polymonkey_code

It's time for a change.

2010-01-12T13:15:00.003+10:00

2010 is going to be a big year. On Monday I start a new job. I'm going to be looking after this. I have no idea why there is a ninja on that page. But it sets an interesting tone.

To mark this special occasion I am gutting www.polymonkey.com. Over the next week it will be changed. I bought a new domain www.thequietvoid.com and the blog (this blog) will be moving over there. This domain is going to shift to be the one thing I never got around to making. A portfolio site.

So with that I'm drawing a line under polymonkey_code. All previous posts and all future posts will live over on the quiet void. In the coming days a redirect will be turned on to move all the traffic over to there.

Always the monkey, MattD

New Year, new Library

2009-12-30T07:25:00.004+10:00

As part of getting ready for my new job, I'm in the process of publishing a lot of the common code that I've been using over the years and I thought why not start a collection. And so the very humble and small PolymonkeyLibs begins.

The first official package is polymonkey.time it features 3 classes that relate to (you guessed it) time.

Time - used for keeping track of TimeDelta (the time in seconds of the previous frame) can also speed up and slow down time.

TimerEvent - A helper class that will automatically call a timerEvent() method in a set number of seconds.

StopWatch - A helper class for timing how long an operation takes.

Docs, Examples and version 001 of the library are in the Download tab of the page above. If you've got questions / problems / requests then send em this way.

Matt Ditton

Disclaimer: Although the internals are as accurate as possible. Everything gets converted to floats or ints when talking to processing. So your mileage my vary. And although it works like a charm I wouldn't use it to run a pacemaker or anything.

Testing testing 1,2,3

2009-12-28T19:22:00.007+10:00

I'm just testing to see if blogger can support applets in a post. I'm doubtful, but here goes.

==================UPDATE==================

There was a applet here but I killed it, because it was a little rude to have on the front page.

Well it does work. With some dodgy hacks for the path to the .jar file. Not pretty but still.

==================UPDATE==================

ok so this is testing using an iframe from the openProcessing site.

And it worked very well. A much better result actually.

And the experiments are done for the night.

Goodbye Pandemic LA

2009-11-18T14:04:00.003+10:00

I was working at Pandemic Brisbane for about 3 months before we merged with BioWare and Elevation Partners invested 300 million into the company. Two years later Pandemic and BioWare were sold to Electronic Arts for about 800 million. About 18 months later the Brisbane studio was shut down. Today the LA studio has also been shut down. Read about it here.

It's interesting to note that John Riccitello left EA in 2004 to form Elevation to buy Pando/BioWare to then go back to EA in 2007 and buy Pando/BioWare from Elevation. According to this article he made 4.9 million from the deal (the second time)

And the image up the top? Well the high point on the left is when Pandemic was bought at $60 a share. And it's been an impressive ski slope ever since.

Things I learn't today.

2009-11-04T21:40:00.005+10:00

I learn't some stuff today. Nothing life changing but interesting. I spent the day at a Microsoft information workshop demo presentation thingo. And it was kind of interesting.

So the first thing is that Microsoft has this product, we could call it a "suite" of products called Expressions Studio. It was news to me. But there were a couple of really interesting bits. First the Encoder product has a screen capture tool and a webcam broadcasting feature. Which was pretty damn cool.

The next thing is they have this other product called Blend. And let's be honest here, it's trying to be a flash "killer". That's a long road to travel down BUT, I was impressed that the file format was XML. Well it's called XAML, but you get the idea.

Also I saw XNA 3.1, and it was cool but I was mostly impressed with the automatic method creation button in Visual Studio. Looking at it from a person who teaches Artists how to program I'm sure most of the class would run to the hills if I told them they had to work in XNA. But Visual Studio will become a good addition to the advanced students.

Now why is all this interesting you ask? Because of this site . Everything on that site is free to any student and faculty staff member. And that's a free perpetual license FOREVER.

I literally heard the words "Free, really? wow, that just saved us a fortune" and this from a high school teacher who was complaining about the cost of the Adobe Creative Suite to teach a bunch of students a product that they can't afford.

Sure the education pricing of Adobe products is good. But it's not FREE.

7 years ago I didn't think a Microsoft console would outsell a Sony console. I'm going to pick the underdog here. So if, and lets be honest it's a big if. If in 5 years Expression Studio overtakes the Creative Suite in the number of people using it, then I just want to say I called it.

MattD

Here world, try your hand at buildings.

2009-10-20T15:22:00.004+10:00

You can now use Google Building Maker to model buildings in Google Earth.

Well you model by aligning blocks over the top of satellite photos and having those textures projection mapped onto the blocks. But there is something really smart about the user interface that's shown off in the video.

When in doubt add more polys

2009-10-15T10:18:00.003+10:00

Tessellate test on Evolving Geometry from matt ditton on Vimeo.

More tests, this time on the effect of tessellation on the geometry. Thanks for JohnK for the idea. I quite like low-fi polygons. But seeing the higher res version is quite nice. The full description is on the vimeo page.

Evolving Geometry. Or what I did with my Sunday.

2009-10-14T08:02:00.010+10:00

Evolving Geometry from matt ditton on Vimeo.

For my first attempt at making a genetic algorithm, is there any better subject than the Mona Lisa and some random dude from google image search?

The premise is simple. By randomly changing the color, position and diagonal edge direction of a grid of polygons can you turn it into the target image.

All written in Processing, the grid draws to a PGraphic on every change and a fitness test is done against the target image. If the fitness is better than or equal the change is kept. If not, it's reverted. Keeping the equal-to in the test causes that crazy vertex movement in the lower image, so that bugs going.

The left image is the grid with vertex colour, the right is the target and the middle is the wireframe of the polygons. The number is the fitness. The lower the number the closer tobeing an exact match.

This is the slowed down version for making a video. I've got it running in a thread and it's stupid fast. But because I'm drawing in the thread I'm getting colour sync errors in the main draw thread. It works fast but the flashing colours get pretty distracting.

Inspiration for this work has to go to Karl Sims and Roger Alsing. They are the giants, I'm just standing here.

No. It wasn't a mistake.

2009-10-05T17:47:00.005+10:00

48hr Game Challenge from Monkey Something

I've just had the best weekend I've had all year. I got 5 hours sleep. I ate nothing but crap (apart from Kieran's pies). I lost it in front of some students, and we made a damn cute game.

This is Thunderheads Garden. You play a happy raincloud in the garden of the mad giant Thunderhead. You spend your days growing sunflowers and watching the happy bunnies multiply. But when Thunderhead gets angry he flips the world to hate and you have to use the flowers as a gasoline trail to wipe out the evil bunnies.

So it's like a family game. And it's for 3 players.

I'll get a web version uploaded after another nap.

Can I make a game in 48 hours?

2009-10-01T11:22:00.004+10:00

This could be a mistake.

Almost on a dare I put together a bunch of friends and we are all in the 48hr Game Making Challenge. GameOn/QUT/iCi/Acid and the amazing Truna have put together an impressive event. There will be 17 student teams and 3 pro teams competing over this weekend. I'm in the Monkey Something pro team and all 6 of us have never made a game in under 9 months, Actually I average 2 years to make a game. So 48 hours is going to be a stretch.

There will also be 3 very brave teams from the (Griffith Film School) Games Design, where I lecture. Milk n' Pickles, Sick Fish and Immigration Office will all be part of the first public appearance of the Griffith Games students.

To make things more interesting nearly everyone on the 3 separate pro teams have worked together. So this could be the weekend for long held grudges to surface.

You can read about it here http://www.48hrgamecomp.com/ Over the weekend it will be blogged and streamed live at that address. Or you can rock up to QUT Kelvin Grove and check it out. Any time of the weekend really. We'll all be there.

Those who are about to game salute you.

Processing vs. Unity

2009-08-31T13:56:00.004+10:00

Recently I been using Unity3D. And I'm impressed. I've been working in game engines for about a decade and I've never encountered one that is so easy to use. It's got basically everything you need, integrated with any package you'd want to use, and you can get a license for $200. That is amazing.

Because I'm also teaching it I've been putting together a bit of reference material about it. The first one is a Processing vs. Unity document. It covers some of the syntax differences between UnityScript (a Mono run version of JavaScript) and Processing (well it's Java under the hood). and here it is..

Processing_vs_Unity.pdf

You need to know about Eskil Steenberg

2009-08-24T10:40:00.003+10:00

There is an MMO called Love being developed one man, Eskil Steenberg. This is his Blog. Look at this video.

Up to speed on the game? Ok now look at this video. And read this post, it's long but it's worth the effort. That's the toolset for Love. He wrote that. It's awesome. His ideas on development are inspired.

I've been following this for a while now, since I saw this article. But the reason for posting about it is that it looks like it's getting close to release. And I can't wait.

The Swarm is Coming

2009-08-10T11:14:00.002+10:00

Swarm (working title) from matt ditton on Vimeo.

In the mad panic at the beginning of semester I totally forgot to post this video to the game I'm working on. Swarm is all made in openframeworks for the iPhone. There are also a bunch of support tools that I wrote in processing as well. More info soon.

Processing SBS and HD

2009-08-05T17:06:00.004+10:00

SBS ONE, First Australians from matt ditton on Vimeo.

I've posted a version of the processing SBS work to vimeo. You can watch it in all it's HD glory.

So like, what happened to Matt?

2009-07-08T14:41:00.006+10:00

Over the last few months I've been working on a number of projects that are slowly getting to a stage where I can talk about them. In the coming weeks I'll be updating the site and writing up some details on all of them. But as a teaser.

One of the big one's was work that I did for Qube Konstrukt. Qube was after something different while they worked for SBS ONE and SBS TWO. So enter Processing and that Generative "look". As luck would have it they called me up, had a chat and hit the ground running making cool stuff.

There are few projects that I've worked on that have been so rewarding. It was a dream to work on, and Qube are flat out awesome. And now the output is slowly making it's way into the world. To begin with SBS has posted a (badly compressed) selection of their new station id's to their facebook page. You can see them here.

The first two are from Qube, the next two are by Mighty Nice and the last three are from Iloura. Amazing stuff all round. The sound reactive particle system in the first one (the red one) is mine.

It's over, and now we're free.

2009-02-11T21:46:00.004+10:00

Pandemic Brisbane closed it's doors yesterday.

I joined at the start of DAH2 and in the four years I was there I experienced the best working environment that I've ever known. If there are better teams and better people out there then I pray I find them one day.

At the end of DAH2 when THQ took the license back, The Bravo Team picked their name first so we became known as the Alpha Team. We moved upstairs, Bravo started up their game and we just kept working. That first 9 months of pitching and experimenting and trying to nail the game idea was amazing. It changed the way I work, the way I look at the job. The respect we had for one another was impressive. That doesn't just happen. It's built, day by day.

I equate it to a band that just kept playing, every month we got better. You'd know how every person would play. You'd know how everyone could shine. We got tight and the product was amazing. One day people will see it. And it'll be seen for what it is. The best game we'll all never finish.

Your faithful tech.

MattD

GCAP 2008 - And now my talk

2009-02-11T21:33:00.005+10:00

Some wonderful people posted the entire talk on you tube. That's brilliant I was told no one got it. So here it is...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (this is the one with the pretty examples!!)

Part 4 (more pretty things here)

Part 5

My screen is full of lines

2008-12-10T15:40:00.004+10:00

More videos of stuff I'm working on at the moment. This time vector forces and particle collision are sitting on my mind.

Vector Force System from matt ditton on Vimeo.

GCAP 2008 - Videos from my talk

2008-11-26T07:09:00.005+10:00

These are videos of some the software that I showed off at GCAP

Drawing With Strings from matt ditton on Vimeo.

HeightField Demo from matt ditton on Vimeo.

Particle System Demo from matt ditton on Vimeo.

Slitscanning Workspace Demo from matt ditton on Vimeo.

Space Invader Class from matt ditton on Vimeo.

GCAP 2008 - Slides from my talk

2008-11-22T08:47:00.005+10:00

On Friday I gave a talk at GCAP. The topic was on teaching artists to program and how this can benefit the whole team. It was a chance to show off some of the experiences I've had through the year while teaching processing.

It's also got a few tips on how to write code for other artists in your team to use. The whole thing went over well, and as promised here are the slides from the talk. If I'm really lucky maybe I can get a recording of it.

the link to the doc

1 minute 32 seconds of pure genius.

2008-08-17T11:16:00.004+10:00

natalie portman's shaved head - sophisticated side ponytail.

The bit at 1.10 where the whale eats the katamary ball of the band is inspired. Also the band has taken 1995 and injected all that awesome into their virtual reality bonus zone. Make sure you've got sound. The midi is to die for.

MattD

Objloader version 014 up on google code

2008-07-12T18:37:00.003+10:00

Now with VBO!

One piece of advice for all who come after me. When dealing with arrays in opengl, remember that the stride of an array IS IN BYTES. That's right F**KING BYTES. One Float is 4 bytes. to get to the second element in a float array you need to skip 4 bytes. Motherfu----.

Seriously I spent about 8 hours on that bug. Just another example of information so common knowledge I knew nothing about it. Opengl you are a fickle mistress.

mattD

StarCraft 2 now Diablo 3, this is the end of days.

2008-06-29T17:21:00.004+10:00

Diablo 3 was announced today. After seeing the game play video I understand that whenever it gets released I do not want a game coming out anywhere near it. You can't fight that kind of awesome. Just stand back and think "So that's how you do a teaser video".

The release of any game by Blizzard will cause a singularity that will destroy the non-Blizzard shelves of your local gaming store. If you're making a PC game right now, you'd better hurry and get it to market. When Blizzard releases Starcraft or Diablo you aren't going to sell anything for about six months.

Of course knowing the Blizzard release system (roll 5 D20, 100 means it's ready) you've probably got a bit of time.

MattD

copy for HTML.

2008-05-05T14:29:00.010+10:00

Processing has a "copy for discourse" feature and when it works it awesome. It takes the code in the pde file and formats it for the discourse board. But this doesn't help when you want to publish some code on the rest of the internet. Something like this

void setup(){
  String myString = backwards("the quick brown fox");
}

String backwards(String s){
  String t = "";
  for(int i = s.length() - 1; i >= 0; i --){
 t = t + s.charAt(i);
}
  return t;
}

OMFG colour. Adds a lot to code doesn't it.

Well I thought that maybe other people might find this tool useful, so here is the pde that makes the pretty colored text above. It takes the contents of the "formated for discourse" clipboard and formats it for the web.

Get your code and copy it for discourse.
Run the copy for HTML pde.
Paste into blog.

copy_to_HTML

Make your own Engrish

2008-05-05T09:32:00.003+10:00

Fun with translators. Type in a simple phrase. and then keep translating the output till it can't translate anything else. For example.

Hello what is your name?
When there is a name, present several?
Is there a multiple which when name shows?
When name shows, is there a multiple?
When name multiple it shows there, is?
The first-rate multiple which when, is shown there where it is?
At the place where it has that, the time it is shown first-rate multiple there?
At the place where it has that, has time that been shown first-rate multiple there?
At the place where it has that to that, time has been shown thing first-rate multiple there, it is?
At the place where it has that the, had time been shown the first-rate multiple of thing, there where that it is?
Time having been shown the first-rate multiple of thing in the place where it has, there it is the that somewhere?
At the place where it has first-rate multiple of thing the time when it is shown, there it is that somewhere?
Is first-rate multiple of time thing as for that, there of a certain place which is shown that somewhere?
Is first-rate multiple time a certain place which is shown thing somewhere, there in regard to that?
Is first-rate multiplex time a certain place which has been shown somewhere thing in regard to that, there?