Archive for June, 2007

Just scanned this old copy of the Canadian edition of Time magazine showing Bill Gates comically holding up a broken XBOX360 for all the world to see, a premonition of the hardware issues that have dogged the console throughout its life-cycle thus far.

Thankfully mine has yet to ever display the red rings that signal the beginning of the end for your next-gen gaming affairs, but I do know a few who have. Don’t you love retro-active PR blunders like this? Finger on the pulse here.

As a comical finale to the whole “Experts” affair, a link was sent around the other day about the TV spot that appeared on local station Musique Plus, whereby I got mentioned by name as an example of a non ex-Ubisoft employee on the team. They even went as far as giving a free plug for Mass Effect with accompanying clips - good stuff.

Nearly two months off work after having moved to Montreal at the end of April, I finally started work at Eidos last week. Unlike every other first day I’ve ever had, this time I had to pack a suitcase as myself and the others were whisked off to the elegant Chateau Vaudreuil just outside Montreal to attend a week-long seminar with the bold name of Eidos’ “Academy of Experts” - something of a mini-GDC for companies either wholly or partially owned by Eidos.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Animation & Physics track alongside others from the phoenix-like Tomb Raider team at Crystal Dynamics, members of Danish IO Interactive’s Kane & Lynch and Hitman series, as well as the up-and-coming Urban Chaos animation team from fellow Brits Rocksteady Ltd, (hopefully named after Bebop’s sidecick) among others.

Aside from being something of a baptism of fire, it was great to feel that I am not just part of an exciting start-up, (we are currently only 7-strong on the team), but am involved in a much larger community of talented individuals that have created some of the most celebrated games series out right now. I can’t wait to begin dabbling with the shared tech and ideas and see what I can come up with next.

You can keep your fancy 3D graphics - if ever there was a reason to pick up a 1080P HDTV then here it is. The first images of Super Streetfighter II Turbo: HD Remix have been posted on this Capcom blogpost, (though it’s not REALLY Capcom because it’s not Japanese). Just as the game is not REALLY Capcom because it’s been drawn up by American-based Comic company Udon Comics and developer Backbone Entertainment - but that doesn’t stop it looking great though.

They better not touch the timing of the animations though, or even try and get “creative” by inserting additional in-betweens, lest we have another Live Arcade Hyper Fighting on our hands.

Just read that Scottish internet game review show Consolevania (or VideoGaiden if you saw the shortlived BBC version) is coming back soon - fantastic news! For the uninitiated, see the below clip of their interview with Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime, discussing Microsoft’s then head of XBOX360, J Allard:

On Sunday, I finally got around to visiting the fantastic Body Worlds 2 exhibit down at the Montreal Science Centre.

Despite being an amazing opportunity to dispell many taboos about death and the physical workings of the human body, as well as being the best anti-smoking advert ever, there were a few things pertaining to animation. The first, despite spending the last 2 years animating an actual scanned human body, I’d never realised that a person’s armspan is generally equal to the length of their entire body - illustrated by a literal overlay of two perpendicular slices from the same person. Secondly, that we REALLY need to begin looking into real-time muscle deformation on our characters if we wish to add a further level of realism to our game characters that had been overcome long ago circa the first Shrek movie.

Admittedly, I can’t see a use for this level of detail in most games, my next project being part of that crowd, but surely 1-on-1 fighting games such as Tekken and Virtua Fighter would be places to gain the most bang-for-buck?