A Symposium and Progress Made!

The end of the week is upon us. Halloween weekend is here, and relaxing must start! But first, an update on Mami.

So, this last Wednesday saw Team Squaybies present Mami at a Center of Excellence symposium in front of a group of about 50+ people. The crowd was attentive, but our lousy time slot saw a good dozen students leave as they had class at the turn of the hour. Past that, the entire team did very well (though we did speed through a bit too quickly – 45 minutes vs a whole hour). Can't wait until next time!

But, what was presented? What has been done in the two days since then? Well, the amazing Travis Boyd and I have successfully implemented an aura "glow" onto our character in flash, giving the illusion that the world is cast into shadow, with only the most limited smidgen of light surrounding the player. It was a bit peculiar at the beginning, but after reindexing the layers, darkness has never looked so good. The link at the end is where the example code is coming from that led us to where we are.

In other Mami news, Galen Farah has put together a decent filler background, but today's meeting decided that we will see a finer edition created later. The animation of the main character is in the works, the dialogue is understood with the finer points to be finalized this coming month. My job as Quality Assurance Lead will see a lot of work in November, since we are now in the crunch to get a working copy of Mami out to the public for initial testing. Yay me!

The shadow tutorial : EgoAnt Productions. Check it out. He's got some good code!

Mami in the Spotlight

Hello, dear readers!

Apologies for the lack of postings this past week. My excuses are that Mami has been busy with practicing and implementing presentations not only for our peers, but for some influential persons who will be here next week; more on that later. The other justification for putting off posting is that Demon's Souls is plain hard! But maybe it'll finish-up this weekend...

Before continuing, it is highly suggested that previous posts about Mami have been read so that you may get the greatest satisfaction from this blog post!

Anyway, I was talking about a Mami presentation. This presentation will be on Wednesday the 26^th, for a group of peers and Center of Excellence (a far-reaching honor society-like group) members from the area. In one hour of time, we will be discussing how our game works, the ideas behind it, and how blatantly awesome we are.

One thing that can be shown off this next week is the finalized pool of concept for vectorizing our first level spirit enemies, another being the place-holder vectorizations of our main character and Eth, the guardian spirit. The place-holders are pretty refined, but lack an asthetic coating, plus still need to be given internal structure so they may move. These are are fairly simple tasks, but will they be ready for next week? We'll have to see!

The CEX members may also be interested in our mechanics for lighting and movement. The illustrious Travis on our team has been working diligently on getting our character to move in this, that, and the other direction, and is nearly finalized with that section of ActionScript (the programming language in Flash we are using to give ... well, action to our game). Just last week I found excellent source code for giving the illusion of glowing by unmasking (letting us see through) various layers in the game world. That code can be found here. Travis took this and the code seems to be working super smoothly with our own.

Next, what have people thought of Mami so far? Well, I took it upon myself as QA Lead to find out! Last week saw me take a summary of our Design Doc and the mechanics of Mami to random people willing to read them, recording their reactions, thoughts, and suggestions of the game. Overall, they enjoyed the concept of what we're trying to convey, saying things along the lines of how they "loved the name, the OMNON Bar," and "straightforward, interesting design." That was an ego boost, but the reviewers also had some serious questions and critiques to Mami. The idea of merging the aura powers that Eth collects, along with the thought of Eth getting full were brought up. Those and other notices were brought to our attention and quickly addressed. So, we're onto our new iteration of the Design Doc! I'll post the design summary and the mechanics summary later, and would greatly appreciate your input on them.

So far so good. Team Squaybies is relatively on schedule, and we're not letting Mami down! Wish us luck next week, and again, please give the summaries a read once I get them up. Thanks!

After the summaries, I hope hope hope that my next post will be about Demon's Souls...

The Concept of Physical Spirits

Hello, folks!

We kids here on Team Squaybies have been hard at work ironing out the nitty-gritty details on Mami, our brooding game with gluttonous spirits and twisting choices!

This week and last saw a lot of improvement over our design. Serving as QA Lead, I was able to get some initial feedback from people outside Team Squaybies over what their thoughts were on a summary of the Design Doc and the mechanics. The results were very promising, with some decent praise and useful critiquing over what the game sounds like now. Heck, the suggestions and questions asked are going to keep myself and the other team leaders reiterating for a bit!

Past my time asking questions, writing summaries, and submitting reports, I've been assisting the art personnel with initial concepts on a few of the spirit enemies encountered in the game. These spirits are from the "small" category of enemies faced in the game.  The spirits hail from the "physical" level, the first location after the tutorial.  Check them out below! (Be it known that I and the rest of the team have permission to divulge our own work.)

Rocky 1 - Likely to be reused as an "order" spirit.

Rocky 2 - The team voted, and this is our small "physical" enemy.

Rocky 3 - Another "physical" along the lines of Rocky 2.

The Rocky series is a set of 3 concepts that took 14-20 minutes apiece to compose.  Should the "order" mini spirit be renamed?  Spiky seems fitting, but let me know what you think!  All comments are greatly appreciated, so please, leave 'em.

See you next time.  Be prepared for either more from Team Squaybies or a review of the renowned Demon's Souls.  The latter might be a while!

A Cowboy's Story

Red Dead Redemption is one of the deepest games I have ever played. I enjoyed my entire trip through it. Thank you, Rockstar. You've outdone yourselves.

Sigh... Now that that is over, on to an actual review!

If you've been keeping up with my blog from the beginning, you should recall my post about my initial impressions of playing RDR (follow along here: http://gamesoftaste.blogspot.com/2011/09/labor-day-and-rdr_05.html). I gave it praise for its tendency to pull the player in without the player even realizing it. Saying that, I continued to drift in and out of focus with the story, instead traipsing-off into the blazing deserts or the snowy forests to pursue vicious bears or pretty flowers.

I also gave high remarks to the narration of the game. Redemption blows away some of the most respected novels of our time for its wittiness of character, the memorable nature of the cast, and the broad-scoped adventure that is tied nicely in plot twists and climaxes that will make your head spin. Not everything is as it seems, and not everyone can keep their word. The fact that Rockstar allows for the player to become not just attached to a warrior, but to a husband and a father, then rips it all away is liable to make RDR a nominee for an Oscar or Tony or whatever award best fits the video game medium.

Speaking of awards, where's the Grammy for Red Dead Redemption's soundtrack? At the roll of the credits after waging my virtual war, I ignored the world just to listen to the music as it played. The tunes tugged at my already sore heartstrings. Great music in a game? This title certainly a source for it!

Now, even though I made it through the entirety of the story (for those of you who have not seen the credits roll, you have much more to do), I feel like my tale is not over. But what more is there to do? I can't say more without a spoiler warning, but my need to be a crusading cowboy is not satiated. Luckily, a friend of mine has handed over Undead Nightmare, a brand-new campaign set in New Austin (the area of RDR), rife with rascally zombies. I can't wait! This gunslinger isn't holstered yet.

Well, Red Dead Redemption is a superb game. I won't bore you with more pettiness of explanation if you have not at least laid hands on it yet. However, I must beg you to do something good for yourself, and buy/borrow/play this excellent experience like none other. Rockstar's performance here will be remembered for a long, long time.

Thanks for read! See you next time! But before you go, don't forget to bookmark/comment/share this Games of Taste blog. Adios.

The Thing, a Dead Space Predecessor pt.2/2

NOTE:  THIS POST INCLUDES SPOILERS!  Don’t whine and cry if anything gets ruined for you.  A fair warning’s been given.

A few months ago I had the great time of playing through a little game.  You may have heard of it: Dead Space 2, the critically acclaimed sequel to Dead Space.  This game of unremitting terror follows Isaac Clark, a lonely engineer, who seeks to escape the clutches of space monsters.  Other than saying that both Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are must-plays, I must say that the series shares more than just creatures from the cosmos with The Thing.

In the way of monsters, Dead Space’s Necromorphs and The Thing’s Thing both hail from being locked-away in a form of cold storage for years, being accidentally discovered and revived by exploratory teams.  After killing everyone that first discovered the creatures, Necromorphs and Things infiltrate the next group of rescuers (aka unsuspecting saps) to wreak as much chaos and havoc as possible in the hopes to spread across humanity uncontrollably.

Reproduction happens by absorbing organic matter.  Necromorphs can grab bodies or weakened humans and mutate them into viciously spiny zombies that proceed to go make more bodies for further Necromorph infestation.  They don’t stop until a “critical mass” is achieved with organic matter, on the scale of hundreds or thousands of bodies in one place.  Though it isn’t explicitly stated that the Thing can absorb dead bodies, the monster infects any living cell (freshly dead bodies will continue basic cellular processes for many weeks after bodily death).  Those infected cells then can mutate on-the-fly; first appearing as a normal human or animal, they may quickly Hulk-out into massive beasts, full of tentacles and barbs.  Further, if a Necromorph or Thing is chopped up, it may not be dead; heck, it may be even more dangerous, splitting into separate parts to body-rape the poor sucker fighting it!  But both types of zombie don’t like fire much, especially since being frozen doesn’t kill them.

Lastly, the humans, the heroes of the story!  Both Isaac from Dead Space and the Antarctic team in The Thing are essentially maintenance personnel.  Though they are quite intelligent, they aren’t the smartest or strongest people around; they instead use their wits to wield common tools about as make-shift weapons to combat the enemies they face.  Isaac and the Antarctic team, though ingenious, start to go crazy, directly or indirectly, from the encounters with the beasts.  This is most certainly not helped by Necromorphs and Things personifying people personally close to the heroes.

In the end, though, the nightmares from space are seemingly defeated, though the fate of our heroes, and if the zombies are truly gone, is left uncertain.  In their wake, the entire setting of the story is in fire and ashes.  Plagued by recurring horror, our unlikely protagonists are left to carry on in sequels and prequels that are looked forward to by fans of all colors.

So, how does the amazing sci-fi horror of Dead Space relate to the eerie terror from The Thing?  Well, you certainly have read about a few common factors.  These two tales, though they have different entertainment mediums, are frikken amazing, and should not be missed by anyone!  They elicit genuine fear, being superb examples of any horror genre.  I must thank you for the long read, but please let me know in the comments if there are any other connections that can be made, or if you have a favorite section of either Dead Space or The Thing.  Give them a play, give them a watch, and give my future posts a read as well!