Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category

Summer is here in Montreal and it’s hard to spend any free time at home in front of a desk, unless it’s to upload a fantastic picture of back home sent from your parents’ latest outing. Anybody thinking of holidaying in Scotland would be wise to get there ASAP while the two weeks where it doesn’t rain holds up.

I have many a fond memory of viewing beautiful scenes like this through rain-covered car windows, steamed up with a family’s-worth of impatient breath and opened flasks of tea, finally taking one triumphant run outside during a break in the clouds before driving back home again to our Sunday dinner and less weather-reliant pursuits of newspapers and videogames.

Mass Effect PC is released today in North America - go pick it up! I wish I had a PC that could run it. In fact, I wish I had a PC that could at least run Battlefield 1942 :-(

[Last night, on the way to see Iron Man at the movie theatre with Marie-Jo:]

Me: Can I just take 5 minutes in HMV beforehand?
MJ: We only have 30 minutes to eat :( We’ll have to get in line and…
Me: I won’t be long baby. I just need to pick something up.
MJ: Everyone was talking about the movie on the subway train here - it’s gonna be a huge line-up. What is it you want?
Me: You’ll see. Just give me 5 minutes…

[…5 minutes later]

Me: Here you go baby. Remember the game you were working on for a year and a half?
MJ: OMG! I completely forgot it was coming out today!

I had hoped to post about the fantastic leaps forward in ingame animation brought about by the highly publicised (in the gaming press anyway) integration of NaturalMotion’s behavioural/physics-based Euphoria middleware in the recently released GTA4.

However, I was one of the unlucky few whose copy would invariably freeze during the opening stages of the game. Even worse, the XBOX360 would also lock up for the next few attempts even without the corrupt disc inside. I have since bought a replacement copy but the current situation sees my machine now sporting the dreaded Red Ring of Death, (much too close to be a coincidence), so it looks like I won’t be playing any games for the foreseeable future - cheers Rockstar, cheers Bill.

In the meantime, above is a video demonstrating Euphoria in a standalone manner, which looks very interesting indeed. Reports from colleagues tell me that the movement and ragdoll look incredibly natural, but the player character unfortunately handles looser than in previous games - something to be expected of any move towards visual fidelity.

Phew. It’s around 1.30am and I’ve just finished uploading the latest theme for the site, doing away once and for all with the busy-ness of yester-year. I’ve been taking a graphic design nightclass lately and have been feeling creative, so now I can get back onto other projects.

In other news, I’ve begun to really move forward with my Canadian Residency application. This does fall short of full citizenship, (the main difference being I’ll still be unable to vote), but I should finally be able to pick up one of these fine accommodations that still seem to be very affordable in Montreal once my “Johnny Foreigner” status has been removed.

I hate Air Canada.

They’ve delayed my flights and lost my luggage with such predictable regularity as to be considered clockwork. I even joined a Facebook group calling for a government inquiry into their low quality of service.

But now all is forgiven, if only my next work trip involves Executive First.

A spot of reminiscing was had this week after I spied my first ever project, Tom & Jerry: War of The Whiskers, (hey - we’ve all got to start somewhere right?), on the latest list of original XBOX games made compatible for the XBOX360. It brought back both good and bad memories to throw it in, (I no longer own an original XBOX), but best of all was seeing it in all its 4-player, HD glory. Why Microsoft made the recent compatibility change I have no idea - especially as they’ve yet to give and update for my copy of Spiderman 2, something I rubbed in to swinging-system co-designer Eric Pavone at work.

Perhaps they’re gearing it up for release under the XBOX Originals incentive on Live? That might make sense as the 360 is severely lacking in games aimed at children and Microsoft recently broadened the Family Settings in the 360’s latest dashboard update. More likely, though, it was a freebie that just happened to work after a general update as the game sucked balls for anybody above the mental age of 3 while simultaneously sporting a ridiculously steep difficulty curve.