10 posts tagged “365”
It's all too easy to virtually parade on gaming forums and proclaim the fact you are a super-ace developer and wouldn't be lovely if the forum dwellers had your job. It's an easy mistake I made quite early in my career because - well - I wanted to shout about the fact I was finally in the industry I longed to be in during College. Problem is that you open yourself up for criticism. I think there are a few games out there which have more than enough love festooned on them, although you will still get critics and they always seem to shout out the loudest. So these days I try not to read comments on forums and news stories. I'll keep on working hard on the game which we as a devco believe in.
Sometimes it can be a bit disheartening especially when you're in the office in the late hours of a Friday night during a particularly hard crunch period. I love working on games - I love finding out about the creative process, looking at great examples of UI in other games and take them on board to make our game that much more. I think it shows if a devco hasn't got their heart in a game. You can sense the tangible joy and fun in some games - I remember playing Die Hard Trilogy on the PSOne and being rather inspired by how playable and how much fun it was. The developers knew what they were doing and had enough fun/time to put in some inspired cheats. I'm hoping it will show with Wheelman when it hits shelves how much hard work we've put into it.
Yesterday wasn't particularly good fun for me living below a flat which contained a hyperactive kid running about. It's strange because you know the kid isn't making noise to piss you off, but you feel like it's a personal attack on you as a person. I'm not sure about the parents but they're obviously too lazy enough to introduce the brat to the fucking huge communal garden just outside. So I've e-mailed the supervisor of these flats to complain... I think this block out of the three is probably the "problem" block. Already someone's stolen the recycling bin and emptied the contents into the bigger bin. The large outer door also has a problem of not shutting properly and thus anyone can come in. My first mega-mortgage payment has been removed from my account and now I can start saving up for stuff. I still need a sofa or two - the office chair I currently sit on to watch television and play games isn't really that comfortable... when I was in my older flat in Wales, part of the rental package was furniture and that included a lovely battered leather sofa which I loved jumping onto after a hard day's work.
I was also pleased to have figured out why my newly-acquired washing machine wasn't getting rid of its waste water - turns out there's something called a "blank" which blocks the tube under the sink. I found and removed the blank and lo! It's actually washing stuff in my kitchen now and it's given me a sense of independant pride that I connected the thing up all by myself. Yes, it's kind of tough living on your own when you have stuff like that to deal with. There's no understanding significant other to tell me that things are alright and make me a cuppa while I tinker with the waste water tube. Still, the aforementioned hyperactive kid incident did force me out and about and I went to see a great little exhibition at the Saltwell Art Gallery here in Gateshead. Looks like they've done some redecorating because the place looks rather lovely now.
Oh, and their doors creak too. For fuck's sake, get some WD40 and be a bit more considerate to your co-tenants. I dunno - am I fretting a bit too much over this? It still hasn't changed my mind about what I think about children - I hate them.
Cool stuff now. First of all, Please Say Something. It was a link I found on the excellent Fort 90 Journal and I'm astounded by how stylish and rather bizarre this looks. Take a peek for yourself -
What else... I've been a big fan of Homestar Runner for god knows how long now and one of my favourite characters, Strong Bad, is part of a WiiWare game soon to come out from those gods at Telltale Games. The name of the game? Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People. It looks like a funky point-and-click using the Wii Remote and Telltale have totally captured the look of the cartoon nicely in 3D. Check it out -
Chris Merritt has put up some new tunes in advance of his new album including one about Mr Karl Pilkington which I was rather astounded by. For those of you who have still yet to enjoy the quirky Mancunian, here's some Monkey News for you...
Other stuff - I may start my 365 book production today. I need to install the trial version of InDesign to get started which will give me a month to get the thing finished. I might make it into a yearbook instead of a 365 book as there are still gaps in the 365 timetable which I can't find. Probably 35-40 missing days, which is frustrating but being an artist means discipline but... quirky discipline? I'm not sure what I'm trying to say there.
Next week should be interesting - a chat with the flat supervisor to see what I can do about the noisy neighbours upstairs and my visit to the Innocent Drinks HQ to take part in their AGM.... and the week after that? I'm going to be staying in the flat to play nothing but GTA4 all day - partly for fun and partly for research. I've kept away from the hype but the small amount I've sampled has left me excited and wanting more.
Thanks for reading!
It's Been A While...
No updates for a few days... I've been pretty busy. For a start, Wheelman has moved into a new and exciting phase - marketing popped around last week and went through their battleplans to make sure everyone knows of Vin Diesel kicking virtual booty in our game. Actually, marketing know of this blog and have mentioned it (hello, Midway Marketing!) and I've made sure that I've stuck to my NDAs and not revealed anything at all which will spoil the events we have planned. It is pretty exciting though, although it's a milestone which means production of the game will step up another gear. I'm all for it - it's my first Triple A title I've ever worked on in the games industry and it's going to be interesting to see the write-ups from the press who attended our Press Day the day after marketing talked us through things. They'll be wanting assets from us - screenshots, concept artwork (Pete, one of our very talented concept guys, has produced some very, very tasty stuff) and - in my case - a lovely t-shirt design. I just need to find the time to do it - time has been something of a luxury for me as I've been sorting out other things too...
Housey-House!
I've almost got everything sorted out bill-wise for the flat... today I managed to drag myself through the dull-as-dishwater chore of contents insurance. The bank offered me a deal when I applied for the mortgage, but it turns out that the bank were taking the piss somewhat and I managed to get the same insurance for less than half price. Banks are funny like that. You ask for a loan and they want it all back and a lot more too. All that's left to be sorted out with the flat is water rates, TV licence and the Virgin Media package of phone/cable/internet... you know what, though? I've not really missed the internet at home that much. I do have pangs of wanting to visit certain sites I used to in the wee hours, but it feels good not to be a slave to the internet at home. I used to work on a PC and then come home and jump onto... another PC. It can't be good for my eyes....
"Call These Eyes? I Wants My Money Back!"
I come from a relatively large family. When genetics were dealt out to other family members, they all got the better deal of good eyesight. That one horribly latent gene decided to knock on my biological door - or rather kick the door in - and I was cursed with having myopic vision and be banished to wear lenses for the rest of my life. I remember vividly when it happened - I was 7 and my family were in constant poverty in those days. We didn't have a bathroom and used to drag a tin bath into the house - I shit you not. We also had the novelty of an outside toilet which was great in the Summer, but an absolute nightmare in Winter. Nothing beats the bracing experience of sitting on cold toilet seat while the wind whistles under the door. These days the Pick Household has evolved somewhat, but my eyes haven't. When I went to the Opticians last year, they did warn of my eyes and how lousy they were. If I ever experienced an effect like "someone drawing a curtain over my eye", I would have to make my way pretty damn sharpish to the Opticians as this would possibly be a detached retina.
OMFG!
Well, that's what I thought. Turns out they can be reattached, though they need to be caught early. You ever get floaters? You know, strange little cells which float by in the eyeball which aren't noticed until you really look for them. I get them often though recently there's been some rather alarming floaters which almost end up distracting me as I try and work on these bright computer monitors. I thought I'd pay the Opticians a visit in case it was something serious - turns out it wasn't, although my eyes are starting to do crazy things. I have stigmatisms in both eyes - how lucky am I? - and although my vision is fine, my eyeballs have kind of changed shape. I notice crazy shimmering effects too sometimes when I look out of a bright window - turns out that'll be my eyeballs changing shape. No problem, I need some new glasses. This fills my heart with dread. My glasses are super-complex lenses and often cost stupid money. Although the government lets me have free eye tests for my comedy eyeballs and a measely £13 discount from any lenses/frames, the price for the lenses? £260. Yep, sickening. I dust off the credit card and chuck that lot on there to worry about later, although our company has a rather excellent healthcare scheme, so I can claim back this money.
When Pupils Attack.
You should count yourself lucky if you have perfect vision or don't wear spectacles. The tests which I had to go through voluntarily (including the dreaded glucoma machine which fires jets of air directly onto your eyeball) were bad enough, but turns out I had to have my pupils dilated so they could get a good look into the back of my eyes to check for telltale tears (first sign of a detached retina). So I had some stinging drops slapped into my eyes and told to walk about the town centre for 15 minutes for the drops to take effect. Munching a pastie outside, I soon discovered the effects which I was warned about - it was getting brighter and I couldn't focus on my phone to check the time. It was pretty horrible. The good news? No tears! Bad news? I had to walk back home. In the bright sunshine. Dodging cars I could barely see. So, yes. I absolutely despise glasses. I love seeing them on women, but I could probably empathise with the horrible ordeal of a visit to the Opticians. I lament at the amount of fast women and loose cars I could have bought with the money I spent on complex and expensive lenses. Still, peace of mind is a wonderous thing.
Tuesday - My Best Day In Ages
After a lengthy weekend of weird weather, buying knick-knacks for the flat and trying to get the process of sofa purchasing out of my head (any colour as long as it's beige...), I returned to work on Tuesday. I really like working here for a number of reasons - the people for one. I have a lot of good friends at work, and it was great seeing them again. This was only the beginning though! I get an e-mail from Innocent Drinks and they tell me I'm 1 of 100 people lucky enough to be part of their first AGM - my mug even features on their blog (scroll down!) along with the others who are coming - it's quite a varied bunch. I keep thinking I'm Charlie with a Golden Ticket. I love Innocent Smoothies though (although they're sadly quite pricey - blame the Government for slapping VAT on healthy drinks, the fools). I also managed to show Ronda my sketches for banners she wants to produce for her class - you can check out the sketches below...
They're going to be vectorised so I need to turn them into something more... final. I also need to make the kangaroo less "retarded" and give the emu legs... maybe make him less angry too. The koala and the kookabura are kidlet-friendly. Ronda asked me "how much?" and I said that all she should do is send me a care package from Australia, as long as it doesn't contain any of those insta-kill spiders. I like the idea of having my artwork making kids happy halfway around the world. What else? I discovered a new band! Pugwash are pretty big in their native Ireland, but I only found out about them through The Divine Comedy's MySpace and now I need some of their music in my life. I particularly like this tune...
Saturday = Fridge Day!
Nothing will excite me more on Saturday - besides getting hold of a nice table to slap my PC on - than having a fridge in my life again. I miss milk, what can I say? I still need a sofa, but a fridge seems to be a lot more important than my personal comfort.. There's been some talk of a housewarming at my place too, but I like living there and I don't want to upset the neighbours. The fridge comes courtesy of my old housemate who I also work with, but not just that - he's actually giving me a washing machine too!!!! It's crazy, but much appreciated - they ordered a washing machine before they moved in though the seller left his washing machine in the house for them. At the moment I pop on down to the Laundromat though it can get a bit busy down there sometimes. It's a bit of a walk too, but it gets me out of the flat and keeps me healthy. All this nice stuff happening makes me believe in karma all the more.
Boosh!
Here's a video which will entertain certain readers of the blog - a documentary all about The Mighty Boosh! Catch it before the BBC take it down!
...and I'm spent. Living in the flat has been a great experience - it's quiet, I wake up in my new lovely memory foam mattress (still no bed) to the sound of birdsong and there's a feeling of slow but constant progress. I have missed living on my own, I really have.
What could possibly be back to dance around these digital pages and haunt the causal reader once more? Why... Mortgages! Mmm! Tasty, tasty mortgages! I got some huge reams of scaryness through the post - a survey from the seller of the place (including the joy of "Fixtures and Fittings") plus the most imposing piece of paper I've ever seen. Yep, the sign off for the mortgage. It requires a witness and also a loss of sanity that you're going to dedicate 32 years of your working life paying off £248,000 pounds. It warns the classic line of "your home will be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments secured on it" and also warns that if I sign this piece of paper, there's no going back. There's no indecision here - fuck up and you lose your home.
It's Not That Bad...
Nope. Not really. There's always two sides to this. The other side is one which is rarely visited by the human mind due to the way it's wired up to always assume the worse. When I was in the thick of my depressive episode before I was rescued by the kind souls of Midway Studios - Newcastle, I learned many things. Depression is a chemical process and we have programmed into our psyches from evolution that we have a fight-or-flight way of thinking - it's almost a binary process. No grey shades. This or that. This purchase of a flat has been the biggest thing of my life - the second biggest being the move up here to NewcastleGateshead in the first place. I've been thinking in the abstract - that this new place will be a new beginning. A fresh start where I can do all the things I've always wanted. The huge debt is an unfortunate by-product of this, but as long as I keep things in perspective and don't do anything crazy then it'll be fine. Actually, knowing more about the mortgage is a handy thing - I have the offer to over-pay the mortgage, so say I could save up £1000 a year and put it as an over-payment to help pay the thing off. If the worst was to happen, then the overpayments will be taken into account and used as a "payment holiday" so I could avoid paying the mortgage for a month until I find a new job.
For the foreseeable future though, I'm firmly placed in Midway Studios and I really feel like I belong.
We Kick Ass!
So get this - every so often the executive side of Midway gets all of the studios to produce a latest stable build of their games so they can play them and gauge how well or badly we're doing. Recently we've been spending a lot of time in the office to concentrate on this build, though only now have we eased off the gas and our build was sent over to the States along with some of the production team to show our wares. The game is played in front of the bigwigs and then it's evaluated. The good news is that Wheelman's Product Review build was very well received - our ultimate boss, David Zucker, was reported to have got up out of his seat and applaud the thing. Good sign? Yep. It's always good to see hard work rewarded like this, and I think most of the team pulled out the stops to get the thing looking ship-shape. There's still work to do and tweaks/refinements, but we're being very, very brutally honest with each other regarding the game and I think that will work out to our advantage in the long run. My current (for the moment) landlord who is also a producer at the studio has blagged himself a position over in the Chicago HQ, although he's not leaving until Wheelman is at alpha stage.
The game is starting to really come alive now and is leaping and bounding. I just wish we had more time to get more things into the game as we're at the painful process of cutting out parts of it which we don't have time for. This happens with all games and the optimist will comment that this will be good news for the sequel. I think this game has helped shape the studio into a more cohesive unit and I can feel things evolving for the good. It's extremely exciting - I would just love to have some gameplay footage out in the wild so people can check out how we're doing. As soon as stuff comes online, you'll be the first to see it!
Butterflies
I posted something on my Facebook blog about how I was walking to work on the Monday and I happened to pass by an incredibly attractive girl - the crazy thing is that what most men would consider attractive, I'd consider fake... cliched? This girl seemed out of place of the rather hostile environment of the Wild West of Gateshead - for a start, she was colour co-ordinated - red hair, red coat, red boots. She wore spectacles and she must have seen me with my mouth kind of open in mid-stupification because when I turned away before turning back (I couldn't resist), she clocked me again. I spent the whole day thinking about this... the fact that it's been an extremely long time since I had that shock of love-at-first-sight feeling, and it was nice to get it back again. Intoxicating as it was, grim realisation jumped in again and confirmed that she was mostly probably a one-off. It would make an amazing painting though - her in red contrasting with the browns and greys of the avenues of terraced housing. I did mention in the Facebook blog that the last time I had this feeling was when I was in Sixth Form. This was a lie...
This is another sneaky peek at my 365 book! I semi-drunkenly scrawled this on my PC's art package (Painter 8) after coming back home from a night out - this woman was definitely enamoured by me, though alas. She had an ugly friend who practically dragged her out of my life. This is often the way with me - random strangers getting in the way and stopping things from happening. I had that feeling then. I wasn't that drunk either - getting older gives you hindsight and also a natural limit. I miss dancing... I would drink four pints of cider and then stick to water while I shook my booty and not care. I get the feeling that the M word will get me out and about more in an effort to forget that debt. I may bump into again, I dunno.
First Impressions.
All of this is looks though. It's all well and good looking at a person from the outside and making judgements, but when they turn out not to be the person they look like, well. "Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover" comes to mind. I've fallen in love with e-mails of some of the more important people of my life rather than the first look of them. I think knowing a person inside out makes them instantly more attractive to me. Give me someone who is interesting anyday compared to the stereotypical woman that blokes tend to want. This is a rare occassion where I spill my heart out a bit before I retract back into my shell and revert back to the art hermit. I remember the times of jealousy mixed with admiration when I saw my older brother be extremely confident with the ladies... I guess some people are born for loving.
Mixed Media
So after reporting on the Mass Effect story in the last blog, I've got back into playing it and enjoying it again. It can be a brutal game at times where the combat will suddenly throw you a curveball and you instantly die. It's frustrating, but you become a better player planning out your strategy in a different way. The amazing thing about the game is that all the characters have some immense back story. I nattered to Ashley - one of the women in my command as Captain - for a good half hour about stuff. It was a reward for all that combat - relaxing conversation. Cooper Lawrence's comments about "the game treating women like sex objects" seems like a ridiculous statement when you see the female (and male) characters are believable and have a lot to say. I recently grabbed Rez HD today from the Xbox Live Marketplace and my goodness, it's good to be back home. Such a beautiful awe-inspiring experience but now greatly enhanced with the HD display. It's about 7 years old, but the game still shines as a thing of beauty. It's like Tron - the art style is timeless. Music-wise, I'm very much looking forward to The Feeling's new album - there's snippets of it up on their myspace, though they recently took down one of my favourite snippets. Looks like I'll have to grab the album then..! I'm also going to see Cloverfield this week - maybe Friday. This review from grumpygamer.com says it all -
- Cloverfield is a great movie because a bunch of whiny self-absorbed twenty-something New York hipsters that live in apartments no one can afford all die. For those of you working on your term papers dealing with film deconstruction and plot subtext for your Understanding Film class, let me break it down for you. The whiny hipsters all represent whiny hipsters we hate. The monster is metaphor for a giant monster, and the shallow asshole good looking people all die because they should.
Steve's Favourite YouTube Of The Day!
It's been about for a while, but nothing beats the insane joy of mixing terrible fan-fiction with some inspired Half-Life 2/Garry's Mod antics. This is why TV is becoming less and less appealing these days. Enjoy!
The notion of celebration on New Years Eve (Is it New Year's? Apostrophe confusion has gripped the many...) is an old and tired one for me. Maybe it's because I'm old and tired. I've been party to many frustrating New Year Celebrations - one of which I will never forget. It happened in The Krazy House in Liverpool and one hilarious female reveller thought it would be funny to steal the glasses from my face and disappear into the throng. I was seething and (even worse) pissed so I spent a lot of time shouting at blurry strangers. I got my glasses back but they were scratched to buggery. I rarely get lucky with people on New Year too. You'd think that would be the best time to play tonsil hockey, but alas. Nope. I've had little luck in that respect. Fireworks also lose their appeal after you've seen them for the first... I dunno... ten times? So sod it. I'm staying in.
Party Pooper!
Yep. Even my headings pour scorn on my decision to stay in, but I'll be slowly drinking while watching the terrible television schedules and/or drunkenly increasing my Gamerscore through online Xbox Live antics. The service has recently been up and down and Xbox Live frontman Major Nelson (aka Larry Hyrb) has tried to calm down a lot of angry people who have received Xbox 360 consoles for Christmas and discovered that they can't play online, although the problem is a lot more than that - the fact that the console needs to be online to do certain things. When the service goes down, people piss and moan - although they have a right to if they've paid for the service. I've not noticed that much because I don't normally play online with randoms because it can be a scary process. I remember a long session of Uno where a lot of the players were half-naked men in darkened rooms. I know of this because they all owned Xbox Live Vision cameras. It's quite something to actually know who you're playing with. Still, I'll see if I can pluck up the courage to go online tonight.
365 Update!
Well, one of my resolutions is to get 365 finished - it's all well and good to have all 365 pieces of artwork to hand but I spent last night arranging them into folders. I need to scan in a load more and track down what pieces of artwork were done on what date. I'm going to be using CreateSpace to get the book published - I used blurb and although they did a great job with the printing of my 365Lite! book for my Mum as a Christmas pressie, CreateSpace offers a lot more than blurb - including the acceptance of .pdf files (meaning InDesign!), your own ISBN number and - because the company is owned by Amazon - the book will be sold through their website! I'm also wondering about connecting the book to charity so profits raised will go to good causes. I ran many miles for Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support and I'm thinking I can raise money for them without all that painful training stuff. As way of an apology, here's a sneaky peek at a piece of 365 artwork never seen anywhere else -
I'm looking forward to getting everything arranged. One of the lovely things about Vista is that with the large icons, it'll display a sexy large icon with a preview image of what's in that folder - this'll prove invaluable for seeing what gaps are left in what months and tracking down that artwork. While on the subject of "Good Things About Vista" - the tabbed folder navigation is pretty awesome too and helped me cut through the monotony of arranging images in various folders. Actually, it feels a lot like when I was younger and I filled out sticker albums. There are gaps which will slowly get closed off. I'm actually very excited by it all - it'll show a snapshot of my year as an artist. There were times when it felt like a chore, but they were few.
Get Me Back To Work!
Honestly... I'm fed up of being holed up here with no work to go to. "You must be mad!" I hear you shout. Nope. Work kept me busy and industrious. Anyone who's been in a state of depression will understand the importance of this. When I was unemployed, it did no good to me and was a factor in my second Trip To The Abyss Albeit In A Different Coloured Submarine. I was thinking about getting my job at Midway and the interview I had with them was such an incredible thing - they were friendly, warm and generous in their comments. The previous interviews I had with other companies were a different matter. Shall I name names? One interview was wonderously confused by the interviewers changing the job role halfway through the interview thus making my carefully-collated portfolio pretty redundant. Another interview almost felt like a bear trap - like they wanted me to fail, slip up or make a wrong move. I think in this industry there's sometimes a feeling that some people are piss-takers. I've worked with a few in my career who have basically blagged their way into the job and they've been instrumental in ruining games. It's a shame, but there you go. I'm glad I'm in a studio where (mostly) everyone has an enthusiasm and a feeling they don't want to produce a turd of a game.
Avoiding The Brown Stuff
Wheelman is always in my thoughts. I guess it can't be helped when I've been working on it this long... there's still obstacles to vault over and negotiate although I'm determined to do a good job. One thing about working for a company which practically saved your life is that you don't take the piss - I'm not exaggerating either. I was quite close to something horrible and I was pulled away from that. I looked at the Midway site last night and was freaked out by the forums and the general concensus on the company's image. It is frustrating in a way - I was very lucky to see Stranglehold's progress on our company twiki and when it eventually became a physical entity on shelves, I was proud and happy to see the game's lifecycle. The guys in Chicago worked crazy hours to get the game produced, and it shows. I was even lucky to thank one of the designers for producing the Museum Level - which I really, really enjoyed. So you have Stranglehold which I consider to be a very un-Midway title. There's been un-Midway titles in the past like Psi-Ops and The Suffering which have been bold in their direction although the sales figures painted a different picture. Talk to people who played both games though and they will state how much they enjoyed them.
On The Other Hand...
...there's Cruis'n.
Yep, that's not a PSOne title. It's on the Wii and sometimes it frustrates me that stuff like this comes out when Midway are trying to "not do an Atari" and end up in the shit. Sadly it's more commercially viable for them to release the game as is instead of spending more time working on it. All the rep built up by Stranglehold gets put back... the same happened with Hour of Victory too - it could have had more time to be tinkered with, but it came out and received a panning. Recently Blacksite also suffered the same fate - not enough time to make it the game it could have been. I was gutted when co-op was dropped and when I got my hands on a copy, there are moments when it truly shines (the first appearance of the spire hitting that shopping plaza in slow motion comes to mind) but there are also moments when there's literally nothing happening. The driving bits are frustrating at first, but you soon get kinda used to them. Harvey Smith did comment about development on Blacksite being "fucked" in an obvious attempt to get kicked out by Midway so he can work on Deus Ex 3 - but when you have worked in the industry for as long as I have, you realise that all development is fucked to a certain degree. I think it was a shame that Blacksite appeared so close to the release of Call of Duty 4 - which is a simply astounding assault on the senses. It does a lot of things very well indeed and really immerses you.
What I'm Trying To Say...
I'm a gamer. I've played games for a long time on a variety of systems and I love the immersion. Getting into the industry was great for me as a gamer because I got a kick (and still do) out of the creative processes behind the games which have given me so much enjoyment over the years. The mistake people make with companies like Midway, Rockstar, Ubisoft and EA (to name a few) is that their output is from one studio when it's actually a collective from many different studios. Midway Newcastle is the only UK-based Midway studio and I think that's going to be hugely important in the games we produce. You'll find Wheelman will have a different feel and look to the US-based Midway output and that's something I'm glad to be part of. There's not been much press of the game though January will change this as Midway's Gamers Day will give gamers the chance to play the game for the first time. I chatted to one of my superiors about how worried I was that Wheelman wasn't in many of the "What to look out for in 2008" articles in the gaming press, but he assured me that Midway didn't want to shoot their load too soon with Wheelman coverage. There's a method to this madness...
Secret Sauce.
There's things we're doing with Wheelman which are quite, quite insane. For a start, we're using the Unreal Engine to power the game and the engine in question wasn't really designed for high-speed action/driving games. Thankfully we have a team of programmers who have come up with scary miracles. The game is looking gorgeous and I really want to show people the game in action too. We have gameplay elements which are quite fresh and different to the norm. We have a soundtrack which fooled me into thinking someone was watching The Bourne Supremacy on DVD for research purposes - they were actually playing a build of the game..! We don't have a huge tacky graphic with the word "Nitrous!" pop on screen and block your view (although if it does come up as a suggestion, I will shout it down from the highest mountain). Most importantly - we have a team of people who are mostly gamers and know what's great and what's shite. Things have been designed, re-designed and tested. I like the fact there are outspoken and vocal people on the team who aren't treating the job as a way to pay off their mortgages. In short - Wheelman isn't even close to Cruis'n. Be assured of that. To get you in the spirit of Wheelman, check out the FMV trailer which has been doing the rounds for some time. I'm hopeful that gameplay footage will soon be forthcoming and people can start judging for themselves... (This is a YEAR OLD..!)
Finally...
Well, it's been something of an update (and a long time coming) but I hope you all had a great Christmas (or whatever festiveness you happen to celebrate around this time of year). Christmas at home was bliss - almost no arguments (although there was a minor squabble over sausages) and it was good to see everyone again. I also hope you have a great New Year although it's already technically 2008 on the other side of the planet. My resolutions? I have quite a few, but I will take a leaf out of Tracey Emin's book regarding them. I'm treating them more as rules than resolutions which I will stick to. I think as you get older that re- rules become more and more important to the way you live your life. When you're a carefree hipster (you know - the type that ruined the third season of The Mighty Boosh), you don't care much for them. You're more interested in kissing random strangers when the bells chime and have no fear of you losing your spectacles as you have perfect eyesight anyway. Grrrr. I'll leave you with a clip of when the Boosh set its adventures in fantastical places and not some grim area of Camden...
I'm glad I woke up for work today, I really, really am. After the news that Rez HD is coming to the Xbox 360, I had an inkling and checked out our PartnerNet. This is the closed Xbox Live Arcade network which is like peering into the future - game developers across the globe chuck stuff on there for other devs to download and play to death. It's quite, quite special to be able to do this. Lo and behold! Rez HD! To download! I'm the world's biggest Rez fan - I even have the Rez Trance Vibrator in my personal possession as well as the original Dreamcast version (a promo copy no less) and the PS2 version. This was quite a find for a slow Wednesday.
Like Rez. Except MORE.
As it says. Imagine Rez but in beautiful HD running at a silky smooth frame rate and you're halfway there. Add achievements, leaderboards and the like and it adds to an already brilliant experience. The download is pretty small (around 111Mb) for what you're getting - one of Sega's greatest moments in gaming where they were getting their very talented satellite studios like United Game Artists and Smilebit producing beautifully-crafted games like Jet Set Radio, Cosmic Smash, Seaman (hehe), Samba De Amigo and Rez. Inspired by the works of Kandinksy of all people, it's a game which is astounding to not only look at but also to hear. There's some wonderful meshing of visual and audio and without sounding too pretentious, it's as close to art in videogaming as you can get. Jeff Minter commented that Rez was "Space Harrier in techno trousers" which is pretty close to the mark. It's a shame that his recent Xbox Live Arcade release of Space Giraffe can't even hold a candle to something this expertly crafted. You do need to do the game justice though - get a surround sound system with a stonking huge television and turn out the lights.
"Memorieessss..."
When I was holed up in the flat in Mold, Rez helped coocon me from the drunken pissheadery and small town mentality and I look back on those days with joy. It was almost like a ritual getting myself ready for another trance-like assault on the senses. I also know of someone I used to work with who swore by Rez. He did smoke d'herb, mind you. The game is ideally suited for it. I'm just joyously happy that the game will soon be in the hands of the Xbox Live Arcade community and I predict it'll do incredibly well to the point that Rez 2 would be a certainty. The great thing about Rez is that even though it's a few years old, it still looks fresh and different - the art style is so radical that you accept it and enjoy it for what it is. It's like watching Tron - even though it's dated, the Syd Mead-inspired designs still hit a chord and look fresh and modern. Rez's achievements are spot on too! Here's a small taster...
Assassin's Creed - The Opinion So Far...
My favourite videogame reviewer Yahtzee has recently reviewed Assassin's Creed and once more he's spot on. There was a lot of mixed opinion online about the game, so I was keen to see what it was like. The first time I experienced the open world in the game was quite an incredible thing - you start off in the bowels of your main Assassin's Bureau. After some (many) tutorials, you get stuck into the town outside the Bureau and the game does a good job of getting you involved. Soon after you get on a horsey and end up in the huge main map - The Kingdom. It was quite mind-blowing - I have to say the graphics in the game are the most truly immersive I've seen yet. The shadows are so nicely produced that everything feels solid. It's very easy to believe you're there in the world and soon I was tasked with sneaking up viewpoints and launching myself off posts into haystacks. This is more fun than you just reading that. You then go to the city of Acre - and when I say city, I mean it - the place is vast. You then interrogate suspects, pickpocket, eavesdrop and help citizens as part of your campaign to find out more about the person you've been assigned to kill.
So Far So Good?
Well, yep. Except the review comments I've heard about repetition are true. Every job thereafter has been the same - travel to city by horse, investigate area and then assassinate. Yahtzee mentioned the horse thing where you have to slowly walk past guards on horseback so they don't suspect you. This got quite irritating quite quickly, and was more fun to leg it through areas with guards running behind you. The parkour stuff is nicely handled and your movements are startingly fluid and realistic - in fact, it's quite enjoyable running on rooftops collecting Crackdown-style hidden things (in this case, flags) while running up to a guard and assassinating him with your handy hidden blade in one fell swoop. There's also the sub-plot set in the future which Ubisoft spoiled themselves by leaving the futuristic HUD in their promotional materials. Ah, well. There's some horrificness in the game though. The combat system can be frustrating at times in that sometimes when you get knocked over, you lose the ability to lock onto stuff - although it's more a case of pressing the left trigger to lock on and then the right trigger to defend yourself - instinctively you press the right trigger straight away, which is where the problem lies.
More Problems!
Yep. Although countering to kill people is great fun, you sometimes glitch through buildings as you perform your moves. If you're backed up in a corner, the camera can suffer somewhat which makes anticipating counters difficult. The repeated soundbytes from passers-by get old way too quickly, especially when saving citizens - plus the camera will lock onto the citizen you've saved when all you want to do is get the hell out of there before another guard turns up... and yet the thrill of running away from many guards is an enjoyable one, as is setting stuff up before you assassinate a main target. Killing guards is good fun because - get this - they stay dead! No respawns here... so killing archers outside the area will make your life a lot more easier. Also nothing beats climbing a massive building and looking around you. In Acre, there's a humoungous cathedral which you get to access after your third kill - and climbing to the top of that was extrememly memorable. Launching off it into a haycart was even more memorable, although I was expecting an achievement like the one I got in Crackdown from getting to the top and jumping off the Agency tower. In short then - rent before you buy. It's good in short doses (say an assassination a day) and the sub-quests help increase the longevity of the thing.
Computer Update!
Here's me thinking I could only burn discs with Vista's gimped burning, but no! Clicking on the Help and Support bit of my PC, I discover I have Roxio Creator - meaning (hopefully) DVD burning won't be painful and I won't have to shell out £59 for Nero. It's curious I only found out about this via the Help and Support bit. Also I think I've found out why my keyboard and mouse are cack - a workmate of mine tells me it sounds like I need to update the BIOS. He also told me why this would be the case - and the link to a forum I posted yesterday had inklings of a BIOS update - although the process to go about it sounds ball-achey. I've contacted HP's After Care Shizzle via a contact form so I hope I'll get concrete help back from them. The frustrating thing is I shouldn't really have to go through all this shit. It's curious that The Tech Guys didn't mention that I had Roxio on this computer when I complained about the slow burning speeds - their "solutions" were either to buy Nero or to use msconfig to shutdown everything and see if that improved anything. Is it too much to ask that I can go into a shop, buy a branded PC-type product and have it do the job it's supposed to do? This BIOS stuff is good news though. I could still salvage this puppy. I can phone up The Tech Guys for shits and giggles and give them the exact reason why this PC is sick and they'll be dumbfounded as they try and use google for an alternative solution.
Book Update!
I recently got a test book through from blurb.com which also acts as a present for Mum - she's not seen any artwork of mine for some time, so it's the least I can do. Anyway, the quality of the book was great - there was a small rip on the bottom of the back of the dust cover, though that might have been my excitement getting it out. The book, I mean... tsk. Well, I was told by another workmate that there's a new way to produce books and it's Amazon-fuelled! CreateSpace is extremely exciting - basically it's the perfect way to get my 365 book out to the masses. I'll need to use InDesign to get the book together, but there's a lot more advantages to this than blurb - you get your own ISBN number, you have more control over content and layout and - get this - Amazon will actually sell the thing for you in their store!!! This is insanely good news. I was using the BookSmart software to layout 365, though now I will use these guys. I just need to start hunting down all the bits and pieces of artwork I have lying about.
YouTube Update!
If you've not yet seen Network, then I suggest you watch the below clip and realise just how relevant it all is to today...
Well, this is a first. I type this on a replacement keyboard with a replacement mouse from the guys at PC World. No ordinary guys though - The Tech Guys! They did what HP couldn't do, and I'm pretty impressed that this new keyboard apparently works better than the grouchy old one. So that's one more problem sorted. The next problem is the mouse is still sticking to various things on Internet Explorer - it jerks about at times and I'm not sure if it's due to the excessive hard drive access when Vista starts up (although I'm told this is all down to Vista making the hard drive more streamlined and sexy, which it does automatically) or it's the fact I need to grab the latest Nvidia hotfixes for this computer as well as the latest drivers - although trying to find the specific drivers for my graphics card is a bit of a giggle at the best of times. It feels like I'm slowly making progress with getting Vista doing the things I want it to do.
XP SP3?
Cryptic acronym? Well, not really. Windows XP will soon get it's next Service Pack - SP3. Insiders in Microsoft's HQ in Redmond have cited they've managed to get a speed boost for XP, whereas Vista's still as slow as molasses even with the forthcoming SP1 (currently in Beta). The article which I read this also mentioned that Vista's biggest rival is... XP. This is a surprise for me, as I couldn't find a copy of XP for love nor money anywhere once Vista was released. It'll be nice to get a shiny updated XP for my old computer, but I don't miss that horrible fan hiss one bit. Enough of the techyness...
365 Is Go!
I've bitten the bullet and started to design the actual 365 book - where I spent this year and a bit of last year creating a piece of artwork a day - and I'm using blurb's BookSmart software again though this time actually using it the way I should have used it for the trial book I produced for my Mum for Christmas. I'm changing individual page layouts, adding notation for reminders of artwork I still have to hunt down and generally feeling an awesome sense of accomplishment of actually getting off my arse and doing it. I think I can move onto other art projects once this book is finished as I haven't done any artwork in an age - either been busy with work-type stuff or playing videogames. I think I've silently promised myself that I won't play any more videogames until the first pass of 365's layout is finished. I was pretty dismissive of BookSmart to begin with, but it's great as long as you're careful and you know what to do beforehand. When the book is finished and I've ordered a copy for myself, I'll sling you the link to the book so you can perhaps check out my mad skillz.
Drink And Draw Christmas Bash!
I'm really looking forward to Saturday - it's the Drink and Draw Christmas Bash! It's taking place in a backroom at the rather masculine Sports Cafe in Newcastle and I'm excited because a lot of the Midway Newcastle Concept posse will be going including Mack Chater, Corlen Kruger, Peter Thompson and my good self. I think this time round I'll stick to shots... if you haven't heard of Drink and Draw, shame on you! It's basically where you go to a pub with a sketchbook and a drawing implement, and you get drunk as you draw stuff. Simple. The exciting stuff comes as you can vibe off each other with collaborative pieces. We'll be drinking and drawing along with the Miami Chapter of Drink and Draw when they start their session over in the States too. I still think that the Sports Cafe is a bit meathead-filled - Trillian's would be a better bet with its darkened corners and goth presence - but the actual room we draw is vast and has a huge projection screen playing geeky movies.
Cold!
I thought I shook my cold, but it's back. I was coughing via my chest today a bit too much, and I'm getting a blocked nose again. I always thought I was quite immune to the bugs which went round, but I don't think I'm that immune. I've got a holiday on Friday which I'm putting to good use - grabbing Christmas decorations and wrapping paper to make this bedsit a bit more festive as well as wrapping the presents I've already bought for just about everyone. It seems weird that I've already done my Christmas shopping, but I'll leave the wrapping of presents until December sometime. Work has generously given us two days of holiday for free - so I'll use those days to come home early for Christmas. My Mum doesn't know yet because I've not managed to get through on my phone. The Pick Household are rather averse to any outside contact even when I use my super-special secret ring.
Soup!
My local supermarket has started to stock my beloved Butternut Squash soup again! The Soup King will be pleased. Soup and crumpets is the perfect combination. Never will I go back to using mere bread for soup dipping. My older brother is a god when it comes to making soup and it's great we have veggies growing in our front garden. He also doesn't like presents, though sod it - I've got him one for Christmas. He'll be kind enough to provide us with a lovingly-cooked Christmas Dinner so it's the very least I can do. I look forward to coming home especially for Christmas - it'll be great to hug Mum again and see what antics she's been up to.
For Old Time's Sake...
Something for Ronda, because I know she's a bit disillusioned with life at the moment and I think the world of her enough to show her beautifully-animated bunnies in a prison cell.
Well, it looks like I've got just about all my Christmas shopping sorted out..! I know, I've taken the fun out of queues and panic, but sod it. Heck, if I need to be ultra-festive then I can wrap up the pressies in December and then cart them home to my friends and family. It's always, always good to come home for Christmas. The family home has always been a rock - a port which will never go away if we need a hand or somewhere to stay. Mum's very proud of the fact the house is hers and all paid for - she is trying to tempt me into the ways of getting a mortgage as I've rented most of my older life away. I don't agree with the "pissing money up a wall" attitude some people have when rent is concerned. One day someone's going to step into my life and change it for the better and maybe a mortgage might be part of the plan of eternal bliss. Who knows..?
My Love Of NewcastleGateshead's Quayside
If there's one thing I love it's travelling to the Quayside and relaxing while munching a semi-warm pastie-based treat from Greggs. There's something spectacular about seeing one of my all-time favourite buildings - The Sage - framed with an early Autumnal sunset and the Tyne Bridge in the background. Don't believe me?
I love living up here - walking about town while shopping felt a lot less frantic than, say, London. NewcastleGateshead has got a lot of heart and soul which you wouldn't find in some places and I like that a lot. I like the fact that Newcastle appears larger than the people who frequent it. People say I'm crazy and mad, but I also love living on the "wrong side of the river" - or Gateshead, in other words. It wouldn't be the same if I lived in Newcastle. The journey is half the fun, right? The Quayside has a lot going for it though - the aforementioned Sage, the fantastic Millennium Bridge which can tilt 45 degrees to let boats through - and the Baltic Mill.
Am I In London?
Nope. The Baltic does give you that impression though. It's a contemporary modern art gallery and sometimes you get some pretty stunning pieces of artwork. One of the first pieces I saw when I first visited was an ingenious thing - imagine a coffee table with a load of fruit on it. The fruit had motors connected to them and those motors had little saw blades which were being used to saw through the legs of the table! Pretty swish, you say? Yep. The Baltic does sometimes sway a bit too much to pretention - the recent(ish) Spank The Monkey exhibition was full of incredible urban art though sadly was ruined somewhat by the ironic way they filled an entire floor with artwork and a skate ramp full of skaters. The ramp was cordoned off from the public, so you couldn't scrutinise the artwork. Pah. I did catch a section of the Baltic I hadn't seen before full of Murakami work -
Mmmmmurakami. Lots of prints and stuff to buy, although I need the money. One day I will buy something beautiful and arty, though not on my 2nd day off..! The other Christmas pressie will be an art book - a mini 365 - for my Mum using the wonder of Blurb. If you're an artist who always wanted their work in a nicely-produced book, now's your chance!
Back to Work.
It was nice to be away from work, but lo! I had much catching up to do! Not only that, but it seems that I have a lot more work than actual time left to produce it. So in true games industry style, I may have to put in stupid hours again to get the job done. In some ways, I don't mind the stupid hours although my gut is slowly growing and I need an exercise alternative to running. There's a gym recenly opened which is a stone's throw away from the studio, so I might have to start using it straight after work. The painful fact is that as we head towards our next major milestone, we're running out of time. There's some plus points which I like - the fact that I'm working with a Flash ActionScript wizard who is making our front end extremely flexible and extremely user-friendly to me to tinker with and put lots of icing on. Mmm. Icing.
Crunch!
It is scary though. I've been in many situations in different companies where I can see in the distance the danger heading towards me and I need to take drastic action to minimalise the crunch which will occur. I heard that the developers of Strangehold (Midway Chicago) were in crunch mode for over 8 months. Imagine that - working 14 hour days and nights in the office every day and night to get the job done - although they did a pretty incredible job with some parts of the game (the Museum level was incredible). I am worried about the crunch we'll need to pull to get Wheelman out the door, especially near Christmas. Let's hope it all works out...
One more thing. Need to lose weight? Butterfield's your man!
So today was my first day off in ages. I've been in the studio religiously - I rarely get ill and I've been spending far too much time in the office after hours. My day off though was quite, quite productive - I spent a bit of it in bed and bit more of it getting ready to go out and about to buy some Christmas pressies. Before that, I ventured into Sainsbury's to buy myself a bottle of my favourite Innocent drink and noticed they were looking a bit... chilly?
I'm very happy about that photo because I took that photo today on my Samsung U600 (which I'm slowly getting used to), uploaded it to this IQ771 via Bluetooth and then edited the photo in GIMP before uploading it to Vox. See? Sometimes technology does work and when it does - it's a wonderous thing. I digress...
So What's With The Knitted Mini-hats, Steve?
Weeeeell Innocent Drinks are quite the company - they're not like a faceless corporation and they enjoy making me giggle with their labels. This is all part of The Big Knit which is a drive to raise money for Age Concern which is a charity in the UK which helps the older generation get by. If you want to know more, then please check out the video below -
They hope to raise £200,000 for Age Concern as every woolly-hatted drink which is sold will generate 50p for the charity. I wish them well!
Brrrr!
Yep, it's getting colder. I love the transition towards Winter with the promise of Christmas although these days Christmas doesn't seem as lavish as when I was a kid. I think it's got something to do with not insulting certain religions although I think that's a lousy excuse as those religions were about when I was younger and enjoyed Christmas in all its lavishness. As for the Christmas shop, there's still more to get although not that much - I plan to have bought everything as well as wrapped it all up by the end of this month, although...
Mum's Christmas Pressie!
So what to get for Mum? Well, last year I gave her a framed photo of me finishing the Great North Run. I can do the same this year as well as something pretty different - the 365 book I've mentioned a few times in blog posts can also be a possible present. Mum hasn't seen much of my artwork properly and it's a shame - so the motivational factor for this is a good one as well as the fact that the trial version of InDesign will last me 30 days, unless... I buy it. Saying that, I was going to buy Photoshop until I discovered that GIMP is pretty bloody good for the price of free...!
Vista is a strange beastie. It looks lovely and all, but there's a period of time for 10 minutes when the hard drive goes a bit bananas and I'm assuming it's Vista updating itself, housekeeping itself, or whatever the fuck it's doing. I'm not sure. Thing I know that those 10 minutes will mean you may as well put your feet up and wait for it to finish what it's doing unless you enjoy the mouse pointer jumping about and the wireless keyboard missing keystrokes. Call me old-fashioned, but I really hate the notion of wireless. It's witchcraft. Give me a fucking wire. Something tangible. These days a lot of social life is spent in virtual worlds and nothing is physically there. We even shut ourselves way into iPod-themed bubbles and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. People say that networking sites and gaming networks like Xbox Live are the new ways to socialise, but is it really socialising? I dunno.
Fuck, I'm Tired.
I've spent a lot of time recently in work on Wheelman - I've got a stack of work to get through regarding the front end and the HUDs. There's a list of things which need to be done and there are some seriously huge tasks. I'm the only guy working on graphics and the animation/integration stuff while I have two programmers helping out with getting the graphics to work with code. We've also recently had a new art director, which means more changes for me art-wise. It's a balancing act being a developer, but I can only do it due to my single situation. If I was lucky enough to get into a proper full-on relationship, then I would have to think twice about sticking around the games industry. I've been in it now for 8 years and although it's comfortable, I do think that maybe I need a change. We'll see.
Turkish Movies - Your New Habit.
I remember when a good friend of mine (who crafted Flawed Jesus for me) showed me the wonders of Turkish Star Wars. It was my first Turkish experience and it was one I would never forget. Basically it's a cult classic now on the internet - a film which totally disregards the notion of copyright and blatantly steals not only footage from the original Star Wars, but also parts of the soundtrack. What the hell! Steal some parts of the soundtrack from Indiana Jones while you're at it too! Throw in a bizarre plot with a golden brain, extreme rock training and a child-strangling robot and you've got one of the best/worst viewing experiences you can get your hands on. Google Video actually hosts the entire thing with subtitles too - check it out!
Originally made in 1982, it also features a popular Turkish actor called Cuneyt Arkin in the lead role. I've seen him in other Turkish movies too, although I think he has a brother. Steve Arkin starred in Lionman, and I mistook him for Cuneyt - they do look very, very similar to each other. Lionman? Ah, well. It's just an ordinary tale of a man who was raised by lions, that's all. Amazingly, no clips of this exist on YouTube! I did find a bizarre Japanase clip though of a Samurai who turns into a man in a terrible lion outfit. I'm too tired to upload it.
More Turkish Goodness!
As well as Turkish Star Wars and Lionman, there's other lovely nuggets of Turkish Delight - to begin with, there's a Turkish version of E.T. It follows the plot of the American original rather well except that E.T. looks more like a midget in a huge condom with eyes, he likes to oggle Turkish porn and his defence mechanism is that he can fart gas out of his penis...
The next Turkish clip is something I've been itching to show you all - although you may have experienced it already. Turkish Rambo. Yep, you read that right. This clip is amazing - it shows Rambo's amazing RPG which have chaff all propulsion but can cause plenty of explosions which sometimes enemies actually dive towards.
One more for the road? Hokay, how about Turkish Wizard Of Oz?
I'll stop for now, but it's truly something I love. Whenever I hear about new Turkish movies, or discoveries of old Turkish movies then it is indeed a good day. I've yet to show you the joys of Turkish Star Trek, Turkish Superman and Turkish Exorcist, but give it time...
Finally...!!
Now comes the hard task of collating all 365 pieces of artwork and putting them into a book form for 365. I was looking around for Vista-compatible packages and I may grab myself as a Christmas present a load of Adobe CS3 packages including my beloved Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and (of course) InDesign. Price? £1,600. People at work think I'm foolish, but no. I want some proper honest software for this beastie. I need to get to bed very soon, I'm exhausted. Thank you for allowing me to share my Turkish film obsession with you all. Hopefully you'll be inspired to check out this treasure trove of bizarreness soon enough..!
Well, almost time for bed and I feel the urge to blog a little something. For the past year I've been entertaining myself by working on an art project called 365 - basically I produce a piece of artwork every day for a year. Sounds tough? Well, yep. It can be. Sometimes art kind of happens. Sometimes you force yourself to do it. I did kind of cheat a little and hawk a day onto the next day so I produced two bits of artwork, but I stuck to the daily structure of the project 95% of the time - which is good for me.
So tomorrow I produce my last piece of artwork. Of course, it's going to be Halloween-themed and I'll lovingly put some care and attention into it. After that will come the long process of composing the thing and laying it out in InDesign. The problem is that now I'm Vista-ised, a lot of my old packages won't work any more so I'm tempted to get myself an early Christmas pressie and pick up the latest version of InDesign... as well as some other packages I miss. People at work call me batshit-insane for even considering a spend of £1,600 on all the main Adobe packages but fuck it. I'm getting old and this Rapidshare-piracy bullshit is not going to wash, especially when I have more money than sense at the moment. I need a woman to come and take it away from me. Still, I want 365 to be a living breathing book which I can handle and show to my grandchildren on my death bed.
The K-Man Is Back!
The fantastic Channel 4 documentary of one of my favourite people ever - Karl Pilkington - has inevitably made it onto YouTube and I've posted the first part of the clip below. Part two is here and part three is here. It's a pretty interesting documentary and you get to see Karl talk to some luminaries like Germaine Greer, David Icke and Will Self - who I hope is taking the piss in a light-hearted way because he comes across as a complete arsehole in the documentary. I'll always forgive him though for taking part in the genius which was Shooting Stars!
Time to hug my hot water bottle once more while the wind whistles loudly outside.
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