Lacking a Name

ChoW Catchup #4 - "Devil's Advocate"

2010-11-17T17:11:00.002Z

The latest ChoW brief, this time we have a demonic description.

Brief:
Mortimer, The Devil's Advocate
NON-HUMAN

If the Devil had a Lawyer, Mortimer would be it.

Closely related to Succubae, Mortimer is an asexual minor deamon who’s will is that of it’s Overlord. Sent to parlay delicate matters of Spiritual Ownership, Soul Use, Spiritual Development and Management, Theological Planning and Soul Collection, Mortimer is a cunning negotiator and loves what he does because he is very, very good at it. And thinks it's fun watching people squirm.

But what Mortimer would love the most is a glass of ice water

***

I do seem to have drifted from the brief slightly, but on the basis that some of the descriptions could go either way - the related to a succubus bit ended up with me wanting to make "Mortimer" more female than the "asexual" bit of the description - I tried to go for female facially, but nit explicitly gendered in body.

Conceptart.org ChoW Catchup #3 - Transdimensional Dragon Hunter

2010-10-20T00:13:00.003+01:00

Number 3 of these paintings.

Serren, Transdimensional Dragon Hunter

Serran is human, but from an alternative dimension, so there’s some oddness about her that you can’t quite place.

She is controlled, manipulative, treacherous, vile, cunning, a murderer and a technophile, loving all sorts of technology with a special love for Jules Vernish mechanical aparati and gadgets. She views pretty much everyone else as a tool of some sort to be used or exploited for her own ends, including her employers.

Physically, she’s roughly about mid height (about 5 ½ feet), slight of build, with pale skin, though not albino. Her features are not ugly, but not unpleasant to look upon either. She typically wears an authentic WWII American Bombardier’s Jacket, and often wears a necklace or belt made from dragon teeth (small ones).

Conceptart.org ChoW Catchup 002# - Fantasy Human Merchant

2010-10-17T21:42:00.003+01:00

My second catchup, I added in a pack animal to give a better impression of him being a merchant of sorts although its a bit rushed so as to not be spending too much time on it.

Character Type: Merchant
Setting: Fantasy/Sword & Sorcery/Conan-esque
Race: Human

Aderillin SeVinis leads the nomadic life of a caravanning merchant. Born and raised among the caravan, he has spent his entire life traveling along the string of city states that dot the Imperial highway from Ighn Hall, the seat of the Teldariam Empire to the Ulder Hills where the vast underground dwarven cities of the hill folk are – a journey some two and a half thousand miles one way – more than a year travel time for him and the caravan he travels with.

As a man, Aderillin is stocky, though not overweight, around 45 with darkish hair and a full beard. He dresses according to his station, marking him as a merchant of the Teldariam realm, and so allowed certain privileges, though these are never discussed. At present, he has no family, but does often share the road with another trader friend, Kaldan of Ciric, a tall man of exquisite intellect and a bard by trade. Good friends for longer than either can remember, the trips the two share together are recalled fondly and often. Aderillin is known in the caravan for his steadiness in most situations, fair trading, and even voice. Rarely coming to an anger, many come to him to settle petty disagreements. He is not terribly imaginative, but is reliable, and therefore trusted by his peers.

Aderillin specializes in dwarven wares – the best of any make. As a tradesman, he knows his clients and customers equally well, and has a keen love of the goods he hauls – how could he not? Dwarven goods rival all in craftsmanship, detail, beauty, and value.

Aderillin harbors a deepening dislike of the Kings Guard, as of late their interest in dwarven goods has increased, and, not surprisingly, have the bribes he has to pay for smuggling other… items. But then, slavery in the empire has always been judiciously ignored, for the most part.

Conceptart ChoW Catchup #1 - Urban Corsair

2010-10-15T22:33:00.004+01:00

Looking at my work recently, I thought it's probably time to put some effort into my characterwork, both from a drawing and design perspective, it tends to get a bit neglected as living in a village means I don't necessarily have models readily to hand for practice.

So, the plan is this: to go to the ChoW (Character of the Week) Challenge on Conceptart.org and try and do all the challenges starting from the beginning, although in a quicker timeframe, no more than a few hours per painting rather than the considerably more that the contest usually runs on the scale of.

So, ChoW #1 is this:

" Jennifer “Jumper” Rheesa, 18-25, Near Future Distopian “Urban Corsair”

:: Description ::

Jumper is a Parkour master thief and leader of her local urban corsair band. She is charismatic and outgoing, but can become emotionally detached without warning. Perfering to outsmart rather than kill her opponents, she is not afraid to use violence when needed and carries a homemade katana, crafted from scrap metal, to help enforce her will among rivals and enemies. She is often tired, dirty, hungry, and worried for her small band of corsairs. They may be urban pirates, but they’re also her tribe."

Hopefully the next entry will be up in the next few days, and over time hopefully improvements will become evident.

Making Characters History and Neverwinter

2010-08-30T12:16:00.005+01:00

I'm not sure what bought this essay on as such, just that I've run into the subject a few times in the last few weeks and it struck me as an interesting subject. The basic principle, is that in a work of fiction, if after one episode, issue or entry to a series, you have a significant time gap within the setting between the two, the one set before becomes historical and in some ways part of the setting, but to achieve that you end up sacrificing most if not all of your characters to dying in the gap between.

The most famous example I can think of off the top of my head is Narnia. While it's a slightly odd case in that the real world children function on a different timescale to Narnians and Aslan is decidedly timeless, the characters that live in Narnia are all usually dead later on with the odd exception of Reepicheep. Prince Caspian appears as a boy in the book in which he is a titular character, is a few years older in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but then, in the Silver Chair, he is an ancient man on his deathbed. Even more extreme is how the great court of Cair Paravel that the children had been Kings and Queens of is an ancient forgotten ruin when they next visit Narnia during the events of Prince Caspian. There is the interesting contrast that something we have been reading as "current" five minutes ago is now ancient history.

This is more pronounced when there are no timeless or time detached characters present. Terry Brooks Shannara Novels and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books both have significant gaps between the groups of books. Now contrasting this with the Narnia books we have the sad realisation that that essentially means that between the stories every single character you've grown to associate with has died. Some of them die within their own stories, some (like the protagonists of my favourite Mercedes Lackey book - the Black Gryphon) just tail off into some ambiguous future where their specific fate is never mentioned, yet their lives were so distantly behind the present that you are pretty certain they died a millenia or so a go related to the most recently set story. Shannara is in many ways worse because it eventually ties in to our time and it's a lot more heavy handed with mortality within the stories themselves. Only about one character off the top of my head actually gets to be a protagonist of two sub-series.

The plus side is that with such large gaps in between, creating a broad history by itself becomes unnecessary - previous stories become that history and define the present in the same way that real world history defines the present. This is also quite interesting as with newer iterations you have much more material to define your world and with every entry the world gains more nuance which you'd struggle to fit comfortably within a single story without it sounding like a novel about a history lesson.

I actually ended up using this technique recently in the latest iterations of an forum RPG series I created. The original was a bit of an exercise in silliness with the players gratuitously travelling about and fighting some evil "Lords" and semi intentionally helping another character rise to absolute power. The second never really went anywhere, but was dealing with a great menace of evil power that was seeping into the world a few hundreds years after the long reign of the ascended character of the first disappeared. They were only vaguely in a consistent timeline with one another, and the gap between them was mainly supposed to just offer a blank storytelling slate.

However as I recently decided to create the third entry to this series I saw ways to tie the third entry into the previous two while still being an independent story in its own right. The first became, retrospectively the closing days of a great war of unification and the second, abortive though it was, became about the world as it collapsed into feudality and disorganisation after having become over reliant on the Lord who had taken control in the first. The third now becomes a story about a villain trying to take over the world using the powers of that ancient lord thousands of years ago. Admittedly its not Tolstoy, but with the grounding of the previous stories it means the most recent one flows better - things weave together more satisfyingly and concepts don't have to be explained constantly. Effectively, each iteration further cements the world in its own reality - it's history is further defined, which is a very useful tool.

I suppose you could argue that it takes place to some degree in any medium with the slightest bit of continuity... *technically* episodes of Neighbours are affected by episodes on Neighbours from years ago (if only in determining the dozens of dead characters!) but it's not the same. But it's not quite the same in that its very much a small section of the world rather than global history.

In games however, I think it becomes particularly interesting - unlike books you can to some degree let the players themselves define that history - in a self run RPG such as the forum one earlier, or indeed any other one, you can let the players themselves define what becomes history. If you then follow it with a sequel where the reprecussions of the original are strongly visible it is potentially a strong tool to give player interest to the world. It's of course harder to do such a thing in computer games because that requires finite number of choices and relatively similar reprecussions to avoid a massive hassle at programming, but even so it does raise some interesting possibilities even if the game is more or less linear. Perhaps importing data from previous games, even including character appearances to put little pointers into the world to be explored. It might seem a lot of effort, but it'd probably be very fun.

On the flip side, what I don't particularly care for is "blank-slate" timeleaps. If you are going to utilise an established setting, say for example, the mythical land of Ipswich, what you don't want to do is suddenly say, now it is a hundred years in the future, Ipswich is in ruins, and everyone is dead, monsters patrol the streets and all the ancient lore of Ipswich is forgotten. There is of course some merit to the concept if you handle it well, but you are risking casting away a powerful tool if you ignore all the existing legends of Ipswich and don't hint at them. Name dropping events the player might have taken part in in other games is an easy way to give people a quick buzz of "I knew them!" or "I did that!" because realistically, if done well it can work as a pat on the back for those players of previous games by reminding them of past experiences.

Which brings me to Neverwinter Nights - 2 was good for this in that it not only managed to reference characters from the original (Fenthick, Deekin, Nasher) but also dropped names relating to Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. If it had just managed to get some Icewind Dale references in there... But the neverly announced "Neverwinter" seems to be gambling a bit here. Admittedly, its the fault of Wizards of the Coast who moved the Forgotten Realms setting forward a hundred years anyway, but when you move that into a sequel to a successful game series it means that pretty much everyone human of the slighest familiarity is going to be dead. A single generation gap sure - it worked well for Icewind Dale II where you'd meet men who were children in the original, or longer, so that the historical ramifications of the first two games can be seen. A hundred years for a fantasy setting is really just in the awkward position between people being alive and history having formed.

I hope I'm wrong and it's going to contain plenty of references to the original and perhaps even the other Forgotten Realms games as well as playing brilliantly, having an intelligent story and otherwise just being a good game. However, at this point I remain apprehensive...

Speed Painting Reboot 23 - Agent

2010-07-28T23:36:00.004+01:00

This definitly falls into the category of "sounds good on paper". Realistically, doing this as anything more than a speedpaint would want some kind of reference, and then you could do some kind of really nice low angle shot of the face with the figure above. For practical purposes, I had to be a lot less ambitious and even with that I really don't have enough knowledge of corpse dynamics to make it work as well as I'd like.

Reboot:

2008 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 22 - Bones

2010-07-19T15:16:00.005+01:00

You may note that in this case there are three pictures: the first is the original, followed by a reworking of the same picture. The top picture is the reboot, and based more on the second picture than the original. It's not quite as detailed as the middle picture given that the middle one took nearly 2 hours in total.

2010 Reboot:
2009 Remastering:

2008 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 21 - Hat

2010-07-17T15:36:00.005+01:00

The original painting here is one of my favourite speedpaints - but it is more or less a direct copy of a photo (although the background figures are added in) With the new painting I decided to keep the background, but I decided to make it focus on the figure and thus the hat, so it actually fulfills the subject of 'hat' more.

New Painting

2008 Original Painting:

Speed Painting Reboot 20 - Tree

2010-07-03T16:03:00.004+01:00

Both of these paintings are essentially based on the same photo of a forest in Japan in autumn. I originally selected it just because I really liked the colours. Both are impressionistic, but for me the most interesting thing is how much less scratchy my style has become (see also: fire) in the last two years. This is probably the kind of painting that I could sit working on indefinitly though, so for a finite time limit, relativly pleased, even if the broader frame means this lacks some of the colour complexity of the original.

New Painting:

2008 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 19 - Beam

2010-07-01T10:43:00.005+01:00

I can't particularly remember the original idea behind this character, beyond that I wanted to do a secret agent sort of thing. Decided against doing that much to this one beyond just doing it better - given a bit more time I'd probably try and make the outfit slightly more distinctive.

Reboot:

2008 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 18 - Supervillain

2010-06-30T19:33:00.003+01:00

This has proved to be the most difficult one so far - this image below was the third attempt at a reboot. Then I realised why. The original speedpaint ended up taking 3 hours. Now, while I could probably roughly replicate that scene in an hour, for the new version to actually design a semi interesting costume AND a nice background was a bit less practical in my hour time limit.

The original image was a mixture of the concept behind "The Raven King" character refered to in the book Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (good book incidentally) and imagery from Neil Gaiman's Sandman. The new version ended up using a photo of me standing on rocks from Cornwall last week as reference, and went less with the pale wraithlike colours and more with that of someone who is exposed to the elements.

I'm kind of glad this is over and done with so I can get back into the swing of the daily paintings!

Reboot:

2008 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 17 - Secret

2010-06-07T12:48:00.004+01:00

The original here is easily one of the worst speedpaints I did. Just generally sloppy, I seem to recall I just couldn't get into it that night. Despite that, nothing massively wrong with the composition, although I can't work out what that thing in the bottom left was supposed to be. Kept the same composition but did it in a more painterly style. I have to say, if nothing else I'm feeling increasingly comfortable with Painter since starting the reboot. Not perfect, but a vast improvement.

New Painting:

2008 Original:

Daily Concept Series 1: 4 - The Wysse

2010-06-06T21:53:00.003+01:00

Now for my fourth in my daily concepts. Decided to try and attempt some Justin Sweet kinds of painting technique. Here we look at the other sentient race found in Alvic. The Wysse. The idea being to try and get in a near-human species to be a mixture of neanderthal parralel species and oppression of indiginous peoples, combined with a fear of these people as monsters.

The Wysse are native people of the northern lands. They are claimed to be closely related to humans by some southern scholars, although this fact is considered heretical by most nations, and by both denominations of the Church, both Old and New. Furthermore, there is massive theological debate amoung the more structured denominations as to whether they are classed as humans and thus have souls, further complicated by the existance of half human, half wysse hybrids. Their name is claimed to originally come from the old name 'Wood-wise', a name that came from an ancient reputation for excellent wood-craft.

They are naturally larger than humans, averaging at over 6ft tall. They are also far more muscular and heavier set than humans. This is generally considered to be an adaptation to protect them to a slightly more omnivorous lifestyle than humans. They also have thicker bones, most notably their thick brow. They are however most reknowned for their 'tusks' which because visible in teeange years in both genders, and are actually just enlarged encisors. Their hair is also thickerthat human hair, and is hollow, providing it with insulating properties, although in most cases this results in their hair taking on a slight green tinge through algae. They are just as intelligent as humans, and though relatively primitive in modern times, archaelogical evidence points to organised civilisations in the past.

They are the original inhabitants of the entire continent, although now pushed to the far West and North of the continent since human's arrived two thousands years ago. In the South they were pushed back, and eventually became considered as monsters. The last native Southern Wysse were hunted down and paraded as slain monsters before frightened peasants. They are more tolerated in remote places, if not because actually liked, because they are too dangerous to actually go against. However, there is a very definite stigma against them in many places, and calling them names such as 'Trolls' and 'Goblins'.

Wysse live in the area around Alvic, and do small amounts of trade with the people there. Though Alvic is generally quite liberal in it's approach to Wysse due to it's leadership, there is a not insubstantial anti-Wysse faction.

Speed Painting Reboot 16 - Revolution

2010-06-06T15:27:00.003+01:00

Here we have moved into the first speedpaint originally done in 2008. I seemed to be going for a semi-russian propaganda, semi actual scene sort of look. Frankly, its a very messy thing. I decided to go forward and try and produce a fully propaganda looking thing. It turns out that despite the simple look, it's incredibly hard to do on computer. Might possibly be easier if done by watercolour by hand rather than digitally.

New Painting

2008 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 15 - Antihero

2010-06-06T00:18:00.002+01:00

The original painting here has dire anatomy and posture, but the trench-coat clad masked figure was fun enough. I dropped the flaming green fist thing that was going on on the basis that it didn't really match the colour scheme I'd started with, so ended up with a much more Question/Rorschach kind of vibe than it started with.

New Painting

2007 Original

Daily Concept Series 1: 3 - The Shearwater

2010-06-05T14:55:00.004+01:00

A few days gap there I'm afraid, hopefully I'll get this back up to speed from now on.

The Shearwater is perhaps one of the most important things keeping Alvic alive. It is one of the two largest ships which supplies Alvic, along with the slightly smaller and newer Grey Serpent. The Shearwater itself is approaching 150 years old - however, at this point virtually no part of the ship is entirely original. This is because the route to the North Shores is not profitable enough to afford buying new vessels. The ship carries a crew of six.

The Shearwater brings vital supplies to Alvic and the other settlements on it's trade route. Though Alvic can survive on it's own food for prolongued periods, the most noteable import is grain, used for making bread, which the climate in Alvic doesn't support on it's own. Steel and iron are also major imports, as is beer. It also brings the occasional passenger, ranging from independant traders to occasional mercenaries and adventurers.

Imports to Alvic are however not where the largest amounts of money are made. Infact, generally speaking the imports are only profitable in that they fuel exports. Alvic has a tin mine, and with that as a relativly scarce commodity it is very valuable as a result. Other exports include Cairn Bee Honey, native artifacts (jewellry of such is particularly popular in Southern courts) and mother of pearl.

Damselflies

2010-06-03T23:11:00.004+01:00

I really don't do enough macro photography. Especially of invertebrates and the like. A walk with Megan yielded loads and loads of damselflies, and weirdly, only one of them was the normal turquoise blue one. Here we have the rest of them. The first and last I'm particularly pleased with, just how you can see all the detail in them.

Speed Painting Reboot 14 - Sliding

2010-06-01T00:18:00.003+01:00

Never did particularly care for this one. Another ArtRage piece. The idea being it was a sun deity in who carried the sun on their back and it would gradually slide down over the course of the day, and need to be picked up again at night. Pretty tenuous I know. I decided to switch the new version to female on the basis that I'd only done the ruin one recently and decided to get some variety.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Daily Concept Series 1: 2 - Ythmir

2010-05-30T23:46:00.005+01:00

The second in my daily concept series, I bring you a look at religion in Alvic. Again, same CGTextures paper background, and done in speedpaint.

Ythmir is the primary deity of both of the main religious groups of Alvic. It's worshippers, of either denomination are known as Ythmirites. Belief in him or variations of him stretch back as far as most historical texts cover. His worship is divided amoung the 'Old Faith' and the 'New Faith' with vastly different interpretations of his as a being. The Old Faith is the primary version found in Alvic, whereas the countries to the south lean more strongly towards the New. There are infact subdivisions amoung each Faith, generally revolving around the comparative merits of the core Five Saints both Faiths share.

Ythmir himself is generally portrayed as a lean old man shrouded in a blue grey cloak, with a hood covering his eyes and carrying a plain staff. His symbol is the Sea Serpent - representative of Storms and the power of the Sea and it features in various religious symbols of him from both faith. Though there is no particular official symbol for him, New Faith serpents tend to be consuming their own tail to represent the cyclical nature of Nature.

There are a few core similarities between the two Faiths. In either, when someone dies, if they have lead a virtouous life they are able to rest in peace. If they haven't they are doomed to spend eternity seated in his Cold Halls in misery. The New Faith however is generally far more forgiving in the terms - the Cold Halls are a purgatory rather than a Hell, to be worked off as you are given time to repent. Both Faiths worship numerous saints, and while some saints differ, both agree on the core five. These five each represent living perfect lives by the tennants of the faith.

The 'Old Faith' is a more primative incarnation of his worship, where he is a single powerful deity with control over natural forces. Most specifically he is associated with Cold, Death, Damp, Storms, the Sea, Winter and Despair. He is a semi-adversarial figure, who, while not always actively hostile to humanity, doesn't care whether it lives or dies and revels in destructive forces. The rules are more dogmatic than the New Faith. The Old Faith Saints are much darker stories and generally end in unpleasant ways, despite the Saint themselves remaining virtuous throughout. These figures are looked on as the examples that other can follow to avoid the Cold Halls but not strictly celebrated in their own right. Celebrations of the days of their deaths are generally marked by acts of prayer and attemptive atonement.

The new faith is probably founded on the basis of many generations of southern monarchs and rulers trying to reduce the direct power of the Church. It is now the primary religion over much of the World, although the further from 'Civilization' one gets, the less prevalent it becomes. Ythmir of this faith is more sympathetic, while he is still generally a cold remote figure, Winter and Storms are seen as part of the natural cycle rather than any maliciousness on his part. He can also be occasionally moved to small acts of kindness by particular acts of kindness. The stories of the Five Saints are much lighter and less tragic than in the Old Faith. The saints are also far more popular, with celebrations and festivals held in their honour on the days of their 'ascention'. The New Faith places less importance on mass ritualistic prayer, and more on personal prayer.

In Alvic, Old Faith to New balances at about 70% / 30%.

A related figure is Hrothmyr - a Native deity and folk hero with many similar features. It can be assumed that all three eventually came from the same route.

Speed Painting Reboot 13 - Cow

2010-05-30T19:03:00.002+01:00

The original cow painting was a rather ghastly affair with no reference meaning it ended up not looking like a cow. This remake is done directly from reference, on the basis that when looking for reference it was just a really cool photo. Ran out of time for a decent background though.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Clean Out

2010-05-30T12:20:00.002+01:00

Just to let you know, I've decided to go through all my old posts and weed out all the older pointless ones. If this blog is going to be attached to my professional site, I should at least vaguely try to make it semi-respectable!

Apologies to anyone who is actually going to miss the waffle posts. Reviews, essays and speed paint stuff will stay, but I'm probably going to ditch a lot of Uni tasks and the miscellanious ones. I don't think anyone will really miss them. I think most will still be on facebook anyone if you really care.

Daily Concept Series 1: 1 - Cairn Bees

2010-05-29T16:39:00.005+01:00

I decided that as I've felt that my speedpaint reboots were doing really well, I'd start up doing a second daily speedpaint challeange. The basic idea of this is that each day I'll do a speedpaint as concept for a setting. This can be creatures, objects, characters, environments or whatever. I've yet to decide how long each setting will last, but probably either one or two months. Along with the speedpaint itself I'll do some in world detailing of the facts and significance of what it is. The idea is to build a setting which holds together in all regards and to practice my painting skills further. Also, I'm going to try and present it as it it's a sketchbook by someone new to the setting and making notes of things they've seen. Just because it's slightly more fun that way.

Paintings aren't going to be as rigidly timed as the speedpaint reboot (which aren't *that* rigidly timed anyway) but are going to be done in anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours. No massive long works unless it really looks like it warrants it as it's going.

Paper texture from Cgtextures

The first setting is one I've been toying with for a while - it essentially boils down to a fantasy western setting in a far northern settlement. Yes it is heavily influenced by Icewind Dale. In a much more low magic world than Faerun. No massive convoluted pantheons of active deities, only two sentient races, no traditional monsters in the surroundings. Just a settlement on the edge of a far northern coast which only ever survives by the skin of it's teeth. I'm calling this little backwater Alvic. Bonus points for anyone who can find out how I created that name.

Our first page we are going to look at a native creature. The Cairn Bee.

The Cairn Bee is one of the most essential creatures to survival in Alvic. Only visibly active in the 4 month period in Summer when it's hot enough for the snows to fully melt and flowers to bloom, the rest of the year. At the end of this four month period all the workers die, and leave only the flightless tunnellers, which behave more like ants than bees.

Originally a dweller of cliffs and scree slopes, it get's it's name from frequently making nests in the man made cairns that are regular features along the paths between settlements. It creates a hive in the space between the stone - the tunnellers filling in the crevies with earth if not already present.

It's importance is two fold - it's the primary pollinator of flowering plants in the north. There are other species present but are much less common. This means that many staple foods depend upon the bees. Secondly, they will generally make a nest in cairn within two years of its construction, and therefore it's very easy to encourage wild nests. Their honey is tricky to harvest and can only be done so in summer as it requires dismantling the cairn to get to it, but is well worth it. In ideal circumstances, a bowl shaped cairn will be made, filled with sandy soil and a large flat stone placed across the top. This means that just removing the single top stone will inevitable give access to the combs.

The honey is a major export of Alvic, albeit in relatively low quantities - it has a rich and very slightly bitter taste that is popular in the courts to the south as a glazing for meat and for deserts. The locals use it as one of their most readily available sweeteners, and most households will build at least one cairn to supply them. It is also frequently made into mead as one of the staple drinks of the northern towns along with various ciders. It's also worthwhile having a cairn in the middle of people's allotments - the ant-like tunnellers tend to eat pests. Though largely protected in their stony homes, they do have a few predators such as Honey Foxes, crows and other insectivores .

That concludes the first daily concept. Tomorrow I'm hopefully going to have a look at religion in Alvic.

Speed Painting Reboot 12 - Ruin

2010-05-29T13:43:00.004+01:00

The original painting was trying to get a Frazetta-ish vibe as I recall. While the new version is better in some ways, the lack of deep shadows detracts from drama that the original had.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 11 - Cataclysm

2010-05-28T22:32:00.002+01:00

I was always relatively fond of the original version of this - though the buildings were a bit weird I liked the energy of the water flowing into them. The new version is better in most regards (though still far from perfect!) but it has lost a bit of the energy of its predecessor unfortunatly.

New Painting

2007 Original

Speed Painting Reboot 10 - Storm

2010-05-27T14:24:00.005+01:00

The original was a very rough thing without much in the way of composition, so I fixed that by taking a mountainside photo for reference, and created a broader spectrum of colour to hopefully make thescene more interesting. Not entirely happy with the result though, would perhaps have benefitted from being done in painter to get a greater degree of texture. Also, the highlights should really be something other than white but ran out of time.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 9 - Alien

2010-05-27T00:04:00.004+01:00

At the time I just used this as an excuse to have a go at this Dramatic Star-field Tutorial. I pretty much just repeated the same idea again, and while still no where near as good as the one in the tutorial, I do feel I'm getting the hang of it more this time around. I changed the colour as realistically, Green isn't a particularly cosmic colour. Hopefully, when I get around to redoing the 'Portal' speedpaint (which also used this tutorial) it'll be improved further! Also of note is that I suspect that non square canvases for star fields work better unless you are so good at it it doesn't matter, giving it either a greater sense of height or bredth of grandeur.

New Version:

2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 8 - Wizard

2010-05-23T09:38:00.005+01:00

I was always actually quite fond of this painting, it might not have been brilliant, but I liked the idea and composition. The new painting keeps the old composition a bit but adds more background.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 7 - Fire

2010-05-22T14:35:00.004+01:00

The original painting here seems to be about the most popular one I've ever done. I've had a couple of enquiries about it - the first resulted in them buying a print of it. The second was a bizarre request to have it on the cover of a Czech matchbox companies products. They never followed up on my reply, so it's possible that somewhere out in Europe there is a shop with the original on the cover. The new version, while a bit more accurate in how fire works, has a lot less character to it. It's a shame I can't remember how I did the effects...

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 6 - Treasure

2010-05-21T12:49:00.003+01:00

The original painting definitly falls into the category of like the idea, not the execution. Rather dire anatomy doesn't help it's cause, neither does the lack of treasure or any kind of symmetry. Quite pleased with the update. Possibly over an hour, but was doing other thigns at the same time.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 5 - Weasel

2010-05-20T14:58:00.004+01:00

The original painting here is probably about my second most 'critically acclaimed' speedpaints after the fire one. I've occassionally got odd people emailing after it. Infact, when looking for reference to supplement this one it turns out it is on the first page of images if you search for weasel in google. On a website about Sri Lankan politics of all the odd things. Composition remains more or less the same, and is more or less a slightly neater version, although actually, I do think the original has a little more charm in some ways.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 4 - Augmentation

2010-05-19T13:29:00.003+01:00

This one is more or less kept the same design wise. The original wasa bit experimental in that I decided to do it in ArtRage, a program Iwasn't that experienced in. The new composition is based roughly on a She-hulk cover but obviously not green. This one went over an hour, on the basis that I kept redoing the composition until I finally settled on the She-hulk one.

New Painting:

2007 Original

Speed Painting Reboot 3 - Impact

2010-05-18T12:30:00.003+01:00

Not one of the original paintings I remember the fondest, I didn't really like it originally. Also the fact it's just slightly abstract to draw just a back and a fist coming through it. Expanded it to an entire scene as really, that makes a lot more sense composition wise. The anatomy is off, but I didn't even bother looking for reference of someone being punched through the chest in midair - it's neither likely to exist or something I want to actually see. Decided to go for a generic Kung Fu movie vibe as it seemed the most fun approach.

New Painting:
2007 Original:

Speed Painting Reboot 2 - Evil Robot

2010-05-17T16:48:00.005+01:00

We move onto the second of the 'reboot' paintings with 'Evil Robot'. Design is massively changed but keeping a few core elements. The original was pretty much the monsterous child of Nintendo's R.O.B. and War Machine, with tracks from somewhere. Kept the colours, weapons and tracks but design wise is pretty different indeed. It seems to have got Ultron's head from somewhere though. It's probably just the v 2.o edition.

Again, painting somewhere under an hour.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Speed Paintings Reboot 1 - Friends

2010-05-16T22:18:00.000+01:00

Firstly, apologies for the lack of updates, I have a large stack of half finished posts that I never got quite around to finishing or publishing.

Anyways, to the point however. In addition to trying to do new speed paintings, it occured to me that I'd start by 'rebooting' my speed paintings. Essentially, I'm taking each of my speed paintings, and repainting them from scratch. Same basic painting for each just with (hopefully) improved composition and technique from what I've learnt in the meantime.

All the new paintings will hopefully run in at about an hour or less.

New Painting:

2007 Original:

Super Review Catchup Part 1

2010-03-25T11:07:00.011Z

I've been sitting on a fair number of titles to review for a while, and I thought it's time I caught up with the list, albeit in brief form.

Just of note, I've decided to revise my 'score' system to 0-5. Without a specific formula, it just ends up a bit arbitary to do it out of a hundred. Quick rundown is basically:

0 = Abysmal - Game is an abomination that should never have seen the light of day.
1 = Poor - Game is playable, but very weak
2 = Disappointing - Game has potential to be decent, but doesn't get there.
3 = Average - Game is decent but unremarkable, or has good features mixed with bad
4 = Good - Fun game, but not perfect
5 = Superb - A superb game, strongly recommended.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2
Developer - Vicarious Visions, Platform - Xbox 360

Much as it may not be a paragon of an intellectual franchise, I am a big fan of the X-men Legends/Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchise. It's a pretty simple concept - run through a story as a selection of Marvel superheroes in a four party team beating up every enemy you face on the way. You of course get to choose your team of favourites out of a large selection of characters, so generally speaking, you'll be able to get a team of characters you like together.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 however differs from it's predecessors in a number of ways. It's the first in the series (which is in effect a continuation of the X-men Legends series) to be developed by a company other than Ravensoft, and it's the first to be based on actual comics storylines. It also replaces the 'extreme' moves of the previous games (essentially big crowd clearing super moves) with 'fusions' in which two characters in your squad combine their powers to create unique effects to damage their foes. Most of the fusions work off of a few common themes, for example, someone who can create forcefields fusing with a heavy bruiser character will likely fuse to produce the forcefield creating a 'hamsterball' around the bruiser, allowing them to roll around crushing everything. The fusions are definitly one of the standout additions to the game, being much more interactive than their predecessor. It's also worth noting that instead of selecting from a various list of powers that this game gives you four set ones, plus a few inherant boosts that you can level up.

The character roster is fun, and while there are a few great additions that weren't present in the first game (my favourites being Gambit, Iron Fist and Songbird) the roster as a whole feels like less of a representation of the entire Marvel Universe. This is however at the loss of the more fringe but more fun characters - with most mystical characters and the single cosmic character from the first game cut. There are of course, all the really big names, so those wishing to be Wolverine, Spider-man, Iron-man or Hulk will not be disappointed. That being said, there are several characters who've had films (albeit frequently bad ones) which don't make the cut, and those wishing to play as Punisher, Blade, Elektra or Ghost Rider will leave disappointed. I'll also say that I really don't care for what they did with the final unlockable. Characters all have a single unlockable costume, but with a few exceptions, these secondary costumes tend to be a bit uninspired compared to what they could be and indeed were in the last game.

The main disappointments come in the story however, standard enemies are generic the entire way through the plot, whereas in the last game various levels would see you fight Doombots, Atlanteans, Dark Elves, Demons and so on, here every single common enemy is either a generic robot or a generic paramilitary type. They are well modelled, but in the middle of battle they really never look any different from each other at any point in the game - on either side of the branching plot. Equally, though the boss fights are frequently against named character (and with the Civil War plotline, usually against heroes) it's quite fun to see so many characters from the Marvel Universe. On the downside, many of these fights are repeated several times. I don't mind occasional repeat fights, but when you end up facing off against the same villain several times it's just no way near as fun as seeing new faces, particularly as the third act doesn't really have any new faces at all. Also of note is that storywise, the third act is where it deviates from the comics, and also where the plot feels weakest, the first two acts are far stronger, particularly the fun of 'choosing a side' during the second act.

Visually it's a great improvement over it's predecessor, and while the reworked power system is more streamlined, the repeated enemies, both boss and normal really let the game down. The third act is also a let down. Having said all that, if you liked it's predecessor, or the Marvel Universe in general, you'll probably have a fun time playing this, especially as the branching plot gives you the option of playing through twice.

Rating: 3/5

Mount and Blade: Warband
Developer - Taleworlds, Platform - PC

Mount and Blade: Warband is the stand alone expansion pack to the original Mount and Blade - a sandbox game set in a psuedo-medeival world where you can. What this means in practice however is that this is effectively an updated version of the original game with some extras. If you already have the original game, it's debateable as to whether you think the new game is worth it.

Visually the graphics have been updated, with the introduction of normal maps amoung other things, but the game still remains visually below average for a current release, to the point where it will probably annoy graphical elitists. However, if you look beyond that the gameplay is very satisfying once you get into it. The physics based combat is quite satisfying, and the fact it means that you can plow down your enemies from a big armoured horse is always a plus. Noteworthy that even on easy settings the combat is now harder - before on the easiest setting you could, as long as you had a horse, slowly whittle down a force of any size single handedly if it came to it. Now, you are liable to eventually get loaded with crossbow bolts even with good armour. It also seems easier for the enemies to pull of successful spear and lance attacks, using your own horses momentum against it to do massive enormous damage, a few times I effectively got knocked down in one hit due to a mistimed attack on a lance wielding enemy, something that I rarely encountered in the original.

The main addition of the game however is a multi-player feature, allowing huge mobs of players to charge round attacking each other. Unfortunately, this is not done in such a way that you can slowly level up your character's armour and equiptment, and every time you start a new game you have to use a tabula rasa of equipment that can only be improved within the context of that one match. There is nothing wrong with that in itself, but I'd personally rather have the option of importing my solo campaign character and army into a different game mode and battle it out with other peoples polished characters and armies - it'd feel much more organic.

In general I'd recommend the game, but more so to those who have yet to purchase the original game as the features that it adds to the first game don't in my mind justify the price. Still, it's a cheap, fun sandbox game based on both stats and skills, and I've personally got a lot of fun out of this and the original game. Recommended.

Rating: 4/5

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Platform - PC

Batman: Arkham Asylum at its core has the same fundemental problem as Mirror's Edge. When you are doing things right, it feels awesome. When you aren't... well Batman never really gets taken down by a bunch of generic thugs. Ones with stun prods are especially annoying. In the game itself however, there is a lot to praise. The game is certainly atmospheric, and the combat has a nice satisfying weight to it. It also succeeds where many comic based games fail by looking about what fundamentally works about the character and basing the games around those. Too often there is an inclination to just make it an excercise in running around and hitting things.

The mixture of stealth, brawling and gadgets is certainly a great deal of fun, my only criticism being the sections where it arbitarily says 'your grappling hook doesn't work here'. I don't mind the principle of a level where you can't just zip around there at whim, but I'd rather it was based on a more organic system of it won't work on specific surfaces in the room, not the entire thing. The odds of an entire room having nothing worthwhile to grab onto where every other room has everything is slightly jarring.

The voice acting is superb but I don't always find the character design to my personal taste. The Jim Lee-esque Joker looks a little bizarre next to the rest of the characters and I'm unimpressed with the gratuitously sexualised redesigns of Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. That being said, ignoring those exceptions the work is very good. Credit also has to be given to the superb environements, which really capture the gloomy gothic quality that makes Gotham such a great setting. Very enjoyable and generally a very accomplished game.

Rating: 5/5

Beat Hazard
Platform - PC

Beat Hazard as a game is sort of the illegitimate child of Audio-surf and Geometry Wars. The concept is effectively an arcade style shooter where you have to destroy waves of asteroids and enemy ships entering the screen to get higher points. The difference is the power of your weapons, the length of the level and the ways the enemies enter is defined by selecting one of your own musical tracks from which it generates this, playing the music in the background. You can get power-ups to turn up the volume as you play and collect bonuses to increase the multiplication of your score. A nice concept which is fun.
The problem is that unlike audiosurf where different kinds of music results in a different experience, in this game it limits what music you can use. try playing anything slow and somber and you'll be so pitifully weak you won't be able to kill even the easiest enemies, let alone the bosses. On the flip side, play something fast and busy (Muse for example tends to work particularly well I've found) and your weapons will satisfyingly be blasting out a gigantic cone of death eliminating half the foes on the screen with minimal effort. Which is admittedly very satisfying as it works best when the song reaches it's peak.
That is a pretty major balance issue. The other issue is that there is no leader board for songs. I must admit, the opportunity to try and beat something is often enough to bring me back to a game I'd have otherwise stopped playing. I keep going back to Audiosurf for example whenever someone defeats my world record on the song to defend my title. Without that feature, Beat Hazard feels less like a serious challenge and thus has less reason to go back to it. Incidentally, I really don't care for the game's logo - its just a bit too much 90's in the 'thinks it's cool but is actually embarrassing' sense.

Rating: 3/5

Anno 1404
Plaform - PC

It's been a long time since Pharoah, my last proper forray into the city-building genre. I do actually enjoy the games but it's a genre which never usually captures my interest in quite the same way as other genre's do. That being said, if nothing else than the beatuiful graphics this game did catch my eye. Set in an ambiguous island based version of history, the game revolves around relations between a generic european civilisation and a generic arabic one.

The game essentially boils down to creating various cities across the islands you own and building them up to be prosperous, with a bit of military combat thrown in. It is kind of satisfying to try and create a set of interdependant islands. The problems arise because it can be very hard to balance production and imports and exports. If you end up over producing in one place your trade ships end up full of one thing which they are not set to get rid of automatically and ends up not being able to move about things which are mandatory for the upkeep of your cities. This problem is exacerbated slightly by the fact that each island has a finite number of crops that will grow on it, and all the arabic and european crops are mutually exclusive. In later ages particularly, it can get exacerbating to be having to ship indigo from the orient to make inks to get books to satisfy the rich - I'm sure they could comeup with something different if they really wanted to. All my niggles tend to be based around that kind of thing, it's a game which requires intense micromanagement to get working properly, and could perhaps benefit from greater control in its tools.

That being said, it's certainly a enjoyable game if you enjoy that kind of thing, although perhaps it's better to play in the sandbox mode, rather than the campaign if you just want to sit and make a city that runs liek clockwork across an archipelago.

Rating: 4/5

Dragon Age: Awakening
Developer - Bioware, Platform - PC

I really did enjoy the original campaign of Dragon Age, it may not have been the best Bioware game ever, or even the best fantasy Bioware game ever. However it was fun, dramatic game with interesting characters. Awakening is the first full expansion to that game, and if I'm honest in that regard it's a huge disappointment.

You play either your character from the original campaign or a new Grey Warden come over from another country dependant on your choice and are set incharge of a Keep. There are of course problems when the Darkspawn somehow reappear despite being vanquished and surprisingly enough you recruit a party of adventurers to sort things out. Nothing particularly wrong with the setup, but it's from here we run into problems. The biggest problem here is that you can't talk to your party members except when the game does it in cutscene. This prevents you getting to be as familiar with the characters as you could in the original game, which was one of its greatest strengths.

The two other problems are that for a full expansion pack, the game feels short and underdeveloped - it feels like it lacks the attention to detail of the original campaign. Furthermore, the mission areas feel very 'by numbers' - you must visit several areas, each at the being a key area of sorts for each party member. It really doesn't feel organic at all. It also frequently fails to give you the impression of the significance of your choices, and with delicate situations it can feel like you are blindfolded.

There is certainly promise in the game, but it feels like it needed an entire extra year of development to get it polished to it's potential. Unfortunatly, I'd say that Awakening is the least satisfying Bioware release for the PC I've ever played.

Rating: 2/5

Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe
Platform - Xbox 360

Here we have a game which very much does what it says on the tin. It is exactly, Mortal Kombat vs DC, not a greta deal more, not a great deal less. To be fair, there are some good points, and it's enjoyable if the original pitch appeals to you, but not a gaming classic.

As usual with games of this genre, everything depends on the fighting system, and this one is a mixed bag. The basic attacks are easy enough to get the hang of, but I am really not a fan of controll systems requiring twiddling controll sticks in combination with various buttons, it makes fighting inaccessible to the basics, especially when there is nothign in the uspport material to tell you how to do all the different, and touted, fatalities and brutalities. When you do pull off special moves they are frequently satisying.

The roster is decent enough, I have no problems with the DC choices, and I dont know enough about Mortal Kombat to make any calls. One minor artistic I would cite, is that while the modelling and texturing is generally good, there are a few places, such as on Superman's costume for example, where the colouring looks weirdly flat. I'd also personally increase the roster size, but that is because, contrary to popular developer belief, I think broadening a roster adds appeal to a game, both in offering people more playstyles and greater chance of allowing them access to their favourite characters.

A decent distraction if not a game I'll be coming back too without others there.

Rating: 3/5

Robot Wars: Extreme Destruction
Platform - PC

This is very much a retro review, and frankly, I only installed it as a bit of vague nostalgia after a conversation on MSN. It's a lot worse than I remember.

Robot Wars, for those who don't remember, was a TV show in which remote controlled robots built by the public, were pitted against each other to smash each other up. It was presented in the first series by Jeremy Clarkson before he was famous, and then for the other six by Craig Charles of Red Dwarf fame. Neither of these are present inthe game however, and we are left with the irritating commentary of Jonathan Piece as the sole sign of humans in the game.

I actually got a good deal of fun out of the first Robot Wars game (Arenas of Destruction) but having not played it recently, in retrospect I suspect it wouldn't stand up so well. However, whatever its faults, it was certainly a lot less buggy that ED. The physics can at best be desribed as "broken" - and in the context of a game which is essentially 'who can use the laws of physics to smash up their opponent the best' this is a major problem. It can probably in part be blamed on the age of the game, coming from a time back when physics weren't great in general, but I suspect it is sub-par even for then. Everything is far too floaty, and thigns which should end up their back miraculously end up going the right way up at the end, possibly because the physics dictates that that is more likely. Equally it's virtually impossible to push opponents, because even if you get flat face to flat face opponents just tend to slide off through some unknown physical law.

More annoying than this however, are House Robots which will, relatively regularly, while you are winning a fight, bullrush you from the opposite side of the level into a pit for no discernable reason. In addition, being much bigger than everyone else, they actually have the unique ability that they actually can ram things, which is incredibly frustrating.

The ability to unlock famous robots from the show is a definite plus as the build a robot feature is dire, and for the most part you have a hard time creating a machine that functions vaguely like an actual robot wars robot - none of the weapons are even built into the robots in the same way which makes a lot of them useless. Some of the existign robots are just unplayable - they are veyr fast, which is fine, but combined with the floatiness, it ends up being like trying to controll a bouncy ball round the arena. Pussycat is, by necessity the worst of all, because it literally just seems to fly around the arena randomly even when the computer controlls it. I haven't even bothered trying to play as it myself.

I really think that given modern technology, integrating the sort of stuff we found in Spore and Force Unleashed particularly, combined with a generally good physics engine and paying attnetion to how the robots actually work, someone could churn out a good Robot Wars game with their eyes closed. This one however should be avoided. At least I only paid £4 for it.

Rating: 1/5

Coming In Part 2: Morrowind! Mass Effect 2! Geometry Wars!

Steam Sale Review-a-thon

2010-01-06T22:21:00.001Z

Over Christmas Steam had a sale, which meant that each day for a good stretch of time I was tempted by a selection of new titles to potentially buy. Over the course of the sale I ended up caving in 4 times, all of them for under £5. There were a few other superb bargains in there too (notably Audiosurf, and 3 different Bioware games all for £3.50 or less each) but these were games I wouldn't have bought at full price. I'm going to continue my trend of training my writing skills, by further attempted to be concise, in this case, the terrifying target is but a single paragraph per game!

Trine
Steam Price £16.99 (Sale price - £4ish)
- Frozenbyte

Trine is a strange game in some ways, it's a side scrolling physics based platformer with a fantasy theme. The side scrolling fantasy platformer is nothing particularly new, but the physics aspect is a fun twist. You switch between three characters - a wizard who can create and levitate objects, a thief with a bow and grappling hook and a knight with a sword and shield. You have to use a mixture of their different abilities to complete the puzzles and kill a few skeletons along the way. The plot is paper thin but really that doesn't matter, it's a fairy-tale-esque whimsical excuse for the story. The mechanics are fun, and the graphics are surprisingly good for a title like this. The music is also a nice pleasant fit to the mood. Like any game like this, some puzzles will prove frustrating, particularly when one or two of your characters are currently 'dead' it becomes a bit pointless, tho on normal difficulty at least the game is forgiving.
Fun though it is, I would personally not really touch it for more than I paid for it - it's a casual distraction, not a game to spend big chunks of your life on. Wait for it in a sale.

Score - 4/5

Torchlight
Steam Price £14.99 (Sale price - £3ish)
Runic Games

No game has perhaps overshadowed it's genre so completely as Diablo (to the point where any fantasy action-rpg is refered to as a Diablo clone) and Torchlight falls very squarely into that category. Not surprising really as it has some of the same developers behind it. You pick from 3 characters, oddly enough pretty much identical characters to Trine - big male warrior, small male wizard/alchemist and woman archer/ranged fighter. Torchlight has a rather simple setup - monsters are threatening the town of Torchlight and you are the only one that can save it. As appropriate to it's genre it's basically about running through dungeons, killing everything in sight and getting loot. To be blasphemous by popular opinion standards, I'd actually say I found it more compelling than Diablo 2 most of the time - the steampunk flavour to the setting being a nice touch. You also have a pet, either a wolf or lynx that helps you, and has a couple of useful abilities like casting spells and being able to run back to town to sell loot while you continue fighting, but I found myself ignoring the 'change into different forms by feeding it fish' feature - the idea didn't really appeal to me. The art style is fun and varied despite being in just one big dungeon for the whole game it manages to have a variety of areas ranging from volcanic, tropical, formal dwarven and classic mines which prevent the game from feeling like an endless slog through a forgetable grey cave. The enemies vary with each area and though they aren't necessarily the best designed monsters ever, in some ways you don't want them to be - you want to wade through them and steal their gold.
As with Trine, this game is a fun distraction, and I'd say well worth a look (and I'm not a particular fan of the genre) though again the price is too steep for me. If you like the genre, get it now, if not, wait for another sale to roll round.

Score 4/5

Osmos
Steam Price - £6.99 (Sale price - £1.50ish)
Hemisphere Games

Osmos is one of those little vaguely pretentious little puzzle games that have seemed to crop up over the last few years. The closest comparison I can give offhand is that it's like the bacterial level of spore - you are a 'mote' (aka little sparkling blob) and your objective is usually to become the biggest blob. To do this you can absorb blobs smaller than you to add them to your size and avoid being absorbed by blobs bigger than you, however, to move you eject small blobs from yourself, thus losing size as a sacrifice for movement. Most other motes are passive to begin with, and just bounce around randomly, but other 'motes' like yourself appear later on, as do a selection of other mote types. The concept sounds simple, but there is a surprising amount of mileage in it - and the levels are varied. However, like Trine I found myself only able to take it in smallish doses. Some of the more difficult stages are infuriatingly tough, with simple mistakes resulting in having to restart the level. I may have missed it, but a sort of casual sandbox setting would be welcome.
It's not a game that says anything, but as a casual distraction, and a pretty cheap one too, if it appeals it's probably worth getting.

Score - 4/5

Medieval II: Total War
Steam Price £9.99 (Sale price - £2.50ish)
The Creative Assembly

Easily the highest profile game of the 4, and also the one I've played the least. M2TW is vastly ambitious in it's scope, and critically acclaimed, but I'm actually going to go out on a limb and say as a product designed to be fun it's the weakest of the four games. I'm sure there is a good same in there, but from what I've I've managed to get out of it so far, it's just that everything about it feels clunky and unintuitive. The basic problem is that this is a game which is supposed to simulate true, fully tactical battles, and with that it should entail being finely customisable. If I want a group of archers to all step backwards five meters but remain in formation, that should be easily doable, conversely if I want a load of men with axes to break rank and charge wildly, that should be too. That's not to say you can't do those things, but the issue is that its not always obvious how to do those things, and more importantly, it feels harder to achieve that that it would be to just shout the order - this is a game which really needs voice commands to a massive degree of customisability. Also, it has a weird turn based overall campaign mode, if I'm frank I have very title patience for turn based strategy that isn't risk - the problem being that it doesn't feel real in the slightest. The battles are of course vast and visually spectacular, but half the time you don't really feel like you can tell what's going on.
This may all by just me being a big of an ignorant player, but really, here is a game that feels like it should be superb, yet just feels unwieldy to the point of boringness for the casual player. If you can master it, I suspect it'd be incredibly rewarding, but I don't think it's for me...

Score 3/5

Badger and Tilly

2009-12-15T00:18:00.001Z

If you met them, they loved you, and if you never met them they would have loved you.

They will be extremely missed...

Bird Photographs

2009-12-14T12:19:00.000Z

While I started this at the beginning of the Summer, I thought it about time I bought it up here. Basically, I decided I wanted to have a go at wildlife photography, but not being able to afford an SLR I bought the 'normal camera' with the biggest zoom I could buy, as an upgrade from my old camera with that as a side reason. With that in mind I started a very geeky project which was basically to try and photograph all the kinds of bird in the country. I'm uploading them to a blog, with the eventual aim of getting a nice photograph of every kind, along with advice for seeing each one and photographing them.

I'm approaching half way through now in terms of things photographed, although to get them all up to good standard photos will, I suspect take a lot longer. Anyway, if for some reason you are interested, take a look here.

Mini Retro Reviews 1

2009-12-13T23:03:00.001Z

Over the last few weeks I've got inspired to go back to some older games I haven't touched in a while inspired by my own blog post, the blog post of another and whim respectively. Two of which I never completed, one of which I did. Two RPGs and a Strategy game. So I've devised a simple test, install all three, play them all and see which one I end up playing most, and how these games look in retrospect. What's more I'm going to fight every natural instinct I have on the matter and I'm going to try to be relatively concise.

So, lets look at the games:

Impossible Creatures

Relic Entertainment
2003

Impossible Creatures, as people who have read before will know, is a real time strategy based around the concept of combining real world animals to create your units to fight your wars. There are 51 creatures to begin with, plus an extra 25 official ones for free, plus a selection of less well made unofficial ones (see previous post). Only the initial ones are available in the main campaign.

The concept is brilliant, but I perhaps wonder if also difficult to work of properly. The units are visually distinct, but the statistics system means there is less tactics in directing your units than just picking the right ones for the jobs and base building. Effectively, at the end of the day the only tactic that works consistently is a tank rush. There are varieties in the form of amphibious, flying, artillery, ranged and a selection of more subtle abilities, but ultimately, you don't feel like its really that different if you field a team of tiger-hammerheads or a team of gorilla-piranhas. There *are* differences, but a lot of the time the only significance that you'll see is that creature a tends to die quicker than creature b.

The campaign is a fun little pulpy story, where the protagonist (one Rex Chance) and his generally more useful female associate (Dr Lucy Willing) are out to stop evil Industrialist Upton Julius and a trio of his equally evil associates. The benefit of the campaign is it uses scripted events to add variety to the 15 levels, but some of them fall the wrong side of infuriatingly gimmicky. One in particular is just really horrible. Without these events however the multiplayer becomes less fun, playing against computers is fair enough, but with a game like this playing humans is just asking for tedious power-building which makes the game far less interesting. If there is one thing I find tedious in games it's power building - no sense of creative concept...

That being said, just creating creatures it itself is fun, and despite the age the graphics stand up very well - they have a nice caricatured art style which keeps it looking attractive unless zoomed in too close (which mostly only happens in cutscenes). The music is minimal but fun, and the voice acting usually amusing. It is also in my experience a very stable and system tolerant game - I at one point had it running on a 4mg inbuilt graphics card, when it supposedly required 16mg.

While not a classic by any means, if you see it for less than £10 it's well worth picking up.

Score - 4/5

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura
Troika Games
2001

Arcanum is, in it's most basic form, an isometric RPG which shares vague genre standards with the likes of the Infinity Engine games. The world however is a bit different to the standards D&D fare in that it's a Steampunk setting where both magic and technology are widely available. There is also a fair bit of interesting nuance to the setting, but suffers perhaps from trying to cram too many ideas together. I've always felt that in a fantasy setting, every time you add a major sentient race that the world becomes less plausible, and Arcanum gives us one more than D&D with the strange restriction that half of those races can only be male. Very odd.

Visually, the world suffers in comparison with it's Infinity Engine contemporaries - the characters are more detailed but the backgrounds mostly lack the spark of the fully painted environments of those games, most notable in the way that unlike an infinity engine game building in the world is built round a tile system, so all buildings are built exactly in line with each other, so the world feels less organic. The other thing is, that while the game is technically open ended in that you can explore any point of the continent, unlike, say, Oblivion there is no real point in manually exploring everything because it doesn't have the visual impact or variety to pull it off.

The story is interesting, but stunted, it seems to put artificial barriers on how far you can get before needing to be level x, for example, being level 12ish and then discovering that inbetween me and the place I apparently needed to go was a lvl 25 golem who could floor my party in seconds on easy mode. On normal difficulty modes games should really be accommodating the players organic progress rather than "if you want to go on, get grinding!" - an automatic level adjustment for enemies would really make the whole experience more fun. It also has a rather contrived learning system for new skills, which is basically a 'pick one skill, which allows you to pick a second tenuously related skill next time you level up'. I have no problem with levelling up allowing you to pull off a more sophisticated variation on a theme

The game is fun in chunks, but it seems to always find a way to get so far before it does something to annoy you. Usually it's one of those level blocks, or getting into a conversation with a companions where apparently every single dialogue option makes him like you less. The music is heavily violin based, and while atmospheric to begin with, there is not enough variety to cover the game so what music there is can become a bit annoying. Sitting back from the game, the core problem becomes apparent - the fact it tries to be both open ended yet focusing on a sophisticated storyline don't end up really meshing properly. Even if the game just told you to go and save up a certain amount of money to buy macguffin x to carry on, that would be a lot more reasonable than the current situation.

Finally - for a game which uses the player made protagonist + joinable characters, most of these characters seem very under explored when compared to a Bioware game. Only one of them so far seems to have much interaction at all, and that would usually be a way to pad out the game and make it more interesting.

Don't get me wrong, Arcanum is by no means a terrible game, but neither is it one that lives up to its potential, however, if you've run out of more famous RPGs, it's well worth a look.

Score - 3/5

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords
Obsidian Entertainment
2004

Knights of the Old Republic 1, is regarded in many circles as one of the best Western RPGs of all time, and in some ways I think this ends up being both a blessing and a curse to it's sequel. On the one hand, the success of its predecessor allows the game to be more thematically experimental with ideas and in many ways be less commercial. Unfortunately, the game was rushed to release meaning that the overall experience is missing several planned areas, buggy and generally doesn't feel anywhere near as polished as KotoR1.

The most interesting thing about the game however, is how it challenges your preconceptions about Star Wars. This is in fact the games strongest suit - and it comes down largely to the character of Kreia, one of your companions, your Jedi mentor figure and the first character you encounter in the game. While the first game encouraged you to go to to either the far end of the dark or light side, Kreia tries to make you see that in many cases helping people too much merely weakens their own ability to achieve anything, and that good intentions don't always have good results. She is both helpful and manipulative and it's not towards right near the end of the game that she shows all her cards, and even then you are left wandering whether she really has.

Although the storyline continues from the first game, it's much darker in tone, while the first game was a fun very 'Star Warsy' romp with a very clever twist in the storyline, here we have a much darker tale, any perhaps it's telling that of the three party members the games share, two of them are dark sided characters, and one of them is hiding secrets of what happened between the two games. Incidentally, one of those Dark Sided characters has their storyline continued in a very interesting direction, but just as interesting is how Kreia cuts to the weakest point of someone who believes themselves superior. In some ways, you could even argue that though the game is a Star Wars game, in some places it comes off as to be somewhat critical of the conventions of the franchise. Gameplay wise however, it is a very satisfying affair, with combat being similar to it's very well done predecessor but with more force powers to choose from, but really I can't resist a lightsaber and beyond healing and some force lightning I tend to just stick to that in most combat

This all sounds like it's shaping up to be a great game, but here the bugs get in - I had more bugs on this play through than my original one several years ago, however, this was without patching so it probably isn't as prevalent as I make out. There was one particular quest which didn't even register as complete as far as the story went, making a big difference. However, even ignoring those it lacks the polish you'd expect in a production like this. Asking a companion where her master is outside the door to the room he is in results in her telling you that I wouldn't be able to find his ship. I don't blame the developers for this though, and I suspect that here is a case of a potentially superb game not getting its due because of publisher pressures. If you patch it up though, and particularly if you've completed the sequel, I highly recommend it.

Score - 4/5

In conclusion, if they sound interesting to you, I'd recommend any of them, especially as you can currently get any of them on amazon for under £10. They may not be classics, but definitely some fun.

Alexjholt.tk Retrospective Part 1 - Impossible Menagerie

2009-12-04T00:25:00.000Z

A few weeks ago, my original website went down along with the rest of things hosted for free on geocities. I'd known about it for months, and it basically seemed to me like a matter of economics to shut geocities down. Anyway, I'd intended to do a little retrospective on the site, but I've been a bit occupied with real world events.

Alexjholt.tk (or originally geocities.com/alex_j_holt) had been up for possibly about 7 years, and while frankly in retrospect a lot of it was kind of embarrassing, I'm still glad I did it. Here I'm going to do a series of articles on whatever happened to all the things that were on it and the unexpected ways that they may have changed how my life has progressed.

I shall start with one of the original sections - The Impossible Menagerie.

The basic idea was simple - a mod project to add creatures to the supposedly very moddable Impossible Creatures. The basic concept is a real time strategy game where you combine the DNA of real world creatures to create custom units. I could well do a massive retrospective review on the game, and in many ways it was very influential on me, if more in its concept than realisation. It represented the first time I was interested in a game enough to look forward to it, and the first time a game made me want to add stuff to it. It's a flawed game, but ultimately a fun one. I should really go back to it sometime to complete it.

Anyway, my youthful enthusiasm gave me the idea of creating a mod for this game, basically adding a big bunch of my favourite animals to the roster so I could use them too.

This then lead to my first experience of non-CAD 3D modelling, and furthermore texturing. This largely stemmed from the fact that the tools were effectively bound to gmax - the woefully stripped down free version of 3DS-max that I'd later discover at uni. A program in which the most basic and useful of tools found in it's big brother are absent.

I didn't get anywhere fast.

Eventually however, I did manage to push my way through gmax's problems and a tutorial which wasn't precisely ideal for a 15 year old with no experience of 3D modelling and eventually managed to produce my rendition of the African Wild Dog. The model was only tweaked from the default wolf included in the tool set but the texture was largely different (though effectively a paint over of the original textures). Not precisely the greatest achievement in the history of modding.

At this point my presence on the now defunct 'Impossible Creatures Planet' increased and I actually had a little more interaction with some other modders. In retrospect it was actually a bit funny. Essentially, a certain prominent member of the community thought that my little mod was a threat to the big mod team producing a thing called Creature Chaos. As I didn't really care about releasing the mod so much as getting it made in the first place I (perhaps naively?) agreed that I'd just hand over anything I did and let it be integrated into that mod.

I add here that ICP was BY FAR the most totalitarian forum I've ever had the displeasure to frequent. I was pretty much inoffensive, and the fact I didn't post much meant that I was probably just about the only person on the entire forum who didn't have a warning rating, including most of the moderators. There was only one person I met as result of that site who I'm glad I've known.

Anyhow, effectively at this point I was more or less an unofficial reserve member of the modding team in that I did stuff and handed it over to them. I didn't have any input into the overall mod beyond what I did, but I didn't really care. However, in general the same person who'd drafted me proved increasingly to be a rather unpleasant person to have to report to. It'd always been clear from the start that I was effectively just saving them competition and they were being my distributor, however, attempts were made into getting me into tidying up other peoples work, and furthermore that I should learn how to do things which this mod leader couldn't be bothered to do himself.

In this time I also submitted my snow leopard, my second creature to go into the game. However, the final straw for me was when I discovered all the statistics I'd done for my Wild Dog had been scrapped and redone from scratch for the release without my consent or even telling me, including removing the pack hunting 'power' which to me seems like the main point of the Wild Dog - an animal which possibly has the highest hunting success rate of any large animal because it hunts in highly effective packs. I was not happy.

Following that, I gradually broke off contact with the people involved (save that one person I mentioned earlier, who is awesome) and distanced myself from the mod, and the game community itself. It wasn't a pleasant atmosphere there to begin with, and they hadn't done anything that endeared me to it.

I did vaguely try and do a few more creatures (somewhere on one of my old computers there is a ratel and a gila monster just needing textures tidied and animating) but by this point I was heading off to Uni and I forgot about the project in a whirl of learning new stuff and meeting new people. As far as I can tell, I'm not even acknowledged on the current home of the mod as contributing except in thee below image and listed on the install file. Oh well.

I don't regret the Impossible Menagerie, or even the bad experiences I had with it. I do think it may have disenchanted me with modding teams to some degree, yet as I'm writing this I'm even tempted to have a crack at going back with the skills I learnt at Uni to see how much better I could do everything. I didn't even know how to add or delete polies back then! But I suspect I won't, there's a whole lot of new games that have been released since IC and I think it may be time for something new.

However, if perchance you track down Impossible Creatures, and fancy downloading the Creature Chaos mod, you'll see the snow leopard and the wild dog and thus have a brief glimpse at a more youthful time in my life.

You can find Creature Chaos on the heir to ICP - Impossible Creatures Hive

Review: Mirror's Edge

2009-12-02T19:27:00.002Z

When the first trailer for Mirror's Edge appeared, it was immediately one of those games that stands out as something that looks fun to play. On the other hand, it wasn't the kind of thing that I'd buy for full price, thus, a bit over a year after it's release, a special offer on Steam selling it for under £4 has finally allowed me to play it.

One of the first things about it I'd say is that it's a game which revels in movement. This considered, just adding screenshots doesn't really give you the full grasp of the thing, thus I give you the trailer:

The basic premise is that in a clean futuristic city, delivering information via technology has become so insecure that corporations are forced to use 'Runners' who are basically a group of people who use Parkour to carry stuff across the rooftops from A to B. Presumably delivering stuff normally is somehow also impossible, although maybe those corporate business types like the idea of their pen drive of spreadsheets having a more exciting life than they do themselves?
You are one of these Runners, so it's your job to run, jump and climb your way across this urban landscape in as quick and death defying manner as possible.

In a practical sense, this ends up as a FPS-platformer-puzzler hybrid, which puts it in the same vague area as the excellent Portal. This hybrid genre however is both the games' greatest strength and its greatest weakness. On the one hand, when things go well, you feel awesome - you are timing things to perfection, speeding across the urban landscape and generally just being amazing. Then you slightly misjudge a jump and plummet to your death and have to do it all again.

Well, not strictly, ALL, there are relatively regular checkpoints, but even so it does negate the feeling of having done one bit really well and awesomely to have to do it again and not do it so well. To this basic theme, what tends to happen is the game stops and starts, you'll have a straight run through a good section of the game, then hit one particularly tricky bit and the the flow is shattered. The worst aspect of this is that these points tend to be disproportionately difficult to the point where in my playthroughs when I did have to restart a section, I often had to do it 3-5 times. Combat with armoured police (or 'blues' as the game refers to them) is often guilty of that - you go down in two hits, so unless your timing is a lot better than mine a single one of them can take you out very easily. Puzzles involving more complex maneuvers, particularly ones with several parts like walljumps and wallrunning then jumping can also require several attempts.

The combat follows the same pattern - you are by default unarmed, which is a great choice gameplay wise as it really accentuates the games distinct features. You can take weapons off attackers, and then use them against others, but they slow you down and you don't have any spare ammo, and thus you automatically discard the gun when there is none left. Unarmed combat is much more satisfying, with you being able to do flying kicks, sliding kicks and disarms in addition to the normal punching and kicking which really helps the flavour of your acrobatic protagonist.

Visually the game is very impressive, although not necessarily the most technically advanced in the world, the use of a clean blue and white world is a welcome change from the generic brown grittiness that has been popular over the last few years. The colour red symbolises things that you can interact with, and by colour coding the world like this it helps make your free running more fluid rather that stopping every five seconds to work out where to go next. Slightly unfortunately, the animated cutscenes just aren't as impressive looking as the game itself, which does detract slightly.

I did have some minor technical problems at one point, the game seeming to slow down drastically when the physics engine was turned on and multiple opponents were firing at me, but upon tweaking the settings to eliminate that it has been entirely stable.

Mirror's Edge isn't a perfect game, but its unique and fun take on the genre - if you are good at platforming games it's probably going to improve your experience as you'll be less likely to have to repeat sections as much as a platform fumbler like myself. I wouldn't recommend it at it's full original retail price, but if you can get it for as cheap as I did (or even a bit more!) it's definitely a worthwhile buy, even if just for the coolness of the sections when you are doing well.

Score: 4/5

Game Toolsets

2009-11-23T19:00:00.000Z

As I've concluded that I need to have some more focused practise in at various things (including but not limited to - modelling, texturing, 2D art, writing) I've decided to have a go fiddling around in the Dragon Age toolset which is supposedly quite comprehensive to try and adapt a particular story I have in mind.

Fortunatly there is a wiki to help things along, which helps (fumbling blindly in toolsets never tends to get anyone anywhere unless they are extremely lucky or extremely good) so I may actually get something done.

However, it might just be me, but I don't quite get why I always seem to come across things that requie loading files in other applications. In this case the first thing I decided to go for (the world map) requires muddling around in Excel. It might just be me, but surely it would make sense to integrate a basic spreadsheet program into the application itself that could work parralel to the actual editor?

Maybe I just don't get programming...

Review - Dragon Age: Origins

2009-11-17T19:38:00.000Z

As anyone who has waded through my opinions of the subject before will know, I'm a great fan of Western RPGs. As such, first thing that particularly draws my attention to Dragon Age is the fact that it claims to be 'a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate'. This is a very bold statement to make in some ways (and I must make clear that I'm going to presume that this refers more to Baldur's Gate II, a vastly superior game to its predecessor) as even 9 years after its release, many still hold it as the pinnacle of the Western RPG. Pretty much all its competitors since are other Bioware games anyway.

With that out the way, I'm going to disagree with that previous claim to a certain degree. Dragon Age, mechanic wise seems in many ways more heavily infused with Bioware's other super critical darling - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. This is by no means a bad thing in a lot of ways, though presumably the main reason is to make it more accessible to casual gamers and console users. Having said that, the PC edition does include the ability to scroll out into an isometric-esque angle to relive those infinity engine glory days. However, despite my self professed love of those games, I actually found myself preferring to use the behind the character camera most of the time. Though 'isometric' is perhaps more functional, being closer to ground level makes the action more dynamic to watch.

The main lure of any Bioware game is the story and the characters, and Dragon Age doesn't disappoint. Perhaps one of the most interesting differences this time around is the titular 'Origins' which serve to make you invest more heavily in the setting. They are short enough so as not to outstay their welcome but long enough to give you more of a sense of place in the world. They also introduce characters which crop up in the main story later (and influence interactions with those characters) and function very well. This matches up with the Mass Effect approach - you aren't destined to anything per say, you just happen to be a particularly bad-ass member of society which in some ways is more interesting. There are six origins in all, two unique dwarf ones (commoner or noble) two unique elf ones (essentially nomadic elves or oppressed second class citizen city elves) and one unique human one (human noble) plus Mages which can apply to elf or human.

I personally decided to go Dwarf, and as the choice was apparently between poverty and wealth, I chose the latter. Furthermore I decided to be a rogue because mages are usually too much micro-management and there are plenty or interesting warriors available in the plot. My origin story consisted of me being second in line to the throne in the Dwarven capital, and the political wranglings that entailed. Not to spoil anything for future players, but there is a very good twist in this particular origin.

All origins however end in approximately the same way (though via varying routes) - you become a recruit of the 'Grey Wardens' to fight the 'Darkspawn' (the invading monster villains of the game) . This is another one of the things that gives the game its KotOR feel - the joining the legendary order of heroes does give it a bit of that vibe. The Grey Wardens are slightly more subtle in their means than the Jedi however, and they have neither neon weapons or any tangible pseudo-magical abilities. They are supposedly able to sense Darkspawn and see them in dreams, plus one other ability that only comes into play at the end of the game - beyond that their main abilities seem to be gained from being recruited from the most awesome of the awesome people they could find and then testing them to make sure they are just that bit more awesome. Fortunately you just happen to meet that criteria.

After a relatively short section, including a very non-jedi initiation ritual the main bulk of the game stretches out before you. You basically have to put together an army to stop the Darkspawn. There are four core groups to recruit - the Knights of a kindly Earl (or Arl as the game puts it - one of various medievalisms that creep in and give a nice bit of flavour the the setting) some wood elves, wizards and the dwarves (of my characters own former city). You can do these in any order you want and it makes no difference to the plots, though there are a couple of reasons which aren't mentioned in game that makes doing the wizards first a good idea.

As you go you gather a party, starting with Alistair, a fellow grey warden (who can be bizarrely immature) there are by my count ten characters in total. One of those however does not become available until near the end of the game. They are very much a Bioware cast of characters, with the usual range of varying eccentrics, however, for the most part they are probably more Baldur's Gate in tone than anything later, which have tended towards being slightly larger than life in a lot of cases. I found the most interesting to be the second character to join your team the most interesting - Morrigan, a witch who has lived in the wilderness her entire life who begins haughty but the better you get to know her the more that disappears to be replaced with being unsure with how to react to people being nice to her.

My one gripe about the characters however would be that of a world where dwarves and elves play a major part, they are only represented by one character each, and unfortunately I found them to be the two I found least interesting to have in my party.

I'll also make special note of two more characters. Firstly Shale - while technically downloadable content you get him free if you purchase the game first hand (there is a code on a slip of paper in the box). He is effectively this games' HK-47 (the popular assassin robot from KotOR who refers to people as 'meatbags') in that he is a morally dubious artificial being with humourous dialogue. Although I didn't have him in my party the first time round he definitely seems like it would be worth having him in the party for the dialogue alone on a second play through.

Secondly, we have the Dog, which I, on a whim named Orestes. Dogs seem to be in Western RPG vogue right now, with Fable 2 and Fallout 3 both offering their own versions. The Dragon Age dog is however great fun, and not only seemed to be the most hardy member of the party but there is some great interaction between it and the other characters. It is also integral to my favourite moment while playing, which involves a reaction to you saying you want your dog to represent you in a duel to decide what happens to a kingdom.

Unfortunately you can only have three of these characters with you at any one time, and as I found happened in KotOR, Jade Empire and Mass Effect you can never seem to fully explore all the characters, and with the characters that aren't constantly in your party they just seem to hit a wall where you've missed some point of interaction and run out of ability to explore their story or pursue romance plots, which is very frustrating. You can improve how much your companions like you with gift items that you find throughout the game but that only stretches so far. In fact, to my recollection, I've to date only managed to pursue one romance subplot in any Bioware game out of six games and three expansion packs completed. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong...

This is a good point to mention that this game is HARD, I'm not precisely a slouch when it comes to RPGs, but even on normal mode you are forced to be very tactical or you'll get massacred in even middle of the road fights. This is a definite throwback to Baldur's Gate, although unfortunately I no longer have 'cloudkill' and a shut door to do have cheap victories...

Graphically it isn't outstanding (it doesn't look as good as Mass Effect for example) but neither as some reviews have been suggesting is it an ugly game.

Technically speaking on my playthrough it has been very stable. There are some clipping issues with certain armours, and a lot of times arms don't seem to bend very well clipping with themselves. There are also some issues with selection boxes - during my playthrough I found that quite often you wouldn't be able to select something you could see because a piece of the scenery had its own box in the way. There is also a possible memory leak, and I've found that playing the game for a prolonged time means that loading areas seems to get slower after a while.

The fights are challenging and visually, but in certain sections can feel like a bit of a slog. There is also one thing which it lacks is that all the core story areas feel very enclosed, and in all but a few cases there is no interconectivity between the areas, which makes the world feel less unified. However, for getting knowledge about the world, there is a massive amount of information hidden in codecs throughout the game. The only other particular thing is personal preference, but the blood splatters present after combat can look a bit daft - it would probably improve it if they just removed the blood from faces after combat from earlier, you wouldn't tend to talk to someone with it all over your face, it might freak people out.

The plot has its moments, but suffers slightly from a lack of an exploration of the motives of the darkspawn or a 'mastermind' that can speak. This means that although there are some other villainous figures, they are unaffiliated with the Darkspawn, and in the end come off as misguided. It does benefit conversely that all characters except the darkspawn function in a more realistic set of shades of grey than the light side/dark side of KotOR or the D&D alignment systems. The replacement of any kind of morality measurement with individual party member influence does feel more organic, which is a definite step up from other Bioware games.

There are numerous complex moral problems, where neither is obviously right or wrong which give it a degree of sophistication usually lacking in games, although in one or two instances it can be frustrating to find that where as in real life I'd suggest a more nuanced compromise, that particular resolution is unavailable, which can be irritating.

The music is very good, although unfortunately not Planescape or Icewind Dale good, although certain parts do strongly resemble parts of Mask of the Betrayer, which although it was good music is slightly jarring when it already has connotations attached. The voice acting is generally great, with the game being fully voice acted (as far as I noticed) with actors such as Tim Curry, Claudia Black and Steve Blum being among the cast. It really adds together without being really obvious who is reading what (I'm looking at you Oblivion).

Overall, while not necessarily up to the standards of the Infinity engine forbears, its very close, and easily eclipses the entire Neverwinter Nights franchise, and is on par with the KotORs and Jade Empire. However, it's definitely a very worthy game, and in my view the best Western fantasy RPG of the last 7 years at least, so if you are at all interested in that, it's definitely worth picking up.

Score: 89%

Marketing to the Other Audience

2009-10-16T20:40:00.000+01:00

As we head into Autumn and Winter, it's becoming the time of year when I want to settle into a good long RPG. To put it bluntly, a nice long game like this is kind of like the gamign equivelant of reading a nice long book infront of a fire. Except I don't have a fire.... Fortunatly, we have perennial RPG maestros Bioware and their next release, Dragon Age: Origins coming out in the next few weeks.

On the not so fortunate side, for the first time in my life I've come across an advertising campaign that puts me off wanting to play it.

It's mainly the music and themes really, but to me this seems a bit like scoring Lord of the Rings trailers with Marilyn Manson. The theme of the trailer doesn't help either, given that it's quite probable that the sex part of the game may amount to less than 1% of gameplay.

The ironic thing though is that really, is that I kind os suspect all this is going to achieve in the end is marketing a game designed for one type of person (one willing to take at least a moderatly cerebral approach to a game) to the kind of people who are expecting something simpler and who will find this utterly boring...

Alexjholt.com v 2.0

2009-09-29T11:01:00.001+01:00

Well, after taking onboard some professional reviews at conceptart.org on how to improve the site, the whole new thing is up at www.alexjholt.com as before.

Now all that needs to be done is to reformat the old images still present into web optimised .gifs to increase loading speed and thats it done. Then just to keep adding to it and applying for jobs!

AAA Titles?

2009-08-25T12:36:00.000+01:00

A very brief little post here, but I really think that my concept of what a AAA title means must be vastly different to most employers. I'd personally get the impression that a AAA title is a defining title that only comes out occassionally (being like an A title, but so good it defines things that come after it). Half Life would be AAA, so would WoW (and probably most things by Blizzard to be fair) the Sims, Halo, Guitar Hero and GTA too, things of that sort of calibre.

Massive financial success, massive critical acclaim AND actually being a defining moment in the genre MIGHT qualify a game for that status in my eyes.

Really, to claim that all your titles are AAA, or that you only want employees with triple AAA experience seems a bit odd to me, obviously you want the best, and you think your game is the best, but I'm afraid it just looks slightly daft when every single job listing seems to say that they'll be working on a AAA title. One or two of them might conceivably be, but quite possibly none at all.

I guess I just prefer a bit of modesty about these things, particularly when the game isn't even released yet. Although as every title is apparently AAA, I suppose that means its easy to qualify for it...

A Bit of Reworking

2009-07-20T16:37:00.000+01:00

I was literally just clearing old my backlog on DeviantART, getting rid of all pieces which are old enough that they don't represent my current skills, when I came across this:

This particular piece was a speedpaint done in Painter, probably in the region of a year and a half ago. If I'm honest I never particularly liked it. I liked the idea when I started painting it, but it just didnt't come out right.

So, coming upon it now I decided to have a go at fixing it up. Nothing fundementally changed, just took it into photoshop for 40mins and went over it a bit, just to bring it up to something better.

Now it's still not perfect, it really needs to horizon line moved away from midpage and lots of tidying up. Infact I'm even tempted to say this is only the bottom right quarter of a much better composition, but anyway, really I find it quite interesting just to see what I now recognise in pictures now that I didn't a year and a half ago.

Thoughts?

Saturday's Art

2009-07-19T10:09:00.000+01:00

Had a very good day yesterday art wise, and as this is really an art blog these days:

1) Finished off my entry to the 'Stranger is a Strange Land' contest on game artisans.

2) A Conceptart.org daily sketch challenge: 'Reptilian Beast has both Elephantine and Tortoise-like qualities'

3) Speed Paint - Truth or Dare

4) 'Creature of the Week' on Conceptart.org, first concept of 'Creature that Refridgerates itself to cope with cold.

A New Home

2009-06-11T00:26:00.000+01:00

You may notice a change is design on this blog. That's because it's now integrated into by brand new website and needed to match it. Also because realistically it previously didn't look that great.

Anyhow, if you haven't visited already, you can find my site at the unforgettably named www.alexjholt.com

See you there hopefully.

Academia: It's Own Worst Enemy

2009-05-20T12:02:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I happened to catch a brief section of a program about why women's pay is still on average less than mens. I must admit I didn't watch the whole thing - money as a measure of success has never really interested me, and the program itself didn't give the impression it was going to come up with any meaningful solutions, and merely stated the kind of reasons behind it that I'd already concluded myself. However, in one brief section of it they were talking to a group of University students who were doing law, who were in there spare time entering into a beauty pagent.

Now it goes without saying that I dislike the concept of beauty pagents, and especially the very plastic artificial image of feminity they promote. It would seem that the male presenter of the show roughly agreed with that kind of viewpoint, and asked these girls why they wanted to be judged on their appearance when they were obviously all so intelligent. One of the responses was something to the effect of 'I'm proving my academic worth all week, but thats not all there is to me, and other things have value. Like beauty'. It's a pity that they had to add that last bit, because a skill of looking like a plastic doll aside, the rest of that statement has an interesting point to it.

The issue is that academia really only endorses other academia. Now that is a bit of a generalisation, but the point being that unless something can be directly tied into a representation of academic success it is looked down upon. This is probably most true of secondary schools to the point where they are practically parasitic of their student's successes. Unless a school has a focus in the arts, the chances are that for the most part achievement in the sciences, maths, english and so on is far more highly valued than the arts or anythign extra curricular. Academia tries to force itself into being the prevalent force in someones life while they are young, and so I don't think its really surprising to see that anti-intellectualism seems to be embedded within youth.

We get this because academia tends to have a rigid sense of meritocracy, and therefore students who are 'bad' are effectivly forced into competing against others at their own game, and losing. No one likes to lose, least of all the young and impatient. This is not to say that people should be
allowed to get an easy way out by being lazy. It's of course fair to make sure that everyone has at least a decent grounding in english and maths, and arguably IT even if they struggle against it because it's doing them more harm than good to let them go into the world without having developed those key skills. But at the same time, you have to be practical. Not everyone is a scientist, although everyone should know some science and so on for every subject, but only to the point where they have a grounding enough to know what they want to pursue.

Infact, for once I'm actually willing to say that I think my former school is right about something. Albeit for the wrong reasons. By the time I left school they were beginning to introduce a system whereby SATs would be taken a year early, and thus GCSEs would start a year early and be spread over three years rather than the normal two. I dislike their reasons - which are to effectivly increase efficiency in their meat grinder of an educational machine, SATs are irrelevant to your prospects so getting them out the way allows more time on the GCSEs to thus allow higher grades, which would seem admirable if I didn't know the kind of minds behind it. On the positive side however it does mean than children get to branch out earlier into specialising in their chosen subjects earlier, which I'd hope would do something to slightly ease any anti-intellectualism present.

Perhaps some kind of solution involving doing some kind of apprenticeship kind of thing as a kind of qualification amoungst GCSEs and reducing the range of mandatory ones if they are doing that. The problem with that is it starts messing around with child labour issues, so it probably needs more work as a concept. Retired professionals being paid by the government to run classes perhaps?

There is a real need to dispell the kind of intellectual arrogance that is present in the world, just as much as its necessary to get rid of the anti-intellectualism, both feed off each other and its an unhealthy state for society to be in. Tying back into the beginning though, I think society as a whole needs to work towards giving people more subtle avenues of expression. Its entirely reasonable to not want to be represented by one aspect of your character, and academia is merely one of the most greedy of claimants upon people's identity. Vanity is just as bad, although arguably less institutionalised. But for intelligence, occupation and education particularly, the amount of clutching at peoples identity is what drives people away from it and into potentially more self destructive avenues.

Review: Mysteries of Westgate

2009-05-07T18:20:00.000+01:00

Mysteries of Westgate is an 'adventure pack' for Neverwinter Nights 2. As an actual product this means it is something like a mini expansion pack containing a new campaign including a few new monsters and currently is only available via download. In terms of value for money, it costs £10 (or Euros or dollars... dubious currency conversion....) and with that you get a campaign which is probably in the region of 15 hours long if you do the side-quests. Considering that there are full price games out which last less time than that, that isn't too bad at all.

The game itself frequently feels like a homage to Baldur's Gate 2 - you are afflicted with a mysterious curse which causes nightmares (caused in this case by a mysterious domino mask which you can't get rid of) and arrive in a city where there are two warring criminal factions. As you advance in the quest you find out that there are more similarities than that but I don't want to spoil anything too blatantly. There is even a short but enjoyable quest which homages Minsc and Boo.

Lets start off with a few obvious points. This is one of those RPGs where realistically, certain classes are less than ideal to choose for yourself. There are three NPCs in the game, which you can have all of in your party at once, a cleric, a fighter and a rogue. The problem with this layout is that it really means that to have a particularly effective party you have to pick either a wizard type class or have a second front line fighter as otherwise you'll have a less effective, lopsided party which makes the game considerably harder, particularly if you pick a bard or rogue.

As I'm a masochist however, that is precisely what I did, and that was the least of my suicidal choices. My character was Pippa Clickle - a rogue, and more specifically, of a race called the svirfneblin, which are basically gnomes from deep under the ground, who also happen to be the only playable race which level-up three levels behind a normal race to balance out some rather potent powers. Which means in a game designed to finish at level lvl 14, I was lvl 11 at completion. Arriving in the city of Westgate though, my only fellow party member is a second rogue. Which served to make me pretty vulnerable until I could locate the other two characters.

The characters however are one of the better parts of the campaign Your companions are a former member of the ruling criminal gang in the city, a fallen paladin and a self righteous and condescending cleric, and while they may not be as good as the companions in either the original campaign of NWN2 or Mask of the Betrayer, they aren't that far off. What lets them down is intermittent voice acting (only half their lines if not less seem to be spoken) and a lack of dialogue options with them to account for circumstance. One example of this is that the former Paladin was a follower of a god called Lathander, and when you first meet the cleric character she complains about the church of Lathander. After completing the campaign I quickly made up my own (non-fallen) Paladin of Lathander to see if that would change the conversation at all. It didn't, and while it may seem like nitpicking, to not acknowledge differences between different characters like that, particularly ones which will effect the plot like this in a major way damages the suspension of disbelief to an extent.

Visually there isn't a great deal of point analysing MoW - as it's based on Neverwinter Nights 2 there isn't a great deal to be said about this which is different to any statements about the original game. Visually the main problems for me at least were more animation based than anything else, specifically running animation for all characters just looks wrong - its basically the feet don't touch the floor correctly and the legs move at a speed which combines to make them look like they are sliding across the ground while simultaniously moving their legs in a manner which is like a mild parody of running. It really doesn't do the game any favours, but it must be noted this is a legacy problem from NWN2 and nothing to do with Mysteries of Westgate itself. Similarly there are some odd proportions at play in most of the particularly human sized characters, and particularly among the male characters they stand very stiffly.

Visually the new monsters are very nice, although I only noted four of what I believe are supposed to be five. Two are spoilers to a degree, and the wererats were nice - however, it was the Quelzarn - a massive eely sea serpent thing which steals the show, in many ways showing up the legacy monsters. It's a shame that the only fight with one (there may be more...)I had was both very easy and anticlimatic. Especially considering only one of my party member had the ranged attacks necessary to actually get at it.

Plot wise the story splits into two, either siding with the priests of Lathander or the Ebon Claws - one of the aforementioned criminal gangs, one coincidentally populated by wererats. Here I must point out that there is one of my other niggles. I wasn't searching for the wererats, but was exploring and ran into them. Fair enough. However, I didn't particularly want to do their side of the plot so basically told them the truth but only so far as bluffing them went because they threatened a fight otherwise. Unfortunately doing so shut off the other side of the plot because the head priest had contacts who'd seen me making deals with them, which considering all I just agreed to their terms at the bottom of a dank sewer and then went straight to the priest to try join with him seemed a little harsh. I'd also say that at certain points you feel directionless and not sure where to turn, particularly in the first half of the plot.

Having said that, there are a number of clever and enjoyable quests, in addition to the aforementioned Minsc and Boo homage, there was a clever quest involving an amnesiac man, an elaborate quest involving a giant ball of yarn, a sphinx and riddles which I enjoyed. The arena fights are also quite enjoyable. Appropriately enough for a game based on a city run by thieves there is a satisfying amount of misdirection in a lot of the quests, although in the instances where you see through it immediately but are unable to act on it can be frustrating.

I have to say however that I particularly enjoyed the finale, as each of a number of characters revealing their motives and true goals to you one after another actually gave me a better feeling that this is a city of intrigue and deception better than the rest of the game combined. I would however say that I didn't have any trouble with any of the finale except the very first bit of it, and otherwise I'd have made it harder, enemies seemed to go down unexpectedly quickly.

As an overall game its not something that's necessarily going to stand on its own as a show of a really good RPG, but at the same time if you can ignore some quibbling bits, it is certainly an enjoyable little game, and given the price there isn't much reason to not get it if you like western RPGs.

One last note - it has a lot of unique loot with little back stories for each, which if you've read some of my earlier entries you may know is something I'm very fond of and NWN2 and it's expansions have thus far been comparatively light on, so at least as far as that goes it's a step up.

Score - 71%

Early Preview Look at the Museum Itself

2009-03-01T16:09:00.001Z

Just because it occured to me that I wasn't updating this at all, I thought I should put up a look at how my area itself is coming together just so you can actually see where I'm going with this. There are plenty of textures and assets to go in, including all normals and speculars.

The green is where the stairs to the upper plaform are going to go, the turquoise is is going to be brick, and the pillars and upper window frame only have a generic stone texture at the moment in time. The textures on the internal arches are also temporary. Also the lighting is not even as good as awful, and was only bunged in just so it was easier to see what was going on, but anyway:

Duck in Snow

2009-02-03T17:45:00.000Z

Just because I'm very fond of it - one of the photos I took yesterday in the snow.

Sabre-Tooth Tiger Skull

2009-01-27T02:24:00.000Z

Again, this needs some tweaking once I can take a look at it in Unreal, and is a higher triangle count than I'd intended, so I will probably tweak that down. This also has both normals and speculars, but they also need tweaking.

Cabinet of Hummingbirds

2009-01-21T19:51:00.001Z

I thought that as my new computer is going to be arriving next week, it's probably best to start on some small objects that my computer can handle in the mean time. Here we have my cabinet of hummingbirds. There are six different hummingbird textures in 3 different positions each. It's not quite finished yet however - there are still specular and normal maps to do and perhaps a felt texture at the bottom in on of the remaining two 256x256 textures. I'll try getting it into the engine next week to see how it looks in there.

Morality

2008-12-19T01:17:00.000Z

There is something about the idea of right and wrong that always makes people edgy. The second an act that is percieved as wrong occurs this whirling maelstrom of blame, self righteousness and good old fashioned fury seems to condense around it like some kind of infection in a wound making any kind of healing even less likely. That's not to say it isn't ever justified, and infact quite often it is and more so, but it's just the lack of reason in the reaction half the time that can sometimes disappoint me just as much as the original act, and even on occassion, more so.

There is always the temptation to assume all actions are black and white and would fit into a nice two columned table if you were to be asked to categorise them. But in reality, as all acts are ultimately selfish in some form anyway, I find it hard to believe in pure good or pure evil, or even pure right and wrong. In a sane mind, no one does anything just because 'it's evil'. They might well do a purposefully evil act, but there are always other motives - because they want people to notice them, because they want to prove such an arguement invalid or just because they think it will please someone else, not some kind of ridiculous moustache twirling desire to commit nefarious deeds.

I just finished watching 'The Most Hated Family in America' - a Louis Theroux documentary on the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, and it reminded me of some things. As much as I find their views reprehensible, I was already vaguely familiar with them, so there wasn't the shock value. I didn't find myself jumping to any kind 'aren't they evil!' braying for blood kind of feeling, but more fascination at the thought process. I've probably said it before, but I have a default distrust of organisations which act as entities in themselves. I just suspect I'm unwilling to put any faith into something where there is ultimatly no accountability because they govern themselves, if you get confronting the 'head' of such an entity then there is pretty much no obligation for them to be answerable to you. I can question an individual to my heart's content, but when an individual represents others then that means that at the end of the day they can default to a safety in numbers approach and assume that existence of their fellow members vindicates their stance on whatever.

But anyway, more interesting in this instance is the naivety of it all, which isn't so say aww isn't it harmless or anything of that sort, but more a somewhat macabre fascination with a thought process that has been effectively grown onto the younger generation, causing them to jar with the rest of the world. In many ways, I feel far more sorry for younger generation of them than I do loathing of them. The Grandfather is a whole other kettle of fish, just so filled with bile and hatred that from everything I've heard of him I could quite easily assume that he just subsists on his misguided hatred of the world. It's easy to hate things and to call them monsters, but I don't think that people are ever really monsters. They can certainly do monstrous acts, and infact a man acting as a monster is worse than just a monster - because humans understand how to hurt humans far deeper than anything looking from the outside in. But there is always the danger that in seeing people as monsters, you justify your own monstrous acts against them.

A man kills a child. The father of the child kills the original killer. They have commited the same act but the sympathy goes to the father understandably. He is, in some schools of thought justified to do so, but at the end of the day, in enacting revenge he himself is now a killer. I don't believe in revenge, revenge is merely justifying your own monstrousness with your pain and thus cause more pain and so you inflict on his family what he inflicted on yours. Frankly speaking I consider that a sign of a weak mind. I'm not suggesting that we should all just forgive and forget, as that is hardly a practical option for all cases, but more so I believe that justice should be served to a point, but you should never stoop into becoming that which you oppose.

When it comes to an organisation like the aforementioned Church though its the fact that they believe they are doing good which is quite interesting. I could pick holes in their arguements til the cows came home, but unless I was actually talking to them in person there is not much point, my poitns just sit unrefuted and I don't gain any insight into this twisted knotty bundle of beliefs. It's almost as if the younger generations have been forced into a mould purposefully designed to not fit in with the rest of society and then when they inevitably don't fit in with society the older generations just use this to say 'this proves we are right'. As I say it is all too easy to call them monsters, all too easy to call a dictator such or a violent inner city teenager, but at the end of the day, they are still human, and the knot of beliefs that makes them as they are, set up by whatever part of their upbring gave them their views. They are all humans and far from morally perfect examples, but that doesn't mean that we are perfect either, a fact which many seem to forget.

Badger 3D

2008-12-02T17:23:00.001Z

This is still unfinished work, I need to do all the 'fluffy bits' and the collar, as well as tidy up the texture, but here is a quick look at my character project. Just to clarrify to those who have never encountered her, yes she is a dog, her name is Badger.

Game City - Indiecade Video

2008-11-30T13:54:00.001Z

There is now actually some evidence on the internet of me actually being at Game City beyond a half second glimpse in a video, you can find Bernhard Schulenburg's video showing the whole little area we were working in here.

It was a really cool experience in general, but in some ways it makes me want to come back as a developer of some sort next time rather than as an assistant, it might be just me liking talking about myself too much, but generally speaking it just looks like it could be more fun to be a VIP.

I have to say, although I don't think I'm necessarily the right kind of person to undertake an indie project, the idea appeals, and just seeing the variety of things there which all end up beign very distinct is the kind of thing that just makes me want to go make a game right now. Pity I'm not a programmer.

But things like the visual beauty of Machinarium, the clever gameplay mechanics of 'Ibb and Obb' and Bernhard's own 'Where is My Heart', the complexity of Democracy 2 or the technical ingenuity of Level head and it's cameras (regardless of how frustrating it was to get the thign set up...) it was just great fun.

Incidentally, the game I was playing at the end with Megan is called 'the Dark Room Sex Game' - it doesn't have any visual component, just noises created when you are shaking the wii-motes in time with each other. The sounds if you break the rythmn are pretty hilarious though. Only two pairs of people actually managed to complete it in the demonstration, being me and Megan and Dave and Megan. Which makes us the champions of it for Gamecity. I probably shouldn't put that on my CV though...

Belated thanks to Sam and Stephanie for running the event, John and Yuey for technical support and Berhard, Yakub and the creators of all the games whose names unfortunately escape me at this second. Hopefully I'll be back again in some capacity next year.

My First Ever Interview!

2008-11-18T00:45:00.000Z

People who've read posts in the past may remember me talking about the One Million Masterpiece. Well, I'm currently the featured artist on the site, with an interview with me talking about various bits and bobs.

You can find it on the Million Masterpiece Site

I must admit however that if I get interviewed in future I should probably not answer questions late at night when I'm inclined to write vaguely hammy answers...

On a side note, if you have yet to sign up to the site I recommend doing it, at the very least you pretty much get a free part of a world record to add to your accomplishments with the record already been broken but the final submission for the record not passed. Plus it's for a good cause!

Space!

2008-10-23T23:04:00.000+01:00

I have a character in Space! In real life! Although unfortunately it's not as interesting as it sounds...

A little while ago I signed up for a demo of the MMO Tabula Rasa, who due to the childhood ambition of it's designer Richard Garriot was doing a promotion whereby on Mr Garriot's trip to the International Space Station he would take hard drives containing all the character's in the whole game into space with him.

Thus, Randall Steell (Steel was already taken as a sirname....) professional gruff post apocalyptic survivor character who drives a re-inforced armoured rubbish truck bastardised into a name for a rather generic space marine type character has ascended from this world!

Which is pretty cool I suppose.

Otherland: The Game?

2008-10-01T19:16:00.000+01:00

Books... directly inspiring games? Preposterous you say...

Well I'm not going to waffle on for ages, but basically one of my favourite series of novels is being converted into an mmo.

There aren't many details as such on the game so far, but basically the Otherland series by Tad Williams is a book set in the near future where the internet is even more all pervasive than it is currently. It essentially exists as a huge virtual reality world which people plug into. There are still games like fantasy mmorpgs within it, but the whole world is a lot more like second life or somesuch. The story itself revolves around a group of the rich trying to use the internet to make themselves immortal, by transfering their conciousnesses into it.

What relation to the plot of the books the game will play is unknown, and whether you could have any avatar of your choice also remains to be seen (people using Egyptian Gods, Baboons or just blank characters as their avastars amoung other thigns all occur within the books)

Anyway, a article and first screenshots are available here

If it anywhere near lives up to the world of the books it could be a very very interesting take on the genre. Although the fact that it seems to be beign developed for quad-core computers as standard is slightly unnerving for someone with my rescources...

Little Histories

2008-09-21T22:07:00.000+01:00

In some ways a fictional world is made most real by the stories within it. Not the book or game or film that is the actual story but the ones in the background. I only started thinking about this due to my playing of Icewind Dale II. The story isn't anything like as complex as Baldur's Gate II or Planescape: Torment, which in some ways works to its advantage. It is at the end of the day, a story about how a group of mercenaries kill everything that stands inbetween the frigid northern docks at which they first arrive and the twin foes who live atop the ancient ruined citadel of the Severed Hand. It is much more complex than that in actual story, but gameplay wise thats more or less the extent of it.

But there are some lovely little stories hidden in it if you know where to look. The best place though is in the weapon descriptions. There are of course plenty of generic weapons, magical or otherwise, with most of them being. But the real gems are in the 'unique' weapons. It of course varies as to the individual weapons, but these little stories really add depth to a setting. Some of them are epic, some of them are humourous, some of them are tragic, it's the fact that they are there that makes it all more interesting. This is infact one of the biggest gripes I have with action-rpgs, your equiptment is characterless due to the fact it is randomly generated. I really couldn't care less about somethign called the 'snazzy long spear of the walrus' where all the adjectives are merely descriptions of power or status effects generated by the game. It's dull and looses the uniqueness of an item - there is no story, it is merely a tool to be used and disguarded.

Admittedly for most action-rpgs or mmorpg it simply isn't practical to do that, and not only that, in the latter having any more than one item like that is simply going to devalue the story. Perhaps some kind of system where there is only ever one item like that in the game world at any one time, and it can only be claimed by victory in pvp in gameworld (or trade). Infact, to take it further, you could have it gain history as it goes. It makes something more interesting for an item to hav dynamic history, and perhaps even become more magical if certain feats are performed or certain conditions are met. Even in an mmo little stories can appear ingame. The sword you find in the snow is far more interesting if it was the sword of the last defender standing of a group who stood against a hoard of trolls who attacked a remote village. While all his companions fell around him he battled on killing dozens until he himself succumbed. It might well have happened, and it's definately that 'this sword has a +1 bonus to hit'.

The downside of this is that it would have to be done in such a way that there weren't hundreds of the things around. Or a different approach, doing certain epic feats with a weapon could unlock the ability for the user to write their own story. But then that would have to be moderated for content and plauisibility within the game world, which would probably be a full time job for someone. So on second thoughts no.

One possible exception to this could be the war mmo that Joel and I came up with between us. Effectively just a vast single sever game of capure the flag, no magic, fighting game style combat, two castles, a big open space between. Thousands of players all fighting at once. It would essentially just go on until one side won by capturing the other castle, and depending on what kind of character you played you'd unlock new equiptment and such. Anyway there would also be top players of each 'match' and their weapons could become these epic things the more they were used. Then when a player bearing one is killed it could be looted and carried onto the next player who gets it, and so the history grows.

Anyway, I'll shut up now, but I just wanted to express how much more fullfilling just little details make things. Stories of an elderly knight who wouldn't give up on his vow to a crying child, overprepared invetors beign crushed by their own mass of belongings, wives naming weapons after their hated late husbands in vengeance, bastard children seeking out the warlord who is their father, shoes designed to stop entangling vines which just lead their enemies too them. A bow from which a woman transformed into an arrow was to be fired to escape a marriage. Much more fun than a namelss +1 mace.

Sport, Commercialism and the Olympics

2008-09-12T21:19:00.000+01:00

There is something that vaguely annoys me about people complaining about the Olympics. It's ot that I personally go out of my way to watch any of it, as a rule I don't do that for any sport but as something to watch casually in the spaces of times between doing other thigns it's quite itneresting. Admittedly this year I watched slightly more than usual just because I've had less to do than usual but thats not exactly the point.

The point being when I read articles in the paper by people argueing effectively that the whole proceedings are a waste of time and money. I would beg to differ, as a whole I find them a far more worthy event than the endless grey monotony of the yearly football matches. I can't even stand to watch those at all... I think I just find it vaguely offensive that football is as much an industry and an obsession as it is a sport. That's not to say I disapprove of kids playing it in the street or even people gettign together of sundays to play, but the whole lumbering bloated industry around it is one of the things on the list of things that just makes me disappointed in things. The other day when sorting stuff in the Red Cross Charity shop I've been volunteering in the last few weeks we came across a bag of Liverpool wallpaper and liverpool lampshades and so on.... eurgh... Not that I have any problem with Liverpool, just that there are people (children I would presume?) out there who define themselves so much by the performance of a group of strangers that they would adorn their personal space with it, as if that is the most important thing to them... that they support someone else.

Now admittedly I have always had issues about that kind of thing, not sure why precisely but since I was little I've refused to wear obviously branded clothing as much as possible. I even remember throwing a wobbly of sorts in primary school, when, upon discovering that I had left my unadorned navy blue jumper I was made to wear a similarly coloured and similarly sized jumper except with the words 'Geddington Primary School' embroidered in red in a matchbox sized area on one side of my chest. The general oppinion still holds really, although now it's fortunately more subdued, I possess only a few t-shirts that are not just one plain colour or have any kind of writing on. One of which being the one I had to wear at Game City (you will note I didn't throw a wobbly then, lol) another is the infamous 'hobbit' t-shirt which got picked up in a charity shop somewhere years ago and is generally just inoffensive enough to get under the radar.

Generally though, for preference I just wear a plain t-shirt whenever possible. I also used to hate having stickers put on me, even if for a good cause. I still just tend to say no thanks or stick it in my pocket 'for later' if I get given one for a charity donation. Anyway... I diverge... the point being that I have never been able to associate with the need to be visually identifiable as one of a group. Perhaps I just don't associate with groups in general? I understand on an academic level of course, humans are inherantly a pack/herd animal (a bit of each in my oppinion) so marking yourself as a member of group X enhances your own strength and status, or just makes you feel like you belong, or lets everyone else know you like certain things, there are loads of reasons.

In theory I have little problem with the general principle of that, right up until the point where people define themselves as a member of a group first and an individual second. I think I might just be very pro-individual when it comes to people defining their identity... I just don't trust in society or cultures building people's identities for them, it's like cultural inbreeding, the flaws of the culture end up emerging due to a hidden prevailance.

Anyway, while football just seems to be an obsession for many the Olympics is an obsession of the few, but more so, in many ways it just seems more personal. If a footballer scores a goal he may run around roaring or doing backflips or waving his shirt around. One of the most memorable things I saw during the Olympics wasn't really about the sport at all. It was a review of the day, pretty early on in the proceedings and they were showing the winner of some of the women's weightlifting. It was a chinese woman I believe, she had just lifted the winning weight, and had just won the whole event, she threw down the huge weight, and ran off the podium, massive smile on her face, and literally just jumped into the arms of her boyfriend. It was only when she moved away from podium that you realised that she was probably less than 5ft tall, so it was this wonderful image of this tiny woman clung around this guy who was far taller than her, yet she was the one who had just been lifting these vast metal weights, and she just looked so happy. To be honest I found that, cheesy as it may sound, just a lovely moment, and million times more interesting and wonderful to watch than all the generic machismo you see in the overpaid footballers who live in their mansions. For all I know she might be massively paid and live in a mansion of course, although I suspect not, but just seeing moments like that just makes the athletes in the Olympics seem far more human, and far far more interesting. Congratulations to them all, people who won, people who didn't, whatever, they all deserve congratulations for getting there.

But then there are the Paralympics. In a lot of ways I think this is the most worthy of all sporting events - while the Olympics are about people striving to be the best in the world, the Paralympians always seem to have to do that despite whatever physical limitations they might have. It's just wonderful to see what these people can achieve despite having these disabilities that would probably have me or most people wallowing in self pity. I wish I had half the personal strength that they show by even just trying to get there. I frankly feel humbled by them all, and wish them all the best in their lives, both competative and otherwise.

The End of the World and Spore

2008-09-08T22:30:00.000+01:00

On Wednesday they turn on the supercollider, and if you are reading it after that date it hopefully means that they didn't destroy the world. Or that you are a member of some kind of alien civilisation who have somehow recovered this as a relic of earth. If the latter I apologise that this couldn't be some more significant artifact that you could get extra funding for...

To be honest I kind of wish I didn't know about it all, I hate risks in general and to me this just comes off as the biggest risk humanity has ever taken and I don't even get a say. Unsurprisingly... perhaps I need to hang round with eminent quantum physicists more?

I can vaguely see why they want to do it, but for what as far as I can ascertain is a purely academic endeavour I really don't see how the risk can be justified even if it is 'not going to happen'. Imagine the health and safety risk assessments on this one.... 'may destroy earth, may convert earth into 'strange matter'' It's a bit grim all around.

With any luck it of course won't destroy the world or anything, but presuming my continued existence I'll be sleeping easier after Wednesday. I think its the fact that I'm in one of my more gloomy phases anyway that's just magnifying it all. I always say I like to learn from other peoples mistakes, but it kind of defeats the point if there is no one left to do so. Then there's the fact that if this is my last few days in existence I wish I could bring myself to do more than play Spore.

To move onto a slightly lighter topic then, Spore is finally here, and it proves to be both addictive and vaguely disappointing.

To be fair, any game that's been on my check-up list for the amount of time this has is bound to be not quite the hype it has built up around itself. For some perspective, this was on my list before I even knew Marvel Ultimate Alliance (a contemporary on the list) was being made, which was in early 2006 if not sooner. I completed MUA and then had to wait almost two more years...

Spore is basically five smaller games, some stronger than others, and they kind of need discussing separately.

Firstly the Tidepool stage, where you create your bacteria-esque beast basically plays like a kind of elaborate pacman, you eat stuff, you grow bigger, unlock more parts eat more things and so on. Its the shortest stage of the game from what I've played but one of the more fun. The problem is that in this stage the body parts are somewhat limited so I found it kind of frustrating to try and create an interesting little beast, a wider selection of parts would really benefit this stage, although there is admittedly a quiet satisfaction in it. Anyway, to help illustrate my journey I have enlisted the help of my main creation - the Tidopods, who, upon finishing the cellular stage looked like this*: *If you are reading this on facebook you probably won't be able to see images, in which case look at doomforall.blogspot.com to see my Tidopods in their full glory.

When you have eaten enough you go onto the land phase of the game, I must point out here that they omitted the aquatic phase shown in some of the early videos which is a shame I feel as if this part of the game would really benefit from being longer and more varied but they may always reinsert it in an expansion. Anyway this phase basically consists of your now legged creature having a nest going off and either making peace with (through song, dance, posing and what as far as I can make out is some kind of bum wiggle) or killing and potentially eating everything. Or both. The choice is yours. I've tried all three approaches and personally I found the herbivore approach more satisfying, although omnivorousness is also handy should a creature happen to attack you before you get a chance to sing to them and you need to replenish your health afterwards.

This is one of the better stages but it looses out in being far less random that I had the impression of, it's not like a real Savannah say where there are just beasts everywhere of various sorts (like the cellular stage for that matter) but rather almost all creatures are focused around nests with the exception of a few rare/epic ones, which in the development of the Tidopods unfortunately included an epic Abomantis - a rather nasty creature with too many arms and tree insectile jaws, which relative to my creatures was the size of a house. Eventually eluding that though I eventually worked up to the next stage. This is incidentally the stage with the most work in the editors, and that's the fun part of it really seeing your creature gradually develop like thus...

Next we get to what I feel are the two most underwhelming stages which I'll do at he same time - Tribal and Civilisation Phases. Tribal is a more complex version of the Evolutionary stage in many ways, except replace nests with tribes and control little armies of creatures instead of a solo animal and a few 'friends'. There's nothing really wrong with it, its just I have no urge to go back to it as it just came off as pretty straight-forward. At the start of this phase you get to design a little costume which is fun, but in a lot of ways I wish their was customisability in the weapons and instruments just to add a bit more personality to the stage.

Civilisation is basically about harvesting spice (Dune reference anyone?) and taking over the world. I chose to do this stage religiously which involved my little tracked customised vehicles going over to the other city and bombarding them with a giant hologram of my little piggy beast spouting propaganda which is admittedly quite amusing to watch. You also get to design a second costume here for your civilisation - I settled with just a top hat and a rucksack just because it amused me. You also get to create land, sea and air vehicles which I want to go back and try again as my results where a tad uninspiring. When you finally succeed you are off to the final stage.

The Space Stage is by far the most complex of the game. You have still got to manage the whole foe/friend routine but you gain an increasing assortment of tools to do it with. You get weapons, you get abduction beams, you get dozens of land sculpturing tools (including ones for changing the colours of the sea, air and land) and things which stamp bizare shapes into the surface of a planet. Like making a mountain shaped like a chocolate truffle. This is the most addictive and varied stage of the game, and also by far the most difficult, but in your custom space ship its pretty rewarding.

The problem with Spore as a whole is that I personally just feel every stage could do with more complexity and more things to do as everythign feels oversimplified. The exception is the space stage which has more specific requirements - particularly just a means of endign a war other than genocide or bribes, preferably some kind of diplomacy even if its just a space age equivelant of doing the dancing from the second stage.

The thing I would say is that Spore so far is a platform for more stuff, they are already talking of releasing a plant editor, and hopefully the aquatic stage will be reintroduced, and just add more content. The game stands out in its ambition and its technology (the procedural movement and focus on user content is great) plus there is a buzz when you find your own creations in the game. It's not the best game ever by any means, but it's original, unique and fun and you can't ask for much more.

On a side note, the much touted sharing of creatures doesn't work in the EU yet, but once it does you'll be able to have friends and get thier creatures and so on.

Help Save the Rainforests!

2008-08-13T21:07:00.001+01:00

I literally just came upstairs from watching 'Lost Land of the Jaguar' which, although I only saw the latter two episodes has just been fascinating to watch, just watching it has given me an urge to go off to a rainforest and just take photos of every single animal I see there until I just can't do it any more, just the idea of so many species... I mean I've been in Cornwall this last week and done a fair bit of searchign for animals, I saw just in the way of birds:

Herring Gull, Great Black Backed Gull, Lesser Black Backed Gull, Peregrine falcon, Kestrel, Buzzard, Fulmar, Stonechat, Rock Pippit, Meadow Pipit, Robin, Wren, House sparrow, Oystercatcher, Cormorant, Fulmar, Sandwich Tern, Woodpidgeon, Garden Warbler, Swift, Swallow, Sand Martin, House martin, Gannet, Skylark, Pied Wagtail, Turnstone, Curlew, Song Thrush and Dunnock

Now if I can see thirty species, and there will be some I've forgotten or couldn't identify, just in a rather limited habitat like moors and cliffs and gardens, there must be thousands upon thousands of things in the rainforests.... plus millions of insects, dozens of mammels (I saw both grey and harbour seals and thats about it on this trip) plus a ton of reptiles and amphibeans (in britain we have 3 snakes, 3 lizards, 2 frogs, 2 toads 3 newts and the occassional sea turtle) it must be just brilliant, and the thought of loosing all of them is just frankly terrifying... I must admit being slightly jealous of all the wildlife my brother got to see, having just returned from his trip to Uganda...

At the end of this last show however though, they revealled that the Guyanan government is willing to not log ANY of its jungle whatsoever should it be given financial aid by other countries to compensate for not logging, which is entirely fair enough.

So I came straight up to my computer to go to the government petition site and found the appropriate one, so I urge every single british person who reads this to go straight to
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/guyana/
as soon as possible and sign it, and help save a whole countries worth of unspoilt rainforest!

Changes

2008-06-05T22:35:00.000+01:00

I think to some point I may have a slight degree of notoriety amoung those who know me. I am slow to change compared to a lot of people, it could even feasibly be suggested that I'm closer to a direct extrapolation of myself when I first started school than more or less anyone I'm able to compare to.

Just as much I don't hold with change unless I see a reason for it, otherwise it just feels frivalous. I particularly struggle with suden changes where one becomes the other in a single instant, even if armed with preknowledge, chances are unless it is a change I consider necessary I would prefer a gradual transition. Equally I prefer change to happen at a natural rate rather than people trying to accelerate it.

I'm not sure why I'm talking about this, it just struck me about thrity seconds before I started writing that I should write on the topic. It's possible that I have something niggling at me related to the subject, but I can't really think what offhand. Nevermind, it might come to me later.

But anyway I feel that the world is preoccupied with change and it's acceleration. In some places this has merit, and as such I won't fault it. The growing awareness of green issues for example is definatly a step in the right direction, although at the same time humanities gargantuan self importance will prevent us from making as much difference as we really should. The big players in the world rely too heavily on oil for them to let it go, it's like trying to wean a few vast babies off bottles of oil while they grasp on to claim every last putrid drop...

In part thats the reason why I don't like countries - well I don't like governments more specifically, countries are generally quite interesting but only as conveniant ways of looking at collected histories, ideologies, geographies and ecologies rather than because I actually appreciate the countries themselves in any particular capacity. I just find them distastefully introverted and selfish - if I was in a government I'd always be trying to make the country as a whole a force for good, and not in an 'america policing the world' kind of way, as that is ultimatly just america bossign everyone else around to protect its own interests. They are too inclined to ignore problems which they have no direct interest in - the various corrupt dictatorships in Africa for example, and equally to ready to only treat the symptoms of internal problems rather than addressing the causes, which while admittedly harder are better in the long term.

Perhaps this is just me still being the rigid ideallist I was as a child - as I said, my changes are far less than that of most. But even so I don't think there is ever an excuse for choosing the less moral of any choice...

Walks

2008-05-29T23:11:00.000+01:00

I've been feeling inclined to go walking recently. In part it's just my country-dwelling mentality finding the city just a bit too grey. Well not literally, but it's a far more enclosed place than anywhere I've lived before. The horizon is always hidden and there are always people... not that there's anything wrong with people but I always need a measure of solace that is never quite satisfied with the ever present hum of other people. I think I'm more of a countryside dweller than most people I've ever known, on one level I seem to need my own space far more than anyone who has lived in suburbs and estates, but even compared to other village dwellers I can be reclusive.

Perhaps it's that I started off smaller yet - for the first four years of my life I lived in a house in a row of cottages in the middle of nowhere, just plonked slightly off the side of the mainroad with nothing but countryside in every direction. My brother is far more of a town person than me, and I suspect the fact he was only two years old when he moved to the village, rather than my four. In some ways I still think I feel that company is the exception rather than the rule, whereas I similarly suspect he finds it the opposite.

But back to walking...

I find the canal a massive bonus, not only is it a rather simple route 'out' but the fact that it is surrounded either by a facade of trees, or what for lack of a better word springing to mind I can only think of as ruins, in which nature is slowly clawing it's way back frond at a time. It's just a lot more calming. A few weeks ago I walked 3 miles along (and then back of course) past the space centre and on to what was just beginning to be countryside. I did this after having just been invited to the pub - the suggestion that I should go spend time in such a 'busy' environment gave me an urge to do the opposite. So I walked.

I have been asked why I walked it, instead of getting the bus there or asking for a lift, and I couldn't really come up with an answer though I knew there was a reason. I've realised there are three reasons though - firstly that where ever I get to, I feel I have earnt my solace, secondly as I'm not going anywhere particular the journey is the interesting part - I want to see the things on the way, and take them in ayt my own pace. Thirdly if someone else takes me (someone giving me a lift or a bus driver of whatever) then I don't even get the very feeling of freedom and intentional isolation I've been wanting.

Anyway, just to finish up, heres a few of the photo's I've taken over the last few weeks:

I may upload some more when I next clear out my camera...

The Joy of Angst

2008-05-20T23:21:00.000+01:00

Unfortunatly it's reached that time where I feel the need to do some more introspection. Realistically, it's a constant factor in my life, but now it's got to the point where I need to write it down again, so miscellanious readers I aplogise in advance.

I'm not perfect. I wouldn't say I would be the first to tell you this - I have the position of actually being me so I know my strengths as much as my weaknesses, but still enough that I'd be one of the earlier people to say it perhaps. Perfect is of course unachievable anyway - if anyone was then the rest of us would be obsolete and they themselves wouldn't be human - for one thing perfect is subjective - my definition of perfect will wildly vary from that of someone elses and so perfection for the masses will forever be impossible to define, which in some way's I'm glad of. If there was a perfect being does that imply that being perfect they would seek to remove imperfection - and what right would they have to do that, and how would they do it - are they perfect morally too? Dr Manhattan in Watchmen - a God created by science becomes largely indifferent to humanity just because he percieves it as small and irrelevant yet would the scrutiny of such a being be any better? In fact entirely unrelatedly this came up in the Star trek episode I was vaguely watching over lunch:

"Do we have the right to interfere? So we do for this geological disaster? How about for disease? And what about war?

Those weren't the exact words, I'm too tired to look for them, but the gist is there - at what point do you stop helping and become controlling? At one point in Cable and Deadpool Cable uses his telekinesis to rip the guns from the hands of warring factions and molds them into a huge statue of shaking hands, but given that power, is that the 'right decision'? They say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutly but I do not believe this is necessarily true, or it least depends on your value of corruption.

Is it corrupt to do the right thing even if you have no right to do it? I don't think so, although of course the 'right thing' is debateable most of the time where would it warrant your attention and where would you have no right - it would be all to easy to declare yourself absolute in the knowledge that that is the only way guarantee peace in the long run - the Paradox of the tyrant - if you do evil for the greater good is it still evil. Leto the Tyrant of the Dune novels is of course one example - is a millenia old empire run by one man which caused mass subjugation and death excuseable because only through it could humanity as a whole survive? I couldn't make that choice for one thing - are both choices inherantly wrong? Even something far more clean cut - say either an unrepentant murderer dies or two children do, who do you chose? I would hope the children at least as a gut reaction, but still, what gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies? Circumstance of course, once you are at the point you must make a choice and live with it for better or worse.

I've stated before that I hate the rigidity that the concept of fate implies - with everything preordained we have no way to make a difference. I could take comfort in that - the odds of me both existing and alive about minute, yet if reality is just a very complicated film - or even a linear game where we can go marginally different routes and always arrive at the same outcome is too horrible to consider.

This wasn't even what I originally was talking about, I am flawed and one of those flaws is my self righteousness. Saying it is just how I am is no excuse, but is it something that can even be excused anyway? If I have a belief in something why would I keep quiet about it as that betrays my own belief and that is something I am not willing to do. Just as if I make a promise to a friend I will never break it if I have any choice, even exceeding whatever other commitments I have - I don't feel significant enough in myself to me putting myself ahead of them and certainly I have trouble feeling any obligation to an entity that doesn't exist like a company if that comes between me and my promise.

I don't feel significant - in some ways I wish I hated myself - it would be a lot easier if thats the case, but more so I feel constant disappointment in myself in the knowledge that for every choice I make it necessitates small evils even if I don't mean it. Sometimes I just feel like i've been left in the corner to hold whatever burden I've taken on myself, but really, I think I put myself in the corner because I want people to act to me the way I try to act to them. My friend George once said upon being asked if there was anyone whose face she couldn't read well 'You' and I feel I know why - at the same time as trying to be the one whose playing by my own misguided rules I'm also trying to be the stalwart who never shows discomfort, and, while it is probably true that I can handle far more discomfort than most, I can't handle as much as people might have the impression I can. Or even perhaps I can, but certainly not in a healthy way - it's when my shoulders constantly feel tense I can tell its really piling on. I sometimes feel like properly snapping would be a release, but who knows if I can anymore.

I don't think I'm perfect, but I'm probably closer to my own image of perfection than I am to that of most people - I uphold my ideals at the expense of pretty much everything else. I'm not sure it's worth it, but I don't know how to do it differently. How it turns out in the end is for history to say.

'Most Likely to Succeed?'

2008-04-30T21:50:00.001+01:00

Facebook is a pretty odd, yet brilliant concept when you think about it - take loads of people who know each other and give them the means to keep up to date without actually necessitating any direct communication. People do of course, yet still in some ways it seems counter productive, I know things about peoples lives that I'd never find out usually, yet, at the same time it means I have less to talk about with people when I do talk. 'Oh, have you heard?' - the answer of course being yes, facebook told me.

Anyway, that wasn't really what this was about, as the title may have suggested, that this is in fact more about the specific 'compare people' application. Which is again a massive simplification of conversation that seems addictive - do you think person X is a better whatever than person Y - now you can tell the world with a click of a button - and that person Z is better at that too.

It is of course fatally flawed in some regards, one being that you of course have different levels of familiarity with the people who will be judging you. Using friend wheel (yet more cleverness - the names of your friends, diagrams and colours what isn't to love?) I can see where my friends know me from - of my 169 'friends' just under half are from secondary school, perhaps over a bit of a 6th are from uni, a couple over ten comprise friends from primary school, a smattering of relatives, a slightly larger smattering of 'friends of friends' and then a big anonymous amoeba of people I've met over the net comprising a similar number to those encountered at uni.

Every single one of them will of course have a different perception of me. There will be best friends, people who vaguely remember me, people to whom I'm a vaguely defined entity in the background, people who think I'm flawed, people who think I'm great, people who can't even remember me I suspect, former friends, former enemies, people to whom I am a footnote in their lives and people whose lives I have unwittingly helped define for better or worse. One person whose only connection to me is that he shares my name. It's all rather surreal when you think about it. Then they are asked to then chose between me and another person who they think is better in a certain way.

Now, how can I compare as the aforementioned footnote to life to a lifelong best friend? I could of course try to be best friends with everyone, but that belies my somewhat cautious nature - I'm not very good at initiating conversation unless I'm very familiar with someone, and, at the end of the day, while I'm sure there are people in this list that I should make myself know better, there are probably equally those who I have no need to do so. How do I judge which is which? If you read this and have a vague inkling that we should know each other better, be sure to just start talking, much as I like to pretend I can do it from here its an unrealistic personal deceit.

But then we look at the results, and some of them are just as intriguing as the improbable scenario that bought them to light.

According to this, I am most defiantly not cool, which I have always aimed for anyway. I am not likely to skip class, but equally I'm not a hard worker. I'm also apparently not reliable, which I'd personally argue depends massively on context but as it was voted on by four anonymous people again four equally anonymous opponents is not exactly a crippling blow to my ego. I'm also apparently not sexy, datable, kissable, fashionable, useful or brave, which I can all live with (although being considered kissable and datable would some nice at *some* point in the remaining years of my life). I can apparently drink more than 50% of people I was compared to, I must admit being intrigued considering my only alcoholic drink in the last year and 3/4 was half a glass of mulled wine which gave me a bad stomach.

In some ways though, the higher reaches of the scoreboard are likely slightly more useful, as when I'm getting voted as the 'winner' then it obviously means I mean something to the person voting, which is nice to think, rather than just the opponent of their good friend X. Some people apparently consider me funny, kind and cuddly, which means a lot more to me than the aforementioned sexy and co, I'd far rather be these things to people. I'm also unanimously smarter, a better catch and well mannered which although not things I'd ever aim to be perceived as specifically, are also quite nice to hear.

But what am I apparently best at? The things about me I instill in others to the point where it is seemingly integral to their perception of me...

Worryingly apparently of 169 people I know on facebook, apparently I would make the 6th best father... I'm not sure what exactly that encompasses in peoples minds... me a father... what a terrifying thought... especially considering that there have been only two occasions on which I ever thought about it in any depth - both following dreams on the subject. One was a very pleasant dream, I was older and had two daughters the older of which was exactly the kind of person I wished I could be at that - intelligent, astute and also kind and affectionate. She also had black hair and pale skin, the younger daughter was still a baby. That was one of the few dreams I've had in a very long time where it gave me a positive feeling upon waking up. On the counterbalance the other dream was a nightmare about having a child at this age on the basis that the mother 'wanted to try everything once' - that put me in a sour mood for ages....

In a similar vein to each other, people have said I'm loyal and likely to do favours. These are also nice to hear, yet still are things I try to be but never feel I am doing enough.

Yet the one I find most bizarre is 'most likely to succeed' at which I place 3rd. Out of every single thing on the list this is for some reason the one that jars with me. Not I add, because I inherently think I'm a failure, but equally I don't think I'm a success. I feel like when describing myself recently this is becoming a buzz phrase, but in terms of this, I 'just am'. I can't remember if I've said it before on here, but the greatest compliment someone ever gave me was from my friend Rachael and was to the effect of saying that if I had the drive to do anything I could, but that to be as relaxed about the world as I am would make things more calming.
I think that hits the nail on the the head - it's not I can't do things, its just I have trouble treating them to be as important as they are.

I lack drive in my own life, which is not to say I don't try - its just that I find it incredibly hard to prioritise 'work' over other things. To an extent, its a lack of focus - I have never felt as if there was one aspect of me that defines me entirely and so without one uniform focus, I myself can't focus. Art may have the majority vote when it comes to what i want to do with my life, but I still feel drawn to writing, to some science (wildlife still holds a fascination to me) and to psychology and philosophy and to mythology and to any number of odd bits and pieces. Which is of course why I picked the course I'm on - at least it touches on most of my interests even if it doesn't cover them comprehensively whereas I never saw anything else that would.

I'd get bored with pure academia, and frustrated at pure art and am probably the only person on the course as it is who wished they could write more. So how can I possibly 'succeed' when I don't have a goal to succeed in. I really don't know to be honest, in some ways I feel I'm unable to commit to work because I'm afraid I'll be limiting myself to a more narrow confine than I'll be able to cope with. I'd like to do everything, but it feels like I'd rather do nothing than *just* something a lot of the time - I need to engage my brain academically AND creatively. It's infuriating really...

I'm possibly a jack of all traits (which has forever conjured an image of a grey fox climbing in the trees of South America looking for eggs - a scene which appeared in the 1992 wildlife series 'The Velvet Claw' which was the first time I heard the phrase - I have no idea why that association is so strong, but I digress) in that I don't think that I'll ever be the best at anything, I think perhaps what I should focus on is that I can be diverse rather than the best. Perhaps I'll change, perhaps I'll settle, but for the mean time I'll carry on picking whatever course of action seems the best, and until I finally find somewhere to latch onto then I'll just see where the ride takes me.

Insights into Creativity

2008-04-23T21:15:00.000+01:00

I just stumbled on this article upon the oppinions of David Gaider from Bioware, who from what little I can gather is a writer. Particularly interesting is this:

In other words, I would much rather have characters that do completely idiotic things, are sycophantic or hopeless in their idiosyncracies or over-the-top like HK-47 or Deekin as opposed to those who are well-written but otherwise completely unmemorable. You as an RPG connoisseur might roll your eyes and think that means that I don't value quality-- but that's not it at all. Quite the opposite, in fact, as these goals are not what I would consider to be mutually exclusive.

So essentially he is saying that memorable is in many ways a priority when designing, and I can't help but agree, not just in writing but creativity it general. It's all to easy to make a generic game, ubt the more you push the boundaries, the more it stays with you. Now, that in turn makes it mroe likely that people will remember your work, and then after that, that they'll recommend it onwards. In some ways though, more important to me is the memory, it would be really great to create soemthign that stayed with people.

Thinking about it, the more you can remember specific moments of the game, the more it feels like it means - Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Skies of Arcadia and vampire the Masquerade stand out particularly personally, just because they were just more distinct. In contrast, much as I enjoy them a ton, games like the X-men Legends Games, Marvel Ultimate Alliance are more fuzzy memories in comparrison, just a vague feeling of enjoyment with the knowledge that I was playing as famous characters.

I hope someday I manage to create something that people remember... it would just be quite surreal, but awesome.

Not so Bad Characters

2008-04-21T23:41:00.000+01:00

Just a few moments ago a phrase that I'd heard in various places popped into my head - 'there is no such thing as a bad character - just bad writing'. I've heard it various times on the comic site Newsarama, particularly by a guy called Dirk Manning who writes this column advising people how to go about writing comics (or to some extent, any kind of writing).

Now this sounds all well and good, but that means differentiating a place where the character ends and the creator begins, which sounds easy to some extent but isn't. The thing is, when devising a character, its not just plucked out of thin air and in many ways reflects the author themselves - it may not be obvious but a characters limit is defiend by the limits of the creators imagination. Plus there is always the tendency write a character as yourself as you wished you were - particularly the protaganist who of course provides the viewport into that world. The ideas of each character can only ever amount to the total ideas of the originator. Fortunatly the human mind is a remarkably versatile piece of creative equiptment, it is of course limited by the experiences of the person. Now drawing on socio-linguistic theory I pitch to you the theory that men are less able to write convincing women then women are able to write convincing men. The first is that male behaviour is inherantly more extroverted (the desire for overt prestige if you really want to know) and secondly that our culture has developed in such a way where the female experience seems to essentially the male one with some extra bits. This results in that women are often more aware of how men work because it's pretty damn obvious, and frequently much as it's relatively frequent to find male writers who can write women (as women, and not as emotionally androginous) it mostly seems to stem from an academic understanding rather than a real grasp of the emotions. Thats not to say they aren't out there, just that I've yet to knowingly encounter a female character from a male author who strikes me as exactly like a woman would be, regardless of how good the overall text is.

Now that is just generalisation, I'm pretty certain there are exceptions out there. The point being that a character is limited in that way - of coruse, comics have an advantage over the other mediums - they layer up with successive writers and artists to the point where instead of being defined by the visions of one person, they are alloyed with dozens more. Then of course if you get someone who doesn't quite get part of the composition they can still write it badly, even terribly, but the character is still intact. With books, games, films and anything else (with the exception of series), it's a little different because they don't have the layers to protect the core concept - the core concept is then original and has to stand on its own merits.

So, how do you decide that is worthy and what isn't? The problem is that the character might be fine, just entirely wrong for the setting, or in entirely the wrong role. Take an absurdist character and try and stick it into Eastenders and chances are you wouldn't get very far with it - the demographic isn't looking for a character who does nothign due to belief that human endeavor is ultimatly pointless. The tone is wrong at the very least - to have absurdism as the principle defining characteristic would remove them from the tabloidesque interpersonal relations which define Eastenders because it's a pretty solitary thing unless you go spouting monologues. Now, take that same absurdist and put them in a situation whereby it is a small group of people in a bunker - the last survivors of the human race and suddenly this puts the defining feature somewhere it can be used. Conversely put Dot Cotton there and the tone just goes out the window unless you take it that her personality would have been shocked so much by the implied cataclysm that she is effectively no longer the same character anyway.

This seems kind of obvious really, the second problem is then avoiding cliche. To some point, it is unavoidable just because the mind works that way, looking to group things conveniantly to save it the effort. However, thats not to say a cliche concept is inherantly bad - infact to some extent, by removing all cliche from something you remove all points of reference from it and thus it requires identification for the mind to process it. Games rely on cliche - the cliches of genre identify it - its all very well trying to be innovative if it doesn't work. So, lava-men and chicken legged-men and mechs and people with ridiculously large swords aren't bad. Thats not to say they are good, but it's unfair to cast them aside by default. However, to make them good they have to justify themselves, and visually at least unless they are brilliant, they just don't demonstrate that much visual creativity.

Take Godzilla - whose main familiarity with people is that of smashing up thigns and fighting other giant monsters, and who has spawned in his wake a thousand copycat giant lizards. If we took that to get marked we'd be carefully told to do somethign else. It's a giant lizard? What's so original about that? However, you have the bear in mind that the original Godzilla was a metaphor for the dangers of nuclear power - implementations are as important as the actual design.

Which is one reason I'm against designs trying to be clever for the sake of it - one the design becomes more important than the final product, then you've lost sight of why you are doing it. Be creative, but just harness and controll it through logic.

Good enough to be Good

2008-04-20T18:24:00.000+01:00

The other week, somewhat uncharacteristically, I impulse bought a game off the internet. Now that is not entirely unusual, however, it is for one that my entire knowledge of had been gained in the past ten minutes reading half an article, and had before that been entirely unaware of.

The game in question is Pathologic - a Russian rpg with a rather unique plot: essentially you come to a remote Russian town on the Steppe as one of three healers - a scientifically trained doctor who aims to cure death itself, a sinister Shaman of the Steppe or a peculiar girl with odd messiahnistic powers. You become trapped within the town after the outbreak of a bizarre disease that defies your own ability to cure it.

This unusual setup alone piqued my interest, I've been having RPG withdrawal symptoms through lack of any PC releases for a while. It becomes odder still though - you must sate hunger, thirst and weariness, and avoid catching the disease yourself - and food has the chance to be carrying it. Then the towns economy gradually decays, a rather fascinating example given in the interview was that the writer was particularly pleased on the third day - they finally got a gun, at which point they straight away to the shop and sold it for food.

Now, part of what appealed to me here is that it was trying to ignore the confines of what people consider a game to be, it just struck me as rather fascinating. So, for about £9 I bought it on Amazon. Anyway, after that little bit of back story I move onto the point.

I have yet to get very far into it, I've been putting it off til this project is over, and I can breathe easy again, however, already a few things have struck me about the game. Firstly it's thoroughly creepy - any game in which the tutorial character waits outside houses for you, dressed as a creepy mime and then declares that practically everyone in the entire game could be lying to you, including itself, it does instill a feeling of dread. Lying in games - it's very rare in games unless it sticks out like a sore thumb with an 'oh shit! what villainy spews from his mouth' kind of feel to it. Case to point, Mr Sillitoe inspired me to get round to completing Throne of Bhaal, something I put off due to a rather sticky battle last time round, and I started a new game a couple of days ago. This morning in my brief pre-work game session I entered a room it to discover a merchant who sounded evil accusing a boy of treachery, and the mother of the boys missing friend sobbing while agreeing with him. It was pretty obvious that the merchant was evil, and the second I confronted him about it all that happened was 'yes I am evil, but I'll kill the missing boy if you try and stop me'.

Now that would just never happen in real life, you just don't confess to kidnap and blackmail to a bunch of well armed strangers who wander into your house for no discernible reason. Now, in Pathologic I encountered a stern and slightly secretive family head who told me not to speak to his son. Now, any self respecting gamer will know that upon being told not to do something by a secretive person the first thing you do is go and do it, however, that mime got to me a bit, and I'm half expecting that to be a genuine warning - foolhardy inquisitiveness is expected of a protagonist, but what if the game is made with that in mind? Damm that mime....

However, this was actually leading to a relevant point, you see so far, I wouldn't really consider Pathologic a good game. The visual design is odd and uninspired, and more importantly lacks interest - considering it came out originally at roughly the same time as Half Life 2, and the technology seems capable of it, they just haven't pulled it off. For all certain staff members may gripe about HL2, you can defiantly say that the environments are always engaging. These are bland and everywhere looks like everywhere else. Additionally the translation from Russian is poor and you have to sit back and try and work out what people mean a lot, the animations are incredibly wooden and the texture distribution is weird (one notable example being an intricately embroidered chair upon a floor with a pixellated texture). It also desperately needs voice acting.

But still... that mime's words keeps bugging at me, the unease when you talk about the Apiary, the huge abattoir that is manned by things not quite human... the talk of sorcerers and werewolves on the Steppe... Then there was the witch burning, which turned out to be innocent that I stumbled across as I traversed the town... Yet the feeling that this should is the real world, and despite the whole broken english its just dam creepy... how much of this is superstition?

So, does that make it a good game? So far I can't say, as I believe one reviewer wrote of it 'This is bound to be some one's favourite game of the year, just probably not yours' - it might be great, I'll have to play more before I can give a final judgement, but as it stands, I wouldn't call it a bad game. The issue about reviewing a game is that it has so many factors it can rise or fall on - take Half Life 2, add some clunky controls and is it still a good game? Have the writing in Baldurs gate in half translated Russian and is it still a good game? Is an unfinished game the same as a bad game? Film and television have this problem to some extent - the mixed mediums visual, writing and audio - yet a game must have these and the interactivity and controlls. You *can* do a game like a film such as Half Life 2, where the whole experience is linear and predestined and still have it be a superb product, but that doesn't take the maximum advantage of the medium.

Now just as in my previous post you can subdivide the 'is it good' into various factors leaving games to fumble with hundreds of little aspects that can make or break them. Then they have bugs too.... At the end, all you can do is acknowledge what was done well and what wasn't, but at the end of the day can you ever judge an entire game to be bad as such a sprawling work of a collective. I'm kind of unsure - in Pathologic the writers have excelled where their animators, modellers and translators have failed, what right do I have to diminish their effort because it is part of a weaker whole? We know what works and what doesn't, and every experience we have further shapes and defines that judgement.

Perhaps at the end we just need to remember that you can find good hidden amongst or behind the bad, and that the lessons we can get from it are just as valuable those we get from the big parading heroes of creativity.

Group Project Summary

2008-04-19T14:06:00.000+01:00

As we've finally reached the end of the great slog, that makes it evaluation time, based upon notes from the meeting:

Positives
In a lot of people's eyes the very fact we managed to finish with everyone completing at least a small number of assets is a decent positive in itself. However, in the broader scheme of thigns there was a unanimous agreement that the major benefit of this project has been a general increase in Max competance, both in terms of speed and skill. Similarly, there has generally been at least some greater familiarity on the technical side relating to engines.

Negatives
The primary negative that most people have is that as a group we suffered from awful communication throughout the project, and relied too much upon the blog to communicate and not enough on face to face. This in turn lead to the secodn biggest problem, that our concept was at no point really defined, and everyone tended to have varying images of what the final piece was - also a factor in this was lack of later stage concept art to nail down what the level was going to look like (rather than the ealeir what *could* it look like). Another by product of the communicaton was that people tended to get pigeon holed in their roles, which other than Carter no one needed to do really.

The art style being completed earlier, plus a more defintie asset list which didn't leave room for interpretation would have also helped everythign to be more cohesive. At the end however, it was also questioned whether the groups where too large for the project - meaning that some people never had much important to do.

What we have learnt
Obviously following on from the issues, the importance of communication has been demonstrated very clearly. In addition to the improved modelling, most people stated they felt like more competant texturers than previously, including how vital a colour palette is, both in havign one and ensuyring it is adhered to. Additionally most people now have at least a passing familiarity with Unreal.

What would be done differently
We suspect that if repeated, the Tech lead (Carter) should also be group leader, and for the most part, the other roles aren't needed - beyond the art lead defining the art style (although that should probably be more public in its creation).
The concept would also need to be nailed down in a much clearer way, which would partially be achieved by a more rapidly produced art style guide, and later a more specific asset list. Also of note was that i would probably be easie to start with limited ambition and then later add to it time permitting. More regular communication is obviously also needed with people meetign face to face (although not necessarily in a formal meeting) quite regularly.

What is Good?

2008-04-16T21:46:00.000+01:00

I've found the blog posts this term harder to do than usual this term, primarily because we were essentially told the answer at the beginning and then told to write about it.

The good that makes it good. The bad that makes it bad.

The number of times that little phrase has popped up makes it quite hard to do this, it's for all intensive purposes correct, but equally the wording has this little nuance to it which says in my mind 'pah, we all know what is right and wrong, what else is there to say.' Perhaps it's just the way its been wielded as the last word on the topic?

The I suppose to elaborate more, when judging a piece of art there are three core things it has to achieve: technical correctness, appropriatness and originality. These are not the only things that have to be considered, but they are what a concept needs to fullfill before it can even be considered on more case specific criteria.

The first is dull as dish water and I really cannot be bothered to list in detail for the thousandth time what makes an image correct or incorrect. We all know it, anatomy, perspective, colour theory, lighting and all the rest - like a procession of people peering over the top of clipboards, looking for the merest hint of weakness so they can cast it aside before it can even be judged on the merit of what it is. All of which is unfortunatly necessary, or you end up with DeviantART and its ilk as I discussed earlier. That doesn't make it any less tiresome to talk about in a detatched sense. We know what is right and what is wrong and debating certainties is always a pointless excercise. Perhaps at the end I'll go find some comically bad DeviantART work to lighten the mood...

Secondly work must be relevant, you may be the greatest artist the universe has yet to birth, yet, at the end of the day if when you have been asked to concept generic enemy number three and you come up to your boss with a Monet-esque landscape with beautiful lillies then much as he might be impressed he isn't going to be that pleased. Thats an extreme example, but even if asked to design a ground based opponent monster and you pitch a guinea pig but three times as big, then raised eyebrows is the best you can hope for. It has to fill the brief essentially.

Lastly comes the big favourite, the almighty creativity. Where appropriateness is filling the brief and ticking the boxes, yes it is a spacewarrior with armour and an improbable weapon. Creativity is about making your image unique, distinctive and generally trying to make it better than the thousands of other spacewarriors. It's a rather abstract point, some may say that the more it differs from the conventions of its brief, the better it will be, but thats frankly a stupid attitude to take, you not only risk being inappropriate, but generally there is a good reason why thigns are as they are. The example that comes to mind for me is the British cover to Ursula Le Guin's 'Tehanu' - the dragon essentially looks like a normale dragons head, with a collection of badly put up tents from the neck down forming it's wings. It just looks a bit stupid really (no slight on the Earthsea books, the first three of which particularly are superb) compare that to this (a painting by Justin Sweet, my more admired of Game Artists) and you can see the difference - the first tries to be clever and fails, the second isn't that original but is just a stronger design.

Now that may sound like me going 'pah, don't even try to be creative, you'll only fail compared to the creative God that is Justin Sweet' but it's rather more suble than that. You need to know when to be creative, and when not to be, which can be internal to one image even. Sometimes it can be that you can be creative, but only in subtle ways, modifying musculature or changing the colours can create far better designs than just going weeee lets take off its legs and add springs shaped like helixes. As I like metaphors, perhaps creativity is like, it flows best when in a channel and makes everything fertile, but if it breaks its banks and gets everywhere it'll mess everything up. Where to apply creativity is personal, and I'm not going to say 'these are the only things that should chance' because it's not like I'm omnipotent, and for all I know changing something fundemental that I wouldn't change if offered a substantial wadge of cash might result in something amazing. I know I'm inclined to design things that I can imagine working, and I'll look at some things and just see features which I think are a bit stupid, but thats just my personal preference, it isn't necessarily right (although prepare to be scorned should you produce tent-dragons)

I think the general motto here is that be creative but don't try to run before you can walk, and don't just try to make things from nothing, the world is vast and varied, and there is boudn to be something out there that'll be the first step to your great design.

Unfortunatly, my DeviantART bashing will have to happen another time as I'm feeling too lazy.

Maximum Effect

2008-03-21T23:58:00.000Z

So, in I go to another blog post, and vaguely attempt to tie it into the tasks, this one came about reading an article by Jack Emmert, the lead designer of City of Heroes and city of Villains. This article however was on Cryptic's new game: Champions Online, which is more or less, City of Heroes with all the bits I thought would be really cool to add in later. Anyway, the full article can be found here

One part of the article in particular stood out to me:

When hiring for our writing position, all of the applicants had to take a test. One of the questions was:
A supervillain is monologuing his triumph to his seemingly helpless superhero nemesis. Write this monologue from two perspectives. The first – the supervillain is a cold, calculating monarch of an Eastern European nation. The second – the villain is maniacal, nearly insane.

We wanted to find someone who could, in a few words, deftly communicate the difference between the insane archvillain and the arrogant one. Most applicants were readily able to demonstrate that the one was sane and the other wasn’t, but very few illuminated the underlying motivations of each.

Now firstly, I need to find jobs with application tests as cool as that. But more relevant to the tasks at hand, to me it seems like a written parrallel to the features of creativity that (I think?) we are supposed to be lookign at at the minute... hmmm... doesn't bode well to be this late in the game and be unsure of what I'm supposed to be doing... oh well. Anyway to me, the differentiating factor here seems to be creativity, in this instance anyone could have scrawled down a bit of what they think Dr Doom would say, and a bit of what the Joker would say and leave it at that. That would be roughly equivical to when asked to concept something to do some kind of bastardised pastiche of the most famous examples of that concept.

So to the point, which now is far more relevant than I anticipated, the key is always to understand the principles behind what you are trying to create, not just what the best examples existing are, you have to look at why those existing examples are as they are. Super-villains is a bad example here because they don't really exist so unless you are very careful, you are only going to be drawing from preconceptions of what other people have imagined before you, which isn't always bad, but you have to mix in your own stuff too - Darth Vader for example was in part inspired by Dr Doom, but Vader is more than just Doom in space, he has his own quirks, that doesn't mean you too are going to be able to full that off.

For a better example, I'm going to look at animals and creatures, because I like drawing animals, and there is plenty of evidence for what does and doesn't work in them. One of my biggest peaves is creatures with weird unbalanced anatomy - I don't demmand it be proportionally perfect but some things get to me. One example is my attempts to design Tengu, which are essentially mischeavous bird-people from Japanese mythology. They are pretty cool (at least I think so), and I've seen some wonderul traditional asian style ink and brush illustrations of them, but whenever I try to produce them in my own style it doesn't work. The basic reason I've found is that it annoys me too much to leave out a bird tail, but due to human anatomy a bird tail is firstly stupid looking and secondly highly impractical when on the human form. Without the tail however, the wings wouldn't work properly, so my attempts at combining the two bone structures have ended in failure. Perhaps I'll try again with a more avian skeleton... That's ignoring the muscle mass that would be needed on the front of the chest to support wings, but if the wings themself are sufficiently sturdy that's more excusable because thats to do with density rather than basic flight principles.

In games or any visual medim for that matter, weird anatomy just sticks out like a sore thumb, particularly when you have overly bulky limbs compared to the torso - to be specific chunky forearms can work but they should still be less chunky than the torso really. Thinking about it, this is quite a long term thing; a friend told me a while back that when we both went to see the Hollywood version of Godzilla one of the thigns that made it less scary was me complaining about the stupid relative proportions of the jaws... seriously, what benefit does having such a massive lower jaw have anyway? its not like a crocodile where its going to be biting upwards so a heavier bottom jaw makes sense... I'm pretty sure 1000foot high atomic lizards are going to be biting downwards where the extra weight of the jaw means its wasting energy to close it... Anyway, I digress. Knight of the Old Republic II kind of bugged me in this regard, I seem to recall the creatures had weird bulges in their muscle structure that just made them inefficient... oh and while I'm at it, nothing except a sprint predator like a cheetah has got business having a tiny thin waist.

Anyway, to get back to the topic itself, the key feature of what creativity can be judged on could basically be how much it works and how well it works. Those unsuccessful supervillain monologues did what they were supposed to do, but they didn't do it with the insight into them that was required it was a design that fulfilled the brief, but it didn't really fill out the details of envigialising, in the same way that the hordes of dubious monsters that have proliferated the arts over the years have frequently done what they are supposed to, but not in detail, and perhaps that's what we are missing...

On a side note... for some bizarre reason I've wanted to try and design some animals that could work in the real world, just little subtle things like mice and voles. Perhaps I should try over the holidays...

The moral of the story is - use what's there to support your creative choices, but don't let them dictate things to you.

Ideas in a Swarm

2008-03-02T19:49:00.000Z

The following rambling text is essentially an edited write up of my replies to a post on DeviantART entitled 'Digital Painting Issues' - I kind of realised afterwards that it made some points which were pretty relevant to the blog tasks, so here it is.

The internet is an odd thing, all in one it is among the most powerful tools ever devised as far as a creative person is concerned, but in equal measure it saps creativity by not giving any individual breathing room to explore their own ideas. you can probably guess my targets - it's pretty much so blatant that anyone could hit it from a mile off - the scourge of generic Internet anime and manga. Now I can honestly say I've never cared for either, in fact, I suspect I'm one of the few on the course who can say this. I seem to have dodged the things expected of a person like me without any particular itnent to do so - I never watched anime and I never played Warhammer or tabletop Dungeons and Dragons. This is really beside the point, but never mind. My point being that essentially you could break down the potential for creativity in any work down to subject and method. If you are copying a style then you lose half that creativity, if you are not being original with the subject (which isn't a problem - people make loads of money purely from reusing existing imagery, be it reality or other art). It bugs me more in fact when people don't use their own style, purely because it they are merely attempting to simulate another, without even having the base knowledge that the original artist had, unless they deviate from that course, they are never going to get to be an equal of the original artist, let alone have the potential to surpass them. This is a bit of a waste in my eyes, much as you could argue it culls the uncreative ones from the flock, I can nevertheless feel that the world may have lost some potentially exceptional artists because they were too busy trying to do manga like someone else to develop as artists themselves.

People who draw manga CAN progress it's just ninety nien times out of one hundred they don't. Drawing and painting entirely in someone elses style is inherently counterproductive. To try and recreate the works of different artists on occasion is helpful because it helps you understand their techniques - only doing art in one style without trying to apply any external knowledge is not. If someone is good with manga then in theory I don't have a problem with it. What defines 'good manga' is a point of contention, but I'll get to it later. However, at the end of the day the amount of frankly awful manga on a site like DeviantART alone is astounding because they assume that because it looks 'simple' and 'cool' they can be good at it as professionals. To begin with without having to learn the principles behind what they are doing or all they produce is trash - to compare it to music, if someone played something listening to it without understanding the techniques of the instrument isn't going to allow you to play it yourself. I know a fair number of people who have managed to have a manga influenced style of art that is very good, and even some who do good manga itself, but these are people who have traditional skills too - Tom Li's work for example is superb and I don't hold it against him that it has manga influences. If you don't have basic skills to back yourself up on manga or any other artistic fad (not that I could name one), its unlikely what you produce will either be good or get any better.

However, where the Internet really exceeds itself in doing damage is when it brings together lots of like minded people. That kind of implies that I don't think similar people should be together, which it is not so much as identical people shouldn't be together - if you put 5 people of similar skill sets and similar talents in an environment they may learn to optimise the things they can already do, but not really learn anything new. If then one of them is a weak artist, then 4 of them are weaker still then no one improves unless they are aware of their own skills. People aren't most of the time as they come on the net to be told how great they are, in whatever context it is - art, music, looks or just if you are a nice person. This essentially means that weak stuff will be pandered to by those even weaker and no progress is made as the stronger stagnate and the weaker aspire to bad practise. As they all came there in the first place to be encouraged the situation stagnates. That is why there are millions of pieces of awful manga and awful art in general on deviantART and similar sites.

It can be argued however (as it was in the original post) that if someone draws a piece of fanart for example, based upon franchise X, because they enjoy franchise X then surely if it makes them happy to do so then the art has achieved its purpose. If it has achieved what it was drawn to do, then what does it matter what we think?

I recently argued a very similar position about peoples personal poetry, that as its written for the writer, by determining its success in purpose it is very successful even if they attempt to rhyme dog with rhinoceros. However, if you put your own creative work in the public arena (DeviantART for example) then you have to expect it to be judged by everyone else's standards and not just your own. If you put rubbish work up, then you must surely be anticipating the weaker to be fawning over it for any kind of gratification from it. There is of course no obligation for you to take on board whatever is said either way, however, people don't put up pieces they consider 'bad' except for demonstrative or comic effect, so largely it can be assumed that all the rubbish people put online is assumed by someone to be 'good' because, by nature people don't want to have the stigma of being associated with something they perceive negatively.

I can, to some extent, understand the appeal of a predefined artistic style, it does provide a way that half the thinking of it is done for you in a way so you can just get down to drawing what you want to draw. The point I'm uncomfortable around is that I consider art to be an inherently creative process, so I'm adverse to people removing that creativity from it. Creativity also kind of implies a desire to improve because, and thus art does too. Art without some kind of desire to improve (even if it's as limited as 'I wish I was as good as them') seems a tad meaningless, so if they are just doing it for the reason of homaging something and not to express themselves artistically, is it even art.

One of the oddest things is I find it strange that so many people choose to draw the same things in the same 'generic' style of manga, there isn't that much variance among most of it. Taking a quick trip to the front page of deviantart I found this person who does manga - [link] - which demonstrates what I feel is manga done 'right'. This person's work is frankly very good, they clearly understand everything behind the art they're doing. Without the knowledge behind it that lets it develop in its own style, a desire to take what they see and improve upon and personalise it, it would just be another idea in the swarm.

By all means people should do art, but they should try to learn how to do it. I'm loathe to use the word 'properly' because that's very contentious in art, but more 'successfully' in knowing what does and doesn't work. I'm not going to bet on it because I'm just as fallible in my guesses as the rest of humanity, but I suspect it would be very difficult to find an artist who didn't want to be better in some way, excepting perhaps those with extreme arrogance. In fact I suspect that the legions of anime drawing people on this site will almost all have a desire to improve their art. I think its more that they are reaching out at others to meet that improvement instead of looking inwards and looking for their own faults and ways they could improve - trying to step forward without looking how the last step went wrong. People shouldn't be working towards an existing style but rather than onwards from it. When you arereally doing art then it should be on your terms.

Thanks to Darkmir for his arguemnst and apologies from the rubbish strucutre due to editing forum posts together.

A Bit of Relief

2008-02-09T11:39:00.000Z

According to this article EA doesn't intend to meddle with Bioware (or Maxis) at all. That lets me breath a sigh of relief. Also the forth biggest company in the games industry admitting they were wrong, is very refreshing. Certain companies who produce vastly overpriced consoles might want to try following that lead...

A pity it is far too late for Bullfrog.

Creativity, Friends and Otherwise

2008-02-03T23:22:00.000Z

A brief story to begin, I have a friend whose twin doesn't comprehend how I can exist. Now they are obviously not talking literally, but as a person and as a mind, I just don't make sense to them. She isn't by any means the only one. As a mind I seem to be a statistical anomoly, and for more than one reason. It would obviously be a mixture of genetics and upbringing, but the precise defining factors remain as much a mystery to me as anyone else.

I get stuck in my own dictomy of creativity and thought, too much of one and not enough of the other and I become disatisfied. I've met plenty of people who can be both creative and cognitive, but no one I've ever met has ever revealled themselves to have the same kind of struggle for time, usually one is the core, the other is the hobby. I may have mentioned it before, but it's still relevant, but my thoughts never really shut off, half formed thoughts, theories, designs and concepts constantly float around in my head in a constant torrent. It explains several other things about me I think, I like to have controll but not be in controll, I dislike thigns which rely on reflex just because it has to go through my head first which slows proceedings down, and part of the reason I don't drink I suspect is because I'm worried that it'll stop my mind and without my mind I amount to nothing.

Which is probably not healthy, I do not think there is a single part of what I consider to be my identity which is anywhere but inside my own head. Yes if asked to describe myself I would probably real off age, gender and physical descriptions, but thats just because it's what people expect, I'm just me, the fact I'm a 6ft 2, 19 year old male with brown hair and grey eyes seems to be purely incidental and for the conveniance of helping someone be able to pick me out of a crowd.

I've been wandering through questions on the website OKCupid for a while now, a bit out of interest and something to do as anything, but largely because I want to meet new people. Not any new people, there is hardly any shortage of those, but to see if there is anyone else out there like me. I had a little success in finding an american who had very similar interests and tastes to me in a lot of things. She didn't play games at all being the notable exception to the rule, but was superb coversation otherwise. There seems to be a point in any online friendship where it just can't go any further though, at least in my experience. There are a number of people I've known online over the years who I wish I could keep up with.

Anyway, the point being, that generally when the website compares me to people, to find people like me, it seems to find two sorts of people. It finds the eccentric philosopher types, who are often vegetarians, have a philosophical outlook, like travelling and reading and are almost always science students. Then I find people who like games and books, and frequently comics, and are artistic but are so engrossed in them that they don't think about things enough for me to associate with on a personal level. I feel like some kind of weird chimeric blending of the two, all they seem to overlap in is they like reading, and even then I lean more towards the reading of the latter in my tastes.

I suspect I'd get on with either well enough in real life, but the thing isthat if someone only cares about half of you how can you ever truely associate with them? I don't think I'd even want to know someone too similar to me, the problem is I at least want them to be willing to make oppinions on or experience the things that make me tick if its going to be a true friendship.

Does such a person exist? Presumably, will I ever encounter them? With any luck...

Artists

2008-01-25T22:13:00.000Z

As so far this term everything seems to be a mad jumbled dash towards the group project, I thought it was probably time to cool my day of irritation at the ineptitude of parcelforce, my frustration at the lack of quiet countryside to wander off into to, the irritation of a lack of people around and the generally feeling uninspired to do any kind of work for the group project by postign a blog. Hmmm... that doesn't seem to logically follow, but here I anyway. So if I'm going to be looking at how I can critique art, a good a place as any is to look at my personal favourite artists and why I like them.

Justin Sweet
Gallery of Work
I first encountered Justin Sweet's work as the portrait artist for Icewind Dale II, there are a few really stunning pieces, and havign found more of his work playing the original Icewind Dale I just became a bit transfixed. He isn't the most photorealistic artist ever, but the main thing that appeals to him is that you seem to be able to see his strokes but it never detracts from the work. As it stands I think hes possibly the only artist I've ever seen who has significantly had an influence on my style from just vieing their work. Seeing his stuff has just made me feel far more safe about loose strokes in a work without fussing to make it look perfectly accurate. Its also this work that inspired me to originally try out my first teetering steps at digital art.

Coming later:

Kaspar David Friedrich
David Mack
Christian Kesler (aka chrike)
and maybe more...

Summary of Creativity

2008-01-14T12:21:00.000Z

Not the easiest task ever, to write an essay summing up essays, especially for someone notorious for using more words than necessary half the time... The other hurdle of course is that my posts have been pretty convoluted in gettign to there points, and its possible that some of my sidetracks have been as relevant as my overall parts. Should be fun....

So lets go back to the beginning, my Mums side of the family is quite reative, my Dads sdie, not so much, so I probably take after my Mums family more in that respect. I went to a primary that was very good at encouraging creativity (particular credit goes to Mrs Follet, who definity helped me become more artistic). Secondary school was a bit of a downer at the start, one hour of art a week isn't enough... although to be fair, with an hour of music and design technology a week it totals a decent amount of creative time. Ironically for much of school my art was more useful as a tool for other subjects than in itself, particularly in design technology, bu to a lesser extent, any subject which we had some kind of informal leaflet or whatever to make where I'd do the illustrations. Outside of school I did a lot of watercolour and pencil, bu not much else. If I'd have charged people I would have made a nice profit.... GCSE and A-Level were much better though, and I got to be a lot more free with my work. Although to be fair it varied on project - 'haberdashery' doesn't have that much scope whereas my insect project did (it wasn't on the list, but the teacher let me do it anyway). The massive downside of creativity at secondary school was english, which I found quite oppresive, I like writing, but I don't like writing to a predefined structure or word limit. Hence why my creative writing wound get A and I'd have to slog to get essays up to B.

Which brings me neatly to the subject of 'dot to dot' creativity. Time for a little winge, but I can't stand the culture that says 'if you do this, you are creative', I could winge at modern art, but for one thing its like shooting fish in a barrel, and for another I'd get Louise complaining.... More though its the popular creativity that is a constant source of disappointment for me. To give an example take a look at the art of another Alex Holt whom I found on Deviantart last year, albeit a 16 year old Canadian female one. What I see when I look at her work if talent held back by conforming to someone elses art style in this case manga. I could say that I don't actually mind manga, but I'd just be trying to persude myself that - I don't like it, the only exceptions being when it's done well enough that you don't notice that it's manga like Studio Ghibli films. I have no problem when its a persons style, or even an adapted version, for example Tom Li's work is always superb, but when its exactly immitated as a 'cool style' it just means that the person isn't developing their own style. Manga is an easy target, it just bugs me when I see someone with a really nice technique frittering it on someone elses style.

The thing is, creativity applies to all aspects of an image - the colours, the form, the texture, the medium and the style, so to supplant style for someone elses just seems cheap in the same way that copying someone elses paintings seems cheap. Now it could be argued that using photo reference is in a way cheating, but to explain its metaphor time - all the other aspects are input, and the style is the filter which changes it into a personal work of art rather than a copy. I don't think its a problem on the course at all, but from my point of views in the wider world its practically an epidemic.

The problem of course is that creativity can seem overwhelming - theres just so much out there, maybe it is more fun to just paitng someone elses character in someone elses style, it means you don't need to make choices and could perhaps just enjoy the process. Oddly enough, most of the time i don't enjoy art. I enjoy the end picture and I enjoy the precise mediums; I don't know why but I enjoy being precise - fine pens, fine brushes (particularly for watercolours) and craft knives. I must admit I've been devloping a taste for digital art recently, which bucks the trend slightly. But in general I enjoy puttign an image in my head down on paper more than I do the process necessarily. I don't know how everyone else compares? The thing is for me I like explorign infinite ideas, I can even form perfect images in my head of how I would do them, its just they don't translate to paper, thought is more fluid.

This brings me to one problem though - my mind is far faster than my hand - I do do a lot of development, but generally I analyse things before I even draw them and move thirty steps onwards - I feel this is a huge disadvantage work wise as I have to slow myself down to show progression properly, and then I get bored because I'm drawing an obsolete version. In Design Technology at A-level I had this problem, I went through all the permatations of my end product really quickly in my head, drew the design I came up with as my first drawing and then spammed out junk to pad out my concept pages. I'm not sure if its arrogant for me to think this or just that for an artist I think far more inside my own head than usual. If anyone has some advice on this topic, I'd welcome it.

I may add more to this later, but if not, here be it.

My Prop

2008-01-12T17:22:00.000Z

For no particular reason, I give you my prop for the self portrait project. no I don't own one, I just decided to model a random bird.

Its 496 triangles.

Speed Paintings: Part 2

2008-01-11T14:51:00.001Z

To save me having to edit one post forever, I'm now going to start a new post. Older work can be found in the following link.

Speed Paintings 1-20
Consists of:
Friends. Evil Robot. Impact. Augmentation. Weasel. Treasure. Fire. Wizard. Alien. Storm Cataclysm. Ruin. Cow. Sliding. Anti-hero. Revolution. Secret. Super villain. Beam. Tree.

Speed Painting 21: Hat
Corel Painter X - 45mins

Speed Painting 22: Bone
Corel Painter X - 45mins

Speed Painting 23: Agent
Corel Painter X -45mins

Speed Painting 24: Root
Corel Painter X - 1 hour

Speed Painting 25: Childhood Inspiration
Photoshop 7.0 - 1 hour

Speed Painting 26: Brotherhood
Corel Painter X - 45 minutes

Speed Painting 27: Ancient
Corel Painter X - 1 Hour

Speed Painting 28: Nomad
Corel Painter X and Photeshop 7.0 - 45mins

Speed Painting 29: Portal
Paintshop Pro 7.0 - 1 Hour

Speed Painting 30: Protection
Paintshop Pro 7.0 - 45mins

Speed Painting 31: Beetle
Paintshop Pro 7.0 - 45mins

Passion and Wonder

2008-01-05T23:48:00.000Z

I always seem to find that different games in even one genre can feel buzzy in different ways. But I've come to realise that the bits of a game, or in fact story in general, be it book, film or whatever which really get me enjoying it are those moments of wonder and passion. Let yourself giggle to yourself at that second one for a moment if you feel it is necessary, but passion can be passionately hating, passionatly caring for a character. I've always maintained that the best game villains are the ones who really stir anger in you and make you want to kill them. I'm not sure if I should be worried? Are games abstract enough from life that the possibility of a deed that would cause that reaction in me is improbable if not impossible? Or is it that I feel empowered to make those consequences where I don't in real life?

HERE BE SPOILERS

Usually its the traditional character driven RPGs that get me. The passion of anger at the killing of what I know to be a character I not only like, but possibly even think I would like to meet if they were real does stir anger in me. Planescape Torment (I know I go on about it) does it in one of the most effective ways. Over the last act it not only systematically kills off your party, but reveals that a past incarnation of yourself also took a party there and they were all killed too. You are able to ressurect your party upon confonting the final boss, who I seem to recall I only talked to and persuaded, but in a way, the most fitting end to the game is that regardless of if you save your companions, or if you have been good or evil throughout, you are still damned to fight in the eternal hellwars. I could write essays on how that game although largely average gameplay wise combines both the wonder and the passion.

Another game that I talk about less is Skies of Arcadia, but it too works particularly well, although recidedly dated, particularly in the cutscenes, it still purveys great emotion, the villains are genocidal - doing it for the benefit of their country, while still remaining humans, albeit twisted by greed and power. However, much as a few of the more gutrenchign twists do remain strongly in my mind, it is the sheer wonder of the world that got me truely ingrained into the game.
Its flying ships in a world with no ground except random floating lumps of rock house the last of humanity. Beneath is the deep, where the pressure is too high to survive, above the air is thin to high for msot ships to sail. Then, within the lumps of rock, the gigantic Gigas - vast creatures responsible for shattering the world into what it is now. You have to fight them in your airship, which is miniscule compared to them. Now that is a spectacular world. I like to discover a new world when I play a game, if i wanted reality I would just step outside, I want to experience the wonder of somewhere new and original.

One of the best examples of this is the very first time I played pokemon. You enter this world, realised with gameboy graphics, and then a short while later you are in the grass fightign this bird and then you catch it, and you realise there are more of these strange creatures out there that you don't know about, and you want to find them. Its this first bit, while you are still discovering the world and its limits where thigns are truely magic. It's never as good as the first time. Even in a game which is pretty much blatant what the setting is there will be odd glimpses of genius. One of my favourite concepts of all time is in Icewind Dale; as you cross a Glacier you enter a building to discover it is an ancient aquarium. However, due to the obvious cold of a glacier all the exhibits, both mundane and not so have been frozen solid, leaving murky shapes visible in their tanks. It's just genius.

Sometimes even just glimpsing things of the late game early on can inspire you, playing City of heroes and wanderign around on the ground, and you see a higher level hero rocket past at high speed above you, and you sit back and think 'I want to be up there' and thats part of the magic.

It usually fades of course. Once you become too familiar with a world and you know everythign you would know it just becomes a bit of an ego trip. People should never start games with the competative multiplayer, as then its just straight into 'what will let me win' without experiencing what its about. Even when you first play Smash Bros Melee and you are suddenly challenged by a mystery opponent there is that buzz of the new. The games that truely retain their wonder are the ones which give the impression that the world is still a mystery. The two games I mentioned succeed. Baldur's Gate II succeeds (it's Mental Asylum for wizards getting close to the frozen aquarium in terms of genius) and Vampire the Masquerade - but perhaps mystery is easy for a game set entirely at night and which you are fully aware you are being manipulated by the politics of monsters...

Passion is the tool of the writer, they manipulate how you feel about things and if you care. Characters die due to your decisions, but when done well I can't bring myself to let them die, even if it makes things easier for me. Wonder is also the tool of the writer, but its the artist that must realise it, just to create something magnificent in which you feel small... a world to get lost in to the poitn where it feels as real as our own world for a while... now that is creativity.

Super Heroines

2007-12-23T09:47:00.000Z

On the off chance I have any aspiring comic writers reading, I thought this might be of interest:

Create a Super Heroine Competition

Just to give you the general idea, they want a paragraph long story about an original superheroine, which is free to enter, can be from any age or anywhere in the world, and you can enter as many pitches as you like. The winner not only gets to have their work turned into a 3 issues miniseries, but they also get 50% rights to the character and 50% profits (the other half of each going to the artist). The link will explain it in more detail, but its certainly worth a go.

Already got my first pitch in, so now just to think of some more to up my chances....

Cover Artist

2007-12-21T14:55:00.000Z

Well 'cover artist' is stretching it a tiny bit, but as well as being on the inside of this years One Million Masterpiece calender, I am also one of the artists on the cover.

The Image Used is this

In addition to these ones:

A New Game Pitch...

2007-12-10T00:34:00.000Z

Created by bored minds (bored as in slog induced boredom) I give you: Portalphant Hunt!

The only game that against most elusive of all big game: the Portalphant! It looks like an elephant, but can project portals from the end of its trunk giving it an uncanny ability to escape danger as you try and bring it down. Armed with your trusty rifle and a variety of devices to make traps and scares, you hunt it through the reaches of Africa for no explicable reason, but how do you hunt a creature that can't be cornered? Particularly when this pachyderm can just teleport behind you and stamp you into a paste.

If any games developers fancy making this, consider the concept a freebie... I reckon the best last level would be fighting it as it teleports around the top of the Empire State building...

Odds

2007-12-07T22:46:00.001Z

What are the odds of me, exactly as I am, sitting here and writing this blog in the grand scheme of things? Why are there rules to physics? If you start off with nothing, then something is formed, why would there be rules defining it. In its own way there is nothing more abstract than reality itself; it just seems odd. Not that I'm suggesting some kind of higher power, quite the opposite in fact, a chaotic existence wold be far easier to create, bcause it would need less definition. The laws of physics just seem so odd that they are how they are, even if we don't fully comprehend them. Why are they as they are? Why can't light travel a few miles an hour faster than it does? It just seems odd when thinking about it. This really isn't likly to go anywhere, so if you are waiting for it to, I'd abandon ship now to preserve yourself.

Anyway. I hate the concept of destiny, I believe I covered it last year, but essentially, I can't stand the prospect that I can never achieve or underachieve anything which wasn't pre-decided at the moment of the universe forming. Why bother doing anything? It would be your destiny anyway. Bloody self fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one. But even on a more human scale, if humanity went extinct thirty seconds after you stop reading this, what would happen differently? Then when the universe collapses in on itself, will anything we have done mattered? Is our own existance only as significant as that of any individual atom or do we contribute in any way to the greater whole?

Its a very human thing to think of the universe in terms of politics, a supernova doesn't care if humanity wipes itself out or your team wins the football, and even it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Just a speck in an endless sea of stars to be vaguely poetic. Can anything but the entire universe taken as a whole be deemed significant? It's quite depressing, but I'd say it makes me a stronger person that I am aware of my own futility and mortality, even if I don't truely comprehend it, and can still go out and try to help people and enjoy myself doing things. To link it back to something more relevant, our mind is our shield, we imagine how things are important, how it matters about anything, just to look out from our very mortal forms and think ourselves significant. It may be just evolution, but the very fact we can deem anything we do significant is probably the most useful piece of imagination of them all. Besides, the odds of everything being as it is are infintessimally small, a million sperm could fertilise an egg in human reproduction in every generation, the odds of you existing when two generations back is therefore less than one in a british billion - let alone going back every stage back to the very first organism that we are descended from. We beat the odds and existed, so we may as well make the most of it.

Wow, I actually managed to make that almost relevant....

Film Review: The Golden Compass

2007-12-05T18:00:00.001Z

Now, lets start by saying that I hate pandering to American audiences, and this film does it so much. The name of it is a start, it should be 'Northern Lights' - the Golden Compass just has this inherant ring of 'duhhh' to it. Sorry but it really does. Secondly much as I am aware of the financial reasoning behind it, it is frankly a joke to compromise what is largely an atheistic work to pander to a zealous nation. It doesn't stick out that much but its just annoying. On a side note the very logic that it might 'corrupt' children and suchlike is inherently stupid, if such a film could shake the faiths of people (or as suggested by the American catholic church - not do it in itself but encourage children to read the book which would) then it underlines a growing insecurity within organised religeon. If their doctorines are supposedly so great, then the possibility of corruption from them should be nil. It annoys me that they are basically censoring things to controll the minds of people because they are afraid of people free thinking.

Anyway, back from my attack on religeon, the film suffers from being overly dummed down, which is presum,ably because they presume the American audience o be mentally deficient, but here it just comes off as unbelievably patronising. The introductory montage actually removes every single 'oh cool' moment from the entire proceedings by telling you all aout the world. I can understand that Daemons might need explaining, but the rest just robs the film from having any ability to have impressive developments. The removal of the last scene from the book also severely robs the film of emotional impact and sugar coats it, presumably for those American children - it falls into the same category of me thinking that modern children are too sheltered from death (is there anything out now to compare to animals of farthing wood?).

On a presentation side, I love the designs, particularly architecturally, my only comment is that the world seems too clean, it doesn't have that gritty edge to it I got from the books, its all overly wholesome. My only other complaint visually is the weird gyroscopes that seem to power some things, it just doesn't make sense with the rest of the technology - steam powr is where its at. If they have gyroscopes, why not helicopters and cars?

On the other hand, desptie my previous doubts I'm very impressed with the armoured bears, and daemons. They look right. My only comments are that oerhaps the bears don't show enough variation in their armour, or indeed, even correlate with Ioreks armour at all. I always imagined the bears with lots of different armorus to reflect their personalities, instead, other than the named characters, its just variations on Roman style, which just seems to lack imagination. Daemons generally look very nice, just in odd instances they are too obviously CGI, I can't really give specific examples except the Tartar wolves, Stellmarie the snow leopard looekd particularly spectacular though, and the seamless transition between childhood demon forms was very good.

The casting was pretty good, though Ian KcKellan as Iorek did'nt quite make sense to me, a younger, more fiery oice may have suited it better (tho McKellan as always was superb, its just that voice just says 'Gandalf' too much.) The child actors were as good as expected, and much as Lyras accent could be irritating, it also suited the role.

Laslty, but most significantly, it was too short for the plot to play out smoothly, a few montages as the start were particularly jarring (that Team America song just in my head). An extra hour would have made it just flow that much better.

In summary, its worth a look, but could have been better - the compressedness and pandering just let it down. If there is however a massive extended edition however it will be well worth another look.

Speed Paintings

2007-12-04T00:48:00.001Z

I've really enjoyed the speed painting this last week, so thought I may as well upload a collective of my work so far.

SPEED PAINTING 1: Friends
Photoshop 7.0 - 30mins

SPEED PAINTING 2: Evil Robots
Photoshop 7.0 - 30mins

SPEED PAINTING 3: Impact
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 4: Augmentation
ArtRage 2.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 5: Weasel
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 6: Treasure
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 7: Fire
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 8: Wizard
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins (ish)

SPEED PAINTING 9: Alien
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 10: Storm
Photoshop 7.0 - 30mins in theory

SPEED PAINTING 11: Cataclysm
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 12: Ruin
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 13: Cow
Photoshop 7.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 14: Sliding
ArtRage 2.0 - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 15: Anti-Hero
Corel Painter X - 1 Hour

SPEED PAINTING 16: Revolution
Corel Painter X and Photoshop 7.0 - 30mins

SPEED PAINTING 17: Secret
Photoshop 7.0 - 30mins

SPEED PAINTING 18: Super-villain
Photoshop 7.0 - 3 Hours

SPEED PAINTING 19: Beam
Corel Painter X - 45mins

SPEED PAINTING 20: Tree
Corel Painter X - 45mins

Comprehension

2007-11-22T21:05:00.001Z

Is anything truely beyond comprehension? Thats right! It's time for vaguely philosopical blithering time (I bet you've missed it, haven't you) Is there any way we can imagine something that is utterly beyond our experience in every way, or conversely, is the very fact we can imagine something proof that in some strange way it could in theory exist in reality? I say in theory in the most mild sense imagieable, I can imagine cybernetic pelicans who play the trombone using telekinesis and fire beams of blue fire from their eyes. However, if you break this down into composite parts - I can imagine machinery, this I can imagine cybernetics, I can certaily imagine pelicans and trombones, telekinesis is merely a combination of the concept of mind and movement, and perhaps some fancy pyrotechnics to jazz it up enough. Blue fire isn't hard to imagine, I saw it half an hour ago while cooking the fish I had for tea, and I know eyes exist as I'm using them for this very waffle.

Is our problem that we can never truely create but merely manipulate? No one has ever gone straight from a lump of raw materials to cybernetic pelican implants - it needed people to work out that metals could be extracted from the earth, more people to work that metals could be beaten into sheets, many to work out the various aspect of electricity, then their work is eventually developped into semi-conductors and then microchips, and then people realise electricity is common with that and the human body and perhaps they could be integrated. Then I steal it from pop culture and stick it onto the first creature that came into my head. But there was nothing stopping a cybernetic pelican from existing in principle, beyond probability at least.

In which instance creativity is perhaps more observation of both subtle features and where things could be combined rather that summoning new things from the ether? Everythign is limited by our perceptual baggage as humans, and even were I to design something entirely otherwordly it would still rely on the basic understandings of colour, light, dark, volume, solid, liquid, gas, time and texture. Then if there are limits on a thing then it is finite. Thats not to say it gets bigger, if for example I sauntered into the palace of the Pharoah (I'm not sure I would, its a metaphor...) and proposed to him a story centring around say, cells or atoms or black holes, he would have no way of comprehending it because it would be so removed from his frame of reference.

To take a more relevant example, aliens are likely to be far more alien than we can concieve of (unless of course that the humanoid design is the only one capable of following this evolutionary route?) I think for example that its fairly commonly assumed that most creatures ever conceived can breathe in some form or other, unless the not breathing is somehow an integral part of what they are, because of course, not breathing is also within oru experience, so Golems, robots and zombies of course don't becuase its what divides them from humans. But if you consider it, in all liklihood, breathing isn't likely to be the only way to intake energy from the atmosphere, at least breathing as we know it. I did biology at A-level and have a least a basic understanding of the different respiratory systems of insects, plants, amphibeans, anenomes, amoeba, spiders, fish and terrestrial vertebrates. Adding to that just not breathing, due ot magic or technology, how would a being I design get its energy? It could absorb radiation and convert it, it could infact be some kind of sentient star which produced a chain reaction which kept itself powered for its lifetime. It could be something that clings to the rocks under the sea and it doesn't breath at all, but merely uses the currents as some kind of biological hydroelectrics? All of its ideas taken from other places and redistributed. Its frustrating to see these limits, and I suspect our minds aren't necessarily capable of breaking through them. Having said that, although the concepts may be limited in a way, as far as we are concerned they may as well be infinite because as far as we can comprehend, inspiration may as well be infinite -we can never be omnipotent, so there will always be something we don't know. Plus even small changes are still changes. What if we gave the pelican a periscope?

Creativity and Identity

2007-11-17T23:44:00.001Z

It's only occurred to me today really, but the greatest irony of the creative industry is that in many ways we are being creative so others don't have to. Equally it may inspire people to be creative themselves, but in many cases we are telling people what its like to be a footballer, or a sword wielding warrior or a futuristic soldier rather than them imagining it themselves.

I take mild comfort in that we are not directly telling them what their own life experience should be like in certain industries - an msn conversation between a number of long time Internet acquaintances earlier highlighted this, one is training to go into the fashion industry, but refused to acknowledge that the very industry she aspired to was essentially tryign to tell people what would make them feel good. Perhaps I'm being a hypocrite here, as what are game designers doing but making something directly for enjoyment and so telling people what they enjoy, but I don't really believe it. For the most part, people buy a game because they want to play the game, clothes are bought because people want others to identify themselves in a certain way. I of the baggy fleeces, sandals, uncombed hair, tatty beard and end of line and charity shop clothign couldn't care less, but is that just my decision? Is choosing to sit on the fence just as much a decision as some alternate me going round with gold chains and white hoodies (what a surreal image)? Again I think not, purely because as long as I don't think whatever I'm wearing looks too stupid by my standards, and its practical and comfortable I'm happy. Excepting of course the fact I always wear clothes that aren't visibly branded except where unavoidable like the leather patch on most jeans. I'm not paying someone else to advertise for them. I make no secret of the fact that I'm a cynic to almost every aspect of society, and if theres something I'm not to yet, theres a reasonable chance I jyst havent read up on it much. But perhaps stealing imaginations and selling people their own idnetities in bits and pieces strikes me as most detestable of all; I don't think my mind goes through the normal processes of the masses here, but perhaps its just a continuation of the whole vaguely Ubermensch-aspiring aspect of my personality that I've had through my entire life, long predating my awareness of the concept. I've never felt the desire to 'belong', perhaps to be beneath the notice of people, or to be close with an individual person, but never really I want to be part of a group for the sake of it. Just to avoid the appearance of arrogance, I am not by any means believe myself to be anything approaching the afforemention Nietzschian role, for one thing, I do not consider the concept to be achievable, and for second I would not wish to be one, as I do not believe that one persons supposed 'perfection' could ever be reconciled against anothers which would just lead to chaos. My identity is in my mind, not my clothes and music taste, but does that give me the right co criticise those who do have it there? I'm not even sure where I'm goign anymore, I don't claim to understand my own development or that of society in general, but the reasons for each would surely be fascinating, particularly why they don't co-incide.

I diverge wildly, but my point being that I rarely associate with the work of others, artistically there are about four artists whose work I can look at as a primary activity and really enjoy them, thats not to say that I don't rate the art of others, merely that there are only four artists whose work I associate with in the slightest. I typical wear non descript clothing because for it to be descript would be to rely upon it as an identifier, I do however associate well with authors and books should I fidn the right ones. Its up to everyone to decide how to identify themselves creativly, I suppose I just don't comprehend when people just identify themselves as a composite of the work of others.

That was a largely incoherant ramble...

Review: Hellgate London

2007-11-09T18:39:00.001Z

As I feel I should be doing something vaguely constructive, it's time for another review: this time Hellgate London.

I don't intend to waffle on for ages with this one because to be honest, there isn't that much to say. The first thing I can though is it needs a massive amount of optimization. I'm well over the recommeded processor, RAM and graphics minimums yet even if I turn all my settigns to minimum it runs horribly. Also that at minimum settings the game looks dire, which is reasonable, but not if its unrealistically forcing me to run it at these settings. At the very least I should be able to have a decent detail on the textures. However, the second I try to fight enemies with associated partical effects the game goes down to a few frames a second if not lower. The game can run fine with pretty high settings right until a common electricity firing grunt. Which is just bad, the simplest thing to do would just to have a sliding bar in the settings which lets you decide on the particals - such a feature was invaluable in City of heroes for optimizing my running, and this game could do well from it.

The general theme of this review is going to be niggles. The setting is very interesting, the character design varies between superb and errr... 'exotic'. The game looks like it was set in a London as perceived by someone who had never actually been. This is sometimes just due to level plausibility and copyright; the London underground logo is not present, but instead has a system of boxes in the same colour scheme. Copyright I presume. More strangly, the streets are massivly wide, but landmarks are done on what feels like half scale. The streets are presumably just to make it plausible to play something - knowing city streets it would otherwise bottleneck the monsters and make the game very easy. The monuments are more puzzling - the two I've witnessed so far - Covent Garden and the British Museum are far farsmaller than reality, which for me ruined it a bit - particularly missing out on the epic central hall of the British museum - it would have been perfect for some kind of boss battle, but the dwarfed version was miniscule. Covent Garden just seemed like a scale model, and although unlike the museum it does give a feel of Covent garden, you know very well that it isn't. On a side note, unless you are familar with individual stations, the Underground definatly feels 'tubish' except for the missing logos.

Now for a quick feminist half time: In a post apocalyptic demon infested London, the following things should be noted. Firstly, women are not going to have time to do their hair and make up. The starting cinematic (with rather odd disinterested sounding voice acting) contains women who look like they are trying to combine demon hunting with a career as a supermodel (at least the creators of tabloids and gossip magazines have probably been eaten by now). Specifically the main female at the beginning has ridiculously pouty lips and pristine skin, which don't really make sense considering she is supposedly a battle hardened warrior who presumably does get hit occassionally. Not even bothering going to the bikini clad sorceress, the hair on both the initial character and the ten years later child is the main thing that looks stupid, largely because hair doesn't look that pristine in shampoo adverts. These are women who have supposedly devoted thier life to vanquishing evil, yet somehow have enough time each morning to prepare each hair on their head individually, in the latter case, possibly by electro platign it with gold. Not only is this quite patronising to women but it also ruins my suspenion of disbelief in the entry video. In the gam itself it is better, but we still have a few interestign questions such as: where are all the piercers and dyers that seem to be making a fortune upon the remenants of society. I wouldnt mind it beign on a few characters, but again, in a post apocalyptic demon world neon coloured hair is just going to get you spotted and piercings are going to get infected, particularly if you have hundreds of them. Again we have stupid character design to appeal to the mindless sex-craving teenage audience. Furthermore, if what I hear is true, I will personally strangle whoever went along with the idea of having one of the characters naked in Playboy. On a last note the women have stupid builds: shoulders are too narrow, breast too large, too thin in general and no musculature for people who are supposedly warriors and fighters. I'll end this now, but basically its both appealling to shallow chauvenists, being anatomically incorrect and loosing suspension of disbelief in one tidy package.

On the actual game side - the randomised environments work well to a degree, although sometiems the monster distribution can be brutal. The classes I've tried so far are definitly varied and offer different challenges, so should be fun to try, along with the randomiation offerign loads of replayability.

Voice acting is odd - the accents are rather hammy frequently, varying between 'posh' and cockney, but more weirdly despite the serious dialogue the characters say in writing the random sound bite spoken dialogue is 'crazy' which makes no sense, and again detracts from the old suspencion of belief. Why would a technician whohas just given me a stern introduction to a quest requiring parts address me like an incredibly drunken sappy flirt with a fake english accent? The one time that it does work is on a character who is actually mad, where amoung other things he implores the DC character Gorilla Grodd to save him.

As a whole however, the game could be supremely good fun, it isn't a deep RPG, more in the vein of click to kill in the case of the classes I've tried to far. Its things like the lack of optimization amd the things that detract from disbelief that demote it a bit. I'll probably have further oppinions once I finish it.

Creativity

2007-11-08T14:07:00.001Z

I suppose I best actually do some of this creativity task just so it looks like I'm ding something, while the tome of my own creative history is slowly scrawl led away ready for posting.

As to what I'm going to write now, I'm not sure and so its fairly probable that whatever results will be borderline incoherence. Never mind.... To start then perhaps its best to have some background; apparently unlike a fair number of people on the course, I'm not a first generation university student, both my parents went and I think most if not all of my grandparents. There is a fair bit of music in my family, my Granny having done singing in some rather prestigious places, and my aunt being in the music industry (as a music copyist - she worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy among other things) On the flip side of this, although there have been artistic people (largely on my Mum's side of the family) it tends to be something that is done casually, and generally picked up more so later in life. I'm not sure exactly where I picked it up; I was always encouraged to be creative and draw when I was little.

On an slightly unrelated side note, I strongly believe that the best toys for children should be a mixture of inanimate and things that can be constructed. Action figures with fifty points of articulation and interchangeable parts do all the work of the mind for you - I has plastic animals and dinosaurs, and Lego and mechano and suchlike. If a child has to do half the work in their own head. Its one of the many factor that I attribute to why so many children are so lousy these days. not necessarily the biggest reason, but certainly a reason.
I turned out fine... well I think I did anyway.

Lets shift lanes again, to an entirely detached aspect of the subject, now I've thought of it. Peoples perceptions of the relative values of the creative mediums. This is one of the hardest subjects to digest for most people, I think I'm largely all welcoming in my approach to mediums. That's not to say genres within the mediums, which is more of a matter of personal taste, but I find myself caught in dual-ended distaste most of the time whenever I try to recommend something to someone.

People frequently seem to gravitate towards either the 'old mediums' or the new, and scorn the other. Music seems to be placed unanimously over all others for some reason, personally, my secret shame is that I think as a medium it is fantastically overrated, a put on a pedestal. That's not to say I don't enjoy music, and in fact I think it is quite enjoyable. What I cannot comprehend is the thousands of legions of people claiming 'music is my life'. It is nice, but personally I was disinterested in it up until about the end of my GCSEs, and I still never just listen to music. Its nice to have it there, when I'm writing, painting or thinking, but for me at least, it is never a 'primary activity' as I'm just going to coin it. I would likely find a music concert tedious unless I had some kind of alternative interest there (seeing a friend perform being the only one up until this moment in my life) It also bugs me when people try to argue that music is more important than art in the world, right up until I point out that without art everything would be designed for practicallity only, thus loosing architecture, clothes design, graphic design, films, games, packaging and numerous other things. At about this point they shift their arguement to fine art rather than a more general art.

Anyway, I diverge - in general, particularly amoung younger people, there are the following groups: music and film (and to some extent, television) are more or less universal. Fine art, books (particularly 'classics'), theatre, musicals and poetry fall into one category - into the second games, fair percentage of television, animation, science fiction and fantasy novels and comics. Music and film also get divided by genre classical gets relegated to the old genres, where as said, say science fiction frequently to the new. If I was to recommend say, Watchmen or Half Life 2 to one of the old group then I tend to get a bewildered reaction roughly equivelant to thinking me an uncultured peasant. In contrast, if I were to recommend
Orwell (which I probably wouldn't, although I respect his skill as a writer, I don't enjoy the tone - if I want that kind of thing I've got plenty to spare in my own head) or some Dylan Thomas poetry (my one real like when it comes to poetry) I get a reaction as if I'm going to bore them out of their minds. I don't expect that people should like everything, I know I don't like rap music, survival horror books or games, slapstick comedy and numerous other things, but I'm not going to recommend thigns I don't think people would like. If someone likes Orwell then I'd recommend them Half Life 2 just for the feel of the game as far as I've played it, and the same in reverse. People need to broaden their horizons and not just make assumptions. However, these two groups at least come ahead of the the people whose entire cultural repetoire comes in the form of whatever is the most popular music, film and television at the time. Those are the people who need the most help here...