Primordial Ooze

Halo 2: Biggest Hit Ever

Wired is running an article where they say Halo 2 will rake in $100 million... in it's first day!

"The launch would be one of the largest in gaming history and would dwarf the first-day figures of even the biggest historical hits in the movie and music businesses.

It's the sign of the times.

The Incredibles

"One of the best movies I've ever seen." -- Nick Codignotto

I'm not spoiling anything here, so read on.

Given that I'm a big fan of the genre, you have to take my recommendation with a grain of salt. That said, you'd be hard pressed to find another movie that matched the visual and storytelling perfection of the Incredibles.

While the characters weren't new in concept, the super powers have all been seen before, and the story was largely predictable, I have to say that none of that matters.

This wasn't a typical Pixar film. It was a bit gritty and real. There were mature themes that went over my 5-year old's head, but would be easily caught by someone just a few years older. People got hurt, people died, and it was all necessary to tell the story. I think I read somewhere that Pixar is positioning the film for Best Picture at the Oscars. Best Picture!

I have to admit that I need to keep my enthusiasm in check as I write this. Like I said before, I'm a fan of the genre and I would have liked the movie even if it kind of sucked. As long as it wasn't a train wreck, the film had me at hello.

The visuals were stunning. In my humble opinion, The Incredibles was by far the best looking Pixar film, nay, best looking 3D animated feature ever created. Rendering humans has always been a challenge for 3D animated features. I'm sure this is common knowledge, but the reason that Toy Story was invented was because the main characters could be easily rendered. They're not real, they're toys. For instance, the "hair" of a toy has none of the complex nuances of human hair. If you go back to Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and you look at the humans in those films, they're decisively artificial. Their movements and appearance are not nearly as convincing as the toys themselves.

Difficult objects such as hair were rendered better in Monsters Inc, another Pixar film, and another film that avoided the rendering of humans.

For The Incredibles, every aspect of the world has been improved (in terms of quality) over previous Pixar films. In particular, I took note of how well hair was rendered. A lot of attention was paid to the hair styles of the various characters. In addition, there was a lot of texture applied to the characters as they got wet, they sweated, or were covered in debris.

The scene construction was nothing short of brilliant. Being a computer film, the animators can take advantage of software tools that make it easy to make action cause reaction in precisely controlled ways. In one scene, Mr. Incredible throws a rock at a distant guard atop an elevated walkway. The rock hits the guard, wobbles his head causing the guard to drop his arms, become limp, and slop to the fauna 30 feet below. The scene was perfectly choreographed and the clarity of the sequence was profound.

As for the actual super heroes, referred to as "supers" in the film, a rich mythology was laid out and served as a lush background for the story. The creators of the Pixar films know a lot about economics and were able to use the background story to create both a mythology and provide fore shadowing to some key laughs at the end "No Capes!"

The Incredibles, I mean the family, used their powers in many effective ways and it was amusing to see this all happen by accident. When Dash was being chased by the goons of Syndrome, the look of surprise and delight on his face when he discovered he could dash across the surface of water was priceless. As I said, walking on water is nothing new to super heroes like the Flash or that Chinese guy in The Adventures of Remo Williams, but it was still fresh and exciting here.

I have doubts this film will ever be considered for something like Best Picture at the Oscars and I'm sure there are droves of folks might find the film yet another variation on a theme. For me, I can think of no other film that elicited the intense awe that The Incredibles drew out of me. It was truly the best film, animated or live-action, that I've every seen.

Boring game? Outsource it!

I can't believe this has happened, but I suppose it was inevitable.

If you have ever played massively multiplayer online role-playing games like Star Wars Galaxies or EverQuest,  you probably know that they can take up your life. In essence, it takes an enormous amount of time and energy to create a powerful and resourceful character in those games. Some people get really addictaed and achieve this on their own, but other players (perhaps ones with a life) choose either to settle for mediocre characters or they spend money to have other people get powerful technology or artifacts for them.

It's commonplace for economies to develop within these games that are just as complex as the real-world. Wire News reported on that way back in 2002. I believe there were even earlier studies, google turns up most of them.

Well, it looks like MMORPG economies have taken on another real-world spin, outsourcing this "drudge work" to other countries! 

I can just see it now, I'm in a tavern, drinking a virtual meade, when in comes a salesman selling +5 Swords of Dragon Slaying at discount prices. Seeing the competition, the local salesman draws his blade and attacks the foreigner! Unfortunately for the local salesman, the foreigner has superior armor and weapons and makes short work of the local...

Wired News has the whole article.

I, Robot—I, Saw It

I wrote about the movie way back in March when I saw the original trailer.

Well, I'm glad to say that I didn't boycott the movie. It was good, real good. Asimov would have enjoyed it. The movie is good for a laugh, good for the action and special effects, and quite surprisingly, good to ponder on... ponder about... whatever!

Go see it.

Last Samurai

I just watched the Last Samurai and I enjoyed it immensely.

It was well paced, had fantastic fight scenes, and managed not to be too full of itself. I thought the way they paralleled the slaughtering of the Indians with the slaughtering of the Samurai. Tom Cruise’s character went from one side (fighting indians on behalf of the U.S.) to the other side (defending the Samurai from the onslought of the imperial army).

Very nice.

I, Robot—I, boycott

I have a real problem on my hands. I’m a sucker for science fiction movies, even bad ones. Furthermore, if it’s a sci fi blockbuster, I’m pretty much there on opening night. Since having kids, that’s not really true, but almost true.

That said, I now have a real dimemna. I just saw the trailer for the motion picture I, Robot, starring Will Smith. From what I can see, they have completely twisted the story from Isaac Asimov’s original work of the same name. What am I supposed to do now? I’ve got to boycott the thing, don’t I? I mean, I grew up on Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels and later his Foundation series. This is like sacrilege.

My main problem with their perversion is the robots seem to go ballistic in the movie… typical of a hollywood disaster. In the books, this would be impossible, of course. In the books, the robots always obeyed the three laws of robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Again, in the books, the robots had no choice but to obey the laws. It was made very clear that these three laws were written into the fabric of the robotic positronic brains. Failure to comply was as impossible as it is for a human to fly.

The point of the rules was to present challenging opportunities for the reader in situations where the only being capable of the crime was… a robot. However, this line or reasoning had to be abandoned since the reader could always rely on the laws being valid. The movie breaking these rules as liberally as they seem to is just plain offensive.

Unfortunately, I’m not the boycott type. I’m not that disciplined. Plus, it’s fun to complain and sound like I know what I’m talking about as I rip into the story. Maybe I’ll just come in 5 minutes late and miss the title scene so I can pretend it’s a different movie.

Arg.

Update: My first LAN party

I created a slideshow of the evening’s festivities, and they can be found here:

SSDLanParty2-21-2004.wmv

Unfortunately, I became familiar with the last screen way too often. If you play, you know what that means.

Cheers.

My first LAN party

I’m going to my first LAN party tomorrow. Seems like there will be upwards of 18 people playing (though we expect a few to drop off).

I’ve never been to one, but I’ve heard that they’re a lot of fun. I just can’t imagine what it must smell like in that room. I hope people take showers beforehand. Better yet, I hope the room is ventilated. I don’t know what to expect.

We’ll be playing these games:

• Raven Shield—1.41

• Battlefield 1942—1.6

• Desert Combat—.7

• Unreal XMP—7710 plus community map pack

• Savage—2.0b

I heard we’ll also be playing the brand new Unreal Tournament 2004 Demo. All of these downloads are freaking huge. In addition to installing the game itself (which usually weighs in at around 3 discs), you need to download patches and map packs that are easily 250-600MB each.

Finally, I must say that I fully expect to get my ass handed to me. I’ve played online against these guys before and I really don’t belong on the same subnet as them. We’ll see…