The Wall

No vlog yesterday as i wasn’t near my fancy shmancy new webcam. I was instead visiting my family in another town over.
while i was there my dad said they were going to the movies and if i wanted to join.

So after approx. 1 beer im like “Sure, whats on”. I dont usually like going to movies, but if my rambo experience taught me anything is that i can be pleasantly surprised when it comes to New Age Theater. So after skimming through all 4 movies that are playing, we all agreed on this alien title “Vantage Point”.

Just… wow.

Where do i begin? It used me absolute FAVORITE storytelling mechanic: Multiple POV. the story starts off and plays through around 30min-an hour of the persons viewpoint, and then rewinds the whole thing back to the beginning of the incident, and plays through again through a different pair of eyes. Rinse and repeat.
Ive ALWAYS enjoyed the whole “crossing paths” feeling. Take for instance coop games where your not glued to eachothers hip the whole time, doing your own objectives, and eventually jsut crossing paths or noticing your partner in the distance doing stuff.

I cant really say much without spoiling the whole film, but it was frantic, action packed, twist filled, and very VERY satisfying.

All i have left to say is: Agent Thomas Barnes, your a badass.

Also: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/vantagepoint?q=Vantage%20point
I can only assume these critics of this day and age either:
- Smoke alot of crack
- like to cut their wrists for the rush
- are backalley hobos looking for shock value in their writings
- Smoke alot of crack
- Are humorless, bored with life, and want nothing more than to bash something while only looking at it like its a piece of paper, turned on its side.
- Smoke alot of crack.

Im getting pretty sick of these critics. The Games Journalists and Reviewers are almost as bad lately, but the movie critics just take the cake.

Oh and the Metacritic userbase is apparently retarded too.
=-=-
“it seems as if director Pete Traivs was doing nothing but presenting a stunning visual of action, chasing, violence, and fast-pace. It looked like he was trying to copy a Bourne movie or something because while he thought their was a really engaging story in the capture of the audience, the audience remains either confused or dulled out.”
Dany C. 0/100

his review was longer but i was laughing so hard at his comments i just had to stop.
First of all, what BALLS do you have to give a production that isn’t Veggie Tales or another Land Before Time, a 0? In fact, not even thsoe deserve 0’s. alot of hard work goes into these movies, and alot of people pour alot of heart and soul into the productions as well.
Secondly: “presenting a stunning visual of action, chasing, violence, and fast-pace” sorry, he ends it there ‘and fast-pace” what? Action? This was supposed to be a Suspense/Thriller or at least thats what it was categorized as, and i agree its more of an action/thriller than anything, but the suspense is there. At the end of each vantage point, it opens even more questions, and ties everything up at the end.
Oh speaking of which:

“What you won’t be able to ignore is the ridiculous way Vantage Point’s brings everything to an end. “
FILM THREAT ~Pete Vonder Haar, 30/100

Well at least he didn’t give it a zero. Though this guy was so completely dumbfounded at the end for some reason. I guess he got lost and didn’t have enough breadcrumbs to get home, even though he just witnessed the same movie 8 times. “the rediculous way it brings everything to an end”? it was an exciting and fulfilling end. I wont spoil anything here, but let me just tell you: as crazy as it was: IT WAS FLAT OUT FUN!
Sometimes people, movies dont have to make sense, even though they can be based on real life scenarios.

im almost done here but theres just one more:
“There were average citizens working with high priority agents seemingly knowing how to do things, survive car collisions, handling guns, chasing suspects, and helping investigations.”
Dany C, 0/100 (back to this hack of a fuck-wit)
im sorry… what? Civilians seemingly knowing how to do things? are you absolutely bat-shit fucking stupid? So im a civilian, does that mean i wouldn’t know first aid? would you not help your fellow man after a BOMB, or would you just run away and feel sorry for yourself like the talentless misanthrope you apparently describe yourself as? Working with high priority agents? Well sure! But onyl when the agents went up to them, liek the dude with the camera that Agent barnes saw who was looking at the window and got it on FILM. OF COURSE HE’D FUCKING ASK HIM ABOUT IT! ITS EVIDENCE! Also to bring your dumbass opinion to a close: Civ’s weren’t handling guns, partaking in car chases or anything that you said. Are you sure you were reviewing the correct movie? The only ones DOING anything in this entire film, aside from volunteer assistance to medical aid, are government agents, terrorists, and marines. So of course they’d know how to do this crap.

Ill say it again, Thomas Barnes, your a badass.

This just in, Retarded metacritic reviewers, are retarded. Want further proof:
http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/rambo2007?q=Rambo

Case and Point. Or however that saying goes.

Well this weekend was… bad. Saturday was such a terrible day as a whole. Not that anything truly BAD or anything happened but i jsut felt like CRAP the whole day. My back immediately started hurting the moment i woke up, leaving me bed ridden till the afternoon. So to pass the time i played some Phoenix Wright 2. Ill get to Apollo Justice soon enough. But when i got up my back still hurt, however i got up anyways.

its at this point any normal sane person probably would have downed a couple pain killers, ohh but not me, as per my usual dumbass self: i completely forgot about that possibility. So i suffered through it.
The bad back issue is something thats been with me for a few years now, but its only really bothered me if i dont sit ergonomically correct for more than 1 minute. To put some light on how bad it is: Everytime i bend my back backwards a bit to sit up straight, or even if straighten my shoulders back or anything of the sort, my back cracks.
Never fails.

I need to see a Chiropractor, and ive BEEN saying this for many a year but no day has ever been more apparent than Saturday so im going to schedule an appointment REALLY soon.

The bad back pretty much killed any productivity i wanted to expell that day, as i felt insanely discouraged. Even if i wanted to do something, my attention would not have been on my work, but my back. Thus: shite quality, and because im a perfectionist to myself lately, i would have wasted the entire day, say, drawing a finger till it looks right.

A good night sleep helped the WHOLE situation. Enter Sunday.

Sunday wasn’t exactly the best day for productivity either. Sunday is the new day we set aside to record the Crash Without Recovery podcast, instead homework hit everyone so no one got together for it until around 2PM. When everyone got there we were waiting on one more person, who, didn’t end up showing due purely to homework. Damn school.
Byt the time we stopped waiting it was 4PM or 5 or so, i cant honestly remember. So we decided to order Pizza and watch Shooter.
After that was done, it was 8PM and no one felt up to recording. So we made a decision to record on Tuesday, lol.

So we staye dup playing COD4 until 11:30PM. Then we disbanded.

I got NOTHING done this weekend. im quite dissapointed in myself. But i guess we all need an inadvertantly unproductive weekend at some point or another.

Till next time,

-k

Vlog 4 - Long lost love and other nerdy crap from KyleHarrison on Vimeo.

Oh god.. i did NOT want to wake up this morning.

Anyways enough about me, So i grabbed an importer and imported the Betruger head from Doom 3. And just.. wow. Now THAT is an importer. The Mesh is perfect, the bones are named properly, the joints are placed perfectly, and whats more awesome than that? The WEIGHTS are proper.

Ok so understandably, i dont have the rigs that Id used to animate the faces or characters as ive had to import the MD5mesh’s. But they used an insanely traditional means of animating the faces: No blend shapes, no weird scripting to place nulls and weights, no advanced strange controls only found in game. Nope. Just pure Joints and Weights. So this was rather encouraging to actually: Learn how to rig a faec. And thats what im in the process of doing. THIS is something im fully willing to do.

First of all, both of these are FRESH imports of their RAW reference exported format. On the left is Betruger from Doom3, on the right is Berney (believe it or not)
With Betruger, right from the import, i am able to move the joints around and create a facial expression (quick 5 second one purely done for example, i know theres flaws :p)
On the right with Barney: Notice there IS no facial controls?! I had to wireframe it to prove it, also notice NO JOINTS?! They are NULLS. If you try to move one of them, the mesh stratches instead of staying contrained, making animating a complete joke and nightmare.
Also notice with barney that weird thing goiing on: Yeah i turned his neck join about 20 degrees to the left.
Thats it.
This reference SMD actually requires me, to pretty much redo everything juust to get a custom sequence in there (as your REQUIRED to RECOMPILE the reference SMD to add another sequence) and thats NOT what im up for.
The doom3 side wins, its lip synch system may not be as phonetic, but at least it sets me miles ahead in ambition than the Source Engine does.

To understand what im getting at, check out the video for Thursday right below this post. Everything should become clear!

and now for something new:

The Danceoff Edition!
On occasion i have been known to surf youtube for various reasons. So i thought id pick out a few every now and then that seem to standout in my mind. Todays theme seems to be around dancing, so lets get to it:

The Yes! Dance [Warning: If your even slightly homophobic, you may hate this]
Lets do the fork in the Garbage Disposal! My god these guys are HILARIOUS.
Beetlejuice’s Interpretive Dance!
I dont know HOW dead men dance, but he works it HARD! BJ does a mean robot and epic pelvic thrusts. Who knew? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!
The Blue Fox Group [Warning: if your even slightly furryphobic, you may hate this]
Obvious parody of the BlueMan Group. I laughed throughout the duration of this one, something about a bunch of dudes in blue fox costumes, rapping, is just downright hilarious, and ballsy. Songs kinda catchy too.

‘Till next time!

-K

This Vlog contains alot of bad language, sensitive virgin ears be warned.

Vlog 3 - Source Did it Wrong from KyleHarrison on Vimeo.

EDIT: I would like to correct 1, just 1 thing about my rant. Of course, for Doom3, your required to save .mb (maya Binary) files and run them through the doom3 engine using meshExport to make the md5mesh and anim files, defined in a .def file. So in a small sense, the .def is much like the .QC from source.
The difference: With a little study of the md5 format, its not severely difficult just to make an exporter that exports directly into MD5mesh and MD5anim files, eliminating the compiling middleman.
The main Doom3 advantage: Inheritance. No models are actually “compiled” jsut “converted”, MD5 is ASCII based haha. SourceMDL makes binary models and everything that was shared is built directly into it.
In Doom3, the .def file (without compiling) can build entire characters by something like this (please forgive the inaccuracy)
// dude.def
char_dude
{
“inherit” “body_labcoat”
“head” “dude”
}

youve just created a character, simply by providing a head model. All animations for the body, are shared amongst other MD5anim files.

My apologies for the rant inaccuracies, though, i still stand my ground on the rest.

Vlog 1 - Im so out of shape from KyleHarrison on Vimeo.

Vlog 1 - NO HD Fo U and PS3 Cant Encode For Shit from KyleHarrison on Vimeo.