(Half)Brick Week

This week saw the start of a couple of things.

First up, it saw the start of this, my final year of university.  Hard to believe that I’m now on the home stretch.  It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I was taking an SAT test to see if I could even apply to go to uni, let alone be two thirds done.

Of course, this being the final year the gloves have come off and we are playing sheep stations!  Well, almost.  A large part of this year is our 3rd Year Game Project.  This class runs over both semesters and by the end of this semester we will need to submit a completed and playable prototype.  This will then be used to build the final submission version of the game at the end of second semester.  Not a small task by any means.  This is also a group project and there have been plenty of horror stories of groups imploding in the past, so we have plenty to keep us on our toes.

The second thing was that I was selected to do an internship as one of my subjects this semester.  The call had been put out just before Uni went back asking people if they were interested to reply, answering a few questions and providing a link to their portfolio as well as a copy of their CV.  We talked about it at home and decided that at the very least it was worth going through the process, so I took the plunge and sent everything off.  A couple of days later I got an email from my university saying my details had been sent off to a studio and that they would be in touch with me if they wanted to schedule an interview.  Skip to the following week and I get an email from the studio on the Monday asking if I can come in for an interview on the Tuesday.  Of course, it being holidays still I have plenty of time and I say yes so we schedule it in.

Wow.  I got an interview.  That is so cool.  The email didn’t say what role they were considering me for, but that’s ok.  The fact that they wanted to talk to me was brilliant as far as I was concerned.  So over the next day or so I sorted out my portfolio, which was a bit hard as I didn’t know exactly what to take to show them.  So I grabbed a bit of everything, some of my art, my photography, my writing, voice acting, anything that I thought would be valuable.  I also started to experience something I hadn’t felt for a long time - nerves.  I was going off to be interviewed for an internship position by a game developer, and the last time I had a “job” interview was almost a decade ago.

I don’t like to be late, I never have.  I’ll leave to be somewhere with plenty of time to get there.  When I was working, I used to leave home to get to the office at least half an hour before I was scheduled to “clock on”.  It gave me a chance to get settled, have a coffee, read my emails, plan my day as best I could and get my head in the right place before getting on with it.  I employ the same strategy going to Uni and I did the same here.  My interview was scheduled for midday, I pulled into the carpark and got off my bike at 11:15.  I’d had a really good run in.  So, what to do for 45 minutes?  Thankfully, there is a pub just down the road, so I wandered down there for a nice long glass of lemonade and killed half an hour watching the cricket on TV before heading back up to the studio.

While I was waiting in reception the Human Resource manager wandered out and sat down with me.  We chatted for the next fifteen or twenty minutes until the guys doing my interview were ready and then away I went.  The interview went well I thought, the guys were interesting and I felt happy with how things had gone.  I also found out during the interview that they had me pegged for design or production and I felt that my strengths leant toward the production side of things given that I’d fulfilled that role on two projects last year, and I said as much.  Then the half hour was up and I was on my way, waiting to hear back from them to find out if I’d been successful or not.  We’d been told in an earlier email that decisions would be made quickly and we would know as soon as possible as if we were successful it would probably require the dropping of an enrolled class to take on a new one.

Skip forward to Thursday.  My family and I are down at Gold Coast airport waiting to board a flight to Sydney to go to a wedding the following day.  My Razer Nabu smartband had arrived the previous day and I was wearing it when it buzzed while we were in the airport newsagency.  I checked the display and it was an email from the studio.  I pulled my phone out and checked my email.  

I’d been selected!  I’m not ashamed to admit that I let out a bit of a whoop and a fist pump right there.  Which of course made my wife look at me like I was from some other dimension.  Right at that moment though, I was on top of the world.  I’d been selected to be a part of the program as the producer.  I emailed back while we were standing in the queue to board the plane, gratefully accepting the offer to join the program and acknowledging that I’d be available the following Wednesday for the first group meeting.

And so it came to pass on that Wednesday, I along with my three colleagues from Griffith University became the newest participants in the Halfbrick Academy.  For the next 14 weeks we will be working one day a week at the studio on a project set by them.  We will be graded, we will have to write a report on what we’ve achieved along with a few other tasks.  To say I’m over the moon about this would be a complete understatement.  I have the opportunity to work with people in a well known and successful studio, to learn as much as I can AND be able to put what I learn into use immediately.  

One thing I know though, you’d better hang on, cause this is gonna be one hell of a ride!

A few thoughts on... Alpha Protocol

Over the summer break I spent some time playing a few of the older games in my collection.  I’ve already written a few words about Binary Domain and I thought I’d follow that up with another game published by Sega.  Alpha Protocol was released in 2010 and developed by Obsidian Entertainment.  Obsidian are responsible for games like Knights of the Old Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas and most recently Pillars of Eternity.  

Alpha Protocol follows the trials of one Michael Thornton, an ex special services operative who is recruited by a secret government agency (Alpha Protocol), and on his first mission cast out by them as an expendable asset.  Fortunately for the player, Mr Thornton has a strong survival instinct, not to mention what could be called an overdeveloped sense of vengeance as he sets out to find out who tried to get rid of him and why.

Alpha Protocol is a couple of years older than Binary Domain and this does show in some of the animation sequences, but the story builds nicely as you interact with a variety of characters from the UAE, Rome, Moscow and Taipei.  Your interactions with these characters are handled through response selections during conversations.  The wrinkle that Obsidian threw in here is that you only have a short amount of time to choose your desired response.  These responses may be professional, suave, flirty, etc, and it’s up to the player to decide how they want the tone of conversation to go.  As with many games that have player conversations, the NPC response may be favourable, neutral or negative.  This impacts the player on not only how the conversation actually goes, but also on whether NPC’s may be recruited as allies and even handlers for later missions.

Players will have access to a safe house in each of the game's locations.  Within the safe house they may restock ammunition, purchase weapon and suit upgrades and sell off surplus items.  They will also have access to email which will periodically provide the player with some opportunities.  The majority of these will be related to intel you receive and what you choose to do with it.  You can either sell it on the black market, blackmail the company involved or hand it over to a reporter NPC for her to use (and obtain some small payment).  All of this tries to help the player feel like they have some control over what’s happening, and overall it achieves this goal.

There are a number of “boss battles” that take place through the game, and it seems here it’s where Obsidian let the ball drop.  The difficulty curve you encounter when you face the boss fights is off the charts in comparison to what you have been experiencing, and once the battle is over things go back to the level they were at.  I had trouble with a couple of fights, namely the nutcase that is Konstantin Brayko.  This narcotic snorting, dual gun wielding madman was initially the toughest opponent I faced.  Let him get to close and he cuts you up with his knife, and while he’s high on whatever it is he’s snorting, he’s damn near bulletproof.  But Brayko pales into insignificance when you confront the final boss, one of your fellow Alpha Protocol operatives and a previous handler, Darcy.  Seems that Darcy has the best arm and biggest hands of anyone alive as not only can he throw multiple grenades at the same time, he can throw them with great accuracy and further than you can shoot with an assault rifle!

This final battle was probably the most disappointing part of this game for me.  I’d enjoyed the narrative with its twists and turns.  I’d accepted the choices I’d made along the way and how those choices had shaped my version of Michael Thornton.  But all of that felt like it was wasted when it came to the final battle.  It’s a real pity, I enjoyed everything up to that point but frustration with the final battle almost got the better of me.  I’d like to see Obsidian revisit some of the ideas from Alpha Protocol in the future, particularly the timed conversation responses, those gave a sense of urgency, of thinking quickly and dealing with the consequences of your actions, even of those consequences don’t show up right away.

On Reflection - Two years down, one to go.

As my final year of Uni comes closer, I've spent some time reflecting on not only the journey of the last couple of years, but also on what the future will bring once I graduate.  There are a few things I've learned over the last two years that might be helpful to anyone who's considering jumping into the Game Development arena as a student.

The first thing to know about game design is that it's not all about making games.  There is a lot more to it than that.  You need to look at games with a critical eye, you need to dissect them, to look closely at the mechanics, the art, the story, the interface, all the aspects of a game that come together to actually make it work (or not work as the case may be).

Be prepared to work.  I know, this sounds like the most obvious thing in the world, and it is, yet it also seems to catch people off guard.  Uni isn't like school, you don't have teachers pushing you to hand things in.  The expectation is that you know the due date and you will submit the required work on that date.  It's not fair to say that tutors and lecturers don't care, they do, and they will help you, but you need to be proactive.  Don't wait till the day before something is due to email your tutor, if you don't understand something or are having problems, get on top of them early.

The follow on from this is be organised.  This is really important, as you'll likely have three or four assessment pieces that will inevitably all fall due in the same week, if not the same day.  Prioritise, work smarter, not harder.  While the ideal is to leave yourself the same amount of time to complete all tasks, some will be quicker than others, recognise this and then put the extra time toward tasks that you aren't as confident with.  In the two years so far, I've had some late nights working on things, but at no point have I had to pull an all nighter the day before something was due to be submitted and I put that down to being organised and prioritising.

There is no doubt that no matter how organised you are, you will still have some late nights.  Sometimes it's due to things not going right, other times you are so engrossed in what you are doing you lose track of time (hello 4am) and on some occasions your brain will be going a million miles an hour and won't let you sleep.  I found in the latter situation that it's best to just get up and write down what's buzzing around your brain (for me it was usually a story or game idea).  Once I'd gotten it down on paper, I could head back to bed and I'd be out like a light.  The main thing is to get enough sleep.  Sounds obvious but it's very easy to have late night after late night and by the end of the week be exhausted.  This will impact not only on your ability to work, but also on your ability to understand the things that you will be doing in class, and when you don't understand something that makes it so much more difficult to do what it is you are supposed to.

While there are some very specific skills used within video game design, a lot of the skills you need translate across the other genres, like tabletop, board game and even role playing game design.  One of the key skills across all of them is communication.  You need to be able to not only talk about your ideas, but you have to be able to express them in writing as well.  Design bibles are something you will make, and they will not only have all the ideas you have for a game, but also the changes you make to it along the way.  When you are working as an individual these can be in any form that works for you, but making games is rarely an individual thing, so you need to be able to communicate your ideas to everyone else that is on your team.  You need to do this effectively and efficiently so they understand what it is that is required of them.

Being able to tell a story may not be your forte, but being able to document your ideas is important as you can see.  Another area that is important (and it's one that I'm not strong at) is maths.  You will work with physics engines, you will need to be able to input the correct coordinates into your engine and having a good grounding in mathematics will make this a lot easier to deal with.  I'll be honest, coding is not something I'm good at.  I spent a lot of time with my head in Unity and I didn't enjoy it, but I stuck with it because it was necessary in order to complete my part of the project.

One of the major areas that people struggle with is group work.  While there are some classes (mostly the art classes) where you work individually, as you progress you will find that more and more you will be working in groups, sometimes a group of two or up to a group of six.  Working with people can be one of the most rewarding experiences you'll have.  When everything clicks, when everyone is on the same metaphorical page everything runs smoothly.  But when it doesn't, it can be really frustrating and this can cause friction within the group.  Personal communication skills here are really important and can take a situation from bad to good if handled well.  Of course, if handled badly things can go from bad to worse just as easily.  One of the other major traps of group work is placing your expectations of yourself onto everyone else.  If someone is struggling to get things done, rather than attack them for not meeting your expectations, find out why they are struggling, and then find a way to help if possible.

Be prepared to do things you don't think matter or you aren't interested in.  You will have subjects that you don't care about, don't think matter or hold no interest for you, regardless of how you feel about them, these will inevitably be core subjects that you have to pass in order to graduate.  For me, it was drawing.  I didn't like doing it, I wasn't good at it and I found it really hard to take what I saw and transfer that to a page using a pencil.  These classes were in first year where you get a taste of everything, and while I'm unlikely to ever be an artist in that style, the things I learned were invaluable in understanding how things fit together overall, with all the different areas of game design coming together into a cohesive whole.

Expose yourself to new ideas and points of view.  You can do this by playing games outside your normal field.  For example, if you are a fan of puzzle games, play a shooter, if you like shooters, play an rpg, if you like rpg's play a horror game.  Put yourself out there to experience the variety of games on offer, and not just video games.  Play some board games, you'll be surprised not only at the variety out there covering almost every genre, but also how the mechanics within a board game may translate into a digital environment.  And it's not just games either, read books, comics, watch movies, TV shows, anime, as all of these things can provide you with a seed that you can plant and cultivate until it germinates into an idea.

Be prepared to explore these ideas as well.  They may go no where, but in the process of exploring them you will come to understand what about them works and what doesn't, and this can then lead to something new.  I can't count the times that I've been watching something that has sparked an idea that I've jotted down and then gone on to explore later, some to a greater extent than others, but all have been useful to me.

Finally, be prepared to for change.  When you first start you may have some very solid ideas as to what you want to be when you graduate, but as you go forward, you may find that this changes as you are exposed to new ideas, new skills, new concepts and you find things you enjoy that you didn't expect.  For me, I went in thinking I wanted to be able to make 3D models, I've found since that while I could do that, I much prefer either writing the story or managing the team that are putting the whole thing together.  I've embraced that discovery which has then had a significant impact on my subject selection for this, my final year.

A few thoughts on... Binary Domain

Binary Domain, developed by Devil's Domain and published by SEGA in 2012 is a game that seems to polarise people. They either love it or hate it. I found it to be an enjoyable experience, with some nicely written dialogue (I'm a sucker for banter), an interesting story that isn't to far fetched and a nice twist in the tail.

Binary Domain is an on rails third person shooter, and as such there isn't any real exploration to be done.  The story is set in the near(ish) future where Japan has closed it's borders and bipedal robots are commonplace.  You play as Sgt Marshall, a special ops soldier who is sent on a black op to Japan to track down information on "Hollow Children", essentially robots that can pass as human beings which of course has been outlawed by Geneva.

The narrative is very linear but the pace of the delivery keeps things moving forward at a decent clip, so you don't feel the desire to go off the path too often. I have seen a number of complaints that this is a buggy and substandard port of a console title, the graphics are on par with what you'd expect for an almost 4 year old game, but I didn't encounter any glitches or frame rate drops at all.  I also didn't have any issues with my controller (Xbox360), which worked fine first time out and didn't give me any trouble throughout my ten hour play time.  The only thing I found frustrating was that the interactions didn't remap to the buttons to the 360 controller scheme, this meant that at times I was guessing which button to press to select a conversation response.

The game also makes use of voice commands, so you can tell your squad to hold, charge, fire, etc, verbally rather than having to select the command using the controller.  This seemed to work pretty well overall but I ended up leaving my squad mates to their own devices most of the time and let them comment on my skills (both positive and negative) when in combat.  This commenting I found to be one of the more interesting aspects of the game.  You don't have a lot of direct conversation with the NPC's outside of cut scenes, but as you progress through the game the supporting cast do give you some exposition and provide some nice banter between themselves.  I think my personal favourite is Cain, a CN-7 model Combat robot, who talks with a French accent.

The story wraps up neatly, but there is enough left that should a sequel ever be developed it could be quite interesting.  There is an online mode (both co-op and player vs player) but the online matches are pretty dead unless you know people who you can play with.

Overall I enjoyed Binary Domain and would recommend it to people who enjoy rail shooters, games with a light Sci-Fi feel or banter between the main character and their supporting cast.

The Final Fantasy Mystery

I'm the first to admit that I don't understand the fervent adoration that is shown for the Final Fantasy series of video games.  I didn't play them growing up and my last encounter with them was back when I was working in a video games store when Final Fantasy X came out.

Just before Christmas, I purchased the surprise gift box that Square Enix put out.  There wasn't a list of what was in it - hence it being a surprise, but for $9.00 it seemed like a bargain.  Turns out that it was, with only one game that I already had when it came time to open it up.

One of the games included was Final Fantasy XIII, and so, over the break I've been giving it a run, and I still don't understand the fervent adoration these games get, but let me at least explain my view of this.

The graphics are wonderful, of this there is no doubt.  The character models look stunning and the environments are simply amazing.  Visually, this game is stunning to look at.  And I wonder if that is where it gets let down.  The visual feast you are presented with doesn't have any real substance to it.  Now this may be the same with all JRPG's, but I've found the whole thing to be linear, completely linear, with no scope to go off and explore, no emergent narrative.  For the most part, I feel as though I'm watching a movie that I occasionally have to press a button during in order to keep it playing, but it's a movie that I missed the first 10 minutes of and so it doesn't quite make sense.

I think the reason it feels like a movie, is largely due to the number of cut scenes.  Almost every bit of exposition is done through a cut scene rather than by stopping and conversing with the other characters.  Now, that's not the say that these cut scenes are not well done, if anything it's the opposite.  The animations are smooth, the dialogue is decent and the development of the characters and their back story's is not too bad overall.  But step out of these bits and into navigating the world and everything isn't so rosy.

While the animations are still pretty smooth, the controls feel "janky".  It's the only way I can describe it.  Moving the character around the world isn't the kind of experience that the visuals and animations suggest that it should be, instead it's unresponsive, inaccurate and a let down in comparison to what is presented to the player visually.  Finally, I want to say a quick word about the combat.  Like previous iterations of the Final Fantasy saga, it's turn based, in this case you control one character and others perform pre-set actions based on your choices.  The combat actually works pretty well I feel, which is at odds with the player controlled movement.  The only real frustration I've had with it so far is that due to the other RPG's I usually play, I want to move around, to flank, dodge, etc.  That's not possible, but the more fights I have, the less I miss that.

In the final analysis, Final Fantasy XIII is a beautiful looking movie, spoiled by player interaction.  Whether it would work as an actual film if you spliced all the cut scenes together (ah la Injustice), I don't know, I suspect that the amount of work required to make it comprehensible and flowing would create other issues.  Regardless, I'll keep plodding along through it between The Witcher 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Rise of the Tomb Raider.

When it rains...

We all know the saying, when it rains, it pours.

Well, this could not be more truthful for me and my motorcycle over the last month or so.

My bike was due for a service, overdue if I'm being truthful.  I'd been putting it off but it got to the stage where I knew it had to be done.  So, I booked it in.  I mentioned when I dropped it off that there were a couple of issues that I was having in regard to starting it at times as well as an odd glitch that had just started happening with the headlights.  This was what had prompted me to finally book it in.

The issue was that when I'd turn the ignition on, all looked fine, but sometimes when I thumbed the kill switch, the high beam light would come on on the dash and the headlights would go off.  Nothing I did would turn them back on either.  Something was seriously amiss.  I let the guys know about all this and they said they'd look into it.

I get a call later that day to tell me that there were a whole lot more things that needed doing, but the biggest one was the starter motor clutch.  This was worn and was the cause of the bike not wanting to start.  They also thought they'd worked out the headlight issue as well.

So, $1700 later, I pick up my bike and away I go.  It was the week before mid semester break so the bike pretty much went into the garage and didn't come out till I started back at Uni.  And of course, it was it this point I see that the headlight issue hasn't been fixed.  I call them back up and let them know that it's still an issue and organise to take it in the next day.  Because I have uni, they can only have the bike for about 3 hours and of course that morning everything is working perfectly.  They change part of the wiring loom between the headlights and the switchgear and they believe that this will fix the problem.

Fast forward to Monday night.  I've had a good day at Uni, been out to dinner with some old workmates and played a couple of hours of D&D.  We finish up about 8:30 and I'm on the bike starting to head home.  I'm in one of the back streets of Fortitude Valley when I flick on the high beams...  And bang!  Well, actually, there wasn't a bang, in fact, there was nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  No power to anything.  So, obscenities restricted to within my helmet, I manage to pull the bike up to a stop at the bottom of the hill.  Of course, there are no street lights and I can't get it started.

In the end, I push the bike to the nearest hotel and send the night in the city before I can contact the mechanics and get them to come and pick it up the following morning.  I got a loaner and headed home to try to get some work done on assessments and what not, all the time wondering just how bad things were, what it had fried, how much was it going to cost and would it be worth it.

When I spoke to them later that afternoon, my worries were put to rest.  Seems that the no-power issue was due to a short that had blown the main fuse, exactly what should have happened.  The cause of the short?  A worn wire that ran from the high beam bulb.  Seems that when I'd flicked on the high beam, this had shorted, blowing the fuse and killing all power to the bike.

So this morning I picked it back up, and checked that the high beams didn't fail and kill everything again.  So far so good.  i just hope that this is the last time I have to go in for some time to come.

Captain Kremmen - Re-voiced

Last year, one of the subjects I studied was an introduction to the principle of sound and sound design.  The final assessment required us to take a video clip, remove the existing soundtrack and replace it with a new one.

I chose to do an episode of the old Captain Kremmen cartoon.  Kremmen (along with many others) was the brainchild of Kenny Everett, a British comedian who had a tv show in the late 70's and early 80's.  You could never call it a kids show, but the 70's being a much simpler time, it was on at a kid friendly time.  The cartoon was shown during the tv show, and all the characters were voiced by Everett himself.  The animation was done simply, and it turns out it was done by Cosgrove-Hall, who went on to make Dangermouse among other things.

So, after choosing an episode, listening to it over and over in order to scribe out the script, I spent a day in the recording booth at Uni laying down the tracks for each character, and like the original, I did all the character voices.  Then it was off to edit it all together and put in the appropriate sound effects.  I had some previous experience with voice overs and and vocal work previously, so I have no doubt that helped, but this was one of the hardest things I've done, as trying to match up the vocal to the animation was really hard.

The clip is only a couple of minutes long, so enjoy.  And if anyone is looking for a VO guy, I am available.