2007-05-24

SDGI 8: Magic Systems Revisited

Image is from the game Final Fantasy - Crystal Chronicles
Copied from ign.com

I've always been interested in magic systems. We all know the quote by Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguisable from magic" - and I'm sure that magic wouldn't be the least magical if it existed - but that's beside the point. What I'm interested in is the implementation details and the design of magic systems in games as well as movies and litterature.

I just found a new post over at Gamedev which covers a magic system one of the newer members is developing. So if you're interested in magic systems then check it out!

Boring Games

I just read an interesting article over at Gamasutra.com about how games are still considered an exotic media, and how making it more mundane probably will increase its mass appeal and give them a more important role in our everyday life.

2007-05-20

More Starcraft

The official gamplay video is here!! You must check this out!

edit
You can now watch it directly from gametrailers.com!

2007-05-19

Blizzard.. how could you?


You've taken away my life the past couple of weeks with WoW and now this? Starcraft II is finally announced and it's gonna rock my world. Damn... there goes all my ambitions for the upcoming year. Here are a couple of teasers. You can find trailers at starcraft2.com or at gametrailers.com.



2007-05-15

User Friendliness, Where Art Thou?

First I'll have to apologize for the long absence. I've been too caught up in - guess what - World of Warcraft. It's every bit as addictive as I imagined and I've spent most of my spare time playing that game since I started playing it last week.

Now.. let's get back to the issue at hand. Lately I've been working a lot as an office assistant (or something like that) which involves using a lot of different office programs - some worse than others - but they're all bad!

One program I've started to use is called ESS (Employee Self Service) which is a web based program that all government owned firms in Norway have to use. The concept is that every employee has to register things like their own contact information and when they're absent from work in this system. The problem is that it's just plain counter intuitive - here's one example I'd like to share with you:

To the left you've got your main menu and to the right you've got the currently selected action. If you look at the picture you'll see I've selected inbox (marked with a red rectangle) - but what might be a bit surprising is that the inbox selection contains both the inbox, the outbox, your personal message archive and the trash can - so to get to the outbox you've got to select the inbox.. intuitive? I don't think so!

2007-05-02

Lip-Reading Surveillance Cameras

It seems the UK has again managed to increase its lead in the "Biggest Police State in The West" competition (or was it world?). Lip-reading surveillance cameras? Orwell must be proud of you!

2007-05-01

Spider Car

Wet Dreams

BioShock is one of the games I'm definitely looking forward to! We know that it's got a powerful rendering engine since it's based on Unreal Engine 3, but what makes it stand out is its custom water rendering. Irrational Games have just released another teaser and this time around it's all water rendering - check it out.

If you're interested in water rendering then check out these link: