Ctrl+Alt+Del

This is one of the Ctrl+Alt+Del comics, there a great way to pass the time while avoiding work. They are really awsome and once I'd been shown them, I now cant stop reading them, so you have been warned!

http://cad-comic.com/archives.php

Synesthesia Challenge

60%

Saw this on Mr P's blog, hmm 60%, yeah well creativity isnt about marks so there!

Assessments

So we had our dreaded assessments the other day, involving a presentation to the whole class and teachers of all our work, oh how fun that was.

After spending half the day saying “ I’ll go up next” and then just sitting quietly still, I eventually did it (partly because some people pressured me, you know who are) and shakily got through my presentation. Once done it was a great relief and although I whished I said one or two more things it didn’t actually go all that badly.

Been able to see other peoples work was good, and although Mike said that the open briefs allow you to do anything, but you all still end up with the same idea, I think there was a good range of work and I saw somethings that I’d like to try out for the future.

I think one of the best things from making the presentation is been able to look at all your work in one place, and also while I was compiling my work I got to look back on it all and see what I learned and how my earlier work had many mistakes that I can now easily recognise.

So yeah glad that’s now out the way, unfortunately have to wait till the end of the year to see how it went, and now have to start doing more work for the next assessment, oh the joy.

The Story So Far

So an entire term has finished now and we have now been formally introduced to the insane life that is known as Game Art! From what we’ve done so far it we’ve already learnt a fair bit, but it’s had its up’s and downs.

I think the main thing that I wasn’t expecting was so much work, which took me by surprise and is why I think I got behind on some work (well maybe not some…) but actually looking back I’ve realised that I’ve actually learnt more than I thought, at the start if you had said any of the 3ds max terms such as uv’s, normal maps (well any of the maps really) I wouldn’t have had a clue, but now I know what they are and even better can actually do them, well just about anyway.

Chris’s side with all the ‘real’ art skills is a tough class to get by, there’s a lot of work to do and it all requires your own motivation to do it, but even so it’s one of the great sides to the course and I can tell that even by the end of the first year I will have a fair amount of skills under my belt.

By the last week of the term I had kind of hit a wall where there was work to do but I just wasn’t inspired or motivated to sit and actually do it, then the heavens opened and set Ben Mathis upon Game Art. This guy is seriously talented and enthusiastic about his job, he just has so much energy and is just awesome at what he does. Because of him I got more motivated to do work, and I think he did the same for whole class just showing us what we could actually be doing one day. Saying that everyone in the game art industry does seem to say it’s awful to work in and things are never right, but they always follow that up with yeah it’s like the best thing ever and I’ve enjoyed every day of it, how very odd.

So yeah that’s my story so far, and I’ve just realised some thing as I typed that, that last thing I said is actually true, I’ve got really bogged down with work sometimes and though how is this possible, but at the same time it has been so much fun and I cant wait for next terms goings-on, so I should probably now stop avoiding doing really work by doing this and get some stuff done.

One Of Ben's 3D models

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/ - Ben Mathis's Website

Week Six - Its All Good Fun

Games design, well this seems like a really fuzzy topic now after reading some of the links, first of all I think I have concluded there is no definition of games design, there blog entry done…. If only.

Games design essentially means the whole game and all of it’s aspect (hmm maybe that’s the definition of games design), but it can be broken down into smaller chunks.

First of all we have gameplay, now gameplay many people say cannot be defined as it incorporates too much, from the way you move a character to physics engine to art style, well that seems like a good enough definition to me. Gameplay is the experience created by the designers that makes playing a game so damn good. But all the aspects have to come together well meaning all the people involved in making a game need to work together to create an overall experience in a game.

Two main factors in this is audio and visual stimulation, these are two things that are very important in games as the other sense’s can not really be created, well yet, such as smell, touch (although you could say the wii is addressing that) and taste. So it is important that the artists can create a visually stimulating game, and this does not mean amazing graphics. Now I’m going to use Zelda Ocarina Of Time as an example here as it will be easier.

Shigeru Miyamoto, Truly The Greatest Games Designer!

This game has an amazing gaming experience as anyone will tell you, you play the game and forget it’s a game and become the role and get really into the story, which brings me onto another point, Plot theme and background. The games story works so well, now this game is a very epic game (and I really do love the epic games), but games don’t necessarily need to be epic (arcade style games like racing games (burnout), side scrolling shooter (R-type)). But the story involves you in a game so someone down in the office has to design story lines, character story’s, scenes environments, list is probable endless, I think a good way of looking at it is it is like a film, if a film has no coherent plot line, badly thought up characters, and lack of detail, you will be left thinking what an awful film, same with games only you play the role.

But with all this there is also a growing demand for freedom in games, it all sparked off really with grand theft auto, although I’m sure there were a few games that had it before. But the ability to do what you want in the game lets you create your own experience, I’m sure anyone who has played GTA has spent hours just driving around aimlessly find new and exciting things to do.

Now as you can probable tell I’m making this up as I go along so I do apologise if it doesn’t read all that well, but don’t worry I am going somewhere with this, sort of.

Anyway back to some more random dribblings. Another thing I’ve got noted down to talk about it the growing in technology and how it’s implemented in games development. A lot of games developers are talking about how these days their physics engines are even more realistic that real physics, showing how when a character dies he falls at the exact speed he would in real life, this is all good and well, an in most case’s does add to the gaming experience (Wii sports has a very fancy physics engine), but without everything else in a game it can all fall apart and result in a very poor gaming experience. So yeah as I think I’ve said before its great and all technology is growing, but unless we can utilise it well and come up with good ideas, it will be become irrelevant, and a dot, chasing another dot, will continue to rule for all of time.

Wii Sports Tennis!

One last thing I’d like to address is two of the questions in the task “Do different genres require different design principles? What's important for you, when you play?” this isn’t set in stone, but my two favorite gaming styles are, the really big epic titles that encapsulate you and keep you wanting to just play and play, and arcade types of game where you can just pick it up and play for a while, try and beat high scores and keep you wanting to just play and play. So yes different genres of games do need different design principles, but it all comes down to you want to play the game and have a damn good time while doing so!(See I told you I was going somewhere with all of this)

Blogger's Rage

I’ve looked back at some of my post, and I have this tendency to rant on a moan about things, even if I don’t care too much about it, I’ve also noticed this with a lot other blogs I’ve started to read around, and have come to the conclusion that blogs bring out rage.

This is like road rage, everyone who drives also has stories about how they get really annoyed with the driver in front, or something along there traveling’s that has ticked them off, resulting in road rage. Now most of these people aren’t violent people in every day life but can really lash out given the chance, and blogging it seems has the same effect. Now maybe it is just a way of venting all the negative energy at the end of a day, or the inner dark side of a person trying to get out, but what ever I think blogs are bringing out the rage in people, just something I’ve noticed.

Week Five - Marks Out Of Ten

Right so New Games Journalism, this new(ish) fangled way of writing where it’s no typical review and your told pro’s and con’s, usually summed up into a “10/10” system. That’s what we’re mostly use to, and to some extent I think it works, ill come to this a bit later though, but this New Game Journalism completely throws that out the window.

Okay I’ll admit it took me a while to grasp the whole idea of this style, and at first I really did not like it, and I can honestly say after reading through a few different articles, I still don’t like it. The main problem I think I have with it is I am so use to your typical review style, now maybe I’m missing the point of these as they are not reviews as such, but more just a story told from a gamers perspective.

Now I use to always read NGamer (right back to when it was called N64 Magazine), so I’ve always been fairly happy with the way these types of reviews/previews work. And yeah Mike was telling us the marks out of ten systems doesnt really tell use anything, which I do agree, I mean if one game gets 9/10 for graphics, and the other 9.5/10, but there two complete different styles, which is the better game. But I think that’s taking it too literally, I think it’s more of a guide line to what to expect a game to be like, I mean if a game gets 3/10, and another gets 9/10, chances are that game that got three isn’t going to have the greatest graphics in the world, same for the other types of scores (gameplay, Lifespan etc.). Just to add to that a bit I do still tend to read review on n-europe, but don’t let the review influence me to decide weather a game is good enough or not. Mostly reviews are written by someone who is getting paid, and so if they write a inaccurate review it doesn’t matter much to them as they still get pretty penny for it, but some reviews that are written by everyday sorts of people are more likely to more reliable, and I find forums are the best place to find out about a game as they are just talking about It for the sake of talking about it, not for the money or anything else.

Anyway back to these NGJ writings. One of the one’s I actually did enjoy a bit more is “Bow, Nigger”. Staring to read it I thought to myself I really don’t like this style, and I kind of did that thing where you read but think about something else thus not really taking in what you’re reading. But then it starting to get interesting, he started telling an epic like story that caught my interest (possible because it was about a star wars game I particularly like). But still while he was telling this it went off course a few times and didn’t read too well, but by the end of the article I was thinking that it was actually pretty good to read, had a good narrative that told the tale well, but as a review was awful. This is mainly because it didn’t explain any part of the game. Now while I’ve been writing this I’ve been thinking more and more I completely do not understanding this and will end up not getting to any point, so I looked up NGJ on wiki. It does say that NGJ is not necessarily a review but more of a narrative piece that describes an experience or journey of a game, now in that sense then “Bow, Nigger” is pretty good (if you cut out about half of it)

Now to do the typical top gear review style, as much I dislike this style of writing, and how it drags on sometimes, goes into some other random dribblings, has that style by where I will be reading it but also be thinking about something else so I don’t actually take in about what I’ve read, despite all of those things it’s actually not that bad. For the style that it uses to convey the experiences in games, like with the “Bow, Nigger” article even know that could of done with half of it cut out, it actually works pretty well sometimes, but I still highly doubt I will ever read one of these NGJ articles again, I think I’ll just stick to my useless “marks out of ten” style.