Pretty cool. Wordle generates word clouds from text provided, or RSS feeds. This one for example came from my blog homepage.

It is free, just visit http://wordle.net/ to make one of your own. They use a Java applet to generate the image, and you can customise many aspects of it.

Microsoft has made a pretty good marketing ploy to help improve the image of Windows Vista.

Called “The Mojave Experiment”, they took a number of Vista ‘skeptics’ and showed them Windows “Mojave”, the next version of Windows. Overall these people, who had given Vista 4/10 or lower when asked in the beginning, rated “Mojave” really well.

Then Microsoft dropped the bombshell, Windows “Mojave” is really Windows Vista.

The positive reactions of the participants about Windows “Mojave” really shows that you need to experience things for yourself rather than relying only on what you hear, as most of them did. As one participant noted: “You have to see for yourself.”

You can see the video of the reactions and participants at the "Mojave" Experiment website.

Whilst searching through my RSS feeds today I found a little gem that could give you a nice boot time improvement.

It seems that even on dual/quad/n core machines, Vista boots using only one core. Peter Provost has a solution he found that will allow you to take advantage of all of your cores.

In summary the steps involve going to msconfig and changing the number of cores.

To do that:

1. Start –> Run
2. Type msconfig, click Ok
3. Click on the “Boot” tab
4. Click Advanced Options
5. Enable the checkbox titled “Number of Processors:”
6. Change the number to your number of cores using the drop down box
7. Click Ok
8. Click Ok/Apply
9. Restart

That is basically it, just follow those steps and you can enable Multi-Core startup.

This option also exists in Windows XP. It is under the tab named BOOT.INI, also under Advanced Options in there, however it is called /NUMPROC. A bit more advanced since there seems to be ini editing here, but either method isnt for a basic user

Not much has been heard on the Spore front recently, in comparison to two years ago. However today saw the release of the Spore Creature Creator Demo. Spore is the latest game from design genius Will Wright of SimCity and Sims fame. Taking the “Creation” gameplay idea to a whole new level by letting you create your own species and leading them from the cellular stage through evolution until they advance themselves to space travel.

The key element of the game that is being promoted by Will Wright and team, is the procedural content generation technology inside the game. To be able to create any kind of species you like, with practically any look, they let you do the art creation yourself through an easy tool, and generate the rest, like animations on the fly.

This tool, a simple modelling tool for your species, vehicles and buildings is what has been released early for fans to play around in. A demo of the Spore Creature Creator, featuring a subset of the “parts” available in the full game is now available to download from most game file sites on the Internet.

The editor is extremely simple to use, and does not need a tutorial or manual to start using. Some of the more advanced features are prompted by an unobtrusive text popup at the top of the screen, making it easy to jump into.

I did however find that creature textures were generated every time you switched from “Test Drive” mode to the editor and back. Which introduces a noticeable period of “lo-res” texturing on your creature. I feel that caching would have been a simple and effective option here, since if no changes are made during an editing phase, there is no need to regenerate the texture.

Aside from that, the editor was pretty easy and fun to use, and this is a good taste of a key element of the full game coming in September.

Go ahead and download the demo today, it weighs in at 205mb and runs pretty well on a decent system.

GameArena Download Link

or from the Official Spore Website (Mac version available there as well)

For those doing native application development that need a Physics or Animation product, Havok, partnered with Intel have released the world famous Havok Physics & Animation package for free.

This gives you the complete binary for use in your personal, educational or even commercial game as long as it is below US$10.

Currently there does not seem to be anything for XNA (despite an apparent job ad a while back), but I am sure this will be wrapped soon enough, and then the power of Havok will be available for use on the PC platform in XNA as well.

You can get Havok from http://tryhavok.intel.com. Just fill out the form and download the Programmer binaries and Artist tools.

I have been a Microsoft Student Partner since the beginning of this year, and in conjunction with the other MSP at UTS,(Chris Webster) have been planning a large event for this semester.

Recently we decided that the best thing to do was to give a talk on the ways you can get free (or cheap) software from Microsoft as a student.

The time has finally arrived.

How to get Free (and cheap) stuff from Microsoft

Slides and content will be available after the presentation, although probably only late night or next day due to a late lecture. :P

If you intend to come to the event, head to the website there and register your interest so we can get an idea of numbers.

Remember, not only do you take away the methods of gaining free software, but you also take away a bag of goodies and have the chance of winning a lucky door prize!

In my preparation for CeBIT starting tomorrow I found an article on the website about the recent export numbers for Australian Game Developers.

http://www.ausinnovate.com/2008/05/05/export-boom-for-game-makers/

The article mentions that 06-07 data shows $139.7 million in generated revenue, with most of the market coming from Queensland or Victoria. Programmers accounting for 29% of those employed, compared to 34% for artists. A logical number. :)

If you missed out on the free registration, check for information next year around February, that is the time the free Registration occurs.

The professional video tutorial scene has started to adopt XNA from the looks of it, with Digital Tutors releasing a DVD training package named Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA.

Popular highlights:

XNA Development Overview

Interfacing with Keyboard and Gamepad

Building Controller Systems

Controller Vibration

Exporting and Loading Static Meshes from Maya

Exporting Animated Characters from Maya

Moving and Turning a Character

Object-oriented Programming with Bullets and Targets

Baking Textures in Maya

Deriving Bounding Boxes from Maya

Collision Detection with Bounding boxes

Collision Detection with Rays

Building a Custom Animation Player

Switching and Blending Between Animations

Chase Cameras

Camera Shakes

Drawing Text

CGSociety has this to say about the product:

'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' contains nearly five hours of project-based training for technical artists learning the methods of creating game content using XNA and Maya. 'Pipeline Development with Maya and XNA' offers artists an essential workflow and innovative techniques for easily integrating Maya and XNA for game creation.

Since this costs money, I cannot get this at the moment and so I cannot give my own review. However it looks like a good product, and considering Digital Tutor's track record, it should be a good investment for the artistic programmers out there.

Edit [17/5/2008]: I noticed that Digital Tutors also has an interesting looking Training Package titled Real-Time Shaders with XNA.

As of now the XNA 3.0 Community Technology Preview is available for download.

XNA 3.0 CTP

This requires a version of Visual Studio 2008 and will co-exist with Visual Studio 2005 and XNA GS 2.0.

Note there is no Xbox360 support in the CTP release, however there will be with the final release, currently only PC and Zune.

Now I am off to see what else they added. :) Enjoy.

If you are a student attending UTS, then visit the new UTS MSP website and watch it for details on promotions and events that we are running. Some great stuff will happen and you do not want to miss it! :D

http://www.utsmsp.com