Update on what I'm "doing"

I apologize profusely for the following English.  I was not in the best... state of mind in Digital Media class when I wrote this.

I kinda want to make a short sci-fi live action film, live action with CGI composited, based loosely in the Hella Jank (game) universe I was workin' on earlier...  Like there was a plague in the solar system and everyone's tryin' to get to earth because they think it's a sanctuary (it ain't gotten infected yet) but they're all infected so earthlings can't let them in because if they get in everyone'll get infected and die because there's no cure, so the protagonist helps to destroy the orbital ring which everyone relies on for interplanetary docking because ships are no longer made for lithosphere-based takeoff/landing because it's inefficient, and meanwhile they're dealing with the moral conflicts associated with this, and there's some other stuff, but...  Well... I simply don't have the time.  Probably.  Got a ton of school/precollege/intern/job work to do already.  So.

Meanwhile, the game I've been actively working on -- the medieval combat game -- has seen some progress.  There are now swordsmen with shields, archers, and spear people.  Impaling has improved, so people can carry corpses around on weapons, but thrown spear collision is still broken so people fly into space when they get impaled on thrown spears.  Dismemberment's also still working fine.  Yeah.  Working on adding procedural obstacle navigation for the dynamically/randomly generated castle, along with improved AI stuff (attacking closest foe; sounds easy, but believe me, it ain't).  Optimizing blood spray/splatter.  Sound effects with multiple versions have been added for impacts (swords, shields, flesh, arrows) and for death shouts (honestly, I used the cheatcode input sounds from Receiver.  They're... like... Yeti sounds? ...)  And a bloody sword.  Not the sound effects, just the fact that it gets bloody.  Also added character health, impact recoil (from getting shanked, jumping off stuff, etc.), and some nice cam movement dampening/elaboration so handling feels much more dynamic.

SCREENSHOTS:  be warned, bloody as hell.  This is not a pretty game.  In fact, it is made in the name of making stupid, over-the-top games.  Because they're fun.

 

A victorious pikeman.

 

Something to give you the gist of just what's going on...

 Person impaled on a pike-spear-thing.  Fun.

 

Bloody sword.  Blood dissipates.

Oh, and I added a yeti.

 

More on that later.

Film Review #25: Battlefield 4 cont (not really)

So, Battlefield 4 is awesome.  Runs faster than Arma 3, looks amazing, tons of customization, immersive gameplay, just intense and terrific all around.  Even an excellent stealth mechanic in the Campaign that actually lets you approach a mission as you choose, not that crap where they're like "click 1 to go loud, 2 to go stealth".  No.  Better than that.  That said, campaign is quite short, but that's understandable, as BF4 is a circa-multiplayer game and the campaign is thus a brief precursor to multiplayer, familiarizing people with the game and whatnot.  Now, MULTIPLAYER.  Multiplayer is awesome.  Insane, and awesome.  We know this.  But that's not what I'm going to talk about RIGHT NOW.

You see, I've only played maybe two matches of online BF4.  You know why?  No, it isn't because I don't have time, or it's broken (it is, but not nearly fatally, anymore).  It's because of Comcast.  I've only been able to play BF4 at a friend's house, once, because MY internet is being throttled by Comcast.  If you try to boot up internet-reliant, intensive programs, the internet cuts short and doesn't let you run them.  Now, my internet has plenty of room for usage-- the thing is, I downloaded BF4 and two other games over the course of a week.  Comcast saw this and was like, oh, HELL NO YOU DON'T.  Even though my internet covers it.  Because they're GREEDY.  LITTLE.  SHITS.  This is all entirely illegal, mind you.  The comcast thing (that's right, they don't get a capital C anymore because they don't deserve it).  This brings us back to some of the recent legislative bills giving corporations full regulation of internet functionality.  It's not OK, they don't have the right, and you're squandering the small businesses the internet has become the hub for: startups, dev blogs, small-time websites...  They all get crushed.  Fight it, people.  Jesus christ.

I know, this is coming a bit late, it only REALLY pissed me off (believe me, I was before, but now my right to shoot digital people is under IMMINENT THREAT) just in the last week.

Film Review #24: Battlefield 4 (very, VERY first impressions)

Still getting the hang of this game, campaign is absolutely beautiful, multiplayer is... broken as hell.  Can't get online, my friend even personally asked some devs to help my case and no luck as of yet.  Oh well, that pisses me off.  So.  Experience so far... is... the above.

Game handles well; lots of weapons, beautiful (and I goddamn MEAN it), BEAUTIFUL graphics.  Campaign is fun, I liked their use of cinematics (I know, surprising)...  However, their music choice was a bit awkward, and some stuff that was probably intended to be very moving... wasn't.  Poor transitions in cinematics killed a lot of it.

Now, there's one thing I really, REALLY wanna bring up.  In the first mission, you go sprinting through wartorn urban China, rounding up civilians to save, or something.  One of them says something like, "Oh, Americans.  Thank god you're here; we could really use your help."  Just...  Just reflect on that statement for a moment.  Consider it.  Obviously (at least, it seems to me), this is satirically employed.  It's just...  So great.  Just the IDEA of someone actually saying that nowadays.  When pigs fly, my friend.  When pigs fly.

I'll write more on the game as I play it some more.

Film Review #23: Shotgun Funfun (game)

I don't know what to say about this.  Just your basic 2D shoot-em-up zombie game, more or less, perfected in simplicity.  Plenty of blood.  A couple cheat codes.  A shotgun.  Zombie-vampire things (they just look like worm-people to me).  A nice little high-score thing.  No real loading time, just fast play.  Which is nice.

But.

This is not over.  Nuh-uh, buster.

We're going to talk about...
CHEATS, EASTER EGGS, ETC. IN VIDEOGAMES!

As you go back in time through videogame history, you see more and more cheat codes, easter eggs, and assorted ridiculousness.  It was pretty much consistently high for a good number of years.  HOWEVER, NOWADAYS, this brilliant tradition has begun to dwindle.  WHY?  WHYYYYY - - -
Anyway.  Cheats are fun.  They completely change gameplay, generally for the better, and almost always in the interest of ridiculousness.  You know when you play a game and there's, say, a rocket launcher that's just insane, but you can only fire it once in the entire damn game, and you're like, REALLY?  Why would you bother making this if you're only gonna let me play with it once?  Well, that's where cheat codes/easter eggs come in.  They're the things that grant the stupidness that should exist in every videogame.  Easter eggs are most often hidden jokes of various sorts, or special stuff, or whatever.  The point is it's hidden, and when you find it it's like, oh damn, awesome.  Like, say, in (I think) Halo 2.  There's a gun you can find by breaking the map and flying off to a concealed location in the background, which fires massive missiles like bullets from an LMG.  Bungie (Halo makers up to Halo:Reach) actually had plenty of easter eggs throughout their games, mostly just hidden jokes, but still.  Anyway, in most games nowadays you can't find ANYTHING.  Not even an unfunny little inside joke, or a cheat for invincibility.  A few game companies (Rockstar, Infinity Ward, Bungie possibly, Avalanche) maintain this tradition, even if only to a very slight degree.  But still!  People, stop taking videogames seriously.  It's a goddamn videogame.  Make it fun.

Coding: What I've Done.

Ya ya ya, I did a bunch of Codecademy stuff and whatnot, but that's not exciting.

What have I been doing?
WELL
I'LL TELL YOU!
*cue idiot smile*

Anyway, I've been developing a game I called (for some unknown reason) Hella Jank.

 See?  I'm serious.

To the point.  I scripted everything except the base for a lens flare, and a mouselook script.
That is, about 49 separate scripts by me, simulating ragdolls, atmospherics, lens flares, bloom/coronas, sun glare, vehicular wheel traction, aerodynamics/lift, player movement, aircraft throttle/torque, hyper-optimized destruction, explosion force/torque/damage, bullets, primitive AI, level-of-detail, randomized city generation, sparks, object interaction, vehicular use, 6DoF player falling, weapon use/inventory, depth of field, and an LSD trip, among other stuff.  7 of those were written in GLSL, and the rest were in Python.  Just about everything was written in the last 2-3 weeks.  The game itself includes a dynamic day/night cycle, numerous land and air vehicles ranging from cars, to air-bikes, to aero-tuktuks, to massive industrial behemoths looming over the city.  2 weapons: machine gun, missile launcher.  2 enemies, both of which attack and can be killed.  12 different building iterations/types, plus 2 types of parks, plus roads and intersections.  Varying elevations/hills are in progress.  Tuktuks and 1 type of car can be blown into pieces, plus the enemies.  Nearly all vehicles rely on a B/W 32x64 PNG for alphas (vents, etc) and colors, to a degree.  The tuktuk runs on 3 texture maps, 1 for the rotary engine, 1 for the body, and 1 for the thrusters.  These are 16x16, 32x32, and 64x64, and all B/W PNGs.  Basically, everything is ridiculously well-optimized and awesome in every way.  Sorry, it is, and the fact that if you crash into stuff in vehicles too hard you fly out of your seat makes the game ridiculous and actually pretty intense/immersive.  Yeah.  Anyway, ego-rave over.  Scripts range from about 15 lines to about 100 lines, averaging around 50.

Now, SCREENSHOTS!

AA nice sunset with a tuk-tuk.  And an airship.  And a massive floating district, but you can't really see that yet.

Blowing up some trigger-happy fools.  Ragdolls, check

Popo-mobile, with procedural lens flare.  Looks REALLY nice at night with the flashing siren.

City streets with a smaller airship in the foreground.  Around 10:00 AM.

Don't go aero-biking around corners at 120kph on acid.

Fleeing police drones in a getaway car.  With a machine gun, of course.

What would this game be without exploding tuk-tuks?  No, their destruction is not complete; engines and thrusters are done but the body needs more work for its own total obliteration.

Film Review #22: McSweeney's (magazine thing)

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
McSweeney's is basically a magazine-esque ... um... thing, which publishes tons and tons of very, VERY sarcastic stuff, some of which is relevant to the times and some of which is just plain diatribe, gibberish, etc.  Some of their stuff is absolutely goddamn brilliant.  Hilarious.  Collin Nissan is one of my favorite ranters.  They also publish books, collections, etc., and recognize quality serious work from a variety of genres as well, everything from classics like Steinbeck or Bradbury to contemporaries like China Meiville.
If I were to complain about something it would be that some pieces simply aren't that funny.  They've got plenty of quality, believe me-- but some pieces seem to try to hard, so to speak...  Ya know, they just don't swing it.  Just not brilliant, which would be acceptable except that there IS so much brilliance.
Anyway, I really like their logo.  It's a classic-looking chair thingamajig.  <thingamajig is apparently a word; spelled it right the first time too *score*

Film Review #21: C'mon, Let's Go Jay-Walking (minigame)

Lets Go Jaywalking is a free, ostensibly flash-based game online about jaywalking.  you try to get as many people out of 25 as possible across a multi-lane highway, with the help of evaporating traffic cones and magical floating speed-boots.  As you might imagine, this makes for some absolute chaos, especially given the blood and ragdoll implementations.

The game itself is fun as hell.  You can take the .swf (or whatever the hell it is) right off the internet and play it offline, too.  Great time killer, and the raw silliness of it just adds to the fun (hey, let's see how much of the road we can repaint with one guy's face...)  Yeah, it can get pretty bad.

NOW I'd like to talk about JAYWALKING ITSELF.  You goddamn college students.  Just because you have the right of way doesn't mean the front of my damn car won't smash you into hundreds of bloody, squishy bits that some poor bastard at Public Works will have to clean up.  THE LAW OF BERKELEY ROADS DOES NOT IN ANY WAY PROTECT YOU FROM THE LAWS OF PHYSICS.  People, find a college student near you and tell them to get off the road, or Ingemar WILL hit them, and not even entirely on purpose.  Stop walking into the middle of the damn street and then stop to check your phone.  You are a hindrance to humanity as a whole.

</Rant>

Anyway, you can find the game here:
http://www.gamesbutler.com/game/16072/Let%27s_Go_Jaywalking/