Case anyone was wondering, there’s a big stupid hurricane approaching my house at the moment. I’ll be driving over to Fairly’s parents’ house with Chuck and Norris and my computer and some other stuff. I’m backing all my Flash stuff up to DVDs at the moment, I’ll try to keep you guys updated…

[4:43 AM] Update: that didn’t go so well, took us 2 and a half hours to drive 10 miles. So we’re back at the house for now, going to try again tomorrow when all lanes are outbound (Hey kids! Today’s word is ‘contraflow’!). I’m fairly positive that the city won’t take a beating that it can’t recover from (I live in Metairie, we were one of the first to bounce back after Katrina), but any damage whatsoever could destroy morale over here and absolutely kill our ecconomy.

*sigh*

I’m sure we could use as many prayers as possible right now.

That, and European levees, I hear those things rock.

God help us…

[Update, Sunday night-ish] The short story is, heading east would have taken forever with the traffic and road closings, so we headed west to stay at an aunt and uncle’s house, so now I’m here, along with Fairly, all the cousins who live here, a smattering of other family members, and everything that I need to stay dry for work.

While the power’s still on, we’ve been playing Brawl and Castle Crashers, major congrats to Tom and Dan on that one, it’s a blast to play with 3 other players.

Poor Chuck and Norris, they’ve been stuck in a cage in the garage, along with two other cats who are just a bit too old to make new friends… (not all in the same cage!)

Funny, though, I don’t really mind the idea of all this blogging stuff right now, guess it’s because I’m not just going about my boring daily life today…

Anyways, hurricane winds should start up in, oh, about 8 hours from now, fun :-/

[Monday morning] Right on time, power’s out. Cell towers feel like they’re overloaded. Bah.

Tree fail:

[Monday night] Syphoned gas for the generator from my uncle’s car after some trouble. Finishing watching Jurassic Park with Jenna and the family on VHS on my 40 inch LCD I plugged into a backup generator: Serious Business.

For the record, my friend and I played Starcraft on backup power in our college library after Katina hit 3 years ago. Also Serious Business.

Fun fact: The days we got off from school after Katina hit was the first time I started seriously working on FPA.

You know what I really hate? Keeping a game a secret. I’d probably tell you guys about a lot more if half the stuff I fool around with never sees the light of day. But for now, here’s a peek at Fraser’s Ride!

(click on an image to view the description, click again to view the image full-sized)

And just for fun, here’s some shots of the last build we showed the interwebs:

http://www.greatgamesexperiment.com/game/frasersride

First off, sorry for the complete lack of posting lately, I’ve got so much going on behind the scenes right (some ‘pay the bills’ client work, as well as some really exciting stuff) now that getting to the blog isn’t as easy as I’d like. I still try to leave comments and poke around the forum while stuff is compiling (around 15 seconds for Fraser’s Ride, a full minute for World 2, yikes!), but for the most part, here’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been holding off on that I wanted to try and address.

My last post mentioned the Too Human demo, and gaming sites have been reviewing the game sense, but the sort of stuff that really bugs me about the game is stuff that you never find in reviews. Game reviews always try to stay objective and non-biased, and I really think that that’s the worst possible way to review a game. Anyways, the first thing that really bothered me about that demo how you can shake the joystick back and forth, and your character freaks out back and forth, facing whichever way you were turning. Now, I know I always discount realistic physics in games, but I think there’s an important distinction to be make. I love physics in games, even (especially?) animations that imply physics with no sort of real impact on the game. I love taking sharp turns in Jet Set Radio and watching the skater lean into the turn, I think the heavy weight of the main character in GTAIV feels great, if not a bit unresponsive. 2d RARE games always had a great sense of momentum (Snake Rattle N’ Roll, DKC, even Battletoads). I always stress games giving feedback to the player, and when a game can portray a sense of weight, that’s what much more data being sent to the player to round out the experience. The original Metal Gear Solid had a problem with that, and today, letting your character turn on a dime is just unacceptable. Holding the joystick at an enemy and watching Balder hack away at a enemy just feels terrible. It’s basically the polar opposite of what the Wii is about, I intend for that enemy to be attacked, and Balder just does his thing, everything in between is left out. In this case, there’s not even a mashed button or tilted joystick to relate to each strike.

Anyways, thought I’d just like to address that, since it seems like ‘next-gen’ means something different to everyone. Plus, I guess I just really, really liked Silicon Knight’s awesome Gamecube game, Eternal Darkness.

[fyi: I'm terrible at writing long blog entries, I keep getting distracted and walking away from my computer]

Lets see, what else can I throw my 2 cents in on… Ah, the age old debate of ‘games as art.’ Duh video games are art, and not just because they’re made up of other arts, like music and graphics. Art is nothing more than a creation that’s meant to be interacted with. Most art is one-sided, to be looked at, or to be listened to. Today, people like to make crazy things that they consider art, like a leaky faucet, or a light up floor. Gameplay itself is an art, the way a person interacts with a game, the emotions and other data sent to the player, and the player’s reaction. This itself is an art. I would argue that video games as they are today are an imperfect art, in the same sense that gazing at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel through a 3d ViewMaster would be an imperfect interaction with the art.

‘Game feel’ just isn’t emphasized enough nowadays, probably because people have such a hard time putting their finger on exactly what that means in the first place. You can’t really bullet-point that in a sales pitch or commercial. But I would say that the ‘feel’ of a video game is the most artistic part of it, the purest interaction, best when it’s subtle and detailed, and even mostly subconsciously conveyed to the player.

To an extent, though, I almost want to feel insulted when games are called art. I mean, that’s it? Only ‘art’? Like Oscar Wilde once wrote, ‘All art is quite useless’ (This is, however, the internet, where the more useless something is usually means the more awesome it is).

While I’m at it, ‘realistic’ physics rarely help gameplay, or the feel of a game. I tried out the Force Unleashed demo on ps3 recently, and sheesh, did they forget to put gameplay in there? I mean, grabbing a stormtrooper and watching him flail about was fun, well, the first time. After I was able to clear out a room and get one guy left so I could actually appreciate the ragdoll instead of just getting grenades exploded at me, there wasn’t all that much left to do with him. But the camera follows them if you throw them really far. Because throwing baddies really far is epic. Apparently.

Less tech demo and more game, please!

P.S. Almost forgot, behold! Chuck and Norris!

Here’s something neat to start out my barrage of posts with. Every summer my grade school/grammar school’s men’s club does a summer cabbage ball program for the kids. It’s all over with now, but I had sponsored the team one of my younger cousins was on, so they got this on the back of their shirts, instead of the usual business card scans:

Close up of the logo on my cousin at bat:

And they’re orange! Woo!

So I just downloaded the Wordpress app for my (pre 3G) iPhone, testing it out…

Playing the Too Human demo at the moment, haven’t really heard any buzz about it on the Internet (the demo, I mean, the Internet won’t shut up about the actual game).

Wow, it’s awful. Really, really bad. I’ll have to go into it a bit more once I’m back on the computer (that is, if you guys care), but all I keep hearing about is how much better the game gets every time the press sees it again. If that’s true, then the first versions must have been absolutely atrocious…

Maybe I should make a list of all the things wrong with the game and see if any of them get fixed…

Lemme start off by apologizing to anyone who’s just came to my site to read about FPA. There’s plenty of links to FPA related content on the right… The rest of this is for those gamers out there who like to keep their eye on the industry. Really, first and foremost I’m a gamer, and I believe that the most important part of creating video games is having a love and understanding of the medium. So, I figure that posting as a gamer is just as relative to my blog as posting as a developer.

Anyways, about E3 ‘08. Pretty disappointing eh? No matter what I tell myself, I still, I suppose by some terrible habit, act like E3 is still what it used to be. If you’re a serious gamer who likes to keep his eye on the gaming pipeline, E3 could be a lot like Christmas morning. In reality, it’s now about nothing more than talking numbers and bullet points for the shareholders and mainstream news outlets.

That’s really the truth of it. My inner gamer wants to claim how full of fail all 3 press conferences were, but come on, E3 isn’t what it used to be. Nintendo announced their next big thing, and if you haven’t heard about MotionPlus, I’d look into it, because it’s awesome. Aside from that, they’re being Nintendo and not announcing games until a month or two before they ship, just like Apple does.

Technically, I am part if the gaming industry, but being on this side of the fence is still pretty new to me, so I still geek out about game announcements just like I used to, so that’s why I’m even writing about it in the first place, haha. I still tend to root for Nintendo, but I have to remember that E3 in no way represents their full target audience. The E3 PRESS CONFERENCE is for the casuals, sneaky behind the scenes interviews done by gaming sites are for us ‘core gamers.’

Besides, Nintendo works on a little bit of math that goes something like this:

Casual games = $$$
$$$ = Zelda, Metroid, Mario, etc.

So as far as I’m concerned, Nintendo can make and sell as much casual software as it wants. Besides, that leaves a big empty space for other developers to fill.

Yeah… don’t really know why I choose this post to actually put that disclaimer up on… guess it finally just hit me how many people come to this site every day, and that this really is my site as well as just a blog…

I tend to get far more excited about e3 (the big show where Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all show off and announce new stuff), and no, I have nothing to show off for e3 as a developer, but as a gamer, I still can’t wait to see what Nintendo’s got up their sleeves. For those of you not scouring the internet for late breaking new, Microsoft just announced Miis for 360, to satisfy the legions of hardcore Gears of War players who complain that there is not enough of ‘teh kiddie’ on their console. Before Microsoft’s conference, Nintendo announced a new add-on to the Wii remote that allows the console to know exactly where the remote is being held, probably in case Microsoft announces a Wii-like controller (yet that was the only thing they didn’t copy…). And no, that’s not what the controller was supposed to be able to do in the first place, absolute positioning and reading tilt are two completely different things.

So yeah, Nintendo’s conference is usually the one that I look forward to most (as long as they’re not just announcing 4 player Pac-Man, that is…). I’m predicting WiiSports 2 bundled with the new MotionPlus peripheral, and there’s been rumblings of announcements of Animal Crossing Wii (it’s about time, I’d say) and Punch Out! Wii (and if that’s true, I’m positive it’ll use the TrueMotion add-on). Pikmin 3 is practically guaranteed, as is Nintendo showing at least something about a new Kid Icarus.

Might happen: TrueMotion bundled with WiiSports 2 for a good price (30 altogether? 40 at the most…), news that Nintendo actually cares about The Conduit (and a big thanks to High Voltage Software for that one), Animal Crossing Wii having some sort of ‘adventure’ single player game mode, and at least one other big ‘core’ game announcement.

Probably won’t happen but I wished it would: New awesome Star Fox game that’s a true sequel to Star Fox 64, new Zelda title that’s built from the ground up for Wii using TrueMotion, firmware update for USB MASS STORAGE SUPPORT AKA HARD DRIVES OR FLASH DRIVES for Wii downloads, a new Retro game (the guys who did the Metroid Prime trilogy), Disaster: Day of Crisis playable and almost finished, and finally: Red Steel 2 being shown off and looking as good as the first one almost was (I liked the first one a lot, the control was just terrible).

(and while I’m at it, New Super Mario Bros. 2 would rock)

So, what you guys looking forward to? Any predictions?

… it’s my birthday today, 23 years here, most of those spent playing video games, the last few spent making video games.

Just thought I’d let you guys know, heh. By the way, can’t remember if I told you guys this yet or now, but I got a ton of awesome stuff in the works that I hope I can tell everyone about soon.

Alrighty then, so I finally got around to posting the second part of the Q&A session I recorded a few months ago. Yeah, I know, trust me, I’m still dealing with a lot of post World 2 release stuff. I’ve got a lot of cool stuff brewing in the background, though, I’m trying to set up a lot of stuff that FPA fans should like. Either way, check out the ‘videos’ tab under World 2 to view part 2. I think these questions are actually pretty interesting.

While on a ‘taking care of things that I should have done a long time ago’ kick, I updated a lot of the placeholder pages to the right. Game pages now have short little blurbs about them, and links to the game if there wasn’t one before. I still need to post images and stuff like that, but it’s better.

Also, and Fairly’s been bugging me about this one, I went and put some stuff up on the About Me pages, some info, a few pictures, if there’s anything else you guys think should be up there, go ahead and yell at me in the comments.

I’m going to try to get a few new shots up of Fraser’s Ride up, also.

Hey guys, I had a wedding to go to after Disney World, so I’ve been out of town for quite some time now. Not like a post so often that anyone would really notice, but hey. Anyways, you can check out the Flickr set with a handful of the pictures from the trip in it. I’ll probably post some of the funnier ones around in the forum.

Annnd, Fraser’s Ride is back in production, still a lot of work to be done until I’ll be happy with how it feels overall, but so far so good. I’m a bit worried, though, it’s more of a mellow experience of a game, not so sure about how Flash gamers will receive it. But oh well, I’m sure it’s good to diversify a bit. I’ll try to grab some screens or something once it shapes up a bit more.