Kre8tif 2010 Part 1

This is a summary of the first day of Kre8tif 2010

Jason Manley (Keynote)

Jason talked about his experiences starting the most successful online art course (conceptart.org), how he took a job that was good financially but wasn't really helping his career and he wasn't happy about it, how to put down on paper a 'Partnership agreement' to clarify things in a new startup company,  learn to be open-minded and start talking and networking with new people you meet even from unrelated fields because you never know someday you might do business with them.

David Freeman (The Secret Behind Pixar's Magic)

David defines specific techniques used in Pixar movies that enables audience to consciously and subconsciously relate to the characters in Pixar movies. Here's a couple of the techniques:

• Sophisticated psychological insight, don't look down on the audience.
• Let it get ugly, don't feel that the audience can't handle some harsh reality.
• Echo the central issue in more than one character or plot-line.
• Poignant and funny can go side by side. Slide into poignant, you can spring into funny or action.
• A group working together can win.
• A person can be uniquely himself or herself and part of a close-knit family too.
• Toss in something wonderfully unexpected, for the unexpected gives birth to delight.

His website: Beyond Structure.

Pitching Clinic

Moderator: 

Leah Hoyer (Former Director of Development, Walt Disney Co.)

Panel:

• Tracy Wong (Director of Creative Services and Marketing, Animax)
• Silas Hickey (Creative Director, Asia Pacific Animation Development, Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, INC)
• Lynette Ng (Manager of Acquisitions for Disney Channels Southeast Asia)
• Evon Koh (Channel Manager, Astor Ceria)
• Juhaidah Joemin (Representative Office Manager, Al-Jazeera Children's Channel Malaysia)

The panel main discuss about what different channels are looking for in pitches, stressing about target demography (age, gender) and how each channel work differently from different regions.

More to come.

Everywhere Zombies!

I thought I put my knowledge about zombies into good use in this blog. In games, zombies are mindless enemies with simple and straightforward set of instructions which is what game programmers call AI. Even in the most complicated AAA games, zombie AIs are encountered, those enemies that run straight at you and straight to their deaths (a.k.a. kamikaze AIs), zombies are everywhere!

I may not be a zombie expert, but I do know my zombies. Here's a quick list of zombie movies I grew up watching.

• 28 Days Later
• 28 Weeks Later
• Brain Dead
• City of Rott
• The Crazies
• Dance of the Dead
• Grindhouse: Planet Terror
• Land of the Dead
• Zombieland
• Severed: Forest of the Dead
• Flight of the living dead: Outbreak on a plane
• Diary of the Dead
• The Signal
• I am legend
• Insanitarium
• REC
• Slither
• Resident Evil Series
• Shaun of the dead
• Splinter

Not much of a classico though, I kinda hate old films. And there are tons of other crappy zombie movies not worth watching or mentioning (including some on the list).

Here's a few rules to create if you wanna make a game/movie about zombies:

1. The way it spread, by biting, virus, airborne, some relic/item/curse, etc.
2. How fast the victim become infected, in seconds, minutes after they die, or some special condition like turning into a cocoon before zombifying, etc.
3. Zombie's agility, slow/fast, walk, crawl, jump/hop, run, etc.
4. Their brains, adaptiveness, stupidity, consciousness, capabilities and abilities, can they talk? (lol) or just mindless hungry bots, etc.
5. Their senses, sight, smell, noise, heat, etc.
6. How they die, headshot, normal but more body shots, fire, poison gas, they just don't somehow, etc.
7. Is there a zombie boss, the first strongest infected, the cursed/chosen one, non-zombie like the scientist or the mastermind, etc.
8. The cure, vaccination, some immunity perhaps, purify by fire, lemon juice, etc.
9. The survivors, from the start, how much character vector changes, weapon of choice, always leave some chicks alive, etc.
10. The ending, always leave questions in the end, never solve everything, open ended for viewers/players own interpretation, or a nice epic ending for satisfaction, etc.

Have fun but beware of zombies. If the world ends with a zombie apocalypse, you can always refer back to this blog for some survival tips and tricks. I'll write more when the time comes. lmao.

Games Are Personal

Gamers take games very personally because it is what defines them. We are what we eat. In most cases gamers get very emotional (anger and stress mostly) when playing a losing or imbalance game. The question is why? As an observer, it's hard not to be judgmental when looking at people who swears prematurely while playing games. I used to be (maybe still am) one of those people who swears and curses the gods (mostly Zues) in DotA when I'm losing. It's funny when you look back.

People are angry for a reason. Nobody likes to lose. But why so serious when it comes to games? The first obvious reason is games mean a lot to gamers, or should I say, that game means a lot to that gamer. All gamers have their favorite game, the one they put enormous emotional effort into when playing. They are defined by how resourceful they are in-game as opposed to in real life. If I were training Tekken for many years and lost to some newbie who spams buttons in a ranked tournament, of course I will be emotionally compromised. Who wouldn't?

The second reason leans heavily on how competitive that gamer is. Competitiveness is double edged though. It can push for improvements (game knowledge, reflexes, teamwork) but also make you too emotional over something intangible. That is what separates the gamers and pro gamers. The professionalism in pro gamer means they are really good at their roles in their games and they are good at containing stress and pressure levels as well as their emotions. That's what make games a good sport sometimes. Game tournaments are held all around the world for popular games and some even made careers playing as pro gamers.

So the next time you hear someone raising their voice while playing a game, you know how much emotional effort is being poured in. 

The Game Developer's Fire!

Screenshot from Game Dev Story on iPhone. 

Daylight, I work as a decent game programmer/tutor. But come night, my secret indie game is on fire! The question is...

Being a game developer is not the coolest job, yet. But to all who's following this path to success, be careful what you wish for.

Level Length Research (Platformer)

How long does it take before a player feels a platformer level is too lengthy? The answer is very subjective to the players. Here's a simple Youtube research that I conducted on how long it takes to finish one classical platformer level:

• Jungle King (1982 Atari 2600), 45 seconds. Link
• Congo Bongo (1983 Atari 2600), 1 minute 54 seconds. Link
• Super Mario Bros. (1985 NES), 1 minute 15 seconds. Link
• Super Mario World (1990 SNES) 39 seconds. Tested.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (1991 Sega Genesis), 29 seconds. Link
• Prince of Persia (1992 NES), 2 minutes, 38 seconds. Link
• Donkey Kong Country (1994 SNES), 1 minute 34 seconds. Link

Some platformer games have a time limit, therefore that's the maximum time to complete the level and the minimum time is the fastest time that level can be completed, roughly. The goal is to find out a time range between the time limit and the minimum time that we can use to design the length of a platformer level. Not too long, not too short, nice balance.

Here's our first hypothesis:
A level must be completable within a minimum time of 1~2 minutes.


Therefore if a player takes shorter than 1 minute to complete a level, its too short. Before we continue, lets list down the factors that influences the time it takes to finish a platformer level:

Internal factors that we can control (in game)

1. Level length (from start to end for one level)
2. Character movement speed (acceleration, deceleration, dash, etc)
3. Level difficulty (enemies, puzzles, platforms)

External uncontrollable factors (the environment and culture, player)

1. Player's personal experience (pattern recognition, game mastery, reflexes)
2. Player's goal and motivation (exploration, completion, perfection, achievement, competition)

How do you balance everything to fit our first hypothesis? Through thorough testing. Once you get the feeling right, internal factor 2 and 3 above will become your constant to modify internal factor 1. Now back to discussion, we know what is too short for a platformer level from our first hypothesis. But what is too long?

In Super Mario Bros and Super Mario World, there is a 400 second countdown limit for each level. Because of this constrain, players are motivated to complete the level within the time frame. The only drawback is no perfection (to get every coin, to find hidden blocks, to try entering every pipe) because players don't have the luxury of time to do all that.

In Sonic the Hedgehog, the timer starts from 0 instead, thus removing the constrain and encourage players to explore and find hidden rings and bonus game portals. The drawback is sometimes player explore too much and lost track of time and position, in other words, lost.

Games like Donkey Kong Country do not have any time constrains. Players can explore all they want and try to achieve perfection by collecting all the bananas and balloons.

Too long will cause the player to get frustrated either because of repetitiveness, linearity or difficulty and makes them wonder is there an ending? There is no real way to tell how long your level should be, I guess the closest winning formula would be 2~3 times longer than the minimum time from our first hypothesis. Thats roughly around 2~6 minutes for one level.

Here's our final hypothesis:
A level must be completable within a minimum time of 1~2 minutes and not longer than 6 minutes.


There are many exceptions to the rule, like modern platformers with coops or mixing platformer with other genres. Bear in mind it works only as a guideline not a must.

Finally LG!

Looks like we won another RM10,000! To Joe and Nic: Thanks, you guys are the best! :D

TVBoy!'s Full Cast!

We went through audition for the casts for TVBoy! Looks like we've got the most promising and talented actors for the all roles.

TVBoy: Hey can we get some hands please? -_-"
TVGirl: Yiiiiiipeeee! =D
OldCoupleTV: ........!
Tvil: Boo!

This is one crazy bunch, I hope they won't mind the first few months without paycheck. *runs away with the contracts*

TVGirl: HEEEY!
TVBoy: What the *uck dude? That's not what we agreed on! 0_o
Tvil: Wait a minute, did anyone read what our contract says?
OldCoupleTV: ............!
TVBoy: Crap! T_T

My Day Job

Fulfilling my role as the dark knight.












Lol!

The Story of TVBoy! (1st Draft)

After weeks of reading Gamasutra (Gamasutra - The Art And Business of Making Games), trying to stay updated with the latest tech and trend of games and watching tons of mind-fuck movies, I've finally come up with a story idea for TVBoy!. I will vaguely list down where I get my inspiration from without giving away too much spoilers:

Games

Breath of Fire II

Final Fantasy 7

La Pucelle Tactics

BioShock

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Heavy Rain

Shadow of the Colossus

Movies

The Triangle

Time Crimes

Time Machine

Star Wars

Stranger Than Fiction

Romeo And Juliet

Back To The Future

I, Robot

That's roughly it. You probably guessed that I watched a lot of movies compared to playing games, because I don't have the luxury of time and console to play the games I love for instance long RPGs with heavy storyline. I'm using the 3 Act structure to tell a story, although it's impossible to follow the ratio. To give you, my audiences a taste of what the story is about, in point forms:

1. Tragic love story
2. Time travelling
3. Parallel realities
4. Multiple ending
5. Breaking the fourth wall (Fourth Wall)
6. Chaos theory (Chaos Theory)

With that in mind, I'm trying to create a rule/law for game characters similar to Isaac Asimov's Three Law (Three Laws of Robotics):

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Here's my original idea for the laws that govern TVBoy! the game:

1. TVBoy must not deviate from his own predetermined storyline.
2. TVBoy can break the fourth wall but must not be in conflict with the first law.
3. TVBoy must not cause a butterfly effect (Butterfly Effect), because there is only 1 ending to the story, no matter what his actions are.

The idea here is that, if one of my laws were broken by the player playing TVBoy, it will cause a rippling effect on the story, therefore creating a whole new parallel dimension in television. The emotional impact that I'm trying to pass on is déjà vu (Deja Vu) and immersion (Immersion in Virtual Reality). More to come!

Lazy Girl Squad/Lesbian Group Sex

Were you expecting porn? Too bad you won't find any in this blog. But hey, here's something better. A group consisting the brightest minds from Limkokwing University of Creative Technology. Wait for our grand debut!

Ultimate Story Telling

At least that was what the workshop organized by Mdec for IPCC winners was called. 22/9/2010.

The workshop is lead by Yasu Tanaka, a Japanese working as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. Surprisingly he's quite an American and he has a Malaysian wife if I'm not mistaken.

Well lets get straight to the point. The workshop is about how to tell a good story and if there were any forms or standards to follow. There isn't any specific rules, however there are certain guidelines to follow even when telling a story through an interactive game.

I will list down the important key points as well as the current Hollywood story forms that director and scriptwriter use.

1. Story telling is about primal desire. What it means is that everyone understand the concept of money, power, lust, hunger, marriage, etc. Therefore don't be afraid to use these elements as a premise for your story.
2. Hook in the beginning. If you can grab the attention of the audience in the first 5-10 minutes, you will successfully grab the rest of their attention for the entire experience. Use either visual or emotional hook for instance the starting battle scene in Star Wars IV (visual) or the a scene where William Wallace as a boy loses his father in the beginning of Braveheart (emotional).
3. Have a strong and clear antagonist. There is no story without a conflict and antagonist is the one driving the conflict. The antagonist does not necessary be a person, it could anything that causes the conflict.
4. Using stereotypes. For example Titanic, the movie is about a love story but everyone knows that the ship is going to sink eventually therefore the audience is anticipating and accepted the sink of Titanic even before watching the movie.
5. Set the destination and goal for the main characters. In every story, there is always something the main characters want or desires therefore sets up for a journey, quest, training or adventure.

The basic format for any story telling is the three act structure in the ratio of 1:2:1.

Syd Field's Paradigm

Syd introduced the idea of plot points into screenwriting theory. Here's my interpretation of Field's paradigm in sequence:

1. Act 1 - Setup. The daily life or ordinary world for the main protagonist.
2. Plot point 1. The last scene in Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2. Turning Point 1 is a surprising development that radically changes the Protagonist's life, and forces him to confront the opponent. In Star Wars IV, this is when Luke's family is killed by the Empire. He has no home to go back to, so he joins the Rebels in opposing Darth Vader.
3. Act 2 - Conflict. The extraordinary world for main character's transformation arc.
4. Midpoint. In the middle of Act 2, often a reversal of fortune or revelation that changes the direction of the story. Field suggests that driving the story towards the midpoint keeps the second act from sagging.
5. Plot point 2. The last scene of Act 2 and beginning of Act 3.The decision moment or the confrontation and resolution. This is the scene where the main character must decide whether to stay or escape from his/her extraordinary world back to the ordinary world to resolve the conflict.
6. Act 3 - Solution. The main character has gain something, a certain set of skills, knowledge, companions, that can help him confront the conflict.
7. Showdown. In the middle of Act 3, the protagonist will confront the conflict directly, either overcome it or come to a tragic end.

Some additional key points like rocket boosters after midpoint to keep the audience awake, using borderlines like doors, walls, bridge, tunnel, river, etc to go in/out of the extraordinary worlds, change the vector of story constantly to keep audience guessing, internal (emotional/psychological) and external (physical) goals, and writing good loglines.

The movie examples used in the workshop was

1. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
2. American Beauty
3. Titanic
4. The Matrix
5. Braveheart
6. The Devil Wears Prada

Plants Vs Zombies (iPhone Version)

I first played PvZ on the PC back in 2009 and I've finished the iPhone version too. Here's the changes made to the iPhone version:

1. No zen garden, tree of wisdom, or endless survival mode
2. Controls, no more mouse click, its now finger drags and taps
3. In-game UI for plant selection has been moved from top to the left
4. New achievements page

 Besides that everything else is the same. Without the endless survival mode, grinding for coins are a lot harder and there isn't much re-playability after you've purchase all plants from Crazy Dave and completed all achievements. But for an iPhone game itself, its really fun and addictive.

Highly recommended, if you're looking for an awesome iPhone game. PvZ is worth your money!