I came across a game design blog I haven’t seen before, Lost Garden, with the latest post being a game design challenge. Sweet! I need more stuff to do (or an excuse to not do the stuff I already am doing). I looked through a few posts and liked what I saw; gotta read more, but until then, it’s now on my blogroll. —>

So what really caught my eye was this challenge. I may do it for a nice prototype on my portfolio, as well as proof that I can code stuff. So the basic idea of the game this: Mushrooms are planted on the 2D board and if they’re in the sun for longer than a second, they wither and die. Once the player contacts a mushroom, it uproots and follows the “rugged mushroom farmer”. Over 15 minutes, the day progresses, and thus, the shadows change. The goal is to collect as many mushrooms as you can and return it to the safe spot by the end of the day.

The author of the blog, Danc, is a game designer and he came up with this idea for Shade and sent out this challenge to anyone willing to make a prototype to see if this design concept will stick. Maybe I’ll give it a go in Blade3D, shouldn’t be that bad, mostly coding, since the art is all relatively simple. Who knows?

So, while shopping for pizza dough at the co-op with Shelly, I came across this gem:

Bluebeard’s Original Beard Wash. For you scruffy pirate’s out there (I’m lookin’ at you Will), only $14.00. :O

If you’ve been following Blizzard’s hype the last few days leading up to the Worldwide Invitational, you’ve seen their splash page slowly evolve:

Pretty cool. This stunt had pretty much the entire internet in an uproar about what Blizzard is announcing. Unfortunately for speculators, angled eyes with a furrowed brow is a common trait in several of their characters in all series. Is this Arthas, the Lich King, announcing the open beta for Wrath of the Lich King, WoW’s latest expansion, a Protoss revealing some new information of Starcraft II, or is it the face of the Lord of Terror, Diablo? Not only were all three camps fighting over what information it could possibly be, it didn’t help that the runes embedded into the ice were also from Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo.

So last night, I explain Blizzard’s stunt to my girlfriend and how everyone’s freaking out about it. She’s not familiar with Blizzard, but she’s heard of their games, so I gave her a quick background on them and their development philosophies, and told her that tomorrow they’re announcing something huge, and this splash screen will reach its conclusion and I’m really excited about it. So I close Firefox, boot up Everquest 2 for her (more on that later), and get some sleep.

I hop in the shower in the morning, preparing myself for the day of moving out of our place, meanwhile she checks her emails and Facebook and what have you. I come back into my room as she says, “Blizzard.com is doing something INSANE.” and I rush over, covered with only a towel, jaw-ajar, screaming, “WHAT?!?”

Hell yes. Oh, the sleepless nights I’ve had frost bolting my friends and learning the lessons of meleeing a lightning enchanted fiend. I look forward to you again. I sense a Diablo II night coming up.

Conor expressed dissatisfaction with their art direction, and how it’s more WoW-esque than the prequels, but after giving it a look over, I’m pretty happy with it. While it’s not as gloomy as the originals, it gives the production-flair seen in WoW and Starcraft 2 with insane particle effects and brings Diablo to life with the same techniques seen in WoW without lowering the urgency and dark matters at hand (like destroying the Lord of Terror and his brothers). This is just from the screens I’ve seen, and I’m sure Conor will disagree in a post of his own (who, to be fair, is more of a Diablo fanboy than I am. I just kinda drink the Blizz Kool-Aid).

After watching the ten-minute gameplay trailer, it reminded me of something I heard Rob Pardo, Executive VP of Game Design at Blizzard, say during a presentation at the GDC this year. This guy pretty much had a hand in designing everything that came out of Blizzard after Warcraft II, and he discussed some design challenges facing the MMO behemoth, World of Warcraft. I’m paraphrasing but, one point he brought up was:

You need to make every player feel overpowered, without actually being overpowered.

I took so many notes during that discussion, shit. But the point is, everyone wants to be a badass. After watching this trailer, the crushing sound of destruction combined with the luminous particle effects with each swing of the Barbarian’s axe just gave the illusion of complete annihilation. I’m sure this demo had weaker enemies than one will actually face in combat, but even if the player wasn’t mowing down zombies, the visual and audio feedback from each skill was enough to show the idea that this character is strong. And a badass.

Also, there was a little cutscene featuring an old friend.

Barbarian: Cain… You still live.

Deckard Cain: Ah, there you are! The writings in this place are incredible! Come.. stay awhile and–

Barbarian: It’s time for shedding our enemy’s blood. Not idle talk.

Deckard Cain: Gah… No one ever listens…

We will see what Blizzard has up their sleeve. I’m still waiting for their unannounced MMO.. which better be Universe of Starcraft.

Also announced at the WWI is that Starcraft II won’t be here this year. Sadface. :[

Three roommates have vowed to play through seven Mario games (SMB, SMB2, SMB3, SMW, SM64, Sunshine and Galaxy), back to back, until they’re all completed for charity. On their website, they have a live feed of their room with a picture-in-picture of their gaming progress and a chatroom with over 400 people in it at the time of this post. Going from 3pm eastern until whenever finished, these guys have already raised $800 some dollars in only an hour! And they’re only in world 2 of SMB3..

I’ve always loved the Child’s Play charity. I should do a Mega Man version of this.

EDIT:

Holy shit, $2616 raised at this point! And only on Mario 64, keep it up guys.

Getting a tip from FOH shows that Mega Man 9 has been announced for WiiWare! This may be the drive needed for me to play the Wii again. After doing some internet snooping, it turns out that Nintendic has the latest issue of Nintendo Power, which has a bunch of screens and the inside scoop on the latest game in the Mega Man series.

Personally, I couldn’t stand most of the GBA games. The Mega Man Zero series was confusing as hell, tried to integrate some kind of choose-your-own-adventure stories, not to mention frusteratingly difficult. The Battle Network series was okay, for some kind of Pokemon-esque RPG, but it sure as hell wasn’t a Mega Man game.

Give me something from the original Mega Man series, or from the SNES spin-off into the future Mega Man X series, where each game had 8 Robot Masters (or Maverick Hunters!), clear objective of getting to the “end of each level”, and sling yellow pellets everywhere to downright awesome music. Unfortunately, the later episodes in the X series were made on the PSX and PS2 platform and were pale shadows in comparison to the strong robot fist of X, X2 and X3, and the later games in the original series shared the same watering-down fate. So what am I expecting from Mega Man 9?

Well, apparently Mega Man 9 is being done in “retro-style”. Lead man of the game, Keiji Inafune of Capcom says this game is for the old school fans.

From Nintendic,

Inafune claims that the simple fun of a classic Mega Man game “doesn’t fit into the grandiose and expansive world that the consumer gaming industry has become, and so you have to make games that match the current expectations.”

And thus is the reason for the Virtual Console and WiiWare being a perfect fit for the latest Mega Man game. It’s about time; there hasn’t been a new game in the series since 1999. And now it’s back, with old school graphics and old school music, with new bosses, such as:

• Magma Man
• Galaxy Man
• Jewel Man
• Concrete Man
• Horney Man
• Plug Man
• Tornado Man
• Splash Woman (Wat!?)

If you know me at all, you know that I am currently going insane over this news, smashing my head against the wall, with a hand holding my cell phone high, screaming along to my Mega Man X2 ringtone. I don’t know how else to show my anticipation.

Inafune says:

“The moment you’ve been waiting for is here! We’re not just giving you Mega Man 9, we’re giving you a new NES game. This is a game that brings back the fun of the old games, and I hope you all enjoy it!”

Sweet chipset music to my ears.

Dr. Richard Bartle, Granddaddy of the MUD, was recently interviewed by Massively, criticizing on the state of MMO’s, namely what he’d change about World of Warcraft.

Steve Danuser, designer from 38 Studios, noted on the generation gap now existant in the MMO genre, giving it props for being old enough to have this gap, and acknowledging the differences between the two camps of MMO players:

What this boils down to is that you have the Old Guard protecting their sacred cows, and the New Guard (many of whom have World of Warcraft as their primary or sole point of reference) questioning their elders. This pattern should sound familiar, because it happens in every generational shift around pretty much every art form. Congratulations to the MMO industry for finally being old enough to have a generational gap!

Bartle, representing the MUD camp, and being one of the ten-million World of Warcraft players, had a lot of criticisms for Blizzard’s MMO, in the realm of things he would change about the game. While his ideas are solid from a design stand-point, not all are necessarily the best way to go about implementing “better” functionality in an MMO.

One change he’d make is the ability to Buy things on the Auction House. You can put up 10 Bolts of Cloth on the AH for 10 gold, but the ability to put up the request to buy 10 Bolts of Cloth for X gold should also be available. Several other games have implemented this feature (Everquest comes to mind), and Bartle demands a reason for not having this available. Maybe it’s to force players to interact with each other in trade channels? Who knows, but I wouldn’t consider it an abomination in design that Bartle seems to present it as.

He next goes on to criticize WoW’s first expansion’s introduction raid zone, Karazhan.

There was absolutely no need for Kharazan to have that kind of hardcore raid attendance thing. There was no need for it. Why can’t you PUG it? It’s got five different sections. There could have been five separate instances. Why?

I’m not sure I even understand this. Blizzard claimed this to be one of their finer achievements in terms of The Burning Crusade, a 10-man intro raid zone, and Bartle would rather it be split into five different single-group zones? Single-group zones already exist at this point in the level 70 game.

Blizzard has done an awesome thing from my now-casual-MMO-gamer perspective; as the age of a raid zone increases, so does the ease of entry. This means the hardcore raiders will always be at the newest zone, draining it for all it’s worth, and the casual raiders will be raiding zones that were once cutting edge. During The Burning Crusade’s launch, Karazhan was exclusive to the hardcore for a few months, but as they moved on to harder zones, the casual raiders were easily able to organize and even PUG Karazhan. What does Bartle have against entry-level raid zones for the casual gamer? There is nothing hardcore about Karazhan, ask any WoW player from any playstyle.

I never played any MUDs, that was before my time, so the generational gap I most feel is from the Everquest era to the World of Warcraft era. The unforgiving slaughter machine that is Everquest made many players hardended and gave them a form of entitlement to everything they earned, and subsequently, felt that if they had to go through something hard at one point for item X, everyone else has to as well. World of Warcraft eased up on this, and felt that it was useless to restrict raiding to hardcore players only, and lowered the entry-requirements to the entry-level raid zones as the hardcore players progressed beyond it, something hardcore players and players from the Everquest era sometimes strongly disagree with.

While World of Warcraft isn’t the perfect game for me, they have made some strong design decisions, and to criticize against an entry-level raid zone for not being split into several single-group instances, essentially taking away the ability for casual players to raid, seems kinda silly.

While we are currently in an odd era of BSC2 (or Before Starcraft II), characterized by perpetual anxiety and waiting and an insatiable fiending to zerg, this may be the cure for the itch until the second coming of Kerrigan occurs.

J!NX Shirts are selling Starcraft shirts that look pretty awesome. Now to decide which one I’m going to get.

I am such a Blizzard shill.

So, being only one week since I technically graduated, I’m still feeling restless without a job. Having been looking and preparing over the last year, doing everything I “should” be doing, like attending conferences and networking events, being in the labs constantly, get to know people in the industry, and such like that, it’s just frusterating to see classmates enjoying themselves, not worrying about a job (or content with freelance and abundant web developer positions, I envy you). Aaron just (probably) got a job in NY doing some 3D modeling and scanning, and he’s super psyched about it, ultra grats to him, he deserves it, as his job hunting efforts rival mine.

So, feeling devoid of motivation, I came across someone on one of the many CGAcademy boards that is new to modeling, but was looking to see if anyone was interested in rigging it it so they could start animating it. Turns out this guy is also a recent graduate and looking to work on some personal stuff, so we’re totally in the same boat it sounds like. I make a rig, he makes some animations, win-win!

He was looking for a cartoony rig with stretch and squash features and such to go with the cartoon-style of his model. Awesome! I’m all over this, I need more practice rigging and this would be a great portfolio piece, and I have never done a full cartoon rig. Let’s do it! He sent me the MooM 4.0 rig for inspiration and said he liked a lot of the features on it. After looking through it, it did have plenty of things I would want in a good cartoon rig:

• Independent toggleable/blend FK/IK controls for arms and legs
• A waist control, separate from the COG node (something I really need to finally do)
• A suitable facial rig (nothing too extrodinary, but works great)
• Foot and hand controls: Your basic heel and toe rolls for the feet and master curl, spread and twist for each finger, as well as individual knuckle curls, in addition to a master hand controller with master controls for all of these things for all fingers. All pretty much the norm, but it’s a good bunch.
• Stretchy arms and legs in both FK and IK modes.. and spine!

So all this is looking great for inspiration, but there was a few things I wanted to add, and after talking to the animator, he was all about it:

• IK/FK snap: I’ve made a MEL script before that autocreates an arm with IK/FK blend and snapping ability, so I can do this and the animator seemed really interested in it as well!
• The FK controllers didn’t move in accordance to the stretches, so I’m gonna try to add this if I have the time.
• The MooM rig had a disconnected hierarchy, also, something I’ve never done before, so going to give that a go. After talking to my Character Animation Professor-Grad Student-Mentor, Matt Smith, he gave me some tips so hopefully it’ll all be good.

Even if I make a rig for this bear almost identical to the MooM rig, I’ll still be proud of it: It’s a nice cartoon rig. If I can add those additional features, I’ll feel like a rigging badass. Will post updates as they come!

Keepin’ up with the Joneseses.

Had to think of some kind of icon to represent this blog, so I stuck with the heart again, ’cause, ya know, robots need love too.

But I decided that wasn’t metal enough.

So now it’s puking rainbow vomit.

I changed the iTouch/iPhone option to have a large image of it, so if you’re checkin’ this out on one of those (I’m looking at you, Will) let me know how awesome it is.

Pyros are getting some love in the form of the latest update released by Valve for the arguably most balanced game since Starcraft. Adopting an episodic form of releasing content, Valve is in the process of retooling each class with additional achievements and weapons, at the rate of one class every two months or so.

Free content updates for an already balanced FPS that I can pick up casually and hop on to backstab some roommates or snipe some n00bz?

Hell yes.

Slowly becoming the norm in the MMO industry with their large updates every few months, let’s hope developers of the FPS and other genres adopt this method of releasing content, instead of bundling it up all in one go.

Following the new medic weapons and achievements update, the Pyro is the second class in line to get tweaked. In addition to the three new Pyro weapons, their main weapon has also gotten an update.

By hitting the alt-fire key, the Pyro is able to produce a blast of compressed air that knocks enemies away, and redirects enemy projectiles.

And the new weapons, unlockable via achievements:

The first Pyro unlockable is The Flare Gun, which replaces the shotgun. It allows the Pyro to ignite an enemy at long range, but does require careful aim on their part. It’s particularly useful for causing havoc on Snipers and Engineers who want to keep their distance.

The second Pyro unlockable is The Backburner. This flamethrower is built for the Pyro who likes to ambush their opponents. It removes the compression blast capability, instead guaranteeing critical hits whenever it’s used on an opponent from behind. To aid in survivability, it grants the Pyro an extra fifty health.

The third Pyro unlockable is The Axtinguisher. This mighty axe guarantees critical hits on any enemy that’s currently on fire, although it’s significantly weaker against enemies who aren’t. A great combination with the The Flare Gun, or with another Pyro buddy riding alongside doing the igniting.

The compressed air add-on could bring some more balance against long-range enemies, and the new weapons open up several new possibilities in playstyles, but I guess we’ll see in time what works and what’s unbalanced, but it seems to be some new fun ways to do this whole Pyro thing.

And of course, the achievements. While some are the standard achievements gained through normal gameplay (Hot on Your Heels: Kill 50 enemies with your flamethrower, from behind), some are going to be harder to get (Plan B: Kill 10 enemies while you’re both underwater). And personally, I can’t wait to get this one:

Dance Dance Immolation: Kill 3 enemies while they’re taunting.

To pull a random quote from a Kotaku comment:

WOW

I WILL BE PLAYING THE SHIT OUT OF THIS CLASS

Indeed, TheNocturnalSun. Indeed.

For any of you n00bz out there who haven’t picked up this refined shooter yet, Valve is having a free TF2 weekend this Friday-Sunday. Hit me up on Steam.