Got a bit bored and felt under productive this week so i decided to read some of the handouts given to me last trimester on rendering, and it really helped improve the goldish metal on the owl figures. Fresnel reflections are really handy, the candles and the books etc are still lacking but its a nice improvement to what was a rather flat scene.

Prior to the changes made the scene looked like this:

I don’t mind the hazy look to it with all the flat colours as opposed to the reflections. Might just leave this scene for a while and mess with a more modern room design to play with lighting and materials.

Read More

id have posted an image of the hack but its too ugly to feature, here’s the laughing man instead.

Well today after watching ghost in the shell all day I had an interesting surprise, my site had been hacked by a Saudi Arabian hacker, cool. Its just.. they didn’t really do an impressive job, used lame and possibly the least intimidating design for their note.. I was a little sad. Furthermore since they just seemed to have exploited an out of date wordpress installation to delete my account and change the frontpage to a crappy html file the second I get updated FTP details from my host I’m simply going to delete the directory.

Till then, hollowminds.com/blog is a place to enjoy bad colour and typography choices.

Remember to update your word-press installations and delete old unused directory’s guys!

I’ll also be sure to email my hacker some info on design, colour theory and typography. Because a page that looks like a badly done word document menu from a five year old isn’t intimidating, or half as cool to see.

Read More

2011 was a pretty awesome year for me, some major up’s some major downs. But looking back with a smile despite the few issues that came up, it was a good year, there were some awesome game releases for me as a consumer and I had some major epiphanies/eye opening moments as a developer. Anyway, here’s what I thought of 2011 for any lonely souls out there who read these things:

 

2011 in gaming

 

GOTY: Bastion

I had a hard time answering friends when asked what my “Game of the year” was, the following noteworthy plays we’re pretty much all in a brutal internal war for the throne, but bastion came out on top. The game made me feel new, refreshed, exited to play another game and play with making games some more.

The game is a great example for the “games are art” argument if ever needed, it marries visuals with audio, narrative and play so well that I sat down to play it and didn’t stop till the narrator had uttered the last word, and then when the credits had rolled, and I went to bed, the “Setting Sail, Coming home” song burst back into my head, alongside all the little details, background stories and twists the game gave to me, that’s perfection and I can’t even explain how much I love supergiant for this masterpiece. I’d go into more depth but don’t want to spoil a single drop of this game for anyone. Get it.

 

Noteworthy 2011 titles:

Total War: Shogun 2

Shogun2 was one of the games that I HAD to buy this year, so when I got it i was glad that I was actually really happy with the game. The Sengoku period of japan has always been something that took my interest enjoying stories such as Hideyoshi’s rise to power and unification of a land divided (though that’s a glossy way to put it). So I decided to try my hand at becoming a grand unifier, sadly thats easier said then done, as I learnt the hard way, becoming shogun and then losing all of my allies, the land I attempted to unite now turned to me in the center of it. Greedily looking at my provinces and new gained power.

If the above paragraph didn’t say it by proxy, shogun2 is a challenging game of tactics, no one is to be trusted in the long term and as power is gained, when you have a large deal of land the proper spreading of troops to defend and also expand is a whole strategy game of its own, then theres managing sea based threats, pirates and how to feed all the men under your rule. Oh, and don’t forget the variety of special units who can assassinate generals, sabotage castles, spark religious uprisings, convert troops to a way of peace and much more.

Off the grand strategy board and into the real time tactics battles shogun2 continues to shine, though the seemingly intentional engrish can be a little silly feeling to begin with all the units have a perfect feel to them, sending a volley of arrows to rain death on the enemy is satisfying, and seeing the enemy’s archers emerge from the trees and line up your charging footmen is heartbreakingly exciting.  Well worth looking at if your interested in Grand strategy or tactics/wargaming. The “Rise of the samurai” expansion based on the Gempei War is also worth a look if you enjoy the game, looking forward to fall of the samurai.

E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy

My time with E.Y.E has been interesting to say the least. It’s felt like a strange mix of Ghost in the shell, Warhammer 40k and Halflife. I didn’t find the game too hard to understand despite a lot of complaints I’ve read prior to playing, I’m not sure if that was due to patching, playing a lot of games all the time or just managing to get it but anyway that didn’t seem like much of a problem. The story though convoluted is enjoyable, though It had been a little while since having to read so much. It’s not a mess, its interesting, its just how it’s delivered that seems to be the issue. Essentially though you play as a member of a force of warrior monks/samurai (which remind me slightly of the space marines/a ghost in the shell esque force) whilst there’s a interplanetary war and something something multiple factions something something, go play it.

Though the art assets aren’t next gen or stunning the visual design on the armor, environments and creatures is quite awesome, knight and samurai armor with anarchist/post-apocalypse touches really make the Secreta Secretorum an interesting faction. The visual design really creates a completed atmosphere for the game, despite its issues its worth looking at, as if stalker went cyberpunk.

Sanctum

Similar to Irongrip: warlord, Sanctum is an enjoyable first person shooter/tower defense game, made all the better with a few friends and the ability to abuse text to speech features. Organizing the construction of the most convoluted maze possible to maximize the amount of time enemies have to walk while taking damage, placing floor tiles to slow movement or amplify damage and then the all important construction of various towers give Sanctum a huge choice in how to go about defeating that next wave, while preparing for the ones to follow.

Skye is a well designed character, the enemies are all well designed as is crucial. That and they wear tophats and dance if you lose, so the game also has a nice amount of light heartedness to it.

Magicka

Magicka‘s a blast, It constantly throws something funny, be it a clever reference or just casting an obscure spell on yourself or your best soon to be worst friend. The game and its DLC provides a fair deal of content and challenges to get through by yourself or with friends, alongside PVP maps, some better than others… Like the ice map where fire + rock = victory at your fingertips. Local co-op with gamepads was a nice thing to see too, and the control scheme worked just as well after a little while of getting used to the joystick directions instead of the q – r and a – f keys.

Wanderlust: Rebirth

When one of the developers from Team Wanderlust sent me a key to the game Wanderlust: Rebirth I was really surprised, I admittedly wasn’t expecting a great deal off the bat but the game combines a nice story with really solid mechanics and controls, the art styles nostalgia inducing, the  musics great and each class feels modern in usability yet still carries the retro tropes we’d expect from them. It also has four player co-op, sadly I haven’t been able to try much of the co-op. Though from the short games I did connect to everything worked well, would be fun with some pals.

Project zomboid

Even though it’s not officially out as finished its in public release as alpha so I’m going to mention it anyway. Project zomboid’s one of the most interesting indie developments of the year, for me at least. It’s not the mechanics or a unique twist on play that makes Zomboid so interesting, its the package as a whole. The arts simple though still connotes the dreadful events, audio is used to its full extent to deliver the intended emotions be it the saddening vocals to the background music or the sudden noise as your character is panicked. The game play’s still lacking, being in alpha and all, but its getting there, and its already got there in terms of its overall atmosphere. It’s looking promising, and after several problems through its development the team at indiestone are still going, with each update looking better and better.

Longest time alive is 2 months 3 days and 2 hours

Wrapping up:

 

There are a lot of other games worth mentioning, but i think those are some of the most played 2011 games. Portal2, Orcs must die, Dungeon defenders and payday were all good fun too, payday actually surprised me since i thought the media would eat it up, a game about armed robberies but seems like it slipped under the radar. The two most disappointing purchases this year for me were Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. I also played a tonne of Mount and Blade: Warband and Samurai Warriors 2, good fun.

Here’s to another great year of games!

Read More

The scene still has a lot of work to go, but I’m messing with an idea (and that all I think it will really be, but something to learn from none the less). Essentialy its just going to be a minute long or so lovecraftian intro. Possibly to shoggoth on the roof by the H.P. Lovecraft historical society, I’m not too sure, it began as just making a nice little scene to put Shannies owl I made in. Anyway, ignore all the jerky overly quick camera movements, i had the frames placed way too soon so that id didn’t need to render over 100 frames on my poor little laptop:

 

Thinking from there ill be adding a tentacle slamming against the window, still need to make a proper flame effect on the candle (with animated lighting in the room to fit), possibly a flame on the window candle and then extinguish it and show smoke when the tentacle slams the window. That and an insanely spoken monologue on how the owls are much like the elder sign etc. Eh, thought I’d share it anyway, even just for me to look back on in a few years!

Also needs textures, some elder signs, some worn wallpaper etc.

Read More

Well the mindbendingly exhausting Christmas has passed, at least a whole day spent in a car over the last week driving from Perth to Bridgetown to Manjimup to Bridgetown to Manjimup to Kellerberrin to Perth. Now that that’s done just a week till I can put my feet up and really relax again. Trying to keep on top of things study wise over that part of the breaks almost impossible, but I’ve managed to start on a small project with a friend in the USA, a simple space shoot em up that I want to experiment with in terms of delivering content, the idea is to get the “Arcade” mode done so the game can be played along a very long track of level as the players try gain the highest score.

However there is also a “Story” mode that will be broken up into chapters and run in the same way a webcomic would, I’m thinking a level a week, and have a couple months worth of “core” narrative done before official launch of that mode, and then just expand off onto other arcs, with a fun and quirky bit of story in between shooting up ships and defeating the weekly boss. Probably not the smartest idea in the world to say “hey we’re gonna make weekly content” when that sounds like a) a lot of work and b) very time consuming when I have little time, its only an experiment I guess.

You can constantly try it out HERE, its very early in the making so its not much of a game yet though.

Also, whilst i had no internet for the last week Shannie (my partner in crime) showed me an old owl radio her grandfather recently gave her. I thought it looked pretty cool so i decided to start making a simple scene last night, this is it so far, nothing special but its been fun to make, will hopefully look  better once textures come into it and more clutter gets made:

Read More

Though I want to go back and make an actually good looking detailed Cthulhu today I messed about in zBrush and created the classic water being himself, the great old one Cthulhu. I’m a massive fan of lovecrafts writing and the mythos, so it was fun to do, though it proved from a technical standpoint I have a lot to learn when using zspheres and such.

To make up for my lack of understanding I decided to stylise it a tonne, then added a lot of clay/scraped a lot from the model to create the lumpy skin of an elder god. The wings could have used some planes if i dragged the .obj into maya, but i didn’t end up getting around to that.

There’s a lot of crappyness in the joints and where zspheres have been too close, but i learnt from it, and had fun.

Read More

For the next few months im going to try pump out a 3d thiga-ma-jiga a day, be it a maya game asset or a zBrush character. I need to keep my skills going so that by the end of this year I’m looking semi-employable as a 3d artist, which sadly I don’t feel anywhere near yet.

Anyway, today I want to introduce you to EL desagradable Diablo. I don’t speak any spanish but according to googling words and ignoring grammar that might be how a spanish speaking caveman would say “the nasty devil” or something like that. He took a few hours of messing with to get to this state.

Click for a full res view! (The image is kinda massive)

Anyhow, enjoy Mr nasty pants. His legs, feet and knees are probably the most crappy part of him, but I’m still really happy with it for an afternoon of toying about. Oh and the muscles probably aren’t going properly, a good book on anatomy is on my to-buy list.

desagradable may mean unpleasant, objectionable, i dont know, i dont speak-a-the-spanish.

Read More