Okay, so this is shameless self promotion, but I've been working on this project for a little over 5 months.
I've been working on a Scooby-Doo parody called Skunky Mutt and the Puzzle Posse. I got the idea a good while back when a couple characters of my MisFitZ cartoons mentioned watching shows called Skunky Mutt and the Puzzle Posse and Professor Y (a take on Doctor Who).
If you ever have some spare time I'd recommend watching God on Trial. 'God on Trial is a 2008 BBC/WGBH Boston television play written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, starring Antony Sher, Rupert Graves and Jack Shepherd. The play takes place in Auschwitz during World War II. The Jewish prisoners put God on trial in absentia for abandoning the Jewish people. The question is if God has broken his covenant with the Jewish people by allowing the Nazis to commit genocide.'
It asks and raises some interesting philosophical questions and is generally a good watch, if quite heavy.
WARNING: Contains buzz words.
-nm
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Member of the Snake Appreciation Society
Death Illustrated is a good game, if old (2003-2002) and abandoned. The singleplayer campaign is worth checking out, because even though there are few maps (about 35, 2 of which are blank) these are levels sure to last you a lifetime, no matter how scarce.
Multiplayer (because it is abandoned) doesn't work (no servers), but if you could set up your own server, you could get people to play DI again for sure.
On singleplayer modes, 19 levels are Campaign, the other (about 16) are Deathmatch.
Be warned... on some computers like mine directly clicking "Death Illustrated" doesn't work, and instead click "death.bat".
It's completely free, you don't have to pay at all.
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today!
I have a Twitch stream. A while ago, I started playing through the Myst series on stream. I finished 1-3, but I had to stop at Myst IV because the visuals were choppy and I couldn't figure out a way to fix it. I believe I've figured it out now, and I'm planning to pick up where I left off: at the very beginning of Myst IV. I'll be starting in about 3 hours, at noon Eastern Time.
If you'd like to join me in my stream, it's at http://twitch.tv/thedimono and I'm planning to stream there every Sunday at that time - when I finish Myst IV I'll be moving on to another puzzle game, and so on.
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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!
Well if anything goes here, I'll link to a flash animation that's been just like a flash animation to me. (You'll get that joke about 3 1/2 minutes into it.)
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There are two types of sheep in the world. Those who jump off a bridge when told to, and those who jump off a bridge when told not to. Don't be either.
A surprisingly large number of them are solvable just with paper and pencil, but since several of them involve very large numbers, very large data-sets, or both, you're generally encouraged to do some programming to have your computer help you out with searching for the answer.
This combination of mathematical deduction, to reduce the size of your search space, and clever programming to efficiently search said space, or do the computations in a straightforward manner, means that solving any one single puzzle is quite an accomplishment.
Anyway, here's my friend key in case you want to share progresses:
743381_VkXHaIiXuipT7mwLRNssohIBZLm6ZJ8m
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Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):
Pekka
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Re: Look! Links!(0)
This video has some video previews of technical papers from SIGGRAPH 2017. It's good for a brief glimpse into recent computer graphics research. It's 3m 11s.
Pekka
Level: Smiter
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Registered: 09-19-2007
IP: Logged
Re: Look! Links!(+1)
Pedro Medeiros ( https://twitter.com/saint11 ) creates frequent pixel art tutorials and post them on his Twitter feed. They feature a variety of pixel art specific techniques and more general animation techniques.
Here is a link for an advanced search that shows just the tweets with the #tutorial hashtag. Search results.
Pekka
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 302
Registered: 09-19-2007
IP: Logged
Re: Look! Links!(+1)
Springer released a selection of open access books as PDFs some time ago. I saw a link to this categorized list of these books by Harish Narayanan today, and I'd like to share it here.
At the place I am currently working at, I am hosting an unofficial video game design club on Google Hangouts.
Although I am flexible and can change how the club functions, I believe it would make the most logical sense to make 2D games before 3D games, as 3D is harder to make if you are not familiar with game design.
Similarly, I think it would also be best for us to work on art first as that is the easiest to do on a computer, and then sound design next, and then level design because you need sound and art for a functional level, and then finally programming.
The link for anybody who is interested and has a Google/YouTube account is:
For this week, I am teaching basic shape tools in Microsoft Paint, and then each week we will learn something new:
What we will learn x weeks from now:
1) color theory
2) opacity and gradients
3) JPEG vs PNG compression
4) select and freehand drawing tools
5) tools similar to freehand tools, such as burn, smudge and clone
6) layer masks and blending
7) basic transforms and cropping
8) warp transforms
9) pen tool
10) text
11) seamless backgrounds and textures
12) animated GIFs
13) imitating 3D art styles without use of the perspective tool.
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today!
I have finished a Google Site with all of the tutorials up to now which I update each week; so far I am still only teaching digital art/graphics, but I plan on moving on to sound design in December.
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today! [Last edited by azb at 10-19-2020 03:14 PM : Clarified date of next unit]
I finished publishing the final tutorial video in the 2D graphics and animation unit just now, and I made sure to organize it in a neat playlist for anybody interested. Note that some videos have info cards to link back to previous concepts that they are built upon, IE how layer masks rely on a good knowledge of the alpha channel, or how blending modes rely on a good knowledge of the math/computing behind how RGB colors work.
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today! [Last edited by azb at 11-25-2020 01:48 PM : YouTube embed won't work for link]
Sadly, the website appears to be down right now (I get a 404 link), so I think I will have to start another one from scratch, but for now I have a link to the sound and music production playlist:
1: How headphones vs speakers work, as a prerequisite about how you will get different playback sound qualities depending on what you listen with
2: Basics of sound waves, such as frequency, volume, and what a triangle, square or sine wave is
3: Basics of digital recording, such as sample rate and bit depth
4: Lossy audio compression files such as MP3 or OGG Vorbis (note that I do not cover lossless files such as FLAC because most game engines do not support them)
5: Mechanics of how sound is made physically (string, wind and percussion instruments)
6: Basic electronic effects like amplification, pitch and tempo changing, reversing and inverting the sound, or fade ins/fade outs
7: Modulation-based effects, like tremolo or vibrato
8: Time-based effects, like echo, repetition, delay, or reverb
9: Tone-based effects, like overdrive and distortion, phasers, or wah-wah effects
10: Basic spectral effects, like compression, low and high pass filters, or bandpass/bandstop (notch) filters
11: Advanced spectral effects like equalization (AKA audio mixing)
12: How harmony and chords work (how to layer tracks for a more richer sound)
13: Harmonic series for synthesizing your own tone/timbre from scratch
14: Types of tempos/beats/measures (1:1, 4:3 etc)
15: Arpeggios and their similarity to chords
16: Octaves and how semi-tones, quarter-tones etc work
17: Scales (like Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do)
18: Keys (referring to the relative pitch a scale is in, not like physical piano keys)
Currently, I am only on week 5 of the program, but I am still working on recording the rest taking it on a week by week basis.
Do any of you guys who are musically inclined think I teach it in the proper order, and do you know if I missed out on anything?
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today! [Last edited by azb at 12-30-2020 01:26 AM : Clarify which part I am on]
Okay, I can see now that I forgot bass vs treble boosting, as well as crossfade effects and paulstretch effects, so I think bass vs treble boosting would go well with basic spectral effects, paulstretch effects would go well with time-based effects because of how it stretches out the sound over the specified time, and crossfade effects would go well with the video that introduces harmony because they are based on having different tracks/layers seamlessly blend into one another, as opposed to the regular fade ins and fade outs.
I also forgot about vocoders and autotune, but I think that would best fit with tone-based effects since it is all about getting an electronic sound to your voice or whatever instrument you use.
EDIT: Actually, I think vocoders would work better when teaching harmony and harmony-based effects like crossfades, because of the nature of how vocoders work (IE: how you have to synthesize a second track to the one you are applying the effect to, to make the vocoding work/tune the vocoder).
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today! [Last edited by azb at 12-30-2020 10:08 PM : Revisit vocoder placement]
I have developed an Asteroids style game using MIT's Scratch engine, with a theme similar to Bandersnatch's alternative timelines, or Dr. Who's TARDIS, famous time travel concepts like that. In particular, I implemented time travel by having the player switch between multiple eras of 2D gaming, starting with the original era of the Asteroids game (late 70s/early 80s arcade machines) leading up through all the major eras to present day HD gaming.
A: I have completed the music production unit of the tutorial, so for everybody's convenience here it is:
I also have a link to the 2D graphics unit for anybody interested:
B: I will also start this week teaching 2D game programming using MIT's Scratch Engine for convenience to anybody new to programming and software development, so I do in this order each week:
1) Introduction to the binary system and how variables consume more data the greater their number value
2) Event blocks, which will not start the rest of the code until they are executed (like how double clicking on drod.exe will start the code in DROD's case)
3) Look blocks, which are used to alter a graphic mid-game, like its size or color
4) How to work with imported graphics in Scratch, called "Costumes"
5) Sound blocks, which can also be used to alter some properties of a sound mid-game such as its pitch or volume
6) How to work with imported sound and music files in Scratch
7) Control blocks, which are used to direct the flow of the rest of the code
8) Creating custom variables in Scratch
9) Blocks that run before rendering the next screen
10) Mathematical operator blocks, which have a wide range of uses from simple addition and multiplication, to more complex things like logarithms and trigonometric functions
11) Sensing blocks, which are used for sensing physical/real-world inputs rather than virtual inputs like keystrokes
12) Motion blocks, which are (in my opinion) the most technically complicated of Scratch's blocks, but also the fundamental cornerstone of how game mechanics work/are implemented.
13) 1D constant velocity linear motion, like in many platformer games for enemy AI
14) 1D accelerated linear motion, which is usually used to make player characters run
15) 2D constant velocity linear motion, like you see in the Asteroids enemies or the ball in Pong.
16) 2D accelerated linear motion, including projectile motion.
17) Constant velocity rotational motion, again using Asteroids as a reference to constant rotational rate of the ship when you turn it.
18) Accelerated rotational motion, like with increasing the spinning of a bike wheel by applying torque.
19) Complex motion that combines rotational and linear motion, like top-down 2D racing games do.
Would you guys say that it is well-thought out and in good order, or did I miss out on anything?
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today! [Last edited by azb at 04-01-2021 08:01 PM : Link wasn't working properly]
I am also thinking that I should teach 3D modelling and texturing after making 2D games, and then making 3D games after that.
In particular, I would like to teach for 3D modelling in this order:
1) Basic polygonal meshes, like in the Mario 64 era (although some of the game's models could be more detailed too)
2) More detailed meshes, like Quake III had but they were still pretty low poly
3) Hyper realistic models, like Call of Duty or Fortnite has
4) Texturing your models using Photoshop skills taught in the first unit
5) Adding extra textures to your model, like bumpmaps, lightmaps normalmaps etc.
6) Animating your models using keyframe animations
7) Animating your models using skeletal animation model formats, similar to how skeletons work in real life human bodies
8) Scanning real-life actors into skeletal models, like many triple A studios do or technical colleges
I am thinking that for the 3D programming unit after, I can do:
1) Programming the models to display different polygon counts at different fields of view, similar to how older 3D PC games worked
2) Introduction to the 3 axis, such as yaw
3) Programming vector calculations for environmental factors such as light raytracing, or sounds decreasing with distance/radius
4) 1D constant velocity motion, such as a player moving along one axis in most games
5) 1D accelerated linear motion, such as some physics games have like the Marble Blast series (both PC and Xbox releases)
6) 2D constant velocity linear motion, like shooter game gun vectors have (although it's so fast it's hard to tell and feels instantaneous)
7) 2D accelerated linear motion, including projectile motion
8) 2D constant velocity rotational motion, like you see when you turn the character around with the mouse in some games
9) 2D accelerated rotational motion
10) 3D rotational motion, like throwing a ring or tennis racket at an angle in real life and how it follows a bizarre mathematical pattern (ignoring linear displacement from things like gravity or the force of your throw)
11) 3D rotational motion combined with 1 and 2D linear motion, so using the previous example but this time with linear displacement caused by the factors mentioned above
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Please feel free to test the ultimate arena: King Azb's Arena today! [Last edited by azb at 04-05-2021 06:04 PM : Grammar - incorrect "a" before "skeletal models"]
These seem like interesting topics to me and you seem to have put a lot of thought into the curriculum. I have nothing else to add to what you've proposed.
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Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.
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