This week's Wednesday Evening Training: Procedural Content Generation in games & graphical tools

This evening, we got an interesting overview of the various ways in which graphical content can be generated. Our colleague Quincy Jacobs explained us the basis techniques behind graphical tools like Photoshop and gaming engines, including the math behind. We were also shown some nice online examples and demo's.

Lot's of stuff to discuss and experiment, thanks Quincy!

We'll definitely organize a sequel workshop. We're thinking of implementing a simple generator in Unity3D. To be continued...

Try it yourself?

Lot's of stuff to be found online, a few example below...

Shape grammar:

http://grape.swap-zt.com/App/KindergartenGrammar

Lindenmayer systems (turtle):

http://www.kevs3d.co.uk/dev/lsystems/

Convolution Matrix:

https://docs.gimp.org/en/plug-in-convmatrix.html

http://matlabtricks.com/post-5/3x3-convolution-kernels-with-online-demo

Fractals (math visualisation):

https://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal/

Conway's game of life online:

https://bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

Startup generator:

http://tiffzhang.com/startup/

Combining graphics:

https://deepart.io

Next week...

Next week, we'll dive into infrastructure basics: what you, as software engineer, should know.

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This week's Wednesday Evening Training: a lot of Pi and some Witty Cloud with patterns

We continued our labs and projects this evening. We got some interesting demo's of running projects, e.g. a sensor network in which temperature and moisture data is exhanged between Pi's, a Witty Cloud Board, through various channels, including mail. This way, we're able to switch on/off devices remotely, guaranteed. Next step: come up with a practical application for this ;).
Also this evening: a lecture on basic design patterns. No tools, a whiteboard and a marker only.

Next week, we'll dive into Procedural Content Generation (used by graphical tools and game engines).

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In today's Wednesday Evening Training: a "klusavond" with multiple topics

Don't try to translate "klusavond" using Google translate, you'll definitely get a wrong impression of today's Wednesday Evening Training. In Dutch, a "klusavond" could be translated in "an evening in which everybody is working on projects/tests/prototypes and freely exchange knowledge".

This evening, our topics were diverse:

• JavaScript: intro and quiz (see selector)
• Raspberry Pi: exchanging measurements between Pi's
• Simple simulation in plain JavaScript (object orientation)

Today, we also had two good reasons for celebration...

It's Pi Day!

Since 1988, the mathematical constant π (pi: 3.14 in short) is celebrated each year on March 14 (3/14 in the month/day format). This year's celebration is extra special since the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ was lauched today as well. So what has changed?
First of all, a faster processor. Secondly, a new networking controller which provides faster wireless transfers. Also: a new four-pin connector for an optional power-over-Ethernet (PoE) add-on. All this
Unlike apple, all these improvements have no significant effect on the price. the Pi remains equally affordable.

More information: http://www.alphr.com/raspberry-pi/1008797/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus-review

Next week we'll continue our "klusavond". We'll further define the scope of our joint Pi-project exchanging commands and measurements between Raspberry Pi’s through diverse channels. Additional idea's: adding custom Node-RED nodes & exchanging through Office365/Azure.

to be continued...

New quiz questions available

This week's Wednesday Evening Training: continuing with Unity3D VR

This evening, we continued our labs on Unity3d VR. In our last session, we started our handson labs to create a simple interactive ball game. Now we added functionality needed for our game to be played in VR using the HTC Vive headsets and controllers. We used the VRTK (Virtual Reality Toolkit) and SteamVR to get started.

Next time, we'll evolve our VR game into a bowling alley.

To be continued...

Do you want to try this yourself? 

There is lot's of material out there! For starters, some links below:
VRTK GiHub repo
Virtual Reality Toolkit YouTube channel
Unity3d manual
Unity3d official site
Swords and shovels (learn game development)


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