KludgeHack

Need some help starting your Game Development?
24 July 2007 in Programming & Tech | Comments (0)

DigiPen has an 8-part webcast series on creating a video game to help aid in just doing that.  Their game doesn’t use XNA but uses DirectX 9.0.  Their series covers sound effects, sprites, sprite behaviors, basic overview, and collision detection.

You don’t need a programming background to follow the videos, which a smart 7^th grader could digest.

The content is associated with DigiPen’s Game Development Webcast Series “Video Game Development: Learn to Write C# the Fun Way”. Webcasts, PDF documents and sample code available.

G4 Code Monkeys
12 July 2007 in Fun & Tech | Comments (0)

Yesterday, G4 broadcasted the first two episodes of the new TV show Code Monkeys.

“Code Monkeys is the first animated comedy made specifically for today’s Xbox/iPod/YouTube generation and could only have come from a network that truly appreciates video games and technology,” said G4 president Neal Tiles. “Whether they’re a gamer or not, the video game and technology references in Code Monkeys are something every guy will enjoy.”

Although this first two isn’t especially funny, the show certainly has potential.

If you didn’t watched the premiere, you can view online here.

Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life
10 July 2007 in Tech | Comments (2)

I recently found on Lifehacker a nice article from the Friedbeef’s blog, about 15 ways to extend the laptop battery life. Here are a few of those I think are the most useful:

• Defrag regularly -  The faster your hard drive does its work - less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery.
• Dim your screen - Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen.  Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance.  Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.
• Cut down on programs running in the background.  Itunes, Desktop Search, etc.  All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life.  Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery.
• Cut down external devices - USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery.  Remove or shut them down when not in use. 
• Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory.  Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient.
• Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are worse.  Even having one in the drive can be power consuming.  They spin, taking power, even when they’re not actively being used.  Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol 120% rather than optical ones.

You can find the full original list here, with both 15 tips and two bonus tips, and even some good ones spread at the comments…

DARPA Urban Challenge 2007
29 June 2007 in Fun & Tech | Comments (0)

For those who don’t know the DARPA Challenge, I must say, you are loosing one of the biggest event of the year. The challenge is a prize competition for driverless cars, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research organization of the United States Department of Defense.

Every year university’s from all around the world build their powerful autonomous vehicle. The last two years, the challenge was to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles capable of completing a substantial off-road course within a limited time. Now, this year challenge is scheduled to take place November 3, further advances vehicle requirements to include autonomous operation in a mock urban environment.

You can find Stanford video from last year here. The video is a talk about, how they won the challenge, both funny and technical. You can also find more info in the Wikipedia, where you can also find links to the official pages of the teams playing.

Demonstrating how fantastic this challenge can be, recently the the Stanford University car, Junior, just got it’s learning permit for basic driving.  What does “basic driving” entail?  Navigating a 4 way intersection with live traffic, passing a stationary car and doing a U-turn.

So it is a car that can do what a 16 year old can do but why is this such a big deal?  Well, think about all the rules you have to follow while driving.  Proper distance, checking if you can change lanes, using turn signals, and actually following the speed limit are just a few.  But in real life, you break each and every one of those rules.  So designing a system that respects those rules then is allowed to break them when it best suits the system’s needs is tricky.

If you saw the Stanford video (above) you will appreciate the advantages of a driverless car.

BumpTop: Virtual Desk
29 June 2007 in Fun & OS & Tech | Comments (0)

BumpTop is a 3D desktop prototype for Windows, does some must-see-to-believe wrangling of digital documents as if they were physical pieces of paper. Words don’t do this justice; just hit that play button.