I’m seriously considering one of these candy cabs. Now where to put it 
The Egret II cab is popular because of its easy rotate mechanism and monitor with near flawless geometry, and stunning picture in 15kHz.
Cave will thank me for it…
I had the pleasure of attending the FOWD 2010 conference and revisited an event i attended for the first time 3 years ago, the latest incarnation of which was bigger and broader, covering virtually every aspect of the business relevent today.
17th May 2010
Accelerating Creativity in ActionScript 3 using HYPE
Josh Davis – Josh Davis Studios (http://www.joshuadavis.com/)
Having a background programming flash, what appealed to me would be a framework that would take care of the general book keeping and repeated core tasks necessary for commerical work.
Attending the hype workshop with the eccentric Joshua Davis allowed me to find out more about this collection of behaviours, written from the past 10 years of his experience with flash, which makes visual sketching more accessible using AS3.
In his own words this is not an API. And although it’s supposedly easier for designers, because they don’t have to code the mathematics, you will still need to be confident in understanding AS3 objects and structure. There are a number of classes that perform a number of tasks from grid and shape layout, to timer rhythms and callbacks, wave ocillators and cool functions like png and targa export.
The closest thing i can approximate it to is Processing – but using Flash AS3. A visual sketch book with utilities for exporting between file formats for static work and tools to experiment with making animated/moving images. It this respect it didn’t meet my expectations to what it was, but it is an extension and simplification of the cool stuff that can be done in flash that would make sense to visual experimentors and animators who dont necessarily spend time in heavy code.
I spent the whole day actively using the framework and we covered a number of the tools in a series of tutorials. The framework is open source and Josh encouraged participation and development the project.
Find out more about the hype framework here:-
http://www.hypeframework.org/
18th May 2010
Play. Destroy. Create.
Brendan Dawes – Magnetic North (http://mnatwork.com/)
Probably the talk with the most heart as Brenden always relates to his own experiences and family, and its clear he still has a genuine passion despite being there at the birth of internet celebrity. He covered a number of topics that should help you to broaden and inspire your views as a designer and lucky for you i can spoil you with my notes.
1. Collect things
We now have a plethora of ways to document and record information from mobile devices, pen and paper, photography and Brenden was an advocate of a site called evernote – http://www.evernote.com/ which lets you store your notes and ideas and later print them off as a book. There was also a Mac only program called DEEP that allowed you to catalogue and tag images which can do some funky things like automatically create swatches based on the indexed images.
2. Ordinary Everyday
Observing things that are unnoticed was another heavy topic, and we were encouraged to look beyond the portals and top twenty lists. Brenden revealed a picture of the inside of his wife’s handbag and explained that every item in the bag from Christian Dior perfume to tissues and tictacs was there for a purpose and symbolises where we are as a society. So when we design we should be looking to solve a real world need, which is often overlooked.
3. Edit Everything
Brenden’s dad was a sports photographer and from a young age was in situations where he had to make instinctive decisions. The story goes that once the paper was going to press and he was called to produce a printable photo in 5 minutes. Now it takes 6 minutes to develop film naturally. So he had to dry 36 wet prints with a hairdryer and make a definitive call in seconds on the best shot and continue drying that. Newspaper and print have a different context to digital because they are throwaway, but desicion making principals were still encouraged to be done on instinct.
4. We don’t make sense
We were presented with a top down map city and it was noted that we don’t stick to the suggested routes but will take shortcuts. Brenden used an example of a bridge that was designed with this brief.
“Create a structure that provokes exploration and questioning of accepted practices and methods.”
The bridge’s final design had a kink in it. And rather going from A to B as all bridges work, you were encouraged to explore. Not only was it whimsically, the kink was neccessary engineering touch to aid support, but you potentially could’ve have bumped into your future wife or an old friend. A great example of illogical design.
5. Risk needs a partner
6. Give things a name
7. Contraints are Good
10 Tips for iPhone Interface Design
Sarah Parmenter – You Know Who (http://www.youknowwhodesign.com/)
Sarah Parmenter delivered a straightforward insight into her wireframing process and own experiences of the iphone app submission process throught 10 tips. A lot of it was broad design and process knowledge for anyone involved in the industry but what was most interesting for me as a developer involved the Apple UI rules and dimensions for touch screen hit areas, iconography, bevelling and spacing. (See photos) Anyone involved in iPhone/iPad Dev should definately do thier research work before developing an app as apple have stringent control and expectation on what is publishable, which was a good takeaway from this session.
19th May 2010
The Art of Emotional Design: A story of pleasure, joy, and delight.
Aral Balkan – http://aralbalkan.com/
This talk was a delight. Delight being the keyword with emphasis on designing experiences beyond usable, to stable, to something pleasurable, delightful and even magical. The ways this could be acheived is in the attention to details, and provoking emotional responses from these details.
Aral’s iPhone app feathers is a twitter posting app that could use special characters. It is essentially a very simple app but he achieved critical praise for embelishing interactions with visual feedback that was empathic to what the user was doing and thier needs and not the designer/developer. He had a clear understanding of what the user might do and treated them.
His other app was a barcode reader than would load up the ebook version if it could find it. If the search was taking ages to request he was engaging the user through his app’s emoticon character. The character would become glum and upset and eventually if it timed out it would apologise. Empathising with the users state of mind during this interaction made the wait more bearable and even made a plesurable experience.
Uncharted 2 is to PS3 what Golden Eye was n64, or Halo was to Xbox. It’s a platform exclusive that raises the expectations of a console game, or any game for that matter.
No other current gen blockbuster has captured my imagination like this or had me playing all the way through to the end. I’ll get this out the way the single player adventure is linear, and i am an adulent fan of linear games as opposed to sandbox style games, as i like being taken through a structured and directed experience as it give me an insight into someones vision with tighter control.
Naughty dog took a risk with the new IP but capaitalised on the lack of really great games at the systems launch. As it stands Uncharted 1 was one of the prettiest titles at the PS3 launch. Leveraging this the team have gone and over delivered in terms of graphics, everything is normal mapped to such a high level, theres impressive weather physics from bloom, to snow weight and density models, and water affecting the cloth physics of the characters. Even depth of focus on the gun sight! something I didn’t even notice until recently, but small touches just add to the cinematic experience.
Despite the visual similarities to the tomb raider series, uncharted is more 3rd person shooter driven and plays like Gears of War crossed with Splinter Cell but faster paced than both. Gears pace is more measured, and there is a rhythm of stop and pop action, you could basically camp and hold position well staving enemies away with the chainsaw at close range. In uncharted you never have the luxury, Nathan Drake is purposely designed to be an everyman, the odds stacked against him and constantly shouting sarcastic quips as he gets flanked but much stronger enemies. You will be moving to and from cover much more, using every available grenade and using splinter cell stealth kills to conserve ammo as you can usually kill a guard in one hit.
There are much more weapons in this game than the first including the crossbow which kills in one or two hits any enemy in the game as well as doing it in stealth. The riot shield which can be used in conjunction with a handgun – works well with the automatics. And you have the ability to toss gas canister and trigger explosions. That and staple blind fire and many levels having a computer controlled AI to help you and you have lots of gameplay options available to you.
Special mention goes to the characterization with the awesome Amy Hennig helming game director and script writer role and putting the effort to study rolls of film to create believable characters. Nathan drake, Chloe Frasier and Victor Sullivan may be a pastiche of indiana jones characters and be a cliche in film terms but its commendable to move game character design out of space marine/generic adolescent fantasy territory, and sold well despite not bowing to publisher pressure.
As you can probably tell I love it, I’ve sunk loads of time into the achievements, and cracked hard mode. and had my first multiplayer experience which rocks too. This is definitely my game of the year so far. Go out and buy it and put that PS3 to good use.
It looks like an official patent so I trust this one. Don’t know how software can fully emulate without the hardware chips, as PAL 60gb has proved and im sure Sony will charge silly amounts for the back catalogue titles but at I’d take playing a half broken version of ICO than nothing any day!
Lets face it the Standard edition Madcatz fightstick was made to be modded, I already took delivery of x6 sanwa buttons which ive never used before and have to say i really like them, even though they are a little on the sensitive take side i’d rather take speed and responsiveness over the allegedly weightier seimitsus.
So the next trick was replacing the stock sanwa Madcatz SE Joystick (e.g fake!) that feels nothing like a proper JLF /JLW.
Here’s what i did, and i in no way suggest you do this to your own sticks and blame me for turning your new stick into a street fighter paperweight :-
NOW MUSTER ALL THE PATIENCE YOU HAVE BECAUSE THIS IS THE TRICKIEST BIT
Removing the restrictor plate:-
Now the reason i got you to remove the mounting plate is because it makes this next step so much easier. I had such a hard time trying to remove this until i read this article on srk http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=182260&page=2
I was actually try to push my screwdriver in the holes from the bottom of the stick but actually like this diagram explains you should be wedging it in and it in the direction of the plate comes off (despite the hooks). Now that the mounting plate is off go round each of the 4 hooks and apply gentle pressure to each with a screwdriver, loosening each hook the same amount. You should hear a creak if this is working an with about 5-10 mins you can have this off 
TO MOD OR NOT TO MOD…
Now this is a crucial point, you can now do substantial mods http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QytcbzZmXaI to this stick to get the throw and activation quicker at this point and ive also seen advice along the lines of: “ok throw the stock stick away! ”
But last night i a stroke of genius and 30mins 2am soldering I discovered another use for the stock components…
Introducing the …
**** 5 PIN CONNECTIONLESS MOD! ****
We can mod the SE stock stick to our hearts content but the trouble is why polish a turd, And we can tighten the throw on a JLF, but really why do this unless you want an octo gate fitted as well when there are perfectly tight seimitsu sticks about. Well i had one LS-32 stick spare!!
…HOWEVER its not the -01 types (the ones with the 5 pin connector) I did have a JLF 5 pin coming for my birthday, but i just couldnt wait to try SF4 with a Seimitsu. How could i connect this stick without a 5 pin connector? I have to say this was done as a first time, late night mod, apologies if this has been done before, but i was quite excited about it.
Looking at the components i thought there are 5 soldering points on the pcb, probably 1 ground and 4 others for up, down left and right respectively, I made a note of which way the pcb was fitted in, The connector would be facing right when the back plate of the SE stick is opened. Then following the copper traces i deduced that pinout for the board was, from left to right i the pictures above :- (DOWN, UP, LEFT, RIGHT, GROUND)
I started to solder wire from each contact to the appropriate connection on the microswitches of the LS-32. From looking at the existing stock PCB I deduced that the ground on each microswitch was the pin on the opposite side of the actual switch mechanism or the lowest pin where as the pin that connects to a directional contact on the pcb was PERPENDICULAR to the switch mechanism. That might be clearer in the following pictures, Ive daisy chained the ground, (wires in white) to solder to that single contact, and the rest just connect up to the appropriate microswitch but feel free to get in contact with me if you need clarification.
Then i connected the 5pin connector to the pcb, which is also now connected to the LS-32! The great thing about this mod i realised, is that when the JLF arrives or if i indeed want to connect any other 5 pin compatable joystick i can remove this as its not a permanent mod!
So there you have it:
x1 Standard edition stick £70
x1 Seimitsu LS-32 £14
x6 Sanwa Push in buttons OBSF-30 £1.70/ea
A vitually perfect stick in my eyes and fairly cheaper than the of the cost of a TE stick. Using Madcatz offcuts at 2am in the morning was pretty ghetto, and fell asleep before i could get any decent matches, but tried it with HD remix this morning and it just feels amazing. Now i just need to perfect my FADC Ultra’s and it would have been worth it!
The announcement finally drops and i couldn’t be happier, but i wonder how long it will be before someone cracks it…. And it’ll be more interesting if sony decide to go towards the digital distribution only route.
Wow i’ve held off for so long but between this and the new 3.0 revision to the iPhone firmware i might have to get myself an iPhone!
Continuing the VC goodness i just found a great interview with my favourite VGmusic composer