Scifer. Werd.

"No problem, Boss."

This is the only phrase you'll ever need when doing a freelance design job. Because whatever your client asks of you; however deep and unfamiliar the water they ask you to swim across, you feel like you do not want to disappoint. First you promise them the world on a plate ... then you work out the least stressful way to give it to them.

Most of what I've been doing for Locomatrix in Brighton has been in territory with which I'm familiar, from a design point of view. But there is always a surprise every now and again to keep me on my graphical toes. The first of which I encountered right at the beginning, at my interview for the internship position.

Now, I'm a Southampton Solent University graduate who's been taught to sell my talents and ability for all they're worth. I was taught that if I didn't think I'm the best at what I do, then I might as well go work for Ronald McDonald. Consequently, I turned up to the interview with my entire arsenal of graphic design work, 3D portfolio, videos, animations and paintings, expecting to be critiqued and torn to ribbons by an entire board of graphics personnel. Naturally, I felt rather silly upon realising that I was applying for the ONLY art position on the team. "At least you didn't under-impress them," I told myself.

Another thing university has made me 'used to' is having state of the art computer software to produce flashy artwork and animation that is visually stunning. However, there are no need for such things to produce games for mobile phones. Anything that is too detailed, looks like a jumbled, pixelly mess on an iPhone. That, and the phones are not yet advanced enough to show animation that is any faster than 10 or 12 frames per second (which, for those of you who are not familiar with animation principals - is slightly slower than the speed of smell).

At first, I had doubts that this internship was going to give me enough experience, or space to stretch my wings, what with the 3D games element I specialize in being absent. But in less than a month, I have integrated with Locomatrix and helped produce the graphics for a funky little archaeology game for kids. In a way, it has actually been more of a challenge to fit my graphical style to the technological restrictions of the mobile phones and still create something that is aesthetically pleasing. Plus, I got to see my work in action (something that is very rare for a games designer). We drove all the way to a school in Essex to watch the kids dig up a virtual ancient building. Then something amazing happened.

When I saw them laughing in glee at the crazy animations I'd spent the last few weeks , I remembered why I pursued games design in the first place. They were enjoying themselves - and having FUN. That's the only reward I need.

And what with the notion of creating a website on the horizon (something else I have no experience with at all), it looks like there will be plenty of cool stuff for me to do in the future.

To wrap up, I suppose the main message I want to give to all the interns reading this, is UNFAMILIARITY IS GOOD! Your employer would not have hired you if they didn't think you were awesome enough for the job. It's not like you applied for a leech-farming job. University is designed to prepare you to be the best and sell every inch of your talent. But sometimes, people can have different ideas about where your talents lie. It could be an aspect in your skill that hasn't been given much space to develop yet. So, even if you don't think the internship is right for you - stick it out. You're much more employable being multi-skilled than you are as a one-trick-pony.

Hope you're all having as much fun as I am.

-=Andy Etter

It's strange. I was disappointed at first, but after a while I became enraged enough to write a full-blown rant in my emojournal.

Last night, I tried out the demo of the new AvP game. "Oh goodie!" I thought, "I used to play the original back when I was a kid, so logically, this 'remake' will be just as much, if not more fun!" My God was I in for a shock.

My biggest issue with the demo of the game is that it's WAY too over-controlled. This game has what I like to call 'Flight Simulator Syndrome', in that every button on your keyboard does something different. This is just about bearable in a flight sim, because you have time to look away from the screen to work out what the hell it is you're meant to be doing. But now imagine that in a First Person Shooter, now imagine it in an incredibly pitch black FPS, where your eyes need to be CONSTANTLY on the screen, lest you miss the subtle glint of the alien on the ceiling about to chomp through your sweet brainmeats. I don't want to have to organize my fingers in a contorted mess just so I have all the major buttons covered, glancing down every now and then to make sure my hand hasn't haven't turned purple and fallen off. Why? Because it isn't fun...

Second issue would have to be the screenblur. For starters, it's a very cheesy way for game designers to make their games look dynamic and cinematic. They did it in Gears of War, yes, but AvP is a first person shooter. Not a third person over-shoulder viewpoint. I want you to move your head on a swivel now. Roll it about looking in different directions like your viewpoint would do in a shooty game. Does your vision blur and take a few seconds to reset itself to normal sight? No. Why? Because you have human eyes, not a giant fucking video-camera-for-a-head. And d'ya know what? You can't turn it off! Even on the lowest graphics settings, it's still like playing a shooter with somebody rubbing Vaseline into your eyeballs every time you move your mouse. Now I have quite a graphics capable laptop. And it can handle a bit of tasteful screenblur. It can do the blurring of Bioshock, and of Left 4 Dead. But not AvP apparently. Apparently Sega's screen blurring effects are just too epic for my laptop to render. I don't want cinematic graphical issues to get in the way of gameplay. Why? Because it ISN'T FUN...

Third problem is with the combat system, and it kinda links back to the over-controlled point. In Left for Dead, when you take a hit, a little red arrow pops up on your screen in the rotational direction of where the assault is coming from. I mean hell, in the original Doom, the little picture of the marine's face looks angrily in the direction he's being attacked from. In AvP, you get ... a bunch of blood-splatter effects that completely eclipse your view, stun you for a second and - oh. You're dead. Woops. There's no indication of where you're being shot, stabbed or harpooned from. Maybe this is done on purpose, to make the player disorientated. Well it works, but for the wrong reasons. The combat itself has 3 attacking buttons (mouse 1, 2 and 3 ((If you even have a rollerball)) ) and two 'block' buttons. BLOCK buttons?! What the fuck is this, Smash Brothers Brawl?! All 10 of my fingers are already occupied just keeping the character moving, shooting and stabbing. Perhaps I should utilize one of my feet to the keyboard as well. The only other example of an FPS that was this over-controlled I can think of is Mirrors Edge on the PC. You want the player to feel like they have full-control over their avatar, but not to feel like they have to keep pressing the 'breathe' button, or they'll pass out.

The only way I could get any kills in on this game was to sit perfectly still in the darkness, work out people's patrolling routes and camp there, lopping people's heads off with my alien tail as they ran past. But if I even budged my mouse - *SCREENBLURRRRRR* *HUD fills with stupid splatter and stun effects and*- oh. You're dead. Woops. Stopped bothering playing the marine (my favourite on the old game) after a while because of his utter clunkiness and inability to turn in the other fucking direction. No wonder human beings suck against the aliens if we keep sending people made of stale cake to fight them. And the predator. Pf. I couldn't work out the controls for the pred on the original version back in 2000. So bugger it now.

I'm gonna cut this rant short because I gotta head out soon. All of my issues and problems with this game boil down to one of game design. In that Sega has sacrificed fun and playability for the sake of visuals and cinematics. Some people might say that it was worth it to generate a nice, gritty, tense atmosphere. Maybe it's just me, but I find it very hard to be tense and scared when I'm annoyed and frustrated. I refuse to invest in a new graphics card at this stage. L4D2 was VERY chuggy on my laptop at first, but there were options to turn the graphics levels down the make the thing playable, but still very pretty. Seeing as Sega haven't included an option like this in the demo of the game (something which has been specifically designed to draw in all types of players using all types of computer systems), I really don't want to take a gamble that they will include such an option in the final game.

AvP doesn't get any golden badger eggs at this stage. I'm far too annoyed to poop even one of them out. But here, you can have this egg I found in the misty chamber down on the spooky uncharted planet!

Hmm ... it appears to be openin- OH GAWD *screenblurrrrrrrrr*

Oh Valve you cheeky buggers, is there ANYTHING you can't do?

Okay, let's start from the basics, for those of you who don't know. Valve's Left 4 Dead is a tongue-in-cheek gesture towards all the thousands of cheap zombie B-movies that have ever sunk without a trace. But, mix in some memorable stereotype characters like Bill (The 'Nam veteran), Francis (The Bikerdude), Louis (The managerial BLAYK GUY :D ) and Zoey (The college chick who did a major in horror movies) and some of Valve's infallible teamwork game mechanics, where merrily charging off alone and acting like Rambo will get you eaten in a matter of seconds - and you've got a recipe for an awesome shooter. What really made L4D1 for me, is Valve's incredible attention to detail on the characters, the zombies, the weapons and the environment. Right down to the film grain filter over your character's vision, EVERYTHING in the game looked and felt like you were battling your way through the raging hordes of zombies and mutants in a cheesy 90s zombie movie. Most excellent!

It's no surprise that L4D1 won 'Game of the Year Award 2008', along with countless other medals and trophies. And from this tremendous success, appeared the unashamedly named Left 4 Dead 2.

Valve seem to have an odd habit of giving names with multiple numbers in them to their games ... (HalfLife 2 Episode 1 ... What, so like, HalfLife 2 the original? NO! DON'T BE STUPID! THAT'S SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! ._. )

Anyway, L4D2 is set in 'Middle America', just like the original was, but this new sequel has a more Southern feel to it. Playing the demo was a rewarding experience. Valve have kept to the classic formula of sticking together with your team-mates, concentrating fire on the bigger mutants and helping your friends out if they get knocked down. They have also added in some new items, weapons, and 'blunt object' melee weapons, to make close-quarter combat much more rewarding. I'm praying to whatever God will listen that there is a 'Guitar Heroes' achievement, where an entire campaign is completed using only electric guitar bludgeoning. There's also a cacophony of new zombies to excite the internet, my personal favourite being 'The Jockey'. A sort of hunched over goblin-thing that laughs like a hyena on crack, leaps onto survivor's heads and tries to steer them into the path of danger. I can't wait to play as that zombie on versus mode and steer some poor sod off the edge of a building. <3

As far as the whole 'zombies in daylight' thing goes, I couldn't help but thinking "So what?" I thought the whole premise of the game was to play off zombie movies. The majority of these happen at night, so why break the stereotype by having the game set in the day? Besides, Danny Boyle's '28 days later' did it first ... I think.

There's a few problems that Valve decided to leave in. Maybe they'll take them out of the main game, I'm just reviewing the demo, after all. My biggest bugbear with Left 4 Dead 1 was that players controlled by the computer AI had an uncanny ability to run out in front of human players who were shooting a stream of zombies running towards them. When the human players are armed with shotguns and the game is on advanced mode and the zombie hordes are coming thick and fast, this can lead to some pretty nasty friendly-fire incidents. You may be thinking "Well Scifer, maybe you should exercise a little gun-control then! :D " Butts to you. I've had lots of my other zombie-shooting friends say exactly the same thing. I'm not the only one having this problem. It's never slightly-to-the-right of where you're aiming or slightly-to-the-left, its' smack-dap DIRECTLY infront of you, completely eclipsing your firing line with barely any reaction time. This happened multiple times when playing with an AI player in L4D1, and I was dismayed to see that it happens in L4D2, just as frequently ...

Still, it does bring some relief to my heart that mankind is not yet advanced enough to create robotic supersoldiers, the like of the T1000 in Terminator yet. Even if computer game characters are not yet advanced enough to realise that erratically jumping out in front of knife-edge-tense humans armed with 12 gauge boomsticks is a BAD idea - ... that's good enough for me.

In terms of the setting, it seems a bit to flat to me, from a dirty greasy foreigner's point of view. I mean, don't get me wrong; I like the whole Southern twang' to the characters, and the music. Hell, I lol'd as soon as someone said the words 'redneck zombie clown' to me. But for this reviewer, having ALL the characters as Southern Americans kinda broke the line between simple stereotyping and localised racism. It'd be like me making stereotype characters out of Irish, Welsh and Scotsman. It's not 'serious' racism because all 3 stereotypes are white males, but there's enough difference between them to constitute highlighting the stereotypes to create memorable characters. Perhaps I just don't know enough about the different brands of Southern folk in the US, but for me, the characters of L4D2 just aren't as memorable as the chaps of the first game.

To me, L4D2 feels like a spinoff. A GOOD spinoff, with excellent gameplay just like its' predecessor, but a parody nonetheless. However, it has enough drive to be released as a standalone game, without L4D1, so in that respect, it's already done what most sequels can only dream of.

If Left 4 Dead 3 was flung into my lap, character design and all, I'd have it set somewhere a bit broader in terms of its' populace, with it still being obvious where in the world the apocalypse was happening, but never mentioning the exact name. Somewhere immensely crowded like Middle-China, or Middle-Europe. In a homage to the ending of the film 28 Weeks Later, Middle-France would be an excellent setting. A pug-ugly Liverpudlian football hooligan, a pale American tourist in a Hawaiian shirt, a long-haired pot-smoking backpacker from Amsterdam, and a female French fashion student who doesn't speak a word of English; sneaking through the Parisian suburbs, battering zombies with stale baguettes in an effort to get to a helicopter rescue from the top of the Eiffel Tower ... actually, that may be worthy of a movie-poster picture ... :3

"If things get nasty, pardon their French."

But on the whole, I really enjoyed the new zombie-filled goodness that the L4D2 demo had to offer. It didn't leave me for dead, only wanting more; which is exactly what a demo should do. And I know I wont be disappointed.

L4D2 gets 4 Golden Badger Eggs out of 5 from me.



It's not perfect, but that's only because of a few tiny problems that are easily resolved through time and development. Well done Valve, you've done it agai- HUNTER!! *BLAM*

Was just a quick job, but I had a bash at making a 'personas' skin for firefox. May do some more if I'm in the mood. But it's a little tricky trying to sync up your artwork to the firefox skin. (Because the tutorial they give you to position it is a pile of arse.)

Anyway, I made a steampunk flavour'd firefox skin. It's viewable and downloadable here - www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/53729

When I last looked at it, it had about 36 daily active users. So, if you're a firefox user (and feeling particularly steamy), enjoy. :3

Oh GoDDD NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! D:

The author is approaching the last week of development now and needs to prioritise what needs to be done from what is optional. As character creation is part of the learning outcomes, the author spent a day getting Jake's texture right.





If the author finds himself ahead of schedule, he will spend more time working on a normal map and specular texture for Jake. But now, putting the animated scenes together for the final render is the main priority.

The author has also finished animating the 2D scenes in Flash and is ready to put them into 3D Max.



Tomorrow will be spent organizing the 3D scenes, unwraps and textures.

The author believes he is getting things back on track now. He is still trying to keep the workload to a professional pace and only work for 12 weeks, but feels as if he is pressed for time now. It is very stressful to work quickly in the time he has allowed himself.

Still, rapid progress is being made, and the end is in sight.

The author has finished the 3D animated shots with Jake in them. The animation itself still needs a lot of tweaking to look realistic, but the author feels the timings are cinematically correct. Jake also needs a finished texture on his skin and clothes, which the author aims to have finished by the end of this week.



Notice that the author has also managed to put together the moving graffiti-on-walls effect via the use of camera projection. This is done using quite a complexed blend of techniques, which can simply be described as drawing the animated effect directly onto a lens-plane infront of the camera, and moving it accordingly.


It was very tricky to get right, and the effect looks a little blurry in the video, but the author has diagnosed that this is because the output size for the save-files on the projection pictures has to be slightly larger if it is to look nice and crisp.

There was also an issue of cinematics reguarding the 3rd shot in the video. The author decided to differ from the storyboard and produce this alternate version of shot 3, where the spraycan actually falls out of Jake's pocket when he sits down -



The author did this because he did not feel that the video was as dynamic or tense as it could be yet, which is the feeling that is supposed to be created by the dramatic chase sequence at the beginning. However, after critique from his peers, he decided that this action implies that Jake's entire perpose as the creator of Hood, his world and the entire game narrative is trivialized somewhat. If Jake hadn't dropped his spraycan, would he still have created Hood and triggered the start of the game? Having Jake being proactive, stand to his feet and march straight up to the wall to create the main character signifies his role as a creator; someone the player wants to pursue and also seems much more in-character for Jake himself.


The author is quite pleased with the animated pre-render of the 'Dirty-Harry-esque' grin that Jake pulls at the end of the new animatic video. This, along with several other points in the storyboard is one of the crucial, gripping moments as it focuses on character, rather than narrative or gameplay. The author believes that part of good storytelling in films, books and games alike is to base your key moments and camera shots around the actions of the characters. This will stop the story becoming boring or plot-driven. The smoothness of the character model was created using a basic turbo-smooth modifier. As the shot is part of a prerendered animation at the beginning of the game narrative, the author felt justified in using a polygon-expensive tool to create the right effect efficiently and quickly.

By the end of this week, the author aims to have -

- The majority of the 2D animation done in Adobe Flash (and ready to be batch processed over the weekend into 3D Max)

- Jake's full body textures (Diffuse, spec and normal maps) all completed.

- The HUD for the gameplay sequences completed

Then the final week will be spent texturing the rest of the environment, tweaking minor details, rendering and compiling a learning document for the entire project.

The author is confident that he can get it all done in the time he has allowed himself to work.

It would seem that I don't know as much about 3DS Max textures and materials as I thought I did, particularly the multi-layering technique that my tutor showed to me to create the graffiti-on-walls effect. I could say that it was a coding issue and it was not in my interest to design an effective way of making my game look the way I pictured it (being a mere artist), but seeing as I'm the only person working on the entire game, that statement seems a bit irrelevant.

I did a working version of the graffiti texture effect in pre-production, but that was only on a very basic level. In the test, there was only one set of UV mapping co-ordinates, one texture, and one animatable image. Now I have to deal with lots more layers, meaning that all the work I did texturing the level via the use of sub-selection has become un-usable. So perhaps texturing dynamics and understanding of the material editor is another gap in my 3DS Max knowledge.

Well, I have cleaned up the level now, so every object with it's own UV unwrap has an individual material. Tomorrow I need to talk to my tutor as the method he showed me for multi-layering surfaces seems to crash Max 8, and I can't work out why.

This project is really having a stressful impact on me and I'm starting to feel the pinch now. But I've been given the 2 week extension until the 4th of June to get Fitti finished, so I'm going to use what time I have left and not give up working.

I have been active as of late. I'm half-way done on the 3D animations for Jake (having fixed the morph targets problem on his joints as well), and I've also done some of my own graffiti effect brushes using real spraypaint on white paper. This way I can create spray-brushes using the photoshop technique I mentioned earlier in pre-production.


I'm going to try and get all of the Jake animations finished to a reasonable standard by Monday next week, keeping in chronological order with my timetable.

Today I rigged up Jake's bag of tricks using a simple double IK limb solver rig.The bag now follows two controllers. The shoulder strap, which will be held and swung from Jake's hand, and the main body of the bag, which will be animated seperately, folding in on itself and contorting in on itself to the animated physics put upon it.



-

I also wanted to start animating Jake today, but I first wanted to make a few adjustments to the way his joints deformed when certain limbs were bent. In particular, I was not happy with the pinch points on Jake's knees when he ran -


Even with the many rigging tests I did earlier in the pre-production process with Jake's limbs, -

- I thought I had modelled the legs in a way that wouldn't create tight pinches in the geometry. The only way I can stop these pinches occuring is to make sure I dont put Jake in any extreme poses while animating him.

I realise that two weaknesses of mine are character modelling and rigging simply due to my lack of experience in doing them. In the 3 years that I have been at University, Jake is the 2nd humanoid character that I have ever rigged, and he is meant to be realistic. Perhaps it was overambitious of me to choose realism as a 3D art style, but I believed it would add contrats to my showreel and portfolio.

I have been researching for a way to solve the pinch point problem however, if I find myself with enough time to fix it later. One of the ways I could solve the problem is by using the 'Morph Targets' modifier, which remembers certain points the vertexes can "morph" to whenever the mesh is in the right position.

Normally, there would be a large, unrealistic pinch point under these knee joints, but I have added a morph target so that the mesh remembers how to deform when it is in this position -


The only problem I have found with this technique so far is that 3D Max often has trouble with remembering the default position that the mesh needs to be in when other, similar changes to the mesh have been made -


I will ask my tutor for further advice on this technique tomorrow, but now that I only have a month to go before the final deadline on my FMP, I do not wish to waste any more time rigging. When I look at my storyboards, there are very few shots that view Jake from the side, and thus, very few points in the final AVI that will show off the pinch points too much.

Finished the basic animated frames for Hood. These are all the movement orientated ones controlled by the player, plus the first narrative sequence where Hood is 'born' after being created and abandoned by Jake.



I decided to get these animated finished first, not just because they were priority A in my Pre-Production document, but because they were the hardest to find a balance between believable animation and playabillity in a game.

I looked at two puzzle-platformers for inspiration on Hood's animations.

Oddworld, for it's subtle, yet realistic animation -



And Wario Land III for it's quirky, wacky and cartoony animation with fun squash and stretch movements on the main character -


I wanted to try and combine the two styles of animation to create a series of movements that were still cartoony and characterful, but weren't completely over-the-top so that the animation was still believable. One of the problems I predicted was not being able to have any anticipation on the quick movements. Particularly in the animation where Hood jumps, I realised that the character has to leap the second the player hits the A button, meaning that there is only time for a few frames of 'getting ready to jump' posing.



However, after a crit session from my tutor, I was told that in computer game animation, anticipation is not needed as the player creates it themselves, just by pressing the controller buttons. If the right level of immersion is achieved, the animation will be believable even at this, hardly noticable level.

One of the things I need to correct is the transition from the standing still pose to the run animation. I originally animated the running animation first, to test out the secondary motion on Hood's clothing and straps. But after I attended an open day at Blitz Game Studios, I was advised by a professional animator that starting a character's run cycle from the point where their legs cross-over is advisable. This way it doesn't look odd when the character's legs shoot out straight into the spread position whenever they start to run. But now, because of the way the character's hoodie trails out behind him when he dips down in the cross-over, it looks like his Hood goes really rigid when he starts to run. -



I will correct this by simply reversing the positions of the Hoodie when he bobs up and down during the run sequence. All I have to do after that is a few of Hood's narrative animations, then the background spraypaint effects, and the work I need to do on him is finished.