"Plane Stupid", they call themselves...

They're a campaign group in London protesting the expansion of Heathrow airport...

Almost nobody knew about them, until Wednesday. When five "Plane Stupids" somehow got onto the roof of the House of Parliament, and unfurled two banners ..



Now, besides the obvious questions ( How the hell did they get up there, and what does BAA-HQ stand for) a third question cropped up in my idle mind...

Don't they know it's difficult to read when the wording of the banner is at right angles to the man on the street?? The banner was made to be hung horizontally, not vertically...
They were up there for three hours. Surely they could have pulled it up and hung it across two of those spires on the roof??

How easy is it to remove a banner? Especially when it's hung over the side of a building? Newton's laws of gravitation also applies to cloth, boys!

At least they tried. A nice stunt, albeit not at the level of notoriety that made the Sex Pistols famous... maybe a more serious name will do the trick, instead of one suited more for a quiz team from around Bangalore...

Oh, it just popped into my mind - The banner would be more effective if it said

"PLANE STUPID"

www.nothirdrunway.com

But the real joke was what their PM had to say about it -

"Decisions in this country should be made in the chamber of this House and not on the roof of this House."

That's stating the obvious for you... but then again, this is apparently what he told other MPs.

Can you 'planely' intelligent readers come up with any more funnies on this thing? I'd surely like to hear :-)

Procedural generation - a closer look

The thing about PG is that it ain't new.

Let's go back to 1984, when a now famous game simply called 'Elite' was released. A space trading game, Elite contained eight galaxies, each galaxy housing an astonishing 256 planets to explore and play around in. How did the developers cram in so much on those nowadays-scorned-at 8-bit machines?

Yup. The entire game world was procedurally generated.
And how many developers were involved ? Only two guys.
How long did it take to develop? Two years.

Now, I bet you're asking yourself, 'If Elite was released in 1984, then why has PG taken two decades (maybe even longer) to set the video game industry on fire? Why wasn't it refined and used with games like GTA3 for example?'

To partly answer that, we go back to Elite again. PG also created a few problems there, regarding the placement of some of the galaxies. The inherent complexity of the content generating algorithms also contributes to the lack of major interest towards PG by the industry at large over the years.

But progress, and Moore's Law, and skyrocketing development costs for video games are forcing more and more people to look more closely at PG. And now Will Wright and Spore are marching to it's tune.

That's about it for now. Be back soon with a look at some of Spore's gameplay mechanics. In the meantime check out these two links for further info -

Games that Never Age - a very interesting introduction to PG, complete with screenshots of examples.

Ascii Dreams - a really amazing technical write-up with lots of links.

See ya soon!

The Evolution Of The 'Game Of Evolution'

On September 7, 2008, one of the most revolutionary and groundbreaking games will finally be released to the eagerly-waiting-with-bated-breath-public.

SPORE - The brainchild of video-game god Will Wright.

The basic premise of the game is that You - the player - will control a custom-designed organism through the cycle of evolution and the ravages of time. Starting at the single cell structure, through the evolutionary (mis)adventures of becoming multi-cellular, building into tribal society and then growing into a full-fledged modern civilization, and finally developing the tech needed to leave your home planet and zooming into space! And search for other planets containing similar organisms...

Now that was the When and What and Who... but How? Therein lies the rope.

The method is 'procedural generation'(PG); A technique for creating computer objects 'on the fly' and not beforehand. The beautiful thing here is that PG allows really advanced high-quality multimedia objects to occupy very little storage, as opposed to the current trend of obscenely large storage requirements of many major videogames.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise to hear that Spore has been the most talked about game at various Conventions and Expos. Now, after release date after release date after release date, it's almost done.

Being both a computer student interested in multimedia computing, and a video game enthusiast, I'll be following all developments, background tech, and release info on Spore, posting on this space periodically. All the way to Sept 7th.

And it's gonna be a monster.

PS- If u ain't interested in Spore, then this might - GEARS OF WAR 2 - NOVEMBER 2008. ANNOUNCED AT GDC YESTERDAY - CHECK OUT THE TRAILER ONLINE

Thanks and See u soon.

24 hours later....

Well, the aforementioned deal went through after all...

I still think Suns will be contenders this playoffs, but then lets just watch and see.

A Tale Of Two Centers (and trades)

Let's Talk NBA for a moment.

Last Friday the Los Angeles Lakers made a blockbuster trade to bring Spanish center Pau Gasol for four players (one of them being the rights to Marc Gasol, Pau's younger brother) and two future draft picks.
And in spite of just one practice session with his new gang, the 2002 NBA Rookie of the year puts in 24 points and 12 rebounds, leading the rejuvenated Lakers to a home win over the mediocre Nets. (Kobe had only 6 points in this game, strangely).

The Gasol trade has the potential to turn the Lakers from a potential West 5th seed to a top-seed contender, throwing an already tight, chaotic, topsy-turvy Western Conference into further madness. We could see 5 teams separated by at most 3 wins come April. Two months to savor indeed!!!

Fast Forward to 4 hours ago, reports are out that Shaquille O'Neal is possibly going to be traded (again) ...... to Phoenix!!!!!

3 reasons why this trade will fail--

1. How will the Suns, who play a fast paced running game, relying on quickness and fast breaks, fit Shaq into the system?... It's not possible. Shaq wouldn't be passably quick enough for them if he was 27, let alone 35 years of age.
2. The deal, given Shaq's age, can bring short term benefits only, bringing along Salary Cap and Luxury Tax problems to the Suns.
3. Shaq has been suffering from recurring knee injuries, something that he is unsurprisingly not able to completely heal from. The only way that knee will get back is for an extended lay-off and rehab. So if he is traded, the Suns probably won't get more than 1.5 years of activity out of the remaining 2.5 years left on his contract.

Hopefully it's just rumor. It's a suicide deal in my opinion.

This season and Western Conference playoffs look to be the most closely contested of the decade, Shaq or no Shaq. No matter how the season pans out, the playoffs surely will go down to the form and fitness books of the teams.

Western Conference verdict - TOO CLOSE TO CALL!!!

...And all the while, Kevin Garnett and the rest of Beantown must be watching with sadistic glee
:-)