Sup guys. I haven't posted as much as I've wanted to recently. But it's good because I'm nearly done with the Spring Semester here at game school. On Saturday, I'm flying home to Louisiana to be with my family for two weeks. And I can finally put this arduous semester to rest. Spring semester was touted as the hardest and it sure was! Summer should be much easier and we have more time to work on what we want. That is good news.
I might as well say this...it makes me look rather buffoonish, but the "misfortunes" I've ran into in the past weren't so bad. At the very least, there is some good out of it. You usually notice it in the future when it becomes apparent by hindsight--you get a bigger view of the whole picture. Some event which led you down an unexpected road but you gained a couple of things out of it. Well, what do I mean? Here's my two things:
First glaring example is the Daytona USA 2 GameFAQs board nukeage about two years ago. Essentially I had been posting blog-like posts on that board for years. Like Knuckles watching over the Master Emerald, I watched over that board for years, making sure it didn't grow all old and dusty. Maybe got a few other posts too.
Then wham--some jackass GameFAQs mod takes down my main topic and any subsequent threads thereafter because they were off-topic. It made no sense at the time seeing there are so many off-topic boards all over GameFAQs thus proving how hypocritical they are--taking down arbitrary threads while leaving up more egregious ones. My very first blog post talks about this sad ordeal.
So I went into panic mode, you know, damn the torpedoes, hit the red button, etc. until I said "f*** it, let's give this blog thing a try." And here we are living it up all nice and cozy on Blogspot. So I was able to make my own website, rack up a lot of Google hits, and reach a larger audience. So thanks stupid GameFAQs mods, your vain attempts to crush Sega racers has led to me becoming that much more powerful. Now go play your Square RPGs and blow it out your ass.
Then the second thing would be the FIEA capstone gaming pitch--the "Avant-Garde Racing" game (look up the damn meaning yourselves). It would span about 6 months long and would have some 15-20 people working on it. EDIT: There were about 30 pitches, 10 would make it to the second round, 5 would actually get made, and (usually) 3 survive to the end of the semester. This great, GREAT pitch according to everyone else was poorly voted on by the cohort. The reason this was so traumatic was because:
A. I wanted to make a racing game.
B. I wanted to have some say in what game to make so I don't appear to be another insipid programmer who is perfectly okay to be bossed around by the insightful, awe-inspiring producers (okayface.jpg).
C. I was duped into believing the professor's vote (which rated me as one of the best) was one of the main reasons for choosing which games got through. However, his rating was dropped at the last second while the artists' votes (most of whom don't want to model/animate cars) ravaged the whole thing
Yadayadayada, if you don't fully know what I'm talking about, read this.
In the end, though, and I don't say this to badmouth the game I'm working on (Battle Fortress Tortoise), but I think everyone involved in the pitches had these grandiose schemes of making big-ass cutting-edge video games. How everyone overscoped their ideas like this was going to be the next Spike VGA award winner with hundreds of hours of gameplay but no--they were cut way, way short. Instead, what we're going for is a very small, compact experience--only about 5 minutes worth of gameplay. Yeah, some game, huh? A small, well-polished game looks better on resumes than does a large, not-so-polished game (you can't sit through a long game in presentations). And the fact this capstone consumes so much of your time and goes through so much scrutiny, I don't think I could've handled BOTH a precious racing game AND tons of homework at the same time.
If anything, though, despite my abysmal failure to make it out the first round, it got people talking about racing games again. Which is damn good in the face of all these hack-and-slash/beat-em-ups, you know what I'm saying? Oh, and by the way, because my time was freed, I also got to work on this game:
No really, if I had made it past the first round of cuts, I'd have to spend all my free time planning a bigger presentation in front of a larger audience and undergo even more stress! Or we can just work on Super Sprint--a game that I didn't have to worry about a handful of gamers getting their greasy fingers all over it! So Super Sprint it is.
And speaking of bad things, Sega may be sucking right now but I expect that in some way, completely unbeknownst to most/all of us, new opportunities arise for us, for Sega, for blue skies. So THANK GOD for all the great Sega fans out there who have shown massive support when the chips are down--that is encouraging to every one of us. You just have to look around for things like this.
BTW, I saw this a long time ago after the 2011 AFC Championship Game. It's Ray Lewis. Now I don't really like the Ravens and Ray may have a history of violence but he tells it like it is here. This is after losing to the Patriots with that male bimbo Gronkowski ("mimbo") dancing shirtless all the time. God doesn't make mistakes. Skip to :25 past the lousy Ruth's Chris Steak House commercial.
Saints and Ravens Superbowl, BOOK IT. Two teams with the biggest chips on their shoulders. And exiled Saints coach Sean Peyton is coaching his son's football team so he has time to bond with his family! Really though, I could unload on this whole media bias against the Saints yet again but I can't do it so let's focus on the positives.
BTW, if I go out tomorrow and something unfortunate happens to me, then expect me to lose my cool again cause I'm on edge like that all the time. I'll probably have to take a prescription medication for that sometime.
I might as well say this...it makes me look rather buffoonish, but the "misfortunes" I've ran into in the past weren't so bad. At the very least, there is some good out of it. You usually notice it in the future when it becomes apparent by hindsight--you get a bigger view of the whole picture. Some event which led you down an unexpected road but you gained a couple of things out of it. Well, what do I mean? Here's my two things:
First glaring example is the Daytona USA 2 GameFAQs board nukeage about two years ago. Essentially I had been posting blog-like posts on that board for years. Like Knuckles watching over the Master Emerald, I watched over that board for years, making sure it didn't grow all old and dusty. Maybe got a few other posts too.
Then wham--some jackass GameFAQs mod takes down my main topic and any subsequent threads thereafter because they were off-topic. It made no sense at the time seeing there are so many off-topic boards all over GameFAQs thus proving how hypocritical they are--taking down arbitrary threads while leaving up more egregious ones. My very first blog post talks about this sad ordeal.
So I went into panic mode, you know, damn the torpedoes, hit the red button, etc. until I said "f*** it, let's give this blog thing a try." And here we are living it up all nice and cozy on Blogspot. So I was able to make my own website, rack up a lot of Google hits, and reach a larger audience. So thanks stupid GameFAQs mods, your vain attempts to crush Sega racers has led to me becoming that much more powerful. Now go play your Square RPGs and blow it out your ass.
Then the second thing would be the FIEA capstone gaming pitch--the "Avant-Garde Racing" game (look up the damn meaning yourselves). It would span about 6 months long and would have some 15-20 people working on it. EDIT: There were about 30 pitches, 10 would make it to the second round, 5 would actually get made, and (usually) 3 survive to the end of the semester. This great, GREAT pitch according to everyone else was poorly voted on by the cohort. The reason this was so traumatic was because:
A. I wanted to make a racing game.
B. I wanted to have some say in what game to make so I don't appear to be another insipid programmer who is perfectly okay to be bossed around by the insightful, awe-inspiring producers (okayface.jpg).
C. I was duped into believing the professor's vote (which rated me as one of the best) was one of the main reasons for choosing which games got through. However, his rating was dropped at the last second while the artists' votes (most of whom don't want to model/animate cars) ravaged the whole thing
Yadayadayada, if you don't fully know what I'm talking about, read this.
In the end, though, and I don't say this to badmouth the game I'm working on (Battle Fortress Tortoise), but I think everyone involved in the pitches had these grandiose schemes of making big-ass cutting-edge video games. How everyone overscoped their ideas like this was going to be the next Spike VGA award winner with hundreds of hours of gameplay but no--they were cut way, way short. Instead, what we're going for is a very small, compact experience--only about 5 minutes worth of gameplay. Yeah, some game, huh? A small, well-polished game looks better on resumes than does a large, not-so-polished game (you can't sit through a long game in presentations). And the fact this capstone consumes so much of your time and goes through so much scrutiny, I don't think I could've handled BOTH a precious racing game AND tons of homework at the same time.
If anything, though, despite my abysmal failure to make it out the first round, it got people talking about racing games again. Which is damn good in the face of all these hack-and-slash/beat-em-ups, you know what I'm saying? Oh, and by the way, because my time was freed, I also got to work on this game:
No really, if I had made it past the first round of cuts, I'd have to spend all my free time planning a bigger presentation in front of a larger audience and undergo even more stress! Or we can just work on Super Sprint--a game that I didn't have to worry about a handful of gamers getting their greasy fingers all over it! So Super Sprint it is.
And speaking of bad things, Sega may be sucking right now but I expect that in some way, completely unbeknownst to most/all of us, new opportunities arise for us, for Sega, for blue skies. So THANK GOD for all the great Sega fans out there who have shown massive support when the chips are down--that is encouraging to every one of us. You just have to look around for things like this.
BTW, I saw this a long time ago after the 2011 AFC Championship Game. It's Ray Lewis. Now I don't really like the Ravens and Ray may have a history of violence but he tells it like it is here. This is after losing to the Patriots with that male bimbo Gronkowski ("mimbo") dancing shirtless all the time. God doesn't make mistakes. Skip to :25 past the lousy Ruth's Chris Steak House commercial.
Saints and Ravens Superbowl, BOOK IT. Two teams with the biggest chips on their shoulders. And exiled Saints coach Sean Peyton is coaching his son's football team so he has time to bond with his family! Really though, I could unload on this whole media bias against the Saints yet again but I can't do it so let's focus on the positives.
BTW, if I go out tomorrow and something unfortunate happens to me, then expect me to lose my cool again cause I'm on edge like that all the time. I'll probably have to take a prescription medication for that sometime.
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