Blobby Volley PSP (with bonus anecdote)

Long time ago there was a game called Blobby Volley available for PC. It was crappy two player volleyball match between two colourful jellies. That's about all that could be said about the game.


Its main advantage was that it didn't have virtually any system requirements and also it didn't require internet connection to be played. Hence, two players could compete on one computer, even if the hardware was very old - useful for those boring laboratory classes where pairs of students were put in front of lousy computer for long hours. Other than that particular case, I feel pity towards people who play this for fun.

You can download it from here or here, newer version is available here (for Windows, MacOSX and Linux). This link leads to a fansite the members of which obviously have too much time on their hands and very peculiar sense of what digital entertainment is. But then again, to everyone their own porn.

All right, so the game is old and crappy (although apparently some people do like it, but then again, some people juggle geese) - why even bother? The reason I am bringing this little, umm, thing to the light of day is that just recently a PSP port showed up (link to news, link to download). Okay, I hear you say, so now we have a crappy port of a crappy game, so why bother again?


Well, first of all, like I mentioned before, some people enjoy this game. It actually is fun for a short while and having it on PSP might let you pass couple minutes while waiting in a queue to dentist's. Not many interesting homebrew games arrived on the platform recently, so this one will have to do for a moment. At least give it a try, despite my complaining.

But the real reason for me to write about this game is a little anecdote from old times when I still was a student of telecommunications.

Introducing two heroes of the story:

• Cyril - blonde white guy with blue eyes, terrible acne and addiction to porn, always downloading new kinky movies, very likable, known by everyone, generally fun to talk to;
• Pablo - half Spanish, half Polish, with huge mane of black hair, addicted to computer games, grumpy, lazy, but despite that also really likable;

Both of them would almost never leave computer lab (albeit due to different motivations,) both of them would play countless hours of Quake II and Starcraft, both them would be local masters of Blobby Volley.

After some dialogue that started innocently, then heated up and escalated, they both decided to have an official match to settle the difference concerning who is the best Blobby Volley player once and for all. The whole Telecommunications group gathered to watch the clash of the titans, the epic showdown which would establish the champion of computer lab.

Someone spontaneously assumed the role of commenter and added voice-over to otherwise silent match:
- Pablo dodges Cyril's attack...
- Cyril remains cool...
- ... now he's attacking in a cold fashion...
- ...doesn't show any emotions...
- Pablo on the other hand is feverishly struggling...
- ... fighting desperately...
And then someone loudly added:
- ...in order to preserve his species!

Bam, the whole tension went out of the window, everybody burst out with laughing. I don't remember who won, but I do remember everyone laughing out loud. Pablo totally hated the line about him preserving his species, which would of course be thrown at him every now and then 'till everyone got bored.

Okay, so maybe this is not that funny to you, but at the moment it was simply brilliant and frankly, this anecdote was the first thing that popped into my head after having seen the news on PSP port of Blobby Volley, so of course I had to go and share it publicly.

The Tao of Visualisation

Investigating the topic of visualisation of social networks that I have written about recently, I have come across VisualComplexity.Com, a great source of information on visualisation of various networks. Here's what they say about it:

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

On their main page there are links to different visualisation projects, complete with short description and accompanying images. I have to say that some of them are really beautiful, true bridge between the worlds of art and science, with the exquisite presentation layer serving as the means of conveying actual information. Observe some samples below (and head to the project list on Visual Complexity for more):


Useful and very pretty (if only all women could be too), some of these projects almost make me regret having left my academic career related to visualisation. Also, as a result of visiting numerous sites related to the aforementioned projects, I have stumbled upon this beautiful videoclip prepared by user flight404 (check his blog for more cool things) :

Is there anyone who dares to claim that art and science can't go hand in hand?

Dead. Lots of dead.

Some time ago I have given up the habit of posting here trailers of the games I am waiting for. Partially because the added value of such a post is little to none (in other words, me telling you to watch out for upcoming interesting titles is not something particularly interesting), partially because some of those games turned out to be crap later on, and partially because such post is a promise that I will one day play this game and write about it on Barts News, which I manage to hold up until the playing part, but usually don't have time to write proper review and end up feeling guilty about it.

This is actually really hard - I love game trailers, they sometimes are way better than movie trailers. And there were two games recently that have captured my attention to the point where I was tempted to write about them here: Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. I have managed to resist temptation up until now, even though both have great trailers that you can see below (and they are unbelievably cool). Now that I have laid my hands on demos of both games, the latter one by Valve and the first one by Skullptura (sorry, I am not buying a game without trying it first), I have an excuse to share my initial impressions accompanied by trailers as well.

Dead Space trailer caught my eye due to excellent narration, great use of music and emotional content. While you may laugh at that last bit, I actually am quite prone to fall for a bit of the human touch in games and that includes damsel in distress cliche too, as long as it's well played out. I loved the display of USS Ishimura in space, I loved the ambient tune at the beginning and sad song later, and that huge alien thing rising over the spaceship hull with sun behind it was totally awesome.

As for the game, I have not played it a lot yet, but what I've seen so far was good, not ground-breaking, but solid. Good graphics, good use of lighting and mist to create atmosphere, interesting concept of holographic HUD being integral part of experience (so no pausing when player goes to inventory screen), some cool gameplay elements such as zero gravity fragments or dismembering enemies.

There are also some things that I didn't like too much. Ragdoll effects are completely rubbish and their lack of realism removes any sense of immersion whatsover (human corpses behave like they were really made of rags). There was not really that much of tension building, with first monster attacking openly about five minutes into game (some glimpses in shadow might be better, but I'm complaining). The following sequence with main protagonist being attacked in elevator was quite intense, though.

Later on the atmosphere is getting thicker and thicker, monster begin to be real threat, ammunition gets scarce... Yes, this game is scary when played alone at night. Yahtzee wasn't exactly kind to Dead Space in his videoreview, but I would say that it is a good game. Not without faults, but definitely a solid title worth checking - especially if survival horror is your thing.

And now for the second game with word "Dead" in its title...

I have been following the news on Left 4 Dead ever since first reading about it on Kotaku and downloaded the demo the minute it became available. I have spent couple hours playing and boy, did I enjoy it (whenever I didn't have networking problems, see below).

This game has Valve written all over it - the attention to detail is their trademark. Even the loading screen in form of the zombie flick poster is a neat touch:

Notice my name on the right :)

The gameplay is solid, especially on higher difficulty settings, where it poses just about the kind of challenge that will keep the player on the tip of their toes, without being impossible to beat. The AI Director system that Valve was loudly announcing is keeping the gameplay varied, but I had the impression that all that changed was the moments when the zombie horde would attack the group. I had the feeling that the game will throw packs of zombies at us not too often, but also will not allow players to have too much of a pause to catch their breath. On the other hand

The engine is the good old Half Life 2 engine and while some seem to bash it for being old, I think it does the job well enough. There's dynamic lightning, sufficient detail, reasonable amount of polygons, cool animations. Frankly, I do not see the need for better graphical engine for this game, not to mention that using something more advanced in terms of generated graphics would also decrease number of PC users that would enjoy the game - not a smart thing to do in case of an online game. There is a huge number of subtle visual clues and effects to further enhance the playing experience (told you it's Valve - their attention to details is legendary), but I have to say that in the middle of the action I am usually too busy to notice them and as for colour correction, it's totally lost on me, since as most men I am somewhat colour-blind.

Speaking of details, the characters will often comment on what's happening around them. Some pieces of in-game dialogue are brilliant and really serve to amplify the feeling of being a part of a zombie movie cast. As a recommendation for Left 4 Dead I can say that the week I played it was the first week since long time for me to spend playing other online shooter more than Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - and that is something.

Okay, that is not to say that the game is perfect - it is not. I totally hate how other players get highlighted when knocked down or when they have ventured too far from you - for me this totally undermines the otherwise good semblance of realism the game has. Three glowing purple silhouettes seen through the wall make the experience seem like, well, uh, a videogame. Sorry Valve, immersion goes out of the window.

The mechanism of finding new game sucks - why can't I see the list of servers and chose one based on, say, ping, like in the other games? I have seen many times the situation, where four players are waiting for long minutes, because game is happily looking for a dedicated server. Also, not sure about networking code, but when I played the game on some (probably, because there is no way to check it) distant server, the lag was making the infected run in a sketchy jumpy fashion, flickering and appearing suddenly right next to player. Obviously, this ended in player being deceased. Lags and lost connections spoil the overall impression.

So far the fun factor was really high and the game is on the whole very polished and enjoyable, I find it to be too expensive, however. To drop 45USD on this thing is not an easy decision, even more so if Valve doesn't iron out all the annoyances described above, especially networking code.

Other than me having a blast playing these games, they will probably add some fuel to the incoming final post on fear in videogames, so stay tuned!

Graph visualisation of social networks

Visualisation has always been one of my points of interest, perhaps due to the fact that I have always been keen on both art and programming. I wrote on this very blog about my master thesis on visualisation of medical imagery. This concept is also directly related to my other hobby, computer games, as visualising imaginary world is the key to making the game interesting.

It is therefore not surprising at all that when I first saw the following video of interactive graph visualisation system, I was hooked:

SkyRails

That beautiful piece of software is called SkyRails and as its creator says, it "was originally aimed for social network visualisation. Then I realised it can also draw any (reasonably sized) graph interactively." I have to say that I just love the graphical presentation layer, probably due to my nerdy upbringing - all that sci-fi movies in which some really cool interfaces floating in the air obviously had the effect on the way I perceive software aesthetics now.

(Let us open a parenthesis at this point - have you ever wondered who is designing all those futuristic interfaces we get to see in the movies? His name is Mark Coleran and the movie reel of his works can be either downloaded from his webpage or seen here on Youtube. Spectacular!)

Back on topic, Skyrails can visualise pretty much every social network, if only you're patient enough to convert it to program's own description (simple, but task could be somewhat tedious if you know many people and are trying to do this by hand). Therefore I tested it with pre-made file containing Naruto's graph of relations:


Definitely impressive, I have to say. Also, don't forget it can serve more serious purposes than checking what are the links between Naruto heroes - for example check this post on visualising protein interaction. Program's author claims that Skyrails can also act as a server visualising live feed data, but I have not found any specific information as to how to do that. Nevertheless, this piece of software is great for any graph visualisation.

Being lazy, I didn't type all my Facebook contacts into Skyrails, but began with googling to check if there isn't someone who has done this already. While I have been unable to find any recipe on how to automagically have Skyrails chew on my Facebook data, I have found another very interesting program fit for that purpose.


Nexus is the online application for Facebook social network visualisation and it does the job very well (you can also access it through Facebook apps link). Not only does it take into account how you entourage is connected, but also commonalities between them, meaning for example groups or causes that user's friends might share. The resulting graph can be presented in two forms (no flashy 3D display this time, sorry), radical graph and spring graph, as well as two themes. Compare how the information is visualised in the screenshots below:

Radical graph

Spring graph

The latter form is more convenient for clear distinction between different social circles user is involved with. On the spring graph above one could distinguish game industry professionals (highlighted with names) that I happen to know, my family members and their friends, two partially overlapping groups of fellow students from two specializations I have studied, very numerous and tightly connected group of AIESEC students, as well as two other groups connected by a person of Adam Lyons, small group of people I have been living with in France and some free electrons, meaning folks not connected to any other of my friends.

Spring graph allows user to observe how the groups overlap as well as the affinity between group members, as well as other little curiosities. For example, in the graph above one can find my buddy, nicknamed Ace of Spades, who is connected to three circles I happen to be involved with - a definite proof of his social skills. Nexus is both very informative and very interesting, plus it makes for really cool patterns (how about putting it on t-shirt?).

Investigating this topic I have also come across Walrus, an open source 3D graph visualisation tool, but since it is definitely less user friendly, I just mention it here as a curiosity. Perhaps someone with either Open Source fetish or more complex problem to solve will find it more approachable than I did. Nevertheless, it's free and can be used for visualising social networks as well, hence it warrants the mention. Also, Walrus' rendition of CVS tree has some fractal beauty to it:


If you happen to know any other interesting software that could be used for visualising social networks, let me know through comments!

PSP Brite screen revisited

Remember that PSP-3000 screen interlacing issue that popped out? Seems like the reason for that has been found by folks from this webpage (which in turn I have found through Kotaku, from where I have nicked the image as well). It's in French, so click here for the translated version.


Now you got proof to skip PSP-3000 altogether and wait for the next iteration - this is a hardware thing and it's not going to be corrected through a patch. See, I told you to hold on before buying the new toy.