Feb/080
Off to GDC 08
My flight is in a few hours, just finished some last second packing. Really looking forward to going this year, not only for my own presentation, but the current line up of talks are great. Some of the presentations I’ll try attend discuss the games, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3, and Portal.
And like last year I’ll have a lot of notes and information to share once I return. Â Hopefully this trip will go well, becuase so far I have had a bad start this morning with some serious plumbing issues in my apartment, which resulted in an overflowing toilet…not cool.
Jan/080
Review of Reviewers
Had nothing to write about for the last few weeks, but now I do, my topic…movie reviews. They suck, sometimes they portray an accurate picture of what to expect but sometimes it’s a load of bull shit. People have their own expecations and for the most part are not in line with those of reviewers that get paid. I personally perfer a friend to tell me if movie is awesome or sucks, but somtimes you can tell just by the preview. I say sometimes… as the quote goes, “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”.
For example, recently I saw There Will Be Borderm… sorry Blood. Previews looked intersting, title sounded cool, good reviews. Personally I did not want to watch it, wanted to see Cloverfield, but a buddy of mine already saw it so got dragged into the other one. Anyways, long story short, that movie was boring, too me. Not to say it was not interesting it had it’s moments but damn was it long and not what I expected. From what I heard and previews I saw, it seemed to be a psuedo-ganster type film, love those types of movies, where the main character would be total bad ass to get what he wants. Well it was there in this film but the way it was done was so slow and drawn out that I lost interest. And there was no blood till the end. Funny thing one my other friends started to snore during the film so that was a sure sign of it’s bore factor.
Now take the new Rambo. You already know what to expect given the last three iterations, part two was the best in my opinion. However the review scores are low, my thinking is reviewers are a bunch of old farts that look at movies with a ‘technical eye’ rather than just the fun factor of it. Of course Rambo has no story, well maybe some basic premise, but the gist is people die left and right and shit blows up. And it’s fun, hell you even laugh at times at how cheesy somethings can be. As I said I kind of knew what to expect, I know this is not going to be one of those movies that supposed move you in some way or be made to win awards like the other one, There Will Be Blood, but sometimes senseless movies are cool and great way to just forget about things and spend two hours having a blast than thinking about characters and detailed story. Of course each person is entitled to enjoy the films they like and walk away from others that are not their cup of tea, but slamming poor reviews on a fun movie like Rambo was just a cheap shot from critcs, I say. There were some decent well rounded reviews discussing good and bad points, but still more focus on the bad.
Oh well, it seems reviewer opinions seem to drive most movie goers to certain films and get paid for their comments good or bad, but honestly lack the value of hearing how something was first hand from a reliable source like a friend. Then again there are contradictions to that statement, take the 300 spoof that is out now, low ratings, like 3% from reviewers, and still people watched it and made it the best box office movie for this week! Now a movie like that is not my cup of tea, but I can see how some probably watched it for the hell of it to have fun, no matter what people say about it.
So again movie reviews suck, just watch stuff on your own gut feeling of it being good or bad, or take the safe route and ask someone how it was, or save your wallet ten bucks and wait for the DVD and not regert wasting money on a movie that people said rocked, but sucked for you.
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
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
New Look
The last template I had was pretty good, but I was browsing the web to see if perhaps I could find something else that looked neat. Well I found this template from one of those wordpress template sites, made some minor changes mainly to the side bar from the orginal design. The orginal designer is still credited in the footer of course. I have no web design skills to make something is awesome…
Sep/070
Nostalgia…
Time does fly by…fifteen years ago I played Sonic 2 on my Sega Genesis, and today I am playing the same game on my 360.Â
Aug/070
DM-Runoff Released!
Well my last and final UT2k4 map is out the door. Head down to the level design page to download the map. As usual I had a ton of fun making the level and got some good feedback during the design from a couple of people from the Unreal community that overall helped improve the gameplay and visuals of the level.