Twilight: The Video Game?

Daemon made me aware of a link last night that Craig had put up on Facebook. Apparently there's been a little bit of chatter on the net regarding "Twilight MMO". Before anyone gets too excited/enraged at the thought, I should tell you that [at the moment], no, it's not actually happening.

From what I can tell, what seems to have happened is Twilight Source put up a news post stating that there would be a Twilight MMORPG, probably after reading about it on Artuji, who may have possibly come across the story first on The Examiner. I think. I kinda stopped halfway through writing that paragraph and lost my train of thought to watch an episode of Psychoville with my sister.

One look at the actual website of this game however, tells you everything you need to know:

- The game is being created for academic purposes.
- Brandon Gardner is the Game Director and Lead Programmer, Steven Danielson is the Concept Artist.
- The game is not going to be an MMO.
- They are going to surrender the game and all it's materials to Summit Entertainment once it is finished, and it's up to Summit Entertainment whether they want to actually publish it or not.

If you want to know more, I suggest heading over to the "actual website" link above and checking it out.



On a more personal note, I seem to still be living in a sheltered world.

I'm a fan of the books and the story, and all the girls I know who have read the books loved it [as well as a few mums and a couple of librarians who had been introduced to them too]. It seems to be a chickflick of the book world. So it's no wonder to me that it's became so popular, that they made movies for it, and that anyone would consider making a game for it.

What did surprise me was the reactions of most of the articles I read about it. Such as this one on Massively. To put it simply: They didn't like it. Some thought the books were rubbish, poorly written and/or lame. Some thought a Twilight MMO would be the end of the world.

At first, I thought that point was a bit dramatic to make, just because one is not into the idea of romance and videogames [and people wondered why there weren't enough women into games...]. But then, I thought about it. Maybe, they're scared of the idea of a Twilight MMO. Women everywhere could take such delight in it, that their other-halves and/or sons would have to fend for themselves. Oh, the horror.

Imagine playing on COD4, or WoW, or whatever your addiction is, and suddenly finding that you're absolutely starving because the lady who normally brings you food has disappeared from reality. The thought of it kinda makes me wanna laugh and say, "Get over it, and stop playing that game for two seconds, or you can eat pixels for dinner." But on the otherhand, the idea of a game as addictive to women as WoW seems to be to, um, people who can't seem to stop playing WoW, is understandably scary.

I think the only way I could condone such a game would be if it helped women develop personally as they played - rather than turned them into one of those people that sit around letting their reality fall into disrepair, while they get sucked into an imaginary fantasy world because their reality sucks, because they've let it fall into disrepair... And if you don't think games can help a person develop as an individual, stick around. It'll happen. If a person can come away from a film feeling like they've learned something or been enlightened, I really don't see why a game can't be capable of the same and still be entertaining.

Age of Conan, The Last Bastion, and The Order of the Silver Dragons

I am so very intrigued right now. I came across the MMORPG, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and now I really really want to play it. Here's a "re-review" of the game, from curse.com.

I'll be honest, part of the attraction for me is the fact that it sounds different to WoW in gameplay. I was trying to play WoW the other day and found I'd forgotten how to play my belf rogue. Button mashing, anyone?

However, I also found what I've seen of the world to be quite pretty as well. Shiney water make Lottie go, "Oooooh! ^_^". Also, I kinda have a thing for watching the sun and shadows move in games as time goes on...



While researching AoC, I found out that somebody called Zsolaith has started an epic machinima series, The Last Bastion, inspired by the player Silverar in the guild they call the Order of the Silver Dragons. I'm intrigued by not only the way The Last Bastion came into being, but also by the idea of the Order of the Silver Dragons.

The Order of the Silver Dragons (OSD) are a long-standing multi-wing gaming community that was founded on January 9th, 2006, and exists well beyond any one game, being involved in many gaming environments. What makes the OSD unique is their ongoing commitment to mature interactions, their proud display of civility and concern, their desire for adventure and their healthy placement of value on individual effort and communications. They are known across many gaming servers for taking the high road when situations arise, and they pride themselves in the knowledge that they will always strive to help others. Their continued success stems directly from the OSD officers of this order whom take it upon themselves to uphold these virtues, reminiscent of the fabled Knights of the Round Table, which in turn are mimicked by the community of players within the guild.

- Zsolaith

Anyhooo, I've found Zsolaith's channel on YouTube and I'm about to watch what he's got there. You're more than welcome to join me :)

XFIRE: Now you can spy on me gaming.. or lack of it.

Just joined the Xfire site and downloaded their thingy. I'll admit I've not come across anything quite like it, but I'm not a proper gamer yet, so I guess that'll be a given. I'm impressed though. How does it know how to find what games I have installed? Clever little thing :) But yeah, the point is that I've joined partly to see how much gaming I do, and maybe encourage me to game more. Not so sure the last part will work. WoW is probably the only thing that'll gain hours, if any..

Time for some focus?

I'm having a little bit of trouble with this summer assignment, namely, I keep staring at things in my garden and doing little much else. Just had a bit of a revaltion now though, because I keep noticing the dreamcatcher-like things I made and hung up to decorate the BBQ area in my garden last summer, and the actual spider webs that have come to decorate the place in the time since.



I'm thinking bugs. Bugs and insects, and beetles and creepy crawlies. Butterflies. Moths. Dragonflies. Spiders. Lots of lovely shapes and sizes and colours for me to choose from with bugs.

And I'm thinking: I reheheally fancy some cheese on toast first.

Top Secret Project!

Okay, it's not really all that top secret and amazing, but I figured it would be more interesting if I titled it this way.

Remember the Dogbot character I made?
And the post where I mentioned David Freeman's book on Emotioneering?

I'm gonna be trying out a few of his techniques and design a game around the dogbot, and for some reason I'm also imagining a little green blobby alien that takes over the dogbot...

No idea how far I'll take it, but if anything more interesting happens with it, I'll post it up.

As for the Summer assignment, I've spent more time thinking than doing at the mo. I got about this far before I joined the family in the BBQ area in our garden.


Something like bamboo with windows in... and the other one was.. something like... willow branches? Yeaah. I think I'm gonna have to start taking a few pics of stuff in my garden for inspiration and do some proper sketches.

Plot to Take Over the World: Stage 1 - COMPLETE

Officially passed 1st year CGD with a respectable load of B grades [B11, B12, B13 & B13, in that order]

Now I have a Summer Assignment: Natural and Man-Made Form, Micro and Macro.

I am supposed to produce a series of drawings for the design of a virtual environment, inspired by forms in nature, paying "particular attention to differences in scale, from small to large, micro to macro..."

Sounds good, I'm pretty excited for next year already.

Also, I spoke to my friend Dan [a.k.a. the BigBlueLion] and showed him the little flash clip I made. He loved it.

Changing the topic once again, tonight I removed all labels from my posts. My previous system was... barely a system, to be honest, so I'm going to be re-labling [how does one spell that word?] all my previous posts and all posts that follow in a much more useful way. Also added Twitter to my sidebar... although I rarely use it at the moment...

Why Guitar Hero is a Beautiful thing.

It introduces kids to classic songs they may otherwise have never heard of.

How many kids go on youtube and purposely seek out this stuff? Not many. Proof that games can introduce kids to more than just a billion different types of gun - it can also introduce them to old music styles in a fun way. Take that, critics of the idea that games can't teach anything!!

Big Blue Lion & co.

The other day [yesterday?] just for fun, I began making a series of flash clips, using voice clips my friend Daniel sent me via MSN during a random conversation [or three]. It's almost like a follow up to the AIR project I had been involved in recently.

[AIR - Animator In Residence. Basically the animator, Ian Gouldstone, would make a 5 second video clip for us to make a response to. We would have 24 hours to make our 5sec or less response. He would then respond to that, as if we were writing animated letters to eachother, creating a dialogue between two characters that were created by us as the story went on. Click HERE for the result...]

The project went on for a few weeks, and I found it a good way to practice different animating techniques or try new ones I haven't done before, such as the digital rotoscoping maya method Eric and Rhys introduced me to.



This is a video of one of my entries. Bit frustrating as I haven't figured out why I can't export Quicktime movies from Flash, so it wasn't in the format requested. I also ran out of time to do what I originally intended, which was to have a picture of a joker on the side of the red cuboid - like a pack of cards - which would have an animated facial expression.

Also... in the previous clip done by our character, we called Ian's character a leprechaun... I wanted to make a leprechaun style "Jack" pop out, but also didn't have time to get it done. I made the box and handle in maya, animated it in maya, and then put printscreens of each frame into photoshop and traced over the action there. Rotoscoping is a cool technique, but rather time consuming. Especially at 25 fps -_-

But yes. I'm going to show Dan the first one before I put them up anywhere, to see what he thinks. I imagine he'll end up laughing. I know I am, and I haven't even gotten to the good part yet.

Watch out for HEADCRAB ZOMBIES...

I'd apologise for finding this funny but... no. Hahaha :D

This is, without a doubt, the greatest film adaptation of a piece of literature ever.

-- whichwayfilms

Assassins Creed 2 & My Maya grade...

Kieran told me we got a B13, yay! I've just emailed Corrado so I think he will be emailing me some more indepth feedback later.

Onto the next thing:
Just caught this trailer on YouTube...



Verry naiice.
Very cinematic.
Very sorry for the poor dude near the start.


Now for some commentated gameplay..



Leonardo Da Vinci gadgets... It's like James Bond set in the Renaissance.

Eric just made me j*zz in my pants.

Forgive the rocker in me, but words cannot express just how awesome this video has made my day.

Video Games | Brutal Legend | E3 09: Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Super Monster Candy Attack!

Went to the 3rd Year's Grad Show the other day, it was pretty good [it's still on, til the 5th June 09 - click here for more info]. Pretty interesting to see what kinds of things we'll be expected to do when we get to Year 3, and the atmosphere was really lively compared to some of the other Grad shows going on.



I wonder why.



CGD, knows how to party hehe :) But I guess the theme was Super Monster Candy Attack, so it wouldn't have been right without some candy!



A lot of the playable pieces were very glitchy, but still cool, and I'd like to see them when they're all done up proper. I heard some are heading to Game City this year, which I am totally attending as last year was Suhhhweeet :) As was breaking the world record for the most number of zombies recorded in one place...



1227 of us :) Anyhoo, back to the Grad Show. Here is a photo of the best thing there.



Am I talking about the mutant chicken thing in the background, or the fan? Blatently gotta be the fan. Just check out that structure, the choice of textures, the fact that it works when you press the "on" button...

I'm joking, however, it was absolutely boiling hot in that room with all those people and computers. It's because CGD is so damn amazing, hehehe.

Also because somebody decided to put the table of sweets in front of the window.. and then somebody decided to have the blinds pulled down so the wind wouldn't blow the sweets away.

Oh! On another note, I've finished playing Fable II. Well sorta, I got to the finale of the game, but I haven't yet experienced the consequences of my wish before leaving the Spire. Am I the only one who got creeped out by the way Theresa spoke at the end about the Spire? But yeah. I was well miffed when Lucian shot my dog. Even if it was just pixels, and the only name I had given it was "Dog", or "Doggy"...

Dating for WoW Fans

Just saw this random Ad on the Adsense section on here and thought it too funny to not mention.

Hilarious. The thing is, I play WoW and I'm not a geek. I took a highly scientific test, and got the following result...

To be fair, I do say dude a lot. I suppose that's what happens if your childhood heroes included Bill and Ted, and Wayne from Wayne's World.

The First Maya Animation

Kieran has uploaded it onto his blog, so to save me the trouble of doing the same: here is the link to it :)
Clicking on the picture above can also lead the more observant among us to an insightful message. Teehee.

EDIT: Apologies, Kieran has since deleted his blog so I will have to get up a video of this animation when I can get hold of a copy of it.

Congratulations, it's Igor.

The past few days have been proper hard. I felt quite ill some of the time, and my sleeping pattern has definitely been affected. That said, I'm proud of what we've produced, and we were lucky that not too much of our work did a Seth on us.

I've gotten so far behind in updating about it on here, but in my defense it was because I was at Kieran's working on the project where I can't just steal the internet anytime. Often it'll be because when we're not working, he's using his internet to play WoW. I can't laugh, cos they've finally managed to persuade me to get back on too. Paid for three months, with the intention of not playing it in August due to the sunny weather that might grace Pembrokeshire, or wherever I happen to be!

Anyway, enough of that. I might wander a bit, it's quarter past 6 in the morning and I'm not sure when I'll go to bed.. but I just got back from finishing Maya, so I can grace you with some photos of the sketches we did during PrePro [hehe, I'll keep calling it that, it amuses me]. Oh, and a plasticine man.

"Fancy a beer?"

Initially we wanted to make Seth walk aswell, but time constraints, knowledge limitations and needing to learn how to use Maya alongside creating the full on [..well, primitive doesn't mean it has to look like crap, does it?] Maya animation persuaded us to try something simpler. After the crit, I may put the video up. Before then I might put up the playbasts taken from Maya.

It's kind of funny how our PrePro video is longer than the animation itself. I'm immensely proud of how the flickering of the welding looks, but ever so slightly worried that it might cause an epileptic fit when it's shown with the big projector like usual... Anyhoos, I need sleep! I've decided that the fact that I can hear the blood pumping around in my brain is a sign that I really should be asleep right now.

Fable II and its Reviews

I've decided to write my essay on Fable II. Initially my plan was to write about the good/evil or pure/corrupt system, or how making the different choices in the games lead you to different scenarios, but I found a book in the library which has been very interesting. It's called Creating Emotion in Games, by David Freeman, and offers many tips on making game characters, stories and worlds more interesting and life-like through the medium of... emotion. This is the area I'm going to focus on in my essay.

Now on to the main subject of my post: The reviews I have read on Fable II as part of my research.
I've noticed a great divide in the reviews here about the game, ranging from "a total waste of money" to "It's just Fabalous I say... just Fabalous. Or should I say... Fable-ous!"
Many of the reviewers seemed to like the game, although a lot of comments were made about how disappointing it was that two players could not play their own full characters during co-op mode.

Of some of the more extreme comments made against it, it seemed to me that these players were either angry because they had heard a great deal of hype about the game and were not given what they were promised, or they are stuck in this idea that the game needs tons of "cool armor", "awesome weapons" and a "big boss fight" at the end. This following comment in particular showed me how some players just don't understand what game designers need to do to encourage the games industry to develop.

fable 2 is simply stated an entire let down. you CAN'T DIE!? and there is NO MANA!? this game was built up so high with promises that ended up being total lies. The co-op is terrible. NO ARMOR!? The dog finds all the keys and items for you. The game was set up to be the easiest RPG in the world. They should have added difficulty settings. It is not better or more genuine than the past 10 years of Final Fantasy! i can't believe they said that. The game is 100% spoon feeding, from the trail to the dog to the no death. Why are there still Rez Phials?!? The choices for clothing and weapons and spells are way to minimal.

Yeah, I know, it makes me cringe too.

There's nothing wrong with a game that doesn't let you die. There's nothing wrong with a game that has no mana bar [seriously, WTF. Mana bars are just an imaginary limitation that someone introduced one day. I may be a bit on the agnostic side to say this, but I know enough to know that "Thou shalt design games involving magic to have mana" was not a Commandment. And there's nothing wrong with a game that has no armor. Does PacMan have armor? NO!

And why should they have added difficulty settings? This game is about the story, be that the main story you can follow, or the stories you help create yourself, such as when your character marries someone in the game and you have a baby boy named Ross, and then Alex divorces your character because you're always being chased by the law because you may have gotten caught killing a few people because you wanted to see how many you could kill one by one before you got caught, and then you decided to resist arrest instead of paying the fine. And then your son gets taken away when somehow your husband died after they moved to another region and you're unable to look after Ross because your destiny to find the three other heroes won't allow it.
I did find it somewhat humorous to return home after ten years to find that my caucasian spouse and I had managed to produce a dark skinned child, as if the first one had escaped like a pet and Alex had replaced it with one that was not quite the right shade. But I still felt the loss when social services wouldn't let me have him after Alex died.

...Anyways, back to my point. It's about the story. I mean dude, the clue is in the name. You do know what "fable" means, right?

It also intrigues me how many people have mentioned how long it took them to "beat the story". I may just not quite be down with all the terms seeing as I'm not a hardcore gamer, but the idea of "beating" a "story" doesn't quite make any sense to me. Sometimes, it's the journey that's important, not the destination. If you rush through the game without taking the time to observe and appreciate the characters, then of course you are going to be diasappointed.

It's times like these I realise how far I've come on this course. A year ago, I would have seen that person's comment and thought, "Oh look, an angry person."
Looking at it now, I'm thinking, "Oh look, an angry person who doesn't have a clue."

Papercraft

It's funny how things happen. Last night I got tricked by Kieran, who decided to pretend to be our friend Vicki on MSN. "Vicki" told me that the boys had managed to persuade her to start playing WoW too. Such a monumental event had actually caused me to want to resubscribe to WoW, leading me to the WoW europe site and almost doing it. I got distracted by this article.

Imagine, having a life sized gnome in your room! Pure awesome.

It reminded me of a time years ago, when my brother had a book that had a big paper skeleton that you were supposed to put together. I'm not sure if we even managed to get halfway before something went wrong, like something getting squished or broken on missing. It was that long ago that I actually can't remember what happened to it.

But yeah. I'm not going to resubscribe now to WoW, not just yet.
I've gained a new interest. Or rather, regained an old interest :)

If you want to check out the other awesome WoW papercraft models, you can find them here. They've also got some friends, I think, doing Pokemon ones :)

How to Break a World of Warcraft Addiction

Get a hypnotist to hypnotise you into thinking you are Charlotte Gyseman.

I've noticed a funny thing about myself. I have played WoW, and I still have my WoW account, but I just can't be bothered to re-subscribe. I had to unsubscribe because I lost my Magic Money Card [I've lost it only twice and yet I'm on my fifth one, amazing], and had to replace it. That was weeks ago, and I have still not had the urge to start playing again. Well, sort of.

Dancing on Thrall's throne in nothing but a tabard was fun, but I'm sure it would be more fun in real life. And the sight of Luke dancing like a female blood elf in a tabard would be hilarious.

I've felt like it now and then because of the friends that play it, but I always get a voice in my head letting me know that I've got better things that I want to do, or that I'd rather have fun for free. I did wonder if it was because I have a dislike of spending my money, but that doesn't explain Black & White 2. Kieran lent me the game to see what it was like, and when I showed it to my sister... she got addicted. The last time I went home, my mum said that Gen [my sister] had asked her to tell me to make sure I bring B&W2. A similar thing happened when I introduced her to Twelve Sky.

This sometimes leads me to wonder if there's something wrong with me, which then makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me for wondering such a thing. Surely a lack of addiction to games is a good thing, right?

Note: For those readers who actually want to break a WoW addiction and have no hypnotists to hand, the wikiHow article is here. I must admit, I laughed when I saw it and laughed when I noticed that it's the first one on the list when you type "addiction" in the search box. By the way, I have no idea whether following the steps actually helps. Apparently I've never had to try them.

Projects and Essays

I've received the marks for the Flash Postcard [we got a B11 or B12, I can't remember at this second] and the 2,000 word essay we had to write on how digital games have exploited their technology of delivery to produce a play experience unavailable in pre-digital games [I got a B11], and it's looking good so far.

Next up we have the Maya Project and the Second Essay [ooooh, ahhh], and then that's it for the first year.

The Maya Project - Primitive Theatre

You are asked to produce a character animation sequence of strictly no more than 2 minutes in which primitive character constructs communicate a nuanced and expressive performance of an emotional scenario of your own creation. The piece should feature no dialogue, though sound must be utilised to emphasise the emotional registers of the piece. Pay particular attention to the lighting, colour and compositional elements of the piece, through a clearly structured pre-production process. The use of camera will play an integral part in the construction of meaning.

I'm now working with Kieran, with Daemon working with Scott, so we can experience what it's like working with different types of people. As a result, elements from our projects will probably be merged to create something new. The characters Kieran and I have brought to the table to develop are Seth and Igor, and the scenarios we come up with will centre around an interaction between them.

The Second Essay - 2,000 words

Isolate one key element of a game. This can include, but is not limited to, any of the following:

- A specific game mechanic, which might be thought of as a cycle of exhange between user and software to create a change in the game state
- The user interface (including the HUD)
- Narrative structure and its organisation
- Structures of progression
- The specifics of level design unique to the game in question
- Systems of reward/punishment

Your game analysis essay is not an appreciation ("I enjoyed this because") but an analysis of the details of how the design affects the experience of the user ("how does this function/operate to produce event or meaning?"). It should be supported with reference to the published literature, and must go beyond industry publications to include scholarly work.

At the moment, I don't know what I want to write about. Maybe the fact the you can be a girl in Pokemon Crystal version on the GameBoy Color. Or maybe I'll just go check out the books in the library and see what interests me.

URRGHHH!!!

I'm really annoyed.

Why, oh why, did I think it would be a good idea to check out how the Tim Eves stories were doing.

I'm really annoyed because of this. And this. And this. Oh and definitely this. Uch! This too [it let me write the comment out before telling me I had to be logged in? Shut. Up]. This one didn't annoy me at first, but then I started reading the comments. Bad idea. It started to annoy me. This and this? Also annoyed me.

Basically, every blue-instead-of-purple link that came up on the first two pages when I searched for "man dies playing wii fit" on google, which led to a site that required me to register in order to post a comment. This would have annoyed me, were it not for the fact that I had already registered to EA in a moment of spontaneity to find out about a game called Battle Forge [which, in the end, I didn't spend a lot of time finding out about due to needing to pack to go home for Easter hols]. I thought I'd better stop at page two when I noticed there were about 187,000 results at the moment.

The reason I want to comment is to educate people, as a lot of the articles just pull the term "Sudden Adult Death Syndrome" from the articles they find as their source, causing lots of people to think its some stupid name given for when doctors don't have a clue how someone died. Often these people go on to blame the kebab he had just ordered and the glass of port that was waiting for him.

I had been thinking about the "Jade Effect" before following up the Tim Eves thing, the term that has come about to describe the fact that loads of people have been trying to find out about cervical cancer since Jade Goody died - to be fair, it's not something I had ever thought about before. I could say that Jade dying was a good thing, but it sounds horrible when I put it like that. It made me think, "Hmm, maybe annoying sensationalist crap can be good for something. If that Tim Eves story makes people aware of SADS, then it can't be that bad a thing that sites like the Telegraph's have reported it". I was going to write a follow up on here while [at the time] in a less annoyed mood saying exactly that, when I decided to see what new stories had sprung up.

Unfortunately, it's not quite been the same. Each time the story is reproduced, something else gets chopped out or rephrased, and soon enough people are reading about some kebab eating, port drinking, trying-to-get-fit-with-a-Wii-fit-cos-he-MUST-have-been-really-unhealthy-on-that-kind-of-diet dude who happened to in the process of trying to get fit. Cue the eye rolling groan. It frustrates me how uninformed people have become along the grapevine, but there's not a lot I can do. Sure, I could register to every site just to post a comment stating the original story. But seriously? I have a life [honest, I do].

It also annoys me how angry it's making me look through my blog. I probably should stop writing these things in the heat of the moment and maybe leave it to sink in first, before writing something that I just have to post now, because it's there, finshed and done, while the Publish Post button keeps staring at me in all its orange glory.

Urgh.

I promise, I will start writing about work again soon.

Actually... I'll start now.

I had an extension on Kieran's Igor idea: Igor comes home from work with re-animated Seth statue, gets changed out of the Igor costume, freaking out Seth because he thought the costume was his real skin? Hmm... It might work. Again, more on that later. My laptop and I are running out of energy.