Last week was a relatively light week in terms of construction. As I near the end of the current phase of building I'm eager to begin the next training course as soon as possible so I can continue into creating the props for the room with as little downtime as possible. So most of my time was focussed on painting the walls.
Allow me to elaborate.
As previously mentioned, in order for my room to look like my room I would need to find textures that match the wall paper, carpter, and the wood beams. Half Life 2's textures are on the whole an excellent and professional looking lot, but do conform to the theme of HL2, which could charitably be described as "a renovator's dream!". So nothing especially matched. About the only thing that looked closed was the fireplace, and that was only because I found a "wood" texture. But if it were to be an accurate rendition of my room, improvements would have to be found.
A couple of online tutorials later and I was all set. Downloading a communuity made program called VTFEdit (there are some very nice smarter than me modders out there that believe in sharing the tools they've created, which makes my job so much easier) which could convert any image into a texture for HL2, I set about photographing the various walls of my room.
This wasn't quite the simple chore I had imagined, and in the end I had to do quite a bit of careful light placement to ensure I found a balance between shadow and glare, and even then I generally I could only salvage a small square out of the photo, tile it to make it repeatable, and then paste that in. Fortunately this actually works very well as all of the things I was photographing were "repeatable", ie. flat slabs of blue or white. Still, if I'm going to do this professionally it's going to require a good camera and some studio like conditions.
But that's a thought for the future, as to start with I'll be working exclusively in the engine and the textures included therein.
The change was a small one, but it results in a dramatic difference to my eyes, as it is actually starting to look like my room.
I did do a small amount of construction this week, as I decided I was not at the level to be able to create the skirting boards and wall design as a texture, and built them using brushes instead.
All that's left to do building wise now is texture the doors and cupboards, and make them both open, and then it'll be time to start placing props...
Showing posts with label Gaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaming. Show all posts
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
A Room Without A View: Week 1
One week in and the room is proceeding well. The main architecture of the room (walls, roof, cupboards etc.) are complete, and textured, though not with the correct colours yet. I have found the work immensely satisfying and may have found a new hobby/career option, and have learnt many things, most importantly to never put fireplaces in your levels.
Allow me to elaborate.
Monday: Only had an hour to spare between work and a social engagement, so I spent the time taking some reference photos of the room and balancing precariously on a chair with a tape measure trying to make my arms grow another fifteen cm so I could reach the roof.
Managed to get all the measurements I needed based on the age old method of "measure a bunch of short things and add them together", as it turns out the tape measure I thought was absolutely massive when I was ten is in fact, only 2m long. Now I feel old. But also tall.
Tuesday: Took a couple of final fiddly measurements such as "width of cupboard door" and "depth of the lower fireplace shelf at the centre compared the the diagonal line of the edge" (deep breath), and then using my rudimentary Adobe Illustrator skills contstructed an architectural plan of the room showing the scale and measurements of the walls, which served as a reference and also something to make architects fall on the floor and laugh their heads off.
Then started building the room in Hammer, the level editor for the source engine.
Firstly, the Hammer editor is AMAZINGLY intuitive and enabled stupid people (ie. me) to build quite complex objects with ease.
Secondly, Never try and build a room facing north starting from the west wall when you're currently facing south, or expect to get confused by compass directions every few minutes.
Completed the walls, roof and floor, then called it a night.
Wednesday: Started with the wardrobe as the single largest feature of the room, but also the boxiest. Made one of each of the wardrobe and cupboard doors, then copied them accross. Copy and paste is your friend.
The bedroom door posed a quandry, I could quite easily do a thin pretend door and leave it at that but given I eventually wanted the door to open I had to take into account the length of the frame on the OTHER side of the wall. Hammer helpfully has a 'carve' function which allows you place an object through another, and use that to cut a hole through it. So by placing the door frame into the wall and then carving, I was left with a perfectly door shaped hole. Win.
Thursday: Thursday was fireplace day.
I have what I always assumed to be a relatively plain and unassuming old fireplace in my room, which has long been sealed. As it turns out there are lots of little slats and supports all over the thing that I had previously taken for granted. To make it a bit more difficult, most of them have rounded edges. 3d technology has come along way since the days of, say, Quake, but the general rule still applies that curved edges and video games don't mix. The solution is to do lots of little straight edges, and enough of them that it effectively looks curved.
The upshot of which is that the fireplace took me longer than every other part of the room combined, but fortunately it did look the spitting image of my actual fireplace when done. A currently unsolved problem is the mirror just above the mantlepiece. Reflections are a bit of an issue in the source engine (particularly as the main character is never actually seen in Half-Life 2), but there are solutions. I just need to find them.
The main architecture complete, I threw in some placeholder textures ( the 'skin' that objects in the world wear), added a simple light, and loaded up the level in the actual game to see how it looked.
The first thing I noticed is that lighting makes your level look infinitely better.
The second thing I noticed is that the editor is actually more powerful than the game, and so all my carefully curved edges had been transformed into diagonal or straight lines. Still looked good but rather frustrating nonetheless.
But the room was done! Walls, fireplace, cupboards and doors, the framework was complete. I leaned back, breathed a sigh of relief, looked up and realised I had forgotten the roof.
Bugger.
Friday: Taking a break from the roof, I decided to solve another question I had been wondering. Half-Life 2 has a number of built in textures, but of course if I'm building MY room, I should probably make sure it's the same colour as MY room. So I needed a way to create my own textures.
This is slightly hindered by the fact that my drawing skill is almost exclusively limited to cartoon fish, which falls slightly short of the ability to create a bump mapped texture with virtual depth and inbuilt material properties.
To the internet I would go. A quick search later and I had downloaded a program a helpful modder had made that allowed images to be converted to source engine textures with relative ease. Using an image of a white plaster ceiling that I... "borrowed" from the internet until I had time to photograph my own roof, I ran the program, added a view properties to tell the game it was plaster and would react as such when shot or walked on (neither likely in this scenario but you never know) and restarted Hammer.
Sure enough my new "whiteceiling.vtf" file appeared, and I was able to replace the roof texture with this new one. Still looked nothing like my actual roof, but important milestones, people.
Saturday: Having successfully procastinated design work with learning work on Friday, I returned on Saturday to the roof. My roof has 4 cross breams running accross with whatever you call the roof equivelant of a skirting board running around all edges, which includes both the edge of the roof and the cross beams. Now this is the kind of thing you'd normally reserve for a texture but I wanted to go a bit all out on the room to know my limits, so I decided to build them using geometry instead.
The loyal tape measure was brought out once more and some quick measurements were taken of the beams and the skirting boards. From there it was a relatively simple affair of building the beams, building one set of skirting boards and then copying it 33 times to the other edges on the roof, doing a little trimming here and there to ensure that the edges blended appropriately. I also took this opportunity to trim the door frame as the top is two slanted diagonals rather than a single straight line.
On Sunday, after creating my world, I rested, and played video games instead.
Allow me to elaborate.
Monday: Only had an hour to spare between work and a social engagement, so I spent the time taking some reference photos of the room and balancing precariously on a chair with a tape measure trying to make my arms grow another fifteen cm so I could reach the roof.
Managed to get all the measurements I needed based on the age old method of "measure a bunch of short things and add them together", as it turns out the tape measure I thought was absolutely massive when I was ten is in fact, only 2m long. Now I feel old. But also tall.
Tuesday: Took a couple of final fiddly measurements such as "width of cupboard door" and "depth of the lower fireplace shelf at the centre compared the the diagonal line of the edge" (deep breath), and then using my rudimentary Adobe Illustrator skills contstructed an architectural plan of the room showing the scale and measurements of the walls, which served as a reference and also something to make architects fall on the floor and laugh their heads off.
Then started building the room in Hammer, the level editor for the source engine.
Firstly, the Hammer editor is AMAZINGLY intuitive and enabled stupid people (ie. me) to build quite complex objects with ease.
Secondly, Never try and build a room facing north starting from the west wall when you're currently facing south, or expect to get confused by compass directions every few minutes.
Completed the walls, roof and floor, then called it a night.
Wednesday: Started with the wardrobe as the single largest feature of the room, but also the boxiest. Made one of each of the wardrobe and cupboard doors, then copied them accross. Copy and paste is your friend.
The bedroom door posed a quandry, I could quite easily do a thin pretend door and leave it at that but given I eventually wanted the door to open I had to take into account the length of the frame on the OTHER side of the wall. Hammer helpfully has a 'carve' function which allows you place an object through another, and use that to cut a hole through it. So by placing the door frame into the wall and then carving, I was left with a perfectly door shaped hole. Win.
Thursday: Thursday was fireplace day.
I have what I always assumed to be a relatively plain and unassuming old fireplace in my room, which has long been sealed. As it turns out there are lots of little slats and supports all over the thing that I had previously taken for granted. To make it a bit more difficult, most of them have rounded edges. 3d technology has come along way since the days of, say, Quake, but the general rule still applies that curved edges and video games don't mix. The solution is to do lots of little straight edges, and enough of them that it effectively looks curved.
The upshot of which is that the fireplace took me longer than every other part of the room combined, but fortunately it did look the spitting image of my actual fireplace when done. A currently unsolved problem is the mirror just above the mantlepiece. Reflections are a bit of an issue in the source engine (particularly as the main character is never actually seen in Half-Life 2), but there are solutions. I just need to find them.
The main architecture complete, I threw in some placeholder textures ( the 'skin' that objects in the world wear), added a simple light, and loaded up the level in the actual game to see how it looked.
The first thing I noticed is that lighting makes your level look infinitely better.
The second thing I noticed is that the editor is actually more powerful than the game, and so all my carefully curved edges had been transformed into diagonal or straight lines. Still looked good but rather frustrating nonetheless.
But the room was done! Walls, fireplace, cupboards and doors, the framework was complete. I leaned back, breathed a sigh of relief, looked up and realised I had forgotten the roof.
Bugger.
Friday: Taking a break from the roof, I decided to solve another question I had been wondering. Half-Life 2 has a number of built in textures, but of course if I'm building MY room, I should probably make sure it's the same colour as MY room. So I needed a way to create my own textures.
This is slightly hindered by the fact that my drawing skill is almost exclusively limited to cartoon fish, which falls slightly short of the ability to create a bump mapped texture with virtual depth and inbuilt material properties.
To the internet I would go. A quick search later and I had downloaded a program a helpful modder had made that allowed images to be converted to source engine textures with relative ease. Using an image of a white plaster ceiling that I... "borrowed" from the internet until I had time to photograph my own roof, I ran the program, added a view properties to tell the game it was plaster and would react as such when shot or walked on (neither likely in this scenario but you never know) and restarted Hammer.
Sure enough my new "whiteceiling.vtf" file appeared, and I was able to replace the roof texture with this new one. Still looked nothing like my actual roof, but important milestones, people.
Saturday: Having successfully procastinated design work with learning work on Friday, I returned on Saturday to the roof. My roof has 4 cross breams running accross with whatever you call the roof equivelant of a skirting board running around all edges, which includes both the edge of the roof and the cross beams. Now this is the kind of thing you'd normally reserve for a texture but I wanted to go a bit all out on the room to know my limits, so I decided to build them using geometry instead.
The loyal tape measure was brought out once more and some quick measurements were taken of the beams and the skirting boards. From there it was a relatively simple affair of building the beams, building one set of skirting boards and then copying it 33 times to the other edges on the roof, doing a little trimming here and there to ensure that the edges blended appropriately. I also took this opportunity to trim the door frame as the top is two slanted diagonals rather than a single straight line.
On Sunday, after creating my world, I rested, and played video games instead.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
A Room Without A View: Introduction
I have decided to build myself a bedroom.
Allow me to elaborate.
For the past few months I have been working - slowly but mostly surely through a dvd course on level design in the Source Engine (the engine used to create games such as Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and many other games with 2 in the title). I am nearing completion of the course (whereupon I will start one of the 6 OTHER DVDs in my drawer), and am looking for a small project to test it out. I could create a multiplayer map, and indeed I have a couple of plans to do this. I could create a single player map, and this is our eventual goal. But first I'm looking for a project, small in scope but allowing for expansion and improvement as I practice and learn.
My brother (as we develop our attempted buisness we continue to set each other goals and deadlines as an encouragement to productivity) set me the innocent sounding goal of building a recreation of my bedroom as a test. At first this seemed simple enough. As I learned more about level design and the tools involved, it began to seem far to simple. As I learned even more, I began to realise that there was an amazing amount of potential for this simple idea to become wonderfully complex.
This will need to be done in several stages.
Stage 1: Creating the physical space itself. This is easy enough apart from one corner (my room is not a perfect rectangle, it has a dip in one corner behind an old fireplace), but for authenticities sake I will need to do some measurements of the real bedroom and convert this into in game units.
Stage 2: Adding non-moving parts. My bedroom is an old room that's been renovated a few times over the years, it used to be a dining room that connected the front hallway to the back study, but has had an extra wall added in to make it a seperate room that connects onto the hallway. As such it has a few quirks such as an asymmetrical roof design (beams and plaster), an old sealed over fireplace, built in wardrobes and a wall pattern that juts out from the wall slightly. As these are all fixed and don't move they can be added in using fixed geometry, along with the window, which I will leave opaque for now.
Stage 3: Adding moving parts. Door to the room (which, unless I build the wallway, I will need to leave locked), wardrobe and cupboard doors.
Stage 4: Placeholder props. Bed, TV, Various shelves, desk and computer. These will be placed using in engine props, meaning the bed will not look like MY bed, etc, but this will certainly do to start with.
And that will complete the room. However, there's plenty more to be done. Firstly, I have a course in designing 3d content and props, so my eventual long term goal is to attempt to create props that match the content of my room, so I have my bed, my computer, rather than whatever the source engine has available. If I feel particularly crazy, I can even use photographs as actual textures to ensure they match adequately.
Once that's done, I will look to see if anything can be done to fix the opaque window. The simplest solution seems to be create as much of the outside as can be seen from my window (fortunately this is very little, just a fence and a portion of the neighbours house), and then leave the rest as blank, as it will never be seen in game. The same approach could be used for the hallway to allow the door to my room to be opened.
I'll be uploading pictures to my facebook (and here) as I go, to show my progress. Work will hopefully begin tonight.
Allow me to elaborate.
For the past few months I have been working - slowly but mostly surely through a dvd course on level design in the Source Engine (the engine used to create games such as Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and many other games with 2 in the title). I am nearing completion of the course (whereupon I will start one of the 6 OTHER DVDs in my drawer), and am looking for a small project to test it out. I could create a multiplayer map, and indeed I have a couple of plans to do this. I could create a single player map, and this is our eventual goal. But first I'm looking for a project, small in scope but allowing for expansion and improvement as I practice and learn.
My brother (as we develop our attempted buisness we continue to set each other goals and deadlines as an encouragement to productivity) set me the innocent sounding goal of building a recreation of my bedroom as a test. At first this seemed simple enough. As I learned more about level design and the tools involved, it began to seem far to simple. As I learned even more, I began to realise that there was an amazing amount of potential for this simple idea to become wonderfully complex.
This will need to be done in several stages.
Stage 1: Creating the physical space itself. This is easy enough apart from one corner (my room is not a perfect rectangle, it has a dip in one corner behind an old fireplace), but for authenticities sake I will need to do some measurements of the real bedroom and convert this into in game units.
Stage 2: Adding non-moving parts. My bedroom is an old room that's been renovated a few times over the years, it used to be a dining room that connected the front hallway to the back study, but has had an extra wall added in to make it a seperate room that connects onto the hallway. As such it has a few quirks such as an asymmetrical roof design (beams and plaster), an old sealed over fireplace, built in wardrobes and a wall pattern that juts out from the wall slightly. As these are all fixed and don't move they can be added in using fixed geometry, along with the window, which I will leave opaque for now.
Stage 3: Adding moving parts. Door to the room (which, unless I build the wallway, I will need to leave locked), wardrobe and cupboard doors.
Stage 4: Placeholder props. Bed, TV, Various shelves, desk and computer. These will be placed using in engine props, meaning the bed will not look like MY bed, etc, but this will certainly do to start with.
And that will complete the room. However, there's plenty more to be done. Firstly, I have a course in designing 3d content and props, so my eventual long term goal is to attempt to create props that match the content of my room, so I have my bed, my computer, rather than whatever the source engine has available. If I feel particularly crazy, I can even use photographs as actual textures to ensure they match adequately.
Once that's done, I will look to see if anything can be done to fix the opaque window. The simplest solution seems to be create as much of the outside as can be seen from my window (fortunately this is very little, just a fence and a portion of the neighbours house), and then leave the rest as blank, as it will never be seen in game. The same approach could be used for the hallway to allow the door to my room to be opened.
I'll be uploading pictures to my facebook (and here) as I go, to show my progress. Work will hopefully begin tonight.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Cold Season, Flu Season, Red Season, Blue Season!
They say that every journey begins with a single step. This is true.
They don't say that every plummit off a 5000 ft cliff begins with a single step as well, but this is also true, unless you're Stephen Hawking, Christopher Reeve, or have the ability to fly via perhaps some type of jetpack, helicopter, or a freak mutation at birth that gave you wings/your own jet propulsion system that the other kids mocked you for at primary school but now a super villian is attacking the town hall and the smart yet ditzy and good looking mayor's aide is trapped inside and the only entrance is from the roof and oh if only there was a hero who could get inside and save her/take her out to dinner so WHO'S LAUGHING NOW? HUH? WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?
I think I may have wandered off point.
While it's certainly true that a 1,000,000 step journey does indeed begin with a single step, feeling proud of yourself after only one step when you've still got 999,999 steps to go is probably a bit premature. Don't get me wrong. I will walk 500 miles. And I think the sentiment behind the saying is that rather than worrying about the length of the journey, it's important to just get out there and start (Unless rather than the 500 mile/fall down at door scenario, you are referring to the plummeting cliff death scenario, in which case I heartily recommend NOT starting. Procrastination has it's merits, particuliarly in relation to falling off cliffs).
My brother and I have been planning a number of interactive game projects since we were about 5. This wasn't the only thing we made up, in our heads we created books, movies, tv shows, plays, and ocassionally adventures where we were (obviously) the stars. In many ways we've always been writers. Not necessarily GOOD writers, but writers nonetheless. I remember one of our earliest ideas was a sketch comedy tv show which featured a large amount of video game references (we liked video games, you see). A lot of the sketches we came up with have (fortunately) vanished into the mists of time like so much, um, mist, but what I can recall seems to largely consist of my brother being a lizard (not really for any humourous intent, he just likes lizards), and me walking into walls.
Fortunately we've greatly improved since then. Our current project is a modifcation for an existing game, which I am handling writing and level design/creation for. Every modifcation begins with a single step, and for me that step is that, in order for me to create and design the levels, I need to know how you create and design levels.
So I'm going through a dvd course at the moment, and in a nerdy/geeky (not dorky) kind of way, am finding it thoroughly fascinating. I'm currently playing through the main game we are working with (damn you, achievements) and it's quite interesting to see how it's put together. The first time I played through the thought generally running through my head was "Wow, look at the world they've *BANG!* built, it's incredible *RAAARGH!* how immersive *EXPLODE!* this game is." Now, the thought running through my head is "Interesting, *BLAM!* so they used this texture here, but *SLASH!* rotated it, and used a light field to *SPLATTER* create that shadow..." which certainly adds a rathe surreal air to it all, like an action game where you play as a chartered accountant who defends the galaxy while also doing his tax return.
The type of things you can get away with in a 3D engine is really rather ingenious, including the ability to create a scale model of, say, a mountain range, and being able to use this as a giant 3-dimensional background.
Yes I'm a nerd. But being a nerd is AWESOME.
(As a side note, the title of this blog was suggested by my good friend N3rd Girl, who runs a blog at http://n3rd-girl.blogspot.com/, which is very amusing. You should read it. You should read it now. I'll wait.)
They don't say that every plummit off a 5000 ft cliff begins with a single step as well, but this is also true, unless you're Stephen Hawking, Christopher Reeve, or have the ability to fly via perhaps some type of jetpack, helicopter, or a freak mutation at birth that gave you wings/your own jet propulsion system that the other kids mocked you for at primary school but now a super villian is attacking the town hall and the smart yet ditzy and good looking mayor's aide is trapped inside and the only entrance is from the roof and oh if only there was a hero who could get inside and save her/take her out to dinner so WHO'S LAUGHING NOW? HUH? WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?
I think I may have wandered off point.
While it's certainly true that a 1,000,000 step journey does indeed begin with a single step, feeling proud of yourself after only one step when you've still got 999,999 steps to go is probably a bit premature. Don't get me wrong. I will walk 500 miles. And I think the sentiment behind the saying is that rather than worrying about the length of the journey, it's important to just get out there and start (Unless rather than the 500 mile/fall down at door scenario, you are referring to the plummeting cliff death scenario, in which case I heartily recommend NOT starting. Procrastination has it's merits, particuliarly in relation to falling off cliffs).
My brother and I have been planning a number of interactive game projects since we were about 5. This wasn't the only thing we made up, in our heads we created books, movies, tv shows, plays, and ocassionally adventures where we were (obviously) the stars. In many ways we've always been writers. Not necessarily GOOD writers, but writers nonetheless. I remember one of our earliest ideas was a sketch comedy tv show which featured a large amount of video game references (we liked video games, you see). A lot of the sketches we came up with have (fortunately) vanished into the mists of time like so much, um, mist, but what I can recall seems to largely consist of my brother being a lizard (not really for any humourous intent, he just likes lizards), and me walking into walls.
Fortunately we've greatly improved since then. Our current project is a modifcation for an existing game, which I am handling writing and level design/creation for. Every modifcation begins with a single step, and for me that step is that, in order for me to create and design the levels, I need to know how you create and design levels.
So I'm going through a dvd course at the moment, and in a nerdy/geeky (not dorky) kind of way, am finding it thoroughly fascinating. I'm currently playing through the main game we are working with (damn you, achievements) and it's quite interesting to see how it's put together. The first time I played through the thought generally running through my head was "Wow, look at the world they've *BANG!* built, it's incredible *RAAARGH!* how immersive *EXPLODE!* this game is." Now, the thought running through my head is "Interesting, *BLAM!* so they used this texture here, but *SLASH!* rotated it, and used a light field to *SPLATTER* create that shadow..." which certainly adds a rathe surreal air to it all, like an action game where you play as a chartered accountant who defends the galaxy while also doing his tax return.
The type of things you can get away with in a 3D engine is really rather ingenious, including the ability to create a scale model of, say, a mountain range, and being able to use this as a giant 3-dimensional background.
Yes I'm a nerd. But being a nerd is AWESOME.
(As a side note, the title of this blog was suggested by my good friend N3rd Girl, who runs a blog at http://n3rd-girl.blogspot.com/, which is very amusing. You should read it. You should read it now. I'll wait.)
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Diary Of A Mad Writer #5 - It's the End of the World. Get the Popcorn.
I've a number of projects going on at the moment. I'm teaching myself to create levels for the Source Engine (HL2, Portal, et al.), which is challenging but satisfying, and there is no doubt in my mind based on what I've seen that everything I want to do is entirely doable.
Work on the new website proceeds well, we've outlined the look and layout we're after (a little different from your average website but striking and unique, which will add character to our brand, and also add a local flavour), and the smarter of the team (Hi Ben) has put together a functioning front page mock up based on what we've worked out (only with buttons that go nowhere, in the literal sense rather than the frustrating web design sense).
My writing partner has been a veritable font of creativity of late, coming up with two play ideas and the premise of a short film, all of which I am happy to be assisting on. But the current writing project is one we started last year. I have been given the honour of drafting the opening episode(s), and am currently putting together an opening that will hopefully introduce everything and set the tone for later episodes. It's going well, although as always I'll need to do some editing once it's done, I'm currently up to page 12 of a 20 page script, and I'd estimate a quarter through the story. But hey, means we've got lots to work with.
Not much is happening in real life this week, mainly education and helping out some friends who have a lot on their plate, so after a short delay I present the return of the weekly film review. See next blog.
Work on the new website proceeds well, we've outlined the look and layout we're after (a little different from your average website but striking and unique, which will add character to our brand, and also add a local flavour), and the smarter of the team (Hi Ben) has put together a functioning front page mock up based on what we've worked out (only with buttons that go nowhere, in the literal sense rather than the frustrating web design sense).
My writing partner has been a veritable font of creativity of late, coming up with two play ideas and the premise of a short film, all of which I am happy to be assisting on. But the current writing project is one we started last year. I have been given the honour of drafting the opening episode(s), and am currently putting together an opening that will hopefully introduce everything and set the tone for later episodes. It's going well, although as always I'll need to do some editing once it's done, I'm currently up to page 12 of a 20 page script, and I'd estimate a quarter through the story. But hey, means we've got lots to work with.
Not much is happening in real life this week, mainly education and helping out some friends who have a lot on their plate, so after a short delay I present the return of the weekly film review. See next blog.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
This is the greatest game ever and I can't wait to finish - ooh, shiny thing
I'm a gamer. The very first game I played was King's Quest IV on my dad's computer, unless you count the paint program that was on a computer so old the screen only came in green and black. Those were the days. My first console games were Super Mario Bros and Bart Vs The Space Mutants, which I played on my very own Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short) which I got when I was five.
I've been racking my brains to think of how I ever heard of one, and I honestly have no idea. I don't remember seeing an ad, I don't remember reading about it in the paper, all I can remember is wanting one and getting one. Those were the days. Quite possibly it came from my father, he was always rather switched on technologically (I think he was on msn before I was) so it's possible he just decided that we as kids might like one. My dad's awesome that way.
The next 15 years were spent, after giving us the NES, of trying to take it away from us. That's not true in the slightest, but our parents, realising that we were spending an awful lot of time on it, wanted us to focus on other ventures as well. On the whole that didn't work out so well, but eventually we all grew up and reached the stage where we liked games, we wanted to play games, but we were also smart enough to focus on, you know, school and work and those sort of things.
I remember that my older brother Ben was by far the best player of the three. And Josh and I would frequently give our turns to him so we could finish a game that you normally couldn't finish in two. (We each were alotted two hours of play time a day, but were allowed to watch the others while they played) I'm not sure what Ben thought about this, but I certainly don't remember him complaining.
Now that I'm an adult gamer (by which I mean an adult that plays games, not that I play adult video games, which generally mean copious amounts of sex and violence with no justifiable point. For the record. in case anybody was wondering, anything with the words "Sexy" and "Poker" in the title does not count as a game), I finance and manage my own gaming habits. I do play a couple of hours a night in most cases, but I also ensure I'm in bed in time for work, and spend time on my other hobbies and side projects, so I argue it's had no detrimental effect whatsoever.
But I do have a large amount of games I haven't finished, and this has started to bother me. It's largely a side effect of my larger salary last year, where I had too much money for my own good, so most of it went on games and dvds. As a result, I frequently purchased games faster than I could finish them, would spend a little bit of time on all of them, and ultimately never see any of the endings. So I started ploughing through them one by one instead, and have actually increased the satisfaction I receive from them. Finishing a game feels great. It takes 10+ hours of your time, and you feel like you've achieved something once it's done, and it can go back on the shelf in the completed pile, which is getting ego swellingly larger.
In short, I am a gamer.
Those were the days.
I've been racking my brains to think of how I ever heard of one, and I honestly have no idea. I don't remember seeing an ad, I don't remember reading about it in the paper, all I can remember is wanting one and getting one. Those were the days. Quite possibly it came from my father, he was always rather switched on technologically (I think he was on msn before I was) so it's possible he just decided that we as kids might like one. My dad's awesome that way.
The next 15 years were spent, after giving us the NES, of trying to take it away from us. That's not true in the slightest, but our parents, realising that we were spending an awful lot of time on it, wanted us to focus on other ventures as well. On the whole that didn't work out so well, but eventually we all grew up and reached the stage where we liked games, we wanted to play games, but we were also smart enough to focus on, you know, school and work and those sort of things.
I remember that my older brother Ben was by far the best player of the three. And Josh and I would frequently give our turns to him so we could finish a game that you normally couldn't finish in two. (We each were alotted two hours of play time a day, but were allowed to watch the others while they played) I'm not sure what Ben thought about this, but I certainly don't remember him complaining.
Now that I'm an adult gamer (by which I mean an adult that plays games, not that I play adult video games, which generally mean copious amounts of sex and violence with no justifiable point. For the record. in case anybody was wondering, anything with the words "Sexy" and "Poker" in the title does not count as a game), I finance and manage my own gaming habits. I do play a couple of hours a night in most cases, but I also ensure I'm in bed in time for work, and spend time on my other hobbies and side projects, so I argue it's had no detrimental effect whatsoever.
But I do have a large amount of games I haven't finished, and this has started to bother me. It's largely a side effect of my larger salary last year, where I had too much money for my own good, so most of it went on games and dvds. As a result, I frequently purchased games faster than I could finish them, would spend a little bit of time on all of them, and ultimately never see any of the endings. So I started ploughing through them one by one instead, and have actually increased the satisfaction I receive from them. Finishing a game feels great. It takes 10+ hours of your time, and you feel like you've achieved something once it's done, and it can go back on the shelf in the completed pile, which is getting ego swellingly larger.
In short, I am a gamer.
Those were the days.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Boycotting: A Game anyone can play, or: Why I'm still not a true fan of anyting.
The word boycott seems to be appearing a lot in my life lately, at least in regards to gaming. Two games that were recently released have come under 'controversy' that have led certain groups to boycott these games. I am speaking of Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, and Left 4 Dead 2.
It's worth pointing out that games (or indeed other media) that are boycotted are in fact nothing new. Media is boycotted on a daily basis. The remake of the film Lolita was boycotted by audiences concerned with the underage romance therein. Leisure Suit Larry: Manga Cum Laude was boycotted for graphic nudity and sexual content.
I would hold that the above two products should be boycotted because they're awful, but there you enter into a debate of quality and opinion, which is a debate nobody can ever win, as you are always entitled to your own opinion, so long as it's theirs.
Mel Gibson's the Passion of the Christ has the dubious honour of being boycotted both by religious groups (for the portrayal of the Jewish leaders) and non-religious groups (because it's about religion and they don't like that sort of thing).
I'm trying to point out that people calling for a boycott of products is nothing new.
What makes these two games and their boycott interesting is a) They're both good games (again, in my opinion, though I really don't think I need to clarify this. Obviously this is my opinion, for I am saying it), and b) their reason for boycotting is (in my opinion), nothing short of bizarre.
I'm going to stop pointing out that this is all my opinion now. Everything in this blog is my opinion. The End.
No, wait, come back! That wasn't the end of the blog, that was just... oh never mind.
Anyway, the boycotts. It's worth pointing out that simply deciding not to buy a game is not enough to boycott, it must be a decision to encourage others to also not buy these games.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is a near future war first person shooter. For non gamers this means you shoot stuff with guns.
It has been boycotted by members of the PC community because 'Dedicated Servers' have been removed. I won't get into the technical details but without a dedicated server the quality of the playback of the game can vary depending on how far you are from the person who started the game. It also prevents the ability for players to create custom content for the game. This is a similiar experience to what you would find on an Xbox 360 or a PS3.
PC gamers are unhappy that what they have considered a given of PC gaming has been removed, and concerns have been raised that the developer of the game is abandoning the PC market (where the series started) in favour of the console markets.
Left 4 Dead 2 (which surprisingly, is the sequel to Left 4 Dead 1) is a current day first person horror survival shooter. For non gamers this means you shoot stuff with guns, but this time the stuff is zombies.
Announced shortly after the release of the first game, many gamers felt angry that a sequel was being developed so soon after the first game came out, as it was felt by some that this meant the first game would not be supported. It is worth pointing out that Valve has a long history of supporting their games after they have been released with updates and additional content.
The key point in both of the complaints above is that the gamers feel they are entitled to dedicated servers or ongoing free content. These are long term fans of both companies, who have bought their games for years, and know them well. They feel that these companies owe them.
I've got news for you. These companies don't owe you anything.
When you buy a game (or a dvd, or a magazine, or a book), unless the cover or the EULA specifically states that by purchasing this game you are also purchasing ongoing additional content, you are not automatically entitled to ongoing content. I recently bought a kindle (a topic worthy of its own post) and I am entitled to ongoing updates and features, because the terms and conditions says as much.
Where I'm going with this (and this is really a continuation of my last entry) is this:
I think fans are the worst thing that can happen to a product.
Fans are misguided, fans are selfish, fans have delusions of grandeur. We've bought your product, the fan says. Now you owe me. Give me my dedicated servers. I expect my ongoing free content. No, Dumbledore can't be gay, that messes up my fanfic. Anakin would never say that, you need to change that line. That's it, I'm boycotting your products. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
Fans are indeed responsibly for the success of a product. If they do not buy the product, the product fails. However, I would argue that if there is no product, there is nothing for them to be fans OF. Ergo, the product and the creator of that product is immeasurably more critical to the success of the product than the people who's only contribution is to put money on a counter.
If I make a game and you buy it, thank you very much, I hope you enjoy it. If you think my game is lacking a critical feature, I understand and you are perfectly within your bounds not to buy my game.
But if you feel my game is lacking a critical feature and I should put it in there because you bought my last five games and I owe it to you for that feature to be in there, then you, dear sir, are wrong. The previous five games were stand alone sales, and I may indeed have set a precedent of expectation. But I am under no moral or legal obligation to provide the features you expect. I am glad you enjoyed my games and I hope you enjoy the games I make in the future. But I do not owe you anything.
In my opinion.
It's worth pointing out that games (or indeed other media) that are boycotted are in fact nothing new. Media is boycotted on a daily basis. The remake of the film Lolita was boycotted by audiences concerned with the underage romance therein. Leisure Suit Larry: Manga Cum Laude was boycotted for graphic nudity and sexual content.
I would hold that the above two products should be boycotted because they're awful, but there you enter into a debate of quality and opinion, which is a debate nobody can ever win, as you are always entitled to your own opinion, so long as it's theirs.
Mel Gibson's the Passion of the Christ has the dubious honour of being boycotted both by religious groups (for the portrayal of the Jewish leaders) and non-religious groups (because it's about religion and they don't like that sort of thing).
I'm trying to point out that people calling for a boycott of products is nothing new.
What makes these two games and their boycott interesting is a) They're both good games (again, in my opinion, though I really don't think I need to clarify this. Obviously this is my opinion, for I am saying it), and b) their reason for boycotting is (in my opinion), nothing short of bizarre.
I'm going to stop pointing out that this is all my opinion now. Everything in this blog is my opinion. The End.
No, wait, come back! That wasn't the end of the blog, that was just... oh never mind.
Anyway, the boycotts. It's worth pointing out that simply deciding not to buy a game is not enough to boycott, it must be a decision to encourage others to also not buy these games.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is a near future war first person shooter. For non gamers this means you shoot stuff with guns.
It has been boycotted by members of the PC community because 'Dedicated Servers' have been removed. I won't get into the technical details but without a dedicated server the quality of the playback of the game can vary depending on how far you are from the person who started the game. It also prevents the ability for players to create custom content for the game. This is a similiar experience to what you would find on an Xbox 360 or a PS3.
PC gamers are unhappy that what they have considered a given of PC gaming has been removed, and concerns have been raised that the developer of the game is abandoning the PC market (where the series started) in favour of the console markets.
Left 4 Dead 2 (which surprisingly, is the sequel to Left 4 Dead 1) is a current day first person horror survival shooter. For non gamers this means you shoot stuff with guns, but this time the stuff is zombies.
Announced shortly after the release of the first game, many gamers felt angry that a sequel was being developed so soon after the first game came out, as it was felt by some that this meant the first game would not be supported. It is worth pointing out that Valve has a long history of supporting their games after they have been released with updates and additional content.
The key point in both of the complaints above is that the gamers feel they are entitled to dedicated servers or ongoing free content. These are long term fans of both companies, who have bought their games for years, and know them well. They feel that these companies owe them.
I've got news for you. These companies don't owe you anything.
When you buy a game (or a dvd, or a magazine, or a book), unless the cover or the EULA specifically states that by purchasing this game you are also purchasing ongoing additional content, you are not automatically entitled to ongoing content. I recently bought a kindle (a topic worthy of its own post) and I am entitled to ongoing updates and features, because the terms and conditions says as much.
Where I'm going with this (and this is really a continuation of my last entry) is this:
I think fans are the worst thing that can happen to a product.
Fans are misguided, fans are selfish, fans have delusions of grandeur. We've bought your product, the fan says. Now you owe me. Give me my dedicated servers. I expect my ongoing free content. No, Dumbledore can't be gay, that messes up my fanfic. Anakin would never say that, you need to change that line. That's it, I'm boycotting your products. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
Fans are indeed responsibly for the success of a product. If they do not buy the product, the product fails. However, I would argue that if there is no product, there is nothing for them to be fans OF. Ergo, the product and the creator of that product is immeasurably more critical to the success of the product than the people who's only contribution is to put money on a counter.
If I make a game and you buy it, thank you very much, I hope you enjoy it. If you think my game is lacking a critical feature, I understand and you are perfectly within your bounds not to buy my game.
But if you feel my game is lacking a critical feature and I should put it in there because you bought my last five games and I owe it to you for that feature to be in there, then you, dear sir, are wrong. The previous five games were stand alone sales, and I may indeed have set a precedent of expectation. But I am under no moral or legal obligation to provide the features you expect. I am glad you enjoyed my games and I hope you enjoy the games I make in the future. But I do not owe you anything.
In my opinion.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
I Learned how to Love Music from Video Games and Automobiles.
Music is not my life. I am not a musician, have no plans to become a musician, and if I were to learn to play a musical instrument/sing better (something I have vaguely considered), it would not be to become "a musician" but rather something to amuse myself in the quiet hours, or potentially to serenade women, but given that if I were to learn anything it would be the piano, and given that it's rather hard to drag a piano down the street to someone's window without alerting them and the police to my presence, the prospect seems pretty unlikely, unless it was that they were living next door, or indeed in the same house that I lived in.
So: my task appears to be, find a girl I like, convince them to move in with me on purely platonic terms, buy a piano, learn to play aforementioned piano, and then finally serenade aforementioned girl with aforementioned piano, finding out that they're really more of a violin girl, decide I didn't really like her anyway, and finish this sentence.
However, while music is not my life, it is definitely a large part of my life. I listen to music pretty much when I'm not doing anything else that requires my ears (or when the thing that does requires my ears is particularly dull). This is partially because I seem to need to keep most of my sense busy to be most productive (at this present moment in addition to typing on the keepboard and looking at the screen, I am listening to the Beatles and eating ice cream with fudge. Smell is the least behaved of senses and so gets no special treatment from me), but mostly because I've always loved listening to music, and how, more than a lot of other mediums, it can take up your whole world while you're listening to it.
I'd like to say that ever since I was born I was surrounded by lots of music and that this has somehow ingrained music upon my way of being, but frankly that would be a load of nonsense. I have no idea what I was doing when I was born (apart from the obvious). No, my first memories of music came five or six years later. They were of loud music and fast cars.
Ok, that sounds much more exciting than it probably was. My parents weren't, like, rock stars or anything. My dad is a computer programmer (though a pretty rockin' computer programmer), but he had an extremely large influence on my musical tastes.
My dad originally hails from up north, so when we were younger we made frequent car trips up north to visit various relatives. And by car trip I mean nine hours in a car. You can make stops along the way, take in various sights, make frequent requests to go to the toilet, or occasionally just stop because all three of us were fighting in the back and Dad found this just a little bit distracting when trying to drive, but in the end, it's nine hours in a car.
I was blessed with the superpower of not getting carsick when reading, but we spent most of our time looking out the window and listening to a lot of music.
There were lots of albums Dad listened to but there were three albums that I think might have been his favourites, as we listened to them hundreds of times over the years and they are now burned forever into my soul. They were River of Dreams by Billy Joel; We Can't Dance by Genesis; and, most prominently, Cloud Nine by George Harrison (Possibly my single greatest musical hero, and this album also featured one of my other heroes, Jeff Lynne, though I was not to learn this for another decade or so). These albums (with the addition of Queen, which we heard a lot of whenever we went driving with Mum), would set in stone a lot of my criteria of what made great music.
So at the very start, I was already about 5 years behind the times when it came to music.
Over the years I've acquired new music to listen to by many different means, some from my brothers, a couple from girl's I had crushes on at the time (the music stayed, the crush didn't), and random self discoveries thanks mostly to the wonder that is the internet.
The single biggest influence and repository of new music for me though, has been, without a doubt, video games.
I make no apologies for this.
Specifically, the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises, have greatly increased my love and understanding of music. From these games, whenver I found a song I loved, I would always go and do some hunting, and if the rest of their music matched, I'd buy an album or two, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I'm not sure anyone actually says that anymore.
Anyway. Thanks to Rock Band and guitar hero, (and a couple of other games) I have found:
The other thing that these games have done for me is given me a better ear for music. Thanks to playing only one part (and, well, hearing which part was missing when I missed a note) I now can actually hear the different instruments in a song much better than I could previously. I can now hear the lead guitar, as opposed to rhythm or bass, pick out the drums and split the harmony parts, whereas previously it was all one big wall of sound, wonderful to hear, but unable to be separated into component parts. Actually playing along in a small way has improved these skills greatly. Who says video games don't do anything for you?
Now some people may point out that this is probably a skill that would normally be picked up from going to live performances, and these people have a point. But given I don't really do concerts (large crowds and me don't exactly mix), this is certainly a happy compromise.
There's a lot more I could wax lyrical about, the bands that have had the biggest influence on me (The Beatles/George Harrison, They Might Be Giants, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Electric Light Orchestra) but these are probably topics worthier of their own post.
Also it's 2am. So no. Later. When it's daylight.
So: my task appears to be, find a girl I like, convince them to move in with me on purely platonic terms, buy a piano, learn to play aforementioned piano, and then finally serenade aforementioned girl with aforementioned piano, finding out that they're really more of a violin girl, decide I didn't really like her anyway, and finish this sentence.
However, while music is not my life, it is definitely a large part of my life. I listen to music pretty much when I'm not doing anything else that requires my ears (or when the thing that does requires my ears is particularly dull). This is partially because I seem to need to keep most of my sense busy to be most productive (at this present moment in addition to typing on the keepboard and looking at the screen, I am listening to the Beatles and eating ice cream with fudge. Smell is the least behaved of senses and so gets no special treatment from me), but mostly because I've always loved listening to music, and how, more than a lot of other mediums, it can take up your whole world while you're listening to it.
I'd like to say that ever since I was born I was surrounded by lots of music and that this has somehow ingrained music upon my way of being, but frankly that would be a load of nonsense. I have no idea what I was doing when I was born (apart from the obvious). No, my first memories of music came five or six years later. They were of loud music and fast cars.
Ok, that sounds much more exciting than it probably was. My parents weren't, like, rock stars or anything. My dad is a computer programmer (though a pretty rockin' computer programmer), but he had an extremely large influence on my musical tastes.
My dad originally hails from up north, so when we were younger we made frequent car trips up north to visit various relatives. And by car trip I mean nine hours in a car. You can make stops along the way, take in various sights, make frequent requests to go to the toilet, or occasionally just stop because all three of us were fighting in the back and Dad found this just a little bit distracting when trying to drive, but in the end, it's nine hours in a car.
I was blessed with the superpower of not getting carsick when reading, but we spent most of our time looking out the window and listening to a lot of music.
There were lots of albums Dad listened to but there were three albums that I think might have been his favourites, as we listened to them hundreds of times over the years and they are now burned forever into my soul. They were River of Dreams by Billy Joel; We Can't Dance by Genesis; and, most prominently, Cloud Nine by George Harrison (Possibly my single greatest musical hero, and this album also featured one of my other heroes, Jeff Lynne, though I was not to learn this for another decade or so). These albums (with the addition of Queen, which we heard a lot of whenever we went driving with Mum), would set in stone a lot of my criteria of what made great music.
So at the very start, I was already about 5 years behind the times when it came to music.
Over the years I've acquired new music to listen to by many different means, some from my brothers, a couple from girl's I had crushes on at the time (the music stayed, the crush didn't), and random self discoveries thanks mostly to the wonder that is the internet.
The single biggest influence and repository of new music for me though, has been, without a doubt, video games.
I make no apologies for this.
Specifically, the Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises, have greatly increased my love and understanding of music. From these games, whenver I found a song I loved, I would always go and do some hunting, and if the rest of their music matched, I'd buy an album or two, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I'm not sure anyone actually says that anymore.
Anyway. Thanks to Rock Band and guitar hero, (and a couple of other games) I have found:
- Aerosmith
- Boston
- Charlie Daniels Band
- Dragonforce
- Eric Johnson
- The Explosion
- Fallout Boy
- Foreigner
- Various Video Game Soundtracks (Myst, Blizzard games, et al.)
- Jonathan Coulton
- The Killers
- My Chemical Romance
- Ok Go
- Toto
- Autograph
- Weezer
- Yes
- And The Beatles, though that's a longer story deserving of a post all of its very own.
The other thing that these games have done for me is given me a better ear for music. Thanks to playing only one part (and, well, hearing which part was missing when I missed a note) I now can actually hear the different instruments in a song much better than I could previously. I can now hear the lead guitar, as opposed to rhythm or bass, pick out the drums and split the harmony parts, whereas previously it was all one big wall of sound, wonderful to hear, but unable to be separated into component parts. Actually playing along in a small way has improved these skills greatly. Who says video games don't do anything for you?
Now some people may point out that this is probably a skill that would normally be picked up from going to live performances, and these people have a point. But given I don't really do concerts (large crowds and me don't exactly mix), this is certainly a happy compromise.
There's a lot more I could wax lyrical about, the bands that have had the biggest influence on me (The Beatles/George Harrison, They Might Be Giants, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Electric Light Orchestra) but these are probably topics worthier of their own post.
Also it's 2am. So no. Later. When it's daylight.
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