Projects
With college out of the way, I can start dedicating more time to personal projects.
AMOXA
This week, I have figured out an important part with rendering maps with PyGame. For one, map images are constructed from tiles during startup instead of having each tile being drawn to the screen every frame. This seems to have significantly improved performance. If animated tiles are going to be used, which would be inevitable, they will be rendered on top of the map image.
I made great progress with the game this week. I mostly worked on concept art, worldbuilding and audio.
It is at this point I went back to using the main desktop for development rather than the dual-Opteron system I planned on using originally, which was mostly chosen for aesthetic purposes given its use of the rare Virginia-made Qimonda DDR3 RAM and Radeon HD 4870 also using GDDR5 RAM chips very similar to what is found on the main character's robot motherboard (see below); the robot using the slightly faster speed grade of the RAM. The main issue I face is not being able to use all three of my monitors due to insufficient VRAM on the graphics card. I have actually been using a Radeon R7 240 on the system since I could not find a suitable heatsink for the HD 4870 I received from Ukraine recently. Also to mention, the desktop puts out a ton of heat, expected from dual Opteron CPUs which turns my room into more or less a sauna any time I use it for an extended period of time. Once I find the heatsink for the HD 4870, I may consider going back to the dual-Opteron system.
Story and Worldbuilding
Like the Portal 2 map I started working on in 2023, which eventually became this, the game takes place in Verona, New York in the year 2008 in an Aperture Science-like facility. Verona, New York being chosen specifically due to some aspects being based off faint memories of a school I went to. ChatGPT has proven to be crucial for worldbuilding and story development, fitting for the game's AI-centric theme (I still fact-check stuff though).
One thing I am proud of is a in-game image I drew along with a detailed description in the randomideas.md document that describes the motherboard that is found inside the main character's robot body and the details about it including the CPU, RAM, NPU and cooling systems. I tried to make the details as realistic as possible. This is an immense amount of detail that has never really been seen in a game like this before (that I know of) but I think it make the game more immersive and unique.
I decided to have the canonical name of the experiment be called "2nd Life" after my former employer, 2nd Life Inc. The logo for it is a reference to the old logo used by 2nd Life Inc. The name "MindSystem" is based off HP BladeSystem.
This drawing, though, is a work-in-progress and has a lot of refining left to do.
The board itself is a System on Module, connecting to a larger carrier board that contains the radios, power supply, connectors and other components.
The CPU, is a custom 16-core x86-64 processor with a physical layout inspired by the AMD EPYC 7371. The dies are larger than the dies of the AMD EPYC 7371 mostly to accomodate for the many GDDR5 PHYs. The function of this CPU is to take in data from sensors such as the cameras, microphones, motion sensors and the NPU and process and possibly transmit it. Canonically, the x86-64 cores were licensed from AMD while being fabricated in-house like the NPU. The CPU is paired with 8GB of RAM with an extra 1GB for ECC. The RAM is made up of 72x 1Gbit GDDR5 DRAM chips from Qimonda, specifically the IDGV1G-05A1F1C-55X. The GDDR5 DRAM is the only silicon not made in-house (though presumably most of Qimonda graphics memory came from Richmond/Sandston, Virginia and packaged elsewhere). The memory bus is 2304 bits wide, giving a maximum bandwidth of 12,672 Gbit/s including ECC.
The NPU, being nothing like any other computer system in 2008 or even now, is a neural processing unit that is capable of simulating a human brain. It has an architecture that is more like neurons than the computational units of modern GPGPUs such as the Nvidia H100. The logic elements are made up a hundred stacked dies, each with 100,000 cores, each core having 10,000 neurons. In game, the NPU is named "AXN-10M"; 10M for ten million cores. The NPU is paired with sixteen stacks of an HBM-like memory (HBM didn't exist in 2008) that is 16x faster than the HBM3 we know now. In total, the NPU is paired with 1 PiB of memory.
The robot is to have a cooling system making use of Novec 649 in a two-phase cooling loop.
More about these details can be found in the randomideas.md document.
2005 Chevy Tahoe
In a brainless move, I decided to try taking the 2005 Chevy Tahoe for a spin, without properly reassembling the parts under the dash and it being a long time since the last time I driven it. Deciding that it wasn't really a good idea for me to be driving the Tahoe given its condition, I decided to pull back up the driveway. An air duct got in the way of the brake pedal, which prevented me from stopping, crashing into the garage door at fortunately low speed. Not a single scratch was seen on the Tahoe but I made a mess of the garage door. I still don't know what was going through my head, apart from the voices, to think this was a good idea.
After this I started to work on the Tahoe again, properly reassembling the parts under the dash. One of the main issues that have to be fixed is the door switches.
It does not look like I would actually get the vehicle for myself given its lack of computerized safety features that the Subaru Forester that I usually drive has, which is a concern from my parents, personally I think I find it more dangerous to rely on such features than not having them which would promote focusing on the road. Also, it is valuable especially due to being a Z71 with a 5.3L V8, likely ending up going for several grand.
Personal
Though disappointed in how I performed in college, I see this time as a good oppurtunity to start working on my personal projects.
College
Again, mentioned in the last two weekly blog posts, I have decided I am not attending any more semesters. I may have only passed one out of four classes this semester.
I can just go to VCU and hang out there if I become too desperate for social interaction. I've done it before and will do it again. One of these days I may stay in the Qimonda Atrium for a solid eight hours, once again for aesthetics.
Starting April 29, I will be taking an extended break from Instagram for reasons I'd rather not describe here.