Well, the Spore Creature Creator has been out a few days now. It’s pretty fun!
I was really curious about the animation system, since that’s been the subject of several tech talks the last few years. I must say it works remarkably well, especially considering the number of bizarre creature shapes that are possible. Great stuff.
Longhorn Bullipede
Antadillo
Zog the Zig-Zag Frog
I admit it. I love cars. I don’t read all the latest car news–I rely on my brother to pass on just the juicy bits–but I can tell you the difference between a turbo charger and a super charger, and I’ve even helped my brother replace an engine or two.
A couple of weeks ago, Wired posted an article about Alex Roy’s record breaking race across the county. In a car that would make the Batmobile feel under-equipped, Roy and his co-pilot shrieked from New York to Los Angeles determined to beat the real-life “cannonball run” record of 32 hours and 7 minutes. Their final time? 31 hours and 4 minutes coast to coast. Joyously, they video taped the whole thing.
Yes, I know, illegal street racing is wrong. I don’t disagree, and I tell every kid I know who wants to race about Firebird Raceway’s run what ya’ brung nights in the hopes that it will keep one more kid from getting killed.
Just the same, I’m still dying to know how these guys did it. On a lark, I popped over today to the 32 hours site to see if the video was out yet. The video is not available yet, but the trailer is.
I was mindlessly watching the trailer when suddenly I saw a familiar face I wasn’t expecting. Wait… that couldn’t be! Quick, rewind. I looked again. Could that be… Will Wright?
Another chat about procedural animation in Spore? Surprise! This one’s about fitting larger fuel tanks into a Mazda RX-7.
Sure enough, it was. I’ve been in the same room as Will Wright before, and that certainly looked like him. Rattling around in the dusty corners of my mind, something about Will Wright and illegal street racing seemed vaguely familiar, so I looked it up. And there it was: Will Wright was the winner of the 1980 “US Express” race, with a cross country time of 33 hours and 39 minutes.
And here, I thought my post about cross-country illegal street racing was going to be totally off-topic to game development. What a small world it is!