In the July 24, 2011 edition of the New York Times Magazine, Jonah Weiner profiled Tarn and Zach Adams, the brothers who created the game Dwarf Fortress, which is kind of like a much geekier, vastly more complex version of Minecraft (in fact, the creator of Minecraft is a fan of Dwarf Fortress). Weiner says, “Dwarf Fortress is, from the perspective of game play, perhaps the most complex video game ever made.”

It’s rendered with extended ASCII characters, like a roguelike.

Though its medieval milieu of besieged castles and mutant enemies may be familiar, Dwarf Fortress appeals mainly to a substratum of hard-core gamers. The game’s unofficial slogan, recited on message boards, is “Losing is fun!” Dwarf Fortress’s unique difficulty begins with its most striking feature: The way it looks. In an industry obsessed with pushing the frontiers of visual awe, Dwarf Fortress is a defiant throwback, its interface a dense tapestry of letters, numbers and crude glyphs you might have seen in a computer game around 1980. A normal person looks at

and sees gibberish, but the Dwarf Fortress initiate sees a tense tableau: a dog leashed to a tree, about to be mauled by a goblin.

… The brothers [Tarn and Zach Adams, creators of Dwarf Fortress] themselves are often startled by what their game spits out. “We didn’t know that carp were going to eat dwarves,” Zach says. “But we’d written them as carnivorous and roughly the same size as dwarves, so that just happened, and it was great.”

The article is a fascinating profile of obsession.

Rob and I are going to interview Jonah about his article in the upcoming edition of Gweek, Boing Boing’s podcast about games, science fiction, comic books, and other geek media.

The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress

It takes many galaxies' worth of amazing people to make science fiction and fantasy rock our world... but every year, there are some people who stand out as especially influential. Here's this year's list of the genre's movers and shakers.

As with the previous two years' power lists, these aren't our favorite people, or the people we wish were powerful. They're people who can make things happen in the genre — or help the genre reach a wider audience of people who don't consider themselves fans. These are the people who've used their power in the industry to help make science fiction and fantasy stories a national obsession — as well as helping to fuel our personal obsessions. Because we do the power list every year, we tend to focus on people who've particularly stood out in the past year.

And as always, feel free to debate our choices in the comments, or suggest your own candidates for the power list. We had to whittle down a list of dozens of names to get to 20 people, so we're aware we've left out some great choices.

Anne Sweeney and Jeff Bader, ABC television

Straight-up science fiction, that wears its genre credentials on its sleeves, is becoming an endangered species on network television these days. So it's a minor miracle that ABC is continuing to stand behind overtly SF shows like V and No Ordinary Family. We have ABC President Sweeney and Scheduling Chief Bader to thank for that — and here's hoping their gamble pays off.
Up next: ABC has a number of SF or quasi-SF shows in the Fall 2011 pipeline, including Marvel shows AKA Jessica Jones and Incredible Hulk, plus Being Erica, Hallelujah, Once Upon A Time and Patient Zero.

Tom Hardy

He damn near stole Inception from its all-star cast. And now, the man we used to think of as Picard's shoulder-pad-hobbled clone has become 2010's new hotness.
Up next: He's got an unspecified role in The Dark Knight Rises, and he's starring in the delayed Mad Max: Fury Road.

John Lasseter, Pixar/Disney

As creative director of both Pixar and Disney, Lasseter deserves a great deal of the credit for some of 2010's most high-profile science fiction and fantasy films, including Toy Story 3, Tangled and Tron Legacy. Lasseter, who was inspired by the original Tron as a young animator, was part of a group of Pixar pioneers who viewed an early cut of Tron Legacy and suggested reshoots that, by all accounts, helped improve the story.
Up next: Fanciful Disney and Pixar movies in the pipeline include Cars 2, Mars Needs Moms and Tim Burton's Frankenweenie.

Steven Moffat

This was the year of the Moff. He took over as showrunner of that great British institution, Doctor Who, and propelled it to new heights of popularity overseas. And he co-created a new Sherlock Holmes series that reinvented the great detective for the modern era.
Up next: Another year of Doctor Who, plus Moffat helped with the scripting of the new Tintin movie.

Steven Spielberg

He's been powerful forever, but lately he seems to be wielding his power for the benefit of science fiction. He's got three television shows in the pipeline, including Falling Skies and Terra Nova. He's signed on to direct Robopocalypse. And he's inspired pop culture's great remixer, J.J. Abrams, to create the Spielberg tribute Super-8.
Up next: Robopocalypse, plus the Tintin movie with Peter Jackson.

Paolo Bacigalupi

His adult novel The Windup Girl has won almost every major science ficiton award and "stomped the competition" (as Locus puts it) on the trade paperback bestseller list five months running. More than that, though, he's brought hard science fiction back, helping to prove that hard SF can still be relevant and popular. Meanwhile, his YA novel Ship Breaker was a National Book Award finalist and brought new smarts to the "dystopian YA" trend.
Up next: He keeps tweeting that he's hard at work at another project. Work faster!

Christopher Nolan

We already had him on our 2008 power list, but the incredible success of Inception — almost $300 million in U.S. ticket sales — proves that his strength goes beyond merely recharging the superhero genre. The fact that a big-budget weird-fest like Inception even got made, much less that it became such a huge hit, is a minor miracle. People have been saying this means Hollywood will green-light more big films by quirky auteurs — but really it remains true that a few people, like Nolan, can make something like Inception happen.
Up next: The Dark Knight Rises.

Tim Holman, Orbit Books

Orbit launched its U.S. imprint in 2007, with Holman relocating to New York to head it up as publishing director. Since then, its list has grown rapidly and Orbit has been scoring bestseller after bestseller. Looking at Orbit's 2010 titles, too, you're struck by their range, from hard science fiction icon Greg Bear to space opera master Iain M. Banks, and from postmodern epic fantasy author N.K. Jemisin to steampunk innovator Gail Carriger. Not to mention a lot of weird zombie books, from Mira Grant's Feed to Jesse Petersen's Flip This Zombie. Holman has been instrumental in making Orbit a force to be reckoned with in the United States.
Up next: Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes, and Walter Jon Williams' long-awaited sequel to This Is Not A Game, Deep State.

Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns, DC Entertainment

DC Comics and its parent company, Warner Bros., have lagged behind Marvel/Disney in putting their classic superheroes on screen lately, apart from Smallville and Nolan's Batman films. That's about to change — Nelson signaled a shift in the company's priorities when she moved all its multimedia operations to L.A. Nelson and Johns are the president and chief creative officer, respectively, of DC Entertainment, and their only mission is to make DC's universe into the next Harry Potter. A lot depends on how the Green Lantern movie, which was already in production when they stepped up, performs.
Up next: A Flash movie, a Wonder Woman TV series, and probably a number of other projects yet to be announced.

Tom Doherty

He's the publisher at Tor Books, which he founded and still runs, and he also owns 1/3 of Baen Books. His influence can be felt in every area of science fiction and fantasy, as much today as 30 years ago. And this has been a banner year for Tor — out of Kirkus Reviews' top 15 SF/fantasy books of the year, nine of them came from Tor, including books by Kage Baker and Mary Robinette Kowal. The publisher also had a record 20 books on the New York Times bestseller list this year. Meanwhile, Tor's magazine, Tor.com, has continued to set the conversation among science fiction and fantasy readers and writers.
Up next: John Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation, Hannu Rajaniemi's acclaimed The Quantum Thief, and George R.R. Martin's Fort Freak.

Richard Pleper and Michael Lombardo, HBO

HBO's True Blood was already a pop-culture phenomenon, and becoming more overtly fantasy-oriented with the inclusion of fairies 'n' stuff, when Pleper and Lombardo decided to take a chance on a second fantasy series: Game of Thrones, based on the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin.
Up next: Winter is coming! Game of Thrones launches next year.

Janelle Monae

The Archandroid is appearing on lists of the year's best albums all over the place, and she's influencing a whole generation of futuristic pop and R&B artists, with her cyborg visuals and her ultra-eclectic sounds. Plus she's witty, clever and she claims Octavia Butler as her great inspiration.
Up next: She's touring Europe after doing a show in New York with Prince.

Darren Aronofsky

In 1999, Aronofsky saw The Matrix, and it inspired him to think about new ways to reinvent science fiction. The result was The Fountain, a movie that seems to divide people about evenly into evangelists and iconoclasts. But Aronofsky's never stopped thinking about how to tell other-worldly stories in a new way, and the proof is Black Swan, the ballerina movie about horror and art that's getting Oscar buzz.
Up next: The Wolverine — and let's hope Aronofsky's got enough power to keep the suits from messing this Wolverine film up. Plus Machine Man, based on the cyborg novel by Max Barry.

Sandra Bullock

Some people are on this list for work they did in 2010, but others are mostly on here for work that was announced in 2010 — and Bullock is definitely in the latter camp. She's one of the most powerful actresses in Hollywood, but this was the year she chose to use that power for good — she's starring in Gravity, the new space movie by Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), and that film would not be getting made if Bullock wasn't in it. (Already, some are comparing Bullock's move to Halle Berry making Catwoman right after winning an Oscar.) We can't think of a movie project we're more excited about than Gravity, and Bullock has rescued it from development hell.
Up next: She's also filming Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, the 9/11 movie based on Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. Gravity is supposed to start filming in the Spring.

Jon Favreau

Iron Man 2 was one of the year's most successful movies, and one of the biggest comic book adaptations of all time. And now Favreau is setting out to reinvent the Western and the alien-invasion movie in one movie with a silly title: Cowboys and Aliens. It's a testament to his clout that he was able to get Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig on board this wagon.
Up next: After Cowboys and Aliens, he's taking on an even more daunting task: making Disneyland cool, with The Magic Kingdom.

Suzanne Collins

We loved The Hunger Games, but with the third and final book in the trilogy, Mockingjay, Collins showed that she's got the potential to join J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer in the ranks of authors whose books people camp out for. We still hear people debating that ending — no spoilers here — wherever we go. And now it's going to be a movie, from Gary "Pleasantville" Ross.
Up next: Whatever Collins writes next, we'll be first in line to read it.

George Lucas

He has a successful TV series — that he made without any studio input — on the air, with two more series (a live-action Star Wars show, and Seth Green's Star Wars comedy) in the pipeline. Plus, he still controls the multi-squillion-dollar Star Wars brand including hit games, books and comics, and his Industrial Light & Magic effects shop is the essential ingredient in countless science fiction blockbusters.
Up next: Clone Wars returns next week, and we're still hopeful the live-action Star Wars series gets off the ground despite some delays. (A "movie of the week" plus 50 other episodes are already scripted, they just have to wait for technology to advance enough to make it cheap enough to film, says Lucas.) Plus the original films are coming to Blu-Ray and being converted to 3D. He'll just take your wallet now, for safe-keeping.

Matt Fraction

He's writing two of Marvel's biggest titles (Iron Man and Thor) to critical acclaim and commercial success — and he's in charge of Marvel's grand crossover for next year ("Fear Itself"). And he consulted on set during Iron Man 2. He's established himself at Marvel, in a position that at one point was Brian Michael Bendis' purview.
Up next: Fear Itself, plus hopefully more Casanova, now being published by Marvel's Icon imprint.

Jennifer Brehl and Diana Gill, Harper Collins

Between the two of them, these editors are publishing some of the most exciting science fiction and fantasy authors out there — including Christopher Moore, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Richard Kadrey, Terry Pratchett and Ray Bradbury. But also, in 2010, they worked with Harper's editors in Australia and the U.K. to create a global science fiction imprint — Harper Voyager, with Gill serving as the Executive Editor in the U.S. This means that any title published by Harper can have support in all of the biggest English-speaking markets simultaneously.
Up next: Harper Voyager has already signed two authors for their worldwide debut, Karen Anziger and David Wellington (writing as David Chandler).

Gale Ann Hurd

The legendary producer of The Terminator was instrumental in getting The Walking Dead on our television screens this year, and it became one of the biggest new shows of the Fall season, proving that zombies — and relatable survivors — could carry an ongoing television series.
Up next: She blew up the internet the other day by suggesting she'd like to take the Terminator series back under her wing. Make it happen, Pacificor!

Thanks to Annalee, Meredith, Alasdair and Cyriaque for helping to brainstorm and cull this list. Thanks also to Diana Gill, Lou Anders, Ginger Clark, Jonathan Strahan, John Picacio, Jennifer Heddle and Liz Gorinsky for invaluable help, advice and suggestions.

A grandmaster on the computers that have bested him and how we have misunderstood the implications of artificial intelligence.

You'd think a totally smooth surface would be better at flying through the air with the least amount of wind resistance. So why do golf balls have all those little indentations? So they can use the air against itself.

Ah, golf, the thing you watch when nothing else is on and you're not energetic enough to get off the couch. Since putting is never interesting unless the golfers are trying to time it so they don't get their balls knocked aside by a windmill, and the audience isn't privy to the whispers about which kind of club the golfer will use, the whole draw of the sport is pretty much seeing a clean white ball flying through the vast blue sky.

So it's no wonder that golfers will do everything they can to make the ball go farther. Once upon a time, the only balls that went far were the ones that weren't so white. Golfers noticed that battered balls went farther than new, smooth ones, and the balls were modified accordingly, if bemusedly.

It doesn't make sense. Air generally moves smoothly over smooth surfaces. A smooth ball should fly easily, the air parting and rushing past it without any turbulence.

A rough surface doesn't make for easy airflow. Air dips into crevasses and is stopped short. It eddies and whirls. It creates turbulence, which sucks the ball one way and pushes it another, making it erratic and slow. After all, you don't see any pits being put into the wings of airplanes to make them fly faster.

You do see airplane wings tapering off, though, and that makes all the difference. The wing tapers off behind, providing air a smoother path to move over. And of course a wing keeps a flat underside, for that all-important lift. The ball doesn't do the same. As a smooth ball moves through the air, it clears a path of air behind it as wide as it is, and then it abruptly drops away. This leaves a wide wake and this wake can do many unpleasant things a ball in flight. It can create pockets of low air pressure, or extremely fast-moving, swirling vortices. Both ‘suck' the ball backwards, draining its momentum.

Rougher balls, on the other hand, create their own turbulence right off the bat. The dimples and bumps create their own little pockets of suction, and their own small breezes that push at the ball. Both of these things keep a layer of air in contact with the ball. Specifically, they keep that layer in contact with the side of the ball that trails behind. This creates a sort of glove of air around the ball and makes for a much smaller wake. That smaller wake pulls the ball back less, and lets it fly farther.

This is counter-intuitive, but far less counter-intuitive than the sport of golf allowing the ball to be modified in the first place. For a game that goes to literally great lengths to make every aspect as challenging as possible, modifying the ball seems like cheating. I wonder how golfers were convinced to do it. I wonder if we can convince them to add rocket packs to the balls, next.

Via LiveScience and HowStuffWorks.

• Link (via Kotaku)

More than 1300 individual pictures went into the making of this film. It is based off of the video game, Portal, and features the soundtrack from the game’s credits with an all lego cast.

• Link (via Joystiq)

This week on Game|Life, Wired magazine senior editor Chris Baker took us through the crazy videogame-obsessed brains of the creators of Futurama, the geekiest show on television.

In case you missed any of the in-depth reports on how Futurama and games have and will continue to intersect, here is the complete set of links. Please waste your entire Friday reading them! I will.

• Link

Related:

• Wired Magazine on the resurrection of Futurama
• Futurama’s David X. Cohen Interview
• New episodes of Futurama coming

The character is this hilarious passive aggressive personality, which is obviously a perfect subject for me. I write about that sort of thing all the time. I got an advance copy of the game when it was nearly finished, played through it, talked with the writers, and tried to get inside this character’s head as best I could. I bought my first ukulele specifically to record this song, it just seemed right for it. (Or maybe I wrote the song that way so I could buy a ukulele, hard to say.)

• Link
• Portal – “Still Alive” Credits Song on YouTube

Related:

• Code Monkey

The making-of How-To for the Xbox 360 laptop will be in three parts. In today’s segment we’ll discuss the parts list, stripping down an Xbox 360 motherboard, and modding / reattaching the DVD and hard drives. The next installment will cover case design, construction and hacking the LCD display, as well as wiring the video. Part 3 will then describe wiring all the separate parts together, troubleshooting, and finishing up the unit.

• Link
]]> http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/361/feed 0 http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/352 http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/352#comments Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:29:27 +0000 Beanbag http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/352 Space Invaders in stop-motion using humans as pixels. Brilliant!
• Link (via Boing Boing)
]]> http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/352/feed 1 http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/319 http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/319#comments Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:11:22 +0000 Beanbag http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/319 Continue reading →]]> Not really surprising, but playing action games can help improve your visual processing abilities.

In an article to be published in Psychological Science, they have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart.

• Link (via Digg)
]]> http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/319/feed 0 http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/316 http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/316#comments Fri, 02 Feb 2007 23:42:01 +0000 Beanbag http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/316 Continue reading →]]> This is a humorous text-adventure version of Pong.

Excellent, the left paddle has needed a leader like you for a long time. With your help, we may just be able to destroy the evil enemy that is the left paddle.

• Link (via Neatorama)
]]> http://bagofbeans.tsangal.org/archives/316/feed 0