General Chat

Sounds great - I can't make it to any of them though :( I suppose it's unavoidable that this is the case, but it does seem pricey ? A lot of people wanting to get into the games industry, by definition, haven't got jobs in the game industry (not to say that they don't have money or other jobs)...

Have you run any workshops like this before ? feedback from anyone who has attended would be good too ?

It's a great idea but it does seem awfully pricey. I wouldn't consider attending such an expensive workshop unless you provided a fairly detailed run down on who the industry professionals are and what specifically each has to offer.

I'd also want to know who these three senior games employees are first as well. Aka no mention who they are on the website etc, makes it sound a little dodgy.

It may just be me, but wouldn't it be more pragmatic to set the Brisbane date closer to GCAP, where out-of-towners may be considering coming for the same reason?

There may be overlap, so like others have said - you would want to detail more specifically the benefits of coming to this course in the most honest way possible. Overinflation will ensure there's no year 2.

If this workshop does what it claims I don't think it's overpriced, it's good value if anything as it includes lunch and refreshments (personally I'd let people bring or find their own meal to keep the price down for students, and places like ACMI might give you free venue hire). Just an honest review of your portfolio from someone who knows what they are talking about is worth the price of entry, there are far too many grads/students out there who think they are God's gift because they have never heard a word of honest criticism in their life. However I am always very skeptical when people talk about their "experienced teams" but don't mention a single person by name. The web site talks about "a variety of workshops and seminar" but this seems to be the first and only one, so it really doesn't look very reputable... WhoIs says the site was registered by Penny Sweetser, and LinkedIn will tell you that a Penny Sweetser is (or was?) a Senior Game Designer at 2K as well as having a games-related PhD. I understand that you can't announce speakers until they confirm their availability but you really couldn't make this look more dodgy if you tried. Just bad timing on the announcement?

And, as I just noticed, Penny does say who she is if you look at her Tsumea profile - so I retract some of my comments! It would have been good to include that information in the post though, for unobservant people like me ;)

I agreed with you for the most part though. They should list their panel of industry experts on the website/posts etc.

It lends a lot more creditability to the workshop.

Hi Guys!

Thanks for your feedback and questions. This is the first time we have run this workshop, so my apologies for not providing more specific details up-front. The workshop will be run by:

Penny Sweetser (Senior Designer)
Martin Slater (Lead Programmer)
Lorne Brooks (Senior Animator)

Unfortunately, the Brisbane workshop will not run this year, but we hope to run it early next year. The Melbourne workshop will run as part of IDEF and E-Games Expo, so hopefully that will make it more accessible to some of you.

I will post more details to the website soon and put up a post here to let you know that it is updated.

Thanks!
Penny.

Hi Penny.

I've haven't heard of the people you have listed I'm sorry. Could you please give a little bit more information on their background, the games they have worked on and the companies they have worked at and are currently working for. I'm sure they are talented people but that kind of information will help me in deciding whether or not I sacrifice food for the next month and live on MiGoreng noodles to hear what they have to teach me.

Cheers

Popping those names into google will tell you exactly where all the speakers are from, 2K Australia.

Penny has a book out called "Emergence in Games" which is all about designing games with emergent gameplay, and I've been to a talk of her's at AIE, so I can say on her count alone it's worth going to. From memory of her talk, she also used to work at "The Creative Assembly", where she worked on Medieval Total War 2, doing a wide range of things.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2007/11/21/2k_australias_martin_slater_d…

Here's a good article about the Bioshock Post-Mortem done by Martin Slater.

Oh and Lorne Brooks has his name all over the Bioshock credits, so I think all in all a solid team to give a talk on anything game related. :)

Online registration and speaker details are now available for the Canberra and Sydney Get in the Game! workshops at www.levelup.com.au

Regards,
Penny Sweetser.

Online registration is now available for the Melbourne Get in the Game! workshop. Please visit the website to register: www.levelup.com.au

Registrations for the Get in the Game! Workshops to be held at Canberra and Sydney will be closing this Friday, October 17.

Registrations for the Melbourne workshop will close on Friday, October 31.

Please visit the website to register: www.levelup.com.au

The closing date for registering for the Get in the Game! workshop to be held at AIE Canberra on November 1 has been extended until October 27. Please visit the website for online registration: www.levelup.com.au

The Get in the Game! workshop to be held at AIE Sydney on November 8 has been cancelled.

How much is this? I couldn't find the details on the website ...

Depends on the event I imagine.

On the right hand side is a list of different events, under a blue background section. Click on the event and it'll show you more info.

For example for the melbourne event the costs are :
* $125 for AIE students
* $175 for all other students
* $250 for everyone else

I would .... if I played TF2 ....

I think i remember playing the original quake team fortress back in the late 90's/early naughties when i had more spare time :D

level does look interesting though, did/do you have a specific method for your design, was it shaped/characterised by the nature of play of TF2 or done ad hoc ? Sadly i'm a bit of an academic, so i always want to know what ppl think and how they go about doing things ...

Always designing for the game at hand, but wanted to add some element to differentiate it from the rest of the levels, so in came the vertical aspect. It's primarily ad-hoc, paper designs can only help to a certain extent :)

Playtest on Saturday was excellent, around 20 people showed up. There will be continual playtests every Wednesday and Saturday evenings so if anyone is interested, there's still time to jump in.

Hey Kris, looks very pretty. I'd love to give it a try (add me in case I forget to add you - "bittman")

I'm also trying to use the Hammer editor to get up a map or two for my portfolio, I'd love to see the source files out of interest while I'm still learning.

Cheers Bittman,

We have a playtest tonight, 9pm EST - come check out the new Payload version of the map. I restarted the level from scratch - we tested it last Wednesday for around 3 hours (14 people) and it went really well.

More info here: http://triggerthis.net/preplayinfo.html

Here's a snippet from the latest additions to the level...

CRANKING THE VALVE

This new gameplay element to Great Heights, gives Blu not only a second path to cross over the Icy Bridge, but also gives them a second means of pushing the Cart. Once the Cart starts its path up the Icy Bridge, Blu will be able to crank the valve positioned underneath the bridge. This valve acts in the same way standing around the Cart would do: the more players present, the faster it cranks (thus the faster the Cart moves!)

Red team will need to defend both the Icy Bridge and its underpass, currently the visual cue is minimal but effective: there is a large red cog at the start of the Icy Bridge, if you see this moving, Blu players are underneath the bridge cranking the valve.

Well, naturally, Anonymous was from me. Doh, forgot to log in.

What an awesome service! Thanks for posting the link Neffy. Your teapot made it onto their front page too :D

lol lol lol =)

<3

lol! thats awesome i want a max teapot too!

hehehe - poor souls

meetings are very importaint, though in preschool they where called nap time.

I still enjoy nap time.

I'm disappointed. I thought this was going to be about hugging game developers, like Neffy. :(

As a web designer / developer, I've had my fair share of "meetings".

There was this time when our project manager grabbed a few of the team for yet another meeting, and one of the asp / database programmers who was a bit fed up with it all told us beforehand to "just nod, don't say anything, otherwise it's going to draw out the meeting for hours", since that particular project manager had a tendency to question everything or request an explanation for even the most simple or mundane things.

So that's what we did. We answered in shrugs and nods, or a one word response if we couldn't help it, all in the midst of chuckles and death stares (to each other in case someone broke the rule - especially after the project manager would ask a question that needed a long explanation). The project manager caught on, but hey, we did get out a lot earlier :D

I stomped out of a meeting once because the other participant was very rude XD

I'm sure there's plenty of male developers that you can hug instead. Doesn't Kezza work just over your shoulder? XD

You know what you need to do now.

Every place has their dramas. Anyone who's worked in an office knows that office dramas happen all the time. It's the reason why The Office and the Office Space movie is so popular!

lol I haven't seen the office space movie, I don't know if it even exists :P

I think we should have Nap Time at work.
All in favour ?

is that the one with diedrich bader as some kind of construction worker and some no-name lead actor ?

funny movie :)

Next time you have problems with that printer/fax machine have a look at this scene from the movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwjU3HWLM3c&feature=related

Kez is on a different floor, but I think I'll pass either way...

You have to see Office Space when you have the time. It's hilarious :D

I had a workmate who used to have nap times in the office, just like George Costanza! He'd curl under the desk and tell me to wake him up in another hour. XD

Not sure how anyone can get a nap in a busy office, but he did fine.

Yep, that's the one. Diedrich Bader is hilarious in it!

Holy crap, welcome to my job! D=

I'm using Adobe Flex this week...still don't know why, I JUST AM!

Come onnnnnnnn Game job...oh wait, this'll probably/definately happen there too...

Well, it's not as 'non-trivial' as you might expect.

Detecting common features from a 'transient' image (like video) and then using those features as 'markers' from one frame to a next, then mapping both the geometric data and then the texture data onto the geometry (rather than motion capture, which has physical markers present in the image data to do all this) is a pretty cool little application of transform methods and signal processing. What benefits this has would depend on the system of capture used, how much data you can collect and process etc etc

I'm certain it has been covered in research already. However, obviously there are many ways to implement it an 'image metrics' is simply one system devised for this purpose. I really would have to take a closer look at it to work out whether it gets my tick of approval or not.

I just had a quick look a the footage. Her face looks heavily botoxed or something! Especially on the cheeks when the face smiles. Not Quite there yet i think.

God dammit, why are Pixar the only people who seem to be able to do eyes properly?

Her face smiles, but her eyes don't. It's missing all those slight varied tiny movements our eyes make that we don't notice. You do however notice those movements once they're gone.

The material and the render is actually epic though, just the eyes and the lips really ruin the animation for me.

Dane Brennand - Texture Artist

They are saying that this is what the technology is supposed to capture; a more 'continual' and subtle control over the movements and expressions - that is eyelids, lips, etc. I think as far as digital processes go it's a leap forward. It's not very realistic, (try watching it with the sound turned off!) however the speed and cost with which they can produce the quality shown is pretty awesome.

Digital solutions become cheaper and cheaper as time goes on, so this method of image capture and processing is going to be the status quo soon, even if it might be considered non-comparable to some other current methods that require more human/analogue control at the moment. What we *should* compare it to is the old methods of capture and purely digital-recreation ... which are pretty crap.

Looks ok, I'm hoping it doesn't have a supernatural angle to it though

There's three bad things about this I can come up with off the top of my head.

I've never really been a big fan of Mark Wahlberg in action flicks. Secondly, it has some R'n'B dude in the cast, which is never a good sign. Thirdly the only writing credit Sam Lake got was for characters (the guy who write max payne the game).

I can only hope that by some miracle this movie can buck the trend of the often poor execution of a game-film medium crossover

It looks ok. I thought the plot and premise of the Max Payne games were ok, but never thought it would make the translation to an exciting movie. Will have to see how the reviews pan out.

Looks interesting. I hope they don't overuse bullet-time though.

The End.

plot and premise were 'ok' ?

crikey that's a bit harsh! Admittedly, you could tell that they were really pushing the narrative and making it a focal point, and hence it's easy to be overly critical of it, ESPECIALLY given how hyped it was at the time...

but merely 'ok' ?

man Souri, you must've got more cynical since I last saw ya in 2003 (i think hehe)

Don't need to see anything else for the rest of the year. Thanks Batman for being awesome! =D

Yer it was really excellent, great from start to finish :D

Heath did a great job. It's unfortunate that he will not be able to reprise the role.

and the 'Magic Trick' He did was awesome!

I think one thing that I needed to get used to straight away was the fast editing that was happening throughout the entire movie. Did anyone else notice this or was it just me? It felt like watching an MTV music video clip for a whole movie.

Many scenes just never had the chance to rest. No time for a rolling camera sequence to show we're jumping to a new location, no time for a shot of that actor reflecting and whatnot, it was straight onto the next scene, then the next. I'm not a director or even know anything about directing, but it felt they were really trying to squeeze things down as much as they could, to the detriment of the movie I think. There was a scene where they were on a luxury boat, and I think that honestly lasted for about 6 seconds total.

I know the movie was two and a half hours long, and if they could take their time with scenes, it could have easily went over 3 hours, but perhaps there were sections of the movie that could've got the chop instead.

Anyway, I loved it. I came in with high expectations, and came away satisfied. Heath was great - the first bit that majorly impressed me was the first camcorder tape that they showed with him and that hostage. His voice acting and laugh was just damn perfect. The guy that played Two Face was also excellent too.

Oh, I had one gripe about the movie. I wish I didn't see the damn trailer where the joker says "Evening, Commissioner". I had assumed that was to Gordon, but in the movie he was dead but I kept wondering why the Joker would say that later on unless he was still alive. :/ So yeah, that surprise was sorta ruined. Oh, another gripe was these godamn teens about 6 rows back making stupid noises and being general asshats. If only they were a bit closer, I woulda got up and yelled at them or something :/

haha - I suffered the same problem with teens the row right behind me.

And Aaron Eckhart played two-face ... did a good job considering I can't think of a single bit of work he's done that is memorable/likeable.

I agree, it felt like there was way too much crammed into a small time, maybe because it was trying to tell a batman story, and a harvey dent story in the same movie, but separately?

... Who knows, it was damn good anyway !

I found it really good.
It was quite long though.
But it didn't suffer from a stretched out story IMO.

I had a kid in the row behind me. He was about 10 from what I could tell.

It makes me think about what age should kids be able to watch these kinds of shows?
I suppose I was watching the same kind of things at his age though :)

I just saw this at IMAX, damn good movie, the Joker was excellent. At first I thought people were just praising Heath Ledgers performance out of sympathy, turns out he really was brilliant. I loved the Jokers mannerisms and sense of humor (The disappearing pencil).

It was pretty bad.
The Joker was great, but I didn't enjoy all the superhero cliches. I had watched Batman Begins the previous night, and that was very grounded for a superhero movie. I could tell that The Dark Knight was trying to be grounded, while 'taking it up a notch'. The bat cycle was stupid, as were many of the chase sequences. How can Batman fall from a building while holding a woman, land on a car and just get up?

Where did all that explosive come from in order to blow up the hospital?

The ferry scene was a bit of a letdown and the last half seemed very rushed. Dont even get me started on the stupid phone sonars, and Bale's guttural growl, even when it was not warranted.

I'm sorry, if you want your movie to be gritty and realistic, do it that way. This just ended up being a step toward Batman and Robin.

It was just an average superhero movie, I rate Ironman much higher (purely because it wasn't trying to be anything rather than a fun movie with an interesting 'hero').

I am eagerly awaiting Watchmen.

The End.

Man i dunno if watchmen is going to really do the graphic novel much justice though, the trailers just look like a dull action flick !

Looks like the movie company purchased an old building (scheduled for demolition?) and blew it up with a lot of camera angles.

Also, seeing the Joker dressed up in the nurses uniform was freaky. lol.

Can't say I'm looking forward to Watchmen - Zack Snyder (the director) hasn't exactly got a great record of character dramas... 300? Dawn of the Dead?? This is not a good thing.

Although I will confess that the *look* of the movie, from the trailers, is spot on.

-Soul

Hahaha, I don't know what else to say. I want to watch it again, but I don't know what draws me to it.

It is great :)

I might have to get the DVD when it comes out. I loved the at the end of the second act.

The ending was a bit odd though, he didnt seem to have much remorse, though I suppose he IS Dr. Horrible (PhD).

The End.

Well I hadn't played Hellgate : London but from what I saw it didn't look too bad, and I had thought that it was unlikely such an experienced group of people would make such a great mess. Shows that it can happen to anyone though, which is kind of scary in some ways, and kind of re-assuring in another :)

Obviously though, this still points to there being some serious issues with the funding model and what kind of wealth and security a fledgling developer can build.

The gameplay was very lackluster. I participated in the beta and even a week before the game was to be released, it wasn't exactly fun to play. It was pretty much Diablo without as much variation.

The game really excited me initially, and the potential was there, but I think the setting and gameplay were too bland. Another example that grey games are boring.

I also think the Halloween release date was too soon for the game, but was chosen for the marketing appeal.

The End.

I did read in those articles somewhere that there was a squabble about the release of the game.

Yeah this looks great, I do play Diablo and Diablo2 occasionally and a few other Hack and slash rpgs like Dungeon siege so I'll definitely give this a try.

What the? They're saying it looks too colourful and cartoonish (like World of Warcraft) and not dark enough like Diablo II :/

http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2008/07/diablo_fans_petition_against_dia…

I'm a bit perplexed, since I am totally diggin the art style. WOW is pretty cartoony with hand painted textures and the design of the models, but I wouldn't say this game is in that style at all.

This probably goes back to the "where's the colour" issue, but I'm starting to think that gamers really do just want dark games in shades of brown and grey.

Here are some photoshops from the petition..

http://i32.tinypic.com/2zqr9yx.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/2jexp1x.jpg
http://i27.tinypic.com/vep6ix.jpg
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l318/frostwake/Diablo32.jpg
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l318/frostwake/Diablo31.jpg
http://img110.imageshack.us/img110/1681/1214657022122wu5oq6.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/7807/itshouldrh5.jpg
http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=makeluvnotwarcraftzs3.jpg
http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/6065/howitshouldlooklikevx5.jpg

To me it looks like they just wanna do away with all the coloured lighting, increase the contrast, decrease the saturation a heck of a lot, and then throw in some grainy video processing on top.

For what it is as it is, we need games with their own style and direction to offset the strive for photo-realism herd.

And I have no interest in what some noob does with 5 seconds of sharpen + noise. Photomanip and I'd possibly listen, but they didn't really re-texture the screenshots in any real way.

I like the fact that they didn't hype up the game in the presentation of gameplay and gave a good this is simply it, how we are taking diablo further, hope you like it honest guy approach.

The community needs to shut up on this one and appreciate its beauty. This comes from a critical gamer who usually finds ways of being readily bored with the majority of titles and sees nothing but faults. >.> I particularly grew to despise WoW rapidly and most of the titles I own from other companies are gathering dust and scratches.

But this peaked my interest.

They just want more "next-gen brown".

Do we really need anonymous posting on the forums? It seems like a bad idea to me

These people are morons, as if the colour is going to somehow effect gameplay. Half the reason the original Diablo's looked so gritty was due to low res graphics and low colour depth. I'm starting to think people really dont want anything slightly different, just the same crap over and over.
I bet developers find it depressing when this is the sort of shit their community comes up with, whiny nit-picking. I suppose to placate the whingers they could just add some sort of colour-desaturation post process effect and let whoever wants it, switch it on.

I'm totally pumped for this game. Big d2 fan and think d3 looks really good. The art style is great, honestly I don't get what all the whining is about. One of the advantages of blizzard games is they've always run very well on low end pc's, when you consider how few polygons go into each WoW model it looks pretty darn impressive. This one will be no differnt.

Can't wait :D

Kotaku had a recent news item showing some new screens from "This is Vegas" which shows off some colours in a real world game.

http://kotaku.com/5021662/new-this-is-vegas-screen-shots-display-a-dist…

Granted, the game is based in Vegas, so they pretty much really need to have things bright and colourful, but it's good to see some colour around! I mean really, do Diablo fans really want this??

http://i27.tinypic.com/2jexp1x.jpg

To me, the after picture is pretty much just monochrome. Anyway, the murmurs and guesstimates around the internets are that the levels shown off in the demo are one of the earlier levels in the game. The more hellish levels and darker levels are presumably less colourful and more drab.

Speaking of things that are colourful..

can i eat it

You'll have to ask the bearded guy...

I remember a similar uproar about a game's art design not that long ago, but I'm struggling to recall what it was. Oh that's right - the Duke Nukem Forever teaser thingo that came out last year ... granted it did look rather drab. I wonder if it's becoming a problem for developers that supposed 'fans' (read : army of whingers) are very willing to generate negative press before a game has even been released.

i bought the diable battle chest last week (diablo,diablo2,diablo lord of destruction expansion)... and although i think diablo 3 looks f***ing awsome .. i was one of those whingey dudes.. who voted it should be a tad darker... and be more in tune with older versions...

i really liked the whole lighting around the character thing ...

i dont really care that much though.... would only be a lighting change... not like it would set them back 2 years in production or anything..

i think it looks awesome and cant wait to play it..

I think it looks great as it is. Any attempt to darken it will only serve to make it more generic. I agree with the designers at Blizzard, dull looking games are boring to play.

That said, they did say in an interview that there would be a large variety of areas in the game, including some darker areas.

The End.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2008/08/diablo_iii_art_director_quits_ga…
http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2008/08/blizzard_looking_for_new_diablo_…

The Art Director has quit, but it looks like he was interested in pursuing his own (non-game related) start up rather than because of fan based backlash on the Diablo III art style. Previous to this, Blizzard said they're happy with the colourful art style and don't plan on changing it.

It looks great.

I played Diablo but didn't get into Diablo 2.

I'll be getting this one for sure.

Folks should just get over themselves. The game world looks amazing and unbelievably detailed. Totally works for me as a Diablo Fanboi

They had the odd job opening in 2006, and then a dozen or so openings late last year. I don't think I've ever came across their business address details - if you wanted to apply, you'd use their job form.

They're sponsors of Sumea / tsumea, and I do have their phone and HR contact details although I'm not sure if I can pass that along (some studios don't like being called up about job applications etc). I've been meaning to do an interview with them for a long while now (I've got a huge list of things that need doin :( ), so hopefully I can get that done soon.

What do you need to contact them for?

They are located next door to Krome on Queens Rd.

jobs are applied for through the EA Website.

There were a lot of jobs listed for EA Melbourne at jobs.ea.com around February/March but there doesn't seem to be any up there now.

I have applied for a job recently, but received no notification of them receiving it, not even an auto-mated response.
I would be most interested in having an email address, because I appreciate that contacting them by phone in reference to an application, before they've contacted me, isn't professional. It's such a perfect job which is advertised I'm very keen to find out if the ad is still relevant and if my application has been received, before I accept a position elsewhere. I know some companies are fairly relaxed about the employment opportunties they advertise and keeping them relevant. Is it fair to assume that EA being highly professional would not have out of date ads?

Of course I'm mostly interested in finding out more about the studio. Isn't it unusual that they don't have their own web portal? Pandemic's website makes only a small reference to the Melbourne studio and there's no information (as far as I'm aware, I could be wrong) on the EA jobs website. Do you know which titles have they developed in the past?

Also on the same sort of mystery developer topic, I had a friend tell me that they knew someone doing QA testing work at Nintendo in Melbourne. There isn't a Nintendo dev studio here is there? Could it have been localization testing perhaps? I am probably going to ask my friend about their potential drug habits, because it sounds like crazy talk to me.

I applied through jobs.ea.com in February and didn't get anything back from them until April so I wouldn't be too discouraged.

Hey, is it so strange that they may have filled their jobs? They attract unsolicited inquiry from professionals globally. Go for the other jobs.
If they wanted to talk to you, you know they would have called you. Maybe another opportunity with them may come up but don't sit around holding your breath on the off chance. Geez, this is like dating advice. Its like those american teen movies where a girl has a crush on the football jock and won't look at anyone else...

hahah I've had three interviews and a job offer in this week? I was merely inquiring what state their Melbourne studio is in, since there's no information available online. Where's the harm in doing all you can when applying for a position, or at least learning as much about the place as possible?
One of the golden rules of job searching is the follow up call, not only does it attach a real person to the application they also get to hear my sexy voice.

I'm not sure if your first sentence means EA offered you a job or not.

If it was or wasn't them, congratulations regardless :).

No it wasn't EA, but thank you. I'm looking forward to starting my new job next week!
For future reference I have finally received an automated notification email, almost a month after applying, stating that there are reasons for the delay in the process. I still don't know anything about the studio other than it's location though... it's all very mysterious

There didn't seem anything mysterious about it when I applied.

They offered me a job and I fly out from the UK on the 25th to start there.

Obviously I wont be able to say anything about it either having not started yet though. That's not to say I could or would be allowed to say anything about it even after I start either, but there's nothing suspicious as far as I could tell.

I was reading the who stole the colours one. Not all the points given are agreeable or seemingly strong from a general reader and casual market customer point of view. The real conflict is between drab and bright. Then, smackus uses screenshots of Super Mario 64 to show us what a colourful game could look like. As if that was the last example of bright palettes in gameplay. As if Super Mario Galaxy didn’t just come out.-Tim Maley


I'd say that Mario Galaxy was a weak point due to the fact that both titles are developed by Nintendo EAD - a stronger point would have put forward a title from a different developer to illustrate that colourful titles are being made across the industry in present times. But that might just be because I was reading it as an article and not a conversational.

Certainly he redeemed it by supplying a bunch of links to examples after, but after is a little late in the mind of a reader. Definitely when talking about the gaming industry where they often say that you have to hold your customers attention span (n) seconds (not minutes) and provide the next hit or it's bust. Plenty of gamers read reviews and even opinions these days as they want to know what hints are to the next big thing.

I'd also not consider the Metroid example as entirely valid. Just my personal opinion, as there was really only 4 or 5 identifiable significant colours and or values. The palette was quite limited looking, the world was I must observe rather bland, but the point of the use of colour in that game I do realise was to draw the players attention to what mattered. Though solely from the presented footage, not from actually ever playing it.

And sins of a solar empire, while it has colour, again is rather muted and washed out with highlights for that spark of interest here and there.

Gears of War and Jerico were pretty depressing in the colour department, but then again that actually suited the game. As boring as it looked, colour can be a spoken language and I'd wager that the happy go lucky I love everyone rainbows wouldn't fit in a serious it is do or die story. Then again, I love games with comedic appeal and humour so perhaps it wouldn't be all that bad to brighten a few things up - but developers tend to make their products solid to their design. There are design reasons I would guess that determine the 'lack of colour' we are witnessing and I am not entirely concerned about it. As not everyone I know lives in a gingerbread and candy house ever so sweet.

There are still games being made out there with cutesy colours and graphics, Domo, Dofus, Perfect World, RO and Maple Story are titles that draw the attention spans of some of the market with globally bright and sometimes varying colours (though I'd suspect if one looks hard enough, limitations in the palette could likely be found in almost any title). Heck lets throw in Geometry Wars evolved on xbox live arcade, cause I like it and it's bright though colour numbers are limited.

Ultimately I'd gather that the colour choices would rest with an echo of the core message of a game rather than the desire to sugar coat the experience. And the three areas regarding the palette, hue, saturation and value will be bent to convey the message.

So perhaps the solution isn't to consider the colour palette first, but to think if the message your game revolves around is the same as the next. Perhaps you need a new message, instead of following the other developers.

Still I'm just a customer like the next gamer, what would my opinion matter? Then again, would my wallet? ;)

Spore is reasonably colourful and I've already mentioned to you Souri, I'm flat out buying it.

I'm curious as to what your casual opinion on game look and feel might be.

I'll have to give these a read. Had a quick skim over the colour article. Just out of curiosity - since when did Quake use dynamic lights? http://www.fpsteam.it/img2006/quake_tenebrae/quake_tenebrae_08.jpg

It certainly didn't back in the day when I was playing it. Look! The Zombies are actually casting shadows!

EDIT: And bump mapping!

was released ages ago and coders have rummaged through the code and extended the engine with all the snazzy features. I think they even managed to get dynamic lights in before Doom3 came out?

Yeah I'm not going to click that, but I'll say some class mates spent some time making all the inappropriate and not so proportionally correct creatures you could imagine. Admittedly it was pretty funny some of the stuff you could get away with.

But I got serious. And now I want to make it my goal to make this guy with some changes here and there, in max. D:

It seems youTube removed it because it violated some terms of use agreement. That's hilarious!!

Hey, that looks awesome, Adromaw. It's inspired me to download the editor now to see what I can tinker up.

I haven't personally ran into problems with the demo either, not only is the creature creating flexible but it seems to be impressively stable for a demo.

I've had countless finished products and beta's alike crash, blue screen and even restart or shutdown my computer. But this thing ran like a charm for me.

Props to maxis on a well polished demo. I'm totally going to save up for this baby. I mean, it's just a demo :D - wow!

yeah no doubt its a sweet demo. its so clean and working. though watch out souri its a trap! you'll be playing with it for hours...It was still a bad plan to bring it into AIE XD

How did you get pictures of your creature? I made some snapshots, and sent them to myself via the creature editor, but the links return a 404 error :/

in My Documents there's a folder: "My Spore Creations" Everything is in there, even the creature it self is stored as a .png file, which on another computer can be dragged into the spore creature creators editor to rip your creations and modify them by someone else.

That's the directory to look for the snapshots you made. No need to send them.

I refrained from doing any penis monsters and came up with this thing. I dunno, I'm finding it hard to do anything really creative without it turning into a freak monster. The editing tool is top notch and the process of experimenting is heaps fun though. I'm amazed that creatures still walk and animated pretty convincingly no matter how far experimental you go with your creature

The one of the left is having a Homer moment.

That looks cool Souri.

I might actually be able to make this one :O

I'm gonna be in Brissie in early July.

How open is this party, Yug? Aren't you afraid of being the next Corey? XD

About time you came to one of our shindigs :P

Well, it's open enough that I put my address and phone number on the internet!

My apartment is also in a very secure complex, so the only way to get in is to be let in by me - which means I get to screen and introduce all the people coming in. Considering the size and craziness of some of the NON-gamer related parties I've thrown, these gamer meetups are a walk in the park :)

"the only way to get in is to be let in by me"

haha that never works well

True ... it usually ends up everyone lets everyone else in :)

But I've never had any negative incidents at these get togethers so far, and I tend to believe that people are fairly decent at house parties.

Unless I'm stuck in crunch (like I was last time) I should be there.

If I were based in Brisbane, I'd be going to the Supanova expos, IGDA Brisbane events (if they're happening anymore), Game Connect, and all the stuff that Truna organises. I'd definitely be up for AustralianGamer shindigs! I really wanted to go to that THQ Australia open studio thing too..

If I were based in Melbourne, I'd be going along to all the Dissecta events, every exhibition at ACMI (hit's of the 80's, Game On etc), Free Play (although I've been to two), Game Connect (I've been to one), Ballerat: Get into Gaming, heck, even that Urban Screens 08 Conference looks pretty damn cool.

And, well.. Sydney's got the Digital Media Exhibitions and some film related stuff, but yeh.. not much in the way of game events.

Just a reminder that the party is on this Saturday.

To answer a few questions, there will be a Plasma setup downstairs with Guitar Hero and probably Singstar, while the Projector upstairs will probably have Wii Sports, Smash Bros and Mario Kart Wii.

We're also running a live poker tournament downstairs during the party too (on a real table, not in a video game!!).

We're also giving away some free merch, 50 GTA IV collector plastic cups (click here) and 50 Guitar Hero T-Shirts (click here) ...

Plus, we've confirmed a live magician who will be wandering around performing card tricks on the night!

Damn anonymous posting, that was me above ... :S

Hey Guys.

I've uploaded a video of the party that has Yug taking you on a guided tour. It was a really great night, except for the lowlifes who ended up stealing a few of Yug and Laurens personal belongings from their house. :( Heres hoping everyones geek powers combine and we track the little shits down.

You can check out the video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScVt0oQsKok

Cheers
Mik

What the hell? Who steals someone's shit?

Great night though guys. A++ would visit again.

My mate who was going to provide the car for the drive up there dropped out, so I couldn't make it :( We were planning to have a drunken shenanigan full weekend in Brisbane.

Can't believe you bailed Souri!!!

Next time gadget, next time ...

Anyway, I've done a full write up of the event, complete with photos and micks video - find it here:

http://www.australiangamer.com/game_event/444/brisbane_gamers_meetup_3…

Cheers to everyone that came, and sucks to be you to those that missed it :P

Yeah, heard about this at work. They must have realized how many cases of copyright infringement they were publishing by taking assets from other games and trying to publish a game using them.

... I'm just astounded the publisher actually put it out the door to be honest.

Did they think people wouldn't realise what they have done? It looks like a clear rip-off poly for poly. Didn't even try to move any of the props either.

(to quote Grandpa Simpson), For shame!

There've been claims before of developers using assets from other games, and I think the Ukrainian devs who did STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl were accused of that in recent times (some of the assets in Stalker were identical to stuff in id software and Valve games), but I think it turned out that they used the same commercial texture packs that any developer can license.

But this is in a whole different level. Did any of those three guys honestly think they'd get away with lifting entire scenes from other games? Honestly, they have to be the biggest morons in the industry!

Yeah i read about this on Kotaku, the stupidity of some people amazes me, im not sure how they didnt expect anyone to make the connections when they take them from such successful games/movies.

You'd think a developer that'd do this is from some far off non-western country.. but these guys heralded from the motherland! They definitely knew better.

"Majestic Studios is composed of three long time pub friends--Steve Bovis, Tim Croucher, and Laurence Francis--in Maidstone, England. The actual idea for Lost of the Limbo originated roughly 10 years ago, nearly eight years before Oblivion released, when the friends decided to turn their loved hobby into a serious endeavor. The group spent three years making the game at home."

http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/881/881435p1.html

The pub usually is a great place for coming up with ideas too :[

Enclosed photo of the dev team.

http://www.kentmessenger.co.uk/paper/default.asp?article_id=9644&slide_…

Yeah it is pretty amazing that this even got published. Hats off to the publisher for showing faith in an indie dev team, but I mean seriously now, their website is hosted on geocities lol!

The sad thing is though this is just going to make it harder for small dev teams to get their work published.

"Our hope, if everything goes well with the sales, is that within a year we will all be stopping the day jobs and doing this full time."

Unfortunately, I don't think that's about to happen...

People on other forums keep going on about the publisher. Seriously, what publisher is going to recognise portions of different games? Not many I would think.

I also read that they just basically took screenshots of the games and used a scaling 3d object for their characters. That's why they're so precise...

Please be assured that we do not condone in anyway the use of unauthorised copyrighted materials and if we had been made aware earlier, we would of course have ceased development of the product and rectified the issue prior to the publication process.

http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2008/06/limbo_of_the_lost_devs_protest_i…

Unfortunately for them, here's an interview where the Creative Director said he created all the visuals.. oh, he handled the coding, sounds, models, and marketing as well.

http://www.justadventure.com/Interviews/Limbo/SteveBovis.shtm

I cant wait Souri. I hope 3 get the iphone shortly after vodafone and optus, then i can just upgrade my mobile within my plan.

It has parking lot = epic win
I steal one of my workmates to play it all the time.

I'm so uber at parking lot

I hear it can even make phone calls...

No confirmation on that yet though.

Here's a pretty interesting picture of the iPhone 3G and data plans in different countries. Australia, not surprisingly, doesn't do too well in both regards..