I have not taken the time to verify your claims here, but don't you think it's fair to use "off the scale" when comparing this to any other time period during the modern human era?
As other people have said, life on earth will go on in one form or another. But "off the scale" is a necessary term in this context to drive home the incredible turmoil and human suffering that will result as we are forced to adjust the local pressures of water shortages, mass human migration, and agricultural failures that will be caused by this...
Not sure I agree with the author's assertion that matrix math should be avoided until absolutely necessary when learning graphics programming. I don't even agree with the idea that matrix math is particularly difficult.
When I was in university, we learned graphics programming by taking a linear algebra course or two. This was applied in a graphics course in which all students built their own software renderer, from top to bottom.
I have seen coworkers who never learned matrix math fumble with obfuscated code that could be replaced with one line of matrix operations. Several game companies I have interviewed at make linear algebra a very big part of their technical interview process. IMO if you are even remotely comfortable with math, learning matrix math is a HUGE benefit (maybe even a necessity) if you want a serious job as a game developer... the easiest way to get going with it is to just take a university-level intro to linear algebra course. That is all you need to understand the math underneath the entire rendering pipeline.
Vector, Matrix, Affine transformations, quaternions - this can all be managed in a week or two for solid understanding, even if one's math skill is at advanced arithmetic (pre algebra) level, since it is Linear algebra after all. It really is not that hard, and of utter importance in graphics.
There is a book Math for game programmers or something, I forgot, but these are the basic tools you have as a graphics programmer. I'd argue you need to expand knowledge into physics if you want to be a good graphics programmer (optics), and without some calculus, namely integration, forget about advanced graphics programming. You could do it, but you won't understand it - you'll end up waiting for others to code examples and publish non-scientific papers in order to understand what you need to do. Thus, you will always lag behind cutting edge and won't be able to read published papers and implement/expand them.
The key point he makes is that you don't _have_ to focus on the hard stuff to be productive and actually make something useful. I think it's an important thing to realize and a great way to learn...build on little personal victories and gain a level of confidence before you take on the really tough challenges.
It's useful to know eventually, but I think the author is right that, if you want to make games, you should learn how to make pong first. (How many hobbyists would be willing to learn the equivalent of two college courses before they can rotate a circle on screen?)
In my university's game design society, we have a short competition to make "pong with a twist" near the start of the year. Use of Game Maker and similar programs is encouraged, because we're "game design" not "game programming", but it's the same principle: if you want to make games, start by making a game.
Matrix math is actually incredibly easy. I've never really understood why a linear algebra class is considered a difficult class by some. If you were able to handle high school algebra, then the ideas you learn in linear algebra won't be particularly beyond that. At the very least, a simple understanding of basic matrix math will get you pretty far in graphic programming.
Matrix math is covered in a few classes, it's all the abstractions that state the same thing in 10 different ways. Gaussian elimination, determinants, subspaces, eigenvectors, etc that make it a full course.
I've seen various resources around hn for getting familiar with linear algebra (which seems hugely useful) - let's say that I'm not in a position to take an intro to linear algebra cours at a university, what other alternatives are there? Any online courses?
And how much calculus is required to have a chance at understanding the material?
It might be nice to have some study groups in the bay area for people looking to get into this with a regular schedule.
The MIT Linear Algebra course by Gilbert Strang is my personal favorite. I don't think calculus is really needed to understand the material. Linear algebra does have a lot of benefits in a multivariable calculus course though.
Your local community college probably offers linear algebra and may offer them at more convenient times. I only offer that if you haven't considered it.
Assuming no class is available, depending on how deeply you want to learn the subject, linear algebra is fairly accessible. It sounds like the introductory level stuff (University 200 level) is what is recommended in that article, so the good news is you don't need a class to learn it.
I don't think not having calculus would prevent learning it at this level. Personally I'd just look at reviews for linear algebra textbooks on Amazon and buy the best one. One thing I often do when trying to learn a subject on my own is a go to the University bookstore to figure out what materials I should start with.
Then just read the chapters and work the sample problems. When doing any matrix manipulation by hand (boring, but good to verify and help internalize understanding) it's easy to use that software to check results.
Basic linear algebra is one of the easier mathematics to teach one's self.
> I'm not in a position to take an intro to linear algebra cours at a university
What kind of non-position are you talking about?
At least here in Germany, there's absolutely no problem with attending a linear algebra lecture as a guest. Just ask the lecturer whether it's okay for him/her, and everything is fine.
Linear algebra is absolute basic stuff. It is part of the first and second semester in mathematics, and also taught in computer science, physics, chemistry and many other fields.
So all you need is a university that provides natural sciences. I can't imagine such a university being hard to find.
As an Albertan, I am very proud of the exciting candidates we are electing in municipal elections. Hopefully someday we will be able to see the same excitement in provincial politics, where we have had the same party in power since 1971!
I thought I was one of those people too... every time I try to nap it seems to end up with me just lying down and trying to fall asleep for 20 minutes. However, after moving in with my girlfriend she has confirmed that I do indeed manage to fall totally asleep during these attempted naps.
I did some looking around and apparently earlier sleep stages can easily be confused for being awake, especially for light sleepers. It may sound weird, but sleep perception is a funny thing. Some people nap quite easily, yet conclude they did not sleep at all because they never perceive themselves falling asleep or waking up.
For a digital distribution service that depends so much on consumer trust that their purchased content will still be available well into the future, this is even more puzzling...
Why even hint at the idea that you may one day shut down and remove access to purchased content? Surely there are ways to build hype without eroding trust in your brand and angering your audience.
The entire selling point for this site is that they sell DRM free games.
Since the games are DRM free, you never have to worry about the publisher, or anyone else, pulling servers offline and making the games unplayable.
GOG can go out of business the day after you purchase and you still have the games you already bought and downloaded.
They're not a game backup service. They're a game store. Once you've bought and downloaded your games, you can make your own backups; you don't rely on them to keep anything available forever.
That is true, but I think many people still use GOG as a backup service simply because it is convenient. In my opinion this is a big selling point for digital distribution, DRM or not.
I personally own a few games on GOG but currently don't have local copies of any. When I saw the notice on their website and assumed they were gone I briefly thought I would never be able to get a legimate copy of the games I bought. One could argue that it's my own fault for not backing them up myself, but still...
Exactly... I also wonder about calling it "HIS product" in reference to the employee. If he is only an employee, it is not HIS product, it is the company's product (and the OP's, as a founder/owner).
In my opinion, intrinsic motivation for a project isn't something that you either have or don't have by nature. It is something that is built and nurtured by a variety of external forces (team members, education, working conditions, etc) until the act of performing a task is rewarding in and of itself.
Expecting early-stage employees to be intrinsically motivated while ignoring environmental factors that may be eroding that motivation is unrealistic.
I bought the book with high hopes, but to be honest I found it a little dry. About halfway through I had to give up on the idea of reading it cover-to-cover, and instead just cherry-picked the interviews I wanted to read. It lacks a lot of background info on the interview subjects, so unless you are familiar with them you may find yourself lost as many historical and technical details are referenced without additional explanation.
Personally, I thought "Founders at Work" was a much more interesting read and would recommend checking that one out first.
I read Coders at Work and enjoyed it. As someone who picked up programming in a post-web age it was very interesting to read about our heritage. I bought the book expecting nuggets of architectural and project wisdom but found less than I had anticipated in that respect.
Yes, reading specific interviews is one way to read it.
Another way is reading every interview and comparing answers to the common questions Peter asked. Some answers are close to home, some unique, all interesting. Comparing them may be educational to all.
It depends on your experience I guess. I'm reading it now, and up to Joe Armstrong's interview everything is very understandable.
I was a bit disappointed the author didn't really ask Joshua Bloch about the non-Java JVM languages (in his answers Bloch thinks about Java and the JVM as a whole, while the discussion on concurrency for example would clearly benefit from separating the two).
I worked in computer vision for my MSc three years ago, and based on the state-of-the-art at that time I would be surprised if Natal going to be as robust as the mass market expects. This kind of thing is notoriously hard and error-prone. The information coming in from cameras is often so noisy and incomplete it is very difficult to tell what you are seeing.
Also the rumour that they have chopped Natal's onboard CPU and moved most of the processing to the Xbox 360 CPU does not fill me with optimism... Prove me wrong, Microsoft, prove me wrong!
Makes me think of the Newton hand writing recognition. It was pretty amazing for its time. But the errors made it worse than a keyboard for most people (as decided by the market, at least). Natal could correctly recognize 90+% of all motions correctly, but if it occasionally makes a mistake that causes your character to die or the opponent to score a goal on you, the public might stick with their Wii-motes for now.
I got to play the Natal Ricochet game this summer and I must say that it worked flawlessly. The only thing that didn't feel natural was the response time, which they said they were trying to improve.
Maybe, but performing well in controlled press tour and demo environments is very different than performing well in a million different kinds of living room and lighting configurations. I'm not saying the tech is going to utterly fail, but these things typically do present a lot of problems for computer vision technology.
As other people have said, life on earth will go on in one form or another. But "off the scale" is a necessary term in this context to drive home the incredible turmoil and human suffering that will result as we are forced to adjust the local pressures of water shortages, mass human migration, and agricultural failures that will be caused by this...