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… @#(@#$#!!!

I edited together the left over footage into a little follow up. It’s short and sweet.
(I’m also uploading a version to gametrailers.com so I’ll update later)

Oh and check out this charming art that Josué from Nerf Now!!! Sent me!

Oh boy! Here we GOOOOOO!
The first of hopefully many Lava Level videos!!!

This is called GF TF2
Basically I recorded my girlfriend (who I would not call a gamer) playing Team Fortress 2 for the first time.
It’s quiet an interesting experiment, to see how her skills improve as she gets over the initial learning curve and how she doesn’t have any of the ground work that most gamers have in knowing the general rule sets and principles of games.

It’s also pretty funny.

So big thanks to her! As you can see she is probably the most compassionate person alive.
(It runs for 7 minutes, a bit long I know and I still have heaps of footage I haven’t edited through so there might be a part 2)

Oh also, I have created a lavalevel youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/lavalevel
SO JUST WATCH!

*UPDATE*

Haha, I’m on front page of kotaku.com.au
Kotaku gf tf2

*UPDATE 2*

The video is doing really well and everyone is really responsive!
The amazing news is gf has installed steam at home and purchased her own copy of TF2!!! HOLY WOW!
I guess I owe her one so… I should learn a foreign language or something cos that’s what shes into. nah

*UPDATE 3*

HAHA! Jesus. Some guy ripped the video from youtube and put it on gametrailers.com
Check it here girlfriend plays TF2

It’s become a ‘featured user media’ and has… as of now been watched 15,000 times.
haha wow. I don’t know if I should be annoyed I don’t have control over the most viewed copy or happy that I someone did what I should have! At least the lavalevel.net link is in the video.

The situation has gotten way out of hand.
No I’m not talking about wii friend codes, no it’s not to do with the core xbox skew or the fact that when I asked a guy at my local EB when Halo 3 was coming out back in the day he asked ‘Is that for playstation?’

NO. It’s to do with these STUPID image verification steps when registering for things online now days.
They have gotten to a stage where you have to be a code breaker just to make sense of the damn things!

what?!

JESUS! I know we all cower in fear of the BOTZ that take over the INTERNETS and download our brains.But cut me some slack, I just want to register on the forums at www.littledogsincoats.com

As these images have gotten more and more unreadable over time so I think I will try and be cutting edge on this site and visiting it will involve new image verifications

It reads ‘Congratulations, you have eye strain!’

This is the first of hopefully many game ideas.
I came up with this concept while at my game course last year and found it in an old sketch book.

It’s pretty straight forwards really. There is a guy/girl with boots that can act like large magnets.
It would work best as a 3rd person action adventure platformer.
Magnet boot gameplay possibilities

• Ability to walk on walls and ceilings (provided they are metal)
  
• Ability to reverse the magnetic charge to ‘jump’ really high
  
• Ability to pick up metal objects and hurl them ala gravity gun (half life 2)
  
• Ability to ‘reverse charge’ jump then positive charge ‘dash’ onto walls and ceilings
  
• Ability to skate/hover inches above a metal surface by using a weak constant reverse charge
  

So hopefully you can see the potential in this idea. The ability to walk on vertical and upside down surfaces would create an interesting camera issue and the need for quick midair control to select which surfaces to attach to. Perhaps where the player looked would rotate the players body to point the boots ahead, much like Max Payne’s dive control.

The story I had in mind was a character is taken to a prison planet, basically a small planet used to send all the solar systems criminals to (Australia). I think the Riddick game might have done this too.
We take the idea from Face/Off with the magnetic prison boots in order to keep all the prisoners locked down. Our main character is some sort of mechanic or engineer who manages to tinker with the boots and make them totally rad. So the game goal would be to escape the planet.
So the boots are basically face/off prison boots meets the Super Mario Brothers Movie jump boots.

I really like the Mario Bros movie because when I saw it I was young and stupid

Boot upgrades and modifications could be given throughout the game to give new player abilities. I like the idea of minimal hud so the boots could have a coloured light on the back that when green is a positive charge and red negative.
Say if this was a console game (lets say xbox 360) the left trigger could be negative charge and the right trigger positive and depending on the pressure and speed the triggers were pulled could be the force of the charges. If both triggers are held down the character ’skates’.

Cool magnetic boots are the new bullet time

*EDIT*
So yeah… I got the charges the wrong way around, opposites attract
WHAT!? I dropped out of physics.

Lavalevel.net first official wallpaper!
Keep an eye out for lava worms in your local area.

Click for full size
1280×1024

More will come in the future!
And you never know, maybe even a webcomic.

So here we are again. SO I resumed my CoD 4 playing and amazingly some of my complaints in my first 3 hours in were resolved. The story actually became interesting! There is a point at about 4 hours in where it really changes the direction I thought the game was going. I won’t tell you what it is but it was a fresh idea and worked pretty darn well.
I do think they could have milked this special moment much more.

Then there is a level set in the past (19 years or something) where you play your commander as a younger man. Captain Price, who was a central character in Call of Duty 2. That may not seem weird at first, but 2 was set during World War 2 and 4 is set in the near future. SO I have concluded that Captain Price is a vampire, or perhaps his amazing jack the ripper moustache has powers to bend space and time???

The mission set in the past is AWESOME. It’s a stealth mission set around Chernobyl, I’m also playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R (what the hell does that stand for anyway?!) Shadow of Chernobyl and I’m pretty interested in that location.
It’s just you and your commanding officer sneaking over the dilapidated country side and into rundown buildings, while wearing grass suits (ninjas with guns) in order to assassinate some Russian dude with a wicked beard. (Have you noticed that Russians are the go to bad guys as there never seems to be any uproar that all Russians are evil maniacs?)

RUN FROM ZE CHOPPPA!

The fact that you are picking each target and not slaughtering hordes of enemies makes it so much believable and immersive. The AI character in this mission is great and I grew a bit of a connection to him especially towards the end. The AI leads you through the mission and I found myself actually relying on him. The only downfall with the games AI is you go through the entire game in a squad, but they always lead so I never feel like I’m making any tactical decisions.

Then there were a bunch more missions where I must have killed close to 1000 evil Russians and middle eastern people on vacation in russia. THEN I get to this real sonuvabitch of a level set in these tight underground corridors, I complete the level and as it tries to load up the ‘CONGRATZULATONS!’ screen the game crashes… SO I have to do the stupid arse 40 minute long level again! THEN I find that the disc becomes unreadable after this point. DAMN YOU BLOCKBUSTER RENTAL GAMES!
I reckon I must have been up to 2nd last mission too.
SO I guess I’m done with the game, im not compelled to go out of my way to find out what happens. I have a good idea of what happens anyway, the good guys win using bullets and the americans and british soldiers slap each others arses for 15 minutes.

I don’t think I’ll have a chance to try multiplayer which is a shame, but Team Fortress 2 will do me just fine.

SO all in all it was an ok game that is worth a rent but I wouldn’t recommend it for a buy unless you are going for the multiplayer.

SPEAKING of tetris, go watch all 8 parts of THIS

I had been meaning to play Call of Duty 4 for some time now. It’s gotten such universal praise I had to check it out.
I was a big fan of CoD 2 and we have the common decency not to mention CoD 3.

I haven’t finished it yet, I’m probably 50% of the way through and so far it’s been ok.

The gameplay formula is super similar to 2.
Baddies / (bullets + gun + UNSTOPABLE MAN DEMON) = success

What I don’t get is that the game is grounded with so much realism but also exists in some kinda fantasy.
I didn’t know that modern warfare consisted of one singular mute marine who can kill countless numbers of enemy soldiers, regenerate and heal bullet holes and sometimes throw grenades at his superior officers and shoot around their feet when being talked to.

There is just SO much shooting in this game, I know it’s a first person shooter and everything but you just know every few steps you take will be an intensive firefight.
I’m just not that excited by it, I don’t have any real feeling towards it. It’s a good game, with great graphics and atmosphere… but I dunno, it just doesn’t get my brain working.
CoD 4 is pretty, it’s not so much that it has a crazy amazing graphics engine but the detail and attention to the levels and natural environments is what makes it really ‘pop’.

I guess I just don’t see what all the hype is. It’s not exactly original and I have no idea what the hells going on in the story.
I’ve heard the multiplayer is great and I can see with the gameplay mechanics it could be. Things like being able to shoot through walls and the intense feeling of bullets whizzing around is great.

I just wonder how many more faceless middle eastern people I need to kill to have fun.

So I installed the EVE online steam trial last night
(Please note this is just my initial experience after playing for about an HOUR)

www.eve-online.com

For those who don’t know, EVE online is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) set in space with the players controlling and upgrading space ships. It is one of the highest rated games on MMORPG.com and I have heard a great deal about it as an amazing but fairly hardcore game. Upon loading up the game and tooling around in the character creation for WAY too long I finally got into the game and this is basically what I saw

Well sort of…
More accurately

The game seems so dense and complex at first glance, anyone not willing to sit through lengthy tutorials and read pages of instructions is going to be pretty lost. The interface is so daunting and complex that I had to read a tutorial to find out where my items were. I knew it was a hardcore complex game but I wasn’t ready to be expected to operate a REAL SPACESHIP. Look I don’t doubt its an amazing game, if I sat down and really learnt all this stuff and got involved I’m sure it would be one of the most amazing experiences ever. BUT SWEET SPACE JESUS! This thing is like a roller coaster where instead of having to be a certain height to ride you have to have at least been to space once.

The graphics are awesome though, with great lighting and atmospheric effects but my only issue is the fact that it is SPACE and everything is so huge and open set on a black backdrop that I often don’t know what I’m looking at and find myself craving TREES AND DIRT. The fact you also don’t have direct control over the ship (it uses a kinda waypoint system and you control it using drop down menus) and low level combat is targeting something, pressing fire and going and getting yourself a delicious space food stick. Also that you don’t really have control over a character, it’s very hard to connect with a spaceship and a little portrait. The now shutdown Auto Assault had this same issue.

I wouldn’t trust that caramel

This is just my initial reaction and I did know what I was getting into. There is a real niche for this kind of hardcore game and it’s perfectly valid in our game space (not pun), hell even welcomed!

I think the fact that the interface is straight out the gate at such a complex level it is going to push away a lot of curious people who don’t have the patience to get through it. I think that one of the reasons World of Warcraft has been so successful in the casual player market is because the initially simple interface grows with you throughout the game.
At level 1 it’s going to look something like this

and at lvl 70 something like this

(Well if you are hardcore enough…)

Basically we can say I’m not the right market for EVE Online, and I wouldn’t say its a bad game in anyway. So go check out the free 21 day trial on steam by all means. BUT BE PREPARED.

Because in space… nobody can hear you read