So it's been about half a week since our Mystery Case Files: Millionheir game was released. I've seen some good reviews and some bad ones. Amusingly, I think this game is a classic example of how reviewers are not the target audience. However, this one really is the best one I've read so far and puts it forth quite eloquently:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080905.WBwgtgameblog030120080905092410/WBStory/WBwgtgameblog0301/

From experience at work it's the kind of game you'd hand to your mom/girlfriend/daughter and you have to pry it out of their hands. Much like our secretaries and the like. So my advice to reviewers would be: Hand it to your mom and see if you get your DS back.

I'm also so glad most people like my writing (although some hinted at those bad puns I mentioned last time ;). I wish I could have done more with MCF, but it was a reassuring thing and just makes me want to go on and do better stuff.

Yay.

In other news Neopets DS is basically done! We worked hard on it trying to put as much as we could in time. Coulda had more side-questy stuff and the like, but it's probably one of our more polished games. At least the parts I wrote. Mmmm, fancy scrolling and cross fading. Teehee.

Can't really talk about the next one but it's even shorter. Phew. No rest for the weary! Better get back to it now.

Thought this thing would never get done, but here it is:

http://www.mcfmillionheir.com/

Yeah, it took us about a year to do 'cause we kept redesigning it. Obviously I'm totally sick of the game, but people tell me it turned out extremely well. We have to rip it away from people who get their hands on it. So that may be a good sign.

And yes, yours truly rewrote the story, too. Haha. I think a certain someone crammed in extra bad puns afterwards, though, so we'll have to see how it turned out. I haven't gone over the final result yet. Scared the new puns will be -too- bad!

Next up is what I like to call the '9-week Project From Hell'. Though it's down to 8 now as I type this. We'll see how that goes...

I can't really repost them easily but here's the link to the article in question regarding a likely blatant copy of Oblivion by another company.

http://www.gameplasma.com/limbo_of_the_lost_or_oblivion/

I've been told my top 10 list is hilarious, so I'm posting it up in my journal to share the fun. Disclaimer: This is all tongue in cheek and intended to make you giggle. I know absolutely nothing about Majestic, personally, and don't follow the company or know anyone there (or even their names). So here goes...!

What can we conclude from these screenshots?

1. Majestic had a low quality video card and lots of anti aliasing when they were taking screen captures from Oblivion. Signs of a low budget operation.

2. Majestic will come back and claim the 'fair use' right in that Oblivion was so immersive they believed it was reality and they were just taking photographs. Honest.

3. Majestic will likely not be making Limbo of the Lost II: Tango of the Lost.

4. Majestic will have more trouble coming out with their new middleware solution Majic: The Oblivion Asset Creation Studio.

5. Nintendo's legal department will freak out and go over every DS game to compare anything in them to Oblivion. Candlesticks? You're busted, pal!

6. Bethesda will move to patent the 'stone' texture.

7. Now is a great time for a studio 'roadtrip' to go purchase copies of Limbo of the Lost and resell them on ebay.

8. Tri Synergy should have realized the lack of laughter when they proposed a 250k game budget for a 'fully immersive and complex point and click game world' was not that of shock but the cold realization of 200k of profit potential.

9. Majestic should have at least color cycled their stone textures like other great studios.

10. We probably don't want to hire the art lead at Majestic, as I'm sure he'll be looking for work tomorrow.

Well, right outside I see a decent pileup of snow (which was so pretty last night!)

Kind of a weird reminder that you never know what the weather is going to be like, but I can't say I mind it too badly. It may have hurt the trees a little bit, which are already starting to show their leaves, but they don't look too bad.

Wow have I been busy at work. Still pounding through to the final stages of our big Nintendo release. I've been helping to rewrite the script of the game this time, which is just as well because I find it really easy. Of course everything seems easy except, oh, quaternions so I dunno. Oddly enough it's the whole working out and eating better that's brought such a huge change. They've learned a lot of us prefer things like apples

Personally, hmm, can't say a whole lot. I've been archiving my DVDs to hard drives because, well, they're starting to fade and go bad. Guess it's been a number of years since they released those, hasn't it? I had thought BluRay would be more viable by this point, but seems like it's still a few years away before that's an affordable option and hard drives are so huge. SSD will make an awful lot of sense soon.

Oh, also picked up a copy of Dark Star. It's interesting in parts, though a bit amateurish and formulaic. I like games a little better where the main emphasis is not on the very simple forced progression, like they did with the 'artifacts'. It was a let down from what I was hoping for. Still, not entirely terrible and a decent space romp to get you through to the next game.

Okay, so someone left the water running in Seattle over the weekend and flooded everything. Fortunately I was high and dry, but also stuck at work as I didn't want to go out walking in the endless rain. Could be far worse.

I got some awesome pictures of the snowstorm, however!

Well! Been an awful long time since I posted anything. I suppose it's important to now and again. :D

First off I got a big promotion! Nothing wrong with that and it comes at a great time with xmas upon us like the plague that it is. Black Friday netted a mouse, new bedsheets, pillows, socks, etc. All the essentials at lovely bargain prices. I went back to my usual place to see if any Calphalon/etc pots remained, but sadly it was mostly furniture this time. Those would have made nice gifts.

Thanksgiving came and went rather silently, but I suppose it's not much more than time off of work when your family is a long distance away. I do miss having family sometimes, as it can be a rather lonely world sometimes. Just sometimes, though. :)

Still, what are you doing? Celebrating something? Or just kicking back and recharging for the next assault on your senses and sensibilities.

Personally, I'm tempted to visit back east again, but at the same time I don't know if that's the answer. It'd be nice to see the family again, of course. Haven't seen dad and mom in ages, after all. I would rather spend the time off productively, but I seem to be lacking in realistic ideas. It's hard to want to start something when you only have a few weeks to do it.

Just not sure. My gut feeling tells me I'm in limbo at the moment, resting up until the next inspiration hits, and then I'll dive into that.

I do keep wanting to give things away. It's hard to imagine what my parents could possibly need (except money, but I think that's anyone's answer!) But I do agree that life is somewhat empty at the moment. Some of my long term 'projects' (people) are working out great. A few not so great, but those in particular seem to be beyond my ability to really understand or help.

I was tempted to give things to an ad on craigslist, for instance, for some foster kids. But another post decried that as a scam, pointing out that foster kids get a decent state income for things like that already. Just don't know, really. My friends/kids are pretty well taken care of right now, for the most part, and getting better. Perhaps one of them isn't doing so hot psychologically, but if you consider things and money he's off to a good start.

So I obviously need to start new projects. :)

Today is tacky sweater day. I found a tacky sweater. Not sure how 'holiday' it is, but it sure is hideous. :)

So this is a picture of another modification to the T-Amp. This time I've put 10uF tantalum capacitors to run in parallel with the C3/C4 caps. I'm told that running in parallel is actually a really good thing and it will likely mean that both the highs and lows filter through correctly.

Anyway, it's hard to tell, really, but I do think there's a much lower floor for the bass now that's coming from my speakers. Judging from the feel of how the room seems to want to vibrate around me. But it's so hard to be absolutely certain. I mean, the bass wasn't -bad- before and neither was the audio quality in general.

Remaining to do are different phono input jacks, a project box, and a different volume pot.

As well, on the whole Cat6 bandwagon I mentioned before that my friend replaced all his. I've got some cheaper Cat5e which isn't as thick, myself, but it's okay.

I got a call yesterday and went down as he went ahead to get more Cat6 and work on stranding the entire cables together. This gives him two whole strands dedicated to positive and to negative. He gave up on the stranding as it caused the audio to become quite a bit more muffled, which I can't really argue with. I would think that it'd introduce crosstalk from the relatively unshielded cables.

However, adding the second Cat6 lines made noticeable improvements on the audio which opened up the soundstage even more. We didn't get into as much testing this time around, but there definitely was a moderate quality boost.

Another audio post... Seems like that's a lot of what I'm busy thinking about lately, but it's interesting for now.

This weekend I went down to a friend of mine and we decided to try out Cat 5 cable to see if we could debunk the whole audio cable thing. Curiosity, really.

While it was pretty cold out we headed down to CompUSA and BestBuy to find cables. Which was okay. They had some decent quality Belkin in various forms, but it was really expensive and hard to guarantee exactly what was in the package.

So on a whim we gave in and headed down to Fry's as they tend to have a rather large cable selection. Their bulk boxes of cables allow you to see the ends, which proved that a lot of them were rather 'off' as the size and shape of the strands looked different. As well, I would swear that some of the ends appeared to be made of different metals throughout.

They have a lot of bins of premade cabling, as well, though that's a bit of a crazy thing to sift through as the qualities of cable were vastly different. It took a lot of searching but we hit on a rather thick looking unshielded cable with slightly more fancy looking ends. According to my friend the flexibility of the cable was the key. Since it felt more like rubber that meant the stiffness of the wire was less of an issue and therefore more likely to be of good quality metal. One of those fancy auto adjusting wire strippers later and we were back home taking the wires apart.

For this test we used one wire per terminal. So the positive and negative terminals got a different complete strand of Cat6. The ends were all cut off at about the same point and then simply stranded together to make the connection.

The interesting thing about this cable is that it came in four twisted pairs of stranded wire. This was also separated in the middle with a simple + shaped plastic divider. We figured it looked rather spiffy, but of course it's hard to say how good it would sound for audio.

To be fair, my friend has a full 5.1 THX setup with MK speakers and five ART SLA1 amplifiers. Nice amp, too, though I'm not sure what its specs are. All of this was interconnected with rather fancy looking (and expensive) AudioQuest wire. Some of their 'functionally pure copper' series.

The center channel was the first to change. This was hard to quantify as I didn't get to A/B the cable strand but my friend seemed to think it sounded clearer. For a better test we next switched the left channel and went through some orchestra moments in Phantom of the Opera. Obviously when listening it's hard to tell differences, however the horns and strings were very resonant in the left channel, while the right was hard to make out. More notably it was like the music 'started' in the left channel during the movie's rising volume moments, like the right channel was just muffled.

According to my friend the sound was like you were listening mainly to the left front and all other points in the room were covered in a sort of curtain.

So we finished up and replaced all the speakers, then went through some music. I didn't get to listen to it much with the previous cable, so my observations were limited. To him there were 'layers of sound' that weren't there before, such as cymbal shakes and the whole soundstage in general 'opened up'.

I think what really convinced me was the moment in the Invincibles where the main character is sneaking into the lair and knocks out guards from far away. Previously I couldn't tell what they were saying in the background, but all the communications were quite clear.

We took all the old AudioQuest wire, bundled it up, and tossed it in a box in the closet. (Anyone want to buy some used audio cable?) He was going to just give it to me, but there wasn't any point when we had far better cable sitting in giant bundles in the living room. I've got four strands of Cat5e all braided and ready to go when I get back to the office. :)

So I went ahead and modified my little digital T-amp. Just a quick browse on Google would show you that the Sonic Impact T-amp is an amazing device, mostly because of the one single chip in it. Funny that.

However, if you modify it the amp just gets better.

So far I've added new speaker terminals (which I think are too small still) and put in a much bigger capacitor on C10 to make it a 1000uF electrolytic capacitor from the stock 330uF one. Additional recommended changes are to put on bigger capacitors (probably will go with a polyester one for cost) and replace the four inductors.



Anyway, it does sound rather amazing so far, but I know it can get better. :)

Date:	2006-11-27 21:48
Subject:	Audio Fiddlings
Security:	Public
Mood:	bouncy
Music:	Dinosaur soundtrack

So I broke down on Black Friday and got a couple of interesting things to improve my work audio.

First off the Creative Labs XMOD:
http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=209&subcategory=668&product=15913

This is a little USB device that is basically a no frills external sound card. It has the X-Fi audio processing, however, which means you get the Crystallizer and the CMSS 3D thingy.

Speaking non technically I tested with both and can't say that I like either. This is probably due to the fact that I'm not using weak unbalanced speakers. The Crystallizer sound processing just seems to emphasize the wrong parts of the audio signal and makes it feel rather unbalanced to me. The CMSS thing was interesting with headphones, but on speakers it just makes the sound kind of 'fake' like there's too much sound shaping going on.

Now, it does have a plus side. It produces a nice, clean, fairly high powered signal. I can hear a definite broader soundscape with higher highs and lower lows than the built in motherboard audio on both my laptop and work PC. (The laptop bring a Satellite A105 and the work computer being some modern Dell P4 thing. I would like to hear what Intel's HD audio is like.)

The cleanliness of the signal speaks for itself:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-xmod.html

I have to ask myself who would want something like this thing. Given that the sound shaping isn't worth worrying about I think it really is appealing to replace the audio in either my laptop or on a work computer that you can't open up. For 80 dollars it really isn't terribly expensive. Cheaper audio solutions might include the Behringer UCA202, but the specs on that aren't anywhere near as nice. Going with an Audigy 2 pcmcia card would be swell, but then you're linked to pcmcia which is like having an anvil tied to your leg when you realize you can't use it with anything but old laptops.

For a future external audio product I'd like to see creative dump the Crystallizer and CMSS 3D things in favor of a selectable high quality reverb effect and a dynamic compressor. Not really rocket science here. I'll get to that a bit later.

I also purchased an alternative Tascam US144 external USB device:
http://www.tascam.com/Products/US-144.html

This is a professional USB audio station, basically. It has a lot of sweet hookups like midi and line in/out and stuff. But it suffers from rather low line output. That's not a horrible problem except that I don't have a working amplifier yet. It does what it's supposed to, of course, but at the same volumes it sounds almost identical to the Xmod, which is probably due to them having similar specs.

I mean, it's built really solidly and has an awesome feel to it, but it doesn't really excel at anything in particular and seems a bit underwhelming. It would be awesome in a studio where you just wanted to slap it in, expect it to work right off, and weren't amazingly fickle with your audio.

EMU 0404 USB Sound module:
EMU's external 0404 module was what I really wanted, however it was not in stock at the time. Regardless, I think I'm going to go back and try to get that one instead, however. The specs on it are absolutely amazing and blow away most anything else I've looked at. Mind you, Lexicon's sound system is tempting, too, but I think it caters more for things I'm not ready for. I do want a sound module I can grow into and more easily incorporate things like midi and recording if I want to, just in case, but my primary interest is in getting the highest quality DAT and sound processing available.

Foobar 2000:
This leads us to a mention of Foobar 2000, which should be anyone's favorite audio player if they aren't more interested in having something flashy. The sound processing is top notch and for some reason I keep finding new plugins every so often when I get bored with it. It's an audio system by and far with no graphical elements, really, but a very rich set of features. Just a bit of a pain to deal with the interface sometimes. I mean, sheesh, wouldn't it be nice to have a volume control, perhaps?

The latest interesting sound processing plugin is the VLevel DSP (http://stephan.kochen.nl/proj/foobar2000.html). This has basically no effect on a lot of audio streams that I listen to. Either they're too high fidelity or already mixed extremely well. But for my mp3 collection it's a rather impressive dynamic compressor. To my ears it seems to normalize the music, but also I think it slightly enhances the background sounds. Regardless, so far I'm keeping it on because there's no degradation in quality that I can perceive and the effect is a rather more defined audio signal.

Best way I can put it is that it seems to increase the dynamic range (I could be mistaken so will have to listen to it more closely) and vastly increase the output of the audio system. It actually seems to make up for a lot of the shortcomings of my onboard work audio chip. But A/Bing it again with the Xmod still shows me that the bass in particular on the Dinosaur soundtrack is far more rich and I suspect I'll find similar differences throughout.

Future:
I need to get my digital T-amp rebuilt and finally make use of my rather large 12 gauge audio cables. There just doesn't seem to be any good way to work them into a standard connector, though I've contemplated taking apart a regular phono cord and wiring it in near the source. Kind of crazy, I know...

With better wires it will seriously enhance the richness of the audio, I suspect. And, of course, a proper amp means you don't have to overdrive the preamp in the Xmod (or whatever sound chip/card you have).

One thing at a time, of course. The selection of the proper source is a good first step. I just have to decide between the 200 dollar EMU or the 50 dollar XMOD. Decisions, decisions...

Well, as strange as it might be my company was just purchased by Foundation 9. (Amaze Entertainment).

So we've gone from being the biggest independent developer to being an even bigger biggest independent developer. Huh. It's hard to say yet what it means to me although I find myself even more busy and in demand than before.

Still, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Also we're getting in exercise machines, so an on-site gym! Yay.

So I brought in more speakers to work and a simple little splitter. The cabling isn't high quality but I don't have the right amp equipment yet so it's just cobbled together. Still, it sounds rather nice and clear regardless of whether I turn it up or not.



I think this is a totally known topic already but I encourage anyone to run one of the Boinc-based science work@home projects if they can. Stuff like figuring out strains of cancer can't hurt getting cures (and less expensive treatments for things that work better). For most of you these things will probably appear in your lifetime and likely save you whereas your parents won't fare so well.

This is a good place to go to start your understanding of what the various work at home projects are:

http://www.boincsynergy.com/

And finally today to kick off the newly remodeled sound system I'm listening to an audio DVD given to me by Alexander Brandon (old friend of mine). Lots of quirky old video game music. It's really amusingly absurd to listen to it on such a monstrous speaker system, but hey. And yes, those stacked speakers are taller than I am. :) I've got some special recordings of old music done by various actual professionals. Mwahaha.

Day in the Life of Mario
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwKOYqMmhow

Not sure why but this is one of my favorite online videos. It's just cheerfully bizarre. But someone posted it to YouTube so I can find it again. :)

Ever have one of those nights you're dreaming about spiders and get bitten? That's why I'm awake. *yawn*

Alright, here's two more pics of me being a bunny, from complaints of a lack of expression on the first pic. ^.^

Yay, here I am for Halloween as a bunny! It didn't look quite as nice with the full makeup on so we'll go wiht the normal one. :)

So it's been a long, long time since I updated my livejournal. I suppose in a lot of ways this year sucked, so there hasn't been a whole lot of good things to put up. Still, I can't say it's a bad thing. Quite a wakeup call to change a lot of things I was doing (or allowing to go on) I suppose.

Needless to say I brush my teeth a lot. With an OralB crossaction battery powered toothbrush. And Arm and Hammer Enamel Care. Awesome combination with a nice high powered Nimh battery.

I ended up with a sweet laptop. Toshiba Satellite. It's a good work computer, really. Useless for games, but two gigs of ram and a dual core cpu go a long way to writing C# tools. Yep! I haven't really worked on games in a while. Seems like my usefulness has been writing tools lately at work.

So, since we're often defined by what we purchase I wanted to take a moment to mention the Logitech Z10 speakers. These are simply awesome, yet flawed. It's such a struggle to take them back or not. Really you have to understand the sound is quite good. Even at low volume there's still a decent amount of clarity for something so small and yet still reasonably rich in bass. Though I think it tends to resonate a bit too much at 100hz. But the thing that makes them awesome (and yet flawed) is the touchpad and display on the front. Hard to screw up a display, really. But the touchpad. Gah. Half the buttons seem to not register unless I touch them in the exact way to make contact. Which is almost impossible. And the other buttons are way too sensitive. Sheesh.

I'm thinking about starting up a speaker website. Sound is, oddly enough, something I've felt passionate about. Sucks that one of my ears ring now. No, no, it's not from listening to music. Got smacked in the head around February, so it's off and on rung since then. I can pretty much ignore it now and my hearing is otherwise perfect. I mean, excellent clarity even at 15khz isn't something to shake a stick at, according to the hearing tests.

So, yes, I'm gonna try to update some more but here's a good start at getting back into the limelight. Been hiding for too long now. :)

So it's been quite a while since I updated my journal. Quite a bit has been going on. More than I could ever hope to say all at once.

So let's see...

First off I had a boyfriend for about a month and a half. That was interesting. :) Got him a nice job!

Next up I got a new amplifier. One of those really neat little Sonic Impact things. It's an amazingly small plastic device that puts out more power than my giant amp sitting underneath it. Funny. I'm listening to it right now, so it's foremost in my mind. So far it lives up to the hype. Running it on batteries right now, and it's still quite amazing. Ah, I love more efficient technology. So many wonderful things being invented right now.

Trying out an Odwalla drink, too. Part of that thing about wanting more vitamins and healthy stuff. Kind of weird, but I could get used to it. Expensive, though, but good thing it tends to fill me up.

Two of my renters are moving out on the 17th (more likely over a few weeks). That'll be weird, actually, as they've been here over a year now. Hope they'll be okay. They're not the greatest at managing their money. Although I suspect the drama level and my amount of work at home will go down a fair amount. We'll see. Have to think about what to do to replace the rent they were paying, as mortgage rates are going up slowly.

Seems that someone is writing a book on/inspired by Tyrian. That's kind of amusing, really. I'm still amazed at how far things go sometimes. Makes me wonder what it would be like if I put more time into that instead of focusing all my energy at work. (Which is going -awesome- by the way. Right now the editor I kind of forced them to let me write is inspiring upstairs to totally change everything they're doing. Heh. Pirates DS is nearly done, too.)

Anyway, no need to do too much writing tonight! Merry Christmas everyone! :)

Well, just finished reading the new Harry Potter book. Phew. That took about ten solid hours. :)

Also, redid all of my speaker wiring (and Skye's). Bought a huge 100ft roll of RCA 'Digital' 14-gauge speaker wire. Had lots of people stand in my room and upstairs listening to sets of speakers where one was the old cable and one was the new cable. Know what? The Monster XL cable I had was by far the worst stuff. I swear you could hardly hear the left speaker playing while the right one (with the new 'generic' cable) was chiming through loud and clear. And only about 32 cents per foot. Then twenty dollars more for 16 screw-on plugs. Not bad at all, though it took me hours to do it all.

Fun stuff. :)

Skye just had his 18th birthday, too, which probably came as quite a shock to everyone else as he's a looney. His mom came by, stayed the weekend, and took them out to the fairgrounds off in Seattle. I forget the exact name of it now. Kinda wanted to go, but someone had to do all the shopping and errands. :)

Been a while since I last updated, so might as well. :)

Finally got the vinyl replaced in the W/D area. Which meant laying down cement, glue, then a layer of hard to maneuver vinyl. Who would have thought it was so much work. :) But I guess if you're going to do a good job at it you need to do all the steps. I'm sure I could have skimped on the cement part, but then it wouldn't have been very level. We ripped out all the old stuff previously, see, as there was three layers of increasingly ugly vinyl flooring. Crazy!

Today finds me hard at work on the DS after a nice round of chinese food for lunch. We're hard at work on getting our Pirates of the Carribean game up to speed. Funny. Writing games keeps getting easier and easier. I suppose that comes with experience.

I'm really happy at the moment, of course, as they gave me and one other programmer a big office to share. Probably one of the best in the company. Kind of had to, as we just finished a major reorganization! Everyone moved around. Just as well. Now I have a nicer view out of my window. Not the -best- view, but nicer. More flowers and trees and things.

And of course it was my birthday a few days ago, which was nice. Took the kids out to eat at a decent mexican restaurant, which was fun. I didn't exactly get myself much of anything, but that's okay. :) I'm playing Knights of the Old Republic II right now, which keeps me quite entertained.