A while ago I started playing Metal Gear Solid 2. My roommate Ben and friend Chris both said it was a crappy game, but it's been a lot of fun. While playing MGS2, I had an incredibly urge to play through Metal Gear for the NES again. My dad and I used to play that when I was really little. Conclusion: Metal Gear would probably be the best NES game if the English translators hadn't screwed it over. Even though I needed a strategy guide to complete it, it was a great deal of fun. At some point, I'll probably play through Metal Gear 2 for NES and Metal Gear Solid as well. I've discovered some new music (to me, at least) through DDR. E-Rotic [1] [2]. Good stuff. Yesterday I spent a few hours at ISU's Brunnier Museum helping set up a virtual reality exhibit which will be there for a couple months. Go check it out if you're in the area! We took one wall of the portable CAVE and two computers from the ptah cluster to run it. It's amazing how fast Ben Scott and Aron Bierbaum set up the computers, projectors, speakers, projection screen, and filters. The display will run two applications (Ashes to Ashes, a memorial to 9/11 and the Hindu app, which shows random people walking around, praying, lying on the ground, and dancing) on repeat while the exhibit is up. At some point the gamedev club is going to hold a meeting out there, showing some of our games on the big screen. Speaking of the club, we had our first meeting of the semester on Thursday. My boss came and held a discussion about whether working for Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto III) was like working for Philip Morris. He basically wanted the club to realize the issues involved in making games with mature content which could affect how kids see the world and those in it, especially members of another sex or race. Some people agreed with his viewpoint, but many were trying to defend the harmlessness of video games in the dialogue. It was interesting, no matter what side you were on. He also discussed how you would go about getting a job in the video game industry and some modern graphics technology. It was a great discussion. After the club meeting, most of the active people in the club got together for two and a half hours and discussed what we were going to do for the next IGF game. We decided on a slapsticky beat-em-up game called Barfight. Premise: A fight has broken out, you have five minutes until the cops come, so beat everyone up and drink as much free beer as you can. It'll give us a chance to use the VRAC's motion capture suit for animation, which will be fun. Maybe I'll even ask my roommate Mike (martial artist and dancer) to come help. :) Sphere 1.0 beta 1 has been released. The official 1.0 release should be out in a week or so. More info about that when it happens. :) One last bit... I don't really have any drama or angst in my life... everything is pretty straightforward. I either have what I want or am working towards getting it. In order to get my daily dose of drama and angst, I go and read other LiveJournals, and I like it. Almost like tabloids. It's kind of weird. That's all.