Posted in Games on Apr 21st, 2010 No Comments »
I’m not in the habit of plugging sites that sell things, but I’m willing to make an exception for the re-release of one of my favourite games of all time on GOG.com: Appeal’s Outcast, for $5,99… Seriously, get this game. There still hasn’t been an open world adventure quite like it.
Three years since I moved to France this month! Also, more nifty links: Good animation advice from Bobby Pontillas on breathing, some wonderful art of pixels and Wild Things, moving drawings at the Pencil Test Depot, … and notes, slides, and other materials from GDC…
And the Oscar for best use of gaming nostalgia goes to… P I X E L S
Posted in Animation, Design, Games, Ianim on Mar 22nd, 2010 1 Comment »
For the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing a series of posts on the use of interactive animation in a number of notable games… This week, Gothic. I suggested recently that games could show skill progression in the movement of the player, making the animation more elegant as you level up, but some games [...]
Posted in Animation, Design, Games, Ianim on Mar 15th, 2010 No Comments »
It’s been a little while, but there’s much still to be said on the subject of interactive animation. So let’s continue… Once again, I’m going to be talking about old games as well as new, because we already have the technology, we’re just not using it very much. These are some exceptions… Let’s start with [...]
Some links for perusing purposes: The psychology of avatar customization, Patrick Redding on co-op narrative and NPC interaction, intriguing insight into Valve’s design process, and a cool new animation blog and podcast. Enjoy responsibly.
Posted in Design, Games, Guppy on Feb 6th, 2010 3 Comments »
If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you’ll know that besides animation I also enjoy game design and I’ve recently been tinkering with a little prototype that started as a movement-test and is slowly growing into an actual game. Graphics are placeholder. Haven’t decided what to do for visuals yet…
Posted in Games, Writing on Jan 30th, 2010 No Comments »
This is old, but I was re-reading it recently and there’s some great points about game writing in there… Bloodlines is one my favourite games, a real diamond in the rough; unfinished in places, but community patches have solved most issues and at its best it rivals classics like Deus Ex for character interaction and [...]
Posted in Film, Games, Writing on Jan 23rd, 2010 No Comments »
The story discussion continues. Again, SPOILERS… The heart of a good story are its characters. They don’t have to be likeable, but they have to be interesting and above all believable. Sometimes a character will say or do something that just seems wrong… People change, certainly, but you know that character would not make that [...]
Posted in Games on Jan 19th, 2010 1 Comment »
I mentioned developer credit as a problem the games industry is still struggling with, but another more pressing issue is quality of life. A few years ago “ea_spouse ” brought to light some disturbing development practices at EA, today it seems similar things are going on at Rockstar. The United States seem particularly prone to [...]
