History!

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/203244/Classic_games_now_preserved_accessible_on_Archiveorg.php

So this is a pretty cool thing, simply saying a whole load of old games are available online now in an easy and free way. Sweet huh? Pretty cool to look at how far games have come.

Behold the Bradgate

So, pretty much everyone on our course has been to Bradgate Park over the last week. It's a pretty cool place really. The whole area has this big feel of Tolkien, and even when it was raining and miserable it was still an amazing place to be.

This was perhaps my favourite photograph from exploring Bradgate. I love the look of the tree, the way it looks all battered and twisted lent to the side, accompanied by the view past the wall. I told you that the place had a very Tolkien feel. This land reminds me of home, of the nice large Therfield Heath that I lived next too for a good 18 years. 

 This place was awesome. So awesome I returned there with a party of companions when the sun actually decided to shine. This time we managed to focus on sketching, because there wasn't a torrent of rain on my sketchbook constantly. My main focus was looking at the trees. Because I know that trees will be very important to learn about for this course, and especially the older more fantasy looking ones. 

Take for example these fine trees. Especially the one on the right. It looks like it might of grown in Silent Hill, screaming forever. I couldn't resist drawing that one.

Sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something.

By removing N-gons I merely make more N-gons... It's a downhill battle! I had no idea that these N-gons were even a thing, that if you make a shape with more than 4 sides in 3D it's apparently the worst thing in the world. Now I'm trying fruitlessly to fix model where about... 60% are these devilish N-gons. Oh dear.

3DMax why do you hate me?

History 1 - The Odyssey

 When researching the history of video games we usually assume that the first video game console was the Atari 2600. In many ways it is, as with its cartridge system you could buy games to use on the system, much like consoles today. But it was not the first. The Atari 2600 was released in September 1977, where as the Magnavox Odyssey) was released late 1972.

Daddy Magnavox here came out a good 5 years before the Atari we all know and love. Unlike cartridges used by the Atari and the NES the Magnavox used removable circuit boards that change the way the game works. Along with that the Odyssey had a very strange controller, with spinnable analog sticks on each side of the box. This controlled a glowing dot on the screen, where one stick moves the dot on the X axis, the other on the Y. Unlike the Atari every single game played the same, and all were rather simple and made to be played with two people.

 The system was unable to keep score in it's various games, so the players had to do this themselves. The console even came with chips and scoreboards. The games were... less than exciting. Like many before it, the Odyssey starts off with a pong like game, as video game consoles dedicated to Pong were extremely popular at the time. The console came with plastic overlays to place over the television which was like an early form of graphics adding some basic colour, such as a green tennis court and various other skins of Pong such as hockey and football.

 Some other gens are Simon says, where you draw cards and move your cursor over to the body parts on the overlay, and Skiing where you follow a track and see who can go fastest. Of course for our American friends there was even a game where you named the States of the USA. It also came with various different board game overlays, where you literally played the board game and used the TV as a board. It's a very basic system, but what do you expect from the first family console?

Interestingly the Odyssey came with an early light-gun peripheral similar to the NES's, based on military light gun technology planned to help shoot down rockets but adapting it for entertainment. For a console so far ahead of it's time it didn't sell well at all. There was rumors that the system would only work on specially designed Magnavox televisions and partnered with pour marketing campaigns the Odyssey remained obscure.

But for Magnavox it was not a financial failure. Overtime Magnavox sued Atari, Coleco, Mattel, Seeburg and Activision over their designs of games being extremely similar to Magnavox, and won or settled every time. Magnavox even won a court case against Nintendo for Magnavox claiming to be the first video game console (saying that Tennis for Two came first) and failed. So Magnavox sure did make alot of money. 

The American company Magnavox may have been pushed into obscurity as a subsidiary for Philips but it atleast has a place in video gaming history.

Professor Layton and the Autodesk

 There is something I'm very much enjoying about this course. When working on 3D modelling in Autodesk 3D Max there's an element of problem solving. It's like working on a puzzle.

 My Guru's (third years who are helping us hapless first years) gave me and the rest of my group a project to make a weapon, and I've been working on this fun little project.  This is the weapon I've been trying to make, from an old story of mine. At every turn I've been stumped by little problems. 'How do I do this?', 'Is there a way around this problem?' and of course 'Oh god what have I done?!' And I'm loving it. These puzzles are awesome, and by solving these questions I'm growing as a 3D artist... Or atleast, I'd like to think that.

 So far, modelling in 3D has been fantastic. I think I'm really starting to understand it, even if I'm at a low level. Texturing this thing may be alittle bit harder but I'll learn. It will all work out in the end.

 Nothing is broken,
Everything is fine.
I textured a phonebooth,
Along all it's lines.

 We dealt with strife,
And came close to snapping,
But thus is the terror,
Of UV mapping!

We are stuck.

 Mayday.

We've been in the labs trying to do a lesson about texturing. As you can see, I haven't mastered texturing yet, nor have I (or anyone around me) managed to fully texture our phonebooth. Our teacher has gone AWOL and no tutorials online make a lick of sense! No one can figure out what to do... It is a sad day...

 I used to live in the countryside. Moving here to Leicester for university has been awesome but something's very different. Sirens. There are so many sirens all the time, not even mentioning all the ambulances, police cars and fire engines I've been seeing. Its very strange. But it got me thinking...

 When I was a child, and I know alot of other people who were the same, I loved police cars, fire engines and ambulances. They were so cool. I remember getting super happy seeing the sirens blaring past. It's odd, how that was so exciting to me as a child, and to other children, considering that if one of these emergency vehicles has its sirens on then it means something seriously bad has happened. But I didn't think about that as a child. I was just excited at the flashing and fun. It's a very surreal thought that the now foreboding symbol of despair and horror used to be a symbol of excitement.

 So I've got something on my mind. (I mean, this is a blog, I may as well use it.)

 The exceedingly likely chance is in my growing career in Game Art Design is that if I get a job, I will probably be spending my life modelling radiators and chairs. Think about it, every in-game environment is filled with small objects and assets littering the place all adding to the feel of the place. Someone's gotta model the toilets, texture the chairs and mesh the bins.

Now I know this sounds negative but I'm actually looking forward to it. I've only used 3D max for about a week and I really am excited to make all these things, even if they seem insignificant. The small things that may seem boring will piece together the environment and make whatever we make seem real!

 Of course in a few years time I probably will hate myself for thinking this.

Prologue

This is my blog! I'm Oli and I will be your blogger for this evening. This blog was all constructed for my Game Art Design course in university, and so will probably be mostly made up of me talking about my course and various related things. Of course, I might talk about completely unrelated things aswell. Expect an insight into Oli's mind and my various thoughts.