Monday, March 28, 2011

Building mysteries

Today, i noticed that Trigun had been released on Netflix instant, so i decided to go back through it again. I've seen it before, so i know how it goes, but it made me think about good character development, especially as it pertains to creating mysteries around your characters. The main character of the show, Vash the stampede (pictured) spends the entire first half of the series playing the clown, while the entire planet is convinced that he is a merciless killer, with a bounty of $$60,000,000,000 on his head. The guy is absolutely loveable, but the whole planet wants him dead? BOOM. I'm hooked.
The real trick of it is that confusion. The first episode is about bounty hunters looking for the legendary Vash the stampede, trying to win the bounty, but the whole time, nobody is quite sure who he is, two different red herrings appear, decked out with big guns and bad attitudes, while some goofy clown bounces around in the background. After awhile, it dawns n them that HE is Vash the stampede, and they join forces to capture him. But the goofy clown never fires a shot,surely this can't be the notorious gunman everyone is hunting down? Well, of course it is. that's the whole thing, the hero is this goofy guy who according to the legend destroys entire towns in a moment, and we've never even seen him fire a shot! it doesn't make any sense, and that's what draws you in.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Something inspirational


I have been listening to a song in Jen's car, a cover of "will you be there" by micheal jackson, and have been repeatedly irked by one of the lyrics.
But They Told Me
A Man Should Be Faithful
And Walk When Not Able
And Fight Till The End
But I'm Only Human

It's not the first time I've heard this excuse, and i doubt it's the first time you have. "I'm only human" I call bullshit. That's right, here and now, i want to silence anyone who has o ever intends to use their humanity as an excuse. Screw you. You're a disgrace to people.
"Oh snap!" I hear you say, "did he really just say that?" Of course I did. Being human is not something you can hide behind, it's something to be proud of. For thousands of years, people have been creating, loving, dancing singing, and being the greatest damn people on earth, all because they're human. Human beings are the only creatures on earth who think like we do, who really emote beyond basic instincts, is that something to hide behind? I say no, i'd say that it's a strength.
Take a short moment to look at the picture above. The reason i picked that building, the Aldar Hq in Abu Dhabi is that it strikes me as a beautiful symbol of us. Think for a moment about what must have gone into that building. Every single triangle of glass on the surface of that building is A: Gigantic, and B: has three side of different length. Think about that; Every triangle is different. Do you think that somehow, b random chance these thousands of triangles magically formed into a curved facade? Of course not! It was people, Humans, who took the work of honeybees, and applied their imagination to build skyscrapers, bridges, and homes. It's Humans whe launched themselves into space, who created medicine to help not only themselves, but other creatures as well/ Human isn't something to hide behind, it's something to be proud of.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Free houseplans


I spend a lot of time on stumbleupon, which jumps you to various randomly suggested websites, relating to your interests. While I was on there, I found a website that stuck me as very interesting, so i thought I'd share it here, and talk about it a bit.

earthbagplans.wordpress.com is a website put up by an architect who specializes in houses built using the earth-bag technique. The Basic idea is to stack bags filled with dirt to create heavy, well-insulated walls for your house. The bags can then be stuccoed over, to create an adobe-finish, which would blend in in almost any neighborhood (at least here in southern California). It's a very cool idea, the main material for the house is found completely locally, since dirt is just about everywhere, and the thick walls make cooling and heating the home much less expensive, because three feet of dirt insulate every wall. The earthbag houses are incredibly environmentally sound, and are (sorry for this) dirt cheap to build.
All of the environmental stuff is great, but what really made this blog interesting for me, was the fact that the architect Dr. Owen Geiger, made all of the floorplans for these houses available for free on the internet! Every blog post starts with a rendered picture of the particular home, then he has the specifications of the house (sq. footage, #of beds/baths, and the overall footprint of the house), a short description of it, and then the floorplans, right there, available for download! It's an incredibly generous thing to do, especially when you consider how much money architects tend to make.
So, if you're planning on building a house anythime soon, or just appreciate architecture or free things, i encourage you to check out earthbagplans.wordpress.com.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Donkey Kong

Yep, that's right, a post about a video game. I'm sure there aren't a hundred thousand blogs out there covering the same thing, but in all likelihood, most of my posts will not be about video games, so just bear with me on this one.

This post (while technically about a videogame), is actually about wasted potential and replay value. "Whoa," I hear you say, "this just got a bit heavier than I had hoped." Roll with me. Over the past week, my sister and I played co-op on the new wii version of the classic Donkey Kong country game. To be completely honest, I LOVED the game, and I'll tell you why; The game itself was a true-to-the-originals homage, but it was it's own game. Much like the New Super Mario game that came out last year, this game takes a classic franchise, blends in the wii, and makes something downright awesome. The worlds were from the original, but given new life as live 3d locations, which got down right cinematic. The game was very fulfilling, and spent the entire time hinting at great depth.

We spent the first half of the week playing through the game chronologically, from level to level, boss to boss, and had a great time. Even though the game was tough (we went through a lot of lives) we never got so frustrated that we quit, which is hard to pull off in games like this. As we played through the levels, there were extra things to collect, which were pretty gratifying when we could manage it, and suggested more replay when we didn't. For anyone familiar with the original donkey kong country game, the letters K-O-N-G returned, which were to be collected throughout each level, and there were also puzzle pieces to be collected in the same way. These puzzle pieces are the bone I would like to pick.

After the story is completed, it is revealed that collecting the Kong letters will lead you to a secret level, (I'm not really giving anything up, I hope.) "How exciting!" we exclaimed, straightening our monocles, "I say, let's get about it, then!", and we did. The whole while, we gathered Kong letters, and generally ignored the puzzle pieces, since we were fairly sure that after the Kong letters were gathered, they'd tell us to get those next. Oh wait, no they didn't.

Gathering KONG opened up nine bonus levels, which is fantastic, and each of those nine levels had their own group of puzzle pieces, as did every other level. It would seem that, if you are going to set the precedent of collecting items for bonus levels, that both sets would follow the pattern, but alas, Nintendo had other plans, apparently. We made jokes the entire time we played "watch, as soon as we get all the kong letters, they'll just say 'no, you can't enter the temple without the puzzle pieces'". Honestly, I think that would have been better than nothing, which is what we got. They used extra levels to motivate the collection of the kong letters, which worked great, and as a prize for finishing all of those levels we were given... mirror mode? Apparently we are expected to motivate ourselves to play the game by flipping it horizontally. I didn't bite.

I guess what I am saying is that, when you set up a motivator for replay value, like the puzzle pieces, you have to first entice the player (as they did with the Kong letters by "revealing the Golden Temple") And then reward them via extra content. To be fair, gathering the puzzle pieces unlocks concept art in a gallery, but really? I for one, wanted more to play, not a flip-flop, not pictures, gameplay. That's what the KONG letters did. They offered you more gameplay, in exchange for repeating previous gameplay. The ratio was about one new level for every nine old ones. You know what? That was more than enough. But trying to get me to replay just to get concept art isn't going to cut it. I like concept art, but at that point, playing through old content a third time, without the introduction of anything new turns it from a game to a grind, and I, for one, am not down for that.