Good lord, I really don't get around to posting on here that much.
Back at Cornell, of course, with all the work that it entails. It's not exactly been overwhelming yet. Certainly been time to not work and such, but I believe it may grow worse with time.
As the DGA has been sucking up most all of my free time (I like to think of it as a 4 credit course w/out the tests), work on Stage IV has... not really been going on. Schwartz left during the summer, so GDIAC is effectively nonoperational for now... it'll get back together, but later. So, I'm finding myself spending all of my time trying to get other people to make games and just about zero time making them myself. I'm admittedly envious of the projects that are really moving along, as I would rather be in the same situation. Any volunteers for DGA president? Entirely willing to abdicate.
As suggested in my previous post, I've shifted my mental attitude to be more appreciative of learning and less guilty about not being some dirt poor soul with no prospects. *Shrugs*. I guess it's more of the regular cycle/tide of one's brain than anything. I don't put that much stock into it because I'm sure it will again be altered within a few months.
Ayiyiyi... what else can we hit up here? Apparently a game called
Eternal Sonata just came out for the 360 that really caught my eye. I'd not heard about it before, but apparently it's "about" the death of Chopin. He drifts in and out of a dream world w/ some girl who is at the center of a controversy between two kingdoms and magic and anime eyes and statistical battles blah blah blah... so not everything about it is original. But the idea of mixing the deathbed of Chopin and this magical world does intrigue me... now if only I had a 360 to play it. If they're taking a very real scene and connecting it to purpose of the fantasy world, well... maybe it's a bit on the nose, but it definitely beats out the pure fantasy of most games. Alas, maybe I'll play it a few years down the road, though the trailers that display about 80% battle scenes with stylized integers flying to and fro with each attack make me wonder if I could ever get into it. There's a place for stat battles, and there's a place for a story about the death of Chopin. I guess I'd want to mix them just about as much as I'd like garlic with that ice cream sundae.
"The balance of risk and reward changes depends on the value of R(s) for the nonterminal states. Figure 17.2(b) shows the optimal policies for four different ranges of R(s). When R(s) <= -1.6284, life is so painful that the agent heads straight for the nearest exit, even if the exit is worth -1."