An odd game's (kind of) redesign

Anyone here heard of Terramex? It's a game I've got on my old (and awesome) Acorn Archimedes, which I still love playing. Trouble is, not many people of heard of it. Truth be told, I like it that way, but it'd be nice to see it's weirdness get a little recognition in the odd obscure reference or picture.

So I decided to redesign and recreate in 3D certain aspects of the game. Y'know, as a little warm up for the final year. Here's what I've got so far.

Some characters/enemies (reference pics below).


Top left is Henri Beaucoup (in the middle), who I designed with his chin way too pointy ^^;
Middle right is Big John Caine (to the right of Henri in the pic), who's my first ever attempt at a jaw shape like that.
And in the background's a really creepy looking feint image of Prof Eyestrain (top right in my sketches)

Middle left's a really freaky monster that doesn't seem to do anything. It just had a really unnatural repeating movement and scared the hell out of me as a kid.
Bottom left's a dragon-pterodactyl type thing that flies in straight lines and kills you if you touch it. It can get kind of annoying when you get you're timing wrong on one part of it.

And finally, bottom right is the 'main baddy', if you will (well, I get the comet's that, but it doesn't do much in the long run). They randomly pop out of rocks and kill you. Timing means nothing to them, which is why they're a total wind up. This one's next to the first item you collect in the game; the vacuum cleaner. It flies. Awesome.

Right, now doodles and explainations are out of the way, here's a 3D model of the flying thing I started work on. I haven't got a clue how to UV unwrap it to texture it though :/

Not bad for a few hours work, if I do say so myself. And this coming from the person who had a challenge with Sir Cuthbert and his mad lot.

See the world in Tetris. Or the head, at least.

Some 3D art I found while on my daily roamabout on Kotaku.

Click the image to go to the website.


This is pretty much how I see things after I spend a little too long on Tetris, a close representation of the 'Tetris Effect', if you will.

I'm planning to try out a strange mini-project sometime this week, which'll involve sketches and 3D work, if all goes well. I'll write another post about that in a short while.

I found an amazing animation on YouTube called Draw With Me.



I'll admit, I cry easily, and this was no exception. The built up of the music and the expressions of the characters, along with the message really got to me. The end part's a little....strange, to say the least (once you realise what happened, it's even more amazing though), but I still love how effective it was in showing you what it wanted to show (despite seemingly following anime drawing cliches).

A Rare opportunity?

Bad pun, I know, but throw stuff at me later (when you find out why it's so bad). This week's updates are Wednesday (today, whee), Friday and Sunday, 'cause go figure, I've got stuff on the days I planned up update this blog.

So, a news article on Kotaku reported that Rare is currently seeking designers to help with new games for Project Natal. The strange thing is that because this is a 'new' way of playing games, they're not showing any preference to previous work and design experience, which is a good opportunity for those who don't have much experience yet (okay, now throw stuff at me).

I also found this gallery of various boxart designs. I love seeing all the different ways you can design a cover to something, and often wonder how they manage to make each one so different. It's an essential design technique I still haven't got my head around.

Hopefully next update'll be something that's not on Kotaku, but it's such an easy place for this kinda thing (note to self: find something not games related for Friday)

Finding a 'new' style and a game about a fox

I decided a long time ago I needed to break away from the usual anime style all the time (no way I'm giving it up completely though), but only recently did I decide to give it another crack. Trying to make my work look less anime, more 'my own' (long limbs are apparently my style), this was my first try at something new.




I've alway had issues drawing realistic human faces, even with life drawing to help me, so I kinda tries a compromise. With Japanese culture seeming to pop up a little more lately, I think I could get away with this style for something commercial, if the need calls for it. But we'll have to see. Had some positive feedback from people about it so far though. I'm planning on entering a manga contest this summer in this style to try and get some consistancy from it.


I spent the last couple of days playing a game on Newgrounds called William and Sly, although personally I don't see why the man's name is first, the fox does all the work. It's got beautifully designed graphics and a very smooth framerate, with a great level of exploration and secret areas to find. I'd recommend people take a look at it, I find it very calming. Well, except for when those creatures pop out of the ground at you.


Got to find out my game work and try to find a way to record a run through of my level. It's nothing worth looking at, but considering I don't play FPSs on account of them making me feel sick, I don't think I did too badly for a first try. Well, you'll see it when I can find screencapture software that doesn't make huge filesizes / bad quality.

Quick look at Tomb Raider: Underworld for PS2

Well, I figured I should write about some games, considering a third of my pathway is games design. I don't actually play games like Tomb Raider (I prefer RPGs more than anything), but my mum's been playing Tomb Raider since about TR2's release and has finished them all except for Underworld, which was released a week or two ago on PS2, a couple of months after the current gen releases.

From what I've seen so far, it's really not looking that good. I thought the later release date would give them time to make sure it worked right with an older console, but I should've guessed that wouldn't be the case. One main thing I noticed is loading times. The loading screens (that are dressed as information screens) take up to 30 seconds to get to the game once you've been killed, but it's the ingame loading that's really weird. I got a couple of videos just to show the two ways scenery loads while playing the game.




The scenery doesn't load until about 10-15 seconds after you first see it, so you end up walking in midair. If you hadn't been there before, it'd really throw you off (and personally I really hate glitches where you go through/can see through scenery).




If the scenery doesn't load late, this happens. You get stuck for about 5 secs like the game's frozen.

And this isn't a nitpick, but I found this amusing.



She kinda floats down the stairs. I cut it 'cause there was a load if messing about between the two clips.

I can't really get a good video of the camera, but once again, it's always looking for Lara's 'best' side rather than going to any angle that'd actually help. She can scale walls at angles now, but that makes movements fidgety and a lot of the time it takes a few tries to get her heading in the right direction.

That's what I've seen so far. Probably seems like I'm nitpicking, but it's stuff like that that I'd expect to be at least nearly polished out when the game's released.

What I've been up to

Just a little note first, I'm gonna be making a new background image for my blog, so it looks a little plain right now. And now for the main post X3

Since my second year began, I've tried to do different things. Don't think I've really succeeded, but here's hoping I get to over the rest of the year ^^; Anyway, here's what I've done in my spare time.

First of all, I've been trying to make fake anime screenshots, particularly of Dissidia: Final Fantasy, which I mentioned in my last journal. A single still frame from an anime actually have more detail than one of my pictures that I've spent a great amount of time on, so it's good practise.



I've also been working on my alternate style a bit more, trying to make it into something more unique, rather than it having the same feel to it with it's colouring with only the lineart that's changed.




Which led me to try and recreate this stlye in 3DS Max, which has gone okay, but I still have a lot of problems figuring it out.



I had started to alter the face shape around, but that particular file corrupted this morning (unexpected error caused 3DS Max to crash). Luckily I saved backups :3 Compared to previous attempts to make a character, I think this is turning out much better, although like I said, I'm still having a lot of problems with it.

I've been working on my manga a bit more, too, and it surprised me when I took an older page with my most recent page and compared them. There were so many things I could see had changed in the two years since I started it (going very slowly. Only on chapter 4), but it made me realise how much my style had improved and even how I can improve it further (all the subtle details that are in manga will take a while to figure out).

I'm going to enter this years NEO manga contest again (missing last year due to my operation and needing an extension), so here's hoping my skills have improved enough.

Finally, on a completely non-multimedia related note, I've been making plushies :3 So far I'm just on those ready to sew kits, and so far I've finished a guinea pig, a dolphin, a baby owl and most recently, a dragon (no pics for them yet). I've bought materials to start making my own designs soon enough, so it'll be a fun experiment for me and a chance to do something a little different. My first custom project is going to be Timcanpy from D.Gray-man (who I can't find reference pics for for some reason O.o).

Anyway, that's some of the stuff I've been up to. I could've done a lot more, like trying more animation, but I recently had my animation previews muted on YouTube and it's made me a little paranoid T.T


Oh yeah, before I forget, I never posted the photos I took of my finished board game :o




I just hope it was playable.

Around the net

Yeah, it's the name of an Attack of the Show segment, but ah well :3 So here's a few things I've found on the net (well, what I remembered about, anyway)



I'm not normally into anything to do with Halo, but the scenario was just so unusual and the movements were really smooth and realistic that it caught my attention. Machinima's not the easiest thing to pull off, but the models are well rigged and animated.




Bad guys killing people, good animation and a Disney parody? Sounds good enough for me! It looks like it's jumped straight out of the original webcomic, with each frame looking like a fully detailed panel. Okay, so it gets gruesome, but it works so well :3




Dissidia: Final Fantasy was released on the 18th of December, but it's kept my attention since it was first announced in May '07. The main selling points of this game were that characters from other Final Fantasy games that we've become so used to were redesigned and recreated for the PSP engine, with the graphics coming close to that of the PS2. Also, the combat system was created from scratch, featuring a full 3D environment and camera system, with battles arenas spanning a huge area.



Just an example of gameplay from when the game was released. It also shows a ingame cutscene too. One thing to note is that no motion capture was used for either the full motion videos (intro) or any of the cutscenes and battles. They decided on this as it would give a more unrealistic feel, and they wanted characters to be able to do what people couldn't in real life.

When I find out more stuff, I'll be sure to post it and give my thoughts.

Ball bounce....or not

Is it me or is it getting harder and harder to find somewhere to upload SWF files? :/ If anyone knows anywhere, let me know, 'cause swfup.com doesn't work anymore.

Also, the resizing document trick wouldn't work, so I put it in a movie clip, so naturally I can't even export it as anything else. Joy *rolls eyes* Wouldn't have looked too great anyway, 'cause Flash is having a go at me and keeps turning some of the frames red. Who knew programmes could have rebellious stages?

I didn't get around to making the hammer and ball loop, 'cause I spent most of my time this weekend recovering from 'first week back' syndome and working on a 3D train for next Thursday. It was a real struggle in class but I'm handling it pretty well now ^^

I'm going to a gamemaker workshop and hanging 'round the city square next Friday 'cause Game City's on again :D I missed the last one and regretted it, so here's hoping there's funness to be had.

SCGMDx3

Quick look at the latest in the Super Crazy series, Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 3!

I loved SC2 when it was released, and this 3rd one, although a LOT harder, gives you that smug sense of satisfaction when you kick a really hard song's ass X3 Personally, I've got gold in all but 2 songs (in which case, I have a bronze and a silver), so I'm not too bad at it. It's like a free online alternative to Guitar Hero. If you take out the 3D graphics, the plastic guitar, and the fact that Yahtzee hasn't reviewed it ^^;

Anyway, if you wanna play it, I've posted a link. It's downloadable too, if you're connection's slow.

Kid Playing Through the Fire and Flames on Guitar Hero III

http://view.break.com/422526 - Watch more free videos

We were talking about how hard this was in a tutorial session, so I felt I had to post it XD