I for one love zombie games, i have a link to the zombie panic mod. wich was well fun for HL1, and Valve are releasing a game with the source engine called left 4 dead wich looks pretty amazing, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles most games being released has, but it looks like a really good teambased game.
check out the gameplay footage,
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/10873
It was based on the popular thing from people setting up counterstrike servers and having 2 or 3 human players against 30 or 40 bots limited to knives,
The game looks great and also has player controlled super zombies and stuff.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Task 20
Creativity... hmm errrrr
Creativity is a hard thing to talk about, it basically means to create things... yeah, well putting ideas we have into practice and creating something new, and if your a creative person you can keep thinking of new things.
In a game art frame of mind, it would be to think of new settings and characters for example, or something simple like thinking of a cool gun that changes the way we play.. (portal? is that creativity at work)
Game companies thrive on creativity, we need it to keep people buying new games and to keep games from becoming stale and boring, creative people have always been around to feed the games industry with ideas, even poor games have flashes of creativeness in them.
Creativity is essential in gaming but isn't the only thing companies want from graduates.. the quote on the vle explains this well,
'Creativity without craft is like fuel without an engine - it burns wildly but accomplishes little...'
This means that all the creativity in the world is no substitute for raw talent and technical knowhow... well a little, creativity is very important but if you don't know how to put your ideas into a media then your of little use to a company, who may already have lots of creative individuals who are talented in their field.
I think all games have at least a little creativity, (unless its really dire) creating monsters guns and characters all need to be done with some amount of creativity, making a whole new world or environment requires a lot of creativity.
In our course we have many creative individuals who will continue to suprise us, we are always thinking of cool little idea's that could go into games, i also think that playing games have fueled our creativity at least a little, seeing new idea's all the time and playing through different settings and seeing other peoples ideas on screen all help with our ability to create..
Creativity is a hard thing to talk about, it basically means to create things... yeah, well putting ideas we have into practice and creating something new, and if your a creative person you can keep thinking of new things.
In a game art frame of mind, it would be to think of new settings and characters for example, or something simple like thinking of a cool gun that changes the way we play.. (portal? is that creativity at work)
Game companies thrive on creativity, we need it to keep people buying new games and to keep games from becoming stale and boring, creative people have always been around to feed the games industry with ideas, even poor games have flashes of creativeness in them.
Creativity is essential in gaming but isn't the only thing companies want from graduates.. the quote on the vle explains this well,
'Creativity without craft is like fuel without an engine - it burns wildly but accomplishes little...'
This means that all the creativity in the world is no substitute for raw talent and technical knowhow... well a little, creativity is very important but if you don't know how to put your ideas into a media then your of little use to a company, who may already have lots of creative individuals who are talented in their field.
I think all games have at least a little creativity, (unless its really dire) creating monsters guns and characters all need to be done with some amount of creativity, making a whole new world or environment requires a lot of creativity.
In our course we have many creative individuals who will continue to suprise us, we are always thinking of cool little idea's that could go into games, i also think that playing games have fueled our creativity at least a little, seeing new idea's all the time and playing through different settings and seeing other peoples ideas on screen all help with our ability to create..
Saturday, April 14, 2007
morrowing the elder scrolls 3 oblivion daggerfall 2.. this time its personal
I knicked oblivion of a mate the other day and its actually... quite good despite its 50 titles. i dont really enjoy RPG's too much but it has a really nice environment. I am getting a bit annoyed of the 4 voice actors in the game.. Shaun BEAN being one of them eugh.
I set of to be a really evil bloke but i ended up being a nice guy characer that occasianally stabs somebody, i think im a nord or something... yeah the guys who are good with big swords.
ha theres even a small man with yellow hair following me everywhere, he even went into oblivion with me a few times.
also when im walking about randoms start to attack me for some reason, i think its because their part of an evil gang or something,
I set of to be a really evil bloke but i ended up being a nice guy characer that occasianally stabs somebody, i think im a nord or something... yeah the guys who are good with big swords.
ha theres even a small man with yellow hair following me everywhere, he even went into oblivion with me a few times.
also when im walking about randoms start to attack me for some reason, i think its because their part of an evil gang or something,
Task 19
ERgh behind in blogs again, im gonna try my best to finish the rest of these by the end of holidays and still have time to do some more artwork stuff. hahaha
Im going to do this blog like an answer to a question instead of spending ages trying to think of and introduction so... Blog go now////
"Some game companies want highly trained graduate artists and programmers. Some claim they really prefer creative individuals with a good Liberal Arts background. They can't both be right can they?"
It is important to have a "liberal arts" background to a certain degree, being able to draw is a standard, i don't think companies are looking for a fine art degree, you don't need to be salvador dali, but just to have some sort of drawing knowledge and experience.
I think companies are really looking for a talented artist that can move his skills, ideas and style to a game environment. The traditional art thing ends there.
I think that as a game art course we shouldn't be focusing on traditional art so much, most of us are competent artists anyway.. or at least should be, i know that i can paint and draw and stuff i did an endless, boring amount before i came to university. The screening for the course was to have at least an A level in art, most people would be good enough to start moving their skills into games then.
Game art is becoming more technical these days, and more computing knowlege is probably needed more than painting lessons, i can't program a thing, and i think a little knowledge maybe needed in the future, at least enough to configure an engine or write a shader, if i went to rockstar now and showed them lots of pretty pictures of tree's and canals, their not going to allow me to make assets that go into new advanced engines.
But then again, knowing proportions and being able to visualise 3d on a 2d canvas is a good thing to know as well, I think we should be learning Art techniques but applying it to the games more, knowing perspective is good, and learning proportions was needed for our advancement in games, but going over the top and doing a degree in art is not what we need.
oops i went of on a tangent a bit.. but i think i answered the question well enough.
Im going to do this blog like an answer to a question instead of spending ages trying to think of and introduction so... Blog go now////
"Some game companies want highly trained graduate artists and programmers. Some claim they really prefer creative individuals with a good Liberal Arts background. They can't both be right can they?"
Of course they can.. And i sort of agree with both sides of the story, game company's are all different and are looking for different things, it would be easier to have them all uniformly looking for a wheeliebin making drone, but that would be boring, and make it a lot harder to find a company you really like.
I think companies are really looking for a talented artist that can move his skills, ideas and style to a game environment. The traditional art thing ends there.
I think that as a game art course we shouldn't be focusing on traditional art so much, most of us are competent artists anyway.. or at least should be, i know that i can paint and draw and stuff i did an endless, boring amount before i came to university. The screening for the course was to have at least an A level in art, most people would be good enough to start moving their skills into games then.
Game art is becoming more technical these days, and more computing knowlege is probably needed more than painting lessons, i can't program a thing, and i think a little knowledge maybe needed in the future, at least enough to configure an engine or write a shader, if i went to rockstar now and showed them lots of pretty pictures of tree's and canals, their not going to allow me to make assets that go into new advanced engines.
But then again, knowing proportions and being able to visualise 3d on a 2d canvas is a good thing to know as well, I think we should be learning Art techniques but applying it to the games more, knowing perspective is good, and learning proportions was needed for our advancement in games, but going over the top and doing a degree in art is not what we need.
oops i went of on a tangent a bit.. but i think i answered the question well enough.
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