Just doodling today. Last night I was up late playing some TF2 and CSS. After a days work gaming is a great way to unwind. Some rounds (as usual) got pretty tense and the trash talk was extra vicious. Ahhh good times.
Archive for the ‘Mike's Posts’ Category
Gaming Culture.
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009Twitpocalypse Is Upon us.
Saturday, June 13th, 2009
The last (could be the 2nd too) horseman of internet apocalypse has rode into netsville tonight. No- not the one that will obliterate porn from the tubes but the one that messes up your twitter 3rd party clients, namely twitterrific on the iPhone. This is referred to as Twitpocalypse. It’s alot like Y2K. You can read about it here.
The Pittsburgh penguins had just won Lord Stanleys mug. Sydney Crosby is the youngest Captain to hoist the cup over his head. So I rushed to my iPhone to tell the world via twitter that the Wings failed to repeat the glory of last year. I squeezed the breaking news that would stun the world into the 140 character limit. I even managed to squeeze in the part about Marian Hossa leaving the 2008 Stanley Cup losing team (the Penguins) for the 2008 winning team - the Red Wings only to get OWNED by his former team (the Penguins) in 2009. Marian Hossa = Epic Fail.
In any case upon hitting the send button I was stunned to see a little blue box pop up informing me that an API error had occurred and my tweet was lost. Also my tweet feed was completely dead. NOOOOOOOOO I cried out to the binary gods. But luckily I’m not the only one who watched the game that night, others got their tweets though and the world sighed. Not via Twitterrific of course.
I’m not sure right now how many 3rd party twitter apps are affected by the Twitpocalypse. But TwitterFon was working fine. So I downloaded, installed the free app and asked the Twitter nation if they were having trouble with Twitterrific. I just kept refreshing the search icon and hundreds if not thousands were experiencing the same problem. Even the guys at iconfactory (developers of Twitterrific) showed up after awhile and were explaining to @individuals that Twitpocalypse has effected the iPhone app and the team was on it’s way back from WWDC. I must admit it was quite amusing hitting the refresh button and seeing the developers frantically explaining and apologizing for the inconvenience to as many users as they could. But their efforts were futile. Wave upon wave of dissatisfied tweeters came in at a crazy pace. The anger in some tweets were insane, others sounded desperate but the majority were just frustrated. A good time was had by all…… well some…… me.
I for one will continue using Twitterrific for my pathetic tweeting fix….once they fix it of course. Till then I guess I’ll tryout TwitterFon. Which for some odd reason can not access multiple accounts. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to get my Facebook vanity URL. Good Night.
Falcotron
Thursday, June 11th, 2009Awhile back we we’re getting blasted with requests for custom flash games. Everything from side scrollers to simple match games. With all these games we could have actually created a mini arcade. I came up with a proposed concept to the team, actually Kelsey came up with the look, I just added the robot as an escort to the site. You can see it here.
But having alot of games to work on, we just never got the time to build the arcade site. It’s a catch 22. The silver lining though it was great practice to create and develop a 3D character and it gave great insight into what it takes to develop one. The character was created in a 3D program from scratch, it was created without any visual concepts or blueprint. Something I have never done since. Drawing out a character prior to development is a critical step that should not be over looked. In a weird way by drawing out you character first you get to know him and discover a personality. Sounds dumb but its true. In this case I really just wanted to teach my self how to rig a character. Now looking back I lacked a proper understanding about modeling for the purpose of rigging. Essentially this character was just a bunch of polys slapped together without looking at the final goal. Much was learned off this guy. Like all characters I gave him a name. Falcotron. Why? Well the word falcon is great but when merged with tron just makes it kick ass. Lolz.
Lost DHARMA Screen Saver
Thursday, June 11th, 2009I’m a big LOST fan. In fact I am proud to say that I alone am responsible for getting the majority of the office hooked on the show. A few years back for fun I created a screen saver using Flash that mimicked the computer in the Sawn Hatch. I installed it on all the computers at work and people would walk into the office in the morning wondering if their computers were screwed. After explaining to them that it was a screen saver they’d stare at the blinking cursor and say “That’s it? It sucks”. Well once they caught up watching the show it was like… “dude that’s awesome”. So I created a web page for it and it’s done reasonably well, the screen saver that is. I knew fellow LOSTies would like it.
Since then I sort of neglected the site and the emails I got from it. Not on purpose, just got to busy and forgot about it. I tried to cover all the questions on the FAQ but that’s the one thing about questions, you can never run out of em. I just checked my hotmail account after a year or so and there were some questions about the SS there. I felt bad. So if you have any questions about the SS you can post a comment here or even on twitter (www.twitter.com/eaxis) plus there is an open e-axis.com Face book group you can join. That way I’ll never miss a question. No guarantee I can solve your question but at least now I can see em. Which is half the battle.
Dante’s Conundrum is on iTunes
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
On the other side the team worked out the look and feel of the actual game. All kinds of ideas floated about, from hell fire to puffy clouds. Like any creative it evolved over time. Bottom line we needed a light clean game area and everything else was gravy. Overall creating an iPhone game was a great learning experience.
You can get the game for your iPhone here.
Many thanks to Top Hat Monocle
Dante Dudes are done… sorta
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
Well the characters are modeled and some what ready. One thing the models are missing are a rig. Fortunately we did not need any animation so I just posed them using a FK system over a complete skeleton using IK. Good thing too, time was running out. Originally the characters were going to be 2D. I convinced the team that 3D might be a better investment seeing how once the 3D work was done you can use them again in a series of other Dante games or even some promotional short videos. Rigging though is a complete pain, but that is another post.
Dante’s Dudes
Monday, June 8th, 2009
Here I was tinkering on how I’d like the character to look. I started with the devil character because the angel outside of the wings is pretty plain. The devil you can play with a more sinister look. However in the end it was decided cute works best for the game.
Dante’s Conundrum
Friday, June 5th, 2009
This is a concept for an up coming game for the iPhone we are developing. The game pits devils vs angels on the ultimate battle ground. Well okay mabey not that extreme, unless you consider a grid of circles a battle ground. We wanted to have cute plump little representations for good and bad. I liked the idea of having little guys in rubber suits. This is just a quick idea. I added the background to help the team visualize the over all feel of the game which should be light hearted. More to come.
Painting with my iPhone
Monday, March 16th, 2009
NHL 09 + New Patch (March) = Awesome
Friday, March 6th, 2009
Well I never thought as a PC gamer I would ever own a console, but after playing NHL 09 at work I decided this game alone was worth it. So I picked up an XBox 360, a handful of titles and I must say that I love it. However I should be clear that shooters are still 100% better on a PC. But that is another blog post.
I was having a blast playing the CPU on the new “be a pro mode” and just playing over all. I decided to hook the 360 up to the net and subscribe to xbox live. The new interface update was quite cool not to mention all the down-loadable goodies I have acces to. But NHL 09 took a hit. I sucked online - these guys were just pulverizing me. However I expected this being a noob to the game. But I was puzzled as to why I can beat people who were in the same room as I but yet could not beat people online. I might be new to 09 but not to the EA NHL franchise. One night I’m playing some schmuck who would just skate to my goal line and shoot the puck toward the net. I’m thinking WTF is this guy doing? Well he scored 2 goals like that. That led me to discover the existence of glitch goals. Haxors. Good to see that these guys also exist in the world of console gaming and not just PC.
These guys were scoring at will. I was passing it off the whole time due to playing people who were more skilled than I. Shortly after discovering glitch goals EA released a a Patch on March 3 that eliminated the glitch goals (new ones coming). w00t! Also the stick lift and hit spamming ended because NHL 09 calls 90 % of penalties. They were calling them before but it seemed random. Now for example 2 players chasing the puck down ice can draw a penalty if one decided to check him before he touches the puck. AWESOME!
I still suck (mabey I should stop playing as the Leafs - lol) but atleast now I’m loosing to guys who are more skilled at passing, setting up plays and ofcourse scoring. This is an upside because of course I can get better with honest game play. The most amusing thing I have found post patch are people who quit on me after I score a goal.
Who’s the noob now? LOLz.
Some people however are not all that pleased with the new patch mainly because of all the calls (they won’t admit to the glitch goals). Well tough turtle nuggets for them. EA states at the begining of their sport games that “it’s in the game” meaning they are trying to make it true to the sport. If you watch hockey (Go Leafs) you’ll find that if you pulled that shit in a real game your team would be in the box for at least 2 periods, not to mention you’d be benched.
So thanks EA for saving possibly the best sports video game of all time.
EA Sports World…….OOOF!
One other neat thing about NHL 09 is EA Sports World 
www.easportsworld.com. It keeps track of all your game stats for Madden, FIFA or whatever your poison is. Also gives you the ability to upload your highlights and photos you create in the game. The crappy thing about it is the Avatar…..OOOF! When you play someone online this is what shows up representing you to the other player. Unfortunately there are 2 things wrong with it. First the avatar point system (which is usless) in the game covers my ability to pick a strategy during a face off (Not sure about other games). Secondly the avatar is just a generic 3D dude with lame customization options ( which is what the useless points are for) who I should mention looks like an East LA gang member.
I can understand why EA might not want the user to create thier own avatar. I mean there are only a limited amount of penis’s and other offensive pics a man can take in a day. But why not create a library of simple square avatars. Is there reason as to why you cant pick your favourite hockey team’s logo? If it’s because of the NHL trademarks rights, then the NHL needs to wake up and smell the brand exposure - they need all the branding they can get (States side ofcourse). But outside of that their are other possibilities. Why can’t I take a picture of the custom player I created and use that as my avatar? Flags of countries, silhouettes of goailies or players, a fist or just generic cartoonish icons? As someone who works in new media people like customization. In any case this is me being picky. Overall NHL 09 is a great gaming experience, especially for a hockey fan like me.
