Under development

This is the hint of the new title.

The photo was taken at a coast close to Toyama in 1994. We were making a sand maze for Loony Labyrinth original package. It’s 14 years ago. How young we were! Fujita had bunch of hair. My appearance hasn’t changed a lot though

Now the core of the maze was completed. It was hard to form curved smooth surfaces from sand. We chose the coast as the sand was fine in pale yellow which is suitable for desert-like look.

Though many people assumed the package picture to be the one from a real ruins, it was created by sand and sea water in the primitive way as shown in the photos.

Then, the new title which is under development is the Loony Labyrinth 3D 2008. (the title hasn’t been fixed yet) This is not an “upgrade” but a complete new title. We are implementing the elements which should have been included in the original Loony as the current CPU power has enabled what were impossible at that time.

The release schedule hasn’t been fixed yet. I’ll update the progress in this blog

Fairy Tower ranking is HOT now

Hi, it’s Reiko. Have you seen the Fairy Tower contest ranking recently? It’s really active now. The JINNI contest bronze medalist has been at the head, but It’s also notable Jos from Australia is coming up to the top group. Will there be the first finalist from the southern hemisphere? Keep your eye on the ranking.

I guess Fairy Tower appeals to the experts in comparison with Monster Fair which has comical and friendly taste. Each of our games has its own taste respectively which reflects our moods of each development period

By the way, do you have any idea what’s under development now? We are in a happy mood. I’ll show you some tomorrow. Some of you may be surprized.

Randam numbers

An unbreakable encryption has got into the news in Japan recently. I checked the topics to see what’s going on as it roused my attention.

There is a famous encryption called one-time pad which lots of blogs talk about. It is proved to be unbreakable. But at the same time, it is a simple one. For example, to encrypt HELLO to WORLD, it uses a randam number which length is the same and the randam number should be used just one time.

In the process of the decryption of WORLD(encrypt) to HELLO(plaintext), there will be bunch of candidates such as WORLD>BREAD, WORLD>NORTH. The right answer could be included in the candidates, but it will be shown in the candidates without any hint. Therefore, a decrypter never knows what is the right answer even if he’s seen the right answer. That means, the right plaintext is not necessary to be hidden from the decrypter.

Another example. Provided you want to decrypt an encrypted girl’s name. It is possible to input information such as “the plain text is a girl’s name” along with the table of all girls name and round-robin randam numbers… but it will work only to display all girls name on the screen. This can’t break the encryption.

It is important to use the same length randam number only one time. You can use the same randam number repeatedly so that you can get closer to the answer.

Well, the randam numbers. To create them in a program is a tricky job. Using only software, we can generate only false randam numbers. It is because running a same program generates same randam numbers everytime. If you have a trouble with this, you can use built-in clock or counter of CPU or other special hardware devices.

In the game programming, you can use input timing of the user as an element so that the performance of randam numbers is usually fine. But in some occasion, you may see stripes on the screen which is created by the “false” part of the randam numbers.

In such case, I create my own randam number generating algorithm for better performance. I noticed randam numbers of C library often causes such problems as it considers the speed to be most important.

To be randam is not simple as it looks.

Reference: one-time pad, Mersenne twister　(Wikipedia)

Foresight of my classmate

It might be lucky that I lost the paradise. Being absorbed in one thing should be avoided for a junior high school boy.

Then my interest went back to semiconductor element, that is hardware. I did not touch keyboards until I entered the university. Main reason was because I didn’t have a computer though

When I was a third grader of my high school, words of my classmate O made me decide the course to take after graduation.

“Hey Fujita, the processing speed of computer gets faster and faster. But then, do you know what happens next? —The era of data transmission will come.”

Honestly, I didn’t understand what he said very well. But, I felt a strange power in his words. I guess I didn’t apply The University of Electro-Communications without his words.

O entered the same university. His major was radio communication. As you now, radio communication is the neccesary technology for non-contact/mobile communications including mobile phone, digital braodcasting TV, wireless LAN, and FeliCa.

But, it was 7 years before the first cell phone in Japan was released from NTT docomo… I’m amazed how O had a lot of foresight. And grateful to it as well.

By the way, he entered a big Lab after graduating the university.

Haven in my youth

So, I stared to program games.

Most of my friends programed easy-style games such as reversi or StarTrek, but I developed real-time game such as aerial combat game. Yes I’ve been loving real-time games.

Of course I did not own my computer. I write down my program on papers at home and type the codes in the computer store. How fun was it! I studied determinant very hard to express the roll of aircrafts. The coordinaes transformation was implemented by BASIC. It was rather hard as BASIC of TK80 could handle only integers.

And it didn’t work well as the speed was too slow. Then I rewrite the program by assembler. Still too slow. So I modified the code. I repeated it again and again.

I was so serious to study math and programming, but I was not so so serious about the studies for exams in school.

Before long, our haven was lost suddenly…It was just about PC8001 was on the market. The computer industry was changing rapidly.

By the way, I’m sure there was kids who thought “I’m sure I’m going to develop Astro Boy someday!” I guess there are some of them in the develop team of ASIMO. I really wish to see a real Astro Boy

I thought I could develop “Astro Boy”

My first program was developed when I was a second grader of a junior high school. It was for participating in a programming contest of a Japanese computer magazine called I/O. The quesiotion was about 6502 assembler which was used in AppleII. I remember the answer should be written in hexadecimal.

I had never seen 40 pin tips at that time, let alone micro computers. My young heart was filled with longings for computer.

In the next year, a NEC micro computer shop(like RadioShack) opened in the neighborhood of my school. Of course I dropped in there every after school. They allowed to use the demo machine TK80BS for free of charge anyone who signed on the member list. There were always lots of junior high school students. I was so happy to go there.

And thought, “It’s impossible to develop AstroBoy with this machine…”

-Fujita

Programmer’s hands

This is my back view. You can see my palms facing backward. I realized it as my wife and kid largh watching me walking. They say “You swing your hands like swimming!”

My hands used to be attached to my body in the normal way when I was a kid. Why it is like this now?

I guess programming 6 to 10 hours everyday for 26 years has changed the elbow joints. I’ve been typing keyboards everyday ever since I entered the university.

Probably I’m not the only one among programmers. Do you know anybody who owns “programmers hands”?

-Fujita

Fujita

This is Yoshikatsu Fujita, the president and main programmer of LittleWing. Sometimes he is called “Genius programmer” and sometimes “goofy guy”. He has incredible powers of concentration on computer things, but at the same time he just can not remember the color of his toothblush till the day it retires. Anyway, I guess he’s a kind of freak.

The photo on the left was shot on a beautiful day in last fall. You can see his nice cap (but little-too-small) with black earflaps. Our assistant programmer took him to the riverside to pick silverberries.

-Reiko

Fujita’s Personal data:

5′10.25″, 145lbs, Shoe size: 10 1/2

Aquarius
Blood type:B
Hobby: river fishing

Ryuichi Sato

Ryuichi Sato, who composes the great tunes for our pinball games is a singer-songwriter. He’s resumed live performance recently and also planning to release his third original album.

You can listen to the sample tunes at:

http://www.myspace.com/miotron

I love his blues! I think his blues has ethnic gloove.

-Reiko

Assistant programmer

Hi, my name is wolf the assistant programmer of LittleWing. Sometimes I fix bugs while my boss Fujita, the main programmer takes a nap. I really love to see him surprised when he’s back to the office…

Another important job of AP is the health management of Fujita. I walk him twice a day, every morning and evening. Yes, sometimes it’s troublesome when I’m too busy.