Nick's Blog.

Pass

2009-06-29T18:14:00.001+01:00

Hooray, 3rd Class honours. (i think i barely passed) got 40 marks for each module, thought i was gonna have to retake the first semester as it was really rubbish, but i guess my final project worked out after all. : )

Stuff i've being doin recently

2009-05-10T17:13:00.011+01:00

In between trying to find a job (any job oh god i need money) and waiting for my rent to run out i have been doing this stuff. Here's a few W.I.P shots from a little project I'm doing, i decided to build up on some of my previous sketches and design a few characters along with a vehicle that i could put together in a max scene to go in a my portfolio maybe.

Final sketch is a little off, but i was able to visualize the characters better if i sketched em out first, i decided to expand on the tank crew idea and make some cool 3d models and all that.

I don't usually like to post photoshop work until its completed but who cares seriously i just wanted to show of my cool neck scarf thingy. (even though its going to be obscured by a bunch of army man generic gear) also i suck at painting faces and the colours are probably all wrong.

I made a face, I'm going for a low poly approach, originally i was gonna try PSP spec and i still might be able to if i can get rid of enough triangles in the face and keep the rest of the body low poly too. currently its about a 1000 triangles which is way off.

Oh and good luck to everyone in game art 06 with they're future endeavors.

Awesome Artwork thats not mine

2009-04-16T17:53:00.004+01:00

People being painted on so they blend in with backgrounds

Check it out, the human interaction ones are my favourites.

Sketchbook stuff

2009-04-14T17:14:00.003+01:00

Thought i'd post some of my sketches (taken with camera), they are in no particular order.

more screenshots

2009-03-30T00:52:00.003+01:00

preview picture

2009-03-27T20:00:00.005+01:00

I dunno if anyone reads my blog but im gonna show some progress anyway, i like crit but i dont mind if people dont have an opinion or whatever.

still need to do some minor stuff but it will be presentable by monday, or tuesday or whatever day we have to show these.
There was lots of stuff i wanted to try but didnt get to, i've been rushing just to finish the assets and terrain, the map is still using like 2 hl2 textures and an overlay (concrete, road, and a drain decal.), ill try to get round to replacing them but i still need to Uv/texture some models.
I managed to get the 3d sky working but im not sure how to make the textures look any better.

some stuff

2009-03-18T18:49:00.004+01:00

quick post

2009-03-07T18:22:00.005+01:00

thought i'd post a model page of that wooden keep, also texture page.

W.I.P

2009-03-07T17:44:00.002+01:00

Got lots left to do!, need more assets and textures but im gonna get the shape down first.

also i am working on another map for the source engine (pvk2mod), heres a small preview picture of it, ill explain the map and post the concepts and stuff when i have more done.

The keep is one model and the turret bits break off when throwing axes are chucked at it, this is just a small section of the map, the sea will reach the edge of the skyline in the final version, its supposed to have objectives and stuff to complete but im gooing to worry about that after i finish the layout and assets.

playing with blendtextures

2009-03-03T21:04:00.002+01:00

Hooray it works, i can blend between these three textures on a displacement brush. Next i am going to have the texture assign small models that populate them automatically, you can also set different types of models to the middle of the blend were both textures are present. Hopefully it will render alpha grass on the grass part, small rocks in the middle and nothing were the mud is.

In engine model.

2009-02-28T20:11:00.001+01:00

took me a while to sort the normal map out, it was displaying all wrong because i didnt import the texture correctly,

this is in engine, the windows are showing fully transparent when i defined them to be semi transparent im not sure why.

just had a quick break at home, now back to work

2009-02-27T17:47:00.004+01:00

i have a version in the engine and everything i just need to sort out collision models they used to work but now they are all fiddly and annoying and you get verts really far away from the base model in the collision mesh for no reason.
When i was home i took even more pictures of the area and i have a good idea where everything is, im going to plonk this in hammer so i get an immediate sense of scale then build the terrain around it, i dont expect the terrain building to take very long, its just making decent blend textures that have working detail shapes rendered on top wich is a bit more tricky. im hoping to use a new feature in source that lets the auto generated alpha grass stuff sway in the wind and move when you walk through it.

towarr

2009-02-12T22:29:00.002+01:00

hallway samurai

2009-02-03T17:41:00.000+01:00

yay

2009-02-03T17:14:00.002+01:00

hdr stuffs work now :D, ill probly double the resolution when im done with the modelling as its a bit blurry, i used 512px for each side cus thats what valve use for most skyboxes.

Skyboxing

2009-01-27T21:49:00.006+01:00

Finally sorted out the 2d skybox, i couldn't get the nice hdr stuffs working because the program that converts .pfm files into valves texture format is broken and i just get the same error message,

Still needs to be edited in some places but its much better than my earlier try where the horizon was too low and everything looked wierd.

This is how it looks in game, wich isn't saying much because there isnt anything in the level to compare it against, basically anything that looks pretty close to the player in the skybox will be either parts of the level boundry or as a 3d skybox, your only going to see the really distant objects, apart from one spot shown in this screenshot where you can see much more of the background where the hill gets much steeper.

This is the panoramic i took and blended together, (cept much smaller) no tripod and bad photography made this a bit of a chore.

Robodog, Walk

2009-01-26T22:13:00.004+01:00

is that it.

2009-01-16T01:44:00.003+01:00

After working on this for 2 days i managed to get about this far into the environment project, I thought i could get a bit more progress done but the wooden decking took longer to UV map/texture than i thought. Oh well lets see what happens tomorrow :L

Goddam trials.

2009-01-14T04:42:00.002+01:00

Presentations on friday! im not looking forward to it as my environment project is barely started. (had a bunch of issues, notice my first peice of work was posted in november eugh,) Anyway i got just over 2 days to try and get something presentable for it, i took reference photos over christmas of my garden. I was gonna do the scrapyard one but the turkish/polish people wouldn't let me take pictures that week (i dunno why, maybe they dont want me modelling their precious smashed up punto's.) The project is pretty easy, i can probably get some sort of decent assets in the time i have left, i don't know about decent lighting and stuff because the max viewport isn't the best platform for environments. If only "shaderfx" didnt cost like 250 dollars and i'd be sound.
Also my mudbox trial expired and i can't find a keygen/crack for it, we probably should be provided with this sort of stuff, ill ask about it when i i'm at uni but i won't bank on getting a copy.
ALSO my crazybump trial expired, i didnt even know it was a trial i thought it was free! but no it costs $300 for a pro copy! i can't even afford the student version wich is still $70, its a shame that i can't use it anymore i tried cracking it but that didn't work, ive been using xnormal instead so not all is lost.

starting the next project.

2008-12-18T19:03:00.004+01:00

I've started planning for the main project, i decided to make an in engine version of this place.
Im using Source/orangebox engine for this because i dont have UT3, also i think making this sort of thing would be easier, the most annoying part is importing things but i found an application that makes that part easier.

its called broadway tower, its a little watch tower built not far from my house, i thought it would be an interesting idea to tackle, apparantly on a day of clear weather, thirteen counties of England can be seen from the top of the tower, including across the Severn Valley to the Welsh mountains.
i havent been there in a while but im gonna go over christmas to take a bunch of pictures. Ill also try and take a panoramic photo for the skybox wich will be the first part of the project ill do, (ill also try to make it a HDR skybox wich means ill have to edit the panoramic to fit with these templates.

The above picture is an example i found of the different exposures i need to have for each image in the template. The example image is from a tutorial i am using to build the HDR skybox.

An HDR (High Dynamic Range) skybox is a 32-bit floating-point format, saved by an application that supports HDR as a Portable Float Map. It contains enough information to allow the resulting texture to change considerably across different exposures.

I have also downloaded a program called HDR shop that lets you easily combine images at different exposures and export them as one .PFM file

hooray

2008-12-11T20:20:00.001+01:00

almost done, i know the face sucks but i dont have time to start over on it, at least all the shaders are working correctly.

bit of progress

2008-12-05T21:34:00.004+01:00

finally got the mudbox baking process down after some difficulty with uvs and stuff, starting to look ok,

the diffuse is a blank colour, just has a normal and ao, i made a height map too but it doesnt work right.

my eyes hurt

2008-12-01T00:33:00.005+01:00

i was checking out blogs and somebody linked to the shader im using, (i cant remember whos blog it was sry) david chuengs blogTHANKS

its got Diffuse, normal, specular, reflection, gloss, ambient occlusion, and two cubemaps that i didnt make,

the gloss map is just the diffuse greyscaled and i just used a high pass filter to make the ambient occlusion.

the shader i used also has a glow map section so you can make decent looking self illumination, i might try it on the brake lights or something.

over the triangle limit :L

2008-11-30T03:00:00.002+01:00

after lots of deleting verts im still at about 9500 triangles, nm

bit of progress

2008-11-27T21:03:00.002+01:00

heres my low poly (its about 8000 triangles i think)
getting close to finising this now, just need to trim some traingles so i have enough for the hat + hands. gonna play around with mudbox, need to quickly get to grips with it so i can finish this.

character project getting a move on.

2008-11-22T18:15:00.003+01:00

Decided to do the WW1 project but not make an infantryman, i wanted to do a more colourful character so i checked out ww1 french troops, foreign legionaires and scottish blackwatch, eventually i chose a Don cossack, officer from the red army.

did this yesterday

2008-11-17T16:08:00.000+01:00

thanks to carter for helping me out with the normal

W.I.P Van

2008-11-15T06:36:00.001+01:00

wireframe

render

deer thing

2008-05-24T23:10:00.001+01:00

New painting picture thing

2008-04-19T20:17:00.002+01:00

Amusing image

2008-04-18T20:52:00.002+01:00

grody

Unwittingly he trained a dolphin to kill the president of the united states

2008-04-12T19:57:00.004+01:00

This is supposed to be for that pub interior thing, doing this i came to the realisation of that im shite at perspective, i couldn't remember the perspective 3 point whatvers and just sorta winged it, i guess if you where making a map and did a detailed colour painting of part of it you wouldn't need to worry so much about accurate perspective anyway as making the model in 3d would do it for you, looks okay but it took too much time for such little payoff, i also gotta work on colouring and lighting when using photoshop, its easy to forget about things like lighting direction when your dodging and burning away at stuff then going crazy with the blur tool. yes i did cheat on half the textures in this scene,

I feel Obliged to make a blogger post.

2008-03-24T18:46:00.003+01:00

I duno why i neglect this thing so much, i guess its because i don't really like writing. It probably comes off to other people that i don't have an opinion or don't care about the various stuff were supposed to be writing about but thats not entirely true.
I've been reflecting on the past year and a half this afternoon and thinking about what i've achieved as an artist. I came to game art with .. some enthuisasm but skeptical on how this degree will actually help me in any way to earn a living. I learn't about the good possibility of getting a job in the game industry wich we all hope for and how enjoyable this would be, i was pretty glad i took the opportunity and gave up everything to come here.
I started off pretty well, learnt 3dsmax pretty rapidly and banged out some models, also my neglected 2d skill started to return i even felt like i was improving, learning to apply my skill properly was something that a school art environment never tought me.
The first year had its ups an downs but i felt i did pretty good in the end. I know im not like Teh Best Evar, but im good enough and thats fine with me.
Underlining this optimism i kept getting a nagging feeling that a job in the games industry will be a lot harder to achieve than we were initially told, but no matter i'll just try even harder.. or NOT
For some reason i fell way behind in the second year, i always seem to start out okay then make some sort of mistake and end up playing catch up the rest of the year, i think i was just lazy although at the time it felt like i just couldn't make my hands work when trying to draw, i guess i just lost the excitment of doing it and my creativity suffered.
Then i got like an F in one of the assesments and got threatened that i would have to leave the course..
UH-OHs. It felt like i was just crap at the course and there was no chance of me getting a job. But what could i do? i wasn't going to quit now and work at morrisons thats just not me, so i decided to stick at it, I still don't understand why i got an F in my 3d work as it was the same quality as some other peoples D/C grades, i never liked that old 3d teacher dude. never mind, water under the bridge and all that, it was time to improve somehow.
I got to modelling and caught up with my 3d. i also attended (most) of the 2d classes and got to drawing, i lacked a tablet thing but i was able to borrow one and got some photoshops out.
few weeks later and we started our group project wich was awesome. I was givin a clear outline of what to do and got on with it.
I feel i have achieved quite a bit, i'm a competent modeller and if you think im crap you just haven't seen enough of my work, i learn't lots more 2d when sketching i actually feel the benifit of the life drawing, my anatomy has improved tenfold. My photoshop skill was non existant last year, and now i can make some nice shiny pieces, my colour-blindness can get in the way but i like being a left handed, colour-blind artist.

I think im sorta safe and won't be booted out of the course.. i have this habit of not knowing about big pieces of work i was supposed to do and i hope nothing like that's gonna creep up on me but i think im okay.
If i was truly in danger of a fail then micheal powell should of said SOMETHING, they were all RWAAR DEFFO GONNA FAIL, now none of the course leaders seem to remember any of that and just ignore me and my work even in the presentation micheal powell just wrote stuff in his book and missed all my good pieces of work while chris went to get coffee, i just took it as im safe and what im doing is enough to pass the year. I worked hard to catch up and now i can finally draw becasue i want to and have FUN doing it.. HOORAY

Uh oh time to go my food is ready cant fix spelling mistakes or proof read this, i miss having food cooked FOR YOU haha amazing, anyway HERE YOU GO I WROTE SOMETHING THORN IN MY SIDE BLOGGER.

i was bored

2008-03-22T21:03:00.001+01:00

Sea, Air yaught?

2008-03-19T03:18:00.003+01:00

Blogger is BACK

2007-11-15T20:51:00.000+01:00

ok its time to write even more blogs, but first a quick update on the last year..

Okay first of all i didnt finish all the blogs last year.. whoops! no matter i still passed without any idea of what grade i got, Its about 4 or 5 weeks into the year.. or more i don't ever keep track on that sort of stuff and well we haven't really done that much to be honest.. okay we have "learn't" to model a character and drew our own designs for characters and stuff like that, but we don't really have a proper teacher for modelling and by now i would of liked to of learnt a lot more, tutorials only teach us so far.. at least for me, i hate the damn videos. seriously theres not much need to turn up to the modellng lessons anymore as you can do more at home without the hassle of transfering files over and finding a PC that isn't fried in the lab.. Never mind, im sure the year will get better. Unless michael Powell has spent all of our University fee to go to vegas and buy cheap hookers.

Alright i am supposed to write six blogs on creativity... yes you heard me right SIX blogs about creativity even though we already did one last year, im sure theres a good reason for this but i wasn't there when this was set so i had to ask a peer (im sure this gets annoying for everyone) I'm still unsure if i just misheard them or not.

OK watch this space one creativity blog coming up in a jiffy unless i get sidetracked and play Team fortress 2 wich is reallyreally good.
I also need to finish my character model up, Uv mapping and texturing are my big weakness and considering i had to learn it all myself i think i'm doing okay. Ben mathis is our new teacher.. our VIRTUAL teacher.

Week 21's task.

2007-05-17T17:44:00.000+01:00

Where do you want to go, and how do you get there?

I'm not really sure, one of my main ambitions when i was in high school was to get into university.. and i have sort of done that. Now im trying to learn as much as possible about game art so i can be competant at a job when i leave, im not sure what i want to do after my possible game art design job, but i've always been the type to do.. whatever and end up at places through random choices.
My ideal plan at the moment is to start a decent game art job at decent company making a bit of money, I think i have the talent to get there, i just have to fix my chronic lazyness and i'll be fine.
I apologise for this really short blog.. but i hit a writers block.. i guess its one of those questions that i find really hard to answer, i can't really answer the qeustion and manage to stretch it out into 300 words.

I think im going to come back to this post.. when i make it 'big'

Left 4 Dead

2007-04-21T16:50:00.000+01:00

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.

Task 20

2007-04-21T16:40:00.001+01:00

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..

morrowing the elder scrolls 3 oblivion daggerfall 2.. this time its personal

2007-04-14T17:05:00.000+01:00

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,

Task 19

2007-04-14T16:24:00.000+01:00

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?"

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.

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.

Sound for games

2007-03-21T17:43:00.000+01:00

Sound for games is very important for atmosphere and immersion, these days i can't really play a game without sound and have much fun, it provides one of the basic senses in a game.
Games use different sounds to create an environment, they would usually have a long sound file of ambient noise to immerse yourself into the game world and make a virtual place seem more believable with wind, traffic birdsong etc
Sound for games have been around almost as long as games have, from simple blips and bloops to full orchestral music scores, i remember the atari 2600 sounds being awesome with its primitive explosions and loud static noises. I also remmeber being really impressed at voice being implemented in sega genesis titles, with its original music giving different feels for its games.
I feel music in games is only recently been thought about seriously again, i remember the old Nes games like mario having really simple little tunes, but they were catchy and made you instantly recognise what game it was from. The Sonic series had its own original little music tunes that helped bring the game to life.
When the playstation was released it wowed people with functioning 3d graphics, but i feel the quality of sounds were lost, although they were at a higher bitrate and sounded clearer they seemed pretty generic and most games used stock sound effects from movies wich were boring.
The music was mostly thumping generic dance tracks with little thought put into them although there probably were exceptions. Most people bring up final fantasy (again) when it comes to music tracks but i listened to a few tracks and their all just poor looping midi files.. in my opinion.
However recent games have been quite impressive with their sounds and music, using full orchestral scores in games like medal of honour 2 and shenmue (bit old but whatever) and good ambient noise mixed with realistic sounds and voices in the game world.
Sound also adds to the gameplay of a game with certain noises being recognisable for when somethings going to happen, or music playing to make certain scenes more intense.
Some games have sound based puzzles, or sounds given as a indication of where to go or what to do.

Task 17 Game engines

2007-03-05T16:19:00.000+01:00

The game engine is the core part of games, they bring all the assets together and work them into a playable space, game engines make developing games easier and allows a company to easily port their game to different consoles.
Some engines come with a developer kit that allows the company to quickly edit their game and reduce cost, this also allows mod teams to develop their own content for the engine in question.
I would try and explain scene graphs and graphic engines but that stuff gives me a headache and will just end up as an unreadable paragraph..
Popular engines include Unreal engine, Cryengine, Doom 3, and the source engine, i've only ever used the source engine before and only made a few maps with it. i once had a go with unreal but gave up quickly.
Their are things called Middleware engines where company's develop programs to help developers build their game, one example is speedtree wich makes realistic trees really fast and saves a lot of time.
When a company starts to develop a new game they will either create their own engine or use an existing one, creating a new engine is very difficult, engines like doom 3 and quake have been constantly updated over the years and keep getting enhanced and eliminating bugs. Game engines are expensive but it could work out cheaper than coding one from scratch.
Subtractive and additive, is a term for mapping, it explains how a mapping tool works, in Additive the mapper starts with an empty environment called "the void" or "empty space", the mapper will place a room inside of this by making a hollowed out cube and sealing it, crazy stuff can happen if there is a leak in the box. Sky is created with a skybox, wich is just a normal box with a special skybox texture added to it.
Subtractive mapping uses one infinite solid space instead of a void and a mapper will hollow out the inside to create rooms, this totally gets rid of leaks but i find it an annoying way to map and prefer additive. Some people create their own void by making a giant hollow cube and adding bit inside it.

task 6teen, gaming cultures.

2007-02-08T15:46:00.000+01:00

I cant check the gamesutra account because you need to register so i'm going to write what it think this task was on about.
Gaming culture is sort of like film culture were different people group towards their different genres of games, you have your RPG fans who might post pictures of kittens and listen to J pop, and you have your FPS fans who might argue about whos mom sux the most or how much George Bush is a fag,online forums is a popular place for this as gaming culture is tightly bound to internet culture, the internet provides a meeting place for game fans and allows users to play against each other online, it also provides users a place to post their own creations and get feedback.

The webcomic Concerned, highlights certain gaming "cultures"
within certain first person shooter games.

Webcomics are becoming popular in the internet these days, their are a few good ones such as
PBFcomics and Concerned, Concerned is made with garry's mod wich changes Hl2 into a sandbox game where you can make contraptions and "hilarious" poses, people now make comics with it wich.. 99% of them are terrible, but concerned had its moments, giving someone who can't really draw a chance to make a good webcomic. ( i won't go into machinima.. ew)
Modifications, to me are an important part of gaming culture and some day the industry, its were a lot of talent for the games industry is found and although there are some lazy, badly thought out mods a lot of them are gems and are really worth playing, certain mods make bad games good, operation flashpoint wasn't that great until it got patched and modded up, Battlefield 2 is a horrible game on its own but Project reality really makes up for EA's silly mistakes, and worked wonders with such a limited engine.
A lot of mod teams have been given support to release their mod as a full game, such as The Ship, and Red orchestra, also garry's mod was recently released as a full game, these games are usually released over Steam.
Mods are getting very popular, counterstrike has already shown us that a small mod team can get a huge playerbase, you just need a good idea and a few decent coders and 3d artists.
Gaming culture is huge and is no longer restricted to bedrooms and arcades, games are as much as a phenomina as TV or music and will continue to gain popularity.

task 15

2007-02-03T13:43:00.000+01:00

It kinda looks like i missed a load of tasks but its actually the week 15 task and not 12 or something.

The game industry is constantly changing, at the moment we see big companies with thousands of employees releasing games, a lot of the work is outsourced to countries where labour costs are a lot lower.
Many people seem to think that the outsourcing will cause difficulty in getting in the industry, it probably will at first, but cheaper artists are no replacement for actual talent and motivation, i think that as games get bigger a lot of the generic objects (tree, wheeliebin,terracedhouse.) will be outsourced oversea's and the bigger, more challenging objects will be undertaken by game artists in country.
I also believe that smaller team led studios will be more popular as a teams vision could be created with the help of outsourcing, Some mod teams are starting to release games you pay for, The ship, Sin episodes, Portal, Red orchesra. are all games created by mod teams who moved on to bigger projects as the original mod gave them some experience.

The elements of Game Design - Gameplay

2007-01-23T21:20:00.000+01:00

As i have said before gameplay is pretty much the most important thing about games, graphics sound etc are important too, but without gameplay its just a cgi movie, as game artists its forgivable if we do a good job and the coders aren't switched on but its always more satisfying if everyone does their part.
"Gameplay" is a pretty broad concept and can be defined as how the characters in the game are controlled and how the player effects the world, it can also be described how fun the combat or tasks in the game is. innovation in gameplay is important as the same type of gameplay can get very boring, lots and lots of shooting and jumping can get pretty tiring and most people like a change, its important to have a lot of new things to do in a game, half life 2 had its physics engine wich gave you new ways to solve problems, max payne had a slow motion mode that allowed you to defeat enemies in a different way, no matter how small the innovation it adds to the fun and gives each game its own gimmick or reason to play it, the games that stand out are the ones that have well implemented gameplay innovations.

Periphials can be good for gameplay as they give a new way to control the game, lightguns were some of the earliest oddball creations and proved very popular, other ideas include fishing rods, bongos and guitars, these games were popular becasue they were different and well implemented, they were good games because the periphials worked well, although their have been some failures such as the nintendo power glove and virtual boy.
The nintendo wii is a very good example of gameplay innovation and stands out because its slightly crazy but somehow manages to work well and change the way we interact with a game, the graphics aren't quite up to par but it doesn't matter as the games are good.

Task 10, Story and character

2007-01-12T15:58:00.000+01:00

"The rain was coming down like all the angels in heaven decided to take a piss at the same time... in my situation, you can only think in metaphors."

I think i've already gone on about story and characters, but i think i have to write more even though some of it might be recycled from the last blog.
Oh well ill give it a go anyway, stories in games will get nowhere without a decent set of characters some games define the characters around the player instead of developing the guy you play as, games like half-life 2 and zelda do this and it feels more like your them, your own actions and way you play contribute to the main characters attitude. Other games develop all the characters and makes the main character speak for you, although sometimes games give a decision in what to say usually the character has its own attitude and feelings, this can kinda suck when the character lets some bastard escape instead of executing him like you want him to, but most of the time the player would rather see how the story plays out instead.
Over the holidays i had the chance to play through max payne 1 and 2, these games have a very developed story line and characters and sometimes feels like a bad ass action movie. I especially liked the way the tv stations in max payne 2 took the piss out of the original game, and also attempted to develop characters that could die as soon as you meet them (wich happened often as they usually charged ahead and got themselves killed).
My favourite characters in books and films are the type with a huge backstory that you don't know yet, while reading the book or watching the film you learn more about them and what happened before the timeline your reading. My favourite series of books is the nick stone steries from Andy Mcnab, i feel the character is very developed and you learn almost everything about him in the nine books that are written so far, i think a lot of the author is in the character and is written very realistically.
Although for games i don't mind playing as a mute character like in half life. The setting is as important as the character in games, as its a more visual experience than books and sometimes films as games give you the ability to explore and unearth things you may not of noticed on the first playthrough.

Task 9 Ergonomics.

2007-01-03T16:21:00.000+01:00

Ergonomics in consoles is something us game artists don't usually worry about, but its still pretty important for a console to have a controller that is comfortable to use.
I personally prefer using the mouse and keyboard, i play shooters most of the time and there isn't a controller that has really been any good at FPS games.
For consoles the gamecube pad was great, all of the buttons and stuff where just in the right place so you can use it for ages and your hands wouldn't get knackered.
Joysticks are apparently good for aeroplane games, i never eally tried using a proper joystick with throttle and all the other bits but for immersion i guess using these would be the best for certain games.
Arcades are good examples of finding tons of different ideas for ergonomics as almost every machine was designed with a seperate team for that area, a lot of cabinets have the classic joystick thing and a few buttons, but walking around an arcade you'll see enterable tanks with different buttons for controls, or sniper rifles you have to look through and moterbikes you have to actually get on and ride, all these machines had to be designed so that different people could use them.
i still prefer the mouse and keyboard though.

Storytelling in games.

2006-12-06T20:37:00.000+01:00

Everyone loves a good story, from films to books a good story has been used to entertain for centuries, but what about these new fangled videogames the kids are all talking about, these things let you shoot aliens and drive race-cars, surely they don't need stories.
Stories are an important part of games today, a lot more than the space invaders era, small games that are for picking up and playing for 5 minutes don't really need a plot but the bigger budget shooters and RPG's almost always have some sort of story even if it is a really cheesy one.
Story telling in games seems a lot harder than a book or a film because the player has to be a certain character and it can feel unnatural for the character who you are playing to be speaking for you, some games like to make the main character a total mute but this can look really awkward. I think half life 2 did this pretty well but there were some wierd moments when people were talking to you and you just waved a crowbar around at them. Also books usually are told from a third person perspective and this isnt possible for games as you cant be telling yourself the story and living it out at the same time.
Every man and his dog knows that RPG's are the main story tellers in games, i don't really play that many myself and most the stories are too fantasy like for me, RPG games are basically big stories with random battles shoved in everywhere and seem to keep some people happy.
To me it is important for a game to have a story, the games i remember most are the ones that keep you interested on whats going to happen next, i don't find it as important as gameplay but it is a core part of a game. Some games are open ended enough to allow you to create your own stories and your own character, these games can be very immersive and sets a story up with a setting and background instead of your father being killed by a big evil man and you have to get revenge or something.
A games setting does a lot for its story and feel, games like half life 2 are good as the background is believable enough for you to think its a real world with its own people and customs. This is created with art styles and some dialogue, games that let you create your own little stories for the extra characters around you gets extra brownie points in my book.

(Everyones going to mention final fantasy... to be honest i dont think that final fantasy 7's story was very good, it had a good setting i guess but the dialogue was horrible, i think its more down to it being many peoples first real experience of a story being in a game and people still remember how fond they where at the time, i feel games have moved on since then.)

Art direction.

2006-12-02T17:27:00.000+01:00

An art director is a bit like a film director.. but for games, he has to control a team of people to create the art side of a game, he wouldn't have much input on the gameplay and testing side of things but he does have to think about the art style and look of the game, sometimes they would be involved with the writers who provide their input on how they want a game to look.
An art director has to juggle different artists into their roles and start to put the bits together, he would also have to maintain a certain respect from his team.
An art director would have to design a lot of the art himself and distribute it to be made, he would also control some of the outsourcing aspects and meet the artists etc, art directors would have to decide what artists do what, the team he leads isn't a rabble of mindless robots to do his bidding, they would have their own opinions and styles and if something needs changing the art director would have to do it in a non critical way.
An art director is the highest position you can be in the games industry but still be creative, this isn't really a position i want to achieve just yet, I'm not sure what other opportunities there will be so I'm not going to let all my hopes lie within this position, the games industry is always changing who knows what other chances there will be. I'm not sure if I'd last long as an art director anyway as my leadership skills are poor and my time management is.. questionable.. it's like week 10 and I'm doing a week 7 blog..
I'll wait and see what the future holds, as long as i don't get thrown of the course for stealing PC parts.

Gameplay and game design

2006-11-24T16:58:00.000+01:00

Many people will tell you that Gameplay is the most important part of a game, there are a few people who go on about "Gud GrafIx" but these day these instances are rare, Gameplay, and game design form the base, or foundation of a game, sound and graphics are placed on top of this.

The old classics (pacman pong etc) are still fun to play today as they have a good game design. The people who designed these games knew how they wanted people to interact with the game environment and what made them fun even though they don't quite have HDR lighting and specular maps.

These fundamentals are still here today, but are sometimes thought of differently, games can be based on a book a film or a story then adapted into gameplay characteristics afterwards.
As technology advances games move forward into different gameplay genres, this became apparent as the first 3 dimensional games where developed, this was more significant when wolfenstein or Doom where made but i suppose battlezone opened the floodgates for the First person shooter genre.

Other Genre's began to find their roots as the first RPG's where developed, also the first Real time strategy games such as Dune where made, this gave something for developers to aim for and be able to put their own story or ideas into a certain game genre.
As money became a more important part of making games publishers kept chucking out hundreds of really bad games with poor gameplay (and/or graphics) just to make cash, games like this are still made by the bucketload today and probably will continue to be made, the only exceptions are when a games designer has an idea or talent to make a good game that is strong on gameplay and style, game producers/writers/designers such as Hideo kojima or Shigeru Miyamoto make these fantastic games as they have a desire or vision to create their game. Not only do they make good games but they end up being popular and earning a lot of money, way beyond the budget used to make it.
These days there seems to be an opening for good games as good games tend to make a lot of money. Third party developers or indie games are also on the rise, as these developers create games because they enjoy them and want to create their idea, much like the old classics like pacman or space invaders. Gameplay innovations are also gaining popularity as developers make all kinds of crazy gizmos and peripherals but more importantly new genres and sub genres.
I use the phrase Sub genres as games are becoming a lot like some films in the way that there hard to define, an example could be Deus X as its a first person shooter but has a lot of RPG elements, System shock 2 is also simular to this as it has its own level system and story driven gameplay. I wouldn't call these games an RPG or an FPS, but perhaps an Action RPG or something like that.
As games develop they will continue to get bigger budgets and better visuals, some games will become a lot like films, single player FPS's usually have a story behind them and as budgets get better so does the writing, even if their are blockbuster games that have superb storylines and mega graphics hopefully the gameplay foundations are still in place, as people won't play a game that isn't fun.

YOU'RE WINNER!!!1

2006-11-23T16:10:00.001+01:00

Writing about games.

2006-11-23T15:00:00.000+01:00

I haven't bought a games magazine in a long time but i do remember having a short lived subscription to PC gamer from 1998 to 2000, i used to love reading the reviews on games as they not only gave information on how good the game is but did it in an entertaining way, i remember feeling like i knew each of the writers as they all had their own writing styles and feelings on the different aspects of games. I especially liked reading the really bad games as most of the writers basically took the piss in a funny way.
One of the writers during that time was Kieron Gillan i remember him being the butt of most of the staffs jokes and left at some point to do a comic or something. He still does comics and writes blogs, in one blog he mentions how reviewers are overworked and rush to finish up the magazine as these days there's hundreds of games released and the developers want them reviewed. These days their are so many games released that demand attention writers find it hard to give each review the attention it deserves also publishers cutting staff and budget does not help the situation.
When writers are very busy they can't look at every privatly developed game or mod, so the good games do not get any publicity, Kierons blog also suggest how to get your game into the spotlight by doing a bit of the work for them.
Magazines usually have some sort of scoring system that tells readers what to expect from the game, most readers use this a filter and would'nt buy a game less than say 70 percent or 7/10.
The scoring system is a good basis on how good a game is, i admit to skipping the writing just to see what mark it got but reading the review gives a better insight on the game and if its worth your heard earned cash.
I feel that games deserve creative writing and at least some effort and opinion put into a review, reviews should be interesting and not squeezed out of an overworked writer, bad games should be given a good reason of why their bad, reviews can be funny, angry or even excitable as long as they broadcast an opinion and insight.

PR 0.4

2006-11-12T19:04:00.000+01:00

Project reality 0.4 has been released and im trying to download it over this internet.. the file is 1.6 gig and even though i cant play it over the internet i may be able to like.. run around as a british soldier and be superior to USMC for a while.
I seriously recommend this mod.. it takes the shoddy arcade monster that EA created and transforms it into a slightly buggy mod that still improves everything.
If you guys get 2142 in the lab then also bundle in BF2 and just .. play this mod instead of the original game like a lot of players already do.

theres also a player guide for folks to read

Oh and the pictures have been working again for a good while, thanks to my host.. who went to America and drank dole juice for 2 weeks.

Dark ages.

2006-11-12T18:23:00.000+01:00

We have already done the time warp all the way back to the 50's and all the way up to the 90's so where now?

We're going back.. Back to the future! the year 2000 where we all fly around on hover boards and drive our giant roboto man to work.. well.. not quite.
In my opinion not much drastically changed in the Ps2/Xbox generation apart from souped up graphics. Sega was the first to go down the "next gen" road with the dreamcast and at least tried to change the way we play games by having those crazy VMU memory cards and having a wide array of strange types of games. I enjoyed the small amount of time i had with the dreamcast as every other day a new fantastic game seemed to be released.
The Ps2 didnt have this innovation and just had literally thousands of crap games, (bar a few wich i dislike anyway like final fantasy or whatever) i also hated the low resolution it had and its blurry graphics although it had a nice DVD player addition.. and GTA.
The Xbox had really nice graphics and a few good games, i never played much of this console but i heard good things. The gamecube was another console that had a lot of great games, the graphics were'nt to shabby either but it wasn't very popular and game stores never seemed to have any games for it.
The generation to me seemed less of a "good games and innovation" battle than a "how good can we market these things" fight where the developer with the most shelf space wins. The ps2 won hands down even though it was poorly made and had terrible games (i know some sony fanboy is going to argue against this) seemed to appeal to older and younger players because it was "cool" it was also cheap wich is a bonus too. (i have no idea how their going to shift the ps3 mind.)
Another factor of this generation is the seemingly increasing amount developers are spending on video games, even games without film licenses are becoming very serious investments. This was first apparant to me when shenmue was released and topped 20 million wich was pretty unheard of during that time. This seemed to benifit the market(although the first time this happened it killed the market .cough. ET) as developers spend more and more in making the next blockbuster game despite of possible flops.
Im also supposed to write about the future of where video games will go and wich road they will take, but i fear i'll start writing about how i want them to go not how they actually will or something.. My idea is that game consoles will keep getting better graphics and hardware but will open up to the internet phenomina a bit more and become more "PC-like" i think Mod teams breathe new life into older games and continue their life way past its generation (half-life and mods are played more than most brand new games) mods for console games seems a bit crazy now but who knows what will happen.
Steam seems like the way to go.. (not steam engines you silly) as it is allowing third party games made by individuals to sell their games over the internet. Usually crazy gameplay ideas are too much of a risk for big developers and steam offers these potentially good games to be played.. (Garry's mod is one of them DEFCON is another..) They have also bought the call of duty franchise (*cough lab with HL2 COD and HL1 in easy to use browser thing cough*)
Anyway the Truth is that however the games industry will go its us that has to get used to whatever is given to us and theres not an awful lot we can do, if a company feels like it's in risk it won't try and break the mould too much and it won't go down that road... Business sucks.
On the bright side companies do seem to be opening theirselves up to innovation, Nintendo seems to be doing interesting things with the Wii and a few of the Dx10 PC games look quite good too, i do think that the steam client will get big or another company will use the idea and improve upon it.
Games are taken a lot more seriously now than they used to, these days games are an important part of the entertainment industry and can only really get better.. where we're going we don't need roads

Middle ages

2006-10-28T15:54:00.000+01:00

I have already wrote a bit about the middle-ages of video games in my last blog but i'll write more i guess.

The middle ages of video games to me is after the industry got up off its feet (Spacewar through to pong) but before games started to rival the film and music industries wich is about like 5 years ago to now when the Playsation 2 and stuff came out.

After pong, pac man, defender and space invaders were released Atari raked in the cash and decided to develop the first ever home video console that uses plug in cartridges, there were a few home consoles before that had a few games built in but these were expensive and unsuccesfull. Originally they had trouble finding a fast and cheap CPU that could be used to render the current coin-op classics, but then this MOS techno 6502 thing was released wich allowed Atari to push forward the Atari 2600 and make even more money.
The 2600 started to decline and the whole E.T thing happened, atari were already trying to get into the 8-bit home computer thing but the commodore Apple 2 and amstrads controlled the userbase and Atari had to realise there were other company's that could make money off video games.
During this time the NES was released with Mario brothers and Nintendo were now big in the video games industry the NES became dominant in the north american market and were the front runners until Nintendo released the Super famicom in 1989 this console pushed atari out the door and the only real competitor it had was the genesis, wich held on but never was as popular as the nintendo. During this time Arcades started to decline as equal or better graphics could be achieved at home instead of arcades being superior in technology.
The PC engine also had a large enough userbase to survive in the games industry but they were used mostly as tools, the Amiga was still popular in its newer forms.
Hand held video games made there debut and became increasingly popular through the nineties with the Nintendo game boy in pole posistion.
In 1994 Sony released the Sony playstation wich impressed the world with its 3d graphics and quickly dominated the video game market the sega saturn flopped and atari fell apart after the jaguar failed.
After a good while nintendo released its new 64 bit console the N64 wich boasted better graphics and 4 player support although this was popular in japan and sold a lot it didnt beat sony with its playstation as it was expensive and still used cartdridges.
The dreamcast was also released in this time but i feel its more within the PS2/gamecube generation than the playstation/N64 one.

Pirate balloon

2006-10-19T15:06:00.000+01:00

As you may of noticed most of the pictures arent working. I have been using an uploader owned by a freind who was nice enough to give me unlimited bandwidth and space however his host has died a bit and wont be fixed for a while.

there is a countdown on the site.

http://www.psychoholiday.com/uploader/

Space invader war tic tac tennis.

2006-10-19T13:28:00.000+01:00

During the 1950's kids didn't get to shriek expletives through the internet while gripping their favourite sniper rifle, infact most kids didn't get to play video games at all, Video games seemed pretty exclusive to scientists and Ph.D holders tucked away with their mammoth computers.
The very first electronic game was called OXO wich was basically naughts and crosses made by A.S douglas in 1952 and was only really played within cambridge university.
In 1958 a game called Tennis for Two was made by a man called William Higinbotham, it wasn't really a video game as it was made of an Oscilloscope (one of those machines that monitors sound waves and stuff) To keep people from getting bored at a nuclear power plant.
The coolest computer game at the time was Spacewar made in 1962 by some blokes from MIT wich had two players fighting against one another with small spaceships i feel its one of the most important video games as it opened the doors for later game developers to create the first arcade cabinets and home computers.
I think Pong should be mentioned as it was the first home video console as well as one of the first arcade coin ops.
Space invaders was very important for the popularity of video games and convinced companies and shareholders that computer games could be a very profitable business, along with Asteroids, Pac Man and breakout it seemed computer and video games where here to stay.

And they did.

The first video games i ever played were on the Atari 2600 when i was about 3, the Atari was a little grey box that used small catridges that you seemed to put in backwards, i remember it as a gift for my older brother who was playing the atari version of pac man, i had a go and kept dying so i hated it and went to play with army tanks and eat chomp bars.

Later i attempted it again with another game but the atari had some problem with getting games to work and instead of the title screen you got loud beeps and whines eventually i got a game to play wich was called IKARU WARRIORS.. or something like that where you had crazy music playing and controlled a little army man that could drive tanks and blow up helicopters i thought it was great even though i was crap at it and died all the time. I still have the Atari with most of the old games, it still works and is quite fun to play some Boxing or crystal castles on again.

OH man i found a picture of the cart. Why cant game developers make their cases as exciting as they used to. A Japanese man blowing up American tanks and helicopters looks super awesome to a 4 year old.
The reality doesn't quite look as exciting as the cart promised but i loved this game.

Although i had an atari and was quite contempt with it i didn't realize there where much newer consoles apart from arcade cabinets which i used to enjoy. The next console i had was a Sega Megadrive one christmas wich was to be shared between me and my brother. The first game i played on it was Streets of Rage and it was the best thing ever. I also loved sonic the hedgehog and ended up with all the sequels. i was quite sad when the megadrive died out and these rubbish looking 3d games started taking over, i kept my megadrive until we got our first PC.
We didnt get many ground breaking games on the PC but i still had some pretty cool ones, the one that influenced me the most was Half life and the mods that kept being produced (i also had a dreamcast and a gamecube within this time which i thought where fantastic).
In recent history i haven't bought many games. My PC is quite rubbish and needs a replacement video card although its quite new. Half life 2 and its mods remain a firm favourite of the time, i also enjoy tactical shooters (usually mods for HL2 or BF2) and mapping for source.
I have kept playing computer games all this time as its really been a big part of our lives as much as movies and music as entertainment mediums, although for me i never really watched movies and video games kinda took their place. Plus fragging the kid with the sniper rifle is always fun.

Zombies!

2006-10-08T17:40:00.000+01:00

Went home this weekend and bought back my old sega megadrive to play in our kitchen. i didn't bring many games with me but i hope to pick some up for dirt cheap at this store some kid mentioned. I also need a second controller as i lost my other one.

I have another map i decided to post, this is kinda near completion i just need to make the steps to the house better and add a roof to the house. It's for a mod called Zombie panic source. I need to add the zombie panic entities and guns after they release the game, but the base map can be done in HL2 deathmatch.

Its a fun mod and already has a release for HL1 i used to play it quite a lot and after i heard they where making a source conversion i had to make something for it.

heres a general descrition taken from the site.

"The basic idea of the mod is straight out of many different horror films: Zombies are coming for the last remaining humans, and the humans must fight them off as best they can. The way it works is this:

Everyone joins a server, say 10 people. All of the players but one join the Survivors team, which is the humans. The remaining player joins the Zombie team. His goal is to kill all of the humans. The humans' goal, of course, is to stay alive as long as possible. The catch is that everytime a zombie is killed, he simply respawns and continues to play. If a human is killed, he respawns as a Zombie on the Zombie team. Soon, more and more humans have joined the ranks of the zombies, until there is only one human left, facing all of the zombies alone. When the last human dies, the round is over.
That is the gameplay in a nutshell. Of course, there is a little more to it than that.."

My map called zp_surrounded places the humans inside an old wooden house and the zombies attack from the outside. The difference from any other map being the house is fully breakable and zombies soon start pouring in from all over the place, i thought this would make a great map idea. The humans could attempt to barricade the house (support for this is supposed to be in the mod) or do a runner upstairs and hide in the rooms. (breaking the staircase is always a good idea). I had a few problems with the lighting as breakable props act wierd and you can sometimes see the outline of the interior shape.

First map i actually finished.

2006-10-05T15:10:00.000+01:00

This map was only finished as i only spent about 5 days working on it. It really does need some errors sorted out like the SDK bug that makes objects fall through displacments, It's a fun little map designed for garry's mod wich lets you build things with the source engine. This map was aimed at building boats and fighting them, i also added bits of wood and other stuff you could use to make your boats better.
Its basically a giant water brush with two parrelel islands and one near the middle. I'm happy to say that it doesn't lag even on low end systems considering the amount of water there is.
It was my first go at a 3d skybox wich is more water added stretching of into the distance, the texture is a little different but i think i'd be able to fix it if i could start steam on this internet and open it.

This is one of the islands. I tried to give the map a sunny feel by making the light brighten the water at a distance.
I also added cool little bunker things you can attack boats from.
Its a pretty basic map but i think it works well and is fun to play.

Stuff

2006-10-04T23:42:00.000+01:00

I have like zero 3d max experience but i did a lot of mapping for various source mods.

I dont have a scanner to show you most of the real work for this but i have endless sketches somewhere with details of how i want everything to be. including erm "contingency plans" where like if something ended up out of place or took to much resources to run i could cut a section off and still make it playable. At the moment it looks like a few blocky buildings with textures slapped on but its the most "planned" map i have ever built.
I made a few textures of signposts and things and imported them. Somebody else made the nice normal/specular tile texture for me, although i did provide the reference.
The image quality is a bit rubbish as i just kept saving them all as default Jpegs to save time.

The Cinema is probably the only part of the map that was made after a reference photo that i took myself. It's of a derilict cinema in my town that my dad closed down becasue it had really dodgy electrics. If i find the photo i'll post it up.

Hallo

2006-10-04T20:01:00.000+01:00

Testing my new blog where i post stuff about game art and other projects that i will never finish