Mid-April Updates! (Game Development/EPIC/BETACinema)

Hello, blog readers!

Spring's in full-swing and I've been working on several different projects. I'll go into them in more detail a little later, but it has been causing me to get into some random inspirations at random times in the middle of the night. (Probably inspiring the tone of this blog entry, too.)

I've been reading this book almost non-stop (whenever I get some free time at least).


It's called "Introduction to Game Development" by Steve Rabin. Rabin has 10 years of game development and currently works at Nintendo, and also contains various publications and contributions from several people in the IGDA (which I'm also a member of.) It's actually a good read if you're interested in the game industry. (And it's a thick book, don't let the picture fool you. It's about 900 pages.) Believe it or not, it was the textbook we were required to get for my Game Design course we took last year, but the professor hardly used it. He didn't seem to know much about games in general, but this book was still a good buy, even if I'm just now reading it six months after I took the course.

(I ended up getting an "A" in that class, in any case.)

The book seems to understand what I want to do, even if most people do not. Most people seem to get the misconception that I want to do game programming and/or video game 3D modeling and what not, and don't really understand the true meaning of what exactly I want to do with my dream career.

I want to be a game designer. The one that makes the rules of the game, the one who comes up with intricate level design, and/or directs the progression of the project. A game designer can be programmer, and most do start as that, but I'm really not one to sit there typing lines of code, it would drive me nuts after a while. (Well, I'm not exactly the patient type.)

Not that I sit there and think programming is boring. (It's not.) It's just not something I would want to do a full-time career in for the rest of my life. I have a lot of leadership qualities and creativity, and I'd rather actually put those into motion as a designer or engineer rather than be the programmers behind it. Programming is a logical talent, design requires a lot of different talents. More of a "jack-of-all-trades", if you will. Even reading through said book (above) in great detail, I've learned an equal amount of computer science, psychology, and statistics.


Anyway, going off of that tangent, onto progress on projects!

"Codename: EPIC"

My own game projects have been appearing in my dreams too, it's been weird. I've been so engrossed in getting this game project progressed, and I'm very inspired to keep working on it. (Probably much to the disgust of the team, which has to endure my random thoughts, posts, and screen-shots on a constant basis. Sorry, guys!)

However, I still don't feel that any of the work I (or any of the team) has done on the project is worth showing to the public. Not yet, at least. I want to have at least one big picture of the project to show by the end of next month.

Here's a pic of the world map (in development):




World Map designs. I've spent most of this week coming up with a decent flow of the game, testing out possible things the player may enjoy, and getting it to be enjoyable. But on the other hand, I have a bad tendency to make things WAY too easy for the player, and I'm glad I have Jon to call me out on it.

I'm hoping to have a playable demo of one part of chapter 1 done by the end of the summer and all of chapter 1 done by the end of this year. That's the goal, at least. There is a lot of work to be done.

Still need a permanent monster designer and someone to do trailers and promotional work. I'm talking with several different people, but I'm trying to look for someone who'd be more willing to contribute and get a share of the project rather than ask for a flat fee. That's not exactly easy to find, you know.


BETACinema:

Three new skits are coming: The Tube Skit, the Internet Skit, and the Math skit. I don't know what order these are coming in, though. The Math Skit was originally supposed to be finish on April 1st, but we had some postponements getting some of the scenes, so that will be posted in early May.

I'll have to get on Ryan's case for finishing the others since we have the footage for that.

I also need to get working on AdSense...

So much to do, so little time!





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Patience wore out! :(

Edited (4/12/2011) - The patch outline for Thursday has been posted.


I'm normally very patient, but I think time has caught up with me. I'm finally starting to lose hope for Final Fantasy XIV. In fact, I guess I could say I had 7 months of optimism before it ran dry.


As it currently stands, I'm logging in once a week as a commitment to the linkshell, and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future, but there isn't just any motivation to play, and a lack of noticeable improvement or hope coming from the development team. Enhancement of battle effects, really?

I guess you could say that the main driving force for this is seeing the road map for Final Fantasy XI for the next year. They seem to have big plans for the game, and even if it's not anything I'm particularly interested in that would warrant me returning, I kind of wish they had some kind of updated structure for XIV and in a sense it's making me long to return to XI.

I don't know why, or even how Square-Enix managed to make this XIV release such a colossal bomb. I just don't know how, they spent five years on this project and we get a handful of zones, a very minimal amount of story, and no chocobos we can ride, airships we can board, or even Cid!

I applaud Naoki Yoshida for taking over for a game that was in a state of other chaos. (Hell, he even became one of my game design idols because of that.) But his team is going very slowly trying to understand the immature Crystal Tools technology and re-engineering a five year project in 6-7 months. I do think the game will eventually improve to a point where it is enjoyable by many and playable, but I don't think it's going to be a reasonable enough time-frame for gamers to want to give it a chance. Or the playerbase will eventually get fatigued (as I did) and move on to greener pastures.

Anyway, as far as this post is concerned, I think I'll remain logging in once a week to do LS events and keep looking at updates, but my optimism has long dissipated and I know I can't fathom recommending the game to friends for a long while.

I'm hoping one day I can look at this post and laugh because the game will have changed for the better, but I don't know. I just don't know.




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Selection of Video Game Music - (April 2011)

^ (Credit to "Leno" for this drawing of Mario.)


Today's blog entry: Some of my favorite video game tunes. I'm going to go ahead and make this a monthly series of sorts, where I choose 10 from a list of my favorite video game themes. I don't want to pick ones that are overly cliche, but some you may recognize.

Note: I'm going to jump around back and forth between newer games and older games. I like some of the old pieces with old-fashioned 8-bit themes and I like orchestral music that is used with some of the current generation games and systems.

These aren't in any particular order of interest, but they're numbered in order to note the same song in the post:

Anyhow!


#1 - Yoshi's Story - "Ending" (N64)

Anyone who knows my gaming habits will know that this is my stage/song of choice in Super Smash Bros. Brawl Matches. Stage: Yoshi's Island with this song playing. Personally, I like the cruel irony of four people beating the hell out of each other to such a sad song.





And the Super Smash Bros Brawl Remix!




#2 - DuckTales "Moon Theme" (NES)





Seriously, one of the most underrated songs of our time. I haven't even heard of the game or the song myself until video game music enthusiast Brentalfloss did a remix of it. (Below)





I don't know who at Capcom was doing the music for that game, but they are an 8-bit genius.


#3 - Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals - Sinistral Battle Theme (SNES)

This has to be one of the most badass boss themes I've ever heard. Ever. I used to beat this game repeatedly when I was 6-7 years old just to hear this over and over.





Taito and Natsume really had a good series going from them, Square-Enix owns the rights to this franchise now, and they recently re-did the game for the DS. While it is a great action RPG in its own right, the remixed soundtrack doesn't hold a candle to the SNES classic.

#4 - Final Fantasy XII - The Paramina Rift / "Seeking Power" (PS2)

This is one of the Final Fantasy titles that veteran of the series Nobuo Uematsu didn't do any of the regular compositions for and just contributed the main theme. Hitoshi Sakimoto contributed the other themes to the soundtrack, and this is my favorite out of the game.





#5 - Super Mario Land 2 - Star Maze (Game Boy)





I actually forgot about this game's soundtrack, I haven't played this game in years, since I had a Game Boy Pocket. Recently, I heard an interesting YTPMV remix of this theme starring Jack Black's appearance on Sesame Street by cs188.




#6 - Pokemon Black and White - "Emotion" (Nintendo DS)

My friend sent me a URL to this song a few months back out of the blue. I'm very surprised to hear this out of a Pokemon game, they really put some new directions in their pieces, and this one was an unexpected twist. (As I hadn't gotten that far in the game when he sent it to me as he completed the game before I did.)




#7 - Breath of Fire III - "Life's a Beach" (PS1)

Breath of Fire is an underrated RPG series by Capcom that was primarily developed in the 1990's. I only played the third in the series, but this theme is really catchy! Probably my favorite in the game for sure. (I will need to play through it one of these days.)




#8 - Final Fantasy XIV - Track 50 (PC/PS3)

I have not heard this theme in-game yet, but I have to say that it's one of my favorite newer themes from Uematsu. I think if the game didn't have such of a catastrophic launch, then there would possibly be more cutscenes in which this theme would be used, but everything got kind of put on hold. I'm looking forward to hopefully hearing this in game soon.






#9 - Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest - "Bramble Blast" (SNES)

Probably one of my favorite 16-bit era platformer themes. David Wise composed the music for DKC2 and I find it to be shameful he wasn't signed on for the new DKC:Returns for the Wii. Donkey Kong Country 2 had the best music and gameplay in the series by far, and this is one of my favorite themes out of them.





There was also a Brawl Remix and a fan remix involving the Fresh Prince.









#10 - Super Mario 64 - Bomb-Omb Battlefield / Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Throwback Galaxy

These two share the theme, but it's a classic. This game did a lot to the 3D platforming genre, and is probably one of the most memorable themes of the N64 and the 3D Mario era.

Koji Kondo FTW. :D

I think it's time for a break.

For the last few days I've been extremely stressed with my second game project, almost to the point where it's not any fun anymore. I mean seriously, I've been up until 3-4 AM with rolling headaches working on this and lacking a good amount of sleep. (3-4 hours a day average!) Call it obsessive-compulsive, but i am trying to get minor details right and just fixing one thing takes me hours if it's not perfectly centered or does not perform what I want it to do.

On Saturday, I'm going to teach one (maybe two) of my friends the program and the ins and outs of how it works. I'm hoping with a few others doing some of the event work (which doesn't require programming knowledge), I can go more into the "nitty-gritty" and program some features in Ruby that I would like to appear in game that events cannot really do.

Earlier, I kind of got put on blast for only using a simple "beginner's" tool to do this project, but I'm well aware of my team's abilities. We all have ambition, but no experience. I'm barely learning Unity and Unreal myself, to teach others how to use these advanced tools will be too much work, especially if we're trying to tell a whole story. The amount of things to model, the amount of areas to build, and the team required to do all of that will take way too long to be remotely reasonable.

With RPG Maker VX, I can easily teach the team how to use a program I've practiced with for almost 10 years now and we can have a pretty good game with their event knowledge and my programming skills in coming up with an interesting battle system (which is my goal for this year.)

I just want to note that this game project does have an emphasis on story and game-play elements rather than the actual graphics. Personally, I'm not too picky on the graphics. However, I am aware a consistent art style does help - If a game doesn't at least look visually appealing, then no one will play it no matter how good the story is or how well it plays. So there's a long road of development ahead of us.

Like I said, I really can't reveal any huge details about the project (are there any?), and there is an overwhelming amount of ideas and things are being worked on.

I'm hoping once these stress headaches clear up a bit, I can actually focus on working on drawing an overworld map, we will see.

Until Sunday!




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One step forward, one step back.

Where to start?

Codename: EPIC:

Yesterday was a great advancement on the second game project. We have finally started digitally inputting all of the resources and started literally building the game.



Up until this point and for the last four months, we have been working out designs and writing out a plot to go from.


Unfortunately, it also called for a reshuffle of the leadership team on the project. We now have a new art director and character designer which will set us back quite a bit on progress. We're essentially taking five of the characters back to the drawing board to be redesigned by Fuego (new art director).

I'm being very cryptic about these details because I don't like to mention anything that's not set in stone yet. Tomorrow I'm going to get some help from one of my closest friends to start writing up some guidelines for the new team, such as:

1/ All submissions from team members become property of the group (as a whole) after x amount of time has passed.

2/ Members of the development team will be required to accept a non-disclosure agreement [NDA] about the project which states that they cannot freely talk to anyone about explicit details about the project while they are members of the group. (To save from people leaking details about it.)

3/ Members will be required to give a one week advance notice before official departure. If doing a short notice resignation, then we have one week to remove anything submitted by them that has not passed the x amount of time needed to become group ownership.



If I had these tentative rules in from the start, I don't think this would have been an issue. Now some people may look at these rules and consider it a little harsh, or a form of socialism. But I want to make this following fact crystal clear:

Not everyone is getting an equal share in the project. The project will be split in contribution percentages. (The more contributions to a project the person does, the more they will be compensated in sales percentage.) After an x amount of time (yet to be determined) the person will be unable to retroactively bring their resources out of the project, but they will get just compensation for their resources they submitted once the project goes live.


My Leadership Policy:

I've been criticized by many to be way too soft and accommodating. That's just the type of leader I am. Normally, I'm really not one for contracts and the like, but what happened yesterday was a big wake-up call that I need to have some kind of rules in place or I get walked all over by people who abuse my kindness.

I've said this once before and I'll say it a million times, I'm very fortunate to know very talented artists, voice actors, musicians, and writers and friends from all different backgrounds.


I'm also very happy to have Fuego working with us as the new main art designer for the project, and hopefully the project itself won't be set back too far because of these unforeseen circumstances.

We're also in need of monster artists! ^_^;



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It's Over!

Spring Break, that is.

Along with half of my freedom. And you know what? I didn't get to beat Final Fantasy XIII. That was my one main goal for the last three months. And I failed. Did I mention that it makes me sad when I don't accomplish a goal I've set for myself? Maybe it's the leader in me talking. I hate breaking promises and not making goals, that's one of my personal pet-peeves...

Anyway!

During this Spring Break I did beat Barthandelus (finally) and made it to the end of the next chapter (Chapter 12), which is where I'm stuck on.

And if I know my Final Fantasy lore, apparently this guy:





is a modern remake of this guy:





Not that you all would care, anyway. But the latter was so much easier! I beat it like 12 years ago first try with little difficulty. This, on the other hand is a pain in the ass. It seems that I'm stuck because of the linearity of the game I can't go to a decent place to grind so I'm stuck killing soldiers!


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Enough of that, yesterday we had another BETACinema meeting!




...and I happened to have learned something very important from said meeting:

The town I live in does not take well to humor. We were still flipped off multiple times, heckled at, and some other stuff. It's sad, really. Don't get me wrong though, I love the scenery and the atmosphere, but the people here are so snobby that maybe I do want to move out of the town once I graduate.

I don't plan on having a "hissy-fit" because someone I don't know decides to just hate on us being random and not harmful towards anyone. It motivates me to do these fun skit gatherings even more.

Anyhow: Here's a trailer I quickly edited together for one of our shorts that will be posted soon:




That's about all I got for this blog entry. Sunday nights before the first day of new classes are always hectic. You don't know who you're going to meet, who you're going to run into, or how your teachers are. Well, actually I've had all three of my teachers before, so I should know exactly what to expect. But I've not had these particular classes with these professors, so this is going to be quite interesting.

Until Wednesday, blog reader(s)!

Four, Two, but no Zero!

This is unfortunately to be the last blog post of my Spring Break before it's back to the grind on Monday. (Albeit nothing as close as excruciating to what I had to deal with last quarter)

I'm taking a quarter off on Computer Science related academia while I focus on getting my Math and Physics requirements out of the way. Even though I'm not officially taking any programming courses in the university this term, I want to focus on getting my knowledge of Ruby and C# for when I take Video Game Programming (CSE441) in Spring 2012. I'll rant about that a little later.


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New Skits!:

There are two new BETACinema videos! I posted one of them as an afterthought in the last entry, but it is "If Jon Ruled the World" written by Jon and myself and edited by Jon. Check it out below:






The second movie is an afterthought and I edited it in about 4-5 hours as a last minute short-term replacement to "The Math Skit" that was supposed to be released as an April Fools' Day skit. Due to circumstances outside the group's control, however, it has been postponed. I don't like to go back on promises, so I edited together some of the funniest footage that could not make it into our actual skits (for lack of continuity, didn't make sense, bad footage, etc) and I compiled it into a ten minute movie! You can see that below:






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Nintendo 3DS:



I got a chance to play some of the Nintendo 3DS and Super Street Fighter IV over a friends house. He got it on release day and let us play it for a while. I have to say, I LOVE the console. I originally was skeptical about the 3D effects, but they really give a whole new dimension to the gameplay and I really like it. It's something everyone should see first hand, definitely. YouTube movies and trailers of it do not do it justice. My friend got the black colored console, but I'm hoping to get this particular color. What can I say? I am a sucker for blue colors. :)

The only foreseeable downside I have (personally) with the Nintendo 3DS is that I cannot handle the 3D effects very well. I have the depth slider at almost bare minimum and any more makes my eyes cross-eyed and gives me a terrible headache. But even on the minimum, the 3D is clearly apparent and gives off the impression that the characters actually bounce off the environments. (Your experience may vary.)

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Programming Goals / Codename:EPIC :

Like I mentioned earlier, I am taking a break from programming classes at the university to focus on some self-study in order to prepare for what is to come. I've been in university for three years and I still don't feel confident in my programming abilities, so I'm giving myself about five months (the Spring and Summer) to change that. I would like to improve my skills in these areas to be ready for classes like "Graphics Programming" and "Operating Systems".

Anyway, for now, I'm expanding on my own Ruby skills in order to program some of my own systems in the game for the project. Since Ruby is a scripting language and RPG Maker VX allows for Ruby Scripts, I'm expanding on my foundations using this website and this book (below) as a reference.

I've had it for a couple of years now and I want to focus on actually getting through it and start doing some development on the side with the in-game systems while the art infrastructure and algorithms of the game are being implemented. Hopefully screen-shots are to be shown of the progress in the next couple of weeks. The game is going to be in a long development.




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April Goals:

-Complete Final Fantasy XIII. (It's been these goal lists for three months now?)
-Do well in Spring quarter courses.
-Start and have initial screen-shots of Codename: EPIC.
-Finish "Math Skit" for BETACinema.


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Here's to a happy and cheerful quarter! ^_^

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to lead a linkshell event in six hours.