polymonkey_code

So like, what happened to Matt?

2009-07-08T14:41:00.006+10:00

Over the last few months I've been working on a number of projects that are slowly getting to a stage where I can talk about them. In the coming weeks I'll be updating the site and writing up some details on all of them. But as a teaser.

One of the big one's was work that I did for Qube Konstrukt. Qube was after something different while they worked for SBS ONE and SBS TWO. So enter Processing and that Generative "look". As luck would have it they called me up, had a chat and hit the ground running making cool stuff.

There are few projects that I've worked on that have been so rewarding. It was a dream to work on, and Qube are flat out awesome. And now the output is slowly making it's way into the world. To begin with SBS has posted a (badly compressed) selection of their new station id's to their facebook page. You can see them here.

The first two are from Qube, the next two are by Mighty Nice and the last three are from Iloura. Amazing stuff all round. The sound reactive particle system in the first one (the red one) is mine.

It's over, and now we're free.

2009-02-11T21:46:00.004+10:00

Pandemic Brisbane closed it's doors yesterday.

I joined at the start of DAH2 and in the four years I was there I experienced the best working environment that I've ever known. If there are better teams and better people out there then I pray I find them one day.

At the end of DAH2 when THQ took the license back, The Bravo Team picked their name first so we became known as the Alpha Team. We moved upstairs, Bravo started up their game and we just kept working. That first 9 months of pitching and experimenting and trying to nail the game idea was amazing. It changed the way I work, the way I look at the job. The respect we had for one another was impressive. That doesn't just happen. It's built, day by day.

I equate it to a band that just kept playing, every month we got better. You'd know how every person would play. You'd know how everyone could shine. We got tight and the product was amazing. One day people will see it. And it'll be seen for what it is. The best game we'll all never finish.

Your faithful tech.

MattD

GCAP 2008 - And now my talk

2009-02-11T21:33:00.005+10:00

Some wonderful people posted the entire talk on you tube. That's brilliant I was told no one got it. So here it is...

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (this is the one with the pretty examples!!)

Part 4 (more pretty things here)

Part 5

My screen is full of lines

2008-12-10T15:40:00.004+10:00

More videos of stuff I'm working on at the moment. This time vector forces and particle collision are sitting on my mind.

Vector Force System from matt ditton on Vimeo.

GCAP 2008 - Videos from my talk

2008-11-26T07:09:00.005+10:00

These are videos of some the software that I showed off at GCAP

Drawing With Strings from matt ditton on Vimeo.

HeightField Demo from matt ditton on Vimeo.

Particle System Demo from matt ditton on Vimeo.

Slitscanning Workspace Demo from matt ditton on Vimeo.

Space Invader Class from matt ditton on Vimeo.

GCAP 2008 - Slides from my talk

2008-11-22T08:47:00.005+10:00

On Friday I gave a talk at GCAP. The topic was on teaching artists to program and how this can benefit the whole team. It was a chance to show off some of the experiences I've had through the year while teaching processing.

It's also got a few tips on how to write code for other artists in your team to use. The whole thing went over well, and as promised here are the slides from the talk. If I'm really lucky maybe I can get a recording of it.

the link to the doc

1 minute 32 seconds of pure genius.

2008-08-17T11:16:00.004+10:00

natalie portman's shaved head - sophisticated side ponytail.

The bit at 1.10 where the whale eats the katamary ball of the band is inspired. Also the band has taken 1995 and injected all that awesome into their virtual reality bonus zone. Make sure you've got sound. The midi is to die for.

MattD

Objloader version 014 up on google code

2008-07-12T18:37:00.003+10:00

Now with VBO!

One piece of advice for all who come after me. When dealing with arrays in opengl, remember that the stride of an array IS IN BYTES. That's right F**KING BYTES. One Float is 4 bytes. to get to the second element in a float array you need to skip 4 bytes. Motherfu----.

Seriously I spent about 8 hours on that bug. Just another example of information so common knowledge I knew nothing about it. Opengl you are a fickle mistress.

mattD

StarCraft 2 now Diablo 3, this is the end of days.

2008-06-29T17:21:00.004+10:00

Diablo 3 was announced today. After seeing the game play video I understand that whenever it gets released I do not want a game coming out anywhere near it. You can't fight that kind of awesome. Just stand back and think "So that's how you do a teaser video".

The release of any game by Blizzard will cause a singularity that will destroy the non-Blizzard shelves of your local gaming store. If you're making a PC game right now, you'd better hurry and get it to market. When Blizzard releases Starcraft or Diablo you aren't going to sell anything for about six months.

Of course knowing the Blizzard release system (roll 5 D20, 100 means it's ready) you've probably got a bit of time.

MattD

copy for HTML.

2008-05-05T14:29:00.010+10:00

Processing has a "copy for discourse" feature and when it works it awesome. It takes the code in the pde file and formats it for the discourse board. But this doesn't help when you want to publish some code on the rest of the internet. Something like this

void setup(){
  String myString = backwards("the quick brown fox");
}

String backwards(String s){
  String t = "";
  for(int i = s.length() - 1; i >= 0; i --){
 t = t + s.charAt(i);
}
  return t;
}

OMFG colour. Adds a lot to code doesn't it.

Well I thought that maybe other people might find this tool useful, so here is the pde that makes the pretty colored text above. It takes the contents of the "formated for discourse" clipboard and formats it for the web.

Get your code and copy it for discourse.
Run the copy for HTML pde.
Paste into blog.

copy_to_HTML

Make your own Engrish

2008-05-05T09:32:00.003+10:00

Fun with translators. Type in a simple phrase. and then keep translating the output till it can't translate anything else. For example.

Hello what is your name?
When there is a name, present several?
Is there a multiple which when name shows?
When name shows, is there a multiple?
When name multiple it shows there, is?
The first-rate multiple which when, is shown there where it is?
At the place where it has that, the time it is shown first-rate multiple there?
At the place where it has that, has time that been shown first-rate multiple there?
At the place where it has that to that, time has been shown thing first-rate multiple there, it is?
At the place where it has that the, had time been shown the first-rate multiple of thing, there where that it is?
Time having been shown the first-rate multiple of thing in the place where it has, there it is the that somewhere?
At the place where it has first-rate multiple of thing the time when it is shown, there it is that somewhere?
Is first-rate multiple of time thing as for that, there of a certain place which is shown that somewhere?
Is first-rate multiple time a certain place which is shown thing somewhere, there in regard to that?
Is first-rate multiplex time a certain place which has been shown somewhere thing in regard to that, there?

Classic lines from game dev.

2008-04-25T07:27:00.004+10:00

"I added this thing so that you can slow down time.
I couldn't speed up time cause things explode"

Matt Clark

I have a very weird job.

2008-04-07T07:05:00.003+10:00

Some damn funny game design over at Mazapan.

You Have To Burn The Rope

rock paper shotgun did a walkthrough

Absolute genius.

we're up on google code

2008-03-29T09:22:00.005+10:00

In the last week I've been putting the two libraries I'm involved in up on google code. So the OBJLoader and the Collada Loader both have nice safe source controlled homes. Over the coming weeks I'll be making sure that all documentation and examples are also up on google code.

the OBJLoader
the Collada Loader

Saving uncompressed TGA

2008-03-21T07:19:00.012+10:00

(this image has nothing to do with this post. Just something I'm working on)

Alas RLE compression isn't supported everywhere. Can't expect the earth, it's only old enough that I can't find when it was invented. But onto the problem.

I needed to dump out uncompressed tga's from processing. Turns out this was an old processing feature that was upgraded to RLE. Because I'm still living in the dark ages, Toxi pointed me towards the original code that he wrote for uncompressed tga saving. Just so I don't lose it and maybe other people are looking for something like this. Here is the slapped together bit of code.

The zipped up sketch

MattD

Collada Loader 003

2008-03-11T07:43:00.005+10:00

The Collada Loader has been updated and now sits at version 003. There are a few new functions involving materials. You can check out the supplied example file for the usage. But here is the list of new stuff.


model.toggleTexture();
//toggles the texture on and off

model.toggleMaterial();
//toggles the collada material

model.setTexture(PImage);
//replaces the loaded texture with a supplied PImage

model.originalTexture();
//reloads the original texture

ColladaLibrary_003_demo.zip
ColladaLibrary_003_lib.zip
ColladaLibrary_003_src.zip

UPDATE: I'm sorry to say that with the updates to the XML library in processing, the collada loader broke. And broke hard. If anyone would like to help out in fixing this, that would be great. I'm afraid free time is just not happening for me at the moment.

processing and tga's

2008-03-06T07:22:00.008+10:00

You can always depend on a tga. That faithful image format is like an old friend. But processing has a bug where is saves them out upside down. You can see the bug in this code


line(10,10,90,90);
save("data/img.tga");
PImage img = loadImage("img.tga");
img.save("data/img2.tga");
exit();

Until a fix gets in, here is a workaround


line(10,10,90,90);
save("data/img.tga");
PImage img = loadImage("img.tga");
PImage outImg = createImage(img.width, img.height, ARGB);
for(int x = 0; x < y =" 0;">

UPDATE:

It's fixed for 0136. WooT

one down thirteen to go

2008-03-05T07:49:00.006+10:00

Week 01 of 1109GFS is in the can. Thank you to all the awesome students who came along. I had a great time. See you same place, same time, next week.

remember


problem = pebkac;
lol(u);

mattD

1109GFS and trying to explain (art == data)

2008-03-01T09:36:00.008+10:00

This is the last weekend before I start teaching at QCA. This year between working full time making games, I'll be teaching two classes called 1109GFS and 1112GFS. They have been titled something like "Programming for Artists 1 & 2" but I prefer to call them 1109 and 1112.

The formal structure of the class will be teaching processing to students of the games design degree. But the subtext of whole thing is to try to show that you can view art as a form of data. It's a different approach and one that takes understanding before you can appreciate all the ramifications of what that approach means. Consequently when I talk about this idea at work they smile politely and nod. There is a lot of scratching and shaking of heads, and it mostly finishes with everyone agreeing that I'm on to something, we just can't put a good finger on it.

First class is on Tuesday night. Wish me luck.

Processing Collada Loader version 001

2008-02-19T16:04:00.004+10:00

Here it is.

Library
Source
Example

So why another format?

Lot's of reasons but mostly because I needed to load Collada files into processing. The added bonus is that the collada format is far more extendable than the obj format. It can store mesh, splines, cameras, lights, skeletons, skins, animation and even physics. So it's more a storage medium for 3D data rather than being just a model format.

What can your loader do for me?

At the moment the loader can load and display one model with one material (textured or untextured). There are also several helper functions for drawing the bounding box, vertex normals, face normals and the wire frame. You can see them all in the example above.

Is that it?

In this release, I'm afraid so. There is a lot more work to do. The current todo list (in order) looks like this.

Multiple materials
Multiple geometries.
Cameras
Lights
Splines
Animation

So when is it going to be finished?

Um. I'll get back to you on that.

Can you add support for (insert thing here)?

Yes. It's meant to be used. If there is something that you need from the loader just ask.

I broke it.

Excellent. Drop me and email and I'll try and get it sorted.

MattD