A friend of mine tried Googling my name this week and I was surprised by the results. Searching for "ashley bennett" will show my IGDA membership page as the fourth result. Adding developer to the end will get you HiAsh.com as the first result. That's not too bad!
With the PlayStation Portable (PSP) launching in the USA this week I have to rant about game retailers blatantly taking advantage of the early adopters. Searching around for prices on the console at stores such as EB Games, GameStop and Best Buy all bring up overpriced bundles. The console should be $250 on its own, but I can only see the major retailers selling packages of at least $350 with many more being $400+. I'll wait before I get a new portable anyway. Nintendo have another one on the way to go with their Revolution console, and my GBA SP gets little (read: no) play as it is.
The Matrix Online Beta is over with the game to launch on Tuesday. Apparently the last few hours were great, with characters such as Morpheus, The Merovingian and Niobe all turning up for a huge war involving the Matrix's virtual world being set ablaze by a fire virus started by the Machines. After my experience with the game I can say it could be fun to play in the long term if you could get in a good "clan" and there were some more events similar to the last day of the beta. Or of course if you are a rabid MMO fan.
I also tried out the Lego Star Wars Demo this week and I have to say I'm very impressed. Clean, simple fun with basic puzzles, 3D platforming and lightsabers. As long as the levels are a little longer and more complex than that presented in the demo, I would have to recommend this game. The replay value is great since you can go back and play each level with access to all of the characters in the game, each with a unique ability allowing you to open up previously inaccessible areas of the map. Buy it next month.
Finally, congratulations to the boys at Elemental Entertainment who's title Wingmen, which I have mentioned in previous posts, will be featured in an upcoming issue of Computer Arts, top digital design rag, as part of a piece about the MediaLab Arts degree, (or rather Digital Art and Technology as it will soon be known.) Well done!

I'm back now from GDC and it was pretty damn cool. Highlights include getting completely drunk for free, all the food we blagged each day, getting my arse handed to me in a game of Doom 3 by a professional girl gamer, oh, and the show was there too.
On the first day a lot of stands were giving out beers and stuff at about 5, so we went around each of those booths and had about 6, then went across the road when the show finished and had a few with the Full Sail staff that were there. The next night Playstation held a private party that we all got into.
As for the show, the fact that Microsoft wasn't really showing anything was a surprise. I got to have a go on the PSP a few times and there were some entertaining things to do at the booths. But overall there was nothing amazing gaming wise. It was more showing the new technologies and tools we as developers can use, which was cool to see and try, but its not like E3 - place of shiny things.
We spoke to a few people too, which was good, including getting some good advice for next year, so I would say it was definitely worth the trip. It should be better next year since we will be looking for jobs and should have some stuff to show. It was a bit pointless talking to companies about it now, apart from seeing what they wanted and what they offered (such as internships.)
I just got back this morning and had some sleep. Apparently we didn't have power for 2 days since the power company cut us off thinking we were someone else. I'm pissed.
In totally unrelated news, I'm on the front page of the MediaLab Arts website in a beautiful pic. Lucky me, thanks Chris! ;)

I have managed to get myself on the Matrix Online beta which is pretty sweet. Its the first time I've signed up for something like this and is the first MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) I have ever played at the same time. Signing up involved agreeing to an NDA, so I can't say too much, but it seems like it could get quite deep. I was thinking it would be a terrible game, but being a fan of the Matrix series I signed up for the beta as soon as I heard about it months ago, however it wasn't until Tuesday I was accepted. I have only played for around 2 one hour sessions so far, having to restart with a new character for the second hour since I switched servers to try and reduce the lag. It was bad yesterday, but it was acceptable today. I'm more impressed than I thought I would be, but really don't think I would pay a monthly fee to keep playing. I'm going to try and get the most out of this free beta as I can.
I also had a quick go at Cold Fear for the X-Box today. It looks impressive. A more action oriented survival-horror game, along the lines of Resident Evil 4, but based on a large ship in the middle of a storm. The movement is exaggerated based on huge waves crashing into the hull, making your character sway as they move. After playing I was watching the TV and everything was 'moving' infront of my eyes, which is a little worrying for a 20 min play!
This time next week I'll be at GDC and I'm looking forward to that. Just need to keep on top of the work at the same time!

Last week I added to the list of strange meats I have sampled... this time Dolphin. I have to say, Flipper is pretty bland. Also that week I had a chance to speak to Sheri Graner Ray, author of Gender Inclusive Game Design and who now works for Sony Online Entertainment. I got to ask her some questions about the content of her book and how we should approach marketing to try and gain a larger female audience, increasing our sales potential. It was an interesting conversation and a great opportunity to speak to someone in the industry, so I would like to thank her for that.
Yesterday I sent some voice recordings over to Elemental Entertainment for them to put into their game Wingmen. Its a fun little multiplayer 2D space shooter which is nearing a milestone right now. Check out the impressive website and grab the demo when its up, they are a good bunch of lads.

Fantastic! Bloggers are considered dangerous to society due to the potential inaccuracies... despite blogs bringing up some major scandals recently. Scare mongering by governments, (and other idiots who have no idea what they are talking about) really is crap.
But anyway, school is going well so I booked myself a trip to San Francisco next month with a few friends as a reward. The reason? The Game Developers Conference 2005 baby! I can't wait. Its just a shame students cannot attend E3. When I go, I'll try and post some photos and news live, or at least at the end of each day.
Oh, and Dad visited us here last week. It was great to see him and have a few beers. Just thought I'd throw that in. Thanks Dad.

I took a look at the Half-Life 2 source code in order to start making a mod or two which I have planned. It is a bit intimidating to look at at the moment though, since there are no real guides out there for the coding, they are all for map editing.
I noticed that Prima are coming out with a new guide in the next few months however, The Half-Life 2 Mod Maker's Guide, so I may pick that up to get some pointers. Even if I don't end up using it directly for HL2 modding, I'm sure there are some good general tips in there, and it is less $15.
Just one last note, I have been using Vonage (who use VOIP technology which lets you make phone calls using your Internet connection so you save money, especially on international calls!) as my telephone service for a while now and I can only say good things about them. If anyone out there is thinking of signing up, email me, (or use the form on the left of this page) an I can send you an e-coupon for a free month of service, whichever plan you choose.

Another month down, and it went fairly well I think. I did not really enjoy the Physics class, but it has been a good reminder of my old Maths and Mechanics and how to implement it in code for games.
Unfortunately I didn't get to see Louise while she stopped over in Miami tonight, sorry honey. That's what accelerated school does to you.
I did a quick update to the site, making the most changes to my CV, (or resume for any Americans reading) :) I think my portfolio could do with a spruce up, but I doubt that will happen for a while! I hope tomorrow to take a look at the Half-Life 2 source code and see what the chances of making a mod are.

I have been getting a lot more mail about my Blogger/Atom/RSS/MagpieRSS tutorial recently. Most are to say thanks, but some with questions. To that end I've updated the guide to add a little more detail since it seems to be helping quite a few people out there.
Full Sail is still going well. It has been harder this month I think, but I'm doing pretty well with my grades, and that's what matters.
I went to Disney Quest at the weekend, which for those that don't know is essentially a big arcade with some virtual reality rides. It is billed as an indoor theme park, and while that may be a little over the top, it is still a good way to kill a few hours. I haven't been there for ages, so it was good to see they had updated some of the games, but it would be nice to see a greater number with a bit more variety. I haven't seen a decent new arcade machine in a long time. Rocky's Arcade doesn't do badly with their games like the full size F-Zero cabinet, but I have been dying to play a game I once played in a GameWorks. It was a Virtua Cop style affair, but with firemen. You had to hold a fire hose as your controller and put out the fires to advance through the building, like House of the Dead. I remember it being a Sega game (hence all the Sega references in describing it!) but haven't had a chance to play it since.
While driving back from Disney Quest I managed to have a car accident with a Lexus RX300 which was less than fun, but that's what a long session of racing games in an arcade must do to me!

I received an email this morning from the people at jenniferavalon.net who said they had used my Blogger / MagpieRSS tutorial as the basis to develop their own technique for publishing posts on a set date. They were good enough to then write this up in their own tutorial: Autopublish-on-date, using Blogger and Magpie/PHP which you might want to check out.
On a completely unrelated note, I have come up with an idea for a Half-Life 2 mod (or maybe mods,) but don't want to reveal too much just yet until I get things going, either on my own or in a group. I got the SDK from Steam yesterday and had a brief look. Map making doesn't seem too bad for what I want to do, but I'll have to start taking a look at the code and see how to edit it to make the game.

The first week back is over and it has been tough going. It doesn't help that we had a two week break to forget everything, but the work seems to have ramped up a bit in terms of how challenging it is. I'm still doing ok though and my tests have been turning out alright.
I have finally fixed my XBox and after posting this I'm going to do the last bit of tweaking to get it running the way I want it, then I can sign up for an XBox Live trial.
Season four of 24 starts here tonight with two episodes today and two tomorrow before getting back to a normal once-per-week schedual. I love that show!

First post of a new year. I'm back in the USA and I have an exam today, my first day back.
New Year was good. I spent it in Norwich with the boys and we had a laugh. Cheers Doc for letting us stay.
I have just updated a file on this site that fixes a bug in MagPie RSS, but I don't think it was a bug that affected this site, so you may or may not notice a difference. I need to update loads of stuff I have realised, like my CV. But for now, I should really get back to my notes.

I have been back home in England for over a week now for the Christmas break, but not had much to update with on here.
The last month at Full Sail ended well and I'm confident about my results. I have an exam the day I get back I believe and that is not too far away now.
Christmas has been good... Some real food, plenty of beer and some nice new clothes for me to model. I've ended up being technical support as usual and was asked to say Hi to the lovely Louise, Lauren, Rachel (I'm pretty sure I've spelt that wrong) and especially Marg (who is probably feeling a bit worse for wear this morning!)

About a week ago I created a tutorial on "How to Include Blogger Posts on Other Pages" which should make sense to people who use Blogger for their websites. Blogger themselves have posted a link to it on thier User Hacks Page and the MagPie RSS weblog, (whose PHP software I used) have done the same on their news and How-To Pages.
Hope that helps someone. I may make other tutorials for other stuff eventually and add a new section to this site. I've thought about it many times before, but just never written them...

I have just finished Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 today after taking a break from both games. There may be spoilers in the rest of this post, so this is warning for anyone still playing them.
I didn't realise I was so close to the end of Halo 2 when I stopped playing before. The comments that had been flying around about the ending being a load of crap were right. Unfortunately, I think about the same for Half-Life 2. In fact, that whole game has too great a sense of mystery about it for my liking... But I still love it. Reading around on the Internet has put a few of the puzzle pieces together and now I just have another 6 years to wait for Half-Life 3.
In my opinion though, it is a shame that games are left far too wide open for blatant sequels. I would rather have some sort of closure to the current events and have the ambiguous endings of the current games be the start of the next game if there ever is one. Why not even replay the final battle as the intro? Which is worse though, tacking on a cheap plot extension with little explanation just to produce another sequel, (making more money but raping a successful franchise, like too many movies,) since things were too tightly wrapped up, or leave it open and confusing? But then I still want to buy the next installments for both titles... What can I say? Consumer whore.
Oh well, multiplayer is here now for HL2. I'll get X-Box Live! to play Halo 2 when I get back here after Christmas. HL2 should have some interesting mods released for it eventually. I like the sound of one - Resistance Vs Combine. An obvious, but potentially excellent team based shooter.

OK, so I have been in this country for about two and a half months now and yesterday I went ahead and shot some guns. Real life, kill a man, bullet firing pistols. Hey, we had a few days off for Thanksgiving, so we were just sitting around doing nothing... why not find a shooting range? I found one on the internet just around the corner so Chris and I called up some friends and let some lead fly. I shot a .22, a 9mm and a big bad .45 Colt. I'm a perfectly fine shot with the .22 but I'd need a bit more practice with the bigger boys... they had some kick.
Also, as I have mentioned, the day before yesterday was Thanksgiving itself and we were both lucky enough to be invited round some people's houses that were cooking. We got a free meal and had a laugh with some people. Thanks for that, those that hosted.

I've just updated this site so it is finally centered, both horizontally and vertically, and resized things so that it should fit within a browser window maximized in 800x600. Things have been tweaked quite nicely. I just need to edit some of the themes now.

The second month of Full Sail is over and I seem to have come through unharmed. Programming 2 and Linear Algebra await me starting next week, with a harsher schedule including classes ending at 1am and a broken up weekend. But that's the price of accelerated learning I suppose.
The year is drawing to a close, at least in gaming terms since the big titles are pretty much all released now in time for the "Holidays." Metal Gear Solid 3 is the latest one, and the Nintendo DS is out tonight, (at least here in the US.) But life is not all rosey in the land of the Title-of-the-Year Contenders...
Halo 2 has reportedly got a few bugs in it, but that didn't stop me and some friends having a 7 hour marathon, multi-systemlink session yesterday before moving on to a party, (thanks Joe for hosting and good work Duke on the party, great turn out.)
The Halo bugs are not too bad though in comparison to the Half-Life 2 situation. Steam has been throwing its guts up over the past few days under the weight of registrations from people registering their store bought copies. At least I can play my downloaded version, even if it does have a crappy stuttering-every-few-minutes bug. What is ingenious though is Valve releasing a warez copy of the game soon after the retail release with a trap in it to destroy your Steam account if used. So if you happened to pay for any titles over Steam you can no longer use them. Seems fair enough to me.

So one of the most anticipated games ever has landed on my hard drive this morning. Actually it has been there for a while through the magic of Steam, but at midnight last night Half-Life 2 was finally unlocked and playable by the world. It is a beautiful game, but it has had a few glitches on my system, including one almighty crash that filled the class room I was playing in with the screams of Alyx, a gorgeous side character. My main problem though is with the distribution model. Once you unlock the game online once, that should be it. But you are made to do it each time you boot the game, which sucks. Seems I'm lucky that I got it working this morning, (I did the final unlocking at 8am before class, then left Steam open and hibernated the laptop,) so I could play it during the day. But I don't really want to have to go through that every morning. It wouldn't be so bad but Full Sail have blocked the ports that Steam connects through, so that is where one of my major problems comes from, (but it is just the same as being away from an Internet connection.)
Despite buying the game, I would consider using a crack to circumvent Steam, and that's just crap. I would rather have bought it on DVD and have something tangible rather than the download, but its only on 5 or 6 CD's in the USA unless you go for the $90 collectors edition. Stuff that. (But even if I did, you still need to install Steam and validate each time...) At least they have put in a "Backup files" option into the Steam client now.
Anyway, so far the game rocks. Just remember this simple formula:
HL2 Single player > Halo 2 Single player.
Halo 2 Multiplayer > Counter Strike: Source (which is a cop-out anyway...)

I'm watching an incredible tv show right now while I'm working. Richard Branson: The Rebel Billionare. It's a reality show where he has 16 people (all yanks which pisses me off, and you'll see why,) which he jets around the world to do challenges, eliminating them when they fail. Fine. But eventually the prize is Branson's Job! They will OWN VIRGIN! All of it!
So 1) Why yanks? (Its a British company with a british owner, why is he doing this show in the USA?)
And 2) How? (How can he give this away?)
There must be a twist in there somewhere. They are doing some crazy stuff. This is the first episode, a 2 hour special. He has had them climbing out of hot air ballons and planes and have been to England and Hong Kong. They are having to do a business task now - do something for the Virgin Airways Upper Class cabin. They have to do something to improve the service on an Upper Class flight with $500 (or something like that...) within 24hrs. But then half way through he makes them take difficult choices such as offering them a trip to a national monument in Hong Kong. But that's it. So do they go, or not waste the time and keep working on the challenge since they have a time limit? Is it an important choice? Not really if they get the work done, but it makes them over analyse the situation.
One team decided it is what Branson would do and have gone thinking it may become a cultural advantage. The other team wanted the time and didn't go. It's quite interesting, and we have no idea what Branson is thinking, and they are all too preoccupied thinking about that in my opinion, but it must be hard in their position.
This is just crazy, that's all i can say!
(It eventually turns out that the group that goes on the trip makes an inferior product and loses the challenge, so Branson says perhaps they should have spent more time on it. But then if they had done the work it wouldn't have been an issue to him I'm sure.)
But more importantly, I picked up Halo 2 last night. EB had a midnight opening launch to celebrate so I got to the mall at around 11.15pm. After paying off the rest of what I owed I was given a number (104) and invited to a Ruby Tuesdays restaurant around the corner to play some Halo to kill the time. I was getting beaten down. As midnight hits people start going back to get their copy of they game as they are called, but in the restaraunt Halo 2 gets put into the 3 networked consoles. This was my chance to shine and I preceeded to pwn everyone. I ended up coming second by a couple of kills and fell in love with the game during that time. There is so much more in terms of tactics. Halo was essentially a choice between the pistol, shotgun or sniper rifle. This one is a choice between any of the balanced weapons, whether to duel weild (but lose the ability to throw grenades,) or carry the baddest of bad ass - the Covenant sword, (close range, but instant kill.) I'm just annoyed that I have had a load of homework today so I couldn't start the single player campaign!
Oh, and I've fixed the crappy bug that made the text bold and blurry on this site in IE.

Today was a fun and active day. First I went swimming (in November in an outdoor pool. Florida sunshine is the best!) and then Chris and I went paintballing with a few people from Full Sail. That was all rounded off by a shooting session at the LAN Party. So now I'm nice and chilled. This weekend we are going to host a party so that means I can have a beer without worrying about how to get home!
25 hours and Halo 2 will be in my XBox. Another week after that and I can finally start playing Half-Life 2 (I signed up for Steam yesterday.)