Quality. Pure and simple. Qual-ih-TEE! This is speaking from the perspective of a witness to all the total shit that gets thrown up on Netflix, and supposedly somehow managed to get on TV. The French pulled something pretty groovy here.
So, Les Revenants, or The Returned, is at a glance a show about a little French town in which the dead start coming back as their old selves. Mostly.
I'm not going to go and say it's a zombie show, as while they are technically "undead", the essential traits of mindless, flesh-eating zombies seem to be lacking... For the most part. Seriously, it's weird, and I've seen evidence both for and against the horde-of-mindless-flesh-addicts undead, very little "for", that is, so.... Yeah.
Now, that quality I was talking about: actors/actresses seem skilled or at least competent, characters are deep and engaging, the storyline is complex, a bit all-over-the-place, and VERY intriguing, the soundtrack is simply awesome ("Wizard Motor", Mogwai), and the whole damn thing is just BEAUTIFUL. Cold, morose, winding, stunning.
Now, I have ONE QUALM. I mean, maybe more than that (I've gotten mildly annoyed by one particular main character), but... MAIN qualm. Yeah. And that is that the season 1 finale (as far as I've gotten) is simply anti-climactic. I mean, it wasn't THAT bad, but in context what happened seemed somewhat irrelevant and uninteresting. The BUILDUP throughout the episode was terrific, but... Eh. Yeah. Perhaps this is simply my primitive mind demanding some gore and explosions, but in all honesty I wasn't alone in my opinion. Just... eh. I'm tired. Watch the show, and hope for some more ... something in season 2. Exhaustion-rant over.
Apparently there was a movie first, which apparently sucked. Don't watch the movie. Just the show, for now.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2521668/
I DON'T KNOW if there was a book first, but it would make sense, given the complexity of the tale and the movie's failure.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Learning Center concept stuff.
Playing around with post-processing and an Adventure-time-esque base.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Film Review #30: BeamNG Drive (game)
Yeah, another "film" review about a game. Deal with it.
BeamNG Drive is a car simulator. And it's SUPER COOL. So you know how metal is, in some way, soft? It bends, stretches, etc. Well, what BeamNG (the studio) has done is gone and simulated metal. In the parts of a car. So basically, a CG car that ISN'T just a box with wheels and a pretty visual mesh, but an ACTUAL PHYSICAL ENTITY, made up of dynamic parts capable of bending, breaking, etc. It's amazing. Everything from rollcages to doors to suspension to drivetrains to axles to wheels to tires, all simulated with dynamically tuned characteristics to match the physical properties of their corresponding materials in real life. It's early alpha, and the physics can still get... interesting at times, but still, truly amazing.
The game itself features all this tech mentioned above, among some more awesome stuff like slow motion, plus multiple large open-world maps, plus multiple customizable vehicles, including various types of cars and trucks. You can also spawn in multiple cars and give them behavioral properties, like follow (and smash), drive in this direction, etc., plus you can switch between them. Easy access to built-in Lua code integration means you yourself can code in whatever might please you. That's right, that, and it's got TERRIFIC mod support. I've seen planes, helicopters, submarines, rocket cars... It's pretty great. Police chases and races are in the works/implemented in some respect or another. Also, you can put stuff around the map. Ya know, scenery-wise, and whatnot. It's running in the CryEngine, which basically means it looks nice too, and is super-goddamn-optimized. Like, dayum.
In terms of driving mechanics, it actually handles REALLY well, and not just for an insanely-complex-precarious-softbody-simulator-type game. It's ... nice. Different vehicles handle differently; the fastest car, an 80's supercar, handles far differently than the versatile little coup.
Anyway. In all, I really enjoy BeamNG Drive. It's fun, challenging, expansive... There's probably a whole bunch of stuff I simply missed in this review, just waiting for you to find. It's for PC alone as far as I know, though via bootcamp and such macs seem to handle it pretty well too. I dunno about Linux, though I'm sure you can find something on that.
Their dev blog: http://www.beamng.com/blogs/
Just go and check that out. Believe me, it's worth it.
BeamNG Drive is a car simulator. And it's SUPER COOL. So you know how metal is, in some way, soft? It bends, stretches, etc. Well, what BeamNG (the studio) has done is gone and simulated metal. In the parts of a car. So basically, a CG car that ISN'T just a box with wheels and a pretty visual mesh, but an ACTUAL PHYSICAL ENTITY, made up of dynamic parts capable of bending, breaking, etc. It's amazing. Everything from rollcages to doors to suspension to drivetrains to axles to wheels to tires, all simulated with dynamically tuned characteristics to match the physical properties of their corresponding materials in real life. It's early alpha, and the physics can still get... interesting at times, but still, truly amazing.
The game itself features all this tech mentioned above, among some more awesome stuff like slow motion, plus multiple large open-world maps, plus multiple customizable vehicles, including various types of cars and trucks. You can also spawn in multiple cars and give them behavioral properties, like follow (and smash), drive in this direction, etc., plus you can switch between them. Easy access to built-in Lua code integration means you yourself can code in whatever might please you. That's right, that, and it's got TERRIFIC mod support. I've seen planes, helicopters, submarines, rocket cars... It's pretty great. Police chases and races are in the works/implemented in some respect or another. Also, you can put stuff around the map. Ya know, scenery-wise, and whatnot. It's running in the CryEngine, which basically means it looks nice too, and is super-goddamn-optimized. Like, dayum.
In terms of driving mechanics, it actually handles REALLY well, and not just for an insanely-complex-precarious-softbody-simulator-type game. It's ... nice. Different vehicles handle differently; the fastest car, an 80's supercar, handles far differently than the versatile little coup.
Anyway. In all, I really enjoy BeamNG Drive. It's fun, challenging, expansive... There's probably a whole bunch of stuff I simply missed in this review, just waiting for you to find. It's for PC alone as far as I know, though via bootcamp and such macs seem to handle it pretty well too. I dunno about Linux, though I'm sure you can find something on that.
Their dev blog: http://www.beamng.com/blogs/
Just go and check that out. Believe me, it's worth it.
Yearbook work: WIP facepage backgrounds
Started this stuff... Wednesday? Thursday? I forget. Either way, obviously, it isn't very near remotely finished. Anyway.
I made a post-processing setup in Blender that takes whatever you throw at it and makes it look old, slightly water-stained/ink-seeped, and old-n-papery. So that means I can take a straight B/W picture of white with some straight black lines here and there, and it'll color-tone it, deform it, etc. Check it out. These are a fifth of the size of what the finals will be, simply for rendering/size purposes, but the full ones will look the same with more detail, so fret not about scaling mucking anything.
So there ya go. Old-book-like enough? (That's the assigned style for this year's book)
Lemme know what ya think; I've set up a system for easy value/saturation/hue+color-ramp/contrast manipulation, so it's very adjustable. Want different colors? Variety? What?
I made a post-processing setup in Blender that takes whatever you throw at it and makes it look old, slightly water-stained/ink-seeped, and old-n-papery. So that means I can take a straight B/W picture of white with some straight black lines here and there, and it'll color-tone it, deform it, etc. Check it out. These are a fifth of the size of what the finals will be, simply for rendering/size purposes, but the full ones will look the same with more detail, so fret not about scaling mucking anything.
So, this, above, to this, below.
Some more stuff.
Forgot to change the distortion texture's coordinates for this last one, so the distortion roughly mirrors that of the previous.
So there ya go. Old-book-like enough? (That's the assigned style for this year's book)
Lemme know what ya think; I've set up a system for easy value/saturation/hue+color-ramp/contrast manipulation, so it's very adjustable. Want different colors? Variety? What?
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Oh yeah
Also, I've made an effective portfolio-blog for the time being. It's pretty much just a bunch of consolidated recent work.
http://troglodytic-productions.blogspot.com/
I've been applying for internships at various local game companies; hence, the above.
http://troglodytic-productions.blogspot.com/
I've been applying for internships at various local game companies; hence, the above.
Film Review #29: Next Car Game (the game itself, as of now: EARLY ALPHA)
The actual game is… a different story. Don’t get me wrong; it’s awesome as hell. Still, it’s got a ways to go (it’s still in Alpha, so duh).
The game features demolition derbies and races on a figure-8, a gravel track, and a tarmac track, with controllable lap and AI counts plus track reversability. You can use 3 cars, all with customizable paint jobs and parts which actually affect the car’s function, from horsepower to wheel type. There’s also a sick cinematic camera with Depth of Field, for all your fancy obliterated-cars-and-lens-flares needs, and several camera modes, from a chase cam to a driver cam to a hood cam to a bumper cam.
To me, the racing is pretty tough— the AI drivers are unrelenting, and driving is precarious, with cars prone to spin-outs. However, most people seem to embrace it as a fair challenge, so it’s probably just me and my own inability behind the wheel. The destruction is beautiful as ever, but given the relatively (to the tech demo) tame nature of the forces inflicting destruction— just your standard smashing cars and guard rails, no giant flailing metal spiders— it doesn’t seem to be fully utilized.
Also, the damage-to-car-functionality is lacking: each part of the car (back-right, left door, front-right, engine, etc) has a damage node which registers “damage”. If one of these nodes maxes out the car is broken. The real trouble is the damage-reading system is inaccurate, and will often distribute “damage” to the wrong parts of the car. Don’t get me wrong— in terms of visuals and physical meshes, it’s still just as brilliant as before. It just seems that the system for perceiving this damage and affecting the engine’s functionality is broken. Luckily, they’ve addressed the issue, and are apparently working now on a much better, accurate system.
Obviously, the game lacks content at this point, but one must remember that it’s in early alpha. Everything is still in the works; there’s a great deal being developed and there will be such for quite a while. I can’t wait to see what they do with it, and I really, REALLY hope they integrate some more insane car-wrecking machines into some new maps. That’d be nice.
Again, their dev blog:
http://nextcargame.com/blog/
The game features demolition derbies and races on a figure-8, a gravel track, and a tarmac track, with controllable lap and AI counts plus track reversability. You can use 3 cars, all with customizable paint jobs and parts which actually affect the car’s function, from horsepower to wheel type. There’s also a sick cinematic camera with Depth of Field, for all your fancy obliterated-cars-and-lens-flares needs, and several camera modes, from a chase cam to a driver cam to a hood cam to a bumper cam.
To me, the racing is pretty tough— the AI drivers are unrelenting, and driving is precarious, with cars prone to spin-outs. However, most people seem to embrace it as a fair challenge, so it’s probably just me and my own inability behind the wheel. The destruction is beautiful as ever, but given the relatively (to the tech demo) tame nature of the forces inflicting destruction— just your standard smashing cars and guard rails, no giant flailing metal spiders— it doesn’t seem to be fully utilized.
Also, the damage-to-car-functionality is lacking: each part of the car (back-right, left door, front-right, engine, etc) has a damage node which registers “damage”. If one of these nodes maxes out the car is broken. The real trouble is the damage-reading system is inaccurate, and will often distribute “damage” to the wrong parts of the car. Don’t get me wrong— in terms of visuals and physical meshes, it’s still just as brilliant as before. It just seems that the system for perceiving this damage and affecting the engine’s functionality is broken. Luckily, they’ve addressed the issue, and are apparently working now on a much better, accurate system.
Obviously, the game lacks content at this point, but one must remember that it’s in early alpha. Everything is still in the works; there’s a great deal being developed and there will be such for quite a while. I can’t wait to see what they do with it, and I really, REALLY hope they integrate some more insane car-wrecking machines into some new maps. That’d be nice.
Again, their dev blog:
http://nextcargame.com/blog/
Film Review #28: Next Car Game, the tech demo (2.0)
I’m splitting my review of Next Car Game in its entirety into two reviews, simply because the tech demo is something on its own.
So, when a game is first announced, and while it’s in development, some developers release to the public— whether for free or through preorder,etc.— some sort of demo to give them an idea what they’re making.
Bugbear Entertainment released a tech demo to show off the hyper-optimized physics/destruction engine they’d developed for their WIP game “Next Car Game” (supposedly a working title, as that is apparently what they “name” all their unnamed games before something comes to mind, though it seems to be sticking). And guess what: it’s goddamn amazing. Amazing.
The player plays as a weathered American muscle car among a sea of other beater cars in a playground of pure car-obliterating chaos: giant hammers, massive metal spiders, car grinders, trial courses, tons of massive jumps, loops, basketball hoops, building-sized cannons, destructible buildings/structures, jet turbines, and more. Just insane, really.
Basically, you drive around and smash other cars, the environment, and yourself to pieces. Debris piles up, wheels roll about distorted and unconnected to anything identifiably a car (nothing is, really, after a couple minutes), and the player slowly turns his/her car into a small, tatterdemalion cube, with perhaps some misshapen wheel protruding from where the engine used to be. Or something. The player can, of course, press E to repair the car, or R to reset its position to something navigable (instead of, say, upside down at the bottom of a pit of blenders).
Now, the physics: they are awesome. Awesome. This is, of course, conjecture, based off observation and my own limited knowledge of game development, keep in mind. The vehicle distortion system is not fully, constantly soft-body— that is, it isn’t constantly acting like some extremely plasticine piece of jello. Rather, impacts cause the car to calculate distortions in its mesh. In this sense it is still very realistic, as most games that have tried to simulate constant soft-body meshing tend up to produce utterly cloth- or jello-like vehicles, which are, ostensibly, not very realistic relative to actual metal vehicles. Plus, this approach— NOT the jello approach— runs much faster, if managed properly. Needless to say, Bugbear has managed to pull it off brilliantly. Car destruction looks amazing most of the time, and when it doesn’t it’s just ridiculous— which is kinda an element of the game, or the tech demo, anyway. Vehicle physics AND visual meshes are distorted by impact, along with functions— that is, wheels will continue to turn, if only in their new position on the car, which frankly ends up being just about anywhere. If you smash your car properly, it’ll simply be a smaller version, still drivable, steering and all. Not realistic, but hey, it’s the tech demo. The actual game is different, with more accurate destruction-based function degradation.
Now, gameplay itself, opinion-wise:
Very fun. Car handles well, drifts in an easy, controllable manner; it’s fun to see how long you can actually keep the thing under control just driving it around and smashing it to bits. Smashing into the environment or other cars is tons of fun. Plus, the game has a “physics cannon”- you can fire rockets, black holes, giant spheres of doom, more or less everything in the environment, and more at whatever you want with controllable force, either from a flying free-cam or from the front of the car. It’s… insane. Tons of fun, especially given there is a free more limited tech demo available on their site, which is just like, hot damn, GET IT. For PC, that is; not for anything else at this time.
Oh, and graphics. The graphics are unbeatable. Probably. Realtime raytraced reflections? No, sorry, you lose, Next Car Game wins. Runs INCREDIBLY fast, too— the physics and graphics engines can be pushed to ridiculous extents without any FPS hit.
Now, their dev blog:
http://nextcargame.com/blog/
So, when a game is first announced, and while it’s in development, some developers release to the public— whether for free or through preorder,etc.— some sort of demo to give them an idea what they’re making.
Bugbear Entertainment released a tech demo to show off the hyper-optimized physics/destruction engine they’d developed for their WIP game “Next Car Game” (supposedly a working title, as that is apparently what they “name” all their unnamed games before something comes to mind, though it seems to be sticking). And guess what: it’s goddamn amazing. Amazing.
The player plays as a weathered American muscle car among a sea of other beater cars in a playground of pure car-obliterating chaos: giant hammers, massive metal spiders, car grinders, trial courses, tons of massive jumps, loops, basketball hoops, building-sized cannons, destructible buildings/structures, jet turbines, and more. Just insane, really.
Basically, you drive around and smash other cars, the environment, and yourself to pieces. Debris piles up, wheels roll about distorted and unconnected to anything identifiably a car (nothing is, really, after a couple minutes), and the player slowly turns his/her car into a small, tatterdemalion cube, with perhaps some misshapen wheel protruding from where the engine used to be. Or something. The player can, of course, press E to repair the car, or R to reset its position to something navigable (instead of, say, upside down at the bottom of a pit of blenders).
Now, the physics: they are awesome. Awesome. This is, of course, conjecture, based off observation and my own limited knowledge of game development, keep in mind. The vehicle distortion system is not fully, constantly soft-body— that is, it isn’t constantly acting like some extremely plasticine piece of jello. Rather, impacts cause the car to calculate distortions in its mesh. In this sense it is still very realistic, as most games that have tried to simulate constant soft-body meshing tend up to produce utterly cloth- or jello-like vehicles, which are, ostensibly, not very realistic relative to actual metal vehicles. Plus, this approach— NOT the jello approach— runs much faster, if managed properly. Needless to say, Bugbear has managed to pull it off brilliantly. Car destruction looks amazing most of the time, and when it doesn’t it’s just ridiculous— which is kinda an element of the game, or the tech demo, anyway. Vehicle physics AND visual meshes are distorted by impact, along with functions— that is, wheels will continue to turn, if only in their new position on the car, which frankly ends up being just about anywhere. If you smash your car properly, it’ll simply be a smaller version, still drivable, steering and all. Not realistic, but hey, it’s the tech demo. The actual game is different, with more accurate destruction-based function degradation.
Now, gameplay itself, opinion-wise:
Very fun. Car handles well, drifts in an easy, controllable manner; it’s fun to see how long you can actually keep the thing under control just driving it around and smashing it to bits. Smashing into the environment or other cars is tons of fun. Plus, the game has a “physics cannon”- you can fire rockets, black holes, giant spheres of doom, more or less everything in the environment, and more at whatever you want with controllable force, either from a flying free-cam or from the front of the car. It’s… insane. Tons of fun, especially given there is a free more limited tech demo available on their site, which is just like, hot damn, GET IT. For PC, that is; not for anything else at this time.
Oh, and graphics. The graphics are unbeatable. Probably. Realtime raytraced reflections? No, sorry, you lose, Next Car Game wins. Runs INCREDIBLY fast, too— the physics and graphics engines can be pushed to ridiculous extents without any FPS hit.
Now, their dev blog:
http://nextcargame.com/blog/
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