Education in Death

GundeadliGne

2011-09-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes they literally have mazes of bullets onscreen.
literally.

Currently playing:

2011-09-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

Gundemonium Recollection
Gundeadligne
and Hitogata Happa

Three "Bullet Hell" shooters from Japan.

Found them on Steam. Steam is cool.

It's amazing how much time slips away from you.

2011-09-30T18:09:00.001-07:00

It's amazing how much time slips away from you.

keep on bloggin'

2011-08-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

Portal 2: femalest game out there

2011-05-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I think in many ways Portal 2 is designed to be the opposite of Half-Life.
In Portal2, you never attack anything directly. You always sneak around behind enemies or use portals in novel ways to drop things on them or drop them on their heads.

You accumulate many weapons in Half-Life, and using the right one in the right situation is a key element.
Portal 2: You always have the same gun- a gun that shoots holes.

Half-life is male, portal female.
portal is female? You bet, it's the femalest game out there. Tell you why.
First of all, the main conflict is between two females, a daughter and an evil stepmother/witch character.
Visual design-wise, everything made by Aperture science is smooth and rounded and white, like an egg.
Did i mention your gun shoots holes? It's the least phallic gun ever made. It's shaped like an egg, it's got three little arms on it.

Lastly, and i think this is subtler, you don't just shoot things, You solve problems. This to me is a much more female approach to things.

I don't even think there are any male characters in Portal1. Oh wait, Doug Ratmann, but you never actually see him, just his dens.It's all about the females.

Portal 2: it's about the family

2011-05-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

Think about it.
The main character is an orphan. Glados serves as her evil stepmother. Her dad is Wheatley. He's super dumb and clumsy. Uh, oh, look out when he takes over the house!

The mother/father conflict is expressed many ways throughout the game. In many pivotal scenes, both robots are urging you to do opposing things. But you really have only one thing you can do.

Turrets: defective turrets have a male voice, good turrets have a female one.

Portal2 is such a great game. There are levels of depth and complexity that really are there.

or maybe not

2011-05-27T19:52:00.001-07:00

Maybe i'll keep doing what i've been doing for the last year.

its just kind of ironic that

2011-05-08T14:09:00.000-07:00

the job i have now is in video games. Went to school to get a degree in games. Changed my major cause Animation seemed so fun. Now i'm back in video games. Back in QA, sadly, but maybe that'll change soon...

that was for my new blog with pictures of my art

2011-05-08T14:01:00.001-07:00

http://thejeremycampbellproject.blogspot.com/

test one two

2011-05-04T18:51:00.001-07:00

POINTS QUEST

2011-04-04T12:22:00.000-07:00

It's the game i'm going to make. It'll be great.

a new job???

2011-04-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm also going to send copies of the new portfolio i had to make to Pixar. i might get rejected, but i might as well show them what i'm really made of.
should probably send them to other studios as well, but pixar is so near where i live, in addition to being the best one.
Definitely going to send a portfolio(without the portfolio case) to pixar wishmeluck.

i hope i get this position

2011-04-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

i interviewed for an artist position at the place where i work,i hope i get it. I'd do anything to make art for a living. QA is nice and all, but at the end of the day you have created nothing.
but paperwork.
That and- in QA- they just don't like to see you coming. Whenever you're coming to talk to someone, it's always something bad. QA is never the bringer of good news. And that wears on me after awhile.I'm a creator of unghappiness.
I'd rather make something. Even something trite(like i'd probably be doing), it's still makin' stuffs.

I really hope i get this position. i hope i haven't jinxed it somehow.

Toy Story- i think about this way too much

2010-11-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

So... As a result of having a kid, i've watched the Toy Story movies Quite a lot lately. They hold up suprisingly well to repeated viewings. Most questions are answered, story-wise. But there are a few...

Questions That Remain Unanswered at the Close of the Toy Story trilogy:

1. What happened to Andy's dad?
We never hear about him. We've never heard anything about him. You always only see Andy's Mom.
Even if he's not important to the story, it's possible to drop hints in the dialogue or the visuals somewhere .Bonnie has a dad-you can see him gardening in the last scene. You barely see Bonnie's mom. (Hey, did you notice that? In Toy Story 3, Whenever you see Bonnie in the frame, Bonnie's mom's head is cut off, cut off by very deliberate framing to focus on the kids and the toys.)

As far as i can tell, there aren't any hints about Andy's Dad. The fact that there aren't any photos anywhere argues strongly for divorce. But he could be dead. He's not even in his son's graduation photo, which we see in the movie. Bonnie has a dad- we see him gardening with his wife in the last scene of Toy Story 3. I think it's cool, actually- it reflect a lot of kid's real experience, and, in terms of story, it kind of enhances the idea that the toys are parents to the children. Anyway, we never found out what happened to Andy's dad. It;s interesting.

2.Who made "The Rules"? Where do they come from?
In the Toy Story movies, there's one basic rule that all toys must follow. Good toys, evil toys, even toys that think they are real... all obey this rule. Do you know what it is yet? Woody mentions it once in the first Toy Story: "We'll have to break a few rules, but if it works, it'll help us all out." The rule is: All toys must not come alive around humans. We know that they can-it's not some sort of magic spell or anything like that. Woody came alive to scare Sid.at the end of the first Toy Story. But they must at all costs maintain the pretense. It's kinda weird if you think about it. Too much.

3. What's the story with Woody's empty holster?
Woody never uses a gun, even though it's a big part of cowboy lore. He uses lassos and the like, he has all the other cowboy accoutrements, but no gun. He has a holster, but it's always been empty. They even drew attention to the empty holster in Toy Story 1 by having Sid put a match in it. No gun. Why?
You could say that Andy lost Woody's gun- i think that's very realistic. But remember that Woody was stolen by a rare toy collector in Toy Story 2. Al McWhiggin seemed to believe that Woody was 'complete'.
But i think it's a conscious choice: to make Woody a character who solves problems with cleverness instead of force. Maybe.

That's all i got for now.

Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader

2010-10-01T19:18:00.000-07:00

Yeah so i was going to tell you about how i started thinking of my job as a game.

Well, i also think about it a lot in military terms. There's no ranks in private industry, well, there's of course jobs, but they're not so stratified and uniform as the military. More in terms of this guy leads a group of guys, (keeps tabs on them, is responsible for them). He has levels above him, that keep track of a group of guys like him. And so on up.
And the guys he leads, interface with the actual "stuff". The job itself.

I've been thinking a lot lately about being a leader. What good leaders do, bad leaders, what they do.

Thinking a lot about games. I said iphone games are a lot different. They are. In some ways they're better. They've had to simplify and so have honed in on essences of gameplay experiences, building blocks, of games.

it's interesting.

games,

2010-10-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

Some high-level observations about games, and observations about the gaming industry. Because i'm actually inside it, at a low level. Front line, in the trenches.

metaphorically speaking.

It means i at least see decisions being made, maybe have a hint about why. See the high-level decisions, and they affect people all down the line. their effects on the game. It's interesting. What else is interesting is i see a little bit more of this now because i'm a part of the process.

try to explain. One thing that's great about smaller companies and start-ups is that you move up fast. I call it "battlefield promotion" but that's not quite right. This is not when someone is fired and you get their job, but just that the company is expnding so rapidly that jobs are being created and shifted around all the time. People getting promoted, getting more responsibilities all the time. It's cool. i like it. There's a lot of things great about start-ups. Remind me to tell you sometime.

But anyway, so now i'm in charge of a group of testers.

It's weird.

So hey i uh

2010-10-01T18:57:00.001-07:00

Am working, now, in QA, at a game company. I am back doing QA again, not too happy to be kind of back where i started, down at the bottom, but i am working in the game industry. i think that's the important thing really, to be working in the same indusrty as where you want to be, ultimately.

They're called ngmoco:). They make games for the iphone and ipad. It's a whole different set of circumstances from what i'm used to( which is console game testing, PC game testing) iphone game testing is different from all of those. So i've had to learn a whole lot of new technical stuff. But at some level, it's testing, which i know how to do. Experience tells you where programs are likely to fuck up, what areas of the software to hammer on.

metaphorically speaking.

i hope to maybe share some of my ideas about

working from home

2010-10-01T08:17:00.001-07:00

about working in games

2010-09-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

as i guess i do now.It's almost possible. What we dreamed about has become possible.

marvel at the complexity of it all.

2010-06-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

shirow masamune

as an aside

2010-05-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

, I think that was PIXAR's success with the sequel to Toy Story(a monstrously successful movie in it's own right) , was that they took the same approach as a video game company would which is to save unused ideas for use later and to keep improving the product.

From what i've been able to glean from listening to commentary tracks, most of the characters, situations, gags, etc. were things planned for the original Toy Story movie but were cut for various reasons. Mostly time. One thing that always amazes me about Toy Story is how fast it moves. snap snap snap It's a short movie, but you feel like you've been a lot of places.

I've seen it a lot lately. My kid loves it so... i've seen it a lot. it's good, it really holds up.

when you see a whole series and are deciding which one to get...

2010-05-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

For video games, always get the "2"

For movies, always the first one is the best.

There are notable exceptions, though, actually i can think of a lot of sequels, movie sequels that are better than the original.

But with video games, almost always you want to get the second one. That's how games are, they improve. For the sequel, the developers put in all the stuff that they had to cut out to make the deadline on the first game.

Oftentimes, by the third in a aseries, the game is larded down with features, controls, super-moves(meta-controls) and and is overall less fun to play.

im not sure i made that clear enough

2010-05-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Valve circumvents piracy with Steam. They do it by making it almost as easy to go legit. Click a button and the download begins, it's just about that simple. And they throw additional features into the bargain.

Also i believe the Steam service is free. It costs money to buy games of course but measure that against having to go out into the real world to a game store, buy a physical media, come back, install the game, update drivers, and play the game.

The downside is not having a physical media for the game. i can see that being a big deal for some people. it's completely virtual. You don't 'have' anything. Which is true.

But the upside to that downside is that it's not constrained to any one computer anymore. You can go to another computer, download Steam, install it, give it your password, and have access to all your games, with the correct drivers to work on the new computer.

This is really pretty cool and a true shift in the way we do things.

Steam

2010-05-09T13:38:00.001-07:00

is wonderful. I think i 'get' Steam now. Or maybe they've added so many features that they're useful to somebody.

I think of Steam as my "Game Job"

It's so well-organized. Everything is cross-referenced. And worst of all, buying games is easy. Of course that's best for them. What Valve did is they made they're system slightly less easy than pirating games. They realized that's their competition. And they also realized that most people- probably the mass of people, won't pirate software if a legitimate, and equally easy system exists.

And, actually, itunes is a pretty successful example of that. but Steam. They actually seem to offer a lot of features- friends list, achievements, etc. I actually like that Steam takes care of updating your drivers automagically- the games just run.

and they make it so darn easy to buy games. You have to exert self-control.
Also, having all the demos available in one place for games. You used to have to go hunting all over the web.

in the old days...
of the internet...

Anyway, Steam is your "Game Job" You belong to workgroups, You can arrange meetings in different games, your own avatars remain. A meta-level game...
It shows you all your friends' status in real-time.

It's an insanely well-organized Job, i myself have worked at plenty of jobs that could have benefited from this kind organization, or any organization at all.

But it seems something like a Job. i don't know. maybe it's a 'Leisure Organizer'.

This is one of those things

2010-04-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

That makes Valve such a top developer as they are.
These two stories:

119!!(

andthis

The fact that they're going this far to put new (completely free by the way, once you have the game) content into Team Fortress 2, a game that is so old as to have had 119 updates.

It seems like they consider it a responsibility to keep people happy. or something.

murder simulators

2009-09-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

I'd like to rename this column "Murder simulators"

if you're curious about what happend

2009-09-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

about the 'tester bug'? As far as I know, it's still in the game. There's much worse problems with the game.

Which reminds me, that's another way things can fuck up in the game industry. What the developer will do is not be able to fix small bugs because they just can't achieve stability. Which means it runs. without crashing. That's of course on a whole different level of severity and must be addressed.

But what happens is that- oops, that little stuff just isnt important. It's just polish anyway. Which is of course what separates good, from bad, from mediocre games.

Then, timewise then, you get the worst thing in the game industry right now. Consoles can patch. Oh shit, now they can update! Which you'd think would be agood thing but what it means is that as soon as you pick up a new game, as soon as you connect, you have to download the update for it.

This makes developers lazy. This makes developers lazy. They don't fix things because they know they can put out a patch for it. I know for a fact A lot of bugs got waived, pushed to the next version because of this. I'm not even kidding. A lot of people in the game industry i've talked to have said the same. Makes 'em lazy.

So the worst games, you'll have to download multiple patches, or the patch will be a really high number. bad sign.

DLC!

how's it going?

2009-09-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

So my contract finally expired at Sony. i guess i'm looking for work now. I can animate and model & texture in Maya. I can do character design.

http://thejeremycampbellexperience.com/index.html

Let me know if you find out anything.

definiton of a 'tester bug'

2009-07-26T17:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a bug i found awhile back. I can't tell you what game i'm working on (even though it has been released) or where i'm employed at, so i don't get into trouble NDA-wise. but i just can't let this one slide because i think it illustrates how it is that things go wrong in games.

When the user's character throws a grenade, the pin is still attached.

WTF? I mean damn, how does something like that get by? you may be asking yourself. i mean, anyone who's seen any movies knows you gotta pull the pin to arm a grenade. And this game is supposed to be 'realistic'.

A 'tester bug' is a bug that only testers would find. We find them by doing weird, counterintuitive shit that doesn't win us the game. It's also kind of a negative term, and often used as a rationale to close bugs. Ordinary people supposedly never do these things. To find that grenade bug for instance, you'd have to walk over and inspect a live grenade, instead of running in the opposite direction. But do you think it will never be noticed by anyone, ever?

Little things like this send a message: We don't care. Polish. Polish is what separates the good developers from the ones who are in it for the paycheck.

How does something like this happen? Probably, the modeler was given the assignment 'model a grenade'. He does it, checks in the asset. Goes to the pub. Programmer writes code that spawns a grenade when the user gives the command to throw one. He just makes a reference to the asset, he never even sees it. It's neither of their job, really, to make sure it's used correctly. But no one looked to see that the user's haracter was throwing a grenade with an attached pin. No one's looking at the big picture and that's the problem.

It's Test's job to find it. Okay, we found it. What happens now?

By the way, the bug was closed. (waived, actually, which means it's pushed back to the next patch) Will it ever be addressed? Who knows? That's another thing mediocre developers do- slack off on everything until something gets to a crisis point and then use that as an excuse to only work on the most egregious bugs. Again, i'm not mentioning any developer's names here, please don't sue me.

game development

2008-10-14T14:14:00.000-07:00

i'm gonna use this space to put down a few things i've learned from my time in games. From the test point of view, which is where i am now. I've been on the development side as well, so i have an idea of what goes on there. i have an idea of what's blame-worthy or not. because sometimes, you'll just have an honest bug. Look- all games have bugs, before they go out- that's the facts of life in software development. I'm saying that you can judge a developer- you can tell if the developer is any good or not by the quality of their bugs.

And whether they get fixed or not.
And in what order.
And does fixing them cause more bugs?
And do they stay fixed, or reappear later?

(oh my god i have stories for each of these) I'd probably violate my NDA if i told these, and probably get fired, so i'll have to generalize.

Notice that all of these factors have nothing to do with whether the game is fun or not.That's a whole nother can of worms, but that tells you a lot about the developer as well. Ask yourself questions like this:
Does the game make things that you would think would be fun into tedious chores?
or
Does the game make things you might not think of normally as fun into fun experiences?
Is it fun just to move around in the game?

more to come on this subject for sure...

QA

2008-08-28T13:10:00.001-07:00

I also wanted to tell you my idea for a tv series. It'd be an episodic ensemble-cast comedy sort of in the vein of 'the Office'. But it's about testers for a major software company. i think there's a lot of potential for humor(i see it as very grim, Dilbert-style humor) in that sort of setting. Also, I think now everybody knows about video games and enough people are in the tech industry that i think a lot of the jokes wouldn't go over people's heads.

Ensemble Cast- There's a lot of potential for weird, interesting characters. It's really pretty diverse bunch of characters, different races, different genders, different stages in life, all in it for different reasons.

Yeah, really original, i know. I'm inspired by my real life. But i think i could make it interesting, funny and watchable. I suppose what i should do now is write out a pilot. I'd like to shoot a video of a sample episode. Some vignettes, maybe, slices of life, really, they don't have to fit together into a plot yet. I think it'd be cool to use people from work as my actors, i guess i should have at least a script ready to approach them with. I know some people who would be totally down with it.

right now i'm putting ideas together to see how much material i have.What do you think? Good Idea? if you want to give me money to film my idea please email me at :jeremy.campbell@gmail.com

Marketing department:
Everyone's young, beautiful, chuggin' red bulls all the time and pulling mad crazy overtime, then going out to the club 'cuz why bother to go to sleep

changes

2008-08-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

So now i've got a job working at Sony. FPQA Test.First Party Qa Test. Testing games for the PS3. There's not much more i can say. NDA you know. But anyway, it's limited. Short term contract. Big company, well established ways of doing things. Reminds me a lot of when i worked at SEGA, way back in the days of the Saturn. Yeah.

You don't hear much of me lately cause i'm dealing with setting up my life around my new job and the baby. The game i'm on is going into crunch time so it's overtime for everyone.
Another thing i remember from way back when i worked at SEGA. i was a younger guy back then and living by myself, i could take as much overtime as they offered. But now i have to have someone set up to take care of the baby. Takes up more of my time.

Which is why my second demo reel is moving so slowly. I'm going to make a second one, put it up on YouTube again. It's going to be modeling and texturing. But theres also going to be some animation. I'm excited about it. I'm excited about the music.

here's my demo reel

2008-05-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

Up on YouTube.

It's just my animation work. I'm trying to get a job at Pixar. I know, everyone wants that.

my website

2008-04-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

Upon which you may see my art-work:

thejeremycampbellexperience.com

a modest proposal

2008-04-16T04:48:00.000-07:00

Something really bothers me about the animation industry right now. Everybody seems to send their stuff to Korea. Why? Even good animators like Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken. There's more new animation being made now than for a long time and there's a distribution channel for it (cable) but none of it is actually being animated here. It's apparently 'just how it's done now'. This is distressing for a couple of reasons.

One- Outsourcing Creative work. This isn't just labor. This isn't just something anyone can do. This is creative work. Even inbetweens are creative work. Which brings me to the second point:
Work for new artists. Used to be, young artists would get to build up their skills on the crap work like inbetweens. Then they'd have a foundation for drawing animation, and know what's required to work in a studio. Now, no one can get those skills. School teaches you basic principles (if you're lucky), but you need to work on a real series to apply those principles. So, there's never going to be a native animation industry here. It's all overseas.

How come this is the way it's done? Money? Probably.

Also, I should probably say that I have nothing against Korea or their animation industry. They're selling a product that people want to buy- more power to them. What i don't like is the people who made the decision that outsourcing jobs was a good idea.

The real point of this diatribe? Someone needs to found a studio that will do that, if that's how the industry works now, no one does animation in-house, then someone needs to make an inbetweens studio in America. There are a ton of people who want to get into animation- i went to school with a bunch of them. Probably i have enough connections to staff a studio like that. i don't really know. I don't really know the size of the staff or the amount of money involved. We'd of course need it to be very cheap, to compete with Korea. Office space is pretty cheap in some places here, and no Aeron chairs for anyone. Is that cheap enough?

This studio would have these benefits:
Rapid turnaround.-It just has to be faster to FedEx stuff to Burbank than to send it overseas.Has to.
No Language barrier.-This shit should be obvious.
No culture differences-This is a little more subtle. Animation depends on physical acting. A lot of physical acting is gestures and poses, a lot of which are culture specific. An American company would know what you mean.
Possibly starting a new industry in the Bay Area.

what do you think?
-jeremy

video game ads

2008-02-29T08:38:00.000-08:00

It's awesome how it realizes the concepts of the game- visually.
I love that little sigh when the drug hits the swimming demon girl.
I love the music.
I love the mario costume.

video game ads

2008-02-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

Tells a whole story in 1:11. Leaves a cliffhanger at the end.. it's up to you!

I can't tell you how beautiful and cool i think this is.

anyway, 2fort totally owns

2007-10-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

if you read the link, here's my opinion.
There have been 3 versions of 2Fort, right? something like that. i remember Team Fortress and TFC. The 2Fort in TF2 seems smaller. Not merely overall smaller in feel, but really smaller relative to the players. This affects everything. It affects:
The areas that a sentry gun can cover.
The distance an engy has to run to restock and supply that sentrygun.
The ability of a spy to avoid bumping into people while cloaked.
The usefulness of snipers.(the central area used to be a wide open space, sniper heaven, no-man's land.)
Soldiers, same deal- they need line of sight just like snipers

So, Tf2's 2fort is smaller, and these changes all favor the defense. SO people complain that it's a map that ends in stalemate. and that's valid. But i think the map is fine. First of all, i like that it's strongly defense-oriented. i like trying to break a strong defense. Sometimes i like trying to set up a strong defense. People have always surprised me with new tactics they come up with to break a well-entrenched defense.

Second, i think it's in the plan of the game, that it favors the offense. The additions to the game all seem to be offensive i.e., the medic's ubercharge(the medic's special ability- he can make a teammate invulnerable for 10 seconds), the critical hit system(sometimes your shots do more damage if you have been hitting a lot lately-'you're on a roll'(fucxin' great idea in my opinion), the spawn timing(how long it takes for you to respawn after being killed varies according to i think your overall team's score or how well they're doing- again, 'your team is on a roll'.

So anyway, wha i think is that, yes, 2fort has gotten smaller and a lot easier to defend, the new elements in TF2 make up for it. Or at least compensate for it.

I'm gonna go with Valve on this one. It's fine the way it is. It seems like most of the changes made appear to have been made for a reason.

2Fort owns

2007-10-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

2Fort owns.

this is a link to a forum discussing a particular map, in a particular game.
more specifically, a new version of this map, one that shipped with a new game that was a sequel to a game which was actually a mod of a very popular game of its day (around 1996-7, in my dim memory)

i was reading these forum posts and i suddenly realized this alien, arcane language that was being used, on the face of it it's totally absurd.
and yet, i understood every word that people said. bizarre.

TF2 more

2007-10-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

i can't stand it anymore. i must play right now. My name is Podgorny. If you see me, shoot me. Unless you're a medic, in which case heal me.

TF2

2007-10-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

It's a game where character design & art direction has finally taken its role of importance in games. The nine classes are so distinct from each other. Not a single element was left the same. From hats to boots to faces to weapons to even postures and styles of running, the classes are designed to be recognizable at a distance. The simplified art direction helps this immeasurably. And the animation and textures are so good that it looks stylish instead of simple or cheesy.

it's so good.

In the developer commentaries they mention J.C. Leyendecker as an inspiration for the style of shaders. This is awesome. This is where i've been waiting for games to go. Because if you think about it, advertising and poster illustration has similar goals- to be read instantly, to convey information stylishly.

another developer would use an out-of-the-box cel-style shader for the characters, but Valve didn't. Notice there are no thick black lines around the models, like all cel-shaders have. They wrote their own shaders, ones that instead force a rim light on edges (the opposite of the ink outline in fact) to help visibility. And the transition from light to shadow has a little highlight to pick it out clearer.

All these go to make the character's silhouettes individual and distinctive. Silhouette is a basic feature of character design, especially in animation. It's one i've always tried to get into my character designs. you can see them at my 'please hire me' website:
thejeremycampbellexperience.com
you can also find my email there if you want to send mee feedback. please do, if it moves you.

i wish i could work at Valve. They seem to 'get it'. i want you to know that someone understands and appreciates your hard work. please hire me.

Team Fortress

2007-10-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

it's good.

super mario 64 more more

2007-09-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

other games that were like that:
The afore mentioned Tony Hawk and Mario.

SSX. All of the SSXes. if you've played it you know what i mean. i keep saying that. i feel like those should be a tagline or something. It also kind of sucks, as an attittude, because i believe you should try to be accessible. as much as possible. try to make situations understandable in layman's terms as the old saying goes. i don't know what to say, if you've never played SSX please play it.

super mario 64 more

2007-09-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

best game ever made? Definitely in the running.

Though you can't really rate games like that. Ther'es different genres. And in games, genres are more important because...
different genres have differnt control schemes, whole different ways of interacting with the world.

anyways, Super Mario 64- Best Game Ever Made?

i could believe that-for these reasons-

1. It's overall coherence. Everything about the game works, and works together. The art direction supports the cartoony physics, makes it Believable.

2. The Game teaches you how to use it. you are taught your character's moves by gradually increasing challenges involving those moves, training you to use itself. Then making you use the moves again later on, possibly in an area you'd been in before.

3. (here's something i've noticed about all the best games, (the ones that have reached a certain level of complexity perhaps)) You Can Recognize a Person by the way they Play. Simply getting around in the game environment, moveing from place to place, each player expressed a different style. if you've ever played it you'll know what i mean.
maybe an example. This is about another game. kevin said this about Tony Hawk, another game which is complex enough to be good. i hope i remembered it right.
"I like to trick off the railslide and then ollie, trick, ollie, from place to place, but i noticed that you like to grind to get around, you grind-jump-trick-to a grind again. It's different styles."
i hope i remembered that right. Anyway, the point is that- there's such an abundance of choices of stunts, really all fun stuff, that everyone played it differently.

super mario 64

2007-09-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

i think one of the things (the many things) that Super Mario 64 did that no one else has really done,
was to make the camera into a character.
To embody it.
and also to put it under the player's control. They needed some sort of metaphor, i suppose. It seems interesting that no-ones really followed up on that concept. i guess more experienced gamers take camera control for granted. you don't really need a metaphor anymore.
Mario 64 is maybe something else, something more basic.
An introduction to games, and the conventions of games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzjeBckxOAM

and another thing...

2007-09-09T19:53:00.000-07:00

Maya. The official online help is crap. I found a heading with exactly my problem on Alias' site.

this is it.

I even signed up as a member to get that info. a bronze member. However, oops, i need to be a platinum member to get that info.

This is not getting my work done.

i hate maya

2007-09-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

why can't it just render? honestly, why can't it just render an .avi? Or anything really, .mov, flash file,anything, why the fuck can't it just output any goddamn kind of moving picture file?!?
it's so bad that i've gotten used to getting individual goddamn .jpgs and putting them together in After Effects. Which is stupid. Now the goddamn thing won't even render that. It would before, why not now?

I do not want to use the command line.
I do not find it easier. here's why.
You have to know what the options are before you can set them in a command line. How do you know what the options are? Apparently you have to go through the help files. fuck that.
I want a fucking GUI where i can see what my options are before committing to a render.
It's just a fucking render. everyone has to do it. the most basic rendering abilities should be in the goddamn program.
please.

Okami vs. God Hand

2007-08-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe the same studio made these two games, they're so different.

i'm a bastard

2006-11-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

turns out that thing on the bottom of the rig was small because it wasn't supposed to be selected. you aren't supposed to animate the character by moveing the world selecter, you're supposed to use the local and shift-select the feet. and hands if the ik switch is set. which it wasnt until about a week ago. anyways. i was wrong about that. but the hands controls should be very large, very easy to select.

i'm writing this down in hopes of remembering it.

i got another one for ya

2006-10-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

make the root in the middle of the body or make it wave up and down in more than one plane. because... you often want to adjust charcter's realtioponship to the floor-most often, i'd say. And you can't select the root if it's sticking throught the floor.

notes about rigging

2006-10-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

make the wrist joints really big. You'll be selecting them a lot. Also the foot controllers. Make them big and hopefully multiplane. (i.e. wiggly)

The root controller also has to be very big and easily recognizable. Don't make it small.

Also, and i don't know if this is possible, can someone make a control or something that selects everything? Every controller anyway, so we can key them all at once. Without having to individually select everything?

i'll look into this.

more about icons and how they suck

2006-10-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

say youre an orc warrior. you might have a hotbar that looks like this. if you'll look to the right side of the hotbar, you'll see what i call the 'shouty skills'.

what do any of these do?

Yarr! Wyeah!! Waaa!!! Wrooo!!1!
WROAR!1!!1

-a little suggestion about what you might do as an alternative (i don't like to criticize without suggesting alternatives (it's what makes criticism constructive( and allows me to mock more mercilessly(hehehe)))-
Think about the effects of the spells, not the cause. try to depict those in an icon.

i dont mean that the art is bad

2006-10-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

-looking. I think some of the art for the icons looks good, in terms of what its representing. I think it's used badly, and in a way that can confuse players and affect gameplay negaatively.

it's not just the repetition

2006-10-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Though that is the most easily ridiculable. It's that they use the same piece of art for things that are very different conceptually. Take this little glimmer thing for instance.

It's used for an attack spell for Mages, (Arcane Explosion i think) but if youre a hunter, it's a switch that shows which of your aspects is currently 'on' Also, for Warlock's pets subtoolbar, it shows which pet ability is currently active.

Those are two different uses of that piece of art, two completely different concepts. You should never use the same art for things so different.

While i'm at it, i don't like the use of a piece of art as a switch to show that an ability is on. not only does it make the icon different, but it covers up what is there. You can't tell what's on, you can only tell what's not on. Do you see?

A better way already exists in the game. In the hunter's pet toolbar, there's a little animated marquee border that appears when an ability is on. This is a good solution, it does its job, tells you the ability is active without occluding the ability.

Now how come the hunter's pet toolbar uses this method, while the Warlock's pet toolbar uses the occlusion method? The only thing i can think of is that they were done by two different people.

Consistency. consistency is important for an interface.

a greatly belated example

2006-10-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

Say that you are a troll (with racial ability ...that speed thing) warlock (able to summon imps)on the quest for Zalazane's Head. Your hotbar would look something like this...

i forgot i was doing tiny blurbs on world of warcraft

2006-08-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

The absolute worst thing about world of warcraft is the icons. God, those icons are bad. Think about it. How often have you gotten powers mixed up? I don't know, let me give an example.

NUUURRRBS!!!

2006-08-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

That's what i think whenever anyone mentions Nurbs. And people mention it a lot in my line of woprk.

Revenge of the Nerds.

Which it is, really. Whoever writes the history books. Or the format of the history books.

more about world of warcraft

2006-05-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

there is no sense of yourself in an environment. Light does not play on you. (or even simply switch from a lighted to a dark model) Your footsteps make no sound. You kick up no dust, leave no prints.

i like the 'few suggestions format"

2006-05-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

these few suggestions apply to World of Warcraft.

+the fact that, if you have two weapons, and switch them, your second weapon, previously invisible, pops into being on your back. i think that's inexcusable in a modern game.

+

ill bet you thought i was dead

2006-05-29T12:03:00.000-07:00

well im playing World of Warcraft, which is pretty much the same thing. it is flawed. so flawed. and yeat someparts of it are very good. i'll have a full report on it later.

a few suggestions

2005-12-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

for god's sake make the interface auto-download patches and updates. Don't make the user do it. You connect to the server anyways to access your stats( which are another excellent idea byt the way), just give people the latest patch.just like MMORRPIGSES do it. You login to the server, it downloads the patch. So everyone's on the same version.
more stuff in the kits. Not just upgraded guns, but upgraded everything-better wrenches for the engineers(repair twice as fast), different types of grenades, grappling hooks that shoot higher, medpacks that heal faster. And all individually selectable. More customizable kits.
it's like you're improving you're character- as you go up in rank, you get better at things.
more things for engineers to do- i was thinking it might be cool if they could build a low wall for defense, maybe with a gun attached to it, given enough time. But they could build it anywhere. Increase their usefullness in a defensive way. Maybe they could build bridges too. Kind of like the snipers crossbow, you point the cursor at the endpoint to see if it's within your(brideg-building range). multiple engineers could build it faster.

guess thats it for now.

i'm not giving up games

2005-12-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

silly

i've benn playing a lot of Battlefield2 llately. a lot. I'ts a great game, a great online game, but flawed. The expansion pack came at just the right moment for me, as i was starting to tire of the maps and got used to the weapons. Bam! all new content. So i'm hooked.

The flaws lie mostly in the interface. The actual gameplay is close to perfect. What i mean by that is that all that needs to be done is to add content and perform balanceing tweaks. The engine does what it needs to.
The interface art itself is actually very good, dynamic with a realistic feel. But the layout of things and the way interface buttons respond so sluggishly. ugh. The First Rule of Interface Design (is you do not talk bout interface design) is that it has to be responsive. It has to respond instantly. So you know what you pressed.

The online element is integrated beautifully into the game. You hardly notice it. That's the good part. The persistent character thing works really well for a FPS. And the idea of giving the levels the names of ranks in the army was a stroke of genius. of course! right?

The music is exceptional. Exceptional.have you noticed that all the songs have the same main theme, just interpreted with different styles of music ('middle eastern' sounding, or 'chinese' sounding for example) but the main theme is the same. But what really blew me away was when i remembered that Battlefield 1942 (the game that this game is the '2' to(Toto too? yes, Toto too!(sorry))) had the same theme as well, just with a war movie-like martial-sounding tfeel to it. Wow. So it's the theme to the game series, like a tv show would have a theme. Cool.

i have a couple of suggestions.

farewell to games forever

2005-12-15T09:13:00.000-08:00

nya hah hah.
not really. anyway, well, i changed my major. i'm now an Animation (and media arts(whatevert that means)) major.How come? a couple of reasons. then i'll tell ya why i'm pretty much happy about it.

i suppose a growing disappointment with games is part of the answer but really it's that i wasn't drawing enough. It seemed like most of my time in my computer stuff classes was spent wrestling somehow with the hardware or software in some way. a low proportion of time was spent on actually working on the assignment.And when you did finally get to work on it, it was rushed. You know what i mean- version mismatches (You're wroking on the latest version of say, Maya at home, and the school has an older version and guess what? the files are not backwards compatible), data losses, general computer fuckups, and then in terms of software- geezus. Some programs have such a lousy interface, so hard to use, so fulll of 'you just have to know' type thingsd,.gr. /...rrr

Where's the interface on a pencil?

i think that's it really. It was taking hours to do stuff that i could have drawn
SFX: FINGERS SNAP
just like that
With any of the classes that had projects that were to be drawn, i just sat down and did them and that was that.
it doesn't seem right to say 'it was the easier choice', but it kinda was.

i think i'm happy with my decision. the animation teachers seem cooler. They seem like happier people, fun people, they'd be fun at a party. Whereas the games teachers... Some of them would be good, but not all of them. you know.

it's finals again

2005-09-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

there's always one weekend just before the term is over, where you have to just basically get everything done, like a drop dead date? What i do is i devote a weeknd to it, just being efficient and getiing everythinng done? at least tolerably? You can go through and refine later. anyway, i'm doing that.

Stolen from Blues News:

2005-06-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

We know that some players currently engage in repetitive farming activities for the primary purpose of unlocking skills and items for PvP. Rather than preserving the effectiveness of farming for this purpose, it is our intention to address the larger issue of the need for farming by assessing how players acquire and unlock items, runes, and skills, and then by taking steps to ensure that players can acquire and unlock these things through normal gameplay. We believe that the most effective way to play the game should also be the most fun way to play the game. You can expect to see the first meaningful changes towards this goal next week.

This is definitely one to watch!!!LOL!!1!

I'll be sure and check back when they've removed the boring and repetiitve parts and put the fun in.

penny arcade: a loser is you

2005-06-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

Can't tell the difference between hype and ideas. Plus that one guy's a christian and a neat freak, which sorta weirds me out.

Joke weak. And childish, too: It really shoulda been Will Wright's SPERM, with a big Citizen Kane poster of Will with the word SPERM. And the people in the audience could be clamoring for Will Wright's Sperm. That'd be great. Plus it like rhymes. But what do they give us?

well, it is funny to hear 'pee in my hair'. once.

i quit playing city of heroes

2005-06-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

why? have a look below. 'What's bad' is bigger than 'what's good'. That's all there is to it.

That and i just can't stomach the tedious bullshit anymore after hearing about Will Wright's upcoming game Spore. i'll maybe do an in depth thing on it later, but for now, watch the video of the presentation he gave at GDC. It's a nice antidote to E3 and all the hype about the new consoles.

Despite what Penny-Arcade says, hype is not a the guy that made the game telling you about his game and demonstrating it to you before your eyes. Hype is going to a closed-door showing of prerendered videos that may or may not be from games from the new console coming out at the end of this year maybe.

Everything has a number on the end of it now. it's so fucking tedious. i'm becoming disillusioned, which really sucks because that's what i'm ostensibly studying for- to enter this diseased, retarded, navel-gazing, tail-eating industry. I thought i had a pretty good idea of what the industry was about- i did work for a couple game companies before deciding to go back to school. I worked in the trenches too- test. If you don't really like games and their potential, test will weed you out forthwith. It's like seeing the courtesan without her makeup, it really is.

Will Wright's Spore is the only thing i've heard lately that makes me prick up my ears and listen. So im soaking up information on this one.

What's bad about City of Heroes

2005-06-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

What you see is not what you get-a simple example will suffice. Say you want to punch someone. Activate the basic punch ability. But you're not in melee range. Okay, no problem, you close in. But here a funny thing happens. Once you get into range, it'll activate the punch power and you'll take a swing. But keep running past the guy you want to hit. You can be nowhere near the guy you're swinging at, and you'll do your punch animation, and do damage. It's just a dice roll, your accuracy against his agility or whatever. Aim has nothing to do with it. The actual animations that you see your character perform have nothing to do with it. There's no skill involved. And every power works like this.

getting around is tedious- you really need to have a travel power, like flight or super speed, even if it doesn't fit your character. Also, those are the only two travel powers there are. Oh, i guess there's super leap as well. Teleport is available, but it's not a travel power. It doesn't work like you think it would. You can bring other team members to your position, which is undeniably useful, but you can't travel with it. You have to go where everyone wants to be manually (pedally) and then teleport everyone to your position.

Player vs Player is not very fun. Some classes are support classes. Some classes have 'hold' or 'entangle' type powers. It's not fun to have these sorts of things cast on you. Also, PvP takes place in an Arena that is separate from the main game. You don't earn anything in the Arena that affects your character, like experience. There's just an entirely new point system-Arena points. Putting something like this in the game is akin to fixing the failure of an intelligence agency (actually, two) to warn or prevent an impending terrorist attack by creating an entirely new intelligence agency, and all bueracracies appurtaining thereunto. The Arena is nothing but bragging rights and as such is useless. Everything should tie back into the main game.

Not much variety in powers-they're clearly spells, just like in an RPG. Fire, Ice, Earth. There really are no 'strange' powers like stretching or swinging on webs, or clinging to walls (wouldn't that be easy to program?), or sensing danger, or shrinking to the size of an atom or shapeshifting or even having a bow with high-tech goddamn arrows. Or a gun that shoots paste.

Many powers you would think would be interesting are not. You would think with super strength you could pick up cars and hurl them at enemies, or uproot lampposts and swing them like a giant Louisville Slugger or wrap them around groups of thugs or interact with the environment in some way. Nope. Buffs to defense, buffs to offense. A failure of imagination, or more likely execution. I know sometimes stuff has to be cut to make milestones, but...

The hero creation system is quite fun, but the interface is so poor, it looks like programmer art. it's clearly just dressed-up drop-down boxes. Is this really the best way? The background of the hero creation screen is black. What if you want to make a hero dressed in black? Well, you can't see him, that's what. You have only about 10 faces to choose from for your hero, and they're just bitmaps. You can't change the shape of your nose or the type of mouth for example. If you want glowing eyes, there's only one face bitmap that has glowing eyes. just. one. A lot of the accessories you can choose will clip through the body, i guess because you can change the body shape, but come on, that makes those accessories unusable.

Actually the interface of the whole game is awful. The text entry boxes, there's a little triangle below the level of the text that shows you where you are. You can never tell where you are in the text, the triangle is tiny and flashes on and off somewhat intermittently. Please, just give us a vertical line between letters. And please give us the ability to highlight and copy and paste. This may seem like a small thing, but you'll be typing a lot in this game. And if they can't even handle text entry properly...

One more interface issue- the icons that represent the powers in your HUD. They're all the same. Okay, there are 3 or 4 different types, and they're pallete-swapped to represent fire, ice, radiation, etc. Come on. If it's pallete-swapped, that means it's a different file, and if it's a different file, it can have different artwork. This was so disappointing to me, that the power icons were so similar, even for wildly different powers- holds or attacks, they all look the same.

Dancing. A major part of the game is social interaction, by design. Another major part of the game is waiting around for party members to arrive. Dancing is a cool thing to do while waiting and chatting, breaks up the tedium. So why is dancing so poorly implemented? It could be truly cool, but it totally falls down. Here's how it works- there's a selection calle Boombox, under which are a number of really shitty songs, loops really. When you choose one, your character whips out a boombox from another dimension, plops it down and starts dancing. Sort of. Really just moving a bit. No matter which song loops you choose, you do the same dance at the same speed. You can do other dances, but they're under a completely different menu and you cant choose the dance you want to do. You select 'dance' and you do one of about five dances at random. At random. And the dances... they're poor. They're just white-bread arm-flailing, you don't even move your feet, much less your hips. How much cooler would the game be if you could choose your dance, from actual dances. You know, real ones. Like the mashed potato, the swim, the frug, the fly, the Batusi ferchrissakes. The robot! The cabbage patch! Not whole dances, but moves that could be chained together. You could have a real dance party. And really, the music should be not complete songs, but tracks, so people could get together and make music collaboratively. That would be doing it right.

The fatal flaw of City of Heroes, though, is this- you can't be the hero you want to be. Copyrights. i completely understand why, but it's also a natural desire for people to want to play heroes they know and like. The powers of familiar heroes are in the game. Very similar costumes to familiar heroes are in the game. But there are developers roaming around the City who can change your costume and your name on the spot if you're too close to a licensed property. I totally understand why they do this- they have to, so they don't get sued. Again. They give you a free costume change when they do it and you can repec all your powers for free as well, they're not at all assholes about it.

Even so...
it's flawed at its core. The idea is self-defeating.

well, is that it? all i can remember... for now!

what's good abut City of Heroes

2005-06-07T09:11:00.000-07:00

Conceptually, it's awesome- couldn't be better. You are... whoever you are in your everyday life, but at night you go to Paragon City, don your alter ego, and fight crime. It integrates the player's real life as part of the game, fitting perfectly with the comic book hero concept.

They did a good job in generalizing the crazy variety of possible heroes into high-level groupings they call Archetypes. The archetypes themselves are well thought-out in their interactions. It encourages grouping because a lot of the classes (Archetypes, but i grow tired of typing that) are support- or cooperation-based. There's really only one or two classes that can go off completely on their own. I call them the 'selfish classes'. Most classes however, have some sort of weakness that is compensated for by the strength of another class.

Teaming is the best part of this game. When everyone works together, all the support powers work together, you're an unstoppable team. It's awesome to behold.

They've got that Marvel love of cool words. It's shot throughout the whole game, but one example is that you can earn titles such the Unyeilding [your hero name], the Rugged [*], or the Tenacious X. Very cool. It's like you have a comic of your own like the Amazing Spider-Man or the Incredible Hulk.

The effects are very good. The types of powers are all visually distinct, flashy and cool, and very comic-booky. Energy blasts have those mod little op-art circles in them, they look great, pure Kirby Energy. The sound effects are also very good, all the more so when your remember that there's no sound in comics- you imagine all the sounds in your own head. They sound perfectly right for all that. I personally would have gone with sound effect words that pop up, Batman TV series stylee: ZOP! BORT! POOOO!

But some people might think that's silly. As if comics aren't silly.

Overall, i think they did a good job of integrating different types and styles of heroes and making them fit within their framework. You can play grim-n-gritty claw-slashin' heroes or cape-wearin paragons of justice if you so choose.

Video Games Can be Art

2005-05-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

exhibit A:

The new console Sims game, Sims in the City.
first of all, i should warn you, i'm going to be giving away the "ending" to the game because i want to discuss how it does what it does. If you want to discover the end for yourself (and i highly recommend it, it's one of the best game endings ever.) then don't read any furthur.
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what did i say? Right, the ending.
anyway, to meake a long story shorter, the console version of the Sims neatly folds the older PC version within it. Here's what i mean: remember the PC Sims game? It was basically a toy, not a game. You played with it. There wasn't any hrad-wired goal built into the game. Maybe Will Wright didn't like that or maybe he caught some flak for it. Either way, this new version has very clear goals. It's more focused. It's a better game for it. But the thing is, in the new Sims game, once you complete the goals, you basically have a house and people you can customize and no goals. Do you see? You get the first game as a reward for beating the new game.

genius game design, and i don't think people give Will Wright enough credit.

Oh yeah, so about the ending. You're given a house to decorate as you like, no more goals, and infinite money. but here's the thing, the big secret: You get as much money as you can crank out. Literally. The big reward is a money making machine. But you have to crank it yourself.

So are games art?
my definition of art is 'tells us something about our lives in the real world.'

game balancing and testing made easy

2005-04-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

1.Notice at what point the game begins to become fun.
2.Make that the start of the game

im learning about addictiveness

2005-04-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

i mean in games. how to put that quality in games. Been sampling mmorpgs lately. Sove of them hame that quality. I'm trying to figure it out.

You know what else has that quality? The Sims. Especially the new one for PS2. I'll tell you why. later.

fun to relax.

2005-04-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

also have a programming class- through a weird accident, it's an
advanced programming class- way beyond my level. But i'm gonna give
it a try. It's cool, but a little daunting. I'm studying right now.
P.S. okay not really.

but at least you can turn him off.

2005-02-17T16:20:00.000-08:00

i'm sick. i think i've got bird flu or something. i don't feel like playing games. That's how you know you're really sick. Nothing seems fun. Actually, that's one of the main symptoms of depression.

anyway, short answer(we just had midterms): here's what i'm playing:

Rumble Roses- excellent nich-market game. One question remains- if you're going for that market, why leave out the most important feature

to that market? I'm talking about free camera and replay.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater- God, what a title. It's a totally other language. The game i can sum up in one word-meticulous. If you like meticulous games, this is your game.

Burnout 3:Takedown- Very fun game. Annoying DJ. Probably tring to be like SSX. And failing. The thing is, in SSX, the DJ gave you information. He told you who the next boss was going to be, he told you about the track you were going to race on, he told you when you were getting famous. Those things enhance the game. In Burnout, the DJ doesn't say anything useful, he's a shitty actor, and he repeats the same four messages ad infinitum.

but at least you can turn him off.

The new Leisure Suit Larry so almost didn't suck

2005-01-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

it could have been great.
more about how later.

SSX3: so close...

2004-10-18T23:33:00.000-07:00

crimson sea 2 (the good one)

2004-10-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

i just noticed that when you're walking on a metal surface, your boots strike sparks.
Damn, isn't that cool?

zingCRIMSON SEA 2zing

2004-10-13T09:42:00.001-07:00

zingCRIMSON SEA 2zing

2004-10-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

is the good one. Crimson Tears is the bad one. Two very similar games. With very simliar names. Yet one is fun to play and makes you want to say 'just one more', and the other is a chore and a bore. Why? Let's find out...
(it's a jazzy review today. hey, here's another thing i like about Katamari Damacy: the soundtrack! Awesome tunes, eclectic tunes)

Here's a difference i noticed: In the good one, (Crimson SEA 2) you're cool to begin with. You don't get the sense that they designed a fully tricked-out character and then removed abilities from him. Unlike certain games. You have a lot of abilities at the start, and the promise of more. You have choices in how you can fight, not just punch-punch-kick combo. Unlike certain games. Even at the beginning you have these choices. Which is good because in both games, you get the impression you're going to be doing a lot of fighting.

In the bad one, (Crimson Tears) it seems like a chore. 'i have to accumulate that many experience points until the next level-up? Sigh.'

In the good one, (Crimson SEA 2) it seems like fun. 'i wonder what that'll be like when it reaches level 3?'

How come? I think it's because of the incremental nature of the advancement system. Here's th difference:
In the bad one, (Crimson Tears) you accumulate enough experience points, you can 'buy' a skill, which is a new move you can use. Then you have to learn how to use it.
In the good one, (Crimson SEA 2) enemies occasionally drop an object, which is an experience 'point' that you can assign to either of your two guns(which is also very cool, by the way- it's like i said above- you don't feel like you're going into battle with the alien Menace armed only with a pistol) or your sword attacks. Or your Psionic attacks. It's actually more complicated than that, but in a good way- you can upgrade the individual attributes of your guns. Power, Range, and Rapid. After awhile of assigning one point here, one point there, you really feel like you've tinkered with your guns and improved them in your own unique way.

Menus. Both tackle the problem of 3-D menus in different ways.

I need to explain something. A menu is not just the 2d screen that comes up at the beginning of the game. It's anywhere you control game functions. This can be within the game. It's expressed in these two games very similarly: there is a 'home base' type area where you can run around, but there are no enemies. Instead, game functions are available. SAve/Load, choice of next mission, item shops, and the 'teleporter' that takes you to the actual missions. See what i mean? it's part of the menu.

Anyway, one is Good: utilitarian, gets the job done. Essential things are all in one room. And one is awful. In the bad one, (Crimson Tears) you have to run all over to do ordinary game functions. A simple example should suffice:

To get to the Weapons & Items Shop:

In the bad one, (Crimson Tears) you go out of the little garage you're in, (fade out, fade in-new screen) run to the right down the street a short ways and through a doorway, (fade out, fade in-new screen) To an alley where 3 people are standing. They are the Shops. You have to talk to each of them individually because they are, respectively, item shop, gun shop, and knife shop. There's no indication which is which, they're just people standing there. All to operate what's essentially a menu.

In the good one, (Crimson SEA 2) You start on the bridge of a starship. Pretty big room. In this room are: a robot that allows you to save your game, another robot who serves as the Shop, and the Teleporter that takes you to the missions. All in one room.

Do you see?

Crimson Tears and Crimson Sea 2

2004-10-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

two very similar titles released at about the same time. It's just like the 'bug movie' confluence we had a couple years back. Remember that? When 'Antz" and 'A Bug's Life' came out at the same time? Anyway, these games are about that simliar.

Story: you're a genetically enhanced futuristic cyber-assassin who fights their way through hordes of enemies stylishly. (Both)

Even the style of gameplay (genre) is the same: very similar to Diablo or Phantasy Star Online vis. you fight a great many battles, collecting experience, which you spend to increase your character's stats.

Yet one game sucks and the other is fun. Why?

another reason i hate pc games

2004-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

"In the boxes below, type your 25-character product key"

i just want to play the game.

i also hate they way they make you put the cd in the drive to play, just like a console game. Except that there's no purpose to it. The game is on your hard drive. Basic disrespect for the consumer. Lack of desire or motivation to make things easy for your customers.

you know what bugs me about PC games?

2004-10-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

besides installing them?

it's the interface. There's no games that feel good to play. They're all pointing and clicking. And dragging. Or godfordbid, typing.

What i mean is that, in even the worst console games, you can actually control a character . Press jump and he jumps. To say nothing of the superlative games, where you can control a snowboarder, or Spider-Man, or a giant ball of ocean liners? There's not much like that in PC games.

DOOM excepted.

oh yeah i forgot

2004-10-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

there's a bad part though. to the game. Katamari Damacy.

it's too short. Now i don't usually think that games are too short. I actually like short games. If they're good. Which this game is. But, and here's the thing- the design of the game points out how short it is. You make stars in the game. You make the constellations. And the Moon. and the North Star. Celestial objects. So you kind of expect, like at least 12 missions. I mean, if you're making Zodiac signs like Virgo and Taurus, you kind of expect to see all of them. But you don't. Not at all. There's like four or five constellations.

if they'd only not point out an inadequacy of the game in this way, i might not have noticed it.

There's a lot of replay value in the levels. Secrets in the levels and clothes that you can wear to customize your character. So like i said, the game's shortness is not a bad thing, but...

katamari damashi (PS2)

2004-10-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

This game is amazing. Utterly mind-expanding. Anyone who's interested in what video games can be, in the potential of games, owes it to themselves to check it out. it's really good.

You know what's the mark of a really good game? One where you you find yourself playing it when you're not playing it. When you see the game world overlaid on the real world. You see falling tetris blocks in your dreams, You imagine what it would be like to deathmatch in any open space that you see, You imagine grinding and tricking off every railing that you see.

Some of you know what i'm talking about.

That's a good game. So believe me when i say that i've been seeing giant balls accreted of buildings, bridges, giant squid, and rainbows rolling down the street in the city. So, yeah, good game. and if that description interests you at all, let me also add that the game is ten times wierder that that.

Katamari Damacy

2004-10-01T13:25:00.000-07:00

it's really good.

victory and defeat

2004-09-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

game magazines are horrible

2004-09-10T18:55:00.000-07:00

right now i'm writing a review of Spiderman 2

2004-09-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

i'll have it in by friday.

well, what i mean by that is...

2004-09-08T20:06:00.000-07:00

it wouldn't work earlier today. and i thought that my stuff had gotten lost. But there it all is. great.

is it working yet?

2004-09-08T19:44:00.000-07:00

'Gaming Grows Up' indeed

2004-09-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

The five-page section starts with a topless image of the half-vampire, half-human title character from "BloodRayne," a leather-clad woman who fights with three-foot blades attached to her arms.

i feel stupider just reading that.

astro boy for PS2

2004-09-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

my god it's bad. it's so sad. Sonic Team really misstepped on this one. Did Mr. Naka even look at this game?

i can't believe i just watched text that described a scene. They didn't even attempt to show what was happening.

And this "battle"... with this possessed woman... I know it's supposed to be a reference to old-style Japanese console RPGs. i don't care. That doesn't make it fun to play. It's just awful.

I declare this game to be... Unfinished!

2004-08-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

that's my paper from the class Intro to the Game Industry. it's a bio of a game designer. Actually, the term my teacher used was 'game god'. which sounds dorky. Though they are like gods.

"How High can You Go?": the Games of Shigeru Miyamoto

2004-08-17T15:22:00.000-07:00

Shigeru Miyamoto is the designer of many of the world's most popular games. Games that started genres all their own. Games like Donkey Kong. Super Mario Bros. Mario 64. The Legend of Zelda.He rides his bike to work every day and plays acoustic guitar and banjo for fun. Who is this guy?
To begin at the beginning, he was born in 1952 in Sonebe, a rural village near Kyoto, Japan. Not having any video games, young Shigeru grew up running, playing and exploring in the fields and forests outside his house.

"And whenever we are making this kind of thing, what we always keep in mind is 'what was important for us when we were children'? What was fun then? That is the core of many of my games."

He did programming, art, and music on his first game for Nintendo, Donkey Kong. Not really that uncommon at the time, games being as small as they were. Donkey Kong is a game structured like a story- a goal, a protagonist, an antagonist, and obstacles to that goal. In 1980, Nintendo of America had released an arcade game called Radarscope, which was a flop. And so they had all these arcade consoles they didn't know what to do with. Young Miyamoto, with his freshly minted degree in industrial design, was assigned to make a game on the existing hardware. He consulted with Nintendo's engineers to figure out the hardware, but as mentioned before, he did everything himself. The results made video game history. Interesting that his first game was intended for the American market, with a villian modeled on an American movie(Kong), and an Italian carpenter (Jumpman, later renamed Mario (and retrained as a plumber)after the landlord at Nintendo's American headquarters).

"For me, game creation is like expression through music. When I am working as a director on a game, while I always try to hit upon new plots, I place great importance on the tempo of the game and the sound effects. I feel that those directors who have been able to incorporate rhythm and emotional stimuli in their games have been successful."

Super Mario Bros. was the first game franchise. Not a sequel, but an entirely different game from Donkey Kong, using the same player character- Mario. It was the first side-scrolling, platform-jumping game. It was much copied, so much that it became its own genre. It was also specifically made for the home system, the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES). It had long levels and many more of them, as well as the elements of exploration, discovery, and breaking of boundaries. It was meant to give much more play time than an arcade game, where time is money. I don't need to say that it was wildly successful.

"but of course, with the evolution of the technology, the graphics will get even better, clearer, and yet that's not the only cause we should aim for. Rather, we should put more emphasis on the ideas-- new ideas-- unprecedented, unique ideas. Ideas that aren't connected to the available technology. I would like to encourage everybody to think that way, otherwise we will not find a new way to further explorer and adventure in this unprecedented media called video games."

Miyamoto again defined where the industry was to go with Super Mario 64, the first Mario game in 3-D. Controlling a character in a 3-D world was entirely novel, and the techniques used to control Mario were easy to learn, yet had depth and complexity to them. I've noticed that no two people control Mario alike. Simply going from place to place in the world is fun and expressive. Every 3-D action game since takes at least some paradigms from Mario 64, but no game since has duplicated the sheer fun and complexity-in-simplicity of this pioneering title. It's still fun today.
How is he able to do it? How does he make games that are both original and popular, games that transcend time? I don't know, but I'll close with a final Miyamoto quote that may shed some light:

" I have never created a game that has been of a level that I could be satisfied with."

gaming journalism sinks to a new low

2004-08-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

sad.

if the guy had used the time he spent photoshopping his face onto one of the monsters to actually write an article, maybe we could have learned something about the game.

i gave up DOOM3 for sex

2004-08-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

it's what separates the men from the boys.

whew

2004-08-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

busy

game design class

2004-08-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

we had a great assignment yesterday in my intro to game design class. it was to design a game for Pamela Anderson. Based on the intellectual (stretching the meaning of that word a little bit)property of Pamela Anderson, as it were.

it was a good assignment because it's real-world experience. Sometimes you have to work on things you don't like. it was based on an actual event. My teacher had to submit proposals for actual Pamela Anderson games to his company when she (the actress in question) was shopping around for something to spend money on. She thought a game might be cool. She eventually ended up going with Stan Lee's production company to make an animation called Stripperella. i haven't seen it, as i don't have cable and can't watch Spike, the station for men. cheez. Anyway, it might be cool. i gotta think she made the right choice, especially based on the concepts my teacher said they submitted to her.

Pamela Anderson Racing? What a horrible idea.

i hope my instructor doesn't read this.

Anyway, the class split into two groups, and we hashed out game proposals given the constraints of one year to release and low budget. The other team had a really cool concept of a sort of Hollywood RPG, where you come to the big city as a nobody and try to make it as an actress. Winning an Oscar was the goal. It had a real cynical edge to it- you could get parts by sleeping with producers and you had to choose your clothes carefully to keep people interested in you and your fame meter up. They didn't really seem to have an idea of what the gameplay itself would consist of.

i'll tell you what our team did next time. i have to shut down this machine because the printer is going wonky. thing's got a mind of its own. fucking haunted printer.

doom3

2004-08-06T19:31:00.001-07:00

i am now downloading other special drivers to make doom3 run better. there's no denying it. They've got me.

doom3

2004-08-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

um, it's pretty good.
yeah, pretty, um, pretty good...whew

i've been playing it a lot and thnking about it more. Always a sign of a good game. And there's some clever things they do to get information to you, the player. And the more information you get, the deeper the story becomes. which is a wierd thing to say about an id game. I mean, id, right?

i especially like reading people's PDA's, reading through their email. especially knowing that they're the corpse in the room or the zombie you just killed. It's a wierd feeling.

but i especially wanted to talk to you about the graphics. Okay, i'm an artist, so that's my thing, so i'll devote a special post to the graphics.

Education in Death

GundeadliGne

Currently playing:

It's amazing how much time slips away from you.

keep on bloggin'

Portal 2: femalest game out there

Portal 2: it's about the family

or maybe not

its just kind of ironic that

that was for my new blog with pictures of my art

test one two

POINTS QUEST

a new job???

i hope i get this position

Toy Story- i think about this way too much

Squad Leader and Advanced Squad Leader

games,

So hey i uh

working from home

about working in games

marvel at the complexity of it all.

as an aside

when you see a whole series and are deciding which one to get...

im not sure i made that clear enough

Steam

This is one of those things

murder simulators

if you're curious about what happend

how's it going?

definiton of a 'tester bug'

game development

QA

changes

here's my demo reel

my website

a modest proposal

video game ads

video game ads

anyway, 2fort totally owns

2Fort owns

TF2 more

TF2

Team Fortress

super mario 64 more more

super mario 64 more

super mario 64

and another thing...

i hate maya

Okami vs. God Hand

i'm a bastard

i got another one for ya

notes about rigging

more about icons and how they suck

i dont mean that the art is bad

it's not just the repetition

a greatly belated example

i forgot i was doing tiny blurbs on world of warcraft

NUUURRRBS!!!

more about world of warcraft

i like the 'few suggestions format"

ill bet you thought i was dead

a few suggestions

i'm not giving up games

farewell to games forever

it's finals again

Stolen from Blues News:

penny arcade: a loser is you

i quit playing city of heroes

What's bad about City of Heroes

what's good abut City of Heroes

Video Games Can be Art

game balancing and testing made easy

im learning about addictiveness

fun to relax.

but at least you can turn him off.

The new Leisure Suit Larry so almost didn't suck

SSX3: so close...

crimson sea 2 (the good one)

*zing*CRIMSON SEA 2*zing*

*zing*CRIMSON SEA 2*zing*

zingCRIMSON SEA 2zing

zingCRIMSON SEA 2zing