Playing the Nostalgia

Lately I've been playing Mario Sunshine again and while being on this course, you look a little more subjectively at the games you once knew. You start to ask how things are made, are buildings 4 sided shapes with maps on them, how are these walls and grasses done and the general other assests.

For instance, in Delfino Plaza, going to the back of the map by the Shine Gate, there are some grassy knolls and looking at these, most of them have the grass texture just stretched over them.  Many of the windows in the houses are all the same window, the roof tiles are the same just recoloured and there are a lot of noticeable seams between three of the same area.

Then in Ricco Harbour, an area with lots of grating and metal sheets and bricks you notice that on different polies some of the bricks are different sizes. The chicken mesh grating is a slick single plane and all of the circles are 8 sided cylinders. Its pretty cool to see that we're kinda keeping up and making sure we avoid these things. Well, the texture seaming and stretching anyway. Most of the areas in the game look pretty slick, even if the letters on the hotel are really low poly. I think its darn cool. Even better is performing the glitch to walk underwater at the end of the game shows more info. The doors become painted on, the manhole covers are also flat textures.  It's all over a cool glitch.

I'll keep looking around at these old games and see what theyre like. I do wanna look at the DS games more, probably Phantom Hourglass as thats the only one that i think i own thats in 3D, cept for starforce. I'll look at these things dammit. 

And gosh darn it I hope to learn more by seeing how these are done. And its not "I'm playing CoD4 doing research" it'll be staring at everything in my game time. Shame most things don't have a first person view. Least not RPGs. TF2 would do and that's a decent looking game, regardless of how simple it is. So seeing whats out there at the mo and what I can get away with would be pretty decent. Even if those game artisan people make me feel really bad all the time with their great models. I really need this summer to come along and give me the time to get on with what i want

The worst game ever

No matter how much I delude myself into thinking it is good. And no matter how much I play it. Sonic the Hedgehog 06 (360/ps3) is the one game that is like suffering to play it. There are just so many things in the way of it that could make it a good game. The main one is the loading times and the way they handle sidequests. Instead of it being a simple talk to someone, then a brief load time and then the mission it goes

Talk to person with quest>Accept it>Load for 90 seconds+>Have the mission reiterated to you>Load a further 90+ seconds> Complete 30/60 second mission> Get rank> Load a final 90+ seconds>Carry on with your enraged time wasted life.

The traditional Sonic plagued camera, being every but where you really need it to face. You can get it rotated but it'll sometimes bug out, get caught behind a wall, not catch up to your character and a bunch of other unhelpful things.

Enemies in Silver's story. Seriously who is silver? Why is he here? A psychic hedgehog. Another one. He has no direct attacks and can only hurl shit at his enemies. Most of those being wooden boxes which do jack all damage. Other kinds of boxes or rocks do damage but even then you need to throw the same thing around 7 times to kill something.

There is too much to list. I'll admit this game looks and sounds pretty nice sometimes but other things are just the worst. Having to hold down to rotate 340 degrees on a snowboard is pretty lame. And Mach speed sections. Its like on rails sonic but one hit kills.

Human Eggman: I hope whoever came up with this got fired.

Don't worry kids, I'm a professional. I'm finishing this game so that you don't have to.

Subjective style

So just now I had the thought that everybody has totally different opinions. Ok maybe not the first time but looking at the range of threads on gameartisans has me thinking that many people have totally different aversions to it. Would this mean that people would hate any sort of work that was in a certain style and that doesnt agree with it?

The answer is probably yes. People are fitted into their own genres and niches and that is where their interests lie. Just playing Prince of Persia, Mike really loved the environments and thats what converted him to environmental artist. But I really loved the Prince. I couldn't get over how amazing his hair and scarves were. I could still see that the environments were cool (purified ones anyway) but it didn't really interest me massively.

Take for example "The Ranger" by Mike K Website here 

While it is a nice model, has amazing detail and is overall flashy, great and looks like a guy, its pretty boring to me. I've seen enough game characters that are buffed up super troopers who could take on whole armies by themselves. So kudos for the model but the subject matter is a bit bland to me. Below is the ranger. 

On the other hand there is another thread created by heribertovalle posted the models for the three main characters in Imagineers Games "Shades of Violet" Website here.

Instantly I was like Wow, this is interesting. I don't know anything about the game but already I'm interested in the characters. Even if they are all androgyenous. (He did say he'd look into that though) A game with a graphical style like this, and characters like this too are rare to find out of MMOs nowadays.  Below is the character Violet Vendetta. A sort of Guybrush Threepwood tomboy:

This is the direction I want to go. More cartoony fun games. DS models with lots of style, character and colour. I know I'm gonna need to work on my painting in order to match the textures but I will make it so. First DS style character will probably be Persona 3's Aigis to go along with a painting a want to do of her.  From there, i need to find wireframes and other reference images from similar games and bobs my uncle. We'll actually Pete is.

And I know that in industry you do what you told but this is the whole point of a hobby and a life. Doing what you want and being happy.

And I'll add on the Final Submission of Kuzco for the GA Kingdom Hearts war. I just couldnt get my head around the shadow thing.