hirn → internet

Money is always short when it comes to spaceflight. While NASA does have a rather large budget in comparison to ESA for example, very little seems to come out of it if you look at the development time of the new Ares rockets which are supposed to take human beings to the moon again. If you consider that it’s already been done before a couple of decades ago, you’d think it could be repeated in a shorter time frame and with less money now since a lot of the basic research has already been done (of course, a lot of know-how has been lost as well.)

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This is a short film we created last year for our animation class. Enjoy!

I’m not exactly a fan of what modern technology has meant for video games most of the time. With improved hardware capabilities always came graphics that tried to push the boundaries between the virtual and reality, while at the same time not quite getting there yet. Sure, it can work out real nice and a couple of genres really lend themselves quite well to photo-realistic graphics, like sports or racing games. However, I’m not always interested in reproducing what I can find outside on my screen at home. If I’m sitting in front of a games console, I want to be entertained with something unique nobody ever has thought of. Not an easy task of course. But I’m always happy if there is this one game every once in a while that breaks the usual conventions and starts doing something different with the visual potential that is inherent to the medium.

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This impressive photo taken by Thierry Legault shows the Space Shuttle and the Hubble telescope crossing in front of the Sun. Click for full view.

It’s been a long time since I last pixeled something. Well, I finally got off my lazy butt and made this, a kind of by-product of the work I’ve done for my thesis so far. I’m not sure if it’s 100% finished yet, maybe I’ll update the image at some later point in time.

I’m back from London just in time for the first anniversary of the blog. One of the most interesting discoveries for me was a clothing store chain that sells video game t-shirts. How cool is that! I wanted to get a black Arkanoid shirt, but since they were out of stock, I went for a Bomberman motive instead. I usually hate shopping for clothes, but this was really awesome. If they had stores in Germany or Austria as well, I’d be going out on the hunt for clothes more often. HINT HINT!

Oh, I almost forgot: to celebrate the first year, the blog can now be reached via robotriot.org as well.

I think it’s time for a new list of (mostly upcoming) games that are worth a closer look. Since I was able to get most of the games in my previous list, I’ve added a whole bunch of new games I’m interested in. Maybe there’s something in for you, as well. This time it’s complete with gameplay videos, yay!

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When looking up at the moon, it’s always this monochrome, barren disk in the night sky. The reverse view is something I still find rather wonderful and refreshing, despite having been around since the Apollo landings in the 1960s. Standing on the barren rock and looking up to a strangely coloured marble against a pitch black background — it looks so fake, yet it is a change of perspective that would do good for a lot of people on our planet when it comes to the ridiculous matters we fight for.

This is a video of Earth rise as seen by the Japanese space probe Kaguya currently orbiting the moon, taken on April 5, 2008.

Click for video.

While doing some research for my thesis, I stumbled upon these amazing “automatons.” Automatons are basically mechanical robots with two of the most famous examples being The Turk and Vaucanson’s duck. The Golden Age of automatons was the second half of the 19th century, the ones shown here however were created by a Swiss watchmaker by the name of Pierre Jaquet-Droz around the year 1770 and finished in 1774.

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I did some digging today, saving old CD-ROMs by copying them to harddisk. Then I made an astonishing discovery - not only did I still have a backup of my second oldest homepage, but also of a couple of “games” I created when I was 14 or 15. Hilarity ensued. I’d like to present some of the, er - “gems” I created over 10 years ago in this article.

The first such “project” I’d like to show you is actually not a Click & Create game, but was programmed by nufan (with whom I later founded our demogroup skp) in Delphi if I remember correctly. It was called Outworld Apocalypse, and the story revolved around a character called “J.C” who crash lands on an alien jungle planet. Well, the game never really went anywhere, although I still have a prototype with clickable buttons and all. My “contribution” to the game were the ugly interface buttons and logo you see in the screenshot, as well as the website and manual. After the jump, you’ll be treated to even more astonishing creations!

Observe the state-of-the-art Photoshop filters I applied to those buttons!

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