Modding: December 2007 Archive Page

The new clip improves on last night's version, I've added blinking eyes, improved the nose glowing effect, and moved one of the legs a bit.

Update: Here's the file if you'd like to use it.

Reindeer.blend

I've been using Blender3D for about two years now. Here's a little Christmas animation I whipped up.

That's supposed to be sparkly glowy things coming from his shiny nose, but it looks more like a puff of breath. I'm pleased with the head motions. I've got the eyes rigged up so they can blink and track an object, and I've got the two front legs rigged. I'll probably try to rig the other legs and do a simple walking animation, but I'm through for the day.

I just got this e-mail. Scratch is an amazing tool designed to teach programming to kids. My nine-year-old loves it. I'm planning to use Scratch in my "New Media Projects" class next fall.

Because of your interest in Scratch, we thought you would like to 
know about the Scratch@MIT conference that we are hosting next summer.

The conference will provide an opportunity for educators, 
researchers, developers, and other members of the worldwide Scratch 
community to gather together to share experiences and discuss future 
possibilities for Scratch.

The conference will take place on the MIT campus on July 24-26, 2008. 
Everyone is invited to submit proposals for presentations, panel 
discussions, and workshops (deadline: February 15, 2008).

For more information, see http://scratch.mit.edu/conference

Best wishes for a Happy New Year -- and we hope to see you at MIT 
next July!

Adam Parrish:

The Frotzophone is an interface for making music with interactive fiction. The topography simulated in the game is used to generate sound, as is the player's path through the game. A Frotzophone "performance" looks just like playing a text adventure; but in addition to playing a game, you're also playing music. Here's a sample of the Frotzophone's audio output. This sample was generated from playing the first part of Zork I--up until I got killed by the troll. Download the full track here (2'12", 192kbps MP3).

While my daughter was (supposed to be) napping this afternoon, I downloaded Crystal Space, an open-source tool for creating 3D games. I made lightening-fast progress in the first couple of hours, but after that I was quickly lost. Maybe my expectations were unrealistic.

Over the last year or so, I have experimented with Half-Life 2 modding (making custom levels for a commercial first-person shooter game) and modeling with Blender 3D (a heavy-duty, free design tool).  I like the simplicity of Hammer, which is the tool that makes Half-Life 2 levels.  But getting Half-Life 2 to work on the school's computers was hell; I couldn't expect my students (mostly English majors) to go through all that effort to get Hammer to work on their own computers, which means that the students can only work on Hammer when they are in the computer lab.  (The next time I teach that course, I'm going to add a mandatory extra lab hour, so that I won't have to cut so deeply into class time in order to give students access to the tools they need for their assignments.  Yes, the students can come to the lab outside of class time, but that lab isn't open 24 hours, and sometimes other classes have booked it.)