Hey, you remember The Wire? You remember that total badass Stringer Bell, like a slick James-Bond-modern-Ganster-Sylvester-Stalone-Corleone deathmachine of raw awesome? Well, he's back. Kinda.
Stringer returns as the ingenious, loose-cannon, on-the-edge modern British investigator John Luther. His marriage is in shambles, he let a man literally fall into a coma (death, he had somewhat hoped at the time), he has a loose psycho-killer stalking him and his associates... His life is complicated.
So. That's awesome. But what about the show?
Well, for starters, I'm something like 2 episodes in, and there's not even ONE of the protagonists whom I hate. Like, holy shit. You DON'T KNOW how much of an issue that is! I mean, unless you watch American TV. Which, depressingly enough, I succumb to on occasion.
You see, Luther is BBC. Thus, it is simply better.
Each episode seems to be based around a different investigation, though it shares overarching characters/metaplots; this could play well or badly. We shall see.
Anyway. From what I can tell, I can easily recommend this show; IT"S ON NETFLIX! YAAAAAAY-
Friday, May 2, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
Film Review #31: Les Revenants (TV show)
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.
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.
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/
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