Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - Google IO Keynote Speech

We kick off the keynote to a quick animation, that outlines all of Google's Projects.

Without further ado, out comes Sundar Pichai. A couple of minutes of mandatorily plugging Google later, he gets into the real body of the Event.

To start off with, he casually announces a new service to be added to Google Mail. Smart Reply will be able to learn from you, and quickly allow you to reply to emails with a message-based experience.

The next big announcement is Google Lens, which is basically an integration of Google's myriad services with vision as an input device.

Coming on next, we have a kind of TPU, which is basically an upgrade to proceessing units. Offering significant upgrades to power and speed for the specific purpose of making computers more amenable to AI.

An announcement for developers - The Google Assistant SDK will be out for developers to integrate into their own solutions.

With Actions on Google now on mobile phones. we could be looking at a whole overhaul of how phones fundamentally work. It may not be a replacement of the app paradigm just yet, but it is coming pretty close.

Next up, updates to Photos. Smart sharing's now a feature. Google will now find pictures in your device. and suggest you share them with the people in them. Sounds simple; isn't.

As expected, Google Lens will be integrated with Google Photos, integrating computer vision with the capability to analyse images.

As for updates to Youtube. I'm not too impressed technically. The idea of "Superchats" is Youtube assigning a process and a name to an already existing process, which, while not too revolutionary, is definitely a great thing to see.

Moving on to the next section - Android. Picture-in-Picture, like Superchats before it, isn't really anything new, BUT is in fact something that many a user has definitely wished for before.

The upgrades to notification dots? Smart Selection? Vitals? More of the same. Streamlining of an already existing process to improve an existing user experience is something that can never go unappreciated.

A couple of big announcements for Android Devs, Kotlin is now an official language compatible with Android. With improvements to their profiling tools, and the Dashboard, where an Android app can be analysed and top issues can be highlighted. Also coming is the beta release of Android O, although it's only out for an extremely limited set of devices.

As a person that struggled with an Samsung S Duos for two years, Android Go seems like a great feature. It's nice to know persons with low-end phones will not be left behind.

Finally, there is Gboard, which integrates translation services and phonetic typing into a single keyboard, something which I, as a multilingual person, personally like very much. No more struggling with different keyboard layouts.

"Great momentum with apps, more Daydream-ready phones, and a standalone headset coming leater this year." Quick summary about VR from the presenter himself.

Moving on to AR, I find that the most interesting idea here is VPS (Visual Positioning System). It could be incredibly helpful to the visually impaired, and even just to people looking to navigate an area.

As an undergraduate looking to enter the job market, I find the idea of being able to find open job postings right through Google Search to be really interesting.

Looking at the keynote, it's clear that the future from scifi movies isn't so far off.

Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - I Dream of 5G

The next major item on the list is a presentation on 5G, by Gobinath S. Govindasamy.

A criticism I've had of all the speakers so far is that they are far too technical for a layman to comprehend. Mr Govindasamy, the presenter of this paritcular item, however, seems to at least be aware that he is being overly technical, and seems to be striving to keep his presentation on common terms.

He states that 5G may not be as far off as you think. It could even be as close as 2018. The new 5G standard comes with vastly increased speed and bandwidth, to the point that it could even be used in an application that requires split-second timing, like in cars.

Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - Drones - Its Revolution and Evolution

I'm back with the second major item on Mobitel's agenda. A presentation called "Drones - its revolution and evolution", delivered by Manju Gunawardene.

The presentation is, predictably, on the role of Drones in the future of Sri Lanka. Manju Gunawardene is a little technical -  and anyone that isn't conversant with the field may start to lose interest, as evidenced by looking around at the audience.

However, it sounds like the use of drones has really helped the government analyse the dump at Meethotamulla, and even identify difficulties in relocating the garbage and find even as much as an underground pond.

He goes on to illustrate the use of drones in precision agriculture, and other similar application fields. Their real strength is in data collection so that actual variances and differences can be detected by actual experts, then acted upon by the concerned parties.

Google I/O 17 SL, by Mobitel - InspireSL

Hi everyone. I'll be blogging about Mobitel's I/O '17 SL event over on Facebook, Twitter, and here. Thanks to Mobitel for hosting the event, and to Readme for the great seats!

InspireSL competition.
The first thing on Mobitel's agenda - the Inspire SL Competition's final round. Some excellent talent on display here. May the best team win.

Teams and products

• I seem to have missed the first team to go up, Plexa by Datacon.
• The second product and team, Lawyered by Hustlers, is a product that aims to make the law more accessible to the common man by deciphering the legalspeak usually associated with legal documents.
• The third product and team, Bazura by Verzions, is a product that all IT undergraduates have probably toyed with at one point or another - how to streamline the process of trash collection. This project, has a unique twist in that it allows people to bid on other people's trash, thereby streamlining the recycling process.
• The fourth product/team, SafeAgri by AgroInventors, a one-man team which makes their presentation in Sinhalese. Their product, SafeAgri, aims to solve the problem of the overuse of pesticides in commercial agricultural application via the use of a delightfully '60s sci-fi looking device, that apparently is capable of keeping away pests without the grievous harm to the environment. An impressive project to be certain.

Of the teams I've seen so far, technically, SafeAgri seems to be the most impressive. I do not know, however, if they will be able to win, seeing as they are working with the handicap of having presented in Sinhalese. I do love a good underdog story.

• The last team to come up, have a great, simple concept, IJX - Angel. A drone capable of flying to drowning swimmers and quickly giving them lifesaving gear.

EDIT: The winner will be announced shortly.
EDIT: The winner of InspireSL is SafeAgri! Congratulations!

Everything of Note From GDC 2017

Author's Note: This is the text of an article that I originally wrote to be published on ReadMe. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get it published in time, and due to the timely nature of the subject, it is now too late to do so. In case you, dear reader are interested, here you go:

Everything of Note from GDC 2017

The Game Developers Conference took place this year from the 27^th of February to the 3^rd of March at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The conference brought out many innovations, especially in the fields of graphics and AR/VR, with speakers from giants in their respective fields – Facebook, Oculus, Google Play, AMD and NVIDIA, to list a few, speaking on several aspects of game development – game development, game promotion, game design, audience engagement and growth, and so on. Several indie developers also announced exciting new projects. Furthermore, this was the first GDC that was open for the public to attend, instead of having to watch from home, so there were much larger crowds than usual.

Here is a list of the most interesting announcements from the Conference.

The State of the Game Industry

Every year, the organisers of the Game Developers Conference poll attendees in an attempt to identify emerging trends in the field, which they subsequently release in a document titled “The State of Game Industry”. The key points from this year include:

• ·         Diversity

This year’s GDC showed a slight improvement in representation, with 20% of attendees polled identifying as women, 2% up from last year.

The geographical locations of attendees remained mostly the same, however, with 67% percent of respondents from North America, 3% from South America, and 22% from Europe. Pan-Asia accounted for 8% of attendees, and 0.3% percent were from Africa.

• ·         Business-wise

Most attendees felt that VR/AR was the future of gaming, with mobile AR as a specific focus going forward, with as many as 1 in 10 game makers working on a platform-exclusive VR/AR title, and 75% of attendees saying that they believed VR/AR had long-term sustainability.

The ESports industry is also on the rise in terms of investor confidence, with 90% of attendees professing confidence in its sustainability.

PC and mobile devices remain the mainstay of most developers, however.

• ·         Platforms and Hardware

On the topic of VR consoles, the HTC Vive was gaining popularity over the Oculus Rift. Don’t worry, though – the stats read 24% for the Vive, and 23% for the Rift, with the PSVR coming a distant third at 13%.

In the mobile arena, Android finally surpassed IoS in terms of developer interest (54% against 51%).

Interest in mid-cycle console re-releases, like the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio, however, was mediocre at best, with many developers feeling that it would only further divide an already fragmented market.

Innovations in VR/AR

• ·         On the first day of the conference, a slew of new games was announced for VR devices, specifically for the Rift. These new games ranged from traditional first-person experiences to a wide variety of genres – strategy, tactical, turn-based, dungeon crawler, story-driven, procedurally generated, the list goes on.
• ·         Microsoft announced plans to bring “mixed reality” headsets to the Xbox and Microsoft Scorpio by 2018.
• ·         Oculus also made a surprise announcement – they would now sell the Oculus Rift and Touch in a bundle that comes to around $600, a price drop of about $200. On their own, each piece of hardware is about $100 cheaper, coming to $499 for the Rift headset and $99 for the Touch controllers. Hats off to Oculus for their efforts to make VR software affordable to a wider audience.
• ·         AMD have announced that they will be working with Valve to support Valve’s Asynchronous Reprojection on their graphics cards, a technology meant to enhance the VR experience and eliminate judder – a partnership that is a big win for AMD, who have been losing the graphics market share to NVIDIA.
• ·         Epic Games have announced their Unreal VR Editor, a ground-breaking extension to the Unreal Engine that allows developers to be in the environment that they are developing, helping to provide the right sense of scale to make realistic, believable environments and make it easier to navigate the environment while developing.
• 
  

The GDC Awards

On the 1^st of March, the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival Awards took place at GDC. Many much-loved indie games and many bigger, AAA-standard titles competed for the coveted awards. A quick recap of the more popular/controversial picks from the GDCA:

GDCA

• ·         The Game of the Year award went, unsurprisingly, to Blizzard’s new title Overwatch. They single beat out other nominees like Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4, and Bethesda/Arkane’s Dishonored 2.
• ·         Niantic’s Pokemon Go won the Best Mobile/Handheld Game award. The previously almost unknown studio beat out Supercell’s Clash Royale and companion Pokemon title Sun/Moon, by Game Freak/The Pokemon Company.
• ·         One of the controversial picks, No Man’s Sky won the Innovation Award, the troubled game from developer Hello Games.

Find a full list of awards, winners and nominees here: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/overwatch-wins-game-of-the-year-full-list-of-gdca-/1100-6448326/

The Inquest - Cursed Sword

Post #3 of my project open-sourcing and self-publishing initiative is a project I've been working on for a long time, off and on.

The Inquest - Cursed Sword (or, as I have come to affectionately refer to it, TICS) is my humble attempt to flex my puny web technology muscles and use my genuine love for making twines to make a twine that isn’t just an interactive story or a sad little tale that makes you feel like you just listened to a Smiths record (both of which are great things when done properly, I might add).

I’m planning to bring an interactive, high-fantasy world to life in my twine.

TICS is currently under development, and I intend for this post to act as a living diary of updates, so you can, if you are interested, track its progress.

This is where I’ll keep track of all the features I’m trying to implement(), have succeeded in implementing(), and have failed in implementing()

FEATURES, in alphabetical order

• At least five cities/holdings in world that are fully accessible 
• Combat system (will be Pokémon-like)  - combat demo
• Commerce system 
• Date-time systems 
• Inhabitants that you can interact with and that have their own schedules. 
• Joinable in-game factions 
• Level-up system 
• Multiple endings 
• Overarching storyline 
• Randomised combat encounters, with multiple enemies each having different strategies and movesets  - combat demo
• Reputation system (will change NPC and faction member reactions to you) 
• Sidequests 
• Wearable/consumable items 

OPTIONAL, ADVANCED FEATURES (also in alphabetical order)

• Ability to fight land wars ( This will probably be an extension of the combat system, with added repercussions for the world’s power balance. It isn’t very likely, but, well, let’s see where the story takes us)! 

TO BE CONTINUED (will keep updating as I think of features). If you’ve got a prospective feature you’d like to see included in the project, please leave it in the comments and I’ll get back to you on it! 

You can find the project in early prototype form on itch.io, and the source code on Github.

Twine, why can't I quit you?

Twine, why can't I quit you?

A short story in which I anthropomorphise my experiences writing interactive fiction for pleasure, with specific focus on Twine

Twine.
A tool that I have run into, fallen in love with, subsequently learned to hate, come back to after a couple of months apart, and learned to hate again.

Surprisingly enough, the above paragraph isn't a paragraph from an amateur writer's first attempt at a dating sim using Ren'Py. Twine, and the aforementioned Ren'Py, are both tools designed to write interactive fiction, shortened to IntFics in the community, which is comprised of people that fit in between the line that divides writers that want to add a layer of interactivity to their work, and programmers that want to tell amazing stories with little to no effort. But this one post, this one's all about you and me, Twine. Don't say I never write you love prose.

Just like a real relationship, when I met Twine, we just clicked. Everything was effortless, easy, smooth. We bonded over paragraphs as I admired the simplicity of her hooks, and realised I loved her when she showed me how easy it was to move from one passage to [[another]]. She was simple and straightforward and perfect. I knew it was a dream that could not last but I cling to the memories of our first days of innocence. They are one of my most cherished memories.

But then, as the weeks turned into months, the cracks in our effortless relationship begin to show. She never communicates efficiently. Getting audio out of her is an incredibly daunting and painful process. She's got a jealous streak, and refused to hang out with my best pal JQuery. My creativity was outrunning her ability to cope and it was stressing us both out.

It was then that I started to cheat. I'm not proud of it, but I refuse to make any excuses. I dabbled in other areas. Had a brief but passionate affair with Ren'Py, then pretended to be something that I wasn't in order to flirt with Inform 7. I left my love at home to find comfort in the arms of others, and this was the last straw. We took a break, and Twine left me for the first time. Dejectedly, I deleted the scraps of projects we had worked on together, the last memories of our time together, and tried to pick myself up.

Months down the line, I found Twine again. I was at the time at a loose end - a wreck. I had broken it off with Inform after we just failed to click on any level, and Ren'Py left me by the wayside when she discovered that I just offered too little for her to take me seriously (apparently she only dates serious creatives, that are, like, also artists.) I had also dabbled in polyamory - HTML, Javascript and PHP. All of them were about a decade older than me, but don't be fooled - they're still perky enough to keep you up all night. Despite JQuery's warning, I gave them a try. Six months into our relationship, they cut me out, but we decided to stay friends. We still share awkward smiles when we meet around town.

When I met Twine for the second time, she'd grown a few versions, changed her looks a little. We met up for coffee, and talked about what was going on in our lives. We laughed about my messups in love. She opened up again, just as easygoing and friendly as before, and in a matter of minutes I was hooked again. We ended up going back to her apartment that very evening and doing something we has never done before: we had some hot, steaming CSS, and that was when I knew she was the one for me, that however difficult she became, she was worth it.

Over the next few weeks, we had a casual relationship, meeting almost every evening. I came to learn every part of her body, from <header> to <footer> to <tw-passage>. We became comfortable with each other, but not so comfortable that our relationship became boring. We kept each other on our toes; there was always a spark keeping things interesting.

Then things got serious again. We moved in together, started up a project. I used all my knowledge from a year of screwups to keep us together, and this time, we did.