If this isn’t the coolest new geek-toy, I don’t know what is! Fold.it is a new game by Rosetta@home where players fold proteins for high scores. Shockingly, it’s actually a lot of fun–you can think of it sort of like a super-advanced version of Tetris. A training mode walks players through the basics, and a challenge mode allows players to compete worldwide to see who has the most l33t folding skillz.

Fold.It – Who says serious games can’t be fun, too?

The goals of the research project are to learn what strategies human players use to solve the very complex problem of protein folding so the same techniques can be taught to computers. In addition, players will soon be able to solve protein folding “puzzles” that computers haven’t yet solved. While the puzzles currently available are all proteins where the real-life structure is known, plans are to release proteins where the structure is unknown in the very near future–allowing players to participate in real-world research and help save lives. If any break-throughs do occur, researchers have promised to share credit with the player who solved it. How cool is that?

Eventually, players may even be able to design their own proteins!

Download it now: Fold-It

Here’s a fun one! Ever wanted to re-create the look of heavy “toon” outlines, but didn’t have a shader for it? Believe it or not, there’s an easy way to fake it using fixed-function only.

Here’s how to do it:

• Make sure all your surface normals are unified (facing outwards) and your polygons are set to 1-sided
• Make a copy of your object and resize it so it is ever-so-slightly larger than the original
• On the copy, set the surface material to black
• Invert the surface normals

That’s it! Nifty, eh? The method’s not perfect–for best results, stick to convex objects–but it’s great for quick renders and on limited hardware platforms where shaders aren’t an option.

“I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.”

– Bjarne Stroustrup

According to a recent report by NPD, 42 percent of people who play games play online. Of those who do play online, 90 percent play through their PCs. Only 19 percent of the 42 percent play on a game console or portable.

That it means that nearly 60% of all gamers don’t play online at all, and an even smaller fraction play console games online–despite the fact that the retail console game market is substantially larger than the PC market. That still adds up to millions of players, but it’s small compared to the offline and single-player market.

Many people have explored different reasons for this from connectivity to ease-of-use, but in a new article on Gamasutra, Bill Fulton explores one of the less-discussed causes: The behavior of some online gamers is so abrasive–even to the point of abusive at times–that many new players would simply rather not play.

Some gamers might be thinking “If he’s so thin-skinned that he can’t take the online banter, maybe he shouldn’t play online.” Unfortunately, many people do just that — they stop playing online.

Even more gamers go online a few times and then never play again. This isn’t just my personal speculation; I have seen convincing data from two different sources that the biggest problem with online gaming is the behavior of others. The biggest problem isn’t the cost; it isn’t connectivity issues, or even the quality of the games — it is how people are f***wads online.

[…]

The online behavior of our customers is dramatically reducing our sales, and continues to stunt the growth of our industry. Non-gamers simply don’t love games enough to put up with the crap they get online.

I think most people who play online would agree that this is a problem… not just for games, but across the Internet in general as forums, instant messaging and other services are often equally plagued by griefers, net trolls and others those who’s primary source of amusement is making other people miserable. While many people use these services anyway, many people don’t, or they severely limit the online communities they participate in.

The article goes on to further suggest ways that game developers can implement game rules to discourage the anti-social behavior of the minority of players who would otherwise spoil the game for everyone.

Read the article: Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach (WARNING: This article contains strong language.)

NPD report on online gaming: Online Gaming 2008

This is actually a really old plugin, but it still has its uses. This plugin allows you to change the parent of a mesh or group by entering the name of the desired parent group in a dialog box. You can accomplish more-or-less the same thing via drag and drop in the hierarchy menu already, but it’s still handy when you have a really complex setup and don’t want to hunt through the list to find what you’re looking for.

Download the plugin. (Requires Windows XP, AC3D 6.2 or above.)