Headphone Jack: Version 3.0, and the other updates

Just noticed that I seem to have changed Jack's personality from what it was before, although he looks exactly the same. He isn't such a soppy git now:

Headphone Jack [The Sound Designer]
When he’s not slinking around like a self loathing cat, quietly contemplating the shadows and tortures of the world, or tinkering with technology to make it “better”, he’s a reckless, risk-taking cowboy. If you piss him off, he’ll jump on your head and torture you through music with his wonderful view of the world.

I think the change happened when I moved the bonsai tree off his desk and onto Squeak's. Speaking of Squeak, I've revised the description of her as well, although there aren't many major changes to her story:

Squeak [The Visual Designer]
Once upon a time, she lived on a ship as a princess of the pirates. Feeling like there was more to life than stealing from others, she rebelled, and ran away to assume a new creative identity as a games designer. She didn’t leave everything behind however, and retained a love of pretty or glittery things. Unfortunately, she found that her high pitched voice caused some people to not take her seriously and earned her the nickname “Squeak”. She was not amused.

She'll still use glue to stick people to stuff in the game, I've just taken that bit out of the brief personality descriptions. I may as well post the other descriptions up as I've written them just now...

I've just noticed that if you take the first letters from "Jagged", "Angry", "Blunt" and "Straight-to-the-point", you get "JABS". That sounds like a good name to me for the Key dude, seeing as I've noticed a lot of confusion in some people regarding this character. I only called him the Key cos he looked like one, but people were reading into it a bit much, saying, "Is he the key figure?" or something about how he shouldn't be the programmer because the key role in games design seems to them to be something else. So:

Jabs [The Programmer]
Easily frustrated and quick to anger, “psychotic” is often the first impression he gives off. Sometimes he feels like he’s surrounded by morons - that he’s the only one who can see things for what they really are, and copes by insulting everyone with his sarcastic, dry sense of humour. He doesn’t hate everything, however, and has a passion for [brutal] acrobatic movement. He may have no legs, but that doesn’t mean he can’t kick ass.

The BigOomphGuy I've started to call BOG, because I can't be bothered to keep typing "BigOomphGuy" when I write about him. Whether he finally ends up just being called BOG though remains to be seen..

BOG [The Manager, or Team Director]
He’s the “big boss man” of the operation, trying to co-ordinate the efforts of the rest of the team. Despite being taller than everyone, the unfortunate position of his face means he wrestles with the fact that he has to look up at everyone everyday… resulting in a strange “mean-little-man” mental complex.

And finally, the little potato guy, who's name we shorted to Po, partly cos I thought it was funny that he was supposed to be a little shit and the German term for the bum is "das Po" or something.

Po [The.. What’s his job again?]
Po is, basically, a cocky little runt. He wears a tie to work and thinks he’s a pro, but the rest of the team don’t actually pay much attention to him. They’re not even sure how Po came to be on the team. What they don’t see yet is the fact that, while Po may not be all he makes himself out to be, his imagination, ideas and determination are a force to be reckoned with.

Thing is, I randomly had a thought today that our game reminded me of Kung Fu Panda, what with the one character who's all lame and stuff but he's with this other people who are pros at what they do, but then he turns out to have a vital skill or something. Also the part about a special item, ours initially being:

"The story would end (in the successful instance) with the designers finding an ancient creed, which reflects the holder's image, that says "LOOK FROM WITHIN". They then make this very game that the players have just completed"

Then I googled Kung Fu Panda, cos I needed reminding about what actually happens in the movie. I'll be honest, I was surprised when I read that the Dragon Scroll was reflective, and then freaked out when I realised that the main character was also called Po.

Seriously, WTF.

It's not too bad though, because I realised the moral of Kung Fu Panda was that there was no special ingredient, that all you needed was to believe.
Our is slightly different, because ours focuses more on the power and importance of the imagination. Sorta.

Oh shit.. wait.. that's not different at all, is it 0_o

Story Telling in Games, and how I'd like my own secret time machine.

During my research for the essay I'm writing on emotional realism in Mirror's Edge, I found out that it was written by Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of Terry Pratchett. When I was checking out the interviews section of her website, I found some articles that tugged on the strings of the storyteller in me.

I've been told I'm rubbish at story telling - when telling stories face to face, that is - but I also remember a time when I was good at writing stories, and not only good, I really enjoyed it. There's a big difference between telling stories off the top of your head and writing them, and that difference is in editing time. There's also a big difference between writing stories for games, and writing stories for books - in games you have to keep interaction of the player in mind...

Before I start getting too much into the idea of story telling in games though, I should probably finish my essay. Oh how I love deadlines.

Speaking of deadlines, I've noticed some of the blogs of the others in my course, and I'm worried I haven't been mean enough. A time machine would be handy so that I could tell my past self to tell santa not to get Ben a PS3, because I feel like we're behind on our project. I also kind of wish I didn't have to do the essay at the same time, because I keep fretting about whether I should spend more time on the essay or more time on the FMV, which just wastes more time. I also feel like I'd be getting more work done if I were in my room at uni. Life at home is not the best work environment for me, seeing as I keep getting moved from room to room with no desk of my own here, and often have one sister telling me to "Do something productive and tidy up!"

Unfortunately I have no time machine to help me with my time-fretting, nor a teleporter to teleport me to my uni room, so it seems I shall have to learn to stop thinking and start doing again.

Imagekind - Would you like a pretty picture for your pennies?

I've always liked the idea of walking into someone's home and finding a picture I've done, looking all pro, hanging up on one of their walls. So when I came across this Imagekind site that will sell prints of my images [that is, assuming anyone wants to buy any of them] looking all nice on posh paper or on canvas or framed up in a proper glass frame, I couldn't resist checking it out :) I've got a couple of images up on there at the mo, and a third is on it's way.

Since when does it snow in January here? :D

Had a bit of a play in the snow today, got a few nice action shots of my sisters throwing snow at eachother, tehehe :D

My surname is not actually pronounced "geezmun".

Before coming to the realisation that I will live until at least the age of 120, I joined some sites in a frenzied panic, just incase games design is the direction I end up going to for my career. Here they are, in order of creation.

- YouTube: I already had a YouTube account, but I decided to let that be my personal piss-about account, and made myself an account especially for professional porpoises. And yes, I do realise what I just wrote.

- dAportfolio: So, I checked out my deviantART account recently [it's been feeling extremely neglected], and it turns out they have this new thing where they let you have a "portfolio" site for free, and it's all nice and simple and easy. Why not, I thought.

- deviantART: My first dA account was under the username Marlwood, but since I've noticed that there is a school with that name somewhere, I'm claiming the name Geezmun.

- theGreatGamesExperiment: I can't remember how I came across this, but it looked helpful, so I signed up.

- IGDA: I was reading up on Robyn Hunicke to see what projects she's been involved in, and then came across the IGDA. Again, looked helpful, but I've only signed up with a free membership at the moment, instead of a paid Student membership.

Oh, and "Gyseman" is pronounced "Guys-man", if you were wondering.

In other news, my sister just showed me this. I love CollegeHumor, tehehe.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The End of the Naughties. Cough, I mean, Noughties.

Maybe it's because this year is the year I leave my teenage years behind, but I have been freaking out about my future during the past couple of days. In 10 days, I will be 20, and then 10 years after that, I will be 30. And so, I'm not going to make any New Year's Resolutions [...as if I even remember what they were by the end of the year. I definitely don't remember whether I made any last year, let alone what they were].

Instead, I'm going to make New Decade's Resolutions. This is a list of things I intend to do by the time we reach 2020. And yes, I intend to live past 2012, and expect everyone else to do so too [except for perhaps Michael Jackson, Brittany Murphy, and all the people I have actually met who ended up passing away in the past year. There were far too many of you]. I caught the last ten years of the 20th century, made it to the 21st century, and fancy seeing how things go into the 22nd century. I don't think it's too ambitious. But anyhoo's, onto the list:

1. Go to the Philippines

This is where my mother was born, and where I was conceived [...TMI?]. It seems that all I need to do this is to get myself a passport, and then wait for a time where I'm free and can tag along with the Fam when there's a nice deal going on.

2. Get a provisional driver's license

I think it would be nice to at least have the ability to drive, but mostly this is for ID purposes. It really wazzes me off when I find that a night out with friends gets sidetracked because I look young. As for actually learning to drive, I was originally going to learn ASAP, but now I don't really intend to start until at least after I have finished uni [...if ever].

3. Invent a new language for an imaginary world

I've always wanted to, and I don't see why I haven't started already. It'll probably be a mix of allsorts of languages, like Filipino, and english slang, and nonsense. All I have to do is get an English dictionary, take my pick of the words I want involved in my new language, and then write my translations next to them. Haha.

4. Set up my Life as an "adult"

This is the big one, the main thing that is freaking me out at the moment. At this moment in time, I do not intend to end up living at home in The Shire after leaving uni. Mostly because I dislike being told to tidy up a mess in the house by my sisters, because after living in my own space at uni I know that I'm not a particularly messy person. Or maybe I've just gotten used to being able to come and go entirely as I please.

...I did write a couple more paragraphs here, stressing about where to find a nice place, with nice people, and getting a nice job, and I'll marry a nice man like the lady in The Notebook, blah blah blah. I'll get there eventually, wherever there might be. When I think about my plan to live to see the next century, it kinda puts the timescale into perspective. But then, that just leads me back to the question: Other than live to see the next century, what do I really want to do with the time I have on this planet?

It's a bitch of a question. I think I'll let myself sleep on it.

Cheers, Steam Sale :)

I was quite stuck on what to write my 2000 word essay on, seeing as I was going to write about how Fable 2 expresses an emotional realism and yet couldn't really remember how it went, nor could I really replay it as I don't own any form of Xbox nor the game...

Enter the Steam Holiday Sale.

I bought myself Mirror's Edge for some lovely cheap price. Never played it before but I'm liking it, despite causing Faith to die a lot because I'm not very good [yet... well, I'm playing on easy, and she's dying lots even when there's no one shooting at her... hah..]. Although I did somehow seem to get quite good when I had to chase Jacknife around the rooftops before he grabbed a loose pole [*snigger*], but that was probably because I thought that if he could do it, then it could be done.

So, I'm still answering the same question [“While photorealistic animation and gaming visuals offer a graphic realism, in what ways have contemporary titles such as Half Life 2 (Valve, 2004) succeeded or failed in expressing an emotional realism?”], but I'm now doing my essay on Mirror's Edge.

I noticed earlier today that the question says "expressing", not "creating", which might be a little trickier for me because I keep noticing the ways it creates emotion in the player [which one has to argue is probably real if the player is really experiencing things like adrenaline rushes and satisfaction from getting it right and stuff.. ? Yeah... We established in the seminar sesh's that the term "emotional realism" has to be carefully defined...]. But I don't think "expressing" and "creating" are quite the same enough for me to go too deeply into it. We'll see, maybe I can carefully word it into a loophole, cos I'm finding it quite interesting.

And yeah... If you're anything like me [constantly being told to play more games], then go check out the Steam Holiday Sale and see if anything takes your fancy :)

Warning: The following article contains lots of unBleeped Bleeps.

I like the fact that Rage Against The Machine's single Killing in the Name is number one this Christmas. It illustrates some of the things I learned during the Games and Animation Studies module regarding the fact that [THIS IS NOT A PIPE].

Sometime in the past week, I saw what I thought was a silly but well written article that claimed that the Rage Campaign means nothing [unfortunately, I've totally forgotten who's FB profile I saw the link on, and I can't find it again]. I can't remember the logic behind it. It could have been the thing about both tracks being done by Sony, as opposed to an indie band being chosen instead of RATM, or about no one caring about Christmas No.1 one anymore, or something...

If I could have been bothered to register to the site to state what I thought [and I rarely am, this seems to happen a lot], I would have told him that people will attach meanings to anything they want to, regardless of whether he, the article writer, thinks it means anything or not. We can't help it. Take the word "FUCK", for example.

Warning: The following video contains the word "FUCK".

Some people are offended by the word "FUCK" - but why? "FUCK" by itself is not offensive. It's just four letters of the alphabet arranged in a certain way, representing the sound someone makes when they say "Fuck." At some point, people decided that "FUCK" means.. well, all of the things it means in the video above, amongst other things. You could switch the word "FUCK" around with the word "PIPE", and all that would change fundamentally is the word used to represent the things that "FUCK" and "PIPE" represent. And what thing or meaning does the word "FUCK" even represent? It means many things... which means whether the word "FUCK" is offensive or not depends entirely on the context.

The only time people should be offended by the word "FUCK" is when it is used in a context where offense is intended towards them. However, if they are aware that the word "FUCK" is sometimes used to offend, they can get offended whether they were supposed to or not.

The BBC had to apologise after RATM started swearing at the end of a live performance of KitN on Radio 5.

The general public shouldn't be offended by the word "FUCK" in the line "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me," because taken in context, it's not even aimed at them. They are not the "you" in "Fuck you", and in the same way, pissing Simon Cowell off or bullying Joe McElderry was not the reason I bought a copy of KitN. But some people do get offended because they may feel the rebellious energy behind the statement, and feel it is directed at them [okay, I'll acknowledge the fact that pissing off Cowell or taking the piss out of McElderry was on some people's minds, but those people were not representative of the whole campaign].

Now that I've been thinking about it, it seems kinda odd that to make a statement with a swearword in it less offensive, we would Bleep out the swearword. How does replacing an expletive with a bleep make the statement any less offensive? Is it to make the listener feel like they have someone on their side, if they are of the offend-able persuasion?

Hey, we're going to to play you a song with swearwords in, but we know you might not like them, so we've Bleeped them out for you. What's that? Why not remove them entirely instead of Bleeping over what must clearly be something offensive enough to be Bleeped over? Oh.. I dunno.. But I don't fancy the artist coming round to the studio, and Bleeping me up the Bleeping Bleep for messing with their message.

The Games Developers Characterers

Check out this post for the previous Character Mini-Bios.

Here are the [almost] final characters all nicely drawn out.. :)

Squeak: An ex-Pirate princess, she ran away from home to join the Games Industry as an artist, because she thought there was more to life than just pillaging treasures. She's really good at arts and crafts, and by that I mean, sticking people to things [such as the floor] using glue, and, dare I say it, chucking glitter at people. Meh, why not, it's pretty. I changed her hair to make her look more feminine, an then invented the new back story now that her hair looks a little like a tiara from the front, but a mohawk from the side; rebellious royalty that she be.

I did this today in Maya to see if it works in 3D. It was thoroughly enjoyable.

Keydude: Mr Angry&Jagged on one hand, but Blunt&Straight-to-the-Point on the other. He's rather good at being brutally acrobatic. After a little bit of discussion, we've decided to round his head off a bit, cos he looks a little bit too straight in amongst the other characters. Not sure yet if I'll make it properly round, or just slightly. I'll probably go with slightly. Also may remove those stumpy little legs of his seeing as he doesn't really use them [check out this guy for one-limbed awesomeness].

Some quick drawings of Keydude doing a cartwheel and a breakdance move that may or may not be called a swipe:

Jack: The Sound Guy, who is like some kinda emo, cowboy, Earth child, cat thing, with headphones for legs and a headphone jack for a tail. He's depressed because he's really into nature and feels like industries are ruining it, but that there's nothing he can do about it but go with the flow. Conversely, he likes to tinker with sound technology. Maybe cos he's kind of made of it and it seems perfectly natural to him. He walks like a cowboy strutting, can use his tail like a lasso, and jumps on peoples heads to play them music out of his headphone-feet. Don't think I need to really change anything on this guy at the moment. Do need to try modelling him up in maya to check how he looks in 3D though.

And here are the ones Ben designed:

GamesTesters: I don't really know the full story behind these guys yet, but I do know that they are intended to be NPCs in the game, and that they are generally always together. I think we've changed it so that there are now only two of them.

BigOomphGuy: The guy keeping everyone else in order. He can't stand being told what to do due to his strange mean-little man complex, which is why he's satisfied with a role that allows him to tell everyone else what to do. And let's face it, who would dare push him THAT far? Just need to define the face a bit better on this guy, through some colouring on the nipples. Cough, I meant, colouring on the eyes. And possibly move the eyes up a tiny bit.

Po: He's a little runt. Nobody knows what the point is of having him around, but they don't really care to ask. Nobody takes him seriously. They let him sit at his desk, furiously scribbling away. But when he gets really worked up, his imagination becomes a force to be reckoned with; literally. Shadows from his mind spring up behind him, and he controls them like puppets. Apparently this was the weakest looking character in design terms, so we're giving him some hair possibly and a tie to break up the "weird neck thing" he's got going on, and to give him some more detail. Also, he thinks he looks more pro because he wears a tie to work, and he thinks it's awesome that he makes games for a living. If he had any friends outside of work, chances are he would brag to them about it.

Bayonetta

Surman was talking about this the other day, and I hadn't heard of it. Sounded interesting..

Bayonetta

So.. she's a glasses wearing, four-guns-named-Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme-wielding, long legged, sexy, witch, mum with a British accent.. is it? Even if that's not quite right, I'm still definitely intrigued. I want to get it, play it, and then let my sisters play it and see what they say. The last badass lady they played was probably Lara Croft.

Yr2Proj2/"Game Designers"/We-really-need-to-come-up-with-a-decent-name-for-this-thing

Just chucked the characters together to see how they look together, and then messed with filters and such about a billion times on Photoshop...

I totally forgot to add the ActorMan though...

So far we've got a Concept Doc [a lame half hour effort because we thought the first pitch was supposed to be powerpoint stylee], which I need to update and expand a bit more, and the storyboard, which I need to redo the images for as they were pretty much quick little thumbnails done in my notebook and then uploaded to the doc via a camera phone...

Oh, I didn't explain on here what the game actually was, did I?

Basically, it's a humorous cartoony pisstake of games designers in the games industry trying to make the perfect game.

Here are the mini-bio's attached to the Storyboard- names used may differ from final product ;) See if you can figure out which is which in the picture.

Po [The... What's his job again? A.K.A. Little "Stereotype" Guy]

The team don’t quite know what his job actually is in the office, so they’ve decided to make him be in the commercial for the new game they have produced. All he needs to do is sit quietly and play the game while Mr Actorman does his thing...

Mr Actorman [Voice actor, and Narrator in the commercial]

With his career in the film industry flailing, he’s left it for what he believes to be the way forward; the computer games industry. And almost everything he says sounds like an innuendo.

Mr MusicGuy [The Sound Engineer]

He’s a bit of an emo/scene kid, if emo/scene kids were made of headphone equipment.

Mr KeyDude [The Game Programmer]

He’s a bit angry, a lot of the time. And also rather violent. I guess you could replace “angry” and “violent” with the term “psychotic”.

Squeak [The Concept Artist]

So named for her squeaky, and kind of annoying now you mention it, voice. She’ll be the one trying to make everything look nice and pretty [and no, not with pink paint and glitter].

The BigOomphGuy [The Design Director Manager... Man]

He’s the “big boss man” of the operation, trying to co-ordinate the efforts of the rest of the team. Despite being taller than everyone, the unfortunate position of his face means he still has to look up at everyone... resulting in a strange “mean-little-man” complex.

The Game Testers

There are three of them... but only two are in the pic above. Unless one has invisibility powers that I didn't know about.

Forcast for [Yr2Proj2]: "Scorchio!"

Just had a meeting with Ben, things are looking wicked. We're planning on having a tutorial sesh with a lecturer, because they could really help us with certain aspects regarding presentation.

No idea how the coursemates will react to the idea, but I'm pretty sure a few of them will think, "Are you serious?" Which, to me, is a good thing, because it is going to be a little out there... But it also means we have to be very careful and really think out how we present it to the big boys. Some of the rest will love it and laugh, while others will be a combination of the two, who might laugh while asking, "Are you taking the piss?" [Reply: Maybe. Whatchoo gon' do about it?]

Ben's also brought a contact to the table, a friend he made last year who's doing music [possibly Creative Sound and Music, I didn't ask]. He can create ambient stuff like this. But from the looks of some of his other YouTube videos, he's also got a sense of humour on him.

New Project [Yr2Proj2]

Sooo, for this project I'm working with Mr Ben Williams. Never ever worked with him before, so there's a chance it kinda of goes against what Dave said about picking your next partner carefully. That said, I guess I wouldn't have agreed to Ben if I thought he was someone who wouldn't pull his weight.

I had trouble coming up with ideas to begin with, blank pages tend to do that to me. So I tried to get Ben to give me something to bounce off. First thing was: He didn't want to do anything to do with butterflies or ants [my old project], or water [his old project]. Sounded fine by me, seeing as the only constraints we have is the fact that we'll be pitching to people who will tell us our idea is crap if it is, and Dave said that if we're up against anyone, we are up against the animators. That leaves a lot of scope for game ideas, seeing as we can make it about anything we want.

Second thing was: He fancies doing something playful, cheeky, and non-serious, with some memorable characters that people can talk and reminisce about. Also fine by me. It reminded me of the Gastronomy project [originally titled Fartman].

We've started off by doing some character designs, then met up to look at what each other had done, then decided things were looking good and that we can expand them a bit by putting them into scenarios and give them family members. Here's what I've drawn so far:



I've also come up with a rough idea for the scenario in the game, but we'll see what Ben thinks before I write it up here.

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles trailer

It's well interesting. If you've not seen it, click here, put in your date of birth, and just press play [no need to watch it full screen].

OH MY GOD!11!""!2

...Traditionally, what would happen next on the course is, we would produce a 30 second animated vignette to be handed in to the desk in 6 weeks time based on what we've been working on in the past 6 weeks.

INSTEAD

Dave is bringing over what is basically the panel of GameCityU, in 6 weeks time, to critique a 30 second animatic thing, based on a brand new game concept that we have to come up with starting from now and pitch to everyone in exactly a week's time, with a brand new partner.
WARGHH

But then, I spose it's not unlike that time in Year 10 doing the Enterprise thing, where I worked with some classmates to come up with an idea to place Pembrokeshire on the map and pitch our idea to the teachers in like, a day. And then when we went on to do pitch it again for our area and went on to London to rep Wales. And then came second in all of the UK... [Woo, go Ysgol Greenhill School!]

Except, this time we have like 6 weeks to prep...

Okay, I think I'm calm now.

The 300 Words...

... plus a bit more, adapted to put the player into the narrative.

The large blue sky lies above. You focus on a bird gliding across it, which suddenly stutters. Changing its direction, you guide it down towards a tulip, whose head is heavy with water from rain the night before. The bird swoops down, crashing into the tulip and spilling the water. As this flows out of the flower, you release the bird, which shakes itself as if waking up. It gets its bearings again and then stretches its wings out, taking back to the skies. But the water quickly spills into a little hole in the ground.

It shoots through a tunnel, and you follow as it winds down into the darkness, until it reaches an open chamber full of surprised ants. Some are washed off their feet, but they quickly realise that they need to move the larvae to another chamber. You focus in on one near a pink caterpillar, adopted by the colony by disguising itself as a queen grub, and guide the ant to rescue and carry it to a safe chamber along with its “siblings”. It is left alone with them, while the naive workers hurry and rescue more of the others…

Outside it becomes night time; you can see the silhouettes of bats against the stars, as they dart around catching unfortunate moths. You watch them a while, now and then switching between helping a bat catch a moth meal, and saving a moth from becoming that meal. Then a badger catches your eye, and you make it the centre of your focus. You try and guide it towards a nearby fox to see what happens, but it resists like a reluctant horse pulling against its bridal. Suddenly the badger starts digging where it is, dirt and little stones and ants flying everywhere. Ants… You realize the badger is digging into the ants nest, and you pull back harder on its mind, trying to make it listen to you. The fox saunters off, on the hunt for rabbits.

Months pass; it’s been some time since the great flood. There’s an unusual stillness in the tunnel, apart from the gentle twitching motions coming from within the pupa resting near the entrance. After ten months of hiding away in the ants’ nest, a Large Blue Butterfly is finally ready to reveal its true identity to the world. It pulls itself out of its protective casing, out of the tunnel and into the bright world outside. Having not seen the sun for as long as it has been adopted, the butterfly bathes in the light, waiting for its wings to warm up, shimmering. It’s been a long wait. You take the butterfly to the sky in triumph, and large blue is reunited with large blue.

DJ Hero [..is that even what it's called? I can't remember]

Soooo, today was, uhh, interesting shall we say, slowly leading on to pretty rocking, to absolutely epic rocketing multiplied by two! :D ... I'll leave that at that for now.

Onto the topic of this evening: DJ Hero [I think]. I just played it for the first time ever with some friends who have had much more experience with it than me. I gotta say, it looked a little daunting what with the little twirley nobs and slidey switch things that you're supposed to use... when? [I'm a guitarist, not a DJ...] And the buttons on the circle thang, which moves under your hand almost when you least suspect it, like a skateboard when you've never stood on one before.

But, [oddly, not unlike the rest of my night] once I got into it, it was pretty damn cool. You'd probably have to have some kind of appreciation for mixing and remixing tunes and the like, because it could get confusing if you're not used to the kinds of sounds and beats you can get out of it. But yeah. It's definitely a game I would recommend myself to buy for the Fam. The little ones [who aren't that little anymore] and possibly the brother would be well into it.

Games Designers are People too, & The Importance of Notebooks.

Got back from Nottingham's GameCity on Halloween. It felt very different to last year's GameCity, but it was still very interesting, possibly more interesting to me than last time because I've become more into the whole thing over the past year. I won't write about the whole thing here because I got a few points from the different talks, so I'll write about them seperately.

One of the events, GameCityU: 2 Hours is Not Enough, involved my lecturer, Dave Surman, and a lady named Raina Lee asking a panel of people [including Mr Katamari: man of few words, sweet Dr. Babsi from Papermint, Masaya music man Masuura, and sad Jon Burgerman below.. I realise those descriptions would make more sense if you'd seen the event] a series of questions such as "Boxers or briefs?", "What's the worst dating experience you've ever had?", "Rock, paper or scissors?", and "What are the best and worst things about being a creative person?".

I did overhear someone saying "..it was like watching Dave have a gathering with his BFFs", which to me was a pretty good summary. However, as trivial as I might be making it sound, I did actually find it both entertaining and interesting to hear all their responses and reactions to the questions, as it really went to show just how varied the personalities in the industry are. I think it would shock some gamers to actually think that behind those companies who make those games, there are actually real, normal people, people who you can chat with, have a drink with, and partay on down with if you ever get the chance [as some people did. *Cough* Todd *cough*. I wonder if there are any pictures].

I can't remember now whether it was the GameCityU event or the GameCityU: 2 Hours is Not Enough one in which Robyn Hunicke, a lady from ThatGameCompany, talked about how important it is to have a notebook [illustrating my point nicely; if I'd had one with me, I could have written it down]. When she spoke about it, she referred to it like a journal, a place to write stuff down so that it would free your mind to think of other things, as well as letting your brain relax and spend less energy juggling all your thoughts.

This is something I tend to do, although I don't write in mine everyday. If something's really annoyed me or upset me, I'll end up carrying that around with me until I can write it down and get it out of my system [it's also quite fun to write in it when I'm drunk, and then laugh the next morning at my inability to write legibly when under the influence. It's also probably safer than posting things on Facebook while drunk]. The video below shows Jon Burgerman explaining another good reason for having a notebook with you. Mr Burgerman, over to you :)

Sexiness Issues

We had the second lot of pitching today, except I think everyone who pitched today were just the ones who hadn't pitched last time. The main point I took at the end is the sexiness issue; how appealing does "salmon shoal shepherding" sound to you [...and how many times can you say it quickly without messing up...]?

It seems we all have decent ideas, but we need to learn how to make them sound really appealing to the people we are pitching to. Appealing, attractive, seducing... all those words came up during the lecture, and I thought hmmm... how sexy can one make an ant-baby-eating caterpillar...

This probably isn't what Dave meant.

Next task is not quite another pitch, but 300 words setting out how the intro to the world in our games. I've also written down "structure" and "flow of spaces" in my notes... but I think I'll need to think about that some more.. [annoying quirk of lectures, they always seem to make more sense at the time].

As for this morning, we had a tech sesh in Maya. I love playing with Maya, although it still feels like an iceberg to me with all it's little buttons and menus that do things I didn't know it could do... We were learning how to put a texture map on a cube, which we've done before but a refresher was definitely in order. After Charlie had taught us that, I started fiddling with the model I made last week and tried to figure out how the textures work on a shape with many more than six sides. I might have broken my first model somehow though.. dunno how, I was working in a copy of the scene saved seperately, and somehow the copy AND the original changed? *shrug*

Pitching, pitching & pitching.

Been back in uni for a while now and our first task has been to get together with a partner and come up with a game idea based on a natural process.. and then pitch it to the rest of the group a week later. That intial pitch has come and gone. I noticed a few of the ideas being influenced by the same process, and also some of the ideas seemed to have similar game mechanics but different subjects [one involved moving planets to influence the path of a meteor or comet, another involved using seismic activity or wind or waves to direct a ball or similar object though a course, both ideas using the mechanic of changing the environment in order to influence the path of something].

I teamed up with Ollie on this one, and we've come up with a game that involves attempting to influence the behaviour of creatures [insects mainly] in order to save the Large Blue Butterfly from extinction. It's pretty much based on the real life extinction of the Large Blue, which disappeared from the UK in 1979. In 1980, conservationists imported Large Blues from Sweden, so now there are like 30 colonies of the pretty little Large Blues fluttering about across the south west of England.

Watercolour image I did of a Large Blue Butterfly. I did actually adjust it on photoshop, the sky is darker on the original painting and the dusky pink in the background was added later aswell, to match the Thyme's colours and make the ground in the background darker.

For those of you interested in stuff like this, the Large Blue is interesting in the way it depends on a specific species of red ant to survive, who in turn are quite dependant on a specific kind of environment. If there aren't enough rabbits keeping the grass short enough, the ants won't be able to hack it because they need it to be a certain temperature, and even a centimeter difference of grass length causes a big difference in temperature to the ants. If the ants are not around, then there's no way the Large Blue can survive through caterpillar-hood, because the later stages of it's life involve living and hibernating in the tunnels of Myrmica sabuleti, eating ant grubs while disguising itself as one to prevent itself being attacked and eaten by the ants. I'm getting a slight sense of deja vu writing this, so I've either written this on here before, or I've just spent a lot of time explaining how the Large Blue lives...

Which brings me nicely onto my next point to which the title of this post refers: pitching. Again and again. It seems to me that the main aim of this exercise is not to create an amazing game USP [although that is an important part of it], but to learn how to present our ideas to another person; to be able to explain to another in a way that inspires and excites them, and makes them want to support your idea and become involved. I'm not surprised to be fair, pitching ideas to people who have the money to pay you to do the work seems quite a fundamental part of the system in the games industry at the moment.

Moving back to the topic of ants [yes, I know, I'm going this way that way forwards and backwards over the Irish sea...]: they're brilliant aren't they? I've got to do an image of a flood in an ants nest from an ants perspective, and while I was trying to find some good underground images to look at I found a couple of really intriguing videos. The first was of an ant colony building a raft out of themselves. The second was the video below.



I find it ironic how, in trying to make it sound epic, the narrator actually makes the video seem a bit hilarious to me - despite how really quite amazing the subject matter is. It might just be me though - I get amused listening to the different voices narrators have on adverts, such as the chummy way supermarket ads often talk to us, how car adverts are always cool, but car insurance adverts are never ever as cool, and how films are always advertised in pretty samey ways with the narrator who always talks in that special voice that tells you whether the movie is scary, a comedy, an action film.. or even a comedy taking the piss out of the scary film genre. If you watch TV in Britain and aren't hard of hearing, I know that you know exactly what voices I'm talking about.