May 13, 2007

On Graduation

The past two days have whizzed by in a flurry of caps, gowns, tassels, hoods, and camera flashes. I'm not quite sure if I've comprehended the fact that I won't be going back to school next August. Or maybe I have and my unending optimism has reassured me that, somehow, everything is going to be the same as it ever was. Either way, the past two days succeeding in putting my entire Seton Hill career into focus. It reminded me of what I, and my classmates, have accomplished during our four years here, and it has also reminded me why I shall miss Seton Hill so much.

Any negativity seemed to vanish Friday (not that there was much to begin with) as I connected with various faculty and friends at the division parties. I'm not sure if they have division parties at every school, but if they do I can't imagine them being as accessible as the ones at SHU. It was nice being able to walk into any party and know that I will see friendly faces.

I was honored by how many people complimented me on my work for the Setonian. I had always known that folks liked my cartoons, mainly because people would approach me in the dining hall to tell me so, but the amount of feedback I received over the past two days has been unbelievable. I had staff members from Financial Aid coming up to me after mass, telling me about how they loved the "tuition czar" idea, professors that I had never met before told me that they would miss my columns, and I was even mentioned in Monsignor Rubino's homily at the baccalaureate mass. I was truly honored by everyone's kind words.

The graduation ceremony on Saturday was wonderful. Rick Sebeck gave a great commencement speech dispensing some valuable advice to the class of '07--like "always order the special" at a restaurant. He kept saying how nervous he was, but really if he hadn't said it you wouldn't have known.

I can't help but feel like I had the best seat in the house that day. Because all of the graduates were arranged by their degrees (with Bachelors of Arts first), the Fine Arts kids were second in line; therefore, I was able to see all of my beloved friends at Seton Hill sitting in various rows in front of me. By some stroke of luck, I could see the majority of my closes friends, and it just seemed too perfect. I wasn't going to woot or yell when they were called on stage, but I certainly clapped as hard as I could.

The reception after graduation seemed very much like the ending of the film "Big Fish." After going through the receiving line, I emerged on Sullivan Lawn to find that people I have known throughout the past four years were there, waiting for me. I saw staff members and faculty, family, friends, and even alumnae that I hadn't seen in years. I always feel that I need to say something profoundly sentimental at these sorts of moments. Phrases that are supposed to somehow encapsulate the entire time that I have known someone... but I just can't do it. Instead I just joke around, laugh, perhaps give a hug, and say "See you around!" or "Have a good one!" I don't like saying anything that might infer that I'll never see someone again.

Now, I look forward to the summer... to finding a job, getting settled in, and having a little fun. I'm still going to be blogging here--I would really be disappointed in myself if I gave that up. I wish the rest of my graduating class the best of luck in whatever it is that they have planned for themselves. And I hope that my friends who are still attending SHU have a graduation as nice as the one I had.

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May 3, 2007

I Apologize, But...

I knew this day would come: my last issue of the Setonian. My last chance to make a statement in the campus newspaper; my last chance to inspire change or challenge folks to think; my last chance to make someone angry. It seems like just last week when I was slipping my first comic under the doors of the third floor Maura Publications Office. But now it’s time for me to put on that cap and gown and schlep my way down the aisle.

Before I do, I feel as if I should apologize, specifically to the fine people of First Admin. The employees of the Student Accounts, Financial Aid, Registrar, and Admissions offices have been under a barrage of editorial attacks for the three years that I’ve been writing this column—even longer if you count my cartoons. Sure I’ve chided other areas of campus life, like the Cove, Residence Life, and the Athletic Department, but none have taken a beating like the folks on the first floor of the Administration Building.

I’m not apologizing to these hard-working and friendly staffers because they control my final transcripts—although it would be great if they would let me graduate. I’m apologizing to them because they are merely messengers getting ripped apart because of policies put in place at this school which clearly make no sense. The folks that work in these offices are just trying to help us out as best they can. It’s not their fault that Financial Aid and Student Accounts have totally separate records. It wasn’t their decision to screw up work-study hours because of the minimum wage increase. Yet these folks get the brunt of the complaints. These lucky people get to hear parents screaming at them on the phone from nine to five every day.

I have consistently written about one major issue going on within this university (and no, I’m not talking about the dining hall coffee, although it hasn’t gotten any better in the past three years). Seton Hill University suffers from a stifling level of bureaucracy that, at times, seems to slow this place down to a grinding halt. I remember when they used to shut students’ meal plans off the second their account info didn’t line up. There were would long, Soviet-style breadlines down the hall of First Admin. Then there’s the lack of communication between offices right across from each other. Financial Aid gives me one quote for tuition, Student Accounts gives me another. And the sheer amount of signatures one needs to register for an independent study is simply preposterous. Things clearly need to change. There needs to be communication between offices, shared financial records, a tuition czar, and reduced red tape for adds, drops, and independent studies. Some better coffee wouldn’t hurt either.

After graduation, I will be looking back at Seton Hill with only the fondest of memories. I never would have dreamed that this institution would have provided me with such an outstanding education and a chance to grow personally (although I’m still 5’6). It reassured me that the Catholic education system is one of the best in the nation. I am so thankful that I chose Seton Hill, and even more grateful that it welcomed me with open arms.

I may have been hard on Seton while I was here, but I think she needed to hear it. Whether or not this school changes is up to the underclassmen, who will have to cope with many of the issues I’ve just mentioned. The phrase “Hazard Yet Forward” may seem overused at this school, but it has never been more apt.

Thank you for reading.

[This article was originally printed in the Setonian on May 3rd, 2007. Writing this article was a challenge for me. There were so many ideas I had in mind for my final column at Seton Hill, and yet an apology to the staff seemed most appropriate. This isn't my last blog entry--far from it--but just something that I felt belonged on the blog.]

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April 14, 2007

Stages: Politics, Theater, Design.

This Friday, April 20th, is the opening of my senior solo art exhibit at Harlan Gallery at Seton Hill. Each art student has to hold a senior art show, and I was lucky enough to be granted my own solo exhibit in the back gallery.

The title of my show is "Stages: Politics, Theater, Design." and will feature a design work that I have done in the realm of theatrical promotion (ie "Dodge Intrepid' materials, Cellar Dweller show posters, and video production) alongside political campaign work. My hope is that people will examine the principles and techniques I use in both of these fields in order to draw the two together. This isn't a show attacking politics, or aiming for controversy, but rather one that will hopefully show people that the political campaigns have the same sorts of storylines, characters and performances as theater.

The main example of this within the show will be the exhibition of the work done in my Political Campaign Design independent study. I have created the two candidates, their characters and their stories, and set them against one another. At the show, there will not only be their logos and campaign stickers, but also direct mail pieces that present a clear look into each candidate. I will also be showing an attack commercial between the two candidates (because attack ads are always more fun).

I have alot of work to do this week in order to prepare for this show. Since the date I was assigned for my show comes sort of at the 2/3 mark of my independent studies, some of the materials have to be created just for the show. I'm excited to be showing this stuff off, and I can't wait to breathe that sigh of relief come Friday evening when it's all set up and ready to go.

The opening reception for "Stages" is Friday, April 20th from 7-9PM. The show itself will be running through Monday, April 23rd.

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March 30, 2007

"A Sea of C's" or "What I learned in New York"

New York City is laid out in a grid system. While this can make navigation and driving an easy task, it can also be extremely disorienting. This is one of the many things I learned on my recent trip to New York. As I previously, and briefly, posted, I attended the Conference for Collegiate Composition and Communication Convention (also known as anywhere between 4-28 C's).

Like I said, I learned a lot while in New York, and not just about composition and rhetoric. I also learned all about navigating a sprawling city, traveling via train, and other helpful things to keep in mind next time you plan to visit the Big Apple.

Lesson One: If you're not in a rush, take a train.
Before this trip, I had never ridden on a train before. I have watched movies that take place on a train, played the train level in GoldenEye 64 hundreds of times, and even wrote radio shows about trains... but never before had I experienced the thrill of sitting still for 9 hours.

I won't repeat what I said in a previous entry about train travel, but I will say that it's worth trying; at least if you're not in a hurry. It was nice to be able to sit back and read over 100 pages of a novel in one sitting (I'm currently working through the fantastic "World War Z" by Max Brooks). I was also able to play my DS, work on some things on my computer, and mess around with some crossword puzzles. But, if you live closer to an airport, especially one that is flying Jet Blue, you can get a plane ticket to New York for about the same price. Sure there is the added stress of an airport, but you'll get there a heck of a lot faster.

Lesson Two: Jon Stuart is the only type of parody.. I guess
The first panel I sat in on was about the study of parody as a proper form of writing. There was some stuff thrown in there about the various forms of rhetorical pedagogy, but really, the whole thing was about parody. I was rather let down by the panel when I saw that the only thing people really talked about was how great Jon Stuart was. He was proclaimed to be a genius while being one of the only stars of parody they mentioned.

The majority of the panel, along with the rest of the attendees in the room, were so enamoured with Stuart, that they failed to really discuss more than him. Slowly the entire discussion dipped into this sort of Bush-bashing Gospel service (maybe I'm exaggerating a bit... but still, it was silly). Meanwhile, I couldn't help but think to myself "What about 'The Onion?'" or the scads of other parody publications out there. Heck, for the sake of balance, why not talk about "The Half Hour News Hour" on FOX?

The lowest point in the panel was when someone in the audience made the claim that because Dennis Miller tells intelligent jokes, he should be telling liberal jokes--because clearly, liberals are high-brow academics. Everyone on the panel gave up this weird groan of approval, and I just rolled my eyes.

Lesson Three: Wear ear buds all of the time
The first thing I noticed about New York (which unfortunately lead me to an initial negative reaction) was the amount of people trying to talk to you. You can't walk down Time Square without someone coming up to you and telling you about some comedy show--because apparently they happen 24 hours a day. We also couldn't eat in a McDonalds without getting approached by someone asking for change.

At first I was shocked how anyone could live like this. How could anyone put up with being talked to by someone on every block? There are a lot of blocks in downtown New York! But then it hit me... they wear earbuds. I had the chance to spend a fair amount of time walking around New York, and the one thing that I noticed was that a ton of people wore earbuds. After all, they were talking about banning iPods on the streets of New York. Now I see that lawmakers don't understand why people wear the iPods in the first place! It's not so listen to kickin' jams (although that is a great side-effect), it's so that you can pretend to not hear people talking to you.

By the third day in to the trip, I was considering just putting in my earbuds and walking around. Not necessarily plugging them in to anything, but just having them on so that I could ignore the next guy trying to hand me free tickets to something.

Lesson Four: Grab Swag
As my adventures to C-PAC have taught me, it's all about the swag. Whether it's something as simple as a keychain or as grand as a bobblehead, it is your job to take it. The conference tells you that it's your job by giving you a tote bag. You would be doing a disservice to the conference and to the tote bag if you didn't grab all the swag you can.

4C's was no different. Their exhibit hall was a little smaller than C-PAC's, but it was filled with quality booths: book publishers. The publishers at the conference ran the gamut from small academic publishers to big time book sellers like Harper Collins and Penguin. When I first got there, I made the rounds, found a few cool freebies and signed up on some newsletter lists. I was most excited to see the Ayn Rand Foundation there (they were also at C-PAC). For a foundation that publishes a book called "The Virtue of Selfishness" they sure are willing to give stuff away! I got both "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Anthem," thanks to Karissa, along with a giant poster of Atlas. Totally awesome!

But the real prizes came on the last day of the conference. The exhibit hall closed at 2:00pm, and as noon rolled around, publishers were looking around at all the books they still had left. So they started slashing prices, or in some cases just giving them away! I instantly got in line at Harper Collins, who were giving away three free books per person. I was able to nab a Post Secret book, "To Kill a Mockingbird," and" Understanding Comics." Folks like Wesbter's were just giving away dictionaries, so I made sure to grab their "Crossword Puzzle Dictionary."

My colleagues on the trip made sure to get some sweet books as well... and when it was all said and done, we each had an extra bag to carry home.

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March 23, 2007

Made on a Mac

I am blogging right now from the Apple Store in downtown New York... it's a glorious moment.

Thanks to this MacBook Pro and Photobooth, I'm blogging proof (see above).

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Trainsitting

This Friday, I, along with two colleagues and a professor, will be presenting at the Collegiate Composition and Communication Conference in New York City. You could think of it as one of the largest gatherings of English and composition professors in the country--you could also think of it as a great reason to travel to New York.

We decided to travel to NY via train, probably because it opened up the possibility of partaking in an "Agatha Christie" mystery during our 9-hour trek. This is the first time I have ever ridden on a train, and thus far (since I'm writing this while still riding on the train) it's been a pleasurable experience. In fact, if it didn't take noticeably longer to travel by train, I might recommend that you do it more often.

You have alot more room on a train than you do on a bus or a plane, in fact my first thought when getting aboard was that we have too much room. The seats are a combination between a normal air plane seat and a barber's chair. There are all sorts of pedals and levers, and even an arcade joystick, that adjust all of the various ways to relax.

There's a tray that can slide forward, so that you can use a computer or put together a relatively small jigsaw puzzle. Below the tray is a foot rest that plops down after stepping on a small pedal beside it. The chair itself can recline backwards with the push of a thick button (it's really almost too big for me to consider it a button, but we'll go with button). Then there is this bright blue leg-lifter under the seat, which I believe is operated by the joystick (however my joystick is broken, so I can't know for sure...) The only thing missing in these chairs is the ability to spin, which would make this less like a train and more like one of those Chevy Gladiator vans.

[This entry was written on Wednesday, Mar 21 at 11:00am... on a train.]

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February 15, 2007

Marshall vs Brown: My Senate Race

My indy study about political campaign advertising is really starting to move now that I have finally settled on the two candidate's names and their campaign logos. Now that their design style has been established, I can focus on finding people to play the characters, and start work on their expanded design pieces (mainly direct mail literature).

My two candidates are James Marshall and Ray Brown. I went with these names for a number of reasons; the main one being their varying lengths. One of the challenges of campaign advertising is making sure whatever the candidate's name is, it's clear and legible in any circumstance. While people in the entertainment industry can change their name if they happen to get stuck with a weird one, people in politics can't. That's how we get such strange political figures as Sam Brownback, Barack Obama, and Dick Armey. You have to deal with these strange names and make them appealing, at least design-wise, to the voting public.

I chose James Marshall as my first candidate because his name fits the 'long-name' category. It has a few challenges to it from a design standpoint. It's length and also its number of taller letters, the M, H and double L's. I've been taught, and have observed, that names like this are best legible when designed with a serif font. The serifs on the ends of the letters allow you to distinguish them better. For my final design, I also went with Marshall's name in all-caps with a larger M in order to eliminate that sort of rollercoaster shape of the tall and short letters.

[I came up with the name "James Marshall" because, well, it's Harrison Ford's name as president in "Air Force One." I like to think of this made-up senate race as the precursor to him becoming president, even though I won't be using his picture as the candidate.]

For his opponent, I went with the name Ray Brown. It's a rather bland name, I know, but it's also short, and lends itself well to a little more creativity in the design. I'm looking at Marshall as the sort of traditional candidate; his logo is more reserved and formal. Brown's logo is thick and bold, and he's running on the name Ray, moreso than Brown. Sort of a throwback to Ike's presidential run. Some candidates can manage to pull this off, but most fail–one could argue it's because they have a bland first name... or a bland design.

For my research into the field of campaign name design, I found a wonderful website called 4President.org. The site has collected and scanned in campaign materials from every presidential campaign dating back to 1960. The best part about the site is that it doesn't just include the designs of the major candidates for each race, but also everyone who had entered the primary (which is really where you find the more unique and interesting designs). I went to this site for inspiration and to study the techniques... while granted, not every campaign has design theory behind their logos, the ones that do really shine.

[I think for a future blog entry, I will take the time to analyze the designs of the winners and losers of some of these races... because if you look back at some of the name designs over the years, it's clear that the better design has won. Coincidence? I don't think so.]

Now that my logos are finished, I am starting to find folks to be the candidates, and also thinking ahead to how their campaigns may be run from a design/message standpoint. I haven't yet decided if these two are both Republicans, running against each other in a primary, or if one is a Democrat. I don't necessarily think it matters too much for the purpose of my independent study, it would only really come into play when the mudslinging comes around after Spring Break (because doesn't all the mudslinging roll around after Spring Break?)

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February 1, 2007

Catholic Social Teaching and Conservatism

Here at Seton Hill, there is a strong emphasis on the lessons of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). Being a Catholic, myself, these lessons are nothing new to me--I've been taught to abide by them since high school. Just looking at them, though, it's easy to assume that a good number of these lessons go against the modern perception of conservatism or Republicanism.

I was sitting in my Senior Sem. class this afternoon, participating in a great lecture about CST when I heard something that really made sense--something that I had never heard in all the years that I have learned about these lessons: in order to properly enforce the lessons of Catholic Social Teaching, the outcome of your actions has to be beneficial to all parties involved. I had never realized that there were two sides to the coin of CST, but it certainly makes sense.

How does this apply to conservatism? While I'm not going to dissect every lesson from a liberal and conservative viewpoint (although it is totally possible), I'll just point out a few things. CST is supposed to inspire reflection and thought about our actions and how we contribute to society, and so therefore I totally believe that we are able to approach every lesson conservatively or liberally (it all depends on our personal choices). Some of the issues just lend themselves to Republicanism, like the lesson of Respect for Human Life, while others appear to skew more liberally, like the Principle of Participation (which deals with the forming of unions).

Looking at a number of these, however, I can see conservative means to reach the desired ends that CST has in mind. Principle of Participation stresses respect for each worker and their right to a fair and decent wage. But it also stresses the right to "private property and to economic initiative" (Reflections 5). In other words, the company is also allowed to benefit, and needs to think of its workers as well as its economic bottom line.

The example in class was about a company moving its factory from America to Mexico because it didn't have to deal with American unions and high wages. While it's easy to say "well they're slighting the American workers and taking advantage of Mexicans by paying them less!" I saw it a bit differently: firstly, they are paying them less because the peso is worth less than the dollar. But remember, CST says that the decision needs to be good for everyone. By moving their factory to Mexico, the American company is helping out the Mexican economy and helping their bottom line. If they intend to do this, however, it would be wholesome of the company to provide severance pay to the laid off workers. And if the American unions were trying to strong-arm the business into paying unfairly high wages, they're no better than the company that fired everyone. There must be a give and take in order for CST to work properly, and I believe that it's highly possible for a company to do what's best for itself while also looking out for others.

The lesson of Preferential Protection for the Poor and Vulnerable also seems, at first glance, to be a justification for support of Johnson's "Great Society" and welfare programs. While yes, I wholly agree that we must take care of the poorest members of our society, that doesn't mean we should just hand everything to them. Remember that this needs to be good for all parties. It would be much more beneficial for the government, and its welfare programs, to teach the poor to raise themselves up; it's the whole "teach a man to fish" saying. Building up the urban slums into respectable, safe communities will help bring people out of poverty (not raising the minimum wage). How do you build up these communities? Why, through small business and entrepreneurialism! If you have small businesses that are well-managed and that employ locally, then it will encourage other businesses and chains to move in as well, and more money will stay in the neighborhood, etc. It's a cycle that can work if the government can step back and let capitalism do what it does best.

Speaking of which, there is one aspect of CST that is one of the main aspects of conservatism: Subsidiarity. In the handout I received in class, written by William J. Byron for America, the National Catholic Weekly, it describes Subsidiarity as follows:

The principle of subsidiarity puts a proper limit on government by insisting that no higher level of organization should perform any function that can be handled efficiently and effectively at a lower level of organization by human persons who, individually, or in groups, are closer to the problems and closer to the ground. Oppressive governments are always in violation of the principle of subsidiarity; overactive governments frequently violate this principle.

When it comes to governments, less is more and local is better. Conservatism subscribes to the idea that the government is part of the problem, not part of the solution. If individuals or private companies can handle things on their own, then they should, and that states should certainly be able to decide for themselves what is best for their people (within reason). Just look at two examples of what the federal government has done that could have been handled on a state or local level: raising the minimum wage (something our state did do on its own, and now the whole country may be facing the same thing) and allowing abortion (something that more conservative states have been trying to break free from for some time). Now, there are some issues that are being handled by the states, things like voting to allow/disallow gay marriage, property tax reform, etc. It's great that states are deciding these things on their own, and a while it's impossible to please everyone in this case, we as citizens have a louder say in legislative decisions when it's at the local and state level.

As I said, I can't go through every aspect of CST in a single blog entry... but it's something to think about. Each one of these lessons can be solved liberally or conservatively, and while the initial outcome might be similar, the long-term effects may differ.

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January 23, 2007

Here I Go Again On My Own: The Planning of Two Independent Studies

This semester, I have the pleasure of creating two courses just for myself. I needed two art studio courses to finish off my requirements for the BFA in Graphic Design, but nothing at this stage really appealed to me. I did, however, desire more practice and experimentation in the field of Graphic Design--so I took matters into my own hands and designed two Independent Studies.

I highly recommend you try an "Indy Study" (as I like to call them) during your time in college. Sure you have to wade through a ton of paperwork and signatures to actually get them approved, but once you have you can rest knowing that you've created a course that you will actually appreciate. You must appreciate it, it is based off of your own ideas, your own need to explore a subject in greater detail. The fields of Art and English really lend themselves to the Indy Study, but I'm fairly sure that you could find something to study in any area. These courses do more than just teach you about a specific area of interest, they also teach you how to manage your time to meet goals.

So for my last semester, I created two fairly expansive Indy Studies. The first is called "Web Multimedia Integration" and the second is "Political Campaign Advertising."

Web Multimedia Integration is a fancy way for me to say "learn more about Dreamweaver and Flash." But I don't want to sell the study short, because while I will be using those two design programs pretty extensively, there is a little more (after all, it's called "multi-media" for a reason). I will also be doing a good deal of video editing in Apple iMovie. The school currently, as far as I have been told, doesn't have a registered version of Final Cut, so iMovie will have to do. Basically, I plan to design a fairly expansive website in Dreamweaver, with a lot of Flash elements weaved into the design. Then I will hopefully produce a full-length video project to boot, and feature a number of clips on this new website.

Not surprisingly, I plan to make the new website for my radio show. It's about time I give the show a proper website, instead of a Blogger page, and really dig into interactivity and information about the show. Hopefully the website will have features like an animated character bio page, a crazy adventure timeline, a podcast player, and eventually some video clips from our live performances. All the while I will be advancing my current understanding of Flash and Dreamweaver into a more professional realm.

The second study, Political Campaign Advertising, was inspired because of my recent internships and design work from the previous election. I believe there are theories and techniques to good political design that go beyond "red, white and blue" and "bald eagles." So I will be studying examples of previous campaigns, critiquing the designs of both winners and losers, on both the national and local levels. My primary text is a book called Packaging the President by Kathleen Jamieson. The book covers the political ad campaigns of every presidential campaign from Eisenhower to Clinton (the latest edition stops at the '92 election). I haven't had a chance to really jump into it yet, but the book seems to cover everything from polling to radio commercials and print advertising; it covers the messages sent by the candidates as well as they way they were perceived by the American public.

But instead of just re-designing some Bush/Cheney materials, I'm going to take things a little further. I will be creating two candidates from scratch (I haven't decided yet what office they are running for), and they will be facing against each other. So each project will center around one or the other in this little mock election. I did a sort of dry-run of this idea with the Dodge Intrepid radio show--where I staged an election for mayor of Aliquippa in 1940. This project will be similar to that, only a bit more serious. Each candidate will have his own logo and design style. Then I will create direct mail pieces, billboards, websites etc. In the end, I'll create a television commercial for one of the candidates--using either Flash or iMovie.

I'm very excited about working on both of these Indy Studies. They are providing me with a chance to get some more experience in the design field and hopefully some good stuff for my senior show.

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December 18, 2006

Oh Yeah.. My Game

I almost forgot, in the crazy hustle and bustle that was my weekend, to post a playable version of my final project for EL405.

Now, as I have said in previous academic entries, this game is nowhere near complete... however, I'm very proud of producing this in the few weeks that I worked on it. It's pretty fun, although I don't know how many people have played it aside from me.

So, if you'd like to play the game, click here to open it in a new window. There still aren't any preloaders... but the game is under 1MB so it shouldn't take too long to get running.

Enjoy.

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December 13, 2006

EL405: Blog Portfolio III: The Reckoning

It looks like this is going to be my last formal, academic blogging portfolio. I won't be doing very much "academic" blogging next semester, although I look forward to keeping everyone updated about my independent studies and our planning for 4C's. But, I must say that I have had a great time working in Flash, despite the major stress-attacks. I have spent a good deal of time detailing the issues I have been encountering with my game, and any of the solutions I have found.

So, what follows is a list of all of my academic blogging this semester. Enjoy, and have a Merry Christmas!

Coverage & Timeliness (Blog entries featuring analysis and commentary on required readings.. all completed on time or ahead of schedule)
• Platforming, Sidescrolling, and Settling in Flash I speak of my frustration with lowering the expectations of my games while trying to learn how to make a sidescrolling game in Flash MX 2004.
• Hammer Down My first impressions of Hammer are quite positive in this discussion about open source 3D design tools.
• Zombie Bowling Puff and I work on creating a new brand of morbid lounge sports with Hammer.
• Collision Course The progress in my Dodge Intrepid game begins to finally show.
• A Bad Flash Day My final development journal entry for EL405.

In-Depth (Extended analysis on various blog entries)
• Hammer Down In this entry, I discuss the advantages of corporate design software over comparable open-source software. With its ease-of-use, I definitely gave Hammer the award for being better than Blender 3D.
• Zombie Bowling Continuing our class experimentation in Hammer, I discuss the process Puff and I went through with creating our game. It was a simple mod, but it showed off the strength of Hammer and what we could produce in just one class period.
• Collision Course I show off the first screen shots in my Dodge beta, while discussing some of the remaining issues I have with the game. While I'm not expected to have a polished, complete game, I do have some large kinks to work out before the final presentation on Wednesday.
• A Bad Flash Day I spend a good deal of time talking about the final issues I am having with my game, and how I have grown as a designer while, at the same time, being humbled by this intimidating program.

Comments & Discussion (Discussions on classmate's blogs that I've participated in)
• Comment on Stephan Puff's blog about Blender 3D
• Discussion on Stephan Puff's blog about Hammer
• Discussion on Amanda Cochran's blog about Hammer
• Comment on Amanda Cochran's blog about her final project.
(I am sure I have left more comments than currently listed, however with the template errors running rampant on MT, I haven't kept track of what got through.)

Xenoblogging (Helping along the blog-o-sphere)
• Comment Primo: First to comment on Amanda's entry on her portfolio

Wild Card
• Soiled Beans Seton Hill gives out Splenda-fied skim-milk-filled iced-coffee to students!

Posted by MikeRubino at 3:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

EL405: A Bad Flash Day

Today--well technically it's tomorrow already, not today, but since I haven't gone to bed yet, it's today-- was a bad Flash day. This, of course, it terrible timing. I would much rather have experienced my "bad Flash day" two or three weeks ago, when I was just learning the ropes of Flash game design. Today, I have an early alpha, beta, lambda version of my Dodge Intrepid game... and it seems to be just a few lines of code away from being how I'd like it.

My biggest issues have been the collision detection and getting into and out of the game. The collision detection was solved, as I mentioned previously, by pasting in some code from a tutorial. However, by doing so, this disabled Dodge's running animation. I may be very close to solving this puzzle, thanks to some code sent to me by Dr. Jerz. I just don't know, exactly, how to implement said code.

This project has really taught me the art of design-triage. When it looked as if one aspect of the game was getting too muddled with errors, I moved on to something else--something fresher and with more flexibility. Since I couldn't get my running animation to work, I focused on actually ending the level. Once the player collects the only book on the level (I've been viewing this level as a sort of training mission for a much larger game... the level is relatively simple, and shows you some various jumping challenges and passive penguins. Like most training levels!) I wanted a vortex to open up. With the help of my ActionScript-master-roommate, Stephan Puff,I was finally able to get a crazy, rotating vortex to appear once your "Book Score" rose to the lofty goal of 1. My current issue is that I can't get the hit test (the command that tests the collision of two objects) to load Scene 2... also known as "The Scene of Champions."

Again, performing triage, I decided to move on to finishing the title screen. I had previously finished the "credits" page, which listed the voice actors of the show, along with a link to our podcast. Now that I knew how the game was actually going to work, I could quickly create the "how to play" page. The tricky part now, would be coding the "start" button so that it loaded the level 1 file. Since I made level 1 in a different FLA file, I would have to use the loadMovie command to open it in a blank movie instance. However, upon doing this, I'm finding that the game loads in the frame but goes insane. Really insane. Despite the various "stop" scripts attached to the movie, the game world flips through pages like mad, and Dodge just sort of sinks off screen. It's a jarring experience, really.

So, as I write this final development journal, at least for this class, I know my project is a little rough around the edges. Perhaps for my independent study I'll purchase an actual Action Script book, that teaches you the coding language so I don't have to rely on amalgamating code from various tutorials.

I am very happy with the progress I have made with Flash because of this class. New Media Projects forced me outside of my Flash comfort zone, prompting me to make games and learn more ActionScript than I thought I ever would. I wasn't a huge fan of Flash from a design standpoint, mainly because their Pen Tool seems to work differently from Illustrator's, but now I have a deep respect for the program, and those who have mastered it. I realize the program's power, and it has become more accessible to me thanks to Dr. Jerz's class.

This Dodge project that I shall be showing tomorrow is, I hope, only the first stages of something larger. Who knows when it will be finished, if ever, but it has the ability to be added to in levels (literally, I can add a level at a time). Much like the show, it could be a serial game. Right now, I feel as if I have created only a crappy adaptation of the show--just like most videogame adaptations of film and television shows. But I hope that this project speaks for the advances I have made personally in Flash.

So yes, today was a bad Flash day. Nothing was working for me, and I spent alot of time doing a bunch of little things. But you need these bad Flash days to put you in your place; so that you are humbled. This program is very good at humbling me.

Posted by MikeRubino at 2:12 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 7, 2006

EL405: Collision Course

My final project for New Media Projects is really starting to come together. It's going to be a beta for a one-day-amazing Dodge Intrepid game. Right now, it's sort of a weird platforming game with questionable quick-sand level design.

Thanks to a tutorial file by Magnetos (who I believe is the arch-nemesis of Java-guru Charles Xavier), I was able to get a form of sidescrolling that I actually sort of like. Instead of a long level that scrolls as the player moves, the level is now divided up into pages (frames). So when the player walks off the right or left of the screen, the frame goes forward or backward, respectively. I can't really think of another game that works like this, but I guess it's similar to the old fashioned Zelda games, where each screen was a different part of a dungeon... but that's a stretch.

So the big issue with the game currently is the collision detection. The game is set up so that all of the platforms are in one movie clip called "World." Dodge's character (known as "hero") does a hit test so that it doesn't pass through anything in the world clip. It's really a great way to make platforms because you only have to define one movie clip. But my problem is that, while he will stand on things just fine, he sort of just passes through stuff that is higher than his feet.

Here's an example: One screen has an incline that builds to the right, so that when you jump off the incline (and on to the next frame) you will clear a massive chasm. However when you walk towards the incline, Dodge just keeps going straight. You can jump and he'll move up to the top of the hill (as if it were a ladder), but it looks really stupid. In the tutorial that Magnetos made, his character doesn't pass through anything, and it looks very good. I've been trying to examine what I'm doing differently, but I can't really find much. Perhaps its because his character is a little bitmapped Zelda? Or maybe there is another key to the puzzle that I'm missing.

Basically, I need to have the ground completely solid, so Dodge cannot pass through it, only on top of it, and I need Dodge's figure to be able to collide horizontally with things.

This brings me to the next challenge I have. Right now the first level is made up of 10 screens, which is pretty good if you don't run through everything (which, at this point, is very easy to do). On a couple of the screens, I have these penguins. Using the "pacing bad guy" script from Magneto's tutorial, they sort of waddle back and forth on the screen in a manner so menacing it would reduce Madeline Albright to tears. Unfortunately, because of that whole collision detection thing, they don't really kill Dodge.

Ideally, I would like to give Dodge a punching attack, which could kill the penguins (or stun them, if PETA is watching), and an actual death animation for when they get him. It would be neat for the player to also be able to swash the penguins like in Super Mario.

Aside from those two issues, the only other big thing I need to do with the game is make the level end. After the player collects the book, a vortex will open, and the player can hop in and end the level. Eventually, perhaps after other levels are made, the screen after the portal will display all of the books you've collected. And then you are taken back to the library where you can check out everything that you've collected over all of the levels.

Things are coming along shakily, but occasionally I make huge strides in my project's development. I'm really breaking new personal ground by taking all this coding and game physics on--it's something I never really expected to do in Flash. Next semester, I am doing an independent study on Flash integration with websites and video projects, but I may be able to add more advancements in my Dodge game to the list.

Posted by MikeRubino at 2:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 5, 2006

EL405: Zombie Bowling

In class today, we continued experimenting with Hammer. While Puff and I had certainly enjoyed our zombie romp last time we worked with Hammer, this time around we wanted to do something with a little more structure, a little more linearity, if you will.

Originally the plan was to make a Half-Life 2 version of "Duck Hunt" (the Nintendo classic). We constructed a room, not really worrying about the textures of the walls or anything, and then figured out how to make a fence. The plan was to fill half the room with an assortment of birds, and have them confined by a fence. The player would be on the outside of that fence with a deadly arsenal--which consisted of weapons not exactly found in the original Duck Hunt. People would be able to shoot at the birds without them escaping the confined area... so it would be like Duck Hunt taking place in three-dimensional space. But, the first thing we needed was a fence.

Building a fence was a fairly simple task... you could choose from literally dozens of fences found in H-L2 and could just place them into the room. Making them actually act like a fence was another step entirely. You had to make sure that the properties of the fence were set correctly, otherwise it wouldn't show up in the game world. Once Dr. Jerz fixed that for us, we were ready to go.

The plan seemed ingenious... until we actually played it. The birds just stood there, sort of pecking around, like they were in a Florentine piazza. Puff was able to pick up one of the weapons scattered about the room and blow them to bits. The novelty of the situation wore off, and I started to get the feeling that we were deranged trespassers at a strange aviary.

We quickly abandoned the idea of the birds and the fence, and replaced them simply with zombies and citizens. The citizens were a key component of the game world, because they distracted the zombies long enough for us to grab a weapon and back far enough away to use it--plus it was fun to see the zombies and the citizens chase each other. Again, however, the novelty of the scenario wasn't going to last. We needed something that would produce different outcomes each time, something with speed, and something that would still involve massive amounts of zombies.

The solution was zombie bowling. We turned our room into a long, narrow hallway with a slope running about 3/4 its entire length. At the bottom of the slope were about twenty zombies... and at the top was a hovercraft and the player start position. You can probably see where this is going.

The player hops in the hovercraft, turns to the right, and floors it down the ramp. At the bottom, hopefully once the player has reached his/her maximum velocity, the craft plows into the zombies in a similar fashion to how the Untouchables break into hooch-houses. The first few times, results were mixed: either we would plow through the zombies, causing them to fly all over the place, or we would sputter to a stop, forcing us to sit there and be eaten alive. Adding to the fun is the random time limit imposed on the player by the withered IBM computer we're using. The system isn't too keen on rendering this stuff, and so you usually have between 30seconds and a minute before it freezes.

After some hilarious test runs, we decided to lengthen the ramp, allowing us to go faster. Unfortunately my carelessness in connecting the ramp to the floor of the game world led to a disappointing first run in front of the rest of the class. A second try, however, showed greatly improved results! We were able to fly down there, smash a few zombies, and still have time to hop out of the craft and run around before the game froze, or we were eaten.

Our time with Hammer has come to an end, and I will be left with fond memories of messin' up zombies. Any game that lets you create your own scenarios, filling a room with pointless bad guys and improbably situations, is okay in my book. It brings me back to my days of playing Tenchu 2 on the Playstation, and Timesplitters on the Gamecube. Like those games, however, I usually get more into messing around in the editor mode than I do with the actual game.

Posted by MikeRubino at 4:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 30, 2006

EL405: Hammer Down

Thursday's workshop in Hammer was a really good time. Perhaps it was because we were able to produce an actual room to play with in a short amount of time, or maybe it was because Hammer runs in the beautiful Half-Life 2 engine; either way, it was fun.

Hammer's interface is much simpler and intuitive than Blender 3D, the open source modeling program we've recently worked in. Creating a room is as simple as drawing for walls, and assuming you aren't going for some French salon or Jazz-era speakeasy, the gritty textures Valve supplies with the program work just fine. After a few tutorials, we were able to fill our room with some zombies, a few shotguns, a smattering of grenades, and a couple pigeons, then we compiled our game and let the chaos unfold.

This, of course, begs the comparison: is Hammer a better product because it was made by a company, rather than an open source project?

It's a debate that one could write research papers, blog entries, and books on... but for this small instance, I would argue yes. I am a semi-supporter of open source: it is great for some things, and awful for others. There is a certain amount of commitment and knowledge required for open source software, and there is also an air of pretentiousness. Open source software is generally made by a collective group of people who all share the same passion for customization, coding and making things the way they want them. This is great, except that it usually means open source software is unintuitive and complex for the average user.

A prime example has been Blender 3D, a 3D modeling program that manages to be extremely powerful and frustratingly muddled all at the same time. The interface is cramped, vague, and obtuse. Most of the buttons are abbreviated, and if you want to actually function in the 3D space, you need to know over a dozen keyboard shortcuts. At the same time, the program can do a heck of a lot, including craft an entire game engine or CGI animation. We performed exercises in this program first, and I found myself often getting frustrated with the two-button mousing system and the constant use of keyboard shortcuts. The programs biggest advantage is its ability to output the final product to a number of other programs, including high-end 3D modeling software like 3D Studio Max and Maya.

When we finally got to Hammer, after jumping through a hoard of anti-piracy hoops in Valve's Steam software, we found a program that was easy to use and very, very fun. Hammer is a slick piece of corporate software that is both very powerful and very user-friendly. The people at Valve worked hard to make this SDK as accessible as possible so that people could mod like crazy, and it shows. It reminded me alot of another easy 3D modeling tool: SketchUp. Hammer operated like so many other graphics programs (alot of Adobe software comes to mind): you have a toolbar to the left which features all the items and selection tools you may need, and on the right are palettes for various details and properties of the items in the game world. This sort of setup, that mirrors other popular software, allows users to get into the program faster because they feel this sense of familiarity. Hammer's biggest downfall, really, was the fact that it can't output to formats outside of Half-Life. Granted, this is a tool to create mods for Half-Life, so I guess you shouldn't expect much beyond that.

You could compare and contrast corporate software to open source software until you are blue in the face, but in the battle of Hammer vs Blender... Hammer smashed the competition into pieces.

Posted by MikeRubino at 4:42 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 28, 2006

EL405: Platforming, Sidescrolling, and Settling in Flash

My latest issues in producing my final Flash project stem from my inability to figure out side-scrolling and platform jumping using ActionScript. My hopes of finding various tutorials to teach me have been a little side-tracked. The tutorials exist, however they are hopelessly vague. Either folks making the tutorials stubbornly insist on not explaining things, or they are creating the tutorials too fast to really make the code universally usable. I did find a few that helped me at least get some semblance of a platform and gravity engine installed, but I can't seem to apply that to a game just yet.

To be blunt: I'm frustrated. Mainly because I am sick and tired of compromising every vision I have for a game in this class. Each project I have done starts out with these (what I deem) great ideas for something that I would really enjoy playing and making. But with each project, I have to scale back, I have to rethink. And now, it looks as if I will be doing the same for my Dodge Intrepid side-scroller.

Right now, the only aspect of the game I really am confident on is the opening menu. The menu looks sweet. I mean, if there's one thing I got down in Flash, it's making menus. It's the rest of the game, really, that is hurting my soul.

At this point, there is a lot of "get it done" mentality going through my head. Just get the game done, who cares if it's what you really want. Just get it done so you have something to show. And maybe that's a good plan of attack for now. Get it done so I have something to build from and work on in the future. A good starting point. With only two weeks left, and really only one class period left, since the other two will be devoted to Hammer, I will have to make the best use of my time.

This is why I have been considering making the Dodge game into a more Lode Runner-style adventure game, rather than a side-scrolling beat-em up. What's the difference? Really only one thing: there's no scrolling. My main issue would be eliminated, and I could focus instead on creating a large level with lots of platforms, ladders, etc. Of course, I don't think I would have the enemies chase you around like in Lode Runner, but rather they would be stationary and you would have to fight them to get to the books you need.

I'm still toying around with the idea. I just want to have one cool level made for the final, and then after this class is over I can make more in my spare time (if such a thing exists). The big problem I have this going this route is that the graphics would need to be smaller, which means less detailed artwork.

I have a long road ahead of me... I just hope I have enough time to dedicate to this project to get something finished.

Posted by MikeRubino at 1:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 21, 2006

EL405: Blog Portfolio Part Deux

My second blog portfolio for EL405: New Media Projects focuses most on my Catholic Social Teaching project. The class has moved away from the traditional texts and I, as a student, have begun to focus my efforts more on my projects. There haven't been as many blogging opportunities during this second portfolio, but what I have here is a detailed development journal of my learnings in Flash. I'm looking forward to sharing more of my development as I begin work on Project 2.

Coverage & Timeliness (Blog entries featuring analysis and commentary on required readings.. all completed on time or ahead of schedule)
• Catholic Social Teacher Has No Square Jaw I brainstorm game ideas based on the Catholic Social Teaching model.
• Flash Faux Politics While not related directly to an assignment, I did spend class time developing this project.
• Putting Project 1 in Perspective I talk about designing the rooms for my untitled CST game.
• Extreme Progress... but still no title. More development journaling about my CST game, including screenshots.
• A near finish product with a real title! A finalized project 1 with a title!
• Project 2 Moving On An entry about moving from Flash to GF2 for my final project.

In-Depth (Extended analysis on various blog entries)
• Flash Faux Politics In this entry, I explore how I created my campaign headquarters and talk about the importance of preloaders in Flash projects. I am more than ready to admit the concessions I had to make on this project due to time.
• Extreme Progress... but still no title. I talk about Puff and I exploring Flash coding. The hardest part of my game was figuring out how to get the sounds to play the way I wanted them to. Even after finishing the game, the sounds still didn't operate perfectly.
• A near finish product with a real title! An deeper look into my finished project 1. In this entry I talk about the design choices I made with the game, and talk about the balance of exploration and narrative.

Comments & Discussion (Discussions on classmate's blogs that I've participated in)
• Discussion on Leslie Rodriguez's blog about Audacity.
• Comment on Karissa Kilgore's blog about Project 2.
• Discussion on Amanda's blog about Project 1.
• Discussion on my blog about CST.

Xenoblogging (Helping along the blog-o-sphere)
• Comment Grande: Posted two comments with ActionScript code on Amanda's blog.

Wild Card
• We Are Dead. We are Robot Jox A dorky blog entry about my impossible quest to find a movie that I remembered from my childhood.

Posted by MikeRubino at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 20, 2006

EL405: Project 2 Moving On

My proposal for the second, and final, project this semester plans on being somewhat of an ongoing project for me (provided I can get a good grip on what I'm doing). I'm basically adapting my Dodge side-scroller from Games Factory 2 to Flash. I know it's not as wonderfully new and exciting as some projects, but at the same time it's where my heart is.

My original plan was to develop a single level for our early exercises and then develop the game further into a number of levels for the final. Now I must face the music and admit that this shall not happen. It's not because of a lack of ambition, because I've certainly got enough of that to power a tug boat. Rather, it's because I have been unable to remain focused on this grand scheme while working on my McTeag game and various exercises. That, along with the fact that Games Factory 2 is an obtuse, limited piece of software and I have little time to march across campus to a comp. lab to learn how to use it. Plus, I have to think of usability.

GF2 can export to a webpage so that the game can be playable in any browser. However, GF2 is only made for PC's I would need one to edit my game in the future. And, you need a "pro" version of the software to export it to web. All these things mean less and less control of my game after I finish EL405. It would be much more convenient to just learn how to make the game using Flash. It would also be more compatible for the web.

The real issue is actually learning how to make a side-scroller in Flash. Puff and I spent a good while talking about making the game in Flash--it was he who said that it would probably take the same amount of time to make the game in GF2 as it would in Flash, and I am beginning to agree. While I know how to use GF2 somewhat, it's unintuitive interface slows the user down. So while I will have to teach myself new aspects of Flash, once I get up and running I hope I can produce a game faster. Hopefully.

And so my main goal for Project 2 is the following: to create a working menu system for the Dodge game, to re-create the Antarctica level that we made previously, only this time make it actually fun to play, and make some sort of ending screen that would lead to more levels. The main source of help for this project will be the Outside of Society, a Flash tutorial website that is devoted to side-scrolling and "tile-based" games.

I will be using much of the same Dodge artwork for this as I did in GF2. The graphics will look marginally better in Flash because it uses vector images instead of bitmaps. I will, unfortunately, have to create the level from scratch, since it won't have the large library of game items that GF2 came with.

Posted by MikeRubino at 11:52 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 14, 2006

EL405: A near finish product with a real title!

After lots of blood, sweat, and tears I finally came up with a title for my Project 1 Flash game... and therefore, I finished the game. Actually, alot of work went into this game--most of my time was spent trying to get the scoring mechanics to work so that people couldn't cheat.

Scoring isn't really the point behind my game. And really, neither is actual gameplay. What's important is the story, the message, and hopefully the humor. I'm dubbing it "a listening adventure" because that's really what you do. I know we were in a classroom environment today when people first tried it; it was noisy, there were alot of distractions, and the speakers on those onyx-IBMs are paltry at best, so I understand that people had a short attention span with my game. Basically, the game is a long-winded noir narrative. You click something and listen to McTeag draw conclusions about a man's character. And then you click on something else... and listen some more. It doesn't sound like the most fun game on the planet, but I wasn't really aiming for that.

I was trying to find something that balanced exposition and narrative with some sort of exploration. Had I more time, the game would actually have animation and interactivity. Then again, had I more time, I would read more books. So my recommendation for you, if you happen to play my game, is to let McTeag talk. Let him get it out of his system. Because if you click on more than one thing at a time, he'll use his uncanny ability to say two things at once. It's really amazing, but really shouldn't be tried. Because I was unable to have one sound playing block out another, it's very possible to go through and click everything, which sounds something like a cluster grenade.

The other issue I encountered was the sound of the final clue, before the game advances you to the ending screen. You see, you have to find 11 clues in order to complete your assignment. But once you click that 11th clue, I have ActionScript that realizes the score equals 11 and it takes you to the final frame... while the sound continues to play. I need to make Flash realize a sound is playing, and then have it advance to the final screen only after the sound is finished. Something to work on for next time.

I'm very happy, however, with the finished product of my game. It's not as polished as most Flash games on the market, but it's very close. It's education to a certain extent, but really isn't for children. It's a hardboiled detective game that just so happens to touch on Catholic Social Teaching. That's a sentence I don't get to write very often.

So enjoy the game!

[Note: the game itself, after being compressed, is about 2.1MB. A little larger than expected, but I'm not surprised given that there is almost 10 minutes of audio throughout the game. The game itself also runs at 800x600... which will be really large if you are running anything smaller than that resolution.]

Posted by MikeRubino at 4:19 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

November 13, 2006

EL405: Extreme Progress... but still no title.

Over the weekend, I made a tremendous amount of progress on my Project 1 Catholic Social Teaching Game. While I still must overcome many hurdles in getting this game to a finished state, the largest seems to be a title. I can't think of a good title for this thing, and it's killing me! How long must I refer to it by its slang nickname: CSTProj1?

I spent a good amount of time on Saturday actually drawing the locations and objects for the game. As I mentioned in a previous post, all of the environments and objects would be created in Adobe Illustrator and brought over to Flash. By doing so, I have greater control over how things look... it's also much easier, in my opinion, to work with vector lines in Illustrator, since it doesn't break up line segments like Flash does. The two environments in the game are "the coffee shop" (which is strangely modeled after my favorite coffee shop!) and "the apartment."

One of the things I have been working on tonight (after some help from Puff), was creating the invisible buttons for the environments. Both environments are filled with things to click on, and by doing so, various audio clues will be played helping the you learn about the guy you're investigating. Since a number of the objects were built into the background, invisible buttons had to be placed over them. Now, when you roll over an object that you can click on, it enlarges, making it painfully obvious that it is clickable. However, this pop-up technique is only used for the vital clues about CST... there will be some hidden Easter Egg buttons as well!

It's very easy for me to not give away too much... since the story is continually morphing as I develop the game. What was going to be a missing person's case on Friday now is looking more like a personal investigation. The objects and their CST relations are still the same, but the overarching story continues to change. Tomorrow afternoon I plan on doing a little recording studio action in my dorm room, and then implementing the sound with the rest of the game.

Posted by MikeRubino at 12:28 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

November 9, 2006

EL405: Putting Project 1 in Perspective

For now I've finished on the planning aspects of my game and have decided to actually begin working on the mechanics. I could honestly sit and theorize about what would be sweet to use in my game for hours, but that's just the easy stuff. Actually putting this all in to practice is what's challenging.

In my game, which doesn't have a title yet, you play a detective assigned to a missing-persons case. Some guy has up and vanished, and by snooping around his apartment and talking to his co-workers, you have to figure out what happened to him. The game will rely heavily on narrative and clicking. There will be more teaching and funny one-liners than any sort of "gameplay," but that's how most detective games go anyways.

Developing a game around Catholic Social Teaching has been harder than I thought (aside from my earlier, more extreme attempt at a CST game). But now that I have my game storyboarded, I spent the morning returning to my days as a young artist by doing some one-point perspective drawings. It has been years since I did one of these, and I had forgotten how fun using a ruler and horizon lines can be! The room (which is pictured in the screenshot) is of a small apartment. I drew it by hand first, then scanning it into the computer and traced it in Adoble Illustrator. What you see is a very basic, generic room outline. I haven't added any lighting, textures, color, etc... once I do that, I will then add the objects for the player to click on. Each of these objects will give the player some sort of clue (all tying in with CST) about the missing-person's character.

So far, things are going nicely. I plan on getting most of the game up and running before actually working on a script and recording voices. I may or may not be calling on my fellow Dwellers for voice help (depending on how fast I need to get this thing together.)

Posted by MikeRubino at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 31, 2006

EL405: Flash Faux Politics

The majority of my Flash dealings over the past week have been putting together my Dodge Intrepid campaign page. While not necessarily adhering to the assigned tasks at hand, this experience has allowed me to delve deeper into Flash and learn things on my own to fit my own needs. Of course, now I am buckling down on developing my Project 1, alot of what I learned with the campaign page will translate directly to the project.

One of the issues I encountered with this design is the sound. I felt that the sound files were too large and obtuse to actually bring in to Flash. So I modeled the program off of a design that we use to actually run the sound effects for the show. The files reside in a folder and are called up by Flash. The code uses the following process (in laments terms): "Create a new sound>the new sound is equal to 'file name'>On release of 'button' play sound."

The one thing I think my current program could use is a preloader. It doesn't for two main reasons: I didn't have enough time, and I don't think it will work with loading external sound files. This Flash app was on a tight deadline, since it needed to go live online by today (since it applies mainly to the live show coming up on Nov 4th). Had I more time to develop it, I think there could be many more features implemented into the design, like a slide show, talking points, and maybe even a voter ballot. (I may try and make the online voting ballot in Flash...) But the big reason I don't have a preloader is because I don't think it will work.

The preloaders described in the Flash Journalism book deal with loading video and sound embedded in Flash. As the program works now, the internet browser downloads all of the sound files individually in the background of the program. So you see the interface, but all of the buttons may not work right away until the sound is done downloading. Dr. Jerz and I talked about having a "preview" sound clip play to tide over the viewer, but since I didn't have any graphic representation of a loading or buffering action, I thought that would be more confusing than helpful. So just for time's sake, I added a little disclaimer at the bottom telling everyone to be patient.

The development of Project 1 is coming along nicely, though. I still don't know what the "story" or "moral" is of the game... but I'm really starting to figure out how it's going to play. The game will be half "Choose Your Own Adventure" and have "Myst-click-fest." The story will play out through text in various frames (possibly with narration... or pictures with narration...) and then you will hit road blocks in which you must look for clues and uncover plot points by searching rooms. It will be a detective story teaching one of the lessons of Catholic Social Teaching.

Posted by MikeRubino at 4:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 23, 2006

EL405: Catholic Social Teacher Has No Square Jaw

Developing a game that embodies one of the main principles of "Catholic Social Teaching" is proving to be a harder task than I first anticipated. Mainly because I need this game to be something that I would find fun playing.

Unfortunately, I can't somehow meld my Dodge Intrepid game into a CST module. If you have listened to the radio show, you know how Dodge doesn't fit in with CST. He loathes the poor, barely respects elderly, and could care less about being a "steward of the Earth." His basement contains six pillars cut from red wood trees! And of course, Allister Farious, Dodge's nigh-immortal nemesis, applies even less to CST. He hates unions--and fair wages altogether-- employs children, and has no problem killing those who stand in his way. The only aspect of Catholic Social Teaching that could apply to him might be his involvement in social and civic life, since he is running for mayor.

The game I originally proposed in class dealt mainly with the primary lesson in Catholic Social Teaching: respect life. The lesson focuses on the Church's stance against abortion and euthanasia, and my game idea encompassed both of those horrendous acts. Yeah, I'll admit the game could be over the top, but it would almost have to be to get the point across.

That said, I will more than likely not be making my originally proposed game. Partially due to the technical limitations of GF2 (and the fact that I would have to go to a solitary lab on campus to work on it) and also because I still think there is more to consider with Project 1.

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October 18, 2006

EL405: Blog Portfolio

What follows is my blogging portfolio for EL405: New Media Projects. The range of these entries spans from our early discussions on game theory, to our foray into Interactive Fiction, and then into Flash and 2D game design. This class has been mainly about workshopping and game theory, without as many readings as previous blogging courses. However, there has been plenty to write about, as you shall see.

Coverage & Timeliness (Blog entries featuring analysis and commentary on required readings.. all completed on time or ahead of schedule)
• Limits in Games An entry covering the first half of Koster's Theory of Fun.
• Taking Games Seriously Innovation in the game market today.
• "Go South" or "Not Dennis" An entry covering a number of IF games, including the Strongbad e-mail poking fun at said games.
• The Ups and Downs of Simple Code I discuss Inform 7's coding language and how it is easy to learn and difficult to master (like Othello).
• Reaching the Widest Audience Commentary on Darby's Make Amazing Games and Games Factory 2.
• Alien Extraction A link to the finished IF game produced by Karissa Kilgore and I.
• A Few Minutes More More discussion of Darby's Amazing Games book and playing with GF2.
• The Big Picture Case Study An in-depth discussion on MSNBC's Big Box Flash program.
• Developing Dodge The first entry in my development diary for the Dodge Intrepid game.
• Advancing Antarctica Continuing develop discussion on the Dodge platforming game.

In-Depth (Extended analysis on various blog entries)
• Limits in GamesAn entry covering the first half of Koster's Theory of Fun and Game Design. I discuss sand-box games, formalist game design, and ways for games to inspire creativity and experimentation.
• Taking Games Seriously Covering the second half of Koster's book, this entry touches about innovation in games today. How game designers are influenced by previous games they've made or played, and how Nintendo hopes to inspire innovation in the market.
• "Go South" or "Not Dennis" A lengthy entry covering my experiences with a number of Interactive Fiction games, as well as musings of "Hugo's House of Horrors." This entry also covers the Strongbad e-mail assigned for class.
• The Big Picture Case Study A detailed look at MSNBC's development of "The Big Picture" Flash program and it's ability to make the news and information interactive.
• Developing Dodge My first entry about the development of my side-scrolling "Dodge Intrepid and the Pages of Time" game in Games Factory 2. I discuss the issues of animation and getting started with GF2's interface.

Comments & Discussion (Discussions on classmate's blogs that I've participated in)
• Discussion on Karissa Kilgore's entry on Games Factory 2
• Comment on Karissa Kilgore's entry on Inform 7
• Discussion on my entry on level design
• Discussion on my entry on object creation
• Comment on Stephan Puff's entry on Darby's Amazing Games in Minutes.

Xenoblogging (Helping along the blog-o-sphere)
• Comment Primo: First comment on Karissa Kilgore's entry on Inform 7
• Comment Grande: A lengthy comment on Karissa's entry on GF2

Wild Card
• "Crank" as a Videogame Film I analyze the film "Crank" from the perspective of a videogame film.
• Unveiling "RSite" An entry discussing new media campaigning with the launch of a new videoblog.

Game Draft
• Dodge Intrepid Game: Demo Level Posted by my partner Stephan Puff on his blog, this is the very, very rough demo of the Dodge Intrepid game that I will be developing.

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October 15, 2006

EL405: Advancing Antarctica

While working in the Game Factory 2 on my Dodge Intrepid game, I spent my last session crafting the Antarctica level. Because of the time frame involved in developing these games I don’t have the time to craft all of the graphics for these levels.

In GF2, it’s best to make the graphics first and then define them as platforms so that the player characters don’t fall off the screen. If you don’t have the time just yet to create proper graphics, but you still want to get a working demo, just create a colored rectangle object and define it as the platform. I used this method, first showed to me by Dr. Jerz, to set up my level. I created all of the platforms using gray rectangles, and then I would find the graphics I needed and lay them on top of the gray. The character will still be walking on the gray boxes, but the player wouldn’t be able to tell.

The Pro edition of GF2 comes with a number of cool textures and characters preinstalled in its library. While a lot of them are made specifically for a certain kind of game, the platforms and wall textures can be used for almost anything. I found a number of “crystal level” textures that I was able to shift to look like an ice cave. So I just laid those into the scenery and then re-edited them so that they would become active objects (the idea that these textures are “quick backgrounds” that can’t be changed to active objects still befuddles me).

Another trick that makes creating platforms a lot quicker is the qualifier property. If you make a rule that a certain character or object cannot pass through something with the property of 0 for example, then you can assign a whole bunch of objects with this 0 qualifier and you save yourself a lot of time coding. Sounds confusing, and for some reason you can’t use the qualifier option on everything, but it’s great when it works.

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October 14, 2006

EL405: Developing Dodge

When I heard that we were going to be developing 2D arcade games, I began drawing up elaborate plans to turn my radio adventure serial into a side-scroller a la Shinobi or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on NES. I spent a great deal of time on the phone with my co-writer James and my co-actor Mike, discussing the various elements of the game. It would be an epic masterpiece… if I could only get it made.

Actually sitting down to the work with the Games Factory 2 program has been an experience quite different from my original expectations. The book, Make Amazing Games in Minutes, was a crock; a product of slick marketing and design-outsourcing. You could make amazing games in minutes if you knew the program inside and out, and had your animation and images created by a professional designer. However when in practice, I find GF2 clunky, unintuitive, and buggy. It promises a lot, and may very well deliver a lot, but so far has been just a tad difficult.

I spent the limited amount of class time trying to get the mechanics down before actually working on the levels for the game. This has proven to be more than a little frustrating thanks to changing contextual menus and GF2 jargon that I can’t seem to get around. The other issue is that you can’t work in class on the GF2 Pro version and expect those files to open up in the trial version. Despite these hurdles, the game is slowly coming along.

I spent a lot of time in Adobe Illustrator, crafting the Dodge figure and his various animations. At first, I drew him exceedingly large, however when converting him to a bitmap, the fine details tended to get a little muddled. The style of the characters has to be simplified in order to still look good in a 640x480 game screen.

The main focus of the game will be punching and collecting books (two things Dodge does best!) You begin each level with the simple mission of collecting all of the book strewn about the world. Then, as you progress from left to right, you have to fight the various goons (in the first level, they are Buick LeSabre’s penguins). Dodge’s animations are a tad limited, but in actuality he doesn’t need to do a whole lot. He runs, jumps and punches, just like in the radio show.

The plan right now is to develop this first level to meet the requirements of the GF2 group project. Then, I will continue work on the game so that it is ready for the term project, due at the end of the semester. I expect that I’ll be scaling back my plans for the final game because of time constraints, and my inexperience with GF2.

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October 10, 2006

EL405: The Big Picture Case Study

Before taking a look at "The Big Picture," I decided to follow it's evolutionary trail. Watching the Enron interactive story, the precursor to MSNBC's "The Big Picture" creation, I was surprised that I had never seen anything like this before.

While in college, I don't have cable television, so all of the news I learn about is from online sources. For video, I'm most likely watching Fox News' free video player, which, while nothing fancy, gets the job done. The shift of the recent years to more people getting their news from the web has lead to a practically every news station, both local and national, posting their videos on the Internet. I was able to watch the Swann/Rendell debate last week unedited on KDKA's website. And the rest of my news comes from places like the Drudge Report. But not once have I seen something like the Enron interactive news story, or the Big Picture.

The strengths of the Enron story lie in its ability to make accessible what some would see as an uninteresting topic. Corporate scandal can often be a confusing mess of jargon and greed, but MSNBC was able to summarize the important stuff in a nice package. The story even appeals to younger audiences because of its appearance as a videogame, which author Mindy McAdams refers to as "Sim-City-like illustrations."

It was the evolution of the idea, not the design, that lead Ashley Wells to design the Big Picture. The idea that people on the internet should receive a unique experience, instead of just a rehash of a print magazine, pushed MSNBC to deliver exclusive, interactive content. The Big Picture offered not just a narrated news story, but the ability to control how you see the news, and what you do with it. Their technology allowed you to skip to various scenes, much like a DVD, while the video was still streaming. You could choose different segments from the pane on the left, or allow the small news anchor guide in the bottom right to show you around.

Allowing people to vote on what they're watching, or on the ideas proposed within the segments, plays on a concept that has taken the internet by storm. I can't figure it out, myself--since Americans can barely make it to the real polls-- but people love to vote on things. Every online video service out there has a ratings system, every online store has customer product ratings, and even videogame review sites allow their readers to contest the editor's reviews by writing their own. The Big Picture melds a compelling news story with the ability to vote.

In the Civil Rights story, MSNBC asks for your opinion on each issue that is brought up. Amazingly, while the video is still running, a pane slides out over the image and asks for your opinion. Should affirmative action be practiced in universities? Choose "yes" or "no" and see what the rest of the viewers said (56% say no, by the way). The voting system becomes more complex when it comes to the 2004 Academy Awards. Here, viewers are ranking the actors and films that are nominated for each category. You have five actors, each with his own bar, that you can drag and drop in the order you think they rank (number one winning the award, of course). The ability to jump between ranking people, video of the event, and clips from the films they were nominated for, gives the viewer control over what he or she cares to see. If you have seen the film that the actor is nominated for, you may not need to see a clip of it, that choice can now be made by you, instead of a producer in a newsroom.

The amount of information presented in the Big Picture seems like more than what you could possibly get out of a simple typed news article. While the story is playing in the large window, you are sent "quick facts" in the bottom center window, and can provide comments and feedback in the window next to it. These "UI components" as Wells calls them, allow for further interaction and learning at a pace decided by the viewer.

The overall package of "The Big Picture" is very impressive. I'm not sure if I would always be in the mood for what is often an overwhelming news experience, but because they don't produce these segments for every issue or story, I can surely see myself coming back to it.

Flash has always been somewhat daunting to me, since I have used it only here and there for various projects. I give Wells, and the rest of the broadband crew at MSNBC, credit for taking the time to master both the coding and design side of Flash. They created an immersive news experience.

Posted by MikeRubino at 10:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 28, 2006

EL405: A Few Minutes More

Darby, "Make Amazing Games in Minutes"

The latest two chapters in Darby's book are getting better. As I had assumed, once he got past the chapters of introductory material, and started getting into the meat of TGF2, things would get a little more helpful. Last class, we really got to explore the basics of the program, and then play around a little bit. I was glad to see that everything was at least semi-intuitive.

Part of the fun from last class was being able to just play around with the rules of the gameworld. I find that messing around in the program first, without following any rules or processes out of a text, yields the most familiarity with the program later on. The first thing I did was go in and make every object in the game have either an eye patch or a handle-bar mustache (it's tradition). But later on, as we learned how sort-of-easy it was to make things shoot, move, and ultimately be destroyed, I had a little more fun, making Smiley cookies shoot sporks at Frownies. It was a messed up game.

So as we go through the steps of making certain kinds of "retro" games, not only are we learning the rules of these games, we're also breaking those rules. I'm looking forward to today's class, where we'll begin to make a bat-and-ball game. I wonder if the bat would look better with a mustache or an eye patch...

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September 26, 2006

EL405: Alien Extraction

Last week in my New Media Projects course, we finished our first games. Karissa and I teamed up to create our very first Interactive Fiction game, mysteriously titled Alien Extraction.

I'm going to try and figure out how to get the game on my own website, but for now, you can go over to the course blog and play it there. Enjoy!

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September 25, 2006

EL405: Reaching the Widest Audience

Darby, "Make Amazing Games in Minutes"

After reading the first four chapters of Darby's book, I am really looking forward to getting started on a game or two. Darby realizes that readers are also getting pumped to start creating... but he stresses planning. Game-making is the same as writing a good paper: you have to do a sufficient amount of planning and preparation before actually sitting down to make the thing.

While the opening chapters of the book were somewhat base and childish, I did like Darby's suggest for outlining your game. Creating the idea, the objective, and the obstacles and then seeing what is actually feasible is a smart way to go about things. Sure the whole book seems to be an infomercial for The Game Factory 2 (TGF2), but after fiddling with the program a bit it's clear that it's the best tool for what we aim to achieve.

How I wish TGF2 was a Mac program... having Inform 7 on my Mac made everything that much easier (and the Mac's version actually had more features than the PC one, which is always a plus.) However, the Click Team--the programmers responsible for TGF2--doesn't produce this product for those of the OSX variety. A Mac alternative is Power Game Factory, a side-scroller-creator that actually looks cleaner than TGF2. Unfortunately, the creators of this game are almost violently anti-PC, which means that any game you create is stuck on a platform that only holds roughly 10% of the market.

And for me, it is key to create a game that can reach all platforms. It's sort of like a publisher who is trying to decide whether or not to develop a game strictly for the Gamecube. You could certainly create an excellent Gamecube game that would really take advantage of the system and all it has to offer... but then you would only have a very small amount of people playing it. The same goes with Power Game Factory. Thankfully, TGF2 can export games to the web, which will be clutch for reaching the widest audience.

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September 20, 2006

EL405: The Ups and Downs of Simple Code

While working in Inform 7 to code our game "Alien Extraction," I've discovered that it's both a blessing and a curse to have such a simple coding language. Inform 7 uses a "plain English" style of coding, instead of something complex like JavaScript. So instead of having to look up all sorts of phrases and commands, you can just type something like "The hat is a thing" and suddenly you created a hat that is, indeed, a thing.

That may be all well and good... until you make an error, or try to do something complex. As we discovered yesterday, something like creating a massive trap for a character is much trickier than crafting a nice "If...then..." statement. The plain English coding turns from a very powerful tool to somewhat of a hindering one--while still infinitely more accessible than Java or any other sort of raw code. The issue is that when you actually do something wrong in the code, like say "type" instead of "kind," it's tricky to figure out what exactly is wrong. You instead have to keep trying synonyms and different syntax to get the code to compile properly--if the game used regular code, you would normally be able to see the clear issue, whether it was a bad command name or some sort of misplaced bracket.

But, Inform 7 technically uses its own brand of coding (despite masking itself as plain English) and we have to learn this code in order to make the game we want to make. The game Karissa and I are making, which is about a small alien who travelled to America in an aluminum boat, just finished its second round of beta testing. While I still can't get the game to do everything I'd like, I'm very happy with what we've come up with thus far. Inform 7 definitely allows the coder to "jump right in" rather than study code for a while, and I'm happy about that.

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September 6, 2006

EL405: "Go South" or "Not Dennis"

There is no better way to describe Interactive Fiction than how Strongbad does in e-mail #94. Not only are these games ridiculously difficult because of their lack of visuals, but they also tend to be very limiting and unexplicable in their understanding of commands. That isn't to say that Interactive Fiction is bad--I rather enjoy it--but it shows its open-endedness can sometimes be a bit frustrating.

First there was Pick up the Phone Booth and Die, a game with a pretty clear non-objective. You are standing in the middle of a courtyard, next to a phone booth. Clearly you have to do something to this phone booth to win, yet it's locked, cannot be broken, and of course cannot be picked up (lest he welcome death). Now, you also shouldn't try eating it, which is what I did, because apparently that also results in death. It was a charming little game with a good sense of humor (you are endlessly mocked if you are actually killed because you "picked up" the phone booth.)

That game, however, is cake compared to the rest.

The second game I tried was 9:05 by Adam Cadre. You wake up in your sparse bedroom and find that the phone is ringing. After answering it (which is complete task in and of itself, let me tell you), you find that you are yet again late for work! And while you may be late for work, that certainly doesn't make you type any faster, and it doesn't make the computer understand your commands any faster... and so I went through the arduous task of picking up everything, running around the house, and trying to leave, only to find that I had to get a shower and eat before leaving.

This all ties back in to Foster's discussion about summarizing actions, clustering them together. It's not often that we are forced to actually recall each and every step we took to get ready in the morning, yet these games force us to get them right. I went to the dresser and changed clothes; then I found out that I had to get a shower first. Sigh. So I go over to the bathroom and try to get a shower. Then I realize that I'm wearing all of my clothes, holding my dirty clothes, and carrying a watch, keys, and a wallet! It was a real exercise in "going through the motions" and detailing every tiny step that needs to be taken.

I then moved on to Deadline, a game that claims to be a mystery. The opening description about the Robner Estate had me intrigued, and reminded me of one of my favorite classic PC games: Hugo's House of Horrors. The Hugo games, along with a whole sub genre of adventure games around the same time, seemed to bridge the gap between Interactive Fiction and Point-and-Click adventure games. There were graphics, however crude, but you still did all of the commands through typing. The games even had elaborate descriptions to make up for the horrid graphics.

But alas, Deadline turned out to be nothing like Hugo, and I quickly turned to something a little more familiar: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I remember playing this text adventure game before... but not in a small Java applet, or even on a floppy disk. No, I played it an IM window. A few years ago, someone created an IM Bot that allowed you to play the entire game via AOL Instant Messenger. I don't talk to that Bot anymore... but playing this game brought back some good memories... like me losing. Alot.

Hitchhiker's Guide really shows off the power that Interactive Fiction can have when done right. It really manages to capture the feel of the entire series, and while it's still a difficult game, it seems to understand more of the commands you type in (even if it doesn't let you do them). My favorite was when I told my character to crawl, because the room was spinning. The computer simply replied: "You can't. At least, not in this game you can't." It's that kind of self-referential humor that kept me playing, despite my difficulty getting out of the house while it was being bulldozed.

This is probably the most interaction I've had with fiction since I rearranged my bookshelf over the summer, and I know this isn't the end of it. While I have my complaints about these games, I ultimately enjoy them... and I know that when I actually make my game, I'll have the same complaints about it that I do about the rest-- it comes with the genre.

Posted by MikeRubino at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 5, 2006

EL 405: Taking Games Seriously

Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design

In the second half of Koster's book, he talks about the evolution of games as an art form, and as a respected medium--right up there with film and music. But, Koster warns that we members of this new medium, games will have to prove themselves, and in many ways, grow up.

There are two basic aspects of a game: the ludemes, or the core game mechanics and design, and the dressing, or the game's graphics and sounds. While there have been plenty advancements in the dressing of games over the past ten years, the ludemes has been rather stagnant.

For games to really develop as a medium, they need to further develop the ludemes, not just the dressing. By and large, however, the industry has spent its time improving the dressing. we have better and better graphics, better back stories, better plots, better sound effects, better music, more fidelity in the environments, more types of content, and more systems within each game. But the systems themselves tend to see fairly little innovation.(Koster 166)

This has been the case especially over the past eight years or so, especially with the current and next-generation consoles hitting the market. There has been little stress on innovation in game design over the years, and instead a focus has been placed on getting more realistic graphics and more advanced physics. While these certainly aren't bad things (I like a good-lookin' game as much as the next guy), I agree with Koster that the industry needs to start evolving a little more in the ludemes area.

The lack in game innovation may be attributed to a lack of competition. The console market has been dominated by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony for the past ten years (or since the fall of the Dreamcast), and because of this, it is nigh-impossible for any outsiders with fresh ideas to shake up the market. Many have tried, and many have failed.

The software side of things isn't much better. With companies like EA and Activision holding much of the market share, game companies can't take as many risks as they used to. But in this day and age, market share isn't as much of a factor as another reason Koster presents. There is always a market, no matter how small, for the game you create, and with the Internet, cell phones, PDA's and the like, there are a number of ways to circumvent the PC/Console gaming market.

Rather, the software side of things is experiencing a lack of ludemes innovation because of the way game designers work. Koster writes that game designers are having trouble evolving their games into new, unique styles of play because they are relying too much on their knowledge of other games. They have played hundreds of other games like the one they want to make, and little pieces of all those games can slip into the designer's game. This sort of thing happens in every medium; when Quentin Tarantino was filming the "Kill Bill" movies, he was constantly borrowing, and referencing, ideas, shots, and design elements from other works of Asian and American cinema.

How many times after the game Max Payne came out did you see Bullet-Time in other games? Or perhaps the idea of distributing stat points each time a character levels up? These game-gimmicks are constantly copied and shared throughout the gaming world, which slow down innovation (while also creating a sense of familiarity between games by different companies).

I must say, however, that Nintendo is actually taking great steps (and risks) to avoid such pitfalls in the next generation console war. While Sony and Microsoft are releasing their consoles (with Microsoft's XBox 360 already released) with enough horsepower and graphics capabilities to render a way to save the Edmond Fitzgerald, Nintendo is putting graphics to the side in support of a more innovative gaming experience. Their new Wii console will utilize a motion sensing, one-handed wand to control its games. It's a daring and risky move that has so far made them a media darling. Their other innovative hardware unit, the DSLite, has already proven its worth, outselling the Sony PSP in both Japan and America. Its dual-screen, touch-sensitive gaming has been embraced by the public. While the PSP, which is a standard hand-held unit with better graphics, has been selling well, it's figures can't seem to "touch" the DS.

And so as games, and their consoles, continue to evolve, will they be able to mature into their own respectful medium? Koster argues that as a medium "we [gamers and designers] have to earn the right to be taken seriously."

Posted by MikeRubino at 10:55 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 3, 2006

"Crank" as a Videogame Film

After seeing the new Jason Statham action film Crank, I couldn't help but realize the influence that videogames are having on Hollywood. The film, which opened on Friday, is one of the first videogame movies that was never a videogame. The directors set the tone of the film from the very beginning and never let the viewer forget that they are watching a live-action game. Overall, while extremely gory, explicit, and visceral, the movie was extremely enjoyable. It's no "Citizen Kane," but it's also no "Double Dragon."

"Crank" begins like every videogame does: with a Start Screen. In the film, after the production studio logos are done with their little intros, the title screen appe