The Brad Hole

Apple released MacOS 10.3.4 today, and it includes a new OpenGL feature called "vertex buffer objects" or VBO for short. It's essentially a method of storing vertex data directly on the video card to eliminate CPU overhead. Apple had implemented a similar extension in the past, called "vertex array range" (VAR) that was essentially a reworking of the Nvidia extension of a similar name. The main difference between VBO and VAR (aside from the API looking fairly different) is that VBO is a cross-platform, ARB-approved way of achieving the same speed-up.

The original Call of Duty code on the PC supported VBO but not VAR. Duane added some VAR code to it while doing the port, so the Mac version of CoD runs pretty well. He also added VBO support to test against, but it ended up performing the same as the VAR path, because according to Apple, they do basically the same thing internally.

KOTOR also supports VBO on the PC. Today I implemented the VBO path on the Mac and ran it under 10.3.4. It made a fairly noticeable improvement in performance. My Mac, a DP/800 with GeForce 3, is well below the minimum specs for KOTOR, so development has been a bit painful. Now with the VBO code turned on, it's actually playable on my Mac (although by no means fast), and performance is competitive with my PC (a 933 P3 with a GeForce 3) for the first time. Naturally, we can't require 10.3.4 for the game so I'll have to write a VAR path before it ships, but I'm grateful to Apple for adding this OpenGL extension to at least make our lives a little easier. Sometime in the future, when our games go 10.3 and up (most are 10.2 and up right now), we won't have to worry about writing VAR code and can just stick with VBO, which will make the development time that much shorter.

Posted by bradman at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

It all started innocently enough a few weeks back. As I was drifting off to sleep one night, I had an unexplained flashback about a board game I played as a kid. It was such an out-of-the-blue memory that I had to look up the name of the game on the net. The game was Alfred Hitchcock's Why? The only thing I recalled with any detail was that the look and atmosphere of the game. The artwork gave off that old haunted house vibe, and I found myself wanting to play it again. So I did some surfing on eBay and placed a bid on one. This started a chain reaction of events.

In the next few days, I recalled more games that I used to play but didn't have - Stratego, Clue, Careers, and Kensington. eBay saw increasing use.

Then I racked my brain and remembered two more, long-forgotten. I couldn't remember the names or even a lot of details, but some detailed searching on BoardGameGeek.com brought results - Big Deal and Fat Chance. In hindsight, Fat Chance doesn't hold up, but Big Deal still interests me despite the incredibly tacky late-70's artwork. Who wouldn't want to get rich with Paint-On Socks or Kangaroo Airlines?

In the process of buying Stratego on eBay, I got a game called The Inventors as part of the bundle. We played it last weekend when Paul and Maureen were over and I thought it was a lot of fun. It combines Monopoly with elements of another favorite of mine, Masterpiece.

During this process, I've learned a few things.

1. Beth doesn't like Stratego.
2. The version of Careers I played as a kid (and not surprisingly the version I bought again on eBay) was an incredibly simplified variation. All the other releases were slightly more complicated, and it appears more fun as well.
3. Beth is very good at Careers.
4. Beth seems to beat me consistently at Skip-Bo as well, but her streak will soon end.
5. I enjoy playing board games more than video games, and infinitely more than first-person shooters with a war theme.

I'm toying with the idea of getting some of the more "hardcore" games that are ranked on BoardGameGeek.com. I've played Settlers before (about a billion times) as well as Tikal, and I've enjoyed both immensely. However, I've seen a lot of geeky board games that require a pretty fair time commitment, and/or have fairly complicated rules and setup. Ideally, anything I can play with Beth (or can easily play with non-board-game-geek friends) is what I'm aiming for. I have less-than-zero interest in dragging my ass to a comic book/game shop to sit around a table with hygenically challenged individuals.

Posted by bradman at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Here's another one of those muttering things:

1. Playoffs:: Not the Cardinals
2. Morris:: Cat
3. Break up:: laughter
4. Eggs:: crack up
5. Parker:: Brothers
6. Hardy Boys:: Bad TV Shows of the 70s
7. Deluxe:: New & Improved
8. Protection:: Mafia
9. Girl Scout:: Cookies
10. Salsa:: Chips

I've noticed an interesting coincidence (or is it?) with these words now that I look back on the list. Take a closer look - "Break up" is followed by "eggs", and the "Hardy Boys" TV show featured "Parker" Stevenson (the word preceding it in the list). I wonder if this is a coincidence, an unconscious muttering on the part of the person compiling the list, or some subtle way to try and drive people to make these connections as they form the list. It looks like it played some part in my responses.

Posted by bradman at 10:38 PM | Permalink

A few weeks ago, I discovered and installed the "MT-Blacklist" plugin for Movable Type. So far I've been delighted with its performance; the activity logs for this blog show that it's stopped quite a bit of comment spam. It looks like as long as I pull down blacklist updates regularly, I'll be in good shape.

The only downside is that no longer will helpful strangers tell me where to buy drugs online. I've really appreciated all the interest in enhancing just about everything related to my penis. It's like I was a man barely alive, and they were trying to rebuild me because they had the technology. Better. Faster. Stronger.

Posted by bradman at 02:22 AM | Permalink

I never wanted to do the Friday Five that was popular with bloggers, because it seemed trite. However, Unconscious Mutterings seems a lot more my style - you get to share a little something without all the overly-personal probing that the Friday Five frequently threw your way. So without further ado:

1. Vagina:: Charlton Heston (via Phil Hartman)
2. Racism:: Sidney Poitier
3. Mother's Day:: Father's Day
4. Fire alarm:: high school
5. Elvis:: Velvet
6. Pregnant:: babies
7. Vacation:: "Shitter's full!"
8. Waffles:: Square or round?
9. Perpendicular:: Parallel
10. Hospital:: sterile

Posted by bradman at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We watched Daredevil earlier tonight, and my faith in Hollywood's ability to make a good movie has hit an all-time low. I usually have fairly low expectations of a movie, and more often than not I'm pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, that was not the case tonight.

Luckily, I was able to soften the blow somewhat with a beer and a large helping of the wine Beth was drinking.

Posted by bradman at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I'm in a confessional mood lately, and it's time to come clean yet again.

I'm really enjoying Enterprise on UPN this season. The theme song is tackier than ever, but in just about every other regard, they've improved the series dramatically. Archer has grown a huge set of balls, T'Pol (sp?) looks like a Vulcan now, and there's a solid, ongoing plot that has a definite arc to it rather than seemingly dragging on forever. It definitely has more of the classic Star Trek feel to it compared to any of the other "new" series. It has joined Smallville and Frasier on my very short list of new shows that I can be bothered to watch - a list which is going to shrink by one on Thursday, sadly.

Here's to hoping Enterprise makes a return next season, now that it's finally become really good. :-)

Posted by bradman at 06:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

In keeping with the theme of my last post, I'd like to present a list of games which I have, in some form, completed or mastered. This should be a pretty short list. :-)

Ultima 1 through 5
Bard's Tale 1, 2 and maybe even 3.
Wasteland
Karateka
Prince of Persia 1 (maybe 2, I don't remember)
Wolfenstein 3D
Doom 1 & 2
Dark Forces
Jedi Knight 1 (and the expansion)
Sim City (the first one)
Civilization 1 & 3
Spyro 3
Alpha Centauri (don't think I ever finished a game in Alien Crossfire)
Centipede
and some random adventure games (a smattering of Infocom, Sierra and others)

I've come close on a few (Warcraft 2, Diablo 2 and Jedi Knight 2) but my short attention span and/or some kind of really difficult level usually stop me cold.

Posted by bradman at 01:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I have a confession - I don't play a lot of games. OK, not entirely true - I play a lot, but a lot of times this involves 5-minute stints and then a trip to the CD rack, never to be seen again. Usually it's not because I don't like the game, it's because I get distracted by something else that's shiny.

So I'd like to come clean and mention a bunch of really good and/or popular games that I have either never played or have only played in one sitting that was under 10 minutes in length. These are all games I hope to play (again) some day.

Diablo
Starcraft (I may have played this for a bit longer, like an hour - I don't recall)
Deus Ex
Tomb Raider series
Tony Hawk
Baldur's Gate series
Tie Fighter
Myth 2
Quake 2
NOLF 1 & 2
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Command & Conquer (the original)
Total Annihilation
Max Payne

Those are the "biggest" offenders. There, I feel a little better now.

Posted by bradman at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Yesterday was the first croquet get-together of 2004, and all things considered it went well - that is, if you weren't me and your name is Jason Simpson. He won 2 out of the 3 games, and I managed to get knocked out first in 2 out of the 3 games.

I don't recall the specific breakdowns, but Ron, Dave, Paul, myself and Jason competed in the first game, and Beth (hereafter known as "Bed, Beth and Beyond" - thanks Simps!) joined us for the second two. Maureen and Elizabeth watched on from the sidelines, drinking and making the occasional snide comment. The weather was just about right, which was a lucky break. I was a little worried it might be too warm out, since we're nearing 100 degrees.

Chris and Heather brought over their brood, but they couldn't stick around for the game. As a result, Chris couldn't defend his title from last year. Daniela came over with Jason and brought their little monster, Aleksander(sp?) the Tiny. Unfortunately, she was running a fever and she and the baby had to leave early as well. All told, we had 3 babies over, which is broke our record for previous babies in our house by 3 (we don't count Paul, even though he whines, cries, eats, shits and farts like one).

We made a slight alteration to the rules for game 3, owing to the size of the field and Paul's propensity to run way, way out of bounds when trouble came his way. We limited the number of "intentional outings" to 2, to prevent him from whacking his ball a mile away to avoid getting killed. It definitely speeded up the end game and emphasized the basic strategy of croquet a little more.

I have also learned that Beth makes Super-Awesome potato salad. She limited the size and quantity of pickles, added bacon and didn't make it too creamy. Excellent stuff.

Posted by bradman at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Aspyr announced Knights of the Old Republic for the Mac today - KOTOR for short. KOTOR isn't a WW2 first-person shooter powered by the Quake 3 engine, which makes for a nice change of pace. :-)

Only one person made the connection to the "Yugo" codename - AJ. Kotor is a coastal city in the former(?) Yugoslavia. Congrats AJ - send me your address and I'll fire off a copy once the game goes GM, which should be in a few months. It hit first playable about a month ago, and it's scheduled to hit alpha today. It might miss that milestone by a day or so, mainly because of issues getting sound to work right, but it's otherwise on track. We also have to factor in some slop time for the final candidate/approval process and other extracurricular activities. Breakthrough was effectively done at the end of February, but it lingered in a long licensing limbo for a few months, for example.

But back to KOTOR - it's won many game of the year awards, and it's quite an experience. If you're not familiar with it, check it out. Thus ends the pimping.

Edit: I totally forgot to mention this. I have to admit I'm surprised that it took everyone a long time to make the KOTOR-Yugo connection. I was fully expecting someone to guess a Star Wars-related game and then try and fit it in to Yugo right off the bat. But luckily, most people seemed to go down the "car" path. I'm grateful that AJ saved me from a shut-out. :-)

Posted by bradman at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)