Friday, January 26, 2007
The Burning Crusade
Today (or rather, yesterday) the expansion to the World of Warcraft, titled the Burning Crusade was released. It seems that the expansion has sold around 2.5 million units in North America and Europe only! That's a really, really impressive number. Seems that WoW addiction is more serious than I thought.
For those that has been living in a vacuum, WoW is the most popular MMOG (it's a MMORPG.)
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Straight Up Terrain Rendering
There are a multitude of methods for real time rendering of expansive outdoor scenes represented as height maps. Most of these methods are mesh complexity reduction algorithms (ROAM, SOAR, etc.) in many variants.
What crossed my mind is that no one just gives the hardware a static regular vertex/index buffer and use a texture to manipulate height in the vertex shader (SM3 of course.) Many methods use the vertex texture methods, but the actual vertexes (verteces?) are generated on the CPU. Why not just dump it all on the hardware and let it do its job? 1-2 million vertexes should not pose any problems for current hardware.
Of course, there can be a reason why no one does this. Namely that it doesn't work! I should mock something up and test it, if time permits.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Company of Heroes, the RTS We've Been Waiting For
It has been a long time since Warcraft III pair and much longer since C&C - Red Alert 2 (And C&C - Tiberrian Sun series), with no RTS games (Real-Time Strategy) that could match up.
But this Company of Heroes is the real deal. It basically whips the llama's behind! I have the opportunity of playing it on a LAN with 2 other friends every few days, and man... it's an experience to remember. I haven't even tried the single-player campaign yet, despite having it installed at home as well.
The game units are balanced, the AI is good (not good enough, but good) and the graphics, physics and the sound are all absolutely amazing! There's nothing like calling in artillery on the enemies head and watching the bridge fall from under their feet (and wheels and tank tracks!) except the whistling after-sound that remains in your ears from the explosion!
We talk for a long time over strategies and where to put those 88s (if we are playing the Axis,) or how to destroy those damn 88s or Panthers (if we are the Allies.)
The mere satisfaction when two Panthers and a Tiger Ace bring down and army of Shermans and paratroopers. When your strategically-placed 88-millimeter anti-aircraft gun (multi-purpose) destroys an armored car or even a tank in one blow before the tank even reaches the range to fire on you, when a squad of your soldiers blow up one of those fearsome Panthers with a succession of sticky bombs and a game of cat-and-mouse. When you wreak havoc on your enemy with two or three 105-mil Howitzers from half-way across the map.
If you've played it, you know what I'm talking about. And you're probably counting the seconds to get back inside another gruesome battle. If you haven't... you have no idea what you're missing! If you ever play games, go buy this one! Remember, "Company of Heroes"!
The Call of Google
(Consider the title related to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulu")
Last night, I logged into blogger.com with the intention of posting to this blog. After the log in, I was offered the option to link this account to my Google account (Gmail, Orkut, Groups, ...) in order to be able to enjoy a host of new and cool features. And I did.
This got me thinking about how Google now has a hand in almost every aspect of my online life (which is a big part of my life proper.) I use gmail and Google groups extensively, and Google search exclusively.
Google provides very good services as far as I'm concerned, and they have mostly the right attitude toward it. But I fear the day that we have yet another monopolizing entity to hate: Google.
If that day comes, and Google puts the immense power in their data banks to evil use, we'll be willing to kiss Microsoft's feet and praise them for their generosity and benevolence. Mark my words!
It seems that it's a week of fear for me. As one of my friends always says:
لعنت به اين زندگي!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Stop Writing My Nightmares George Orwell!
If you live in Iran (as I do) in any society of more than 12, you see idiocy in action every other minute. One of the major sources of these stupid acts is, unfortunately, our officials (I guess every government in the world is like that, but that's no excuse.)
Having lived here for ~25 years (i.e all my life) you'd think that I'd have seen all the aspects of such stupidity.
But you'd be wrong. This last act is so pointlessly stupid (or so purely malevolent and evil) that all other tales and anecdotes pale beside it. (OK, I take that back. Not all others!)
It's called the Plan for Organization of Iranian Internet Sites [Farsi]. Basically, they are forcing every web and FTP(!) site owner (everyone with a top level domain name,) to "register" their own and their site's information in a central database. What this database will be used for is not mentioned. All unregistered sites will be blocked!
If you feel like it, read through the regulations[Farsi] yourself. Notice that how the fact that they're going to block every unregistered site is broken up and scattered all over the document.
It makes me sad and full of rage. Sad that my beloved country is in such a pitiful state and me my fellow countrymen are so stupid and inactive. Why aren't we protesting to this outrageously ridiculous invasion of our rights?
It's also chillingly frightening. Is this part of a move toward an Orwellian, 1984-like society? Will we find telescreens in our homes one day? We already have some crimes very near to thoutcrimes.
Thinking about these things plunges me into a dark stupor. I wish I could do something. I am really afraid, I am scared to death that when people are pushed too hard for too long, they're going to erupt. No one in their right minds want another revolution or war.
By the way, if you're the owner of a web site and you live in Iran, please please don't register it. Please don't.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Updated Movie List - Jan 2007
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