Infamous PS3 review

Isn't it just Spiderman the video game with a better storyline and more actions but less fun?

I've played Spiderman 2 on the PS2, and enjoyed it. The free roaming beat em up with web swinging, wall climbing, villain bashing and using various different upgrades.

Then.. Today I played Infamous on the PS3. It is a free roaming beat em up with, wall climbing (Assassin's Creed Style), Villain Bashing, and you can use various upgrades towards either good or evil.

Hang on a minute... They both have the same features...

But here's where they differ...

In Spiderman 2 you could fire your web at people and they'd stay glued to the spot. (Allowing you to pummel them with various cool fun combos)

In Infamous you fire your puny bolt of lightning which knocks them down for them only to get up again so you've got to keep firing this lightning bolt (not sure if there's a stream of lightning later on)and it just gets repetitive. Also, you're life is set very low so while you're firing upon one trying to make sure it's dead two more are firing at you from two different rooftops... this meant a lot of dying which made it SO frustrating, even though you respawned with everything you've just done already done (so they've managed to take out the "challenge" element)

= Spiderman 2 is more fun.

Yes, ok you can destroy stuff and blow stuff up in infamous which isn't possible in Spiderman 2 but "that don't count for nowt" this doesn't make the game more fun it makes it more tedious, if the enemies are hanging around electric substations (since there is no lock on feature just a reticule) and you hit one by accident, due to the short range of this electric burst you are just as likely to kill the enemy as you are yourself!

My advice, get Spiderman 2!

Here's Something Completely Random...

Imagine that you're bursting for the toilet that there is no choice but to go, you've had to hold it in for half an hour for some reason...

Then imagine that you've gone to the toilet and found someone mortally wounded on the floor in the bathroom but there is something you can do to help them hold on a bit longer until an ambulance arrives (only if you go to them straight away) but there's nobody else around to help... WHAT DO YOU DO? (i don't have an answer but here's some obvious suggestions)

A) Go to the toilet with that person in the room and phone someone from the toilet seat. (If you have your mobile with you)
B) Go to the toilet without any means of outside communication and allow the person to die.
C) Bite the bullet and go where you stand then help the person. (you'll then have to hide this fact later on)

I suppose the answer is easy. That at the end of the day, your personal embarrassment
comes second to the life of another human being.

(I am aware there are probably holes in this but i don't care. It's just a random musing and something to make you go hmmmm...)

Where has comradery and Chivalry Gone

Disobedient kids, work colleagues who think nothing of the effect of snitching on each other...

What has happened to the world? Why are people so keen to stab others' in the back?

Why can't people just work together? People make misakes and that's life but what about 2nd chances and Comradery?

As for disobedient kids... Why can't parents take more control of kids? Otherwise we end up with a self obsessed culture! Yes children are important and should be treasured but they should not get away with murder!

Example: I heard of a kid recently who had two Nintendo DS consoles, when casually asked why he needed two his mother replied that he "wouldn't leave the shop unless he got two" to me, thats spoiling them. I gotta say i'd probably just walk out of the shop and wait for the kid to follow, even if it took ALL day.

Well that's my rant over

Speak soon

TTFN

Hi again!

What’s goin on? What’s goin on?… name that tune lol.

Well here I am back again, I doubt you missed me but I have more important things to worry about.

What things??? Well… I gotta get a job in a games company for one thing, somewhere I can really show my potential and most importantly… PAID!

I’ve been doing this and that recently, having a go at doing an interior and exterior of a terraced street and recently realising I should probably do something different… Like a fantasy slant on an environment, experimenting with shapes and colours to create a unique idea, something that really says… ALEX HILL.

It would be pretty cool to do a medieval village, or underwater city or something like that if I get time. I’ve got to really find out just what people are looking for.

The game The Outsider is looking pretty good but that’s been in development for an age… It’s a deep thinking fully accessible version of Washington D.C. (because there’s nowhere else better in the world *Chortle*)… Could this be another Duke Nukem?

Seriously, why couldn’t they have chosen somewhere more interesting, I’m not saying a jungle romp, even though we need a good one… Far Cry 2 was awful!! Fallout 3 was set in D.C. and the next Fallout will be set in Vegas (Should be interesting)

Well it’s been good.

Thanks for your time

TTFN.. Got some left 4 dead to play mwahahahahahahaaaaaaa!

My Level with daylighting

I decided to light my scene in the daytime as I'm not afraid to show my assets fully lit. The reason I say this is the fact that there are a lot of game levels out there who use darkness as a tool to hide the poor quality of the level, this technique annoys me and so I didn't want people to think I'd used the same cheat in this level.

To light the scene i used the "Daylighting" function in 3Ds Max 2009. I then rendered the scenes and overlaid the wireframe over the top of the renders to demonstrate the scene's construction but show it as a quality scene at the same time.

Gameworld Project Summary

Foreword
My name is Alex Hill, I’m a third year Game Art Student and have recently completed my final project and that is what this body of text is about. I will start from the humble beginnings, summarizing and not going into too much detail about anything unless I deem it important. I plan to go forth throughout this summary in a more informal fashion as if I’m speaking to you and not talking down to you as if you were stupid. I hope that you do have a basic understanding of 3D modelling and art as I will not be explaining all the terms that I use. I wish this summary to be used as a report of my findings, from what I have always known to what I found out in my project and thus how I plan to do things in future.

Tools Used
For photo editing: Adobe Photoshop CS2
For Modelling: Autodesk 3DS Max 2009
For getting reference images: 5MP Sony Ericcson Phone
Engine: Unreal 3

Early Start
I started this project during the summer of 2008 where I had the idea that I would concept and model the shop in which I worked; the Gameworld building.

Brief

Platform
Playstation 3

Group Structure
Individual

Project Description and Genre
To conceptualise how the Gameworld could look if it were revamped

I plan to use the theme of Blue and Silver to restyle the look of the shop to bring it up to date. I have chosen to use these two colours, as these are the colours of the new plastic bags that have just arrived in store.

The colour will focus mainly on blue as I am aware that a similar games company uses Silver as it’s main corporate colour.

Objective
To model the ground floor of the “Gameworld” building and the view of the opposite street as far as you can see out of the Gameworld street entrance.

This is going to be a demonstration piece; both for showing what is actually in the Gameworld Building and how I think the look of it can be improved.

This image shows the proposed area where I wished to create.

I am happy to report…

I have completed the above brief and gone beyond it in modelling the rest of the street or at least creating a street from the meshes I had. I am very pleased with the result and I believe it accurately represents my skill level at this point in time, but I am always improving.

Specification

Technical Specification
All art assets should be constructed and textured to reflect as closely as possible the appearance and structure of the original reference/concept object. The assets created should be logically and economically built taking into account the asset’s size and importance in the scene as to how many polygons are used in its creation and how big texture sizes are, to ensure a full, efficient, real-world reproduction.

Modeling Guidelines
Below is a list of guidelines and standards to adhere to when creating scenic assets.
Basic Guidelines
• The assets should load correctly in max 2009 and load onto the destined computer system.
• The asset should be aligned so that the front is visible in the Front viewport.
• The asset, materials and maps should adhere to the specified naming convention.
• The filenames should be in the following formats:
max: object_type_00.max
psd: object_type_00.psd
tga: object_type_00_d.tga
export: object_type_00.x
The tga files need a postfix that denotes the type of file it is:
_d = diffuse
_s = specular
_n = normal
_h = height
_a = ambient occlusion
• Ensure verts are welded.
• The intersection of separate model pieces is allowed; a judgment call must be made on when the use of intersection saves polygon count over mesh consistency/stability.
• Ensure all face normals should face outwards (or as seen) be aware of flipped faces.
• The asset Origin should be at 0.0.0. Reset the transform and collapse before
exporting.
Additional
• Model in a representational amount of detail, but do not over complicate, detail can be textured in.
• Afford most of your polygon assets to those within the playable area, anything beyond this area will need less detail.
• Pay careful attention to your smoothing groups, these are important as they define the shape of the model.
• Avoid non co-planar and non co-linear polygons (bent quads or polygons with 3 verts in a line), as they do not convert to game well.
Beveled edges
Assets should have beveled edges applied as this substantially improved the quality of the model in the way that it will interact with light. Beveled edges on an object

Poly Count
There is some flexibility within the polygon count for assets, however as a general rule the polygon budget should be around 250 for a simple object, and up to 2000 for a larger, more complex asset. Don’t use polys where they aren’t needed.
A: Object built using a reasonable number of polygons
B: Excessive use of polygons does not improve object
Units and Scale
All assets are to be built to a real world scale.
Stripping
When working in Max the artist should build a model that will strip efficiently when exported into the real time engine. In order to do this, three main areas need to be taken into consideration: Mapping, Smoothing and Structure.
Stripping
• Mapping
Areas that need to be tiled should be mapped using the “polygon planar projection tool”. This will ensure that all the vertices are sharing the correct UV coordinates. Whenever possible avoid mapping a quad and then tiling the geometry to create a surface; this method will result in a mesh that will not strip efficiently.

• Smoothing
Any area of polys where stripping is desired needs to share a smoothing group. A “Hard” edge will stop the surface from being stripped. This is not to say that all edges should be smooth, use hard edges when necessary – on the edges of buildings for example.

• Structure
When creating objects try to avoid producing polygons that fan outwards. Meshes should conform to a grid like structure wherever possible. Fan shapes will not strip.

Texturing & UV Mapping Guidelines
Below is a list of guidelines and standards we adhere to when creating a scenic building.
Basic Guidelines
• Textures are to be created using Adobe Photoshop
• Assets should be textured using maximum 1024x1024 textures (obviously less is better). Smaller assets will obviously require less texture space.
• Textures should be shared where appropriate, ie 2 identical chairs should not have exclusive textures
• A combination real world base textures and Photoshop techniques should be used when creating your textures.
• You may find it preferable to work at a larger resolution when editing the UV’s for clarity of point placement, sizing down at a later date.
• Maximize the use of your texture sheet.
• Textures should be saved in the .tga format.
• Textures should adhere to the given naming conventions.
Photoshop files authored for each texture set should contain the following:
Diffuse Map:

Diffuse texture
The diffuse texture should have as much light information removed from it. Windows should have reflections removed and replaced with a texture that represents what the texture would look like without reflections.
Textures should have reflections removed
Textures that will be tiled should also have obvious repeats removing from the texture.
Specular Map:
The specular map is black and white and is used to control how shiny/reflective parts of the texture are. Black will be used for parts of the texture that appear matt, and white would be used for something that 100% reflective e.g. a mirror. In most cases the majority of the specular map will be shades of dark grey. If you want the specular to appear reflective rather than just shiny you will need to add an environment map to the shader in max.
Height Map:
Height map texture
The height texture is used to help create the normal map. Areas of the texture are painted to show how high or low they should appear on the model. White is 100% high and black is 100% low. To create the effect of bevels etc the edges of the height map components should be faded using a glow effect.

Final checklist
On completion of each project, the following checks must take place :
• Ensure folder structures are correct.
• Collapse modifier stack on all objects (except physique / skin etc).
• Save your work as 3DS 2009 format. Files must load correctly using destined hardware/software.
• All objects, cameras, maps and materials in the scene must be uniquely named to
enable the assessor to navigate the scene comfortably
• Texture maps should be in .tga format, no bigger than 1024 x 1024.
• Save all related maps together in un-flattened .PSD documents.
• Remove any unused textures/ materials from the material editor.
• Unhide and delete any unwanted geometry, lights, cameras or helpers in the scene
and make sure there are no hidden verts or polys in the asset.
• Ensure the correct material is assigned to the asset.
• Remove any smoothing group problems and ensure beveled geometry has the right
smoothing applied.
• Ensure that all verts are wielded up if they need to be.
• Select each mesh and make sure the x-form is reset and the normals are facing the
correct way.
• Ensure pivot points are in the correct position.
• Check ALL textures load when scene is opened from the K: Drive
• Check any other plugins / shaders load when scene is opened from the destined hardware.

I have attempted to adhere to the specification as closely as I could, I do not believe that anything I have done conflicts with any point raised above. I have however included a 2048x1024 map. This map is for the skydome, I have noticed that Epic games have used much larger maps for their skydomes but I thought this size sufficient for my map.

Concepting

When I initially started the project I didn’t think it would amount to being my final project, I just wanted to improve the look of the shop. For this purpose I started doing sketches as to how I would go about creating a shop identity in the form of logos and fonts.

I played around a lot as you can see, mainly experimenting with the connotations of the name of the shop, I finally decided on the font and style as shown on the right. The reasons for using the pinky-purply colour was to do with the fact that the colour of the bags were that colour back then. Since then the colours have changed to blue and silver.

Well, I got hold of the blueprints for the shop from the owner and then got them photocopied then took a load of reference photos of the inside of the shop and a few of the outside so that I could start work on the project, I managed to flesh out the model and was pretty happy with the scale of the thing. In 3Ds Max I experimented with lighting, transparency and mirror effects on my model of gameworld. In the end I found it probably wasn’t viable to use mirrors in my final map due to the enormous amount of memory they take up on screen.

Initial Models
The below meshes were created before the official start of the project but may have been edited during for experimentation purposes.

These images are taken from the 3Ds Max Model of the shop.
After modelling I lit the mesh with lights in max and took screenshots of interesting angles to aid me in development of concepts, I never used most of these but they show how I initially lit the mesh.

Filing Stucture

I organised my filing structure for my reference. Above is an overview of the areas in which I had photos of and below is a screenshot of the sub folders I created for the ground floor.

Sketches
I started with models as I felt the geometry was already in place for the project, I needed to get the right perspectives for the building in order to concept effectively. After being happy with the look of things I began to design concepts to find out which direction I was going in.

These were the basis of how my project was to look, though some ideas were scrapped, what you see is what is in the level.

I later found I wanted to concept the front of the building, even though from the description in the brief’s description you wouldn’t be able to see it in game.

The above image shows the shop as it is now and though I had several false starts I settled on this (below) as the final concept.
I've changed many things and re-styled everything to make the building itself more interesting and very much more presentable.

I've added windows into the basement (which are covered with extra thick glass for safety) as well as flower boxes, changed the sign and the windows.

I added curved walls into the equation as i was inspired by the "Einstein Tower" by Erich Mendelsohn. This building I found in a book called "1001 Buildings to see before you die" which was a great personal buy recently for the amount of reference material there is.

I eventually scrapped a lot of the styling but kept the building white and the sign as it was. My reasons for this are purely time based, I modelled the upper windows but it was too time consuming too.

More interior concepting
After a lot of beard stroking and technical thoughts I thought that the idea to have a convex outward opening door was silly and quite possibly dangerous if implemented. Dangerous in the way that if people walked by the shop while someone was leaving the shop they may get hit by the door, for this reason I decided to concept another door for the shop.

I have always thought that the space inside the door is improperly used and thought it’d be a great place for a display cabinet built into the wall.

I watched "Grand Designs" the other day on tv and they were building a house with a ceiling that was a parabolic arch made of clay tiles and plaster of paris which sounded a bit mental to me but they pulled it off ok. Well the idea i was inspired by in that programme was *picture this* Up a short flight of stairs there is a short hallway and just after the hallway is a guest bedroom. Built into a wall in the short hallway is a large en-suite bathroom. The door of the bathroom opens out to form a partition across the hallway so that the guest bedroom is more private. This got me thinking.

I then utilised the idea of a "partition" and kept an arc around the front of the front door which would house the security guard which would pull across at closing time.

In the alcove behind the front arc there would be a large thick glass door surrounded in metal, which would lock in both the door and the display cabinet door positions. This means that during shop opening hours the door would always be open, winter is not a problem as I would install a air heating system which would blow warm air onto the entrance. This system would be built into the ceiling.

I would put the door itself on rollers at the bottom to allow the door to be easily opened and closed.

Below is the concept of the inside of the front door.

The shape of the doors then followed, I came up with a curved metal exterior surface with a sign at the top. I kept the concave walls as you see in the shop front concept above and then it was about lighting (see two images below)

I started with all blue uplights which didn’t look right, I removed the upper lights and changed all of the lights to white. I still didn’t like this; and so I kept the down lights white but changed the uplights to blue. I felt this was far more suitable.

In the above images you can see how I’ve forsaken the curved and convex upper windows as concepted in the above shop concept and also removed the windows into the basement. This was purely because of time issues, if there was more time or if I have time in future I may change the windows.

And now onto the modelling.

Unreal 3 Editor
This is the engine I used for my project as I had briefly used it for other projects but only so far as to import meshes and add point lights. This having been many months before I started this project meant that I’d forgotten mostly everything.

There is not a module on my course which encompasses this and so I found myself teaching myself how to use the engine. As this project was an individual one I didn’t have someone who I knew about the same topics to bounce ideas off of. I must say that I’m very proud of how much I have accomplished on my own with very little help, though I would say a huge thanks to many Internet resources

http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy
http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/
http://cm482.aisites.com/InteriorSpacesWorlds_Winter2007/2008_Fall_DISW_UE3_StaticMesh_ImportGuide.pdf
http://udn.epicgames.com/
http://utmapping.wikidot.com/
http://forums.blackcatgames.com/
http://www.moddb.com/mods/nightblade/tutorials/nightblade-mapping-doors

And especially
http://hourences.com/
http://waylon-art.com/LearningUnreal

The Style I used

Basically I wanted to go for a real world style, a level where people could walk around and feel that they were in a real place, whereas there are other types of styles I could go for like fantasy, cel shaded, race map etc but I wanted to show what I could do, by going for a fantasy style the style might not have worked or might not have appealed to certain people, I could have gone with cel shaded where the style (if done right) could last forever, but I definitely didn’t want to go with a race map for a final project, sure you can make it look nice but it doesn’t show true potential, it shows that you can use a 3D program and are able to texture models but it’s just not that interesting.

The Unreal bsp nightmare

In Unreal there are two ways to build a level that I know of. One is out of BSP and using the terrain editor. The other way is to model the level in a 3D modelling program like 3Ds Max and import it bit by bit or at least with the material Ids set on the exported mesh.

In my naivety I started the project using BSP for floors, walls and ceilings, this I found to be a complete nightmare. The engine doesn’t seem to know how to triangulate bsp geometry properly, no matter how you fiddle it. My main problem with the BSP was the lighting issues I have with it, I still get lighting issues with using static meshes but not nearly as many.

The way I modelled the BSP was to import my concept building mesh into Unreal and build the BSP around it. Had I known the BSP was so useless I would have simply chopped up my concept mesh, re-triangulated it and imported it straight into the editor.

I must have spent at least three weeks fiddling around with BSP and never being satisfied with it only to then give it up for a much better static mesh system. All the texture materials I used for the BSP worked fine but the geometry does not seem to be able to be altered in Unreal which was extremely frustrating, every internet website I visited to remedy the problem said I needed to export the BSP to a modelling program and sort out the geometry in there. I sorted everything out in Max then exported it back into Unreal only to find that the textures were the wrong scale! I didn’t think there was a way to scale the textures on static meshes so I deleted everything I’d done in Max and continued to soldier on with BSP; hoping the problem would eventually go away. It didn’t. I later looked up on the Internet how to tile textures and lo and behold there was a way to do it, using the “Texture co-ordinate” tool in the Material Editor. This set me on my way to deleting all of the BSP but the walls (as there wasn’t a problem with them).

By using static meshes most of my problems were solved but there are still issues concerning shadows from static meshes (there aren’t any) this is really frustrating as it stops my work looking as real as it should. All I’ve tried to do is add as many lights as there are lights in the shop.

As far as lighting is concerned inside the shop; I feel I’ve done a really good job I love down lights casting light against the walls as they have a certain feeling about them when you look at them, they really draw your attention and light the scene well (See below)

Static Meshes
The idea was to keep their triangle count as low as possible (obviously) I really didn’t feel the need to go over the top with anything, I wanted to create high resolution meshes but not have them take up too much memory if repeated. I think the worst offenders for repeating have to be all of the game cases, they were tedious to make but crucial to the look of the place (being a game shop) they took a lot of time to scatter around the shop also, I was only able to create maybe fifteen different games across eight or so genres but the effort was worth it when I look at the shop now.

Shop Fronts
There are some meshes which I learned a lot from, particularly the shop fronts, the Gameworld building was the first building I built as a static mesh, constructing it was pretty simple but texturing it was a different matter. Having evolved in my technique I wish to go back in future and change the Gameworld Shop front to conform with later models. The same goes for the Sun Pub and also the Nail Salon.

When I constructed these meshes they were all of very simple construction but looked good, when it came to texturing them though, that was a different matter. I found that a 1024 map just wasn’t big enough, and I wasn’t allowed to go up to 2048 due to the specification we were supplied with. I found that the Sun Pub (950 tris) looked very pixelated and low resolution, which would have looked fine from inside the building looking out, but by this stage I had more or less decided I wanted to create a street scene as well as the shop. The solution I thought was to re-map the model to use two 1024 maps, in doing this I had increased file size which wasn’t a good thing but it didn’t take up as much memory as a 2048 map. The building still looks pixelated but I had to move on. The Nail salon looks great at around 350 triangles and a single 1024 map so I decided that was ok. In future I would apply my new technique to this building also.

The brainwave hit me when modelling the Pricewise building. I thought that I was using too much texture space in putting the building’s wall on the same texture sheet as all of the building’s details (like shutters, sign etc) for this reason I then decided to detach all of the details from the walls and unwrap them separately to the walls, these then were textured and used in a 1024 map and they look great.

One thing I did learn about from making the Sun Pub was how to make a good-looking arch low poly. This idea I implemented on creating curved window surrounds on the Pricewise building and I must say I’m rather pleased with the result. The idea is to simply cut a rectangle around the whole of where the window is on the reference image and then extrude it inwards to create the recess, you then create a cylinder which you delete both ends of and then halve it so it makes a extrudes semi circle (arch) and fit it between the wall and the end of the extrusion into the wall. You then put a plane over the front that you create your alpha from which will create a perfect semi-circle (depending on the resolution of the alpha) the below image shows this technique.

I used this idea of separating the details from the walls and roof on the other shops. This allowed me to re-use the textures I’d created for the Pricewise building and tile them on the shop walls to make them all unique.

This technique is a godsend and I only wish there was more time to model the rest of the street.

As you can see from the above image a huge amount of the texture page is just white, in future I would like to go back and just apply tiling textures to the model to increase resolution and improve the model in general.

As you can see from the above image a huge amount of the texture page is just white, in future I would like to go back and just apply tiling textures to the model to increase resolution and improve the model in general.

The above image shows the Sun Pub, it looks good but I’m sure would look a lot better with tiling textures and decals.

I must say I’m very pleased with the result of this building, the walls have a great look to them with just the right amount of wear and tear and the chimney looks fantastic.

All for only 350 tris.

Pricewise

662 Tris (Using tiling textures, decals and alpha technique) 1x 1024 D N S 1x Brick Tiling 512 D N S 1x Roof 64 D N S
645 Tris (Using tiling textures, decals and alpha technique) 1x 1024 D N S 1x Brick Tiling 512 D N S 1x Roof 64 D N S

To Summarize

Considering that I’ve had to teach myself Unreal and had no real help from anyone I must say I’m very happy with the finish of the project it looks realistic, well lit, inviting and full of promise. There is very little I would change (apart from the afore mentioned). I feel that any lighting issues really aren’t my fault, purely a technical issue, and the fact that I have effectively absolved my early mistakes of shop front building by adapting and finding the correct solutions to the problems in later models. There is a significant amount of lag which I can’t really attribute to anything but a technical fault, all I’ve done is add meshes, build some BSP and light the model (much more difficult than it sounds). I’d like to finish (if you’ll humour me) by showing some of my favourite screenshots of my level.

Thank you for your time.

If you would like to ask any questions concerning this project don’t hesitate to e-mail me.

My E-mail is:

Aphill9999@hotmail.co.uk

As for the Future

I feel I have decided though on what I wish to proceed with for my part in the future, whatever it brings. I wish to model mainly vehicles and buildings. I love the geometry of vehicles and buildings can always be made interesting through use of one technique or another, characters are interesting but creating characters just doesn’t interest me.

Why? You wonder. I don’t like making clothes for characters, drawing or modelling, I don’t have a big enough interest in fashions to make a character look interesting. I’ve never had a big interest in fashions, I would never consider myself stylish, or in “vogue” as it were. This makes an interest in characters very difficult for me to start to get an interest.

I’ve always had an interest in vehicles, big or small from a young age, be it big ol’ trains from Thomas the Tank Engine, or absent-mindedly watching the quarry trucks roll back and forth through the bus window as I’ve grown older I enjoy watching Knight Rider way back when. Then later on got into watching all these car magazines like Top Gear and Fith Gear, which I still watch now. If only I could drive.

Then buildings? Why buildings? Well I just find buildings quite fascinating and really can be works of art, buildings are built for many purposes and sometimes the function follows the form taking on a very De Stijl form. I like the creative side of this idea and I love the scale of buildings and the fact that they can take on any form, ok a building in a game may not stay with you forever like a character but it does build the scene into which that character fits, it’s equally important though not as obvious.

TTFN

A Very Down Note

What do I write about? Well let’s start with an amusing Discworld quote from the Hogfather novel (and film)…

Death expresses bemusement at the follies of mortals: "Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders they have managed to invent boredom?”

It’s so true. There are so many things going on in the world but there’s nothing that affects me enough to write about. There are current events that interest me like the whole credit crunch thing, and the Iraq war which is a very important and serious issue but I wouldn’t know where to start with such issues.

To write about anything else than these major events is to be honest, pointless. This is due to the fact that these are two events that affect my life and will go on affecting my life until resolved, maybe not directly but definitely indirectly. That thought that I should be doing something about these events or at least contributing to their solution.

Isn’t it strange how helpless we all are, how we strive to build our puny little lives around us thinking that it’s all going to be something… It’s this hope that keeps us going, that we’re going to eventually dig ourselves out of this rut. It’s a hope that I hold onto, that I will eventually find my niche into the world and turn it into a canyon, a landmark to be remembered.

In the end I guess hope is all we have, until you just give up.

I don’t want to write about my personal life apart from where my interests are concerned, which if you’ve followed any of my blogs include art, computer games (mainly computer games), going for walks, eating, sleeping, 3D modelling etc.

Film; Conception, preconception and theories.

I’ve the luxury of being able to watch almost any dvd I like (not through illegal means I assure you) I take advantage of this luxury as much as I can.

Recently I watched City of Lost Children, artistically… WOW! I loved so many of the scenes in that movie, the way everything was set out so beautifully that you could snapshot and frame some of the scenes in the film. The film was set at night in what looked like the cobbled back streets of a French town. There was a strong “green” tone in the film which always found a way to surface, be it in the water, lighting a distant area or just an ambient light. It gave the film its unrealistic fantasy feel.

I thought the characters portrayed were interesting and unique; one such characters is in the form of a brain in a vat, who everyone calls Uncle Irvin, this character also narrates part of the film, other characters include a man who could be considered “evil” as he stole little children so he could live their dreams because he couldn’t dream himself.

I believe that the developers of Baldur’s Gate 2 may have referenced the idea of the Cyclops’ Cult where the initiates of the Cyclops cult had their eyes removed and saw through the use of a “Optacon” which enhances “vision”. I believe that BG2 referenced this in the way that there is a “Cult of the Eyeless” side quest where you’re given the task of putting an end to the cult. All the cult of the eyeless can “see” but not with their eyes. Their power of sight is given to them by a “Beholder” which is a fantasy creature consisting of a floating fleshy orb with many eyestalks and a mouth. The contraption which Krank wears upon his head has a silhouette strikingly similar to the form of a beholder (see image)



From greatness to utter disappointment. I watched a film called The Brotherhood Of Wolf. Cool name eh? Well… it’s all in the name I’m afraid. There was one decent sword fight, a total lack of flow and utterly pointless dialogue scenes, oh! And don’t forget those damned luvvy duvvy scenes.

What I expected: A secret society “The Brotherhood of Wolf” an elite group of knights almost ninja like but without the Japanese style who are a stealth team who assassinate dignitaries with their own cause fighting for the freedom of France from oppression and then somehow tying it in to be a part of the history of France.

What I got: A dialogue heavy, slow paced wander through the woods in France, full of rich people. I guess you could call this film “Pride and Prejudice (with a wolf)”



I love Disney films, they really are special, each one. Though not all to my taste they all have redeeming qualities. I watched the Emperor’s New Groove the other day and though it wasn’t quite the quality of the Lion King, Bambi or Aladdin it was enjoyable to watch and far more so than most of the films out at the moment.

Life is too serious at the moment to sit down and enjoy a serious film

Now, I’ll admit that this sentiment has only just popped into my head but it is a serious hard-hitting truth!

With all the messed up stuff in the world; why do we watch action films showing atrocities in another version of our world, this only builds up peoples’ fear of the movie events happening in real life.

One suggestion could be that all this depression shown in another world we watch to make us feel better that we aren’t in “that” situation. It’s a shame that we are born with so little trust for the common man, that society has imprinted trust barriers, that we have to instinctively guess what a person is like based on first impressions. I guess I’m just rambling.

I feel I’ve lost my thread today… Time for bed.

TTFN