If I recall, Star Wars: Droidworks was the first game my parents purchased for me on our brand new Gateway computer ("4GB HDD! WOW! How can you fill SO MUCH SPACE?!") in '98. Since before that point, I'd only played early side-scroller computer games (with the exception of a brief taste of Wolfenstein 3D), Droidworks really captured my fascination. Besides, at that point, we only had some very weak television (just enough to get PBS) and Star Wars was the only science fiction I knew of.
The game consists of one creating "droids" by combining various parts and then painting them as you desired. There were a number of missions that one needed to complete, some requiring very specific droid specs, such as being magnetic. And here Maxis thought that they did it first.
Quaint as the game may now appear to be, I loved it, and I believe that I learned quite a bit from it as well. Note, this is back when I was just beginning to really read (and before I found any fascination in books), and still had but very rudimentary mathematics skills (so in order to finish the puzzles concerning angles and such things, I had to devise a system to work out the correct answer without actually understanding how it all worked--or use trial and error). The game also helped initiate my love for sci-fi and robots.
System Requirements:
Windows 95 or 98
Pentium 133MHz
16MB RAM; 32MB recommended
Minimum 34MB hard disk space
4X IDE or SCSI CD-ROM
100% Direct X compatible PCI graphics card
100% DirectX compatible 16 bit sound device
If you'd like to give the game a whirl, try out the demo or buy it.
So the other day I was going through Drow Tales (a [fantastic] comic I've mentioned in a previous post), trying to catch up, and I came across a certain flash video made by the artists to celebrate the new year. I was stunned.
Why? Well, because it reminded me so much of the kinds of opening cutscenes that played a huge part in making the Thief series freakin' fantastic!
As a frequent reader would know from a previous post, there are a few themes that really snatch my fascination. Let me lay them out here, along with how I got them:
5. Steampunk - Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Thief, Bioshock
Now, on to Thief itself.
One of the most fantastic aspects of the series (the first and second in particular, especially Thief 2: The Metal Age, as that was the first I played) was the immersive atmosphere. Its gothic themes (in particular the mix of magic and technology) really brought the game to life for me. Each level (of Thief 1 and 2) would be preceded with a cutscene where Garrett, the protagonist that one plays as, would discuss what needed to be done. The music, the style of the intro art, it all works together to help one feel that they are a true part of this world (and when the graphics look like this, you need great gameplay, a fascinating story, and deep immersion to keep the player intersted).
The series was developed by Looking Glass Studios (rest in peace) for Thief: The Dark Project/Gold and Thief 2: The Metal Age (the creators of the System Shock series) and Ion Storm (rest in peace) for Thief: Deadly Shadows (also the creators of the Deus Ex series). It was the first "first person sneaker" game ever, making use of a heavily-modified version of the firstUnreal engine (from the originalUnreal Tournament) to create shadows one could "hide" in, as well as the unprecedented "AI hearing" capability (depending on what surface you walked on and how quickly you walked, your footsteps would make a certain amount of noise which could alert nearby AI to your presence). Now, I've Splinter Cell series and tried sneaking part of the Elder Scrolls series, and let me tell you, none of them hold a candle to these classics.
Of the Thief series, Thief 2: The Metal Age was, hands down, my favorite. Thief: The Dark Project/Gold, while loads of fun, were a lot more about being spooked (which is cool) and fighting hordes of monsters, and Thief: Deadly Shadows was much more about the action, choices, etc. In contrast, not only did Thief 2 have the steampunk theme that the others lacked, but it also pitted the player against mostly human enemies, which meant real sneaking. There is very little more satisfying than successfully sneaking through a Thief 2 level, stealing loot, without any of the AI noticing.
By the way, that's another thing that added a lot to the immersion; the AI dialog.
Is there some Monty Python reference in here? I've never seen the movie, so I can't say. Regardless, it's these kind of conversations and situations that one "stumbles upon" that really makes it come to life. That and, of course, the dark, gothic atmosphere.
As seen in the above video, enemies can sometimes really surprise you, and while the shadows and directional audio can help you in your sneaking, it can also obscure enemies and make you unsure of exactly where those loud moans are coming from.
I'm not alone in my love of the Thief series. In fact, even ten years after the series began, there is still a thriving fan community for this game, mostly making fan missions.
Speaking of fan missions, some fans got together and created an unofficial expansion pack for Thief 2: The Metal Age called Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age, which is, in my option, the absolute best fan-made work ever. It is a great example of professional quality in amateurs, and, honestly, almost as good as Thief 2 itself. Even the Thief2X website looks great; I love that gothic design. The expansion pack is free to download, though it requires an installation of Thief 2 in order to work.
Thief: The Dark Project
Windows 95
166 MHz CPU
32 MB RAM
4 MB PCI or AGP Direct 3D graphics accelerator
42 MB available HDD space
DirectX 6.0
Thief 2: The Metal Age
Windows 95
266 MHz CPU
48 MB RAM
8 Mb PCI or AGP Direct 3D graphics accelerator
250 MB available HDD space
DirectX 7.0
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Windows XP
1.5 GHz CPU
256 MB RAM
64 Mb Video Card with Pixel Shader 2.0
3 Gb available HDD space
DirectX 9.0b
In summary, if you haven't played these fantastic games, buy them (or even download them) and do so. If the games themselves aren't enough, then the (literally) hundreds of fan-made missions should be. At the least, try one of the demos.
NOTE: This article contains satire and is not to be taken seriously.
Anyone who has read my blog for some time is aware of how much I despise Apple, Inc. But why? I'm sure that everyone in the world is so fascinated by this question that it keeps them up long nights when they could otherwise be dreaming up brilliant new innovations or creative works, so for the sake of the future, I will reveal why.
Most people I meet ask me, "Aren't you a computer graphics major? Shouldn't you love Apple products, Macintosh computers in particular, as well?" Well, what they don't understand is that I've come upon a discovery so secret and mind-blowing, that it shakes the very fabric of all we know.
Steve Jobs founded what company? That's right, Apple. What was Adam and Eve originally fooled into eating my Satan? That's right, an apple! See where I'm going?
Then, on top of that, Steve Job's full name is Steven Paul Jobs III. What does the three stand for? Three sixes! 666!
Of course, any rational human being would by now see that he's the anti-Christ, but there's more! I'm sure that we're all aware of those Mac vs PC ads.
Well, the Bible states clearly that the anti-Christ will try to fool the public by leading them astray by what's "cool." What's cooler than an Apple product? iPod, iPhone... all it needs is a console (iPlay? Probably?) to make Apple a meddler in everything popular.
And, finally, what is it that the Bible says about the anti-Christ? Well, that he will try to fool people into wearing his mark. And what mark is that?
That's right. THE mark. It is a shame that even the newborn have been cursed with this evil mark, for, as the Bible tells us, those who wear the mark will never make it into heaven.
Some may point out how much I love WALL-E, which is full of Apple products/references, and EVE in particular, whose design is obviously inspired by Apple. To that, I meekly state that I don't actually support the anti-Christ, I'm just a fan of some of his work.
By the way, I recommend their latest product, which was a big help in creating this article:
NOTE: This article contains satire and is not to be taken seriously.
Although the SporeCreature Creator has been out since the 17th of June, only now am I finally ready to express my deepest thoughts concerning this let-down of galactic proportions.
Before we go on to the creature creator, let's start with Spore itself. First shown in depth during the 2005 GDC (presentation embedded below), Spore quickly became a matter of excitement amongst gamers who enjoyed the kinds of creation games that Maxis (via Will Wright) is known for (myself included). Wow! Such a gigantic game, with the ability for players to create pretty much everything! It was unprecedented.
Since then, the game evolved, becoming more refined, parts were added, parts were taken out, and those of us who first were excited continued to look on with that same childlike wonder. Then, to our delight, it was announced that the entire creature phase editor would be released as a demo of the game. By far, the creature creator looked like the best editor in the game, and people (again, myself included) were pissing their pants to get their hands on it.
June 17th game and it was officially released. The editor came in two parts: a free editor that had about 25% of the parts available, and the full editor, which was just ten dollars. I had initially pre-ordered it on Amazon, but couldn't wait and so bought it again for direct download.
It was all I'd imagined! I could create pretty much anything I could come up with, and the editor would bring it to life. There were three parts to the editor: the parts tab, the skin tab, and the test drive tab. They allowed one to build their creature, specify its texture, and try it out, respectively. The procedural generation of texture wrapping was, for the most part, all that had been hyped--the computer did a damn fine job.
The problem came when you brought your five-footed beast with a mouth on its ass and eyes for nipples into the test drive area. In spite of how nice the procedural texturing was, the procedural animation was... eh... not quite up to par.
In fact, that is an understatement. It SUCKED. Sure, bipeds worked almost perfectly, and quadrupeds were just fine as long as the back feet didn't step through the front feet (on account of a lack of any kind of collision detection). The real problems arise when you add more legs or an uneven number of legs (such as two in the back and one in the front, or vice versa). Most often, either the leg will be bent in such a way that it doesn't move in a useful way (such as the single hind leg dragging behind the first two--user error, since such a leg would realistically be useless), or the legs bend and twist in horrid, deformed ways as it performs various animations (program error).
Most creature creator artists (many of which are very, very talented) don't care about the animation--it's all about how it looks, but what's important to keep in mind is that the creatures that are made and uploaded to the Sporepedia (that's right--the huge database of creatures that, when the game is released, will be used to randomly populate Spore's galaxies) will have to be animated at some point, or else it's useless to have them there. Many artists have (with much skill, I might add) used the tools of the creature creator to recreate animals, vehicles, foods, etc., forgetting that the whole point of the creator is to make never-before-seen creatures to populate never-before-seen worlds. Not to create things we're familiar with so that some gamer will encounter a planet full of t-rexes, a planet full of crawling creature-airplanes, and a planet full of penises (oh, yeah--I forgot to mention the Sporn).
Which brings me nicely to my next gripe. As of my writing this article, there are over 1.5 million creatures in the Sporepedia, and for every (these are Maxis-approved featured creatures, by the way) Cerebrilith, Cinke Deepdigger, and Orbanid, there are ten Lawn Gnomes, Strawberries, or Maxises, and that's my biggest complaint. Of all the problems that have come before, my biggest is that most creatures that will be randomly chosen to populate my Spore universe are absolute SHIT. Now, I'm not saying that I'm some kind of genius of creative creature design (far to the contrary, though, in my defense, I can't stand bad animations or excessive clipping, thus vastly limiting my creative options), but Jesus Christ Almighty, don't most of these people even TRY to make their creation look presentable?
I know that I've thrown away far more creatures than I've made, and have later even thrown away finished works that I later decided were poor. If anything, I'd rather have creatures of consistent quality in not only looks, but animation and functionality as well, thus making myself a good candidate for "subscribed content" (in the full Spore game, one will be able to filter the creatures that populate their universe by the users that created them). So maybe they're not the prettiest creatures, but they work and, for the most part, make aesthetic and realistic sense.
On the other hand, most other users seem not only to give no thought to the point of their creatures, but also have an immature attitude to match their creative ability (I've many times gotten thumbs-down votes on all my creatures for giving someone creative criticism). When you get down to it, the biggest thing that sucks about Spore (as it is thus far) is that it's an MMO game (regardless of what Will Wright said about it being "massively single-player"), which means that the idiotic and immature scum of society buzz around it like flies around a cow's asshole, and let me tell you, there is nothing that kills my creative urges like a whiny prick.
What's most spectacular is that the creatures in the very first image of this article are actually possible in the editor (though posing them in that manner is not), so why don't more people try to keep their creatures looking good, like that? Also, I think it's kind of funny that they're all bipeds with their eyes above their mouthes--if it's done any other way (for the most part), the animation turns out to be crap, and if it isn't crap in the test drive, I'm guessing that it will be crap in the full game, when the creature oddly bends its head/neck so that it can actually eat with its mouth.
On top of all of that, the game has a number of annoying bugs, such as forgetting the creatures that one has made, or not importing the .png files carrying the creature code properly.
NOTE: This article contains satire and is not to be taken seriously.
I remember the days when characters in games could openly drink alcohol (and become intoxicated) without causing the game's rating to be above T for Teen. Ah, those were the days.
In the present, an upcoming Wii game with the name "Beer Pong" has been scrutinized for depicting the game of, well, beer pong. The Attorney General of Connecticut and Prickdom (and, apparently, wanna-be Jack Thompson), Richard Blumenthal, insists that the ESRB should change the game's rating to M for Mature. In response, the game has removed all references to beer (calling it instead "Pong Toss"), saying that the spirit is "in the game, not the beer." That's like making Grand Theft Virginity, then taking out all the sex because it's "just for the spirit of cornering a girl in an alley."
I suppose that next, they'll be clamping down on all movies in which anyone takes a drink, changing the ratings from PG-13 to R. What's the point? If Blumenthal really thinks that this will some how affect teen drinking, he's going to have a few broken bones with the gravity of reality brings him back down to earth.
NOTE: This article contains satire and is not to be taken seriously.
Yeah, so my tablet had the inconvenient habit of freezing about once every 12 hours or so, so I finally got around to taking it in to be repaired at the local college tablet service, which is run by fellow students.
I explain the problem and awkwardly await a diagnosis. After a long silence, I pry into what they are doing, and they inform me that they're giving me a new hard drive and reformatting the old.
Gee. Thanks.
I took my tablet in to get the five-minute inconvenience of restarting my computer after a lock-up fixed, and their "fix" is giving me hours and hours of inconvenient program reinstallation, settings tweaking, and worrying over perhaps losing something important from the old hard drive.
NOTE: This article contains satire and is not to be taken seriously.
I'm sure most everyone remembers how Antz and A Bug's Life came out at about the same time and everyone wondered "who got there first: Pixar, or Dreamworks?" Well, regardless of two got there first, Pixar grossed over twice as much with their production. Then, Dreamworks and Pixar again went neck-to-neck in 2001 with Shrek and Monsters, Inc as the big 3D cartoons that year. Who won? According to revenue, Pixar did. Then, in 2003, Finding Nemo shook the box office, easily dislodging Shark Tale from ever sinking in its roots and nearly tripled the latter's gross sales.
I think at that point, we all saw that it was going to be a Pixar vs Dreamworks race from here on out, and that so far, Pixar has been the clear winner. Hell, Shark Tale was the most pathetic of all of Dreamworks' previous Pixar retorts, and, year after year, Dreamworks has lost (with the exception of Shrek 2), but at least Dreamworks stopped blatantly ripping off Pixar's movie ideas. Or so we thought.
Note, I have enjoyed many of Dreamworks' films (with Madagascar being "okay", Over the Hedge being "not bad", and Kung Fu Panda being "pretty good"), I have to curl my lip at their latest feature. What is it, you may ask? Ugh. Just... just look and see.
Gee, I wonder what brought on the idea of a movie based in space. What brilliant burst of intuition could have inspired this film? Hmm...
Don't get me wrong, Space Chimps may turn out to be a pretty good movie (isn't this Dreamwork's second 3D animated film this year?), but I can guarantee you that, in the end, it won't hold a candle to WALL-E. Why? Well, mostly because WALL-E is so perfect, it transcends filmdom. It is true art, and there is no way that Dreamworks, a creator of above average 3D films at best, can compare. One has to ask, what's the difference between Pixar and Dreamworks? They both create (always for the former, usually for the latter) original 3D films that have a fairly sound concept, but Pixar manages, time and again, to come out ahead. For one thing, Dreamworks always gets PG ratings because they have to have some rude humor. You know, for adults, because nothing says "grown-up and mature" like sexual innuendo and allusions to bodily functions. In spite of this apparent golden rule ideals of Dreamworks', Pixar continues to appeal to all ages without having to resort to either rude humor (well, usually) or tired pop culture references. Well, if Pixar can avoid those things and yet still do better, why doesn't Dreamworks take a hint and try some of the same?
Now, I'm not one to be offended by foul language, crude humor, sexual innuendo, etc., but I think that it's pretty apparent by now that, if you want to catch a large audience, you have to be willing to do things differently. As of right now, "differently" means avoiding story cliches, rude humor, and pop culture references, because most films are a mix-match of two or three of the above (not that there aren't other problems, but these are the ones that separate movies that just fail from ones that almost made it). Just give it a try, Dreamworks. Maybe it will work for you, too. The bottom line is immersion. When you crack a joke that doesn't fit the world (i.e. Shrek), it breaks that immersion. When you create humor without reminding the moviegoer that they are actually watching a film (i.e. WALL-E), that deepens the immersion. Perhaps Dreamworks doesn't care about "creating worlds" the way that Pixar does, and only wants to "create films." If so, they do a decent job, but all I can say is, "too bad."
On the other hand, I must admit that Space Chimps doesn't look half bad, and I will probably go see it. Once, anyway. Now, I've seen WALL-E twice and have every intention of seeing it again in theaters, plus buying the DVD. Of course, Dreamworks has it unfairly hard in this case, because WALL-E hits so many of the things I adore, it is the closest thing to movie perfection in my mind (in spite of a few faults, but no movie is completely devoid of those). I don't anticipate any movie, even by Pixar, to top WALL-E as my favorite. Ever.
Well, I've done a good deal of ranting and rambling over Space Chimps, but let me tell you, that movie looks like gold compared to another preview I saw in the theaters while waiting for the main feature (WALL-E, of course) to begin.
Ohmygod. It's like a rip-off of a rip-off, with 90% of the awesome being lost in each translation. Granted, it was made in Belgium, and is (according to Wikiepdia) the first animated film to be made and released only in true-3D, but Fly Me to the Moon is, hands down, the worst-looking professional 3D film (with the possible exception of the horridly disappointing Tripping the Rift direct-to-DVD movie) I've ever seen. Seriously, I've seen amateurs do far better (see the embedded Plumiferos for another example). I've played games that look better. It's just flabbergastingly horrid.
What's so amazing is that Fly Me to the Moon (the trailer, anyway) isn't only ugly, its music is uninspired, its dialog is shoddy, its unfunny, and, overall, boring. It's the most boring trailer I've ever seen. It's even dumber than Beverly Hills Chihuahua (the trailer of which, by the way, isn't funny or cute--it's absolutely stupid, and I get the feeling that it beats around the bush the way it does to hide the horrid movie that is the full production).
Ouch... It makes me wince. What's worse, this was attached to WALL-E. Seriously, it's like ordering an expensive plate of caviar and getting a dog turd as a side dish.
Honestly, the only trailer I saw that looked like it may be pretty good was for Bolt.
Really, I think that all the animation studios should go to some kind of "Film as Art" seminar by Pixar. Why does it seem like, although most professional art, be it visual, musical, culinary, written, etc. are masterpieces, only a very, very small percentage of films (and games, for that matter) are truly magnificent? I realize that there is much to a movie (or game), as it needs to seamlessly combine multiple types of art, but why do people not try harder to find that perfect combination? Why are so many directors, writers, etc. satisfied with what, to any onlooker, is a work of absolute drivel? If you come up with the idea of making a "hilarious" movie about two lesbian lovers who spontaneously become male while simultaneously showing off how lackluster human creativity can be, don't. Just don't. Is it really that hard?
Quaint as the game may now appear to be, I loved it, and I believe that I learned quite a bit from it as well. Note, this is back when I was just beginning to really read (and before I found any fascination in books), and still had but very rudimentary mathematics skills (so in order to finish the puzzles concerning angles and such things, I had to devise a system to work out the correct answer without actually understanding how it all worked--or use trial and error). The game also helped initiate my love for sci-fi and robots.
The series was developed by 
Of the Thief series, 
