USC IMD:

Interested in Attending the GDC?

One of the best ways to experience the Game Developers Conference is as a Conference Associate - and the applications are now available! (http://www.gdconf.com/attend/volunteer.html)

Sonar

Eric Spoerner & I recently submitted our game, Sonar, to the Indie Game Challenge. Sonar is about the visualization of sound to create a unique and engaging experience. We made Sonar in 2006 as a student project in CTIN 489 Intermediate Game Design Workshop. Grand prize is $100K and the 6 finalists in our category (Non-Professional) get to pitch their game to a publisher. Wish us luck!

-Waylon Fong

Watch the Trailer

Download Sonar

Virtual Sphere

I was just catching up on my Reuters Tech News, and found this video, while I'm sure I'm behind the curve compared to our VR researchers, and innovators, I thought it worthy of a post nonetheless. I'm wondering what people like Mark, Scott, and Michael might think about the viability of a such a system. I found it also interesting that they tried to claim in the Reuters story that there are no VR simulators for ground troops; having seen some of what goes on at ICT I found it a seeming unfounded statement. You can learn more about Vitrusphere @ http://www.virtusphere.com/

who dare make interfaces

Last Friday, a funny-looking guy from Oblong mentioned during his introductory remarks at one of the UCLA Mobile Media symposium's panels a strange bent he'd been noticing among students and practitioners to accept as UI gospel designs emitted by the two major OS manufacturers. What he had no time to go on to say (but should have anyway): the phenomenon isn't ascribable to the individual; it feels, rather, like a pandemic of ingrained assumption -- at the aggregate tech-humanity level -- in which we all of us can't help wallowing.

That assumption is to do with where good UI ideas come from and who gets to have them (the ideas).

The sole dominant (universal, actually) GUI is twenty-five years old, was introduced by one of the incumbents, and was copied by the other as slavishly as law, talent, and pride would allow. Already a problem, no? A monosetup doesn't promote a mental model in which there's evolution, an ecosystem, a dialogue. Because there was no GUI before that, we haven't even had a pattern that suggests "you get a new one every three decades". And yet we should make it our job to assume that, and to assure that, and while we're at it to get itchy every decade. We're currently coming up on twenty years late.

Touchscreens that accommodate multiple points of contact got rediscovered recently. Products involving these modalities have been released -- some of them to commercial success, some of them to PR success -- and this in turn has suddenly launched large-scale public interest in novel interface. The interest is welcome.

The shame, really, is in presupposing that the incumbents have some advantage in designing radically new interfaces. There's certainly reason to expect they'd have an advantage in asserting new interfaces, but that's hardly the same thing. Yet even there it's unsimple: an incumbent has a responsibility (read: fiscal incentive) not to alienate or confuse or discomfit existing customers. So in fact that translates to a formidable disincentive to offer anything too radical.

Enough about them. What we want is encouragement against being discouraged from designing and building freely. Here's an axiom: a new UI that's a vast leap forward must also be sweepingly different. That's not to say that an incrementally different UI couldn't be a swollen commercial triumph. But such swelling is not what we should be after (not all of us, at least). Here's something between an axiom and an assertion: a vast leap forward is possible. The leap's vast, so it won't look like a traditional GUI with some touch stuff layered on. Therefore, we haven't seen it yet.

That ought be all we need to know.

A last part is that a giant incumbent company has about the same chance of being the one to find it as International Business Machines had of inventing and popularizing the GUI: which is to say: greater than zero: and it is also to say: less that one.

Filling Station (Unity 3D project)

This is the final version of the "Filling Station" experience created in Unity 3D & Maya.

It's been heavily modified and incorporated a lot of the feedback I received with the last iteration.

Please download it below and let me know what you think.

Download (Windows)

Download (Mac)

(This is a repost from my personal blog)

My friend's pre-order micro-financed artsy board game requires your attention! :)

I've never seen this done before. My friend Jim made (discovered?) a board game, and he's financing its publication through pre-orders via KickStarter.com.

If this works, it'll be a wake up call to all of us who've traditionally assumed we were shut out of professional creativity due to the complications of money. Plus, it's a great Christmas gift. :)

Also, the game's KickStarter site itself is full of interesting reading, and a fun video! Nicely done, Jim.

Check it out here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1883736289/the-gentlemen-of-the-south-sandwiche-islands

As if that weren't enough, Henry Jenkins posted about the game on his blog! http://www.henryjenkins.org/

-Bill

IMD Forum for 11/18/09: Tamiko Thiel

Speaker: Tamiko Thiel, Artist

Time: Wednesday, November 18, 6-8 pm
Location: Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
5750 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90036

NOTE: The off-campus location for this seminar. If you a an IMD student who needs a ride to the Goethe-Institut, contact Professor Anne Balsamo.

Tamiko Thiel will discuss the creation of Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall that she created with collaborator Teresa Reuter. This interactive 3D virtual reality art work investigates the impact of the Berlin Wall, which divided West and East Berlin during the Cold War from August 13, 1961 to November 9, 1989. A digital reconstruction of a segment of the dismantled Berlin Wall and its surrounding neighborhoods creates a place of rememberance that users can explore in order to to experience and reflect on this historical time.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Goethe-Institut in Los Angeles is staging the installation from November 20-December 3, 2009.

Official Opening: Thursday November 19, 6-9pm
Exhibit: November 20 - December 3, 2009

Goethe-Institut Los Angeles
5750 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90036, USA
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/los/kue/en4872732v.htm

For images from this interactive 3D installation on the Berlin Wall see:
http://www.virtuelle-mauer-berlin.de/english/devFiles/screenshots.htm

Black Swan

Here is an IF project that I did for World Building last week. Please, try it out and send me comments!

A couple notes for anyone who would be interested in playtesting: This is not a complete game, in the sense that it doesn't have an end state, a goal, or even a player character. I just wanted to explore Emily Short's approach to storytelling through environment and conversation. (See Floatpoint and Alabaster for examples.) So, you won't get much context about who you are or why the two characters are willing to talk to you, but (hopefully) you will start to get a sense of the world that they inhabit through the conversations. All that said, I'd love to get feedback from people. This is the first time I've done something quite like this, and I'm interested in building it out further.

Play Black Swan online!

Eyez: Lingering Images trailer

"Eyez: Lingering Images" is a top-down action/puzzle game where you explore D's twisted soul. Use your right eye to traverse the borders of his shattered reality, and open your left eye to expel his nightmares. Eyez present spatial logic in gameplay like you've never seen before.

Biking through google street view

stationary bike, adruino, and hmd glued together with some javascript and perl to provide a vr ride through google street view.