Posts Tagged → games
Friend Code!
Just to ride on the recent DS/WarioWare high, I finally got Tim to bring my wireless router back to me so I could download all of those Ninsoft games.
My friend-code is 2751 3945 0117 and my nickname is Jenothy. Please give me yours so we can start sharing games and whatnot!
P.S.: I accidentally tasted Bitter Yuck! spray this week. Yes, the spray that is intended for CATS. I’ve never tasted something so horrible and so difficult to get the taste out of my mouth. Yuck for serious! I can’t believe it doesn’t work on my cats. Perhaps I should make a microgame about it as a catharsis.
WarioWare D.I.Y. Love
I’ve become engrossed with this game/tool. I blazed through all of the tutorials, including the advanced “Assembly Dojo”, and have almost finished all of the freelance jobs. As much as I just enjoy doing it, I wanted to see more whiz-bang moments for completing the tutorials and jobs. Seeing a new record/song in the store didn’t really feel like enough. I felt like there was so much more content in the previous WarioWare games. Yes, it’s slighly unfair because this is chock full of tools for making and sharing, but I don’t have any buddies to share with yet. As a single-player experience, I was expecting more to happen (without making my own game) for these smart ancillary tasks.
Perhaps it will open up once I’ve submitted my own totally fresh “In Wonder” game. (Liquid wouldn’t fit.) I’ve also gotten into the habit of making extremely detailed sprites, which makes me wonder if I actually have some kind of artistic talent. I’ve always thought about getting a small tablet, but I never felt justified in doing so. I’m lucky to have many artists in my life, even for personal projects, but WarioWare asks you to make art – now! – so I’ve tried. And tweaked. And become obsessed with my limited palette. And patterns. And how to make the right shadow using the comic tools (screentones, if you know what I mean). I slowly went from the I-don’t-care-about-art-Player who would deliberately make a blob and two spots for a face to recreating Pikachu and Ghastly for two of the last jobs in the last batch. Accurately (as far as 32×32 or 64×64 pixels will allow me, I forget how big those were). With shading and perspective.
I’ll see if I can post pictures tomorrow. I’m really proud of them, to say the least.
Oh, about the actual game making: I have started my first all-me, no-tutorial game. It’s in a semi-realistic style. I was thinking about making sad/serious minigames. For this one, it’s a boy, alone in his barely-lit room, looking depressed. I was going to make the start command “Contemplate Futility” or something along those lines (the above has too many characters and wouldn’t fit). The music is already simple/ultra sad. I’m not sure what the action is, or if there should be nothing (no in-game response) to do. Just… the direct command, to the player, to empathize. I think that’s a shocking change from the usual lighthearted and quirky tone of microgames.
Can you make a stunning emotional experience in 4 seconds or less? …Why not?
Revisit: Why Canst Thou Save Thine Game?
Sometimes, my ire gets the best of me. I’m still frustrated by this problem despite the two years or so that have passed since then.
February 29th, 2008 on “Interaction Faction”:
I own a DS Lite. It’s a great little portable system, with tons of cool titles like Contact and New Super Mario Bros., yet there is a fundamental problem with many of these games.
Why, good people, am I unable to SAVE at any point in the game on a PORTABLE device?
What developer has the nerve to overlook this seemingly necessary feature of a gaming environment in which power off can occur at notably unexpected times? Where shorter play time is inherent to one’s commute?
Please don’t get me wrong – I can take a good Wario Ware fix like the next gamer, but is that my only option?
Let’s look at a fairly complex game with, absolutely, the ability to save at nearly any point: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Any turn in which you had character control, you could immediately save and power down, no questions asked, and arrive at the very same place in battle. Did I mention that saving is always possible outside of battle as well?
The leads me, naturally, to approach the DS as another system more likely to stay home than travel for fear that I play on my weekly commute, get through a small, yet worthwhile chunk of game, but find myself unable to save when I must depart and re-engage the world we live in. Futility at its finest.
Game developers, I beg you, PLEASE implement a save function at any time. Yes, I’ll leave out cutscenes if you throw it on every non-battle menu. We can even negotiate what time of battle engagement, if you like. For other genres, this is not yet standard!
Raise your portable system of choice high! Fight to save your game whenever you feel empowered to!
Rebirth, to Death, to Rebirth
For the next few days, I’d like to spend a moment each day rehashing a post from one of my original blogs before they all evolved into my shiny Multiblog. Today’s is from almost two years ago, back when I was still completing my graduate studies at NYU. I had started “Interaction Faction” as a means for venting my game development and design snafus, which were daily at the time. I was also angrier/more emotional about programming back then, probably because my thesis was my first serious coding project.
From May 8th, 2008, on “Interaction Faction”:
Taking a moment from my critique of game design, in an hour of desperation I offer to you my ray of hope through this epic retelling of adversity.
Death. All I could think about was how to throw my shiny UT3 collector’s box around my apartment, as the editor, just days before a presentation of a project, would not allow me to look at the properties of my builder brushes. Oh, the window would show, but you know those delicious dark gray sub-boxes? They remained unopenable, shut like a nun’s panties. Crawling around the UT3 forums proved futile until one post, one booming voice echoing:
“When judgment is at hand, delete the UTEditor.ini in the UTGAME\Config files in your Documents folder, for the righteous shall be saved.”
Well, I wasn’t saved yet – it didn’t work. HOWEVER, deleting UTEditor.ini along with its cohorts UTEditorUserSettings.ini and UTEditorKeyBindings.ini was successful. The editor was restored to harmony and joyous modding.
I hope this solution also helps those with unreasonably skewed brushes and other varieties of bizarre parameters that the editor saves for the following session… for your convenience!
Raleigh!
I blasted back from the conference on Thursday, but I’ve been in nonstop catch-up-and-connect-with-new-folks mode since I got back. Let me just say this: TGC was a GREAT experience for me, and I can’t wait for next year’s conference to roll around! I’m also thinking of going to the game conference in Atlanta in October (SIEGE), which promises to be equally, if not more, awesome.
I was originally turned off to Atlanta after visiting the Georgia Aquarium on a Sunday (around Valentine’s Day, if you must know). We drove around to check the area out, but it seemed, well, dead. If you lived/played in Greenwich Village for a few years, like I did, you kind of have an expectation of what a “real” city is supposed to be like. Walking through Washington Square Park, hearing who was jamming before I stepped into an over-crowded studio/classroom for some music tech lecture or whatnot… that was my life for two years. It was also the best part of my commute into the city from Jersey City. Anyway, we must’ve been cruising through Atlanta’s financial district or something, but we couldn’t find where the hip kids were at. Maybe it’s more of a commuter city? I was creeped out by the lack of people walking around on a fairly sunny day, but maybe it’s just not that kind of scene. I don’t know. I’m still bugging my Atlanta-prone friends about where I should’ve been exploring.
The real push to attend TGC, aside from networking in the game industry I call my “home”, was to check out Raleigh. For better or worse, I know that I need to think about where I should relocate at the end of the year. Not that Spartanburg has done me wrong, particularly, but I know that my options have been extremely limited, even as a technologist, and that telecommuting for most of my work has been an eye-opener into what I value about work. Some of it doesn’t need an office (getting to know people), but some… well, maybe some does. (You know that chit-chat when you just get in, or those conversations over lunch where you discover that your cubicle mate has the same breed of cat that you do? I don’t have those serendipitous face-to-face moments. Ever. It’s always a voice or an asynchronous exchange.) This isn’t just a matter of telecommuting, but probably a facet of being a contractor – your time is always billed, and who wants to get billed for chit-chat? You’re more of a cog in a machine than a member of the work family, which is something I miss about studio life. However, I have seen consultants in I.T. become part of the teams that are also their clients. Perhaps it’s a matter of culture, but I’m sure that seeing my bright, cheery, I-totally-love-working-in-games-even-doing-this-boring-task-How-are-you-today face would be a positive asset if face-to-face contact was more common.
Anyway, there’s no guarantee that I would gain any of this by relocating. More and more studios rely on telecommuters to keep overhead/office expenses down, so it may just be a sign of the times that so much of my work has come through that venue.
The other half of it, aside from “career positioning” or what have you, is the area. I lived in Sussex, NJ, where there were cows. Some people (non-NJ natives) still don’t believe there were cows, or that I didn’t immediately know what “exit I was off of the Turnpike.” That one is so old. Please, give it a rest. I lived in Pennsylvania for my undergrad (small school) and Jersey City with a commute into Manhattan for graduate studies (NYU… big school). Despite living in so many different places, I’m just not sure where I belong.
I really enjoyed my time in Raleigh, though. So clean, so friendly… I was just surprised. Oh, and those parks throughout the city! And trees! There’s a lot I haven’t touched on yet, so I’m planning a return trip in a few months to see if it’s where I should settle, perhaps for more than a year or two! I’ve been a nomad for the past bunch of years. I hope to change that. Maybe I’ll figure this out before my lease on this apartment ends!
I’ll be in… THE TRIANGLE.
It’s totally true! Next week, I’ll be at the Triangle Game Conference in Raleigh, NC! (April 7-8) I’m hoping to meet with studio folk to see what’s shakin’. It should be lots of fun!
Therefore, I’ve been looking up tips on networking and conferencing. I don’t know many folks in North Carolina yet, but I hope to change that soon. I’ve been listening to an interesting podcast on approaching groups at Manager Tools. I’m still pretty awkward at conferences, but I hope this will better my odds of being less shy/more sure of myself.
I’ll be late for the first day, but I’ll be there both days! If you plan on attending, feel free to send me an e-mail so we can meet up!
Reflections on Theses Past
In a few months, I will celebrate the first anniversary of graduating from NYU with a Masters in Music Technology. It will also be my thesis’ first birthday.
I recently read over both my undergraduate AND graduate theses. Yes, both. I did them a day or so apart, and took notes during the entire process.
The writings appear to be worlds apart. My undergraduate work is stuffy; it doesn’t sound like me writing, perhaps more like a professor or two being channeled as I pushed that project out the door. My graduate thesis – although under greater technical restraints – reads as more relaxed, conversational dive into a niche audio programming/designing topic. I’m glad to have a “professional” outlet for my thoughts (this blog!), and to see that my writing style doesn’t pass away with my last thesis.
Anyway, back to the recent thesis, which has raised a few questions about how to proceed in my non-freelance, non-otherpeoplework life:
- Working with Flash, Java, and Javascript concurrently isn’t wise. It worked in most browsers for the most part, but it’s begging to break if I’m not babysitting it every time a new major browser is released or something changes with one of the three languages.
- Flash or Unity? I’m still torn on which to develop side projects in seriously. I’m always working in Flash, but after developing two simple games in the medium, I’m not sure that it’s the way to go anymore.
- JMSL and JSyn have my hands tied. Moving solely to Flash or Unity makes using either library quite difficult, if not impossible. Therefore… should I consider translating the aspects I like into a new audio library? Unlike these existing libraries, I could gear it towards the specific needs of a reactive or interactive soundtrack.
- If I make a new library, I will also need MIDI supported tools to quickly import composition ideas. This, to me, is a must for getting what I want working/out the door in a reasonable amount of time. I’ll be making these tools myself, though, on top of whichever methods I develop.
I suppose these are the big questions I need to pan out for the near future. I’m feeling better about taking a break from my thesis/kicking myself about the millions of things I didn’t solve with it. It’s easy to get lost with so many different kinds of technology coming about every day. Dare I say it… there may be too many imagined possibilities, freezing the average sound designer in an icycle of indecision.
Revisiting/Learning
I suppose there comes a time when every Master’s degree-wielding warrior wants to take their thesis and burn it to a crisp. I think I may be beyond that point, though, so a revisit may be in order.
My thesis was an audio engine that used Flash, Javascript, and Java all at once… on one page! Essentially, there was a very smart Java library that I wanted to use, but I wasn’t savvy enough to port it into Flash. On the one side, it was better for Flash – no slow-downs due to processing my crazy sound layering/grouping/composition demands, but on the other… well, let’s say that testing wasn’t pleasant. It eventually worked, but it’s not ideal to have multiple conduits between your game and the sound that sound be occurring at about the same time.
In other words, I felt like my thesis was scrappable not long after I completed it. In the future, I don’t know if I want to gear an audio engine like the one I am envisioning towards Flash or, well… Unity.
Yes, Unity. I’m trying to pick that language up in my “spare” time. There’s a possibility that a certain artist I know will create gorgeous 3D objects if I make a game that is ready to receive it. I know this is possible in Flash, but I’m already seeing full-screen 3D browser games in Unity that have me floored. Gorgeous rendering… in a browser. I almost can’t handle it.
In a totally different area of my brain, I also completed an undergraduate thesis in Greek music theory a few years ago. I think it’s worth looking over that for some usefulness, too.
