A visit to Namco Bandai. I want to move into the gundam egg.

The game we tried when visiting Namco Bandai
Originally uploaded by mimmi.

Nakajima sensei's good friend Baba sensei, technical conductor at Namco Bandai organised a fun and interesting visit where we had the opportunity to try an über cool game that is under production We also had a QA session with the developers. All in all the development of this game (gundam) has gone on for five years with different iterations and releases, having a dev team of around thirty people. The picture here shows a screen where it is possible to monitor the movement of players doing matches against each other. While playing one sits in a big egg with an encompassing screen and one has hand contorls and pedals for the feet to act through in the game world. Also there was a headset with mic so one could talk to the team members. It was ok to photograph this screen but not the egg. I hope it is ok to describe it. I want that egg! It maybe impossible to have such a big thing at home, bit then I at least want to live close to an arcade that has an egg! It was great! egg egg egg!! I want to make games for the egg and want to live in an egg!
This is the first game that is implemented for it. The hall where it was was filled with different arcade mashines. That is to me a whole new area, since the arcades are not that big in europe. In order to test the games Namco Bandai has an arcade hall where they do the usertesting of the game. Design wise the process have changed over the last twenty years for Namco Bandai from first designing for the arcades and then make versions for home use (when home computers and consoles were rare) to today when the versions are designed simoultaneoulsy. The framerate in the egg was so fast that i didn't feel sick at all after playing. I compare that with a production that was made at a game company where i worked in 2001, that was done for 3d glasses. We had to take turns testing it since one wanted to vomit after approx five minutes. This was different! This was good! I'm not sure how much I can say so i stop here. But i want to move into an egg!

A few more pictures

Dirge of Cerberus

Intro cut, Dirge of Cerberus
Originally uploaded by mimmi.

...is too tricky to play in Japanese. I must find an English copy when i get home to Sweden. I saw Advent Children the other evening (late, i know), and agree with most of the reviewers that it is mainly a fan service, but as such, excellent.

Fun and/or poetic - Bablefished emails

Bablefished emails japanese -> english,
originally uploaded by mimmi.

I regularly check the emails that are sent in Japanese to the whole lab with bablefish. I don't need to do it - all that concerns me is sent in English, but i enjoy to see the translations. Some become like poetry, others, like this become downright weird an funny. I mean, look at this:
"The rubbish throwing away of student quality was done. It has left with the way, annoyance we applied."

Tuesday Seminars at Nakajima/Saito Lab, Titech

West flank of seminar,
originally uploaded by mimmi.

Every Tuesday in Nakajima-Saito Lab at Tokyo Tech we all gather for a seminar. The topics vary - it can be presentations that are to be held at a conference soon, a summary of a visited conference, announcements of events etc.

Goodbye Libraries, goodbye time.

me at work,
originally uploaded by mimmi.

(testing to blog from flickr)
I just needed to face it. Log4cxx leaks memory. Libxml is redundant when i use the bettermudserver. It was a mistake to swig down the mind. It is better to implement the mind as a lib, and rewrite the server. Goodbye several weeks of dev-time. Well - if one is to change course its better to do it late than never.

Birthday dinner for David Gavilan

 

(testing picasa) 


All pictures

Memory leaks

I have been fretting about mending the memory leaks in the mind module for a long time now, finding other seemingly more important things to do. Oh well all is important, but i have anyway not gotten down to the memory leak problem.

One of the other things i have stuffed around with is converting my code projects from vs2003 to vs2005, and one of the problems is that the libray i use for logging, log4cxx doesnt link properly in vs2005. And there are no new binaries since 2004 in the project. ...So i thought that well either i solve the problem, or i implement a simpler logging system, or i just go on using vs2003 where log4cxx works. But now i have one of those days where i couldn't concentrate on anything, so i thought why not instead use the time to remake the logging system. That's at least a comprehensible task.
...and ended up trying to solve the problem anyway - I'm so fond of the library so i think there is a case of separation agony.
In the midst of this though i stumbled on long threads about memory leaks! In log4cxx!

what if what if...
it would be too good to be true. Probably it's not true, i have probably been sloppy and have to mend those leaks anyway. But maybe there will be one less!

Otherwise it is still good in Tokyo. I had my husband visiting last week and this week i have had a flue, but im starting to feel better.