“Evil Exhumed” by Warren Marshall

In his neverending quest to one-up me, Warren Marshall has released his Quake 1 Base level, Evil Exhumed. But Warren didn’t just create a huge level (that will remind you a bit of the archeological dig sections in Doom 3) and new textures. Oh noooooooo! He also programmed an entirely new level editor for the Mac to make this level. I cannot compete with this level of commitment! So head over to Warren’s page already and download the level!

As for BBelief2008, this is how I described my current status to Warren earlier today:

Need to finish mine…I’m somewhere at the 75% mark now, but that just means that I’m getting to all the areas that I didn’t wanna do before God I hate making mountains in Quake…

Rating “Cyberfilms”

Cyberfilms is one of those books that I bought on a whim. It might have been during a late-night Readers’ Books run with Victoria. The book might even have been in the bargin bin – the cover isn’t all that attractive, but the description sounded interesting enough. Cyberfilms is a collection of sci-fi stories that were adapted into movies. The cover boldly proclaims that “You’ve seen the movies – now read the stories they were based on!”, but that might be overstating it a bit. Of the 11 stories on the book, only three or four (depending on your accounting) became major motion pictures. The remaining eight were turned into B or made-for-TV movies.

But even with over half of this book’s stories turning into somewhat obscure sci-fi movies, I was surprised (if not to say ashamed) to find that I had only seen one of the actual movies: Total Recall. That’s quite a wake-up call: I never watched Candyman! Or Mimic. Not even Johnny Mnemonic… or Reaminator! I’m not sure what I was doing in my teenage years, when you were supposed to watch these campy horror classics. I wasn’t keeping up with the times, that’s for sure.

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BBelief 2008 – Visual Storytelling

One thing that has bugged me a lot about Quake environments – especially now that I’m taking another look 12 years later – is how sterile they often feel. That’s not a new complaint, of course. Back in ’96, several print reviews expressed the same sentiment – undoubtedly still under the impression of a recently released Duke Nukem 3D, which created a much more intricate world. Most of Quake’s sterility can be attributed to the game’s lack of visual storytelling.

As explained in my earlier post, visual storytelling is all about adding a sense of history and purpose to the 3D environments that the player traverses. A well done 3D level never feels like it was built for the player (or, by extension, for the game). A good environment feels like has its own identity. The more the player feels like he is passing through a living, breathing place (or better yet, the more he feels like he is trespassing), the better.

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Snapshot

Cyber-stalking help, September 2008:

Reading… The Cry For Myth (Rollo May)
Watching… Pinks All Out. Giants – Diamondbacks (1 -1, top of the 8th)
Playing… Started playing Spore but lost interest. Working on (and playing) my Quake level instead.
Looking Forward To… first wedding anniversary
Regretting…that my parents couldn’t make their visit
Fun… meeting old acquaintances in unexpected places

Visual Storytelling

A few months ago, on a private message board, we were discussing Digital Extremes’ game Dark Sector (which I finished – good game, with a few shortcomings), and got on the topic of infusing life into 3D action environments. As part of the discussion, I wrote a personal definition of “Visual Storytelling”. I don’t know if this term is widely used in the game industry yet, but everybody in game development will know what you’re talking about once you start describing it. 

I want to give credit to Harvey Smith for digging up this piece of text in the first place, I’d forgotten about the discussion. But why am I reposting this on my own blog when it’s already been published elsewhere? Because I want to set up a later BBelief 2008 post! So, let’s lay some groundwork. What do level designers, game designers and game writers mean when they talk about visual storytelling?

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Life Update

Two down, four to go.