Normal Map Information

This paper on real-time normal map compression, written by J.M.P. van Waveren and Ignacio Castaño, is a great read for everybody who wants to deepen their fundamental understanding of normal maps. The paper fully explains a whole bunch of issues with normal maps that I only touched on in my 2007 GDC talk, and contains a lot of details that I didn’t know about yet. Highly recommended reading for all technical artists and grpahics programmers.

Darth Vader Feels Blue

The extended version of this touching moment includes scenes that you didn’t see in theaters.

Monthly Hike: Sonoma Overlook Trail

For all its beauty and tourist appeal, Sonoma has an embarrasingly small number of public hiking trails (especially when compared to Marin County). Most of the land is privarely owned by vinyards, and the mountains that surround the valley are closed off to hikers. Sonoma Overlook Trail is one of the few trails that isn’t only open to the public, but is well maintained and advertised in various brochures. It’s a relatively short hike up Schocken Hill, close to the town square. The town graveyard is adjacent, and there’s an alternative way that leads through the old cemetery. The hiking is nice, and once you get to the top, you get a good 270 degree view of the town of Sonoma and the San Pablo Bay.

Victoria and I haven’t found much time to go hiking in recent weeks, and the month of February was completely rained out. So even though we’d hiked the Overlook Trail many times before, I decided to use the beautiful weather last Sunday for another visit, trusty iPhone in hand (which means crappy pictures). Here’s a few impressions from the trip.

Silent Reviews

• Rhythm Heaven – Yes
• Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist – No
• I Love You, Man – Yes
• GDC – Yes

Always Remember The Passion

As I was driving home the other day, The Almighty iPod Shuffle decided to take me on a serious nostalgia trip. After serenading me with a megamix of terrible songs from the early 90s (it turns out that I am not “too sexy for my car”), the “Travel Theme” from Ultima V: Lazarus came on. The Travel Theme, for those who don’t know, was specifically written for the Amiga port of Ultima V, and it was the only piece of music included with that version of the game. So the music looped when playing the game – over and over and over again.

Ultima V for the Commodore Amiga wasn’t a great conversion. It was over two years late (part VI had already been released for the PC, significantly advancing the state of the art); its primitive EGA tile graphics looked positively outdated at this point; and it lacked all musical variation found on the other computer systems, featuring that one single song instead. Oh, and it was copy protected! Ultima V on the Amiga came on two nastily protected 3 ½ inch disks, and it saved the only possible savegame on that very same, non-backupable disk! I’ve never been so afraid for my game progress in my life.

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Silent Reviews

• Sisterhood Of The Travelling Pants 2 -  Surprisingly Yes (as much as a guy can like it…)
• Futurama – Into The Green Yonder – Yes
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Blu-ray) - Yes

I’m going to stop posting about weekly TV unless it’s a big TV event (season opener/ending etc.), and only focus on media that’s readily available. We’ll see if there’s enough content to keep these reviews going (they’re already pretty content-free anyway, aren’t they?)