Tag Archives: AiGameDev

Paris and AiGameDev 2010

I’ve finally got around to editing and uploading my AiGameDev 2010 conference notes. I’m still working on photos, we’ll see if I can be bothered to post any – since Alex did a great job posting some himself I don’t know though.

Paris itself was also excellent, with the very cool Micah who I shared a room with – and if you need additional AI notes, contact him πŸ™‚ I managed to do some good walking (and I definitely should get some of those photos sorted!). I listened to some Parisian Jazz, saw various sights and enjoyed a bit of the music festival on Monday evening. I’ve still got things to do there, so likely I’ll try and get to next years conference too.

Paris and AiGameDev Conference

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Tour de Eiffel

Paris was great fun, I got to go to the AiGameDev conference where I helped out by operating the camera, recording every talk, and took my own notes too – good event, well worth going over just for that.

After the conference was over though, I had a day and a half extra (rather stupidly I booked my return trip on the Eurostar on Saturday not Sunday, but well, I did run out of things I really wanted to see anyway!). On the Thursday evening, when most people were going back from the conference anyway, I took a walk around Notre Dame and the Ile de la CitΓ©. Interesting architecture, although sadly the Sainte-Chappelle church which is meant to have amazing stained glass was closed by then.

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Notre Dame

The Friday was dedicated to me getting up not as early as I had planned, failing to get a bike (since it didn’t give me a receipt and of course, I can’t ring the help number up) so ending up taking the metro to the Eiffel Tower. Was great getting up the steps (which didn’t take long to queue for, considering the line for the one functional lift to the middle was huge), and I did decide to go up all the way after slowly going around the first two floors – took ages – only 2 lifts even went to the top from the middle, but got up in the end. πŸ™‚ The delays and closures appear to all be just from the painting work, and I didn’t even realise it was “bronze” (or more accurately “brown”) they painted it, since from far away it looks pretty generic black/dark.

After that, I took a walk, long walk, longer then I had planned anyway, up and around other parts near the Eiffel Tower, failing to see any interesting museums I wanted to go in. Since I hadn’t had internet since getting to Paris, and not wanting to do one of the art museums, it made me wish I had planned it a bit more πŸ™‚ but still got to see some brilliant areas. I went to McDonalds to get their free wifi, to plan what else to do.

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Rigoletto

So, on Friday evening I decided to do something a bit different – I went to see Rigoletto, an Italian Opera by Verdi, performed outside at Le Jardin Du SΓ©nat, located here. Very nice to see outdoors, despite some sound issues (on the speakers it seems), and the fact an italian play, with a French programme, and subtitles of course in French at the sides of the stage meant I didn’t get the most out of it. Reading the wikipedia synopsis makes it also make a bit more sense, although I could tell most of what was going on. Well worth seeing the odd opera I think πŸ™‚ – this famous one had a few highly recognisable parts too (this being the most famous), and I mainly enjoyed the music rather then the story. I did see if there was any orchestras playing, but according to the web there wasn’t apart from this.

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Fascinating part of the catacombs

Finally, I visited the Catacombs on Saturday, kind of rushing them (since I had a train to catch and got up half an hour later then I intended). Luckily the line wasn’t too slow, and it was facinating – not just that there are catacombes and the bones themselves, but that it has been open to tourists for hundreds of years, so has some really, really old tourist boards set into the walls πŸ™‚ I’d highly recommend going to it, and on a hot day it’s very refreshingly cool, and only really creepy if there are no other people around, which won’t really happen.

What I’m Up To In June 2009

I need to get back into posting. Next week I’m going to Paris for the AiGameDev.com conference, which also means I’ll get a chance to go to some touristy places too, expect photos.

There is also news that the Preservation SIG white paper has been accepted along with other game preservation items to DiGRA 2009, should be good!

I also am playing more games, of course! I should bring back the this week series (which reminds me, I’ll adda way to get to tags somewhere at somepoint…), since this kept my mind in check and gave me something to do each week. I’ve got these to finish at some point:

  • Mount & Blade – highly enjoyable open world game, which I really need to write up about, since I’ve spent hours and hours playing this. Iterative game design obviously wins!
  • Fallout 3 – still not finished, I should push for the end – I seem to have done most of the sidequests.
  • Empire: Total War – I’ve barely scratched the surface of this. I should try doing a new campaign now it’s been heavily patched.
  • STALKER: Clear Sky – I’ve played the start but I really need to reinstall it (I started it before reinstalling my OS) patch and play again, especially since an interesting sequel has been announced.
  • Deus Ex – Vintage Game Club game I got about 1/4 to 1/2 of the way through or so and stopped playing, I need to finish off my gallery.
  • Super Mario Galaxy, No More Heroes both on my Wii πŸ™‚

I also have a huge backlog of games to install, which I’m noting here for myself, and what should be in upcoming posts, although in no particular order:

  • Alpha Centuri – need to play this for the Vintage Game Club actually!
  • Command & Conquer The First Decade – a large mix of RTS fun, I wanted mainly to try C&C 2 (the isometric Tiberium Wars one) again, since I’ve replayed C&C Red Alert before.
  • Mass Effect – Should be fun, I like Bioware stories – although lacking modding for many of their games now is a bit sad.
  • Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor – Another campaign should be fun, and what few friends I have who still play CoH, the additional multiplayer gametypes might be well worth it. I’ll have to see.
  • World in Conflict: Complete Edition – I previously borrowed and played the singleplayer of World in Conflict before, but this gave me an opportunity to have it, play it again with the additional missions. The way they did it sadly means if I did have the original, the new missions are in the middle of the game so can’t be done separately, which is a rather odd choice.
  • Far Cry 2 – Got it with a budget graphics card which is going to stay in my current PC (rather then buy a better card now and cause problems when I want to get an entirely new PC, with SLI or Crossfire), should be interesting to look at even if I’ve not heard always the best things (although Chris Remo loves it, so it can’t be that bad).