Video + Photo = Video evolved

This [washington.edu] is incredible, assuming that effects like this are actually possible using only the software as they claim.

Sadly I’ve been burned too many times by promises of seemingly ‘too good to be true’ technologies – I’ve learned to be very skeptical until I’ve gotten my hands on said technology and given it a test. It seems that often, creators of new tech like this spend a lot of time manually scrubbing the presentation footage, giving it a better appearance through a lot of manual editing than their tech will actually provide the average user.

Also very awesome tech, but not strictly related:

I’m similarly skeptical about how ‘automated’ this process will turn out to be.

Harmonix, take note

As mentioned by the premiere opinion leaders of our hobby [penny-arcade.com], the recent Xbox Live Arcade title Geometry War: Retro Evolved 2 does something very clever:

It does something else that is really smart. In the menu where you choose the gametype, each entry has its own arcade-style “hi-score” portion that only lists you and your friends. I really don’t go in for this kind of thing usually, especially if I have to go digging around for it, but showing where I fit in the hierarchy automatically lends my friends list heft and presence.

Here’s what Tycho is talking about (click to enlarge):

I found this totally engrossing from the first time I played: right there next to where you choose which mode of the game you want to play is a list of the top 5 scores of your friends, with your score (should you fall in the top five) clearly highlighted. I spent my first night demolishing my friend’s scores, making sure I got to the top in every leaderboard. I kept playing modes over and over again until I saw my name at the top. And you know what I plan to do when I get home tonight? Check and see if anyone’s challenged me. If they have, I’m going to do my best to knock them down a peg, again.

Harmonix, you need to leverage this. Stat.

Rock Band 2, the update to last year’s absolute best music game [rockband.com] is coming soon, and they’ve already stated that the song selection screen is getting an overhaul. In fact, it’s supposed to look very similar to the current Rock Band Music Store (click to enlarge):

There’s clearly enough screen real estate left here for them to have some leaderboard data displayed. I would suggest putting the top score (with the scorer’s name, naturally) for each song out to the right of the song title. This way, you can see at a glance the songs where you’re not number one with a bullet. Highlighting a song in the list would display the top five or ten scores for that song out on the left (perhaps below the song metadata), with yours highlighted if you fall in this range. This needs to happen. Although this leaderboard information is present already in Rock Band, it’s buried under a deluge of menus. It’s so far removed from the actual song selection process, that when I do feel ambitious/competitive enough to go looking for a song where I’m not top dog, I’ve forgotten what the song was by the time I get back to the song selection screen.

Harmonix, take note!