When Roy Trubshaw and I worked on MUD1, we saw it as a means of giving people freedomFor players, freedom to do and to be; for us, freedom to make our imaginations real (well, OK, virtual)Most of the early UK virtual worlds that followed had that same sense of idealismAfter our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developers.  

They looked friendly enough--at least, no one had fruit ready to throw at usIt was simply kind of surreal, after reading the comments on TN this past week and hearing other things at the conference about the problems with game studies and developer/academic relations

After our "high energy" presentation, the questions were even strangerSomeone asked why humanities research got left out, and we had to say that we couldn't find it to be directly relevant on our top 10 list of bulleted pointsIan made the point, and I agreed, that doing the research for this panel made us think differently about academic researchWhile I'm not going to say that what we've done personally has no value, it was a definite challenge to try and make it *directly relevant* in a BULLETED POINT for developersAnd there are huge gaps in what we don't knowWhere is the research about sports games, to take just one example? Anyway, the point is, I enjoyed the exercise, and learned a lot from itI hope the audience did as well

But overall, I like to think that the attendance demonstrates that developers are interested in what academics might be able to tell them (again I will point out: no fruit was thrown)And all week, I talked with developers who were interested in what was going on with research, from the smallest to the largest companies

Programming Dynamic Character Animation (With CD-ROM) (Advances in Computer Graphics and Game Development Series) Reviews

This book focuses on the programming needed to create and animate 3D models, and render them using Direct3D or OpenGL hardware accelerationThe book and accompanying CD-ROM describe the full path, starting with source code for a rendering engine and animatorThe engine can be used to render any 3D environment and characters for any game genreMost applications using this rendering engine are automatically compatible with Direct3D, Open GL, and future API plug-insThe book includes a thorough discussion of quaternions, key frame animation, and modeling techniquesThe source code is written in C/C++

KEY FEATURES
* Discusses a skeletal animation system
* Teaches how to build and skin a robotic humanoid model with MilkShape 3D and PaintShopPro
* Describes the entire mathematical path; from a single point in 3D, to complex quaternions
* Describes miscellaneous programming tricks and tools
* Companion CD-ROM includes algorithms, software, and source code to create the rendering engine, the animator, and perform simulations from the examples in the book

The CD-ROM accompanying the book contains all of the software, algorithms, figures, and source code (in ANSI C or C++ compliant) to complete the projects;

* All files needed for the rendering engine
* All files needed for the animation engine
* All files for the OpenGL, and DirectX API wrappers
* MilkShape 3D
* PaintShopPro 7 (trial version)
* Color images from the book

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS PC; Microsoft™ Windows 98 or higher; 32MB RAM; Voodoo3, 3D accelerator or better; OpenGL 1.2 and DirectX 8 support provided; the projects can be compiled with Microsoft Visual C/C++ 6.0.