I've been reading this article for how to add some DirectX stuff to WPF. Not only is it going to be very useful for doing what I want to do with my Person Paster project (an application using my stick figure recognizer for extracting people from photos and placing/posing them in other photos using stick figures) but it might have helped a bit with LX Engine! I had no idea and didn't really look into why on Vista/7, LX Engine always had grainy transparency and no anti-aliasing. Apparently it is because I'm using DirectX 9 and not DirectX 9Ex. Like, I had a feeling that might be an issue way back in the day when I heard about it, long before Vista came out, but I never really followed up on that hunch. The whole "lets stop dicking around with game tools and start making games" deal.

I would like to work on From Dusk into Twilight again. I have a lot of projects on my plate right now, though. But maybe I can just kind of like... finish them. I'm feeling a bit more motivated. It doesn't take too much - there was a thread on SA I only briefly skimmed the beginning of, saying that to get a game development job, you need to make cool things. That's not news to me. But I haven't been in the business of making 'cool things' for a while, I fear. The stick figure recognizer is plenty cool, but... yeah. I also was reading Tim Rogers' new Kotaku column here, which also made me feel like actually making something. Even if it's a more simple game... although I think From Dusk into Twilight is a fine goal.

Also upon further consideration, I cannot continue to feel that Deadly Premonition is "so-bad-it's-good". That certainly is the case when you first pick it up, and is certainly the case when you experience some of the sillier scenes, like the oft-pointed-to scene with breakfast with Polly at the hotel. It's cheesy and strangely acted, bizzare and hilarious, and sort of goes on for too long. The driving is hard to get a hold of, and 'driving' York can be jarring at first. I can understand why a person might turn off the game at that point, but at the same time I want to tie them down to the chair and force the controller back in their hand. Press on! You will be amazed, because "so-bad-it's-good", with a little suspension of disbelief, turns into simply "good".

One of the top youtube searches for Deadly Premontion is this YouTube review by some video game reviewing group. They gave it a 2/10. I wanted to leave a critical comment but I decided against it because it would be very difficult to get across what I wanted to say. The review is shallow. It focuses squarely on the controls and graphics and driving and shooting and, essentially, all the wrong things when it comes to looking at this game. It's like trying to give GOD HAND a bad score because the graphics are bad. It's not the point!

The point is the experience, and the story. It's bizarre and quirky and flawed, but produces so much soul it's unreal. You can tell that the developers loved making this game. The last few hours of the game are amazing. There are moments of the game that make you feel that shit is going down. During the final bosses and cutscenes, as well as one of the 'big reveals', I felt like the game was saying something about, I dunno. Perception. Self. What it means to 'control' a character in a game. I can't tell you why though, because something artistic will invoke in people something that just wont in someone else.

So yeah. I would recommend Deadly Premonition to anyone. Not because it's "so-bad-it's-good", but because it's amazing.

The paper for my skeletal figure recognizer was accepted to SBIM! I found out this last weekend, and I've been using this week for putting the finishing touches on the final version. Although I submitted a final version already, I got some other suggestions for revision. I'll hopefully finish those this weekend, and submit another version. I also need to prepare a presentation for Monday on this paper I finished reading a short time ago, on texture reconstruction on a scanned 3D object using computer vision stuff.

But I need to also see about getting myself to SBIM, which takes place in Annecy, France! I'll be able to send off the application for the passport on Monday ( $160 bux, geez ), which should hopefully get here on time. The expedited process takes two weeks or so. I already transferred a bunch of money from my savings and purchased the conference registration, plane tickets, rail tickets, and hotel reservations, all-and-all about $3000. Luckily I'm getting reimbursed. I was considering renting a car, but I guess the train will do. I don't know how to drive stick anyway ( although I get the idea behind it ).

Also I've been recently playing through Deadly Premonition, an amazing 360 game. The more I play it, the harder it is to describe. It's amazing. Super amazing. Each bit of it is incredibly B-quality, but the experience as a whole is fantastic. I don't feel like describing it in detail right now, but it's the epitome of "so-bad-it's-good".

I also finally got a call back from Microsoft the other day. Although the interviews went quite well, they said that all the internal restructuring they were doing that resulted in it taking so long for them to get back to me also results in the position not being available. They said to try again in August, and that they usually ask people to try again the next year. Saying that conditions would be more favorable then. I'll hold them to that, as it sounds reasonable.

In the interim, my professor offered for me to work in his lab over the summer. He said he would probably have a set project in mind, but that's fine. Unless something else comes my way, I'll probably go ahead and do that! I have this room leased through the summer anyway, so it's a pretty easy thing to do. There are some other advantages as well, which shall remain unnamed.

I finished watching Sora no Woto last night, and today I do what I often do with shows and look up all sorts of related material. The music from the show is amazing, and fits well with the show's feel. The full version of the OP song is pretty great. I like the harmonies in the chorus quite a bit. I also watched the original ~3 minute trailer from November, which also is very good, in that it really expresses the feel the show has. And it's a feel I really liked, because it's so tied to setting. The text that went along with the trailer goes like so:

"The story takes place in an imaginary town Seize. A long war brings a gradual decline to the world. People disappear from the town and fishes cease to exist in the sea. In this quiet world, five girls guard a fortress and play brass vividly."

The text is phrased very 'translated'-ish, but it expresses what the show is about, somewhat. It has it's "cute girls doing cute things" aspects, but the setting and mood is solid - a world in ruin, reborn up to the point of about WW2 technology. The oceans are devoid of life and the continents are covered with a barren no mans land. Each episode maintains the theme pretty well, and the show actually has a good ending. That's something you don't see in anime too often - a good ending. It's a weak point of anime as a whole.

So yeah, I really liked this show alot.

There are some great shows this season too. K-ON!!, Working!!, B Gata H Kei, etc. They showed Kaichou wa Maid-sama in club on Friday, and I liked it quite a bit even though I'm not terribly into the maid thing. I've also started playing Beyond Good and Evil and Scribblenauts. I also like the setting of the former, and I could use a bit more creativity in Scribblenauts. You can take out most enemies with a 'Fire' and a 'Napalm' without having to get near them. Also you can drop a 'Plasma' on them, I just found out. Or if they're in the water a depth charge works well. All things you don't need to grab or throw at them, which means they're kinda cheap. Also a shrink ray and grappling hook can cheese a lot of challenges too.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to Atlanta for CHI. Should be neat but I'm there until Friday which seemed like an alright idea when planned but now it's just so damn long. There's a few things going on next week which I'd like to do here in SB but oh well. Atlanta should be interesting! Lots of interesting talks and things to check out, I imagine. It's a big conference, after all.

As for other conferences, I got my paper in for SBIM! If I get accepted there I can goto Annecy, France! Google image searches show that it's a lot like Venice with canals and whatnot. Should be very cool.

Haven't heard back from Microsoft yet, although I've heard that they're still working on it. I'll figure out what I'm going to do once I hear from them, yea or nay.

Also for the 24th I rented another car and am going to go see Sonata Arctica in Hollywood. Should be cool! But I'm getting the car early and going to this Mahjong place, Tokyo Kaikan, in Torrance first. Try to get some sweet Mahjong action in before the concert. I don't really know anything about the place besides that they play Riichi Mahjong - how many people they get, how much it costs, etc.

Also I'm running out of time here at UCSB. There are things I must still do...

So this last Sunday I took a plane up to Seattle. Got my rental car, dropped my stuff off at the Bellevue Hilton ( pretty fancy for me, but I could get used to it ) and went around town with my cousin DeAnn. Tried to find some pizza/sandwich shop that was promised on the GPS I was using, but it wasn't there. Had some McDonalds instead. And then, the next day, I performed my second interview with Microsoft! Woo!

I was interviewing with the Halo and SpawnPoint teams, which are making Halo ( obviously ) and Project Natal games, respectfully. I did spy one of the Natal devkits while I was there. Didn't see them running or anything, but I saw the machine itself. Pretty cool! I talked with 5 people, most of whom were from the Halo team. We talked about programming and math problems, the DUI2 Engine I've been working on for some time, sketch research related things, and a long discussion about why I want to make games, what I want to get out of game development, and what sort of games ( or parts of games, more specifically ) I would be suited for developing. There were a number of things I wanted to be able to express during the interview - I wanted to see what they thought of From Dusk into Twilight, discuss my game environment, be able to demo some of the stuff I've put together, and such. I was able to mention pretty much all of those. I also answered well all of the programming questions and did alright on the math related questions. I'm feeling pretty confident!

I also found out that the artists that work on, for instance, the Halo team, use pens and tablets to do various things in Maya, such that the stylus is one of their primary input devices. They don't, however, have a great deal of use for them in their in-house level editors. It would be neat to work on tools if I would somehow blend in sketch related things into the mix! A nice combination of game development and sketch recognition work.

After I came back home it's been relaxing, although I haven't really been able to play Mahjong as much as I'd like with people. Played some Mahjong on Tenhou shortly ago, and that went alright, I guess. I finished a couple games off my backlog, one of them being Cave Story on Wii! It was worth another playthrough, and my support for the game. I played through it as Curly and did as much as I could in hard mode. No way I'm going to be able to beat Monster X in hard mode though. I may be good at games, but I can never be perfect at games. Like, I'm good at DDR, but I could never AA or AAA songs, even on Easy. I'd always mess up, even in some little way. Beating Monster X on hard mode in Cave Story requires a lot of continuous perfection.

When I get back to school, I'll need to spend pretty much all my free time working on the paper for my stick figure recognizer. My next and last quarter will be interesting, that's for sure. I hope I can get everything I want to do done!

Also I'm sure the stuff I tend to post here is pretty dry, but eh. It's the sort of stuff I feel alright talking about.

I passed the first interview, and will be going, at some point, up to Redmond, WA for another interview! Not only this, but with the Games division. Awesome! Once I get some exact dates I can make travel arrangements and start preparing. I have some things in mind to make sure I read up on before I go up there.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish all my work at the pace I'm at. I finished the final project for one of my classes today, as I'm hoping to use this coming week to finish the other. The rest of my time I'm going to spend on Pep Band, my research, and going up to Washington. Hopefully I get a spring break.

Also I'm finally starting to climb the rankings in Starcraft 2. I'm around rank 32 in Bronze at the moment. There's still a lot of ways for me to improve my game though, so I got my work cut out for me. My biggest problem at the moment is TvT, as Banshees can seriously hurt me if I'm not prepared for them. And I'm not entirely sure how to prepare for them.