April 13, 2006
100 years of animation
Animation started simply; a blackboard, a stick of chalk and the wrist of an artist. A whirring camera stood nearby while James Stuart Blackton sketched out a dubious-looking gent in a bowtie. Blackton's wrist soon disappears, but, onscreen the drawing keeps growing. A woman in a frilly dress with a bun atop her head appears. The man glances over at her, lifts his eyebrows and breaks out into a grin. The woman reciprocates, then Bad Man lights up a stogie and obscures Grimacing Ladyfriend in smoke.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home >> Game ProgrammingJuly 18, 2005
Virtual Culture
Virtual computer characters more accustomed to battling deranged alien monsters are about to take part in a unique social experiment.
A society of virtual "agents” - each with a remarkably realistic personality and the ability to learn and communicate - is being crafted by scientists from five European research institutes who hope to gain insights into the way human societies evolve.
The project, known as – or – brings together experts in artificial intelligence, linguistics, computer science and sociology. It is backed by a consortium consisting of the and in the UK, Tilberg and Universities in the Netherlands and in Hungary.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 05:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home >> Game ProgrammingApril 05, 2005
Digital actors: Matrix Online
Laurence Fishburne and Jada Pinkett Smith should be afraid for their jobs. In "The Matrix Online," a new massively multiplayer online game, the cast of the sci-fi film trilogy has been reprised - and replaced - by digital actors.
"Essentially what we did was build 'The Matrix,'" Jason Hall, senior vice president for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, told The Associated Press. "The only difference between 'The Matrix Online' and what you saw in the movies is you can't access it through a jack in the back of your head."
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Home >> Game ProgrammingMarch 19, 2005
Can you outsmart an online brain?
It's not easy to outwit a computer.
Think you can do it? Play 20Q, an online version of 20 questions, to try.
The free game is the brainchild of Canadian Robin Burgener, who operates href="http://www.20q.net/">www.20q.net out of his basement. The online game tells players to think of an object -- anything imaginable, so long as it's not rude or a pronoun -- and then it starts asking questions.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 04:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home >> Game ProgrammingNovember 09, 2004
Don't Hate Me Because I'm Digital
Kaya is ravishing. She has full lips, long lashes, and a slightly upturned nose. Her expression radiates confidence and power, and her smooth skin is well scrubbed and dotted with freckles. But she doesn't have much of a body. At all. In fact, she exists only from the neck up. Kaya is a CG model, a 48,200-polygon beauty created by an artist in São Paulo, Brazil. And she's sure to be a finalist in the Miss Digital World beauty pageant.
The man behind the event is Franz Cerami, an Italian promoter who's trying to start the world's first CG talent agency. His dream is to manage a bevy of virtual beauties, posing and costuming them for pinup calendars, videogames, ads, and movies. The benefits of digital models are obvious - they never age, never have bad hair days, and can be on location in Tokyo, Paris, and Hollywood simultaneously.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 06:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home >> Game ProgrammingOctober 01, 2004
Four Cool Ways to Use Neural Networks in Games
Most writings on neural networks start with a biological description of neurons in our brains as a metaphor for how artificial neural networks function. Indeed, we give just such a metaphorical description in our book. However, sometimes it's more helpful to think of neural networks in a less biological sense. Specifically, you can think of a neural network as a mathematical function approximator. Input to the network represents independent variables, while the output represents the dependant variable or variables. The network itself is then a function giving one unique set of output for the given input.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 02:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home >> Game ProgrammingSeptember 21, 2004
Are poker ‘bots’ raking online pots?
Pull up a chair at a friendly poker game in a buddy’s den and you probably know the other players and have some idea of their card-playing weaknesses – like Big Al's habit of fingering his chips when he's itching to raise. But take a seat at a table in one of the rapidly multiplying online card rooms and there's no telling who’s sitting to your right – or if the player is even human.
Concern is growing in online chat rooms and news groups devoted to poker that sophisticated card-playing robots – known as “bots” in the nomenclature of the Web – are being used on commercial gambling sites to fleece newcomers, the strategy-impaired and maybe even above-average players.
Posted by Vishwakarma C. K. @ 07:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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