Daniel Ponce

This was Sunday night at the showroom floor. As you can see we managed to weaseled our way in when we probably shouldn't have.

Our booths on Sunday

Clearly it was all built last minute.

The first lecture I attended. It was Designing the First Social Reality Game to Motivate Change. The main problem with this lecture is that the game they used as an example sucked. Akoha is the name of the game.

I then Raced to see my game KWS at the independent games summit.

The next day I went to the Spore talk. It was rather interesting to think that their tech demos that they made for certain aspects of the game were better then the actual game.

I gave my first presentation along with Hua and Michael about our game. Pictured here is Ian Dallas giving his presentation.

IMD dinner at Bucca, as you can see Al Yang tried to squeeze money out of Scott to pay for the massive bill.

The booth was open for business, but that also signaled the death of my legs since we had no time to sit down.

Sony's new strategy for PS3, make every game in Real 3D.

As you can see I was really in to the 3D.

I had to take a picture of Hua's upper torso because had you been able to see his lower half this blog would become NSFW

Heading to the award ceremony.

Looks like the Oscars, but only with less beautiful people.

As you can see Hideo Kojima (of Metal Gear fame) was excited to see me.

A view from our table.

Will Wright and wife.

Pressured by Scott and Mark Bolas, Michael decided to do his post a little different this time.

Kojima's Keynote was pretty good.

Who would have guessed.

The IGF in full swing.

Our last play tester was Johnathan Mac the creator of Everyday Shooter.

You need Darwiin remote and a wii remote and a bluetooth adapter. This reads a text file from the Darwiin and then utilizes it in processing and it shows up as movement.

PImage wiimote_top, wiimote_front;
int accX, accY, accZ, orientation;

void setup()
{
size(600, 400);
frameRate(60 );

smooth();

//wiimote_top = loadImage("shake.jpg");
//wiimote_front = loadImage("turn.jpg");
}

void draw()
{
background(0);
fill(255);
ellipse(400.0,300.0, 50, 50);

// load the textfile generated from DarwiinRemote and converts it into strings
String [] wiimote_file = loadStrings("/wiimote.txt");

if (wiimote_file.length == 1)//this if statement reads the TXT file and converts
//it into movement.
{
String [] wiimote_values = wiimote_file[0].split(";");

accX = Integer.parseInt(wiimote_values[0]);
accY = Integer.parseInt(wiimote_values[1]);
accZ = Integer.parseInt(wiimote_values[2]);

orientation = Integer.parseInt(wiimote_values[3]);
}

ellipse(132-accX/2.0, 190-accY/2.0, 300,400);

translate(width/2, 70);
if(orientation == 1)
rotate(-PI/2);
else if(orientation == 2)
rotate(PI);
else if(orientation == 3)
rotate(PI/2);
//rect(wiimote_front, -wiimote_front.width/2, -wiimote_front.height/2);
}

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=21052

Richard Garriott, also known as Lord British to Ultima Online fans, recently returned to the planet. Mr. Garriott has been a game designer for over 20 years and has been an instrumental designer in Ultima series of games. He had recently completed his interstellar trip to the international space station. It got me thinking, one day that could be one of us, completely full of themselves and insane. I can't wait.

Taking Tracy's class on designing for interactive media has opened my eyes to the wonders of paper prototyping. The great thing about paper prototyping is that it can be used for not just games, but for software too. Apparently someone at Adobe must be in contact with Tracy because if you check out the link below you will discover what could potentially be the greatest paper prototype of them all.

http://gizmodo.com/5080163/what-photoshop-would-look-like-in-real-life

Gesture control has always been something that intrigues a lot of us in the department. For me it began with the clapper, it then evolved to the Nintendo Wii. In the Link below there is an article that shows off a new system of control that uses a web cam (much like the eye toy) to track movement and gestures in order to control what is on the screen. I do believe that there is lots of interesting things that will come out of gesture controls, but one of the main hindrances in my opinion is the fact that it is not for the lazy. Read the article and judge for your self!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/06/mgestyk-system-promises-gesture-control-on-the-cheap/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/04/cnns-holographic-freakout-begins-seems-totally-bizarre-and-unn/

If you head to the link above you will probably come to the same conclusion I and a lot of other people thought, WHY??!! Earlier in the semester we discussed data visualization and its uses, but I'm sure the people at CNN needed that lecture just as much as we did. As I watched some of the CNN coverage early in the day I noticed that they had tried their hardest to visualize data in many different ways, the one which they showcased the most was a touch screen. The main problem I have of their presentation of this information is that the intention was to watch someone else interact with the information they had. Because of this I ( and probably most viewers) could not retain any of the information that was on the touch screen, as the correspondent who used it would navigate the information at his pace (which was super fast) and not at a pace I would have liked. Their experiment of failures culminated with the "Hologram," which was completely absurd. We should all take notes on how not to visualize data.

In the spirit of keeping up with current events I have discovered an interesting article on gamasutra entitled "Persuasive Games: The Birth and Death of the Election Game." It mainly talks about the role that candidate sponsored video games play in campaign process. My only experience so far with campaigns in a virtual environment has been in Second Life. During the primaries John Edwards had set up a small virtual campaign headquarters, but it was very disappointing to to say the least. Not only was there little to no information about the candidate, but they where giving away the most atrocious shoes in all of Second Life for my avatar to wear. Obama is going a different route then Edwards by buying in game advertisement space in select video games, but it is just that an advertisement. In this election none of the candidates have actually done anything official that informs people of their stance on issues or policies they wish to implement in a digital space, but maybe that's what is in store next election.

In the mean time you can check out the article here http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3834/persuasive_games_the_birth_and_.php?page=3

Well I guess that this would be my second post coming at you straight from the ZML.

The first post is always the worst post, especially written in third person.

Basic Information

First name : Daniel
Last Name : Ponce
Date of Birth : 09/25/1984
City of Birth : San Francisco, California.
Country of Birth : United States of America.
Ethnicity : Mexican.
Comments : None.

Body Information

Height : 5 foot 7 inches.
Weight : approximately 145 lb.
Hair Color : Brown.
Eye Color : Brown.
Skin Color : as of now white, by the time the semester will begin, brown.
Comments : None.

Clothing Information

Shoe Size : 9
Shirt Size : Medium.
Pant Size : 32 x 32
Comments : Feel free to present clothing articles to Daniel upon meeting him, as he will most gladly accept them.

Activities

Morning : Eats fruit and brushes teeth, rarely is he approachable as he never appears to get enough sleep.
Afternoon : Is on the internet researching obscure knowledge. He uses this knowledge to take advantage of his loved ones by making sure bets on said knowledge.
Evening : On certain nights of the week one can find Daniel learning a martial art from Brazil called Capoeira or playing with a soccer ball. Once home he plays video games for hours while taking random notes about what comes to his mind while playing. He then retreats and falls asleep.
Comments : None.

Personality Traits

Demeanor : Quiet and Shy. Also has been known to be weird.
Sense of Humor : Peculiar. Will share experiences that others do not find humorous.
Comments : Approach with open arms and he well reciprocate, but be cautious as he has been observed to cling on to others he deems open and friendly.