictures of the town in the early morning sunshine.

Back to School with Kinect Start Here!

For the next week my fabulous book about the Kinect is being promoted by those lovely people at O’Reilly as part of their “Back-to-School special. You can save up to 50% on Books, Videos, Courses (and of course my book) for one week only. Find out more at http://oreil.ly/SUPaaT

20 Programming Opinions

Today I was reading a post from James which linked through to a list of “20 Controversial Programming Opinions” that folks had posted on Stack Overflow. It is worth a look, if only to foster debate about the subject.

I’ve not got a problem with any of the statements to be honest. Some of them make more sense in particular contexts, but none of them are outright daft. I think most of them boil down to:

If you are using something make sure you are doing it for the right reasons and for the right effect. Adding comments, drawing use case diagrams, writing unit tests etc etc should not be things that you do “Because you have to”. In the right context these techniques are crucial. If I’m meeting a customer for the first time and I need to have something that will serve as the basis of of discussion a Use Case Diagram is essential. But if I’m writing a quick, single purpose, application then there is no need for that level of detail.

The bottom line is that before you use something you should consider why you are using it and how it will add to what you are building.  Don’t feel bad because you haven’t used a design pattern, or written thousands of unit tests. Just ask yourself how much the user likes what you have made, and how you can make it work better.

Hope and Anchor at Blacktoft

The Hope and Anchor at Blacktoft is a great place to go for a meal by the river. If you are really lucky you might get a sky like this in between courses. And a dirty great boat going past the window (which I failed to rush out and take a picture of).

Just make sure that you set your SatNav up with care. My score so far is “Attempts to find the place: 2. Went straight there: 0”.

It is also a great place to go if you like Laurel and Hardy. Go along and find out what I mean. And have the roast beef Sunday Lunch. Lovely.

This is another view, using the Painterly 2 filter from PhotoMatix.

The Inverse of Service

I’m never sure whether my hobby is photography or “Buying cameras, using them for a bit and then selling them for a loss on ebay”. Either way, while I do take a lot of photos I also do a bit of camera shopping. Today I was in a camera shop asking about a camera I was thinking of investing in. I never say buying, that sounds like I might actually lose money on the deal.

Anyhoo, we find the camera and one of the assistants appears and offers to show me the device in action. Which turns out to have a flat battery. “Typical” says the assistant, although typical of what I’m not sure. No, they don’t have any charged batteries lying around. No, they don’t have any other versions of the camera, just the one on display. No they won’t give a discount if they sell the display camera. The best they can offer is to charge the battery and I can drop back later to take a look.

I wouldn’t mind but this is the third time I have had this kind of experience. Shop 1 the camera battery was flat. Shop 2 the battery wasn’t flat but they didn’t have an SD card that I could use to store pictures that I’d taken to test the camera. And now I get this.These are just random shops I’ve walked into around the country. They were not all in the same chain either.

The camera I was looking at wasn’t cheap. And I was fairly serious about buying it. If I was selling in this position I’d make sure that every camera was fully charged first thing in the morning. I’d have a pocket full of the relevant batteries and SD cards that fitted. I’d even go as far as having a bunch of sample prints that I’d taken to show any potential customer what each camera could do. I’d have a sensible policy on selling display models, even a modest discount might have sealed the deal.

The one way that these kinds of shops can compete with online shopping is on service. It is rather upsetting to find that they are not really trying on this score either.

Simon Says “Broken Sword”

Today Simon came to see me and told me to write a blog post about Revolution Software and their new project. Revolution has a long and distinguished history, some of which involves Hull, although they are now based just down the road in York. One of my many claims to fame is that a future member of the Revolution staff was with me in my brand new Vauxhall Astra when I crashed it. Things could have been really bad for that company (and me I suppose) if I’d managed to get six inches further out of the junction before that van hit us…..

Anyoo, motor mishaps aside, Revolution has produced some excellent “point and click” adventures in its time, including such seminal titles as “Lure of the Temptress”, “Beneath a Steel Sky” and of course the “Broken Sword” series. The rise of tablet devices has given their products a new lease of life, with a whole generation of new gamers who have the perfect platform for exploring their beautifully drawn environments and taut plotlines.

Revolution are presently seeking funding for their game and you can get a piece of the action by backing their Kickstarter project to raise the cash to produce the game. For a game of this quality the target funding seems quite modest, and they are well on the way to raising it. Simon says that if you don’t get involved he will be very disappointed and wear a frown for the rest of the week.

The Imagine Cup Refreshed

Everything gets refreshed from time to time. Superman, Spiderman (twice) etc etc. And now the Imagine Cup. It has been going for ten years and has been incredibly successful, in fact last year’s finals were the best I’ve ever seen. Of course Microsoft could have kept everything the same and planned on the competition staying at the top. But that is not how things work. The best time to refresh is when you are on the crest of the wave, because that is how you go on to even better things.

And so that’s what Microsoft has done. All the elements that make the competition great are still there. You can still get involved to make the world a better place by engaging with the World Citizenship competition. But there are also some new options. The Innovation award lets you take that little idea you had and make it into something amazing. The Games competition lets you show off your ideas for new types of gameplay. And the prizes are even bigger, with $50,000 up for the winning teams in each competition.

I’ve seen first hand the effect of the Imagine Cup on the students that take part. It has changed their lives. Get in on the ground floor at http://www.imaginecup.com/

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Number one daughter reckons that Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on the PS Vita is good fun. And it is. I bought a copy second hand (or “pre-owned”, which sounds much better) and the first thing it said when I started it was that because the game had been used before I would not be able to get any achievements on my Playstation Network account. Now, since the only reason I do anything is to get achievements (no – really) this was rather irritating.

It was almost as if they wanted to penalise those folks who didn’t pay full price for a new version, in the same way that second hand cars don’t have as many gears as those brought brand new. No, wait, that’s wrong….

Anyhoo, if you find yourself in the same position it seems that there is a way that you can sort this out. Put the cartridge into your Vita and wait for the UMVC3 icon to appear. Then hold your finger on the icon until all the icons start to wobble and have those three dots above them. This is the Vita way of letting you move games and applications around the screens. If you touch the three dots above the UMVC3 icon you will see the menu above. Just select Delete and confirm it to remove the information about this game from your system. Then pop the game cartridge out and back in again for a clean install. Note that this removes all your progress in the game, and so it works best if it is the first thing that you do before you start playing it.

The game itself is hilarious. If you’ve ever wanted to fight as Phoenix Wright (actually he is a bit of a wimp – but his secretary packs quite a punch) then this is a great way to do it.

Now available in white

I found this Roundom Vase design on Thinginverse. It is a fairly good workout of the Ultimaker printer. Up until now I’ve been printing in pink, as it is the only colour plastic I had in stock. However, today when we got back from our trip away there was a parcel from Faberdashery with some different colours in it, including a reel of “Artic White”.

Changing printing colours is quite easy. You heat up the print head, pull the old coloured plastic out of the printer and then push in the new one that you want to use.  Then just extrude plastic until all the old colour has gone. push the old plastic out until the colour changes, and then print something in the new colour. Actually, the base of the white vase above has some pink streaks in it where a last blob of the old colour made its way out of the system, but for now I’m printing white, which is nice.

I’m pleased with the results, but the surface is not quite perfect, as you can see if you examine the above pictures carefully. For me the interesting thing is that the imperfections, which you would think would be down to things like random noise and vibration, are pretty much always in the same place on both vases. Very strange.

I’ve almost, but not quite, reached the point where I can fire up the machine with the expectation of getting a useable print out of it each time I use it. The most important thing is to make sure that the first layer sticks to the printing surface. To do this I use the “Rob Miles Patent Pending A4 paper trick”. This goes like this:

• Turn the printer on and heat up the print head. This is so that you don’t get bits of solidified plastic upsetting the position.
• Put a piece of A4 printer paper on the print surface.
• Send the printer to its home position where the Z value (up and down) is set to zero.
• Turn the printer off so that it doesn’t spend too much time with the print head heated up.
• The print head should now be really close to the print surface. Adjust the surface height until the paper will just slide between the head and the print surface. Move the print head to the four corners of the print surface and adjust the height at each of those.
• Remove the paper, turn the printer on, heat up the head again and start printing.

If you have the urge to tinker then a printer like this is a great outlet. I wouldn’t say it is totally reliable, but it is fun.

Hooked on Table Tennis

I used to be quite good at Table Tennis. Today I found that I’m not as good as I used to be. But it is still great fun. I’m going to take some bats and balls to work and see if I can track down a table. Anyone out there on the Hull campus fancy a game?

Isle of Man Pictures

Not much to say today, but we did get some nice pictures

Exploring the Isle of Man

Got some holiday coming up? Fancy somewhere really nice? Go to the Isle of Man.

Never been there before, but I’ve been missing out. It has scenery that will give Yorkshire a good run for its money (which is saying something) and a fantastic coastline. It gives you the feel of being abroad (different money) without the hassle of being abroad (english money works fine too). We got to spend some time today exploring the island. The Isle of Man is a bit too near UK to be guaranteed good weather, but we found a good bit and headed for it. As you can see above, I’ve been playing with High Dynamic Range photography. This gives the pictures a bit more impact. Sometimes this means they look a bit more like they did when you took them. Other times it means that you can go for artistic effects like these.

I’m using Photomatix Pro to combine three images taken at different exposures. The program has a bunch of pre-set configurations which can be tweaked to get some very nice effects. And the good news is that the forecast is even better for tomorrow.

C# Yellow Book 2012 Now Available

The latest version of the C# Yellow Book is now available for free download. You can get it here, or you can press the spiffy new short cut on this page.

There are a few changes. I’ve fixed all the mistakes that have been sent in (and probably added a few more). The section on Graphical User Interfaces now covers XAML rather than Windows Forms. And the text now mentions “The Wizard of Oz”

Gadgeteer LED Matrix

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to get hold of some LED Matrix modules for Gadgeteer. These give a decent sized array of 64 leds. They are really easy to program, and they use the GHI DaisyLink protocol, which means that they can all be controlled from a single Gadgeteer port. Each device links to the next to make a kind of daisy chain, which is where the name came from I guess. Each of the display modules contains an ARM processor which you can load with your own software (although you’ll have to be a pretty good developer to do that).

One other neat thing is that I managed to power four of them (as you can see above) using a single USB output from my PC. I was worried that having 256 leds powered from a single port might cause problems with the current available but they work fine.

At the moment my program just displays random patterns (like those computers they had in 70’s movies) but I’m going to have a go at displaying scrolling messages and even lo-res pictures. I reckon you could even get a very simple pong game working on a 16x16 display.

Staying with Gadgeteer, if you want to find out all about how my Tweet Printer works, there is a full writeup on the Gadgeteer website (http://www.netmf.com/gadgeteer/) where it is a featured project at the moment. I actually gave the first printer to the Gadgeteer team, I’m presently building a replacement.