http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Crimson-diabloS&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Crimson-diabloS en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:02:34 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/27730437/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/27730437/ Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:40:42 PDT
[link]

There are most probably a few bugs left (limited to graphics, but still), but those will be solved when I encounter them. So far the content is nothing to be proud of (one introduction post and a few pages without content), but the blog will go on to contain more work than I even post here! So, if you like my ramblings here, I would definitely like it if you would follow the blog. Ow, and the blog will also be the spot where I am going to post my papers and games(and prototypes).

If you happen to have a website, blog, something alike of your own, let me know! My blogroll is currently rather slim and networking is never a bad thing.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/27149873/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/27149873/ Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:51:20 PDT
Its quite the machine too! Sure, not the best the market has to offer (I am not ready to offer my soul in payment yet, thank you very much ), but still a nasty piece of work! Quadcore 2(something)Ghz, 1GB of videocard, 6GB of RAM, FullHD 17" screen. It's an Asus and is one of their game brand laptops, so I figure it is natural that the things packs a little punch, but it is strange to know that the thing outperforms my PC in pretty much every way .
Tomorrow I am going to install the hell out of his shiny behind; I even bought crysis warhead (it was cheap) as a benchmark to immediately test just how much the thing could actually take. Not to play it intensely though; I found the first one to be severely disappointing.

It also came with a whole lot of usefull crap I didnt know about (backpack, headphones, mouse)!

Yeah, I am happy .

On a sidenote; my blogdesign is coming along very nicely. Have to admit that I didnt have much time the last few days (got sick and was ridden with post-school appointments), but I would say that the design is somewhere along the line of 60-75% (which means I can finally start on that kiriban very soon!). However, filling a wall with notes and everything is hard, especially since written notes borifies (I hereby coin this term) the whole wall. So, if you have any suggestions (except for a calender, as I was already planning that one), feel free to say it !

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26731615/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26731615/ Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:34:41 PDT .

It was quite horrendous though; the days before and during the final examination where hell. Not in terms of preparations (which was pretty bad too), but regarding the NS (Dutch Railways). Damn, these people really had it in for me these few days .

Tuesday evening, I and my team finished up practising our presentations. It was about 7 o'clock when we heard that there were some troubles at the main station of Utrecht (kind of like a central point for the trains and one I have to travel through in order to get home). Some kind of sign malfunctioning, so trains did not leave. So, after hearnig this, we decided to continue working until 10 o'clock. So far, no NS problem had laster for longer than 3-4 hours, and apparantly this malfunctioning started at 5 o'clock. Well, that was until that night, when we found out that even 5 hours after the problem began, it was still there. I got home at 2.15 after midnight, 4 hours and 15 minutes after I left . For reference sake, normally the trip lasts for about 65 minutes. To make matters worse, these 4 hours and 15 minutes were only because my teammate, who travelled with me, called family to pick us up and bring us home. Without that help, I am sure it would have been about 4 o´clock instead.

So, the next day was my presentation. Due to the miscommunication earlier with Kyushu University, I was the first to present (at 10 o´clock). Unfortunately, since I got home so late, I was unable to get my bike from the protected storage, so I had to go to the station by bus. Normally not a problem, the distance is only 10 minutes by bus. That is, if you do not get the slowest bus driver in the entire world as your bus driver. This guy looked like he was in his late twenties, early thirties at most, but he drove like an 80year old. Seriously, bicycles were keeping up with us... So, at around halfway there, I get out of the bus and sprint towards the station, running through half of Eindhoven (it felt that way anyway). And, by some kind of miracle, I actually made it and was on time for the presentation .

Anyway, if NS does something wrong, they do it thoroughly.

As for me passing; I have to admit I am not that happy about it. Not that I passed, but with what I passed. For some reason, I am not happy with what I made; it is lacking. I kind of figured out the why as well; which may actually have been for the best.

I found out that I am seriously lacking in the ability to criticize myself. I have good self reflection skills, but not when it comes to the things I make. That is one thing I need to work on. The second thing is that I am bad at writing. Fortunately, I have a course that can help me improve on that. The last thing is the most important thing I realized;

I was actually heading in the wrong direction. As a designer, I have always been interested in the interactivity of the medium. For the better part of 8 years, I have also been studying this. However, for the last year, I suddenly went into the narrative direction. Well, more precisely, the last 6 months I went more in the narrative direction. While quite a learning experience, it turns out I have zero to no affinity with the narrative side of media. Which I, unconsciously, have known for like forever. All the things I discussed earlier about what I wanted to make; they have had nothing to do with narrative at all; narrative only formed a layer of polish upon the interactive systems I was aiming to create or design. Which was exactly why I cannot be happy with my latest paper; it was too much about narrative and being immersed in it. I should have been researching a way for designers to use it instead.

So, 2 days after passing, I have actually started writing a new paper . This time, I am going to design something regarding no... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26338615/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26338615/ Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:41:42 PDT
So, if you are willing to playtest the game for us, please download it from the following link:

Arrival By Train

The install instructions can be found in the included README file. After you have played the game (we think that playing it for 10 minutes should be sufficient), please fill in the following questionnaire:

Questionnaire

If new versions become available, I will update this journal. I would really appreciate it if you would reply to this journal if you are going to playtest the game. It is not required, but it would be nice to know who playtests our game .

The game's purpose is to communicate with the lady. This can be done by using the 6 buttons that are placed in a cirkel around the characters. To press these buttons, move your cursor towards it and hold the left mouse. You will see it starting to fill up. As soon as it is filled up you pressed the button and activated the effect associated with that button.

Thank you very much in advance!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26124084/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26124084/ Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:22:39 PDT
Anyway, lets get this started.

Little King's Story is a action strategy title by Cing (well, the exact details of who developed it is a bit more complicated). When it was being developed, the game was not exactly on my radar. I didnt dislike the cutesey graphics or something, but it was mostly the aspect of "realtime strategy" at that time that put me off (I am not a big fan of these games). Anyway, when the game started getting in good reviews and I was able to secure a 2nd handed copy (the game was literally not available pretty much anywhere, except for the obscure specialty game stores, which in the Netherlands are quite scarce). I am glad I did in the end, because the game is mighty fun.

If you are looking for a mature title or a title heavy on storytelling, Little King's Story wont fulfill your need. While the game has a few underlying tones, these tones do not make up a plot. If you are just looking for having a good time, Little King's Story just might be what you are looking for. For me, the latter is all what counts.

Well then, first of all, the good things

The game is mighty fun with an actual decent learning curve. One thing that has annoyed me about current day games is that they throw everything at you they have to offer in the first 15 minutes. Afterwards they expect you to rinse and repeat for the remaining 10. Little King's Story is a bit different and feels more like an action adventure in that regards. During the game, you get the ability to train different job types, most of which have a special ability that only they can perform. Farmers can open up cracks, soldiers can attack, miners can break large patches of otherwise inaccessible rock, and so on. The game really does its very best to keep things varied in the first few hours.

The game is also fairly large. I am currently 8 hours into the game and have just finished conquering my first kingdom. Later I found out I still have got 7 to go! Apart from conquering opposing kingdoms, you also get to expand you own area by defeating boss characters in areas around your kingdom (so called guardians). At the moment such a guardian is defeated, more area becomes available and more jobs become available. On top of that the game offers side quest, which normally involve "find X enemy at Y place and kill it".

The game is also rather difficult. I dont consider myself to be a bad gamer (not top nothc either though), but still this game is able to dish out some harsh punishment to my army. If enemies attack you in groups, better be prepared to take them on while using your brain. Simply rushing soldiers into the heat of battle will get them killed. Fast. As for bosses, they are normally just trial and error. They have a few patterns and you have to learn them; there is not much else to it.

I am loving the style. While the models themselves may not be overly detailed, they sure spend a lot of time on the detail in the environment. Small flower beds, large patches of trees that are constantly moving in the wind, animals that are scattered here and there; the game offers an impressive amount of detail. While at times the amount of detail is a bit much, I think the game looks very good. Sure, the game doesnt push any hardware boundaries, but I dont think it has to.

As for the bad things
While the graphics are certainly not bad, every now and then I spot some weird decisions. For example, everytime you see a tree with cherry blossoms, expect it to have bloom. Same goes for other things; every now and then, they tend to go overboard with the shaders. Every now and then the screen also blurs, though I am not certain why this is exactly. I do know it has something to do with the commands I have given to my army. Maybe it is because they land in some place they shouldnt land and are repositioned using the blur. I really dont know, but I do know that it can be annoying.

The camera can also be annoying at times. To be more specific, there are areas where the camera is locked; these areas make it difficult to fight the enemy. I have had some occassions where I was almost wiped out because I couldnt see the area correctly. Since these are only few in numbers (at points where I dont understand just why they had to do that), it is not a major annoyance though.

At first when you only have a small army, dealing out orders is not that difficult. However, very soon in the game, they are going to expect you to multitask. The game however only offers very little control in this multitas... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26102686/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/26102686/ Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:14:36 PDT
That game is Dante's Inferno.

Now, dont get me wrong, I have never read Dante's Inferno. I am not much of a fan of poems and not much of a fan of biblical literature. These two combined is definite non-reading material to me. However, as far as I know, it is considered to be a classic with a lot of underlying themes. It is more about the journey of the soul towards god, that is what I understood.

So, we have a game based on this poem. In a world where all gamers are screaming hardest that their hobby is more than just a passtime and is a potent artform, you would guess that a game based on Inferno would actually be good for our stance on the whole subject, right?

Wrong.

We get this and this. We dont get a game that tries to be art. We dont get a game that tries to illustrate a journey of the soul, focusing on the rejection and recognition of sin. Instead, we get a game that is all about big cool monsters and most probably a decent amount of gore as well, considering the game is a hack and slash game (devil may cry, god of war). A game sporting a protagonist with a huge scythe.

Yeah, considering me pretty disappointed in this whole deal. I know they need to appeal to the biggest group of people possible (which is most probably people who wont even come in a mile radius of anyplace where the poem can be found), but at least have the decency not to make a mockery out of classics; ESPECIALLY when they specifically included Dante's name.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25941368/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25941368/ Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:22:10 PDT
The reason is simple; there is a vast amount of things wrong with it. To make a nice list out of it:
-The floor was textured wrongly; tiles do not work that well on organic surfaces (and by the time they do, you have got yourself a crapload of tiles and a whole lot less time. Too much of a hassle for just one measly environment).
-I couldnt get the grass right. I did model a few patches and some other stuff (which seemed to work pretty well), but positioning those was hell. On top of that, a lot was needed to get rid of the static feeling, which just wasnt worth all that work (on top of that; with a lot of clones, the texture repeating is bound to get noticed).
-To colors were too bright. Something I recently noticed is that all my colors seem to get way too bright for these models. I should really tone down on the satiated colors.
-The temple itself (being 3 years old, so it isnt any wonder), was not modelled efficiently. Details on places that were barely visible in the first place, triangles floating around that didnt have any meaning whatsoever, and so on. The size was also not good; approximately half the detail of the entire scene was part of the temple.
-The temple consisted out of literal blocks. I really took the term "building blocks" a bit too seriously... Result is a temple that looks a bit repetitive.
-Sizes are screwed; the bridge for example had really a really strange set of dimensions, as opposed to the rest.
-Nature was sloppy; the billboards were not sufficient and I felt the trees to be rather repetitive as well.

I could go on for a while, but long story short; keeping up with this project is like trying to prevent the Titanic from sinking. Its pretty much a lost cause.

Instead, I am planning to make an entire new one, which would also be a good way to see how much I have improved over time. However, if I am going to start it, this one is going to go into an engine one way or another, so this time I am planning to do things the right way. Make some concept sketches, a detailed layout, etcetera. I might also address the style instead of it being pseudorealistic; I am thinking of changing the entire thing into a pendrawing kind of style.

Anyhow, I will at least render the current temple and then it is time to consider this project as finished. Damn, 3 years. Never knew I would drag this out the dust so often.

edit:
Well, I have decided to make this new temple. However, I am not going to do it in the ink painting style I talked about earlier. Instead, I am going to try and do something much closer to myself with it; I will try to change the temple and its entire surroundings into the style I recently started using. You know, the whole illustrative style.

I also plan to approach this much more effectively than the last one. For now, the plans are;
-create a style that has a bit of a cartoonesk feel (no cell shading), by making the entire environment a bit "crooked". Think like "Jak and Daxter" kind of style environment, without the overly bright colors.
-create a color scheme that is easy on the eyes; no extremely satiated colors (current focus, green and brown with a dash of blue).
-make it take place in the winter, with pines. Pines are less needy with leaves, snow can cover lots of areas to give the impression vegetation has just been covered. Plus, I love the winter and snow. Win-win situation .
-draw a thorough map of the entire area to be modelled (think of maps, depth maps, detail maps, those kind of things).
-create sketches for the environment and characters; this time I am going in with sketches instead of a vague idea of what I want. Will also most probably cause the temples not to be a freak combination of architectural styles.
-try to create a generator that generates at least the trees; creating a forest is hell. Creating a forest that doesnt look all "samey" is even worse. Making several areas dense on trees is not smart to do by yourself or without the proper tools. If needed, I will try to get someone else to make some kind of max script to generate the trees .
-This time, I WILL try to put it into a game eng... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25830424/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25830424/ Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:12:18 PDT . Kiriban for the one who catches it (just sent me a note if you got the 15.000 mark or a little over it).

Though you can request anything, I wont have anything to do with porn or nudity related stuff (I am just not that good at it and don't like to draw it either) or fanart (unless its of one of your own creations). Other than that; request away .

As for other business, busy for school and into my neck in the deadlines (though they are going well). Also have the basic layout finished for the blog I am setting up (finally have a decent name for it too). The only thing that is a large problem right now is the CSS format of the blog and how I am going to implement the design into the CSS. I am not that good at it and it has been a while since I last touched it...

So, if anyone wants to help me for free, I would be happy .

EDIT: I have been rummaging through a certain theme I downloaded for wordpress (a theme that was closest to my wants, but, of course, not close enough) and have been able to alter it in such a way that I am happy with it. So, apart from the design (which will be dealt with very soon), I have got the layout of the blog finished! And that with only very small knowledge of CSS . Now I have to continue on my widget quest.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25631152/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25631152/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:15:57 PDT
Namely, what is a story?

Up until now, I havent really thought about it yet. I figure it has always been in the back of my head, but truth to be told, if I am to start researching this thing on an academic level, it is necessary for me to be able to put it in words. I am not just talking about physical properties here, more what is the meaning of a story.

First of all, his definition was that a story is past events being retold. He explicitely stressed the past part. According to this definition, true interactive storytelling is impossible. Indeed, he has a point there; as game always take the player into the present, no matter what timeline the gameworld follows. A game progresses in real time; minute for minute. You cannot just say "hey, now its suddenly a year in the future" as it would disrupt a lot of gameplay.

However, going by his meaning, it would also mean that there is no movie that fits into the story category (which seems stupid to be honest). On top of that, any story told in the "I" persona, using the present, would also not fall into this category. After all, even if the story ends at the end of the book or movie; both of them are not examples of stories being retold. Not in terms of the time progressed in the book or movie.

I therefore think this definition is not very good. Pretty much anyone would agree that movies contain story; that they have to, otherwise they would not be movies anymore. I think if a movie does not contain a specific story, it is more like a documentary. The story doesnt even have to be good; having no story is akin to having no movie.

So, this had me started thinking. What is a story? Is it actually possible to create an interactive artform out of it? Or am I trying to alter the experience of the player, by making that interactive. Therefore, I started thinking. I think that stories are much akin to games; being bound within the magic circle. Everything within the magic circle is a dimension of its own; a different world with its own rules, limitations, events and so on. Everything outside of it does not exist. The writer in this case is the creator of this magic circle; he decided what we can access in this circle and what not. If we think of it this way, story (or, as I am now going to call it, narrative) and games can mix very well. If they both rely on the same magic circle, that means they both have similarities. The only difference is that instead of the magic circle being in your mind, the magic circle is in your game.

So, if we appraoch narrative from a magic circle point of view, we can see how an interactive narrative would be possible. We enclose the player within the magic circle, but within this circle, the player can influence the outcome of the story. The story is still guided by rules that created the magic circle in the first place, but as long as the player obeys these rules, the world is his to guide. Essentially, what I am saying here is that we get a world akin to our own (in which we can make our own decisions). If this works out, this concept would actually get more closer to the make believe games we used to play.

This brings me to another point; I have been calling it interactive storytelling, but that is where I made a mistake. Interactive storytelling implies that the player can actually change the story itself; essentially turning the player into a writer. This was not my aim, so the use of words was wrong. Therefore, I am going to use a new term, namely interactive narrative. Here I see narrative as the magic circle for stories. With interactive narrative I mean that players have the ability to exercise control within the boundaries of this magic circle.

I know there are still inconsistencies to this theory (if you can find them, by all means, point them out), but I believe this is a step in the right direction I want to take.

PS: Kiriban offer is still valid . Only 180 to go!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25453378/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25453378/ Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:49:52 PDT Edit: on a sidenote; I just noticed I had almost 15.000 views. Which is quite something I think. So, anyone who catches the 15.000 (or closest to it), I will make something for him/her . Might be good for my artistic activity as well . Unfortunately, I cannot see when someone cheats his way into the kiriban, although I highly doubt anyone of you would do that. I will make a drawing for whoever catches it.

So for whoever catches it; send me a screenshot of the page views. If you are just over it, send it as well. You might just be the first one after all

Anyhoo, to give you a rundown on why exactly I am not updating or leaving this journal alone.

I have been in my neck in deadlines. 2 projects for work (one game, one graphics pack which is coming along rather nicely), 2 projects for school (another graphic pack and my own master project). They suck up so much time that I cannot have any free time whatsoever momentarily. On top of that I have to prepare for Japanese lessons for students willing to learn (including a teacher who taught me 2 years ago; very surreal). Serves as good teaching experience and I get some hands one with the language too (since the speaking portion is handled by a native).

I am also still busy with applying for Kyushu University. This is also going rather well. I have received a potential "aid" in getting to Japan; everything that is related to the application is to be blogged for school and then I can receive so called "student assistant fee". In short; they would finance at least half of the ticket, which is by no means a bad thing! Still awaiting the answer from the Kyushu University; to check if they have some program for cases like this; which might even be better than what my school offers.

However, me having to go to Japan also caused yet another problem. Apparantly, my school's final examinations are in that exact same period as well. So, tomorrow I have to try my best to get my presentation moved to just before going to Japan. Otherwise, I am kind of screwed. My parttime job doesnt seem to be too friendly either; that period no less than half of all the employees are on vacation, so getting the time I am in Japan off seems pretty much impossible. Ah well, if they fire me, its their loss. I aint gonna thrown away a chance to study in Japan for some mail job. Which is boring. And doesnt pay that wel either.

I also need to get a laptop now (no just having the laptop bag anymore). So, I am also looking around for a small monster I can put on the tab of my company (whooh, evil). Would save me at least 19% thanks to taxes. I have got an Asus in my eye; potentially it is able to play Crysis on maximum settings (not that I care much for Crysis, but any thing running Crysis on max should be pretty darn decent).

Also in need of some new clothing. Realized that my current set is over 2 years old. I took pretty good care of them; which surprised me quite a bit. Nevertheless, they are in definite need of replacement, so that I something I have to take care of as well.

And, last but not least, Rare (yes, the game company) decided to put out jobs for gamedesigners. They are asking for any designer, even those fresh out of college! Now I do have a certain degree of experience, seeing as how I worked for a small game company during my study (and have quite some commercial titles published, with one being a potential AAA title (whatever the hell that means. I never gave much attention to budget put into it. As long as I have fun designing it). Having my own little company helped too.

What makes it even more fun; they are specifically hiring for the Natal project (if you dont know, google Microsoft Natal or something). While I was not too impressed with the whole motion controll "Wii too!" thingy, the possibility of working for a motion control project would be absolutely awesome. Whether it is Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, that doesnt matter. My desire to design games is different from my desire to play them after all .

Anyways, that is a bit whats going on.

On a sidenote; I am going to boot up a blog very soon. I am planning to write my gamedesign antics there, as well as any experiences that are worthwhile to blog about (Japan, if it goes through, for instance). Also couldnt help but trying to submit one of my own deviations as DD. Apparantly you can suggest your own pieces as well, as long as you dont abuse it. So, why the h... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25327607/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/25327607/ Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:36:26 PDT
Anyways, what happened to me today was too good not to write about.

As you all know, I am planning to go to Japan. As you all most probably dont know, I have all the scholarships I need and only need to pass the official examination. So, a little bit more than a week past, I let the professor in Kyushu know that I can go for the official application. He sent it and last week I got it. It was a book. A frigging book!

But stay with me, the awesome part has yet to come! The professor was so nice to make notations inside of it to let me know what each topic was. Which led me to notice one particular thing; a powerpoint presentation of 10 minutes needs to be held on the 21st of August. From what I could gather from people studying there already, it was more like an interview. However, one thing bugged me. And today I finally got an answer.

The presentation is at Kyushu University on the 21st of August.

Yes.

You read that right.

I have to travel to the other side of the world for 10 minutes of presentation.

No.

They dont do video conferences or anything of the sort.

Most. Expensive. Presentation. EVER.

So, essentially, I just received an obligatory vacation to Kyushu (which of course I have to pay for myself). And while I should be angry, annoyed or whatever about this, I am smiling all over! Here I was saying that last year was my last chance for a vacation, hehehehe. This will make one hell of a story later on .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/23746661/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/23746661/ Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:05:37 PDT .

Anyway, that is pretty much what I wanted to say. Well, that and the fact that my luck recently seems to be blooming like crazy. Which is not a bad thing. Definitely not a bad thing! For one, at school they know I am studying Japanese. I offered to give lessons to students from lower years, but eventually I had to give that plan up since my speaking skills downright suck. That, and the fact that we now have a Japanese exchange student at our school, part of the rather intensive contact we now seen to have with Kyushu University, the university I am aiming to study at. So, in other words, I now have a conversation partner who is willing to practice my Japanese skills with! Yay! Level 2 might be a bit too high, but with this, I definitely think I will get a major bit closer than I would have before.

Also, the first (and only) presentation for one of the scholarships is coming up. Here is someone hoping he will walk away with the news of 10.000 euros of scholarship funding to fund his adventures to Kyushu. The third one needs to be filled in before the end of this month, which is easy, as I have everything I need right here! Compared to the other scholarships, by now I have all the paperwork. The one I applied for earlier (end of Januar) is still on its way, with no information yet; I will hear something from that one during May or something. Which brings me to another point, dont know if I mentioned this, but I have been accepted (not formally yet though) to the Kyushu University, Master of Design! Once I am able to get the scholarships, I am going to get formal proof, but right now things are looking veeeeery good! All that hard work is finally paying off.

Yesterday I also had my first presentation entirely in Japanese. Well, not entirely, the questions were in english, but hell, I was nervous as heck. I thought it went extremely bad, although everyone was rather enthousiastic about it (apart from the Japanese coordinator whom we needed to present to; he didnt seem fazed or anything, so I cannot really say what he thought of it). The presentation proved at least one fact; I need practice. Yay for Japanese exchange students that come to study exactly when you need it .

I have also got a major addiction to Left 4 Dead. The co-op in this game is fantastic. I am not that much into zombie games, but I dont know, this game seems to pull it off quite well. I am not even that much of a valve fan. I absolutely love playing as the infected (although unleashing hell with the survivors is not bad either). I suck majorly at the game, but it feels so damn good when you pound a survivor using the hunter and then rip him apart while his allies are trying to rescue him. Or when you jump one coming just around the corner. I wonder how many people got a scare thanks to my, although ineffective thanks to 3 other survivors, scare tactics .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/23482062/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/23482062/ Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:54:22 PST
The best thing is that I passed on better terms than level 4! With level 4 I had about 1 point more than what is minimally required to pass, so that would mean one more mistake and I wouldnt have passed. This time however I passed with about 40 points extra, which means I received a 7.5! Yay!!

Now unto the real test; level 2. I have little hope of clearing this one (since the difference of difficulty between level 2 and 3 is so big, they actually decided to add another level inbetween), but I am still going to work hard with the hopes of passing it anyway. But with this level 3 certificate, I am definitely a step closer!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/22924065/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/22924065/ Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:36:50 PST
[link]

Its bloomtastic!

For some reason, I am reminded of this here comic: [link]

Bloom, the photoshop lensflare of games!

And on a sidenote: glow in the dark heroes! [link]
Soon in a store near YOU!

(I know, I might make a decent journal one of these days)

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/22145358/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/22145358/ Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:49:21 PST .

Anyways, these days I have been busy with Flash Actionscript. As you all know, I make animations every now and then. The last one was the Christmas animation of 2 years ago. Unfortunately, that animation had to be cut severely, since Flash just couldnt cope anymore with the amount of details. And since I have a Christmas break this year, for the first time in 2 years, I decided to address this little problem and make a "directors cut" of sorts; with the complete intended animation intact (with animated backgrounds, several special effects I had to cut short due to either time or lack in processing power). I was planning to get it finished before tomorrow, but that is not going to happen thanks to the actionscript problems. Well, the newgrounds contest deadline is 31th of December, so I guess I am just going to change the text to Happy Holidays, instead of Merry Christmas .

Unfortunately, making that happen is easier said than done. Flash is not a very powerful program; no matter how fast your PC may be, there is a time that Flash just cannot keep up anymore. That is what I found out this morning anyway. Where 2 years ago Flash literally drained all of the RAM and CPU my PC had to offer and still didnt have enough, this morning, around the time when Flash drained 1/4th of my RAM and 1/2th of my CPU, it couldnt keep up anymore and gave me the dreaded "out of virtual memory" message.

In short; Flash cannot keep up with my wishes. So I had to find a different solution; hack up the animation in several parts and load all of these parts externally, by placing them on a webserver and download them with the actual animation. This way, I would not just reduce the load on Flash by approximately 75-80% (seriously), but I would also be able to create larger files and still be able to host them on sites such as Newgrounds, who have a maximum filesize limit. After all, while the entire file might be around 20MB, the animation who collects the parts is just about 1MB of the 20MB.

Anyways, it was easier said than done. Flash does have a special set of scripting language for this particular feature, but getting it to work was hell (and even at the moment of writing, the file is not working 100% yet). That is why I dislike programming; all sorts of errors which seem highly illogical pop up. My issues being:

-the files that are being loaded cannot be controlled seperately. Instead, they just start playing at the moment they have been loaded and cannot be rewinded and played again. Which sucks, as I want to be able to put them into the right order.

-A connection must be made with the files. This connection speed depends and seems rather random. If the file does not connect quickly enough, the variables needed to "progress" the preloader (which shows the viewer how much has already been loaded) become corrupt and the preloader will automatically continue or freeze. This leads to either a animation not showing due to freezing or not showing due to parts that have not been loaded yet. Fortunately, this problem seems to have been solved mostly, if it werent for the next part...

-The file seems to have become frozen, while connections are still being awaited; this depends on the whims of the server I host the parts on. Which it seems to have a lot, if tonight was any judge .

This is why I will never become a fullfledged programmer...

But if I DO manage to finish this, I am able to take my animations to a higher level (if time allows that is), so I guess its not all black and white.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/21742351/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/21742351/ Sun, 30 Nov 2008 04:23:35 PST
Of course, from the first moment on, it seemed to be one giant commercial for a local travel agency who invited this Japanologist to speak. So far, nothing wrong. But what irked me is that this Japanologist seemed more like a Japanophile than an actual Japanologist. Mind you, I have never met one, but I believe that someone who followed no less than an university course on this subject would at least be more... well... objective and knowledgable. I mean, it being her trade and everything. But no, from the first moment on she was raving on how Japan was sooooooo much better than, well, just about anything Dutch. While I agree on some parts that Japan is more interesting (nature for example, since the Netherlands is too flat for my taste), I can also see it isnt the holy grail every Japanophile makes it out to be. My gut feeling was that she only went there on vacation; since the entire presentation was about a (rather ellaborate) city trip.

What turned the entire lecture into one giant letdown however was her actual lack of knowledge, which also felt like it was partically caused by her obvious overpositive view on Japan (I tell you, she tought everything was magnificent). She was telling on how kids in Japan have it more tough in school (with that I agree; they dont seem to have a life with the amount of schoolwork they are forced to do) and how their kanji was the cause of this (might be, I dont know their curriculum). Because they had to learn no less than 3000 kanji!

...What?

If she did any research, or even studied Kanji a little (which is kind of obligatory if you do that university course) you know that Japan has a set of Kanji that is the guide officially announced by the goverment, named the Jouyou kanji. This set of kanji consists out of 1945 kanji (excluding a few 100s special kanji for names), of which approximately 1000 are learned through elementary school (divided over 6 years). 3000? They dont even come close to that number after elementary school. So, I thought I would mention this to her. An asian guy present among the people (an older one) nodded as in agreement; he seemed to be quite knowledgable about Japan. I thought she might have made a mistake, seeing as how she was the professional here. But no! It was definitely 3000 according to her, with the secondary school (or uni, I didnt quite catch that) even learning an additonal 3000.

...What?!

6000 kanji? I believe that most people in Japan dont even know half that amount. professors, maybe, but anyone studying Japanese knows that they dont really have any use for such a crapload of Kanji for daily use, seeing as how they need to use hiragana/katanana anyway (okurigana comes to mind).

The story continues. She even started saying how the people in Tokyo were all easygoing and the people in Kyoto were actually the opposite. Now I cannot really make a statement here, seeing as how I have never lived for a extended period in Japan, but from literally all the people I know that do have that knowledge, they say the exact opposite. So, I go with the majority here, seeing as how they have extensive knowledge.

One thing I also found highly annoying was her pronounciation of Japanese. The way I see it, there are 2 ways to pronounce it; the right way or the English way. Not to bash on any English people, but when English people see (for example) the mora "Kyu", they speak the "U" as "You", leading to "Kyou". There is nothing wrong with that, seeing as how for the English this is the closest possible sound, but for Dutch people, who have a broader range of vocal sounds in their language, this is downright silly. We are should be able to speak this particular note, as the sound for U for Japanese is approximately the same as the sound U for the Dutch. For anyone who doesnt know Japanese except for what has been stereotyped by the English, nothing wrong there. However, for someone who studied it as an university course and is expected to have had at least some exchanges with Japan, I find this rather lazy. I was sad to conclude my pronouciation was better than hers; and I study it in my free time with next to no speaking experience at all.
~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/21372982/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/21372982/ Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:38:21 PST
Frankly, I was happy just being nominated. For a game I didnt even expect to be succesful, I didnt even expect less that it would be nominated.

However, we won an award!! The iPhone game got the award for "best original design" and the serious game got the award for "best serious game"!! So, as you can expect, I am extremely proud !

This is exactly how I want to get "known" (not famous, just known); with quality work in which people apparantly see the promise of an award. We have quite some people at our school who (although while still delivering as much quality as they can muster) would prefer working for someone with a big name, get a reference and get big that way. That is certainly a more easy way out, as long as you are good with networking. But for some reason I feel that doing it like that is not really relying on my skills and expertise, but rather using an established name in the hopes yours will also get known that way. So, getting this award is awesome and feels like a big step in the right direction; no big names, just on our own strength .

Well, I am going back to being proud and drinking ice tea! Yay !

edit: and now I heard we even won in Germany during European Innovative Game Awards the best Overall award and the award in our category for the game I worked on while with Ranj! Absolutely awesome! Even more awesome that we beat games like Wii Fit AND Pro Evolution Soccer 2009! Egoboost, here we go!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/21249938/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/21249938/ Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:52:47 PDT
Since I designed that game blindly (I didnt have any hardware for testing back then, which I do have now, even though I still need to completely set it up) I wasnt too sure about how well the game would be received. I do trust the programmer, but it just doesnt feel right to not be able to test designs I made (since I obviously make mistakes and I want to test it out to check whether or not my intended feel comes through). Anyways, the game got released and it did rather well. It was not a blockbuster or anything (seeing as how we dont have any wellknown franchise nor the name), but it was still pretty well received by many players.

And that's why I enjoyed it. This week, someone, who is doing iPhone development themselves, asked me what game I made. Thinking that I would be taken to the Itunes store (which was partly true), I googled the game. However, the first results were not the Itunes store, but rather blogs, websites and forums that reported the game. Not industry professionals (not all of them anyways) but gamers talking about our game! And quite positively at that too! Which was one heck of a surprise for me and definitely extremely enjoying! That's one of the things I enjoy about being a gamedesigner. lets hope I keep it up .

On a sidenote; I recently got Disaster Day of Crisis and I am liking it a lot. Extremely cheesy (although I find that to be a big part of its charm) but definitely a keeper! Maybe I will post a review on that at a later time.

edit: I just got an email from my contracter saying that the game I described above has been nominated for 2 awards with the Dutch Game Awards! 6 November this week we will hear who goes away with the awards, but needlessly to say, I never suspected this and I am pretty darn happy at the moment !

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20837850/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20837850/ Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:05:25 PDT
First of all, the good things.

The graphics are great, although I did like the color textures for when you paint a building less. I can see why they made these textures simpler, but they seem rather boring. In fact, the world actually looks better in gray. That being said, the worlds are big, there is a huge attention to detail, there are some pretty decent shaders present and the overal style is pretty awesome. I also liked the cutscenes that introduce the level; they have a "cute" sense of humor (for a lack of better words).

The sound is downright awesome. They really made it more interactive by changing the sound depending on the actions you take and the color you paint the buildings with. You start of with a "base" sound, which you can choose in advance (called "moods"). During the level, when you paint buildings, restore landmarks or perform other actions, the sound goes from bland to rich, like a world coming to life. It is a bit of a shame to see all your "sound" effort going to waste as soon as you open a gate, but other than that, I really welcome things like this. Sound is a much underestimated part of games and I am glad that this game tried to make it more suited for a game.

There also seems to be quite some replay value. There are a set of awards you can gain for each level, which are the same for each level but still pretty hard to get. For completists, this will cause the game to have quite some extra hours (which is partly also a bad thing, but more on that later). As soon as you beat a level, you also get 2 challenges for that level. There is also concept art, you can rewatch cutscenes, etcetera.

As for the bad things:

The jump controls. This control is the thing I hate most about the game; they seem awkward and don't feel really responsive. What annoys me more though is that the blob seems to stick to about every surface you jump on. You can use this to scale down walls and paint a set of buildings in one go (much like the wall running in Prince of Persia). Unfortunately, you cannot choose not to stick to the wall, meaning that whenever you jump against a building you WILL stick to it. This is extremely annoying especially when you try to get up a ledge, fail and cannot retry immediately because de blob first wants to stick to it. It is also annoying in challenges, as you lose a lot of time due to this. They should used a button for this, so that players had a choice whether to stick or not.

The worlds are just too big. I think it would have been much better if they would have split the worlds in half. Right now, each world takes an average of 60 (!) minutes (yes, that is an average, I just beat only the 4th level and from what I can remember the 3d and 4th are already 60 minutes long). This makes replaying the levels to get all the awards rather boring at some point, as you need to redo this whole 60 minutes again.

The main character. This is more a thing of taste, but I really dislike de blob as a character. The characters feels like he is doing everything "because he is cool". Yes, from the start of the first cutscene, it only feels like he is doing it because he thinks he is cool. There isnt much else to say about it...

As a last point, the game has a good chance of becoming repetitive. For everyone following de blob, knows that the game looks to have taken a lot from Katamari Damacy (whether the students who originally came up with the concept did or not, I dont know). In Katamari, the goal is to roll up everything in a giant ball of junk. The bigger the ball, the more you could stick against it. This makes the entire level one big area of experimentation, to see what and when you can stick to the ball. The game had "checkpoints" with objects of a certain weight blocking you, which you could only overcome if you had a certain size. De blob does this the same way, but does this through score. Whenever you paint something (or a set of something), you score points. Unfortunately, this means that you can just paint everything (apart from the landmarks) right away; there is no searching for a particular thing that couldnt be painted before. Since there is no real sense of a world that changes, this can potentially make the game boring. It hasnt happened to me so far, but then again, I only just beat the 4th level.

With that being said, the game is still worth a purchase for anyone who enjoyed Katamari before and wants to have something good to play on the Wii.... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20684703/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20684703/ Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:01:25 PDT
And boy, was I disappointed. Having worked with the Wiimote myself, I know what an inaccurate piece of crap it actually is. This game only proves the fact that the mote needs motion+ only more. The game, being a rythm game that is based on shaking maraca's on the rythm of music like Macarena fails to register at least 10-20% of your movements and unfortunately, this is even on easy. For a rythm game this is more or less a lethal blow; in a game like this it should not be based on luck to get that perfect score.

For those of you who dont know Samba de Amigo; the game requires you to shake a pair of maraca's, take poses or do hustles. You can shake the maraca on 3 places on either side: top, middle and down. Taking poses requires you to hold the pose the game wants you to hold for a few seconds and hustle makes you shake the maraca in a sort of line (making you shake, for example, the maraca above year head between the two top options). So far, the idea sounds nice and I am sure the dreamcast version was awesome (when the Wii motes would register my moves I was actually rather enjoying it). Unfortunately, the Wii remotes have severe trouble sensing where the maraca's are. It isnt strange for the game to suddenly decide that you are holding the Wiimote up, while you are trying to shake it in the middle. This in turn will cause you to break your combo, making it more based on luck to get the best score than it is by skill.

In fact, there was only one occasion in which I was able to have a combo exceeding 100 hits, but other than that, I wasnt able to get above 20, because of the detecting failures. And it is not that I am that bad at it; I have played a fair share of rythm games (you can say I am rather fond of those games) and beating at least the easy mode should actually be extremely easy. I can see all the spheres I need to time my shakes to just fine and I shake at the required time. The motes just dont register it.

So, in short, I don't recommend this game. It is fun for someone casual who doesnt care much for score and most probably wouldnt even notice the inaccuracy. But for someone who goes for the best score available, this game is a major letdown.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20635394/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20635394/ Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:01:18 PDT
So yeah, I feel pretty good. And although I am (once again) severely lacking in time, I also have this urge to draw again, which has escaped me pretty much the entire vacation. Reason for this is mostly caused by my most recent piece, in which I decided to try out a different style. I must admit, I like it. A lot. I liked doing it and I liked the outcome. While far from perfect (as some say; it still feels very "photoshop"ish), it gave me more enjoyment than most of my other recent pieces. I also restarted the animation again (which by now is delayed 1,5 years already. I know, shame on me) and am at the last two scenes. The scenes are mostly pretty easy, though still time consuming, but at least not as difficult as the rest of the animation, which gave me nothing but trouble (also causing me to change the style 2 times). After that, only the post production is left, as there are definitely some details I need to address.

Anyways, needlessly to say, I actually want to continue with the style of my most recent. For some reason, I feel to be better suited to these simple things. I am just not into hardcore detail that much, nor realism for that matter (not that I cannot appreciate other people's skill with it. If anything, that is most probably what clouded me). Keeping things simple like this, not being forced to copy every bit of reality to the smallest detail is far more enjoying for me. So much even that, once things cool down a bit here (most probably when I graduate), I am considering to follow a small course on writing for children books, so that I can actually make small stories to go with the drawings. Nothing ambitious like "I want to become a children book author", but to see what I can do with a thing like this. Lets hope it doesnt stay with dreams only .

And I am planning to rework my website again! Well, I was planning to do it a long time ago, seeing as how I havent updated the darn thing for about a year. But so far, I didnt have any real idea of what I wanted; more a mess of ideas that would change my website into pure chaos. Right now though, my idea has finally gotten some form; I am going to try and change my website into some sort of "book". Pretty vague, I know, but when I actually have some time to start on it, I will show some mockups for those interested .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20420845/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20420845/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:31:40 PDT
Anyways, as I was playing Tales of Phantasia, I noticed something. While its "Linear Motion Battle" system is definitely more fun for the player than a general turnbased system, I do have to note that at one point I got really, really fed up with fighting. And that brings me to one point I believe should improve over time in JRPGs; battling is boring.

I believe we all agree more or less over one thing; RPGs are more for the experience they give than for the skill you need to play them. While any game at any point of time might be difficult for some (heck, the first time I played Tales of Phantasia I was getting owned by anything on feet by the later points of the game, whereas now they need to cower under my pressence or otherwise my very look can turn them into nothingness) it is obvious that RPGs do not incorperate skill as much as an important factor as, say, first person shooters or platform games. I also know that these games do not require elements that require vast amounts of skill, since I believe most gamers that buy these type of games are not looking for something like that. That being said; this shouldnt mean that they need to get boring.

For most JRPGs it is a fact that most of the interaction you have with the game is the battle system. One can even say that the meat of the gaming part revolves around fighting. Some games have puzzles you need to solve, some games even force you to find tools for that end (which I like very much, I have had worlds of fun with the puzzles in for example Wild Arms), but all of them have one thing that is thrown to the player at regular; battles. During the years they have tried to make the battles more acceptable by taking out the dreaded random encounter. Sure, it is much better if you can choose who to engage and who to avoid, but one problem still remains.

Routines.

Battles become routine. Take most JRPGs and you will see a variation of 3-5 (maybe 1 or 2 more) of enemy sets in each room/level. Their arrangement might vary a bit, but that is not that likely, as those arrangments are fixed most of the time as well. Take Final Fantasy 7; in order to breed the golden chocobo, you need to catch different chocobos and raise/breed them. Some people however found out exactly what set of enemies you had to encounter for the chocobo to be the right one to breed. I followed this guide and had a golden one within no time. The way to defeat enemies is also always the same, with a few things being bound by chance (albeit little). In any standard JRPG I played I have found myself repeating the same routines time after time in any field. And especially in fields that take time to plow through this becomes annoying, since repeating the same battles over and over becomes tedious. Unfortunately, most RPGs are also subject to the same problems; they introduce you to the basics of battle in the beginning of the game and the only thing that really changes is how powerful you and the enemy are.

To take Tales of Phantasia as an example. I entered the secret dungeon called the Moria Gallery, a dungeon that (without the obligatory part) spans about 12 floors. Not really much, since most of it can be done in 20 minutes. Unfortunately, that is not counting the battles. With the battles, the dungeon can take an upward of 2 to 3 hours. Moria Gallery is one of the last dungeons in the game, yet the only thing I needed to do was mash the button and make sure the enemy fell before I did. If the enemy got me, I needed to heal and just try to pound my way into advantage. The linear motion battle system might have provided a more skill oriented way of battling, that one thing was still not gone. All the battles I fought were nothing but a routine; my main character rushing out headfirst while the support team attacked them from a distance. And it worked, about 95% of the times, as my enemies were easily defeated. And it became boring. Because the only thing that changed was how long the battles took; enemies had more energy. Not because they got more difficult; they just took longer to defeat. I have more examples like these, though not all are my own.

Anyways, my point with these games is that they are doing something wrong. What these games are missing is very simple; real variety. In order to motivate a player, you need to vary things; give them new information for their brains to process. Giving them story as a reward is nice and all, but the road to that reward should not be as tedious. It is much like the school system; it forces you to do the same things over... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20302059/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20302059/ Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:36:33 PDT
To start, before I made the topic, I thought that the general idea of someone being a hardcore (or casual) gamer was varied a lot. I have seen the term hardcore being used in all sorts of situations, so that is why I came to think this way. So, with this assumption I started the topic. While I was not completely wrong, I was not completely right either. The opinions on its meaning are still rather varied, but not as much as I thought.

So far (the topic still seems to be active), there are three general opinions of what "hardcore" is, that I could filter out.

1. The hardcore gamer is a gamer that relies on skill and plays for the challenge. Games like RPGs are by default exempted from this skill based gaming, as those are of the type of game that deliver an experience, not a challenge. A popular genre to define this seems to be the Shmup; a topdown (or vertical) shooter in which the screen is literally filled to the brim with bullets you must dodge. Players who excel in this seem to earn the hardcore status rather instantly.

2. The hardcore gamer is an experienced gamer. The hardcore gamer has a played quite a lot of genres and games and is therefore knowledgable about what is going on and what went on in the world of gaming. He can analyze games and is able to criticise these games, for other reasons than being mainstream (if that were to be the case). Needlessly to say, a gamer that is considered to be hardcore by these terms is a gamer that has been around for a while and is not some "young'un". We are talking here about at least 3-4 generations of games, but having been around since the NES era (or even earlier) is preferred.

3. The hardcore gamer is a freak. He spends all of his money/time on games (and everything related) and his whole life revolves around it. He is obsessed with everything games. In other words; the classic stereotype of a gaming nerd.

There are some other definitions, although these are in a minority. One of these for example is that some people think the term "hardcore gamer" is more or less a self given "status symbol", which is especially important for the younger players that spend their time with the (skillbased) mainstream games like Halo. Another opinion seems to be that multiplayer (and the skill requirements that come with it) also plays an important role in the definition of the "hardcore gamer".

One very interesting reply that one deviant posted was that "hardcore" and "casual" should not apply to the general behavior of the gamer (or the games), but to the appraoch each gamer takes towards the games he/she plays. Anyone is hardcore and casual at the same time, as there is always at least one game for each gamer that he has played to the death, even if other games do not quite receive that treatment. I especially liked this definition, seeing as how I could relate to it instantly. For everyone I know that plays games has had at least one game that he/she has beaten/played to the death, even if their general behavior towards games seemed to be rather casual. My sister, for example, has an obsession with Fatal Frame and has beaten it so much playing the game became a routine. Other games she played rather casually. I have beaten A link to the Past to the death (I stopped counting how many times a long time ago), to the point that I even started creating maps for the game and the game indeed became a routine to beat (although the mapping part was when I was about 10 or so, when I hadn't started with my own designs yet).

So, to conclude, while opinions do vary from person to person, the amount of variation is definitely less than I initially thought. Although I am more surprised I got this much information out of a forum that is usually infested with "I wuv " kind of topics .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20178111/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/20178111/ Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:33:06 PDT
For those of you following my journals, you know that I want to become a gamedesigner and that I am rather focused on the gameplay aspect of the game. That is also how I classify gamers. I have roughly divided them into the "watching gamer" and the "playing gamer".

Now, the reason I did this is because I sensed a clear difference between these two groups of gamers. Through various discussions I had on the forums here I found out that there are gamers who are not neccesarelly playing a game, but rather looking at it. They are the ones who enjoy the environment and story more than the actual game and are also the ones who do not mind the excessive amount of cutscenes that has crept into games as of late (Metal Gear Solid 4, Final Fantasy). Playing gamers on the other hand are more for searching for a game you can play, one you can actively be busy with; they can be found on the other end of the spectrum, ranting on about how games are overrated (I think the playing gamers, at least for the more busy one, might be in a minority here; mostly because the start of 3D games gave rise to a whole lot of watching gamers).

I am writing this because of this article. Guillermo del Tor is a good director imo with some very nice movies in his portfolio (I rather enjoyed his "the Orphanage" move, although I have yet to see Pan's Labyrinth). But to quote what he said on Bioshock: "I absolutely loved BioShock. I loved the world, the design, the lighting, the beautiful art direction and cinematography.". He mutters not even one word about how the game played. He is only raving about how it looked, not how it played. I on the other hand, being more of a gamer that likes to play games, was rather disappointed with Bioshock. It felt and played every bit like a generic shooter. You go from point A to B, shoot crap, find new weapons and continue from point B to point C. Sure, it looked pretty, but the experience felt shallow and I put the game down after 2 hours of play. I never touched it since.

Personally I wonder. If they are playing a game just to watch it, what is the point in playing it? If you are only going to watch the game, you are missing out on one of the most important factors that make a game an actual game; it is an interactive experience where you actually have control over the world inside of the magic circle, instead of being a spectator that can only watch to see things unfold. That is what I think anyways.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19969633/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19969633/ Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:03:11 PDT .

On top of that, I finally got to the 323 kanji just a few days ago! Meaning that, in terms of kanji, I am able to participate in the JLPT 3kyuu already! Very soon I will receive some flash cards (I need some way to remember them, if possible in random order, as that sticks better) and a vocabulary/grammar book designed for JLPT3, so with that out of my way, I hope to be able to gain the much needed knowledge faster than I did with 4kyuu last year. Gives me some breathing space and the ability to move towards 2kyuu immediately; as that will be the real challenge.

The reason I am doing all of this is to be able to study in Japan. That much was clear already (it wouldnt be the first time I talked about it ), but plans did change a little. In order to apply for a scholarship (as even with the money I saved I wont be having enough to do a language course; living expenses are too steep), I need to do a study that is actually related to my current one. Of course, this much should be obvious, but that also meant I had to change my language course plans and do a academic study instead. This in turn means I wont be gaining the language proficiency at a school in Japan; as they demand a minimal level of JLPT2. Which is why I am extremely glad to have passed 4kyuu last year...

But, if this is going to work out, I might be able to study in (apparantly) well known university in either Kyushu or Tokyo! Of course, that would mean I have to earn a scholarship, get accepted into the university and study in order to reach the required level of Japanese, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. And in the case I DO get accepted, it would mean I am able to do 2 masters in not even 3 years of time! Yay!

On a sidenote; the latest WIP I posted is the first one of me trying something completely different. I do like anime style, but I just cannot seem to sense any improvement in my drawings, draining any satisfaction I had when creating them. So, instead, I am now trying something radically different! I am going more for a storybook approach and so far, it seems to be turning out pretty well. Lets hope I dont botch the job and make something pretty out of it . Who knows, maybe I might even be better suited to this kind of style...

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19916384/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19916384/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:08:31 PDT
Anyways, little more than a month ago, I received email from one of the more important teachers that oversee the master program. I do not know if I mentioned it already; but apparantly I am a case of doubt. Tomorrow I am finally able to go to school to defend my decision to go for the master course this year.

Administration can be a bitch, I believe that their choice is related to that. If I am to believe the credits I received last year (note; I should have all credits to even continue to the next year, let alone do master); I have not even finished half of it. Fortunately, I did finish the entire fourth year and with above average results. Too bad the administration does not seem to have caught up. They did not register my internship, my paper and a few other credits. Of course, I did my internship (hard not to remember; I worked from 7.00 till 18.00 each day, 5.00 till 20.00 if you include travel time) and my paper has been rated as really good (an 8 out of 10 points, and that was because my subject did not have any sources to use for research).

So, needlessly to say, I am nervous. I am entirely sure that the mistake is due to administration, although that little voice in my head is preparing me for worse things. Fortunately, since the person who did the ratings is indeed someone who looks at the credits received, rather than the actual qualities (seeing as how this particular person did not have any interaction with us during the 1st, 2nd or 3d years), it should be the fault of this administration (which I can prove). I am just afraid that is not related to this and there might be something else. I have never been the type to present myself well...

So, I hope for the best and hope to let you know what it has become tomorrow... On a brighter sidenote; if I am to do master this year, it woul fit nicely with my future plans . I am planning to do another master in Japan when this study is done after all! Of course, the latter is dependant on whether or not I can get a scholarship... Ow, and enough knowledge to pass 2kyuu on the JLPT, the second hardest test...

edit: I can do master! My teachers thought that my visions for the future and my ideas in relation to gamedesign were fantastic. They also noted that they were amazed by how much I have thought about it already. The only thing they had to say is that I seem to be too nice . Which is entirely true... But other than that; master, here I come!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19439316/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19439316/ Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:36:44 PDT
First thing on my mind are the people who bought the PS3 especially for FFXIII. How stupid is that? You buy a console just for a game that has not even been released yet, nor even has anything like a decent releasedate yet? The only thing released are a few screens, no more than 2-3 trailers and a lot of info on how the game was delayed and how happy SE is with their white engine, even though we have seen nothing produced by that engine yet. And still they buy a console for the game that is, so far, getting released 3 years (!), if not more, after the console was first released. It is like buying a PC right now because I want to have Photoshop XL16 (or whatever the name will be in the future) over 3 years. It does not make any sense and is only retarded.

Second there are the people who are butthurt about how their precious Bluray game could never, NEVER, be put on a HDDVD. They obviously have got no idea whatsoever about the actual difference between the two. Bluray, dual layer, can hold about 50GB. HDDVD, dual layer, can hold about 30GB. Sure, there is a difference, but it is only 1 disc. ONE DISC! Obviously, a game where you need to swap the disc is doomed to fail anyhow because, obviously, FF7, FF8 and FF9 have totally failed to impress gamers worldwide. It never became SE biggest selling game. Just the nerve to think that a game with discswapping is good is herecy. No?

I am especially annoyed by everyone who feels "betrayed" by SE. Betrayed?? Come one! They are a company, they need profit to survive. FFXIII has been in development for a crapload of time; they need massive sales to be able to get profit out of that one, especially since it is their first major "nextgen" title. Making it exclusive to PS3 is not going to help them get that profit. Anyone remember Metal Gear Solid 4, the game who was thought to be a console seller and help PS3 aim for the neck of XBOX360 or Wii for that matter? Anyone also remember that when the initial hype died down, it turned out that the console reigned supreme for one measly month and then continued its usual streak of being outsold by at least the Wii? FFXIII, no matter how good the game could be to the fans, will most probably not be the console seller everyone thinks it is. The power of fandom will not help anything to change that.

Long story short; although I dislike SE for their arrogance, I do think they made a good move porting FFXIII to the XBOX360. I will never buy the game, nor will I buy a XBOX360/PS3 for the time being (as my education is much more important than some gaming device which only has the same games with an extra layer of spitpolish anyway), but I can see why they did it. And I do not hate them for it; as it is a business and they need to make profit. These fantards should start realizing that game developers are not some kind of charity. They tire me, those people.

On a sidenote; I thought E3 was highly disappointing. I never thought much of it to be honest, but I was at least believing that they would announce at least one title that would come as a surprise. What we got instead were empty promises of games that were already known to be in production, even more techdemos and crap to keep the peripherals selling or yet another trailer of a game we already knew existed for a very long time. There definitely has been better.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19389566/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19389566/ Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:51:19 PDT
Anyways, I was suprised to see a new version of Deviantart. At first I kind of liked it, but now, I think they wanted to do too much with it. Really, my messages folder seems chaotic now that everything wants to fit itself in there. On top of that, the new devart seems to hate my Firefox, as when I am browsing this site, Firefox tends to get overloaded and crash. Part of me likes the new design, but most of me does not. What do you guys think about it?

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19231999/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/19231999/ Sun, 06 Jul 2008 08:52:27 PDT .

Tagged by :

* 1. Post these rules.
* 2. Each tagged person must post 8 things about their self on their journal.
* 3. At the end, you have to choose and tag 8 people and post their icons on the same journal.
* 4. Go to their pages and send a message saying you tagged them.
* 5. No tag-backs.

1. I am boring because I don't smoke and hardly ever drink. And don't go dating by the way .
2. I am horrified of spiders; if people are running from a spider invasion, I can be recognized since I will be leading the pack...
3. I look cranky so people won't ask me silly questions. Or something.
4. But I am really not cranky, even when I look that way!
5. I like to talk. My most recent "record" is 5 hours nonstop of chatter .
6. I have never been drunk
7. I have also never been in the hospital for broken bones or anything of the sort
8. I am so gullible, you can even make me believe something I know is not true... Much to the entertainment of some friends .

My tag victims:

Harharhar, suffer like I did .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18818634/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18818634/ Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:54:52 PDT
It was that the game industry, as a whole, is the last industry who knows what innovation is. They might pass themselves of as trendy, innovators and other things, but in the end the opposite is very true. This was his statement and I have to agree. While there certainly are exceptions, the current industry has fallen in love too much with basic recipes. All as being a part of risk management.

We see it all happen; game studios are repeating their own franchises like crazy and have lost all creativity they used to have. Look at Mario, which has done the same in 3D for the last 10 years. Even if they decide to make another 2D mario, they will never repeat the innovation they created with Mario Bros 3 (the same with 3D, but then with Mario 64). Zelda is exactly the same if not worse. Final Fantasy suffers from the same thing, although everyone praises them for specific details that other games already did long ago (and them claim FF innovated). First person shooters, racers, platform games, puzzle games, etcetera. They are all suffering from the same "getting stale" thing that is going on. And yet, those same studios (including review sites) are screaming "innovation" at the slightest change of the franchise. Gamers included of course.

Our problem is that we are failing to think outside of the box. The once creative masterminds have fallen prey to the whole marketing deal, even if they themselves do not realize it. Take a look for example at Wii Fit. While it might be new and different to the console industry, it is not new and different at all. We already had hoolahoop 100s of years ago. We already have Yoga and Fitness. In fact, Wii fit does nothing to make these things different, but seems to literally copy them (unfortunately, as of the moment, I have no Wii Fit, so I could be wrong). Same goes with Wii Sports. There is nothing wrong with simulating a movement that we already used in real life, but why literally copy it so it reflects not just the movement, but the entire sport? Why make a tennis game where you can tennis, when real tennis is not that much different and not even that far away? That is another thing that is wrong with the industry; the more they try to innovate without upsetting their customers, the more they tend to lean towards simulation. Which is just one of the many forms of entertainment, not THE form. Of course, the examples above are not the only ones; the majority of games actually suffer from lack of creativity.

A great example of something that needs to change badly are stories. For as long as game stories have existed, they have been told as boring pieces of text using an avatar to convey it. Of course, the avatar itself advanced throughout the years; adding pictures, becoming 3D, facial rigs and even voice overs, but in the end nothing changed to the way story is told. It is unfortunate that in a form of entertainment where the player is the one who should be in control of this "interactive" piece of software the stories are always conveyed in a static way, without giving any control to the player who is trying to play the game. Instead, you play a bit, read or listen and play some more. As for choices; it almost seems like gamedesigners do not want to give control to the player, since the most advanced system of telling a game story has not progressed further than the branched storyline. Now, this all would not have been much of an issue when we were still in the budding 3D market (PSX time) or even the previous generation. But in the current generation, where consoles are even used to power super computers, it is a downright shame they are not researching new ways of telling story. Ways that give control to the player and not to the game.

The guy who was talking had another very interesting point; namely that true innovation is always halted when you deal with customers and employees. And that is in fact very true. Customers, as I have personally experienced, almost always suffer from so called tunnel vision. They see something cool and want it. They are unable to think that when seeing something cool "wow, this would have been great if we did this and that to improve it and alter it radically". They think now, while true innovators should think in the future. Employees are also rather troublesome, because they make you rely on funding (everyone wants that paycheck at the end of the month) forcing you right back into the hands of your c... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18661611/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18661611/ Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:20:16 PDT
I feel that my skills are stagnating. And I think it is also due to a lack of practice of the "real deal", and keeping with the more stylized things. So, since my summer break is getting very close now (just 2 weeks), I obviously seem to have enough time to do this (granted; I do need to work for my company, restart my website, work out, etcetera etcetera, but whatever), so I am thinking of asking for photos from friends I can copy and going out to draw with a basic set of materials. Planning to make sketches of people passing by and maybe pick up some anatomy book to brush up on my anatomy skills, which also have severely stagnated. Maybe I can even find some public drawing thing, although I highly doubt the Netherlands has such a thing.

Anyways, long story short; if any of you have any suggestions, apart from that what I mentioned above, I welcome them. I really want to improve. I will never be a true professional, in the sense that I do not like to be artsy for work, but I at least want to get satisfaction out of my work and I am really not getting that when the improvement is only so small.

And yes, I am depressed. I really do not feel like talking about it (or maybe I do, but I am evil and I won't tell you so you will get interested and have to suffer from your own curiosity), but long story short I feel empty. Being alone for god knows how long is not really helping me in feeling any better to be honest.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18505571/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18505571/ Mon, 26 May 2008 06:03:26 PDT .

Anyways, I have got quite some games I am designing (inspiration can be quite the hassle sometimes), of which 3 concepts I am working very seriously on. One of these (which is a potential seller for a company I do assignments for) is about as innovative as Twilight Princess unfortunately (a 3D side scrolling action adventure), but I like to think of the other 2 as something quite new, or at least something that has not been done too much so far. One of these is a platforming game, the other one is a RPG.

As I said, I always like to focus on gameplay (even though I am also spending a whole lot of attention to the story department for games like this), this game is no exception. My issue with turn based games, or even turn based strategy games is that you never have complete control over the game. This is especially the case with turn based games. You issue a command each turn, enemy attacks each turn, and the one with the biggest numbers wins. Turn based strategy games go further, but it is still very static. You talk a little, are throw unto a map with enemies, and then do battle.

The game I am designing combines these two elements. Unfortunately, a game like that also exists; it is called Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter (and still one of my favorite RPGs of the last gen). So, I took the concept of strategy to survive a little further; by being able to split up your team and put members on stationary.

This sounds quite simple; I know. However, so far in the design, this adds an extra layer of depth to the gameplay, giving especially the veteran player loads of options to choose from. Battles in this game are fought out on the exact location where you encounter the enemies (again, like Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter), making the player able to completely abuse the playing field in order to achieve results. In the game, you only control one character; with the other characters are controlled by AI (using commands to "steer" them). However, with the inclusion of the ability to split teams; you can actually guide several teams into a certain formation and use one team to engage the enemies. After that, you can use the other teams as a means of ambushing the enemy or surprising them with a sniper in their back. Of course, even I know that using too much small teams becomes too chaotic, so the limit at the moment has been set to a maximum of 3 teams (2 members per team, with a maximum of 6 controllable characters; as I do not like to put members "in the back").

Of course, there are much more details to this battle system (like the various strategic advantages a player can have, or throwing items to other members, in case they need them, etcetera), but I believe that this single part of the battle system is enough to make the game stand out as being different.

And as a small means of self whoring : this is in fact the main character (yes, the game I talked about in the description is not some game I decided to work on for a day and then discard ). The demon drive I spoke about is an important story element.

Last but not least, if anyone reading this journal loves RPGs, please tell me what you love about them; it is always good to know what others think of particular genres, as it gives me more inspiration of creating a decent design.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18457546/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18457546/ Fri, 23 May 2008 03:54:03 PDT
It is about this Metal Gear Solid 4 (no, I am not going to bash the PS3, the thing is doing quite well by itself right now, even though it will most probably not enjoy the success the PS1 or 2 had). I just read that the game will feature 90 minute cutscenes. Not 90 minutes as in "a total of 90 minutes of cutscenes", but as in "cutscenes with the length of 90 minutes". WHAT the HELL is wrong with this industry?

I have always been against overuse of cutscenes. They can have some purpose in a game and can be used as a means of rewarding the player, but apart from that they are archaic at best. They literally force a player out of the game to watch something that is not in the least bit interactive; a movie. During the cutscene, you are forced to watch, because you cannot miss any of the story (no matter what you may have said at first). Furthermore; you cannot see a cutscene coming, unless you played the game before, have a walkthrough next to you or someone who already did play the game (that may be your safest bet though). A lengthy cutscene will do nothing but force you to reserve large chunks of time, just so that you are "armed" against the time taken by these cutscenes.

Finally there is now someone who took cutscenes to the extreme; as there is now a game that actually has full feature movies built into it. What the hell has happened to the concept named "game"? If they wanted to include movies, why not just release the damn thing in the cinema? Would make a bigger profit anyway, seeing as how movies have an easier business model than games. Even Final Fantasy is not this ridiculous with cutscenes, and that means something, coming from me.

Really, this is one of the (major) reasons why I hate the way the industry is headed nowadays.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18333785/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18333785/ Thu, 15 May 2008 09:40:20 PDT
This monday I am going to test out one of the Cintiqs my school bought (have a whole day of drawing ahead of me, I am going to try something new while I am at it as well) to see how (well) it works. However, so far it seems that the choice will not change depending on Monday (especially not since I cannot hide that I am actually looking rather forward to it, and it has been a long time since I was really really looking forward to drawing something ).

On a sidenote: have gotten addicted to Professor Layton and the curious village, although the villagers are scary. They want me to solve silly (yet very nostalgic) puzzles when a murder has just taken place and I am trying to chase the suspect .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18254973/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18254973/ Sat, 10 May 2008 09:48:16 PDT
By the end of this month, I plan to make a rather large payment. However, at this moment, I still do not know what I should get. One option is a Wacom Cintiq and the other is a rather large vacation in Japan, where I will be visiting lots of sights and meeting new friends.

Anyways, as you might have guessed, both are rather expensive. And both have their advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, for both the choices I think that for me, personally, the good outweigh the bad. Which makes choosing between the two extremely difficult, especially because I can definitely only take one. More than that will be too expensive.

The Cintiq

The good:

-potential increase in skill, because I have always been more of a traditional artist than a digital one. Even after 3 years, the current Wacom tablet still feels awkward. I have never had much money for decent material (or, I did not go through the effort of buying it, since I knew that most of my time I spent with traditional art was limited to train).
-definite decrease in time, since I can directly make digital sketches, instead of first sketching on paper, tracing them, etcetera etcetera. Also for my sprite work (for my company) it will lessen the time and should (potentially) be able to increase my skill again.
-Durable investment; the warranty is 2 years. If my current Wacom is any indication, I know for sure that I am going to get even more out of it than that.
-Might give me the edge at certain occasions (job offers, work for my company).
-If I buy it now, I have a large summer vacation long to practice with it.
-Since I can buy it as an investment to my company, buying this thing will actually lower my "disposable income", thus resulting into less tax at the end of the year (as well as the fact that the maximum total I am allowed to earn, before I have to pay back my scholarship thingy, will also lower).

The bad:

-increase in skill is only potential; I really don't know whether I can actually increase my skill when drawing gets more natural. It is, in the end, nothing but a guess, but one that is terribly expensive.
-It is more expensive than the vacation, but not by that much.

The vacation:

The good:

-It could very well be my last summer vacation. After this term is over, I am going to follow the master at my school. Which results into working during the summer vacation, essentially sacrificing it. Immediately afterwards, I plan to move to Japan for the study.
-I have never had much vacations in my life, so this is actually one of the select few.
-Japan is, as you might already know, a beautiful country with lots to see. Which is exactly what I am going to do there.
-I am able to meet new friends I recently met. Personal contact always seems to be better than just mailing through email. At least, that is what I believe.

The bad:

-Friends who are not available. I cannot demand them to be free when I come, so it is more of a guessing situation, hoping that they wont be too busy.
-It is only a 3 week experience. After that, I return and it is like nothing happened.

So, I need your help. If you had the choice, what would you pick and why (especially the why is important to me).

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18055731/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18055731/ Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:41:18 PDT
So I set myself the goal to have saved at least €10.000 by the time I finish my current school, an amount I never thought I would reach (since I expected to save about €300 each month, which would back then get me €10.000 just in time). To be honest, I have had some minor setbacks since then, which would make getting that amount even harder (PC broke down, clothing, the works).

However, after a few lucky breaks from my own little company, I can finally say I have passed my set quota!! I have finally passed the €10.000 limit! And not just that; with the income I have got myself coming, I can even go to Japan on vacation, without my total ever going beneath the 10.000! So, I am very satisfied at the moment, because during my summer vacation, I can start my preparations for getting into the school and all the details needed to become a student there! To give you the general impression of how fast it went: just 7 months ago I only had about 4500 saved. And the general estimation was that I would be able to save only about 7000 right about now; turned out that the profits were actually more than 2 that number (about 7000 instead of 2500). I only need to watch the IB, the ones providing our scholarships. When I earn to much, I risk having to pay back my scholarship...

And speaking about vacation; I am thinking of making it quite a holiday, if I were to go. If I am going there is a good chance I might visit not just Tokyo (and some of the surroundings, like Nike), but Kyoto and Osaka as well, seeing as how I recently met some people from those places. Exploring a city full of strange people and full of strange language (hey, my Japanese skills just exceeded that of yonkyuu, which means I have not even passed elementary yet in Japan) is much more fun when you have someone who actually knows about the place and with whom you can have a good time (they should not expect me to do karaoke though ).

Ow, and it seems the company I was developing mobile games for have started to move unto the iPhone. For those of you who don't know the iPhone; in terms of storage capacity it even seems to be bigger than PSP or DS. Of course, that says nothing about the games for the phone, but to say it is much better in performance than any of the Nokia phones we have developed for is a severe understatement. Going from J2ME to openGL is a stellar difference from what I have seen so far. And I am thrilled to make a game for it, to say the least. Now to hope that the boss of that company sees something in the concept I and the programmer proposed .

So yeah, I am feeling pretty good at the moment!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18021875/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/18021875/ Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:11:53 PDT
Well, I played it, just like I have played several Mario Kart games (rented, loaned, bought or whatever) but I am honest to say I was rather disappointed. And not by the Wii Wheel.

First of all, the Wii Wheel. I know from personal experience that the Wii remote is not that accurate in detection motion actually. Racing games seem to be more fit for Wii, as their controls are rather simple and easy to implement in the Wii remote. Mario Kart is no different, but they also give the Wii Wheel with it, a piece of plastic in the shape of a wheel. Yes, it is just a piece of plastic, but it works and thats what counts. Racing feels okay using the Wii Wheel and I actually find it a shame they included support for the Gamecube controller (with as only limitation so far the lack of voice feedback, because the Gamecube controller lacks the microphone). As a team mate has taught me; when a gamedesigner resorts to giving the player a choice in two different control schemes, it means the gamedesigner made a mistake; he could not choose. Anyways, the Wii Wheel works, and thats what counts.

As for the motor cycles, they do not add that much extra. They are really just carts with a bit different statistics (they control a little bit more difficult during drift), but other than that, when racing with both the carts and the motor cycles, I have to admit I like the carts better. Their drift just feels better, and they also receive bigger boosts from drifts. As for the wheelie, a speedboost in which you loose practically all ability to steer, it is nice you can initiate it whenever you want. It is, however, not that useful. The boost you get with the wheelie seems almost non existent. Which, in turn, makes it not good to use, because of the disadvantages with wheelies (you are easily shoved aside when doing a wheelie; something a close NPC loves to take advantage of).

Stunts are also a nice addition and actually do add something. I find myself trying to boost any hill like object (which is deceptively easy once you get into it) and flying over a wall which would otherwise have welcomed me with a cold grin just feels right.

However, Mario Kart suffers from some basic mistakes, mistakes that were made during the first Mario Kart and have passed over to just about any Mario Kart ever since.

The first is the items. Mario Kart has always been about random mayhem using a broad range of items to upset the other players. So far nothing bad, as the items have always been rather fun. Mario Kart would also give the rarer items to players further behind, while the players at first place had to do with worthless items. So far, nothing bad either. Because, so far, the items were there to give players a second chance; a way to catch up. As someone else put it at IGN (within a comment); powerful items were used moderately. Enough to find it funny, but not too much to fund it annoying. And that is where Mario Kart Wii goes horribly wrong. The rarer items are much easier to get now, and I frequently got the most powerful items when I was 4th place or so. So, when being 1st (playing against NPCs), be prepared to have at least 1 (but most probably 2) dreaded blue shells flying your way, and at least 4-6 times an items that affects anyone but the caster (which is most probably last place) forcing you to stop for a moment and draining away all the fun you had with a good run. Yes, it is annoying when you are drifting through an difficult corner and are satisfied with the result, only to be hit with yet another all range item, only to plummet into a pit you would have not fallen in otherwise. If this would happen once every now and then, okay, but it happens so often that this scenario is actually rather easy to come across. In short, the items this time around actually hurt the enjoyment and makes, in my case at least, the single player a chore and not fun.

The second is the so called "rubberband AI". Yes, it was implemented with the best of intentions, but with Mario Kart as it is, they should at least reward the player for being fast and not punishing the player for it. Because that is what rubberband AI does; it turns the NPCs into cheaters when you do too well and vice versa (when you are slow, the NPCs turn into wimps, thus removing any satisfaction you had when you would have beaten the game at your own strength). In other words; if you are winning, the game punishes you, but if you loose, the game takes pity on you. Both things I find to be inexcusable for a game like Mario Kar... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17591656/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17591656/ Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:41:30 PDT . Had a great week this week, and I just had to write about it!

As mentioned earlier, I found my long lost creditcard, among other things. I put it to great use this weekend! Since my earnings from my company are quite impressive (not to boast or anything, but even I am amazed), I decided to increase my study aids for Japanese yet again (which I had to do anyway, because I still needed material if I were to try SanKyuu this year).

Result; a lot of Minna no Nihongo books/practice books and one thing that did set me back about 480 dollars, but was sooo worth it! Somewhere in this month, I am going to be the owner of a wordtank, with a huge crapload of dictionaries in it (J-E, E-J, E-E), among those the biggest J-E dictionary available. Writing on screen support, which can recognize Kanji (no more searching for stroke order, I only have to write it down, and I can even search for the radicals and things) and backlit. I am absolutely looking forward to this; this is going to make my study, and more than that, so much easier! Heck, even with my limited knowledge, I should even be able to translate the more easy things!

On top of that, thanks to finding back my script, my animation is progressing nicely, finally (although, even though it progresses nicely right now, I am still aware of the fact that the animation had a delay of more than a year, which is quite... uuh... bad?). The animation is 50% finished right now, and I have taken care of the more major issues in the animation (although there is still one small issue left, but that is for later). I am still not sure when I can have the thing finished, but at least I have enough for previews right now. I also rewatched my other animations and, if my current animations works out the way I want to, this new animation is definitely going to be my best so far.

As for the rest, I cleaned out a crapload of crap in my room, and next week I am going to take care of some small things that needed attention. It also seems the company I was working parttime for still needs me, which means more munny! Although right now I have to start being careful, because I risk having to pay back my scholarship when I earn too much in one year time...

So far, my second trip to Japan also seems a go. It is still waiting for my penpall's reaction, but so far there seem to be no difficulties for going (seeing as the biggest difficult being money has been solved).

The only thing that remains boring is the lack of intellect in the forums. I know I can't expect much, but still, it irks me... There are a number of exceptions, but those are few unfortunately... The forum is ridden with sum it up topics, "I luv . Ah well, sometimes there are some intelligent replies, made by people who actually do have some braincells, so I should not complain. It could be worse, ey?

Anyways, going to close off this weekend by looking at bizarre TV shows, and then into bed. Later!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17558922/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17558922/ Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:40:35 PDT
For people following the news (or at least those in the Netherlands), we know that our Geert Wilders decided to make a movie about the Islam, a movie that was supposed to be discriminating to Muslims. Well, I just saw the movie, and while I do not agree with certain parts of it (I mean really, how many times do you need to show 9/11 before people will understand? I think most people are getting sick of seeing the plane crash yet another time and see the twin towers collapse yet another time; America saw to that) some of it seems rather believable. And most of it does not seem like racism actually. It is mostly footage from videos, although a lot of them seem old. How can it be racism when it is something that happened? It would be the same as calling the crusade racism because it might hurt Christianity. It is something they did to themselves, not something we cooked up. As for the fact of rubbing it in, again, that is something I see as rather useless. As a Dutch saying goes: stop met ouwe koeien uit de sloot te halen. Which translates into something like "stop bringing up ancient history".

Anyways, the reason why I at least do not condone this movie is because it is like throwing oil to an already raging fire. Just for laughs, I searched out the movie on Youtube, and only for the comments. And some comments it were. A lot of one liners (practically any comment there) from obvious idiots jumping on the bandwagon of "hate Holland/wilders/whatever". None of them were at least one bit intelligent about it. Nothing but a bunch of aggressive attention craving little monkeys without any intellect (and no, I am not talking about a certain group as mentioned in the film, I am talking about the overall level of intellect in those comments). Shows to prove how stupid humanity truly is.

I mean, if you really cared about the contents in the movie, why not make one yourself? In terms of quality, Fitna should not be that hard to beat. It is something I could cook up, and I am nowhere near a professional video editor (or whatever they call it). And hell, seeing as how Fitna relies on ancient history, Christianity has a fair share of it too, not? By reacting in an aggressive way, you just play into the hands of those who created the movie, strengthening their point even more. There are more ways than one to deal with movies like these; most of them being much more intelligent and effective than just acting like a boar.

But I guess that is too much to ask of these people. Instead, they do what it popular at the moment. Hating the movie and hating Holland like the good ol' monkeys they are.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17495904/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17495904/ Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:01:47 PDT
Anyways, was quite the busy day today. I have a tax thingy coming up tomorrow, so I had to find the necessary papers to do my taxes. Result was; stressing because I couldn't find the papers I needed . I was able to find them in the end (and seeing just how much paper it was, I feel sorry for people who do this as their job), with a bonus!

Yes, a bonus! I finally, FINALLY found my credit card again. Ever since I moved to my new place, I placed the creditcard somewhere and immediately forgot where I put the damn thing. Result; I lost my creditcard for about a year in a 28 square meter room... When I was searching for some paperwork (and thinking it might have fallen behind my desk), I suddenly noticed a piece of plastic. Since I was curious (I expected it to be some old card stores force on you so they feel good; I have quite a lot of them because I can't decline these things for some reason, even though I never look back at them again afterwards) I picked it up. Turned out to be my creditcard . I was almost planning to get a new one, its a relief I don't have to anymore.

And right after that I finally found my script again, for the animation I want to make, have quite a bit finished, but cannot seem to find the time to actually get the whole damn thing done 100% (yes, you know what I am talking about). And about that animation, I am slowly but surely starting to continue on the thing, but now that I have the script back, it is going to be that much easier (seeing as how a certain issue I was having is already resolved thanks to this script. Yay!).

Ow, and I had to finish the graphics for a mobile game today. I don't like casual puzzle games anymore . But hey, it will net me 600 euros in the end, so I cannot complain.

Anyways, tomorrow taxes, most probably they are going to whine that I am short a few papers and that I cannot fill in the forms for some shady reason (these agencies don't really make things easy for the people). And did I mention I passed Yonkyuu? Yes, I passed Yonkyuu, visit [link] to see the splendor of an A4 paper with fake gold on it! Whooh!

Edit: I have just finished my business at the tax agency. I was absolutely sure of the fact that I had to pay the taxes. Instead, it turns out I already paid too much . So now I am going to get a refund somewhere around June, worth about 560 euros! Not bad, not bad at all. And then to think I was terribly nervous since I was expecting large sums of money to pay...

On top of that; the on a role days continue ! This morning I plowed through all of the unfinished paperwork I had lying around for about a year (yeah I know, I suck at accounting business). Result; I found a boatload of extremely old drawings (drawings I made as a ten year old) and a bit more recent drawings. While I am the last one to say I am improving (hell, I still cannot see my own progress), looking at these images now made me realize I did come quite a way since then. No reason to just stop though, I still want to become better .

Also finally changed my address at some places that apparently didn't had my new address data... And the 2nd of April the dentist is going to have his way with my teeth again... How I hate those drills...

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17364023/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17364023/ Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:49:35 PDT
It is like everything I do is more or less futile, an automated process, because that is what the masses want. School assignments, work, my ambitions, and so on. It all feels like it is just nothing but a routine, something that needs to be done, in order to reach a certain goal. A goal I just cannot seem to find that interesting anymore, even though I know better than anyone else that that goal is more or less the destiny of practically every living creature.

Games, drawings, my other hobbies, even my contacts, I do not see the point to them. It is more like they are there just for the sake of it, because I have to have at least some of them. I just wish there was something that could challenge me. Something new, something different, something that would actually matter something.

Meh, I just do not feel like anything at the moment.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17017596/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/17017596/ Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:32:51 PST
Beginning last year, I started up a company in the Netherlands. It is nothing big, I only started it so that the work I did before for some developers would still be interesting for them. It seem that when you have a company you can bill them, and billing them apparantly is more profitable for them in terms of taxes.

Anyways, last year was an extremely slow year, I only earned about 100 euros. Fortunately, my lifestyle does not depend on this company, so that is a plus, it is just an extra parttime job to pay my study.

But recently that seems to have changed! Right now I have got 3 gamedesign assignments, of which 2 are almost ready, which will net me about 3000 euros! And thats without taxes!! Happy Days! It seems that this small vacation in Japan I was planning for this year seems doable .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16979081/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16979081/ Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:48:27 PST
I know, I know, for a publisher something like GDC is the perfect time to advertise, but that's exactly where I think it goes wrong. GDC is not meant to advertise your newest IPs or update with new details. You have the E3, Tokyo Gameshow and a crapload of other festivals for that. GDC is meant for developers, a convention that is supposed to be about swapping intellect, to listen to other experts to expand your own horizon as a game designer/developer. It is something for the guys who are going to create the games, not for the guys who are going to buy it. And it is one of the few that is actually so big developers over the whole world would come together to discuss. Way more few than festivals like E3 at least.

And yes, I know, there are still keynotes with interesting subjects still at hand, but still, it saddens me that GDC is becoming commercial; commercial to such a degree that even review sites are anticipating the GDC, and not for the lessons it could teach.

That being said, I still would like to go one of these years (maybe next year, maybe the year after that, at least once anyway), seeing as how I think this GDC might still be interesting. I just hope that by the time I can find it in my ability to go, it has not changed into E3 with a different name yet...

edit: on a sidenote; recently I have been into Contra 4 for the DS. A lot! The game is tough as nails; killing you off when you get hit, only once. And just when you thought the game had thrown everything it had at you and then some, you are proven wrong . The game is an instant game over screen and yet, I still love it! The whole over the top themes and enemies (riding on the turret of a rocket, dodging the beam engines for example) all scream macho, the whole thing being one big bullet fest. A fantastic game to unload some stress. Lets part-ay!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16492836/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16492836/ Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:49:40 PST
[link]

Now, because I wanted to read the article and then check the comments to see how our "diehard" community would suck this up, I read the complete article at escapistmagazine, and indeed, she had a lot of valid points, points I was already aware of before she started playing with her nephews. The gamers reacted just like I expected them to react; like they knew everything. It is funny to see how gamers can suddenly become gamedesigners if they only play games. If that were true, wouldn't every person who listened to music become musicians? Anyways,

For all of you who read this piece, or even the complete article, please do not make the mistake that she is telling about how we should create games for 3 year olds. Sure, it is an important part of the article, but it is more a reflection on what games nowadays are. In in that perspective, she is spot on.

To elaborate on the whole need for cutscenes; the kid who lost interest playing Jak and Daxter, because the intro cutscene was too long. The whole idea of having cutscenes has become quite a problem if you ask me. Do not get me wrong, having a cutscene every now and then is not bad, but these days cutscenes are used as easy design solutions for just about everything. When they first came into existence, they served the purpose of advancing the story, or forshadowing important events (even though many fore shadowing techniques have already been developed, techniques which are much more effective and much more interactive than cutscenes). Now, we use them for introduction movies, introduction of areas, conversations, any event however little it is, eye candy, even for ingame situations (the action triggers as used in RE4 and God of War), and so on. In other words, cutscenes have become the easy solution to difficult questions; how can we keep the gamer in the game, without interrupting it, but at the same time advancing the story or telling the player where he needs to go.

Curiously, some games have done an excellent job at trying to break this rhythm. While I have not played this game myself, I dare to say that Half Life 2 is a good example. It uses motion to attract attention to certain situations and in the case the player needs to listen to the story, the player can still walk away, and the characters telling the story stay interactive. There are several more techniques used. Sure, a major problem I found to be with episode 1 was that there was too much bull before you could finally take some action, but it was at least a step in the good direction. That is not all though, there are more than enough research techniques to find out where you have to put attention to in order to make certain areas, enemies, important objects noticeable, but unfortunately, these techniques cost money to use, and that is not something the developers are willing to pay, not as long as the diehard gamers keep accepting these easy ways of money.

There are so many ways to substitute cutscenes. To name a few fore shadowing techniques for example (fore shadowing, by the way, is the term for making the player know which way to go or what are points of interest. In 3D games it is common practice, because in a 3D world players are bound to loose their way and get frustrated. So, the player receives "hints" that tell him where to go next, while keeping the illusion intact that the player has a choice). A very effective technique that seems to work for the more dark and gritty games is the use of light. People are attracted to light places as opposed to dark places. When you make a certain area lighter than the other, gamers will most likely go for this area first. They might make the decision to deviate from this path, but the initial decision will always be the light. I think this might also work the same with hot and cold (although, this, I haven't proven yet). Same goes with moving objects. For example, when something runs past an open door, players are bound to enter that door first, as opposed to other entrances in the same area. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

I have seen gamers loose interest just because they had to watch too many cutscenes. Their reasons were all the same; too much movie. "If I want to watch a movie, I would have gone to the movies instead". And most of these gamers are long past the age of 3.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16386471/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16386471/ Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:13:39 PST
As for now, any of the 3D projects I was working on have been stalled, since my 3D program decided to quit all of a sudden due to a weird error having to do with my SATA RAID hard disc. Anyways, I am getting a new version as we speak, but since I will be needing more programs in order to export the 3D to flash, I am not sure I am going to get it to work (not to mention I need other exporters for school, of which I am also not sure it will work).

It stinks, that is for sure, but I am sure I might find a solution. someday...

That was it for now, I need to get back to get those programs to work again.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16254715/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16254715/ Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:17:26 PST This will be quite a read, so if you are one of the bunch who actually read the whole thing, I would love to know your opinion

Seeing as how I have autism and have spent almost my entire (conscious) life in institutions because of it, I feel like letting out some of the bullshit I have been going through, mainly caused by the ridiculous prejudice that exists towards autism. Ah well, I have learned to live with it and even use autism to my advantage so far, so this is not a journal to whine about how bad I have had it or something like that. I give the credits for that to other people who had it worse, which should be quite a lot.

Institutions help people like me coping with their "problems"

Unfortunately, I would love to say it did. Seeing as how I spent my life there, it would almost be like saying I didn't throw away all my life without having any choice, but I can't. While it may be a fact that in institutions there are people who have learned for it, these people are limited to the more "central" buildings. In fact, seeing these people, therapists and psychologists, more than once a year is more or less strange if you are just a youngster. At later age, you might get a decent therapy, teaching you about what you have and what you can do with it, but I can guarantee you that is more an exception to the rule.

The people who we have to spent our daily lives with are caretakers. Nothing more, nothing less. Some of them might have studied psychology at some point, but reality is most of them "just wanted to work with kids". One thing I can tell you; working with kids that have all kinds of disorders (think of kleptomania, pyromania, child rapists in the making, vandalists, and somewhere in between also some people with ADHD, autism and those kinds of labels) is not "working with kids". In fact, most of these people do not even get close to their pension and just get overworked and quit the whole job. It is common practice and something I have seen happen a lot. The only old geezers in an institution are mostly limited to the central buildings (there are exceptions though, but they are rare, very rare. In tens years of institution, I could only count one and even he left for room training, which is considerably less hard to take care off).

Anyway, because you are cooped with a wide array of different children with their problems, there is no way you can actually help them all, so each caretaker eventually falls in the same routine; stay in the office (a room for the caretakers alone), drink coffee, smoke and punish some kiddies when they are being noisy are have done something wrong. In a sense, this is mostly like the situation at home, minus the attachment of family, so kids with these kinds of disorders are not really helped in any way by putting them in an institution.

People with autism have no emotions

This is a more widely known thing, but just as false. Every person has emotion, it is how our body is built (yes, emotions are created through the body and is for each and every person the same. The reason why each and every person reacts differently is because each and every person is raised differently). However, as with almost every part of our body, we have to learn how to use it.

It is funny that people who actually know they have autism, are the only ones who actually believe they have no emotion. I for one at least thought that way once. The cause? Because I could not see the world as everyday Joe. I did not understand what the whole deal about family was, and why I should feel for anyone else beside myself. This led me into thinking I might not be capable of emotions, but fortunately a recent event made me think otherwise. It is not that I do not have any feeling, it is more or less that I never learned how to live with a family.

Yes, you have to learn with a family. Normally, each person learns that automatically, but in certain events, like when you are taken away from your family at a young age, it is only normal that feelings like these will not get developed. Granted, people with autism have harder difficulty learning to cope with emotions (in the way that we process information in another way), but under normal circumstances, we learn how to cope with our emotions and those who do will not even (or ever) know they have autism. It is like you have been living with your supposed to be family and suddenly hear at age 22 that you have been adopted and you father/mother live somewhere in the North. Even if you accept the fact of adoption and even if you reinstate contact between you and your biological parents, you will never feel for them the way you would have if they were a part of your entire life. At best, they might become friends for you, or even dear friends, but a real family they will never be, even if you are related by blood.

... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16023107/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/16023107/ Sat, 22 Dec 2007 14:59:13 PST edit: Now with link at the bottom of this journal!

I love it when I see a console that not only tries something, but succeeds with it. I love it even more when a console like that succeeds on more fields they could ever hope for. It gives future game developers new opportunities, since a fad like this is only begging to get "me-too'ed" by other companies, thus expending the innovation or even renewing it altogether.

Yesterday morning I saw an extremely interesting article in the local newspaper. It was about the Wii and how it was already being implemented in hospitals for use and in home for elderly in order to get them to work out. I don't know about you, but I think this is absolutely awesome. Not only do we get people to play games that formerly would not even get close to a console (which is old news, as that was Nintendo's strategy after all), but we also see the implementation of games and consoles in environments formerly unreachable; namely everything else except people's homes. Before you know it, schools will be invaded and learning will get that much more effective.

Then, later yesterday, I saw an extremely interesting article. Someone had apparently written a piece of software to be used together with the Wiimote. The wiimote would be attached to a stand, aiming at the projection of a beamer (with windows on it, and later also some sort of art program). The program written for the wiimote essentially turned that which was projected into a touch screen! I saw someone operating windows from a wall, and later drawing on that same wall. A little later in the same article I saw something Apple was flashing with a little while ago; an interface that relied only on touch, where you could drag windows with your hands, decrease and increase its size and stuff like that. For those who saw Minority Report; think of the functionality of the screen Tom Cruise was accessing when figuring out the clues of the 3 puppets with clairvoyance. Of course, I know this functionality is not limited to Nintendo alone (nor do I want to give Nintendo all the credit for it, since it was already being researched), but the fact that people are using a game machine for something entirely else (and successfully at that too) is pretty damn awesome if you ask me. There are more things being done with the Wii than just this (in the Netherlands, they have also started talking about the first WiiJs (DJs using the Wii for their job) among other things.

As a proof, something I found in the forums here (something I never expected to happen, considering the quality of discussions there): [link]

This is what I call true next gen. Not just 3D, but the actual feeling of being part of the world itself. The Wii might not be the powerhouse the other two are, but this is something the other two cannot possibly do without a crapload of extra equipment the consumers have to buy. This system (I know, it might not be unique, but now it could at least be affordable; just another peripheral) could actually give practically any first person game a boost in terms of gameplay and immersion. Damnit, I am already starting to think of game concepts for it!

This is exactly one of the reasons why I want to be a game designer .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15817799/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15817799/ Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:33:55 PST
Anyways, I feel like ranting (sort of) about games again. This time, I am going to split it up in pieces.

Are games art?

Well, first we should get clear what art really is. Since not even scientists know the true meaning of art anymore, and the meaning of art is sort or less different from person to person, I am not going to try and make the absolute definition of art, but what I think comes close to what most people refer to as art.

First of all, the conception that art is visual is wrong. Musicians, poets, authors for example can be considered artists by many people, yet they do not rely on visual creations in order to create their "art". That you might envision something visual is alright, but it still does not make these visual in the end, and if paintings can be referred to as art, music for example should also be referred to as art. But if art is not visual, than what exactly is art?

I think art is a keen manipulation of the senses, emotions and instincts. Far as long humanity has existed, humanity has based their entire existence on these things. After all, they make us feel good, as the human body seems to be programmed to steer us in the right direction by producing natural drugs to make us feel good. Learning, surviving (partnership that comes from it), even aggression. When we do this successfully, we feel good. Art makes use of that. We make use of the senses to stimulate the brain (or, in other words, we use art as a means of enriching ourselves. Learning, in short). Going from here with this definition, I can conclude games can be called art. However, not because of visual flair.

Games add an unique element, interactivity, which actually seems to be a extremely powerful tool of learning (and hereby I mean learning in the broadest sense of the word, meaning that even getting a better score or better technique at some brawler is considered to be learning). After all, when we play a game and we are good at it while still providing a level of challenge (or; we can still learn from it), we like the game. Is the game too difficult, we get frustrated, because we cannot learn anything due to difficulty, and quit the game and when it is too easy, we find no challenge with the game and do not like it as a result.

Therefore, when we only concentrate on the visual flair of a game to consider it art, we are in actuality under appreciating games. Games are not a medium that should be enjoyed on a level like that, but on another level. It is the same as saying that poetry is not art unless there are pictures in the book. So, I finally got myself a description of how I consider games to be art which I support . And, in this sense, we can finally start calling games like tetris art, which is something this game actually deserves.

Violence in games

As with any medium, games are heavily under fire from parents, authorities, and so on because they could be violent to the little ones. While I absolutely disagree with anyone saying that games make violent because there is violence in them, I also absolutely disagree with anyone who denies any accusations of games, because the accusation has something about violence. Okay, I know this sounds weird, but what I want to say is that gamers should not immediately brush off anything telling about violence in games, but rather have an open mind to it and judge it for what it is worth.

Recently, it seems finally some more quality research is popping up, research that actually goes further than just "I researched my baby brother and I have concluded...", but there is also very little quality research, so it might take another while before we actually know whether games cause or do not cause violence (I also do not think we are ready to uncover the whole truth for any medium, seeing as how we still do not understand the human psyche completely, but that is another thing).

Anyway, which I think is a fact, from the beginning when games started to get popular, we concentrated on conveying emotions. Especially in recent years, we have added quite a deep emotional level in a game. The player wants to feel drama, wants to feel comedy, wants to be mesmerized by (fantasy) worlds. In other words, the player wants to be emotionally involved with the game. He wants to feel for the characters, and feel bad when one of the characters disappear. But we do not... ]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15718122/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15718122/ Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:13:13 PST . And, finally, this weekend, I have the JLPT yonkyuu test.

I have been studying hard, as much as I could at least (I do not have the the feelings Japanese for buys people learns you enough basics to pass even the easiest test, but as soon as this test is over I am going to get myself the good books). Kanji is okay (know about 140 of them, but I am itching to learn more), grammar is kind of okay and I certainly hope my reading proficiency is kind of okay as well. As for listening, well, lets hope that the anime I watched had at least some effect. I did the exercise test, barely passed it, so I am kinda nervous right now...

Anyway, for something funny. Me and Bluemonika (who is far ahead of me by the way) both did not know how to get to the school giving the test (its in Dusseldorf). I have been informing, trying to get into contact with the school and find German route explanations, but nothing really helpen. My limited knowledge of German surely didn't help either (don't get me wrong, I can understand it quite well and speak it a little, but my writing experience has diminished since I left middle school). Fortunately (stupid I didn't think of it earlier), we have a German at the place of my internship, so I asked him.

Not only did he find a German route generator within 2-3 minutes, he also found the way... which is "walk 4 minutes from the station to school"... All those worries for nothing... But I am happy to at least know the way . So, see you next week with a journal detailing how much I failed (which is probable, even though I get the results in March or April next year).

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15688727/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15688727/ Tue, 27 Nov 2007 04:16:19 PST
Anyways, then I will write about something that recently caught my attention:

I have rekindled my interest in children book illustrations, or other illustrations like it that seem to convey more emotion and skill than many of the artwork I see today (with that, I am referring to the more imaginative kind of illustrations, not the extremely simplified ones like Nijntje (or Mifi, as I believe it is called in the rest of the world?)). These days, it seems to be a trend that everything has to look as realistic or technically advanced as possible (at least on devart), or just be a part of some popularity based scene (naruto fanart, the whole amuria thing, etcetera). Everything other than that seems to fail beforehand.

However, while I have seen many styles and great technical skills, most of the artists I have seen missed one major point in their drawings; the sheer emotion and imagination behind it. Great pieces, but dead ones. Absolutely no atmosphere. But apparently it works for the major crowd, who are easily wowed by pretty graphics with no real substance and thats most probably why they keep drawing the same piece over and over again, with no absolutely no sense of improvement between any of the pictures (kudos by the way to the artists who are willing to try and evolve).

Children illustrations seem to be different. In the past few days I have realized how difficult these drawings are to make. Drawings are easily "too much" and the whole concept of "more is bore" is very important for this particular group. However, the power not only lies in the simplicity of these drawings, but in the emotions they convey. The drawings may be innocent or cute, but at least they invoke more feelings from me than those other pieces of art ever did. The whole term "kiddy" is in my humble opinion nothing but the sad attempt of people trying to be "cool" by rejecting everything that could tie them to something aimed at younger children (this, as a matter of fact, can also be seen in the gaming industry). Well, it is their loss really.

As someone who would like to call himself an artist (not for bragging rights by the way), I can find much respect for people that are able to create really imaginative pieces meant for children. They have more knowledge of art than a lot of other more mainstream artists, because they think beyond the need for "whooh, this looks pretty". They need to use everything in the book to catch the attention of children, things that you can only do when you have a thorough understanding of the effects of things like composition, color and other elements. That is at least what I think.

I think that more artists should try their hand at an illustration meant for children. I know I am going to try it, and I am absolutely sure it will be one hell of a learning experience. Branching out will surely shed some new light on the art you are currently making, and heck, if you are lucky it might even evolve your artwork. After all, doing something completely different will truly make you think outside of that box.

edit: thanks to asumoth, I corrected some mistakes I made. I missed a few vital points I wanted to convey.

On a sidenote: I am getting more and more disappointed with the students in the Netherlands, especially those living by themselves . I mean, a while ago I was told "I can cut vegetables extremely well". What the hell? Cutting up vegetables should be easy, so I thought she was just exaggerating a bit. That was, until last week and today...

I actually felt sorry for the tomatoes that were doomed, as they never have looked more crappy. Last week, the tomatoes were reduced to mush, this week they seemed cut up randomly (last week they didn't have very sharp knives, but this week they had). The tomatoes were quite firm, and I could cut up the tomatoes easily using the least sharp knife in the kitchen. If you cannot even cut up vegetables, how are you supposed to be able to cook? By the way, at least one of these two are living by themselves... I am starting to think I did something wrong by trying to develop myself so I could support myself (and an eventual partner) to the best of my abilities.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15584302/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15584302/ Tue, 20 Nov 2007 00:58:49 PST
Well, the joke was on him, because it would be more effective trying to get a wall to give in than me, a convinced atheist. Anyways, since I had to wait for the train for another 20 minutes, I let him have his fun as he tried to convince me to convert to his religion. While his attempt was, of course, a failure, he mentioned some interesting points that makes me even more convinced of being atheist.

First of all, I have many reasons why I am an atheist, too many to explain. Lets just say that in my 23 years I have been through more than many people experience in their entire lifetime, so I have decided to take the backseat and watch everything from afar. You can call me neutral, you can call me whatever you want, but I have found this to be the best way to find out why we do what we do (and, as you might have suspected, so far I have not done very bad at all). I do not like to be biased towards one thing, and being part of some religion would make me biased. I look at all religions equally, and I have respect for what these people believe in, but I am clearly not a believer myself.

One of the things I noticed was the fact that no matter what I said, he wouldn't take no for an answer. It reminded me a bit of a review of a book about various reasons why America would invade Irak. Of course, oil being one of them, but thats not the point here. One reason mentioned in the book was that America was so fond of its own system of democracy, that it wanted to share this splendor with the countries they deemed were needy. Irak in this case. Sure, the democracy may have worked for America, but Irak is now utterly destroyed at a level that physical destruction cannot even compare. This way of spreading ideology seemed very like that of that man yesterday night. He seemed to be so convinced of what worked for him, that he automatically thought it would work for everyone, without looking past his own personal bubble and see the world for what it is; humans are different from each other. Well, I didn't mention this to him, I don't think it would have worked anyway, but it is funny to see how such conviction can actually lead to disaster if the scale in which it happens is a little bit bigger. The book by the way was by a scientist, who knew what he was talking about, and he made some very interesting points, leading me to believe that he is not that far off from the truth. Humans are simple creatures after all.

Another is that I came to the conclusion that either he, or the whole religion in itself was nothing but egoistic. Since I do not like to discriminate an entire religion based on the experience of what one man says, I say the man was the egoist, and not the religion. Many sugarcoated words turned out to be no more than; as long as I apologize to Jesus, I can do whatever I want to do. Wow, how is that for egoism, using the concept of one man, considered holy by many, to do whatever you want to do, just to ease your own mind. It kind of takes away the meaning behind "sinning" doesn't it?

Another thing he raised was that we apparently we are all born in sin, and that we lead this life to make up for that sin. First of all, I don't like the fact that we have to suffer from something two goof balls in the past did (according to a book at least, which is something I doubt as well, but thats another discussion). Also, the way he put it, it seemed that people who suffered more than other people, are apparently more evil than the other (since they have more sins to suffer for). Well, given the fact that just in my family alone are more than enough people who do not deserve to suffer the way they did, and at the same time there are people in my family who should suffer into eternity and even beyond that, I find it hard to place my faith in a religion that seems kind of unfair to people. When I mentioned the term of equal to him (as far as I have been thought as a good little kid, God treats all humans like equal) he indirectly denied this being equal thing (although later he admitted to it, denied it again and then admitted to it again, and so on).

Anyways, it took away the 20 boring minutes waiting for the train, and it was interesting for as long it lasted, but he lost the discussion and he knew it . These are moments I live for ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15562436/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15562436/ Sun, 18 Nov 2007 12:35:16 PST . Well, not like I care, parents hating me would actually be a compliment, hehehehehe.

Anyway, obviously, I am not just all talk. In fact, I have several concepts I am working out, one that focuses entirely on a new form of gameplay, giving the existing genre a boost of interest (I am creating a platform game that is quite original and so far it seems the idea is not bad. In fact, the reactions of people I prototyped it to (in words, not actual working gameplay models) seemed highly interested and quite enthusiastic.

Of course, whether the concept will eventually work is still a question. One of the bad sides of gamedesign is that design (especially by people who haven't had the experience (or much of it at least) of translating the games to reality) may work well on paper, but can actually fail rather miserably in reality. In the end, a game is nothing more than the product of all it's sums, and gamedesign is only a part of it (albeit a big one).

The second one, who evolved from a side project in flash, to a kind of ambitious project in whatever thing can keep up with the game, to a game that wants to break with all conventions, by breaking the border between dream and reality, is currently my most prized one actually. In the past few weeks I have researched tons of things (I am not even close to what I want), but with what I have found out, I can bring gaming to a level that many would never think possible. Think for example of NPCs falling in love with the player. Not just in terms of switching a sentence off and on in the code, but actual "feelings" of love, which are born through forms of interaction and can disappear just as easily. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. If this system works out, I might be able to mimic human behavior (for as far the human brain has been analyzed) at a level that puts other games to shame.

Well, that is all for now. The animation is still progressing rather nicely. I was finally able to replace all redundant keys this weekend (I had to replace the old style with the new) and although there are still some flaws with it, those are minor and easily taken care off. But, what is most important, this means I am now finally beyond the point I was at before, and now I am actually making progress. Although I am not expecting it to be up before Valentine next year (hey, I still got more than 2/3 to go), but at least I have the motivation to continue and the goal to work for.

Thats all for now folks!

(on a sidenote, Mario Galaxy rocks! Although it is way to ridiculously easy. I have played for two days in time, and I have already collected 100 of the 120 stars. Ow yeah, fun fact is that I had the game 2 days before any of my other fellow Dutchmen had, and that I had already beat the game at the point "Mario Galaxy Get" started appearing in MSN names. Take that Biatches . Har Har Har!)

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15463169/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15463169/ Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:46:24 PST
Well, lot of things happened (one of them being the sole purpose of the animation disappearing), but I managed to pick it up again, only this time to get it finished. Sure, it will still take a while, but right now the animation is going better than it has been in a while.

The main problem was the style. While I had the overall style down, the characters I made somehow kept turning out to be too cute. Well, too cute for this animation at least, where the message is a serious one and cute was the last thing I needed. On top of that, while the overall style was okay, something bothered me, which turned out to be an overuse of the textures.

Anyone who has seen the prelude to animation for this one, knows that as a means of coloring this particular animation, I am using patterns. However, while the initial idea of using patterns to support the animation was not bad, it turned out I was using way too many of them, resulting in the whole thing getting too hard on the eyes.

On top of that, the characters showed emotion. Which is an absolute no for this animation, as the emotions will only lead to an answer in the end (I am using a poem to tell the story. The poem in combination with the animation proposes a question, but the question must remain unanswered. Having the characters show emotion will also be responsible for giving an indirect answer). So I had to switch styles again.

The main problems were; how could I remove emotion and make only the act and the poem self important, while keeping true to the style without creating overkill, keeping the size of the whole deal within a minimum and at the same time making sure that I could produce this animation quicker as it had been going, with smoother (and less shaky) animation. Fortunately, all of these points were addressed by making one decision; adding silhouettes.

By converting the characters and several other (animated) objects into silhouettes with white outlines, the problem apparently was solved. Combine that with traditional cellshaded 3D where the silhouettes kick in, and you have quite smooth animation. Thanks to the silhouettes idea I have now emotionless characters, characters that seem more serious, more easy animation, better animation, reduction of pattern use (not only removing strain from the eye, but also giving the silhouettes more focus) and because the amount of patterns used is considerably less, my file right now is about 2 MB smaller than it used to be, and I haven't even removed every pattern that is too much (considering the previous file was about 5,5 MB big already (just 500 frames worth of keyframes), 2 MB is quite a change).

So, you can say this project has picked up again. I finally got new motivation to work on it, have found good techniques and the style is finally, FINALLY exactly the way I pictured it now. Now onto hoping this means the animation will be finished quite soon...

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15400670/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15400670/ Wed, 07 Nov 2007 03:00:21 PST
This is about the PS3 (currently at least). As we all know, next gen gaming has been identified, by most more hardcore gamers, as something that needs to look pretty, bordering on realism, sporting technologies as the latest pixel/vector shaders, normal mapping, and whatever more advanced/new technique is fad (I beg to differ as I think that graphics are not the only thing that determines next gen, but thats another point of discussion). However, this demand for these technologies led, of course, to more expensive production cycles. Just think about it; compare a game of last gen with one of current gen and even my brother could tell you which one is more expensive to make (and he is twelve).

I was reading the newspaper this morning and saw a small add for Ratchet and Clank Tools of destruction which is, in my opinion, so far the only game for the PS3 worth of owning a PS3 (of course, I am not going to spend about 400 euros just for one game that is interesting). The game looks good and apparently does very well with the critics. Then I saw the pricetag. 75 euros (about 100 dollars)!!

For Europeans and more specifically fellow Dutchmen who play games, we know that the average price of a game last gen (for PS2) was 50-60 euro, depending on who developed it. For some reason, games like ratchet and jack and daxter generally were sold for 50. Now suddenly that very same Ratchet game (which, by the way, is just a prettier looking ratchet game, so gamedesign wise the game is not that much different from its predecessors) is 25 euros more expensive. Even if we go from the old 60 euro pricetag, this is still an increase of 25%(!).

I can see this happening for other big budget titles as well. Gaming according to current next gen standards has just become a little more hardcore. After all, next gen gaming needs next gen budgets as well, and since the time and effort that needs to be spent for a game is increasing exponentially, there is no reason why the price tag shouldn't follow that same example. I can see it happening that the longer both the consoles are on the market, the more money needs to be spent to awe players, en the more the price tag may rise. If it weren't for the graphically inferior Wii, it would have been a dark generation of gaming for starting developers and gamers alike.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15372795/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15372795/ Mon, 05 Nov 2007 07:01:39 PST
Anyways, for those of you who follow my work and know of the comic (currently only 3 pages) with an original story, also know that I have not created a page since like forever. I have decided to drop the whole comic idea for now, and instead work out the story in text. Expect some "poetry" to pop up in my gallery soon, although I cannot say it will be the next Shakespeare (hey, it is my first story I am working out).

Also, I think I might be able to start commenting on some of you again, which is highly needed, seeing as how my comments lacked the previous months. Well then, I am gone, back to work (internship).

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15288228/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/15288228/ Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:31:09 PDT
My internet was also down the past few days thanks to a faulty configuration (you gotta love the irony; the instructions for making your modem (and as such your internet connection) work can be found on the... internet! Wow, talking about being smart...).

For the rest; still pretty depressed, way too damn busy and therefore not very able to do anything except the occasional sketch, so while I am finally getting able to view your works again, commenting on them is going to take a little while longer... Sorry for being so distant .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14727030/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14727030/ Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:50:26 PDT
If you are someone "suffering" from autism like me and get the extremely bright idea to check what books there are on autism; don't.

There is one major thing connecting all those books together, a common trait shared by all; they are solely meant to destroy what little self confidence you seem to have while being someone with autism. All these books seem to go about how tough it is to raise kids with autism, and about how much difficulty they will have in life. And to the people themselves; what bad characteristics they have and how hard it will be for us to fit into the "normal" world.

Sometimes it seems like people with autism are the root of all evil. After all, we only make it difficult for people, and do not have anything good as a merit for that. Well; I am going to write a book about autism and it will be the shortest book ever:

Your little runt has autism? PWND!!

Best. Book. Ever.

Seriously, it seems all we have is bad characteristics, like we are some flaw of nature or something like that. I am glad I had someone explain to me what it REALLY is, and that it is not necessarily a bad thing to have. But geez, is there no one who actually dares to write about the pro's of autism? To make matters worse; everyone without autism actually thinks this is the right way to treat these people.

I do not know about other people with autism, but I can sure as hell guarantee you that I did not want to be alive after my years of specialized institution (yet another great autism only thing; being on your own starting your 7th year! wow! awesome! I seriously own everyone who is wanting to live by themselves and who's parents don't even let them leave f they are 18). The only thing they did in this institution is tell you how bad autism is. Did they ever tell me it actually has pros? Nope, not once in those 11 years I was forced to stay cooped between all sorts of maniacs (child rapists in the making, people who seriously think they are god, etcetera). No, instead, I kept blaming everything on autism, and hating myself for having it, wishing I could be normal like any other person, day after day. Ow yeah, this treatment as absolutely fine!

I hope these "scientists" will someday try to make clear to these people that having autism is not a way of saying "please commit suicide, the world is better of without you". Yay for being someone with autism .

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14725737/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14725737/ Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:40:15 PDT
Every now and then, a game comes out and immediately everyone starts dubbing it as art. Great of course, were it not for the fact that the reason they consider this game art is actually not a reason why you should consider a game art (mind the keyword here: game). True, I will immediately admit the game looks pretty. Some things could have been done better; like making the texture size everywhere in the same proportions, as it is clear that some objects clearly did not get as much attention, but for the rest; this game sports some impressive shaders and has a nice style (pop art). However, this is also immediately the reason everyone is screaming art...

For the gazillionth time; graphics do not make a game art immediately. If that were the case, we can just start dubbing any game art; as graphically wise there will always be someone to like it. Would you consider Fifa to be art? If we are going from the graphics point of view, then yes, as there are people bound to like the graphics of Fifa. But then, what does make a game art going from my point of view?

Gameplay. Now, gameplay is a very broad concept. It relies mostly on a good gamedesign, an even better coding, but in the end, gameplay is more or less a experience created through the use of many factors; music, graphics, controls, (sometimes) story, etc. Gameplay is extremely difficult to describe. However, I still think this is the main thing that can make games art. Then why do I think Bioshock should not be considered art? Very simple; apart from the graphics and style, bioshock does nothing, absolutely NOTHING, to improve the genre. Instead, it is yet another first person shooter in a genre that has been done so many times, the term "being done to death" does not even remotely describe it. And even in this genre, Bioshock does nothing to improve; it does not even attempt to. Bioshock brings narrating elements to a new level? Complete bullshit; the system used to tell the story can already been found in 6-7 year old games and I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who could find an even earlier example. But the story is good? Yeah, were it not for the fact that there are a gazillion books and movies out with a much more impressive story. Because that is essentially what Bioshock tries to be; an interactive movie.

Then, what FPS would I call art? Normally, for the FPS genre, I am really hesitant to call anything art, as the FPS market is overly saturated (for small time developers, it is more or less suicide to try and traverse on this market; as there are so many titles (coming out)). However, if I must call a FPS game art, it would be metroid prime 3. Not because I am a Nintendo fanboy (I still think they should concentrate more on actually innovating, instead of releasing the same old crap in a slightly new jacket), but because they honestly tried to bring console shooters to a new level. They could never replace the mouse, but they made most of the new control scheme and created something that could actually be played on a console. And that is a first; as analog sticks are not very effective when it comes to FPS on consoles. Auto-aim kind of takes the fun out of FPS games...

Anyway, back to Bioshock. I find it ridiculous to call this game art. Sure, it is pretty and sure, it can also be fun, but to label it as art just because it uses pop art style? No way.

And for all of those people still saying it is hard to innovate in the game market; think harder. I have already got a whole slew of games that are new, and a few of these games are potentially able to change the entire way some genres work. I do not mean to brag; I only mean to say that innovation for a market as young as the game market is not very difficult; as long as you are actually thinking about it. Do not give up before you even start; we are going to be the ones to make the new generation games.

Think out of the box? Why don't we just pretend there is no box to begin with?

PS: do not get me wrong; Bioshock is by no means a bad game. They put a lot of time in designing and making this game, and that can be seen while playing the game. The game should not be considered art, but it is still a good game nevertheless.

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14640019/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14640019/ Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:18:33 PDT
]]> ~Crimson-diabloS http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14419161/ http://Crimson-diabloS.deviantart.com/journal/14419161/ Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:24:19 PDT
Anyways, feeling quite sad at the moment. My pen pall, who visited me this time (I went to her in Japan earlier this year ) and stayed for 12 days, has left me an empty hole. So, I am quite down, without the luxury to feel down (deadlines)... It were a fantastic 12 days, but the feeling afterwards (hopelessness) is what makes it so hard...

On a brighter sidenote, thanks to her my interest in Japanese has become more fierce, so fierce I actually requested an application form for this year's JLPT! And the best thing is: I WAS ON TIME!! . Well, on time... I have the application form now, but I need to study like hell before the December the 2nd, as the test will be held that day. For all of you who do not know; the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) is a way of measuring your skill concerning the language and, as far as I know, having a high level will help greatly in finding a job in Japanese industry. Of course, I am going for the easiest test, but we have to start somewhere, ey? And maybe next year I can take the test for the next level, if I for some reason manage to pass. Too bad the test is only held once each year... Anyways, this means I have finally set myself a goal concerning learning this language and, for those of you who know me a little, setting a goal for me is much more effective than just learning it and hoping I improve somewhere along the road.

Ow, for those people also interested in learning Japanese, I finally found a site which has a ludicrous amount of study aids, including some very handy books concerning the how of Kanji, preparation tools for the JLTP (each level), many studybooks (including the Genki series, which for some reason keep get recommended to me) and electronic dictionaries! They are a bit pricey with some of their tools, but it was the first time I found a site with so many resources, and also the first time in a while that I felt obliged to place an order.

Earlier this week I also got the scare of my life. A while ago (somewhere in March) I started my own company, under the name of Studio Crimson. But since I also had to move around that time, things got a little mixed up, along with some important tax papers. Those papers came back to haunt me this week; as I received a fine of about 4500 euro (about 5750 dollar)! Well, it was not really a fine, but more like an estimate. If the Dutch tax agency does not receive my quarterly figures, they make an estimate. Going from that estimate they fine me taxes. Needlessly to say, this estimate is normally horribly high, explaining why I suddenly needed to pay that ludicrous sum of money, since I have not earned a penny yet (hey, I just started). Fortunately, as it turns out, they do this to scare people into filing their numbers so right now I am rushing like hell to make sure I do not have to pay. Jup, they scared me, and they scared me good. I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I saw that sum of money .

But I love my company so far. Not for the reason that I am much more easy to work with now (I can bill people!), but because the Dutch tax agency have a really neat system where you can get certain costs you made refunded if they fall in certain categories. Lucky for me, study costs fall in this category, so when I order study aids for Japanese and can make it sound like it is a part of my current study (which it is), I can sort or less use the tax I have to pay for these goals. Thanks to that, the order I mentioned above just got 10 euros cheaper; and when I reel in bigtime, I can buy study aids for several hundreds of dollars. And no, it is not fraud! It is completely legit! I love business .

And now, vacation is almost over. Slaving for TNT is in the past, school is about to restart (or more precisely, my internship, so I am going to make veeeery long days) and thanks to my pen pall, the need to try and be more healthy has increased, so I am also thinking of going to the gym again (which is really needed, as my job/hobby involves only computers, which is not exactly the epitome of sports). And I have rediscovered tea! Herbal tea without sugar to be precise!

]]> ~Crimson-diabloS