Skyrim

Thought I'd have a wee break from the coding to write a short piece pertaining to my favourite current flavour of the month Skyrim.

Yes, I honestly thought Dark Souls alone would tide me over for a long, long time, but I bought Skyrim on a lark not really thinking I'd get into it and what eventuated was Dark Souls gathering dust in the corner for the following 3 weeks.

Let's start with the shitty stuff so I can go out with the good.

Skyrim has bugs. The PS3 has a massive, game-breaking (and heart-breaking) lag bug. Your first 60-100 hours will go by smoothly and then you'll start noticing the game freezing consistently, and this gradually worsens until you can't play anymore. God it sucks. It's like having a free train pass that's revoked at half-day and you get kicked off.

As a programmer I can probably guess that the lagging issues are born from the constant fetching and organising of data properties of the zillions of random world objects as they're moved about during play. Tricky one to fix unless you want the game to reset certain objects back to their source points. I'm not holding my breath that they'll patch it efficiently.

The fighting is still absolutely shit. If you had to compare Dark Souls to Skyrim (even though they're chalk&cheese IMO) then this is where Dark Souls wipes the floor with it. It's so naff; you can't tell if you've landed a hit, strikes don't have real sense of impact, and it also seems like the collision detection is a bit off at times. It hasn't improved a great deal from the Oblivion days.

Now don't get me wrong, I still love Dark Souls and I have no doubt I'll be back trolling on it in due time, but Skyrim is ultimately a more lasting and engrossing game. You can't really escape the arcade feel of DS, and despite the best attempts of From to make it have a more open-world feel it's still pretty linear at the end of the day. Skyrim on the other hand is the pinnacle sandbox experience of the generation. A mission can be completed in many ways; the main quest can be abandoned in exchange for random exploration; live to be saviour or consume the world with malice. The replay value is insane.

Anyway enoug blathering on about the obvious bollucks most observers have plucked out in their reviews. We all knew what Skyrim was going to be; bigger worlds, better graphics/less stock dialogue, awesome character development perks. So I'll just talk a little about what impressed me.

The graphics are *so* much better. My Orc looks bulky and muscled without armour- someone put the artists through anatomy class this time round. The mountains look mighty impressive from a distance, with vapour whirling off the high peaks, if you couldn't actually go visit them you'd think they were prerendered animations. And generally the weather systems are very well-handled, beautiful particle effects. You'll want to get caught in a snowgale because it looks so damn *good*.

The audio is great. I mean it's legendary. I love the getting the dragon words, the crescending 'HWOAAH!!' as you approach and begin to absorb the power from them. Not to mention the soundtracks, that are so brilliantly composed with large choirs- so appropriate.

And on that note if I had to pick out the highlight of the game it would have to be the ambience and ethereal poetry of the graphics and audio together; it is simply jaw-dropping at points.

I mean there was one moment when I was running around the plains of Windhelm deep at night, the breeze was blowing serenely through the 3d grass, I looked at my gorgeous in-game wife Adele The Huntress and the incandescent red moon shimmering behind her, Kyne's Peace track playing in the background, and a kind of rush of awe swept over me like I was at DisneyWorld watching the fireworks. I felt at that moment there aren't many other games take me out of my boring life like this one. The game has some real celestial POWER that's hard even to verbalize. More game studio's should definitely aim for that. The guys at Bethesda have a kind of Steve Jobs-like grandiose approach to the atmospherics of their games that I truly appreciate. Craftsman to craftsman, I'm like an amateur magician awed by the skills of the masters playing and analysing the skill that went into making this one.

Anyway, that's what games are for me; portals to the imagination, founded not only on fun gameplay mechanics, they're also platforms for virtual world-building and the illusion of limitless possibilities. The better technology we work on, the closer we inch towards actually stepping into the fleshed-out creativity of people's minds. I can't wait to see what's on the cards for the next 20-40 years.

Last thing I wanted to say is- It's so much fun to be evil in this game. I love getting cheap thrills by robbing people and murdering innocent wandering cattle in the forest ranges. This is a fun troll game. It's a shame it isn't multiplayer, imagine what a laugh it would be to ambush people on the roads with a bunch of mates? I'm sure it'll happen sooner or later.

I'm also blown away by the epic dragon battles, they're cinematic, gripping events and mad fun. My only is that it can be a pain in the ass chasing the bastard until it lands, but it's a small price to pay for the fun of the event. Those dragons kick the shit out of anything seen in Monster Hunter, that's for sure. It just saddens me that my daily allocated time for playing Skyrim is essentially 'till it crashes'.

Okay, back to work. I'm hard at work with Insanity 3; designing the dialogue manager but at the same time I'm a little strapped for the old $$$ these days; therefore I'm power coding a couple of smaller games at the mo. 

Nathan Langdon (Complete)

Phew! Well I have basically blown the first month of Insanity 3 development on escalating my Zbrush/3ds max mastery. Definitely approaching an intermediate level of skill with both programs now.

I'll add more to this post later on when I have a minute to type, watch this space!

Early design concepts for The Insanity 3

Happy New Year!

Just a little post about horror game concepts and my ideas towards the game.

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Fear of the unknown is the really the key to any good horror movie/game. Murky darkness in a claustrophobic environment;moody ambiance, and the occasional glimpse of something quite terrifying sparkling in the shadows.

The trouble with the Point'n'Click genre is that it doesn't lend itself too well to the edge-of-the-seat effect and sweaty hands. There's only so much you can do with static screens and shockers- therefore the third game will definitely lean more towards being a first-person adventure that borrows elements from P'n'C games yet maintains a more dynamic atmosphere and includes First Person Shooter events that you wouldn't see in other games of the genre.

Here are a few elements featured in the third game that will (hopefully) intensify the dread you get while playing.

-Quite soon into the game you'll be informed that something is hunting you in the village of Weasel Marsh. Think you can go take a pee and come back without seeing a 'Game Over' screen? Think again.

-The main character of the game Nathan Langdon carries a nine-chambered Smith & Wesson that will require a manual reload from the player. It has infinite magazines but you'll definitely have to practice getting good at the reloading to get through the boss scenes.

-You are NOT safe during captioned dialogue scenes. Some characters you may have thought were neutral will attack you suddenly after certain events have been triggered. You'll always have to have your firearm at the ready- just in case.

-Not 100% on this one yet, but the game will likely feature a game play time system. Certain events will be activated depending on how long into the game you've been playing for.

Hopefully these will help build up a better fabric for a truly terrifying horror game.

The main thing I want to 'sell' in these games is the story itself and the fun of puzzle solving, therefore I don't want people to get hitched up by scenes that require too much gamer skill (eg. The Machine- Insanity 1) . The puzzles themselves can be challenging -there's always walkthroughs- but skill can't be helped. However, a nice concept that has been used in some games of late is to have parts of a game where fast reactions and dexterity *might* get you through an event, but there is always another way if you use your brain. The Insanity 3 will feature some seemingly impassable shoot-outs, forcing the player to wonder if there isn't a simpler method to get through. The cool flip of the coin here is that players who are hardcore gamers will enjoy the challenge of battling extremely tough enemies and perhaps even get a special trophy for it.

More later-

p.s. The Prometheus trailer looks exciting doesn't it? Go YouTube it if you haven't seen it yet.

I actually pinched the 'alarm' sound effect from the 1979 Alien movie for a scene in The Insanity 2, when *Spoiler* Nathan Langdon gets abducted by Project K at the end. Thought I was safe as the movie is years old and nobody would recognize it, but they reused it in the new movie trailer- Ooops! Guess Ridley Scott thought it was creepy as hell too :-)

First Draft Insanity 3 characters

Crow character. Will be adding wings and some feather textures.

BearWolf.

Early Nathan Langdon

Still breathing...

What I've been up to...





-in case you wondered.

This entire month I have been carefully devoting myself to mastering Zbrush and 3DS Max, in order to quicken my workflow and err, well for nothing more than shits&giggles really?

I've also been exploring some creative rotoscoping techniques using biped with mocap applied prints and layering over them with hand-drawings. I busted my nuts on Rebuild 2 so instead of going straight back to working on another mega-project like that one, I thought I'd do some training instead.

Programming languages are pretty easy for to me to pick up but some of these high-end 3d modelling/animation tools (Maya, Max, SoftImage) phew!!! They are simply out-of-this-world complex to get to grips with, and it was only finally this year I decided I to buckle down and actually learn them properly instead of using the mish-mash of techniques I basically taught myself over the years. I thought I could spare a month or so to truly accelerate my knowledge of their use and so that's what I've been up to. I've been through tons and tons of video tutorials, books, conversations with artists in forums, etc, you name it. Literally going through the A-Z of tutorials out there and patiently learning about everything the software has to offer. The result after a lot of head-scratching is that I'm definitely getting better! Funny to think 2 months ago I had never touched Zbrush and now I feel like an old hand at it.

I figure the better I get at this shit now, the better 'The Insanity 3' and all my future games are going to look. One added bonus is that you can always upload any unused objects to sites like TurboSquid for a bit of pocket change; so who knows, maybe it'll result as another notch on my bow when it comes to passive income. Yep, if you're going to pick a hobby, design online games or art assets. It's win/win, baby.

FYI, the essence of the model to game engine pipeline goes like this:

Paper Sketch.

Sculpt High-Polygon model in Zbrush

Retopologise (Polygon reduction and structural simplification) - get it under 5000 max 10,000 polys

Add finer details to high-poly model.

UV map

Bake Normals

Make textures with combination PolyPaint ZAppLink linked Photoshop

Export it all to 3dsMax, add Specular/Light maps. Biped or Bones for complicated characters that don't resemble humanoids. Add mocap info.

DONE

Of course, you don't need 3d objects in Flash but I'm using a lot of prerendered stuff in my own games in order to get perfect animation and a 2.5d look. And besides studying this stuff is fun.

I think all this sudden passion stems from playing Dark Souls. Perhaps the tremendous art in the game kind of struck a spark in me. Games are something that I'd like to come back to in the future and feel a sense of pride and achievement over, and since I do have a day job it's really not about the money for me at all. If it was I'd be churning out Tower Defence rip-offs, not spending the next 3-6 months working on a game that I know isn't going to make me squat.

So what I'm saying is Insanity 3 may or may not turn out to be a great game, but visually it will be something worth experiencing.

And at the end of the day my games are essentially my portfolio. If nothing else it's nice to whip out the Iphone at parties and show people what I do outside of teaching English. "Hey baby, I bet you like guys with good polygons". Err...well that might work with some ComicCon poon, heh.

Aaaanyway, the good news for you peeps who keep nagging me about when Insanity 3 will be out is that I'm gearing up to get started on it like, right now. I do have another fighting game project in the mix, as I've mentioned before- but likely I'll be working on some elements of Insanity 3 starting sometime this week, speaking of which that image of Beardy up the top there is an early model of an official Insanity 3 character, Guymon Wolfden- one of the earlier characters you'll come across in the game. And the guy below him is a rough for, well guess who..

Speaking of Rebuild 2- check out the new gallery I've added to the blog here. You can even comment on the pics so please, tell me how much my art sucks, lol.

Dark Souls came in the post yesterday-

Ohhhhh yeah!!! The time has come. Six months of salivating over screenshots leading up to this.

Wow, what a game. Once in a while I feel drawn against my will to pop open the laptop and review really impressive games that I've played. Well I'm probably half-way through this one as we speak, and I can say in no uncertain terms that Dark Souls is absolutely one of the *best* games I've ever played, on so many levels. Screw working on my own game- which is what I should've been doing this weekend. I think I must've clocked in about 7 hours on DS yesterday.

As a single-player game, I felt that DS is superior to Demon's Souls- it's 'spiritual' predecessor. You can feel why they didn't just call it a sequel, item name-swapping aside, it has a much more open universe feel; though they have some parallels you can sense they're different games. Mostly because even though you can feel it's more linear than say FallOut 3, the game is much more in the tradition of exploration than the previous one.
The difficulty level is borderline impossible in most cases and frankly, I love it. Bring on the challenge, bitches. You'll probably die within 20 minutes of leaving the FireLit Shrine and it doesn't get easier from there, so get used to it. You'll progress through this game at crawling speed, literally pooping yourself at every step because it's 'that' easy to get killed. It's like From took the first gamble with Demon's Souls, concluded that *YES* there are people who do not want to be babysat through games anymore and they just went 'F*ck it, let's give it to 'em with both barrels.'

This is the type of game that old school Neanderthal hunter gamers that worship a challenge have been praying for, a roaring BEAST that only belongs in the palms of the hardcore gamer to conquer, and that will send others running home crying for mumma. Yes, I'll bet there's a ton of casual gamers bithing about it's difficulty all over the web. Well screw you noobs! That's what I have to say. Get back to your comfy Ninja Gay-Den and leave the real games for the real men.

The game is a creative masterpiece. Seriously, bravo to the master artist/s who came up with all the character concepts and conducted the fantasy art visuals on this game; they deserve an award. The menu and item designs are ornate, finely detailed and gorgeous. Boss enemies look epic and mythical and they're also highly original in design, going way beyond just being great to look at, some real brainstorming has gone into how these. Then there's the weapons and armour, some of them are the same old but others are just bizarre and leave you clueless yet intrigued. All in all it captures a kind of creative originality you don't see in many games these days, someone has some good chops. A 3 Headed Pinwheel monster, a Skeleton BlackSmith? It's like, wtf man, but at the same time it's brilliant.

Just take a look at the breathtaking art that went into this game here. The graphics have some serious legs.

I didn't expect any less since Demon's Souls was also something to look at, but they've amped it up here to another level.

I love the game because it's almost as if From Software have taken the entire library of Fighting Fantasy books and turned it into a game. I was really impressed with one part called The Catacoombs, the lighting (or rather lack of it) is fantastic, I genuinely had to stop for a minute just to suck up the glory of some of the views (Gargoyle boss area) anyone. Mountain hiking is one of my hobbies and playing DS stimulated my feelings in the same way as when you reach a peak after a hard ascent. The serenity of ethereal quality of certain views enhances the game for me threefold. No storyline, total mystery, everything is intangible and left to the player to figure out. What a great universe; it's so D&D done right. I'm even impressed by the language, I think they must've hired some Oxford poetry prof. it uses rich language that is cohesive with the style of the game. I can't help but wonder how a Japanese team could manage to capture so beautifully something that is so integrally Western.

Gameplay is addictive as hell. Nearly all the enemies require a kind of strategy to beat, and you can never expect to win if you rush around aimlessly attacking; without prior contemplation you're a dead man. Either way the enemies are never too mechanical, they'll still do weird actions sometimes that'll make you scratch your head (after you die).

I mean, the fighting is realistic in a sense, that's what's great about it. Perfect-timing is called for with many of the larger enemies, as a single merciless blow can end your life, shield carrying or not.

And those attacks look good. Swords ping when then repel off the well, shields thud, the battles flow nicely. And enemies will follow you anywhere, kick you off ladders, set traps to stop you escaping. The AI guys did a good job. There's some sections of this game that are so hard I had no choice but to try to leg it through, and what a thrill when you get to the other side.

It lets you know that you cannot just stride through the whole game with your favourite weapon, thinking you'll breeze through it. You will have to observe and experiment, explore to find shortcuts, take risky jumps and pray before kissing your ass goodbye.

And there's no pause button if you think about getting a breather.

The sfx and music, I'm not going to say much about but perfect, perfect perfect. I especially liked the opening menu melody (kind of reminds me of Resident Evil 4), and the Moonlight Butterfly boss audio was a treat, so weird and wonderful.

You can tell that From Software are really opening the book on the way we play multiplayer. I've said it in interviews before and I'll say it again now, in the future we'll see some incredibly creative and rich ways to play online together. Not just PvsP fights or Co-Op but other methods of aligning ourselves with certain groups we like and having it affect the way we play the game. Now we have covenants in Dark Souls meaning you can choose what type of multiplayer experience you want to have. Be a good and gracious person who aids and heals, or like me if you just want to be a badass troll and invade as many innocent games as possible, you can do that and actually be rewarded for it. Genius! But then there's the Blades of the Darkmoon who act as the 'sheriff's' of the game, who enact revenge on aggressive interlopers who keep invading worlds and whose names are compiled on an online list. Genius really.

These guys will win awards for their efforts, mark my words. Best game of 2011 IMO.

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