Just five words of wisdom

... and so, snow

2012-01-31T01:48:00.001-05:00

... seven minute documentary

2011-10-27T03:01:00.002-05:00

I found this worth sharing.

... my suspicions confirmed

2011-10-07T10:51:00.001-05:00

Listen to the start of this music:Now, listen to this one:Sounds like Ari Pulkkinen is an Ergo Proxy fan!

... feeling a little rage

2011-10-03T02:52:00.002-05:00

Bethesda & id Software release RAGE this week.

Let's see how far they've come since the original FPS.

... seems legit

2011-09-13T14:32:00.000-05:00

Pretty sure I've done this.

... what's the deal with video games anyway?

2011-08-31T05:05:00.001-05:00

Hawken is a multiplayer mech combat game, made by a self-funded team of 11 over the course of a little over a year. It's made using the UDK (same as my old cathedral) and an art philosophy known as "kitbash" ... which gets its name from the way model makers would buy a bunch of random model kits, and cut them up to form original creations.

Trackmania 2: Canyon is an insane arcade-style racing game that thinks that racing shouldn't be about realism or running from the cops or inventing a silly Fast & Furious style fictional universe. It thinks that a video game about racing cars should be alot more like how we played with little toy cars when we were four years old. Only with 200 cars at once.

From Dust was supposed to be in the style of the old God Games like Populous or Black and White, but I am told it turned out to be more of a puzzle game. In the old games you pretty much did what you want, and by the way there may be some goals and objectives or two. It sounds like From Dust pretty much limits you to directly solving problems, without too much free play. I could be wrong. I want to try it anyway.

Quantum Conundrum is a new game lead by one of the designers of the original Portal. As you might expect, it shares quite a bit in common with Portal, though I suspect it will lack Valve's signature production value and slick writing. Highly likely to be quite fun regardless.

Darksiders was heaven & hell pulp nonsense, but it set up an excuse to have an epic ultra-violent adventure through ridiculously unrealistic environments, and was a ton of fun. Darksiders two looks to be more of the same, but promises to be twice the size (they like to promise stuff like that, no?) and a full blown RPG rather than just a straightforward hack & slash.

The Witcher 2 has been out for a while now, but I haven't played it yet because I'm waiting for the great big patch that CD Project Red inevitably releases. As suspected, the patch is coming in just another month.

And then there's Angry Birds.

... a merry thirty first eight thirty

2011-08-31T04:04:00.002-05:00

:D

Made by R Soul, one of many co-designers on Mission X, my seven-years-in-the-making fan-mission for Thief 2. (Which is what is featured in the video, naturally.)

My friends loaded into my new apartment from around 7:30 to 8, and proceeded to pack my fridge and counter tops full of snacks and drinks. Melodie set to work in the kitchen creating a batch of cupcakes, while everyone else dug right in while listening to four hours worth of Carbon Based Lifeforms and the Fahrenheit Project albums.

Aha, photos! You'll find plenty more on flickr if you click on any of them.

... I have the power

2011-08-19T05:17:00.000-05:00

For an additional feel of $50 (I am converting this from EUR to USD for the convenience of my primary readers) on top of the $57 they were already going to charge me, my power has been connected. I think it's perfectly fair to call the additional fee either a bribe or a ransom. In either case, it's legal theft.

Sadly I didn't get to watch a technician conduct backbreaking work for several hours in order to supply my unit with power. He merely had to screw in one cable in the switchbox right outside my front door, flip the breaker on in the basement, and then flip the breaker on in my unit. I hope that level of exertion was allowed by his union.

On the downside, I discovered that half of my lighting fixtures and at least one wall receptacle are nonfunctional. Later I will attempt to troubleshoot by swapping bulbs, but to do that I will need a stepladder. The elegant high ceilings have a downside. The lights in the bathroom and toilet room all work fine, so at least that's good.

As consolation, I enjoyed removing the packing tape and foam from my three brand new appliances (refrigerator, washing machine, dishwasher) and gave the later two trial runs (though empty and without soap) to make sure that the water was hooked up properly. Speaking of water, I wasn't able to take my first proper hot shower, but I did take my first proper lukewarm shower.

... living, part 4 of 3

2011-08-17T05:37:00.002-05:00

I left the battery powered lantern on by mistake after I went to sleep. Hello taking a cold shower in the dark. Thankfully my toothpaste tube and shampoo bottles are different shapes. I'm going to buy an extra set of batteries, and some candles just in case.

I'm very pleased with the soundproofing in the apartment. I am always surprised how noisy it is outside when I open the windows or the front door. Of course back when the building was made, it wasn't soundproofing. It was just called typical construction of quality living spaced.

According to the walking directions feature of google maps, due to the lack of a proper hypotenuse in the streets between my apartment and work (it's an L shaped path), it doesn't matter how many back roads I cut through: I won't shave off any considerable travel time during the commute. I could still time the voyages to see if the software's math is in any way correct, but logically it's reasonable. Unless I can incorporate a true diagonal of a decent length into the route, there's no reason why it would be shorter.

My floorboards creak, considerably. No sneaking shall take place in my abode!

As the kitchen was designed before the existence of home appliances, the refrigerator doesn't really fit. The kitchen door won't open completely, and the fridge door can't be opened at all unless the kitchen door is mostly closed. Were this a modern apartment I'd be sufficiently annoyed, but as it stands it's just a reminder of the history of human advancement.

Even though the fireplace is nonfunctional, it bugs me that the coffee table has to sit so close to it. Maybe eventually I'll get a different coffee table. There's no configuration that works better. I've tried.

The best part of having the balcony isn't going to be relaxing on the balcony, as it's far too small for that. It's going to be telling my smoking guests, yes, you may smoke on the balcony.

... living, part 3 of 3

2011-08-15T08:22:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my new place. Come on in.

Er, sorry. It's going to be a bit of a climb. It's on the 5th floor, and when I say 5th I mean 6th. They count their floors differently in Europe, you know. No, there's no elevator. How do you think I got such a great place in such a great location so cheap? :)

Just don't look down. Okay, you can look down all you want. I know I do!

Well we made it. And now it's time for the epic key of awesome. It's a little clumsy to use, but it makes up for it in old timey style.

And here we are...

Even without electricity, I'm feeling quite at home!

You can see the rest of the photos here. That includes shots of my old place (you can compare!) views from the windows and balcony, and boring stuff like the bathroom.

Click on the image below to Googlemap my location. Feel free to streetview it and have a look around. Right at the corner of my building is a post office, and around from that is a small grocery store. A bakery (a place to get breakfast) is half a block in the direction of the river. Amusingly, just to the south of my place is a School for Psychologists Practitioners, and across the street is a hookah lounge (it's new, and not on the street view images), ensuring that I keep the west-facing windows closed during the night on the weekend. (Because of the noise, not the smoke... I'm six stories up!)

The walk along the river is especially nice, especially when the open market is set up there. I'm about 1.2 miles from work, which is about thirty minutes by foot (campus walk style) or around the same amount of time for public transportation (because you need to wait for metros and subways) but with far less perspiration.

I have easy access to the big Part Dieu Commercial Complex (basically a mall) via a trolley that runs along Cours Lafayette. If I was feeling extra lazy I could then hop from the trolley station to the subway station and head to work that way, but it's such a roundabout route that it would probably just end up taking too much time. Instead I head south along Cours de la Liberte and grab the metro that's just past the big ancient hotel building that's directly south of me.

The nightlife in Lyon revolves around the peninsula created by the Rhône and the Saône, so when I go out at night I'll never be more than ten minutes away from home, which I've already discovered is ridiculously nice.

Well I think that about sums it up. I suppose next I could ramble about my adventures in buying stuff for the apartment, but that sounds boring. :)

... living, part 2 of 3

2011-08-14T15:58:00.001-05:00

First, I needed to accept that I couldn't do this on my own. Digging through realtor ads with the translation feature in the google browser was only going to get me so far.

The boar pick up where I left off, following up on some interesting ads I had spotted, but quickly found that they had all sold already. Quickly thereafter he found another unit via an associate of his at a realtor called Gruel. The next day I was shown the unit in question, but that venture ended awkwardly as the agent had brought the wrong key and showed me an apartment that was currently very occupied. He promised to show me the correct unit the next day.

But as the next day came, an alternative was suggested. The agent discovered that I needed to move posthaste, and the place he had meant to show me first still needed renovation work before it could be occupied again. I am not sure why he didn't just suggest the second option first, as it turned out to be better in every way.

But I'll save rambling about the new apartment for part 3 of this post.

As you might have guessed, I went for it. We were given a list of things I needed to present to the agency. The boar was about to go on vacation, so he handed off the task of assisting me to the skunk, who happily took charge. That's where things got fun.

The biggest item of worry on the list was the warranty, which is basically a cosigner. The cosigner had to be someone who could claim me as a dependent, which meant my father. They needed all sorts of great information from him, like tax documents and ID cards and so forth, along with (potentially) a letter of endorsement promising to pay anything I default on, written in French. I am told that this was all perfectly normal, and I could expect to find similar requirements from any place I wanted to rent. I will be the first to admit that this is rather unreasonable.

In the end, none of that was needed, because my father's candidacy as the warranty was rejected offhand, because he's retired. Instead, I'd have to pay a premium on my rent. How this makes sense (In order to ensure that I pay my rent, they ask me to pay more? Doesn't that make it more likely that I'll not be able to pay?) is beyond me, but it was my only option, so I took it.

Following that, I was pretended with a serious problem. I had known that I would need to pay my rent through my French bank account, and so I had scheduled a meeting to finally resolve the issue of being unable to transfer my pay directly from my employer to my account here. (I needed to set up an account with the US branch of the UK bank that I was a customer of in FR.) What I didn't know was the size of the security deposit the owner wanted up front; in the ballpark of two thousand dollars. Again, I was told (by concerned coworkers, not the real estate agents or the owners) that this was normal, expected, a pain, but that's that. As a wire transfer from my US bank to my French account was out of the question (I'd need to show up at the US bank in person to approve the transfer) I was feeling a little stressed out. In the end I had to get a cash advance from my credit card company in order to obtain the cash in time.

Why the rush, you may be wondering? As it turned out, things were even more urgent than I had realized. I thought that my lease at the current apartment (Part Dieu Park) was going to expire on the 15th. I wanted to make sure that I got the new unit by Friday (the 12th) so I could move in over the weekend. But, I was mistaken. My lease actually ended on the 9th. I discovered this fact on the 9th. Given that the business was also a hotel, they were happy to let me stay until I got the new apartment settled, for fifty euros a day. Of course.

We (the skunk and I) politely asked the real estate agent to expedite matters. They agreed, and managed to get things settled by the 11th which, I am told, was shockingly fast for this type of business. Of course when I saw their fees for their assistance, I was less interested in thanking them for simply doing the job I was paying them to do.

So I had the keys to the new apartment, but before I could move in an inspection had to be done. Rather than the inspection be between myself and the owner(as I was used to from my renting experience in Tampa) a third company was involved, hopefully to ensure neutrality in the record of issues in the condition of the unit, so when I try to get my security deposit back, it won't be my word versus the word of the owner, but the documented evidence of the inspector versus the word of the owner.

They also found lead paint in one of the walls. Just one; a wall not even a foot wide. I promise not to eat off this wall or do anything to make the paint chip. Seriously.

By the time the inspection was done and I could move in, it was too late to check out from the hotel (by a wide margin, it was almost 6 pm). I did not have a great deal of items to transfer, but the inclusion of a small oven meant that having a car to do the move would be most helpful. thankfully the moth was able to provide, and gladly offered to assist me in the move.

But when I dropped by to meet with the moth to get his car loaded with my stuff, the skunk had some bad news for me. We already knew there was no electricity in the apartment. It didn't seem important; surely there was a breaker somewhere that just needed to be flipped. But apparently it was more grave than that. The unit had been unoccupied for several months, and so the utilities company had completely cut the power. As much of their staff were currently on mandatory vacation (government enforced vacation in a government run utilities monopoly) they wouldn't be able to reconnect the power until the 22nd.

So the unit would have no electricity for 11 days.

There was nothing else to be done. I had to pay for one more day at the hotel, so I decided to spend one last night there. Most of my stuff was at the powerless new apartment, so in the morning I just loaded what was left into my backpack, and checked out. (Or tried to... they said it was too early, and to come back closer to noon. Bleh.)

So that basically leave me where I am now. The apartment has running water and furniture, so I can still live there, provided I carry around a battery powered lantern at night. I can take cold showers, and use the kitchen at work. It's going to be an interesting 11 days. (9 more days as of this writing!)

... living, part 1 of 3

2011-08-12T16:14:00.001-05:00

I never moved around growing up. But in my 20s (and this past year) I lived in an awful lot of places.

It started around 2002 or 2003 (I am not sure!) when I first moved to USF in Tampa. I had signed a lease with an apartment building that was still under construction, and the dopes who were running the whole show (badly) had no idea that the building wasn't going to be done for another year. So I lived in a hotel room... the Amerisuites Hotel I believe it was called. It had no kitchen in the room, and the internet connection was dialup. I lived there for three months, give or take.

Next it was Avalon Heights, a thoroughly miserable student housing complex directly to the north of campus. The first room they put me in didn't have a working toilet. I spent several weeks there begging them to fix the toilet (and them promising it was fixed, but it was never fixed) before I asked them to move me to a different room. They did, and for a time, it was okay. Then what was soon to be known as roommate russian roulette happened, and an awful roommate moved on. He liked to stay up all night drinking with his pals and talking about how much they hated black people. That's not a joke.

I only spent three months there, too. Thankfully it was a short lease, otherwise I would have asked to change rooms a second time. Next I moved to Campus Lodge, where I would live for the next two years or so. It was generally okay, aside from the usual roommate russian roulette, with larping stoners, a kleptomaniac discharged marine under house arrest for smuggling pornography while on base, and a pervert who liked to hang out with old men and young boys while wearing fishnets. I was forced out of campus lodge after a fellow architecture student who offered me a spot in the house he was going to rent had to cancel his offer (after a series of unfortunate events), and of course Campus Lodge had already given my room to someone else.

Next it was Fountainwood Manor, which I shared with about ten thousand tiny roommates. They weren't the nice kind of infestation, either. Endless roaches. The place was also mind bogglingly hot. Even during the winter when it was fifty degrees outside I could have the front door and all of the windows wide open and it would still be roasty toasty within. Of course, during the summer the little air conditioner running 24 hours a day couldn't hold back the heat. If I ever left the place for more than a few weeks, I'd come back to mold growing all over everything. Even without the mold, the place always stank of old particle board and mildew. But it was quiet, and I was free from freaks and sociopaths, so I was content from (guessing) 2006 - 2008.

I also ought to mention the month and a half I spent in the Palace Side Hotel in Kyoto, Japan. It was tiny!

Then I moved back in with my family for almost two years.

When I made it to Austin late in 2010, it was hotel time once again. All things considered, the room at the Extended Stay Hotel was one of the nicer placed I had lived. The kitchen was bigger and better equipped than the one in Roachwood Manor, and it was a generally even experience. The main problem in Austin had nothing to do with the accommodation, it was my lack of access to transportation. The neighborhood around the hotel eventually started to feel like a prison, with nowhere really interesting to walk within a several-mile radius.

Arriving in Lyon delivered me to Part Dieu Park (pronounce it like Par-Doo-Park) which was another sort of extended stay hotel, only it was more like an apartment place for traveling business people. It was quite a nice little place, so slick and modern, with a cool balcony with a nice view of the glass and steel jungle of a brand new office park. But I couldn't stay. It was kind of like an apartment, but it was more like a hotel room. I was paying around a thousand a month for a place smaller than Roachwood Manor that would never truly feel like home. I lived there for a bit over five months, which means I had been living in hotels for about ten months.

So now I have my own place, finally, at last... but the next post is going to be about the hectic chain of events surrounding the acquisition of said locale.

... omg we're in fraaaance!

2011-08-07T02:52:00.001-05:00

Everyone at the studio got a kick out of this video "preview" of Dishonored:

... morality, choices, and chaos

2011-07-30T06:46:00.000-05:00

Raf and Harvey, the two directors of Dishonored, have a very candid talk with Game Informer about morality, choices, and chaos in Dishonored.

... like one of those old 2nd person books

2011-07-24T22:06:00.000-05:00

Choose Your Path Through Dishonored

... the industrial designer

2011-07-21T02:21:00.000-05:00

The latest GameInformer feature, The Look And Feel Of Dishonored, interviews Viktor Antonov, former industrial designer, art director of Half Life 2, and our visual design director.

... collaborative directors

2011-07-19T02:36:00.003-05:00

Co-Creating Dishonored: An Interview with the Directors

And how do you make that system work on a day to day basis? What's the interaction between the two major studios in two different parts of the world?

Smith: Well one of the things is that we come in a little earlier than most video game studios, like our lead programmer gets here at five in the morning. And that way he has maximum overlap with the French office due to the time difference. We also leave the video conference up all day. You know instead of just using it for meetings like most people do (which we think is a mistake) we like to put it on a cart next to to the desk and leave it up and just chat with the person. We leave it unmuted, that's another key. You develop this team vibe.

And the other thing is, I think this is kind of a trick, we try to go out of our way to only hire people who understand and love the kind of games that we make. We aren't just a game studio, we're like very much focused on these immersive first person action games that have RPG features built into them. And by recruiting those kinds of people, and sharing that passion for those games, a lot of things immediately become easy, even across language barriers. Because you can point to something in Bioshock, or something in Far Cry 2, or something older in Underworld or System Shock. They love them for the same reasons and that immediately creates a bridge.

... go on and explore

2011-07-16T05:03:00.003-05:00

Dishonored World Map

Dishonored's designers have taken the time to flesh out the world at large that the game is set in. Though the game itself will not touch on most of the locations revealed in this entry, the fiction presented will resonate throughout the game's writing.

... firefly nouveau

2011-07-15T03:24:00.000-05:00

I decided that these would look good here.

... meet the crew

2011-07-13T15:53:00.000-05:00

I'd like to introduce you to a few of the people who I work with. :)

... and it begins

2011-07-11T14:14:00.002-05:00

Getting to Know Dishonored

Dishonored has several major elements that combine to create its unique gameplay: mobility, powers & gadgets, environment, and AI. The trick is that a single power doesn’t just do damage or heal you. You can combine them organically to create interesting effects. Stop time and knock a bunch of stuff off a table in one direction then book it in another, so the guards search for you in the wrong place. Summon a swarm of rats to attack one guard, but possess one of the rats and escape in the chaos. Every problem has as many solutions as you want it to.

... DISHONORED

2011-07-07T09:12:00.001-05:00

Arkane Studios Reveals: DISHONORED

Arkane Studios and founder Raf Colantonio have made memorable games in the past (Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic) that ultimately suffered from a lack of publisher support. Bethesda Softworks believes in their vision and is giving them all the time, money, and development help (regular meetings with guys like The Elder Scrolls' Todd Howard don't make your game worse) they need. Harvey Smith, one of the main minds behind the first two Deus Ex games and a legendary veteran of game development, shares the vision and is on board as Dishonored's co-creative director along with Colantonio. Viktor Antonov designed Half-Life 2's iconic City 17 and is lending his talents to Dishonored's world. This is a perfect storm for creating a game that shatters the mold that first-person action games have built for themselves in the mainstream.

We've seen the game running, and now we share Colantonio and Smith's vision too. Dishonored is the antithesis of a edge-of-your-seat roller-coaster ride. It's a game about assassination where you don't have to kill anyone. It's a game about infiltration where you can set up traps and slaughter the entire garrison of an aristocrat's mansion rather than sneak in. It's a game about brutal violence where you can slip in and out of a fortified barracks with nobody ever knowing you were there. It's a game about morality and player choice where the world you create is based on your actions, not navigating conversation trees.

... oh right, I talk about life here too

2011-07-07T07:18:00.003-05:00

I am a little worn out, so if this post comes across as low-energy, that's why. It's been a very big few weeks at work. Just imagine me half-awake with a silly smile on my face.

It's been a while since I've talked about life in general on here. So, here goes...

After a very exciting month or so trying to do something social-life-like nearly every single night, I've dialed things way back to a far more manageable three to four nights a week, with emphasis on three. It was getting a little expensive! But it was fun while it lasted, and it's very nice to know that if I ever want to do something, it's not that hard to find people to go with or a place to go.

I'm now the owner of a second hand PS3. I look forward to playing some of the highly praised games on that platform that never made it to the PC.

I couldn't bring myself to continue reading the Foundation series. Sorry, Isaac. To make matters worse I lost my copy of Foundations Whatever (I can't even remember the title?) and can't say that I am particularly worried about how the book ended. I also still can't manage to drum up any interest in Ender in Exile, six novels after Children of the Mind was left with such an open ending. When Card writes a novel that takes place chronologically after the fourth book in this eleven book series, I'll give it a look. So, I ordered a copy of Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, which I had been meaning to get to for some time. I've never read a Steven King novel.

So, clothes are expensive here in France. In the area of three to four times as expensive. I am curious if it would actually be cheaper to order clothes from the US than shop here. At any rate, I did get some nice new things, just not very much.

Have I mentioned how useful it is to have a toaster oven? Of course my apartment is so small, I need to put the thing on the cabinet next to my bed. There's no room in the kitchen.

I keep hearing from people who have far better apparent deals than I do. More square footage (meter... age), lower price, still furnished. They don't include a maid and internet service, but I'd rather not share my internet line with the entire building anyway. I can't connect to either of my banking websites (and numerous other secure services) through the line in my room. I need to just get on the whole apartment hunt thing.

C'est Tout!

... psychic astronauts

2011-07-07T02:52:00.005-05:00

This game:

Was highly recommended to me for years. Finally I asked for it for Christmas, and was given a copy. That was something like... three years ago?

Well I finally played it. I haven't finished it. It gets extremely hard towards the end. Unlike some games (such as Mass Effect*) which fall on their face in the wake of the glowing endorsements they've given, this one was deserving of the recommendations. Actually, it turns out to be a fair bit better than I was led to believe.

So why did it take me six years to play the game? Two reasons. It has a bad beginning. The opening level is a platforming obstacle course filled with timed jumps and no greater goal than to collect floating sprites and get to the end of the map. This is exactly the type of game I avoided playing through most of my video-gaming-childhood. The other reason was simply bad luck. Twice I'd installed the game (an arduous task on five CDs) only to have to format drive or switch to a new PC shortly after completing the awful first level. Buying a fresh copy in a steam sale solved the irritating installation issue, but I always sighed at the tedium of facing that first level again. And what if every level was like that? Was the excellent writing worth drudging through all of it for?

It turns out that the platforming obstacle courses, though a mainstay throughout the game, does not represent the majority of the gameplay. In truth, there is no majority. In setting the game in the minds of various characters, it allowed the game designers to reinvent how the game would be played in every level. Your character and his abilities stay the same (or evolve in a faux RPG style) but there's always a new situation requiring a new idea on how to use those powers.

... pageant and pomp and parade

2011-07-04T02:19:00.011-05:00

Happy Independence Day!

A British invasion from Canada ended in the capture of the British army at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. That American victory persuaded France to enter the war openly in early 1778, balancing the two sides' military strength. French involvement proved decisive yet expensive as it ruined France's economy. A French naval victory in the Chesapeake forced a second British army to surrender at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the war and recognized the sovereignty of the United States over the territory bounded roughly by what is now Canada to the north, Florida to the south, and the Mississippi River to the west.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_war

... who I work with

2011-07-02T10:14:00.002-05:00

I work with many different people, but he's a short list of the position-holders whom I interact with the most.

Level Architect
My partner in the creation of the levels. While I design the plot and gameplay of the level, the architect (along with the environmental artists) crafts the visual environment. Typically the level architect acts as liaison between the level designer and the art team.

Lead Level Designer
My direct superior, who maintains a coherent creative vision across all levels. It's up to him to make sure that the work of all the various level designs always feels like part of a cohesive whole, and not a series of different games linked only by some basic gameplay principles.

Lead Environmental Artist
While the Level Architect interacts with the environmental art team far more than I will, sometimes I do need to go to them directly when it comes to explaining a specific level design issue that I need for art to address.

Lead Animator
I'll work with the animators when it comes to the design of unique scripted scenes for my level, where I need characters or environmental elements to move in a very specific way.

Art Director
The level architect, environmental art lead, and lead animator all work under the art director, who maintains a coherent artistic vision across the project. In most cases the art director works with his team of concept artists, who then in turn give direction to those already mentioned.

Game Systems Designer
While I design the nature and content of a level, the game system designer crafts the gameplay itself. They're the ones who decide what tools you have to interact with the world (in most cases this means weapons, but not always) and how the other characters inhabiting the game behave. Typically the game system designer acts as liaison between the level designer and the gameplay programmers.

Technical Designer
While a game system designer collaborates with the gameplay programmers, the technical designer does so with the technology programmers. The tech programmers are the ones who create the software that allows us create the game. The Tech designer oversees the development of tools and utilities that allow the level designers to do our jobs.

Navigation Designer
Naturally the character in the game can't see the game world the same way the player does. Art means nothing to an artificial intelligence. So the characters in the game need to be able to "understand" how to move through the environment in a way that looks "correct" to the player observer. That's where the navigation designer comes in.

Tech Artist
Whereas the above two positions are liaisons between design and programming, the tech artist is liaison between art and programming. They make sure that all of the artwork works properly in the game engine and on the computer or console systems the game has to run on. They're the ones who are in charge of getting the highest framerate out of the highest quality art.

Lead Gameplay Programmer
Again, while the game systems designers are usually the ones who are intermediary between level designers and the gameplay programmers, sometimes I will work directly with one of the programmers, especially when it comes to the design of AI.

Lead Technology Programmer
I actually rarely work with the technology programmers (also often called simply "engineers"), and in the off-chance that I need to, I'm more likely to correspond directly with the engineer who is in charge of the particular tool I am working with, rather than go to the lead.

Quality Assurance Lead
When there's a problem in the tech, art, or gameplay systems, it's often best to take it to the QA lead rather than try to bring it directly to the person whom you think is either responsible or can fix it. That's because they oversee all of the problems that are currently known, and can organize things properly and make sure that the right thing is done. They save everyone time.

Sound Designer
A level won't feel like anything unless everything sounds right, so naturally someone needs to make sure that happens. The sound designer will place ambient audio cues in the level; usually both environmental noise and music.

Writer
Though I do an awful lot of writing for my level, all of it will go through the game's Writer for proper treatment. Sometimes I'll just give him a vague outline of my writing needs for a particular scene, and other times I'll give a very detailed note-by-note breakdown of every line that needs to be written. Usually my interactions with the project's writer goes through one of the producers or the creative director.

Producer
This can be a little confusing, because there's really two different positions with the same title. In this case, the producers are the people who manage and organize each teams' tasks and goals, facilitate communication between all parties (example: between me and the writer), and generally keep the project on track.

Creative Director
In other industries this would simply be "The Director". I've mentioned a few times already about "maintaining a cohesive creative vision," and this is where the ball stops. Ultimately, the director is the one who decides what the game is, how it plays, what it looks like, the scope of the project, and so on and so forth.

Of course, there's others who I won't work with directly. The composer. The user concept, character, interface, and special effects artists. Many of the programmers and engineers. The other kind of producer that I mentioned. But... maybe I will some day!

... what I do

2011-06-11T19:28:00.027-05:00

It's sometimes difficult to explain what a Level Designer does, even to gamers. We don't program, we don't create art, and we're not even really writers. We plan, assemble, and implement.

Planning Stage (Visio)

Everything starts "on paper": a word processor and a planning application. Games are interactive so we can't just storyboard what happens through the game. You create a web of possible actions and outcomes. Much of this work typically happens in the concept/planning phase, but sometimes you need to go back to the drawing board on some elements that need to be redone, or maybe you're coming up with something totally new.

3D prototyping (Sketchup)

The game takes place in a 3D world, so it's good to take the concept planning into that kind of space. I like to use sketchup to rapidly conceptualize the gameplay environment to see how the ideas fit together in "real" space. This is also handy to communicate to other team members (like artists) when you want to give them just the most basic information about the plan.

The game creation itself happens in three basic places: the gamespace, kismet, and matinee.

gameplay space (UDK Demo)

The gamespace is what the player will actually see or experience. I'll construct the basic volumes and layout, and then the art team will craft the graphics. I'll place those icons you see in the image, though this example is by far the simplest scene you'll see. Usually the game world as seen by the designer is packed with dozens and hundreds of icons, all representing some event, trigger, effect, light, sound, animation, anything.

Kismet scripting environment

The second of the three places is called Kismet. This is where many of those icons are linked to instructions that tell them how to behave and interact with one another, and the player. Kismet works as a flowchart, and is all about actions and reactions. If the player does this, then that happens. Often events are set up to happen without any player input at all, in order to make it feel like the game world is existing independently of the player's actions.

Marinee Sequence Editor

The final realm of my work is matinee. Unlike the gamespace and kismet, matinee is all about creating a linear progression of events that occur simply because they're commanded to. Matinees usually handle simple animations (like a door opening, or a drawbridge going up) but they can be complex and elaborate as well, controlling many things simultaneously.

Put all of that together, and slowly, day by day, month by month, a game is made.

... Skyrim in LA

2011-06-07T05:07:00.000-05:00

You know you work for an awesome company when... well, this:

... speaking of aliens ...

2011-06-03T05:20:00.002-05:00

Now people are starting to see why I've been so excited about Prey 2.

... I'm a legal alien!

2011-06-02T07:26:00.000-05:00

It's done. After another four hour wait at the Prefecture (That's one hour to stand in line to get my number, and then another three for them to call my number, followed by a meeting that took less than three minutes.) I was given my residency card, which makes me a legal alien for three years following the date of my arrival: March of 2014!

... music in Livron

2011-06-02T04:37:00.001-05:00

Last weekend I returned to Valance to join a friend (whom I met there two weeks ago during the international club meet) at Livron s'Endiable, a three-day music festival in a small town about 20 km south of Valance.

There was an interesting variety of music presented; old fashioned rock and roll, blues, folk and tribal music, reggae, ska, and some truly bizarre offerings, such as the embedded video below.

We only went Saturday, and spent Sunday morning in Valance just relaxing and being fairly content bums.

The full photo set is on Flickr.

... movie premeire

2011-05-31T13:39:00.000-05:00

This is the movie I went to the Premiere for last week:

Even though it was all in French, I usually could understand what was going on, but often not why. It was a very visual and emotional movie, and that came through without any need for explanation. Compare that to watching The Girl Who Leaped Through Time (a movie I watched, untranslated, in Osaka), which I found nigh incomprehensible. It's a very dark and adult movie (the trailer does not convey this) so don't expect it to come to American theaters any time soon.

I enjoyed it!

... future gaming

2011-05-29T17:47:00.005-05:00

Transformers: War for Cybertron (Out ages ago)
I've heard good things about this one, though I'd rather wait for it to come down in price a bit before playing it. Word is that not only is it a good Transformers game, but a good game in general. Like Batman, it does a good job of capturing the feel of playing as the characters, rather than transforming them into generic video game heroes.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (Released!)
The even bigger sequel to the great big RPG of the similar name. I've tried to avoid reading too much about this one (spoilers abound) but the first was fantastic, and I keep hearing that Assassins of Kings is even better. I'll be playing this as soon as my playing-right-now list clears up a little.
Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den (Any Day Now)
This is the final bit of game in the original Bioshock saga, before things move from the ocean to the sky. Apparently it's a bit of an homage to System Shock before the book is closed on the world of Rapture.
Red Faction: Armageddon (Early June, 2011)
Being a big fan of Red Faction Guerrilla it's a shame to see the fourth game in the series to back to a model similar to Red Faction 2, which I wasn't at all fond of. Still, I'm pretty curious about how this game will turn out. Maybe it will capture some of the fun of the original game rather than being an uninspired and generic blah-mess that 2 was.
Alice: Madness Returns (Mid June, 2011)
An unexpected continuation of American McGee's Alice from something like ten years ago. Alice is older, more psychotic, and the game is supposed to be even darker, possibly to combat the sugary Tim Burton film of last year. Alice is a bit more lucid in this game, and will be able to shrink/grow at will, as well as teleport short distances during combat. I'm especially interested about the promised (and secret) sections featuring an awake Alice in the real world.
EYE: Divine Cybermancy (Soon, maybe)
A rather strange looking French action/rpg inspired by Deus Ex, using the Half Life 2 engine. It could be fantastic or a colossal mess, but I am keeping my eye on it either way.
Dear Esther (Summer, 2011, maybe)
The abstract non-game work of art that I've been keeping my eye on ever since playing the original HL2 mod is still in development, and looking as beautiful as ever. I hope it's successful, and inspires more designers to experiment with using the video game medium to create situations that you experience, rather than games you play.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Late August, 2011)
The new Deus Ex game looks alot less The Matrix and alot more Ghost in the Shell, which may be because it's now produced by Japanese company Square Enix (Final Fantasy), or maybe because that's how the Montreal-based development studio imagined Deus Ex all along. I'm concerned that they've exchanged systemic interaction and player expression for cinematic spectacle, but we'll see.
Batman: Arkham City (October, 2011)
It's like Arkham Asylum, but three times the size. It's not so much about continuing the story from the first game (Batman versus his iconic enemies!) as continuing the concept... Batman versus even more of his iconic enemies, plus Catwoman!
From Dust (Fall, 2011)
The God-Game makes a comeback in this intentionally narrow-focused title where you have power over the elements and must use them to help a small tribe survive extinction in a hostile environment. Having complete control over sand kind of gives the term "sandbox sim" an old meaning.
Guild Wars 2 (Early November, 2011)
Most of my Guild Wars play happened back before architecture school. I returned briefly for Nightfall but never touched Eye of the North and barely touched Factions. Guild Wars 2 looks artistically compelling, so I am tempted to give it a try merely for that. Plus, all of my friends/family from back home will be playing it.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (11.11.11)
The RPGs of the Elder Scrolls series are far more open-world than the offerings of Bioware or CDProjekt, which makes them both much more interesting and much less interesting. I didn't play Oblivion for the story (it wasn't really hook me) but rather just to mess around semi-aimlessly in the vast and open environment.
XCOM (Late 2011 maybe)
I never played the old X-Com games, but the new XCOM (note the lack of the dash and the use of caps) from the makers of Bioshock 2 seems fascinating, both for the 1950s art style and the weirdly abstract alien designs.
Bioshock Infinite (2012)
Irrational Games is reinventing what it means to be a Bioshock game which strips things down to the core concepts: You're an outsider trapped in an isolated city-gone-mad who can use the super-powers of the inhabitants of this city against them, plus some political/social commentary.
Prey 2 (2012)
Blade Runner crossed with Mirror's Edge crossed with Star Wars, and plays like an Elder Scrolls game.

And as an addendum, I am quite curious to see what this apparently old-school space-combat-sim from the developers of Shattered Horizon is all about. Skip to 31 seconds into the video to bypass the other weird stuff.

... the meme is anyone's guess

2011-05-23T04:26:00.001-05:00

When Valve released Portal they had no idea what would become memes and what would not. I imagine the same is true for Portal 2. It's possible that they suspected potatoes may become the item of voice to replace the cake (hence the Potato Sack Indie Bundle). Nope. It's Lemons.

... what I've played recently

2011-05-22T11:56:00.003-05:00

Presented in no order...

NightSky
A platform-type puzzle game where you control a black marble that must navigate increasingly complex scenes in order to perpetually proceed to the right. The graphics are abstract and minimalist, and the audio is a mixture of ambient sounds and music. Physics play a large role in most of the puzzles.
Red Faction: Guerrilla
An open-world third-person shooter where you play a rebel/freedom-fighter/terrorist (hence the title) on Mars, trying to free the population (consisting mostly of miners and other workers) from the tyranny of earth's military which has imposed martial law on the planet. The destructible buildings means that your actions have visible, lasting consequences, with enemy bases you attack being leveled in the process, and then staying that way. This creates a real sense of accomplishment as you liberate sectors. Another great feature is that every NPC is a potential combatant. If support among the public is high for the guerrilla fighters, when a battle begins, any workers in the area are likely to take up arms and fight along side you, making you seem much less like a one man army and more of a rallying point for the larger rebellion.
Gemini Rue
I've raved about this game on the blog before, but I wanted to give it another mention. It's a moody, intelligently written scifi adventure game. The graphics are intentionally retro, and the soundtrack has a longstanding home among my frequently chosen playlists. Go watch the trailer, and if you at all find it interesting, give it a chance.
Batman: Arkham Asylum
I played this one back during my Christmas break last year, and it has me anxiously awaiting the sequel which is due out not too long from now. This is a game that actually captures the feeling and style of being the iconic hero, rather than merely transforming him into a generic video game avatar. While I am not fond of the art style, the writing and voice work is reminiscent of the animated series from the 90s.
Hydrophobia
I haven't gotten very far into this one, but I already like it. It's a bit of an odd hybrid of Tomb Raider style gameplay (which necessitates a female protagonist, naturally) with a little dash of System/Bioshock ruined-scifi-world flair. The Bioshock comparison is made even stronger by the entire point of the game (arguably this is a tech demo) surrounds the physically-modeled water (which is unprecedented in games like this) which actually behaves sort of like real water rather than being a static or scripted special effect. For example, you can shoot and shatter a glass wall allowing a wave of water to rush in and stun and confuse (or kill) some enemies.
Cogs
I've never liked those little games where you have one empty tile in a grid and you need to slide the other tiles around to un-scramble the picture, and this is basically how this game works. On the other hand, it's done in such a way - you're connecting gears and pipes, not parts of an image - that actually makes it interesting. It's a neat little time killer for when I am waiting for my lightmaps to compile.
Dead Space 2
I was a fan of the first game, enjoying the homage to the system shock games for what it was. However Dead Space 2 somehow managed to lose everything that I found engrossing. It's an extremely artistically well crafted game with solid gameplay that's been honed and polished since the first title, but the world feels empty and fake, the plot irrelevant, the characters forgettable, the stakes low, the motivation nonexistent, and the tension rather flat.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
This game will only work if you find it frightening. It tries very hard to be frightening and I imagine for most it will be successful. I found most of the scary stuff to be more annoying (and rather silly) than actually fearsome. Robbed of its ability to scare, it's a rather dull exploration game with some simple puzzles (which you often solve before you even really know what you're supposed to be doing) and a perpetually same-y environment consisting of castle halls, book-filled studies, cellars, dungeons, and so forth.

... next time, gadget!

2011-05-22T09:48:00.003-05:00

Here's a rather fun image. This definitely taps into the prevalent zeitgeist of wanting to make 80s cartoon icons as cool as we always wished they were. Was it just me, or did anyone else get tired of Gadget being an idiot and wanted him to actually be awesome?

GO GADGET GO by *kizer180 on deviant ART

... sorry, webcomics

2011-05-18T04:37:00.000-05:00

I remember a time when I'd ritually check a set of a dozen webcomics every day. Days when those comics didn't update had gaping holes in them.

These days sometimes during the week I remember that I used to read webcomics and take a glance at a few of them. It was made abundantly clear that my webcomic reading habits had changed when I realized (a few weeks late) that one of my previously favorite comics had changed to a 5-comics-a-week update schedule and I hadn't even realized it.

... there's snails on my plate.

2011-05-16T02:42:00.008-05:00

My Flickr gallery from the Happy People International Club's trip to Valence, France.

Valence, France, a set on Flickr.

... it's missing one starbuck

2011-05-11T03:06:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's Starbuck and Starbuck at Starbucks.

Let's add one more Starbuck for good measure.

... if the earth was your eyeball

2011-05-10T02:38:00.001-05:00

http://skysurvey.org/

I feel like such an astronomy noob, but I never realized that the galactic plane and the solar plane were so divergent.

... blood suckers

2011-05-08T18:26:00.001-05:00

Florida mosquitoes are...

tiny,
fast,
will bite you over and over,
understand the fundamentals of tactical camouflage,
or just outright turn invisible,
can teleport,
are clairvoyant,
exhibit a rudimentary sentience,
and have no souls.

French mosquitoes are,

big,
slow,
stupid,
and die easily.

Oh, and they also have no souls.

... green light

2011-05-05T04:46:00.002-05:00

Previously I had thought that this movie looked terrible. But the new trailer actually makes it look pretty good!

... Lyon in Spring

2011-05-01T19:50:00.002-05:00

As promised, Springtime in Lyon is now up in my Flickr account. I'm not going to post many of the photos here because Flickr seems to be rolling out a new sharing system and it isn't quite working yet. Most of the photos were taken from the path along the bank of the Rhone, or in the Parc de la Tête d'Or to the north of the city, or about a mile and a half from where I live.

The below photo isn't part of my flickr account because I (obviously!) didn't take the photo, but it's a good illustration of how I spent last Saturday afternoon.

... long exposure

2011-05-01T05:17:00.002-05:00

I am a big fan of effort + clever

... roll out!

2011-04-29T09:55:00.000-05:00

... listen to Benj

2011-04-28T10:12:00.001-05:00

I wanted to knock the Prefrakture post off the top but didn't want to write anything, so you get Sisko.

They exist! In my mind! I created it! It's real!

... the full story about the Prefrakture

2011-04-24T16:06:00.000-05:00

To clarify...

Getting the resident visa is a multi-step process. Here's what's done.

- I have the work visa, but it expires on the 28th of this month.
- I have my temporary residency papers, which is what they gave me after I stood in line for 5 hours in Friday. These mean that I have started the process of getting a resident visa, and they won't export me... yet. Technically I am still a legal alien, but barely.

What's next.
- In about a month and a half (not sure how long) I have to go back and wait in line again to get my slight-less-temporary residency visa. This will actually be stamped into my passport, but again it will only last a few months.
- When that expires I will need to go a third time, and then I will finally get the three year residency visa.
- However, even with that, I'll need to go back every six months to get it renewed.

So as you can see, it's a load of gosa.

... not quite an Easter vigil

2011-04-21T21:25:00.003-05:00

It's 4:23 am and I am about to begin walking to the prefecture. I wouldn't be surprised if there was already a ton of people camped out this early. We'll see how it goes.

Edit: I now have papers. It only took five hours. Urgh. I may write more on this later. For now, zzz.

... un petit déjeuner

2011-04-21T02:15:00.000-05:00

The French have a very limited palette when it comes to breakfast. Sugar.

Of course you could skip the sugar. You could have a croissant or some pastry devoid of sugary or chocolaty or candied fruit topping or stuffing, but usually it's going to have one of the previous three. (And if it does not, it's smothered in butter which has a fair bit of sugar in it too.)

So I get funny looks when choose my breakfast from the lunch section; usually a concoction of dough, ham, and cheese. Or maybe a quiche. Or a beef pot pie. Or some type of not-quite-pizza-thing.

... it's un-American!

2011-04-19T02:21:00.001-05:00

The Prefecture of the Rhone territory of France (which happens to be in Lyon) is a miserable place. A few hundred people show up every morning. They open the gate at 9 am and let in the people closest to the door in (at an extremely slow pace). And then, once they've decided that they've let in everyone they feel like helping today, they close the gate and tell everyone else to go home. Take note: This happens approximately thirty minutes after the doors open. What do you do then? You try again tomorrow, and decide to come in earlier to get closer to the door.

First I tried 8 am.

Then I tried 7 am. At least at 7 am I was able to watch them close the gate in front of me.

Next I'm just going to go there at 5 am.

Oh, why am I doing this? Because my work visa expires on the 28th of this month and I need to get a resident visa. This is the only way.

... sept semaines en Françe

2011-04-18T04:00:00.001-05:00

It just occurred to me that I've now been in France longer than I was in Japan. Soon I'll have been here longer than I was in Austin. How crazy/cool is that?

... more feelings

2011-04-16T19:53:00.002-05:00

sensations of joy
integration commences
life here is so real

(there, I made it a haiku... happy? :) )

... how we imagine we look while playing

2011-04-13T03:12:00.002-05:00

If you only watch one Portal 2 video, make it this one.

... an average day

2011-04-10T14:40:00.000-05:00

I used to keep my alarm set for 7 am. Now I have it set for 8 am, but I tend to wake up quite a bit before then. There's a big window right over my bed (the east-facing wall is mostly) and with the adjacent buildings totally vacant, the sunrise shines right through the jungle of glass and onto me. I don't mind at all. As a result if I really need the sleep I don't wake up into the alarm summons me. Otherwise, I rise much earlier. I haven't touched a snooze button.

Breakfast is either one of the prepared just-warm-it-up meals from the supermarket often purchased in sets of six (an example is toast covered in melted cheese with a slice of ham in between, or other things more complicated), or a sandwich (the bread is awesome, tomatoes are ripe, the meat is expensive but good, and the cheese is about what you'd expect from France.), or a visit to the cafe for a breakfast quiche (which could also be one of the prepared supermarket meals).

Even though I am not "on the clock" until 9:30 am I leave for work usually at around 8:30. Even if I had breakfast at home I'll stop at the cafe between the apartment at work to try a little French with either Marie (fairly fluent in english) or Rachel (who knows no english at all) and get a cup of espresso.

By getting to work at 9 this gives me a fair bit of time to wind up to the work day. Sometimes I am at a running start at once (like if I left the previous day in the middle of something) and sometimes it takes about an hour to get into the swing of things (this is especially true if I discover a series of emails that need tending to.) When my architect partner arrives (previously The Count, now The Meerkat) I quickly discuss with him which of the two maps I need to work on and the specific architectural task that I need him to tend to. Sometimes these tasks take several days, so often we just carry on. (I try to check his progress in the evening so there's rarely a need to bother him in the morning if I know everything's on track.)

I try to take half as many coffee breaks as the smokers take smoke breaks. Half of my coffee breaks are truly breaks. I sit on the patio and try to decompress for about fifteen minutes. The other half involve me going right back to my desk and sipping the coffee as I work. In the studio we all have our own coffee cache, purchased at the supermarket, and a community coffee machine, which only makes one cup (e.g. a single or double espresso) at a time.

Lunch usually comes at around 12:30, but often a bit later. We all walk to a nearby spot, of which there's really four to choose from unless you want to indulge in something distasteful like subway or mcdonalds. We then take our sub/pita/panini/pizza/etc. to the upstairs breakroom or patio and everyone eats together. No matter where you go, lunch always includes a dessert. When you're done eating most go back to their desk and kill time until 2/2:30 pm, when the lunch break is over. I have to fight the urge to get back to work. Sometimes I give in. Sometimes I goof off and surf the internet. Sometimes I play a casual game on steam. Sometimes I play a multiplayer shooter with some of the other guys. Many also partake in the PS3 upstairs.

The late lunch means that the afternoon goes by very quickly. Meetings always happen in the late afternoon because that's when our Austin half is operational. I don't go to meetings often, but when I do they're usually from 5 or 6 until "closing time". Of course "closing time" is rather abstract here. Sometimes we leave at 6:30 but I've been known to leave as late as 8, with others almost always still present.

After work, it's very common for someone from the studio to go up the road and around the block to the local super-simple bar for some Belgian beer. I sometimes join them, but I like to go back to the apartment (or even to the supermarket) to get a quick bite to eat before I go.

Other after-work activities include going out to dinner (once a week if at all, as dinner is very expensive), going to someone's house to relax (and have a much cheaper dinner), going to a cafe (most don't stay open late unless they're also a bar) for some coffee, or simply going home. Lately I haven't been indulging in that last option. When I do just go home, dinner is usually some spaghetti with one of a variety of really great sauce-in-a-jar from the store, or some sandwiches, or a microwave meal (less often than you'd think) or a small steak (which I like to have with tomato salad!).

... I feel

2011-04-09T18:01:00.001-05:00

I feel so settled. It's vivid. It's interlocking. It's logical and sublime.

... there's prey here

2011-04-08T02:42:00.000-05:00

Ah, concept art for Prey 2. This game is going to be sort of like Blade Runner with aliens. I'd place it just above Skyrim on my "most wanted" list.

... the words under the title

2011-04-04T02:57:00.000-05:00

For the years which I've operated this blog I've chosen to ignore the post labeling feature. I've also listed a few words under the title (careful not to list exactly five) which I felt had a vague connection to the intended content. It was vague, and it was intended, but it wasn't really accurate. Well, now I'm trying to label the posts and am letting the "words under the title" link to the posts with those labels. I expect it to be fairly inaccurate, still. Also, my spell checker keeps defaulting to French.

... hawking Hawken

2011-03-31T10:46:00.001-05:00

This may become one of those games that I blog about every time I see some new material.

... everything looks cool in slomo

2011-03-30T09:31:00.004-05:00

Woodkid - Iron from WOODKID on Vimeo.

... how do you do, star child?

2011-03-30T08:04:00.001-05:00

The first image ever of the planet Mercury from a probe in orbit.

... my favorite game I'll never play

2011-03-28T03:37:00.002-05:00

... I fight for the toons

2011-03-26T18:30:00.000-05:00

... rue means road

2011-03-25T09:28:00.002-05:00

Gemini Rue is a character drive point-and-click adventure game in the style of late-80s early-90s classics such as LOOM or King's Quest. The official story blurb is thus:

Azriel Odin, ex-assassin, arrives on the rain-drenched planet of Barracus to find someone. When things go horribly wrong, he can only seek help from the very criminals he used to work for.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a man called Delta-Six wakes up in a hospital with no memory. Without knowing where to turn or who to trust, he vows to escape before he loses his identity completely.

As fate brings these two men closer together, we discover a world where life is cheap, identities are bought and sold, and a simple quest for redemption can change the fate of a whole galaxy.

Gemini Rue was created by Joshua Nuernberger and produced by Wadjet Eye Games. Considerable credit also goes to Nathan Allen Pinard, the game's composer and sound designer.

At a time when I've found it difficult to stay focused on a game, Gemini Rue kept me playing. I won't go into detail to describe the story, since experiencing it unfold if one of the main draws. I tend to be very critical of writing and attempts at plot in games, but Gemini captivated me, impressed me, and earned a round of applause when the credits rolled. Many of the reviews seem to agree with me.

The gameplay is a mixture of the previously mentioned adventure game style, combined with logic-puzzles (like in Machinarium) and cover-based shooting minigames. I found both the minigame types to be weaker than the usual gameplay, as they're occasionally frustrating and offered little satisfaction reward. It's just something to endure to make the plot resume. (You can opt for an easier version of the shooting games, but I did not. The usual story, right?) The high points were often the interactive conversations. You could not alter the plot based on your dialog options, but you're seldom just fishing for information, either.

It's difficult to talk about the game without delving into the plot, something I'd rather not do as everyone who plays should experience it as fresh as possible, so I suppose it's time to just close with a high endorsement.

... the slow process of finding equilibrium

2011-03-24T04:51:00.001-05:00

I spend a bit of time on the phone a few days ago getting my student loan payments sorted. I went over some options with the representatives and found one that seems to be a decent happy medium. Rather than do the income-based repayment (which can take a few months to process) I've simply switched to the 25 year repayment schedule. This means my monthly payments will be a bit higher than with the income-based, which is actually good, but still much lower than they were. Half, actually.

This means I can actually live like a grown-up* for once, and not an impoverished student! :P

In spite of this I am still going to look for a cheaper apartment next month. A coworker told me that he rents 80 square meters (mine is 20) for only 100 more euros than what I am paying. I don't need that much space (I don't have a family here with me!) but that just means I could be paying a lot less for 20 square meters. We'll see how it goes.

* whatever that means.

... not all good news.

2011-03-24T04:44:00.001-05:00

Bit of a downer this week. On Tuesday I found out that one of my friends from architecture school committed suicide. He was one of the few I stayed in touch with and talked to before I moved to Austin. If you're curious about it, there's a memorial group on bookface. I wrote a few words for him there. (There's also a ton of photos, and I seem to be in about half of them.)

If the bookface won't let you access it without you signing away your soul and privacy forever (or something), this is what I wrote:

Mark always seemed like someone who was born in the wrong century. I could imagine him walking the streets of ancient rome, or tinkering away in a renaissance workshop, or entertaining as a victorian gentleman. Maybe he had already done all of those things in previous lives. In any case, he seemed to bring little bits of those other times and sensibilities onto our world; maybe a little more civilized, maybe a little more refined. It was something I very much appreciated. Something very unique. Goodbye my friend.

... ok, let me explain

2011-03-20T03:31:00.000-05:00

Laundry. Boring, right? It costs six-fifty euros to do a load. A tiny load. At the current exchange rate, that's nine dollars. It's the same everywhere, not just at the apartment place. I had done my laundry successfully two weeks ago, so I didn't expect trouble yesterday. The machine didn't spin cycle at the end. I don't know why. I waited for it, but it never happened. With not much left to do, I put the soaked clothes in the dryer and turned it on. Of course when it was done the clothes were still soaked. It can't work miracles. Not having another three euros (I did, but not in coin or small enough bills) I decided to try to hang dry my clothes. Problem? It was overcast and cold and a little rainy, so I had to hang them indoors. Well, when I got up this morning they were still wet. I had purchases a coffee yesterday while standing in the cold waiting for friends to meet me, so I once again had change. So now the clothes are drying again. $13.50 for clean and dry clothes.

The doctor. Also boring, aye? I had to go get a checkup to see what horrible diseases I brought in from America. (Like capitalism.) He thought that my heart-rate was a little high (no duh it is, I'm uncomfortable and I don't like you and you're feeling all over my chest, neck, and back) and that I ought to lose about 17 lbs.

The bank. This was a little tedious. First I needed to go set up my account. Then they had several things to mail me, each of which would be mailed one by one, get to me on a different day, and take over a week to get to me. First it was confirmation that the account was open. Then it was my pin number. Then it was my debit card. Then it was my access code for the website. And finally my checkbook, which I needed to go to the post office to get, because I needed to sign for it to receive it, which meant I'd need to stay home from work all day on a day that I couldn't predict. All of that is done, though. But there's still an issue. Zeni can't do direct deposit into the Euro bank. I'll need to set up an account with this bank's US branch and then Zeni will pay me that way. I should be able to transfer between accounts with no fee, I hope. Until then, if I need money, I go to the ATM. If I need money in my account, I need to deposit cash. A wire transfer would cost around $70 and there's no fee at the ATM machine. That at least is awesome. The ATM machines in Austin cost $3.50.

My cell phone. It's the cheapest one can buy. (The cheapest one one can buy doesn't sound right, does it?) but I only put enough minutes to last a week, and then they expire. Minutes are expensive, and they expire fast. (Just like the US, right?) The difference is they're much more expensive, but you don't pay for incoming. So with that in hand I gleefully called AT&T to cancel my 13 year old account with them. They were all ready to salespitch the hell out of me to try to hang on to a steady flow of my money, but I told them I had moved to France and that completely threw them off their game. They eventually recovered and asked if I wanted to transfer my account (with over nine thousand!!! rollover minutes) to someone else, and I said no, no thanks, no thank you. And it was done.

My apartment. I only just yesterday discovered that I have a freezer. There's even a little ice cube tray in it that makes little baby ice cubes. Now I can buy some meat! I have the TV hooked to my laptop as a second screen. It's great for watching videos (Sherlock!) or doing Rosetta stone. I still can't take a shower without getting the floor soaked (there's no barrier) and the toilet seat won't stay up without me holding it. Awkward. I put my little table on my balcony and was eating dinner out there for a few days, but then it got cold and rainy again and I realized the table was fiberboard so I needed to rescue it from a swollen, turgid death.

Grocery shopping. The supermarket here is rather Publix. It's very nice and has basically everything I need and the prices aren't too bad. It's cheaper than Whole Foods, even after the exchange rate. I've been getting mostly pasta/sauce and bread/sandwich stuff (which includes good tomatoes and lettuce) but the bread doesn't keep very long. They also have a good variety of prepared breakfast food like grilled cheese and ham sandwiches (it's hard to describe, but it's not really a sandwich) and of course, lots of croissants. I also bought a bottle of wine, super cheap of course (haha, me) which was called Chianti. It was okay. I bought another one yesterday but don't remember what it's called. It's white this time, and just as cheap. I know, I need more veggies in my diet.

The french lessons are going kinda well now, actually. I've started to be able to form simple sentences with a limited vocabulary. I can communicate at the bank without making frantic frustrated hand gestures.

Whew, sleepy.

... irrational history

2011-03-18T07:23:00.002-05:00

This is a repost from TTLG.com. I watched a short documentary (23 minutesish) on Irrational Games, and wanted to share my thoughts on some of their less popular titles which I played. The videos are linked below.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Freedom Force

To sum this game up quickly, it began as gleeful fun which descended into frustrating keyboard-pounding after about five or six hours. It's an extraordinarily deep tactical RPG that starts off very slow an easy, with your small team of superheros beating up the bad guys and causing a ton of property damage along the way. The first couple of hours flew by, using telephone poles to knock buildings to their foundations to thwart evildoers raining bullets from rooftops. But as the game progressed, the learning curve went steep, and the difficulty curve skyrocketed. Missions began taking dozens of replays in order to complete, even with a liberal use of quicksave/load. Maybe I just didn't understand how to play the game or the game isn't for me, but I was legitimately enjoying myself up until the "nuclear winter" map and subsequent story about giant ants, at which point I put the game down, never to return. It's a shame too, because I really did like the game, and was excited at the prospect that there was so much game ahead of me. It's considerably long, doubled when you include the sequel. I suppose I could have tried it again setting the difficulty down to baby-style (I was playing on normal. Normal! Not hard.) but I had bigger fish to fry.

Tribes: Vengeance

This game is my best experience of the three. Were it made today, with the current attitude towards writing in games, it would sweep every award venue and leave Bioware and Rockstar's writing in the dust. Taking a cue from literature or cinema, unlike most games this one does not follow the part of a single protagonist on his or her journey. In fact, one could argue that there is no protagonist (nor antagonist), merely a character whom you happen to be playing at the moment. (For the record, I've always wanted to write a game like this.) The plot is told non-chronologically, jumping back and forth over the course of around twenty years, and from the point of view of five characters (two women, three men), one of whom you play at various stages of childhood and adulthood. The characters are all dramatically linked; you play mother and daughter, lovers, brothers, and a betrayer. Whole the storyline may be a bit melodramatic for some (it's a space opera, but with the scent of soap) but it's so different from the usual action game / rpg plot that I really didn't mind. Like the history video said, as complex as the plot is, it's not that difficult to follow, and provides a fascinating romp throughout. This was a game I was playing to find out what happened next.

But what about the game? For those unfamiliar with Tribes, it's a bit of Terra Nova (not just because of the melodramatic space opera plot) and a bit of Unreal Tournament 2004. There's a ton of variety in the mission offerings, though some felt genuinely like fillers to pad the game's length, or as tutorials for multi-player modes. With that in mind, the gameplay and level design ranged from completely awesome to frankly terrible. You have corridor-shooter maps, open ended exploration/quest maps (clearly the best parts of the game, and thankfully plentiful), sporting arena maps (the worst parts of the gamer, and sadly plentiful as well), and some rail-shooter/vehicle maps. If the training maps were skippable (they appear constantly throughout the game, even up into the last chapter) I would have enjoyed the title a great deal more. The difficulty is also very inconsistent, from cake-walks to replay-me-twenty-times tough. (Yes, even with quicksave.) Still, the parts that were fun were very fun (I especially enjoyed playing the assassin character) and kept me playing in spite of the awful parts, and in spite of the excellent plot.

Swat 4

In many ways Swat 4 is the polar opposite of Tribes Vengeance. There's no plot to speak of, and while both offer quite deep gameplay, Swat 4 is excruciatingly slow-paced (as a Thief fan, consider that deliciously slow-paced) tactical shooter with emphasis on re-playability in a handful of extremely small and detailed maps. You command a team of four swat officers which you can either micromanage meticulously (hint: on anything other than easy, you must micromanage them meticulously) or take point and allow them to merely follow your lead. There's a dizzying array of pre-mission customization options for your team as well. As I said before, the maps are very small, but the locations of the enemies and hostages (both mission-critical and otherwise) are randomized. You can't save during the missions, and often one little slip-up means the entire mission is bust. (Unless you're playing on easy, and then it's okay to fudge a little.) Swat 4 is an anti-shooter. If you play correctly and complete a mission perfectly, none of your team will have fired a single shot. Your goal is to safely restrain everyone in the area without hurting them (permanently anyway; pepper spray, tazers, or rubber bullets are allowed) and confiscate all weapons. The enemies (and sometimes innocents) rarely want to go quietly, so you'll usually need to resort to one of the above methods of subjugation, or if that fails, shoot to kill. Oh, and there's yelling. Alot of yelling. This is probably the only game made where your first course of action when confronting enemy is to always shout at them at the top of your lungs.

Like Freedom Force, this game starts off fairly simple and easy, but by about halfway through it becomes extremely difficult. Again, I was too stubborn to set the difficulty down to easy, but eventually succumbed to frustration-boredom and put the game down, never to return. I believe I completed about 75% of the game, not including the expansion. The map design is very realistic, portraying a wide variety of indoor locations in extreme detail. There's also definitely a touch of Irrational's twisted nature present, with two missions taking place in some genuinely creepy locations. (Like the lair of a sociopath, and the headquarters of a suicide cult.) If you like serious, realistic games, stealth and non-violent gameplay, to micromanage like crazy, and supreme challenges, I do highly recommend it.

... game designer job interview

2011-03-16T07:43:00.001-05:00

Mine didn't go quite like this.

... I'd play

2011-03-16T01:24:00.002-05:00

... batman, obviously!

2011-03-15T14:25:00.001-05:00

You're probably tired of me just posting game videos at this point, but here's another one. You're welcome. :D

... this actually looks pretty cool, too

2011-03-11T17:48:00.000-05:00

... this looks amazing

2011-03-10T07:40:00.000-05:00

This was made by a small indie team. Can you believe that's possible for a small group of developers with almost no funding to do these days?

... see the Lyon

2011-03-06T04:52:00.001-05:00

This, plus about 200 more. Go have a look! :)

... cuisine, of course

2011-03-01T23:02:00.002-05:00

French meals are not smaller than American ones. They're just longer and consist of many dishes spread over about two hours. There is a thread of similarity though. If you're at an American restaurant and you, by yourself, order an appetizer, dinner, and desert, and eat all of it by yourself, then yes. You will be Fatty McFatso. For a French restaurant meal, that's expected. It's normal; the plan. You order an entre, plate, and dessert. Two hours later you've probably eaten more than you would have if you had just eaten the American meal (just the dinner, nothing else) but it's so spaced out that you don't really notice. Oh, and you order wine, never soft drinks or iced tea.

For dinner on my first night I was told by my Italian guide (the OM at AL) that the jarred sauce in the stores here are actually pretty darn good, and not that sugar crap that is the blight of sensible taste buds in America. So I had spaghetti and tomato sauce with ground beef, from a jar. It was delicious! Breakfast on my first work day was... croissants! How could it not be?

During my first day at work I went with the mole and the count to a cafe/bar that also served lunch. As the entre I had capicola seasoned with parmesan and oil and various other seasony things. Lunch was ratatouille (you knew that was inevitable, right?) with egg noodles and pork. We were offered dessert of course, but the meal was so big none of us had room! Besides, we only had an hour and a half for lunch, and that would have pushed it to the typical two hours. I was told that it's very unusual for ratatouille to be served in a restaurant.

As an aside, this is what the Italian told me about the irony of French cuisine. He said that the French hate being "good" at something. They want to be "the best" at the thing. They'd rather be bleh than merely good. It's all or nothing. So, the French had an extremely large variety of recipes. This was because the villages generally didn't like talking to eachother. So word gets out around the world that France has a huge number of recipes, so the world thinks, "daang, must be some good cookin' right thar!" and so the impression is made that French cooking is good. Good! Merely good. So the natural thing for the French to do is go all out, and prove that French cooking is not good; it's the best. The rest is history, but there's more to this story. As French cooking became more fancy and more elaborate and more expensive and more exclusive, it became disconnected from the common French people who honestly didn't care so much about fancy food. With the current generation (mine) especially, there's a sort of rebellion against fancy, affluent, "French" food. So the result? McDonald's is extremely popular here.

So, I was taken by the count to one of the aforementioned "French" restaurants for dinner. Le Tibouren. I will let you Le Google it. The place was small, exclusive, and as Lyonnaise as you can get. The place was so small and crowded that as far as proximity was concerned, there were only four tables in the entire restaurant. (In reality there were eight, or about 24 people in the place. Every seat was taken.) The chef himself comes to your table to tell you what he's cooking tonight. For the entre I had... honestly I don't remember. It was like a quiche I think. It was called Flemmish, so maybe it was a Dutch quiche? It was good. The plate was beef stroganov.

Rather than have a regular desert item, we had the cheese plate. It contained eight slices of cheese, each from a different village in France, and had to be eaten a certain way. Each slice was to be eaten in order, from the most mild to the strongest. Some were to be eaten with bread. Wine must be had between cheeses. It was rather amusing, and quite tasty. After it we had a "digestive" which is a small dose of very strong alcohol. I ordered the pear flavored one. (or the one made from pear?) I was told that when you sip it, you become a pear. It was true.

For breakfast on the second full day I picked up some pizza pastries from the super market, but didn't figure out how to properly heat them in the odd microwaves they have at work until well after lunch. Lunch itself was a simple submarine sandwich, which the French don't quite do right (give me an Italian sub, please) but was pretty good anyway. We ate on the lunch counter at work. Dinner was a repeat of the first night, but a bit more fancy since I got the cause with chopped olives in it.

I am about to have breakfast, which will consist of another meal-as-a-pastry (I think it's eggs benedict with cheese) and we'll see what happens for lunch and dinner.

... safe travels

2011-02-28T01:00:00.002-05:00

Let's start at the beginning. Some of you may be familiar with the very long post I made about the flights to Japan, and how awful it was. I'm not going to make another one of those, because this story isn't like that. I was unexpectedly offered a ride to the airport Saturday morning by a friend who I had recently met. I accepted her offer, and canceled my scheduled shuttle pickup. Off I went to the airport, and when we got there, enjoyed a short breakfast of cheap airport food. (Airport food is never cheap, so here by cheap I mean that it wasn't very good.) With little delay, I was in the air and landing at a Washington DC airport after a short flight.

Things got a little annoying there. They decided to delay the Atlantic flight because of a problem with the entertainment system on the airplane. I suppose for many this is a big deal, but I had books so I couldn't care less. I've never enjoyed movies on planes anyway. After thirty minutes things were underway again, but I was a little worried about how much time I'd have at the Frankfurt airport.

I came a little more prepared for this flight than usual. I bought a book, and a backup book. I brought snacks, some of which was leftover from my hike, and some of which was purchased from the hotel vending machine using the last of my laundry quarters. Two granola bars, beef jerky, soft oatmeal cookies, and a packet of trail mix. There would be no hunger on this flight. I also brought earplugs and an eyemask. As it turned out, both books failed to really entertain. I switched between trying to sleep (I never could, even with the earplugs and eyemask) and the two books, never content with any of these activities for more than thirty minutes. I am pretty sure I should have gotten the first Dark Tower novel instead. Boo.

When we do get to Frankfurt, I am concerned. It was true that I had an hour and a half, but I also needed to stand in line to get my boarding passes for the Lufthansa flight and make sure my baggage got transfered. Then I needed to stand in line at immigration to get my passport stamped. Then I needed to stand in line to get through security, which was tedious because so many there seemed to not know the drill. Between all of those were lengthy walks in a huge airport that had no tram system, no people movers, no transportation at all other than long hallways. Finally I get all of those things done with about 20 minutes until the flight takes off, and dive into the labyrinth to find my gate. Gates B 1 - 65, that way. Well, as luck would have it, I was B 12, so I didn't have far to go. But when I got to the gate, I saw no-one was there. The woman at the desk seemed to notice me, and called out that this was a flight to Lyon. Oh no! I thought. I am the last one! So I run over and she checks the boarding pass and I go through the tunnel thing, and find myself at a bus. An empty bus. Then I realized that I wasn't last, I was actually first, and that the plane was too small or had too few people to park it at the gate. Whoa! A dozen or so others boarded, and then off we went. I kept expecting the bus to take us to a tiny plane, but it took us to a regular sized airbus jumbojet. Of course when we got on, I saw that the plane already had passengers, so the rather large jet wasn't totally empty. I still had the back half of the passenger cabin totally to myself.

That's when it hit me, and I started to get crazy excited.

The last flight was brief. Lyon was before me. It was cold (40ish) and overcast and rainy. The Office Manager from the studio met me at the terminal after the baggage claim. Happy greetings! He drove me into town, and took me to the studio. The view from the roof was amazing. There was a Cathedral on the horizon! We did a little bit of paperwork and he got me my access to the studio so I could come in in the morning. Then he showed me the apartment, which is small and awesome. After that we went to the supermarket which is really close to the studio, and I got some things for dinner and breakfast.

It was still around noon, and I was on my own. The first thing I did was cause an explosion in the apartment when I tried to plug the surge protector my brother gave me into the wall. Boom! I flipped the circuit breaker to get power back for my room. I tried venturing out into the city (downtown is ten minutes by foot from where I live) but the weather was crummy and everywhere was closed, so I said forget it. Time to curl up in my comfey new bed and pass out. And that's exactly what I did.

... intermission

2011-02-28T00:32:00.001-05:00

If you are at all interested in game design, I highly recommend you listen to this (1.5 hour long) podcast.

http://www.podcast17.com/interviews/audio/dear-esther/

... off I go

2011-02-26T07:15:00.003-05:00

It's 6:15. I'll probably be on the shuttle-bus to the airport at around 9:15. I don't know how often I am going to be able to update this post with my travel progress, but here we go.

And now for something ~~totally cheesy~~ quite great.

Farewell, Austin

... but noone wanted to believe

2011-02-24T12:28:00.002-05:00

... the name of this game is rAge

2011-02-17T10:24:00.000-05:00

The company I work for, ZeniMax Media (Bethesda, id, Arkane, et al) has three games coming out this year. This, RAGE, is one of them. It looks an awful lot like Fallout, but is much more of an action game, and it has driving!

... Houston, the visa has landed

2011-02-16T12:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's trip to Houston was a success. I launched from home base in Austin at around 4 am, and arrived at the Consulate at around 7:30. I enjoyed a stroll in the semi-downtown area for a few hours before my meeting at 11, which went very smoothly. By noon I left Houston with my visa firmly attached to my passport. The funny part is that they didn't even need to see my proof of residency. That evening I celebrated with a gourmet cupcake I purchased from a specialty store next to the consulate building. It was yum!

My tentative start date in Arkane's Lyon studio is March 1st. The quail is looking into flight times/prices for me now, but the plan is to go on the last weekend of this month. I'll keep the blog updated as things progress. It's finally happening!

... share in this frustration (updated)

2011-02-10T19:59:00.001-05:00

It all started with an email being lost by a spam filter. If I had gotten it when it had originally been sent, I might have read it. But when I found it yesterday morning I assumed I already knew what it said, so I didn't bother giving it more than a glance.

Really it started before that, with me getting sick this weekend. On Monday I had a fever of 101.something, so in a forward thinking fashion I arranged to have my trip to the French Consulate in Houston moved from Wednesday to Thursday. I figured, by then, I should be at least okay to make the three and a half hour drive. We (the quail and I) still picked up the rental car on Wednesday. I was still feeling sick, and in light of having to get up at around 4 or 5 am to be on the road by 6 to get to Houston at 10, I decided to just go to bed at around 3 pm. I knew I'd wake up some time in the evening, but I figured in my current state any rest was good.

But before I went to bed, I thought I'd check on something. The mole had done just what I was about to do about six months prior, so I thought I'd email him to make sure I had everything I needed. Jokingly, I asked if I'd need anything other than my forms and passport, like a vial of blood from my firstborn kitten. Then, content to watch the patterns of light on my wall and think about unreal-lightmass-global-illumination (with or without ambient occlusion) I went to sleep.

I woke up to a phone call from an odd, local number. I answered it. It was good news! The store I ordered my jacket from finally got it in (in fact they had eight days ago but finally thought to tell me) and asked when I could pick it up. I told them I'd go right now! Ignoring the cold outside and my cold inside, I hopped into my beautiful rental car, and drove the negligible distance (a less then 5 minute walk) to the store to get my jacket.

It was around 7 by the time I got back and was getting ready to go to bed for the night. I decided to set my alarms for 3, have a leisurely drive with little traffic, get there within plenty of time, and relax. But before I went to bed, I checked my email. There was a reply from the mole. He said that when he went, he needed to bring his birth certificate.

What happened after I saw that was a bit of a blur, but I don't think that I panicked immediately. I knew what time it was in France and saw that the email from the mole was many hours old, so I didn't think I'd be able to get any new information from him. I tried to call the quail, but the office social gathering was tonight (I wasn't there because I was sick) so I could only text her. I began to dig through the Consulate's website to find any confirmation or information to the contrary about needing to bring my birth certificate - something I do not have with me in Texas - to Houston tomorrow.

Again, this is all a bit of a blur now. My head was tipping on the verge of panic. I was still feeling quite sick. I was trying to do something like three things at once to determine if I should or should not go tomorrow, if the car rental was wasted, and if things were actually quite worse than they seemed. I was starting to be afraid they were.

I knew I needed someone to help calm me down and get me thinking reasonably if I was to get anywhere, so I sent a message to ColorA, an online friend who also happens to live nearby (but not close enough to just go to.) It helped. To make a long story short, this is what I figured out.

- The entire time I had been operating under the idea that my work visa was ready and waiting for me at the Consulate. I just needed to show up in person and pick it up. This was not the case at all.
- The email lost by my spam filter that I never properly read explained it simply. I had been approved to apply for the work visa, and I needed to go in person to the consulate to apply for it. In order to apply for it, I needed to:
1) Fill out a simple form...
2) Have a passport photo,
3) Have a photocopy of my passport
4) and have Proof of Residency within their Jurisdiction.

And the fallout from each of those...

1A) I didn't have a printer, but that was no big deal. There was one in the hotel office downstairs I was sure they'd let me use. But...
2A) ... I didn't have this anymore. When I renewed my passport they took both of the photos and of course, I didn't get them back. What I did have was a scan of the photo, which I could print out, but the hotel office downstairs didn't print in color. I still had a solution. I could drive to the studio (thank goodness for the rental car) and take care of it there.
3A) And while I was at it, take care of this one too, and print out the forms.
4A) French Consulate of Houston, we have a problem...

Their jurisdiction? As far as I could tell their jurisdiction was listed as "AL, NC, SC, GA, MS, TN" which is really stinking weird, because you'd think TX should be in that list too, no? Not to mention OK and a few of the others mentioned on the site elsewhere. Maybe those went without saying? None of it mattered... FL wasn't on there, and low and behold, Florida has its down French Consulate... In Miami.

I can't get in touch with them to ask. They're only open 8 am - 12 pm. I can't get in touch with the quail, since she's still at the party and probably was going to be for several hours. I did the only thing I could do. I drove to the studio and took care of what I could. I printed the form. I printed out the passport photo. I made photocopies of my passport, and for good measure, my florida driver's license and my social security card too. I figured it couldn't hurt. Figuring my ducks were as linear as they could get, I went back to the hotel and tried to rest.

I finally get an email from the quail after several hours of unsuccessful rest. I had been feeding her info via text before, so she knew what was going on. She was very concerned about the jurisdiction issue, and didn't know what to do. All that could be done was to write an email to the romulan (the one in France who had arranged all of this) and ask him what the heck all of this meant, and what the heck we were supposed to do. I told the quail that I wasn't going to cancel the appointment until I had heard from him.

I tried to sleep...

But I woke up every hour or so (not by choice),

And checked my email,

And found nothing from the romulan.

This went on for four, maybe five hours...

Until I woke up at 5 am, and found an email from him. I was so delirious I couldn't see my mouse pointer, and it took me a minute at least to click and open the email. He said he had called the lawyer, (an actual lawyer, that's not someone's nickname) and was told that papers from my hotel proving I have been there for four months could be enough. Could be enough. The company was paying for all of this, so that was enough for me. I was going to try. I sprang into action, but was soon facing a serious problem.

It would have been best to leave at six. The hotel's front desk didn't open until seven. I knew that I could make it in three hours, so I did what I could. I went over the form again and made sure it was filled our correctly. I hit a snag...

I failed to notice before that they specifically requested that the photograph be on photo paper. The photo was printed on regular laserjet paper. What followed was a tangled mess of trying to figure out where I could get a photo printer or taken before seven am. That tangled mess lead to an even more serious problem. I checked the route to the consulate on the car's GPS. It told me it was going to take five hours.

Yep! The GPS was going to take me there the best way, which included avoiding any major highways, interstates, or toll roads. The junky thing also had no option to the contrary, like, hey machine, why don't you let me use i10? I was starting to get a very, very bad feeling. Oh, and it was 18 degrees outside.

I call the hotel's after-hours number. They can't help me. Tell me to wait until 7. It was too late to try and get a real photo, so I elected to just wait... and as I waited, I shook, and felt woozy, and frankly exhausted from barely sleeping all night.

Finally the front desk opened. I can barely talk. I mumble and manage to ask for the papers, which the women happily gives me. Then I pause, and ask, "Is it possible to get to Houston from here in three hours?"

She gives me a disturbed, skeptical look, and said, "Only if you drive really, really fast..." And then she added, ",and it's really cold out there, so you ought to be going slow. But yeah, you could make it."

I want to fall over. I remember I was going to ask for something else, and manage to request some change, for quarters, for the parking meter in Houston... and then I tell her nevermind.

I had hit the last straw. I won't even list all of the absentminded things I had done while trying to get ready. I was taking over-the-counter drugs to just operate at all. With my mind as slow and foggy as it was, with me feeling weak in the knees and out of breath just from standing still at a counter for ten minutes, I knew this was a bad idea.

I went back upstairs to my room, and emailed the romulan. I told him the situation. He replied back quickly, saying that it was probably wise to not go given the circumstances. Then I saw a text message from the quail. I don't know when she had sent it, but it said, "The mole needed his birth certificate at the consulate because he wasn't born in America."

It was funny to me. If he had made that clear in his email, then I would never have looked deeper into things and discovered all of the problems ahead of me. I would have left at 4 am, gotten there, and then been shocked when I discovered that I was totally unprepared.

I told the quail not to expect me at work today. I felt horrible. I needed to just sleep everything off. But before I went to sleep I wrote an email to the French Consulate to cancel the appointment and to ask them if I could use them to apply for my visa even though I am a Florida resident.

So today I took advantage of having a rental car. The first thing I did was got new passport photos. Then I got groceries. I rested. I feel better. The consulate never replied to my email (big shock) so I will call them tomorrow. Either we can reschedule, or I'll have to be sent to Miami.

Either way, I am not getting to France as soon as I thought.

Update 1: I managed to speak to a representative at the consulate this morning, and I was told that a pay-stub from Arkane would be all I need to prove my residency in Texas. -whew- I'll probably book my appointment to finally visit them for Tuesday.

... the pennybacker

2011-01-25T16:18:00.003-05:00

By now you've seen this photo set, and maybe you were waiting for me to add text to this blog entry. The bridge you see is called the Pennybacker Bridge, and it's considered an Austin landmark. It's a few miles from Austin itself, which you can see in the distance. (Downtown Austin, anyway...)

I went on a -very- short hike with Anarchic Fox (a fellow Mission X designer) ... cut very short because we quickly discovered a fence had been put up, with the entirety of the trail now considered trespassing on Richard Garriott's property. Whups. Other photos include an Austin art museum, a place where they keep peacocks, and views of a dry stream.

I plan to take more photos before my stay in Austin is done.

... warmth and computers

2011-01-09T17:50:00.001-05:00

I am now warmed. Thanks to some Christmas money, from both my parents and the Zenimax drawing, I was able to order what should be a very promising jacket. It is extremely simple and designed for warmth while engaging in sport-like activities rather than for looking dapper or stylish. Why did I go this route, when it seems so unlike me? Well, I only have limited suitcase space, and a rather inexpensive and small yet very warm jacket seemed the best choice. I will also take my simple black coat that I've had for several years, as both should fit in the suitcase. If I want to get another new coat some day that's more to my style, I can do it in France. I also bought two hats. One is a little black knitted thing that goes down over my ears and makes my head look like a black ball. The other is a big fuzzy number that definitely will amuse those who dubbed me The Muskrat at work. It's the kind with flaps that can be pinned up on the top and then let down to surround the face. Between those items, the scarf my sister crocheted for me, and the very nice gloves I bought weeks ago, I should be fairly set for the French winter.

My new laptop is here. In spite of how beautiful the one I actually wanted was, the much more reasonable purchase also proved to be designed with a great deal of style. It's all black with just some silver-blue LED lighting as trim, along with a very nice back-lit keyboard. Performance-wise it seems a bit better than my desktop PC back home, which has parts ranging from a year to two years old, but naturally gains the benefit of being not a laptop. I have not yet tested it with my more beefy games, but the newest 3Dmark test ran at a fairly decent frame-rate, given that it's designed to stress systems far more expensive than this one. Starcraft 2 did run rather well at maxed settings, but I don't know how impressive that is or not. The big challenge on getting it was removing the dozens of bloatware programs it came pre-installed with. It's possible that the inclusion of these worthless bits of software was what allowed the company to sell it at such a good price, as the harddrive is treated basically as advertisement space. At the moment I have Batman: AA and Front Mission Evolved installed and ready for a spin. I named the new machine Quorra. (No, that's not like the silly way people name cars. In windows you actually can and should give your computer a name so it can be recognized on networks.) My old laptop, Parable, still needs to be refresh before it's sent back home, to be given to whomever the rightful owner sees fit. In case you were wondering, the desktop PC is named Paragon II. Why II? Because it was significantly upgrade from Paragon but not so much that I felt it warranted a totally new name.

... group shot

2010-12-12T14:06:00.001-05:00

Behold, Arkane Studios Austin, enjoying our Christmas party. I gotta say, it's a pretty awesome bunch.

... TES V: Skyrim

2010-12-12T13:48:00.000-05:00

Woot, I can talk about Elder Scrolls V now! Is it just me, or are all the big fantasy games going for dragons these days? Dragon Age, Guild Wars 2, the new WoW thing, etc.

... an Arkane Manifesto

2010-12-12T13:15:00.001-05:00

This week a stack of gamesauce issues arrived at the studio. Little did everyone know, it contained an article written by our two creative co-leads, Raf and Harvey. (Well, they knew it.) The article is a sort of manifesto about the games we like, and why. Enjoy!

... QA add on

2010-12-05T18:12:00.002-05:00

----How flexible are your work hours? Is it strictly "9-5(-ish)" or are you allowed more freedom as long as you put in the hours?
No, we stick to a pretty regular schedule. I get in at 9 and stay until usually a bit after 6. That takes into account a 1 - 2 hour lunch break. Usually my lunch break runs from 45 mins to an hour and a half... technically I could take a short lunch or skip lunch and leave early, but I really don't watch the clock that much.

----How intense is the work leading up to release? What happens after release?
Dunno yet! We'll see. I am told it can get pretty intense, but every now and then a project goes so well that the crunch at the end isn't that bad.

----Let's say that you work 10/12/16/whatever hours a day upto release, could you then take some time off after release? Or are you expected to always work normal hours (and live a normal life in-between), and then just continue with whatever project comes next?
(More like 18 hours.) After release it's pretty standard to go on a 1 - 2 week vacation. What happens next depends on who you are on the team and, well, what the plan is. Maybe you jump right into a sequel, maybe you spend a few months on DLC, or maybe you enter preproduction on a totally new title.

----What software are you using (except the ones that you are not allowed to mention)?
I use sketchup and visio for presenting my design ideas. Beyond that I use whatever tools the production team creates do to the actual level design work.

----How important is schooling? Is being self-taught even possible these days?
Getting an education for its own sake is pretty important, I'd say. Even if you just have a liberal arts BA you're ahead of the curve. I am self taught as far as game design goes, so yes, it's possible. Game design schools or programs at universities are still in their infancy, and not something I really put alot of stock in. I think the best way to learn it is to mod, mod, mod.

----Did you demonstrate your skills in any practical way (work samples and such)?
In addition to my dromed and architecture work I had a small portfolio of work in modern game engines, such as the cathedral and marsha's arts.

----What about social interaction in this line of work? How sociable is one expected to be?
No-one really expects you to be an extrovert, but you do need some ability to speak in front of groups and be on good terms with your peers.

... pro game design Q&A

2010-11-28T11:04:00.006-05:00

This weekend I started a Q&A session with the Thief editors at the TTLG forum, inviting them to ask me questions about what it's like to be a professional in the game industry. I got some really great questions. The Q&A will be ongoing, but here's the first batch.

After a month and a half on the inside I thought some of you might want to know a bit more of what it's like behind the iron curtain of game design. Naturally I can't divulge any company secrets or anything at all about my current project, but I'd be happy to talk about the different kind of design/art/production positions there are, how they work together, who does what, and the general process behind creating one of those so-called AAA games for a major publisher.

To start things off, a little bit about what I do. I'm a level designer, and am partnered with a level architect. My job is to create the basic plan for my portion of the game, diagrammatic maps and layout, and draft a detailed design doc explaining all of the art/production needs. My partner (called an architect in my studio but often called a builder by others) crafts the gameplay environment based on my diagrams and specs, and is assisted by several environmental artists (who are almost never assigned to specific levels/maps/missions, but rather create the general 2D/3D assets for the entire game.) I then create the gameplay/scripting in that space using the tools designed by the production team (who are mostly programmers). The level architect and environmental artists are under the art lead, and I am under the level design lead and (by proxy) the lead project designer.

----Do y'all work with advanced machines before they are commonly available? Are the systems upgraded as soon as possible? Is there another reason or two for new games working best on cutting edge tech, when their development began before those systems were available for consumers, including OSs?
I can't speak for the entire studio but my work station is actually less powerful than the two year old PC I have at home. Of course, I'm also the new guy.

---- Do you use stepwise refinement to create levels (as it seems from your description), or do you have a different process?
Stepwise sounds like how it works. (Though I haven't heard this term used.) Every designer/architect pair do it a little differently, but in my case we started with a series of diagrammatic plans and flowcharts that were revised from scratch several times, and then moved into the game engine for a series of less diagrammatic, but still extremely rough "block-out" maps which spanned the entirety of the level/map/mission. (As I also have experience as a level architect/builder I did one of these block-out maps myself, but normally they'd be my partner's job.) Once we had decided what was good and bad about all previous iterations it was time to begin work on the actual map. At that point the architect begins using assets created by the environmental artists rather than just placeholder blocks and BSP, and I begin detailing out the gameplay scenarios in-engine and scripting. This will continue in several passes as more and more systems are completed by the production team (programmers and gameplay engineers) and more art assets are created by the EAs.

---- How much creative leeway do you have in charting levels - do you work from a loose idea in some design doc, or something significantly more restrictive?
The basic concept of my level/map/mission was outlined in a big general design doc (GDD is a term you'll hear alot) when I started, but from there I was able to significantly flesh it out and even propose some changes to the contents presented in the GDD. I feel like I have a great deal of creative leeway, but of course most of my ideas need to be approved by either the level design lead or the art lead, or even the project directors themselves if it's something that impacts the plot of the entire game. (I've proposed things that had to be approved by all of these people many times.) I also found that a great deal of communication was needed with all of these people even when not making decisions, because there's always a ton of "unwritten expectations" about each portion of the game and they don't all necessarily agree on them. It would be up to me to poll each of them for these unwritten thoughts and feelings and ideas and see how much of it I can make come true and what I will have to let them down on.

----Do you report progress to the level design lead? How does that work in practice?
When I was new I'd report my progress nearly every day. This isn't because I was required to, but every day I was making the kind of design choices that needed to be approved by somebody, be it art/design/production, whatever. These days I tend to only report during scheduled reviews (which thus far it seems I schedule myself) and at the end of mini-milestones we have every three weeks.

----How do you keep track of what other level designers are doing?
I'll either attend their reviews (which are open to the entire design team) or just look over their shoulder. Often one of them will even ask a fellow designer (or all designers) to do a quick runthrough of their latest work and offer thoughts on it. It's technically not my job to keep track of what all of the other designers do, but I can't help it. I really want to know. I think that's just in my blood from running the too-many-missions cosas project for so long. Besides, my fellow level designers have worked on some truly awesome games in the past, so it's always exciting to see what they're up to. They're colleagues I can really look up to.

----How does it compare working on your own and for the "industry"?
I do it five days a week from 9 - 6, working with a team of people who also do it five days a week from 9 - 6. Other than that, it's pretty similar. This is especially true because many of my coworkers work in a different studio, so there's constant telecommunication via instant messenger, audio chat, and video conference. So it's actually quite a bit like modding. Coincidentally, the level designer / level architect split is alot like how we did things with Mission X (with Final as the level architect, doing little of the actual game design himself) so it feels very familiar to me.

----How strict are the deadlines? Is someone constantly looking over your shoulder stressing you out to finish whatever you are doing?
I am told by my coworkers that I'm at one of the most chilled our and relaxed studios in the business. Everyone is expected to be very self motivated and driven, and there's almost no whip cracking or standing-over-the-shoulder. They only pick people to work here who they think can thrive in that kind of environment. I, personally, find it perfect. That said, the deadlines are still very real.

----Are commercial game developers soulless moneymakers?
Some are. The ones I work with are not. We are, however, always aware of what is and is not marketable.

----How much do your company care about the mass-market? Is that the only thing they care about?
We care about it enough to acknowledge that it exists and there's a certain way to appeal to it. I think in general in the last few years the mass market has become alot more open minded about games. I think Fallout New Vegas's success says alot.

----Was experience in a ten year old engine any kind of selling point when you applied for the job? Or did you get the job (exclusively) on other merits?
It was because the people who hired me were Thief fans, but if I had only done Thief mods for that entire time I doubt I would have stood a chance. (And yes, we may call them FMs here, but to the rest of the world they're "mods"... bleh!) Maybe if I had applied five years ago, but not today. The biggest help that it offered was it showed what type of gameplay I like, and that clicked with the designers here. Other than that, my architecture education and (though brief) work with the UDK were big helps. (My work at TTLG was also a big help.)

----Given you architectural education and experience, I'm actually surprised you aren't taking on that role as opposed to level design (although obviously you've done a ton of that too). Did you have a choice, or was the level designer spot the only one open at the time? Which position do you actually prefer?
I was interviewing for the level architect position, but when it came down to it that position went to someone else and I was offered the level design one, which I took happily. Now that I've been doing it for a bit, I think I much prefer the level design position... but I'd probably say that were the roles reversed, too. They're both great jobs.

----Care to cite a few examples of marketability/non-marketability (within the limits of discretion, of course)?
Okay, an easy one off the top of my head: allowing the player to kill children isn't marketable. (All the children in Fallout 3 & New Vegas are invulnerable. Also, The Little Sisters in Bioshock.)

----How, if at all, do you handle version control on levels? And are there collaborative development issues involved, and how are they overcome?

We use a program that monitors the status of every file we work with. It will tell us if the file is "checked out" by someone, if it's up to date with our own version, and allow us to check the file out and check it back in. When you check it back in you must update the version history with notes on what you did to the file while you had it checked out. It's good practice to check the file back in at the end of every day. The system seems to work very well.

----So are you essentially the writer as well? Do you pick player and NPC names, location names, any dialogue, that kind of thing? Also, any books and texts within the level, puzzles, item names, etc.?

I think answering that will give away too much about what kind of game it is. :) In general though, from what I can tell, the "writers" are distinct from the designers. Everything the designers do is essentially placeholder, meant as a template for the writer(s) to then re-draft into something that fits a consistent tone throughout the game. I think this is generally how it's done across the board, from id software to Bethesda to Bioware to Bungie.

----Did you target and pursue a job with this development studio or were you applying to multiple developers? Or... did they know who you were and pursue you?
I was applying to many, many places, but in the end I was hired by a studio I had a long relationship with. I'd say the pursuit was mutual. They were always very high on my list of places I wanted to work, and when they finally had some openings that would suit me they contacted me.

----Did you know about the nature of the project beforehand or as you interviewed, or did you only learn about the fiction and world after you got the job?
For the first few interviews (first over the phone, then video conference) I knew nothing. It wasn't until they flew me out for a face-to-face interview that I signed an NDA and was introduced to the project, and then interviewed within the context of me know what I'd be working on. Of course it was still just a tiny peek, close to what we might get when a magazine does a preview of a game.

----How often are you able to engage in general, philosophical game design discussion with your colleagues and leads? I imagine you have to be careful as everyone has to stay on task to a degree, but does your work environment in any way encourage that kind of interaction among employees?
Conversations like that break out constantly, between everyone. It's just part of the day to day business in the studio. It doesn't really take us off task because it feels like these conversations are part of our job. We're also just as likely to start having that conversation about a movie/book/tvshow or whatever media someone happens to be into at the moment. Anything's fair game, and almost everyone there has alot of opinions to share.

----You mentioned that part of your team is in another location. Is your Project Director in your location or the remote location? How about the lead level designer? I assume your partner, the level architect, is in the same location... right?
The two project co-leads are at my location. The art lead, the level design leads, and my partner are all at the other location. I am actually supposed to be working at that other location, but I need to be with the company for 90 days before they can apply for a temporary work VISA to move to that country. I should be over there by February.

----Does the Project Director perform like a general manager who assigns and manages tasks and resources, or is the position more like a film director, where he or she guides the team based on his or her creative vision of the project?
No, that's the job of the associate producers. They all also wear additional hats as part of the design team, so they're part time managers and part time developers. For example, the AP at my location is also a gameplay systems designer. Others at the other studio handle art, music, etc in addition to their producer tasks. This allows the producers to be invested in the development of the game in addition to being managers, and I think creates a much stronger link between them and the teams they're organizing. The project co-leads are more like film directors, as you said. They paint in broad strokes maintaining the direction of the entire game, but never micromanage.

----I don't mean to suggest that the latter style would mean no creative collaboration from the team, just that the project is a little more deliberately guided by a single vision.
A project needs to be guided by a single (or in our case partnered) creative vision or it ends up being pulled in eight different directions at once. Each designer still has a ton of freedom to be as creative as they need to be in order to flesh out their part of the game, but everything has to be run past the leads in order to be approved or vetod.

----Do you have, in a more official sense, discussions of other games out there, as far as how they relate to yours? I'm thinking of examples like, Game A, which was just released, happens to have game play mechanic X, which is very similar to something you do in your game.
The discussions are always spontaneous, impromptu, unofficial, etc. We're all in the design pit (it's not a hole in the ground, by the way) and someone just starts talking, and maybe a discussion begins. But we also always mention other games during official meetings, especially if someone needs to back up their argument with precedence.

----So you play and evaluate that game and decide either, "That was really cool, but it would be better if we did it this way instead" Or, "Hey, that could have been really cool, but they goofed on this part of it. Let's make sure we don't make the same mistake."
No, there's no organized "let's all play this game and analyze it". It would be cool if we did, though, but I don't know if it's something we'd want to either devote work hours to or personal hours to.

... back from my indie days

2010-11-20T18:20:00.000-05:00

I asked the head of the Archasis project if I could share some of the work I did for that indie UDK game with the public. I'm going to be updating my portfolio with these, but that might be a few weekends off. In the mean time, have a look at them here. This image best explains what work I did here. I created the "linkin logs" parts for the buildings and then assembled the buildings out of them. In the industry this type of work is called "environmental art".

More are here, including some general shots of the game that don't include my own work.

... press release

2010-11-20T18:01:00.001-05:00

Looks like I have some new collegues in Sweden.

ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of noted game publisher Bethesda Softworks, today announced it has acquired a European development studio, MachineGames™, based in Uppsala, Sweden. Established in 2009 by the founding members of Starbreeze Studios, the creative team behind the award-winning title, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher's Bay (Metacritic score: 90)and the highly-regarded game, The Darkness, MachineGames is working on an unannounced project for ZeniMax publishing subsidiary, Bethesda Softworks, that is being built on id Software's revolutionary id Tech® 5 engine technology.

I liked the Riddick Games!

... its very beneficial

2010-11-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

There hasn't been much of note or interest going on in day to day life for the past week. I have job benefits and a retirement plan for the first time in my life. The job continues to be very rewarding. The walk to and from the studio has become completely routine, with the dropping temperature helping its pleasantness quite a bit.
I went ahead and bought tickets for the trip home for Christmas. It seemed like a good thing to get out of the way since I am sure I am doing it, and the prices will only go up, up, up. I learned two things. One, a non-stop flight is worth the money. Two, flying on New Years Day shaves $100 off the ticket price. Seriously!
Remember Patricia McBride? Well she has a new webdesigner. I am curious to see what he does with my horrible CSS code but excellent graphic design.
Back when I got my master's thesis printed up by Lulu for submission I was shocked to discover that the school had no intention of giving it back to me. That was irritating. I didn't do an awesome job on it so they could have it. I did it for myself. However, two years later, I felt like I could afford to finally buy my own copy to go with the portfolios in the four book set I had always planned them to be. The 20% off coupon from Lulu was also good incentive.

... three more films

2010-11-20T17:35:00.000-05:00

Zombieland was an overhyped disappointment. My brother, who is notoriously not excited by movies, loved it, so I figured I couldn't lose. Maybe it was actually boring, maybe I already had all of the jokes spoiled, or maybe I just don't get zombie movie culture, but I kept wanting to stop the movie and go do something else. It's inspired by Shaun of the Dead but is far less clever, far less interesting, and far less funny. Yes, the Bill Murray cameo was amusing, but not nearly as OMGLAWL as everyone said it was.
The Men Who Stare at Goats was preceded with the line "More than you'd believe of this is true". What's presented in the movie is so ridiculous I couldn't help but suspect that their claim is accurate. I think the US gov and Military is just that insane. It's about Ewan McGregor (him playing a character anyway) trying to be a reporter investigating the US Army's top-secret Psychic Ops division. It's an extremely dry comedy, which I rather enjoyed.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was pitched to me as "a movie you have to see if you're into video games"... which was totally a false claim. It's really more of a movie for hipsters about hipsters with a ton of video game references which didn't really seem to be there for any particular reason. It's like a graphic novel about indie-rock geeks living in a video game world. It was occasionally fun when not being completely retarded, but the extended jab at vegans was pretty hilarious.

... good hunting

2010-11-15T22:13:00.002-05:00

What can I say about the WizardCon in Austin last weekend...

If you've been here in the past week you've seen the photo now at the bottom of this post. That's Luciana Carro, better known as Kat from Battlestar Galactica. (She started as a flight trainee but became Starbuck's rival until she was killed off for no good reason.) I found her at a table in the convention being totally neglected (she was just sitting there texting) so I had a nice long chat with her about the show and what it was like being killed off with no warning and the pros and cons of Caprica (which she was also in as a new character.) Basically, it was pretty fantastic to meet her.
I also met Walter Koenig. Maybe he was just tired and cold, but he seemed like such a frail old man sitting there. I really didn't say much to him, other than "nice to meet you" because really, what is there to be said?
There was a similar encounter with Kristanna Loken, who I am not a fan of, but is still pretty noteworthy for being a Terminator and so forth. It felt dishonest to say I was "a fan" since I am not, so I just smiled and shook her hand and said nice to meet you.
Ray Park and Peter Mayhew were both there, (I got tired of hotlinking... look 'em up yourself if you don't recognize those names!) but didn't bother talking with them. The coolest bit was that Peter Mayhew had a lightsaber for a walking stick. Pretty awesome, actually.
Ernie Hudson was being mobbed by a metric ton of Ghostbusters fans, so I couldn't even get close. Would have been cool to meet him, but it was cool enough to see him.
The 60s Batman and Robin were both there. It's funny how they both seem the exact same age now. (I don't remember the actors names.)
Lou Ferrigno is at every single ComicCon ever. It seems like Buck Rogers and the original Boomer (who no-one would care about if not for Grace Park) are at every single one, too.
The costumes weren't as prevalent or elaborate as what I remember from the Orlando MegaCon, but there were still a few cool ones. Nothing awesome enough for me to actually mention, though.

... more dear esther

2010-11-07T19:06:00.000-05:00

Pretty....

... walking in the cold

2010-11-07T16:22:00.001-05:00

The internet connection in my hotel room is suddenly horrendously slow. They told me that they switched providers last weekend, but scratched their heads when I told them that the speed is way down. I may be stuck with this. I can't even watch things on hulu. I can't get download speeds of over 50 kbps. What the hell.
Last weekend I visited the Zabalouis and entertained trick or treaters for the evening. We sat on the porch and handed out candy and toys (Keith agreed with me that it was the worst assortment of candy and toys I have ever seen on Halloween!*) As far as the costumes went, mario is very popular this year, (it's the 25th anniversary) as well as Batman and Iron Man. The kids were surprisingly polite, with only a few exceptions (in which case the parents weren't classy either). Another amusing bit were how many teenage girls dressed in sports garb (either in cheer-leading outfits or "their brothers' uniforms") were out shamelessly collecting candy along with the kids. Overall it was great fun.
My movie watching spree is on pause right now, partially because I've been so tired after work, and partially because the connection here has gotten so slow. I did watch Equilibrium, which came highly recommended from my mother and sisters. I found the idea very good, and alot to like about the movie, but it was a little ruined by some genuinely silly moments and rather ridiculous contrivances. I was head-desking during the entire sequence with the puppy. What the hell.
We had a going away get-together for Jouan, my Extended Stay Hotel pal from my first three weeks here. It was at a fairly awesome place called Spider's something. It was a mostly outdoor bar/cafe full of college students and geeks and hipsters and beatniks and similar sorts. A table of game designers blended right in. It's a shame Tampa didn't have places like that. Tampa was all nightclubs and sleazy bars. I really had a great time. Hanging out with coworkers outside of work has been a consistently great experience.
Speaking of Jouan no longer being here, it's been a walk to work all week. Add to that the change in temperature - usually around 40/50 in the morning with a ton of wind, and it's been ... actually kind of interesting! I have an urge to buy a hat, scarf, and gloves. I actually looked at hats, but all the store near here had were trilbys. I do not like those.
This week we learned about our job benefits under ZeniMax and how they'll differ from Arkane's, and I also learned that probably none of it will apply to me since I will be in France. Health coverage and vacation time will all depend on how the French do things, so all of that is still up in the air.
My final Thief project, Fables of the Penitent Thief, got off to a false start this Thursday evening. After several months of beta we though, what could go wrong? Alot, it seems. After mucking around, we finally discovered that old versions of darkloader (the application used to run Thief FMs) does not like to overwrite script files with new versions. So, some people were running the mission with out of date copies of NVScript, TNHscript, and Gen.osm. We're going to re-release it either tonight or monday, and hopefully everyone will have the same good experience.
And with that, I resigned from Thief editing. It was really a long time in coming. Now it's official.
I can't remember if it was this past week or before, but I got a call from my architecture school and Japan trip buddy Giancarlo. He had finally read my Seven Weeks in Japan journal, and absolutely loved it. If anyone reading this blog hasn't read it yet, what are you waiting for?! He hopes he can get over to France some time in the next year (maybe along with Chris) and go on some new adventures. Sounds like a great plan to me.

* The bowl was mostly toosy roles, which is the garbage of the candy world. There were almond joys on the other hand, which is one of my favorites, but none of the good candy that's really valuable for barter trading with siblings after the fact.

... week in review, last of October

2010-10-30T15:25:00.002-05:00

I played The Crossing at work this week. Totally fun!
The studio that developed the Ghostbusters game is in Austin. For some reason, Ecto 1 was parked in front of their building. This is odd because the game came out over a year ago. I wonder what they're up to...
I got my care package this week. It's just a single can of coffee, but it's good coffee. Now I am comfortable having more valuable things sent to me from home. I just need to decide what.
This week went by so fast. I spent most of my evenings watching movies. The reason why there's no fifth is because one night I decided to watch Caprica and The Office.
Speaking of Caprica, news is that it's been canceled, and the remaining episodes have been shelved. They'll be aired some time eventually, and then of course put on the DVD some day. I'd still like to watch the rest of the series, but I agree that it just wasn't terribly great. On the other had, the second new series, Blood and Chrome, about the first Cylon war, is now go. It won't involve the original series's creators, though. (And no, I don't mean the 70s Battlestar.)
ZeniMax bought a Japanese Studio. It was announced this week. It's Tango Gameworks, the Tokyo-based game studio founded by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. Maybe some day years from now I can go on temporary assignment to Tokyo and help them out with one of their games. :) Really I just want to go back to Japan at least once more in my life.
I went to our office manager's birthday party last night. It was really nice to go to a gathering of adults who had a nice party that didn't involve people acting like pathetic college children. I really enjoyed it. I met some new people, got some good social time with co-workers and met their significant others, and proved once more to myself that I generally don't like beer.
I'll add things here as they happen this weekend. :)

... movie reviews

2010-10-30T14:22:00.001-05:00

So, I've caught up on movies. Some of these aren't premeditated. Some I literally just saw on Amazon's movie rental site and decided they'd be interesting.

Outlander. An unlikely scifi/fantasy produced by the creator of Wing Commander. It's about a space-man who crash-lands in 10th century Norway and must deal with vikings and the monster he accidentally brought with him. Surprisingly good! It's got a ton of familiar genre actors in it. (Ron Perlman!)
The Spirit. This is a really hated movie, which leads me to believe that people have no sense of humor. I didn't find it bad at all. It's completely ridiculous and is constantly making fun of itself and the genre it's spoofing (noir radio drama super hero). Think of it like a PG rated Sin City. I enjoyed it.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Not all of the Harry Potter films are awful, but this one was. I'd put it slightly better than Goblet of Fire (which is by far the worst). The plot was a random series of events, the title has almost nothing to do with the story, and the big ending was flat and meaningless. I am really not expecting the final movie to be any good.
Wanted. It's about a kid who is actually the son of a super-powered assassin, and has his skills via genetics, and is recruited by the assassin clan to do assassin type work. Yet another example of twist endings revealing that the writers are lazy and can't create a plot with a decent arc without throwing in at least three twists to keep the audience confused and distracted from how simplistic their story is. A simple story is GOOD. Trying to bamboozle the audience with twists is BAD. (With some (fight club) exceptions.)
Was there a fifth movie? I can't remember.

Seriously, I am no Harry Potter fan by far (never read the books and never will) but I respect their popularity and know that there has to be some genuinely good content in them. The problem with the movies seems to be that they want to honor all the plot threads in each book, and there's no way to properly treat all of them in the film. This movie really should have focused totally on the Malfoy + Snape plot and completely ignored everything else in the book. Maybe then it could have been good.

... debt free (almost)

2010-10-29T11:18:00.000-05:00

Today, this quiet uneventful generally average day, something amazing happened!

I paid off my credit card!

Well, most of it. Thanks to things like, you know, eating, I've spent a bit of money this month so it's not 100% paid off, but what's important is that the credit card dept from my Thesis year and my two years of unemployment (not to mention that trip to Lithuania) are now wiped away after just three weeks of work. (And selling my car, and that bit of rainy day money I put away, but still...)

So, that's pretty exciting for me. :)

(There's still the student debt, but that's more in the "pay over ten years" category.)

... February is the month

2010-10-29T09:59:00.000-05:00

It now looks like I'll be in Austin until February. I will remain an American employee, being paid in dollars and at my current salary. It will be a temporary visa, lasting two years, though there will be the possibility to renew or extend (I think) if I have to or want to stay longer. The reason for the delay is because of a 90 day wait period for new employees before they can apply for the temporary visa. The good news is that because I am from the US going to France, it'll only take a month to process the visa. If it was the other way, the visa takes three months to process. Yikes!

... who's there?

2010-10-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

I can view my daily stats on blogger now, so I know that since my last post (just overnight, really) this blog got 33 hits. I know alot of those are probably search-bots or other not-a-real-person thing, but it would be nice if the real people who are really reading the blog would say hello. :)