Just a quick aside to lazy design

September 4th, 2009

Whoa, two posts in one day? Yeah, school’s on break right now, so I have a bit of time. I just have to vent a little bit about lazy design and a basic understanding of the behavior of reflected light. What do I mean, you ask?

Well, I received an email the other day from SCEA regarding their new “The Tester” reality game show they’re casting. Now, the show looks like your standard fare reality show – meaning, it won’t interest me at all – but the email looked a little off. Something about it just wasn’t right. See what I mean:

First off, I know it’s a monochrome silhouette, but the overlap of the pants legs makes it look like the dude is wearing the crotch at his knees. Now, I’m all for baggy pants, but… No, what I’m actually talking about is the reflection – the tip of the shoe reflection starts at the tip of the shoe itself and continues away as it moves toward the heel. It’s as if the designer thought the guy was standing on his tip-toes or something – either that, or the designer was just lazy. Yes, you can duplicate-flip-position-fade and be done with it, but it’ll look like a cardboard cutout, as is clearly evidenced here.

So I was curious. I took a screenshot of the email, pasted it into The GIMP, and timed how long it would take me to undo what the original designer did and put together a better version – no layered file to work from, none of the source bits, just the flattened screen capture. The time? 15 minutes. The result?

I clone-stamped out the original refection, created a new reflection object with the basic Magic Wand > Fill method, and went to work. I altered the shape of the shoes and pants somewhat, but it’s a silhouette, you can do that – in fact, if it’ll make the final result look better, you should! I completely removed the shoes on the reflection object and traced new, spatially localized reflection areas around the shoes, altered the curve of the pants rolls as they would be seen from a low-level angle (you know, like from a reflection off the floor), applied a Mask to fade it out, and viola. Here’s a side-by-side:

All I’m asking for is just a little bit of professional pride, man – don’t take the easy way out, especially when the better way only takes a few minutes more. And Sony, if you need someone, I’d love to be your graphic designer – grayscale is my favorite, too. ;)

Posted in Ranty Rants | 1 Comment »

And so it begins

September 4th, 2009

:D

Building up my collection
Seems like black suits with yellow masks are all the rage with the rad, shooty people.

It’s official. Add these two to MGS4 (which you can kinda see there behind TimeShift on the right), and I now have more games for the PS3 I don’t even have yet than I do for the SNES I do have. I’m a big fan of first-person shooters, I like having a diverse array, and I’ve wanted both of these for quite some time now. Also, the allegedly terrible shooter Legendary is on its way, so that should be interesting. The really awesome thing was the price: $40 for all three of ‘em combined – thank you Amazon. Sometimes, getting into the game late on a console is handy.

I’d also like to offer up some manner of requiem for Free Radical Design, the developers of Haze. The TimeSplitters series is excellent, and Second Sight was my favorite game on the PS2 for quite some time, until I finally picked up Shadow of the Colossus.

The sad, sad truth

  • TimeSplitters – 8.2 / 10
  • TimeSplitters 2 – 9.0 / 10
  • TimeSplitters: Future Perfect – 8.7 / 10
  • Second Sight – 7.9 / 10
  • Haze – 6.3 / 10
  • * list compiled from GameStats averaged rankings for the PS2 versions of all titles

Four out of five games were awesome – reviewed at 8 or above (7.9 is close enough to count) – but one title gets mediocre reviews and everyone pulls their projects, no one picks up TimeSplitters 4, and Free Radical is forced to close their doors. One poorly-received title can sink an objectively awesome company that tries something big and falls short, but companies like Conspiracy Entertainment and Data Design Interactive can continually churn out countless, worthless shovelware titles for this new Wii audience and stay afloat – minimal effort + minimal cost + ? = Profit!

So, here’s to you, FRD. I will play Haze, I will enjoy it, and I will remember you. “Time to split” indeed.

Posted in Ever'day Talkies | No Comments »

Awesome Sites Volume 1 – OCRemix.org

August 1st, 2009

It’s that time again – the time where I try to direct my traffic to other sites that already have orders of magnitude more traffic than I do! I’m silly like that.

As you can see over there in my sidebar, I have a little section dedicated to “sweet sites” – The Internet is full of bunches and bunches of crap, so when I find something of particular merit, I like to make note. I last attempted this type of thing a little over a year ago with That Guy With The Glasses while they were getting their thing started. I totaled one confirmed referral… So here I go again!

Do you like video games?

Or, more importantly, do you like video game music? Video game music is an incredible arena – it can span anywhere from the cheery bongos of classic Crash Bandicoot, to the stirring orchestral awesomeness of, well, just about anything that comes out of Japan. You’ve gotta admit, when it comes to sweeping, symphonic scores, very little can keep pace alongside a JRPG – I’ve recently found myself quite taken with the remastered soundtracks for the Star Ocean remakes on PSP. And then there’s Metal Gear Solid… :D

But anyway, I digress. There are myriad video game soundtrack remixes out there – the Newgrounds Audio Portal has a huge section devoted to video game music. But that collection is of rather dubious quality – it’s pretty much the YouTube of audio portals. No, I’m here to talk about something better: I’m here to talk about OverClocked Remix.

Have you already heard of OverClocked Remix? If so, then you can go elsewhere, because I’ll just be talking about stuff you already know. If not, or if you’re just interested in hearing me ramble, then grab yourself either an audio-enabled browser (ex: Firefox + FoxyTunes) or a web-enabled media player (ex: Songbird), and let’s listen to some music!

The Critic difference

OCR is kinda like the Aston Martin to Newgrounds’ Honda Civic – either one’ll do, but one is demonstrably more awesome. At the time of this writing, the Newgrounds Audio Portal has 21,847 video game tracks available; in all of OCR, there are only 1744 total remixes available. Huge difference, right? Actually, the real difference is this: In the Newgrounds system, anyone can upload their stuff and, as long as it beats out the Blam, it’s permanently available for download, regardless of how terrible it is. In the OCR system, every submission has to go through a panel of senior judges who put it through honest, blunt critique – everything from the composition to timing to sample quality – and only the ones that are deemed worthy are allowed onto the site. It may sound harsh, but it fosters a community focused solely around quality, experimentation, and the furthering of their art, and it leads to incalculably better music.

I’m not saying everything on Newgrounds sucks – far from it, actually – I’m just saying that, for example, something like this (listen at your own peril) would get itself laughed out of town over at OCR, but it’s up on Newgrounds (defaulted to endless loop, no less) to torture anyone who happens to come by. Now, I know everyone has to start somewhere, and I guess Newgrounds can serve as that place, but that is simply all the more argument in favor of a place where only the adults can play.

Let’s take the Ballad of the Wind Fish theme from The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening as an example. It’s one of my favorite classic GameBoy tunes, and the source of some deeply-rooted personal nostalgia. Compare any one of NG’s offerings against any one of OCR’s offerings – Symphonic Ballade is my personal favorite – and you’ll see what I mean. The funny thing is, the only remix I actually enjoy on the Newgrounds list is the one ranked at the top: Waking the Fish by Willrock07 – the same Willrock07 who has a YouTube channel devoted to his remixes, and had his Mountain of Dreams remix accepted into OCR earlier this year.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is, quality is quality no matter where it is, but OCR’s stringent submission process sets a standard toward which remixers can strive, and basically ensures that you’re never in danger of contracting ear cancer from accidentally listening to one of these while you’re browsing. :shock:

And with that, marvel as I attempt to jump-start your awesome music collection with a few of my personal favorite remixes. Happy listening! :)

  • A Rose for Zelda – by Tepid
    An intimate, acoustic remix of Zelda’s Rescue from A Link to the Past, I love, love, love this mix. Just wait until 3:28 hits – if ever there were an auditory analog for vertigo, that’s it. Hauntingly beautiful.
  • A New Ray of Light – by Sadorf and Sir_NutS
    A kicking trance remix of a song from one of the few games I own for the GameGear: Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble. I loved that game, and love this song in particular. The remix takes the original and knocks it out of the park.
  • Save Me – by SGX
    Ever hear of ICO? To my shame, I’ve still yet to play it, though I’m 90% through the sequel/prequel Shadow of the Colossus. Well, SGX here turns the “Save Game” loop into a driving, energetic, 6-minute song that never feels like it’s overstayed its welcome, despite the inherent repetition. Awesome.
  • Wanderer on the Offensive – by B33J, Cerrax, Sixto Sounds, and yodaisbetter
    Speaking of Shadow of the Colossus, this collab remixes two SotC tunes into one 4-minute song. The track is pure rock, with a killer lead duo – trading off between a smooth electric guitar and a soaring viola. Epic.
  • Rena Lanford of Arlia Village – by Dale North
    An impassioned reorchestration of one of the more delicious tracks in the Star Ocean saga. The source track is a very minimalistic one, and the remixer stayed true to the original theme. However, several times throughout the course of the mix, a full-bodied orchestral sample set is used, creating an atmosphere almost like the entire orchestra is straining against the limitation, imbuing the original theme with an awesome sense of power.

If this exercise has taught me anything, it’s that the headphones I have for my computer right now are utter crap… Anyway that’s all for my pseudo-intellectual attempt at describing songs. There are many more quality tracks on OCRemix from games with some of the most revered soundtracks in video game history – FFVI, Castlevania, Gradius, Mega Man 2 – so go explore, and get you some good music. ;)

Thanks for reading.

Posted in Awesome Sites, Ever'day Talkies | 1 Comment »

Welcome to my new site

July 31st, 2009

Heya dear reader! It has been quite a while since I’ve done anything here, and I blame it all on one thing: Me. Well, me and my custom blog system.

See, the blog I used to have here was interesting in that I created it myself – I did the database design, wrote the PHP, and put it all out there. Thing was, it was rather crap compared to a real blog management system – I never got around to creating a backend for post creation or comment moderation. Everything had to be handled directly through the PHPMyAdmin install on the server. Things like when posting a new article, I’d have to manually create the relational links between the post ID and the category IDs…

And then I became a spam magnet for some reason – weird, as my site only gets about 20 hits a day, most of those being on the tutorial pages. So I had to write my own spam filters – word filters, URL filters, and IP blacklists. Still, in the past 15 days, I’ve garnered 9205 spam comments – 8 of which made it past the automated filters and went visible on my blog. Pretty good percentage, but considering 90% comes from the same 10 IP addresses, it’s less spectacular than it sounds. Further, given that I’ve made a grand total of 2 posts in the last six months, I don’t really think the trouble was worth it.

So, I’m switching to WordPress, in the hopes that a fluent, mature content management system will help me focus on actually creating content. I’ve had a grand total of three tutorials on this site since the last one was published on June 6th, 2007. That’s over two years without the addition of useful content. Rather a waste of a URL, no? Well, I’m letting go of my pride, dropping my custom blog, and going with something that works and works well.

First off, I’ll focus on tutorials for things – not just Paint.NET, but GIMP stuff and Inkscape stuff and HTML stuff and Javascript/jQuery stuff – all manner of things I foolishly think I have insight into which I can give. I’ll revamp the old stuff and move on to new and greater things. For instance, I’ve got quite a few jQuery scripts lying around that I’ve made over the years, and they’re not really doing anyone any good just sitting there. Plus, I enjoy taking something that was custom-built for a purpose and expanding it to be a modular, insertable extension.

I’m still futzing with the styling, but I’d say it’s 95% done at this point. I’ll be porting the old tutorials over within the week, until which point they will remain live in their current state. I’m taking this ship forward, so buckle up. It’s a whole new Sketchpad.

Posted in Ever'day Talkies | 4 Comments »