I have recently received my Oculus Rift CV1, and I’d like to document my first impressions of it.

I haven’t used any other virtual reality hardware at all, except for some of those 3D glasses and very basic head mounted displays that were available years ago.

Even during setup of the Oculus, while I was configuring the location of the sensor, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the sense of presence that the Rift produces. During the Dream Deck Demoscenes, this sense of prescence was truly astounding.

In fact, I had to skip one demo that was set on a ledge on the side of a tall building, due to a genuine discomfort and fear of heights. That is a level of immersion that I have never felt in a game before, and it’s something you could never get from playing on a screen.

In addition to setting up Torque 3D and making my current projects Virtual Reality compatible, I have been exploring some of the other apps and games available on the rift.

The main one would be EVE: Valkyrie. The “launch” scene in this game, when the player is first introduced to the cockpit, and catapulted from the carrier ship into space, is  one of the greatest “wow” moments that I have ever had in a game, and it really impressed upon me the genuine feeling that VR is something different. This is something that is going to be big, because you just don’t get that “wow” factor on a screen.

Being able to look around the cockpit as the lights come on, and then seeing the inside of the carrier, and finally seeing the relative safety of the cramped launch tube disappear as your ship is propelled into the vastness of space, provokes genuine presence and awe. I found myself having to stare straight ahead in order to play the game for some time, since I found looking around made me genuinely uneasy.

I also noticed that at several points while using the rift, I instinctively reached my hands out in an attempt to interact with what was happening on the screen. I knew that the Rift currently has no “touch” controller, but it just feels like such a natural thing to do, you feel like you are “in” the game, and you don’t think to use a controller.

Initially, I felt that “touch” controllers were an important accessory, but an accessory nonetheless. Having used the Rift, I now believe very strongly that touch controllers are an absolutely vital part of the VR experience. To be able to interact with the world by physically moving your hands is essential to maintaining the presence and the immersion in the game world. Using a gamepad or, worse, a keyboard and mouse, would be like buying an expensive car and driving it by sitting in the back seat and shouting directions to the driver. You might get to where you’re going, but you won’t enjoy the ride.

Another point that is shared with the Rifts main competitor, the HTC Vive, is the significant dearth of content for these headsets. I spend time looking through the Steam and Oculus stores and had difficulty finding a game that I wanted to play. There were only a handful of titles that really interested me. I also noticed that most of the titles that were available were from small or independent gaming companies. There’s nothing at all wrong with this, my own work is in the independent gaming sector, and we are in the very early stages of virtual reality. What concerns me, however, is the possibility that the big-name companies are not investing in VR yet because the market is so small. They may be waiting for the second or even third generation of VR headsets to be available, hoping that at that point VR will be cheap enough that a significant customer base will exist.

The problem with this thinking is that I feel, personally,that without a significant investment from Triple-A, Big name games companies, VR may yet fizzle out. It is very much a fledgling industry at this point, and despite my love for independent gaming, I don’t feel it is enough to grow the VR industry. Big budget developers really need to start producing content for VR, at a loss if necessary, in order to encourage adoption of the technology. It would be considered an investment for the future, since I do feel this could be a major player in the future.

On a similar note, I have been looking much more favourably to less expensive VR Heatsets like the Playstation VR. The specs are obviously not going to match the two Rift or the Vive, but with their low cost, they are likely to sell better, and therefore attract more people to the industry, which in turn will drive developers to create more content.

With regards to creating content for VR, I think it is important to design the content specifically for VR, rather than designing the game for a gamepad or keyboard and mouse, and adding VR support after the fact. The latter is tempting, since Unity and Unreal Engine both make VR integration to a project very quick and simple. The problem with this is that conventional control interfaces don’t tend to work too well in VR. This is particularly true when rotating the player. With most first person games, or even third person games, the player is allowed to rapidly turn their character at the push of a button. However, this kind of motion can very often lead to “Sim sickness” in virtual reality. This is due to the same factors that cause motion sickness in a car, the eyes perceive the body to be moving, but the inner ear does not perceive movement, and this dissonance triggers feelings of nausea.

With a game designed for Virtual Reality, the player should be able to look and turn using the headset itself (which means the information from the eye and inner ear will match), or there will be other changes made to the control system to accommodate VR, and reduce the chances of inducing sim sickness. Some games, such as “The Vanishing of Ethan Carter” feature some variation of a “comfort mode” designed to reduce the effects of movement on the player. Even with a “comfort mode” it is clear that VR games need to be designed from the ground up to be VR games, it is not sufficient to simply port a non-VR game.

To summarise, I do believe that VR is here to stay. I think that once the content is there, VR will become a standard fixture in gaming, and it is very, very exciting to imagine the possibilities that VR games can explore. This is what myself, and many games dreamed of growing up, of not just “playing” the game, but “being there”. The Rift, as I said, provides this feeling, this sense of presence, that I have never felt before in a game. I still can’t handle more EVE:Valkyrie for more than a few minutes at a time, and I have to remind myself to “not look down”. Investing in VR right now, as a developer creating content or a consumer buying a headset, is a gamble, as with any new technology, but it must be considered an investment into a future that could bring the “Wow” back into gaming.

The post Oculus Rift: First Impressions first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have been intrigued by several of the very innovative horror games released recently. Some of these are designed for the Oculus Platform (Slender: The Arrival, Alien Isolation) and some are not (Five Nights at Freddy’s, Emily Wants to Play). These games are very often developed by independent or small-scale studios or individuals, and often feature very unique gameplay.

Despite their success, they can also tend to be quite simple. Alien:Isolation is an obvious exception to this, since it isn’t an indie game, but even it relies on somewhat non-standard gameplay, ie, instead of fighting enemies, the player must generally hide, or outsmart them.

Games like Five Nights at Freddy’s and Emily wants to play involve no combat at all. I think this greatly amplifies the sense of fear and helplessness. I remember playing F.E.A.R and I found the sections without combat more frightening. Removing firearms from the game basically removes the players ability to defend themselves, and I think this has a strong psychological effect on a player, and changes how they see the game. If a player is armed, they feel like they are in control, if they are unarmed, they are helpless.

Most big-budget games, horror games included, follow a fairly similar pattern, they are essentially either shooters or “survival horror” games. FEAR, Doom, Resident Evil, Dead Space, etc all follow this pattern.

However, independent game developers are not forced to follow the same pattern simple because it sells well, they are free to come up with new and innovative ideas.

This is why I feel the Oculus Rift, and VR headsets in general, can be a great boon to gaming, since in many ways it levels the playing field. Computer gaming, with the possible exception of mobile gaming, is dominated by a small number of big companies, which tend not to take huge risks with regards to gameplay or innovation.

The rise of VR gaming could create a new avenue for gaming, which, for a time at least, should allow all developers to have a blank slate with which to rewrite the rules of how games are created and played. This could be very good for the industry.

The post Horror Gaming on the Oculus Rift first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have been thinking about the concept of Simulated Reality for some time now. I came across this idea from reading the wikipedia article on it. It is closely related to the simulation hypothesis.

Basically, the idea is that is it possible to create a computer simulation that is indistinguishable from the real world, and that the liklihood is that we are currently living in such a simulation.

Firstly, is such a simulation possible? I believe it is. Look at how far we have come technologically in just a few decades. We have gone from Pong to Call of Duty, and from simple text-based MUD’s (Multi-User Dungeons) to World of Warcraft. 50 years is a completely insignificant amount of time in universal terms. What kind of computer simulations will we be able to run in 100 years? or 1000 years? Or 100,000, or 1,000,000? I think that given out current rate of advancement, developing the capability to create a simulation indistinguishable from the real one is only a matter of time.

The logic as to why we are probably living in such a simulation is quite simple. Humanity has only been around for a heartbeat, compared to the life of the universe. We have also only explored a fraction of our universe. It is reasonable to think that somewhere out there, in the vastness of space, there are a large number of intelligent civilisations. Given the age of the universe, it is quite probable that a great many of these civilisations are at a significantly more advanced state than ours.

If we assume that a civilisation with a sufficient level of technology will create these types of simulations, and we we assume that such a simulation is possible to create at any technological level, then it is far more likely that we are currently the ones being simulated rather than the ones who will eventually create the simulation.

But how would a simulation like this be created?  Is it even possible, for even an advanced civilisation? We have advanced computer games today, but even though they look quite realistic, they are certainly not at the point where one would mistake them for reality.

I think that fundamentally, our universe is just a very large number of particles. If we could create a computer that could store the position and velocity of every particles in our universe, then we could create a simulation of that universe which would be indistinguishable to it’s simulated inhabitants.
Think of it like a snooker player preparing to take a shot. If you know the position and velocity of every ball on the table, and you know the variables affecting the que, such as impact velocity, angle, etc, and you know the variables affecting the environment, such as surface friction, air resistance, etc, then you can predict the position of every one of those balls with exceptional accuracy, from the moment the que strikes the first ball, to the moment that the balls come to rest.
Obviously, simulating the entire universe would be vastly more complex, and would require a level of complexity far beyond anything we can even imagine, but given our rapid advanced in computing technology in the few years we have been on this Earth, I would not be at all hasty to rule out a computer like this.

This idea would encompass some fields of modern quantum mechanics, especially the Grand Unified Theory, and the Theory of Everything.

One problem with this theory is the idea of “nested” simulations. If we assume that the amount of processing power required to simulate a universe is given by the variable X, and we assume we construct a computer with just enough processing power, what happens if the blissfully unaware inhabitants of that system run their own simulation of their universe, not realising it is a simulation itself? That universe, remember, is a 100% accurate simulation of our universe, so it should require the same processing power to simulate. If the inhabitants of the simulated universe create their own computer to simulate their universe, then the original computer (in the “real” world) is now simulating two universes: the first simulated universe, and another nested simulation in that universe with the same level of complexity, simulating it’s own parent universe.

This means that the original computer would actually require X + X processing power, or 2X, but it only has X processing power available, just enough for one simulation. Does this break the theory?

I believe that it does not, for two reasons.

Firstly, it is possible that the original simulation is an “ancestor” simulation, IE, it only simulates a time period from the past, before the technology existed to create advanced simulations. Therefore, a nested simulation would not be possible.
Secondly, it is possible that an infinite number of nested simulations could be run without increasing the processing load on the original computer in the real world. How? Well, assuming that the original variable X is the processing power required to simulate the position and velocity of every particle in the universe. This means that when the inhabitants of this simulation build their computer, they are merely rearranging the particles which are already being simulated. When that nested simulation is run, the electrons running through it’s wires are merely particles whose variables, position and velocity, are being updated in the parent simulation. It really doesn’t matter what configuration they are in, the processing requirements from the parent computer will be the same. Again, think of the snooker table example. I can place the snooker balls on that table in any number of different configurations, change the position, angle, and power of the snooker cue in any number of ways, but the complexity of my snooker table simulation doesn’t change, since the variables themselves are only changing, not becoming more complex. Since I am not adding any new snooker balls, the complexity doesn’t change.
The same should be true for nested simulations running within a parent simulation.

Another problem with this method of simulating the universe would be the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle states, essentially, that it is not possible to know with certainty both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle. If this were to hold true, it would not be possible to simulate even a single atom with absolute certainty, since the position and velocity of it’s component parts could not be known with certainty.
However, I believe that if a civilisation had advanced to the state where a computer powerful enough to simulate an entire universe could be built, that civilisation would have access to a level of knowledge of physics that our society can only dream of. It is quite possible that the reason why we are limited by the uncertainty principle is due to our current physical models being incomplete, or incorrect. Scientists have only recently begun exploring the quantum world and it’s many exciting discoveries, and it is a strange place. Theories are often found to be wildly inaccurate, and are thrown out, or modified. Sometimes impossible things become possible, and perfectly reasonable things turn out to be impossible. I don’t think that anything “Banned” by our current knowledge of physics, such as the processing power required by a computer, or the inability to precisely know the position and velocity of particles, should preclude us from considering the possibilities of a world without those limits.
It would be quite possible for a simulation to be run by a civilisation with knowledge of a “Theory of Everything” which simulates a society like ours, which does not have that knowledge. It is quite possible therefore, for a simulation using an inaccurate or outdated physical model to be run within a simulation which uses an accurate, complete one.

I have always been interested in virtual worlds and artificial worlds of all types, and so the simulated reality theory naturally captivated me. We will not advance to the stage where we can create our own realistic universe simulations in our lifetimes, of course. However, could it be possible that we are just variables being modelled in a computer somewhere? Could the very nature of our reality be just a simulation? If it is, does that make our reality any less “real”?

I have manged to avoid mentioning a certain popular Science Fiction movie in this article so far, but I feel that a quote is appropriate here:

“What is real?
How do you define real?
If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

That is of course a quote from the Matrix.

I would go even a step further than that. Reality, at it’s most basic level, is just a particle simulation. We already have simulations to predict weather, the effects of a nuclear explosion, and the outcome of complex physical processes. I see no reason why a sufficiently powerful computer, armed with an advanced knowledge of quantum physics, could not simulate an entire universe, and the intelligent beings therein.

We may all be no more than variables in a vast computer, our lives nothing more than the execution of a computer process. our reality just a simulation, possibly among many, worlds within worlds, each creating worlds of their own, each believing that they are the creator and not the created.

The post Simulated Reality first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

While researching new ideas and concepts for procedural content in games recently, I remembered a game that I played a long time ago, which had exceptional graphics but took up only a few kilobytes of space, games are made to entertain people, and that’s why content is important and people like to play games to have fun with friends, for people that are not that much into video games, there are other games they can play, you can find The best list out there of simple games to play with friends.

The game was called .kkrieger, and it was actually created as part of the famous “Demoscene” community. Demoscenes are essentially where small groups of programmers, graphics artists, and musicians create a small demo of their work, designed to show off their technical or artistic skill. .kkrieger won the 2004 “96k game” competition at “Breakpoint” a German demoparty.

This means that, yes, .kkrieger, in it’s entirety, is less than 96 kilobytes in size! This game has sound, excellent graphics, multiple weapons, enemies, and rooms, as well as lighting, shading, and textures. How is this possible?

They team responsible for .kkrieger made extensive use of procedural techniques in the game. Instead of creating art assets using a modelling tool, and loading them into the games engine, they created simple shapes (spheres, cylinders, etc) in code, and then used an algorithm to modify those shapes, to create some quite advanced models. Essentially, they wrote an algorithm which automatically “box models” a weapon, character, or room.

This just goes to show the awesome power of procedural content, if all of that can result in a game being reduced to less than 100 kbs!

One of the limitations of this approach however is the very long load times of the game, it takes several minutes for a relatively simple game to fully load. This is due to all of the processing that must be done by the procedural algorithms to create the object data. The game also ran slowly on my laptop, and didn’t run at all on my desktop, although this could have been due to compatibility issues, the game was created ten years ago.

One of the other interesting things about the game is that is comprised of nothing more than a single executable. Since all of the games art, (including textures) and sound assets are created procedurally, it does not have any other files at all. This means that it’s game engine, or whatever rendering code it is using, must be statically linked into the executable, to avoid having to load a separate .dll or .lib file.

This is tricky to do. I have some experience with OpenGL and DirectX, and static linking  and releasing executables without supplying .lib and .dll files can often cause errors and issues.

The wikipedia entry on .kkrieger is HERE. It features a screenshot, although lacks detail about the technical achievements of the game. The game’s official site seems to be no longer available, although an archive version is HERE. The game can still be downloaded from the archive using THIS link.

I am reluctant to post screenshots or the game itself here, since I don’t own it, but the above links, or  simple google search, should provide plenty of images. The game looks far better than many games of it’s day, which is an amazing accomplishment given the small file size of the .exe.

The post Procedural Content in Games: .kkrieger first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

In addition to the low-level work I have done with the physics concept, I have also been working on  a high-level specification for this project. I have decided to create a virtual world with an emphasis on realism. I intend to model such variables as hunger, thirst, sleep, shelter, and hypo- and hyper- thermia. The player would be spawned in a random location of a large free world, and their primary aim would be to survive as well as they can. The variables of the world are based in a large part on Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, which outlines the physical, social, and self-actualising needs of every human being. The object of the world then is not just to keep your avatar alive, but to thrive as a complete person, similiar to real life.

To achieve this level of realism, I will need to depart from traditional RPG’s in many respects.Death, for example, will be either permanent, requiring the player to create a new character and start the game from scratch, or will feature some lengthy time penalty before they can reenter the world. Character will need to sleep for realisitic periods of time. I am thinking of a 1:4 ratio between real world time and game time, which means 1 hour real time will equal four hours of game time. To allow a character to sleep for long enough to be completely refreshed, a player will therefore have to wait at least two full hours, a big difference from the brief screenfade of most rpg’s.

The world will be filled with the ingredients for survival, minerals, raw materials, plants, trees, and animals. The player will need to learn to survive as our ancestors did. They would begin with no tools or equipment, and would have to find food by foraging for berries, drinking water from streams, etc. They would then learn how to use sharpened stick to dig for edible roots, or to fashion spears to hunt for small game animals. They could create pots or jugs from certain kinds of earth, and use them to store or boil water, allowing them to travel further from water sources. They would then develop the ability to make shelter, clothing, and more complex food. Eventually, they could construct much more advanced structures and even vehicles. This is where the physics concept that I am working on now would come in. Players could travers the world far more quickly and easily with a vehicle than on foot.

The game would be multiplayer, however the intended spareness of the world would create a very different dynamic to most multiplayer games. Most social networks and multiplayer games aim to make it as easy as possible for players to meet and communicate. Users are bombarded with useless information in the form of “likes”, “shares” and “tags”. By bucking this trend, I hope to create a place where communciation has great value, and interactions carry more meaning. Contrast receiving a hand-written letter with a “like” on a status that you posted.

Players would meet up with other players, form parties and bands to aid in each others survival. Other players would discover them, and then others, and in time, settlements, towns, and villages would form. This would be the beginnings of a virtual society. The project could be a case-study of human civilisation, and human interactions.

I don’t want to clude player vs player conflict in the game, at least not at the moment. I feel this would seriously and adversly affect the dynamic of the game, and turn it into a “shooter” type game. Players would never know who to trust, and it would ruin the social aspect. Instead, I intend to represent conflict by including AI-controlled enemies

The game will feature an extensive character creator, as well as an advanced chat and user interaction system. I also intend to include many elements derived from the old MUD’s (Multi User Dungeons, text-based precursors to todays graphical RPG’s) which will allow characters to delve much more deeply into the fabric of the world. Instead of just a graphical avatar, players will hae access to a complex character bio, with user-editable and non-editable components. The player will be able to establish and modify a backstory, a complete fiction for their character and their interactions with the world and with other players. The non-editable section would contain information about the players current state (healthy, injured, sick, etc) their deeds and achievements, and possibly information regarding their reputation. In this way, a lot more information can be learned about a character than could ever be contained in a graphical avatar alone, even in an expensive modern RPG.

The post P-152: Virtual World Concept Update 5 first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

Aeroponics is the growing of plants or crops in air, as opposed to soil, or water (such as in hydroponics). It works by suspending crops in a tank containing a nutrient rich solution. This solution is then sprayed onto the crops at regular intervals (In Hydroponics, the crops are actually immersed in the solution).

Both of these systems are far more efficient than soil as a growth medium, but Aeroponics is even more efficient than Hydroponics due to the fact that the crops get the most oxygen delivered to their roots with this method. Aeroponics is, however, more complex, and therefore more expensive to set up than Hydroponics due to the very precise control required over the mechanism used to spray nutrient solution on the crops.

An Aeroponic installation could produce the same yield of crops with just a fraction of the land required to grow them conventionally. In additon, these systems both use very little water, since the nutrient solution and crops are in a closed tank, and the majority of water used is recycled. For Arid regions with little water, poor soil, and/or food shortages, the applications of these systems are huge.

These systems also allow for precise control of the growing conditions. Depending on the composition of the nutrient solution, almost any crop could be grown. This could reduce the dependence of individuals in poorer countries on staple crops, providing both better nutrition, resistance to crop failure, and possibly a boost to local markets and economies.

Aeroponic and Hydroponic systems should be deployed more widely throughout the world to address the issues of food production and shortages. The high initial cost would likely be more than offset by the higher crop yield and reliability of these systems.

The post Concept: Aero(and Hydro)ponics for Farming in Arid Regions first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

The Ekranoplan (Wiki) is a type of Ground-Effect Vehicle. It is essentially an aircraft, which flies just meters off of the surface of the ground, using a cushion of air to provide additional lift. These vehicles are amphibious, but can only travel over a flat surface. The are predominately used over water and ice, although they could travel over flat land as well. Ekranoplans are capable of aircraft speeds, but, due to the “free” lift provided by the ground effect, they are capable of carrying about 50% more weight while burning 40 – 50% less fuel. I believe these vehicles are sorely under utilised in a world which is hampered by rapidly dwindling natural resources.

Ekranoplans are in a position to compete directly with not only commercial aviation, but also passenger ferries and commercial shipping as well, due to their larger cargo capacity. Ekranoplans can also be much bigger than regular aircraft (The first Ekranoplan, the Soviet “Caspian sea monster” was 92 meters long, with a wingspan of 37.6 meters, and a max takeoff weight of 544,000 kgs!) and could therefore be used to carry vehicles or heavy cargo, or additional passengers.

To my knowledge, no ekranoplan has ever been built to break the sound barrier, but this should be absolutely possible. I think there could be a real niche here for a high-speed relatively low-cost passenger transport, similiar to Concorde. The main reasons Concorde was eventually retired were it’s high cost, and low passenger carrying capacity. A supersonic ekranoplan could significantly alleviate both of these issues.
Research and Development of a supersonic ekranoplan would likely be much cheaper than for a supersonic transport (SST). There are several mechanical and engineering challenges which would be either easier to solve, or absent entirely, with a supersonic ekranoplan.

For example, from the wikipedia article on Concorde:

“At the time it was known that the drag at supersonic speeds was strongly related to the span of the wing.^{[N 1]} This led to the use of very short-span, very thin rectangular wings like those seen on the control surfaces of many missiles, or in aircraft like the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter or the Avro 730 that the team studied. The team outlined a baseline configuration that looked like an enlarged Avro 730, or more interestingly, almost exactly like the Lockheed CL-400 “Suntan” proposal.

This same short span produced very little lift at low speed, which resulted in extremely long takeoff runs and frighteningly high landing speeds.^[8] In an SST design, this would have required enormous engine power to lift off from existing runways, and to provide the fuel needed, “some horribly large aeroplanes” resulted.^[9] Based on this, the group considered the concept of an SST unfeasible, and instead suggested continued low-level studies into supersonic aerodynamics.^[9]”

The project that later became Concorde addressed these issues by using a new type of wing planform, (The “slender delta”) however, an ekranoplan would likley have fewer difficulties in this area. Due to the ground effect, ekranoplans require a much lower wing span to generate usable lift, therefore the drag at any speed would also be far less than for a conventional aircraft. Additionally, ekranoplans don’t Takeoff or land like conventional aircraft, and their “runway” is open ocean.

Another issue with Concorde is it’s higher cruising altitude. This can potentially increase radiation exposure to passengers during periods of higher than normal solar activity, or result in serious injuries or fatalities in the event of a loss of cabin pressure. Obviously, neither of these issues would exist for a craft travelling just above sea level.

The post Concept: The Ekranoplan first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

The human body is “powered”, essentially, by a substance called Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). This substance is regarded as the “energy unit” of life. To use this energy source to, for example, contract a muscle, ATP is converted to Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP), resulting in a release of energy. Over time, ADP can be converted back into ADT using the energy obtained from food. ATP can be regarded as the “charged” state, and ADP can be regarded as the “discharged” state of a battery.

This process could be used in two ways.

Firstly, it may be possible to create an “Organic Battery” which converts chemical energy from this process into electrical energy. I found THIS link which seems to indicate that some work is already being done on this process. The only questions would be regarding how small such a power source could be, how efficient the energy transfer would be, and how the battery could be recharged in real-world conditions. This could potentially solve a difficult engineering problem, since battery technology is in need of serious innovation.

Secondly, and more importantly, this process could be used to create a prosthetic organ, or limb, which would be powered by the body’s own energy, like one of its own organs. This means things like artificial hearts would not require the bulky external power packs that they do today. Currently, artificial hearts are normally used to allow the patient enough time to find a donor heart and perform a transplant. A self-powered artificial heart would go a long way to replacing or reducing the reliance on donor hearts, which are in very short supply.

The post Organic Battery (Adenosine Triphosphate Battery) first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

While testing a previous project, I identified what I think may be an opportunity in the VPS** server reselling market. I needed to test the multiplayer component of a project I was working on, but it was too early to hire beta testers or rent a dedicated server*. I could have just asked a friend to test the game, but in the long run, this wouldn’t be a sustainable testing strategy.
The problem is that most of the VPS servers out there are not fast enough for real time computer games, they are optimised for static data, databases, web servers, etc, and not dynamic data, such as games. There are many game servers available for rental, but most of these allow hosting of only specific games. One could rent a Minecraft server, or a Call of Duty server, for example, but only that game could be played on that server.

There are very few VPS hosting options for games, and I have not seen any pitched at the Game Development community. I think that a service like this could work, it would provide the ability for smaller game development companies and individuals to test and release their games, without having to incur the expense of hiring a complete dedicated server.

For developers of casual games, facebook games, or independent projects which feature multiplayer support, this kind of service could be vital.

Prices for gaming dedicated servers are higher than for non-gaming servers, but are still relatively inexpensive.

The only problem with VPS’s is that latency would become a problem (high latency is what causes the notorious “lag” in online gaming).  This would require the physical dedicated server to be located as close as possible to the majority of users, which could be a problem given the wide geographic distribution of game developers and gamers.

* A Dedicated Server is a physical server, located in a data center.

** A VPS, or Virtual Private Server, is essentially a chunk of a dedicated server. Instead of renting the entire physical machine itself, a customer rents a small part of the machine, and has access to only the CPU, RAM, and Hard Disk resources of that part. In this way, a single dedicated server can be divided up into many VPS servers and sold to multiple clients, who may not need or want the resources of a full server.

The post Paid Virtual Private Server Hosting for Game Developers/Gamers first appeared on Phoenix Game Development.

I have previously created a “DataCache” (Posts are Here) , which is basically a solar-powered Data storage device with a wireless (bluetooth) radio for data transmission. Data is accessed by any Android phone with a bluetooth chip installed, and of course, apps could be written for other devices as well. The prototype device which I built does work, but is not designed for outdoor or extremely long-term use.

I have been interested in long term data storage ever since I worked on this project, and while researching this I came across this post, regarding this product from SanDisk which is basically a USB storage device which claims to be able to store data for 100 years. This is a quite a claim, since, obviously, the company can’t have tested this product for 100 years, they have presumably just simulated the wear and tear that the product would go through over that period.

However, the above article raises another interesting point. Even if this device, let’s call it a “data vault”, was able to store data for a century, how would that data be accessed? Computer standards, ports, expansion slots, etc, change extremely quickly. How useful, for example, would an 8″ floppy disk be today? I don’t meant the 3.5″ floppy disks that can *possibly* still be used for BIOS updates on some motherboards, I mean the old 8″ diskettes? Even if you could find a working disk drive, finding drivers that work on a modern machine would be quite a challenge. Fast forward a century, and a modern USB device would be next to useless. The interface would have to be as simple as possible, both in terms of hardware, and the software used to handle the data transfer. The schematics would need to be printed on the device, so that any competent computer professional of the future could easily build a compatible interface device for a modern computer system.

Then there is the question of file format. Storing data in a .doc or . jpg format might be fine for the next five or ten years, but with future operating systems, future software releases, and new compression algorithms, these formats will likely be completely dead well within a century. Accessing the data would then be essentially like deciphering Eqyptian hieroglyphs without the benefit of the Rosetta stone!

What would be needed is a file format that stores the data in as simple a way as possible, likely just 1’s and 0’s. No compression or optimisation algorithms could be used, since the code to decompress or decode the data using these algorithms may not still be in use when the data vault is opened. Any file structuring or encoding information that must be used in storing the data should be printed on the data vault itself, in sufficient detail so as to allow a computer programmer to easily write a program to parse and display the data from the vault.

Another approach would be to store not just the data, but an entire micro-computer system, including an operating system, monitor, keyboard, etc, into the data vault itself. Then, assuming all of the hardware survived, the machine could be powered up, and the data accessed. It could then be either manually copied, or the Data Vault machine could be used to convert the data to a more useful format, possibly by writing a program onto the data vault machine itself. Of course, a compiler, and all relevant libraries, command references, and API’s would need to be on the Data Vault as well.

This is similiar, in concept at least, to what NASA did with the Pioneer and Voyager space probes. These probes had information plates on them which contained data on Earth, Humankind, etc, intended to communicate with an extraterrestrial race if one was encountered by the probe. The problem for NASA is that the aliens probably don’t speak english! Therefore, they had to come up with a means to express the data that would be accessible to any intelligent species, despite the fact that that species would have no knowledge of the language or context of the data at all.

They eventually used a kind of pictogram system, based on fundamental mathematical and scientific principles (Pictures of the structure of the hydrogen atom, for example, and a star map of Earth’s position). The same approach could be used with the data vault, although this task would be much simpler, since the world will likely still be speaking english in 100 years, and it is somewhat likely that computers will still be based on the binary system.

I think that breaking the data down into it’s fundamental elements could provide a means for a future technology professional to access the data using whatever technology is then being used.

This is an interesting area of research, and I think it could become very important in the future. Consider, for example, all of the posts people make to social media, to blogs, to facebook, all of the photos people take of their friends, their travels, etc etc. We live in a digital age, and the record of our lives is stored digitally. In years gone past, a person would leave behind letters and old photos to be remembered by, but in a digital age, we are going to lose that resource. After a person has died, what happens to their digital legacy? Do you take the drive out of their computer, search through it, looking for their old photos, and keeping them? What if you don’t know their password, or where they keep their photos?

Having some kind of long-term Data Vault to store a record of a persons digital life is something that I could see as being quite useful. It would essentially be the electronic equivalent of a box in the attic. It could also be useful for storing records of legal or medical documents, or other documents that would need to be stored for a long period of time.

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