To: 2K Games
From: Concerned Mums

Dear Mr 2000 Games, I was writing you this email to show my utter disgust and upmost fear towards one of your television video games that my son has been playing. The vile video game in question is your ‘Grand Thief Autos number 4’. After watching my son Rodney play I could barely control my fear and anger. This supposed form of entertainment is destroying my sons mind right in my own home. Right on the very television and entertainment console I use to watch my ‘Heartbeats’ DVD discs on! This game is teaching my son to do crimes that I could not even dream of!!! I was watching and the game actually suggested that he should turn his cars high beams on, despite the street being well lit and another car in front of him!!! My neighbour Susan even said that she heard that it has a street rap music radio station! The streets belong outside, not in my floral living room! I even saw the character Nikolas park his car in front of a fire hydrant… How many people must burn to get the high score I wonder?! Rodney even payed at a toll booth by throwing in the change from almost a meter away, CARELESS! He now rushes his homework and hits our labradoodle Peter with a wet towel. These are just some of the countless things I have witnessed my now ruined son Rodney doing. His mind is already so corrupt that I have given up on him and sent him to live with his father, who; might I ad lives in PRISON so luckily Rodney now knows how to fit right in. THANKS

I hope you are happy with yourselves.

~ Concerned Mother

Well I will come out with it and say updates are going to be a little slow at the moment, I could say it’s because life is super hectic, news is slow or my fingers have grown beyond use… but the truth is every free second I have I am playing GTA 4. There we are. I must say that the game went beyond my expectations and I have been playing it for over 15 hours and it is always surprising me and being fresh.

It’s the perfect package. It does driving better than most driving games, shooting better than most shooters and story better that… anything!

SO you to shouldn’t worry about no updates because you should all be playing it non stop!

The video game industry is lacking characters. People with charisma, intensity and big ol’ brass ones.
Sure we have our “Make those marines twice as big and thrice as oily!” Cliffy Bs, our “I gotta go home early today, so cut half the features.” Peter Molyneuxs and our “Put faces on EVERYTHING!!!” Miyamotos but I wouldn’t call them true heroes. The same way that I might describe Conan to be a hero. Kicking someone while your legs on fire, air surfing debris from a crumbling building through a monsters heart, breaking jail bars with bare hands and ejaculating so hard you bust down the prison walls kind of hero.

Oh well I guess that kind of guy aint around… we should just give up on th-

!PAUUUUL STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!

HOT DAMN! Paul Steed! The man himself. For any of you poor individuals who don’t know who paul steed is, here is what wikipedia says

Paul Howard Steed, Jr is a video game modeller and artist. He has worked for Origin Systems, Electronic Arts, id Software, Wild Tangent, Microsoft’s Xbox, Atari, and now Exigent. He is made of an unknown indestructible metal and openly admits to running over John Carmack drunk on Death Head moonshine distilled through Tom Selleck’s moustache while driving his Porsche 911 (infused with the spirit of Thor).

Paul Steed modelled and animated most of the characters in Quake 3 Arena, it should also be noted that he stayed at work an extra 10 minutes everyday (so he could code the entire game himself).

Paul steed has written 3 books. HAVE YOU EVEN WRITTEN 1? Yeah I thought not.
When Paul Steed went into his first job interview he just looked the boss in the eyes and told him to get out. Before the ex boss could leave Steed sat in his big leathery chair and took his house keys and simply asked what his wife’s name was.

Back in 2007 I actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr Steed. Or as we affectionately referred to him as ‘STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDY!’
I was at AIE Canberra studying 3D animation for games. Our teacher came in and started ranting and raving that ‘The MAN HIMSELF’ was coming to give a talk. I must confess that at this time, this ignorant time I had no idea who he was, other than a man who’s name alone invokes the images of powerful stallion muscles.

The day Paul Steed arrived we will never forget, it seemed we could hear his footsteps from miles away. Suddenly the door was kicked off its hinges, Paul Steed dive rolled into the classroom, punched our teacher in the face then got the high score on space invaders all in the blink of an eye. He went around the class and glanced at every ones work. Any student’s work he didn’t like he hacked our teachers computer and unenrolled them from the course. Any student work he ‘liked’ (Paul Steed has never liked anything ever, so perhaps tolerated would be a better word) he would kick in their monitor.

Basically he came through like a buffalo stampede then he was gone again, and we were left gored and in awe. Perhaps I’m slightly exaggerating the man. Though in all honesty he once hacked through his boss John Carmack’s locked office door with a claymore sword. I know what I’m going to do the first day I get an industry job.

So now you know about the MAN they call PAUL STEED. So you don’t have to be as ignorant as I once was, lets hope that at some point you get to meet the man and lets hope after, you are still alive to blog about it later.

This may be old to some, but for others this will be the greatest thing you have ever seen.

Video games are not known for their stories, that’s because most of the time they are an after thought. Like a waiter offering pepper on your already delicious pasta dish (fettucini carbonara).
Take Metal Wolf Chaos. In this case Metal Wolf is a big old bowl of delicious pepper. That analogy may be a bit weak so I will just say what I mean. It is the greatest narrative a video game has ever had.

And I have proof

Cheque please and where do I tip?

This is a game idea I came up with the other day after visiting neopets.com

The idea takes elements from pokemon, neopets.com, spore, the sims and the somewhat obscure Phantom Crash. I know this is a ‘hardcore’ gamerz nightmare, so feel free to close the window.

When I was younger I had a neopets account and enjoyed it on my slow 56k internet. The gf informed me she used to be a top tier neopets player as a young lass and we managed to log into her old account. She still had a connection with her 3 little neopets that are nothing more than some old 2D art. There is some mysterious bond there. I never had much of a connection with my pokemon as I ultimately had way to many and there was never any interaction or feedback from the tormented imprisoned horrid little beast slaves.

So that brings us to Robot Laboratory. The aim of this project would be to try and build a personable connection with the users small robots. These are just some methods to do this

• Creation and customization. RPGs connect us with our character as we customize them and make them our own, a game like the sims or the up coming spore show how successful this is.
• Online setting, being able to share and compare your character with others, creates ownership.
• Character interaction is another important method, nintendogs and black and white did this well.

THE GAME
Robot Laboratory (working title) would be an online social game where players create small interactive AI robots which can compete in robot competitions and be sent to work to earn in game currency.

The player starts the game with a very basic workshop (a workbench)
A trip to the local scrap yard gives the player a bunch of old rusty scrap metals and wires which are used to build the players first robot. Building the robot would be done through picking parts then playing little mini games to attach and wire them. Simple parts have simple mini games where advanced parts will be harder. Depending on how the robot is built will effect it’s stats, so legs affect mobility, arms can affect strength and sensory parts affect social abilities. Stats are not that vital though, so the user isn’t pigeon holed into creating a robot based on stats over aesthetics, so the creation process could be similar to spores creature editor. Depending on how the robot is built, it will be fitted for better tasks and jobs, ie. a strong robot for labour work and a social robot for customer work.

The most important part of each robot will be it’s learning capable AI chip. Initially this ai will be very basic and robotic, but through time will eventually become sophisticated and maybe even reach the holy grail of becoming sentient. The ai chips should have a number personality traits and quirks, which the user should be able to have some small level of control over. This will create a uniqueness to each AI and could create some interesting social interaction. So a low level basic ai might say “d0gs + mE = terror” where that same AI but higher level would say “I find dogs terrifying”. The robots should also have some degree of mood so that the way in which you treat them will effect their performance and perhaps even stats. Though you could create a robot that has had most personality conditioned out of it and create the “Ivan Drago” of the robot world.

The players will be limited to 3 or so robots at low level so that the ‘pokemon effect’ of having too many robots doesn’t detract from the personal connection.
The player uses their robots to compete in robotic challenges and events to gain currency and robot parts. The player will not have control over their robots in these events. These challenges will be primarily non violent, like intelligence tests (puzzles and quizes), strength (lifting etc), social (interaction tests) and mobility (obsticle courses and races). The user will also be able to send his robots to work to earn cash. A level of feedback on how your robot did at work could be both humorous and engaging (ala the sims job choices) The job performance will rely on how they are built but not limited too, a social robot would be better fitted for nurses aid and receptionist but you could still send your labour robot to teach at a school to a comical result. “RobotX stacked all the children into a neat pile, the principle was not amused.”

As a robots AI grows it can be physically changed with updated parts. A low level robot will look like it has been constructed from scrap metal, where as a sophisticated robot will seem sleek and refined. Though it would be great to still be able to have an old junky looking robot be able to compete with a sophisticated robot to create the ‘millenium falcon’ effect (old and junky but loved and powerful).
The player will advance and gain new workshops which will enable better tools and building options. Eventually even having a facility comparable to the robot workshop in I, Robot.

The game will be very community driven and clubs and guilds will be supported and encouraged.
I could ramble on about this idea and flesh it out for a long time but I will leave it now as just a (long) idea and not a design doc. It could be really great though! So some big game company, feel free to hire me.

ROOOOOBOTS!

******************
Unrelated radical things
Oblivion in cryengine2
Iron Mic Rap Battle

Hey guys, quick post today.
I found a great small but powerful physic fluid and matter simulator on the fun-motion forums.

It’s called oe-cake (octave engine) and it is great fun. It’s basically a little window in which you can put dynamic physic liquids and objects into and watch them react. Such as building elastic bridges then straining them till they break. I’ve spent hours just setting up little simulations within the program.
So I suggest you download it! (You may need a pretty beefy computer for it to run smoothly)

OE-CAKE

Some new illustrations and comics coming soon

OK… Soul Control (I have to listen to The Streets to write this)

SOUL CONTROL

Designed and created by young people for young people showing the dangers of knife crime and gang culture
(perhaps they should have used some old people who have made games)

This is a great thing, using video games as a medium for something serious, but I think the aim may have gotten lost somewhere in the development process… We will get back to this.

THE GAME BRUZ!

‘Oi Oi Oi’

The gameplay is you control an english youth through 3 missions such as returning a game, paying the electricity bill and going to a rave. The game looks like a 3D gta 2. Along the way there are crime related temptations, which will test you.
These tests are pretty silly because as we run to pay our electricity bill we are tempted with the chance to rob someone at knife point and we all know that paying the electricity bill is going to be so much cooler.
Thank god my black sister (something went wrong because the player is white) can finish getting her hair did.

Paying the electricity bill

So to look at it, you may say to your self “NANG! This be well mank” (ugly), but remember this is set on the harsh London streets, and if you have been to the real London you would know that it is grey, low resolution and has poor level design. Between levels there are live action videos to set the scenes up, the acting is… anyway! The controls are ‘interesting’, you use w,a,s,d to control your bruz but if you are running forwards you can’t actually turn at the same time so you have to run, stop turn and run again. You can use the mouse to control the turning which sort of works. The animations are also very jittery. You can run or walk, I don’t know why you can walk as there is never any point to.

The level design is well unfit
You have an arrow that points you to the goal but you have to try traverse the ugly maze of fences and houses to get there and most routes end up being dead ends. You can also walk straight through a lot of the scene items.

All that being said the game does have a good sound scape, the ambient city noise and talking npcs on the street aren’t bad. The conversations are only text though.

This rave be Nangin’!!!

The weird thing is the choices in this game. You can choose to break the law or play it clean but the game doesn’t reward you for doing the right thing, if anything it prevents you from doing anything interesting.
My first play through I managed to deal some drugs, rob a guy at knife point then shoot some rival gang members. My second play I returned a game, payed a bill and ran away from a fight, YEAH I’M A HERO!
The final decision you have to meet your friend at a rave who tells you the West Side boys are around the back and you are going to help him shoot them. Being a good boy I said no, and it exited the conversation and then nothing happened. With the conversation the only way to make it progress is to agree to shoot these guys. So you can’t even be good in this situation, when you go and find the westside boys you have the choice to shoot them or ‘run away’. What the hell kind of a decision is that, they could have worded it like ‘be uncool and shoot them’ ‘BE AN HERO! RUNAWAY!’

RUN AWAAAAAAAAAAY!

But check out what you get when you run away

I think that should probably read ‘Coward teenager runs away, peers think is square’ How did I even save him?! Who did I save?! Did I save someone because I chose not to shoot them? Is that how you become a hero now days, by choosing not to be a villain?
Check what happens when you DO shoot

I assume seeing I did the shooting, it wasn’t me who died. SO I totally blasted those west side foo’s and got away with it. Yeah! I’m well tits. (good)

SO the moral of this game is, you can play it safe and pay bills and run away or you can be an English OG and soldier your way to the top!
So I’m ending this article now and hitting the mean streets to do some crime.
Oi Oi Oi!

DOWLOAD IT BRUZ

Hey guys! The GF (girlfriend) is baaaaaaaaaaack!
This time I got her to take on the acclaimed (rightly so) Bioshock.

Remember that the gf is by no means a gamer, and in this case it would be worth noting, scared easily.

She started a game in Bioshock a few months back at my house, playing the game would raise her blood pressure and really freak her out. SO I’m very proud of her for letting me record her coming back to it.
She also plays some acoustic music in the video.
SO enjoy her terror as she takes on BIOSHOCK!

*may contain some early game spoilers*

*Unrelated rad things*
You gotta check Ethan Winer out! REMEMBER THAT NAME, hes my new hero.
A Cello Rondo
Tele-Vision

Let’s talk Natural Motion.

You guys may have noticed this soon to be trend that’s coming to games, which is physics based animation systems. Simply, game characters and NPCs responding dynamically to their environment by actual physics calculated balance and responses from forces.
Think of it as intelligent ragdolls.

And let me tell you that this is AWESOME! AMAZING! INTERESTING!

I love physics, the introduction of physics engines into games was such a leap forwards in technology. Now we think it’s silly for games not to have ragdolls but do you remember back to when they were first introduced?
Some of the early games to introduce ragdolls were Hitman 1, UT 2003 and Max Payne 2 and then we had the next leap forwards with Half Life 2 and its amazing enviromental physic systems.

BUT NOW! We are about to see the next evolution in game physics. Get excited guys.
We have NaturalMotion who have created a system called Endorphin Physics
endorphin is the industry’s first Dynamic Motion Synthesis software.

This system allows animation and physics to work together, you can’t really explain it to well so watch this.

How rad is that?! Too rad. Granted I am an animator so this stuff blows me away but I don’t care who you are, it’s amazing.
I have been having a great time using Endorphin because guess what, there is a free learning edition of this software available on their website! Hit the link
endorphin 2.7.1 Learning Edition

Yes you to can make people fall over! The software is very accessible as far as 3D packages go (try learning 3D Max!) but if you are new to this kind of stuff you will definitely need the tutorials.
You need to register on the site to get a copy of endorphin but if you are into this stuff you’ll love it.
It’s almost like gary’s mod for people falling over.
On a little side note I just noticed on the Natural Motion news section that The Academy of Interactive Entertainment is going to start teaching Endorphin. (scroll down a bit) I don’t want to brag or anything but I have a feeling I may even be the reason for this! I went to AIE and last year I brought in a copy of Endorphin and showed my teachers and classmates and they were pretty amazed with it, so I think I may have introduced it to my school! That’s pretty RAD! (sorry, you can see that physics animation turns me into an excitable 14 year old)

This technology is more for film. BUT don’t worry, natural motion has us covered.
Please say a warm welcome to
Euphoria
euphoria brings Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS) onto Playstation® 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Oh daaang now we are all excited aren’t we!
Our first experience with Euphoria couldn’t come in a better game. Grand Theft Auto IV
Yeah that’s right, the biggest game of the year is bringing us physic based animation. Lucas Arts is also using the tech for some of their upcoming games such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and their untitled Indiana Jones game. Natural Motion also has an American football game in development called Backbreaker.

So this means we are going to have dynamic character interaction such as realistic falls, stumbles and dynamic hand to hand fighting.

So get ready for the PHYSIC BASED ANIMATION REVOLUTION!

Unrelated awesome things
You will never be hip after this
This is a good performance

ROBOTS! Check out MDS (the white humanoid one) amazing stuff
Check this vid of MDS. Could this be the start of our downfall?

ARGHGGHHHHHH!H!!!!!!

http://blogs.theage.com.au/screenplay/archives//009125.html

A Rockstar spokesperson confirmed to Screen Play yesterday that the company had produced a special version of GTA IV to comply with the Australian classification system, which does not currently contain an R18+ rating, but declined to reveal what material had been cut.

The game has been rated R18+ by the British Board of Film Classification, New Zealand’s OFLC and the German Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle. It has been rated M17+ by the Entertainment Software Rating board in North America.

I’m to cross to even write anything in the body of this post relating to it

The fact that rockstar confirmed a few weeks back that we were getting the same version… @#(@#$#!!!