Category: General

Perth game developers, your end-of-year party now has a name:

Look out for the official flyer over at the Let’s Make Games and IGDA Perth Chapter websites soon.

I just wanted to get this teaser out there. 😉

Yesterday was a busy day. I forgot to eat lunch and didn’t realise it until much later.

I spent the morning working on Let’s Make Games stuff. Started with a bit of work on the most recent (April-September) community report. Then a fair amount of communication to help coordinate our upcoming end-of-year party. Finally, I threw together a quick redesign for the website (the old one was very “bleh”) and added some new content (mostly links).

After all of that, I picked up Rowan so that he could do some motion capture with Buddhi down at Beyond Motion. Buddhi’s friend Glenn was there as well and took some great photos. Here’s one:

I got some game programming in while down at Beyond Motion, but I still have quite a bit to do in order to stay on schedule for our game prototype (tomorrow morning is looking busy too!).

I also have to set-up some way for the art team to get builds of the game and submit new assets. Normally, I’d use Subversion – but I’ve heard horror stories about using Unity3D with version control. For those technically inclined, I’m going to try restricting write access to the library folder and for various operations on the assets folder. Either that or just use export/import and some basic access management via ftp (or similar). Any tips?

Hiromi Uehara is going fully sick:

I’m going to buy some of her music, attempt to learn piano, and then grow my hair into a massive mane – all in a futile attempt to greater emulate her.

via VideoSift.

I haven’t posted anything for over a week because I’ve been pretty flat-out with work and preparing to move. I’ve already written a bit about moving, so I figured that I’d write something about work. Hopefully, this will encourage others to do so, because I’m keen to know what people are working on!

I’ve mostly been working on two projects. I won’t write too much about the characteristics of each, because I want to focus more on the process and tools.

Project 1: Booklet design using Scribus

The first project isn’t games related at all. I’ve been doing some graphic design work for a sale booklet for a technology company. The “industry standard” tools for this kind of work are probably Photoshop and InDesign, but I can’t justify spending thousands of dollars on software, and I’m not going to pirate them (which unfortunately also seems to be “industry standard” practice).

So I’ve been using free and open-source software instead: Inkscape (for vector graphics), GIMP (for photo editing), and Scribus (for print layout). I hadn’t used Scribus or done much design-intended-for-print before, so there was a bit of a learning curve. The major things that I’ve learnt are:

1. Use smaller font sizes than you would use for display on a computer screen (think 8pt and 10pt rather than 12pt)
2. Maintain fairly substantial page margins and make liberal use of empty space
3. Design for two-page compositions rather than single pages (adjacent pages need to “fit” together)
4. Take time to set-up a colour palette, master pages, and font styles
5. Focus on the typography as least as much as everything else

Also be sure to save frequently. Scribus crashed on me three to four times over the last week. I wonder if that happens much with InDesign.

Project 2: Game development in Unity3D

The other project I’ve been working on is straight-up game development. I’m working with a group of artists (mostly 3D modellers and animators) to create a casual game (for web or iPhone… probably web) with high-quality 3D graphics. I’ve noticed that a lot of indie developers go for a 2D “retro” look due to a combination of personal aesthetic preference (8-bit nostalgia) and available skill-set (programmer art). I wanted to undertake something different.

It’s been interesting getting the team together and getting a feel for how the team can work (we’re spread out between three different locations, and all have other work commitments), but it feels like things are on track now. Not necessarily for guaranteed commercial success, but definitely enough for completing a prototype to see if our development model can produce good results.

As indicated by the heading above, we’re using Unity3D. It’s inexpensive for very small teams, but I’m concerned about costs when the team grows and also about the lack of support for real version control (although it’s coming apparently). The 30-day trial is great and the interface seems to be very accessible for artists. Importantly, it’s been very easy to get something up and running quickly. 🙂

Here are some things I’ve learnt so far:

1. I look fantastic in a mocap suit, but I seem to have an asymmetrical walk cycle. (This is probably due to movement through a small space, and we will experiment with using a treadmill).
2. When using Unity3D, it’s best to break out your animations into separate .fbx files and you should delete meshes and blend shapes from the animation-only files. (Thanks to Matt for the original tip)
3. A lot of game design involves listing things (documentation), but these lists make everything else a lot easier!

And here are some questions I still have (anyone able to answer these?):

1. What’s the best way to define a fixed path in Unity3D and have an object follow it?
2. Anyone know of decent online resources for place-holder sound assets?

So there you have it – this summary actually took longer to write than I expected! How’s everyone else going with their respective projects?

Margaret Pomeranz was recently interviewed by Byteside regarding her views on the lack of an R18+ rating for video games in Australia.

Here’s a quote from the interview:

Everyone else was willing to go with it. It was the recommendation that came to the OFLC from an expert, who did expert research over many months, and you get one attorney general whose personal view is “No no no, we don’t want this” – banning it for all Australia.

She goes on to say that this pushes avid gamers to obtain games via other means (eg. downloading copies) and that this makes ordinary people into criminals. Basically, by showing disrespect for the public (by asserting spurious regulations), the government undermines respect for the itself and the law.

Video found via Vooks.

Heidi took me to see Shonen Knife on Sunday. It was the last show of the Australian tour to promote their new album “Super Group“.

Here’s a video of the title song of their new album:

Doors opened at 8pm, but it wasn’t until 10:30pm that Shonen Knife took to the stage. The Novocaines opened for them (at around 9pm?) and they were freaking loud (although also rocking and good times). Playing the harmonica is always a nice touch. 🙂

The new Shonen Knife line-up seem to have a great rapport and exuded a very fun and friendly vibe – which perfectly complements their music. It was smiles, head-banging, group poses, and reaching out to the crowd. The brief stories thrown in offered insight into inspiration for some of the songs (not that meaning is usually deeply hidden in their music!).

After the show, Heidi bought some t-shirts and a CD which the band signed shortly before Naoko kindly smiled for this (horrendous-quality camera-phone) photo with Heidi:

We’ve been listening to the new CD in the car (and now on my computer). It’s fun and unpretentious – it really captures the band’s personality. The song “Deer Biscuits” reminds me of Nara and “BBQ Party” gets stuck in my head and makes me hungry (“Pig Out, pig out, pig out. Don’t worry about your diet.”)

I checked out their website and enjoyed seeing Etsuko’s blog post on Perth and their gig at Amplifier. I hope they come back to Perth sometime. 😀

Simon‘s first solo art exhibition, entitled “Apple Cider Tea Party“, is on from 6:30pm tonight at HQ in Leederville (the YMCA building next to the skate park near the train station; it’s the same venue as our joint exhibition back in May).

He’s been promoting it pretty hard on facebook and his blog (and he’s got some coverage in print media), but I figured that another reminder from me couldn’t hurt. I also wanted to share a few thoughts on creativity, art, and self-direction.

To me, the greatest thing about Simon’s art is that he’s able to express very raw, honest, and unpretentious reflections of both himself and what he’s trying to capture. His work is explosive and colourful, but also balanced and thoughtful. He manages to de-construct his subject matter with natural immediacy – rather than prolonged and exhaustive introspection that whittles away at the soul of the work.

He announced the exhibition on the PIGMI mailing list with this flyer:

My immediate response was:

Birds? Lightning? Berets?! Hive 5s!!! FREE?!?!

This is going to be the best exhibition that Perth HAS EVER SEEN! I’m
going to stop by twice ON THE SAME NIGHT!

Overzealous? Possibly. Disingenuous? Not at all!

I honestly cannot recommend this exhibition enough. It will be unlike anything you have ever seen, and you should definitely do whatever you can to make it down tonight or over the weekend.

Way back in the year 2000, I was completing the honours year of my Bachelor of Computer and Mathematical Sciences degree at The University of Western Australia. It was a fantastic year!

Fortunately, most of the highlights are chronicled in (photo, video, games, and article) contributions to an “Honours CD” which served as a sort of digital yearbook. I recently found my copy of the CD and promptly backed it up to my trusty NAS.

Here are a few photos from the CD:

Aw yeah – check out the sideburns!

I wish that there was more of a culture of collective recording of experiences. Maybe there is actually – with all this social networking and all – but group photos and yearbooks are awesome and shouldn’t only be for schools. My games company will have a definitely have a yearbook committee. 😉

I don’t have any photos, but we also had seedy/geeky honours t-shirts that read:

NP–WANG
it’s very, very hard

It feels so infantile now. Hahaha, I”m sure it was back them as well!

I finally got a new PC:

The CPU is 9x faster than my old one and the GPU is 16x faster than my old one (according to Passmark).

I tend to agonise over potential purposes (since I don’t like wasting resources by getting something that I won’t use). In this case, I made a spreadsheet with a bunch of possible computer configurations and their respective prices. I noticed that even a (quiet, low power) basic system gets me a massive performance increase, and that performance gains reduce quickly thereafter.

Anyhow, I ended up spending around $800 for the following:

• Core 2 Quad Q8400
• Intel G31 chipset motherboard
• 2x 2GB DDR2 800
• 1TB Samsung “Eco” hard drive
• 512MB DDR3 Geforce 6800GT
• Antec case with 430W power supply (>80% efficiency)
• DVDRW drive

Unfortunately, they couldn’t tell me if the graphics cards was a low-power (59w) version; turns out that it isn’t.

Overall, I’m very happy with the purchase. It’s nice and quiet, everything is much more zippy, and there are no compatibility problems with Ubuntu. I used some of the money I saved to buy a new tablet (6″x4″ Wacom Intuos3 for $277, discounted now that the Intuos4 is out).

Yay!

I love kerbside collection weekend! The two main reasons why I think it’s so fantastic are:

1. You have a deadline to clear unnecessary things out from your house.
2. Most things get picked up by other people before the rubbish collection people come along.

We’re moving house in a little while and want to minimise what we take (or put into storage). So we had a few things to put out including: a desk, inline skates, exercise weights, an easel, and some motorcycle helmets.

Most items were collected by people passing by (possibly trawling the neighbourhood) within a few hours. It’s great to know that they will be put to (re)use. 😀

We’re also gone through most of our things and we will be donating a few more items, and possibly putting some up for sale online (a couple of bikes, a Commodore 64, a bunch of DVDs and games).

It all feels very… refreshing. 🙂