I’m Engaged

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

It’s funny, I always thought I was supposed to be nervous when I popped the big question, but I wasn’t. In fact, it came out so natural, I was wondering why I hadn’t done it before. Needless to say, I am engaged to be married to Isabella Peldszus.

For those of you wondering how I did it, it was simple. I was on the porch and I saw her sitting there, looking beautiful as usual, and I simply walked over, got on one knee, and I asked… it was that simple. Nothing elaborate, primarily because I knew she’d kill me if I did something embarrassing, and it was just plain. I asked her to be my wife!

It’s a little early to tell what the exact details are for the wedding, but the preliminary thoughts are that we’re going to have the wedding August 22nd in Germany. The exact location and specifics are unknown, but if you want to be on the guest list, please don’t be shy and send me an email.

More info to come later…

Supreme Commander 2 Announced… Kinda

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

Read this press release first.

When I was a teenager I used to volunteer time over at a local internet/gaming place called NetWars located in Bremerton, Washington. They had these ‘pods’ that they setup with fully enclosed environments and the area in the back was completely dark. It was lit only by the glare of the monitors and by the floor lining similar to the lining you find in airplanes when the lights are out. It set the mood for the area.

On any given night, you’d find me in one of these pods developing custom levels for Duke Nukem, Quake, and other games specifically for NetWars as a promotion to their business. In exchange, I was granted unrestricted access to play as many games as I wanted for as long as I wanted. This turned out to be a very bad thing for me once I discovered Total Annihilation.

Total Annihilation was an eye opener for me. It had very simple game mechanics, but got very complex once you started to manage your economy and out-produce and out-strategize your opponent. When I watched a Krogoth march into an enemy’s base and watched as everything exploded around it, I fell in love with the game. It was amazingly fun to play.

Time went on and occasionally I’d start up a new game. I also went out and downloaded mods and played with the amazing new creations of the fans of the original game. I even got involved in the Spring Project, a project that was going to turn Total Annihilation into a true 3D strategy game. That project got cut short barely after it had got off the ground as soon as Supreme Commander was announced.

I watched the videos on the various gaming websites. I would read the interviews and the fan speculation about the game. I couldn’t wait! I went out and got a brand new computer just so I could play the game at high resolution and I pre-ordered my copy months in advance. The copy came in the mail the day before it was officially released in the stores. I put the disc in, installed the game, and then played the campaign.

At first, I thought the game was visually stunning and a masterpiece. I would use my second monitor to monitor my main base while my primary monitor would zoom in and out over the battlescape to get a macro and micro management down to a science, but then I noticed something coming from my speakers… there was static!

I overlooked the technical flaws for a while, until I noticed on the forums that everyone out there was having one problem or another. Some problems were related to sound, most were related to speed, and yet even more were due to stupid user error. As I started playing more and more, I started seeing weaknesses and problems with the tech used to engineer the game. As the patches came out, there was very little improvement and the sound problems continued(please read my earlier post).

Just as I was about to give up, they announced the next installment for Supreme Commander, and it was to be known as Forged Alliance. I had hopes that they would fix the sound system, and I even flew all the way out to Seattle(at the time I was living in Boston) to talk to GPG to see if there was anything more I could do aside from creating a tool that I had released that converted the sound system format to something that they could use, which I had done for free. From the start of the interview they told me that they brought me in for a different game, not Supreme Commander. Gee, I sure wish they told me that before I left Boston, would’ve saved us both the hassle. I felt as though I was just dragged three thousand miles for nothing!

I bought Forged Alliance, like a good little fanboy. I played it, and then the unit imbalances, the lack of a map editor or unit editor(yet supposedly the most moddable game ever), the incredibly horrific patching experience, and the total disregard for system performance made me turn my back on the series. The only saving grace was another Supreme Commander fan who decided to write some amazing stories based in the Supreme Commander universe(check out Dotswarlock’s stories on the SC Forums).

It’s been a few months since I started a game with Supreme Commander, but last week I went back to the forums to check in on the fan fiction section to get the latest in the Dotswarlock story. While I was there I noticed that people were getting all hyped about the press release stating that Square Enix was planning on working together with Gas Powered Games to develop Supreme Commander 2…

The boyhood fan of Total Annihilation wants them to succeed, but the game programmer in me says that this will be another disappointment. GPG has already lost several key engineers that made Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation so much fun. People like Robert Berry, Jonathan Mavor(to which there is a massive weapon bearing his name in the Supreme Commander franchise) went on to found their own startup, Uber Entertainment. My personal favorite, and a common commentator and supporter for the mod community, Chris Blackwell is now with GameHouse. Plus, if you look at the resumes of half the upper management, you’ll find that over half of them have never released a game prior to working for Gas Powered Games.

The loss of those core engineers coupled with the poor management and early release of Supreme Commander and the dwindling fanbase of the Supreme Commander franchise by both modders and hardcore gamers alike will make Supreme Commander 2 a difficult task to pull off!

Still, I am hopeful!

Because I am a dedicated fanboy, I will most likely go out and buy the game when, or if it ever comes out. However, I am going to do so with a slight amount of discretion and caution. I hope they’ve learned their lessons from Supreme Commander, and the many other games that they have released that have received average, or fair ratings, and they are willing to dedicate a large amount of resources to making this the best RTS of all time.

I’ll continue later with a technical breakdown of some of the things that could have been handled better, as well as improvements I would like to see, but for now, I have my own games to build!

-Ken Noland

Perfect Weekend

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

Hey,

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a weekend where everything went perfect, err, well, almost perfect. If it wasn’t for the wait time at the restaurant at the space needle, then everything would’ve been perfect!

It started out by waking up a little earlier then I usually do for a Saturday, then Isa and I hopped on a boat to Seattle and walked around Pike Place Market for a little while and eventually found ourselves in the shopping centers in Westgate where we bought some more stuff and then headed to Seattle Center to watch the fountain and the accompanying musical. We watched as kids and adults alike tried to make a dash for the center of the fountain without getting socked by the seemingly random spurts of water coming out in almost every direction. Of course I had to try this, and I made it without a drop of water getting on me. Afterwards, we rode on the Ferris Wheel and the Merry-Go-Round at the base of the needle and generally had a blast. We took the monorail back and then headed to pioneer square to top off the night. Finally, after a few drinks, we decided it would be a good idea to take the bus back to the ferry and make our way home. It was a good day!

The next day, my mom made us lasagna and I was in heaven! I love my moms lasagna! My grandparents also came over for dinner that night and it was a lot of fun to see the whole family together with my niece and nephew playing around and having a good time as well. Isa got a kick out of the whole weekend and overall, I haven’t had a weekend like that in a long long time!

Well, that’s all I have to say for now…

-Ken Noland

Articles

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

I’ve been neglecting this website for some time. I haven’t really been able to publish any of the articles I’ve written up for the website because most of them are rough drafts. I have some stuff that I would love to share, but I haven’t had the time to share it. Hopefully I will have more time and I will be able to add some more content to this website, but don’t hold your breathe!

-Ken Noland

Moving back to Seattle area

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

So these last few weeks have introduced some major changes to my life. I’m moving back to Seattle and I’m also bringing my girlfriend, Isa, back from Germany to join me. It’s been a been crazy around here to say the least, and to say that I have been very stressed is a bit of an understatement.

My parents are ill, and most of my close friends already know that I worry about them. Yet, despite their illness they have decided to join me on the road-trip back home. There are some major conflicts with the schedule, but I think I’ve ironed out most of the kinks. I’m flying out to Germany on the 21st and I will be visiting with Isa and her family for 5 days, then I fly back on the 27th, pick up my parents at the airport and then drive all the way across the country. Somehow, in this time-frame, I have to pack, I have to take my parents out to a lobster dinner, and I have to find a place to live out in the Seattle/Bremerton area. I’ve got 4 days to race across the country!

When I showed up to Boston four years ago I had just three boxes. Somehow I’ve managed to acquire a lot of equipment and gadgets that I need for my job and I’ve also managed to build up a ton of trinkets and special items that mean a lot to me. Putting these all in boxes and sorting through what I want, what I don’t need, and what is unnecessary has taken up the last three days, and meanwhile I’m still working my normal day job and still talking to Isa every night for at least 3 hours or so.

I’ve met some great people in the Boston area. Most of them have already left, making me one of the last few original people. I never expected that, but my Boston friends went from well over 40-50 people that I knew down to a small list of only 5-6 people that I still hang out with regularly. It’s strange that I am still here, and it is expected that eventually I would move on. Going back to Seattle though? That is the strangest part of it all. I am a traveler at heart, never tied to a specific area for too long. Heck, this is the longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere, but I never got tired of the area, and a big part of me has fallen in love with the Boston area. This place feels more like home then any other place I have ever been to. The people, the places, the atmosphere of Boston is amazing to me and I hope one day I will return to this city.

“I was born under a wandering star”

-Ken Noland

Car That Runs On Water

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

Call me a crazy tin foiled hat conspiracy theorist, but why hasn’t this made headlines anywhere else?

It’s not the first one of its kind either. There was a guy who also made a dune buggy run completely on water using a process he called “water fracturing”. His name was Stanley Meyers, who then died suspiciously. All of his materials were then seized and no one has been able to follow his research, or what little he did actually publish.

I realize that this borders on a conspiracy theory, but seriously it is getting a bit creepy. It turns out anyone who has ever come close to solving this energy crisis has mysteriously died or completely vanished and all materials are taken offline, leaving very little to follow.

Putting the conspiracy aspect aside, I wanted to actually talk about the logistics of some of the more eco-friendly cars available and their pitfalls.

The primary car that everyone is talking about is the hydrogen car. Hydrogen contains 3.5 times more power then gasoline, taking much less hydrogen to propel a car then ordinary gas, but in order to extract the hydrogen, it has to go through electrolosis, in which Faraday’s law indicates that it takes 3 times the amount of energy to extract the hydrogen then the hydrogen actually produces, thus for every one barrel of hydrogen, it would take 10-11 barrels of gas to produce, and that’s not including the cost of compressing the hydrogen into those highly volatile hydrogen containers.

Okay, so hydrogen is wasteful and volatile, but it is eco-friendly. What about the electric car?

The biggest hurdles of the electric car have historically been how far will it go and how many charges til the battery dies. With many advances in lithium-ion technology and better DC motors, a top of the line battery will last for about 100,000 miles and withstand hundreds of charges. The high end electric cars that I’ve seen will go for about 150 miles before it needs to be recharged. Sounds great!

Also, an electric car has fewer moving parts and doesn’t need maintenance like a regular internal combustion engine.

The downfall to the electric car is it’s starting price. For something basic, you could get up and running for about $10,000, but it’s limited to 40 miles per hour and 40 miles per charge. Doesn’t sound very good to me. Up the price to $70,000 and you could get a car that can go 2-3 hours and up to 100 miles per hour. Up the price to $100,000 and a little patience(one year waiting period) you get the cream of the crop, Tesla Roadster. A full two hour charge and a max of 125 miles per hour puts this heavyweight on my Christmas list for all my rich friends.

There’s something that still bothers me about the electric car though. For all its beauty and charisma, the energy still has to come from somewhere. Sure, there are plenty of eco-friendly power solutions available, but for the most part %85 of our nations power grid is still run on fossil fuels. What this means is that the power has to come from somewhere, and the electricity used to power that electric car is still producing emissions through a third party, the energy company!

So this brings me back to the water powered car. If there’s something that’s completely maintainable and reliable and uses such an abundant supply(%85 of our earths surface is water) and the infrastructure to support such a vehicle is already in place and converting a car to run on water isn’t a huge issue, then why aren’t we researching this?

-Ken Noland

Options

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

Lately I’ve been considering some of my options. What do I want to do? Where do I see myself in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? A lot of these questions rely on what I have going on now. I work for an awesome game company developing racing games for the PS3. It’s amazing work and it keeps me pretty busy, but still, there is still room to grow.

What do I want to define myself as? Do I want to be a programmer for the rest of my days, or should I explore options such as becoming a designer, lead tech architect, or move straight into the business of gaming? Being a game programmer was my goal, and now that I’ve attained it, and been a programmer for some time now, where do I go from here?

I’ve specialized in areas such as networking and sound. Do I really want to specialize in that, or should I expand and become a graphics and physics programmer? Should I develop better solutions for sound in the games industry, modeling acoustical properties based off geometry within a scene, or should I start making my own graphics engine, like I did with Trival?

Heh, Trival, that brings back memories. It was meant to be an experiment, something the world was never meant to see. It was my playground, yet despite all circumstances, it began to grow into a business that was then trampled by the publishers. Another game that never saw the light of day. Anyway, it’s tough to think about the future without some reminiscing of the past.

I suppose these are all questions that we face during some junctures of our lives. It is much harder for people like me, people who are, by their very nature, unstable yet driven. Plans fall through regularly and so I’ve become accustomed to not planning and just going with the flow and pushing forward. So far that has worked to my benefit these last few years, but now I’m in a different spot. I’m older! Should I actually attempt at settling down and becoming more stable, or should I continue this wild pursuit of happiness?

These are questions that will be answered in time. For now, I’ll just continue going with the flow since its worked well so far. Eventually, I’ll have the answers to all of this, even if that is my 2 year goal… just to have an answer for where I want to be in 2 years!

-Ken Noland

I Now Work for Blimey! Games

This entry was originally published at Ken Noland

Hey,

Life changes fast. One day your comfortable at your current job, although it may have its ups and down, its a really kick ass job working as a game programmer for a company no one has ever heard of. The next day, you find out that the company is going through a restructuring due to financial reasons and you find yourself without a job. Then, mere hours later, you’ve just signed with another, larger game studio. Strange?

Let me recap. At 9:30am I recieved a phone call from Jake letting me know that I have been officially laid off. I go to the office to collect my things and to say goodbye to the coworkers that I had such a great experience with. At 11am I have surgery. I was in serious pain for the rest of the day! After the surgery I grab a bite to eat with all the old members of Whatif. By 3pm I contacted a studio that had made me an offer a couple weeks prior and I negotiated for my new job, working remotely for Blimey! Games, based out of London.

It was a day to remember! I have to admit though, at the end of the day, I came out ahead!

-Ken Noland