My 3ds Mii QR code

More about the 3ds

So I recently had someone ask me how the 3D images work on my 3ds. I explained something about the little slots in the screen that direct different pixels to each of your eyes to make things appear to have depth to them. Today I found an interesting article with microscope pictures of the 3ds screen: The 3DS Under a Microscope - Nukezilla. It pretty interesting to me that the bars dividing the slots are that big (in relation to the size of the pixels).

Another thing I noticed about the 3ds is that the aliasing of the 3D shapes seems to be even more exaggerated when the 3D is on. I think that comes from the way that the image is rendered twice from slightly different angles, so there are 2 chances for jaggies on the edges. Where a normal rasterized image only has the chance for aliasing once, the 3ds has aliasing for both eyes, and, in particular, the jaggies don't line up and cause an extra level of visual confusion that isn't there for movie images (because of very aggressive anti-aliasing for computer generated images).

First impressions of the 3ds

So I went and got a 3ds today from Toys R Us. Who knew they were still in business? Anyway, I spent a few minutes playing around with it and I though I could share some of my impressions with you.

The first thing I noticed when I turned it on was that the 3d screen was almost too much, but that was probably because I was moving at the time. After I sat down and adjusted the 3d slider, I felt much better about my 3d experience. For it to work right, you have to hold it kinda close to your face, which may be part of why they recommend taking a break every 30 minutes from the 3d experience.

As far as software goes, the first game I played on it is built in and called Face Raiders. What you do is take a picture of your face first, then you proceed to fire balls to knock floating heads out of the sky. And by that I mean, you turn the device around the world, and it augments reality to show flying heads attacking you. I felt kinda awkward doing this in a public place as I had to get up off my chair to defeat the boss that was behind me. The game worked very well and was very impressive I thought. Augmented reality gaming is probably at its best (for now) in Face Raiders.

Then I tried out AR Games after returning to my car to get the AR cards that I hadn't realized I'd need. AR Games is another set of games that augments reality, but it all based around the card you place on a flat surface. Similar to Face Raiders, you shoot balls at targets, but this time they are objects that seem to spawn from the card that you placed down. It was a really fun game, but again, I felt awkward performing in front of a group of people when I was the only one that could actually see the dragon emerging from the card and trying to scratch my face off. I eventually won and moved on to make myself a Mii.

Similar to the software on the Wii, the 3ds allows you to customize your Miis however you wish, but with a few additional parts. I however chose the other option, to have the Mii be based on a picture. I moved myself to a good location, and took the picture of myself. The generated Mii was acceptable, and as I was told, was a pretty good representation of myself. All in all I've had fun with my 3ds so far and I would recommend it to anyone who has $250 that they don't have anything else to do with.

Vs. AI is fun

I just wanted to show off how fun it is to play vs. AI in League of Legends with this picture. The character selection screen had no discussion.

Random Steam Game

I just found a great website to help me when I'm in an indecisive mood but want to play something on Steam. If you have steam and are ever faced with this situation, I recommend checking it out. I just tried it out and got Alien Swarm.

Parkour Parkour!

Tharesan spent a long time building this city environment in which he could do parkour. I helped a little bit and Lilei also helped with decorating the interiors of the apartments. Here's a short video of Tharesan doing a quick lap around the city.

Minecraft's Appeal

I've been playing a lot of Minecraft lately and there are reasons for it. A big part of why I play video games is for the social interaction. While the social tools in Minecraft aren't nearly as good as they could be, playing on a server is very much a social activity. I made a server so that I can hang out and play with all my friends that are interested in exploring, gathering materials, and building awesome stuff. And before you ask, no you cannot have access to my server unless you actually know me.

I have heard some complaints that Minecraft has bad graphics and just doesn't have enough of a point to make it an interesting game. Those complaints come from a lack of understanding of what Minecraft is. You, as the player, can come up with the point of the game for yourself, or you can depend on the other players if you have a multiplayer server to inspire your actions. And if you think about it, the collection of parts and construction of objects is very much like playing with Legos. The blocks in Minecraft are restricted to cubes (and occasionally half cubes), which is slightly different than the Lego restrictions, but similar enough to the basic building blocks from a set of Legos. Of course there are custom blocks made for specific types of building projects, such as light sabers for Lego men to hold in the Star Wars sets. I argue that those pieces are similar to a player holding a sword.

It is also for this reason that I do not want to install the iConomy server mod to my minecraft server. I think that adding a currency to the game is perhaps a little bit of overkill. There are already tons of resources to collect and use for various things. Depending which projects you are working on, you might want to trade the cobblestone you've collected to someone else that has surplus iron. On my server, however, the barter system has almost entirely been done away with in favor of community drive building projects. A couple people get an idea, and everyone that hears about it wants to contribute. It's really a good feeling to have a game that is almost entirely cooperative to contrast with all of the other popular games that tend to thrive on being competitive.