Noah Balmer

Final Project | Final Conclusions

2007-12-10T21:54:41Z

Download Final PPT Presentation I originally did this final project in order to create a tutorial for people who wanted to convert AliasStudio Models into the 3d Game Studio. My original premise was that the reason the models in 3dgs games were so chunky was because the native model editor was not powerful enough to create convincing models. Through the trail and error process I found that the real reason for having such minimal, squarish models was because the 3dgs program was not powerful enough to use a model from a program like alias. The models in alias are based on Bezier Curves rather than a Polygon Mesh. In other words the skin of the model is vector math rather than a solid modeler in which you add or subtract from a solid piece of material much like in the real world. The modelers used in product design are inherently more processor hungry because they are so much more complex than in game models. For a product model you could render one screen image for 5 hours. For a game you need to render about 50 images a SECOND! So to help with speed of rendering the game modelers opt for simpler models with more complex skinning that looks like it is 3d but is actually a skin. Product models have to be more complex form wise because if your going to make it a real thing just pretending that the texture is on the part is not enough. I learned that in game models can have a higher polygon count than 1st person weapons. I could get the gun into the game but not into the players hand. Making a tutorial for this process would lead to a lot of people having to waste a lot of time. Learning the native Med program or another program that is meant for game models would be a better use of time.

Final Project Preposal

2007-11-27T05:59:53Z

I have decided to persue the challenge of exporting a alias .wire file to the Med modeling program. If i succeed I will post a tutorial with screen grabs on 3dgamestudio.com's forum. A number of people have tried to do it but generally have failed. I will attempt to import the polygons as well as the texture maps of a gun model i design, then put it into my simple level i have designed from the tutorials.

How's it goin? R U Flowin?

2007-11-14T04:46:11Z

"Based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s positive psychology research, when a person totally focus into an activity and forget about time and pressure, he reaches the optimal experience, Flow. There are many conditions in order to reach Flow." - http://www.jenovachen.com/flowingames/conclusion.htm The game Flow which I blogged about before is based on these principles. It really is an interesting experience to play. I generally play it after 3 am on a party night to wind down. The simplicity of the game soothes my anxiousness about school and lets me think about only one thing. EATING PLANKTON! Flow Theory From Wikipedia With Flow the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi names the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment. As Csikszentmihalyi sees it, the components of a Flow producing activity are: * We are up to the activity. * We are able to concentrate on the activity. * The activity has clear goals. * The activity has direct feedback. * We feel that we control the activity. * Our worries and concerns disappear. * Our subjective experience of time is altered. Not all of these components need to be present together for Flow to be experienced. This is from this site ---------------------------------------------------------- Wow. Think about this? This 7 or so bullet points are actually a blueprint or list if you would like to creating some really engaging and amazing product designs! Let’s take a look at it point by point. 1) We are up to the activity. The product is easy enough to use, or it is designed that our target market is able to comprehend and operate the product. 2) We are able to concentrate on the activity. The product’s form layout or details encourage focus, ease of use and ergonomics. 3) The activity has clear goals. This implies that there is certain simplicity in a product that is pretty important. This product is meant to do one thing and one thing only. This point could also indicate that people do not have too much of an ability to multi-task and thus convergence products could remain a niche product. 4) The activity has direct feedback. Haptic response by buttons, sound and even lights create a certain reward or punishment for things done correctly or incorrectly. 5) We feel that we control the activity. Any wonder why many people hate the ultimate convergence product the PC? The complexity of the product means many people lose control of it. Again this point implies simplicity in a product. 6) Our worries and concerns disappear. In a software context this pretty means you become happy and forget about your problematic real world. In product design, this can also applied with clever perhaps quirky design. I would like to add as well, that people do have inherent fears and biases with certain products, activities and even brands. A smart designer is aware of these things. 7) Our subjective experience of time is altered. Basically you end up using the product so much you forget to eat! (ehhem,World of Warcraft) All in all a cognitive psychology approach to design actually can be a very powerful design tool, and should be use more often. In today’s every more complicated and competitive consumer market, it’s nice to once and a while fall back to the thinking behind basic human’s thinking building blocks. I find this level of thinking has certain encompassing honesty to it, when you compared to all the other design movements, like form follows function, scenario based design, emotive design, or experience design etc. This is because perhaps a lot of the design movements are derived from cognitive psychology in the first place. Makes sense. --------------------------------------

Final Project Preposals

2007-11-12T06:52:28Z

design of a tv stand that has designated, fan cooled places for each of your consoles, and a rack for storing controllers A 3d model of a concept art character A 3d model of a gun that I export into Med and put into a fisrt person shooter A first person jumping game where you have to jump from point to point A controller design

Why the PS3 is dead.

2007-10-31T20:45:23Z

Sell your stocks in Sony! Why? NO backwards compatibility NO good games NO developers wanting to create games for it TOO expensive NOT a large enough leap into better graphics Same controller ergonomics since PS1? I don't have tiny Asian hands! NO rumble? didn't the Nintendo64 have that!? I have been watching the videogame console wars and now the new HD wars and I believe that Sony is going to lose. Buying a ps3 is a bad idea because it just got nerfed. They just got rid of all backward compatibility. This means that you can't play all of your playstation one and ps2 games on your new ridiculously expensive console. This might be a half-valid idea if there were ANY good games for the PS3 but there arn't. It needs is equivalent to Halo. Ps2 is still the top selling game system even though the next generation is out. There are hundreds of good games for the PS2. People thinking about buying a PS3 now have even less of a reason to. ] Supposedly Blu-Ray is winning the HD war. This will not matter once the price goes down enough. This happened with burnable CD's when they came out too. Burners were either CD+R or CD-R. You only could use the media that your burner could use. Sound familiar. Then, they started coming out with CD+or-R discs and burners and since then no one gives a care about it. Most people dont even know it happened. This is exactly what will happen with HD and Blu-Ray. LG already has a dual format player and is launching another http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/01/07/lgs-bh100-hybrid-blu-ray-and-hd-dvd-player-1-199/ Everyone is watching torrented movies on their computer now anyway. Who wants any kind of disc. They just take up space. Wii proved that gameplay wins over graphics. About graphics, they arn't good because the XBOX360 is bringing it down. Developers can create a game that plays on the xbox360, pc, and ps3 in one try. The problem is it has to go to the lowest common denominator which is the xbox360. The graphics are the same on the ps3 as the xbox360 except for game made only for the ps3 which there are only a few. RIP PS3.

Indigo Prophecy

2007-10-29T21:15:46Z

(Opening Cinematic) - Looks very much like the intro to a film (cinematic sequence) - Flashback! This game is about an average guy who has to solve an at times disturbing murder mystery that he himself committed. However, you also play two NYPD cops who only know that this guy killed someone and they have to bring him to justice. You're helping two sides that are both intentionally and unintentionally working against each other. Unique Huh? This game has one of the deepest stories I have seen in a game for the past few years. Most video games have story lines that are almost as bad as pornography. The way you move around in the world is unique but more mundane than in most new games. There is no technique besides the 'Simon Says' parts. In many other games there is actual skill involved with the interface. For example, aiming precisely, or jumping at the exact right time. Anyone who has played games in the past 10 years can easily do the Simon Says parts first try. This tweaky gameplay is not missed in this game however because the choices you make are paramount. Its like saying the wrong thing to a girl the first time you talk. Although the story is great (for a game) I would not want to just watch this story because the stories plot is based on you making the decisions. It is more like a choose your own adventure book (except you can't cheat as easily). The menus and tutorial show the cinema theme of this game. I thought it was interesting that they did this but i feel like they didn't really need it. It is a bad movie, but a great adventure game. I would rather watch a movie with real actors then sub par graphics. I feel like they are shooting themselves in the foot by having it seem like a movie. Their inspiration could be cinema but they should have left it on their inspirational image boards and sketches and not in the final product.

War and Videogames

2007-10-29T03:51:52Z

I have recently read a book by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman entitled 'On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society' He has pretty in depth evidence that violence in video games and other media have made everyone less resistant to killing. I can safely say that by 16 I was able to load and unload most handguns and rifles without ever holding one. If someone handed me a gun I would know how to use it. Maybe it is because of the brainwashing but I feel safer knowing that if I had to i could use a gun. I am not sure whether or not militaristic games have an impact on recruitment. Having played a lot of Counterstrike I always realize that if I only had one chance at the game I wouldn't last very long. In an hour session of playing people die about 20 times. Realizing this fact only makes me think that fighting with guns is a pretty bad idea. If people really want the excitement of fighting with weapons now they can do it online or with paintballs. Why would you decide to do it with bullets?

Ergodic Literature

2007-10-16T22:08:54Z

I thought that it was relevant when Aarseth was discussing the difference between the cybertext reader and the book reader. My parents never believed how much i was reading when playing game s like Final Fantasy. They are "book chauvinists." This generation is much harder to talk into reading a normal book because they would rather be the main character then a passive listener to a story. A lot of new game also have a cinema quality to them. In other words, people will actually watch another person play a game for the story. My roommate watched me play a lot of Half-Life 2. Moving forward it would be great to get to see more games which have a more elegant storyline, better vocabulary, and stronger messages. However, there has been a shift from text in games to audio voice overs. The facial technology can make characters move their lips when they are talking. I believe that the cybertext types of games are dying out. Having said that I do love Zelda. I beat the Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64. There is a lot of text in that game and i read it all. The new Zelda game for the Wii still has a lot of text rather than voice in it as well. The Wii is still last place in graphics though and this is the reason for the text. Its graphics are even worse then the PS2 or original XBOX.

A Force More Powerful

2007-10-10T21:27:32Z

A Force More Powerful is a game that must have a novel concept in order for it to be a success. Sadly, it takes me back to the days when if you didn't have America Online then you were missing out on about half the internet. I plugged my headphones in to get the full experincae of the game only to unplug them in ten minutes. The only sound is the sound of cars driving and the same car horn honk every 20 seconds. I guess I just thought that a game like this one would have a wav file or too. Maybe some dialog. Character development. This game would be just as rewarding as a flash game. I have been studying interface design for a bit because of the lack of industrial design jobs and the influx of interface design positions. This game is a good model of what NOT to do. The text is hand written which was super low revolution and hard to see. It was a san serif type face which makes reading slower. You never know what you can and cant click on because only some of the buttons become highlighted when you roll over them. The actual theme of the interface looks like what an interface sketch model looks like. lined paper and post it notes. its as if they got a firm to draw up what interface they should have and they just used their shitty brainstorming sketches. If the game was created by Will Wright it still would have touble being a success but that would make this game a little more plausable. The fact that its made by International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) and not a video game company is a probably the reason it is so out of touch with what the user wants. FAILURE.

skate game advertising

2007-10-07T04:33:41Z

There is a lot of advertising in the new XBOX360 game Skate. It is more realistic and I do enjoy that I can skate with the actual skateboard I own. I also am pissed off by it too. With all the advertising I wonder if they made a profit on the game before anyone even bought it. Another more intriguing aspect of having your choice in skate garb is that since Skate connects to the EA database every time you start the game EA can record your every hypothetical purchase. Having this database of millions of peoples preference in skate brands could be sold for millions of dollars. There is no better way to research this market than that. My guess is EA planned for this to happen. If not their as stupid as hardcore videogame fans think. My Skateboard (Real vs. In Game) T-Moble Billboard Adidas Store Neckface Grafitti (real world grafitti artist in virtual world) Video Clip of Rob Dydrek's Sponsors

Niche becomes Blockbuster

2007-10-01T18:48:54Z

Example of Penny Arcade Comic Strip Penny Arcade Article from Wired I can remember when Penny Arcade began. I was handing out this great new underground software called 'napster' on floppy disks around my highschool. I never was really into Penny Arcade. I would look at it in class in highschool or when i was really bored at home, but never for a week straight. After reading this article in Wired last month I realized how large the gaming population has become. ---"The term geek has acquired a patina," says Holkins, a writer prone to ornate verbiage and renowned for his witty blog posts that accompany each strip. He's right — the word is being reclaimed as a badge of pride. But the creators of Penny Arcade aren't among these geek-come-latelies. They're unreconstructed geeks of the old-school variety — which is to say, of the high school variety.---- I was a geek in high school but I was also in the weight lifting class. I rode in the cusp between being a complete nerd playing Mario on my TI-86 (yeah I had the 86, I paid extra so i didnt get the 82plus so that I could play better games) and between the joks with muscle cars (I drove a pimped out 69 Cadillac I bought with money I earned in a lucrative but grimy way on the internet). I feel like i was one of the first nerd/cool hybrids. The point is that it is amazing to think that a comic strip that is so specific can have such a huge following. I wouldn't be surprised if this strip was in the Sunday comics in the San Francisco newspaper a few years from now.

ps3_vs_xbox360

2007-09-26T08:40:06Z

My roommate has a ps3 and an xbox360. I recently purchased a game called skate. It is available for both systems. The ps3 graphics might look about 5% better. Going from my computers 19" screen to sitting 4 feet from a 42" 1080p screen I am blown away by either. Hell, even the wii looks pretty good to me and thats just 2 gamecubes duct taped together. Through having to decide this I realized that the industrial design of the game controller was the most important difference in the two systems. For a racing game, i would rather use the xbox 360 controller because the accelerate button is usually r2 which when depressed is easy to hold down because it is more of a trigger shape. On the ps3 controller when the r2 button is depressed you are pushing on a rounded surface, causing your finger to slide off. for a fighting game i would rather have a ps3 controller because of the analog depressing of the right thumb buttons. The xbox360's right thumb buttons are either on or off. The casual gamer would not really see the difference in these two controllers. Looking deeper i realized that the playstation controller was designed for Asian hands which are generally smaller. The first xbox controller that came out was made for American hands and was much larger. Asians couldn't play it! conversely, the ps3 controller hurts my hands after a while and the xbox 360 doesn't. However, having said all this my favorite way to play a game is with a wasd and mouse. Its more comfortable and accurate than either console. PC gaming for the win!

Advanced Shadowing in Realtime = drool (HalfLife Entry)

2007-09-24T22:18:57Z

I have been watching the evolution of game graphics since Wolfenstein 3d. Its crazy to think that I was playing violent games at 8 years old. I haven't even killed anyone yet! Anyways, the point is I never really understood the brilliance of 3d graphics until I started 3d modeling for school. This image shows off 2 things. The first is the attention to detail. Look at that graffiti on the side of the house. It looks just as crappy and inartistic as most of the graffiti in the bay area. The second thing is the shadow of the soldier. As you can see it is not only a actively moving shadow. based on the direction of the light source the shadow is going up the wall and realistically hitting the other side! This is something that most people casually playing the game would never notice but helps tell a more realistic story. I beat halflife 2 with the creator commentary on and it was a great look into the level design of the game. I think you have to beat the game normally first in order to get the commentary....or cheat.

Selling bytes

2007-09-19T09:17:31Z

So I really wanted to get the new game skate. for the xbox360. I downloaded the demo and played it for hours. By the time i decided to buy it for the steep price of 65$ the pre-orders were already sold out. So I thought I would just wait a few days. The preorders didn't come for 2 days after the shipping date. I could tell that this doesn't normally happen by the tone of the gamespot employees voice. He was flabbergasted. I asked if i could place a hold on a copy. I couldn't. Once they actually shipped I called around to find that skate. was not available in Oakland or SF ANYWHERE. Finally today, I got a copy. When the guy handed me the cd case I was amazed at how light it was. The instruction manual was like 4 pages long. All this got me wondering. How are companies able to cell a DVD disk and a case for 65$. I realized that I was buying the data. Thats all it is. Some texture maps, skins, models, audio tracks. Why can't they have enough in stock? How long does it take to make a dvd? Does it really take up that much space? Maybe they mean to only trickle out the games because then its cool if you're the guy that got it before anyone else, which makes other people want the game more. I don't know. I'm just glad i have it now.

Abstraction and the Videogame

2007-09-15T02:54:58Z

It was interesting to learn that the creator of pong failed at first because he created a game with 'complex' controls. Now most games have so many controls people who arn't 'gamers' are too afraid of the learning curve to try. I remember the first time i played a videogame. It was the Nintendo. I played Super Mario Brothers. My parents didn't allow me to have a console game system at that age so I was trying to move the character on the screen and I was waving the controller around. My friend laughed at me. Its funny now that Nintendo is starting to use motion as a controlling method. Recently, my roommate made me play Rez. The abstraction in the game is not at all annoying like it would be if it was a first person shooter. When your trying to get that human hair to flow just right its hard to make it look real. If you just don't try, then you can focus on gameplay. This is what Nintendo is doing with the Wii. They don't want to get into the graphics arms race like the Sony and Microsoft. flOw, the game I want to do my midterm on is also very abstract. One of the things I want to look at is what different people name the powerups in the game. My roommate calls some of the powerups you eat 'carbs' and others 'protein' based on how you get larger from eating them. I hope to videotape people playing it as well. Flow is a very classic feeling game in its control because you only use one button. It also is very beautiful tho. Escpecially in 1080p HD! Ive noticed my friends saying 'dude, check out how pretty my tail is' and in other games they would be more likely to say, 'Suck on that fucker!' That's a pretty big difference. While was reading it kind of steped its way through my childhood with those games. It reminded me of a project I did for a Microsoft design competition. I designed a game system that began with simple 'classic' games and evolved into a fully functional laptop/ entertainment PC. I believe that children shouldn't be thrown into a 'virtual world' style environment the first time they play a video game. People of my generation evolved with the technology from simple text based and board game feeling games. What do you think?