I’M A STUDEEEENNNNTTTT!!!

It’s been a while and I never actually thought I would say it again but I have signed up to do a video game designer course with Train2Game.

Originally kind of petrified that it might be a shame my worries have since been quelled and it seems to all be 100% legit, all the documents seem legitimate and I get an NUS card, I suppose it can’t get much more legitimate than that ?

I’ve tried to get involved as much as possible, been on the forums less than a week and have entered a level design competition and also offered my services as a beta tester on a game being made by someone on the forums.

I made the following level, the spec was for a 4 player death match level but I think I only managed to scrape together something that will struggle to fit two people, oh well, this is is :

DM_Venice

Altogether very very exciting! Kinda loosing focus at work but honestly I dont care, I have the chance of doing what I have always wanted to do and I’m not going to let that slip me by!

Happy days

http://mekadragon.com/work/udk/dm_venice/flyby1.png

Been hitting the games a fair bit as of late.

Firstly I bought the Monkey Island 2 remake, then I bought Deathspank, I bought all the expansion packs to Magic the Gathering, BlazBlue and I almost bought a new graphics card just to play the Final Fantasy XIV beta…

While not a bad thing it’s a bit of a change from what I had been used to over the last five years or so, coming out of a long ass relationship is never going to be easy, but you just tend to find your self with more time on your hands…

Deathspank I think I overdid, its a very good game and genuinely makes me laugh out loud but I must have played it for about 6 or 7 hours in two days and I’m a little fed up of it now. I will hit it again soon most likely, or it will end up in the pile of games I never actually finish but purchase on concept.

Magic the Gathering on Xbox live is a weird one, I purchased it when it was first on sale for 400 points but never really touched it, but since moving in with @Maximumfish and Moorby I have found us playing it on a fair few evenings and really enjoying the collecting of new cards and the genuine (if kinda lucky) challenge. However we have managed to crash the game on more than one occasion .

BlazBlue I bought because I had always heard good things about it, and Play were selling the limited edition version which comes with a really nice art book for £17.99. Snapped that up and I don;t actually think I have ever owned a Guilty Gear game, so quite looking forward to this one.

Weekend over!

Had a really really good one, nice and relaxing and generally felt I was having a good time.

The initial test for chillout tent V1 seemed to go well, i’m a bit more likely to spend some money to buy something a little more permanent.

Got around to reading the Winter Mouse Guard book, what a stunning piece of art! I want to write more about the book but I feel I can’t justify it.

I also went on a bit of a spree and ended up buying the Mouse guard RPG as well. It runs on the Burning Wheel, which is a very “different” way of playing RPG’s that i’m honestly not used too. It feels much more free style and with our being used to such a structured play that is D&D it might take some efforts to get used to but i’m excited to give it a try

Yesterday saw the release of the second remake in the Monkey Island franchise with the release of Monkey Island 2 : leChuck’s Revenge Special Edition on the Xbox 360.

.

Thankfully due to the awesomeness of it all it has been given a thorough and pretty damn decent overhaul and as with the first remake its a spectacle and oozes fan service.

It’s quite funny playing these games again, its interesting to see what you remember and why you remember them. Mike seems to be able to remember certain things for particular reasons and I remember some things for others.

For example I knew I had to pick up Largo’s spit on a piece of paper it was just finding the piece of paper (Which I found in the Cartographers ship).

you can’t fault the remake in any way, apart from maybe its insistence to get you to try direct control *blergh* but other than that it is perfect. A good couple of hours of entertainment and laughs ahoy in a wonderfully piratey adventure.

I just hope that one day they decide to bring the Telltale ones out on the 360, I could certainly go for playing through those I just don’t want to on either the Wii or my PC! Go figure ..

Watching Ponyo tonight, I haven’t seen it since I went to the cinema but I remember it being amazing. Can’t wait to see it on a friends new “cinema” setup.

This took chuffing ages to render ..

Quite please how it came out despite the walking animation being completely “floaty”

I’ve actually been getting on quite well with the ol Blender learning.

While I know my work methods might not be very good and I’m probably not doing loads of things right but it seems to be working .

I just finished up doing this :

I think once I am happy with the character I can go ahead and see how he looks animated, bit worried however as the character is so basic that he’s going to suffer from dodgy bends and things.

We shall see however, I’m pretty excited to see him with his sword and swinging it about

I hate not being productive…. I hate watching TV, unless it makes me laugh … I don’t even really enjoy watching films again unless they make me laugh or appeal to my inner geek.

Whenever I spend an evening and generally waste it I feel really shit, like I have done exactly that and wasted an evening of a short life I will never get back. I’m constantly trying to learn new things, be it HTML, Programming, Photoshop, Japanese to name a few but I always start and never really get anywhere.

Recently I have really got stuck in to learning blender. Blender is a freeware 3D app that is pretty damn powerful, it has a built in game engine and is completely community ran, if you search around you can find some impressive bits of work done with it.

As I’m sure I may have mentioned, my attention span is atrocious. But I seem to be sticking at Blender.

I find that I can stick some music on and sit down for a couple of hours and really work at something. Tonight was a bit of a large step in the right direction for me as I finally got my head around UV Mapping (skinning /texture). I have so many ideas and being able to do this has put me one step closer to my goal, so in all its glory meet TIM!

OK so its a start

I’ve been sick as a dog for almost a week, hence the lack of posts, still there’s some pretty good stuff this week that I’m sure will be fun, but I’m almost a month behind on track purchasing and that includes a massive release of Queen tracks!

Available on Xbox 360 and Wii (Oct. 27) and PlayStation 3 system (Oct. 29):

• Rob Zombie – “Burn”
• Rob Zombie – “Dragula”
• Rob Zombie – “Superbeast”
• Wolfmother – “New Moon Rising”
• Wolfmother – “Pilgrim”
• Wolfmother – “Sundial”
• Wolfmother – “White Unicorn”
• Wolfmother – “Woman”
• Liz Phair – “Rock Me”
• Morningwood – “Best of Me” *
• Morningwood – “Sugarbaby” *

Does this image seem slightly “wrong” to anyone else ?

Taken from the new range of Halloween gear for your Avatard

I have been trying to learn blender for a few years now but over the last few weeks I really knuckled down after being pointed toward a tutorial that I actually got my head around.

and this is the finished result!

While it might not seem like much that’s about 10 hours of learning and getting my head around a  fairly complicated package. The idea now I suppose it to take what I know and apply it to something else!

I have ideas but I’m gonna be careful