Half term shenanigans.

You want teh truth? There was no half term shenanigans for me. It's been really boring which only proves how much I enjoy Confetti as Im bored without it

The half term started great with the London MCM Expo trip which was awesome! Loads of stuff to see and do including semi naked lab girls, Tekken, Left 4 Dead 2 and David Lafuente! (artist for Ultimate Spider-man) when I got home that very night the house was full of family and friends for my Mum's birthday bash which went on to the early hours of the morning.

The rest of the half term went really s-l-o-w.

Highlights: Grandparents getting a puppy schitzu. Buying GTA Episodes from Liberty City.

Thats about it!

Halloween's been a bit of a dud really, took my sister out trick or treating earlier.

Can't wait to get back to college!

Still got plenty to do on my Digi Comms assignment but I've done plenty of research so hopefully I've got lotsa detail to put into it and be able to teach you all a thing or two (hopefully!)

See you all on monday !

Nearly There!

So excited about Saturday it's mad!

Never been to a proper big expo like this London one so it'll be a geek's dream come true :D

Gonna take my huge photographer camera ad just take pictures of everything and anything. Plus me and Steph have a competition to see whi can get their pics taken with the most fail cosplayer they can find lmao >:)

I'm cosplaying as Zelda and my Nanah has just about finished my costume, just need the wig :)

Operation steal the warthog is a go. It will be done.

Finally got Microsoft Word for Mac (thanks Steph) so now I should have no problems doing my assignments.

Off now to lounge around and count my munnyz for tomorrow.

Oh and I was joking about the Zelda cosplay. I'm going as yoshi. If somebody wants to help me figure out how to lay spotted eggs it would be a great help for my costume :)

see you tomorrow! (whoever's going)

I'm joking about the whole Yoshi thing as well. I'm going as Kirby.

Awesome internet game :D

Just roaming the net at ridiculous hours in the morning and found a really good game to play:

www.forumwarz.com

Its an RPG parodying the internet and forums and such with it's own false forums, internet browser and so on. It's so funny and the whole idea made me chuckle so I thought I'd share the lurve.

Peace.

Job roles in the industry.

There are many job roles in the games industry as we found out in last weeks lecture with kelly. There are jobs such as art designer, lead art designer, level designer, sound production, executive producer, producer, the list goes on and on...

After playing Uncharted 2 Among Thieves earlier today (which is awesome btw ^-^) I noticed when I connected online for the multiplayer a banner advertising career opportunities in Naughty Dog so I thought I'd check it out for this homework.

I thought I'd look at the "Game Designer" career opening as it's the path I'd most like to go down.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for the planning, layout, setup, and tuning of game levels
• Responsible for designing and producing engaging and fun third-person action gameplay and levels
• Act as producer for levels you design, as well as other parts of the game, collaborating across disciplines to get work done and clear dependencies, ensuring deadlines are met, and championing aspects of the gameplay
• Work directly with artists, programmers, animators and other game designers to contribute to the vision of the game
• Responsible for level layout by creating simplified level geometry and performing extensive play-testing and iteration
• Work with programmers to develop tools on an ongoing basis

So after looking at these responsibilities it's clear the games designers need to have a knowledge of all aspects involved in the making of games in order to make sure the design process runs smoothly and goes the way they want it to, ensuring their vision is fulfilled.

Requirements & Skills

• Experience designing levels for console games
• Minimum 3 to 5 years of games industry experience
• Strong methodology and problem solving ability and with a focus on creative, fun and innovative solutions
• Strong and effective communication skills
• Exceptional team player with the ability to collaborate without losing sight of the gameplay vision
• Willingness to take design direction when offered
• Experience playing 3rd person action games
• Very good working knowledge of Maya, 3DS Max or similar 3D package
• Experience of developing third-person action games a bonus
• Experience of scripting set-up for action games a bonus
• Desire to be a part of the Naughty Dog team

The list of skills and requirements needed for the job proves that the games designer needs to have a good amount of knowledge in all aspects of the industry and job roles. From what I gather after last session and just researching the role of games designer, they basically come up with the premise of games, the story, characters, basic premise for the levels and the overall direction for the game including the decision of the genre of the game for example FPS, RTS, Puzzler and so on.

They would have to keep in constant communication with other departments in order to make sure that the designing progress is running parallel with their designs.

A new start cont.

Ok so I promised that I would finish my article about my new ideas for games which need a nudge in a different direction. The pressures on as I have already received subtle threats from Richard but at least if he doesn't like my ideas, theres not really a chance of them being made !

The Legend of Zelda has been a widely celebrated and hugely successful series chock full of quality games the latest being "Twilight Princess" for the Wii and Gamecube. For me it's quite clear that the formula; go around a hub world, enter dungeon, find keys, unlock doors, fight boss, get new weapon, was, rinse and repeat all the way until you fight big scary Ganon, is showing some signs of getting old. I mean we have been doing this all the way back to the NES days!

So how can you make a classic franchise feel new and fresh again without making it a whole new game completely? Here's how I would do it...

My legend Of Zelda would be set in the present day. Yes you heard right. Here me out before you come charging over with pitchforks first though. Every legend of Zelda has been set in some medieval kingdom, mainly always Hyrule. So how cool would it be to see the story transend into the present day?!

The story of rescuing the princess from a threatening dictator or monster is a classic and more than that; timeless.

So our story goes very much like every other legend of zelda. A small time farm boy called whoever you want but let's just call him Link. So Link tends the crops, has to heard the sheep and look after the animals. He lives with his grandpa and runs errands round the small farm village. This would be the opening of the game and play as the tutorial.

Near the farm village is a huge sprawling metropolis City with towering shiny skyscrapers and large iron bridges crossing the lakes that separate the boroughs. The city is full of rich townfolk and poor beggars and other interesting characters.

All events of previous Zelda games have been lost in time, only to be pursued by Link's crackpot neighbour who has scrolls containing info on all the original characters and such. He also claims to know the whereabouts of the original mastersword...

I'm aware of the length of this blog so i'll try and make the rest quick ;)

So the story goes, the world is experiencing natural disaster after natural disaster, along with growing conflicts in the world all drawing closer to the main sprawling city. The source of these problems; the triforce.

The city is built on the original resting place of the uber powerful triforce however legend has it, it was destroyed. But now it's regathering it's power drawing energy from the city, causing blackouts and such.

A woman DA for now let's just call her Zelda, has become a public figure head for persevering in the war on crime and constantly putting criminals from the city behind bars. She's the ultimate good and everyone adores her. Her partner is not so successful never has a spot in the limelight however it's true that he has never done anything to help. Lets call her partner Ganon.

Long story short Ganon is the decedant of the original Ganondorf and wants to finish his ancestor's work by using the power of the triforce to rule the earth, therefore to do this he has secretly become the kingpin of crime, secretly organising all the crime lords and local hoods. He discovered the the newly risen triforce in the deep underground caverns of the city and has been secretly absorbing it's powers.

Our hero, Link all this time has set off on an adventure after witnessing his crackpot neighbour foretell a prophecy of him saving the world from an evil dictator he sets off to the the city on his trusty Epona... a motorcyle ;)

The gameplay, resembles GTA what with the free roam however there are dungeons such as the sewers, a huge skyscraper, a dam, the slums and so on where the players will get new weapons and abilities.

The last third of the the game is bedlam as ganon has revealed himself to be the main protaganist, he unleashes the triforces and his own newfound power, freeing demons into the city and causing destruction everywhere. We learn that the famous DA is actually the decendant of Zelda and he takes her hostage along with the mayor and traps them in the main skyscraper.

Link has to rescue them, zooming round the streets on "epona" killing the demons and goblins with the original Link's weapons and tunic after discovering it in a crypt.

The final battle is link and zelda on "epona" facing off against a fully powered 80ft tall Ganon monster, smashing skyscrapers and such.

Phew. Done. this was only gonna be a quickie but I got so many ideas running through my head i couldnt stop typing ^-^

Hope you like my ideas, like I say, it's just my opinion. You might have better ideas! This'll be our jobs to come up with stuff like this so best to get the creative juices flowing early yeh ? ;)

Please give me your opinions in the comments box! I love to read 'em :D

Bai!!

A new start

We've seen many videogame franchises dominate the charts and our consoles for years, rising up through sequels, spin-offs, TV shows and comics. However what goes up must come down and inevitably most huge franchises take a dive and end up in a slew of downright insulting games with cheap gimmicks and poor gameplay mechanics (insert Sonic game here).

So I was thinking if I had the chance to revive a couple of these failing franchises where would I take them? What would I have them do? Here's a couple of my ideas...

(WARNING: TOPIC MAY AGGRAVATE LOYAL FANBOYS)

Sonic the hedghog:

Let's start with the obvious. Since the jump to 3-D Sonic has failed miserably to capture our hearts and run away with them, completely lacking the sense of speed that he mastered so greatly in the genesis days he just hasn't been up to scratch lately. Too many characters have been introduced taking away Sonic's uniqueness and just generally being poorly designed; Big the Cat -_- Although Sega has announced that they are making a new full 2-D Sonic game we all know they will some how screw this up so here's how I would do it.

Firstly bring him back to 2-D and stay 2-D. Not some crummy 2.5-D it would be in full cartoon graphics complete with a colour palette that looked like a rainbow had vomited all over it. Sonic was always bright, colourful and striking and that would be the same in the re-boot of my Sonic series. The game would play exactly like the classic genesis games with 3 acts and the last ending in a boss battle.

As for characters there would only be Sonic and Robotnik, yes you heard correctly. The name is Doctor Robotnik not Eggman! The Sonic cartoons for me were interesting as they portrayed Sonic as a freedom fighter against the dictatorship society run by Robotnik. This would play a big part in the storyline for my reboot.

As for the story Sonic games have never had decent stories I mean one of the later ones implied a romantic relationship between a young girl (human) and Sonic (hedgehog) which is clearly against all reason and sanity in our society. In my reboot Sonic the hedgehog is a young adult (you get what I mean) who's family was enslaved and eventually tortured to death by Robotnik. The players would learn this via a series of playable flashbacks where Sonic as a young child flees from the capturing of his family and experiences his first sense of speed. The players would need to be careful as he would be slightly unstable, stumbling, slipping and getting tired which would add a new gameplay element different to the other levels in the present day. (these flashbacks would only be a couple of levels). We learn that Sonic never focused on the loss of his family as he never stopped running. He dealt with his problems by running away from them. Literally. This would be a lot deeper Sonic with reasons for what he is doing. Sonic runs away from Morbius (Morbius now being a country instead of a planet) and grows into a young adult, living life running and trying to have fun. Sonic's a loner who believes that anyone he loves would get hurt as Robotnik vowed that Sonic would be hunted down and killed, therefore he never has any friends or relationships but always seems like a fun loving character. The story goes on to how he returns to Morbius and races across the lands to free the country from Robotniks clutches. Maybe at the end it would be possible to introduce a younger Tails who's parents were also killed looking to Sonic as a role model, however Sonic not ready to accept him.

The gameplay would be the same: run from left to right. With hand drawn cartoon graphics and fully animated cutscenes the game could look beautiful.

The reboot is basically taking Sonic back to his roots, mimicking almost entirely the genesis gameplay style however adding more depth to the characters, a more reasonable story and an origin for the main man himself!

So what do you think? Am I completely off the mark and the idea of making a troubled character with true motivations just too much for a game about running? Maybe you even like the 3-D games? Maybe you like the Eggman title? (yeah like that would ever happen) Or maybe you just have a better idea...

Sound your opinions in the comments section!

Tomorrow I'll be continuing the topic with my new direction for the Legend Of Zelda series (yeah... I went there!)

Just babbling

I haven't really got a topic so like it says on the title this post is just going to be me babbling on about anything and everything...

So last week at Confetti was great fun, got a fair few assignments to do but we do have a fair amount of time to do them in (thank god). Tuesdays are proving to be a bit of a nightmare coming back from Confetti as the last bus is at 6 or something and we never get there in time meaning we have to wait for the next one which comes at 7:40 pm *facepalm*. (oh and we meaning Jordan and I)

Wednesday I auditioned for a musical we're doing in the Television Workshop, the musical being Our House :D First time I sang in front of people and thankfully I didn't sound like a strangled cat so I have got a call back for another audition soon.... (fingers crossed!) On the note of musicals i would also like to make an apology to Pete as I couldn't make the play he was workin' the lights on which is a shame as I love watching the plays around in Nott's, I had to go to another audition instead and that wasn't too exciting!

This weekend apart from last night I've done bugger all really, tried to do more on my Digi Comms assignment but couldn't get the creative juices flowin which is rather strange as I seem to be able to work my best when I'm staying up in the early hours typing at the speed of light (maybe a slight exaggeration somewhere in that statement)

Just realised how much I've wrote and not one bit of it is particularly thrilling so sorry about that...

I've also gotta say I'm so excited about teh London trip to the MCM Expo!! It'll be great :D

See you all monday!

(>'')> ^( ' ' )^ <(''<)

Starting a company...

I've been thinking since I saw Raiden's impressive work on his Sonic game that it would be possible for us all to form a small company and make our own full game.In GS92 everyone is extremely capable and competent in this area and we have people who could work on the technical side of things, art department, story development and so on...

It may sound alot to start up a company and work on a game and also sound stressful as we have work to do at Confetti too however if we start early preferably within the next few months we have a full two years, possibly more to make this game which means we don't have huge amounts of pressure!

We all obviously want to work in the games industry and this course is clearly the best way to it however having a full game and possibly company under our belts is something that would give us a huge advantage!

It would be great fun and if we end up making something good we could even possibly make more of it instead of just keeping it to ourselves.

Yeah I know it's a big commitment but Joe, Jacob and I have all thought about it and come to the conclusion it would be well worth the effort.

So if anybody is interested in forming a company and making a game please comment below.

We'll hold a meeting (maybe at confetti) when we have enough people interested to discuss company names, objectives and aims and whatever including ideas for a game we would like to start work on.

This is an opportunity we might not get for a while and we should take it!

Hope to hear from you !

Something Epic...

I grew up with Disney movies as I'm sure alot of you all did. I became engrossed in the tales of monsters, genies and the famous Disney characters.

My favourites were always the core cast of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy and I've happened to come across something that may very well change the way I look at them forever...

Disney interactive and Junction Point studios have joined forces in creating a game for the Wii which is totally unique and something I would have never expected to see before.. The game is codnamed "Epic Mickey" and has only a few concept art images released however these are truly awesome! The images show strange apocalyptic versions of famous Disney characters including Mickey Mouse and Goofy and the Cinderella Castle.

The only info released on the game apart from the concept art is this: "See the world of Disney like you've never seen it before in this exclusive Wii game featuring a twisted, alternative version of many of the characters and settings loved by Disney fans."

And Disney has promised to reveal an "iconic" new game on the 28th of October!

So what do you guys think? Ruining childhood memories? Too strange to sell? Awesome!?

Sound off in the comments part!

Add me on Xbox Live :)

Hey just thought to give me you all my xbox live gamertag so you can all add me :)

cam1905 (no caps)

and for PSN it's cam195

However I'm on Xbox Live more

see you all next monday!

Thank god thats done with!

Ok so I've finally handed in my Mario assignment after the painstaking process it took to complete this task. Funnily enough I found doing the assignment itself very fun and interesting but it was the part after that which I had my problems in...

So at 1 AM this morning I had finally finished the last touches on my presentation and just copied it into my usb drive. I decided to check if it had copied alright and to my horror all the images had dissappeared! I literally couldn't move I was that angry :P So that resulted in me staying up for another hour getting all my images back from the internet and copying them back onto my slideshow. After that all seemed well, I could sleep in peace. And I did.

But all was not over...

So today i arrived at Confetti and went straight to the resource centre, put my usb into the computer, opened the presentation and guess what... no images! Kelly's advice was to consult her "Bovvered Pocket" which yielded no results so it was left to me to yet again put all the images onto the presentation all over again. An hour and a half later I was done. I handed my essay, presentation and cover into EST and left without looking back!

So in conclusion the work itself was fine, the process into printing said work was horrific. Never again shall I use Open Office... until I know exactly what I'm doing with it.

My time at Confetti...

Ok so been here for a couple of weeks now and so far it's pretty cool. I love the course, the things we learn and how we're taught. Our group GS92 is by far the best (maybe because I don't know many others from the other groups) but in all seriousness I enjoy talking to everyone in the group and love how everyone's different.

The lessons themselves are always chilled out and full of banter, fun and games (obvs)

I'm looking forward to the other cool stuff we're gonna learn here.

I think I have successfully earned a place as Kelly's personal "Douchebag" as I have yet to go through a lesson with her without being laughed at in some manner. But all is gurd, I'm used to that shiz.

Can't think of anything else remotely interesting to say to be honest so I'm off!

Peace