Particles - It's What I Do

Hey, everyone. If you haven't been following my blog or haven't looked at the "about me" section on the side of the page, I am a Game Design student at SCAD. This also means that I make games, but I haven't really posted anything about that on the blog yet...so...why not start now, eh?


Over the past month, I've been helping with a senior project that a few of my friends were doing. We were making a mobile game using UDK. My job on the team was the Technical Artist. As the Technical Artist, I was in charge of some of the more complex materials like water and others that involve glowing, moving, pulsing, or anything else really cool. Along with that, I was also in charge of the particles in the game. Particles are basically the special effects in a game including fire, water spraying, explosions, and other similar things. Rather than describe all of these, I have posted a video of the particles I did to make it more interesting.



Also, Dead Island releases on the 6th...which is actually in about an hour. And that's when it unlocks on Steam. I am personally pretty excited about the game because its a zombie game on a tropical island. Since tropical islands are awesome and zombies are fun to kill, this game sounds like it might be promising. But you can't judge a game until you have played it, so I will post later with my review of it.


Another thing that needs to be pointed out is a new "project" I'm going to be working on over the next few weeks or so. It can be found here http://thezombievacationjournal.blogspot.com/ . So keep an eye on that page for an update in the near future.


That's all I have for now. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to let me know in the comments. Also be sure to follow the blog and twitter. Thanks for reading and happy gaming!

Owning Words?

Hey, everyone. To start off with, I would like to remind everyone of Dead Island coming out in about two weeks. The trailer's are making it look like plenty of good zombie-slaying action, which is two thumbs up from me. Another few upcoming games I want to mention are Stronghold 3, Battlefield 3, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Bethesda, the company developing Skyrim, is actually the main course of this post. I'm sure if you have read any previous posts of mine, you can see that I'm a fan of Minecraft. The endless digging in hopes of finding something other than dirt and stone never seems to get old. And recently, Bethesda (the owners/developers of The Elder Scrolls Series) are trying to sue Mojang for making a game that they plan to call Scrolls.

I personally think this is ridiculous! To me, it sounds like a big company is getting jealous or feeling threatened because of a smaller company and is looking for a way to calm their nerves. Mojang has even specifically stated that their future game is not related to The Elder Scrolls Series in any way.

That's all that I have for today. I just hope that everything works out fine with both companies. I have nothing against either company and think that this is all just a big misunderstanding. I, myself, respect both companies and their games and wish the best for both companies in the long run. Good luck to both sides.

There's not too much other news going on right now that I feel everyone should know about. If you want to share some news, please do so in the comments at the bottom of this post. Also, let me know what you guys think about this whole situation between Bethesda and Mojang in the comments. Until next time, happy gaming!

Interesting Trailer

Hey, everyone. Normally I would talk for a while in this section but I'm just going to skip to the meat and potatoes of this post because it's just that good.

Cinematics in games are getting better and better all the time. BioWare is a company that has been making their games cinematic for a long time. And cinematic trailers have been around long enough to have advanced to the point of almost being movie trailers.

Usually cinematic trailers get me interested in or really excited for a game (even though the actual gameplay will look completely different). However, it is rare that a trailer, cinematic or not, can evoke such emotions as this trailer. You are probably confused right now, but just watch it and you will understand. Please note that this video is a bit graphic and emotional.

Note: I do not own this trailer, nor do I claim to.

From what I have read, my thought's on this game are similar to everyone's. Part of me thinks this game will be really emotional and will make me think for a while after playing it, but another part of me thinks that it will be an awesome, tropical, Zombieland vacation with plenty of fun zombie-slaying action.

The developers really did their homework on this trailer, though. If you will notice, they want the viewer to just watch and think that these people are all just survivors, while still leaving a little bit of confusion about their identity. Then they really make sense of it all at the end. This is how they give the viewer that lasting emotional effect that will stay on your mind for a little while. If they had showed that these survivors were a happy family on vacation at the beginning of the trailer, the viewer would have been sad but only for the length of the video...maybe a little longer. By putting it at the end, they allow the viewer to just watch the trailer and then think about what they saw instead of thinking about it while they watched.

Did the developers go overboard with the presentation of the trailer? I don't think so. They took a risk and presented it a bit differently than what we normally see. And their risk was rewarded with a lot of publicity, which is something every developer wants. This just shows that sometimes risks need to be taken to get something quickly.

What did you think of the trailer? Tell me your thoughts on the whole matter. As always, thanks for reading my blog. If you have any suggestions, I'm always open to ways I can improve my blog. If you have any questions about anything, please feel free to leave me a comment and I will try to answer it. Also, be sure to follow me on Twitter.