Adam Adamowicz

A sad day ): Adam Adamowicz passed away from a battle with cancer today.

http://www.awesome-robo.com/2012/02/farewell-adam-adamowicz-visual-mind.html

A link to his diary if interested
http://fallout.bethsoft.com/index.html

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Combat Trailer

I thought this was relevvant to our studies at the moment. This video goes into detail about the combat design for the newly released RPG game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. It was released on the 7th in america and is released tomorrow here in europe. It's got a lot of names behind it. R. A. Salvatore wrote the universe and lore for the game. He's a noted fantasy writer. Todd McFarlane, the man who created spawn, did the artwork and Rare. Ltd's Grant Kirkhope did the music. Developed by Studio 38 and Big Huge Games it's nice to see something that looks solid coming out of the fantasy genre. Also shout out to the black developer in the video! You don't see them very often and he waves swords about!!

Game Design

Game design isn't something I’ve really thought about…or realised I should think about. As a game art student it’s a completely relevant thing to think about and I guess I do think about it to a certain extent but just haven’t realised. Game design to me is the creation of the story, environment and game play of the game. Basically all aspects planned and thought out by a group of people looking to make an awesome game about an awesome person. Most of the time it works…most of the time it doesn’t! I think about game design a lot more when playing fantasy games just because I feel there has to be a lot of attention to the environment you’re in, a whole world created out of a few people’s minds. Then you the armour and characters to design, all the weapons and all the cool spell effects. I never really thought about it for most games like first person shooters too. Granted you don’t really have to pay attention to the character you’re playing as but the environment and the weapon designs are a major part in them. You need to be accurate in the clothes they wear and you have to bring something new to the game play to pull it away from the un-ending pile of generic. It really isn’t something I thought about but now, it’s something I better get used to thinking about a lot!

The definition of game design as said by our favourite internet source in life, Wikipedia:

‘Game design, a subset of game development, is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in a game as well as documentation that describes such a design.  Game design requires artistic and technical competence as well as writing skills.’

I chose to review Gamasutra’s Game Design: Theory & Practice Second Edition: 'Not All Game Design Documents Are Created Equal' an excerpt created by Richard Rouse III. It covers a big range of all the things you need to know about how not to game design as well as the documentation you do as well.

It starts off with an attack of documentation that’s too thin. Short documentation that doesn’t explain much of anything or references other games it’s based upon without any further detail as to what exactly it’s like. You don’t get any help from that and it’s not the best idea to fill in the blanks with your own theories because they could be terribly wrong.  Most thin documentation has too much back story and not enough information. It describes what it’s based on but not what it’ll be like.

This leads into the second part he goes over. This game design document has solely been written for the purpose of discussing the back story to the game. When I read the first line of this paragraph I immediately picked up on the fact he changed from describing a writer to the writer being a woman…like women are the only people that can waffle on for 400 pages of back story. Nice.

ANYWAY, he describes that these writers spend too much time on the stories and not enough time formatting the document. It has no clear reference points or system for you to refer to so you can just skip parts that you don’t need to sit and read. He also describes how it’s unnecessary to have so many pages on back story as you wouldn’t include all of that in a game you were developing.

The next section leads comfortably on to the overkill. Describing every last detail about everything you intend to do. Some things are more important to describe than others and these kinds of documents just keep going about something trivial. For example how an AI would move, sleep talk in great detail which really wouldn’t be necessary.

The last two he describes are related in a way. A grand scale and boundless document for a concept that has no limit or constraint what so ever, that has a completely unrealistic expectation. The last is more of a summary of them all, what happens to a poor design document. It becomes shelved, put to the side, slid under the carpet, locked in a closet never to be seen again. In other words they become a fossilized document.

When you read about these documents and how they are flawed you can see why. It needs to be concise and explanatory but limited in areas that are less important and each section gets the same amount of attention as the next. I’ve heard this said before which he mentioned, documents are measured by their weight. When I did work experience in a small game studio I received a game document for that game they were making at the time. I had never seen so many pages tied together describing the same topic.

It was an interesting article to read. It was more of an obvious statement of what you already knew but didn’t think about because it’s not something that bothered you before. Well for me at least that’s how I saw it. It’s a nice guide and warning signs for things not to do in your own documentation. Hopefully I can follow these and maybe not be boring about it.

Who are the leading lights in game design? Gabe Newell and Gabe Newell. Ok there are more like Peter Molyneux, Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto. They’ve created games that have been so successful everyone has heard of them, knows someone who’s played and has seen countless of pictures of their games on the internet. Gabe Newell to me is the best game designer and to be quite frank, best fucking guy in games development right now. This guy has games like half life and portal under his belt. He created valve, my absolute dream to be working in. If there is any man or woman to follow in the games industry now it’s him. He’s such a genuine guy and really thinks about his player base as much as his games. That’s something I think a lot of games designers don’t think about and they lose sight of the aim of the game they are developing.

Game design is the staple in creating a successful game. If you don’t have a solid design it’s not going to be a solid game. I find that the best games that are developed are not created by one person alone. It has the input of the entire team. In Kojima productions, they developed a great way to develop a game. A piece of paper was given to each member of the team and at the end of the day at least one idea would be on this paper. This proved to be successful as a lot of the ideas on these papers were put in the Metal Gear Solid game they were developing at the time. You don’t just get a great and creative game from one mind alone. It needs several minds involved to bounce of ideas, to tell which ideas are shit and which ideas would benefit.

I think designing a game is essentially the same for any genre of game. It all has to have the same basic points explained and developed. There may be small differences that need to be added or not used in others but they all conform to the same standard of document produced by each game made.

When I play a game I want something that’s stimulating. I play a lot of fighting games and I enjoy them because I have to work at a combo, learning each part separately before putting it all together to make one sick move. It’s the same with fantasy games. You work your way through areas, you level and develop your characters and then ultimately you use it all at the end for one final battle. The process of learning and developing in a game and then using it at the end is satisfying to me. It’s probably why I don’t play shooting games that much…I know there are upgrades you can get and the more you play the better you get but when you play the levels you never feel like you’ve achieved something. It’s an endless learning curve which I don’t like. I hate things that drag out and never end. 

Princess Mononoke or Mononoke Hime

Movie review time!!
This is my absolute, all time, best of the best movie. I watched this when I was 13 in America and my whole being was just wrapped around this story. The animation of the creatures, the colours and the whole lighting of the movie was so incredible to me. The opening minutes showing the fierce fight between Ashitaka and the boar god was something else. seeing the demon spread infront of itself to attack him, wrapping round, gripping his arm, seeing the clothes and muscle bulge at how tight it was just blew me away. I have never seen so much detail  in an animated movie. As you continue to watch you get the whole feel for the tribal area and how different they look to other characters later on in the movie. The colors they wear are unique to them in the movie and the huts as well. It's a contrast to see a beautiful sunny day and then Ahitaka wincing in pain at the boar god's curse.

As the movie progresses you see a very stark difference in color when he reaches the steel town.Dark, grungy colors showing how overpopulated and busy the town is. You see the men guiding bulls down a steep and narrow mountian path towards it. The plot forwarding device to get Ashitaka to the steel town.

The people he meets here are unhappy, rude and overly confident. They're how you would see a nation of people these days. Stressed by their lives and only caring for themselves. People care about money and don't want to help others. The greyer colors of this area reflect the mood and show just how different he is to these people.

Enter the second and most important character, San. She is named as Princess Mononoke to the steel town people. She is a human girl who was raised by a wolf god. She fights the steel town people to save her forest and her family. Her colors are unique to her as well and her style.

Progressing through the movie the colors change quite a lot. Most of it is set at night or in heavy forested areas. The lighting is either very dark or very vibrant in areas and you see the wonderful effects they produce for water and the animation used for Didarabochi. When he starts appearing some horrible crazy shit starts happening and then you get the weather effecting the environment. The motion they use is took cool and really shows off Studio Ghibli's animation to it's fullest.

This movie will never get old for me. It's so inspirational in it's colors, art and animation style that I will forever be in awe and envy.

ACTA NEEDS TO BE CRUSHED!!

So SOPA was shelved and such. We will see it again but for now it's gone which is grand...but now a new evil which doesn't only just effect america it effects every country. This bollocks is known as ACTA. It's pretty much the same as SOPA but it's far more extreme and this article I found on it today just proves how fucking stupid these things are.

http://falkvinge.net/2012/02/03/european-commission-slip-reveals-censorship-in-acta/

I want people to know that if this passes we aren't going to live in the same world any more. This is literally going to stop us from saying what we want. How can you take that away!? Please, please read about this bill and share to others that this needs to be taken away now! If I find a protest here in the UK about it I will be there because I'm not letting this destroy my internet!! GET RID OF IT NOW!! SHOUT OUT AGAINST IT!!

Also another link to what people in the European parliament(remember a guy resigned because of this!!) think of this.
https://torrentfreak.com/we-need-copyright-reform-not-acta-120204/

Session 9

Pretty cool movie. It didn't end the way I thought it would but I guess that was the point.

Best moment in the whole movie

I think everyone must have laughed at this. I've seen it on the interwebs before I actually saw this movie so I thought it was hilarious!

There was quite a lot of things in this movie that was strange to watch. The annoying sounds they used to trip your mind out or repeat loops of the same bird through out the movie...it got to me but I think maybe that was the point? Drive you insane considering where the movie is set. The colors in that place were pretty orange for where they worked and there was a significant difference between the outside colors and inside the building. Different worldly feel to it when they were all doing work and discovering things. It seemed more like a story that would watch a group of people go slowly insane and kill each other but I was quite shocked at how it was just more of a reflection of the curiosity of people needing to know something or wanting to find something. I really felt through some moments that they should REALLY stop what they're doing because you know they're just going to get whacked over the head for being too fucking curious! It didn't happen so my heart rate was exceeding itself for no reason. I remember the main character talking at the very start of the movie and was off put by the fact he wasn't american like the rest of them...it felt a bit forced making him the main focus because he was different. He clearly was from the rest of them. I don't know, it felt awkward watching him. Considering how it ends it feels more forced to be honest. I wasn't quite sure why the chair room kept popping up as they weren't even in it at all during the movie apart from passing it one scene but the lighting in it was cool. Very musky and run down.

Overall it was a good movie. I don't think I'd watch it again cus it wasn't my thing but it seems to be a good reference for lighting and mood in general. Also the guy who decided to put all those horrible noises in needs his ears cut off.

Gustav Klimt

Anyone who says this guy isn't amazing can go find a bridge and jump of it! 

This man, this artist is the reason I love art. He is such an individual with his work and when you see it you know it's him straight away. He just has that overwhelming sense of being and I honestly, every time, sit and look at his stuff for hours when I come across it on the web. I had the extreme pleasure of seeing his art in person in Vienna quite some few years ago. Me being young I didn't fully appreciate it but I loved it! Today I can say truly adore his stuff. I painted the tree of life in school once and that must have been the one thing I was proud of doing. My mum bought me a puzzle of expectation and I must have sat there and completed about 100 times just staring at how pretty it was. He uses such primitive shapes in his well known works and the gold combined is just something really fantastic and unique. I love him! One thing I really want to do this summer is get to his work again now that I'm older. Gief plane ticket plx!

My absolute fav!