Okami vs. God Hand

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

i'm a bastard

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

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

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

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

-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

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

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

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!!!

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

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"

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

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

• 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

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

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

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:

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

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

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.