September 28th, 2008
So I’ve been playing through the current Half Life 2 series backwards, starting with Episode 2 and going back to the original. It is interesting to do this because you get to observe the subtle changes made to the overall visual quality of the game as DirectX and graphics card capabilities have improved.
But let’s face it, the original was so good the changes are pretty hard to spot so really all I was doing was enjoying a bit of classic gaming before heading back to university. But when I reached the Grab-the-Gravity-Gun and head for “Don’t go through Ra…” Ravenholm point, having completely played Episode 2 using mostly the Gravity Gun as a killing machine thanks to the Hunter’s resistance to bullets, I decided that keeping hold of Dog’s rollermine toy ball would be a fun experiment.
And what a BRILLIANT option it is!
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September 16th, 2008
So for a few days I’ve been experimenting with various bits of code, using a Kirupa tutorial as a starting grounds, in order to create the effect of rendering 3D objects in Flash. It has been a bit hard trying to figure out how to do things but eventually I wrote a few functions that basically put a cube of cubes (the basis for my flash game idea) onto the screen and could be rotated in three dimensions.
This was all well and good but now I have been stumped by figuring out how to sort the z-order and making the drawing more efficient by ignoring parts that are hidden behind other parts.
September 7th, 2008
Thought I’d throw in a couple of screenshots I’ve taken of TES4 Oblivion. I absolutely enjoyed playing it the first time around, and it had a similar wow factor to the extent of when I first tried out Half Life 2. Once I’d got as much out of the fighting and looting aspect I turned to simply exploring the absolutely vast landscape and admiring the scenery.
(Vilverin is one of the first sights a player gets emerging from the prison/sewer tunnel at the start of the game.)
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June 29th, 2008
Thinking ahead to the 4th year game’s module and the fact I heard that part of the module is writing an essay on a game, well here is my most likely answer:
Personally I think this is the best game concept ever, and its still great after ten years.
May 28th, 2008
When I first acquired Half Life 2, Episode 2 I just had to see how many of the quests I could complete once I had got past the act of playing the storyline properly once through. And of course I attempted to complete the particularly aggravating Little Rocket Man quest, which essentially sees you carry an ornamental gnome (found hidden in a radio station at the very beginning) throughout the entire game all while doing the challenges you face normally.
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March 13th, 2008
As a follower of the Half Life 2 series, naturally I have tried Portal and was kept amused by it for a little while, solving a series of puzzles with the portal gun set by a mad AI computer obsessed with cake.
However in my search for ideas for something I could make in Flash for my final year autumn term module Scripting for Digital Media (IDAT311) - (I am thinking I may as well get a long headstart on as much as I can now) - I found an amazing recreation of the portal game in a 2D Flash form. It can be found at http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/ - Portal: The Flash Version
May 5th, 2007
Ok, so its my brother’s 18th birthday which means that instead of revising for the AI exam I have plenty of distractions.
Some good news in the form of our idat205 Eden Game has been uploaded to the Eden Project’s website, and has been featured in a BBC news press release!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/6629765.stm
New Website Design in production
Meanwhile I am working to produce a new website design, which I am happy fulfils every intricate criteria I am striving for, and replace the current site which was a result of mashed together previous attempts with the aim of trying to keep everything active. So essentially EVERYTHING needs to be replaced and unified. This is of course while I am heating up the search for a placement.
Other Stuff
Seems relevant to the impacts of digital media as studied in idat203 -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6627135.stm
February 6th, 2007
Some Ideas for Game Formats
The games produced by Eyemaze are visually intriguing logic puzzles and I can see how such a mini-narrative puzzle might be applied to a crops and global warming story.
In particular, take a look at growcube,http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube/index.html
Because we needed to know for research, and it was damn difficult to find when I searched, the correct order for growcube is: guy, water, plants, pot, tube, fire, bowl, bone, ball and spring.
The flash actionscript behind this is flexible enough to allow for any size
puzzle to be created and jumbled as many times as I like. In addition to this,
the difficulty of rotating pieces is also a feature.