super mario 64 more more

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

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

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...

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

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

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.