Page Gallery Improvements

Whoop! I’ve made some major improvements to the gallery posts on my page. WordPress v2.5 introduced an image gallery that is functional, but a lot of basic functionality is still missing. Once you click on an image, for example, you have no easy way of going back to the parent post. You can hit the Back button on your browser, but what happens if a search engine brought a visitor straight to an image page (as is happening quite often for my Samantha Sarcinella image, for example)? When you’re on that image page there’s also no way to go to the parent post and see the rest of the gallery.

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Page Navigation Improvements

I spent the last couple of hours making the breadcrumbs on top of most pages more useful. They’d always been there, but as a navigation tool there were pretty confusing, to be honest. Missing parents (the main blog page was never included!), confusing hierarchies (breadcrumbs for a download post didn’t lead to the Downloads page!) etc.
I’d never really dug into the plugin and wasn’t sure how much work this would be. Turns out that most changes were relatively easy because the plugin already supports them. I had to make some code modifications for others, though.

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Sonoma IRL Race

As usual, I took lots of video and not a lot of photos. But I found a few pictures from the IndyCar race last weekend that I feel like sharing. It was a great event – attendance was up, there was lots of pre-race entertainment, and people seemed to enjoy themselves. Unfortunately the race itself ended up a bit too boring, because there was only one caution and the field never got bunched up. As a result not a lot of passing was happening, and Helio’s victory was never really challenged (good for him, though – he was ecstatic!). Here’s the pictures. Might have to do a second round later with extracted video frames of actual racing action

BBelief2008 Focus

The weekend was filled with racing, so I didn’t do much level editing. So now might be a good time to discuss the criteria that I apply when making decisions about what goes into Beyond Belief 2008 and what doesn’t. And to muse about guiding principles in general.

When embarking on any artistic endeavor, it’s good to establish focus early on. On multi-faceted projects, these principles help the author determine which ideas should be included in the work and which ones should be left out. This is true for many creative undertakings: commercial games, books, screenplays, movie… It’s true for hobby levels, as well. So here’s the guiding principle I established for BBelief2008:

I want to evoke fond memories of the original Quake.

That’s a decidedly mundane ambition, especially if you consider that 12 years have passed in which the Quake community has moved on to much grander projects. Looks like my plan is to make a map that amounts to nothing more than a tribute level. But this guideline makes a lot of sense to me for various reasons:

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Quake Expo 2008 and an Interview

Have you heard of Quake Expo? I hadn’t until a few weeks ago, when I stumbled across the 2006 page. Basically, Quake Expo is an effort by the still existing editing community for classic Quake to shine a light on all the editing efforts that are keeping the games alive. There’s virtual booths where people present their work, and various events like speedmapping and speedmodding. Pretty cool.

There’s another Quake Expo this year, and my two items of note are a Beyond Belief 2008 booth that I opened (mostly a recap of material that I’m posting on this page). And an interview with me on Quaddicted. That interview was conducted before I’d got the mad idea to make a new Quake map, btw, which is why none of the work is touched upon.

BBelief2008 Level Flow

One of the fun parts about making this level is that I don’t have to worry at all about planning ahead. That’s the way of working that comes naturally to me: I never planned out my levels in the Doom and Quake days. I just started working on something and discovered where the level would take me.

You can’t do that in today’s professional game development, of course. When working with a team on a commercial game, things tend to be much more planned out from the start. Every level has a place in the game. The start and finish are usually predetermined. Certain story points need to be hit, specific gameplay elements need to be utilized. And things are so complex today, with several people working on the same environment, that the level needs to be roughed out as early as possible. So that the environment artists can start working on the building blocks. So that lighting artists (if the game has them) can start thinking about the look of the level. So that gameplay elements (which might not necessarily all be proven out yet) can be tested as early as possible – in the levels that they’re supposed to appear in.

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Beyond Belief 2008

In the last two weeks I’ve been working on a little side project, purely for the fun of it. And fun it has been! Straight-forward, old-fashioned Quake. An expected audience of 27. Maybe 28. But that’s the cool part, I don’t have to live up to any expectations that come with modern, professional 3D games. I just get to this for myself, doodle in 3D and remember old times (I’ve always done a lot of level design work while watching the Olympics).

I’m using BSP for this, which I started using back in 1997 after finishing the original Beyond Belief. It’s great to still see the editor maintained, it works in Vista without a hitch. Running Quake in a floating window for easy map checks certainly is an improvement over the old DOS days

I’m not sure when the level will be released, but I’m determined to finish it. I’ll post more information later.

Up To Speed

The latest episode of the IRL’s official Up To Speed show is using a bunch of the footage that I shot at Infineon Raceway last week.  Kinda cool, and glad to see my footage find new uses Here’s the Youtube version.

One of the things that I like about the Indy Racing League is that it’s really embracing new media to promote their series. Some of that might come out of necessity – TV coverage and promotion is lacking a bit right now and the league is looking for additional ways to bring coverage to the fans. But in general they are going in the right direction – weekly update shows, streaming qualifying and races, lots of interaction opportunities on the webpage. Other racing leagues are a bit behind this, or overly driven by corporate and outside interests (NASCAR contracts out its own webpage to Turner, for example).

Snapshot

Cyber-stalking help, August 2008:

Reading… Cyberfilms
Watching… Spaced – Season 2. The Olympics
Playing… Etrian Odyssey
Listening To… Star Trek – First Contact (iPod shuffle)
Expecting… IndyCar race. Parents visit
Lacking… Sleep

R.I.P. Squall

Another one of the original four budgies is gone. I’ve had parakeets all my life, and they die. I can deal with it. But moments like these still make me reflect on life – I’d known Squall longer than my wife! Good times… he will be missed.