Fez and perspective in gaming

April 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Fez is creating quite a stir.

Prior to it’s official release, it received several prestigious awards in the gaming community, generating a lot of hype.

The most attractive feature of Fez is it’s usage of 16bit art to create a completely new style.  The developers combined stylistic techniques from classic games and translated them to fit newer technology.  With this merging, a completely new sort of game is born.  Fez shows us that a 2D game combined with 3D game elements creates a totally new perspective for the player, one that had not really been recognized: the idea of a hidden dimension.

The Paper Mario franchise did work with this idea a bit, as you play on a flat surface (think the original Mario games) that you can turn sideways (3D) to reveal hidden secrets.  However, Fez forces you to interact with both dimensions on a level far beyond what Paper Mario tried to do.  The amount of time you “hop” “dimensions” in Fez is much greater than the times in Paper Mario.  Paper Mario also knew of it’s inherent existence on both levels; the characters (some of them) were made aware of the presence of a third dimension and accepted it as part of their reality.  The characters in Fez appear blissfully unaware of the amount of complexity that exists in their world.  This creates an important discourse for the player.

Fez asks us to challenge our notions of reality, it creates a plausibility for things that cannot be seen.  In the game we are forced to use this knowledge in order to advance.

One can only assume that the code behind this game goes far beyond what it appears.  To take a flat surface and turn it sideways every five seconds or so would definitely be a challenge for anybody.  After reading some of the lead programmer’s blog entries on the topic, my suspicions were confirmed: there is a LOT to take into account when you’re shifting 2 dimensional planes around.  It took the team a good five years to fully complete it, which says a lot about it’s complexity.

But what makes Fez so intriguing is that it really doesn’t look all that complicated on the surface.  It’s very tongue-in-cheek about it’s actual complexity, a lot of which I think has to do with it’s retro look.  Fez’s unique style combined with it’s frankly insane code creates a whole new landscape of opportunity for gaming.

Check out a little bit of gameplay and also, even though I didn’t bring it up in this post, the soundtrack because it’s just absolutely incredible.

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Text & video games – Adventures with the Super Famicom

March 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment
look how fancy it is.

This is our Super Famicom!

(One thing before you read:  the sizes of my pictures are ridiculous, I’m sorry)

Recently, my household acquired  a Super Famicom.  Basically, the Super Famicom is the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo, with the difference being that the games that were released for each console weren’t always the same.  A lot of games were released exclusively in Japan for the Famicom, and since the consoles were not universal, you wouldn’t be able to play those games on an SNES .  Thus, we (for future reference, by we, I mean my boyfriend and I)  bought one with the intention to play all of those cool “you’veprobablyneverheardofit” titles.

Throughout our trials with the Famicom thus far I have noticed something that probably seems sort of weird: for most of the games, the fact that I do not know Japanese hasn’t mattered very much.  When we bought it I thought this was going to be a huge issue, and that we’d need lots of outside translation help in order to be able to even figure out the basics of these games.  But this is not the case.

check out the sweet,sweet turn based art style

An example of the fighting style in Chrono Trigger

The question then is, when does the actual text matter in a video game?  Well, the first time we even encountered a serious problem was when we popped in Chrono Trigger.  Chrono Trigger is an RPG, therefore there is quite a bit of story, and therefore a lot of text.  But it’s not just the story in CT that’s the issue, it’s the battle system.  It’s turn based, so think Final Fantasy, and all the moves and options are written out in Japanese.  In a way, you could say that  Chrono Trigger not only a video game, but it is also a text adventure for the reasons I have mentioned above.  Almost all of your dynamic decisions in the game operate on selecting a textual option, something impossible for a non-native speaker without using a translation.

However, like I said, this is the only instance where we have encountered trouble with the language barrier.  The example I have for this is Super Mario World, where little to no Japanese text is present in the game.  The only time you ever really see Japanese is when the hopping Yoshi egg tells you the princess is in another castle (I’m assuming that’s what he says anyway).

One of the rare instances of Japanese in Super Mario World

And yet another instance of Japanese

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at all the English! It looks just like Super Mario World for the SNES

 

One thing I find really interesting about Super Mario World on the Famicom is the amount of English youencounter.  In fact, this isn’t just for SMW; it applies for the majority of the games we purchased.  Donkey Kong Country 2 and Street Fighter Turbo are primarily in English (except where it matters, like the Settings page).

 

 

 

 

Is text really that crucial to our understanding and enjoyment of video games?  I’d have to say yes and no based on my experience.  Originally I assumed that video games were pretty much unplayable in foreign languages, and while some of them still are, you find that it’s really not all that important.  The enjoyment you get from video games does not stem from their semantics, but rather their syntax.  Unless you’re playing turn-based RPGs.

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Creative Project- Using Synfig & Pencil

March 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

First and foremost, here’s my project.

I chose to do an animation simply because I have done quite a bit of work in interactive fiction and hypertext prior to this course.  I have made several choose your own adventures in the past, and as the requirements state, we’re supposed to try something outside of our comfort zone.  I have made simple gifs before, but I had never truly made anything beyond a few seconds of animation.  So, I dived headfirst into the unknown; animation software.

I have to say right off the bat that it definitely did not come out how I anticipated.  I had high hopes for the functionality of animation software, and they were quickly dashed, creating a lot more work for me.

What I was expecting was a tool that would allow me to input the ‘key’ pieces of my animation, and it would take care of all the stuff in the middle.  And I did find that in Synfig!  It’s a great free program that lets you do exactly what I described, and it worked pretty darn well for me.  Except that it would crash every time I tried to save my work.  I would recommend it though if you are an animation beginner like I was, and if you use a Windows machine.  It’s a little finicky on the Mac.

I went in search of free alternatives.  I found Pencil which is what I ended up using.  I don’t recommend using Pencil for any sort of large scale project.  Even though my animation was only a bit over a minute, this ended up being a huge pain in the butt.  However, Pencil is great if you are an artist who wants to show a time lapse of their work.  Or if you’re making something really short like a 5 second gif.

Pencil told me that you could add sound to your project.  And then, when I would try and export it with the sound, nothing would play.  I attribute this to my lack of knowledge of formatting, but nevertheless, Pencil probably should have been forthcoming with this information.

In the end, my minute long animation ended up having 300+ frames to make it look sort of smooth and, even then, it doesn’t look very smooth.  Each of these frames had to be created in a separate program (Gimp) and then uploaded as a new frame into Pencil.  Pencil’s animation timeline window also only went to a certain length, and I had to expand it manually.  Basically, more than half of the animation frame was hanging out somewhere beyond my computer screen as I continuously had to drag the window bar bigger and bigger.  I hope that made sense.

Due to this large amount of tedious work,  I didn’t get to show the whole story that I wanted to.

Thanks to this project, I got to learn more about animation and how it really works.  I also played with a couple of other different programs that ended up just not being for me; for example, I learned a little bit about modeling by trying out blender.  This was a great way to learn new software :)

 

 

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CSS & Undum – Making your work (more) unique

February 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

So as we’ve learned in class there are these really cool things called stylesheets that change how your website looks.

Because the Undum engine runs on HTML (and Javascript, but all the formatting stuff is HTML) you can add your own stylesheet and customize it.

Using CSS as a customization tool can be extremely important to your story.  I’m going to demonstrate some of the ways you can edit the stylesheet given to you with the source code.

I’ll be using the game I made  to show what I did :)

Also, I did make a video of all of this, but then colourlovers.com had surprise NSFWness that I wasn’t expecting and it showed up in my video. It’s really not THAT bad so if you don’t care about that sort of thing you can watch it here.  The slightly NSFW stuff is at the end anyways.
So the file that comes with the undum source code that contains the CSS code is called undum.css (pretty straightforward).

That code will be linked to in your javascript file (which I talked about in my last video) towards the top.  Simply change the link where it says “stylesheet” to wherever you plan on uploading the css file on your server.

 

I only changed the background and the title background.  In all honesty, Undum doesn’t have too many features that allow for customization.  But by changing these two elements you’re creating an entirely different look.

The background is located in the body tag.  You change the URL there to wherever the image you want to use is uploaded, or you delete that tag and change the hex code (which makes colors!) to what ever you want.  The background of the title is located under the ‘title’ class (which looks like #title in your code) and simply repeat the same steps there that you did for the background.

A great place to find color schemes and patterns is colourlovers.com.  I use it for almost all of my projects that need a little extra something.  It’s pretty self explanatory, and I do explain it a bit more in my slightly accidental NSFW video.

The biggest way to learn is to play around with the code.  Try changing numbers.  If you use firefox, check out firebug.  Firebug will let you mess with the code without committing any specific changes.  It’s a great way to learn.

 

 

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Settling the Score – what does the music in games do?

February 5, 2012 by 3 Comments

After viewing Dak0ta this week in class, I started thinking more about the role music plays in a narrative.

Specifically, video games.

The way the music from Dak0ta accompanied the fast paced scrolling of the text really emphasized the intensity of the story.  Without the bouncy jazz music, my impression would have been a lot different.  Watching it without music made Dak0ta seem a lot more confusing and disjointed.  In my opinion, the music really brought it full circle and sealed the author’s intent.

 

Video game music works in the same way.  Imagine a video game without music.  There are some out there, but their lack of music is deliberate, such as in Limbo.  The sound director for  Limbo says  that: “For me it has a much bigger psychological impact when you turn a naturalistic soundscape into abstraction by making your sound effects play as “music” rather than adding some traditional background music.” (source).  A lot of players need music to feel as if they’re really immersed in their virtual environment.

I wanted to talk about four different types of music that I’ve noticed in popular games and what it does for the player.

 

1. Battle music

The song in the video is from one of my personal favorite franchises, the Legend of Zelda.  It’s played during small-scale battles with various creatures that you run into and evokes an intense feeling of adrenaline.  The fast paced tempo accompanied with notes that seem to flutter and “jump” around really solidify the idea of a fight.  Once this music kicks on, it takes you from a state of neutral exploration to one of desperation and survival.

2. Scenery/Setting changes

Arguably the best music of it’s time, Super Mario 3 has a great score that really takes you to a different world.  In this video, the Underwater theme sounds as if it’s actually being listened to while you’re in water.  It kicks on when you go from land to sea, thereby changing the perspective of the player from one of land-based play to that of underwater, which uses a different style of controls.  The music helps to transition from one setting to another.

 

3. “Hey, this is important”  or “you did something awesome”

Skyrim contains such a vast amount of possibilities and quest lines that no doubt was it difficult to construct a specific score.  However, during dragon battles, a totally new type of music begins.  While this example is similar to example one, there are differences.  As the Dovahkiin, your biggest mission in the game is to eliminate the dragon threat.  Every dragon battle is essentially a boss fight and they are very important to furthering the main storyline of the game.  The end, where you defeat the dragon (not included in this video) produces a loud crescendo that signifies your victory and accumulation of the dragon’s soul.  A lot of games use music that is seemingly louder and more intense to show an important event in the storyline.

 

4. Suspense or fear

I’m not particularly a fan of horror games (in short, they scare me) but I recognize the importance that their soundtrack has.  The feeling of fear that creepy string music produces only adds to the creepiness of the gameplay itself.  Lots of games (such as F.E.A.R and Resident Evil) use this technique to signify that something scary is about to happen.

 

 

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Undum Tutorial

January 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

I explain it a little bit in the video, but I want to talk a little bit about what Undum is beforehand.

There are lots of different kinds of software out there that you can use to create your very own work of interactive fiction.  This is what Undum is.  It’s a program that allows you to create a very cool, streamlined “choose your own adventure” story.

 

I worked with it a lot last semester for my seminar project, and it’s definitely something I recommend if you’re looking for a way to publish your own work of interactive fiction.

Undum stories tend to be a lot like a game.  You have different options that you can pick, and you need to write your story to reflect that.

For example, in my story, I had a sort of fight scene where you had to choose if you were going to hit someone in the jaw or in the neck.  Depending on which option you clicked, it would take you to that specific choice.
Undum works very well for this!

I hope you find my tutorial helpful, and good luck!

 

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