Something about “happy endings”

If you’re like me — emphatically not one of the cool kids — you didn’t get invited to the hottest, latest cool kids’ party, the Game Developers Conference. I guess we could crash the party, but let’s face it: we’d probably just get pantsed and pushed into the swimming pool, AGAIN. Rather than face such a humiliating possibility, let’s just stay home, sulk, and live vicariously through internet news reports.

Let me personally recommend 1Up’s awesome podcast coverage. For every day this week, both Games For Windows Radio and 1Up Yours are producing full-length podcasts, wherein they chat up big industry names. For just day one, GFW landed WARREN SPECTOR, and the lesser-known but very entertaining Paul Wedgwood, of Splash Damage. 1Up Yours featured Amy Hennig of Naughty Dog and Lorne Lanning of the Oddworld series. I wasn’t looking forward to this one quite so much, but it shouldn’t be surprising that it turned out to be a very interesting discussion.

I don’t know if this is directly related to GDC, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this . . . stunning music video produced by Insomniac Games. I always love to see the human faces and personalities behind the studio names.

Move out of my parent’s house, you say? Come to Southern California? Golly, I’m sold! Where do I sign up?

. . . Only to check their website, browse to the Careers > Artists section and find “We currently have no positions available in our Art Department. Please check back in the future.” O Insomniac, cruel temptress! It’s enough to make me redouble my sulking efforts, but how can my heart remain cold after viewing this?

Deus Ex, you always know just the right thing to say.

Mantis dude WIP

As proof that I am pretty rubbish at this blog thing, here is a post I meant to write well over a week ago.

So, only a few days after my second post in this blog, in which I proudly declared my portfolio site to be complete, I decided that this was not, in fact, the case. Specifically, I’ve decided to go back and complete the Thri-kreen mantis guy, which previously only existed as a high-poly model. That portfolio page was, I felt, amongst my weakest entries, and this should give me the opportunity to turn it into what may be among my stronger pieces.

I will take it as far as the rigging stage, but will not animate or implement it. Other 3d game artists often do the same — producing work simply as an exercise, with no specific game engine in mind. The reason is that, well, animation and implementation are difficult, time-consuming, and not always as rewarding as the initial creative process can be.

In my case though, it’s a time issue. As I complete this piece, I have put my job hunt on hiatus, and this is very personally frustrating. I’ve been waiting years to go professional — to finally gain the legitimacy of earning real compensation for what I’ve poured so many hours of my life into (my family will be happy to learn that, no, this game development thing is not just one big scam that never pays out). At the same time, there’s a voice saying, “hey, you’ve waited this long, what’s another couple weeks?” You only get that one first impression after all, and perhaps having another completed character model in place of a page of unfinished assets will tip the odds in my favor just that necessary amount.

I’m trying something a little different with the diffuse map. First, I am specifically avoiding photo overlays, and shooting for a more hand-crafted look. Blending in photographs are a quick and easy way to achieve that high-contrast grungy look, perhaps best displayed in my Gatehouse textures, but I don’t necessarily want to make games that look grungy. In fact, games may even be tending away from that classic gritty photorealism, towards a more gameplay-driven visual design. Rather than simply making each art asset as detailed and true-to-life as possible, artists would be required to ask, “what must it communicate to the player? what is the visual goal of this asset?” For characters models, it’s to be distinctive, memorable, and emotive. For background clutter objects, it’s to enrich the environments without distracting the player’s eye from what’s important, gameplay-wise. Etcetera etcetera.

Getting back to the thri-kreen texture, the second thing I’m trying differently is to seperate the light/darkness shading layers from the coloration. As you can see from the render above, he’s got mottled brown stripes, significantly darker than the rest of his flesh. To achieve this without interfering with the diffuse map’s implication of form, they’ve been seperated into different layers, and this is actually working better than I expected. Here is a look at the grayscale light/darkness layer (ignore the palette and bright orange eye).

The diffuse map, as a whole, is still a bit plain and boring, and I hope to introduce some implied texture without going overboard (he also has a normal map, mind you), as well as greater richness in the coloration. The goal is for the texture to remain smooth and creamy; visually interesting without being visually busy.

This New Generation of Virtual Combat

With the fourth iterations of both the Street Fighter and Soul Calibur franchises approaching, gamers may be asking themselves, “which Japanese fighting game is for me?” Well, you’ve really got to ask yourself one question:

Am I a chest guy. . .

Or a hips/thighs man?

SF4 shots via famitsu.com

Now, you may ask, “what if I am female, or otherwise prefer men?” Why, in that case — HA HA, trick question! You don’t play fighting games.

Naw, just foolin’. I guess it depends on whether you find Voldo or Zangeif sexier.

Me? I think I’ll just pick up Smash Bros. Brawl, as traditional fighters don’t appeal to me a lot anymore. My take is that too much of the meat of the game is tucked away behind a wall of skill and memorization. I’d liken them to a real-time strategy game. Yes, you can go through the single-player campaign, and see what all the little units do, and that’s all fairly fun. To truly experience the core of the game though, you’re going to have to learn the dominant build orders, strategies, and counters, and then try your hand against human opponents.

In contrast, Smash Bros. still has a skill wall, but the majority of the meat is in front of it, not behind it. A beginner player can pick up a controller and perform all of a character’s attacks, though they may not know how to best utilize them. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Whereas traditional fighters are just plain difficult to learn.