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Metroid Prime 2

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:20:27 GMT

Recently I've been playing Metroid Prime 2 and I have to say I'm surprised a game this broken could come from Nintendo. Its fine graphically, and I only found 1 small programming glitch, but the game design is all over the place.

Traditionally Metroid games have been about exploration with equal parts platformming, combat, and puzzle solving thrown in. The original Metroid Prime had a very good interface for these interactions and Metroid Prime 2's interface is almost an exact carbon copy of the original's.Had MP2 been equal parts platformming, combat and puzzle solving this would be good, but it seems that no one told the enemy designers that combat was supposed to be equal to the other elements in the game. Because of this the enemies in MP2 are fast and ferocious and you are ill equipped to deal with them.

Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to say that the game is hard, it isn't. Its just that the enemies exploit your combat inabilities. In the original Metroid Prime Samus (the game's protagonist) was very good at taking down the enemies she faced, mostly because they stayed mostly stationary allowing for her to shot them with her lock on. In MP2 it seems that the enemy designers were committed to making locking onto enemies obsolete.

Most of the non-trivial enemies you face after the game's halfway point have some method of getting around your lock on. Some of them simply move out of your range or stun you (both which seem acceptable to me) but others will just fade out of existence and respawn elsewhere, some will simply travel so fast that all of your locked on shots will miss them and others will just drop your lock-on for no reason at all. This gets really annoying really fast, especially since your only other option for hitting them is to manually aim which is difficult because it requires you to stay stationary as you finesse the analog stick to just the right position and your bullets travel slower than a pitched ball. In a game like Halo these enemies would make sense, but in Metroid they just act to break the game by overwhelming the tools you use to fight them. Sure you can still beat them with attrition, but when there is an enemy that requires this much effort every 3-4 rooms its easier just to run past them.

Beyond that the game has a lot of other minor problems, some of the jumping maneuvers (like the screw attack) are awkward, getting killed by the slow life drain of the dark planet is a buzz kill, and the areas just aren't as memorable as the original game's. But if there is anything that someone should be taken out to the street and beaten with shoes for its confusing the combat engine for something far more hardcore than it is.

But on the plus side, this game made me think of a good topic I'll post about later on. I think I'll call it Gaming in GUI. Also in personal news, I'm moving to Chicago in a couple of weeks where I will start working for High Voltage Software as a GUI Designer. Not too bad, but I do have to find a way to move all my stuff...

Centipede

Tue, 01 May 2007 00:02:19 GMT

My life has become a real life game of centipede, only in real life centipede is not an arcade game it is survival horror.

2 times last week I found one of those in my bathroom shower. They maybe small, but they are still as scary as fuck. While I am bothered by their appearance in my bathroom, at least I can get the drop on them there. What I'm more worried about is that my bathroom is next to where I sleep...

But enough of that riveting tale, its been almost 4 months since I posted so here's a quick update: I got a Wii, got on a very successful project at the ETC (Bandology), got a really cool tablet PC, my brother stopped mooching off me and went to Australia, and I got myself a job in the game industry (haven't signed all of the paper work yet, so I will hold off on saying where I am employed.)

So all in all things are swell, except for the centipedes that invade my every waking thought (and possibly my dreams through my ear canal.)

Wii, in liquid form

Sun, 31 Dec 2006 08:18:16 GMT

This made me smile.

Note the Straberr"wii" Banana in the bottom left

To the Slurpee loving public this may be old news, but today was the first time I saw the blended fruity drink inspired by the home entertainment system. Perhaps not as intoxicating as the HD-DVDaiquiri, but I imagine it gets the job done.

In any case, I think it does a good job of making fun of itself so I will move on. I finally got my student loan refund from school for this past semester, 4 monthes later than I would have liked, but such is life.

On the plus side I can now buy a Wii (I promised myself I wouldn't buy one until I could do so without risking debtor's prison), that is of course if there were any Wiis to buy. 1 step forward, 1 step back. Looks like I won't get my beloved first generation piece of hardware right away.

Normally I wouldn't care, first gen hardware always has some bugs, Nintendo has a better track record than most, but they still have their problems. Nintendo has already started to address one problem (the weak wrist straps) but the battery life on the Wii is still woefully inadequate, and non-wired internet access is still an annoyance. I would normally be happy to wait a year for them to fix all of these problems with most systems, but my Gamecube is busted and I want to play Zelda!!!

I know better than to want it so bad, I know there will be a mess of problems, and that if I wait I ensure a better return on my investment, but Zelda makes me want it so bad. So come January... or Feburary whenever new Wiis come in, I will be waiting in line like I forgot the release was in November. It may be stupid, but it will make me happy. Got to waste my money somehow.

Final Fantasy XII has changed my life

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 06:13:45 GMT

Today I beat Final Fantasy XII and I cannot help but feel like a phase of my life has ended. For over a month the game dominated my playtime like no other, with few exceptions it has been the only game I have played, and with good reason.

Final Fantasy XII is a masterpiece in every dimension. I usually hate Final Fantasy games, but the aspects that bore me with most games of the series are masterfully crated in XII. The story is unique, interesting, and engaging, the high quality graphics are backed up by excellent character and environment design, and the battle system has been remade so that battles from the easist to the hardest are fun. My 2 issues are the lack of treasure chest with useful equipment, and that the difficulty is not as balanced as it should be (when I'm walking through a field of guys I can kill in one hit, there shouldn't be enemies that can kill me in one hit.) But all it all it was an utterly enjoyable experence.

None of the images of FFXII that are online give you any idea of what the game is like. To judge by google image the game is a movie with sporadic bits of confusing combat and a considerable amount of eye candy for the fairer sex.

The game is a marvel in almost everyway, an insane amount of work was put into this game and it shows. It seems almost unfair that this game is compared to other video games, there is so much more content in FFXII than one would expect to see in any other game, even so called triple A games. It makes me think that a new term should be coined for games that are so incredibly epic..., maybe S games, because if Dance Dance Revolution has taught us anything S is better than AAA.

But this alone would not make beating FFXII feel like a life altering experience. A culmination of other factors have conspired to change my life. The most obvious and arguable most important is that I finished school for the semester and am now on break. Things were getting pretty hairy by the end of the semester, but now that it is over and I have had time to decompress I feel like I am really getting into not being at school.

Also my mild obsession with Skyrates has ended. Besides FFXII Skyrates has been the game I have been playing most the past couple of months. It should come as no insult that I am starting to play the game on an on-off basis less than two month after I start playing, after all the game is meant to be played sporadically to begin with, it is a testiment to its design that I didn't move past it after a couple weeks.

So this past week has been a transition, all be it a small one. But now with FFXII under my belt I now have time for other important things, like fully utilizing my Gamefly membership and working of art for my portfolio. There are also some less nerdy elements of my life over the next couple of weeks, I have several elements of my family coming to Pittsburgh pretty soon, Ohayocon after that, and next semester I start work on the Casual Core Gameplay project at ETC. So things are looking up (not that they were particullary down before.)

So what does all of that mean to you... Probably not much. Might mean that I actually add to this blog here more often, might mean I find new and exciting ways to not add to my blog. You'll know more when I know more, so til then I suggest you buy yourself a copy of FFXII, find yourself a cozy spot in front of your TV for the next 70+ hours, and enjoy.

RWARG!!!!

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 04:28:06 GMT

Flash makes me mad sometimes.

Today I wanted to do something very simple using Flash Actionscript. I wanted to change the tint of an object on the fly by using a color object. I think even non-computer users (like the one's who's very nature excludes them from reading this text) can understand how that should be a fairly easy thing to do. If I was coding in C++ or even Director this would be a one line operation that I could find in 5 seconds by searching the program's help file. With Flash, 2 hours of pulling out hair until after endless traces and visiting a site of a hippie flash coder do I find a hidden variable in the color transformation object that allows me to do what I want.

Flash's horrible documentation robbed me of 2 hours of my life which fills me with a certain degree of rage. But today I have to be more mad at myself. I forgot to save after fixing the problem, and I also lost several other hours of work I had done before that *grumble*.

At the very least, I know how to implement all of that stuff faster when I have to do it again tomorrow.

In other non-Flash related news, I have started playing tons of new games for the past 2 weeks. Here's the short list:

Ninja Five-O
Dark Cloud 2
Mr. Do Vs. the Unicorns
Elite Beat Agents
Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy
Yoshi's Island DS
Skyrates BETA
Final Fantasy XII
Yggdra Union

As you may notice, no Wii and no PS3. Well unfortunately with the way school is going (ie crunch time) I won't get to play those until mid-December. In the mean time I'll report back about what I have actually been able to play.

Midland Mondays

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:33:17 GMT

Yesterday was my last scheduled game design lecture for the semester and that makes me very happy.

Don't get me wrong, I love lecturing; I always have been a loud-mouth, know-it-all and lecturing allows me to show that off, while being respected and even paid for it. And its not like I have the stage fright that normally accompanies public speaking; so there is no downside for me to stand in front of a bunch of high school kids and yap about game design for 2 hours. But there was one problem with my recent lectures and that was the drive.

My usually morning routine is quite pleasant. While we work long hours at the ETC no one gets in early; I can stroll in at 11 without anyone raising an eyebrow. This allows me to skip rush hour making my morning commute a measly 15 minutes. After I arrive I can hide in my office, usually alone for the first couple of hours, enjoy a snack from the kitchen, and unwind before hunkering down and doing 10 hours of work. Compared to the stress of most of my life, mornings are downright blissful.

That is when I'm not lecturing. Lecture mornings are hellish; for example, my last two lectures have been in Midland, PA (zoom in on the river to see what a nuclear power plant looks like from space). On the days I lecture in Midland I had to wake up at 6 to get ready and review my lecture notes, drive through rush hour traffic at 8, get there 10 til 10 and twiddle my thumbs for 10 minutes, I then have to lead a lecture for 2 hours straight, drive back at 12 just to get back in time for a my 1:20 meeting, lead the meeting in a confused state for an hour, and then attend seminar for 2 hours. My hour long morning ritual of leisure was converted to 10 hours of exhaustion on 4 hours of sleep. And that is how I have been beginning my weeks.

So I'm glad its over. While it is fun to lecture and the students, faculty, and school were great (if the ETC had a new building built specifically for it, I think it would look a lot like Midland's high school), and while I did enjoy getting paid sometimes sleep has to come first. I think I will continue to lecture next semester, but only if I am able to find gigs closer to home or later in the day.

Animation Rant

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 06:59:04 GMT

The views contained within are my own. I wonder why I need a disclaimer for that considering this is my blog.

I love animation, so it should come as little surprise that I also hate the American animation industry. As an American fan of animation there is no lack of things to loathe about the industry; for the uninitiated, here is a short list:

repetitive stories and themes
a fixation of talking animals
sex and violence being used in lieu of punchlines
art direction that wallows in the uncanny valley
style free character designs
purposefully ugly, dadaist animation
mature, adult animation being ignored and undistributed
animation reviewers and press agents who know nothing about the animation process
characters who are 1 dimensional stereotypes of their voice actors
nostalgia and ham-fisted political satire replacing humor
animation talent going unrecognized
non-animators being put in charge of products they do not understand

And that does not included everything that is wrong with a movie about penguins dancing to pop music from the 90s.

With how many things are wrong with the industry it is amazing that anything worthwhile ever gets published. It is a testament to the visionaries in the industry that anything of value ever gets made. Unfortunately these individuals are rare, and the people in charge of the industry tend to be those who understand and appreciate the art form the least.

This is probably the biggest contributing factor to why so much animation is so entirely without merit these days. The people in charge are completely ignorant of the art form they work in, yet they still feel the need to deliver edicts from on high. But for all of their short comings, these people are not retarded, they can recognize trends. While they may not understand why, even they can tell that CGI films about talking animals are very unpopular now-a-days. Unfortunately it seems their solution is not to stop making these films, but to simply advertise them differently.

Enter Bee Movie, Dreamwork's newest movie about talking animals, of course you would not know that by looking at the trailer. The trailer for Bee Movie is a live action spectacle and will likely prove the most entertaining thing about the whole movie. It is also the only thing that sets this movie apart from any other CG movie made this year.

Dreamworks Animation hits a high watermark.

Other than the trailer, the whole movie is a by the numbers, animals act like humans and make pop culture references that are at least 10 years out of date (i.e. its a Dreamworks movie.) The trailer on the other hand is highly entertaining and witty, making fun of its leading performer and itself in the process. After seeing the trailer I couldn't wait for the movie to come out. It was only later that I found out that all originally and creativity that was in the trailer was an invention of the advertising department, and not inherit in the movie itself. This was quite a disappointment.

I suppose it was naive to think that the industry had actually learned from its mistakes. After all, when was the last time that happened without a lawsuit? It seems that the industry is still determined to move toward destroying itself in a horrifying display or mediocrity and as an animation fan I can do nothing but to wait and hope that the end comes sooner rather than later. While I love animators and do not want any of them to suffer from the crash that seems inevitable it seems now that the only way the industry will ever grow out of this self-destructive cycle is if it first dies a most horrible death.

The end is nigh

Semi-related. The Simpsons Movie trailer was also recently released. It celebrated the fact that the Simpsons will not be a 3D talking animal picture. Of course only half of this is true. While most viewers probably did not notice, the clip of the movie shown in the trailer is chalked full of CG. To the untrained eye it looks like traditional 2D animation, but the scenes are full of 3D assets that are cell-shaded to appear 2D. You can still tell they are 3D based on the line and shading quality, also by how the perspective changes cleanly with no deformation.

I'm sure this means almost nothing to the movie going public, but it irks me that the people making this trailer seek to mislead their audience and keep them ignorant of how animation works. Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part, but I feel that as long as animation remains mystified it will also remain illegitimate to the public for telling serious stories.

Skyrates 2 Beta 1: Start

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:08:33 GMT

The rebuild of the cult Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) classic is back this week and better than ever. Of course I am talking about Skyrates!, the ultimate game for busy people, which has been rebuilt from the ground up and is currently in closed Beta (sorry general public, you will have to wait.) This new version of Skyrates comes with plenty of new additions: new missions, new ships, new features, a new sever backend (now it actually deserves the first M in Massively Multiplayer), new interfaces, some new graphics, and new characters. That last one is where I fit in.

Yes I am back as the Character Designer on the Skyrates project. While the project (along with my involvement in it) seemed fated to end last semester, it came back through a series of strange mishaps (can't say much about it; Nintendo was involved, but in a completely different way than you might imagine.) Now Skyrates is back with a bigger team that is even more committed to bringing greater functionality and usability to the game. As well I am more committed, so you can expect the number of characters in the game to more than double by next semester.

So big things are ahead for fans of the oldschool Skyrates game and fans of good online games in general. In the meantime enjoy a look at the 3 newest Skyrates characters:

Happy Flying

Yesterday I met Anthony Daniels

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 02:00:43 GMT

The views contained within do not reflect the views of the Entertainment Technology Center, its faculty or students.

Yesterday I met Anthony Daniels. We had a nice chat, I showed him the project I am working on at the ETC (ETC-CERT), he said it was less boring than he envisioned, and he gave us props on the user interface of the prototype. Nothing bad about that, but I imagine many of you are wondering, who the heck is Anthony Daniels?

Depending on your relative nerdiness Anthony Daniels is either the name of one of your gods or means absolutely nothing to you. To people between the extremes (the informed yet still sane) Anthony Daniels is the name of the actor who played the world's most famous gay robot. Yes, Anthony Daniels played the role of C3PO in a little movie called Star Wars.

So for the past week C3PO has been touring the Entertainment Technology Center, giving talks, meeting people, seeing the projects, general tour stuff; and yesterday he finally got around to seeing my project. It was a pleasant meeting. He stayed longer and had more useful comments than most people who tour my project, nothing too out of the ordinary.

To me Anthony Daniels is a man who happens to share a name variation that causes everyone to misspell and mispronounce my name (there is no 's' in Daniel.) But to most of the students here you would think he was the pope (not that I would care if the pope toured my school, but at least I would understand why it was such a big deal.)

C3PO's actor with legless ETC robot
From what I've seen of the man, Mr. Daniels is a nice guy, he has a charming British accent, and I hear he can act in non-robot roles, but his popularity at the ETC has left me somewhat perplexed. Yes, he is a well traveled and talented actor, but it seems like the vast majority of his followers are Star Wars fans. Now I will admit that I am not the biggest Star Wars fan (I prefer star peace and planetary wars), but even if I was a fan of the series C3PO was never a lead (except in the cartoon series), he never even fired a gun or twirled a light saber. The only answer I can think of for this popularity is that C3PO is a robot and besides loving Star Wars geeks love robots. For those geeks C3PO engages them on 2 levels (3 if the geek in question also loves being gay.)

But maybe there is nothing to understand. Sure, I don't see much reason to nerd out over Anthony Daniels, but there are people I would, and have nerded out about. I guess the only difference is my geek idles are game designers, comic artists, and animators, and their geek idle is a man made famous by playing a robot of questionable sexual orientation.

CGD Live Journal Experiment...... Start

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 03:29:03 GMT

Peer-pressure and random boredom have finally driven me to the tail end of another of my generation's fads. Yes, I am "blogging", a word my word processor refuses to recognize so you know it must be "hip" (or whatever the kids say instead of "hip" now a days.)

While this live journal thing may indeed be hip, I am still skeptical. Those of you who can read may have noticed that I called this an experiment in the title... Well, it is; I may very well get bored of this and quit in a week or three, or a year from now. We'll see, in the meantime, non-existent audience, enjoy the insane ramblings of a deranged graduate student (how that is different than other graduate students, I am not sure.)

Now that that is out of the way some background info:
I am a male 24 year-old graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (best school ever, but you pay for it, pay for it with money.) I did my undergraduate work at Youngstown State University where I studied Computer Science and minored in Art and Mathematics.

Currently I am trying to break into the video game industry as either a Game Designer or a User Interface Designer (or anything else as long as it gets me in the industry.) If you want to see some of my work you can see it at my website: chrisgdaniel.com. Anything else about me you will just have to wait and find out... or you already know it because you actually know me.

~Chris