Ouch, My Souls
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Ouch, My Souls

by Reed on March 2, 2011 at 7:52 am
Posted In: Comic, Video Games

I’ve been slowly working my way through Demon’s Souls, Atlus’s third person Action/RPG on the PS3, for a couple of weeks now.  I really want to like this game, so much so that I keep coming back to it like some self-loathing masochist, even after throwing the controller across the room in a fit of technocidal rage. I actually threw the controller. I’ve been playing video games all my life and had never succumbed to such a fit.

I keep coming back because the “Game of the Year” and “RPG of the Year” awards make me feel like there’s something wrong with me if I don’t like the game.  The 5 star, 9.5-out-of-10 reviews tell me I should enjoy being immersed in this frustrating binary prison of recurrent death.

One might argue that I’m simply bad at the game, and maybe that’s true.  Unfortunately, I like being good at the things I do, so that leaves me coming back for more, wondering if maybe I could tweak this or approach the challenge from a different angle. This tweaking and changing of play style leads to tweaked and changed methods of excruciating character death, as I see hours of playtime and soul collecting wiped away in a single misstep.

Don’t get me wrong.  All those hot reviews and awards are certainly deserved. It’s a beautiful game. Or at least I’m pretty sure it’s a beautiful game.  The sections of levels I see as I run back and forth between the Nexus and my bloodstain look beautiful.  The pictures that I see online as I search for why I keep dying a gruesome, premature death are stunning. There certainly is an unexplainable allure that has me itching to pop in the disk even as I write about the vexation that awaits me if I do. But hey, maybe if I use a longsword instead of a scimitar on that last enemy, I’ll be able to get back to my bloodstain and regain some of my lost souls, if not the lost hours spent playing this game…

 

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Discussion (2) ¬

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  1. Mike Lottes
    Mike Lottes
    March 7, 2011 at 7:18 pm | # | Reply

    Nice, I loved that game, but I found it got a little boring towards the late game. A lot of the same stuff, running around trying to maybe collect some materials to make a better weapon. Most of the baddies become pushovers when you get good gear, and then the few that are a problem are sort of like puzzles. Difficult until you learn their patterns.

    • Reed
      Reed
      March 8, 2011 at 2:53 pm | # | Reply

      Hey Mike, I see you’ve found my new site! Thanks for dropping by and giving your two cents. I just put Demon’s Souls back in the mail and am hoping Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood comes next. If it does, the next post gaming post is sure to be on that game.

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Fiction: Paper Flowers (Pt 1)

by Reed on March 4, 2011 at 3:06 pm
Posted In: Blog, Writing

On a backlit neon city street, I struggled to clear my mind of its alcoholic stain. I hung my head, watching the cracks in the pavement slide beneath my feet. I was glad to hang my head because the buzzing pink tubes burned my eyes like whiskey, and I had to squint to keep the tears from forming. That was another reason I was happy to be looking at the cracks in the sidewalk as I hunched my way down the street.

My eyes.

I hate people looking in my eyes when I’m drunk. It makes me feel like I’m inferior or something. Really, it’s just me being paranoid, like the other person would care that I got a little carried away drinking alone on a Friday night. But that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

If it were raining I wouldn’t bother hanging my head because everyone else would be. That always cracks me up, seeing people running through the rain with their shoulders hunched all over, like they’re gonna avoid getting wet that way.

I always pretend it isn’t raining, even when it’s really pissing down. The more it’s raining and the harder the wind’s blowing, the more I pretend like the sun’s shining and the slower I walk to let everybody know that I’m not bothered by the rain like they are. But really I hate the rain. I only like the idea of not hating the rain, and that’s why I don’t hide from it. There’s nothing I like more than walking in the rain and pretending I don’t hate every goddamn second of it.

It wasn’t gonna rain, though. If anything, it looked like the fog might come in again.

Before I moved to the city, the fog was romantic. I imagined sitting up early in the morning with a mug of over-steeped Earl Grey tea, watching the fog roll in through the Gate and over the city like a comforter. I didn’t imagine myself lost, stumbling through the streets, drunk as hell. One week living in the city and I was already sick of the fog.

I was trying to find my way back to my appartment, but I’d just moved to the city and I didn’t know my way around all that well. All I wanted to do was crash on my futon and sleep the booze off, but I was just sober enough to admit to myself that I had no idea where the hell I was. That’s what really got me; it pissed me off more than those goddamn neon lights. I’ve always been pretty good at finding my way around. I almost never need a map, and if I’ve been somewhere a couple times, I can usually find my way back without a problem. I’m not boasting or anything, it’s just this thing I’ve always been able to do.

The thought of wandering around in the fog all night looking for my street wasn’t really appealing. Even with my pea coat and wide wale cords, the cold was getting to me, so I started looking for a cafe or some place where I could get some hot tea. Sometimes, a hot cup of tea is the only thing in the world that’ll make you feel right.

© Reed A Raymond 2011

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C of Sound Update

by Reed on March 7, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Posted In: 3D, Blog

I’ve been away from Maya for a week now and haven’t had time to work on this model until today. As you can see, there isn’t a whole lot of difference from the previous post.  Mostly, I spent an hour or so poking around vertices and adding some detail around the lips and forehead. I am going for a very strong brow and cheekbones that create a sunken, almost pathetic look in the eyes, cheeks and mouth.

This exaggeration of features extends to the oversized ears, the most significant addition to the model. Once I was happy with the rough geometry of the head, I felt comfortable enough to add this major detail. The ear is simply a sphere, rotated out, flattened and elongated. Once some of the folds of the lobe were added, I combined the two pieces of geometry and merged their vertices to make them on solid model.

From this picture it is pretty apparent that I have disobeyed one of the cardinal rules of modeling by adding a little too much detail into the lobe before the rough shape is correct. Luckily, the wire frame is still pretty simple and a few adjustments shouldn’t be too difficult.

Up next: Between now and next Monday, I’ll be working on finishing the ear, cleaning up the wire frame, and detailing the eyes and mouth. Hopefully I’ll have a fairly complete head for next Monday’s 3D post.

 

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Game Design Diary: Heroes of Ismia

by Reed on March 9, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Posted In: Blog, Game Design, Tabletop Games

I’ve been working on Heroes of Ismia for about a year, and the process of designing and developing my own board game has been a fascinating and rewarding experience. As I get closer to prototyping, I would like to share some of my designs for feedback, as well as discuss the mechanics and creative process that brought the game to the state it is at now.

One year ago, when I set out to make my own board game, I took about an hour pondering the various genres of games I love to play: fantasy adventure, resource management, role playing. I decided I would make a game featuring aspects of all these genres, and by the end of the hour, I had the skeletal framework of a game I could play in my head. One week later I had a playable mock-up.

My very patient and supportive fiance sat down with me and we ran through the game. The first run was remarkably playable all the way to the endgame, where the mathematics became a little unbalanced. Since then, the game has come a long way. Combat has become more dynamic and fun, new skills, items and quests have been implemented, and the mechanics have been tweaked for faster gameplay.

In this inaugural Game Design Diary, I’ll give a quick summary of the game in its current iteration, with upcoming diaries focussed on more specific aspects of the game I am currently refining or designing.

The game itself is a quest-based fantasy adventure game, in which you chose a hero at the onset of gameplay and are tasked with an Epic Quest which you must finish before any other player. Each hero has a class and a race that determines their skills and abilities that will aid in their quest for glory.

Throughout the course of the game, the heroes visit different locations on the board acquiring quests, then killing monsters, and collecting resources to complete said quests. When a quest is completed, the hero gains a level and sometimes a new power to help fight more difficult monsters.

There are many items and actions that players may use to help them in their journey. Powerful cards may be acquired that make gathering resources more effective or travel more efficient. Items may be purchased in town that aid in combat or otherwise augment your hero.

All this killing monsters, managing resources and completing quests is well and good but as the saying goes, a hero is only as good as his weapon (or something like that) and what would a Hero of Ismia be without a powerful artifact to help in completing his or her Epic Quest. An important part of every hero’s journey is exploring the world in search of an artifact to help them complete their Epic Quest. Finding your artifact early can often mean the difference between victory and defeat. Not only can the artifact aid you on the way to your destiny, it is required before a hero even attempt his or her Epic Quest.

So those are the basics of my game, The Heroes of Ismia: make a character, gather resources, kill monsters, complete quests, find your artifact, fulfill your destiny.

My next Game Design Diary will go into more detail on one aspect of the game as I work on refining and polishing it for playability.

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Fiction: Paper Flowers (Pt 2)

by Reed on March 11, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Posted In: Blog, Writing

Pretty soon I came across this little spot. It looked real busy, but I went in anyway. I hate social situations when I’m drunk but I hate the cold even more. It was funny because when I was outside, my face was freezing and my body was warm, but when I opened the door and the warm air from inside spilled out and all around me, my face got warm and my body felt real cold. My pea coat was holding out the heat. I almost took it off but I didn’t wanna look like an idiot walking around with a jacket hung over my arm like a fucking waiter.

The cafe was made up real nice and cozy. They even had this old wood burning stove over in the corner where all the heat was coming from. It was a nice stove, one of those little black ones, like the kind we had when I was a kid up the coast in Mendocino. The cafe was really just one little room so the stove kept it pretty hot in there. Some guy had his mug sitting on top of it, where you’re supposed to put a pot or a kettle, and he was keeping his coffee warm that way. He looked really at home, all spread out on the couch next to the stove, reading a book of poems by Yeats, or Keats, I couldn’t quite make out the name, and I didn’t really care. His comfort bothered me because I’m never comfortable like that in public. I really prefer to be at home, on my own couch, or my bean bag chair with the soccer ball pattern. I  envied his comfort and wished he was drunk and not me. But that wasn’t until after I ordered my tea.

The girl behind the counter was about my age and really pretty in a Hepburn kinda way. Audrey, not Katharine. As I ordered my Earl Grey tea, I spent the whole time looking at a little wooden Buddha that was sitting next to the tip jar. Audrey probably thought I was acting weird, but I’m not sure because I wasn’t looking at her at all. That made it all bearable. As long as I don’t know that someone thinks I’m strange, I don’t mind. That little Buddha didn’t care that I was drunk. It reminded me of this tapestry I had hanging up in my living room back at my apartment. My friend gave it to me a couple years ago when he came back from a trip to Tibet. It was one of my favorite things, a real conversation starter. I always have gotten a kick outta that Eastern stuff.

The tea cost me two-fifty. I’m always surprised at the cost of tea these days, I mean, it’s just leaves and water, right. The really good stuff doesn’t even come in a bag; you’ve gotta get your own damn tea-steeper and everything. I had this great one shaped like a yin-yang. I got it out of a catalogue and paid almost a fortune for it, really. But I bet it was the best looking damn tea-steeper in the city. Maybe I should get into the tea business if people are paying two-fucking-fifty for some dried up leaves and you don’t even have to give them a goddamn bag.

© Reed A Raymond 2011

 

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C of Sound

by Reed on March 14, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Posted In: 3D, Blog

Just a quick update on the 3d work today.  I’d hoped to get a lot more time to work with Maya this week, but once again things have been pretty busy.  I did spend a lot of time with Illustrator designing a tee shirt and some wedding invites, but I’ll save Illustrator for another post.

Most of the work that I have done on the model is around the eyes, and I added the neck which, while the most striking change since last post, was actually quite fast and easy. I simply adjusted the vertices on the bottom of the neck where I wanted the neck to be, selected the faces, then used the “extrude face” tool to pull the neck out of the bottom of the head. After that it was just a matter of sculpting the general shape.  Fine tuning, as always, will come later.

The character in the story is supposed to be a tired old fisherman and up to this point, the model has had some pretty taut skin for an old dude, so it’s time for wrinkles! I’m modeling some wrinkles directly into the model and others will be created with textures.  To create the wrinkles, I use the “split face” tool to create three parallel lines where I want the wrinkle to be.  Pushing the vertices of the middle line in and pulling the top line out a little creates a nice deep fold in the smoothed model. I’ve carved in some crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes and started work on some deep wrinkles around the eyelids. It still needs a lot of work though, and just as I was really getting into aging this poor guy, the mail arrived.  I rushed out to check, and sure enough, my eagerly awaited copy of Dragon Age 2 had arrived one day early! So Maya went off and I rushed to the kitchen to do some pre-epic-gaming-session chores, poured myself a frosty glass of home-brew and popped in the game.

I’ll expound on DA2 in the next post. For now I’ll be thoroughly immersing myself in stylistic noir fantasy.

Till next time…

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