Recently I have been going through a phase of watching (almost exclusively) dystopian science fiction and while this is probably not widening my "cinematic horizons" particularly, it makes for an interesting blog post if nothing else! Here I present my top 5 list:
Terry Gilliam's dystopian masterpiece is a tale of mistaken identity in a surreal alternate future. Full of dark humour and with the expected Monty Python silliness, the film is set in a visually stunning, bureaucratic world. The bizzare dream sequences may be too full on for some, but they are just a small part of the whole tapestry. The film is full of subtle visual gags too; it is an actual "bug" (i.e. insect) that causes a bug in the system which leads to the main premise of the film! Definitely one of my favourite films, and essential viewing for sci-fi or Monty Python fans...
Logan's Run tells the story of a perfect world where the inhabitants live in a sealed off, domed city following some wonderfully vague apocolyptic event. The catch (there is always a catch) is that very aggressive population control means that no-one is allowed to live past the age of 30. The story focuses on Logan 5, a citizen whos job is to stop "runners" from escaping their fate.
The best part about the film is probably the Oscar-winning special effects (bear in mind the film is over 30 years old). Everything from the now very retro costume and set design to the very English, matter-of-fact style of acting of that era leads you to expect suitably questionable special effects, but in fact the opposite is true: proper laser guns, teleportation, it's got it all...
Watching Metropolis is a very strange experience. Being used to the polished nature of current day cinema, watching a film without sound (save the fantastic orchestral score later added) takes getting used to, especially as the cast "over-act" to convey their character's personalities without speech. However, particularly considering the film is now over 80 years old, the special effects are absolutely stunning and the world portrayed is one that still feels futuristic.
Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is just so damn atmospheric. The dystopian near-future Los Angeles is so believable that it wouldn't be at all surprising to see cities like it in our lifetimes. Like so much great science fiction, it takes place in a grimey, polluted world; this isn't the future of sleek white and glass panels, its a world that is just trying to survive.
Its hard to ignore the theme running throughout this list that almost all of the films predade the big CGI technologies that basically came about after the Star Wars series. Thats not to say that CGI has had a bad influence on film; only that the charm of earlier films such as these comes from the inventiveness required to create these futuristic societies. Its all to easy now to create a 100 foot robot of unimaginable complexity, but what use is that if the story is just playing off recycled nostalgia... The early masters of film had to rely on tricks of the camera, gripping stories and rich characters. Of course it's not to say that all modern sci-fi is full of blundering CGI. Great examples include Moon (2009), and my last choice Children of Men.
Set in a bleak near-future Britain, Children of Men imagines an infertile world with the remaining population left falling into chaos. The film is disturbingly believable, from the draconian immigration laws to the crumbling society that is portrayed in such detail. Perhaps the most impressive aspect though is the epic action sequences, the notable scene being in the film's climax where we are treated to over six minutes of frantic street warfare, amazingly filmed in a single take!
Honorary mention goes to Zardos, a film which Sean Connery described as "the challenge he needed after the James Bond series"...
The basic idea behind using an isometric view is to give the appearance of a 3D image on a 2D plane (i.e. the screen). The definition is basically that the each axis of projection follows the same scale, i.e. there is no perspective, meaning that the angle between all axes is the same (120°).
However, if we actually apply these angles to pixel art, it is more problematic. We have tan(30) ≈ 0.577, which means for every two pixels in the x-direction, we must move 1.155 in the y-direction! These clearly must be integer values if we are dealing with pixels on a screen, so we change the angle slightly so that we get a 1:2 ratio.
While we could in theory draw in a true isometric projection, it would require anti-aliasing to avoid looking horrible, and part of the whole pixel art philosophy is the idea of clean and crisp outlines; it is a style of digital art devoid of the smoothed, Photoshop processed feel that is more common today.
Of course other types of line can be used in isometric pixel art (to great effect), but it is generally advisable to stick to integer ratios for their gradients. A good example of this may be found in Rhys Davis' authoritative "The Complete Guide to Isometric Pixel Art", he describes a family of lines that work particularly well (see right).
This historic moment marks the start of Pixeville, my latest programming project. Inspired by Shamus Young's Pixel City, I have decided to try and create a procedurally generated city in an isometric pixel art style.
Having grown up loving classic isometric games such as Rollercoaster Tycoon and Transport Tycoon (see below, now available from the open source project OpenTTD), it seems the perfect challenge. The aims of the project are to have a arbitrarily large city generated at random, along with random textures and detail, and possibly eventually basic animation. As with all such projects, it will probably get turned into a screensaver eventually, but that is a long way off.
I'm writing the app in Java for the time being (as that's what I know best) but I am considering a C++ port eventually for the screensaver etc. You can keep track of developments on my Google Code project page.
I finally got around to writing a port of an amazing Firefox extension to the Chrome browser. MileWideBack (available on the Mozilla site) turns the left edge of the browser into one large back button, so when the browser is maximised (as it normally is for me at least), you can just slam the mouse onto the screen of the screen and just click to navigate.
By default, its left-click goes back, right click goes forward, and middle click to close. Also using the scroll wheel on the edge of the screen cycles through the tabs. There is an options page so those without middle mouse buttons can set up the extension differently.
Its now available on the Google Chrome extensions site: get it now!
After 8 weeks of work this summer, I have finally finished my work with the Dingwall charity RoWAN redesigning their new website.
I built it using Drupal, and it is the first large scale project of its kind that I have finished. It supports multiple users, comments, search, a recycling database, along with news, events, polls and much more. Please feel free to leave a comment saying what you think of it.
If you are using Drupal, the chances are you probably are using Views/CCK as well. I recently came up against a problem where I couldn't link to the path of an attached file to a Views display. This is where the Relationships feature comes in. This allows us to find additional information linked to the node - in this case, the filepath.
First goto Relationships and add Upload: Attached Files as a new Relationship. Next goto the Field section and add (Files) File: Path as a new field, remembering to choose Exclude from display. This means we can still use the data without displaying the field. Also make sure this field comes first in the ordering.
Finally add the Field with which you want to use the filepath and choose Output this field as a link. Here you will be able to use the replacement pattern [filepath].
A usual, I present the obligatory First Post to launch my new site. Hopefully this incarnation will receive more attention than previous attempts, of which most have started with similarly optimistic first posts. On the site I hope to share various nuggets of music, computing, physics and much more. Lets see how this goes...
