Comments for UMBC Games, Animation and Interactive Media

Comment on Game Data Structures by Brian Sharpe

Brian Sharpe — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 01:49:47 +0000

…Bitsquid uses another technique, where the public class only contains data declarations. Rather than use member functions, you use regular functions to operate on the class…

You just described C

Comment on Spring game programming classes by olano

olano — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:42:06 +0000

There are certainly more and more clusters outside of California for games industry jobs. There’s a collection here in MD. There’s Atlanta, as you mention. There’s near San Antonio, in and around New York, Montreal, Seattle, … Given the cyclic nature of the typical game studio, it’s definitely nice to be near one of these active centers.

Comment on Spring game programming classes by novoline online spielen

novoline online spielen — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:17:16 +0000

Dear Olano,
I know what you mean, A career in the gaming industry would likely be the dream job for many gaming enthusiasts, and thanks to the Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act, relocating to Atlanta, GA might be a great career move for these individuals. The legislation, first passed in 2004, gives game design companies incentive to relocate to Georgia by offering a 20% tax credit to companies choosing to make the move. In recent years, Georgia has become one of the top game design locations in the country, and with over 100 companies now established in the city of Atlanta there is a new-found demand for a workforce trained in game design, game programming, and video game testing.
Catch you again soon!

Comment on Game Development education on the rise by Cooking Games

Cooking Games — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:33:33 +0000

While the rest of the world is debating about game censorship due to game related violence and crimes and what not the industry continues to flourish… a very proof of it is this article.

Comment on Game Development education on the rise by Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:45:19 +0000

Pretty interesting statistics. I would have thought that the average age would be much lower. Somewhere around because of a large number of teens playing video games.

Still a good sign that the average level is somewhere in between. Makes it a more open market.

Comment on Shiny and CLEAN by Top Dog Trading

Top Dog Trading — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:43:41 +0000

Still working through your math but it looks good to me, love the teapots!

Comment on On Error by GamersNetwork

GamersNetwork — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 18:33:29 +0000

I believe u miss understand fernando, he meant that.

Comment on On Error by olano

olano — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:30:34 +0000

Sure steep normal maps can be shiny. I totally agree.

My previous message and this one were exploring some of the deeper issues with a normal map antialiasing method called LEAN mapping that we developed for Civ V, and the cheaper version presented at GDC last year called CLEAN mapping. In particular, this post is looking at when the methods break down.

There’s a tradeoff with these methods between bump steepness and specular power. In Civ V, we used 16-bit per component textures for the LEAN maps, which pushes the safe spec powers into the tens of thousands. Other game developers are now looking at using this or related methods in console games, where they’d like something that’ll work with compressed texture, or at least 8-bit per component textures. In those cases, maybe I can save some developers some time by mapping out where these methods work so they’ll know if they’ll work for them.

I think the specific phrase you were commenting was part of my suggestion that, if you do use CLEAN/LEAN mapping, as a developer it is probably easier and safer to choose a maximum specular power and bump steepness you’ll support. You might be able to stretch the method a little further by exposing the tradeoff between steepness and normal slope to the artist, but it’s just complex enough a relationship (Divide by the bump slope squared? Does anyone have an intuitive understanding of what that means?) that it’ll almost certainly lead to artist frustration, which is not a good recipe for getting an artist to spend the time to make awesome looking stuff.

Comment on On Error by Fernando J.Torres

Fernando J.Torres — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:01:15 +0000

DR.Olano, I think steeper normal maps CAN be shiny, Just my humble opinion.

Comment on Shiny and CLEAN by olano

olano — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 02:58:48 +0000

Right you are. Fixed.