will wright and spore

This guy is brilliant. He’s the guy who created the games Simcity, the Sims etc..
Now he’s come up with a whole different level of game creation. Very complex and evolutionary plots.
It’s called Spore..
It’s based on a game development paradigm called procedural generation. In a nutshell, you devlelop algorithms and simple rules instead of storing complex animations and graphics in the game itself. During run-time, animations, textures etc. are created dynamically (procedurally) based on the simple sets of rules and algorithms..

The concept is not new. It’s been around for a while and there have been other games that have used it. What Will Wright does in spore is beyond that though. He takes lessons he learned from the Sim series and adds plot complexity and even more building/designing interaction into the game. Sort of like Second Life but in a much larger Universe and with a more compelling game play strategy.

I’m betting this will spawn a whole new generation of video games.

There’s a write up of the demo he did at a game developer’s conference.

A video of the actual demo is also available online at google video.
It’s about 35 minutes but worth it..

Update: Apparently there’s even an article on Wikipedia about it.

aeon flux revisited

For those of you who have no idea who or what aeon flux is, Mike Russell has a page about the history of aeon flux and how it came to be.

You might actually enjoy the boston globe version of the comic.

Definitely get the original animation dvds and watch them. They’ll be worth your time, I swear. Watch the animations before you watch the charlize theron movie if you can. Then judge the movie.

google video and nepal movement for democracy

I came across a google video of Paramendra Bhagat talking about his ideas on what is good and should be done in Nepal, politically, economically.
I have never heard of Parmendra before. Some of his ideas seem interesting enough to follow up on because they are tailored to Nepal’s economic and political situation, even thought the basis principle of the ideas were borrowed from things published/publicized elsewhere.
I googled him. Apparently he has a blog called the Democracy for Nepal blog. I’ll have to put it in my feed list.
What strikes me as revolutionary here, though, is the fact that I could get to the video footage about him talking on the internet. This was not possible before. It wasn’t even thinkable. Just imagine the reach of viral ideas. The promise of the internet has still not been fulfilled but the potential is there..
Here’s the video url.

Update: Some of Paramendra’s posts are downright egotistical and self-centered. But doesn’t everyone have their own pet peeves.