Rating “Cyberfilms” (Part 2)

Part 2 of my Cyberfilms story review features two well-known authors and a big movie adaptation. Read part 1 of the series for more information on the book and these reviews. I had originally planned to post four reviews, but when I realized how long each of them had become, I decided to split up the post. As before, be aware that story spoilers might be lurking ahead!

Sandkings (George R. R. Martin)
1979
Score: A

This story was turned into an Outer Limits episode of the same name, written by Melinda M. Snodgrass, directed by Stuart Gillard and starring Beau Bridges, Helen Shaver and Dylan Bridges.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this story, but ended up really liking Sandkings! It starts off a bit wonky, with a Mos Eisley style alien bazaar that conjures up a pulp sci-fi universe that I usually can’t buy into. But Sandking’s strength lies in its characters, not the environment.

When millionaire Simon Kress returns from a long business trip, he discovers that most of his exotic pets have died because of a lack of food – the piranhas cannibalized each other, and his ‘shambler’ devoured the carrion hawk. Somewhat miffed, Kress sets out to find repacement pets at the local market. After a lengthy, unsatisfying search, Kress is finally introduced to a novel species: the ‘Sandkings’, a race of insect-like creatures that build castles, wage wars against each other, and even worship their owner.

[Read more]

Firewater – The Golden Hour

Jamie introduced me to Firewater a few years ago, when I first moved to the Bay Ara. The band is actually from the other side of the country (New York City), but Jamie has close ties with Tod A (the band’s songwriter and front man), and he gave me a bunch of the CDs and encouraged me to attend their ’04 live show at The Bottom Of The Hill. I liked the music, and thought that the concert was exceptionally good (better even than Gogol Bordello, another one of Jamie’s tips).

After that tour, the sporadic updates that I got on Tod started getting increasingly unusual. He had gotten divorced. He had become fed up with America after Bush’s reelection. He had sold all of his belongings and had embarked on a long journey to Asian and Middle-Eastern countries. He wanted to see the world and collect music. He even kept a travel blog about his experiences.

[Read more]

“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.

[Read more]

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.

[Read more]

Unreal 2 Editing Tutorials

My Unreal 2 tutorials had fallen victim to the page redesign. But fear not if you’re still looking for U2 editing help! Hellkeeper has integrated all of my old content into his tutorial page, dug up all of the old documentation, and fixed all outdated links. He’s even translated each tutorial into French, if you feel more comfortable with that. Wanna dig into some oldschool Unreal 2 editing? Go visit the page by clicking on the image below!

BBelief 2008 – Burning The Midnight Oil

If there haven’t been a lot of updates on Beyond Belief 2008 lately it’s because I’ve resisted the urge to post simple editing blurbs like “And now I’ve added this room! Take a look!” With nobody having played the level those posts wouldn’t make much sense, anyway. And if I explained every little detail you wouldn’t have to play the level anymore because I’d already have spoiled everything!

With that said, my output has definitely decreased in the last couple of weeks, and that’s for a very simple reason: the Olympics are over.

[Read more]

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:

[Read more]

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.

[Read more]