There are several things changing at the beginning of the 21st century, including research. That’s a first idea of how research is done in the 21st century.

1. You don’t have to read books and also don’t have to quote or ‘work scientifically’, because the wisdom of the crowds is always one step ahead over the cartographic wisdom of the non-electronic world, means: Wikipedia beats book and paper research.
2. Using artificial intelligence algorithms of Google / YouTube can save you weeks and months of time. That algorithms are the best available in the world and will get you quickly related content of your research topic, if you for example upload a video. The related context that is generated by YouTube is much more devoted to the point as any symposium or conference could ever be. The ai-algorithms not only deliver content, but also connect you directly to the experts out there.
3. To basically do research you only need a blog. Unfortunately there aren’t any fundings for blog research yet. Here I claim: “Will do research for money”. Would do almost any topic in between the color- and artful world.

This is maybe a good place to present you our new node3000-project Eggshell-Robotics. For me blog researchers of the moment are: Serial Consign, The Artful Gamer and Benoit Espinola.

This are hot news: The source code of the very original first game of Sim City was released a General Public License. This are good news, and the community is responding in: “Let’s do the porting begin”. Indeed, there are some pitfalls: Trademark rights forced to rename the game from Sim City to Micropolis, which should be no problem. Micropolis maybe pushing more the inspiration. After 9/11 they also left out the airplane crash.

I think the more trickier part is that one:

“The ‘MicropolisCore’ project includes the latest Micropolis (SimCity) source code, cleaned up and recast into C++ classes, integrated into Python, using the wonderful SWIG interface generator tool. It also includes a Cairo based TileEngine, and a cellular automata machine CellEngine, which are independent but can be plugged together, so the tile engine can display cellular automata cells as well as SimCity tiles, or any other application’s tiles.”

In other words they go on:

“The key thing here is to peek inside the mind of the original Maxis programmers when they built it. Remember, this was back in the day when games had to fit inside of 640k so some ‘creative’ programming techniques were employed.”

So, expert forums please! I really hope to play that game soon on DS and PSP, as well as in candy and also tandy colors. And never forget to have fun.

Update: Steeley set up a micropolis-forum. That’s where the future ramblings on micropolis will go.

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It’s the mid of the month again, time for a sum-up of the interesting things I found last month that somehow did not found its way into this blog yet.

1.

Matthew Smith and Chris Huelsbeck

First I want to show you two documentaries on two heroes 8-bit heroes. The first is about Matthew Smith, responsible for the games Jet Set Willy and Maniac Miner on the Spectrum ZX. After the big success of his games he disappeared and nobody knew where he was. Then again he came back. That documentary is about that.

The other is a documentary that is still in progress, but we can already see the the trailer. It’s about the “8-bit philosophy“. It’s mostly about music and on people all over the world that are somehow connected to C64 music, but the most important focus is of course on Chris Huelsbeck and his music on the Commodore 64. He got famous for his soundtracks for i.e. To be on Top, R-Type or most of all Turrican. Besides the video I also recommend this interview with Chris Huelsbeck on gulli.com (it’s in German) [via]

2.

There’s an interesting interview out with the independent game developer Cactus. He makes interesting and experimental games, that are meanwhile well known and talks in the interview at Gamelab about his games, how he does it and why.

3.

A really good ep was released on the German netlabel Jahtari called Atari-Ska L’Atakk. Its style is very at the roots, described as “Chipmusic meets Ska” and if you follow the harmonic lines you will figure out why this release is at the roots. Think of Giana Sisters and that sort of stuff.

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ASCII Sector is a somehow free remake of the game Wing Commander: Privateer. Like the title implies, there is something special about this remake. Similar to this Marble Madness remake the developer of this game uses an alternative display technology. Since the Marble Madness clone went into the direction of boosting the graphics into the third dimension, ASCII Sector goes directly into the opposite direction: the graphics are rendered in the so beloved Text Mode and are displayed in ASCII. Very charming and indeed you can play this one. (More ASCII games? Look here.)

Earth in Text Mode.

The game itself really got a good oldschool flavor. Just read this lines from the manual:

“As you travel in the game universe, you will be able to engage in dogfights with
other spaceships and land on planets and bases. Here you can interact with the
populace, upgrade and repair your ship — or buy a new ship — and get missions
to complete in order to earn more money (called ‘credits’ in the game).”

Apart from the gaming-layer you also have to master a very complex control scheme with lots of keyboard shortcuts. You best open the manual.txt file and leave it open while you play the game. After a while of playing, you simply forget that you are just staring at ASCII. And the universe unveils with nice name like ‘Crimson Quadrant’ or ‘Vortex Prime’. The game is currently at version 0.2, so expect that the ASCII Sector universe will grow bigger and bigger. As far as I can see it in the forum there are already fans of the game out there. Just reserve some space at a wall in your home for the upcoming universe-map.

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This posting will inform you, that not only the results of the Text Mode Demo Compo X are now available, but that the organizers also wrote a resume on the last 10 years of TMDC. There is also a bonus: you can download all Text Mode Demos in one file (ISO image). Right here.

Screener from Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2

At the weblog of Benoit Espinola I found something on a soothing bio-feedback game. This brought into my mind an idea that kept on glowing there for quite a while now: computing games as holidays. The basic idea is however, why do you have to always solve problems or riddles in virtual fantasy worlds, or why do you always have to get rid of all the monsters at a increasing amount of difficulty in gaming worlds?

I’d like to see games that decrease the stress-level while at the same time apply new and astounding virtual experiences. The bio-feedback game as a study could lead into that direction, especially in terms of how to control the stress level while playing the game or by playing the game. Game designers of course have to solve the problem that the game holiday will not get boring.

Other thing I found lately was the game “Shadow of the Colossus” on the PS2. The exploration of the landscape is as equal interesting as the gameplay itself. The landscape in the game is always waiting for a relaxed exploration.

Update: I just found an interesting posting on almost the same topic over at Digital Urban. They say that 2008 could be the breakthrough for virtual worlds and I suppose they are right.

The Bristlebot

We are entering a new era: homebrew robotics. For me the most impressive example of this shift is the so called bristlebot developed by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, that is somehow a counterpart of the LED throwie from the Graffiti Research Lab. All you need to build this pseudo little bot is an old or cheap toy that got a motor inside, then a toothbrush and a button cell. The rest is fun manufacturing. You can use glue and tape instead of soldering. The bristlebot is a version of a vibrobot. And hey, I sense that this should also be the shift towards homebrew research.