FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2015
The 13th Doll: Revisited
In 2008, I wrote about a community of fans who were developing a sequel to the 7th Guest and 11th Hour called The 13th Doll. It was a promising, self-funded project which began in 2004 after Trilobyte canceled its official, real-time based sequel- The 7th Guest Part III: The Collector. The game was again to be set in the Stauf mansion, painstakingly recreated from game screenshots, with Tad as the protagonist. However, after several years had gone by without any updates, the project appeared dead.
In recent years, 7th Guest co-creator Rob Landeros attempted to restart the franchise using the popular crowd-funding site Kickstarteras well as the lesser-knownCrowdHoster, but ultimately failed in both ventures.
Possibly realizing that a continuation of the series would never be realized, last month the fan-based 13th Doll team started a Kickstarter campaign to revive their game. Amazingly, they met their funding goal of $40,000 and are now headed for one of their first stretch goals. On the site they mention the background of their development over the years:
You can view their teaser trailer here and read more about the project at theirofficial website. Using theUnity game engine, the game is shaping up quite nicely judging from their most recent screenshots.
 |
| Early screenshot of The 13th Doll. (2005) |
Possibly realizing that a continuation of the series would never be realized, last month the fan-based 13th Doll team started a Kickstarter campaign to revive their game. Amazingly, they met their funding goal of $40,000 and are now headed for one of their first stretch goals. On the site they mention the background of their development over the years:
We started the game in the fall of 2004. Up until 2008 we made great progress, but were too ambitious, and lost steam. We gradually let the game fall to the backburner for several years, and only picked it up again in the spring of 2015. By then, all of our source images, video, and code had become outdated, so everything is basically being done from scratch.
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| Screenshot of the Stauf library using Unity. (2015) |
MONDAY, MAY 04, 2015
3DPC
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| 3DPC - The First Movement, "No Holds Barred". |
I dutifully registered my purchase with a post card enclosed in the box and later received a brochure detailing how they produced the series- 3D Studio for modeling and POV-Ray for rendering, as well as an announcement of their second series. I immediately ordered it and upon shipment, noticed on the packing slip an entry for a previously unannounced series named 3DPC - The Premiere Bootleg Edition. For some reason I decided to wait, but when I later tried to buy the Bootleg edition, the company had already discontinued all of their products.
Five years ago, the original developer generously posted the entire series online for free, including the Bootleg edition, for Windows users. I quickly downloaded and installed the series using Boot Camp to see if I could extract the individual files to play on my iMac. Sure enough, the animations were listed as a series of files but with a curious .3D extension. It took a minimal amount of work to figure out that they were simply renamedAutodesk FLI animation files. This made sense because despite its 256 color and 320x200 resolution limit, FLI could play back 3D generated animations without any special hardware.
So in order to display the files on modern computer systems and web browsers, (QuickTime 7 was the last player to support FLI natively) I decided to convert them to animated GIFs. I know, hello 1987! But it's really the best file format to preserve the image quality with absolutely no loss of information and files sizes are still in the kilobytes. Plus the animations can be looped forever as originally intended.
Here's a gallery of all three of the 3DPC series, courtesy of Forté, for your enjoyment.
http://s1168.photobucket.com/user/studiopixs/library/3DPC
FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2014
My Gaming Rig
After years of using consoles to meet my gaming needs (due to the limited GPU neither of my Mac's could handle any modern FPS with a decent frame rate), I decided to build my own gaming personal computer.
The last PC I built had a Pentium III processor, motherboard based on the Intel 440BX chipset and was housed in a beige colored generic ATX case. It was a decent gaming system back in the day but when it came time to upgrade I opted to buy a pre-configured Dell Dimension XPS system using a Pentium 4 CPU to save me the hassle and bloody knuckles from my early PC building days. Eventually that system got too old to play any modern games so I ended up selling it.
Fast forward to 2014 and after some deliberation I decided to jump back in the PC market.
I had a some criteria before starting this project.
Like any big purchase, I had to do a ton of research to get me up to speed on what was current. The processor vendor choice was easy, Intel. AMD had the lower cost but didn't offer the performance I was looking for with the latest demanding games.
The platform architecture was my next decision, should I get the older Ivy Bridge or the newer Haswell processors? Although Ivy Bridge performs almost just as well as Haswellfor gaming, there was no real world price discount by buying Ivy Bridge so I decided to go with Haswell as it also offered additional CPU instructions sets and a more energy efficient architecture.
The last processor related choice was deciding on which Haswell chipset to choose among the many choices Intel offers. After reading about the differences, I narrowed my choice down to two, the top of the line P87 or the more mainstream H87. I ended up getting the H87 since I didn't need SLI support for 2 graphic cards nor did I plan to overclock my processor.
Before I could pick my motherboard, I had to choose the case first. The latest trend in gaming is the SFF (Small Form Factor) PC, which got even more interest recently withValve's Steam Machine initiative. One popular standard for SFF is Mini-ITX which offers a small case size but often comes with limitations such as specially sized graphic cards and power supplies that oddly cost more than their full size brethren.
Corsair recently came out with a Mini-ITX case called the Obsidian 250D that was advertised as a "no compromise" solution that allows you to use full sized GPU's as well as standard sized ATX power supplies. I seriously considered this case until I found out the graphics card I wanted was about 5mm too long to fit so I opted to go with the larger Obsidian 350D Micro ATXenclosure instead. It's a nice looking case with plenty of cable management built-in including wire ties and rubber grommets.
Although Micro-ATX isn't considered a Small Form Factor, it allows me to fit a powerful PC in a smaller package than the larger full size ATX cases and still gives me more cooling and expansion options than the Mini-ITX.
The rest of my components include:
Processor: Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz LGA 1150 Quad-Core - $199
Since I'm not over clocking, I saved money by not getting a K series CPU and with Turbo Boost the CPU can ramp up to to 3.6 GHz under load. The higher end Intel i7 series processors would have added Hyper-Threading, however this wouldn't give me much, if any benefit with game performance.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87M-D3H - $87.99
I picked this motherboard since it was the only H87 Micro-ATX board with 3 system fan headers, a better quality Realtek ALC892 audio codec and for the lowest price vs the competition. It also has the advantage of being Hackintosh friendly in case I want to run OS X later.
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper T4 CPU Cooler - $29.93
Rather than stick with the default Intel stock cooler which runs loud under load, I decided to replace it with an aftermarket CPU cooler from Cooler Master. The Hyper T4 is rather large but can run as quiet as 15.1dBA. I looked into closed looped water coolers, particularly the Corsair Hydro H100i, but I read that the heat pump contributes to noise as well as the 2 additional fans for the radiator so I opted to stay with traditional air cooling instead.
Video Card: Gigabyte GV-N760OC-2GD (rev. 2.0) - $259.99
This card is based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU, which offers the best bang for the buck GPU from Nvidia. It's not the prettiest card but it comes overclocked from the factory and has 3 cooling fans that perform much quieter than the competition. I also considered going with the older GeForce GTX 660 card since it was slightly cheaper and is still based on the Kepler architecture, however I decided to get the current generation since it wasn't that much more expensive. Nvidia is also providing a free game called Daylight with my purchase.
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" SATA III - $139.99
The Samsung 840 EVO-Series is highly rated for it's performance and Amazon had a recent price drop for the 250GB model. Since there no moving parts in a SSD this will help keep my PC cool and quiet.
Power Supply: Corsair RM550 550 Watt 80-Plus Gold - $79.99
I wanted a power supply with a Gold efficiency rating as well as one that ran quiet. The Corsair RM series had both including a fan that only turns on when it needs to. It's fully modular so I only need to plug in the cables that are required for my specific needs, which helps keeps the case neat and tidy. It's also Haswell certified which is important to maintain the low power states when the PC is idle.
Memory: Kingston HyperX 8GB Blu (2x4GB) 1600 MHz DDR3 (PC3 12800) - $85.74
I read that those tall heat spreaders don't do much for gaming so I opted for low profile Kingston memory that won't interfere with my CPU cooler. Unfortunately memory prices are relatively high right now so I opted to get a 8GB kit, rather than the 16GB version. There really isn't any game that requires more than 8GB so I should be fine plus I have 2 extra memory slots on my motherboard for future expansion.
OS: Windows 8.1 Professional
I plan to install Windows 8.1 since it supports DirectX 11.2, is optimized for SSDs, and boots faster than Windows 7. I don't care for the Modern UI, but with options to boot to the Desktop it should be OK.
The last PC I built had a Pentium III processor, motherboard based on the Intel 440BX chipset and was housed in a beige colored generic ATX case. It was a decent gaming system back in the day but when it came time to upgrade I opted to buy a pre-configured Dell Dimension XPS system using a Pentium 4 CPU to save me the hassle and bloody knuckles from my early PC building days. Eventually that system got too old to play any modern games so I ended up selling it.
Fast forward to 2014 and after some deliberation I decided to jump back in the PC market.
I had a some criteria before starting this project.
- The price had to come under the $1000 mark, including tax and shipping. This meant my target goal for the components had to be around $900.
- The system had to run cool and quiet. I still remember my old Dell being too loud for my tastes, especially under load.
- The system should support the latest technology, optimized for gaming. USB 3.0, SSD drives, current generation GPU. No spinning hard drive adding noise and heat. No optical drive. Just a pure gaming machine.
Like any big purchase, I had to do a ton of research to get me up to speed on what was current. The processor vendor choice was easy, Intel. AMD had the lower cost but didn't offer the performance I was looking for with the latest demanding games.
The platform architecture was my next decision, should I get the older Ivy Bridge or the newer Haswell processors? Although Ivy Bridge performs almost just as well as Haswellfor gaming, there was no real world price discount by buying Ivy Bridge so I decided to go with Haswell as it also offered additional CPU instructions sets and a more energy efficient architecture.
The last processor related choice was deciding on which Haswell chipset to choose among the many choices Intel offers. After reading about the differences, I narrowed my choice down to two, the top of the line P87 or the more mainstream H87. I ended up getting the H87 since I didn't need SLI support for 2 graphic cards nor did I plan to overclock my processor.
Before I could pick my motherboard, I had to choose the case first. The latest trend in gaming is the SFF (Small Form Factor) PC, which got even more interest recently withValve's Steam Machine initiative. One popular standard for SFF is Mini-ITX which offers a small case size but often comes with limitations such as specially sized graphic cards and power supplies that oddly cost more than their full size brethren.
Corsair recently came out with a Mini-ITX case called the Obsidian 250D that was advertised as a "no compromise" solution that allows you to use full sized GPU's as well as standard sized ATX power supplies. I seriously considered this case until I found out the graphics card I wanted was about 5mm too long to fit so I opted to go with the larger Obsidian 350D Micro ATXenclosure instead. It's a nice looking case with plenty of cable management built-in including wire ties and rubber grommets.Although Micro-ATX isn't considered a Small Form Factor, it allows me to fit a powerful PC in a smaller package than the larger full size ATX cases and still gives me more cooling and expansion options than the Mini-ITX.
The rest of my components include:
Processor: Intel Core i5-4570 3.2GHz LGA 1150 Quad-Core - $199
Since I'm not over clocking, I saved money by not getting a K series CPU and with Turbo Boost the CPU can ramp up to to 3.6 GHz under load. The higher end Intel i7 series processors would have added Hyper-Threading, however this wouldn't give me much, if any benefit with game performance.
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H87M-D3H - $87.99
I picked this motherboard since it was the only H87 Micro-ATX board with 3 system fan headers, a better quality Realtek ALC892 audio codec and for the lowest price vs the competition. It also has the advantage of being Hackintosh friendly in case I want to run OS X later.
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper T4 CPU Cooler - $29.93
Rather than stick with the default Intel stock cooler which runs loud under load, I decided to replace it with an aftermarket CPU cooler from Cooler Master. The Hyper T4 is rather large but can run as quiet as 15.1dBA. I looked into closed looped water coolers, particularly the Corsair Hydro H100i, but I read that the heat pump contributes to noise as well as the 2 additional fans for the radiator so I opted to stay with traditional air cooling instead.
Video Card: Gigabyte GV-N760OC-2GD (rev. 2.0) - $259.99
This card is based on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 GPU, which offers the best bang for the buck GPU from Nvidia. It's not the prettiest card but it comes overclocked from the factory and has 3 cooling fans that perform much quieter than the competition. I also considered going with the older GeForce GTX 660 card since it was slightly cheaper and is still based on the Kepler architecture, however I decided to get the current generation since it wasn't that much more expensive. Nvidia is also providing a free game called Daylight with my purchase.
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" SATA III - $139.99
The Samsung 840 EVO-Series is highly rated for it's performance and Amazon had a recent price drop for the 250GB model. Since there no moving parts in a SSD this will help keep my PC cool and quiet.
Power Supply: Corsair RM550 550 Watt 80-Plus Gold - $79.99
I wanted a power supply with a Gold efficiency rating as well as one that ran quiet. The Corsair RM series had both including a fan that only turns on when it needs to. It's fully modular so I only need to plug in the cables that are required for my specific needs, which helps keeps the case neat and tidy. It's also Haswell certified which is important to maintain the low power states when the PC is idle.
Memory: Kingston HyperX 8GB Blu (2x4GB) 1600 MHz DDR3 (PC3 12800) - $85.74
I read that those tall heat spreaders don't do much for gaming so I opted for low profile Kingston memory that won't interfere with my CPU cooler. Unfortunately memory prices are relatively high right now so I opted to get a 8GB kit, rather than the 16GB version. There really isn't any game that requires more than 8GB so I should be fine plus I have 2 extra memory slots on my motherboard for future expansion.
OS: Windows 8.1 Professional
I plan to install Windows 8.1 since it supports DirectX 11.2, is optimized for SSDs, and boots faster than Windows 7. I don't care for the Modern UI, but with options to boot to the Desktop it should be OK.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2014
iMovie (2013)
I've been a old fan of iMovie since version 1.0 when it was first came bundled with my beloved iMac DV Special Edition. It was specifically designed to work with FireWire and DV cameras that were prevalent at the time and was a relatively inexpensive way to edit digital videos without having to invest in a more costly Avid/Premier/Final Cut Pro solution.
Although I was quite proficient using the old versions up to iMovie HD 6, I never got around to using the newer iMovie '08. A lot of that had to do with the drastically new UI that was introduced as well as thehorrible reviews the product received. Basically Apple took out a lot of solid editing features (no timeline or advanced audio features) of the old version, replaced them with just a few good ones (zero rendering time for titles and effects, skim to preview), and ended up upsetting the Mac faithful during the process. Apple ended up conceding that this perhaps wasn't the best idea and quickly allowed anybody the option to download the old version for free.
What made this drastic change so puzzling was that the inventor of iMovie '08 was none other than Randy Ubillos, one of the co-creators of Adobe Premier and was part of the original team that produced Final Cut Pro. You would think with his years of digital video experience he would know the type of items video editors would want.
To their credit, Apple didn't rest on their laurels and slowly added back in many of the missing features with each new revision. When I bought my last iMac (Mid 2011) it came bundled with iMovie '11, so I decided to give it another try. By then I had since replaced my old DV camcorder with a newer AVCHD Sony model (thanks to Rob's generous Best Buy gift card!) and was anxious to start editing my HD videos.
I found out right away that although iMovie supported AVCHD video importing (for most consumer type cameras), it wouldn't let you edit the AVCHD files natively. Instead it forced you to transcode the video to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) which has the nasty side effect of taking the storage efficient file format of AVCHD and blowing it up ten times the original file size. With my limited hard drive space there was no way I could support that so I gave up on iMovie and used the free Windows based software that came with my Sony camera. It had an awful interface and it forced me to use Windows (the horror!) but it did allow me to edit AVCHD natively and gave me the option to create near Blu-Ray quality AVCHD DVDs.
Queue in iMovie 10.0 (Apple confusingly just calls it iMovie and has dropped the HD suffix and year moniker), which was introduced back in October 2013 along side with Mavericks. Not only did it finally allow you to natively edit in AVCHD, it had the slick space gray interface of its older brother Final Cut Pro X. I didn't end up using it though until I decided to edit my sister in law's recent wedding video. Coming from an iMovie HD 6 background, the UI still threw me off so I had to watch some YouTube video tutorials and read the sparse online documentation to get me up to speed (I really couldn't wait until late May for David Pogue's Missing Manual).
After the initial hump I found the new iMovie to be very intuitive and blazing fast. It takes advantage of every CPU core and I love the non-destructive editing process. I ended up completing the rough edit in about 2 nights which surprised me on how little effort it required.
There were two hiccups I had which I didn't expect. The first was that the new version enforces DRM restrictions on commercial music. I had a lot of pre-DRM iTunes purchases that it refused to import so I had to download some new tracks to put in the movie.
The second issue was the limited export options. I wanted to create some standard DVDs and AVCHD DVDs for the bride and groom, however I could only export to a QuickTime friendly MP4 file. Apple has other online options such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, ect... but come on, this obviously restricts you to smaller sized clips. Apple's recommended solution is to export your home movies to iMovie Theater or iTunes which is playable on your Apple TV but unfortunately I don't own this device nor do I know anybody else that does.
This led me to a lot of online research which included advice such as transcoding the MP4 file or purchasing a 3rd party product to convert/create the DVD. I used to be a big fan of Roxio's Toast but after reading the horrible online reviews for the latest Titanium product I decided against it. Plus they wanted an extra $20 for the High-Def/Blu-ray plug-inwhich I would expect to be included in the base price.
I then found a free open source product called Burnto create the basic DVD but the interface and features were lacking. The DVD menu option was almost comical with no customization options. Looking for a more Apple like solution I ended up downloading a free 30 day trial of Final Cut Pro X which has a native Send to DVD option. This worked great but I needed a more long term solution without having to fork over $300.
It turns out the answer was another little known to me Apple product called Compressor. Not only does it feature a burn to DVD option but also contains a Blu-ray authoring solution that includes creating AVCHD DVDs. It had a recent update that brings the UI a modern FCPX look and feel, all for $49.99.
For now all my in-laws wanted was just the DVD, but for my next HD project I will be sure to download Compressor. Once that happens look for another blog review.
*******************************************************************
Addendum - 3/2/2014
What made this drastic change so puzzling was that the inventor of iMovie '08 was none other than Randy Ubillos, one of the co-creators of Adobe Premier and was part of the original team that produced Final Cut Pro. You would think with his years of digital video experience he would know the type of items video editors would want.
To their credit, Apple didn't rest on their laurels and slowly added back in many of the missing features with each new revision. When I bought my last iMac (Mid 2011) it came bundled with iMovie '11, so I decided to give it another try. By then I had since replaced my old DV camcorder with a newer AVCHD Sony model (thanks to Rob's generous Best Buy gift card!) and was anxious to start editing my HD videos.
I found out right away that although iMovie supported AVCHD video importing (for most consumer type cameras), it wouldn't let you edit the AVCHD files natively. Instead it forced you to transcode the video to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) which has the nasty side effect of taking the storage efficient file format of AVCHD and blowing it up ten times the original file size. With my limited hard drive space there was no way I could support that so I gave up on iMovie and used the free Windows based software that came with my Sony camera. It had an awful interface and it forced me to use Windows (the horror!) but it did allow me to edit AVCHD natively and gave me the option to create near Blu-Ray quality AVCHD DVDs.
Queue in iMovie 10.0 (Apple confusingly just calls it iMovie and has dropped the HD suffix and year moniker), which was introduced back in October 2013 along side with Mavericks. Not only did it finally allow you to natively edit in AVCHD, it had the slick space gray interface of its older brother Final Cut Pro X. I didn't end up using it though until I decided to edit my sister in law's recent wedding video. Coming from an iMovie HD 6 background, the UI still threw me off so I had to watch some YouTube video tutorials and read the sparse online documentation to get me up to speed (I really couldn't wait until late May for David Pogue's Missing Manual).
After the initial hump I found the new iMovie to be very intuitive and blazing fast. It takes advantage of every CPU core and I love the non-destructive editing process. I ended up completing the rough edit in about 2 nights which surprised me on how little effort it required.
There were two hiccups I had which I didn't expect. The first was that the new version enforces DRM restrictions on commercial music. I had a lot of pre-DRM iTunes purchases that it refused to import so I had to download some new tracks to put in the movie.
The second issue was the limited export options. I wanted to create some standard DVDs and AVCHD DVDs for the bride and groom, however I could only export to a QuickTime friendly MP4 file. Apple has other online options such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, ect... but come on, this obviously restricts you to smaller sized clips. Apple's recommended solution is to export your home movies to iMovie Theater or iTunes which is playable on your Apple TV but unfortunately I don't own this device nor do I know anybody else that does.
This led me to a lot of online research which included advice such as transcoding the MP4 file or purchasing a 3rd party product to convert/create the DVD. I used to be a big fan of Roxio's Toast but after reading the horrible online reviews for the latest Titanium product I decided against it. Plus they wanted an extra $20 for the High-Def/Blu-ray plug-inwhich I would expect to be included in the base price.
I then found a free open source product called Burnto create the basic DVD but the interface and features were lacking. The DVD menu option was almost comical with no customization options. Looking for a more Apple like solution I ended up downloading a free 30 day trial of Final Cut Pro X which has a native Send to DVD option. This worked great but I needed a more long term solution without having to fork over $300.It turns out the answer was another little known to me Apple product called Compressor. Not only does it feature a burn to DVD option but also contains a Blu-ray authoring solution that includes creating AVCHD DVDs. It had a recent update that brings the UI a modern FCPX look and feel, all for $49.99.
For now all my in-laws wanted was just the DVD, but for my next HD project I will be sure to download Compressor. Once that happens look for another blog review.
*******************************************************************
Addendum - 3/2/2014
How could I forget one of the most unforgivable problems with iMovie that was introduced with the '08 version. For reasons unknown (perhaps to allow it to run on slower computers?) it deinterlaces all your AVCHD video, no matter if your camera supported progressive or not, and using a process that degrades the video quality. It looks like this problem has been finally fixed with the new iMovie 10.0 (2003) version which is welcome news. I've noticed no quality issues with my exported videos.
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