One Happy Dude

My Mom got Dude a bed for Christmas. You may not be able to tell from this photo but he is so happy. I put it on the ground and he jumped on it and won't get off. I think it makes him very sleepy.  

Bush Pig

I'm not talking about the U.S. president. I'm talking about the Wheelman Bush Pig. I took a demo ride on one this afternoon. Lots of fun. It's a motorized scooter you ride with a snowboard stance. Accelerator and brake are controlled by a cable that goes to your hand. Unlike a snowboard the front foot is used to turn, essentially acting as the front axel. It was tough to get up and get going. I had to ride regular foot because you have to detach the front wheel to set it up for goofy. The front wheel was too loose around my foot so I couldn't pull a good turning radius. But, once I got the hang of it, it was a blast. Not sure it was $900 worth of good times so I haven't bought one, yet.

God of War on 1Up

1up.com asked a few guys here to fill out a questionnaire about God of War. 1Up writers took our answers and compiled them into this article. The article talks about what games we used as reference while working on God of War. Catfight is in that list. Let me tell you the story behind how it got there.

Cory Barlog ( lead animator ) and Derek Daniels ( designer ) were filling out the 1Up questionnaire when I walked past. They wanted to put in a few joke games on our reference list. They were tossing around ideas like saying that Atari 2600 Combat inspired our combat system and War Gods was in inspiration as a total opposite ( War Gods is to God of War as horrible game is to great game. ) They asked me what I thought was the worst fighting game ever made. Catfight is the answer. I used to work with Larry Hess at Digital Domain. Larry Hess, who now runs Hess Software, also ran the company that created Catfight. When you talk to him he seems proud that Catfight is known as the worst game ever created. That is how Catfight got on our list of reference games.

My T-Shirt

Someone bought one of my Vegan Zombie t-shirts! I am so surprised. I know because I got a notice saying I'd earned royalties from Zazzle.com

I'm probably ruining the surprise for myself. I think someone that I know may have bought the shirt as a gift for me. It's hard for me to believe that someone would actually think the shirt was cool enough to buy and wear for themself. When I wear it out and about people have said, "Hey, great shirt!" Still, the concept eludes me.

It would be so cool if it was just some random person. She'll be walking around in my design. She'll hear the same things I have heard, "Hey, great shirt!" or "Funny Shirt!" or "What's a vegan?" Then one day she'll get sick of it and it will end up at a second hand store. Vintage t-shirts from the early 2000s.

PSP!!!!

I played Ridge Racers on the PSP this morning!! So Sweet. The screen is fantastic, major viewing angle. It has a nice solid feel to it. Buttons galore: standard playstation buttons, shoulder buttons, left digital and analog. The left analog is a bit odd at first. It slides on the surface rather than tipping like a dualshock. It slides so smoothly that you get accustomed to it in no time at all. Call me a bad egg, but I want one! Now!

Christmas Caricatures

The last two Sundays Liana and I have gone to Christmas Parties. A week ago we went to the Sony Christmas party. Ate good food, watched all my co-workers get drunk and lost the drawing for a $4000 Sony Plasma TV.

Yesterday we went to Liana's work Christmas party. The best part of that party was getting our caricature done. I met Robert Villegas the artist. Interesting guy. He has a website of his work CoreShadow Productions.

Fizzy Lifting Drinks

I just saw the trailer to the new Tim Burton / Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I am bummed. Looks crappy. And the voice over better not be the umpa lumpa's voices. I think this movie is going to suck everlasting gobstopper style. But, how could you even hope to be better than the original?

7,000,000 Whoppers or a 30 Foot Cube of Butter

Not long after I posted my questions about how much food had to be eaten to power the 28 million hours that have been logged playing Halo 2 on XBox live, Bart got back to me with an answer:

Bart says:
"6,160 sticks of butter or 7,000 Whopper sandwichs from burger king. Thanks for putting me in your blog! --Bart"

I didn't think the human body was quite that efficient. Powering 3000 years of game play off 6000 sticks of butter just didn't seem right. But, maybe it was, why else would those machines in The Matrix use us as batteries.

I decided to ask Bart if he was correct.
I wrote:
"I found a site that says you burn 114 calories per hour while sitting and writing, card playing, etc. And 4.99 calories per gram of butter. So, I got 1,410,259 pounds of butter required for the 28,000,000 hours of game play. Surely that's more than 6000 sticks. You sure that's right? --TMIV"

Bart's reply:
" Don't forget about the calories to kilocalories conversion.

I think that those web sites that say how fast you burn calories are talking about real calories (I'm not sure; I could be wrong about thispart), whereas food is measured in Calories (capital C) which are really kilocalories.

I was using about 176 calories per hour, which is a bit inflated since it was actually the number for sitting down and playing with a kid. I figured that you would burn more calories playing videogames than just sitting and playing cards because you're moving around a lot and using a lot of muscles in your arms ('fast twitch' muscle which burns morecalories than 'slow twitch' endurance type muscle, re: July 2004 Scientific American.)

For butter I was using a quote from a story that I read last week onFoxNews.com. They were talking about the new 1400 calorie burger at Carl's Jr. and one nutritionist was saying you'd be better off eating a stick of butter because it only has 800 calories and less fat.

28 x 10e6 hours x (176 calories/ 1 hour) x (1 kilocalorie/1000 calories) x (1 stick of butter/800 calories) = 6160 sticks of butter (roughly a cube of butter 3 feet on a side)

Using your value of 114 calories per hour, you'd get 3990 sticks of butter. All this really goes to show that I'm probably just as anal as you thought.
:P

To try to make up for that, here is a cute and relevant story: http://www.iwaynet.net/~ggwiz/f/beerdiet.htm
--Bart"

Then about 10 minutes later I got this email:
"You know what? I just looked this up on the net and it looks like exercise is measured in kilocalories just like food, so I divided by 1000 one too many times. Make that 7,000,000 Whoppers or a 30 foot cube of butter. --Bart"

So, there you go! Playing XBox Live for 28 million hours would require 7,000,000 Whoppers or a 30 foot cube of butter as a power source for the humans. Hmmm... now how much power did the XBoxes and the TV's, modems, routers and servers take up???

3000 Man Years

gamejournalism.com has an article that says people have spent 28 million hours playing Halo 2 on XBox Live! That is 3000 years. Think of all that human processing power. I wonder how much energy was burned during that time. How many calories? How much food was required to fuel these gamers?

I'm sure my friend Bart will know all the answers.

Animal Testing

Today I noticed Dude's shampoo has a label that reads, "Not tested on animals!" Huh? What? It's dog shampoo! I hope it's been tested on animals.

GT4 and a Sweet Rig

I just played a version of GT4. It is looking amazing. I had the most fun I ever had playing GT. Here at the studio we have a sweet GT4 rig setup. It has a racing seat, one of the really good Logitech steering systems, and three LCD TVs. You might ask, "Three TVs? What for?" GT4 now has a feature where you can hook multiple PS2 units together and get peripheral vision. It makes a huge difference in the quality of the gaming experience. The three PS2s are networked together. One is the main view and the other two are the left and right views.

It actually reminds me a lot of a helicopter simulator that I worked on in 1995. The OH-58D simulator for the US Army. It had 4 big screen monitors 1024 x 768 res each all driven off a Silicon Graphics Reality Engine.

In the photo you can see how the monitors are laid out around the cockpit. Similar to the GT4 multi screen feature. Except the GT4 visuals are 10 million times better.
This simulator could be hooked into SimNet. You could join in battle simulations with other helicopter and tank simulators. Keeping the terrain and visuals identical in each simulator was very important for communications and fair fights. So we had to run the standardized US Army commissioned terrain database. It looked like poopie, but it had to run on the much older simulators we connected to in battles.

In the picture the simulator was configured as an OH-58D. It was also could run in UH-60 and AH64 configurations.


This is a picture of the OH-58D helicopter that we were simulating. It was at the same conference, Army Aviation Association of America or Quad A for short.

God of War in Europe

Just got news today that Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is going to publish God of War. US, Japan, and now Europe, that is considered world wide distribution. Cool! Unless you're in South America, Africa or China.