Category Archives: General

Xitang Weekend

One personal embarrassment about the time I’ve spent in China is how little of China I’ve actually seen. Life in Shanghai is hectic and interesting enough – but what’s the point of being in a foreign country if you’re not going to see something of it? Granted, without a decent grasp on the language, solo travel inside of China is difficult at best. But hey, I’ve been here 9 months. I can say “take me to the goat station” and “I’d like a hotel fire”. I’m good to go!

xitang_taxi

So this weekend I left Shanghai with some friends and headed to Xitang. This is a tranquil little water village about an hour from Shanghai by train. Leaving from the South Shanghai train station under blue skies we headed into the Chinese “countryside”. Amazingly, the further we were from the city, the dirtier the air. Seems outside of Shanghai people like to burn things. Lots of things.

XiTang Home 2

Xitang features Qing and Ming dynasty architecture in its bridges, roads, and homes. One road, known as “yi shi tian” (one thread sky) is indicative of village scenery away from the waterways – a narrow sliver is sky is seen running above a thousand year old stone paved alley. On the water, hand powered paddle boats ply the canals. Floating along the river my friends and I were nearly hypnotized to sleep by the simple quiet of it all.

XiTang Boat Ride

If you’re looking for a quick, fun getaway from Shanghai – Xitang is worth a visit. From the South Shanghai rail station take the train to Jiashan (9RMB). Upon arrival in Jiashan you’ll be accosted by a horde of taxi drivers wanting to take you to Xitang (30RMB). We made a day-trip out of our adventure, but the village contains numerous “hotels” – renovated homes and buildings, which look pretty cool. We returned by bus (30RMB), and were back in time for dinner. Wee!

AI.implant – 0$ Licensing Fee

Cool news from the guys over at Engenuity today:

Engenuity will no longer charge a licensing fee for AI.implant and will now offer perpetual source code agreements in exchange for marketing exposure relating to future titles developed with AI.implant.

Qualified Xbox 360 console developers and PLAYSTATION3 game title developers will now have full and complete access to the source code for AI.implant, Engenuity’s highly acclaimed AI middleware solution.

By taking advantage of AI.implant’s perpetual source code agreement you can create more immersive games better and faster, while tailoring the AI.implant core to your specific needs. Save on the expense of game development through the power of AI.implant, a two-time winner of the Game Developer Front Line Award for best middleware.

As far as I know the “Grimm” project was one of the first to gain access to AI.implant technology under this new licensing setup. We’ve been using the technology for a while now – and having great success. Our new on-staff “brain surgeon” is Marwin So, who also doubles as our game designer. He’s managed to pick up and run with AI Implant pretty much out of the box, teaching himself everything needed to put dynamic, interesting NPCs into our game. This is testament both to Marwin’s own decent brain, and to the ease of use and flexibility of AI.implant.

If you’re looking for a good AI solution then AI.implant (plus a Marwin) is an option worth looking into. If you’re an interested developer, check it out.

PS, Marwin not included. Get your own.

Vins Gagliardi – Chateau Du Charnay

Our buddy Pete Gagliardi over at Vins Gagliardi recently announced a new label in his selection of wines. This continues the series which features dark fairy tale label art by Ken Wong. “Red Riding Hood” is the latest inspiration:

Red - Chateau Du Charnay

The previous wine in the series was “Rapunzel”, which you can find more info about here.

Vins Gagliardi - L'Engarran -

To get your hands on either of these beautiful bottles, ask your local wine retailer, or head over to Pete’s website: Vins Gagliardi

USATODAY.com – Into the Pixel

Spicy Horse conceptual artist Lin Ran did a series of images during early “Grimm” pre-production. I posted some of these images to my flickr account a while back, like this one, “The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”:

The Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was

These images were entered into the annual “Into the Pixel” competition – “An exhibition of the best video game art at E3.” – and “The Boy” won! Congratulations to Lin Ran on this prestigious honor.

USA Today is running an article on the event and a nice gallery:

Across town from E3 at the LA Convention center’s “E for All,” the Into the Pixel exhibition examines the most stunning art from last year’s games. A jury of museum curators, designers and producers selected sixteen pieces from submissions worldwide based on the “criteria of traditional fine art,” according to Lead Juror Kevin Salatino.

Check it out here:

USATODAY.com – Into the Pixel

The “Grimm” Logo

Behold it in all its glory:

Grimm Logo

The process for choosing a logo can be weird and painful. There’s conflicting opinions on the value of a product’s logo and packaging in general. Would “World of Warcraft” be any less successful if it shipped in a brown paper bag with “WoW” scribbled in crayon on the outside? Would Apple’s brand perception be what it is if its logo was anything more than simple Macintosh with a bite taken out of it? And who decides what’s best – art director, test audience, marketing guy?

While trying to decide what to do for the “Grimm” logo we had two prevailing (and conflicting) thoughts on direction. Option 1: Simplicity, ala a non-illustrated movie “logo” (basically a simple font treatment). OR Option 2: illustrated logo that “said something” about the product. No amount of argument could make these two camps see eye to eye. So we decided to put it to a vote.

Fifty logos were put on display and votes were taken. Ironically, the sample audience avoided both the overly simple and overly illustrated logo samples. They went for the logo you see, something I feel is “in the middle”.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the idea that “a horse designed by committee is a mule.” So maybe our logo is a mule, but I like it. It’s simple and it says something about the product.

(“Grimm” logo designed by our art director, Ken Wong.)

GameTap brings 500+ PC games to Intel Macs

This is cool:

GameTap today announced that it is expanding its offerings to the Mac community by providing Intel-based Mac users access to its Lite Player, which offers more than 500 new and classic game titles as well as more than 600 streaming videos of original programming from GapeTap TV. “Mac users will now be able to enjoy hundreds of games that have never been playable on a Mac before,” said Stuart Snyder, Turner’s executive vice president and chief operating officer of Animation, Young Adults & Kids Media.

I love my Mac. And I love OS X even more. I might be losing it, but I swear the NeXT machines we were using to build DOOM/Quake were less laggy than Vista. Good to see gaming opening up on one of my preferred OSs.