IGN PS2 2005 Awards

IGN PS2 gave God of War 5 Awards: Best Action Game, Best Original Sound Track, Best Graphics Technology, Best Story, and Game of the Year!

Take a toilet to the dump.

I replaced my toilet with an mega ultra low flow toilet today. The new toilet is a Sterling with two flush options. One full flush for solid waste and a half flush for the liquids. It saves water without having to go by the nasty saying, "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown send it down." 

Prince of Persia 3 Concept Art

Nice Prince of Persia 3 Concept Art.

The French Democracy

From MSNBC,
"The French Democracy was made by Alex Chan, a 27-year-old who lives in the suburbs of Paris. In an e-mail this week, he said he doesn't particularly consider himself a film buff or even a huge game fan. He almost didn't buy The Movies because he would have had to sell his favorite PlayStation 2 game, God of War, to pay for it."

PSP better every day

I upgraded my PSP's kernel software. I have the new browser. It's a little clunky but it does what I want. I can download MP3s and save them to the memory stick. I can download pictures. The best part, at least for tonight, is that I can make a link to tonight's recipe for dinner, boot up my PSP and have an electric recipe card right there in the kitchen with me. No printing involved. :)

Center Storm

My mother just called me. She is now in the eye of Wilma. She is doing fine. By her account several things hit the house. She has not ventured outside and can't see because of the shutters. I hope that she does as well in the second half of the storm.

Update: The second half of the storm was worse than the first. The front door was bowing and the windows rattling even behind the metal shutters. Several of my parent's trees were blown down. One landed on the neighbor's roof. Not severe damage, but enough to be an annoyance. They were without power for a week but they have a generator that allows them to power up the house one section at a time.

More Adam Asher Band

The Adam Asher Band is playing another gig, October 21st 8pm at Molly Malone's in LA. I have bloged about them previously. They now have a myspace page. It has four of their tracks which you can play on that page. My personal track of choice is Anything From You. So, check them out at Molly Malone's or at least check out their songs on their myspace page.

Haircut!

My long hair was starting to get a bit nasty

Dude agreed, it was a gross out.

I had to snip this problem at the root.

What did I do !?!

What did he do!?!

Hmm.. Guess I'll go at it with the clippers.

A mowhawk?

Hmm...

Maybe it could work!

No Way!

Shave it the whole way down.

I think that works. 

Joke

A friend of mine told me a good joke yesterday:

What is George W. Bush's opinion on Roe vs Wade?

He doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

iRiver

A while back I said I would make a podcast of my girlfriend's father. I want to catch some of his NASA Apollo Engineer stories. I took one step closer to that goal today. I bought an iRiver to record MP3s while I'm out and about. The iRiver is very cool. It has an FM tuner, but the surprise to me was that with one click I can start recording the radio. Great surprise. The interface is good and it sounds good. The only thing I didn't like the packaging. It was harder to get into than Ft. Knox. I went at it with a scissor. I yanked. I pulled. Several minutes and two cuts from what must be bullet proof plastic later I had freed the iRiver. I hope to get you the NASA interviews soon.

Virtual Reality

Some days it makes me sad that I can't share the experiences I've had with virtual and augmented reality with my co-workers and friends. There is nothing like the donning a HMD and entering a game environment that completely replaces all of your perceptions. Look down at your hands, arms and body. They are not your own. You have the ability to create objects in your hands simply by touching two fingers together. Crazy.

I want to recreate and expand my virtual reality experiences. So I tried to contact an old friend of mine, Shawn Kendall. He and I worked together in the Toy Scouts, a university research group. There we did several projects and displayed them at Siggraph 1994 and 1995.

My favorite project from the Toy Scout days was Jitalwast. You stood in a pod surrounded by asteroids. They whizzed by your head in 3D and you could hear them coming at you from behind. If a chunk of rock were to get too close to your pod you could shoot at it with projectiles formed by pulling an invisible bow. If you were not quick enough with the bow then navigation of the pod was controlled through the placement of your feet. It was great fun. It was like nothing else I've ever experienced. No commercial VR ever came close.

Our projects in the Toy Scouts led to jobs together at the Institute for Simulation and Training (IST). IST had us put together virtual environments for training missions and psychological experiments. That place felt a lot like Wonka's Chocolate factory to me. They had great equipment and it always smelled like magic blue smoke. My imagination ran wild. We logged serious hours in the lab sometimes forgetting the to go home at all, mostly because there were no windows. Passing the time by playing with 3D sound generators, HMDs, 3 space tracking devices, super computers, or by just listening to wacky PHD candidates trying to make people sick in the Woozy Helmet Lab.

After IST we both moved over to AcuSoft. AcuSoft pulled in defense contracts usually paired with a larger corporation like Lockheed Martin or CAE. There we got to play with large battle simulations using Army Simulation Network (SimNet) and Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS.) For the army, we built training units tanks and helicopters. I've blogged about them before, but I don't think I really touched on the VR aspect. The helicopter simulator we did with CAE was the most interesting. It used an augmented reality system. The virtual world was imposed into the pilot's view using CAE's Custom HMD, Gemin-Eye. This allowed the pilot to play in the virtual world, looking out any direction he chose, but still allowing him to see the actual instrument panel and his own body.


Shawn has now started the company Immediate Mode Interactive, is a course director at Full Sail, and co-authored a book about writing games in Java. I want to talk with him about my desires for new VR explorations because he had a great passion for VR. He once called VR his child and expressed how he wanted to deliver it to the world. Driving cross country delivering VR to the people from an RV. That was his plan. I don't think it ever came to fruition. I figure Shawn will know how I can get some cheap, used, HMDs and Head Trackers.

As a first step I want to put together a HMD stereoscopic version of God of War. It may take some time but I think it would be worth it. Not exactly VR, but a step and, almost certainly, it would blow a lot of minds around the office.

Evil Aliens

I think it is weird that Stephen Spielberg is giving us War of the Worlds. He was the director of E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Both movies with harmless, curious aliens. What happened to his premise? He once stated, "I have a hard time believing that a species intelligent enough to travel vast distances in space would be harmful." Has he abandoned that notion?

Update: I saw War of the Worlds this weekend. It was really good. It felt like a ride. Absorbing and enthralling.

God of War Team is Now Hiring

The team that created God of War is now hiring in virtually every discipline:

Programming
Animation
Design
Concept Art
Character Art
Environment Art

So, if you think you got the talent and the skills and want to be a part of what we are doing next ( you can imagine what that might be ) then email us at: gow_jobs@playstation.sony.com


Oh, don't forget to mention that TMIV sent you.

Mass Hysteria

As you can see, Dude and the Cool Cats are finally starting to make friends.  

Late E3 Post

I went to E3. I'm glad that I finally have the time to blog about the show. Way too crowded! The place was packed. The crowd, as usual for E3, was not filled with normal people either. It was stuffed with freaky bastards, like the guy who rented a wheelchair to grope booth babes and get up-skirt shots. I was standing with some friends on the show floor when I gestured to indicate a direction. Not a grand gesture, no wild arm swinging, but the place was so full some random dude walked his eye into my finger.
I have a question for the Sony marketeers. Who is this Chang character and why should I welcome him?

There were a few Greco-Roman Mythology games at E3. I'm glad that God of War beat them to the market. People love that Hero Holding Medusa's Head pose for the posters.

Spartan: Total Warrior has a hero like the prototypical Kratos. Complete with scrub brush adorned helmet. 

Adam Asher Band

My friend Chad played a gig at BB Kings last night. He's the tenor sax for the Adam Asher Band. It was the band's first performance and they rocked. They inspired people to actually get up and dance. I hope to post some pictures and sound clips in the future and when they get a website I'll post a link. I'll definitely be tracking their progress.

After the Adam Asher Band Eating Alice took the stage. They played a short but tight set of Korn / Tool style music. Given the chance I'd watch them again.

God of War in the Shire

I just heard that Elijah Wood ( Frodo Baggins ) said, "God of War Rocks! Best Game Ever!"

Surfing

One thing I regret is that on my break I didn't go surfing nearly enough. I went out today and yesterday. Great fun. Yesterday was large and, at high tide, really fun. It was choppy and a lot of work to get out to the lineup, but a good day. I had a really great backside wave. Today was smaller but had good shape and it was less choppy. I caught a bunch more waves today. Suring before work always makes the day cooler.

Men in Space

Last night I went to a party commemorating the April 12, 1961 flight of Yuri Gagarin. The flight that took the first human into space.

Space was the theme of the night. The main room was a icy, Hoth-like planet complete with geodesic living structure. Jason Bentley, Donald Gloude and Porter Tinsley played out some great sessions on the frozen wasteland. Donald Gloude did some live scratching which is always fun to see. My favorite DJ of the night was Porter Tinsley. Her beats just got my booty wiggling. Liana and I danced with fervor.

At one point a giant cargo door opened and the brightest light shone through the portal. It felt like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Everyone was in silhouette like aliens crawling from the spacecraft.

In another part of the studio they had lined the wall with phosphorescent paper. Every thirty seconds a light would strobe burning the shadow of whomever was standing between the light and the wall into the phosphorescent paper. The image would fade in time and be replaced by the next burst of light. It was a striking effect beautiful and creepy. It reminded me of how people's shadows were burned into the wall in Hiroshima.


  Unfortunately cosmonaut Dudeinski could not attend.

LEGO Star Wars

LEGO Star Wars is great.

It allows you to play the major points of Episodes 1, 2 & 3. I'm playing episode 3 right now and the movie isn't even out yet. I just battled General Grievous. The controls and abilities are a little childish and easy. The LEGO style is great except the lack of character speech makes it feel like the cut corners on voice talent or they didn't want to be required to invest in translations or subtitles. All in all for a fan of LEGO and Star Wars it is a must have.

I actually worked as a programmer on a game for LEGO. Our team created LEGO Alpha Team an array of characters which is still apparently still going strong for LEGO.

Do The Hustle

I went to see Kung Fu Hustle this weekend. I have not laughed that hard in a long time. I almost peed.

Party Like Gods

 
We had our God of War wrap party at the El Rey Theater. A real good time. Even Kratos broke into dance.

Kratos 

Happy Sheep

I finally got my cartoon Happy Sheep done!

It was inspired by a a skit I did in a class at The Groundlings.

But be careful, Liana gives it an R Rating and I'd have to agree. The audio is probably not safe for work.

Ecstatic!

I am a fan of Penny Arcade. Needless to say I think that this comic and news post are Piss My Pants Fantastic.

Also, Heavy.com has a God of War Flash video series called Pimp My Weapon. It was amusing but the video rate was really choppy.

God of War Comic

Check out this God of War Comic. Funny because it's true.

So, all the local EBs around here are sold out of God of War which is nice.

Universal Citywalk

Tonight I'm going down to the EB at Universal Citywalk Hollywood. Between five and seven is some kind of God of War event. I'm going to check it out.

UPDATE -- I didn't make it down there. It was raining in LA, really raining. Actual rain. I got soaked to the skin in less than a minute in sideways rain. It was great! But, the traffic was totally screwed. The 10 freeway was flooded 3 eastbound lanes were closed. I was on my way to the Citywalk and it took 45 minutes to go 5 miles. Extrapolate that time and I would have gotten there after the event was over. I turned around and went to my local EB who hadn't even gotten their shipment of GOW.

God of War Commercial

I just saw the God of War commercial on Spike TV. I don't normally watch Spike TV, but I figured it had a high chance of playing our commercial. Guess I was right. I think the commercial is cool, but two things I didn't feel were right. 1) the voice over at the end is unintelligible. I could not tell what she said. Something about the blood of the old? 2) I don't think it does the game justice. You can't really get a feel for the game from that commercial.

On the positive side it shows the name, God of War, and the main character.

Bouncing Around Town Today

Today I'm running around doing errands. I have a few things to note.

First, at one point today I got behind this guy in the Prius hybrid. As you can see his plate says L8R4GAS. That's great! I love it. I am currently looking for a truck. I wish the Prius would work for my needs but I really am in need of a truck. I contacted my friends who let me check out the hydrogen car, to see when their trucks would be ready. I guess no time soon, because they haven't mailed me back yet. It's a shame because I work across the street from a natural gas fuel station, so I could fill up there until hydrogen is widely available.

Also, I went to Quiznos for lunch. I've noticed that the quality of the food varies greatly from outlet to outlet. For instance, the Quiznos near Colorado and Cloverfield is good, but the one I ate at today Westwood & Pico was horrid. They must have their toaster improperly calibrated. If I was Quiznos Corporate I'd get on that problem, because if what I ate today had been my first Quiznos experience, I'd never go again.

Last note, when I was at Santa Monica's city hall I noticed that they have installed waterless urinals. Cool! No flushing. The placard says that the system saves 40,000 gallons of water a year. I know no flushing sounds gross, but really it's not. The urine gets trapped beneath a layer of oil so it doesn't stink.  

Campaign

Our ads are finally starting to show up around the internet. I saw them at several different sites. So, that's cool. They all lead to the God of War website, which is now much more filled out.

People have started building some fan sites.

There is the Unofficial God of War Website.

And there is also a God of War Boards Site.

Bad Audio

So, I guess my podcast got some attention. People from work called me and asked me to take down my God of War news. I guess that bit of news had not been released yet. Sorry to whoever is involved. I just got excited and didn't even realize that I could be stealing someone's thunder. So I broke the link to the audio post until I can edit the file to take out the part in question. Which may be a while since I am in Florida.

Hmm... Perhaps I'll stick to crap I make up myself in the future.

Oh and be warned if you do listen to the podcast, I am crap at it. Really, they are horrible.

Chiasmus?

A few months ago, before all the SoCal rains, I was surfing with some friends at a particularly crowded break in Santa Monica. Lurking out in the water with us was a most dangerous creature, Kookus Jackassus. More commonly known as The Kook, the creature struck us in terror. Dropping in on surfers, crashing into people, and allowing his board to get away from his control. He had to be stopped.

Some surfers tried coaching The Kook. They could be heard saying, "What you just did was very dangerous. You should keep control of your board it narrowly missed that person." Ah, but the Kook is a very stubborn breed and the very next wave repeats his mistakes.

Others tried shouting and intimidation, "Faggot! Get out of here Barney! You Suck!" But the Kook was undeterred, happily endangering the surfers.

Still others tried threat, "If you are ever on the same wave as me I'm going for blood! I will run you over with my fins! I will hurt you!" But the Kook does not comprehend the damage a surfboard can do. Perhaps never having felt the sting of a skeg against skin.

Then, when all hope was lost, the Kook was overheard saying, "I'm not to fond of this crowd."
Without missing a beat, as if my lips were driven by divine forces, I shouted, "The crowd's not to fond of you."

Uproarious laughter broke out from the crowd.

After this exchange The Kook looked hurt and bewildered. He recoiled from the water, retiring to the safety of his Corvette. Could chiamus be the undoing of the common Kook? Perhaps.

God of War is Done

Done, complete, finished, gold. Yay! It will be in stores in one month. You can preorder it now.

Now the team is on a break, all recoperating from our last several months of stress. While on this break I was trying to think about what I would like to do next. I had several brilliant ideas. A couple of products and some production tools were floating around in my head. The most promising idea I presented to Sony and I hope that I can get it produced. I don't want to say too much about it yet. Hopefully it will all work out because this idea, in my opinion, is amazing. I am seriously considering hacking it together if Sony doesn't let me build it through them.

In case you are wondering, I did not put the Amazon link here to make money off of the recommendation. I became an Amazon Associate to check out how it all works. I recently heard a speech from Jeff Bezos at the Web 2.0 conference on IT Conversations. What they are doing over at Amazon is very interesting. So, I am looking into it. I chose God of War as my first reccomendation because I know it kicks arse.

Underage Gaming

This is a warning! If you are under 17 I don't want to hear about you playing my video game, God of War. If I do I will have to give your parents a serious verbal beat down. I don't want Sony getting sued, like in the case of this moron, because you were too stupid to determine that your hideous grandma was not actually Medusa before you ripped her head off.

Ratings are there for a reason.

Liana's New Shots

Liana got some new headshots done. These are the favorites so far.

The Law and Order shot

And this one is my favorite. She looks so yummy. 

Thriller Special Edition

I just got the Michael Jackson Thriller Special Edition CD. It's got the Vincent Price recording session they did for thriller. There is a whole extra verse in there that's not in the song. Man, that guy has the coolest voice. There are a interviews with Quincy Jones and a few with Rod Temperton. Great stuff.

Insurgent Alliance

I've been noticing recently the word insurgent is being used a lot more often than in the past. Insurgent means rebel, they are synonyms. Why would the media start using the word insurgent instead of rebel? Hmm, is the populace becoming insistent that the media increase its vocabulary? Highly doubtful. Are we bored of hearing about rebels? Nah. I think that reason is that the word rebel has become sympathetic to us. Especially those of us in our thirties. Star Wars has conditioned us to see rebels as not so bad really. Whether or not it is a right wing plot to prevent any sympathy for the insurgents, I don't know. What I do know is if I saw GW on my TV saying how we had to eliminate the rebels I would instantly associate him with Darth Vader.

PSP FINAL FINAL Release Date

I just got an email straight from Kaz Hirai titled PSP Launch Date Release FINAL FINAL.doc. Unless there is a FINAL FINAL FINAL doc coming, the Launch date is March 24th. Suggested retail price $249.99 US dollars. I hope that people don't skip over God of War in their excitement for the PSP, its release date is March 22nd. You can read the details on the release package and the PSP in the PSP Release Date Press Release. There is also a press release detailing the launch titles, PSP Launch Title Press Release.

No air

I caught a few of my coworkers off guard with this scenario. Take a balloon and fill it up with air. Now imagine you could freeze the balloon's structure. No matter what you do to it the balloon will always maintain it's inflated shape. I know it is physically impossible, just accept it as a truth. Now suck all of the air out of the balloon so that there is a total vacuum inside. The balloon will float away. It will be less dense than the surrounding air. So it will be pushed up, like an air bubble under water. It will float away even more rapidly than if it were filled with helium or hydrogen.

Right now, as far as I know, that scenario is not possible. But soon there will be a material strong enough to hold its shape with a vacuum inside, yet still be light enough to float. Perhaps it will be made out of nanotubes or something. I'm sure materials science will provide it sometime soon. Remember, it wasn't that long ago when we didn't have helium filled balloons.

Hmmm...

Linus Torvalis, the inventor of Linux said, "Software is like sex. It's better when it's free."

"Linux is only free if your time is worthless." -- Anonymous

I think if you combine those two quotes you'll find the meaning of life in there somewhere.

God of War Final Meeting

The God of War team had its final official meeting today. We have reached beta, and the game is solid and fun, but we have not yet reached final. We are still working, so while the meeting was great I was reminded of Pulp Fiction. You know the scene where the Wolf has made them clean the brains and blood out of the car but they have not yet driven it across town to the junk yard. That priceless quote from The Wolf in that scene was in my mind throughout the meeting. Which was nice, it kept me from getting too sappy. It was emotional for some as people related their experiences. Everyone had a chance to talk. Complements all around and I think that they are well deserved. Some apologies were given for misunderstandings. You could feel the pride and mutual adoration in the room. It was pointed out that even at this late stage when we should be sick of the game we still find it fun to play. That is a very good sign.

We then watched parts of our game. I get chills and goose bumps while playing some parts of our game. I hope that is an indication of the quality of our game and not just false pride. Involuntary skin response has only ever happened to me while playing one other game. In the original Halo about three quarters of the way through the sound track and visuals came together with some action game play and I looked like a freshly plucked chicken. I hope some gamers out there get the same experience during our game.

Oh! The demo is out. It's a limited release demo but the first 70 people to email hydra_level@playstation.sony.com with their address and phone number will get a copy.

You Have 3 Seconds To Comply

Yikes! The first robot with a gun is going to war. SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems) will be blasting targets in Iraq. I just hope that Gene Simmons isn't at the controls. What would Asimov say?

PSP Rocks

I know a couple of people that have PSPs already. They seem totally tickled with the features. My head is reeling at the possibilities of this platform. You can take a movie, preferably one that you already own, and transfer it to a memory stick. Then you can view it on the PSP. My friend had two movies ( Shaun of The Dead and The Matrix) on one 512 MB memory stick. That feature alone leads to so many possibilities. Imagine if you could combine that feature with a TiVo To Go service or video on demand. Download the shows you want to see to your PSP overnight. Then the next day you can view your shows on the bus, in a car pool, on the crapper, or wherever you like. People can even create online shows that PSP users could subscribe to and download to their PSPs. And think of illustrated audio books. Wow! It'd be awesome to write some illustrated kids book content for PSP. Or do a crazy cooking show that people could download and bring into their kitchens.

Real Time Collision Detection

My co-worker and friend Christer Ericson's book is finally out. He's been slaving over his collision detection manuscript for years and it has finally arrived.

God of War - The Hydra Battle

This is the cover for the God of War Demo Disc. The demo will be coming out soon. It's not on a wide release. Copies will only be sent to magazines and high exposure type outlets. I am going to try to get a few copies to give away.

I have been thinking for a long time now that this is how we should make games. We should release games with about this much content and sell them for less money. This demo plays for like 2 hours for an average gamer on a first time play through. It leaves the player in a cliff hang situation. I can see a series game working in this format. Episodic releases every three months would be great. I have heard the problem with this sales model is the point of sale retailers don't like games that are not the standard price. They just don't like making shelf space for lesser priced games. So, until we have Game on Demand Downloads (GODD!!! HA!) I guess I'll have to keep dreaming.  

Snowy New Year

Liana and I went to Mammoth Mountain over New Year's weekend. It was a great time. The snowboarding was fantastic.

My friends and co-workers, Tim and Jo, joined us for a few runs. It snowed so much that only the very bottom portion of the mountain was open. Which was fine, because most of our crew were novice. I went off on my own and took some runs through some trees with the deepest powder I have ever ridden. Between runs your tracks would get snowed over and the echoing boom of avalanche blasting could be heard all day long.

At night we did things like build snow chicks and

of course we had to take some time to play test God of War. I guess we are all workaholics. The condo even had a wireless network so we could use laptops to send the bugs we found directly to the office.

As we went to leave we discovered that the snow time fun was not over just yet. Phil's car had to be uncovered.

Thankfully the guy with the Bobcat showed up and joined our shovel party.  

God of Website

God of war finally has a website. Not much there right now but you can sign up for further information. At least we have a basis point. Anyway go check it out: God of War Website

Banda Aceh

The tsunami did horrible damage. I saw some images that I thought would be more effectively displayed if you could flip book between them. So I created this Flash Animation.


There is a good collection of tsunami media over at DataWhat?

And the wikipedia entry on the subject is very interesting.