Awesome

Someone linked me to this. Utterly brilliant, especially if you've been following videogames for some time (there are references that go back to the early 90s).

(click for the full image)

More views

Aside from making more notes on game mechanics and interface/interaction concerns, I spent a bit of time doing two more views, south and southwest:




quick anigif showing the rotation of the three:


and a quick mockup (just slapped the sprites onto a render of the enviro):

Jesus fuckin' iso

After what must have been at least 50 variants, I've finally settled on proportions I'm pretty happy with for the iso sprites. Done up a South-facing view, with a simple and unfinished idle animation.





updated

Pure Awesome

That's what the new Transformers movie is: 100% pure awesome. Ok, that's not really true, but damn I enjoyed the hell out of the movie. It's got your very Michael Bay comedy and drama (which is to say, it can be incredibly painful to watch), but it works overall, and shit, the fights, the transformation sequences, the cheesy nostalgia throwbacks, are all very cool. And I have to admit, that new Camaro is a pretty sexy beast. And Megan Fox, goddamn.

The bad? Frenzy feels like the new Jar Jar, I've already mentioned the Michael Bay comedy and drama, and Jazz was trying a little too hard. Beyond that, I'd say the biggest disappointment is that there wasn't more. I want a sequel. With Soundwave. And more Constructicons.

Sidenote: the new Optimus Prime toy is pretty badass. I'm tempted to pick it up. ^^

Oh, and yes, the movie premiered here a week before everyone else. Suck it. ^^

X-Com

So I finally broke down and got the original X-Com up and running on my computer, ostensibly to do "research" for my admittedly ambitious DS project. As with the first time I discovered the game, I didn't stop playing it for a couple hours. All in the name of research, though, of course.

It's funny, though, revisiting it made certain mistakes and omissions painfully obvious, compared to the numerous games that tried to emulate its formula. Just various little interface niggles, some more serious than others. It still stands as a fantastic game, mind you, but things like not being able to see how many APs will be consumed by travelling to a particular location, not having any feedback on whether a highlighted square is obstructed, range of movement, LoS displays, etc. are a bit jarring. Something to keep in mind when designing the interface for my own project for sure.

In related news, I've decided I'm going to scrap the character models that I was so happy with, and do up a bunch of isometric sprites. Even at 100 tris, which is quite literally the absolute lowest I can go, the models are simply too heavy. With sprites, even assuming I go with a paperdoll sort of system (and I do so want to), that's knocking each character down from 128 tris (plus weapon) to 6 sprites. I think I'd much rather spend those polies on the environment, since that basically gives me maybe 1500 polies (tris/quads? depends on the eventual programmer, I guess) just for the environment, up from maybe 800. And that's being conservative.

That said, doing that many 8-way iso sprites, plus all the accompanying animation, is going to rape me.

A shot of the enviro, as of before my week in reservist. Everything's still WIP, though coming along, and I threw on some vertex lighting. Click for full size:



On that note, my week back in the Army was actually kind of fun. Got rid of the mohawk, obviously, and showed up to camp with a high and tight.

Oh, a little sprite I did to test out a palette that Prometheus is working on:

Pixelling and teaching

Pixelled up a little baby dragon for a friend, and started animating it (not done yet, gonna add some movement to the head, probably a nostril flare as well):



"But I want a BIG ONE!"

I think I'll go pull my hair out now.

...

Timelapse of the unicorn speedpaint

...

Spending most of the night hammering away at the keyboard, giving art lessons of sorts to a fairly enthusiastic 14-year-old has reminded me how upset I was at watching two potential teaching gigs in less than two years go up in smoke, through no fault of my own, and of how satisfying it is to see (metaphorically speaking, in this case) that wild-eyed enthusiasm of someone eager to learn, lapping up whatever knowledge you can impart. Maybe I should consider taking my friend up on teaching game art at a local technical school. Pay's pretty shit, though, and I dunno if I want to teach fulltime. There's also the fact that from what I hear, the current faculty is, for the most part, pretty shit at their jobs, and political infighting is rife. :\

Then again, maybe the joy and satisfaction of imparting knowledge to the young'uns, in topics I know and love, might be enough to trump those factors.

Maybe.

Argh.

Unicorn

Yay, did a speedpaint. Felt nice to just paint for an hour or so, without worrying about UVs, seams, texel density, etc. (click for larger, 800x5-something)