Dec/070
Quick Post
So some people wanted to leave comments but could not, my fault… was not intentional, well it kind of was got too much spam rather than anything constructive. But for some reason in MySQL there was global lock on posts as well. Not sure why but nonetheless comments are open, I moderate them of course but if you write something interesting it shall appear here.
Also MP_Asylum is nearly done probably post final build tonight before I go on vaction so keep an eye out for that soon.
2000 hits! Thanks, keep stopping by really apperciate it.
Dec/070
Level Design Update
Not sure what exactly happened, but I got a sudden burst of inspiration and fired up the Gears of War editor. On side note I got the game working again, latest patch fixed everything.
Anyways, after about ten hours straight of working in the editor I came up with this level, entitled Asylum. Still a work in progress but if I can work at this rate over the weekend I should have a playable lit version by Sunday night. Check out the screens below.
Posting this same info down at the Gears of War forums, if you wish to comment or give ideas feel free to leave a post over there.
Cheers!
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Dec/070
Insomnia…
Been a while since I have posted anything, things were a bit hectic last month and currently busy with work as well. Also lately been lacking a lot of sleep, not sure why but I can’t fall asleep till like 3 AM or so. Perhaps I just need a nice long break from things and thankfully one is coming up next week! Again, I thank those that keep visiting even when there is nothing new, the hits keep going up!
As for this week things as I mentioned are busy, got a major milestone coming up for the current game I am working on. Can’t say much, surprised my self that it’s not annouced yet, but then the other games I did had late annoucements. Anyways, things are looking good on the project, but won’t see it through to the end, becuase after the holidays coming up I’ll be on a new project… but the rest of the team remaining will continue with the bug fixes and what not…
Anyways, enough about that… not sure if you recall but I mentioned that my band mates and I were doing a show at Drexel University this month. Well two weeks ago we played the gig and it went well, could have been better but nonetheless it was another learning experinece for us as a new group getting the hang of the whole playing live thing.. Overall we did like eight songs which took about an hour with in between setup changes, and my drum solo. From what I have heard from my band mates is that the crowd really digged it and found to be one of the many highlights of our show. To check it out for yourself you can download the video of my little on stage endavor… as you can see the crowd did enjoy it to some extent… some blank faces in the crowd but overall a decent reaction. Oh yeah and halfway through the solo my kick drum was sliding but I managed to moved it back into place and start a new groove quickly. By the way some of the grooves may sound familiar can you recognize them?
The band has other videos as well of our songs and covers we performed from that evening but they are in need of some minor editing and final approval from the group as to which ones we want to share online. Once those are up I’ll post a link to them as well.
What else, video games still keeping me busy, right now my main focus is on UT 3, and with the recent patches released and installed the game is badass! I had some doubts about it with demo but the full game is well worth it. On the subject Unreal related items, Gears for War PC is completely FUBAR, well for the moment. I can’t get the game to work, well not the game it self but one of the main components, Games for Windows Live. For some odd reason the game does not want to load it, and with out it you can’t play the game… really quite frustrating. I got some patches for that as well but it didn’t help, even tried Microsoft phone tech support, that seemed to be going somewhere but while I was being assisted my cell phone disconncted twice… well I am going to try some other things to get Gears PC running but if nothing works, I’ll just set aside and wait till some decent fixes are released so I can play the game…
On the subject of my cell phone I hate the damn thing, never works when I need to make a call… or if I do get to make a call, over time the signal bars start dropping one by one till the connection dies. I think on average during a long conversation I will have three to four dropped calls. That shit isn’t funny, but the Cingular (my phone carrier) ads on TV make seem like it is… and their motto is pure bull shit, “More bars in more places”… except Albany. Unfortuneately I am stuck with them for another year, but I am looking into changing my service and phone hardware.
Oh yeah one last thing, came across this while at work today and had a good laugh, though if you don’t play Team Fortress 2 the humor won’t make sense… Saving Private Ryan Team Fortress 2 Style... so wrong yet so funny at the same time.
—End Rant
Nov/070
Speaking at GDC 08
So I mentioned in my last post that I may be doing a talk at the Game Developers Confrence, well it’s official now, I’ll be giving a presentation along with Leo, the lead designer of Spider-Man 3 DS, about the touch screen controls design for the game. Here is the link to the summary of the presentation.
Now on to a compeletly unrelated topic…inflation. Over the weekend or sometime recently the price of pop-tarts in the vending machine has gone up from 85 cents to a dollar… went to get some a few minutes ago and put in a dollar bill and did not get any change back… oh well a loss of 15 cents.. not a big deal really, just found that to be odd. Anyways I better get started with work now…
Nov/070
Back Online
My aplogies once again for the down time, got a few comments from people asking what’s wrong with page, basically the old host server had issues causing the site not to load. My friend’s friend that ran the server usually did some quick fix and it would be back online, but recently it was going offline quite a bit. Anyways long story short I decided to change hosts, and actually start paying for it. So after a bit of research I went with Drem Host, so far so good and hopefully there will be no down time from here on out.
Even if the old hosting server was running I probably would not have posted anything due to work. Just finished our Alpha milestone for the next game I am working on, and the last two weeks have been a bit rough, long hours, bug fixing, etc. Funny thing is that in my two years in the industry my last few projects did have their share of crunch time but not as intenese as this, but now that I look back at those two weeks it was a good learning experience and I survived it, still a bit burned out, but in the end things worked out. I guess another reason why it has been a bit harder on me is that I have gig coming up on December 1st at Drexel University (If your in the area come on down!) and have had to drive back and forth to Philly every so often for band practice and within the next three weeks I am going to have to do three consecutive trips back and forth between Philly and Albany. The drive is not that bad, but doing a couple eight hour trips, ( four hours each way), gets a bit boring and tiresome, but what has to be done, has to be done. Without solid practice sessions the band won’t have a good gig… though I think we are doing alright and will have a good show.
Moving on, the gaming scene is getting crowded now and days as well. I got so much to play and not enough time to play the games. Recently I picked up Gears of War for PC, which looks great running on my 8800GTX, though have not played the game that much since I already own it on console. The main reason why I got the game is to make levels, right now got one in the works, not sure when it will be done but as soon as I have anything worthy to show I’ll post some screens in the near future. I also got Tony Hawk’s Proving Grounds and Guitar Hero 3 for 360 as well, both fun games, though I have some reserves about the GH 3 setlist, not metal enough, other than that it’s good. UT 3 is also on my slate of games to play and make maps for, think that comes out next week. I’ll probably crank out a UT 3 level after my Gears one, not sure if I want to do an original one or do a quick re-make of one my older releases.
What else… oh yeah, I may be going to the Game Developers Confrence again next year, this time as a speaker, with a fellow co-worker. What are we talking about? Well that’s still being sorted out, but it does focus on Spider-Man 3 DS. As soon as I find out more detials from the GDC folks I’ll make a note of it here.
Well that’s all I got for now… it’s good to be back online again!
Cheers!
Oct/070
Halloween Antics
It’s halloween today, and as usual I really don’t care. But it’s cool I guess to look at what other people have come up with for those that do care for the pagan festival of samhain.Times have changed people no longer stockpile grains and livestock for the winter instead they horde boat loads of candy… guess the prinicple is the same…
Anyway, the office has been decorated for halloween, check this video out from one of the tools engineers, it’s a time lapse of him and other tools guys creating a monster’s jaw using the office furnishings and some construction paper.
Other people in the office are wearing costumes some quite interesting others are make shift, but still look cool. I’ll see if I can dig up some pictures from someone. As for me, people ask me why I am not in costume, and I reply that I am dressed as roadie with my Iron Maiden shirt and jeans…that counts right?
Oct/070
Demos
This week on Xbox Live, the demos for Guitar Hero 3 and Need for Speed: Pro Street were released. Being a fan of both series of games i gave them a try. Guitar Hero 3 really does not need any explination, it’s the same deal as the last two iterations, but looks a hell of a lot better visually, has a better set list and the gameplay is improved as well.
The GH3 demo came with five songs: Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Lay Down, Evenflow, Rock You Like a Hurricane, and The Metal. Out of that list I enjoyed all off the songs execpt for the first one, but I really dig Lay Down, the main riff is quite catchy and is stuck in my head at the moment. As I mentioned the game play is improved, by that I was referring to the notes and playing of the songs. At least with these five songs they did not seem to be cluttered with notes and felt more natural to play when you do follow the notes on screen. Also the hammer-ons and pull offs are a lot easier to do this time around, playing on Hard was fun, and even on Expert I managed to complete three of the songs. Usually I stay far away from Expert and just play on Hard but perhaps with GH3 I may just play on Expert more often!
The full game comes out Saturday, which odd since new games and or movies come out on Tuesdays, but anyways I’ll definately be buying it.
On to Need for Speed: Pro Street, initial thoughts are that it looks good, but the gameplay… well it was pretty much a standard racing game. Really did not feel like “Need for Speed” at all. The previous game, Most Wanted was good, but still had a lot of the car modification elements from the Underground titles. Not really a fan of that but still with Most Wanted, the guys at EA brought back the core gameplay elements from the first NFS game released from way back when, with the cop cars and all, but this new title in the series is just a racing game, well that’s what I judged from the demo. But I really do miss the classic NFS games with out the whole car modding fad that’s been growing ever since Fast and Furious hit theathers a few years ago. I think by far Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 was the best in the entire franchise. I still play it once in a while but I would really like to see a next gen version of that, featuring nice exotic cars being chased by twenty some odd cops and a helicopter!
Oct/070
Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground
The first of many reviews for Tony Hawk’s: Proving Ground on Nintendo DS is out. IGN gave it an 8/10! Hopefully the rest of the reviews will be this good to give the game a high overall ranking, but got to remember that we can’t make everyone happy, we try, but sometimes there those that have something negative to say. I remember when the Spidey 3 DS reviews were out we got some really good scores, but then with one or two average scores the overall ranking of the game decreased, right now the current ranking is a 79% for that title. Not to bad but not too good either…
Anyways, I really had a blast working on this game, creating the various goals and skate lines. In terms of what I contributed to the game I manily did level design and goal designs.
Overall, I pretty much spent most of my time on Baltimore Harbor, creating the level geometry and goals. My favorite goal of that level that I made, is the one that requires you to scare off the seagulls, when you play the game you’ll know what I am talking about. Moving on, all the pretty visuals in levels were done by the artists on the project, those guys did an awesome job! I also did some work on the Custom Skate Park level as well as FDR skate park. The other levels in the game include Philly Slums, DC Monuments, DC Museums, and Lansdowne Skate Park. All of the levels look really cool and someof the goals in those levels are crazy with long grind lines and insane score challenges!
Overall it’s pretty much inline with the console version from Neversoft in terms of levels and some Pro Skater apperances, but scaled down for the DS, but don’t let the small size fool you. the gameplay and the goals are quite fun and at times addicting.
So if you got a DS and are a fan of Tony Hawk games then get this title, and if your not really a fan series I am still sure you will have some fun with the game as well.
By the way here is a small clip I found on youtube of the game. Not sure who is playing but they had a good run but bailed in the end not once but twice… if your wondering what level this it is DC Monuments. Enjoy…
Oct/070
Head Shot!
The Unreal Tournament announcer is just awesome, really adds a lot to the game, and with UT3 it’s no different. The annoucer is the same, but it just seems more in place if that’s the right thing to say with the new game than the previous two UT titles. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the last two UT games, 2k4 in particular but there were things about it that made it distant from the classic Unreal Tournament back in the day. But now is looks like that UT3 has found a balance between the old school UT and 2k4.
Thus far, I really like the changes done from the 2k series of UT, the game is not as acrobatic anymore, the weapons feel more powerful, and best of all the player scale is improved. The levels that shipped with the demo look great, and play quite well. There was a lot complaints about adding a vehicle to Death Match gameplay, but I played the level that had the Dark Walker vehicle, and it wasn’t that bad. Sure occasionally someone may dominate the playing field for a bit but if two or three people shoot at the Dark Walker it’s fairly easy to bring down. But in all honesty it’s a lot fun when you’re behind the controls of the Dark Walker and vaporizing everyone else! Only complaint thus far is the UI, at times it can be a bit unintuitive of where to find a particular menu item, and the lighting has that ‘washed out’ bloom look, but other than that feels solid in terms of gameplay. Perhaps in the full game there may be an option to turn off bloom effects or something…
For your enjoyment various screens, mostly headshots 
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Oct/070
Let the Games Begin!
Too many gams not enough time! The other day I loaded parts of the Orange Box on to my system, Half-Life 2-Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2. Did not get Portal, but I’ll install it later. The odd thing was that at work these games were installed in no time, but at home the download rate was riduculous with speeds of 3k/s! So I waited for the downloads to end but everytime I checked they were still stuck at 55% or so due to the slow download rate. But sometime after 1am the speeds really picked up, and by around 3:30 am I had HL2 and TF2 on my machine. So given all that wait I decided to stay up a bit longer and play both games for a bit.
First I ran Team Fortress 2, and level of detail is amazing! I really dig the new cartoon art style for the game, and the characters are really cool each having their own unique set of weapons, combat style and personality. For the short time that I played I really started to enjoy the Scout and Pyro class. Speaking of the Pyro class if you have not seen the short machima video of the lonely Pyro check it out, it’s quite well done and has some humorous elements…
After about two or three games of TF2 I fired up the next episode for Half-Life 2. Did not get far but the little that I did play I was quite impressed. The whole outdoors enviornment thing going on is really cool. Even though I have barely scracthed the surface of both games, just from the hour that I played I knew it would make up for the dissappoinment of Halo 3.
Moving on, Unreal Tournament 3 demo is out, downloading it now. When I first saw the posts over at Beyond Unreal stating that the demo is “two weeks” away I had to laugh. That two weeks joke has been going since UT2k3, but this time around it looks like the demo was actually released within the estimated two weeks and not a day later. Looks like I’ll have to finish up Half-Life as soon as I can becuase if the demo is out that can only mean that the full game may indeed be coming out next month.
Speaking of which, next month will be crazy with Gears PC and hopefully UT3 as well. I already pre-orderd both games and can’t to get them and start modding using the new Unreal Engine tool set. I got some neat level designs drawn on paper so hopefully it should not take me too long to actually get those ideas into the game. So within the next couple of months keep an eye on my level design page with updates of Gears and UT3 maps!
8 min left till the UT3 demo is done downloading…. quoting Cartman, “C’mon… C’mon….”