This week, on the eve of the launch of both Sony and Nintendo’s new consoles, an interesting phenomenon has occurred whereby a large quotient of the alsoran’s remaining colleagues that had yet to join the next-generation of consoles, (yes, even developers are shrewd about shelling out their hard-earned money for expensive consoles unless utterly sold [...]

Updates are scarce right now due to the site being in the process of transferring over to WordPress. Aside from allowing RSS feeds whenever a new Bad Walk Cycle is posted (along with a possible ratings poll), the main reason for this is so that it doesn’t take about 1 hour to make even the [...]

An important update today in the form of sharing news that Puppetshop, the 3D Studio Max plugin created during the course of the alsoran’s current project to supplement Autodesk’s own animation tools, is now available for download from the alsoran’s former colleague’s site. Perhaps the most important aspect of this plugin is that it has [...]

While unfortunately highlighting that gaming habits are tracked in the same manner as supermarket awards cards, the alsoran recently registered to 360voice, the automatic blog kept by the XBOX360. While repetition has already reared it’s head in the generated posts after only a week or so, and an unused XBOX seems to default to a [...]

Some months ago, the UK edition of Microsoft’s PR Rag, The Official XBOX Magazine, visited the alsoran’s studio for a tour of the current project’s work in progress. Due to always having the most interesting, moving work to show, the press stopped off at the animation team area where they were given a demonstration of [...]

Today the industry awoke to the leaked REVELATIONS that Ubisoft plans to release sequels to all its popular brands!. While none of this may be terribly interesting, it does once again highlight the difficultiy in keeping secrets within our industry – brought on in part due to the large quotient of industry insiders coming from [...]

In his time, the alsoran has worked with some of the most talented, experienced and inspirational individuals in the industry today, yet many of them remain humble about their achievements. It is important to always bear in mind that despite your own accolade, however great it may appear, there will always be others equally if [...]

After reading an article in EDGE magazine regarding the influence of the French gaming industry, the alsoran has discovered this little gem of a game, the flash-based online RPG – Dofus. Of biggest note, the beautifully-rendered art style appears to be created by first building the assets in 3D, then drawing over them in a [...]

Upon breaking his micro following too many drops, the alsoran finally bowed to peer pressure last month and picked up a DS Lite during his trip to LA, and regrets not having done so before. His growing collection includes Metroid Prime Hunters, New Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Kart and the most recent addition, Starfox [...]

This week the alsoran returned from the final LA mocap shoot for his current project. Mocap direction is becoming easier with each new visit, with tips and tricks learned every session. This one required multiple actions to be recorded in a short time due to the only female actor having a stricter deadline, and the [...]

Minami-ward, Kyoto, Autumn of 2003. Standing outside the city’s favourite son, Nintendo, the monastic headquarters cast a shadow on the alsoran preparing for his grand entrance. The brilliant white, cube-like building took on an imposing nature even on that sun-baked day, a nervous fear beginning to grow as he envisioned the genius inside that gave [...]

Last week the alsoran gave his first public speaking presentation outside of his weekly team meeting, which is a precursor to a planned GDC talk once his current project is complete. Due to confidentiality and the proprietary nature of several of the systems overviewed, the presentation remained fairly high level, only touching on technical issues [...]

This embarassingly naive statement by unfortunately non-ficticious graduate of Generic Game Design Course appears in Game Developer magazine on a regular basis. In his defence, the offending graduate offers this forum post on Garage Games. “Yea (sic) that quote was def NOT from me…. I wasnt even alive when pong was released! So i do [...]

Almost too close to the bone, this pretty much sums up the alsoran’s parents’ idea of how their son spends most of his days – because videogames are made by simply playing them. It could be a not-so-elaborate hoax, were it not for the actual existence of the website, let alone the course itself. At [...]

So the alsoran arrives home after an extended holiday following E3 with a lot to think about regarding the direction of the games industry. Though there is much to write about in the immediate future, we’ll begin with what was undoubtedly the highlight of the show – the alsoran finally speaking to one of his [...]

No Weekly Bad Walkcycle update this week or next, as the hard-drive failed and the alsoran is away to E3 until next week. Just seeing the initial press conferences from the major 3 today though, it looks like Nintendo are surprising with the quality of their console, Microsoft are pushing back the boundaries of online [...]

So without doubt, one of the most talked-about presentations at E3 was Nintendo’s, not least because of the 2+ hour que to even see anything other than the DS. A friend of the alsoran had overheard the press password “Starfox” on the first day, but that only led to a futile attempt to gain entry [...]

This last weekend saw the alsoran properly introduce the joys of videogaming to his girlfriend and her friend in a hazy evening of gin & tonic and XBOX360. It was certainly interesting to observe two thirty-something women take their first forays into his favourite past-time, most of all because both newcomers were able to catch [...]

Nearly one year after its initial launch, the alsoran is proud to release the first major overhaul of the content of the site. A new menubar for easy navigation of the complete site contents has been added along with a general streamlining of the image-creation process. The single largest feature though is the addition of [...]

At the weekend there the alsoran, while walking along his local main street, chanced upon a sign reading “XBOX 360s Now In Stock”. Now while there’s been a large grey 360 Dev-Kit sitting on his desk for the last 6 months or so, which has recently been accompanied by a rather large Samsung HDTV, he [...]

The alsoran recently had great fun busting out wailing solos on the unique guitar-shaped peripheral for PS2 Guitar Hero. After playing guitar for over a decade now, he was disappointed to only score 97% on his initial run, as real-world experience certainly helps in this game. Of particular interest was one loading-screen message recommending, should [...]

An interesting event that occured this month was the recent ban on the airing of the UK television spot for Call Of Duty 2 by the UK Advertising Standards Agency, on the grounds of misleading consumers with pre-rendered graphics. This case is important in light of the controversy surrounding last year’s E3 pre-rendered screenings of [...]

Updates have been scant this past month as the alsoran has been busy at work helping to plan out the requirements for a demo for the upcoming 2006 Electronics Entertainment Expo. Of note, absolutely no throwaway assets are being created for the demo build, only a re-prioritisation of already scheduled work to bring certain areas [...]

The alsoran feels compelled to write about his most celebrated recent purchase, which saw him entertained well over the christmas break. Though the DS is relatively only slightly more expensive, the alsoran opted for the micro on account of the DS looking like a folding brick that is unable to fit in even the largest [...]