Some of my old pals from LucasArts are almost famous! Here’s a shot of them that appears in the Vanity Fair article about the game.
from left: John Stafford, Matthew Fillbrandt, Maris Brood, Peter Hirschmann, Darth Vader, Isa Stamos, Julio Torres, Matt Tateishi, Cedrick Collomb, Haden Blackman, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, Jim Ward, Rich Davis, Eric Johnston, and Matt Omernick, in San Francisco.
Well… that’s the premise anyway, but the execution is completely ridiculous. Turns out that it’s Canadian and stars Alan Thicke, so I guess a certain amount of ridiculousness is to be expected (hehe).
With a new in-house motion capture studio, the Fahrenheit developer believes that it can successfully portray actor’s emotions – not just physical movement – with actors now interested in the script and story behind the game rather than worrying about the technology.…
“But today, I can officially announce that there is no uncanny valley any more, not in real-time.
“With our next project we’re going to demonstrate with hundreds of characters that we can have extremely realistic characters that not only move like real actors but express themselves through facial animations and speech like real actors, and are extremely accurate to the actors they are portraying,” he added.
Read the article at gamesindustry.biz and there’s a full interview the developer here.
A very brief glimpse into the FF XIII development tools including modeling in Maya.
I like the “how it’s made” show as they usually take us thru some cool factory to show how different products are made. But this segment on how video games are made is really simplistic and doesn’t even come close to describing the entire process — they’re mostly focused on characters, animation, and cinematics.
Pretty funny rant about video games with some really good points…
$600 is a lot of money. And by the time I’ve bought my PS3 and all the accessories and a couple games and a big-ass TV that can properly display them, I’m down for four times that amount. Enough to eat breakfast and lunch for a year. Enough to get a used car that runs. We’ve put the money down, but now we’ve got a few demands: 13. Stop the Short-Sighted Business Bullshit
Cashing in on Crappy Genre Knockoffs. For every Grand Theft Auto, there is a Driv3r. For every Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic there is a Fight Club: Soup Befouler. This is no joke. A movie goer will bitch about a movie he “wasted” seven bucks on. But to leave $55 at the game store and find out you got a knockoff turd in return? That’s some serious customer dissatisfaction, my friends. And it will bite the industry in the ass some day, unless somebody wakes up.
Random humorous image from the article:
You can read the entire Gamer’s Manifesto at cracked.com
The original is still the best.
via videosift
They posted a technical description of what went wrong with their installer setup.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=526
It rendered Windows XP machines unbootable, but could be (fairly) easily restored to 100% full working condition. Some installers have done FAR worse to customers’ computers. I remember the Myth II (a Bungie product) Windows uninstall process which actually wiped users hard drives.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/01/06
Thanks, Steve!
Kohnke v. Perpetual - The Opening Round via TenTonHammner.com
“…public relations firm Kohnke Communications, Inc. – best known for promoting the efforts of numerous MMORPG developers like EA Mythic, Red 5, Turbine, and NetDevil – is suing Perpetual Entertainment, Inc. for breach of contract, fraudulent transfer, fraud, and various other charges for damages between $80,000 and $290,000, perhaps much more in terms of punitive or exemplary damages.
To quote the complaint, which in itself reads like a courtroom drama: “Star Trek Online Executive Producer Daron Stinnett published comments on November 28, 2007 at startrek-online.net, flatly denying that Perpetual was in the process of liquidating and representing that Perpetual was still an ongoing concern: ‘There was also a report about PE liquidating our assets. That report relates to a transaction that took place a while back. And while I can’t go into details right now, I want to assure the community that the entire Star Trek team is still here working hard…’
“Just one day later, the story changed dramatically. On November 29, 2007, Keene [Joseph Keene, an officer of both Perpetual and P2 with a ’significant equity stake in the company’] confirmed to counsel for Kohnke that Perpetual had executed the ABC, and that all of Perpetual’s assets were in the hands of Perpetual ABC. However, Keene also admitted that, prior to executing the ABC, Perpetual transferred certain assets to P2.”
“gamedevmap is a living map and catalog of game development organizations.”
gamedevmap.com
Visual Design, Comic Game Action, with a purpose via CGSociety
Valve is doing some crazy stat tracking. The Death Maps section at the bottom where colors show where players died most often in each map is especially cool
Thanks, General!
Valve’s Francke: Game Art Direction In Its ‘Infancy’
Moby Francke, art director on Valve’s Team Fortress 2, talked about the game’s distinctive art style at the Lyon Game Developers Conference before a standing-room-only audience, and following his presentation, Gamasutra caught up with Francke for some frank words on the future of art direction.
GDC Lyon: Antonov Talks Visual Design, Half Life 2
At the 2007 Game Developers Conference in Lyon, independent art director Viktor Antonov, who art-directed and did concept design for the award-winning Half-Life 2, discussed how visual design in games can accomplish so much more than a sales-driving pretty package — the game world can be a powerful tool for storytelling, and with that in mind, Antonov presented his lecture on meaningful visual design in games.
