Second Maya Project

So I’ve been assigned my second assignment in my Modeling for Game Development class. We have to create a local Savannah building in Maya 2008. I’m really excited because I really enjoyed modeling my elamasaurus. I’ve learned a great deal about Maya and love to challenge myself, so I really want to add more detail in the texture of the building, especially since I think creating the textures of this project will be slightly easier than the organic form of my loch ness monster.

I’ve also made my arrangements for GDC and am very excited! I’m STILL trying to figure out what to do about my business cards. I’m still a little nervous, but totally excited!

Officially my first 3D thing!

It’s a lochness monster! YAY!

Heavenly DEAR GOD when is it over?!

Okay, so today I got my PS3 from home and 2 of my roommates and I decided to play it. I thought that I’d just show them a few levels and then we’d move on to other things, you know, like seeing the sun or taking a walk outside (which is for people who are lame!). This of course led to spending the entire day beating the game. As I speak, my roommate, Sarah, is still working on the final part of the final boss battle.

The game was going at a great pace! Really enjoyable! We were all loving it! (insert more generic praise here). Then we found the room. The room with a door and a wheel that opens it. And in this room is a box of hats, and behind the door is a gong that opens another door. Jolly good times, right? Well here’s the thing, we probably spent about a good 45 minutes in this room alone. Were those 45 minutes spent fighting bad guys? No. Were they spent collecting precious items? No. Well then maybe they were spent making clay pottery that is decorated in fine jewelry? No, and what?  We spent that time tossing a hat at the gong behind the fast shutting door. For example, lets say that when you turned the wheel, the door opens. This door stays open for 5 seconds. You then have to run across the room and grab a hat out of a box, this takes about 2 seconds (which you have to be in the exactly correct position to grab a hat….Nariko does NOT like to compromise). Then you must turn Nariko in the precise position for tossing at the gong, which when you do, she turns a complete left instead of a slight left that is required. This takes about 1.5 seconds. You must then toss the hat and direct it to the gong. This takes about 2 seconds….the door is closed. You suck.

Well after some hat tossing and body throwing, we got the idea of throwing a sword. Failure, because you must have it handy right by the wheel in order to save time. A task, which is VERY hard to accomplish. Even though Nariko has no problem killing an entire army, tossing hats is an art all to its own. We finally got it right, by studying the physics of the game to an extent that no gamer should ever have to do. It was not fun….it was frustrating.

So then after the trauma we suffered, the rest of the game was fun! Pure excitement everywhere! YAY Life! Then we finally reach the epic and anticipated FINAL BOSS!!! So the game alone was probably about 7 hours…..we have been “beating” the boss for the past 3 hours…….3 hours…..Is there something wrong with us? Did we suffer too much trauma from the hat tossing to complete our ninja training?? I don’t know, but we’re still at it. We’ve completed the first two sections of the boss battle, so that’s all yay and stuff! hahahahahahahahaha- and then the third part stretched out its long, dark death-like fingers and began to slowly suck away our souls….we’ve done the rounds (3 turns a person….we’re doing the rounds again….) It should NOT take 3 people to beat a game, but I guess you could look on the bright side and say that its bring more social aspects into the game….whatever! Its just wrong! Haha!

To sum it up thus far, the game is a lot of fun! I’d definitely reccommend it to EVERYONE, but that would also come with a warning….there will be hat throwing….and it will be fun….until you reach THE ROOM….and if you’ve read this and have played the game….you will know what room I am blabbering about. All I can say is that the ending better be worth it!!

I should probably stop writing, because I feel as though I am some sort of trauma victim who feels like there will be a time in her real life that hat throwing will become something VERY vital to her own existence….bye!

And then it dawned on me!

How do I think of my ideas? Sometimes when I WANT to think of something, I sit down with a pile of blank sheets of loose leaf or a new word document, and stare at it. Does this work? No. I can’t think of a time when I was trying to think of an idea whether it be for a film or video game or comic strip, and have come up with something. It used to frustrate me alot because I would think “I have no skill! No talent! Ahhhh!” But then recently it dawned on me. I usually think of really great ideas, just not when I want to.

For example, for our board game project last quarter, some people were coming up with ideas and I was starting to frustrated that I couldn’t think of anything. Then it was the night before we HAD to decide what we were going to do and without really thinking, it just dawned on me! The same was with a recent film project for my visual effects class. I was trying to think of ideas, then it was the morning before class and I immediately just woke up and started writing! It was like I was possessed by someone else for a bit! And the idea was great and we used it! It was way better than the idea I thought of when I was forcing myself to think of one.

I think it’d be interesting to compile like a book or something of how people brainstorm. How they get their ideas. Especially in games. How did someone come up with Halo? “Okay, so I drew this dude in this space suit looking thing, but what if he was a part of the military….” I’d just really love to see that, especially from the games we all love. I know that when I was writing a paper on Tim Schafer, I came across an article where he described his process for coming up with the game Psychonauts. He basically created characters. He used a site similar to facebook and created profiles for these imaginary beings. From there, he discovered their likes and dislikes and just their character as a whole. So his process was more of discovery than inventing.

If anyone would like to comment on this post with their process for brainstorming for ideas, I’d love to read them!

Can my character have a family?

I was thinking today about some of my favorite games. Those are the Sims, Harvest Moon, and Animal Crossing. Notice the pattern here? No? Well the pattern is…..they are the same game, basically. So at first I think that maybe subconsciously, I’m some sort of control freak or that I have some sort of god complex. Maybe its because sometimes I feel like I don’t have any control of certain family-oriented areas of my life that I like the feeling I get when I play such life simulation games.  I get to decide who each character likes, or who has a baby with who, or what I’m going to spend my day doing.

I think I have a thing for genetics. Not like I’m some sort of expert on it, but more like, I’m obsessed with them! In the Sims, I’ve realized that I tend to make it a game of “Okay, what if I take this sim that has blue eyes, blonde hair, a big nose, small jawline, and thin lips, and I breed him with a woman that has red hair, green eyes, big lips, small nose, etc.” Notice that I chose the word “breed”. I remember playing a game on my PC a long time ago, called Petz. The point of that game for me was to do the same thing except with dogs or cats. I love to see what the babies of these sims turn out to look like.

I’m not sure what that says about me, but man is it fun. I make up these stories of this long legacy of a family in this glorious sims neighborhood, living out their lives, meeting their loves, and going through the hard times. I tend to give them all their own personalities, completely unintentionally.

Sometimes when I’m thinking of video game ideas or I see new games coming out, I wish for there to be an option to pick someone to date and marry and have a family with. I just feel like it would add so much to the story. Especially if that child could grow up and you could decide who inherits what of your inventory, or you can train them to follow in your footsteps, etc. There’s so much you could do with a game that has that feature. So when I heard about the upcoming Fable 2, I was eager to check out how they handle it.

I guess I’m a total family type of girl. So I guess all of this wanting my characters to be able to have romance and families is just a weird extension of having that in my life and wanting that in my future. Weird how such interactive media can bring that out and make you really think about what you want out of life.

GDC Business Cards

So since this is my first time going to GDC, I was curious as to what to do about business cards. I know everyone says that I need to bring them, but due to the fact that I’m not sure what area of game development I want to enter into I was concerned about what I should put as my title, or what I should say about what I want to do. That’d probably the most nervous I am about going to GDC. I am just learning pretty much everything, so I’m not the most confident as I could be about my game making abilities. I talked to Brenda about this concern and she said that I should  mention on my card being an aspiring game designer. And that the point of having these cards is to get the cards of other people, so that makes a lot more sense. So thanks to Brenda for putting my mind at ease about this. Check out her blog, she gives a lot of great advice about GDC and such, its listed in my blogroll at “Applied Game Design”.

So I’m excited about figuring out what I’m going to do about my own business cards! YAY! So I’ll be searching through designs and getting all eager about going to GDC!

My first 3d project

So I’m finally being taught how to use Maya. Yay! We did an in class fish, but we have a project that involves us making our own fish. I’m going to do one that looks like a loch ness monster. I’m really excited. Haha!

Anyway, I’ve been having a great quarter so far, with learning Maya and working in Visual Effects as well. Today I get my new HP laptop and a King Cake that my mom sent me! So I’ll be pretty busy, but I’m going to make sure that I make a decent update today, so look here later tonight!

Lifetime Achievement Award

So this year, Sid Meier will be receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at GDC. One may ask, “Sid Meier…didn’t he do Civilizations or something?” and the reply would be, “Why yes! He did do that!” Along with that, here’s a nice little summary of his career!

List of all games Sid has worked on or had some sort of influence on:

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond The Sword (2007), 2K Games
Sid Meier’s Railroads! (2006), 2K Games
Sid Meier’s Civlization IV: Warlords (2006), 2K Games
Sid Meier’s Civlization IV (2005), 2K Games
Sid Meier’s Pirates! for Xbox (2005), 2K Games
Sid Meier’s Pirates! (2004), Atari, Inc.
Sid Meier’s Civilization III: Conquests (2003), Atari, Inc.
Age of Mythology (2002), Microsoft
Sid Meier’s SimGolf (2002), Electronic Arts Inc.
Sid Meier’s Civilization III (2001), Infogrames
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack (2000), Electronic Arts Inc.
Sid Meier’s Alien Crossfire (1999), Electronic Arts Inc.
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999), Electronic Arts Inc.
Sid Meier’s Antietam! (1998), Electronic Arts Inc.
Sid Meier’s Gettysburg! (1997), Electronic Arts Inc.
Sid Meier’s Civilization II (1996), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Vikings: The Strategy of Ultimate Conquest (1996), GT Interactive
Sid Meier’s CivNet (1995), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Sid Meier’s Colonization (1994), MicroProse Software, Inc.
F-15 Strike Eagle III (1993), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Pirates! Gold (1993), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Return of the Phantom (1993), MicroProse Software, Inc.
High Command: Europe 1939-45 (1992), Three-Sixty Pacific
Gunship 2000 (1991), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Civilization (1991), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Railroad Tycoon (1990), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Covert Action (1990), MicroProse Software, Inc.
F-15 Strike Eagle II (1989), MicroProse Software, Inc.
M1 Tank Platoon (1989), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Red Storm Rising (1989), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Sword of the Samurai (1989), MicroProse Software, Inc.
F-19 Stealth Fighter (1988), MicroProse Software,
Pirates! (1987), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Conflict in Vietnam (1986), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Gunship (1986), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Crusade in Europe (1985), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Decision in the Desert (1985), MicroProse Software, Inc.
F-15 Strike Eagle (1985), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Silent Service (1985), MicroProse Software, Inc.
Solo Flight (1985), MicroProse Software, Inc.
NATO Commander (1984), US Gold
Spitfire Ace (1984), MicroProse Software, Inc.

Sid started his career by being one of the founding members of MicroProse Software. He created one of the very first flight simulators (F-15) and also  introduced strategy  in flight simulators (F-19). He also created a bunch of “God Games”, such as Railroad Tycoon and the Civilization series. These hve become extremely well-known in the computer gaming industry and has won Sid many honors and awards for his achievements.

Resources:

http://www.firaxis.com/company/bios.php?bioid=56

http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/meier.htm

Awesome Announcement!

So I have been accepted to volunteer at this year’s GDC! I’ll be writing alot about some of the speakers and such in the next few days just in case you’re going to and want some good summaries on all the speakers! I’m very excited and also VERY nervous! I can’t wait!

User Created Gaming

I’ve been a huge fan of the Sims series for quite a while now and I just keeping shaking my head when I think about the game itself. It’s truly addicting! And I think it’s because the player basically creates their own story. I notice that when I play, I give my Sims back stories and personalities. I get attached to certain ones and others I dislike. There is always some sort of emotional investment in the Sims. The player can create their own objectives and take their time and their own path in order to achieve these goals.

A while ago I watched this video, Will Wright is introducing the game, “Spore”. He says, “I don’t want the player to feel like Luke Skywalker….I want them to feel like George Lucas.” This is a perfect quote to describe Will Wright’s game, The Sims and Spore. In the Sims, he gives the player the freedom to create their own characters and their own goals. There is some slight direction with the aspirations meter and such other things like that in the game, but those things aren’t exactly making you do them. The player can decide to start off with one male sim in a small house with little money and have him work his way up to the top! The player could create an entire family and have them be the richest sims in the neighborhood. There are so many options that really let each player have a totally different experience.

In the game, Spore, Wright uses this freedom with user created content. While the Sims does have user created content, Wright really utilizes it in Spore. From the options the player has when it comes to evolving their species to when and how they begin to become more civilized, the options are almost endless. When the game starts up, it uses the internet to collect data from other users and places that planet or creature in your world or universe! So it truly is a unique experience for each player.

This all goes back to RPG’s, where you can customize your armor or weapons, etc. Players love to have an individual experience and to create! As Will Wright mentions, all children love to create and as they grow up they sort of lose that same feeling of freedom to do so. Games like the Sims and Spore rehatch that same feeling of freedom to create and customize the whole new experience.

Many new games are all about the downloadable and uploadable user created content! With the start of Xbox Live and Playstation 3’s Home, the idea of being able to play someone else’s level, who maybe doesn’t have the knowledge of programming or so, but has the toolset to create a level, gives them the chance to share their ideas with others across the world.

I like this idea because it really unites people in all different countries. I think it’s a great educational tool as well, because it makes people more cultured when they meet people in other countries who can share and give their ideas and opinions on your work. And its a great tool for future game designers to learn what is fun. They can now create levels with pre-existing tools and no other knowledge of programming and have people all over review their work.