Grand Theft Auto V

What a nice bunch of people

Grand Theft Auto V was launched today. Rather than queue up at the store at midnight to see the game I took a slightly easier route. Simon set up his copy in our games lab and we had a go over lunchtime. Sometimes I prefer watching other people play games to actually playing them myself, and this was one of those occasions. After a while there was a bunch of us watching Simon as he crashed into buses and managed to land his car on top of another one. Great fun.

What impressed me most was the city of Los Santos. They always say that in GTA games the city is the star, and in GTA V this really is the case. The environment is huge and looks properly alive. When Simon hit the bus head on we could see the driver inside waving his arms and banging his steering wheel in frustration. All that must have been motion captured, encoded and then triggered at the right time.

When you walk round a corner and kick a garbage can down the road you know that someone will have drawn the textures, built the model and given it physics so that it “just works”. If you accidentally punch someone to the ground (it can happen) medics will turn up and try help him. And all this on an old, white, Xbox 360 that must have been one of the first ones they made. Amazing.

Of course there are limitations. You can only enter some of the beautifully drawn buildings, and we did see a tiny amount of “pop-up”of the skyline at one point. But you can’t take away anything from the sheer scale and detail that they have achieved. You can see where over 100 million pounds went.

The gameplay itself is pretty nasty of course. It starts with a botched bank job where just about everyone, including one of the main protagonists, gets shot. And apparently as the story develops you get to kill, maim and torture. Just like the people do in any mainstream TV drama. For me the best innovation is that if you fail a mission three times you can skip on to the next one. So that I really could treat the game as a rather long action movie that I can visit afterwards.

Much has been made of the ability to switch between the three main characters during missions. I haven’t played the game properly so I can’t really comment on that aspect, but it does look interesting.

Every time that another Grand Theft Auto is released people start going on about how this is the one that will make games finally mainstream, that will cause gaming to cross over and takes its place as one of the major entertainment media. I’ve news for you folks. It’s already happened. I’ve been playing computer games for well over thirty years. Pretty much everyone I know of my age does the same. Lots of devices, from bank cash dispensers to car dashboards, have interfaces that have drawn inspiration from the way that games look and feel. Computer games are now part of modern culture. And don’t worry, they are not all as nasty as GTA V, any more than all modern TV is just like Breaking Bad.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the new generation of consoles can do. I’m sure I’ll be in the queue to get hold of the new devices. Or persuading Simon to bring his along so that I can watch him play.

Update on 2013-09-20 10:55 by Rob

So, on the way back from C4DI I bought a copy of the game. Then, having loaded it and played through the intro I headed out in my car, parked up underneath a bridge and spent a while listening to "The Doobie Brothers" and other classic rock tracks on the radio while the sun went down. They even had some Alan Parsons Project stuff. Amazing.

Great to be Back

Actually, it is pretty great to be back in the department. In spite of what my calculator says.

We have shiny new students arriving in a couple of weeks and loads of things to plan and do. We also have new toys to play with and people to meet. I’m really looking forward to it all.

Back to Hull on a shoe string

This is exactly how much holiday money we had left when we got to the airport to fly home.

Jolly Boating Weather

If you are feeling a bit annoyed about my endless parade of photographs of good weather and happy times, please bear in mind that I’m writing this back home on Monday evening and it is cold, dark and raining… But on Saturday it was none of those things, so we went on a little boat trip.

This is the view back up the lake to where we were staying. Torbole is on the right hand side. I bet that bit of rock made a great noise when it fell down.

Nice church

Part of a nice castle

Wind surfers making the most of the excellent conditions.

Lakeside Fun

The bridge has these padlocks all along the railings. Perhaps they symbolise undying love between two people. Perhaps they are from tiny bikes that have been expertly stolen.

Lakeside excavations

Lunchtime macro photography

This is a far better picture than photos taken with a mobile phone have any right to be.

Mountains and Waterfalls

Mountains

Waterfalls

Verona Day

One of the great things about being on holiday is that you don’t have to worry precisely what day it is. As far as we’re concerned, today was “Verona Day”. In other words, we got on a bus and went there.

They have a proper Roman Amphitheatre. Apparently “One Direction” have played in this very place, so we are obviously in an area with a lot of history.

According to local folklore, this is the actual spot where a bunch of nineteenth century marketing men got together and decided that they should get themselves a piece of balcony based “Romeo and Juliet” action.

The evenings here are rather pretty.

Holiday Hill Climbing

 

Today we took a walk along to Riva del Garda, a town just a couple of kilometres from Torbole. Very nice place. Great museum (I like museums) and a castle thingy half way up the hill at the side of the town. The guide book said it was a 20 minute stroll from the centre of the town. Which it is. For Superman.

For us mortals, arriving a somewhat exhausted forty minutes or so after setting off, it was well worth the trip though. I made the picture above from four shots taken with the Lumia 1020.

I also took a few panoramas while I was there.

Speaking Italian Like a Local

The good news is that I can speak Italian like a local. The bad news is that it is a local of East Yorkshire, UK. I’m trying to pick up words where I can, it seems the height of bad manners to expect everyone to learn English just because they might one day want to speak to me.

It is not going too well. I usually have this unnerving habit of speaking French whenever I go abroad. It’s the only foreign language that I know more than a bit of and it sometimes works in France. In Italy it is more of a hindrance though, serving to massively confuse the person I’m speaking to and massively annoy any French people in the room at the time. Oh well, but I did manage to order the right kinds of coffee today, which must count as some kind of progress.

Day 1 in Torbole

We are staying in a lovely little hotel in a place called Torbole, which is at the top of Lake Garda. It is quite a nice place to take photos.

Today we went for a walk along the edge of the lake. The weather was the comfortable side of hot and the light was lovely.

I’m starting to get this holiday thing.

Heading for the Lakes

It’s been a while since I’ve travelled somewhere with the express purpose of doing nothing when I get there. Heading off to Imagine Cup, TechEd, Campus Europe or whatever is always great fun, but there is always that underlying concern that you might not have the right kind of VGA adapter for the Surface in your bag when you get there. And they might not laugh at the jokes.

Anyhoo, today we are setting off for a week in the Italian Lakes. Actually, not in the lakes, that would be silly, but in a carefully selected, economically priced establishment just on the shoreline. Of course, I’ve not completely released my grip on my iron work ethic, there will be blog posts and pictures.

But I’ll do them when I get back.

Hull Freedom Festival

Hull is one of the cities in the running for “City of Culture 2017”. On the showing of the Freedom Festival event we went to today I think it is there already.

It. Was. Awesome.

They had these fluttering flags all around the city centre.

And the museum up town had been suitably decorated.

I’m ashamed to admit that this was my first trip down to the festival. We are not normally around this time of year, but having seen some of the preparations and with a good (but not great) weather forecast we decided to go for it tonight.

I’m so glad we did. Everything was wonderful. You just walked around a corner and there was another great band, playing superb music. We bounced off various stages and I took some pictures.

This is Kirsty Almeida, with her brilliant band. Great jazz singing, amazing musicians.

I’m not sure who these guys are. But by gum they were good. And loud.

And this is acrobatics to a driving African beat.

Around the streets we had some donuts that were cooked before our eyes (and were yummy), went round an art show and visited the Museum of Club Culture who had a special David Bowie exhibition. Then we bought some strawberry sherbet bon-bons a pig shaped bag from the craft stall (not for me) took in a few more acts and headed home.

The festival is on for the rest of the weekend.

Get. Down. There.

Scary Lifts at Campus Party EU

This is the last day of Campus Party down in London. Andy and the crew will be judging the Hackathon Entries and I’m back in Hull. Oh well. Good luck to everyone. And I hope that some of the things that I said on Tuesday (it seems such a long time ago) were useful.

One more story from the experience: We were carrying some stuff back to the “base camp” room with one of the O2 Dome security guys. As we were heading for the lifts the chap was talking about a science fiction film he saw ages ago about this futuristic society. Every year they took the brightest and best of their people and put them in a lift to “ascend to the next level”. Of course there was no next level, just a horrible fate. He finished his story just as he punched the button to close the lift doors.

I made the point that with me as one of the party, everyone was completely safe from anything like that…..

Early Hull

One of the, few, good things about being up town at 6:00 am is that you can take some quite nice pictures this time of year. I took these on Tuesday morning and today I got around to fiddling with them a bit.

Our train to London.

Campus Party EU Day two (for me)

For those of you who that aren’t convinced by the camera in the Lumia 1020 I say Ha! and Ha! again. I’m going to print out an A3 version of this, and I reckon it will look awesome.

I’ve got a confession to make. I’m surrounded by people working through the night, making things and talking tech. And last night at eight thirty in the evening I toddled off to the hotel to watch CSI: NY and turn in. I blame it on my advanced years and the fact I was up at 5:15am yesterday to catch the train here. A poor excuse I know, but I did have enough stamina left to figure out who the killer was A clue: It was mum.

Anyhoo, here are a few more pictures from the event..

A blimp giving some sound advice.

I bought these from a shop here. Sure takes you back..

Awesome quad copter with eyes that can follow you round the room. Literally.

Completely amazing steampunk retro computer.

Picture Puzzle: One of the people in this photograph is wearing a hideous wig. Using your skill and judgement draw a large X over them so that you can’t see them any more.

Rob at Campus Party EU

 
I call this photo “Down in the trainstation at 6:00 am”..

What do Rob and George Osbourne have in common? Well, not a lot as it turns out, which is definitely good news for him. But one thing we do share is that we are both at Campus Party EU today.

I don’t think George did a talk on Windows Phone development though, at least I didn’t see him at mine making notes. I had a great audience of folks who were all keen to have a go at writing something for Windows Phone. There was quite a wide spread of development experience in the audience, so I kind of went for the “broad comedy” approach that seemed to go well enough.

This is the audience being warmed up for me.

And this is Riaz doing the warming.

They have an Xbox one here, not sure what the game is though. The whole thing is great. Like the Hacked.io event I went to earlier this year, but much, much bigger and international. The clue is in the name I guess. A big chunk of the dome is full of people making things, doing stuff and sharing ideas. A lot of fun is being had and good done.

I found this drawn on one of the Whiteboards. Indeed.

For those of you who were at my talk, you can find my Windows Phone App Studio screencasts here. You can find App Studio here. And you can find me in the open area near the Xbox One sitting typing at my Skinned Surface.

Windows Phone Progress Indicator

You might find this useful. If you want a Windows Phone program to show that it is busy, maybe updating content from the network, binding data to a page or emptying a bank account then it turns out this is very easy. All you have to do is create a ProgressIndicator and bind it to the SystemTray.

ProgressIndicator prog; 
protected override void OnNavigatedTo(NavigationEventArgs e)
{
    prog = new ProgressIndicator();
    prog.IsIndeterminate = true;
    prog.IsVisible = false;
    prog.Text = "Leave me alone. I'm busy";
    SystemTray.SetProgressIndicator(this, prog);
}

The code above makes the ProgressIndicator in the OnNavigatedTo method for the page, there are lots of other ways to do this. You can set the colour of the text and background of the display, but I use the default because I’m boring. If you set the IsIndeterminate property to true (as I have above) , this means that you don’t know how long the action will take. If you set this to false you can then use a SetValue method to adjust the size of the bar that is displayed.

Then, when your program is busy it just has to go:

prog.IsVisible = true;

This turns on the busy indicator. I’ve made a tiny demo application which uses two buttons to turn the indicator on and off. You can find it here.

Peter’s 3D Printer

I went out this afternoon to take a look at Peter’s 3D printer. You can find out more about it here. I’ve actually seen it now. It’s awesome. The most impressive thing is that all the parts were designed by Peter and some of them were printed by me. And it works. To the point that the fan mount on the picture above was actually printed by the printer itself.

I made my printer from a kit and I’ve been slowly discovering the best way to get things from a roll of plastic fibre into a useful shape. The learning curve has been steep at times, but what Peter has done is much more tricky. He has had to construct and align all the components himself.

The design of the printer is totally unlike mine. The position of the printing head is controlled by the movement of the three carriages up and down the three pillars. The controlling software drives stepper motors that are connected to cable that is looped around each pillar and pulls the carriages up and down. The great thing about this design is that the head can move really fast, and during printing the item being printed doesn’t move at all. The tricky thing is that printing in straight lines involves all the motors making complex movement (which is not a huge problem, the software does all the tricky maths) but any inaccuracy in the movement will result in straight lines becoming curved or slanted.

Peter has spent a lot of time aligning everything and now he is getting some excellent results. Eventually he will be using his printer to make a whole new one.

This is my favourite view of the printer.

To Infinity and Beyond

Went up town today and bought the “Cars” playset for Disney Infinity. Clearly there is no hope for me.

Lumia 1020 Lunchtime Photos

So I take my Lumia 1020 for a walk at lunchtime and then, on the way back to the office, I snap 5 pictures at different exposures. Today I blend them using Photoatix and I get this. I’m starting to seriously love the camera in this phone.