Fixing the bleedin' obvious

I have quite a lot of computers in my life, and they all run Linux. In fact, the only time I leave the confines of my beloved Linux is when I'm at work (where my machine at Moviestorm Towers is a Macbook Pro). Most of my machines run a variant of Linux called Ubuntu. Last year, the Ubuntu development team announced a new project which they called 100 Papercuts. The idea was that they would identify 100 little irritations which were reasonably trivial to fix. Most of the issues identified were minor and really not too significant, but as they all pile up they start to become a serious problem. One papercut, after all, is only an irritant, but if you get enough papercuts all at once you just might bleed to death.

I was quite taken with this idea (the papercuts concept, not the bleeding to death), and spent some time talking about it with Dave and Andrew. As a consequence, we recently launched our own "papercuts" project for Moviestorm. Whilst Ubuntu's Papercuts project attracted over 1600 recorded bugs within a few weeks, our initial brainstorm generated a slightly less ambitious 200(ish) issues. We're going to be tackling these "papercuts" a few at a time, aiming to fix between 10 and 20 papercuts each time we have a code release.

Let's take a look at some of the papercuts for the forthcoming 1.3.1 release.

MS-3277 Keep window positions and sizes after the user has adjusted them

Wouldn't it be nice if, when you moved a customisation window over to the left, it appeared in the same place when you next reopened it? Now it does. We haven't implemented this behaviour for every window yet, but it's in place for all of the "adjust something" windows (what we call Activity Customizers).

MS-4887 Improve transitions between major mode views

This one's not so easy to spot, but the load time required to switch Views - to move from Set Workshop View to Director's View, for example - has been much improved. A lot of clever process threading and Clever Engineering Hacking in the background has allowed us to make these transitions faster and smoother.

MS-4826 Can't remove user images

I'm going to be totally honest with you here: this is one of those bugs that represents a lack of functionality not through deliberate choice but just because we forgot to put it in. Once you add a custom image to a set object, there's no way of actually removing that image if you change your mind later. The ring menu for such objects now features a "clear image" option, which removes the image. It also works for held props and bodyparts.

MS-4815 File overwrite message is confusing

This one was ridiculously easy to fix, but had still been sat in our bug database for a long time. Being such a small team, it's easy for small things like this to never actually make it onto anybody's "to do list", simply because there are so many other, bigger things that need to be done. That's exactly what the papercuts project is good for: making sure that issues like this do eventually get addressed. Here's the dialog as it appears in the current released version of Moviestorm:

And here's the new version:

A lot clearer, I think you'll agree.

MS- 4809 Can't find the movie I last worked on

My Moviestorm "movies" directory currently holds about a hundred different movies, in various states of completion. When you spend a lot of your working day testing Moviestorm you tend to accrue a lot of test movies. The load screen will now allow you to sort those movies, either by name or by modification date. That means that the movie you last worked on can be quickly brought to the top of the list.

MS-4806 Typo on first page of Help

Yes, well. The less said about this the better. Let's just move on, shall we?

MS-4786 Warn me if I'm not placing a character at time 0

Ever had a character appear halfway through a scene because the timeline wasn't at the start of the scene when you issued the "place here" command? Yeah, me too. Not any more:

MS-3690 Autosave

Matt has already blogged about this one.

There are about half a dozen other papercut issues in various stages of completion, but this should give you some idea of what we're hoping to achieve for 1.3.1. This is an experiment, so the choice of which of our 200 papercut issues to address first has been almost arbitrary. What about you? What little annoying niggle would you like us to fix? Comment with your papercuts, and I'll add them to our issues database.

Thumbnails

Another little snippet from the commit log:

• Revision 24087 Committed by dave: - Changed the angle for the body part's thumbnails
• Revision 24088 Committed by ben_sanders: - Resaved the parasol thumbnail
• Revision 24081 Committed by ben_sanders: - Updated thumbnail on the beachfront set, and added boulevard set

This is the kind of thing that you don't normally think too hard about when you're starting out building something like Moviestorm. You know how your character & mod shop and prop choosers are going to work: you have a bunch of different things to choose from,, and little pictures of them which you click on to select them. Not exactly rocket science.

Then you come to implement it, and it all looks a bit meh. In some cases, you can't actually find the thing you want. Turns out that the angle from which you view a 3D item is far more important than you might think. If you don't get a good thumbnail image, what you see is confusing and messy: in extreme cases, it's like one of those quizzes, where you have to identify a common household object from an unusual angle.

In our original version of the prop chooser some time ago, we had an automated thumbnail tool which took a snapshot of each item from a standard angle and distance with a standard lighting, and then cropped it to fit. When we re-did it, we replaced many of the automated thumbnails with hand-made ones. This involved employing an intern for a month or so doing nothing else, as it's a time-consuming and tedious job. However, the results were worth it.

Body parts are generally a lot easier to standardise, so we're sticking with automated thumbnails for the new mod shop and character shop designs. However, we're still experimenting with what the best angle is. It makes more difference than you realise.

The hip bone's connected to the what?

Following yesterday's blog post featuring log entries the changes to the main codebase, here's one that will intrigue a few of you:

• Revision 24026 Committed by dave: - Fixed new symmetric female01 skeleton remapped female01 anims for symmetrized skeleton

As we mentioned in the forums this weekend, we've been going back and re-examining some of our design decisions from three or so years ago with respect to the way Moviestorm characters are constructed. We've found ourselves loading more and more onto the characters, and we now expect them to walk, use a prop, look at something, have a facial expression, speak, and gesture, all at the same time. And look good while doing it. And do it all in real time. And while retaining some measure of acceptable performance.

Now we're asking our characters to have morphing faces as well, so every facial animation and texture has to be adjusted to fit the final shape. We're looking at more extreme morphs than we've had before, so we have to be very conscious of the extent to which that distorts both the animations and the actual characters.

Our existing facial structure simply wasn't up to the job, for all sorts of reasons, so we decided to rebuild the heads. While we were looking at that, we spotted that the eyes were very slightly asymmetrical, and nobody had actually noticed that before. That's one of the reasons the facial expressions always looked a bit odd. So we've changed that, and the new faces should look much better. As Dave put it, "it's amazing how a small mistake early in the project comes back to haunt you years later."

Since we were messing with bones anyway, we figured out we might as well do the bodies. That way, when we get round to looking at body morphs*, we shouldn't have to go through all this again. So Chris has created a new skeleton, and the team are now figuring out a way to make all the existing animations and costumes compatible with it. We really, really don't want to have to rebuild every single animation and costume!

Hopefully you won't see any difference at all when the new skeletons eventually replace the current ones. Everything will just work exactly the same as it did before. However, this is important groundwork for several things we're planning later.

For those of you who've been impatient for us to release skeleton schematics, this is one of the reasons we've held off for the last couple of months. Once the new ones are in, working, and fully tested, then we'll see about letting you guys have a go.

I'm also intrigued by this one:

• Revision 24021 Committed by julian_gold: - Tarted up textrenderer interface so i can do some cooler textbased stuff in crv. (Cutting Room View)

That could signify some neat new titling options, perhaps?

* Don't hold your breath. Even if we started looking at them right after MS 1.3.1, actually releasing body morphs will still be some way off. It's a big job.

** That's definitely not going to be this side of MS 1.3.1. I'd say after 1.3.2 at the earliest.

Smooth

If you're hearing strains of Santana then that's about right - have a look at this pic straight from my dev machine (it's not even been committed to the Moviestorm source code repository yet!).

That neck seam has been bugging me for years but I've finally found a way to get it smooth from head part to body part. Annoyingly the answer's been staring me in the face for almost as long, but there's so much to do and so little time.

Hopefully, we'll get this to you as part of the next major Moviestorm release.

Moviestorm is Number 1 at HCI2009 conference

Alright, it's a bit of a cheeky strapline, but it's technically true. Look:

When Dave and I arrived at the HCI2009 Festival Of Interactive Technology yesterday, we were delighted to find that we'd been allocated table #1 on which to run our demo. Arbitrary? Perhaps, but we'll take the kudos anyway. Altogether now: "We're number one! We're number one!"

Moviestorm at the HCI2009 Festival of Interactive Technology

At the moment, we've got almost two hundred active issues in our bug-tracking database which are relevant to version 1.1.7. I don't want you to panic, though - that total is not insurmountable. The entire team is working on turning the nasty red Open bugs into lovely calming green Closed bugs.

Dave #1 and I are leading the charge. What that basically means is that we stand behind the front-line troops, shouting encouragement and not doing any real work. We like to feel that we contribute, though, so it's sometimes frustrating when we have to occasionally leave the office to do other things. Today's procrastination excuse - erm, I mean, important business strategy occasion - is the HCI2009 Festival Of Interactive Technology Open House. Dave and I will be in attendance, demonstrating Moviestorm in all its glory. We've spruced ourselves up as best we can. Dave has even had a haircut.

We're in prestigious company at the HCI conference. Some of the best research labs and startup companies in our local area will be showing off their latest shinies. When you bear in mind that "our local area" is Cambridge, UK, one of the tech innovation capitals of the world, you'll understand what I mean.



So, if you happen to be going along to the conference, give us a wave, a hug, or even a big sloppy kiss. We'll be showing Moviestorm version 1.1.6.2, but if you ask me nicely I might even give you a personal tour of the in-development 1.1.7. We'll be in the William Gates building. Demonstrating a piece of Java software. On two Apple Macs. With a Linux-powered netbook for note-taking, and Open Rights Group stickers on our laptop bags. 'Cos we're rebels. Booyah.

SF in SF

If you're going to GDC09 in San Francisco (March 23-27), the Game Developer's Conference, keep an eye out for Dave, who'll be wandering the halls, searching for interesting people to share a beer with and chat about anything and everything.

Meanwhile, Johnnie and Matt get to go to the annual OCR AS/A Level Media Studies conference in London on March 20, where they will be presenting Moviestorm. You can find out more here and book a place here.

Which means we'll get home in time for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, while Dave has to spend hours on a plane and hanging around in airports. Oh, the glamour of international travel!

How to while away meetings

Meetings rarely require your full attention, and most of us doodle throughout them. Real artists tend to do better doodles than the rest of us...

Dave Lloyd, by Mitch Phillips 27/1/09

Megastorm!

Dave likes 'em big. Screens, that is. He wasn't impressed with us showing Moviestorm movies on tiny little screens like Jeff's Nokia N78, David's Blackberry and iPod Touch, Johnnie's Android or Chris's PSP. You see, Dave likes to watch your movies on the biggest screen he can find. This is his home cinema setup, showing Saving Grace in HD on a screen about six feet wide. And believe me, it's quite a stunning experience.

(Now I'm wishing I'd grabbed a photo from last year's Cambridge Film Festival where we showed some of your movies on a real full-size cinema screen. Now that was truly awesome.)

World of Warcraft also looks impressive played on Dave's screen, as you'd expect. I don't even play the game, but I have to admit that some of the sequences are absolutely stunning when you see them that huge.

Running Moviestorm on it, and making movies on a giant screen is a very strange experience. It makes for a great editing environment, where you can really step back from your film. You get a very different sense of the atmosphere when you see the footage at that size, compared to looking at it on even a large monitor. And, as I've mentioned before, all the imperfections leap out at you when you're working with a huge image and chunky speakers. It's absolutely the opposite to having a movie studio on your lap, as you get with the EEE PC.

Of all the Views in all the Moviestorms, he had to make changes to mine.

It was a Tuesday, just like any other Tuesday in rain-soaked Cambridge. I'd just returned from the 2008 Machinima Film Festival in New York. Crazy city. I was jetlagged, but anxious to get back to work. Before I left for New York, I'd completely rewritten and expanded the internal help pages for Moviestorm's Set Workshop View. It was a big job, but I'd got it finished and submitted to QA for testing just before I left. I was feeling proud of my work. I was ready to make a start on the Director's View section.

Dave Lloyd, co-founder of the company and Chief Bit Shoveller, looked up as I walked into the room. He seemed nervous; sheepish. Perhaps even guilty. I stared him down. I knew he'd crack eventually.

"Ingram," he gulped, "good to see ya! I, er ... I didn't know you were back in town. I'd love to stay and chat, but I got things to do, you know? Gotta run!"

I wasn't buying. This schmuck knew something, and I was going to find out what. I grabbed him by the lapels of his smart checkered suit.

"Spill it, Lloyd," I growled, "whadya know?"

A single bead of perspiration rolled down his craggy cheek, glinting in the moonlight, and then dropped to impact on the top of his trusty MacBook like a gunshot.

"I made some changes." he whispered, "I'm sorry! I didn't know it would go this far!"

I might have guessed. Lloyd was always pulling crazy stunts like this. They didn't call him "The Workaholic" for nothing. I pulled out my copy of The Ruby Way from inside my trenchcoat and pressed it to his throat. Violence is the only thing these engineers understand.

"Show me," I muttered between clenched teeth, "or I'll cut you a new programming language."

I felt sick. All my hard work had been for nothing. My documentation was now as useless as a J2EE engineer on an OpenGL project. This job gets to you sometimes. It eats away at your soul like a World Of Warcraft addiction. Still, as I walked down the smoke-filled alleyway towards my office, I had to admit: Lloyd's changes were good. Crazy, but good. Maybe I could document them after all ...

books!

I had the sudden realization that I'm the only person on the dev/doc team that hasn't written a book. It makes me feel humble to be in the presence of such great minds as the authors of:

Machinima - Dave Lloyd & Matt Kelland

Machinima for Dummies -Johnnie Ingram & Hugh Hancock (send us your pic Hugh!)

Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques - Mark Watt & his Dad

Object "oriented" Game Development - Julian Gold

3D world (regular contributions) - Chris Ollis

Actually looking at that lot, I'm quite glad I havn't written a book. I think I might even stop writing my diary - just in case ;)