amiri.info

Emily - An animated character

Hesham — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:18:25 +0000

Meet Emily, a fully animated computer character. This is a demo of a technology that will usher in a new age of computer animated characters that are life like. Probably we will see this in new animated movies as well.

Again, the character that you will see in the video is 100% computer generated. Amazing.

FallOut 3 Trailer

Hesham — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:48:33 +0000

I loved 1 & 2 and now we get to see the first official trailer for Fallout 3 and it looks amazing. You can also see an early game demo at this link. This should be one of the best games this decade by far.

Diablo III

Hesham — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:39:53 +0000

Blizzard has revealed the trailer for their up-coming sequel to the Diablo franchise. I can’t wait to see this relesed and of-course the new C&C game.

Breif History

Hesham — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:21:01 +0000

Ever since I owned a C64 back in the late eighties I have been fascinated with game creation. I remember spending so many nights writing assembly code for on the C64 testing out ideas and techniques I saw in the games I played then. From parallax smooth scrolling to wire frame 3d graphics.

Over the past few years I have been itching to get back to game creation and I have looked at and or purchased most of the available engines and libraries that are available to indie developers out there:

All of the Garage Games offering - TGB, TGE & TGEA; which I just love
Unity for the MAC - which is a super slick engine.
Blitz Max - A great prototype tool that compiles for win, mac and linux
Dark Basic Pro - another great prototype tool.

I have also looked at the open source offerings that are avaialbel; plus purchased unreal tournement for the unrealed that everyone is raving about but to be honest haven’t had the time to explore deeply enough.

Though I’m a software engineer; when it comes to games creation I would love to keep all of my activity confined in level design, character creation and scripting. I try to avoid modifying the engine as much as possible. I guess my enjoyment comes primarly from the design of games and not programming the engine.

That is why these days I usually find myself playing around with Unity; though I still love TGEA which I believe will be a great engine to next-gen games.

I have also got a good number of modeling packages that I use for content creation which what I mainly do these days. Any indie developer faces the fact that content creation is probably the most important aspect and the most expensive and time consuming.

My modeling skills are moderate though it is getting better. I plan to post some free models here for everyone too use.

Rant

Hesham — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:19:50 +0000

I have been reading this book on and off for over eight months now and finally I’m done with it. I have always liked Chuck’s previous books, especially Fight Club and Invisible Monsters but I’m not really sure about this one.

I think it is an ok book by all means, but there is not enough of Chuck’s usual stuff in it. Yes, it has a surprising twist at the end - even though if you pay careful attention in the first 10 pages or so you wouldn’t be as surprised - but the book just doesn’t have that much impact.

YouTube Downloads

Hesham — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 08:14:20 +0000

If you ever wanted to download YouTube videos or download the audio track of a video file you can use this service.

One Sentence Stories

Hesham — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:59:20 +0000

There is a lot you can say in just one sentence, Hemingway was once asked to write a six word story and here is what he came up with:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

He considered it his best work ever.

Cloverfield 1-18-08

Hesham — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:23:24 +0000

These is a new trailer for J.J Abrams new movies, but I haven’t been able to track it down. Until then, for those that have not seen it yet, check out this earlier trailer. Looks like a must see movie when it comes out this January.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvNkGm8mxiM

Mind Mapping

Hesham — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 04:36:44 +0000

If you are fond of mind mapping tools then you will love the 30+ links to free and subscription based tools here:

Mind Mapping Tools

iPhone Here

Hesham — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:39:29 +0000

Couldn’t resist the urge to get it, so I took a trip to Diera and got me a brand new unlocked iPhone and it is simply amazing. Within the first 5 minutes I was taken away by the interface, I won’t do it any justice here regardless of what I write. Having said that, it didn’t work with my Etisalat SIM card, but worked fine with my DU card. They guy that sold me the iPhone assured me that all I need to do is get a new SIM card by Etislat and everything would be OK, which I did today but haven’t had the chance to actually use it.