Month: August 2011

As many of you know, I’m working on a game called Prototype 2, which you can guess is a sequel to a game called Prototype. In the first game, you play as Alex Mercer. He wasn’t exactly like your normal video game protagonist. Some people found him difficult to like as a character. Mercer spent most of the game in a quest for truth. Powered by amazing and destructive abilities, you could leave behind a swath of utter mayhem as you drove Mercer closer to the truth. He was morally ambiguous. The game didn’t really punish you for killing innocent civilians. It was hard to play him as a good guy. This was most evident when you picked something up. In Prototype 1, picking something up meant death or destruction for that person or thing. There was no way to just simply drop that item. If you picked up a person, you only had two choices: consume that person (it’s as bad as it sounds) or throw that person with enough force for to kill them. If you picked up an object, you could only rid yourself of that object by destructively throwing it away, even if you were holding say a car with a civilian in it. I remember playing the first game and accidentally picking people up. As they dangled helplessly in Mercer’s right hand, I was dismayed to see the game giving me just two options: “consume” or “throw”. Either option meant death.

In Prototype 2, the protagonist is a new guy named James Heller. Heller is a family man who is driven by revenge. He basically just wants to kill everyone he thinks is responsible for the death of his wife and daughter. His backstory makes him easier to like and identify with. Unfortunately, until recently, the game play features didn’t exactly fit in with this dude who knew the value of family and morals. I remember starting work on the game and then realizing Heller had the same “pick up” limitations. He could only consume people or throw objects/people to their deaths. It just didn’t feel right.

Then just a few days ago, I received some release notes. Someone had put in the ability for Heller to put down objects and people. Amazing! I tried it out immediately. I went to a busy intersection and grabbed a random pedestrian. As people scattered in fear around me, my helpless victim dangled in the air in Heller’s right hand. I then pushed the button to let him go. Heller put the pedestrian down gently and they ran away. It was very satisfying. Heller doesn’t have to be a cold-blooded, indiscriminate killer and we just gave the public a way to express that. We now give them a choice. Not everything has to be destroyed. I then tested it on a car. I picked up a sedan with a driver in it. As Heller held the car up over his head, I easily could have thrown the car into the side of a building. I chose to put the car down. Heller didn’t just drop it to the ground, he actually bent his knees and placed it rather gently back on the pavement. Having a choice felt right.

I know it may seem silly but for all the games I’ve seen over the years, this little feature stands out in my mind as one of the more memorable ones.

A few weeks ago, I started an experiment by putting some ads on a few parts of my site. You won’t notice any ads on the main page of my blog because you, my loyal readers, are fine people and I don’t want to subject you to that. How am I doing, revenue-wise with this ad experiment? Well, I’m probably going to break some rules by telling you this but I’ve generated a whopping $0.00 from 377 ad impressions. Not one single visitor has clicked on an ad. I don’t expect you to click on them because you’re smart people. I’m counting on the random visitors to click on ads.

I’m not sure how other people are generating money with their web sites and ads but it’s clear to me my site isn’t positioned correctly to be making money in that manner.

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Last weekend I went to the paint store to buy some paint. This weekend, I borrowed some painting supplies from my sister and her husband. I am now finally ready to paint over the drywall repairs that have dotted my apartment for months now. This an extreme example of procrastination  for me.

Though I’m a total rookie when it comes to interior home painting, I’m give it a shot next weekend. It shouldn’t take more than two days as there are only two more walls other than the one you see above.

For dinner, I ate a huge chimichanga from Chronic Tacos and now I’m too tired to write anything interesting. The thing was massive and for once, myself and female porn stars had the same concern, “how is that going to fit in my body?” I managed to eat nearly the whole thing, save some fried bits off the end. I am going to regret this sometime tomorrow.

In the meantime, press this button.

Though filming for A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas wrapped nearly a year ago, the above trailer is the first footage that has been released for the third film in the series. I’ve been waiting months for this as I’m a big fan of the movies. Beyond the return of John Cho and Kal Penn, the movie features NPH (who I guess didn’t die outside that whorehouse), Danny Trejo, and Patton Oswalt. Let’s hope NPH has some more classic lines!

I managed to visit SIGGRAPH 2011 at the Vancouver Convention Centre today on day one of the exhibits. I only had my lunch hour available so it was a very short visit. I managed to do a quick look around and spent most of my time talking to people. It wasn’t nearly enough time to see everything. There’s a fair amount of swag to be had but I didn’t get nearly as much as I could have.

The first item you see above is a pen in the form of a Zombrex injection. This is from game maker Capcom and their game Dead Rising 2. In their game universe, Zombrex prevents an infected person from turning into a zombie. A dose must be administered once every 24 hours. The second item is from Bungie and it is a bottle opener. The most popular item of swag by a country mile is the Pixar Walking Teapot. The lineup for this thing was almost the length of the exhibition hall perimeter, which is to say it was massive. I’m going back tomorrow so if there’s a chance any are left, I might try picking one up.

I came home this evening and checked my mail. Look what arrived today! As I detailed in a previous post, I signed up to be part of the Colonel’s Club at KFC. This card allows me to get weekly deals at participating KFC locations without having to remember coupons. I feel quite honoured to be part of this exclusive membership. Though I will admit I am uncertain if signing up for this thing was either a good or bad thing in the long run.

If you live in Vancouver, this is an exciting week for those who have an interest in computer graphics and/or video games. SIGGRAPH is holding its annual conference in Vancouver. This conference is the most high profile for those doing computer graphics work. For the first time in its almost 40 year history, the main SIGGRAPH conference is being held outside of the United States and Vancouver was the lucky city selected. It is a testament to the Vancouver”s draw as a destination city and the important of the computer graphics work being done here both professionally and academically.

Though I work in the video games industry, computer graphics has never been one of my strengths. Other than some introductory CG courses I took, my understanding of all that shiny stuff is rudimentary. Like most of you, I just get impressed when I see the pretty pictures on screen. From a professional standpoint, conferences like GDC are much more relevant to me as they deal with the other technical aspects of gaming making. Having said, that I certainly jumped at the chance to receive a free pass to SIGGRAPH 2011. Through the fine folks at Autodesk, I got a free ghetto “exhibits”-only pass. This is the most basic pass and you can’t see any of the cool stuff in the conference theatre nor can you attend any seminars or courses. It gets you into the convention centre and you can stroll through the exhibits hall where vendors, schools, and companies have set up shop to get you to notice what they’re trying to sell.

Though the exhibits hall only opens on Tuesday, I went to register and get my conference pass today as it was the first day of the conference and I had time on my hands. I know I paid the low, low price of free for my pass but I got absolutely nothing else with it. At the printing station, they printed out a few things with my registration. One of them was called a “merchandise ticket” with a bar code on it. I saw all these other conference attendees walking around with conference materials so I thought maybe even my own ghetto pass had some free stuff with it. Throwing caution to the wind, I lined up for about ten seconds in the “merchandise” line. When it was my turn, the dude at the counter looked at my ticket and said, “Um, you don’t get anything with your pass.” It was kinda awkward but without missing a beat I said, “Ok then!” and walked out of the registration hall.

I regret nothing.

I’m looking forward to going back on Tuesday and strolling through the exhibits hall.

The US stock market took a huge hit today as many share prices nose-dived as people continue to worry about the US economy. Similar scenes played out in other markets worldwide. Apparently in June, Americans cashed out $23 billion in stock from mutual funds, heading to safer ground with cash, bonds, or gold. Despite all the panic, I actually bought stock today in the form of mutual funds.

Perhaps because I don’t know better but I see this as a great opportunity to buy stocks when the prices are low. Even a financial idiot like myself has heard of the strategy of “buying low and selling high”. Well, stocks are now lower in price across the board. You usually don’t want to buy shares in a company when the share price drops in isolation. For example, if a company announces they lost a ton of money in the last quarter, the share prices usually drop. It’s dangerous to buy into that company at that point because you don’t know if they’ll bounce back. Today, however, companies were hit through no fault of their own. The last time I checked, companies like Microsoft and Apple were both down at the end of the trading day. Their prices were down because they were caught in the market panic, not because of anything specific they did wrong. Again, maybe it’s because I don’t know any better but to me, this seems like a great time to be picking up stocks that are more than likely to rebound.

As an example of this happening, I encourage you to look back to the most recession that started around 2008. Stocks back then took a major hit as the value of many, many companies went south. It’s interesting to see that a lot of companies hit share price lows all around the end of 2008. For example, here’s the five year chart for EA. You’ll be able to find many more graphs with the same looking data. Had I been able to buy a significant amount of shares in companies at that time, I would have realized significant gains since then. A majority of those companies rebounded from those lows. They certainly didn’t get back to where they were but the important thing to notice is that the shares went back up. The recession overall was bad but at least to me, it seems like there were opportunities to be had.

I didn’t want to take a huge risk today, so I kept my experiment to well under $5K. I split my purchase between two funds. One was an index fund and the other a US equity fund. I know there’s risk with anything to do with the stock market but I just can’t see this going too wrong for me. Perhaps those have been famous last words that have been spoken too often. Only time will tell.

I’ve had a custom 404 page up on my web site for several years. I did it as I thought regular 404 pages were so plain. You can see mine here. It looks quite dated, though if they keep making Toy Story movies, it won’t be too bad.

There is one site who actually embeds a video into their fancy 404 page. You can see it here. Top notch work! If only I had the skill and effort to do the same. Plus, I don’t own any guns.