Adrian Hayter’s Blog

I’ve recently discovered quite an interesting real time game on the internet, and one that is blog related. “BlogShares” takes information regarding incoming and outgoing links from a lot of blogs on the internet, and then calculates their “net worth” (excuse the pun). Users can then buy shares in any number of blogs, and sell them if the blog starts doing badly (i.e. less links are found going to it). I thought this was quite a clever idea so I registered, and low and behold found The Atheist Blogger (my other blog) on there…and doing rather well.

I told the system that I owned the blog, proved it with some html on the main page, and was given 1000 shares that were being reserved for the owner. These shares (thanks to the massive amount of people visiting and linking to my blog) were worth $15,000,000 each at the time, so I’ve now got a nice net worth of $15 billion. I’m unfortunately not majority owner of the “company”. That honour goes to a fellow by the name of “The Undertaker”, who has a net worth of $2,248,152,639,818,087.00. Yes, I worked it out…that’s 1000 trillion (or a quadrillion).

Anyway, it’s quite a fun game, and since it’s in real time you only need to spend a few minutes on it every day trading stocks…that is, until you start earning big!

Popularity: 3% [?]

3 weeks ago, we were given an assignment to work on in small groups. The assignment was to make a game for the Xbox 360 in XNA Game Studio Express, which could either be 2D or 3D. The possibilities were endless, and so me and my partner Conrad decided to go all out and port one of the most popular 2D games (Tetris) to a 3D environment.

When our lecturer first heard about this, he was concerned that it might be a bit too much work for 3 weeks, and that we should start out small, perhaps trying to make 2D Tetris, and then if we thought we could port it across, start to make it in 3D. Fuck that we thought, and started planning a 3D game engine.

Of course, being lazy students, we didn’t do much but plan for the first 1.5 weeks, and then realised we had so much to do in very little time. So we started out by building an environment, which had a rotatable platform, and an array of booleans that would act as the movable area for the blocks. We then decided that even if Tetris 3D was even possible to play in 3D, it would be the hardest game ever…and so we did what any irrational programmer would do…make it harder. We renamed out project “3D Psychedelic Techno Tetris”, applied a spinning background with awful clashing colours, and added the aptly named “Logical Song” by German techno band Scooter…on and infinite loop.

Programming went better than we had ever expected, and we soon had a fully playable game that used a multitude of clever and intuitive methods to move and detect blocks. Without intending to do so, we had inadvertently created the first fully operational 3D Tetris Engine, which could be easily modified, and content (such as new bricks) easily plugged in. Since everything in controlled by a series of constants and calculations, you can easily change the size of the platform, the shapes of the blocks, and even the way the camera moves around the grid, and the game will work out how to make it playable. As so many people have claimed for so many different products: “It just works”.

So I guess I should get down to features:

- Blocks spawn at the top of the environment and move down until they either hit the platform or another block.
- Blocks can be rotated about the X, Y, and Z axis.
- A “shadow” block predicts where the block will come to rest if you were to do nothing further to it.
- Lines and columns that are “complete” will disappear and blocks above will move down to fill the gaps.
- The next block is displayed in the top right corner, and score / level system components are kept track at the bottom.
- The camera can be moved 360 degree around the platform, as well as up above the platform for a birds-eye view, and down the bottom for a normal tetris view.

Some pictures:

The game when you have just started. The first brick is floating above the platform, whilst the shadow brick predicts where it will fall. Both the current brick and the next brick are the same, and examples of the new types of brick we created in the game for the 3D version. Other than the standard bricks, there are 5 extra bricks to make the game more challenging.

An alternate view is gained by rotating the camera.

An example of how things can rapidly build up if you don’t play well enough.

What happens if you really mess up…

I should point out that all images above were prepared by myself in the game, and I am really not as bad at this game as it appears. I am in fact the current world champion at 3D Tetris, with a score of 3800 at level 8, and I welcome anyone who reckons they can score more than me.

Popularity: 4% [?]

A date for every gamers diary: 7th September

A day when the most incredible, most sophisticated, most complex game in the entire history of gaming will be released. Spore has been in development since early 2000, and 8 years of work can really be felt in all the video demos that have been released. Will Wright has used procedural generating, and taken it to a whole new level. He has made his career off of so called “God games”, but I think Spore will be the ultimate achievement. You actually play God to an entire universe of life, creating, maintaining, and destroying.

All I need now is a time machine so I can actually play it…

Popularity: 3% [?]

I haven’t made a blog post for a week or so, and even though I have meant to quite a few times, things have come up at the last minute. However, I’m now free for 20 minutes or so, so I thought I would crack one off.

Last week was my last week at work, and it started well (with a bank holiday Monday to relax on) and the weekend prior had been filled with fun at the beach and great weather. Things started going wrong there though, and I felt ill through Sunday evening and all day Monday. Assuming I had recovered on Tuesday, I went into work, sat down, and promptly threw up all over my desk. Evident that things were just going to get worse, I went home and spent the entire day in bed.

The next couple of days (Wednesday and Thursday) were also spent at home while I shook off the stomach bug I had apparently contracted. By Thursday I had practically starved myself for 2 days so I spent the day building up my strength again. On Friday (my last day) I finally actually went to work for the last time. It was a great day, and I will miss all of my friends that I made there.

On Friday afternoon, Jennie, my girlfriend came down to stay for a week which is great! We haven’t seen each other in over a month due to various commitments on either side but at least I have her all to myself for a week. The next time I’ll see her is after my freshers week at University, which is in just less than a month.

Speaking of University, things are really starting to heat up and get exciting. With only a few weeks until I leave, people are talking about it all the time, especially on sites like Facebook. I can’t wait to get there and meet everyone I’ve met through the various Groups I’ve joined on it. I’ve finally got my Student Insurance sorted out, and my student bank account should be available to use within a few days. The Student Loan Company haven’t sent my declaration form through yet though (and they said they would send it last week) so I’ll have to give them a phone call tomorrow.

As for other things in life, even though I’ve been following the Bioshock story since last year, I somehow totally managed to miss the release of the actual game. I bought it a few days ago and my initial reactions to it are good. The entire look and feel of it is breathtaking, as are the abilities you can use in it. The only thing that I can find fault with at the moment is the physics engine, which somehow manages to throw enemies through walls that they really should bounce off…to the point that two Splicers I had just killed fell through a tunnel and into the water outside.

The story behind it is great though, and I look forward to playing it more and more in the next few weeks.

Popularity: 5% [?]

An average student will bring some form of television to university, whether they use it to watch actual channels, or videos / DVD’s. However, either way the TV Licensing people demand you pay for a TV license, which costs over £100 per year and for students is quite an expensive item. The main reason for this is that the TV Licensing people have quite literally thrown student rights out of the window. A normal household is expected to pay for one license per TV, but when it comes to university accommodation (where a large number of people share flats) the rules suddenly change. Each student has to pay for a TV license if they own a TV, so pooling together is not an option. Sounds pretty unfair, so I’m not going to let them get me in their little game.

It helps that I don’t watch TV that often, and when I do, it is almost always online. I use sites like TV Links which update with links to TV episodes on a very regular basis. Using that site alone I managed to catch up on the many Doctor Who episodes that I had missed, or just wanted to watch again. Other such sites are All UC and Quick Silver Screen. However if you want to watch something a little more detailed, then the BBC has recently launched it’s “iPlayer” which allows you to watch programmes shown in the last 7 days. It’s alright to use, but you will need Windows XP and Internet Explorer to do it, a sad fact for people like me (who tend more towards Linux and browsers like Firefox and Opera).

So that covers actual channels / programmes, but what about TV components like DVD and Games consoles? This applies to me more, as I watch DVDs and own an Xbox 360. The easiest option for DVD’s is to watch them on you computer. Most students have one, and if you don’t have one that plays DVD’s then it’s time you upgrade your system! DVD drives for computers are very cheap and can be installed easily, but there is a very high chance your computer has one already.

Games consoles are little more tricky, but I have succeeded in getting my Xbox 360 to work with my computer monitor and the setup for the visual side is actually quite simple. You need to get a VGA adapter for your Xbox, which goes into the output port on the back instead of the standard cable (red, white, yellow). Instead of the yellow video cable, there should be a plug that fits into the back of your monitor. For audio, it gets a little tricky. The VGA adapter comes with the standard white and red cables for audio, so if you have a monitor or speakers that support them, then use it!

However, if (like me) your monitor and speakers only accept the headphone audio jack, you will need to use the VGA to Headphone adapter that luckily comes with the Xbox 360 VGA Adapter (at least the official one). Now, if you have a monitor or speaker with this port in it, simply plug the jack into it and the audio should work.

However…if (still like me) you don’t have such a monitor or speaker, you will need to buy a pair of speakers that have the green audio plug coming out of them (mine cost £10). You will also need a female-to-female audio jack coupler (costs around £2). Connect both the VGA audio plug and the green speaker audio plug into each end of the coupler and everything should work!

It is a long winded method, but it only cost me around £25 (VGA adapter, speakers, coupler) and saved me bringing a TV and buying the license.

Popularity: 3% [?]

So here I am, half past midnight with a fresh copy of WordPress installed on my new website. As you can tell by the title, this is going to be anything but a linguistic adventure, and for that I apologise in advance.

My name is Adrian Hayter and I am a 19 years old student currently residing in the United Kingdom. I say “student” but this is in fact false since I have yet to start my course at University. Technically speaking I am a Core Administrator at a pensions company, but the job is only temporary and I like to think ahead, so to make matters clearer, I will refer to myself as a student. In September 2007 I am embarking on a 3 year course in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence at Royal Holloway, University of London.

As you have probably guessed by now, computers are my passion and I have been interested in them ever since I was introduced to my father’s old IBM machine (Windows 3.1…you are sorely missed!) and this interest has been magnified throughout my life. I have had experience with most versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and more recently Linux (Ubuntu). Being the son of a software engineer had a load of perks, and not just an abundance of PCs around the house! We were one of the first families in my area (that I know of) to get Internet access which came with the ever so lovely CompuServe connection software (”Welcome to CompuServe!”…anyone?). Since that day I was hooked on all things to do with the internet, which admittedly wasn’t that much at the time (this was before Google had even been contemplated remember). As time passed though, and more and more people got interested in what would become a global phenomenon, I learnt more about how the “web” worked.

At age 15 I was taught the basics of HTML, the first web language, and I started writing offline web pages that I stored on my home computer. It was also around this time that I acquired my Internet Alias: “DrPoodle”, which I obtained through a series of events that I will not go into at this precise moment. Suffice to say, DrPoodle has become a large part of my life online and indeed offline, which brings me neatly onto the next section.

In 2004, the video game “Halo 2″ was released with Xbox Live functionalities. Already a Halo fan, I became an intent online gamer…to the point of obsession. My XBL Gamertag was, unsurprisingly, DrPoodle, and it was through the medium of online gaming that I met some truly remarkable people who I still consider very close friends. However, with us all thousands of miles apart, we needed somewhere to be sociable and have group discussions about various topics. It was at this point that I decided to take the plunge into the world of websites, and on 15th April 2005, I created DrPoodle.com.

My first attempts at a full blown website were…less than satisfactory, but as time went by, I got better and more skilled, learning XHTML, CSS, and PHP. Fast forward 2 years, and the same website is barely recognisable. It was a recent decision of mine to relinquish my personal hold on DrPoodle.com, mainly because the community had grown so much that I felt it would be hardly fair to attribute everything to myself. So even though it still bears my Internet Alias as a name, DrPoodle.com is a Community Discussion site, aimed towards advocates of Freedom of Speech and Expression.

It was also because of this choice, that I started this website…my new personal website, AdrianHayter.com. On this website I will write regular blog posts to do with certain aspects of my life and my interests. Hopefully people will be interested…if not, well, that’s just the way it goes.

-Adrian Hayter

*Note: I will be making a new theme in the near future. I can only describe this one as “Fat iPod” and it needs to go…

Popularity: 3% [?]