PAX Report: Day Two

Probably the most difficult thing I had to do all weekend was convince Bryan to be up early enough to make the nine AM opening of the con. Of course, this didn’t actually happen, but as it turns out no one cared because the line to get in was wrapped all the way around the block in both freaking directions; it was unreal. Rather than wait in line we went and got breakfast at the hotel until things calmed down, at which point we still had to wait another half hour or so before getting inside.

It’s kind of hard to describe the nature of the con – unless you’ve been to one before there isn’t a lot to compare it with. The Meydenbauer center is a very classy place, arguably too classy to host a massive nerd gathering (it even had escalators!) but it really lent a feeling of credibility to the entire event. There was a theater where the various panel discussions and concerts were held, a theater that was far too small for the number of people attending, and a basement (really just the ground floor) that housed various tabletop games. In addition, the fourth floor housed a console gaming room with thirty or so televisions which three consoles each, two PC gaming rooms (one BYO and one provided by Lanwerx) and the exhibitor room. Ubisoft and Microsoft were the too biggest presences in the exhibitor area, although NC Soft, Gameskins and Sweetkitty were also major contributors. Brady Games was there, too, giving out free SC2 strategy guides; I grabbed one because they had a pullout poster inside.

We attended a pair of panels, the first being the “State of the Industry” address and the second covering the game development process. Representatives from Microsoft, Nintendo and other major game studios were present and, on the whole, the discussions were very useful in highlighting good and bad aspects of the gaming industry. It certainly made me rethink some of my plans, although that’s something I’ll cover in more detail later.

The Soul Calibur 2 tournament was absolutely insane. The registration was supposed to be limited to 128 people, but by the time the initial pools were finished well over 400 people had been called. Of course, many of these ended up being no-shows but the final count was still in the vicinity of 300 contestants. I ended up in a decent pool although I lost in the final round to a Nightmare player I probably could have beaten had I been at the top of my game. As it was, I got screwed by the Talim vs. Nightmare throw glitch, where a straight on throw (not a side or back one) from Talim will miss Nightmare for no reason at all about 30% of the time. It happened three times, all of which resulted in major damage against me and one of which would have ended the match had I connected. Ah well, I’m still fairly happy with my performance, and big props go to Pat who also got to the last round of his pool.

The biggest disappointment of the night was the concert. Not because the concert was bad – on the contrary, it was fabulous – but because there was only room for about 500 of the 2000 plus con attendees. I lost track of time and we ended up returning from dinner only a half-hour before the concert was scheduled to start, and by that point all 500 seats had been filled. Bryan and I were incredibly disappointed, but they did use the convention center’s internal television system to pipe the concert into the main areas where we were able to watch it anyway. It wasn’t the same as being there, but even still seeing the Final Fantasy piano pieces and The Minibosses live was totally sweet.

By the way, my plan is to cover the second day of the convention in much the same manner as the first two, and then I’ll follow it up with a “wrap-up” report where I’ll highlight the best parts and give general impressions of the con itself. Stay tuned.

PAX Report: Day Three

By Saturday night we were all suffering from varying amounts of jet-lag, although Bryan (the first one to leave the con) continued to deny it. Thus, Sunday morning was a bit later than I’d have preferred but it didn’t matter since we still made what was arguably the most important panel of the weekend: How to break into the game industry. The guest speakers covered a lot of different areas and managed to show me a few avenues I hadn’t previously considered. I’ve always assumed that programming was the best way to go, but after hearing Porkfry give his testimony the testing department doesn’t seem like such a bad idea either. The guests did confirm, however, the one thing that gives me pause in my quest to join the game industry: insane hours. All of them mentioned the sixty to eighty hour weeks they were expected to work so often it was basically standard.

The Halo 2 demonstration was the next event of note and, like the concert on Saturday it filled up long before we had a chance to get in. It was both hilarious and slightly pathetic to see a few guys walking around with signs offering money for someone’s spot in line. The demo itself was the same one the showed at E3, although actually seeing people playing it live was a lot cooler than watching the videos. I’m still not a believer, but I’m fairly sure I’ll end up getting it anyway.

For those of you who don’t know, Bryan and Pat are phenomenal Call of Duty players. With that in mind it was only natural that we sign up for the five on five CoD tournament. I filled in the third slot, but to fill the other two we managed to grab two guys who had never played the game until an hour before! Even with this handicap we kicked ass (or should I say, Pat and Bryan kicked ass) and our momentum was enough to slide us into third place. In fact, we very nearly reached the final round – we only lost our previous fight by three points after leading most of the game. I got a twelve month subscription to Xbox Live out of the deal, something I’ve been wanting but couldn’t justify paying for.

The night wound down pretty quickly after that, largely because the console room was closed early because of theft problems (some ass-clowns stole four consoles). I ended up waiting in line for the DDR Extreme machine and getting into a conversation with a girl named Brandii. As luck would have it, it turned out she had recently graduated from one of the California universities (sorry, they all sound alike to a Midwesterner) with a CS degree and had already landed a job at Monolith as a mission designer for The Matrix Online! She also had met both Warren Spector (of Deus Ex fame) and Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims et al) and discussed the finer points of game design with them. After learning that I was also interested in game design she hooked me up with several great networking resources including the GDC (Game Developers Conference), which she said I could attend as a student for a vastly reduced price. I ended up with a business card and a request that I contact her when I was ready to start working so that she could help me out. That alone made the entire trip worthwhile; the rest was almost icing on the cake.

This Post Includes Math

No, I’m not dead, thanks for asking though. Circumstances have kept me way busier than I expected, although you’re not to take that without a dash of salt. After all, when I wasn’t trying to catch up with my classes I’ve been totally absorbed by Final Fantasy XI, which I’ll probably talk about some other time (maybe once I get the gaming section back up).

The real problem is, or at least will be very soon, my Algorithms class. I am not a huge fan of advanced mathematics, but even things like Calculus and Linear Algebra have a certain attraction in that you can get an answer. Though the problem may be long an involved, the answer itself is usually short and can quickly be verified as correct or incorrect by consulting the back of the textbook.

As you may have guessed, this is not the case in Algorithms. This class focuses solely on the theoretical areas of math, including set notation, probability, and most importantly proofs. None of these are things I care about, which is normally not a big deal. The bigger deal is that this is a very difficult I care nothing about, which compounds the problem immensely. It’s a real chore to work hard at a class you hate; it’s an even harder thing to work hard in a class you hate that you know you can’t do better than pass.

It’s not that the math is beyond my capabilities, it’s just that I never bothered to train myself in this particular kind. To get to the level I need to be just to understand the notation has taken days – I have not yet begun to actually learn how to analyze these proofs. The task is so immense as to squash all real ambition, but the fact is I have no choice but to take the class. Having finally decided to ditch Computer Engineering in favor of Computer Science (pending one or two small details I still need to investigate) this class becomes required rather than elective.

The final blow is dealt by the fact that I have no use for this information I’ll garner from this class. The study of algorithms is mainly for those engaging in the frontiers of theoretical computer science. Those who, like me, are interested in the application of such things won’t be spending time proving the validity of sorting methods – we’ll simply implement ones already created by those who have the time to do so. I have no desire to enter this field, which was why I became a computer engineer in the first place, but my anathema to hardware (read: anything involving circuits and differential equations) is so strong that I don’t see any other options.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling, the technical details that will be boring to anyone who isn’t in my field (and maybe those people too). I should be back to a regular update schedule again for the foreseeable future – thanks for your patience.

Sendai of Michigan

It’s been raining pretty much all morning here, and despite the fact that Houghton is a great many thousand miles from Japan I actually considered riding my bike with an umbrella. Of course, after a few moments I came to my senses and realized that I was never very good at that, even six months ago.

Speaking of Japan, it’s almost uncanny how much parts of Houghton feel like Sendai when it’s raining. The city (or two cities, really) are in a valley with large hills – not quite mountains – rising on either side and a river running down the middle. Walking down the street shielding myself from the rain with an umbrella I bought at Daeie, looking up at the fog-obscured hills, it felt like a brief moment of deja-vu.

To add to the mystique, a pair of squirrels crossed the road in opposite directions as I was coming back from morning classes. This in and of itself is not unusual; the strange part was that one squirrel was snow white and the other coal black, no joke. They crossed going opposite directions almost simultaneously, and though I am certainly not a believer in such things I can see how one might take it as a sign of something. Probably something bad, knowing as I do my general luck with such things, but a sign all the same.

In an unrelated note, in case anyone was unsure: REZ is fantastic. I played it through again a few days ago while showing it to one of my roommates and realized I’d forgotten how beautiful the fifth and final area is. Play it, now. That’s an order.

Football!

So, after breaking the longest road losing streak in NFL history the Lions have gone on to win again for their first 2-0 start in four years. I’ve been a big Lions fan for years, watching them through both the good times and (mostly) bad, something that tends to surprise most people who meet me. I may not be your typical sports fan archetype but I do hold all the various Detroit sports teams in high regard, though none so highly as my prized Lions.

The biggest bonus, for me, is the fact that I’m actually getting to see this year’s successes. Last year’s season was obscured by my trip to Japan and the previous two years fell victim to Houghton’s proximity to Green Bay; as a result, the dorms only got Packer’s games. Now that I live in an off-campus apartment it seems that I’ll be able to watch all the games, a prospect that finally answers a difficult question: what exactly does one do on a Sunday afternoon?

Heck, the games even serve to motivate me once in a while. It’s amazing how much better a Sunday feels when your favorite sports team wins a game.

My Love Letter To Firefox

I don’t know how many of you still use Internet Explorer, I’m hoping not very many, but I’m sure there’s a least a handful out there. If this sounds like you allow me to direct your attention to the latest release of Firefox, the browser from the guys who brought you Mozilla. I wanted to wait until I’d spent a few days with it before I recommended it to anyone else and, I’m happy to say, the wait was unnecessary – this browser rocks.

It’s not easy to get excited about web browsers anymore since, for the most part, all anyone really wants it to do is display web pages. That’s it. At least, that’s what you probably think you want if you’ve never used Firefox. The latest revisions come with a pre-installed plugin that supports multiple search engines, and when I say search engines I’m not just talking about Yahoo! and Google. The tiny, un-obtrusive utility can search Amazon, Ebay, Dictionary.com and the Wikipedia in addition to Google. This covers essentially every search utility I ever use, with the possible exception of the Internet Movie Archive, a service which I very occasionally use.

I won’t bother to go over the stuff that should be expected in any modern browser except to list them quickly: tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, a download manager, RSS content feeds and style-sheet switching are all there and easy to use. The major bonus, for me, is the speed of Firefox – at long last there’s a browser that can compete with IE when it comes to sheer speed in both opening a window and rendering a webpage. My biggest complaint with Mozilla (and the early versions of Firefox) was how slow they ran, but this issue seems to have been completely resolved.

In any case, if you haven’t given an alternate browser a shot since the days of Netscape I strongly urge you to give the latest version of Firefox a shot. Heck, it even provides a help section devoted entirely to former users of IE! After all, I’m not the only one to fall in love with this browser; one million downloads in five days says more than anything I could post here.

Juniors Should Understand Pointers Too

There’s a fine line between being a smartass and being a jerk. The former has some honor, mostly because it often takes a little bit of creativity to be a smartass, while the latter requires no effort at all. Likewise, it’s one thing to correct an instructor on a matter of fact. Heck, I’d even say it’s your duty to call bullshit in such situations. On the other hand, if you pick on minor details in the lecture that, really, are completely outside the scope of the discussion just to make the instructor look like a moron you’re just a standard jerk. I’ll even go so far as to say that you’re not a particularly bright one. Quit blaming your own lack of understanding on the instructors handwriting – if you really knew jack about programming in C++ the fact that a period doesn’t quite line up with the bottom of the line shouldn’t confuse you. The intention is obvious, and the fact that you can’t see it is a personal problem.

Outside of class, and outside the former topic as well, Yuta and I have been considering heading down to Sheboygan for an SC2 tournament in October. This sort of boondoggle is in no way justifiable but then, such reasoning has never stopped me before. More information as events warrant.

The Final Few Miles

Some of you may remember that, sometime back, I started working on a re-design of the site. Well, I’ve finally put the final beta version of the new design up for your perusal. It’s not finished – there are a few quirks I need to work out in Firefox and, most importantly, the character encoding is wrong. If anyone knows of a utility that can convert iso-8859 to utf-8 I would be greatly in your debt.

Anyway, feel free to take a look around and post your responses. The comment system over there works, too, although it’s not linked to this one. I’m in the process of switching over to Wordpress, a rather painful process but one I think will probably be worth it in the long run. Go ahead and post your comments there, if you like, so that you can get a feel for the new commenting system and decide whether or not it meets your approval.

Without further addo, here’s the new site: www.plaristocrates.com/wp/

Dance Karnov, Dance For Justice!

Sorry about the lack of content lately. It’s really a combination of factors, most of which involve Real Life(TM) doing all sorts of nasty things to my schedule. I don’t even have that many credits this semester, certainly far less than I’ve had in the past, which doesn’t seem particularly fair. Or maybe it is, if you look at it from the perspective of punishment for attempted slacking.

It also seems that Houghton has decided, as it often does, that the time has come for everyone and everything to be frozen. It does this without warning, usually after several eighty-degree ninety-percent humidity days in a row. I went out the door this morning and realized that I could see my breath, at which point I went back inside and put on a jacket. Because I was wearing short sleeves. Because it was warm just a few days ago. Eh.

Oh, since I’ve got nothing further to add (I did at one point, I think, but I’m still recovering from my eight-AM class and cognition is not high on my list of priorities) I’ll direct your attention to Dance Dance Karnov, a phenomenon that will no doubt sweep the world within weeks.

Hype Control

Just figured I’d do my part to control the flood of hype that will no doubt start coming soon: it seems Half-Life 2 scored a ninety-six percent in the new issue of PC Gamer. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is the same magazine that gave Doom III a ninety-four percent and called it “a masterpiece of the art form.” The article that accompanied the review was like a love letter to the developers, practically the caliber you see in internet forums! OMG IMHO DM3 is teh awesome!!11@@!

Don’t get excited by this – if you even still read reviews, wait until someone like Gamespot reviews it (FYI, Gamespot gave Doom III an 8.5). I lost all respect for PC Gamer after the Doom review – it’s clear that they’re in the pockets of the publishers, especially since EGM strongly hinted that they had passed up the exclusive “for a major release” because they weren’t willing to rig the review scores. At least someone out there has a sense of journalistic integrity.