Creature of the week: Quanazillicus

The Quanazillicus prefers to go by Quana, for short.

Spore Creature Creator is here

I've been surprised the last couple of days just how excited I was about the Spore Creature Creator (released today). So I downloaded it the minute I got home from work, and I've been playing with it for hours. As expected, it's tons of fun. A stripped down version is available for free (you should definitely check it out), and you can get the full version, complete with hundreds of creature parts, for $9.99.

Unfortunately, the full version for Mac won't be available until tomorrow. Not sure why the delay, but I suppose I can handle it. If you're interested in how it works, there are thousands of videos and tutorials on YouTube (the creator allows you to post videos of your creations).

I'll avoid elaborating further (you can read a good overview here) and simply tell you again to go download at least the free version. All your creations can be made available to populate other players' universes when the full game comes out in September. For inspiration, check out a few of the creatures I've made today.

3D without (extra) headgear

Not much on the game development front to report today. I've been doing some modeling in preparation for my next project (or at least a pilot test of some concepts). Progress is slow so far. Even with a decent shortcut for character modeling, there's still a lot to learn. The hardest part has been keeping the model simple and clean so it doesn't have too many polygons and will deform properly once it gets into the game. Character design is quite tricky.

Regarding the title of this post, I saw an article this morning about a new television technology that can simulate 3D video without goggles. It basically sends two signals to the screen for every frame -- one contains the image itself, and the other contains a grayscale version of the image, which conveys the depth information. The grayscale image is used by a thin layer of...something...laid over the screen that tricks the eye into seeing depth where there isn't any. That's right, no 3D headgear required (except the round ones you've already got).

In addition to sounding quite cool, it struck me that this technology is reminiscent of bump mapping in games, which uses a similar grayscale image to trick your eye into thinking there's more detail on an object than there really is.

I think there's some amazing stuff coming in the next few years in computer interaction (multi-touch technology) and entertainment technology. It's hard to imagine the kinds of games we'll be playing in another five years, or on what kind of screen.