68..69… and 70

Yea that’s right it took me 3 weeks to make my little firebug a mighty lvl 70.
But that’s not really what i what to rant about, you see i have a little secret, i use windows, and like it, and it’s not because i think it’s the best one, no far from it, windows sucks and the other ones are better.

But here is the catch, they suck even more, even if they are better in some areas.
Linux for instance, great kernel, but it’s designed by geeks for geeks and that makes it slightly complicated to operate, not to mention the lack of unity throughout the system.
Now the mac on the other hand is designed by apple zombies for morons, it has a ui designed for looks rather than sanity, a security policy that is based on the fact they only have like 1% of all systems, and yea, their followers are nuts.

Now don’t get me wrong but, the whole issue about Microsoft stealing ideas from mac os is just wrong, take the whole gadget/widget debacle, wasn’t it apple that stole those from Microsoft, i can distinctly remember those tiny win 3.11 apps you got from computer magazines, and although it wasn’t as integrated as the widgets, they did about the same things, this just proves two things i have been saying all along, 1. creativity is all about knowing what to steal and combine 2. computer software is all about evolution, revolution is no more, that is why it was renamed to something i do in the morning.
I am pretty sure Apple will steal stuff from Vista in Mac OS 11, that fancy 3d version of alt+tab is in jeopardy, so is the Aeroglass theme in some respects.

Now about vista, i wouldn’t recommend it, but i will probably get it for myself (legally even) when i upgrade my computron, The ui looks nice not at all that GGCC (Garish Gloss Coated Crap) stuff apple drops from time to time, it has few of those “lifestyle” applications, just moviemaker, i know it’s cheesy but surprisingly even i can find a use for it.
And even though it’s far from perfect (i am still waiting for IE8 and see if it is any good as IE7 was a bust) i would consider upgrading, but not until just after the first large “whooopsie” upgrade.

Ok, on to other issues, i am finally getting ready to add another OpenGL tutorial, it will be about shadow depth maps, it will be sweet, i am also working on a new game with a “unique” style, if it works out i might pitch it to Sony.

R.I.P Sweden

This Sunday was a tragic day, the alliance – of four right wing parties – won the election, this is bad for everybody but them.
Why? you ask, well it’s simple, they have suggested a lot of drastic changes (over 200 of them) and most of those changes will be implemented by the end of the year.
And for you who don’t know what that means i have a motor cycle metaphor to go with that.
Imagine your on a really fast motor cycle going strait forward at OMG speeds.
Now imagine your suddenly turning 90 degreed to the right, without slowing down or leaning in the curve, that’s maximum hurtage folks, and it’s about to happen to Sweden.

On a positive side though
1. I will probably get a job more easily next year, and to continue on my world domination plan.
2. They only won by just less than 2% witch means that they only got 178 vs 171 seats in the parliament, so the left side can exploit the fact that the other side only need to have 4 absentees or 4 dissidents to win a vote, this actually happens often, in fact a minority can sometimes achieve good results against a “united” majority when it’s this close.

So what is going to happen then, in the future i mean.
And the short answer is, i don’t know.
And with “i don’t know” i mean i don’t know about the stuff that is not OMGWTFPOINES obvious, it is obvious that they don’t have a real plan for moving away from our oil addiction, they don’t have a plan for peak oil, and i don’t think they care either, seriously, Fredrik Rienfeldt – our next PM – said in an interview right after the election “if we don’t meet the economic goals we will not be reelected”, which is true but the correct answer would have been “We will work hard to not let that happen” same thing one might say, but it does tell a little about the intention, what Fredrik is saying is “i don’t care about the result, i just want to do my thing”.
Hmm… interesting, so he doesn’t care, and it is gunning for only one term two at best, well i can’t tell, can anyone really, let me just say that i don’t have any great “faith” in them.

But then again, to me faith is a bad word, and insult even or the eight sin if you lean that way.

spambot menace

Recently this site has been under attack from one or more spambots, i hate them, they have forced me to include various antispam measures, such as the ever popular magic word you have to type in.
Though i have to admit that this version is not that secure, but if they think it’s worth programing a special bot just for my site, well that’s their money they are spending as i can just reprogram my site to follow another behavior.

So spambots, begone with you, if you come here i will resist you.

*Overlord crits the spambots for 2.2K worth of damage.*

Call me uncle

That’s right as the title says, my sister gave birth to a healthy 4kilo lump of a boy a few hours ago (8 to be exact at writing time) witch apparently makes me uncle overlord.

Here are some random pics of the little brat (ok, in all fairness we can’t yet tell if he is a brat or not)

Realtimeish graphics stuff

It has been a slow news month, although E3 sure did impress i thought i write a little about what i have been going for the last month or so.

You see a while ago gamedev.net aquired the rights to Neon Helium productions or NeHe for short.
And with that came the promise to revamp the website and lessons, this is now being done with the help of a handful of community regulars, and this includes me.
Currently we haven’t gotten that far as we are currently discussing things like writing standards and functional specifications of the base code to lesson 1, and on top of that our dev wiki apparently died a day ago, but i hope that soon we will start to get things together an actually produce something.

Now the new lessons won’t be like the previous ones (well ok, some will) but i think that they will rather follow the current developments in real time computer graphics, for instance vertex buffer objects are now on lesson45, this was fine like 5 years ago, but today most if not all software use vertex arrays and vertex buffer objects, so one person suggested that vertex arrays would be moved up to like lesson5 and VBO’s shortly thereafter, i agree on this.

Another thing to consider is the span of hardware people use, on the Nehe forums i have seen everything from the latest of the latest of the most powerful and hardware that was hardly top of the line during the voodoo days (as in 3DFX voodoo, not the religion, but it may as well be that since to run modern stuff on that stuff you will need some real magic).
Now this span is troublesome to game programmers and artists out there since you always want to use thee best of the best and still have as many players as possible, one great indicator of this is World of Warcraft, for all it’s greatness it is still the definition of low poly modeling, they could have done it better.
Instead game developers are now trying to add as many add on effects for people with the graphics power to turn on.
The new lessons will also reflect this need of graphics throttling, i am pretty sure that supersampling, true motion blur and FSAA tuts are needed, but we also need to make sure that whatever can adjust the quality/speed ratio should.
Along this the new lessons should teach the proper way to do things according to the strengths and weaknesses of modern graphics accelerators.

To tell you the truth, i am a bit exited about this, NeHe is a pretty popular place and whatever we produce it will have an impact on a lot of new openGL based software, in fact it will have a slight effect on how real time graphics are developing, this has an undeniably great coolness factor to it.
It would be cool if ATI and NVIDIA started to request custom lessons from us, or if the ARB asked us to write a new extension or two.

And on an related issue, tutorial 03 (HDR) is in the works, but don’t hold your breath just yet, i need to build and texture some custom geometry first to really show the power of normal mapping, tut 02 a-c will also get updated geometry, textures and normal map as soon as i complete the high def base mesh of around 10 million polygons.

Working in the quiet

I’m all vented and have nothing to write, and i have a good reason for it, but that’s a secret project i have and I’ll tell you about it when i am nearly finished.

But i do have a few things to vent about, I finally got out of the ping pong game over at AMS and i am finally getting some money, unfortunately I’m still unemployed and that just sucks.
And as a part of being unemployed i have as an side effect way to much free time on my hands.
So I’m spending it on several projects i have, one of them is the secret project i mentioned on the top, i won’t mention them, but the other ones are.

Been working on better technology for my Coldfire Engine.
Been working on a better exporter for Coldfire, got stuck like you never believe it.
Worked on a top down space shooter called f-wing
Played solitaire, bejeweled 2, and a lot of it.
Worked on an idea for a new bejeweled style game, it might still make it.
Been working on a heavy space carrier model for f-wing with normal maps and everything.
Been working towards making a demo with Coldfire, but I’m not there yet.
Been lifting weights, getting results to.
Started typing up some semi advanced openGL tutorials based on the NeHe series, when i get to a couple of them i will post them.

On to the next subject, anime.
Believe it or not but the spring season is here and there is some fine anime coming out of of the land of cat torture and karaoke bars, like Kyou no Go no Ni, Himawari and last but not least Disgaea which is always a sure bet.
There is a lot more coming, new episodes are coming in faster than i can watch them, currently i got 43 episodes in my unseen folder and i just saw a few more new series on baka updates, when will it end, never i hope.

E3 is approaching and it does look like the console war is going from cold to hot this year, the PS3 is going to be (hopefully) released this November and still nothing from Sony, in fact most of the press the PS3 has gotten is all a part of the wake behind last years press conference, and sony said nothing since then (beside the approximate release date).
So what is going to happen with the PS3 from now to it’s release.
At E3 they are gonna spare nothing and tell it all, sort of, lot’s of video footage, maybe even some in game and it could even be playable at E3, though it will probably be one of the fake ones like the X360 last year.
Lot’s of games will be announced, last years E3 has like 15-20 games in the show reel, but i wouldn’t be surprised if the game count would top 100 this time.
Even so, more will be announced this summer.
Sony will start airing ads sometime during this fall, this campaign will reach it’s climax around Christmas (earlier in japan), and at the same time the release games will be announced, they will be a part of Sony’s campaign.
Finally, one week before release in the respective regions Sony will air adds that will be unprecedented in length, they will rock your mind and you won’t be able to ignore them.
It’s all a part of making sure to steal the thunder from X360, but don’t worry Sony, you managed to do that at last years E3.

I’m waiting Sony, blow my mind.

H5N1: death from above

So this has been my week so far.
Within 24 hours of my last post i got the flu, or something worse, since my immune system is top notch it has to be something like H5N1 or possibly the Ebola virus
So the last week my body has felt like Peter Stormare just un-pimped my auto, and with auto i mean my body.

In other news conroe is released, and frankly its preformance shocked not only me but others to, anandtech.com had to redo the tests to be sure of the results they where getting, 20% more performance than AMD64 X2 with a clock speed about 133MHz higher, just wait until the 3GHz model comes, way to go Intel.

Also Nvidia regained the throne it lost to the x1900XTX(way to many x-es fore my taste) a few weeks ago with their new GF7900GTX, if ever so slightly though.
I still think the g80(or nv50 if you prefer) will be as much a revolution as the NV40 was, but we will just have to wait and see.

I have been thinking of putting a few advanced openGL tutorial series here, the first one will be about FBO, then possibly GLSlang shading.
But it has to wait to at least after my head stops feeling like i just had a lobotomy with a rusty nail.

And Finally, I don’t know how many times i and my peers will have to repeat this.
RIAA, MPAA, IFPI and all the other DRM-loving necrophiliacs i have one thing to say, DRM doesn’t work, it never has, never should and it never will.
Just because your eternally flawed DRM anti copying mechanisms can kill people doesn’t mean they should.

Rebirth is imminent

Ok last time i said that is was currently doing a slight redesign of the site, it turns out that i sort of kinda went a bit to far when i did that, it’s now a complete redesign, but no worries it’s better now, grayer, but better, it’s even IE compatible (by accident).

The comment system is also operational (but only on the redesigned site), you can comment on every post here, even previous ones, it can even take bbcode and stuff.
You could even comment now if you had the link to the test site that is, but don’t expect them to last as i will purge all posts when the site goes live.

The site is almost done, i got a few bugs to iron out, convert and upgrade the admin system, and finally transfer all the old content to the new site system, but not before i redesign it though (internally they will now become special blog posts).
This is so i can update stuff on those pages (+ blogposts) without the use of an ftp client and a lot of hazzle.

Moving on.
A new anime season is here with lot’s of new great anime series, it’s looking good, but it’s still early an only a few have actually aired and even fewer are available on fansub, so i have to get back to you on this, bit it’s looking good.
Also next season in April we get a real treat, The Disgaea anime, i don’t know what you think but all i have to say is “nin nin nin”.

Last but not least, im thinking about letting more people in here, to actually write stuff, mail me if your interested.
Also, to anyone who dares, i want logo graphics, different ones for every day, there are only 4 things i want you to keep in mind, correct size and format(png), work safe images only, it has to say Flashbang.se, and finally the corners must be beveled with the right colors(the right side is a bit grayer) like this first one i made.
it doesn’t have to be anime related though, just check the logo-02.png

Annual endgame

It’s the end of the line, well for this year anyway.
So i thought id’ look back on the year that was, the good, the bad, the 1337 and the ugly.

The good

- Real fiber broadband rulez, i am now officially an LPB.
- The war against piracy, pirates lots, anti pirates still 0.
- F.E.A.R – great game, play it, i command you.
- WoW – although it was launched last year, one year of wow has been good to the gaming world, it is truly the best acronym for this game.
- Battlefield 2 – better than it’s predecessor (naturally), and i also hope to work for the guys who did it.
- Star Wars episode 3, finally it’s complete.
- Got a lava lamp, it brings me joy.
- Stargate SG1 got a tenth(Atlantis a third) season, yay.
- Finally no more school, now i can go to work.
- Bush is finally starting to feel some heat for what he has done.
- The tsunami and the quake in Pakistan may be bad, but it did bring out the best in us, personally i didn’t donate, but it’s because the best in me is my evil part, muahahahahaha.
- Israel vs Palestine is finally going the right way, although Israel doesn’t seem to want to play that game, indirect sustained fire against Gaza might be fun, but you don’t create buffer zones inside other nations, you do it in your own nation.

The bad

- Got a lava lamp, it brings me joy, i need a date, now!
- Finally no more school, now i can go to work, just need to find work.
- Sweden’s new filesharing laws, it’s starting to reek a little of DMCA here.
- Enterprise got canceled, shame paramount give us more star trek.
- Duke nukem forever, it really does take forever.
- I had multiple computer failures, two mobos, a few HD’s and a cpu fan, i need a new comp.

The 1337

- PS3, i have never seen a whole room of my fellow classmates get a Cg porn orgasm from watching a crappy gamespot live feed from E3, until the Sony PS3 unveiling that is, iz gonna be sweet.
- Xbox360, sweet console, but not at sweet as the PS3, more like the dream cast and we all know what happened to that.
- The Nintendo revo(revolution), the console itself is surprisingly dramatically not sweet, but the controller is, mostly because it looks like a sex toy, gg Nintendo.
- PSP, not only did the Playstation roundhouse kicked the Nintendo console just like Chuck Norris, now Sony does the same thing to the gameboy, but the DS did win an award for most perverse console according to VG cats, hmm, i see a pattern emerging here.
- GF7800GTX 512 – i want one or more, dual core processors – them to, cell – I’m getting a PS3 so i will get four of them.

The ugly

- Sony DRM, what where you thinking with, i can bypass it without even thinking and it ass rapes other peoples computers, DRM WILL NEVER EVER WORK!!!!.
- APB, these guys are pathetic, they break the law, they make people hate them, and they think they are doing good, and they get pwnd every time.
- Henrik Pontén, the front figure previous organization, Sweden’s most hated man, right after Bert Karlsson.
- Sam the dog died, and boy was he ugly.
- Windows Vista, i liked the longhorn name better and some design decisions like the crippled openGL, the DRM crap, DX10 and other misc crap. It makes me wanna get a mac, and there is no one on this planet that hates macs more than me. I think perhaps i gonna try Linux once more, but Linux needs to get a grip and clean things up before it can compete with windows.
- Jack Thompson, he is the kind of guy that if someone killed him, froze his body, cut him up in little pices and then used them to stab little children to death, it would still be a justifiable homicide.

Phew, lot’s of typing, fingers are hurting.
In the next post(or the one after that depending on the collective of fuckheads in this world) i will talk about my future predictions for 2006 and beyond.

Finally some advice for everyone, get some exercise, having a pasta/pizza/cola diet + 0 exercise for 6 months + insomnia + a nasty cold is not good for you, i learned this the hard way.

The bliss of glass

OK, the the first question that might pop up when you see this header is, what the fuck does glass have to do with bliss?
Well it’s not because it is what you should drink beer from, no i am talking about a high speed fiber optic Internet connection, or the process of sending obscene amounts of data at no time at all trough a single glass fiber at the speed of light.
And i got it installed yesterday, actually i got it installed from the beginning of this summer to about today, they took their sweet time and it’s not perfect yet.
Yesterday i only got a top speed of about 150 Kb/s witch is about an eight of the full speed, and today as i am writing this they are having huge problems, the connection is sporadic at best and it is only able to at best load the top portion of a page before it craps out for a while.
But despite that i got too experience some bliss at least, while pumping lot’s of data trough bittorrent and watching TV on the Internet i went surfing the web and still had bandwidth to spare.

OK now over to another bliss, or Blizz in this case.
Blizzcon came and went this weekend and a few things came of it.

1.l33t footage and information on their new expansion pack for wow.
2.The confirmation that they have at least two secret projects in the machinery.

Not that i am surprised or anything, but the way they revealed this was kinda funny, apparently they opened up a beta registration for an yet to be announced game, OK that’s one, but the other one came a bit out of the blue with them saying “this sign-up may no be for the next beta test” or in human speak “depending on how things progress with this game our other game might go beta before this one”.
Now what is this game that they had a beta sign up for let’s examine the facts.

1.Traditionally blizzard has always had one game that is announced and released but undergoing patch work, one game that is announced and about to be released, one secret one they are working on + at least one on the drawing board.
2.We know that it might take some time to make since another game may overtake it in the development process, this suggests a larger game.
3.Starcraft:ghost has taken it’s sweet time, why, could it be to make content for another game as well.
4.Warcraft 1-3 + wow, Diablo1-2, Starcraft 1 + ghost, might it be in order to make another Starcraft and then a Diablo.
5.Some of the recent screen shots from SC:ghost are interesting, they show large outdoor sceneries, they are of to low a quality to be rendered stuff (as blizzard normally do) and this scenery is not what i expect from ghost, maybe it’s some kind of in game movie or something i don’t know

So what can we conclude for this ragtag collection of extremely weak circumstantial evidence.
Um not much, there seem to be another RTS game on it’s way and perhaps and another MMORPG.
One being a Diablo and the other one a Starcraft, and from my experience i can assume that the RTS will be Diablo3 and the MMORPG is World of Starcraft.
Mostly because WoD (world of Diablo) would be to similar to WoW and the geometry files and textures created for Ghost is more suitable for an MMORPG than a RTS.
But then again they could just pull a rabbit out of their ass and do something completely new but this is unlikely because they are game developers and thus they take the easy path.
But it would be kinda fun to see a MMORPG remake of the lost vikings.

And as always here is a message to Blizzard, if you need help, you know were to find me.