Movie/Video game night

Yesterday I arranged a movie/videogame night at my apartment for my friends and it ended up very well. Walter and Edmond turned up at 14.00ish with Isak sometime later. We played a lot of different games, much demos but also full versions of some games.

Demos of games are pretty common at my place, they are free versions of the latest games and are great to see wether the game is worth the money or not and sometimes you come across a game that you didn’t really care for earlier. I found Tom Clancys End War being one of those game, I don’t play RTS games but End War have a cool controll method and it works really well and I thought that it worked really good, showed it of yesterday and it lead to that first Walter tried the skirmish game and after him Edmond and I think pretty much everybody thought it looked cool.

A list of all games we played yesterday, copied directly from Isacs blog:
Mariokart Wii
Mario Party 8
Motorstorm Pacific Rift demo
Haze demo
Tom Clancy’s End War demo
Mirror’s Edge demo
Mega Man 9 demo
Tomb Raider: Underworld demo
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts demo

That was all games that was played here yesterday with Mirrors Edge being the game I was waiting for all day yesterday. It’s cool, clean and really good, it might be the next game I buy but havn’t decided yet.

Later on the evening Mattias, Jyrwel and Emelie showed up just after we watched Apocalypto. Mattias showed us his awesome Mega man 9 skills with running thru the demo level of Mega Man 9 and we saw Kung fu Hustle all of us.

As I said earlier, it was a nice evening that I think most of us enjoyed and I think there will be more of them in the future since everybody enjoy playing games in the class.

Now its only 3 days left until Lisa returns to the northern parts of Sweden and Im counting the days. Love you!

Demo Week **updated**

This week there seems to be many new exciting games getting their demos up on the Xbox Live and PSStore. Yesterday the new Tomb Raider adventure was released, it’s said to be rather good and I liked the latest Tomb Raider adventure, not the remake on the first one but the new one that was released a couple of years ago.

Today, a demo on Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts was released and it was pretty nice. Nice graphic with really sweet music but not a game I would buy I think. Banjo 3 is a vehicle based plattform game, a pretty odd combination but it seems to work. Its the only demo I have tried so far but I will try Tomb Raider soon.

Tomorrow Mirrors Edge demo will be released on the Playstation Store and on friday it will be available on Xbox live. That I gonna try tomorrow and I’m hoping its cool and fun since I’m looking forward to it. But now, I’m gonna go to the teve again.

Miss you Lisa and I’m thinking of you all the time.
Update.

I have now tried the Tomb Raider Underworld demo and I liked it, alot. The controlls were a bit too light but the graphics were stunning and the audio aswell. I didn’t finish the demo thou because I got stuck on a place where I died over and over but the parts I played  I liked. The demo takes place on the coast of Thailand and brought my thoughts to Uncharted, the difference is that the graphic in Uncharted have a plastic look over it the graphic in Tomb Raider looked more natural so they have done a good job with it. I think that Tomb Raider is more adventure focused then Uncharted where you mostly ran a few meters,  kill 20 enemies, run to the next room and do the same again. Its not a bad game but I wanted more platform elements in it like their old Jak & Daxter game.

Problems and presentations

Not now of all the times, my GTA4 disc is troubelling me again, just as it did after the summer vacation and I really wanted to finish it now when there is a ton of other great games coming out and that’s pretty much the only game I wanna play at the moment since I need something to do when Lisa is gone and GTA4 was my main objective, finish it and be done with it. But no, not this time, but I’ll guess I’ll give it another shot later tonight or tomorrow.

Today we presented our assingments in Yrkesroller at school, was an early morning for all of us but I’m used to get up early since its in my blood so I had no real problem with getting up at 7.15 and to be in school at 8.30.

The assignment assign people with different skills to a game project that we got a long time ago. We had to come up with how many engineers we needed to do the game and such. We were given some specific tasks like its gonna be 18 months in production and that is the time we shall plan. There should be at most 20 people in the project and the game is a movie licensed game for families.

My groups endprice was the highest with 10 Million SEK which is not that much for a game I think but we had answers on all questions and we could motivate the high price. It all went on very well and it was also fun to see the other groups presentations and what they had decided to do with them.

And yeah, I changed theme once again, felt it was a nicer one. Gonna watch friends now.

Later!

Another week in Skellefteå

Havn’t been writing anything for a while so here comes an update on the past week, thoughts and events that have passing throu my life.

Last Monday, the 20th of October, me and Lisa celebrated 5 months togheter. We went to Monaco and ate a 3 dish dinner and after that and some time just sitting and talking we went to the cinema and saw Tropic Thunder. Great movie but an even better evening togheter with Lisa. A romantic Monday and a good start on the week.

At Thursday we had presentation of our flash games, went pretty smooth. Presentet my game a bit different then the rest, I chose to present the game as a prototype to a game that I wrote a paper on earlier this year and this game should be like on peice in that game and not talk so much about the code and how I solved all my problems but sure, some of that came up as well.

There was a lot of intresting games that day even thou a lot of them had evolved from the first demo game we built by writing what Erik, the teacher, wrote but we evolved them good and there was a lot of differenciality between them.

Friday was a smooth night with me and Lisa watching Syriana, a movie we had wanted to see for a while. The movie was pretty good but a bit confusing but it might get better if you watch the movie a couple of times, some movies are like that.

Earlier in the week we saw Battle in Seattle, a movie about the WTO demonstrations in Seattle a couple, 10 or more, years back. Strong movie and good, but its scary how the worlds works. Those who have the power to change things are too greedy to change so that the rest of the world gets it a bit better and he or she might need to drop his salery with a million but I think they should survive that.

I think greed is a world wide problem, those who makes money just want more. Do a sportsman like Zlatan or any other footballplayer need to make 10 million a week to survive? I don’t think so, I survive with under 10 000 SEK each month, if I made 10 000 SEK each month I would be happy at the moment. Greed might be one of the reasons too humanitys extinction in the future. Bill Gates who makes more then pretty much everybody else is donating alot of his money which I think more people should do. I myself are planning to become a WWF godfather or sponsor, give 100 SEK each month to save an animal from extinction, could easily be worth it, the problem is that I can’t decide what animal to support but someday I will become a sponsor.

Yesterday, which soon isn’t correct but Saturday atleast, it was a halloween party at Traversen where our scenbrutes had decorated the whole place and it looked really cool. There was a dead guy hanging in one of the bathrooms and an other one laying on the pool table. I drank, for those who are intrested:
1x Cuba Libré
1x Captain Morgan Rom
1x Sarek
1x Lapin Kulta
Didn’t need more and it was a nice evening, stayed at the Traversen and helped the people there clean up since Lisa worked there during the evening and when I was gonna take out a bucket with broken bottles I accidently cut myself on one of them, right between two fingers but its healing up pretty good now.

Each Sunday evening there is a tv-show called Big in Japan or Stor i Japan in Swedish and its so good. Its about Sebastian and Jens who are trying to get famous in Japan in a months time. They are doing all crazy stuff but it’s still serious. Sebastian and Jens are two cool guys and I wish I was more like them sometimes.

Today Lisa went home to Linköping so I’m now alone in Skellefteå for a week. Felt terribly at the beginning but it doesn’t feels as sucky anylonger but I still miss her and will do so until she’s back.

Lots of games

Havn’t bloged anything for a while but I have been busy with schoolwork and other projects. In school we had our last Flash lession last friday and our teacher was happy to see all of our projects and thought we have done well as his padawans. There will probably be a presentation next week or the week after that, I hope that we’ll get to present the blender games to, would be fun to see what people have made. Even funnier is that half of the class isn’t done yet and hand in was a little more than a week ago.

It have been an intresting period in school, we have learned how to build simple or advanced game prototypes depending on how much time you are ready to put into them, I have made 4 games this period, 3 Blender and one flash and working on an other flash project at the moment but its in the concept stage where I’m trying out what works and how to draw different stuff but I’m looking forward to get it ”done”.

My flash game in school is called Ozelot on the Run, a game built on an old game idea from a course we had before the summer, Interactive Storytelling.  Even the new game is about this ”license” but from another perspective and style but if I get it done right it will be cool. But Ozelot on the Run is a top down runner where you avoid stones, logs and fallen statues while running thru the jungle. It’s an okey game, not much to a challenge and so but it works as a school project I think or as a prototype. Gonna try and pull my finger out of my *** and get some pictures up from all my projects someday.

On the other gamingfront which is what games I play and not what games I make, I’m currently in GTA4 which is really good. I bought it at its release date but didn’t play it that much before the summer break due to some girl, then during the summer I couldn’t play it since I wasn’t at home and when I got back to Skellefteå I started it but got dirty disc problems but now when I finished de Blob and didn’t have anything else to play I took it up and now I’m liking it. Liberty City is a wonderful city and I’m really impressed over Rockstars work with the game. All from dialogs and photos to missions and atmosphere is on top. I’m still on the second Island but working my way forward.

I upgraded my PSP last week to Sony firmware instead of Dark Alex firmware since I wanted to play a lot of games from playstation store and to use the conectivity between the PS3 and PSP. Sure it can be done with pirate firmware to but I had a older version and since I am against piracy of games I decided to get Sony firmware instead. So now on my PSP I’m playing Crash Bandicoot mostly but I’m thinking of getting Patapon. I got a hold of the demo from PS Store and its sweet and it only cost 150SEK at VideoGamePlus which isn’t much money for a nice game. I bought Crash Bandicoot last years summer but havn’t played it at all since then, why I don’t recall but I didn’t find it funny at the time being but now I’m in to it and liking it. Like their leveldesign and have got a lot of thought for my own platform game.

The last two days I recieved two new Nintendo Wii games, Resident Evil 4 and Zack & Wiki. Resident Evil 4 might not be my game but it was cheap and I got 2 games for GB£30 which is what one of those games costs here in Sweden but I might sell RE4 in the future but gonna play some more of it first.

Zack & Wiki then, a point and click puzzle solving game which I have been playing for an hour or two today. Its cute, fun and damn annoying. The wiimote isn’t always as responsive as you would like, an example is  just reasently and before I quit when I was going to catch a big fish with a fishing rod. To catch the fish you have to do a certain motion as in real life but it didn’t register the motion when I did it and the fish got away. Tried a couple of times but nothing happend. That’s when you wish that they would have used something else then motions. But the game will probably take a while to play throu since the puzzles will get harder with time.

In the end I also wanna tell the world that I’m blessed with the best girlfriend, she doesn’t mind me playing games at a normal degree and she play games herself, somegames atleast, she plays Hellgate London on her computer at home and at my house she plays Mass Effect on my 360 when I’m working in Flash/Blender/Photoshop.

Lisa you are the best and I love you <3

Return of Ozelot

Soon a week have past since we started to learn Flash in Applied Game Design in school, we have a great teacher who walks us throu how to make simple games in Flash in a good way. We have had two lessions so far and tomorrow we have our third where I hope we will learn what I need for my game.

My game is called Run at the moment, probably gonna change name to Ozelot on the Run since it is a concept game for a project I made earlier this year in school. Its about avoiding obstacles while running through the jungle. It’s all in 2D with a top down perspective. You controll Ozelot with the mouse and you can only controll her sideways, moving her from left or right.

Flash is pretty intresting and fun, its easy to create moving things in it and with the code part you can programme some cool feats or atleast let otherthings happen. I quit Chalmers a bit over two years ago to get away from the programming but I have grown up and ready to learn that now. Sure its far from as advanced as it was on Chalmers but I can use some things from that time in Flash, like putting comments on all functions and also call functions instead of doing the code direct in the flow since it’s good to be able to get to it from other parts in the game.

I also today realized that my classmates are not as up to date with game news as I am, it seems like it’s only me and Isak who actually read gaming news daily and keep up to date with the gaming business. Like today when a classfriend told me that he might buy a Nintendo DS and I said that he could wait until the new Nintendo DSi is released and he asked me what that is. Its been on all gaming sites since it was revealed last week but I guess he doesn’t read as much news as I do and its nothing wrong with that, I just personally think that if your gonna work with games you might need to have an eye on whats happening.

It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that I do know a lot about games, last years I said something about Shenmue 2 and no one knew what game it was. If I mention a game creater apart from Shigeru Miyamoto and the most famous ones people would know who I’m talking about. I mentioned Yu Suzuki last year during a project and no one knew who that was. Fun to tell them that he is the man behind classic games like Outrun, Space Harrier and Shenmue but everybody ain’t as nerdy as I am apperantly.

DungeonX

My excercise in Applied Game Design is now finished, or atleast in a state where I feel that I can hand it in and get a ”Well done” from someone. DungeonX is a game in first person view and your task is to find two keys and to find the exit. Somethings are lacking like you can skip the keys and run for the exit straight at the beginning but since we didn’t have any tutor yesterday who could help me solve the problem, the problem withstand. There are some other small stuff like that but well, its an excercise and I made everything in the game except the python script which again depends on our school who don’t want to give us any tutors that can help us, all the textures are done by me, aswell as all the models.

That became a short one but I’ll try and post some photos the upcoming days and hopefully a link to the game so you all can download and play it.