Jot - interesting NPR software

I am getting my feet wet in Blender and the aspect I am most interested in is NPR (Non-Photorealistic Rendering), as evidenced by this post on Freestyle renderer for example. I don't claim to have any spectacular results yet, but I am following up on different NPR-related news and slowly experimenting with NPR techniques in Blender to be able to make a mixed 2D/3D animation based on my best friend's art one day.

So far, I have very high expectations concerning Freestyle - I am following the development blog, watching others' videos and playing with new builds myself (yes, the results are not special, I know). But there was an interesting forum post on Blender artists that caught my eye some time ago - concerning other NPR program called Jot, the source of which has been made public.

The program itself is hardly usable, onee would need to compile it from scratch and even though I officially am a C++ programer, the process turned out to be requiring too much time for me to continue. But the results that can be obtained with Jot seem quite spectacular indeed, as can be observed in the following video:

You can read more about Jot on quite outdated project webpage. Maxime and TK from Freestyle project have expressed cautious interest in checking Jot's source code and perhaps integrating some of the solutions within Freestyle - but after they are done with current project goals, which I hope we'll see this year.

Grab Beyond Good & Evil OST for free!

Beyond Good and Evil is one of my favourite games ever (might be smart to finally do that list one day and publish it here). I love its green-lips heroine, races design, story, orphaned alien children, graphical design and of course great soundtrack. It is therefore with much pleasure that I would like to point out that the aforementioned soundtrack is available for download free of charge (the password for the album is MySpace.com/HyllianMusic and the list of mirrors is here).


While the music tracks from Beyond Good and Evil haven't reached the ultimate status that mp3 can dream of, namely being put in the permanent folder on my Zen Stone player, they are quite memorable and I do come back to listen to them every now and again. There is also a good deal of variation between them: ranging from ambient oriental music ("Ancient Chinese secrets") which I have used as a background for one of my tea ceremony dates, through weird sounds of "Propaganda", to aggressive techno-ish boss fight theme ("Sins of father"), they provide a good variety of tunes for different moods.

The soundtrack was in fact released for free long time ago, which is when I got it, but it's just quite recently that it has popped up on MySpace. Even if it's just the clever marketing ploy in order to draw our attention to incoming Beyond Good and Evil 2, I am comfy with it, because I do like freebies, plus this soundtrack is really awesome. Also, worth noting is this interesting remix of one of the main themes, availabe at OCRemix - it is an unofficial remix, but it's quite good, so I allow myself to link to it as well.

Cloudphobia - are you afraid of clouds?

Almost every sci-fi anime about huge robots (and underage lolitas piloting them, but I digress) features a scene where the robot is manouevering wildly between hundreds of rockets flying in space, smoke trails tracing curvy lines behind them. I have sometimes asked myself a question - why hasn't this become a motive of a videogame just yet? Wouldn't it be cool to dodge myriads of rockets and fire kabongazillions of bullets in the sky balet?


If you ever had similar thoughts, here is your game: Cloudphobia is a classical 2D shoot'em up like the ones we used to get in the good old times, featuring giant robots and anime schoolgirls. Note: my first connotation when seeing the title was the vision of someone who totally hates Final Fantasy VII and its main protagonist.

As for the game itself, there are a few interesting twists to it - player cannot allow enemies to pass them and slip through, as they can damage the mothership, there are markers showing were the enemies will arrive and there are missions in which you pilot a robot that carries a sword instead of the gun. Yes, giant robot with a sword - quite neat, eh? Where Cloudphobia got me, however, was in the level where player is guiding their robot between hundreds of missiles swirling around. Sure, the gameplay is essentially a 2D affair, but the beautiful animated background gives the game some depth and sense of scale. Also, it's damn pretty in movement, as you can see in the video below:

You can also see a more anime-ish trailer here. Once done, go check the game homepage: there is a two-level demo begging to be downloaded and since Cloudphobia is available in digital distribution, it's easy to buy a full game immediately after trying.

[Found via AVClub]

Free MAC Address Changer

There are rare occasions when even an average user needs to change their MAC address, otherwise known the physical network card address (on Windows you can check it by typing ipconfig -all in command console). One of the most common reasons is MAC filtering by internet providers. In my case, I needed to be able to use my company laptop for strictly job-related purposes from home. The problem was that my internet provider only allows one computer to be connected to the internet; more than one computer sharing the connection means that monthly fee goes double. I am not kidding here - welcome to Poland.

Were I to use more computers in the home network, I would probably just sit down and tinker a bit, the result being a post on routers with MAC cloning (this may happen one day), but as someone who normally abides the rules, I didn't want to go down this road. After all I only use my company laptop on rare occasions, so I just needed to change the MAC address of its network card.

While searching for a tool that would allow me to do that, I realised that there is a is a crapload of programs out there that I would have to pay to use. It seemed to me that changing MAC address is such a simple thing that a free program should be able to do it. I was right - there are free programs that will change your MAC address, they are just buried in Google underneath steaming piles of crappy software the creators of which are greedy.

The most comfortable solution I have found was Technetium MAC Address Changer v5 (the name is pretty much self-explanatory). It's user friendly, simple to use, does not include fancy-schmancy overblown visual interface, gets the job done and rus on almost every Windows system out there (not sure about Windows 7 though). A great simple tool for a particular purpose is what it is.

Oh, and to anyone that would like to go on about how displaying ones MAC address on the internet can be potentially harmful - did you read the title?

Barts' Short Bursts vol. 3 - smart reading edition

Since the concept of Barts' Short Bursts is a dynamic one and still in its infancy, I have decide to evolve its formula a bit: if possible, each of these posts should have a theme to it. Instead of being a random heap of links and information, such post would provide you with a bunch of interesting things that are not totally from different dimensions, but are somehow connected.

Today's post will provide you with links to a lot of reading material, hence the name:

* Saracen, the Arabian Knight, has played Deus Ex and obviously likes it a lot. Read his reflections on politics, philosophy and other serious issues in one of the best games ever created in his blog post. It is a pleasure to see praise one of my favourite title written by someone coming from totally different cultural background. Also, it goes to show that truly good pieces of art and story, be it a movie, a theatre performance or a game, can be appreciated regardless of spectator's origins.

* Trent Polack shares some thoughts on game design and emergent gameplay in this article entitled "An economy of fun". Whether you want to create your own game one day or not, this constitutes a very interesting piece of lecture.

* Recently published game Velvet Assassin is based on the tragic events that took place during World War II, namely the heartbreaking story of Violette Szabo. Is basing a game on such real life drama an exploitation or is it not? Alec Meer from RockPaperShotgun put down his doubts in form of a short article. Be sure to check comments, too.

* Even though I haven't blogged about it, I got to play Braid. Contrary to most folks, however, I didn't like it, among other things because of its insane difficulty level and demonic puzzles. Krystian Majewski has written a great article on Braid's difficulty and nasty tricks it plays on innocent, unsuspecting gamer. I really wish Jonathan Blow would have read it before publishing Braid.

* Last, but not least, Simon Ferrari deciphers some of Beyond Good & Evil themes. While I don't necessarily agree with all that he put in the article and some of his connotations are a bit too far-stretched for my taste, it is refreshing to see other of my favourite games (I really should make a list one day) analysed from a different perspective.

As a bow to all the other true hardcore readers, I have decided to be somewhat malicious this time and not to adorn this post with any shiny images - the little letters will have to suffice, dear gamers.

Air traffic visualisation

Remember that flight patterns video I have posted on Barts News over a year ago?

Being a visualization freak working within air travel industry (to some extent, at least), I find it beautiful, but I believe that normal people can enjoy it as well. Which is why I am posting below a similar video that I have found just recently:

Enjoy!

Some thoughts on Final Fantasy VIII parade scene

After deceitfully big title, I am afraid I will disappoint you with a short note just to make a record of a game-related reflection I've had recently. Nothing particularly brilliant, nothing particularly insightful, but perhaps you will find it interesting.

My girlfriend (who, on a side note, looks like Zafina from Tekken 6) has shown me Notre-Dame de Paris, the beautiful French musical, fragments of which can be found on Youtube. After watching the song called "La fete des fous", I couldn't shake of the feeling that I have seen it somewhere, or at least something very similar.


After some time my neurons made an intriguing connection - I realized that this scene reminded me of Galbadian parade of sorceress Edea in Final Fantasy VIII. Although I've heard voices on the web that dancers are doing Thriller routine, I frankly am not convinced at all. For me the parade scene carries more resemblance to the one from musical, in the overall tone and way that dancers move. Seeing how the musical predates the game, the speculation that this particular fragment became influence for the aforementioned parade scene cannot be totally ruled out.

I'm curious to hear your opinion: first click here, than here - do you see any similarity, or is it just me?

[PMS] Failures in PSP emulation

In the course of recent revisiting of different consoles of old, summarized by your truly in PSP eMulation Series (PMS), I have encountered a lot of problems. Some emulators are not very easy to configure and get running, but that is a minor thing - if you're smart enough to hack your PSP and use Google, you will solve all the quirks on the road to emulation. The real problem lies elsewhere - in the firmware compatibility.


My PSP has the latest custom firmware by Dark Alex, namely 5.ooM33-6. The bad thing about it is that there exists a lot of homebrew that would run on my PSP at some point in the past, but won't anymore. I already got used to the fact that there are problems with homebrew programs written for 1.50 firmware - even though I had 1.50 firmware extension, which theoretically makes 5.00M33 firmware fully backwards compatible, a number of programs would not run. Period. These include R-Gear, Snakes and other programs I really liked, so it really hurt me.

Unfortunately, that is not all. Many programs that would run under 3.xx firmware refuse to run under 5.00M33. In this group the vast majority are the emulators. Below is a list of four emulators that I used in the past but can't use now:

• DGen - Sega Genesis
• CPS1PSP and CPS2PSP - CPS System 1 and 2
• MVSPSP - NeoGeo
• Castaway - Atari ST

Trust me - I have googled, I have tried different versions, I have put a lot of effort into running those, but I failed. Perhaps my PSP Phat is already too old, perhaps there is something wrong with it, or perhaps I am not competent enough to run it, I don't know. What I know, however, is that I had a wide selection of homebrew that I liked and this selection has narrowed over the course of the last year or two, without me even noticing it. This is a huge disappointment, really.

[PMS] PSPDOSBox - DOS emulation on PSP (duh)

When I was a kid, we needed an ugly, bulky PC to be able to play our simple games. I still remember the gray tower of an early AT on which I played modified version of the classic Digger (it was not a very politically correct version, substituting names of monsters with names of communist officials of the period).

Nowadays all we need is a PSP.

The development of technology doesn't cease to amaze me. I was quite shocked that PSP could handle GTA in its full three-dimensional glory, but it was programmed by a team of experts for a particular hardware after all. But a huge surprise for me was finding out that a mere homebrew program can actually emulate early PCs - such emulation, while perhaps less stunning visually, is a very complex task and thus also a very impressive thing.

What you see here is in fact not Norton Commander,
but its free Russian clone - Volkov Commander.

PSPDOSBox is a PSP port of DOSBox, a program that allows accurate emulation of DOS environment, in this case on your PSP (this sentence is sponsored by Captain Obvious). It is not a very user friendly homebrew and some amount of tweaking configuration files coupled with a number of trial and error runs will be necessary to set it up properly, but if you are patient enough, you will be rewarded with the ability to play PC games on your PSP - and isn't that worth fighting for?

As for the speed of emulation, don't forget that PSP has but a 333MHz processor and emulating a machine as complicated s PC requires significant processing power overhead. As a rule of thumb I would say that XT and AT games mostly run fine, 386 is pushing it, 486 is in some cases borderline playable and early Pentium is beyond the limit of what this emulator can do.

Also, DOS4GW games are generally a no-go, which is a shame. I tried some tricks, but was unable to run them. Some internet sources claim that it is feasible, so perhaps someone with more time, willpower or technical aptitude will manage to do that. I didn't.

Have I ever told you that I have actually finished Targhan all by myself?

Taking the above limitations into account, I used PSPDOSBox to replay a couple of PC classics of old. I spent most of my time with games from a legendary French developer Silmarils. Metal Mutant, Targhan, Colorado, Star Blade, Ishar - these titles are as playable as they were fifteen years ago. Other games I have played include Prince of Persia, Fury of the Furries, Prehistoric and Electro Body. They all run fine, the only problem being key-mapping - PSP has significantly fewer keys than average PC keyboard.

You will have to excuse me, but I don't remember exactly which combination of files I used to get DOSBox to run. Below is a couple of assorted links that I used to find files, configs and tips on running the games:
- posts tagged DosBox on QJ.net
- Google-translated Russian forum thread on PSPDOSBox (original here)
- description of p-sprint keyboard
I am afraid you will have to experiment with them by yourself, dear reader, but I assure you that these were my only sources and they were enough to get me to have a playable and usable version.

Other than that, I can only encourage you to give it a try - having a PC on your PSP is definitely awesome. There are even reports on the web of running Heroes of Might and Magic II on PSPDOSBox!

[PMS] SNESTYL - SNES emulation on PSP

Emulating Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) on PSP is possible using SNESPSP_TYL (don't ask me to decipher the name).

To be honest, there is only one game that I have been playing more than once via this emulator, namely Final Fantasy 6, the underappreciated classic with great, deep story and fantastic characters. I have a plan to write more about it, but it is uncertain when I will have time to do it properly. I tried the recently released Game Boy Advance port of FF6, but the classic version holds up infinitely better in my opinion, so SNES emulation is the best way to dive into this great title, hence my interest in SNESPSP_TYL.


Back on topic, I have to admit I am not the most competent person to write more about SNES emulation - I have never owned one for that matter, so I have no idea how well the games are emulated. The limited selection of games (Mario, Metroid) that I have tested run smoothly - which is important when it comes to properly emulating more action-intensive games. They all look good, with aliasing provided by scaling, colours are vivid and gameplay in many cases is just great. That said, don't ask me if it's a faithful rendition - as I never played them in real life on a regular TV screen.

The emulator itself is appropriately user-friendly and boasts a good number of options. which I think is enough to give it Barts' recommendation. Download it from the project homepage and enjoy retro gaming in all of its 16bit glory.

[PSM] NCDZPSP - NeoGeo CD on PSP

In 2007 I wrote a post on emulating NeoGeo on PSP, including information on how to play two player matches via Ad Hoc connection. I actually intended to check back on that particular emulator, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work under my 5.00M33-6 firmware. Judging by this post, some people managed to get it running - I didn't. Nevertheless, I found another option to play my favourite Last Blade, namely Neo Geo CD emulator.


Therefore, we will assume that all is fine wth MVSPSP, and we'll have a look at its sister emulator NCDZPSP. You can download it from PSPUpdates - there is detailed instruction in the comments below this post. The main difficulty is placing mp3s in correct place to have CD-quality soundtrack accompany one's games.

Once it is set up, it's smooth sailing from there on. Fluid framerates, excellent sound (CD!), user-friendly menus. The only downside is that CD versions take more then regular zipped roms. Overall verdict - yet another fine emulator on PSP.

[PMS] GPSP - Game Boy Advance emulation on PSP

My first contact with the original Game Boy Advance took place in 2002, when I bought it for my younger brother as a gift from my exchange semester in France. I remembered how much fun we used to have with the original Game Boy and I wanted to give him the best there was. Unfortunately, I didn't have that much money, so I only bought two games to accompany the console, namely Castlevania and Doom.

To put things in proportion - in 2002 portable console with 16bits of power and color screen was really cutting edge. At that time Doom on a portable gaming console seemed something so technologically advanced that my non-gamer buddy who studied electronics at the time came to just watch me playing it and was in awe.

The gift met with a lot of cheering, as the recollections of both of us wasting long hours on playing the original gray Game Boy were still relatively fresh. And indeed, for the next year or so, before the charm finally wore off, Game Boy Advance has given us both a ton of fun. Castlevania, Doom, Golden Sun, Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars, Fire Emblem - the gameplay of these titles was simply brilliant, sheer fun lasting for hours. It does say something about both games and the console that my best memories of summer 2002 were those spent tucked in the armchair in the corner of the room with Game Boy Advance and a copy of Advance Wars.


Fast forward to 2005, when PSP's technological prowess seemed almost as if some impossible technological dream materialized on our eyes. Barely three years later after playing Doom on a handheld seemed like a triumph of science (okay, in service of entertainment, but still). It is a shame that this powerhouse did not have a software lineup to follow. But I digress.

Back on topic, you will be happy to hear that Game Boy Advance emulation on PSP is spot on. The only problem is that there is quite a bunch of GBA emulators, most of them abandoned in development, so it's a bit hard to chose the right one. The best emulator I have found so far is Unofficial GPSP 3.2 Test 8.7 (that is a long name indeed), which I've found through comments below this post.

I've tried a couple of other emus just for fun, but the gentleman who recommended this version to me in comments was right - it is the best. There's plenty of options, speed of emulation is excellent, no problems at all. Performance-wise, I have to admit that there are a few titles that slow down a bit at times or lose a couple of frames (this is most noticeable in Golden Sun's quasi-3D fighting sequences). The vast majority of GBA games, however, runs flawlessly and even those that stutter a little in some sequences are very playable with minor frameskip.

Overall, PSP is giving Game Boy Advance game their well deserved second youth... or maybe third, not sure, Game Boy Advance SP might be considered their second youth... also, there's Nintendo DS, so it would be fourth youth... and then DS Lite... okay, now this becomes Monty Python sketch, I think I'll just scratch this line.

Thanks to wonderful PSP screen combined with aliasing effect provided by scaling up GBA games to fit it, these classics look better than ever. Playing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on PSP made me realize how colourful this game really was the way its creators intended it to be - on original Game Boy Advance's non-backlit screen it was so dark that player could barely see what was happening. I actually remember reading somewhere that development kits for Game Boy Advance were much brighter, which is why Castlevania turned out too dark on regular GBAs. Sure, it was building dark ambiance, but made this game virtually unplayable if perfect lightning conditions were not available. On PSP screen the colours are vibrant and vivid and game looks better then I remembered it from my first playthrough.


Same goes for other Game Boy Advance titles - they look great, their gameplay is as engrossing as ever plus there are all the perks of using the emulator, such as save states for example. Overall verdict is that emulation of Game Boy Advance on PSP is just great, allowing PSP users to effectively carry in their pockets two consoles in one. Two thumbs up for this incest relationship between Sony and Nintendo

Temporary domain name issues

My apologies if you were trying to hit Barts News and found yourself redirected to Blogger. I am in the process of changing my domain name host and this can result in some hiccups. Hopefully will pass through it soon enough.

Stay tuned for incoming posts!

Harpooned

I love Japan, I really do. But despite many things that make it great, Japan also has its dark sides. One of these rather dreadful things is the Japanese approach towards whaling. I wouldn't be mentioning it here on Barts News (this is principally a game blog after all), were it not for Conor O'Kane, a man who has chosen a rather unusual media channel to draw people's attention to the issue: he made a PC game about it.


Called Harpooned, the game is in fact a clever satire disguised as your average shoot'em up game. Player controls a whaling ship, killing whales and collecting their meat, while taking care not too shoot protesters. All this is accompanied by sarcastic messages such as "scientific bonus" taking a jab at Japanese explanation that this cruelty takes place just for scientific purposes.

As player progresses through the game, more whales get harvested for scientific research and fewer of them remain in the sea. The comments between the game levels will be saying things like "Our research shows that there are less and less whales in the area - we must kill more of them to find out why it is so" until finally there won't be nothing in the cold waters but scientific vessel and icebergs...

Average player will be able to complete the game in couple of minutes, but it is not really so much a game but rather a statement disguised as a game, a way of drawing attention to the real-life problem. Therefore I couldn't really say that its brevity is a handicap, on the contrary - average player will be able to reach the end of the game before they get bored and witness the empty cold sea themselves. I think this was intentional in order to make an impression on the player - it certainly worked in my case.

It's also worth noticing that the production values are high for an indie game made by one man - from pretty graphics, through blood effects, to sad music, everything is polished and carries a sense of style. There also is an online score board for the best whalers scientists.

Download the game at Harpooned website (there is also a Mac version available) and if you can't spare five to ten minutes to complete it, at least have a look at the trailer below:

Now, will anyone make a similar game for Taji dolphins?