Ironic re-release: Daikatana

Gametap is offering the whole of Daikatana for free to download, now this is the gaming equivalent of free arsenic but its the best example of what hype over proper design can lead to I can vaguely remember playing the demo and finding it ridiculously hard even though it was the first level and I was (still am y'know?) into Quake.
The level design is hard, not in its complexity although due to murky lighting and repetitive textures i didn't know where to go half the time and everywhere is poorly signposted but the way the level throws you down ledges and slopes ever so slightly too steep or too high meaning you lose health even before you run into the robotic frogs or the mosquito's that take two impossibly well aimed shots to kill - two being the least number of shots to have any effect upon the world it would seem

So yeah every aspect of the game is appalling bit its a good opportunity to download simply to see what too much hype can lead to




Daikatana

Started painting

Well i started painting up the Sculpey fungus thingy, then suddently realized i really REALLY had to sleep i'll probaly finish it up later today

Also what the hells with Blogger making you download images now? Most vexing

..even a new tablecloth

Seeing as i've found a new wind of life for the blog I decided to make a fancy new banner for it im going for the whole dry humour approach something which sadly comes far too easily to me

I R SPEEDPAINT

I've noticed a few other ppl are posting there speed paints on there main blog presumably to pad them out but im not gonna swamp my blog with a load of my pretty poor images, thats what this is for Speed painting blog

I am however gonna post up some of my favourite pics I've done over a few weeks into a single image, this way its all nicely contained in a single post,

Image on the left is for 'Omnipotent' i figured a satellite is pretty close to that surveying all of Earth at a time, this image was completely unfinished the satellite looks more like a fridge and the Earth looks poo im pretty happy with opting to leave out any stars and stuff in most of the image making it look all the more remote and distant. The image on the right is for 'Augmentation' had been thinking of mudboxing up some Giger stuff recently so it made sense to do something close - a beauty machine that takes more from you than gives back

What really is creativity?

I've realised I've been blogging about creativity when I haven't really exlored what it really means, according to Wikipedia creativity is, 'Creativity (or "creativeness") is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts.'
Which makes sense creativity be it for any task or project is always new and original other than emulating something else, something games i guess could learn from i guess

BUT

people who always say 'ooh games need to be more original more creative' etc don't often consider that new creative ideas are horrible half baked ideas often the result of somebody with a 'great idea', im pretty sure this applies to all aspects where creativity and design go hand in hand. The closest example i can think of is the Car industry and the Fiat multipla.
Despite being displayed in the Museum of Modern Art at New York, sales worldwide were absymal with Top Gear voting it the 'Ugliest Car' car of 1999 Fiat eventualy restyled it back into a more traditional looking design and sales started to increase.
Showing more than anything people want familiarity not a car you would find in a pretensious modern art house, evolution not revolution i guess.
But creativity to solve a problem is a truly mysterious thing some spark of inspiration that completely rewrites the book and has everyone copying you until the next big wave of creativity

Crafted with my very own hands

I finally got round to doing some sculpeying(?) today bought some tools yesterday and spent most of the day making something up then trying a different side then smushing the other.

Still its a welcome change from staring at a screen day in day out.
Piece is a lil' something for my organic project although im not sure if it looks like a rose or a particuarly nasty case of piles

I know somebody in Edge magazine...

Latest Edge has a feature up on gamecity showing the various events around the uh event - but whatsthis?!
Why its Game Art's very own David Sillitoe! Apologies for the picture quality they were taken at 6 in the morning with a 'orrible energy saving bulb

modelling update

I've realised I've not posted up any new information on me self portrait model, well I started a brand new head this one has ears, nostrils spherical eyes and a inner mouth among another things that make it look a bit more realistic and believable and not like Odo off DS9. The face geometry has been reduced while still retaining its shape and im experiementing with a mixture of poly modelled hair and alpha's. Current new model stands at 2443 tris which gives me a further 57 tris to play with for the hair.

Alas the hands still look like a cripples - i need to find a way to model all fingers within the budget

Creativity or mum knows best

My mums just recently well 'retired' i suppose from working with various austistic children in a number of primary schools seeing as how creativity seems to be so tied into the education system, for better or worse, I thought I'd pick her noggin for a few of her thoughts on the whole arrangement.

If general education can quash any creativity out of an individual, guiding them down a linear path preset when the UK was more industrial than it is today the effects this has upon an autistic child must be huge,
Many of the children had been expelled from state school, most of the time simply for struggling with the curriculm, and thrust into private school the parents assuming throwing money at it would solve the problem, coupled with the parents expectations and they way the curriculum is drilled into children the oppurtunity for any creativity is long lost

The curriculm often hindered development of learning let alone encouraging any creativity, one topic would be covered a week then you would move on to the next. This topic could not be revisited even if the child showed a genuine interest for it interestingly this would apply for all subjects across the board not just the 'proper' subjects of Maths, English etc.

Coupled with an extremely rigid curriculm guidelines enusring they must stick to that completely without going off on a tangent despite any positive benefits it would have upon learning, for example studying insects in grass it would be completely discouraged for the teacher to take the children out into the field opposite to draw the insects in the grass

So you can see currently the way this stuff is taight is so rigid and unbending it often hinders itself let alone any oppurtunity that may arise for creative or abstract thought

UnrealED: Praise indeed

Righty I've been idly playing around with the UnrealED toolset that comes with Gears of War and UT3 for aroun d two weeks so i'd thought I'd post my findings and musings on the whole thing,

The Same Subtractive blockworld editing is still present here but you can now choose to build a map using additive brushes, for previous versions this would have been madness it was hard enough getting a correctly dimensioned room without having to create it from 6 brushes, but the new geometry mode pulls up a 'mini-max' style interface that allows you to select the verts, poly and edges of a brush allowing you to quickly resize and shape it, there are even options for modifiers and soft selections and because ALL objects now clip to the same grid you don't spend time carefully snapping them all to the same grid scale

Another nod towards Max is the inclusion of a massive directional widget, this can be toggled for scale and rotation and is a nice change over selecting a brushes tiny verts, holding down shift to move and have it shoot off into the void because your fingers had slipped. These can be scaled in uniform or non-uniform directions

Building upon previous versions is the new asset browser through this dialog window you can view absolutely everything in the engine from animation to UT map music all of which fire up there respective viewers, its really nice to be able to load up a custom model and be able to look at it ingame without compiling (im looking at YOU source engine) then dump it into your map. Being able to view all of the assets that would make up a map in one place quickly and easly is a huge boon to the speed you work. It also displays the various entities in a map logically sorted in a folder tree allowing you to quickly alter a large number at a time

Additionally importing stuff into the engine couldn't be easier models can imported from .ase or .obj with all of the smoothing groups and other details normally lost still intact, additionally theres no hardlimit on the amount of polygons you can import so models in there millions are doable although why you would want to im not sure. Accepted texture formats are even broader the expected .tga and .bmp extensions are there but being able to import raw .psd files is a huge time saver.

But the best thing has to be the material editior, by simply plugging in some rough textures and connecting up some boxs you can quickly make some really nice looking shaders and all without any shader programming knowledge. Stuff like water, oil spills, blobs of jelly anything that would require knowledge writing complex shaders can be created in the material editior. Im pretty sure this is the tool that will make a good map stunning

I've not even mentioned the kismet scripting engine or any of the sound stuff but yeah colour me impressed

Im gonna post up some of the problems I've found with it later on, although to be honest there not many