Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Blender Rocks

Blender's new interface ROCKS HARD!  Finally I can find the buttons and get stuff done without 30 minuites looking for the interface window I acidentally closed down or turned into another rendering window.

Me and my sis have been working on 3d modeling some stuff for a 3d platformer/action game to be made in Unity.  It's way too early to say anymore, so I must resist the urge to spill out everything here.

It feels so good to be sketching concept art for it again.  Finally there's a use for all this background world design I've been doing to the universe the characters are in.  Even if half of it won't be visible in the final game at all. :)

Last few days were pretty much consumed by learning Blender stuff, drawing concepts for the 3d game, and of course, heavy playing of Portal 2 and all the "The Incredible Machine" games in the pack from gog.com.  If you like puzzle games I highly recommend TIM, any version.  Except the DOS version original might need some warming up before you enjoy it, and a bit of manual reading.  The other versions are brillant though.

As for Portal 2, I haven't finished it yet, but I can safely say that aside from the first 30 minuites of the game where they had to teach newcomers to the series the basics, it's so far been brillant and a good, proper sequal.  And thank goodness, no super annoying triple-fling puzzles(yet).  The puzzles this time around are a lot more about preparing the rooms and falling into portals, not shooting while on the fly.  Which is a very welcome change indeed, because the whole shooting on the fly to continue warping through the rooms was more frustrating then fun.  If you haven't already, and you're not prone to being motion sick, put Portal 2 on the very top of your games to get list, NOW!

I'm also trembling in anticipation of the next Minecraft update.  1.6 is supposed to come out this week, and with it, the ability to make a portal to the Nether in multiplayer.  Much hillarity is bound to be had with such an abusable, if resource expensive power.

Updates may end up few and far between for now, as there are so many other things I am busy with that I rarely have time/energy to write.  I'll try to post any major developments.

Till next time, Gawain Doell, signing off.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

My eyes are shot(not literally, thankfully).

Having trouble reading some of my code, or doing the graphical work for the enemy designs, mainly testing the smoothing of the animations during the actual game, which need to be scrutinized at the per pixel level.  My eyes are on the fritz.

Thankfully, I go to see the eye doc tomorrow, and from there the timer starts till my glasses become useful again.  Been way too long since my last visit evedently.  I think it's been over a year or so, at least long enough where I can't remember the last visit.

I can still drive and play/review games, and thankfully the blogger publishing interface has big enough text where I can write blogs.(though if I get . and , mixed up, it's cause I can't really tell the difference anymore.)  So I'm not totally out of stuff to do yet.  :)

Needless to say, not going to get much work done till this is fixed.  So if I don't update, don't panic, it's just cause I really need to be able to see clearly before I get any more work done. ;)  At least in regards to my MMF work.

See you next post,

Gawain

Monday, May 9, 2011

Update, The Ball review

Just a quick summary of updates to prove this blog isn't totally dead, random stuff follows.

First off, if you haven't played it yet, and you don't mind a bit of blood, go play The Ball.  I just finished it yesterday, and it's a very solid puzzle/action/first person game with a heavy emphisis on puzzle.  The designers clearly put a lot of effort into making sure the puzzles were challenging without being frustrating.  Highly recommended!  It's also one of the few puzzle games that I'd be glad to play again from the beginning a second time, because the puzzles are just so fun to do for the most part.

I mean, you get a GIANT ball nearly twice your height to roll around with a push/pull gun, and that, plus your wits and mind, are your only weapon the entire 8+ hour game.  Brillantly fun!

In other news, I've begun to design/script some enemies for the random platforming project.  Currently working on a simple slime enemy.  It's actually pretty complicated making enemies that need to just be dropped into a level and deal with whatever is generated at the time.  But it's pretty fun to be drawing stuff again, for once.

Till next time, this is Gawain signing off.