Hello all, we are back up finally! I have done a complete overhaul of the site layout and hope to have some new stuff to show coming up so keep your eyes peeled.

More revisions including some new gameplay additions in the form of two new powerups to make the game more interesting. I have a 3rd power up in the works but haven’t decided if it’s really necessary.

I have also implemented a High Score system so that scores can be recorded and saved on exiting the game. This also includes a 3 letter initial input like in old arcade games. The high scores table can be reached from the Start Menu.

I have not gotten around to addressing some of the other bugs and issues so they remain on my to-do and known issues listed below. I would say the most aggravating bug right now is the 2-Hit Coin not displaying damage at all as I had gotten it to work with the 3-Hit Coin which had been the other broken element. My code doesn’t seem to be off but I’ve seen Unity do some weird things recently so who knows? But anyways, we’re getting real close to a finished game and I couldn’t be more excited to have finished my first full featured game using Unity.

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Current Version 0.9.3
Fixes/Changes

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• Magnet and Barrier power ups implemented for more varied gameplay.
• Hi-Score scripting implemented.
• Issue with Unbreakable Coin blocks interacting with ball after a gutter ball was discovered and fixed.
• Unlockables Menu and Results screen now display 4 digits for money balance, previously only displayed 3.
• Issue with Volume slider on Options page not being interacted with was found and fixed.
• Slider for Difficulty selection on the Options page has been replaced with buttons to match Control Type selection.
• Coin damage sprites are now working for 3-Hit coin.
• First music track no longer repeats for a couple seconds before moving onto the next track.

Known Issues

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• 2-Hit Coin doesn’t display any damage, still looking into why this behavior is missing.
• Ball still affected by button press after start of play (left in as a sort of “debug” in case ball needs to be nudged).
• Placeholders still in place for last 2 Balls and Paddles under Unlockables.

To-Do

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• Fix coin block animation that shows damage for 2-Hit Coin.
• Create new sprites for remaining Balls and Paddles under Unlockables.
• Make it so the ball doesn’t get stuck in vertical bounces at corners of the screen.

Just a quick update, I’ve gotten around to fixing a few of the bugs from the prior build v0.9.0. So here are the bug fixes for the latest build v0.9.2.


Current Version 0.9.2
Fixes

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• Difficulty slider in options works again.
• Gear assembly animation works as intended.
• Gear assembly particle emitter for the sparks now visible.
• Ball launches when button is pressed after paddle is destroyed and restored, no more delay.
• Impact sound no longer plays when ball collides with unbreakable blocks while moving to next level.

Known Issues

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• Coin blocks do not display damage properly, but still break after the proper number of hits.
• First music track loops, plays for a few seconds before moving onto next music track.
• Ball still affected by button press after start of play (left in as a sort of “debug” in case ball needs to be nudged).
• Placeholders still in place for last 2 Balls and Paddles under Unlockables.

To-Do

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• Fix coin block animation that shows damage.
• Figure out why first music track loops for the first few seconds before playing next track.
• Create new sprites for remaining Balls and Paddles under Unlockables.
• Make it so the ball doesn’t get stuck in vertical bounces at corners of the screen.
• Tweak Hash Power power up effect and add remaining power up items.

So I’ve written some methods to randomize the type of block and its rotation when called so that the grids can be initialized and setup at the start of the scene. As you may or may not notice I’ve filled in the hole in the center of the grid. I made this choice after seeing how setting the blocks made the game unplayable because the permutations often resulted in dead ends. Even with more blocks to work with per floor I’m having trouble with what it puts down and where, I need to streamline this a bit so that the game is winnable. What that also entails in scripting it so that only one drain can be placed per floor (currently it seems to not want to place any), which is the block used to get to the floor below. I also need to iron out some bugs with the Reserve element which allows the player to swap out a block, which currently only changed the type of block in the reserve window and not on the play field. More to come as it comes along.

My little experiment is coming along really quickly but not without some kinks… one thing I have noticed with Unity and its collision system is its not always perfect and depending on the velocity of an gameObject, it can shoot right through a collider. This has lead to my structures being leaky which doesn’t bode well if the water spilling out is what triggers a game over. I also have it scripted that the particles that make up the water trigger another particle system that serves to get the water around corners. however if I have more then one instance of the gameObject and emitter its attached to the later emitter triggers and the earlier emitter that actually triggered it doesn’t even turn on. Not sure why thats the case but I’ll figure it out. This is a learning process and I’ve overcome plenty of challenges in coding as I learn how to do it.

[youtube_sc url=”https://youtu.be/Ig9MCKrG2ms”]

So I’ve been doing a little experimentation in Unity, using the Particle System to create flowing water, while its rough and for now only flows in one direction. I think it doesn’t look too horrible, its rough for sure and will require some more tweaking but it at least resembles water. I plan on turning this into a little puzzle game once I’ve gotten the right behaviors or if its even feasible. We will see. Also I’ve not forgotten about the other games. They will get updated soon.

[youtube_sc url=https://youtu.be/nQa0tHqBUyE]

I’m pleased to announce that Blockchain Breaker has now entered Beta with the v0.9.0 build. If you would like to contribute to ironing out the bugs and polish up some of the rougher elements please let me know and I’ll send a link to the files. When I’m satisfied with the build I will release the final build on its game page as a free download.

 

Current Version 0.9.0
Known Issues

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• Coin blocks do not display damage properly, but still break after the proper number of hits.
• Impact sounds still play when ball collides with unbreakable blocks while moving to next level.
• First music track loops, plays for a few seconds before moving onto next music track.
• Ball still affected by button press after start of play (left in as a sort of “debug” in case ball needs to be nudged).
• Delay from press of button after paddle destroyed and restored.
• Placeholders still in place for last 2 Balls and Paddles under Unlockables.
• Difficulty slider in options does not work properly but should not effect gameplay. Can be toggled in game.

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More to come.

Longtime no see Cyberspace! Thought it was about time to post again to my much neglected Cryptic Worlds Designs website. I’ve been cramming on relearning some of the basics for Unity3D by taking some online courses through Udemy. I highly recommend checking out GameDev.TV’s Udemy Courses when Udemy has one of their frequent sales. They were worth every penny and helped me greatly in filling in holes I had from being self taught in designing in Unity3D.

I’ve gotten several small projects started and I say small because they’re not as big in scope as the Aquatichaos project in length and came about taking refresher courses to work out all the holes in my memory for scripting in Unity3D and learning the new features of the current build (I’m working in the 2018.1.0b12 beta build for that sweet sweet ProBuilder integration).

These projects include Marooned which is going to be a 3D First Person Tower Defense style game which is coming along nicely. With this project I hope bolster my skills in working with Unity’s 3D functions vs the 2D functions that I dove head first into with creating Aquatichaos (which for the time being is on hold). I also plan to use this project as a testing point for learning online multiplayer functions by incorporating upto 3 (maybe 4) players to make some team based strategy for a more fun experience.

Second project is a Breakout clone I’ve titled Blockchain Breaker, a refresher for scripting and becoming better acquainted with Unity’s interfaces. If the title doesn’t give it away, the visuals will. The theme is a joke about Cryptocurrency because of the craze for it from late 2017. When I first started conceiving the assets, the hype was much larger but I think it’ll still be a fun little game. What sets my version apart from others is how the game handles level progression. Instead of being a scene per scene loadout… the whole game is on one scene. When you break all the blocks in the current level, the playfield raises like an elevator to the next level up till you “shoot for the moon!”. I’ve also implemented a currency system (seen in the top right of the UI) which you gain by collecting small coins that sometimes fall out of broken “bricks”, which I plan to implement an unlockables menu for unlocking some goofier additions.

Thats all I have for now. Keep an eye out for Blockchain Breaker as I’ll probably have a finished build in the next coming weeks.

Its been awhile since I’ve posted anything on any of my projects or work. Back in October I was laid off from my full time job as a Graphic Designer at a historic Theatre in downtown Lancaster, PA which was a tremendous opportunity and a lot of fun. Having focused more on that then my own personal work I had let my work slip to the way side during my time employed there. Now with a lot of downtime in between finding new work I’ve re-focused on developing my Unity knowledge, C# programming, and to finally finish this game. I’ve put a lot of work into the scripts and play mechanics and I think its finally coming along enough that maybe just maybe I’ll be able to get a developers table at a con and show off my game this summer which I find to be thrilling.

Now onto the update!

 

 

 

 

 

Aquatichaos Updates:

• Player Size – I’ve reduced the scale of the protagonist as it didn’t make sense for him to be as big as he was in a shooter where a large player object would make avoiding hazards a whole lot harder. I may also toy with reducing the size of the HUD so it takes up less of the upper portion of the screen.
• Death Animation for the protagonist has been implemented, I’ve redrawn the original “Deadicus” sprite I had created during Aquaitchaos’ Multimedia Fusion prototype days and instead of being a static sprite it has animation for the short period of time it is on the playfield. Getting the scripting to also move the player from off screen back onto the playfield after respawn has proven to be a little tricky though I’m sure I can figure out where my scripting is going wrong.
• Shield Power Up – I’ve recreated the shield power up from the prototype, however to go with the goofier nano-tech theme, they’ve been made into mechanical stars instead of starfish. Due to some aspects of Unity’s prefab functions that I do not quite understand the shield doesn’t work when a power up is acquired because you can’t as Unity’s log likes to remind me… “Setting the parent of a transform which resides in a prefab is disabled to prevent data corruption. UnityEngine.Transform:set_parent(Transform)” So until that is fixed the Shield is disabled.
• Boss Scripting – probably one of my favorite parts of developing a game are the boss fights. I’ve implemented some basics for when you enter the “Boss Area” at the end of a stage so scrolling halts and the boss is initiated which is working nicely, allowing me to focus more on individual scripting for each boss as I design them. As with the original Prototype, Level 1 pits you against a giant bullet spewing Sea Anemone with smaller anemone “turrets” though I’ve totally overhauled the design and changed the background setting to fit in with my ideas for Level 2.

In the next week or two I’ll be updating again on my progress. I can’t wait to see how the new enemy redesigns will come out since I’m still using low res placeholders.

With E3 2015 still in full swing, I’ve gotten the modeling bug again. Due to working and life in general I hadn’t gotten much modeling done let alone kept up with regularly making posts. What I hope to accomplish in my free time is to finish this model here. I had started it about a year ago and just never got around to finishing it in Mudbox, it currently clocks in at over 2 million faces at a subdivision level of 6 in Mudbox but it still looks pretty rough and in some serious need of polishing before I can export the normals and bake them onto a much lower poly version.

A little background information on this piece might be necessary. What it is suppose to depict is my interpretation of the Nuckelavee. What exactly is a Nuckelavee? Well it is a mythological creature from Scottish folklore, a type of water elf that terrorizes villages situated close to oceans or brackish waters. It appears from a distance to be a man upon a horse as the Nuckelavee is a shapeshifter… however if you couldn’t tell they are not particularly good at it as they usually are malformed or incomplete (in this case its a torso sticking out of a horse’s back) and their skin is transparent leaving their musculature and exposed bones visible along with thick black veins. Another characteristic from the lore is they smell awful and one of the best indicators that one is around is a tremendously bad smell.

With background information out of the way what is left to do here? Well as mentioned their skins is transparent. I have most of the musculature shaped and jagged bones and the overall corpse like look. I hope to use mudbox to texture muscle fibers and veins to further the effect before I begin to paint the model. When that is all out of the way the next challenge will be to rig a model that is essentially a biped torso attached to a quadruped skeleton which should be interested.

After 3 years MagicalTimeBean has done it again. Escape Goat 2 has finally come and I must say it was a real treat. Never heard of Escape Goat? Well you’re missing out. The game is a quirky arcade style puzzle game starring a Goat and his companion, a mouse that helps him solve puzzles in an attempt to rescue sheep in a dangerous prison tower. The newest entry takes the original formula and puts it on steroids with high resolution graphics and not only is the game lengthier than its predecessor it offers many new features without changing the core mechanics of the game which in itself makes this a steller sequel to an already steller indie game.

The original game had you dashing and smashing crates, pressing switches, avoiding hazards and not getting burnt to a crisp by fireball flinging reapers. All of that returns here with much more complexity and at times a much higher difficulty so don’t expect an easy romp through this game. The original’s sole power up was a magic hat that would allow you to switch places with your rodent friend for getting out of tight situations and for completing levels where parts of the level will seal you in. That power up returns in the sequel but added to the mix are 3 new abilities for your mouse to utilize for getting out of the tower alive. The new additions include a cape that turns your mouse into a flying projectile that can not only smash crates but destroy reapers and saw blades, a hammer that turns your mouse into a block that can be used to press pressure plates, cut off electrodes and crush your enemies and finally what I felt was a really cool but under utilized ability was the Alter of the Necromouser. This last ability isn’t so much a power up but an environmental tool that when your mouse is placed in it you are given the ability to spawn up to 4 zombie mice for solving puzzles that require more then just the goat and your mouse to solve. The part that really makes this game so much fun is how the levels are setup. The puzzles are designed around moving blocks and switches along with barrels, trapdoors and moving hazards that all work together in a manically genius Rube Goldburg-esque manner. Sometimes I couldn’t wrap my brain around how they thought these things up even after playing with the originals included Level Editor. With all that is happening in some levels you really need to think about how you are going to solve the level and in most cases (at least for me) that meant countless deaths before achieving victory. In later levels the insanity built to levels where the game knew you were frustrated, I’m not kidding, they programmed it so after so many deaths on a level the option “Quit” becomes “Rage Quit” which I found hilarious. However even with all these new additions to the game the game still only really featured one new addition to the enemies and hazards you will enounter in your journey. While definitely not something that spoils the game by a long shot MagicalTimeBean had an good opportunity to add new enemies to the mix along with the cool new toys for the mouse but didn’t, but you’ll probably be too busy not being crushed, chopped up or burnt on your quest to rescue the many sheep trapped in the tower.

Graphics wise, this is a huge jump from the retro 8-bit visuals of the original. Here you have some really clean high resolution sprites and background to compliment the new complexity and grander scale of this sequel. Also it features some really dynamic lighting effects which were not present in the original and its a very nice effect. Light and shadow are effected by everything in the environment and when you set off an exploding crate or barrel the room simply lights up adding to the mayhem. Blocks cast shadows and when the level mechanics kick in and the tiles change configuration you get a real sense of depth which was simply not present in the 8-bit goat’s foray.

The sound in this game is spectacular. Ian Stocker has once again created a soundtrack that is both memorable and really sets the mood of the game. The remastered tracks from the original along with the new tracks all really add to the overall enjoyment of this game. The sound effects are clean and appropriate nor do they annoy to detract from the game.

I highly recommend everybody check this game out, it has good length, spectacular presentation as well as a bunch of secrets for you to unlock and as I mentioned earlier the original came with a level editor for creating your own levels. There are plans to release such a tool at a later date through Steamworks so that will be something else to extend your goat-centric adventures. As for me I hope we’ll be seeing more of our purple friend in the future!

Get Escape Goat for Steam, PC, Mac and Linux now!

Verdict:

I’ve had Mudbox since I had gotten my Autodesk Education Suite back in 2010 but never really went about truly learning the software due to hardware issues and because I found zBrush to be a much better tool for 3D Sculpting. I do not however have zBrush since graduating from my Animation program so Mudbox has had to do. Now that I have a computer with enough power to run a sizeable sculpture I’ve dove in to learning the ins and outs of Mudbox. I’ve been experimenting with sculpting a shield within the program after building a basic bare bones “shield blank” if you will in Max and after several hours of sculpting and painting I have come up with this:

The high poly version looks great from my stand point, but when the normals are baked onto the lower poly blank with the reduced poly version I exported from Mudbox it doesn’t quite look as nice. And there is a weird crease on the bottom of the shield that breaks up the eye pattern which I’m not entirely sure why this is occuring but it is. One problem I’ve encounted in Mudbox that I didn’t in zBrush is painting and sculpting bleeding over to the back faces, I’ll have to look more into this.

I’m not entirely sure how the Specular painting layer is suppose to work as the outputted file I got looked horrible and required some editing in photoshop and still doesn’t look as nice on the lower poly model. I’m unsure of what the proper way to paint Specular is in Mudbox but I’ll find out as I Dabble. With that said… this is still a work in progress as I’ve omitted a few elements for the sake of creating the main feature of the shield which is that howlingly angry looking face on the front. My end goal is to load this into some sort of game engine, be it Unity, Unreal 3 or Skyrim and see how it looks under the ingame renderer. More to come as its finished!

Picture this… you’re a squirrel collecting acorns to feed your family in preparation for winter while running, jumping, swinging, bouncing and stomping your way to the exit with your haul. That sums up the game that is known as Little Acorns, a fun little platformer for your phone. In this case the Windows Phone 7.

Graphically the game is cartoony and colorful with a boxy theme for all the characters and items throughout. Its simple and doesn’t need to be any other way because it works. What it does lack though is animation. Your squirrel is a rounded boxy little guy and besides the squash, stretch and rotation involved with his sprite there isn’t much else going on with your character and this generally applies to all the other enemies in the game, not really an issue but it adds to the simplicity in artistic design none the less.

Game play is fairly simple. You maneuver your squirrel through each stage collecting all the acorns present to unlock the exit door before the timer runs out. While you’re on your quest for acorns, you have enemies impeding your progress including spiders, spitball shooting racoons and bees. Getting hit by these guys doesn’t kill you it just slows you down and time is very important in Little Acorns as the timer hitting zero leads to failing the level. Along with the usual running and jumping the game throws in grapple points which you can swing from with a rope and springs to help propel your squirrel to normally unreachable platforms. One thing your squirrel can’t do is swim… so falling into water is an instant level fail. In addition to the acorns, upon collecting all of them you’ll have 5 fruits pop up which when collected and the level is finished add bonus acorns and unlock accessories for your squirrel including mustaches, fezs, new textures for your rope and other goofy customization allowing for a custom squirrel as you play through.

Little Acorns utilizes the phone’s touch screen for controls with on screen control buttons. The controls are basic involving two directional buttons, a jump button and a pause button up by the timer. While responsive the controls sometimes are too sensitive and you may end up running your squirrel into a pool of water or into a spider you’re trying to avoid.

Little Acorns is a simple and fun game with a lot to do in it. The game has 80 levels to keep you occupied along with times to beat and accessories to unlock so it won’t be a short romp through its colorful worlds and at $0.99 on the market place its quite a steal.

Verdict:

You may or may not recall the release of Mirror’s Edge on consoles back in 2008 but it featured parkour style acrobatics, stunning and interesting artistic style and a strong female lead that wasn’t over sexualized but still alluring all in a first person viewpoint. It certainly was not a typical run and gun game of the genre as the protagonist known as Faith didn’t use guns at all, in fact she had moves to disarm enemies that did. Flash forward to 2010, a 2D platformer version of the game is released for the iOS platform which brings us here to it finally being ported to Windows Phone 7 in 2012. While not as flashy and as graphically intensive as its console big brother this game has quite a bit of charm but not without its flaws which we will be covering in this review.

Graphically the game is pretty well rendered on the smaller screen and hardware of the Windows Phone 7. This version of Mirror’s Edge would be considered a 2.5D games as its displayed as a side scroller but utilizes 3D models to represent the world. We have well designed character models and the brightly colored backgrounds and saturation of the console version but in terms of overall geometry of the backgrounds the lower polygon count does become apparent but its nothing that detracts from the experience as where the polygons need to be they are. The animations of the character models are pretty fluid and do not look rushed or robotic which I’ve noticed with lesser mobile games utilizing a 3D rendered engine.

The game features some good tunes including the single “Still Alive” by Lisa Miskovsky featured in the console release. The sound effects are generally crisp including most of the vocal effects from Faith and the enemies she faces in the game. However some of the vocals for the enemies just come out muffled and low quality which just seemed odd considering the other sound effects didn’t suffer this same effect.

As for how the game plays? Well, the controls are fairly simple utilizing finger swipe motions to tell faith when to jump, slide under an obstacle, deal with an enemy or clamber up a wall. The game even utilizes the WP7’s built int gyro to utilize tilting the device to balance Faith out when sliding down ramps or crossing narrow beams which adds a little to the strategy. This all works nicely during the slower paced portions of the game but when the action starts to ramp up it almost seems like the game forgets how to interpret your motions. There were several frustrating moments when Faith simply wouldn’t do what I told her to do like perform a jump kick into a guard shooting at her or when she’s clambering up a wall and totally missing the jump. For all the action in the game it does get a little monotonous after awhile as the levels go on, the variety of obstacles starts to dwindle down and it starts to lose your attention. The game only features 14 levels so it is fairly short but for a mobile game that isn’t too bad. As for replayability, each level features messenger bags that can be collected in each level and not all are easily found. The game also features a Speed Run mode which allows you to either beat your own times in the levels you have cleared or go against others times on the leaderboards.

All said and done the game could have offered more and it falls a little short of being all that it could of been. Should you check it out? Definitely, but expect some frustrating moments along the way.

Verdict:

Well, its a new year which means new content and potentially new and better things for this site. However I do not want to get totally ahead of myself as time has become a bit of a commodity as of late. So let’s start things out with some upcoming reviews:

360

• Borderlands 2
• Dead Space 3
• Dead Space 3: Awakened

3DS

• Code of Princess
• Adventure Time: Ice King, Why Did You Steal Our Garbage!

XBLiG

• Penny Arcade’s On The Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness 3

PC

• The Elderscrolls V: Skyrim – Dragonborn

I realize some of these titles did not come out in 2013 but I wanted to write up some reviews of them as I’ve completed them as to give a well informed opinion.

I’ve decided to implement a simple rating system as well to all my reviews starting now. Now along with my observations from playing the game, there will be a final verdict in graphical form. The rating system will go as follows:

Anyways, keep an eye out for new posts as always.

I’ve only recently been getting the hang of the pretty powerful editing tool that Bethesda has made available to the PC community in the Creation Kit, so its been a journey of trial and error to figure out all the best ways to do things and how it all works. Not to mention learn the changes that have been made to NIFSkope and how it creates Creation Engine compatible NIF meshes. Its a whole new game compared to how Oblivion handled them, thats for sure.

My first quest in bettering my Skyrim experience and not to mention get more acquainted with creating meshes for game content… is to add back in some of the legacy armor and weapon types that have been in the Elder Scrolls series but removed in future entries in the series. For you non TES fans, this includes Silver and Adamantium. I was kind of disappointed when I found out they had removed Silver armor from Skyrim only giving us a sword and great sword for that material type that has been in the series since Arena so what better way to remedy that then add it back in? On a plus side, many developers have said the best way to gain more experience in game design is to mod mod mod.

Its been awhile since we’ve seen SNK’s logo on an actual piece of hardware, the last two pieces of hardware to come from the fighting game masters were the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Atomisware Arcade System but SNK Playmore seem to be changing that with their latest offering, the Neo Geo X. It looks to be a sleek and shiny portable Neo Geo arcade system with 20 games built in. For those of you that have never been involved in the Neo Geo collecting scene or ever followed the platform, this is pretty cool news. Why do I say this? Well the Neo Geo from the get go was a luxury system, with the console costing $600 and individual games costing from $300 – $500. Very steep for any gamers budget. Even with the system having been defunct since the company finally dropped support in 2004, the prices of games for collectors haven’t gotten any cheaper. In comes the Neo Geo X which will provide authentic Neo Geo gaming at a fraction of the cost with two versions, a basic package at $129.99 which only includes the handheld and a gold ‘premium’ package at $199.99 which includes a docking station with AV out functionality resembling the AES console and a replica joystick. SNK Playmore is slated to release the handheld this December, I honestly can’t wait.

The 20 Built in games include:

• Alpha Mission II
• Art of Fighting
• Baseball Stars 2
• Cyber-Up
• Fatal Fury
• Fatal Fury Special
• King of Fighters 95
• King of the Monsters
• J Count Bout
• Last Resort
• League Bowling
• Magician Lord
• Metal Slug
• Mutation Nation
• NAM 1975
• Puzzled
• Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
• Samurai Shodown II
• Super Sidekicks
• World Heroes

From a retro gamer’s perspective such as mine this is really cool news, but from a casual or newer gamer’s point of view whats the purpose of buying this? SNK has offered up several collections of most of these games on other platforms including the PS2 and PSP so why would anybody want a dedicated portable platform? Not to mention there are a handful of handheld devices designed with emulation in mind that could be cheaper alternatives. The 20 built in games are nice but it really is a very small portion of the awesome library the Neo Geo has to offer and with only an SD card port as a means of data storage and no word on whether more games will be offered as downloadable purchases or if SNK plans to offer up some new IPs for the hardware leaves little incentive for the more mainstream gamer to invest in it other then as a novelty item. We’ll have to wait and see how things pan out for the Neo Geo X.

Facebook among other things is a very popular avenue for social networking but not without copious amounts of controversy. I could probably write a book about everything Facebook has done to genuinely aggravate its users but I’m going to stick to one subject for the purposes of this article and that is Applications.

Applications can be a fun little tangent for most things involved on Facebook but it has really gotten to a point where they are over saturating the user interfaces and general overall aesthetic of the site. I find it very annoying when I click on a link a friend has posted and a permissions box pops up asking me to install yet another app to my FB account. The biggest perpetrators for this seem to be news outlets with Yahoo! Reader being the biggest offender however when they try and get me to install it… I don’t install it and just do a Google search. Which totally defeats the purpose for Yahoo! and I found the author of the Oatmeal to represent this annoying phenomena quite nicely.

We get that you want to get better connected to your consumer base but trying to cram apps down our throats to mine our information just really gets on my nerves. I want to read these articles but I don’t need an app telling all my friends I just read an article or to try and recruit my friends as well. Its really just another step toward a entirely transparent internet where nothing I do is truly private and we really don’t need hundreds of apps watching everything we do just to get the information we want online. I think that if these companies could see just how unappealing their forced app requests are they might ease up a bit or stop these shenanigans altogether but that would be too easy or the smart thing to do.

***May contain spoilers***

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The Alien’s franchise is one that I have a soft spot for, being a fan since I first snuck a viewing of the very first movie when I was a child on late night TV. I’ve played many of the games featuring the iconic xenomorph species, from the awesome Aliens Vs Predator for the Atari Jaguar to some more mundane offerings such as Alien 3 and the abysmal Aliens Vs Predator for the SNES. Aliens: Infestation is a delightful addition to the Aliens franchise but not without its flaws and I’ll tell you why.

Aliens: Infestation is what you could call an interquel, it takes place well after the events of Alien but before Aliens. The gameplay is very reminiscent of Super Metroid in that you must collect items and keys to get to new areas and you come across new more powerful weapons as you progress. While the zones don’t constrain you to one certain path the game is pretty linear unlike metroid style games. Throughout the game, you lead a squadron of 4 Marines in which you play as one at a time, all with typical call signs you’d expect from Aliens and the Comics. This squad setup has its low points, when the character you currently have out dies, they’re dead for the rest of the game. You can replace them by finding other stranded marines in the current level. If you grow attached to one of your marines you might find yourself using one of the others as fodder for boss battles. The boss battles left a lot to be desired in my opinion. While the designs of the bosses themselves were pretty cool, the mechanics for these battles were weak. For the most part you had to figure out their typical AI pattern for the whole fight but with some these patterns were impossible to flesh out leading to you losing several of your marines in the course of the battle just because the damage is unavoidable. Also with boss battles, if you aren’t careful you can run out of ammo, as there is no way to regain ammo during a battle other then your current marine dying and you will run out of ammo if you aren’t smart because the bosses have an extraordinary amount of health making some battle way too drawn out. Another feature of the gameplay I sort of found to be totally unnecessary was the stamina bar. You require stamina to sprint and to do the forward roll, which the latter will save your hide many a time during boss battles. Its a pain because when the bar is empty you can’t do anything evasive but walk and in the heat of battle this can spell disaster.

The thing that immediately drew me to this game was the crisp 2D graphics. If I hadn’t been paying attention to what I was playing it on I could swear I was playing an old SNES game. It just screams classic platformer and as a retrophile this is a huge plus. More practically it works so much better for the hardware as well. Its true the DS can handle 3D pretty well but its not its strongest feature when it comes to designing games that work and look good at the same time. The attention to detail is great too, you can tell the designers either were big fans of the series of they did their research because the level designs, characters, enemies and weapons all are what you would expect in an Alien’s game including locations and elements from the first two movies. With all those pluses aside, lets talk negatives… I understand that you never really saw more then a few types of xenomorphs in the movie universe but the game offers only a small number of different enemies to fight aside from the boss creatures. You basically only had one type of standard xenomorph, eggs, facehuggers, ape aliens and the two android enemy types. I think a little more diversity would of been nice seeing as some of the earlier Capcom arcade games took more creative license in what kind of enemies you fought. Also, the marines themselves seem to have a pretty standard sprite, though some have some slight deviations in chest plates or armor pieces but other then that they are practically identical with just a different color palette. The female marines don’t seem to have any body type difference from the males either which just seems a bit lazy but its nothing that makes the game unenjoyable however.

The atmosphere for the game is well established not just by the visuals but more importantly the sound. All of the sound effects from the movies are here. The squeals of the aliens when injured, the memorable bleeps from the motion tracker and the sounds of gun fire are all ripped right out the movies. One part I really thought was a really nice touch was one room in the first zone of the game, you enter the sick bay and a cat comes jumping out at you just like in Alien using the same sound effect from the movie scene. The music ranges from atmospheric to typical action music, its good but nothing really new. Though it as well as the graphics have a retro kind of feel to it. Once again I feel like I’m playing a long lost SNES game.

Overall I feel this is a pretty decent game, aside from some of the weaker gameplay elements and unbalanced boss fights the game is enjoyable and if you are a fan of the Aliens franchise it probably is the best Aliens platformer to come out in years.

I had thought I would try adding a new little segment to my blog highlighting people in the industry I think have been producing memorable work. For the next couple posts I’ll be posting reviews of projects by those featured in the spotlight. To kick this off I thought I’d cover a developer that has been occupying a lot of my gaming time lately: WayForward.

WayForward is a for hire game developer situated in Valencia, California. The company formed in 1990 developing licensed titles for the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, TV games and educational software for the PC market. The majority of their titles from the early 90s and on were licensed properties for the education software market and mainly for the home computer. It wasn’t until 1997 that the company decided to re-shift its focus to creating entertainment based games and offering their services to publishers.

From that time on the company rarely did any internal development until in 1998 they started work on the brainchild of their Creative Director, Matt Bozon’s Shantae which was released for the Game Boy Color handheld console in 2001 with Capcom as publisher. The title while a great game became a sleeper hit, having not sold as well due to the dwindling interest in the GBC what with the newly released Game Boy Advance taking its place as the next heir to the Game Boy mantle. Regardless of its lack of sales the character would later prove popular enough to be used as a testing ground for new technologies on hardware as it came out, however their focus continued to remain on producing high quality titles for their clients.

The mid 2000s to the present, Wayforward developed many licensed titles for properties such as The Scorpion King, Nickelodeon properties such as Spongebob Squarepants and Tak, the remake of A Boy and His Blob, Sigma Star Story, Contra 4, Aliens and many handheld ports. The thing that has always struck me as a problem with licensed properties is a total lack of care involved in their production and quality. The one aspect of this developer that has totally stood out to me is that this same trend doesn’t generally apply to the licensed titles they have produced. I’ve found most if not all to be very well done or at the least genuinely playable. This is saying a lot when what most other for hire developers pump out is pure garbage.

While they still mainly do business as a for hire developer, with the rise of digital distribution venues and online markets tailored for the console market, it has given them the opportunity to produce more original properties including the Mighty series. They first tested the idea of producing internal projects with the DSiWare title Mighty Flip Champs in 2010. Which sold well enough that it paved the way for 2 additonal Mighty titles including Mighty Milky Way and their first 3DS digital game, Mighty Switch Force. What really excited fans though was it also allowed the team to finally give Shantae fans the sequel they had been hinting at with the release of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge on DSiWare in 2010 which went on to win awards for Best Visuals and Best DS Game of 2010 from IGN.

Its been a real pleasure getting to know this developer through the great games they’ve created I’ve picked up and played through in the past couple months and I can honestly say if you have never played a Wayforward game, you are really missing out.

I’ve enjoyed my fair share of MMO games having played World of Warcraft for a couple years and delved into Star Wars: The Old Republic in the past year but I’ve never seen the tremendous draw these games have for some people… going as far as actually causing addiction. But thats not what I’m really wanting to cover here. More to the point I want to understand why developers suddenly think turning their properties into MMO games is such a good idea. It had been rumored that Bethesda had been working on an MMO Elder Scrolls game but only recently have those rumors become fact with releases of screenshots and story information popping up from official sources this month. Now I hear that the new and untested property, Kingdoms of Amalur is hopping on the MMO bandwagon. Blizzard has more then proven that MMO’s could be highly profitable with them milking an 8 year old game engine with periodic updates and large content expansions over the years but does this model truly work anymore? Many WoW imitators have come and gone and even pretty great ones like The Old Republic have lost large subscription bases in only a few months of being live. To me its a pretty risky investment and even more so since the new trend in MMO is now the ‘Free 2 Play’ model. So why unveil a product that more then likely will go Free 2 Play in the next 3 to 6 months after release? I don’t totally understand the economic value of the Free 2 Play model other then advertising revenue and the premium items sold for real world money for most of these F2P games but the publishers seem to see something that I don’t, especially if they’re willing to dump several million dollars into the project. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

I was asked to design some posters to announce the coming of a new Pita Pit restaurant in Elizabethtown, PA. Out of three designs I came up with, they went with the one on the far right. I preferred the one on the far left due to the symbolism of design and construction in relation to the on going construction of the restaurant location itself but my clients felt they needed something more colorful so we have the one they used. I don’t normally agree with the use of yellow in most things because of its gaudy and sometimes murky nature but it works here but in my opinion.. thats a rare thing indeed.

NOTE: These were for a local franchise and are not associated with the corporate arm of Pita Pit.

Most if not all of you are familiar with User Interfaces or UI for short. Whether it be sending a text on your phone or using the ATM at the bank you have interacted with one. These are the faces of the devices and software we use on a daily basis and it takes some good design and clever thinking to make ones that work and work well.

Some of my personal favorite UI’s that I think work wonderfully in design and function are for the art and design programs I use the most. Adobe Photoshop is probably one of the most intuitive programs I’ve used. The layout of the tools and accessibility makes it a very easy program to pick up and learn. For that matter I also find Autodesk’s 3D Studio Max to have a very nice user interface. Since I’ve been trained in the use of this program I have a bit of an upperhand but prior to that I had messed with it and it didn’t take me long to pick up the basic functions. That in my opinion is good UI design.

When we have a great user interface, things run smoothly and easily. But when we have a bad one… well, things get frustrating or annoying. I tried using Blender once which is an open source 3D rendering program much a kin to 3DS Max, Maya and Modo. My biggest gripe with that program? The UI was a convoluted mess to me. I didn’t think I would need to consult the online manual so much just to make a basic mesh. Unfortunately, I’ve kinda noticed this with a lot of other open source programs freely available on the web.

The biggest offender in my opinion? Netflix on the 360. If you have used this prior to the Kinect Dashboard Update you might remember it being kinda cool and easy to navigate. Well the new one isn’t so much hard to navigate its the way they gutted the core features. Like… the removal of basically all other functions other then Play, Stop, Pause and Fast-foward/Rewind. There was no Skip nor were you able to restart a video without rewinding or watching all the way to the end. I mean… c’mon! Who were you thinking of when you dumbed it down so much? What made things even more annoying was now it starts everything you select automatically, this isn’t so much annoying for movies but when you want to sit down and watch a tv series you have to go in an select the episode while the currently loaded one plays. It really comes down to poor design in my opinion and I’ve had friends who have stopped watching Netflix on their 360 because of this setup.

Recently they did update the Netflix App, restoring the old 360 Media Player functions it removed. This is a step in the right direction but still I can only hope they do away with that autoplay function for TV Shows at least.

I had previously written about my fears about the turn in which the game industry might be taking because of all the rumors floating around the internet detailing anti-used game technology. One thing that I forgot to mention was digital distribution. Why is this important? Well, games that go out of print can eventually find their way onto digital distribution platforms like Games on Demand on the 360, PSN and Steam for PC and Mac gamers.

There is one problem I see with this though. Unlike games sold in a brick and mortar retail environment which prices are entirely based on demand, digital platforms rarely are priced according to the market. Most if not all games will drop in price with in a matter of months, thats the way a healthy marketplace works but digital venues don’t function like this. There is no competition from retailers to dictate price when only one distributor is available for your platform of choice. Thats not to say some of these platforms don’t understand their market and the idea of value because I’ve found Steam to be the most generous in terms of sales and deals on their content but with Microsoft’s XBLA and Games On Demand you rarely see this and when they do its usually on games and content that have sold very poorly.

The convenience of being able to shop from your couch is nice but the chance for deals and better prices will always be in the real world retail environment and if we can no longer count on the 2nd hand market for getting those games we want that they no longer manufacturer there won’t be too many choices then now will there?

This past Sunday, Jack Tramiel died at the age of 83.

I’m sure most of the younger generation would have no clue who Jack Tramiel is, he’s had a rather significant impact on the computer and to some degree the video game scene, in good ways and some bad ways too. Tramiel was the founder of Commadore Computers, the makers of the VIC-40, Commadore 64 and 128 and later the Amiga line of computers. I have many fond memories of the Commadore 128 computer. My grandfather was rather old fashion but he was computer savy for his age. He had a Commadore 128 which he used for his Geneology projects, but he always had several 5 1/4 floppy disks loaded with games for when me and my older brother would come up to visit for the summer. I loved that computer and Jack Tramiel was the man behind the company that created that wonderful piece of technology.

However… he was also responsible in many ways for the rapid decline of Atari. When he bought the company from Time Warner in 1984 after resigning from Commadore, he decided to use the Atari name to further his computer empire with the production of the Atari ST, the 16-bit successor to Atari’s 8-bit XE and XL computers. Much of the focus from then on was for the computer aspect of the company which didn’t do well for the companies game console projects which for the most part were put on the back burner. However we did see the development of the Atari 7800, Atari Lynx and the black sheep and misunderstood of the family… the Atari Jaguar during the tenure of the Tramiels (Jack’s son Sam was in charge of Atari’s game devision from the 90s up until the companies collapse in 1996). Mismanagement and being more knowledgeable of the computer market instead of the console market pretty much sealed the companies doom.

Regardless of what some perceived as his part in the downward spiral of Atari, Jack Tramiel did much for making affordable home computers in the 80s and he should be remembered for that.

I can remember back in the mid 90s hanging out with one of my friends from elementary school. He was one of the few if only friends I knew at the time who owned a Saturn so I got my fair share of exposure to that sweet little black box of 2D goodness. One of the games on the Saturn that has stuck with me for all these years was Treasure’s Guardian Heroes (Remember back when Treasure was a household name for game developers?).

Flash forward 14 years and we see the re-release of this 2D arcade action game on XBLA. Not only is it the same game I remember from my youth but they’ve put a shiny coating of HD on it. While its nothing more then using some smoothing filters and the 360s much more powerful scaling abilities it really makes the old game shine. If you had ever seen the original game you would have noticed the glaring pixelization of the sprites when zoomed in and you saw this a lot because the game used scaling very generously. As you may or may not know the Sega Saturn had very powerful 2D graphics capabilities for its time but much weaker 3D rendering capabilities, so for the most part 2D games on the Saturn were the greatest compared to those on the Playstation while the Playstation was king of 3D. One thing the Saturn bizarrely lacked was the ability to do transparencies so instead of transparent sprites they’d use dithering to get a pseudo-transparent effect on fire and foreground objects, on the 360 they replaced all of this with real transparencies in the original mode. With all that out there, you can get some idea how Guardian Heroes ran and looked on the Saturn and you can imagine with modern hardware and smoothing just how much of an improvement it is. Another thing that is new is the menu and user interface designs. They totally revamped it all, as the originals were kind of bland and boring they mixed it up here. Its a nice little touch. The generous people at SEGA have also given us the ability to turn off the enhancements which they have called Remix Mode in this port, so you can check out Guardian Heroes in its original pixelated glory if you wish.

Gameplay wise the game is just as I remember it however they have added several enhancements as I had mentioned before in the Remix Mode. Not only does this effect the graphics it changes how the game controls. In the original you had a choice of Quick and Strong attacks but in Remix Mode they throw a medium attack into the mix allowing a little more diversity in your attacks. Some new additions added in Remix mode are some new moves including air dashing, force back counters, more diverse recoveries, throw counters and some additional magic attacks for a select few of the enemy characters unlocked in Versus and Arcade modes. The Remix mode also changed how MP is regenerated to some degree. In the original casting a spell and hitting an enemy 2 or more time would regenerated some magic, in the remix you get magic from every hit you land but casting doesn’t regenerate magic anymore. One thing that Remix mode hasn’t helped is Nicole… she’s still as awkward and weak as she was in the original and I can only recommend using her if you’re playing a 2 player game or you’re just that good at the game.

A noticeable and welcome thing about this port is speed. The Saturn version ran pretty well but there was some slow down when the action got heavy which is not the case in the XBLA release. The ability to select whether you play the Remix Mode or Original gives you the freedom to choose how you want to play too which is a nice plus when some remakes and enhanced games do not let you do this.

The sound is great. The sound effects and vocals have all been cleaned up and come out crystal clear. While this wasn’t entirely an issue during the CD-Rom era because you could store higher quality sound on a CD instead of the downsampled PCM on cartridge media of the times… Guardian Heroes sounds were a little raspy on the Saturn which you won’t find in the XBLA version. My only real gripe is the variety of sound effects for some characters. You’d hear the same sound over and over again, while not a huge problem it does get a little annoying after awhile.

For those who played this game its a welcome return to a classic and getting reacquainted with the Treasure most of us grew up loving but for those just tuning in its a fun game especially if you have a friend to sit down and play with. The many different paths in the story mode and unlocking all the characters for Arcade and Versus modes will keep you playing this one for awhile. I highly recommend at least checking it out.

Many rumors have been springing up over the past several months about what the big guys in the gaming hardware industry have been cooking up for the next generation of game consoles. The general idea is the next generation is bigger, better and faster but it doesn’t entirely seem that way with the next batch of consoles being developed. Microsoft and Sony have both had rumors circulating about their next consoles having technology that in essence blocks the use of used software not to mention rumors of the system needing to be online all the time just to run anything. This is frightening to me, it seems like extremely heavy handed tactics to combat the perceived threat that used games and piracy have on the industries bottom line and I just don’t understand it. No other market is like this, no other normal market is exempt from the 2nd hand market. You don’t see the Automobile Manufacturer having you pay them when you buy a used car from a used car dealership nor do you see used bookstores or thrift shops having ‘book’ passes or percentages going back to the manufacturer for an item who’s 1st hand sale has come and gone. Yeah, the development of video games is very expensive but so is the development of other technologies and other entertainment outlets but you don’t see anti-second hand market sentiment from them. The Industry is stuck in the past and seems it can’t catch up nor does it seem to want to. Fact is, not all of us have the money to throw around whenever a great new game comes out, sometimes we wait too long and they go out of print. The only way to get that game at that point is on the 2nd hand market. See where my problem with anti-used technology is? I hope so.

We also have Nintendo. They use to be the front runner of the hardware race when they first released the NES which helped salvage the industry from the Great Crash of 1984, with each successor being a significant upgrade from the previous generation. The SNES blew away the Genesis and TG-16, then the N64 came and gave Sony a run for its money. I Guess it was around the time of the Gamecube that Nintendo started to lose its thunder not to mention the much earlier failure of the Virtual Boy. With the Wii we had a rather insignificant upgrade in terms of power in favor of a gimmick that did prove to be popular however with their future prospect we see this again. If rumors are true about the Wii U, we are going to see another console banking entirely on its gimmick compared to its competitors. The Wii U according to some developers is on par with the PS3 and 360 as opposed to being closer in power to what the PS4 or Xbox 720 will be and this makes absolutely no sense to me. On the other hand we have developers from Epic and Gearbox saying the complete opposite about the hardware. Its hard to figure out what the truth is and Nintendo isn’t denying nor confirming it. Only time will tell it seems.

As these are merely rumors… we can only take them with a grain of salt. Rumors come and go and only time reveals the truths behind them. I can only wait and see if the next generation will be truly worthwhile or if my concerns are valid or not.

Upon the announcement of this installment in the Star Wars game franchise there was an equal share of cheers and jeers. Mainly from the die hard fan camp we had many expressing their utter horror at such a thing. I however… thought the idea was kinda cool. Why wouldn’t I want to play a game where I can swing my arms and swing a lightsaber on screen and not have it be on a Wii? Fast forward to the present and the game is out on store shelves. Pretty much every gaming review outlet has posted reviews that tend to be on the bad side of the grading scale. I’m not too surprised by this and it makes me wonder if the game itself is really that bad or if it’s just the Kinect stigma that many have attached to the peripheral device that has allowed 360 gamers to share some of the gaming mechanics the Wii has enjoyed since 2006. I think I tend to see many automatically assume a game being designed specifically for the platform is going to be gimmicky and stupid but for that matter is it really just because its a game for the kinect or that its genuinely a bad game? Where I can perfectly understand this when the feature is haphazardly tacked on near the end of development but for a game that had the feature in mind from day one I think it needs to be given a little more credit. Unfortunately my views are only those of any outsider as I have yet to take the plunge and buy a Kinect Sensor but for the most part I see nothing but opportunity while others see nothing but failure and it only makes me wonder.

This week we see the PC release of 2 great independent games from Magical Time Bean, SoulCaster and SoulCaster II. Totally loved these games when they were only available on XBLiM. The significance to this post you might be thinking? Well I got the chance to help out and beta test these releases which I can happily add as another instance in the indie scene in which my name appears on a credits screen. I really have to give credit to the internet here, especially seeing how accessible it makes getting into contact with the right people. Back when I was much younger and most if not all independent game development was PC based or unofficial homebrew, getting the opportunity to help out by play testing was a much much harder opportunity to come by. You needed to be a professional playtester to have beta tested for NES games and this would extend to the end of the 6th Generation of game consoles (i.e. Xbox, PS2 and GameCube). While I do enjoy helping out independent developers, I am also seeing a trend that could hurt professional beta testers… we have more and more mega softhouses using public betas and other promotions to essentially get their beta testing done for free and in some cases… even making money off of this pro-bono work. While I do appreciate the opportunity to play new AAA titles before they are released but there really are people who may be losing their jobs because of this. I kinda hope that is not the case but it is something to think about.

As of this past Saturday I am now a certified Screen Printer, I can add that to the pile of things I know how to do now but the only difference is there’s a job involved.

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Ever since they put Xbox Live Indie Marketplace online there has been a steady stream of new games created by many people who may have otherwise never seen their games released to the masses. Of all these new releases there have been the run of the mill Zombie Shooters and lack luster platformers but every so often we see something new and refreshing. Wizorb takes the old Breakout/Arkanoid formula of block breaking and adds an RPG element to it of sorts. In Wizorb you play a Wizard who is a master of an art of magic involving… you guessed it paddle ball. While it sounds kind of outlandish its very well implemented here. The paddle is in effect the wizards wand which you use to bounce the ball while destroying bricks and defeating enemies on screen. The game follows you as you break bricks on your way to restoring a village ravaged by monsters.
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I’m testing out a new plug-in I added to automatically crosspost entries. Pretty slick, but simple.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFvrzBQjj_I”]

I’ve been a fan of the series since I first played the Shinobi games on my Game Gear and the penultimate Shinobi game for me being Shinobi 3 for the Genesis. Ever since they tried to revive the series after Legions with that 3D disaster for PS2 I never thought I’d see them do Shinobi justice again. Along comes Shinobi for the 3DS, while its not an 100% return to its 2D roots it does pay homage to the 2D games for the Genesis and Game Gear. Now, if only I had a 3DS I would definitely check this out when it comes out. For now I can only hope it plays as well as it looks in the trailers.

It was about time I tried to rework this site. So expect to see some changes as I re-work and add new elements. I hope to have things up and running soon enough!

Decided to model an inanimate object that was lying around. Wonder if anybody remembers what this is, I’ll give you a hint.. it took 6 AA batteries and could eat through them in an hour. It’s a work in progress, it’ll be cleaned up a bit more when its done.

It feels like forever since I’ve written a new blog entry. I guess life just does that sometimes, you get caught up in just trying to get by especially in the economic state of the US and the lousy job market for artists. I’m hoping to get back to the grind stone and expand on my portfolio. I guess more importantly I need to finally turn this site into something more my style and more in tune with what my original intent was. . . to display my work and my personal projects. So as we get into 2011 I hope to have accomplished a good majority of that and do it well. It might help to read up on CSS and Action Script while we’re at it.

Also of note, I’ve played through some great new indie games that have popped up on Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace (which will from now on be referred to as XBLiG on my site) including: Curse of the Crescent Isle and Soulcaster II. These games really got me rearing to give XNA another shot what with  version 4.0 of the framework being released, there is much more going for it. I hope to get around all the issues I’ve run into trying to learn C# and XNA and make a working game. More to come on that in the future.

It’s been well over 11 years since Toy Story 2 graced the silver screen, I saw Toy Story 3 in 3D just yesterday and it was exactly what I expected from Pixar, a quality movie and a quality “threequel” to boot.  I read about what it took to make Toy Story 3 and it’s pretty interesting. The original rigs and models they had used 11 years ago for Toy Story 2 were incompatible with the current software they use so everything had to be recreated for the movie, amazingly I couldn’t tell the difference however Buzz Lightyear did have a helluva lot more detail and as they stated in the article he was made up several pieces instead of a single mesh. As for the human element in the films the Hair and Fur modifier they use now is definitely well beyond what they used in the original 2 films.  Now, I didn’t have to see it in 3D but I felt compelled to dish out the extra $2 to see just how different it made the experience. It was cool, unlike some other “3D” movies where the effect was thrown on half hazardly close to premier, Toy Story 3 used it very well. On a more professional note I have to wonder what all goes into the creation of content for the Real D technology and more importantly the new technologies video game companies are going to be employer when the 3D Fad hits game consoles. I wonder where it’s gonna fall on me when I finally get a job in the industry, just what am I gonna have learn or for that matter will I be involved at all? I think it’s important to wonder these things since if the “fad” actually catches on for a while I may just be involved in it somehow.

I finished up my Annulnali character model I started months ago as a side project for my demo reel, I think it looks pretty good. Enjoy.

For the first part of my capstone an inorganic object is required, I split it up into 3 weapons for the game I want to make and the capstone is based around. I thought it’d be easier then it was to complete this part of the project but it took me much longer then original predicted. However I have finished them, except for the rather plain look of the PAK Rifles texture I’m pretty satisfied with how they turned out. The 3 weapons out of the 7-8 I had conceived for the game include:

Protonic Accelerated Kinetics (PAK) Rifle

This weapons I designed to fulfill the purpose of the token shotgun weapon, giving it a more sci fi approach as in it shoots out shards of energy instead of buck shot. I’m not as satisfied with the outcome of the texture of the rifles body however.

MKV Inferno Flamethrower

This has my favorite texture job of the 3 weapons here, I think it came out really nice however it does show the weaker texture of the PAK Rifle if they were placed side by side, I’ll have to think of what to do to make the texture better on the other gun.

Cryo Rifle

This is one of my favorite weapon concepts, a cryonics gun (a freeze gun).  I wanted to make environmental hazards in game like coolant tanks so a freeze effect would be cool to use for a weapon.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted guns to have secondary fire but I thought it’d be cool to make this guns secondary fire shoot a projectile that creates icicles when it hits a surface which you could then throw enemies into to impale them. The possibilities are endless! (At least.. as far as I can program lol)

Next up.. Characters

I’ve started my 6th and final term for the animation program and I’ve just finished the first of 11 weeks until I’m finished. It’s not long at all.

We have Animation Studio as one of the most intensive classes for the term and I’m going with the modeling track. Since Game Art is what I’m shooting for I decided to make my capstone video game based as in I’m going to focus on creating content for my game except more intensive and of a much higher poly count. Since I have 2 low poly models done I’m pretty far ahead except the plan is to undo the triangulation I did on them so I can create a high poly model with intricate detail from my existing characters to later bake into a normal map to be reapplied to a lower poly model. Seems like more work then is necessary? Well for one it does give a level of detail you can’t achieve with photoshop alone not to mention I’d have examples of low and high poly respectively. I find it exciting, I dunno about you but it should be fun. What I really hope to achieve with this capstone project is to really come up with some great stuff that an employer at a Game Studio can look at and see that I am more then capable of doing the work necessary to be an asset. I really feel confident in what I may achieve with this.

In other news, I’ve gotten some XNA under my belt, the book I acquired recently is pretty good however I feel like the author assumes too much at places, now the book does do a good job of introducing XNA 3.0 but it seemed like he jumped from one way of doing it in Chapter 2 to an entirely different way in Chapters 3 and 4 which didn’t seem to relate at all. I’m like a chapter or so away from starting the 3D aspects but the 2D parts are pretty interesting. I’ll be announcing my bizarre 2D test game in a later post. I guarantee either a good laugh or a raised eyebrow lol.

I had finished my previous low poly model with several drastic changes from the previous picture posted on my blog, I’ll post those after the jump, however I started and completed another one as part of an XNA project I want to try and make a reality. I’ve definitely gotten more competent at working in lower polygonal limits with this new one being 790 triangles (still haven’t gotten to under 600) and only taking me about 2 days to complete and fully texture. I have several other components to make but I have my image planes all set for their creation so I think i’m on track! This character pictured to the left is the player character for a side scrolling shooter from my Chronicles of Terrus universe, as of yet I havn’t decided whether to give him a distinctive name or just a nameless space marine. Depends on whether or not I can get any workable code written before I can get to the story bound details.

Some other angles and new renders of previous model (more…)

My attempt at a low polygonal character for an assignment going over low poly character construction. So far this guy is clocking in at 988 triangles. I find it odd actually wanting to use triangles since we had been taught that triangles are undesirable but they are used extensively in low polygonal modeling however if you have the ability to go high polygonal (4k+ Polygons) then triangles can be avoided. I want to add a cloak and a bottom jaw as separate objects to this guy but I have to continue to work it down further. I’ve seen people who have made working characters at 500 triangles but I don’t see mine being that low poly and functional at this point. It’s not suppose to look pretty by itself, the texture mapping will be what makes this look good. Though I believe I’m under the typical amount of triangles for a model found in a PSP game.

Lipsync assignment, I chose the chainsaw gag from the Simpsons. I decided to mod the premade rig to sorta look like Homer from The Simpsons.
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I’ve been working on building up my portfolio for character design. So far I’ve been pretty slow at it as I’ve only gotten 2 fully modeled (minus a few accessories such as hair and cloth) characters done. My 2nd personal character is the 3D rendition of the Annulnali race from my Chronicles of Terrus universe. This one unlike the Vulkanian is skinned with 3DS Max’s Biped skeletal system which I’ve not really experimented with until the Advanced Animation class that I am taking this term, while parts of it are pretty cool others I don’t like as much such as some of the ways the bones rotate or turn as opposed to the standard IK Bone system I had utilized for the Vulkanian. It does however have a built in walk cycle but it yields rather weak and robotic looking motions so it really comes down to personal preference I guess. I’ve heard the industry loves the Biped system for humanoid characters but I’ve also heard that when hiring, they usually look for people who have used the systems walk cycle so maybe it’s better that I refine my standard skeletal systems and my walk cycles.

As I’m more focused on Character Design and Construction, it’s mainly my focus as of late but the progression of learning better techniques for character modeling have slowed me down a bit but I hope to start churning them out at a more steady pace so I have a stellar portfolio to show off my skills.

I’ve been meaning to post these for quite some time now but it’s slipped my mind along with many other things as of late so here they are for your viewing pleasure (or displeasure). If they play slow lower the quality.

Note: I havn’t figured out how to create loaders in ActionScript 2.0 or 3.0 yet so wait a bit before hitting play

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As part of the 4 part final for my Surface Techniques class we were tasked with taking a model of our own creation (preferably a non-organic object) and place it into a photograph with adequate lighting and the use of the matte/shadow material to make the object look like it was actually part of the scene. Well I decided to go with my Extreme Ghostbusters ghost trap model I created previously. I just threw on a reflection map, some soft lighting, added a trap switch (though I think the EGB trap was wireless in the cartoon lol) and angled it. I like how it came out but I guess it’s not entirely photo realistic, the way the trap casts a shadow seems to work but should it be softer? These are questions I’ll need to answer when I get a job in modeling.

So I’ve been basically working my ass off on this one so I could use it for a project due this coming monday. I can say that from unwrapping this model (which took me nearly a week x.X) I know how NOT to model a humanoid character, while I’ve cleaned up a lot of the triangles, 5 sided polygons (anything but 4 sided is a no no), stray vertices and overall shape of parts of the model there are still parts of it that need work but I’m at the point where this being my first humanoid character model ever it’s probably pretty good since without NURBS or Turbosmooth it clocks in at about 4,358 polygons which is a good number for a low poly model. Now I just finished putting together and implementing a basic rig for this model, next step: Skinning, this is where I apply the skin modifier where the mesh is directly manipulated by the IK Bone system that is the heart of the rig, and the most time consuming aspect of that process is adjusting the Envelope. This is what tells the modifier whether to warp a certain part for example an elbow to higher extent then say the mesh where the forearm is.

I created this blog mainly to show off my progress which I’ve been seriously slacking on but my inexperience with WordPress has kept me from posting videos and such since I’ve been too lazy to upload to my Youtube account. Yeah, that would be easier but when did I ever take the easy way out? I hope to get at least 4 more posts in before the month is over so keep an eye out.

We’ve been covering rigging and IK bone chains in Intermediate Animation and I’ve been dying to apply it to some of my own models, well it’s not as easy as I thought it’d be. For the most part the original model had some sloppy work on it compared to what I can churn out now so that needed to be fixed. I’ve corrected the odd neck, better spaced the eyes, added a bit more girth to his frame and fixed a slew of bad geometry but the hands are probably the biggest tweak.. well.. tweak is maybe not the right word because I amputated the old ones lol. So the hands are brand spankin new and I think they better convey the bulky nature of the characters race. Now all I gotta do is unwrap this thing and my prior attempts have left me knowing it’s gonna take a lot of patience and time.. can’t say I’m looking forward to it but it’s gotta be done if I wanna apply a texture to the model.

I’ve learned quite a bit since starting my Surface Techniques class back in October. About a week ago our midterm was due for the class which involved texturing a gas station scene. This model was of questionable construction in my personal opinion with some awkward additions to the mapping and the overall design of the structures. One thing we were not allowed to do was alter any geometry in it so I had to use maps to my advantage. While this project doesn’t look as amazing as I had hoped it would I’m still proud of it, I was basically used as an example of what an A looked like in the class lol. That made my day.

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This term we have a History of Animation class, it’s one of the few academic style courses I’ve had in the program but for the most part is mainly a course where we watch cartoons from the many studios that have come and gone in the history of animated features. We only recently covered the Van Beuren Studio which besides it’s rather lackluster Felix the Cat cartoons I had never heard of before provided less then memorable fare. The stories were pretty plain and character development was practically non-existent. I was wondering when the toons we watched would suddenly be funny. Practically never. This is my general feeling for the lousy stuff that has been released in recent years like the awfully shallow flash based cartoons from Canada such as 6Teen(ugh), Total Drama Island(wretch), Total Drama Action(hmph), and this even worse one about surfing(hurls). I think all those studios still around should take a course like the one I’m taking and see what was good and what wasn’t.

Looks like I can use what I learned in Lighting Design for this stuff, so that is not a complete waste lol. I really did enjoy the lighting design aspect of theatrical design because you were essentially ‘painting’ the mood of the scene with how much light and what color gel you used, even the use of a gobo could help set the mood. 3DS Max’s standard light lister allows for quite a bit of flexibility in that respect since you can focus and color your light sources individually however I’m not quite sure if shadows work the same way as they do in real life. Possibly that is left for photometric lighting which I have not even toyed with, we’ll see when I take Intermediate Modeling in my 4th term.

This background was originally conceived as a concept for a indie game I was helping somebody out with graphics for but they decided they didn’t want something this detailed for it. I thought it would have been a perfect match to be honest.

With the release of the Ghostbusters video game (and it is an amazing game by the way), I got inspired to try and make my own models of Ghostbuster tools of the trade. So I present two of my works in progress.

The standard trap, based on the movie design with aspects taken from The Real Ghostbuster’s trap design. There is a lot more minute details then I remembered, so it took some watching lots of Real Ghostbusters to get everything i needed. Though I’m still missing some lights, buttons and nobs.

My take on the trap from Extreme Ghostbusters, while not as memorable as the original trap, it’s rounded shape and tri-winged door were a bit of a challenge, it still needs some creative additions.

I think when I’m done with these, I’ll try making the Proton Pack from Extreme Ghostbusters.

I handed in my production guide final for my Scriptwriting course today and I can tell you what a relief.. I finished about 69 storyboards which was about 207 individual drawings, it’s a very time consuming process. I have a new found respect for the people in the industry who produce storyboards for feature length films because my storyboard were only for a 25-30 min short and it took me quite awhile. Whats cool is I now have a working script, storyboards, character and environment concepts if I decided to turn it into an actual animated piece. By the way, try out a program called Celtx. It’s a script writing application and I can say it made it very easy to write a professional looking script.

I’ve loved Disney movies and animated shorts since I was little, they were for the most part timeless and memorable, even the classics that came out long before I was born. But I see a lapse in that quality, in particular.. the stuff Disney has been pumping out for the TV audience. It’s utter crap, and for the most part it seems to be promoting (and South Park got this right) sleazy teenage trends, superficiality, and a commercialism that is down right obnoxious.. What I’m really getting at is what happened to the Disney cartoons that followed the original formula that made them work? Where is the magic that made Duck Tales a timeless classic? Some more examples are Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, Gummi Bears, Tale Spin, Darkwing Duck, Bonkers, Aladdin, Hercules, hell even The Legend of Tarzan, Lilo & Stitch and The Emperors New School were good. But where are the cartoons of this quality? They are nowhere to be found and frankly I can’t fathom how Disney could not see the need to look back at these series and make some new truly memorable cartoon series.. oh thats right.. they can make millions whoring out Hannah Montana and The Jonas Brothers as wholesome family fun when it is clearly the opposite. Shame on you Disney!

It’s pretty much finished, though I may have to tweak a few things since they do not look as smooth as I would like even with NURBS turned on. Currently I’m just gonna leave it with flat shading and some specular mapping. I guess my next step would be to experiment with bones since I modeled this in the standard ‘T’ pose it should be pretty easy, though I know next to nothing about applying said system. We won’t be getting into that at school until either Intermediate or Advanced Modeling. Dunno, but I think my model came out really well for my first attempt.

I’m rather excited about my overall progress with 3D Studio Max 2009. For our final project in my Introduction to Modeling course we were to create a cartoon character. I chose to create a model of one of the characters I developed for a fighting game concept and space opera I’ve been working on for quite some time on and off. If I can pick up some more XNA, maybe I will use these in an actual game!

Well folks, I have been slacking on my blog big time. What I need is to really setup all my admin tools on my laptop then maybe I won’t be so lazy lol. I have a ton of 3D modeling work I’ve done during the span of my absence from taking care of this site. So keep an eye out.

Project 1: A demonstration of the first of several foundations of animation: Stretch & Squash.

As of late I’ve been watching my fair share of animated films, I enjoy them alot. Especially the 80’s – 90’s Disney and Don Bluth films which I hold in regard as the best that the US has had to offer the animated feature world. But lately all efforts by any of the still active studios in the US have been paltry offerings, from weak artistic direction to awful and shallow story lines. The other problem is the lack of actual work done on any of them by American studios, having all the actual animation work shipped off to some sweatshop animation house off in the orient. What we do have left is cheap attempts to cash in on the ‘Anime’ phenomenon that has swept the country.. for the most part this Americanime is awful and the only decent example is Avatar: the Last Airbender which actually paints a very creative and somewhat original story then the cliche stuff even Japan is pumping out to the outstretched arms of greasy Weeaboo in the US. What I really want to see is a rebirth of classic hand drawn 2D animation like Duck Tales, Secret of Nihm, Ren & Stimpy, Darkwing Duck, Rock-a-Doodle, etc… That is what we need.

The one thing I don’t miss about college (I previously obtained a BA in Theatrical Design) is the general education courses. Here in Art School I’m required to take general art courses.. well these would be cool if they wern’t the most redundant and boring experiences of my first 2 weeks of classes. Not that I don’t enjoy the art, that it’s all stuff I learned from taking art courses throughout High School and some of the electives I took in College. New stuff please??

Hello all, my names Matt and I’m an animation student and an artist. I created this site to showcase my work and among other things the inner thoughts of my mind. While I only just started my Animation program I thought it’d be interesting to blog about my progress along with other things in my life. So keep an eye out.