...one of the things I'm proud to be working on

http://rockband2.com/

...Next week

I'll be in the bay area next week for business. I'll probably have some free time so if you wanna hook up, lemme know.

...earth to bowie

I made a song in garageband today in an attempt to learn it. Don't hold you breathe waiting to hear it...it's not too good. Maybe if I do it another 75, 80 times and I'll get a good one...

s

...africa hot!

It was really hot out there this weekend. I guess it IS June, but c'mon spring was like a week!

...long time

Perhaps a reward?



Could be torture for some...

...week deux

Cool times here...I'm starting to feel of use to the team. In fact I got myself some more short-term responsibility on something really cool. Bad news is that I'm here at work on Sat but the good news is the crunches here are short...I'll be done on Thursday!

Most jobs have been like this. At 3do I got there 2 or 3 months before Air Attack2 was done and they were like oh don't worry we'll just get you up to speed and maybe you can help out with some multiplayer levels. 2 weeks later I owned a couple levels in the game - including the second. Not that I'm complaining...I love the challenge!

...great first week

So this past week was my first at work. What a great place. It's strange being in such a large place again...there are over 200 people there now! And as stated at the company meeting, my hiring grew the company design department by 20%.

I always feel weird my first month or so at a new job...you want to do your best work but at the same time you are determining all the process at the new company. Also trying to remember people's names is always challenging.

Ok now some pics...oh man I need a better camera...c'mon Iphone 2!




OK, those first 4 are from an all Harmonix band show I saw on saturday in Boston. Good times, but expensive drinks! $10 dirty vodka martini (well it was kettle one, but all they had was top-shelf!).

Friday weely (not spelled wrong) lunch was awesome. Roast beef and lobster sandwiches, chicken wings, clam chowd(a), and pie...that reminds me I have to go work out!

I rented a zipcar and went to trader joes for my first food excursion. I spent near $300!

Mmm best and cheapest Indian food I've had outside of England.


Someone posted on the newgroups that this band Semi Precious Weapons was playing on Wednesday...it turns out they were really fun. Check 'em out when the album comes out this august: http://www.semipreciousweapons.com/

...an amoeba substitute

They had everything I was after and some were cheap...

fyi:
The Death Set - Worldwide
Fugazi -Steady Diet of Nothing (remastered)
Idiot Pilot - Wolves
Suicidal Tenendies - Suicidal Tendencies
Torche - Neanderthal
Elvis Costello - This years model (rhino version)

...I'll get back to unpacking later

...s.a.t.u.r.d.a.y night + pics of my place

Last night I went to a film is the Boston Independent Film Festival. It's called american teen. It is a very good documentary that follows a bunch of teens in a normal sized town in middle america. The director took questions afterward and said it was picked up for release in august so go see it when you get a chance.

Just got back from a really delicious dinner at a nice upscale place called Oleana. I'll definately be going back for special occasions...

So here's some pic of my place taken from what looks like a serial killer at night:











Oh finally check it out...I have a nice TV finally:

...day 1 and 2 in boston

It's been a long first 2 days here.

Day 1:
I get in at 6 am and very tired. Took a cab to the hotel (bed and breakfast actually) and some dude was in my room...great...so I slept on the couch while the nearby spanish-speaking female teachers were arguing for hours. After a couple hours nap, I went surfing for houses and set up some appoinments to see a bunch. In short, the next 9 hours were spent looking at 6 places, deciding on one, and signing lots of paperwork...yay success. More details about my place (and pics!) in a future post but in a nutshell its a 2 br about 7 mins from Davis and Porter squares.

During the day I had a good BBQ meal:

Tasty if you like saucy BBQ. Perhaps I have been too worried about missing SF food. The weather was perfect...check out the flowers in bloom:


Davis square is really cool at night with tons of people and life going on it reminds me of a small square in Paris or Amsterdam. Can't wait for a 3g iphone (hopefully with flash) so I can take better camera phone pics:

Day 2:

I'm ready for the day:

Damn my time schedule is all messed up. But at least this may have been my first long nights sleep in weeks. Got up and ate a tasty boston scrod lunch. Later sara from alcove realty took me to look at washer and dryers (thanks btw!) as I need to buy some for my new place. Afterwards I walked from Davis square to Porter square to Harvard square to Central square (where my work will be)...it is during this walk where I've started to feel some love for the city. The squares are awesome each with it's own character and tons of people. And it's probably only 35-40 mins to walk between all of them. There were tons of shops, guitar shops, bookstores, restaurants, parks and I even got a boba tea. Here's my one pic of people protesting china about tibet in Harvard square:

More later...

...best of 2007

Here's my favorites for 2007: I reserve all rights to change this as I remember more :)

Music (includes releases from late 2005)
Top 5
Against Me! - New Wave
Akimbo - Navigating the Bronze
Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs
Future of the Left - Curses
Melvins - A Senile Animal

Honorable Mentions
Grinderman- Grinderman
Gallows - Orchestra of Wolves
Battles - Mirrored
The National - Boxer
Patton Oswalt - Werewolves and Lollipops (well not music but a cd)


Movies
Top 5
The King of Kong
The Host
Grindhouse
No Country for Old Men
Ratatouille

Honorable Mentions
There Will Be Blood
Control
Sicko
Black Book
Superbad


Games
Top 5
Rock Band
Orange Box
Call of Duty 4
Bioshock
Super Mario Galaxy

Honorable Mentions
Halo 3
Puzzle Quest
Skate
The Darkness
Mass Effect

...my schedule until I leave for Boston

Thursday April 17 - movers come and take my stuff
Friday April 18 - get my apartment cleaned
Sunday April 20 - Bye bye SF...I get on a plane late at night for a one-way ride to Boston.

If anyone wants to hang out or anything before that lemme know!

...new job, new city + pics!

So here's the big news. I'm leaving San Francisco to move to Boston to work at Harmonix! Harmonix are the creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band (among others) and I am really excited to start work there. Now I just have to pack, sell my car, find a place to live, find a moving company...

Here's some pics of my last lunch at F5 and playing rock band last night at Seppo's house.

...some quick things we're learning making the TF2 map

1. Make sure your spawn rooms are perpendicular to - not part of - the main path.
- It seems obvious, but we missed this for awhile. It's not a great experience when the flag holder can run through the safety of the spawn room to easily get to the capture point without people being able to chase him.

2. Keep engineer sentry range in mind for all major meeting points and defensive points.
- The should be a generous amount of good sentry spots in the map. For players, taking the time to setup a sentry and then have it destroyed by people simply shooting out of it's range gets frustrating. We made a prefab of this distance to move around the map as needed.

3. Large wide-open areas tend to be lacking for team-based play
- Areas like this may be fun for snipers, soldiers and scouts, but we saw that the resultant gameplay to be too unorganized for fun team play especially with the other classes. We have ended up constraining more as we go and the level is getting more fun.

4. If you are going to place the flags multiple floors up, don't let the capturer simply drop off to get away
- Constraining this with fences has given the defenders a better chance to regroup.

5. Make sure the spawn room exits are simple and obvious.
- At first we had 3 ways to go, one of which went up the stairs. This was really confusing (even to us!). It seems like 2 directions from the room is ideal...one to battlements and one to flag area.

6. We made Snipers pits within view of each other.
- Allows snipers to have to kill and avoid being killed by each other.

7. Most importantly - testing the map with people is worth 1000 hours of theory.
- So much becomes obvious when we watch and play with people. We play on opposite teams and constantly switch classes to see how it feels with each. Also we have all talk on (sv_alltalk 1). Pay attention to what people are saying and suggesting, but also notice events such as why people drop (sorry about the unfair squishing!).


Extra Bonus - Here are some stats I found on the forums that have proved usefull:

All Classes

Walk ---- 83h x 49w
Crouch -- 56h x 49w

step ------------ 18
Jump ----------- 43
Jump + Crouch -- 70

min height before fall damage -- 269 (this is lower if you crouch)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Class specific (listing highest values I was able to attain, recommend lowering these unless you want the jumps to be as difficult as possible):

Sentry Range ---------------- 1132.15
Engineer Sentry Jump -- 136 (jumping from top of your sentry gun to reach higher locations)

Scout double jump ----------- 90
Scout double jump + crouch -- 117

Soldier Rocket Jump -------- 324
Soldier *Super Rocket Jump -- 528

Demoman Sticky Jump --------- 608
Demoman *Super Sticky Jump -- 960

*Super Rocket Jump - crouch just before you do standard rocket jump.
*Super Sticky Jump - crouch just before you do standard sticky jump.
These are kind of difficult to pull off, you have to time it just right. I find the demoman more difficult to super jump.

...went to GDC 2008 this week.

It was was a good time. Saw lots of good talks and met even more good people. More details to come...

...latest TF2 map link and Pics [UPDATED - again]

On request :) Here is a link to the latest map Mars and myself have been working on. Place it in your tf2 maps folder then run it in-game.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A4VXM86Q

Newer Pics:

Newer, simpler spawn room.


New middle section has much better flow now. Intense battles take place along 3 levels of crossfire.


Buttons on boths building levels move the "elevator". Players can shoot from the windows on the second floor which face the sniper pits. Soldier can rockets jump into and out of the second floor.


View from new Flag area 3 floors up.


Back route shortcut for soldiers/scouts.

...flocking birds

So it seems like birds keep track of 7 neighbors when flocking...Click title for the link. 7 seems to be an important number...there was a recent article that said humans can track 7 objects on screen (as long as they move slow enough). I'd be curious to see how this relates to games - shooters in particular...

...this made me smile today

...3 rings of nooooooooooooooo

Well, the gaming gods have conspired against me. My Rock Band Guitar only registers upstrokes, EA sent an empty box to replace it and finally my 360 just got the dreaded 3 rings of death (again). Looks like Rock Band, Mass Effect, COD 4, and Halo 3 are on hold :(

...wow

beatles + led zeppelin = ?

...yay...the Dolphins won!

May not be the worst team ever...Next week Dolphins beat the Patriots :)

...pics of the TF2 mod I'm working on

Me and a few other guys are working on a mod for TF2. Basically we want to add a character and a level. Here's some pics of the level that me and Mars have deen doing for a couple weeks:

...last night (we played our tf2 level)

Myself and Mars have been working on a Team Fortress 2 level as part of a mod we are making with others. We had an impromptu run through last night and people seemed to really enjoy it. I'll post pictures soon...

...the relationship between making a TV pilot and making a level

Saw the movie The TV Set on dvd last night. Interesting, well-done movie. There are definite analogues in making a TV pilot and making a level. The amount and usefulness of feedback and the repercussions to quality are the main similarities. I cringed a couple times watching it...

...frustrations with the Simpsons game demo

Well just played the Simpsons demo at work. It has potential, but I don't think I'd buy it...too many frustrating issues - such as:

- walking in a straight line is hard! The camera starts turning with any rotation off directly forward.
- demo level is too hectic...too many krustys running around saying the same thing over and over.
- "lard lad" boss's pattern could be much better. One of the 2 spots he goes between is almost impossible to get onto his back from.
- ...and Homer is practically useless against him. I would like it better if Bart had to do one thing, then Homer had to do the next etc...
- too unforgiving in general...I'm talking about glide decent rate, double jump success rate, amount of time Lard Lad stays stunned, frequency of Krustys...
- camera is odd...R-stick can be used to look around, but pressing L1 to actually aim at things often has you pointing away from your intended target

A good focus test could really help...unfortunately I know sometimes even with well-run focus tests, it is all in how management reacts and fixes the problems that come up that make the difference...

...article I wrote about game design

Check it out here: Tips for the Working Designer I hope it is of use to some out there. Some of the information is common sense, but I am sometimes surprised by the lack of effort I've seen from other designers. It's important to have a method to problem solving, even if it's not the same one I use.

...DC

Best of luck to Tamsen right now. She is in DC right now, fighting for highly-skilled immigrant rights.

...i have this week off

...and I'm playing games! Bioshock and Metroid 3 primarily. I can heartily recommend Bioshock to pretty much anyone...

...well I'm back

And ready for a vacation again....

Went to the gym yesterday and I'm down to 147 from 152. I'm hoping it's fat, but my last yoga class tells me otherwise...