febretPository

ENDURANCE Final Update

2011-11-22T15:47:00.001-08:00

Work on the ENDURANCE project has ended. The final data products consisted in an updated bathymetry model for the entire west lake bonney, using the complete 2008 and 2009 datasets. The data has been rendered as high resolution (8000x4000) elevation and contour images, plus 3d meshes and points clouds up to a resolution of 1 meter.

The final rendered West Lake Bonney Bathymetry

With respect to the previous models, the bathymetry has been corrected using a new shore line dataset. Using the new shore data it was possible to generate a much better zero-depth contour for the mesh.

These images show a comparison of the sonar reconstruction without using the shore line dataset (top) and with the shore line dataset (bottom).

Lake Bonney flyover

2011-01-07T09:01:00.000-08:00

The sonar data gathered by the ENDURANCE AUV has been used to recontruct a 3d model of East Lake Bonney. A customized set of tools has been developed for this purpose. The tools are able to decimate and clean up the source sonar range, perform raytracing using water sound velocity profiles, and extract a surface from the filtered points using Poisson Surface Reconstruction. The resulting bathymetry has been rendered and animated inside Paraview.

Using Kinect for 3D video capture

2010-11-15T16:38:00.001-08:00

(Thanks for the link, Jakub)

What is This?

2010-03-12T09:58:00.001-08:00

Via Gizmodo:

What you're looking at is a project from Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg called Flickr Flow. It's a look at how the colors in Flickr images of the Boston Common change with every season

The original project page can be found HERE

GPU Programming Project 1 – Kodachrome

2010-02-09T00:08:00.001-08:00

The objective for this project was to process a stream of images captured from the webcam, and apply a set of vertex, fragment and geometry shaders to achieve different visual effects. The shaders had to be written using the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL). My application made use of the OpenCV library for the webcam capture part. OpenCV has also been used to integrate face recognition support into one of the shaders. Go To The Project Page

How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days: Tips and Tricks from 4 Grad Students Who Made Over 50 Games in 1 Semester

2010-01-19T20:44:00.001-08:00

Some days ago I stumbled upon an interesting article on rapid game prototyping. Read the original article here.

Some of the guidelines these guys suggest are applicable only to small game projects, but others are way more general. This article is a very good read for anyone wanting to start developing their own games.

Edanarion source code released

2010-01-07T03:07:00.001-08:00

Since I won’t be able to go on working on Edanarion, I decided to release the entire source code of the game server and client, plus all of the current game data.

The game server and clients are working right now, and a couple areas are included in the game data. The gameplay code is not complete, but the code can be used as a good starting point for anyone wanting to build a multiplayer, flash based game for the browser.

Here are some of the features currently supported by Edanarion:

Multiple area support.
In-client area builder.
HTTP-based communication protocol (game works through firewalls)
Completely data-driven design.
Scriptable AI and dialog support for non-playing characters.
Inventory support
Customizable characters (both appearance on character creation, and dynamic customization with dresses / weapons)
Basic fighting
Pathfinding support.
Extensible server control console.
Unified, command-based communication and management system: player actions, as well as server administration, is managed through command messages: command availability is filtered through privilege levels given to user accounts.

The server code runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS (using Mono).

Read more about the project and download the source code Here

Website Update: Atomz

2009-09-08T18:32:00.001-07:00

A new section has been added to the website: 24Hour Games

The 24H Games project is an experiment in gameplay design and developement. Its main objective is the creation of simple web-based games in a single day. Each of the games presented here has been built by a single developer (that is, me ^-^) in just 24 hours. Each game is presented along with its developement log, describing the various steps in the creation of the games, things that worked and things that didn't.

The first published game is called Atomz. In this puzzle game the player links moving symbols (thr atomz) by matching shape or color, before they go out of the screen. Linked atomz switch their state, linking them in a smart way to create bigger molecules increases the score. Enter the 24Hour Games project page to play the game and read the developement log!

Website Update

2009-06-17T20:30:00.001-07:00

New section added. Its about a CodeProject article I wrote several years ago, titled Fast late-bound invocation through Dynamic Method delegates:

Reflection is a feature that allows a program to find out type (and metadata) information about objects at run-time. The use of Reflection, however, comes with a price. While some of its functions are pretty fast, some others, like late-bound invocation routines, are costly and if not used wisely could result in a major bottleneck inside your application. This article discusses a way to obtain fast late-bound invocation inside the .Net framework, by obtaining a method handle through the common Reflection services, and then emiting MSIL code to patch up a static call site for the method.

Compiling DSDoom

2009-04-10T16:42:00.001-07:00

The port of Doom on the Nintendo DS was an amazing project. I used to play the original game quite a lot, and being able to run it again on my DS is like going back in time :)

Even if the game is pretty much running as it is, the project does not seem to be under active developement anymore.

Since I wanted to learn a little bit more about NDS programming I decided to try and compile DSDoom from source. The devkitPro toolchain contains everything needed to start homebrew developement on the DS.

Since the DSDoom code was last revised in 2007, the source won’t compile anymore with the latest devKitPro release (r23). I managed to have the code compile and run again even though sound and wireless are not working right now. I planned to do some fancy stuff with this game but I soon realized I won’t have time for it, so I decided I was satisfied enough in having it compiling right :)

Donwload DSDoom sources for devKitPro r23 here.

Edanarion Milestone 7 Preview

2009-03-30T21:02:00.001-07:00

I plan to reopen the edanarion server in a couple of weeks. Some big changes since the first online test, expecially in the graphics department.

See some other screenshots HERE

Usability in Games

2009-01-26T21:11:00.001-08:00

New project added on the website: Usability in Games.

We are investigating how interface usability influences user engagement in long-term computer games, and working to assess the relevance of usability versus playability factors on the overall experience engagement. A preliminary paper on this topic has been accepted at the Engagement By Design workshop, which is part of the CHI09 conference on Human-Computer Interaction. The conference and workshops will be held in Boston, April 4-9 2009.

Testing Windows Live Writer

2009-01-15T21:44:00.001-08:00

Blah blah Blah Blah!

1	2
3	4

Game design '08

2008-12-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

Added lecture material for the last game design & game industry lecture (Interaction Design students).
By the way.... I should really revise the site layout, the current one is a buggy mess.

Good Experience Games - good games, fun games

2008-10-19T02:13:00.000-07:00

Good Experience Games - good games, fun games

A nice site collecting online web games, that offer a good game experience in the author's opnion.

NOTE TO ME: Take a look at these if / when doing a web-game usability study.

Edanarion - New screenshots

2008-10-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

Screenshots from Milestone 2

HiEnd3D

2008-10-06T03:54:00.000-07:00

HiEnd3D
A nice collection of filters to enhance 2d images. They are the same filters used in game emulators like MAME. I plan to use one of those filters to obtain better chipset / charset images for Edanarion. I also really like the 'oil-paint' kinda style they give to results.

MotoGP 08 HD Trailers

2008-10-02T01:31:00.000-07:00

From GameTrailers
Race 1
Race 2
Menu Walkthrough and gameplay

MotoGP 08: la copertina italiana

2008-09-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Capcom ha presentato le copertine che appariranno sulle confezioni delle varie versioni di MotoGP 08 sparse per tutto il mondo, compresa ovviamente quella destinata al nostro mercato.

MotoGP 08: la copertina italiana

IGN: MotoGP 08 Updated Hands-On

2008-09-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

The MotoGP videogame franchises have been in a bit of a weird spot in past years with multiple publishers owning the rights to the license on different systems. So the MotoGP that you'd play on the Xbox 360 would be different than the Sony titles, for instance. Fortunately for confusion's sake, Capcom has wrapped up the license on whole and will be bringing MotoGP 08 to the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PS2 and PC in a few months' time.

IGN: MotoGP 08 Preview

Gameplay and Usability Heuristics

2008-09-12T02:34:00.000-07:00

Some good articles about game evaluation through Gameplay and Usability Heuristics:

Heather Desurvire, Martin Caplan, Jozsef A. Toth
Using Heuristics to Evaluate the Playability of Games

Melissa A. Federoff
Heuristics and usability guidelines for the creation and evaluation of fun in videogames

Noah Schaffer,
Heuristics for Usability in Games

Siobhan Thomas, Gareth Schott, Maria Kambouri
Designing for learning or designing for fun? Setting usability guidelines for mobile educational games

MotoGP 2008 First Look Preview for Xbox 360 - VideoGamer.com

2008-09-05T01:03:00.000-07:00

MotoGP 2008 First Look Preview for Xbox 360 - VideoGamer.com

After years of MotoGP games arriving on Xbox and PlayStation formats from different developers and publishers, Capcom is finally bringing us a game to unify the formats. MotoGP 08 from established racing game developer Milestone is coming to Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii and PS2. At Games Convention 2008 we got a chance to see the Xbox 360 version in action for the first time, and we're glad to report that the licence appears to be in good hands.

Google Chrome vulnerable to carpet-bombing flaw

2008-09-04T03:59:00.000-07:00

Google Chrome vulnerable to carpet-bombing flaw

Google’s shiny new Web browser is vulnerable to a carpet-bombing vulnerability that could expose Windows users to malicious hacker attacks.

Just hours after the release of Google Chrome, researcher Aviv Raff discovered that he could combine two vulnerabilities — a flaw in Apple Safari (WebKit) and a Java bug discussed at this year’s Black Hat conference — to trick users into launching executables direct from the new browser.

Raff has cooked up a harmless demo of the attack in action, showing how a Google Chrome users can be lured into downloading and launching a JAR (Java Archive) file that gets executed without warning."

MotoGP 08 (Xbox 360)

2008-09-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

MotoGP 08 (Xbox 360)
The official game of the 2008 season, MotoGP 08 features all the riders, bikes and tracks providing the definitive 2 wheeled racing experience.

Edanarion project wiki

2008-06-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

The wiki page for Edanarion can be accessed at http://febretpository.freesitespace.net/wiki/index.php/Edanarion.

It will contain both technical and design information for the game.

2008-06-04T02:12:00.000-07:00

A list of Wiki tools I can choose among for Edanarion documentation:
http://wikkawiki.org/HomePage
http://wiki.splitbrain.org/
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/

QbViz 0.3

2008-05-26T12:17:00.001-07:00

The QbViz and Hydroviz Software Package 0.3 is now available for download!
Take a look HERE!

Installation instructions can be found inside appendix C of my Thesis, look at my last post for that.

Thesis

2008-05-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

Added to the site a new section about my thesis, titled Evaluating the Flash Platform for Web-Based
Collaborative Data Visualization. It has been discussed 8 May 08 at University of Illinois
at Chicago, and will be presented at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) by the end of July.
It is mainly a discussion of the work I did developing Qbviz and Hydroviz.

Inner Battlefield Update

2008-05-19T05:03:00.000-07:00

Game videos and downloads of running version of the game and Lua sources are available HERE!

YAMO - Yet Another Music Organizer

2008-04-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

Yamo (Yet another music organizer), manages a music library, moving and renaming song files based on a set of options specified by the user. Yamo is composed of a dynamic library that implements the library manager engine, and a wizard application that allows easy access to the Yamo engine services. Both the library and the wizard are written in C#. Being a library, the Yamo engine can be used even inside third party applications.

YAMO is a small app I developed some time ago... I tried it on my Vista machine and the binary version doesn't seem to work, I really need to build it again and see what the problem is, since my music collection is really messed up right now :)

Original CodeProject article and binary / source code downloads

SBK08: Almost here...

2008-03-21T14:34:00.001-07:00

www.sbkthegame.com

Hydroviz 0.2

2008-03-03T12:28:00.000-08:00

Go to the application prototype page

CHANGE LOG

Layer panel has been revised. Precise indication of slider levels added. Layer names have been substituted by an indication of their depth interval.

Now user can switch to selection mode (fourth toolbar button from the left).
When selection mode is enabled, user can click on datapoints (NOTE: A layer should be selected in the layers panel) to get additional information about them and shwo a context menu with operations that can be performed on the point.

Added support for annotations (in datapoint context menu). The user can attach text annotations to a datapoint, and share them with other users connected to the same view.

Added support for streamline generation (in datapoint context menu). It is possible to select a point, and start a streamline from it. The streamline will show the approximate behavior of the current flowing from the selected datapoint.
Some visual improvements in the workspace panel.

Slight optimizations in client / server messaging (reduced overhead for data response messages).

In order to reduce query times, dataset now stores precomputed detail levels instead of calculating them on the fly.

Hydroviz Preview App: New Release

2008-01-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

A new release of the Hydroviz preview app is available HERE It is reccommended that you read This Tutorial before using it.

RELEASE UPDATES

Several UI Bugfixes.

Better response times on Bathymetry updates.

Added support to configuration of collaborative options (View and Camera update settings)

KNOWN ISSUES & WISH LIST

It is possible to delete views on which users are still connected. This leads to the silent disconnections of users from the view and should not lead to any problem, but it is incorrect anyways.

In the workspace window, added views may result difficult to see. A brighter and more opaque background has to be applied to view thumbnails.

The view that the user is currently connected to should be identified in the workspace panel in some way (different background color / overlay, ...)

Server side queries need to be optimized.

Add support to shared annotations on views.

Hydroviz & QbViz Updates

2008-01-15T13:48:00.000-08:00

I added to my site a new page about QbViz, in which I describe how the library works with some more detail.

I also added an introductory tutorial to the Hydroviz Preview application to give the user a better idea on how it works.

Main QbViz Page
Main Hydroviz Page

Hydroviz News

2008-01-07T14:06:00.000-08:00

Screenshots of the new Hydroviz Sample application are available
HERE

Decorated Data

2007-12-10T14:11:00.001-08:00

This new couple of screenshots shows the first attempts at layered data visualization using QbViz. Data is read from server (A WebOrb hosted C# service) as the user changes the area of interes on the interactive map. The red dots show data sampling points, while other screenshots are a basic representation of current information on the bay. As the images show data can also be downloaded from the server at different resolutions.

Geographic data on QbViz

2007-12-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

This new couple of screenshots show QbViz visualizing geospatial data. The original dataset contains sparse bathymetry information of Corpus Christi Bay, Texas. The dataset has been first converted to a standard heightmap image through an interpolation algorithm. In one of the screenies, the resulting heightmap has been decorated with satellite imagery.

Smart particle visualization

2007-11-16T00:17:00.000-08:00

Links to some articles about a data visualizaiton technique based on Sparts (smart particles).

Here, Here, and
Here.

Some nice info about collaborative visualization metaphors can be found HERE
A presentation on the same topic HERE

QbViz

2007-11-12T13:52:00.000-08:00

I added an entry for QbViz on my site. I plan to keep my blog updated with news about project progress from now on.

I still have to publish stuff about an ond game on mine and some other folks, called Inner battlefields As for now you can find some more information (and downloads, yey!) about it HERE.

QbViz, New Screens

2007-11-12T13:44:00.000-08:00

Here you can see some screenshot of the my main QbViz web application: ViewBuilder. ViewBuilder should be a generic tool to build and test QbViz views. It will be able to load data from local and remote data services, build up views, customize and save them. Views saved in viewbuilder should be completely compatible with any other QbViz application instance.

Two nice links...

2007-10-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

...About Papervision & Image processing in ActionScript 3. These two will definitely be useful for my thesis work!

Image Processing Library
UnitZeroOne

QbViz - First Screenies

2007-10-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a couple snapshots of the work I'm doing for my Thesis project. It's basically a data visualization system accessible by any flash-equipped browser. For the 3D i'm using a slightly modified version of Papervision.

My Naming Conventions

2007-10-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

Here are the naming conventions I currently use in my projects. I keep questioning myself about them from time to time. Usually I end up changing some point but I'm forcing myself not to do it anymore. Conventions should be a way of reducing developement cost. If you keep changing them you are actually turning them into a money pit. I learned that the most important thing with a naming convention is to stick with it, whatever its definition is.

C#

Microsoft guidelines for everything public.
Private variables: prefix them with my ie myVariableName. I use this style for both normal variables and winForms controls.

ActionScript

Packages, and class members are camelCase.
Class names are PascalCase.
Private variables: prefix them with _ ie _variableName but I plan to switch this to the same convention I use for C#. That's because prefixing vars with an underscore results in a too low-levelish code for my tastes, and because underscore-prefixed vars as Flex control ids look weird in mxml (I don't want to use different naming conventions for controls and variables).

I thought a little bit about using the underscore style in C#, mainly because you have private vars clearly distinguished from the rest of class members in Intellisense. But again, the resulting code looked too low level.

I also considered using a single letter as a prefix for private vars, ie mMyVariable, but i like using my instead because it often makes the whole variable name sound like a piece of a correct english sentence.

Installing WebORB on Vista

2007-10-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

Extremely useful information if you have to install WebORB over a win Vista machine.

Read Here

Mr Doob

2007-09-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Nice Site Design + Uber Nice PV3D Eye Candy!! Hooray!!!!

Site Update

2007-09-20T01:58:00.001-07:00

Added Videogame Design Seminar material (Italian).

Batch Image Resizing

2007-09-19T06:08:00.000-07:00

I was quite surprised not to find any Resize Bunch of Images function in Windows Vista. I was used to the Image resizer powertoy for Win XP, which added this exact functionality to the explorer context menu.

Anyway, I found the solution: VSO Image Resizer!! Its free and it does the trick (except for the context menu thingie, but that's fine enough).

Console Event Handling

2007-09-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

Today I was looking around fro a way to intercept exit events for a c# console application. I found out there is no 'simple' way to do it, you have to import a win3d API function as explained HERE.

I need to do this for my Edanarion server application. Server should be shut down gracefully through a console command, but it should also take care of shutdowns through console window closing.

Edanarion News

2007-09-17T15:16:00.000-07:00

Posted some new screenshot of Milestone 9 (Prometheus). You can find them here.

Pre-Alpha

2007-09-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

The intial version of my site is up. It still lacks content, but the style and layout are completed. I'll start creating project pages as soon as I can.

Layout & theme has undergone major modifications from its original version (the Primitive Element) one. I got a 2-column flexible layout out of a 3-column fixed one. Experimenting with it I learned quite a lot about CSS and table-less layouts.

The site has been tested only on IE 7 so far, I definitely need to run it on other browsers to see if the layout remains stable.

Here It Begins

2007-09-13T13:29:00.001-07:00

I started working on my own site. Finally. I'm trying to use a consistent style across the site and the blog. I'm satistfied with the result so far even if it can still be tweaked a little bit. The current theme is a mix of the PrimiteElement theme from Free CSS Templates and the Minimal Dark Blogger theme.