#and other 3d objects i think. but it was mostly meant for architectural design.

[club-prideguin]

I wish i was good at drawing diagrams to illustrate building structure, itd make designing locations and trying to show off ideas i have in my head so much easier.

[catholicartistsnyc]

Meet Indiana-based Artist Daniel Mitsui

DANIEL PAUL MITSUI is a Hobart, Indiana-based artist specializing in ink drawing on calfskin and paper.  His work is mostly religious in subject, inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts, panel paintings and tapestries. www.danielmitsui.com

CATHOLIC ARTIST CONNECTION: Where are you from originally, and what brought you to Hobart, IN?

DANIEL MITSUI: I was born at Fort Benning, Georgia, where my father was an infantry officer. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and lived in Chicago for most of my adult life. About two and a half years ago, I moved with my wife and four kids to Hobart, Indiana, which is sort of the easternmost edge of Chicagoland.

How do understand your vocation as a Catholic artist? "Catholic Art" can mean a number of different things: art that happens to be made by a Catholic, whatever it is; art that communicates Catholic ideas and values; art that explicitly treats the Catholic religion as its subject; or art that is considered "sacred" art, meaning that it is intended to communicate religious truth and to assist prayer.

Most of my artwork is of this last kind, so I understand my task as twofold. First, I do my best to follow an established tradition as far as composition and arrangement are concerned. Sacred art should corroborate sacred scripture and liturgy, and the exegesis of the Church Fathers - because it too is a means by which the memory of Jesus Christ's revelation is carried forward through the centuries.

Second, I do my best to make the art as beautiful as possible, because the experience of beauty is a way for men and women in a fallen world to remember dimly the prelapsarian world, and to grow in their desire for reunion with God. As I wrote in one of my lectures:

It is important "not to consider sacred art a completed task, not to consider any historical artifact to be a supreme model to be imitated without improvement. To make art ever more beautiful is not to take it away from its source in history, but to take it back to its source in Heaven. Sacred art does not have a geographic or chronological center; it has, rather, two foci, like a planetary orbit. These correspond to tradition and beauty. One is the foot of the Cross; the other is the Garden of Eden."

I am Catholic, and an artist, so I have no objection to being called a "Catholic artist.” However, I do not want to make an advertisement of my personal faith or piety, to suggest to other Catholics that they ought to buy or commission artwork from me because of the sort of person I am, rather than because of the artwork's own merits. An artist who would make an advertisement of his personal faith or piety has received his reward.

At this time, my personal mission is to complete a large cycle of 235 drawings, together making an iconographic summary of the Old and New Testaments and illustrating the events that are most prominent in sacred liturgy and patristic exegesis. I call this the Summula Pictoria, and I plan to spend the next twelve years of so working to complete it, alongside other commissions. I already have spent more than two years on it, mostly on preliminary research and design work.

Where have you found support in the Church for your vocation as an artist? The Catholic Church is of course much more than its institutional structures; it is all the faithful. Most of my patronage comes from private individuals rather than parishes and dioceses. I do receive some commissions  from ecclesiastical institutions - in 2011 I even completed a large project for the Vatican - but I do not go out of my way to secure them. In ecclesiastical institutions, there tend to be committees involved, and a whole lot of politics; the usual result is that an artist spends time preparing proposals, reserving his most interesting ideas, and just fighting for permission to make the best artwork possible. I feel sorry for artists like architects and sacred musicians who, by the nature of their medium, have to do this. I avoid it whenever possible.

I choose to make artwork that is small enough and inexpensive enough that private individuals can commission and buy it. I think this may be the future of Catholic art patronage; there is not much reason to think that ecclesiastical institutions will be able to provide it much longer. You can look at the demographic changes, at the money lost both through diminishing donations and lawsuits because of clerical scandals, at the amount of artwork already available as salvage from closed parishes - none of this suggests that ecclesiastical institutions will become great patrons of new sacred art any time soon.

How can the Church be more welcoming to artists? I think that sacred art should have four qualities: it should be traditional and beautiful, as I said already; and it should be real and interesting.

What the clergy and theologians of the Church could do to help artists is to advance an argument for art that has these qualities. They have not advanced this argument much lately, and a good number of them probably don't even believe it.

By "real" I mean that sacred art ought, at least as an ideal, to be made by real human hands or voices. Music sung or played in person is a different thing, and a better thing, than an electronic recording. A picture drawn by hand is qualitatively superior to picture printed by a computer. There is at least a rule on the books that liturgical music needs to be sung or played live, not off of a CD, but even there a lot of fake things are broadly tolerated: bell sound effects played from speakers in a tower, or synthesizers dressed up in casings to look like pipe organs. Visual artists don't even have this sort of rule in place for them. Printing technology - both 2D and 3D - is now so sophisticated that I worry about it displacing human artists, without the clergy or theologians objecting.

I fear that some time soon, one of the great artistic or architectural treasures of Christianity will be ruined - more completely and irreparably than Notre Dame de Paris -  and that in response to demands that it be rebuilt exactly as it was before, living artists will dismissed from the task as untrustworthy. Instead, a computer model will be constructed from the photographic record, and everything will be 3D printed in concrete or faux wood. Once that happens, a precedent is set, and living artists and architects thenceforth will compete, most likely at an economic disadvantage, against computers imitating the old masters.

I don’t oppose reproductions themselves; I have digital prints on display in my own home, and I sell digital prints of my own artwork. I listen to recordings of music. I do oppose the idea that these can, in themselves, provide a sufficient experience of art and music. I oppose the idea that sacred art and music can be fostered through attitudes that would have made their existence impossible in the first place.

By "interesting," I mean that art and music should command attention. So many Catholics have gotten it into their minds that the very definition of prayer or worship is "thinking pious thoughts to oneself.” They close their eyes and obsess about whether they can think those pious thoughts through to a conclusion without noticing anything else. With this mindset, art and music are praised as"prayerful" simply for being easy to ignore. Art or music that are particularly excellent are condemned as "distracting.”

This, really, is wrongheaded. Distractions from prayer are foremost interior, the result of our own loud and busy and selfish thoughts. Sacred art or music that draw us out of our own thoughts, that make us notice their beauty, are fulfilling their purpose; they are bringing us closer to the source of all beauty, God.

I can't remember the last time I heard a living priest of theologian say as much.

How can the artistic world be more welcoming to artists of faith? I don't really think that it makes sense to speak of an artistic world as opposed to any other world, at least when it comes to sacred art.

This art is meant to be in churches, or in homes, or in any places where people pray - that is to say, anywhere. It belongs to everyone. I have no objection to seeing my artwork in galleries or museums, but I don't seek out those spaces; I try to make my artwork available to anyone, as directly as possible.

How do you afford housing as an artist? The medium in which I chose to work - small scale ink drawing - does not require a very large working space, and uses no toxic materials or dangerous equipment. So really, all I need is a room in which to work. It doesn't need to be a space outside the home, or away from my kids.

So affording housing as an artist is, for me, the same as affording housing in general. I moved to my current home after my wife and I decided that our family was too large to stay in apartments any more; we have four children, and wanted a yard of our own for them. We wanted to be near Chicago, but everything on the Illinois side of the border was too expensive. It took about six months of house hunting, and one temporary move, before we found what we wanted, and we had to borrow most of the money to buy it. So I don't know that I should be giving out advice, except perhaps to urban artists who are "apartment poor" like I used to be, not to let that situation go on too long.

I advise any artists who are still early enough in their careers not to be wedded to a particular medium to consider how their choice of medium will affect what sort of living space they will need eventually, especially if they hope to have a family. If you want to paint pictures or make prints that require pigments or chemicals too toxic to have around young children or pregnant women, that is something you should be prepared to deal with in advance.

How do you financially support yourself as an artist? My artwork is my livelihood. About half of my income is from commissioned drawing, and about half from print sales, licensing and book royalties. I do teach, write and lecture on occasion, but this is not a significant part of my income. I've never had a residency or a grant, and I do not seek them out.

I've had my own website, www.danielmitsui.com, since maybe 2005, and use this as the primary means of displaying, selling and promoting my work.

What are your top 3 pieces of advice for Catholic artists? In one of my lectures, Heavenly Outlook, I gave three pieces of advice to anyone who want to appreciate or make sacred art, and I will repeat them here:

First, never treat art like data. Second, be guided by holy writ and by tradition itself: liturgical prayer, the writings of the church fathers and the art of the past. Third, do not consider sacred art a completed task. Do not consider any historical artifact to be a supreme model to be imitated without improvement. Please pray for me, and for my family.

[virtual-lara]

AVault - Philip Campbell Interview - Tomb Raider 1: Unfinished Business

Interview appeared on AVault website, dated sometime 1998. Article was written by David Laprad.

On Friday, March 20, Eidos Interactive gave legions of Lara Croft fans a very nice thank you in the form of four free add-on levels for the original game. Called Tomb Raider Gold, these never-before-seen levels were designed by Phil Campbell, producer and designer for a number of Eidos titles. The new levels are split into two sections: Unfinished Business and The Shadow of the Cat. Unfinished Business consists of two expert levels chronicling Lara's dramatic return to Atlantis, where she must destroy a hidden alien hatchery. The Shadow of the Cat levels take players back to the City of Khamoon to embark on an all-new adventure. The Adrenaline Vault was able to catch up with a busy Campbell and get his insight into the Tomb Raider Gold design process and all things Lara Croft.

AVault:

Thank you for taking time to speak with us. How long have you been involved with the world of Tomb Raider?

Philip Campbell:

I have been doing Tomb Raider-related work since March of last year. I was not involved with the original game at all. When Jeremy and Adrian Smith saw my work on another Eidos project, they asked me if I would like to design some expert levels. I worked at Core in England for a couple months creating concepts for a number of possible levels. Subsequently, I designed and built the two Unfinished Business levels. Later, I designed the Shadow of the Cat levels with the help of Rebecca Shearin, a senior artist here at Eidos.

AVault:

What other game development experience do you have?

Philip Campbell:

I started work at Domark in San Mateo a few years ago. Before that, I had been an architect for 15 years. Initially, I was art director on a couple of projects, and now I am handling producer and designer roles on a number of projects. Currently, I am working on Vermin with Kronos Digital and Omikron with Quantic Dream. I guess I am the office handyman! I try to get involved in all design related projects, ranging from external development to Tomb Raider publications, comics, and merchandising.

AVault:

Where does your work take you?

Philip Campbell:

Technically, I am a senior producer and designer working for Eidos USA and based in San Francisco. However, my current schedule has me spending six weeks in Paris working on Omikron and two weeks in Los Angeles working on Vermin. In Paris, I just completed the recording and motion capture sessions, and am currently concentrating on level designs. Although I work for the publisher, I supplement the Omikron design team. On Vermin, Tom Marx and I form a production team, helping the external developers with design issues. We have been very involved with this project from the beginning and are trying to break down the traditional concept of publisher and developer relationships by working closely with the team on all aspects of the game. Back in the U.S., I am currently designing a marketing, packaging, and website campaign for Omikron with the marketing department, and working on another Tomb Raider product.

AVault:

Working on another Tomb Raider product? Do tell!

Philip Campbell:

[to the sounds of his hands being tied by public relations] Soon! Very soon!

AVault:

Why is Eidos publishing Tomb Raider again, this time with extra levels?

Philip Campbell:

Tomb Raider Gold is an added value product. The four new levels, extra goodies, and the low price make it a great deal. There are probably a lot of new converts to Tomb Raider following Tomb Raider 2, and we wanted to make it easy for them to pick up the rest of the story.

AVault:

It is rumored the Unfinished Business levels are for expert players only. What special challenges confront players in these levels?

Philip Campbell:

The two levels that detail Lara's return to Atlantis are meant to follow directly from the end of the original game; therefore, we had to make sure the difficulty was as high, or higher, than the preceding levels. I do not think they are that difficult, but the player who really wants a test should play them before the Shadow of the Cat levels to limit the number of pickups and weapons.

AVault:

You do realize cruelty in game design is a punishable crime.

Philip Campbell:

I do not think we are being cruel! Devious, yes. Even sneaky. Hard, but fair. I think the levels reward careful play. No enemies materialize from thin air, nor are there random deaths, except for that one situation....

AVault:

Do the new levels concentrate on adventure-style puzzles, similar to the King Midas brain-buster from the original, or are they more focused on action, like the sequel?

Philip Campbell:

Both, although there may be a slight emphasis on action. The nature of the Atlantean foes makes them very tough enemies. On the other hand, the first Unfinished Business level is like a puzzle box. You must have an understanding of where rooms are in relation to one another. The Shadow of the Cat levels are more focused on mystery and mysterious puzzles. The player can get cat visions, and some objects transform. I loosely based a series of room puzzles on the Nine Lives of the Cat, an Egyptian hierarchy of gods. For instance, there is the Sun God room, where everything looks like it has been bleached out by the intense rays.

AVault:

Describe the conceptual development of these levels. Did you do any special research, and run into any unique design problems? I imagine you drew upon your experience as an architect.

Philip Campbell:

The Unfinished Business levels are based around a tight architectural construct. There are a lot of transparencies highlighting the connections between the various spaces. I imagined a giant underground hatchery, built out of the synthesis of a crumbling ancient architecture and a horrific kind of gunk. This is why you will find some very organic areas growing out of some fairly formal sets of rooms. Of course, everything is built upon the fiery red lava, and I wanted the lava to be constantly bubbling and popping throughout the levels. I worked around a lot of concepts I felt constituted good level design, such as foreshadowing events, allowing the player overall tactical views before a confrontation, building up the intensity as the action progresses, all the time considering dramatic camera angles and dramatically designed spaces. I did the Shadow of the Cat levels because I loved the Egyptian look in the original game, and wanted to add to the mythology of Khamoon. I did do a bit of research into Egyptian lore and culture, but mostly I imagined huge outside spaces, vast expanses of desert, and gigantic pyramids.

AVault:

Describe the actual dynamics of constructing the levels.

Philip Campbell:

The editor was a joy to work with. Rather than feeling like I was building models, plane by plane, vector by vector, I felt as though I was sculpting space, taking a solid block of matter and carving out an environment. Designing Tomb Raider levels involves a lot of late nights, on-the-spot testing, and subsequent tweaking and rebuilding. One of the great advantages of the editor is you can test as you go along.

AVault:

How easy was it to pick up the editing tools?

Philip Campbell:

The tools are geared to results, and I think part of the success of the original game is due to the quality of the level editor. It is very simple to build, test, and revise. The original did have some limitations, but these tended to focus the design rather than hinder it. Of course, my challenge was to build levels with the same high quality as the original, and I hope players find the maps challenging, compelling, and enjoyable.

AVault:

Do you think the editing tools could be mastered by the Internet community? What are the chances of them being freely released?

Philip Campbell:

Anyone with a creative eye could build playable levels, and I hope you will soon have a chance to do just that.

AVault:

You mentioned working with Rebecca Shearin on the Shadow of the Cat levels. Is there new art in Tomb Raider Gold?

Philip Campbell:

Rebecca and I came up with some concept designs the Shadow of the Cat levels, and she made some great new textures, many of which have a feline flavor. We had to stick very closely with the original textures for the Atlantean levels for continuity's sake, but I had a free hand as far as structures and constructs were concerned. For the Egyptian areas, I started out with pretty much the same texture set as the original, then gradually introduced new material as the mystery progressed. We were also aiming for more dramatic outside spaces than the original, so the levels ended up being pretty huge.

AVault:

What is your take on the Lara Croft phenomenon? Do you feel there have been any missteps along the way?

Philip Campbell:

Of course not! The whole Lara Croft and Tomb Raider franchise is the current preoccupation of many talented people at Eidos and Core. Everything is carefully geared to respond to our audience's wishes, and each step is meticulously planned. With a movie deal now in the works, it is critical for us to generate a quality script. Eidos makes sure experts are employed to deal with every conceivable expansion area for the franchise.

AVault:

Where do you see the franchise going?

Philip Campbell:

Tomb Raider is both a series and a franchise, and has potential to develop in many directions. The movie is an exciting opportunity, and as long as people want Lara Croft games, we will continue making them.

AVault:

Describe Vermin and Omikron, as you are able.

Philip Campbell:

Briefly, Vermin is an exciting 3D arcade action game, and Omikron is a real-time action and adventure title. Both look to be potentially great games, and we will be releasing more details as they develop. Certainly, they will both be featured at the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year, alongside our many other titles.

All rights belong to AVault and/or their affiliated companies. I only intend to introduce people to old articles and preserve them before they are lost.

[yegarts]

“Animal Family” at Edmonton Valley Zoo

The Edmonton Valley Zoo is going through extensive updates with the building of Phase Three, Nature’s Wild Backyard which will be comprised of the Urban Farm and Red Panda Habitat. To complement the changes and new development, Edmonton Arts Council released a call for artists in Spring 2016.

Artists Christine Leu and Alan Webb of LeuWebb Projects from Toronto were awarded the project and have since been working on developing the interactive 3D painted aluminum mural “Animal Family.” The mural is being installed on one side of the Urban Barn, which is the first thing guests will see when walking towards Nature’s Wild Backyard.

”Animal Farm��� rendering by LeuWebb Projects “We’re really interested in creating work that the public can engage with, and art that can work as an entry point to other spaces that you visit,” Leu says. “As we thought about this project more, we just really liked the idea of an oversized storybook and making something that children could engage with. Knowing that our artwork could be part of this development and this investment was really exciting, and there’s an opportunity to really integrate the artwork with the zoo since it’s physically part of an attraction. Sometimes art acts as an object in a landscape, but we really wanted to think about how the public can engage with it.”

Since Nature’s Wild Backyard is meant to be a revival of the child-friendly elements of the original Edmonton Storyland Valley Zoo, Leu and Webb wanted to create a storybook-like visual that would appeal to all ages. “We saw some remnants of [Edmonton Storyland Valley Zoo], there was that big Humpty Dumpty sculpture,” Leu recalls. “That really energized the concept of the storybook. It’s a sweet story.”

Leu and Webb especially wanted the piece to help educate young children as they made the transition from reading about animals to seeing them up close and learning about them at a zoo.

“Real animals can be intimidating to young children, in a book a cow is cute but in real life they’re quite big,” Leu says. “The animals [in the art] are mostly to scale, but they’re colourful and feature-less and not very intimidating.”

The panels on the mural can be flipped, just like the pages of a storybook, to create animated movements.

“We’ve already seen kids be really engaged with the art and other features here,” Leu says. “I feel like there are already some pieces here that inspire play and that there’s real engagement with. I feel like we’re just adding to that, adding to that language of play. The zoo is doing a good job of providing things you can touch and feel and engage the sense of touch. Feel free to play with [“Animal Family.”] It’s not an object in a museum.”

Leu and Webb hope that the interactive piece, like the zoo, will have people thinking about their relationship to animals.

“We’re interested in our place in the environment and our place in the natural world,” Webb says. “The zoo as a venue is interesting because it explores human and animal roles and relationships: how do we interact with [animals]? How do we perceive our relationships and responsibilities to animals and plants? We found the renewal plans [for Edmonton Valley Zoo] inspiring and the actual architectural designs [for the Urban Barn] are pretty amazing as well.”

“It’s really exciting to see so many people at the zoo, so many kids,” Webb remarks. “I hope the art will lead people to this new area and signal what you might find or see there. It will provide different levels of interaction: first impressions, a level of play, and then going into the Urban Barn. This is a long-term dream, but it would be nice for kids to come and see the art and as they grow up continue to return to it as something they associate with their memories of visiting and enjoying the zoo. We hope it’s meaningful.”

“Animal Family” will be available for the public to view in early 2019. Nature’s Wild Backyard is scheduled to open in summer 2019.

[aurelliocheek]

Making Euclidean Skies on my own

Miro Straka, the creator of Euclidean Skies and Euclidean Lands, talks about developing games on his own and gives tips and tricks on a successful game release for solo developers.

Euclidean Skies is a successor to Euclidean Lands, an award-winning turn-based puzzle game that was released on iOS. Both games combine the manipulation of marvelous architecture and turn-based combat to create a beautiful world with mind-bending puzzles. Compared with its predecessor, Euclidean Skies evolves this principle into extremely complex and intricate levels, which ensured its release beyond mobile devices. Euclidean Lands was released in early 2017, received Apple Editors’ choice, and praise from mainstream media, which guaranteed a need for a sequel. Euclidean Skies was released in late 2018 on iOS and early 2019 on Steam, where it merged both games together for a more extended experience.

I am not a game developer I was born in 1990 in Slovakia, studied architecture in Vienna, during which time I’ve developed Euclidean Lands. I went to school, then to work, then home to work on the game, and I did that pretty much every day. My girlfriend lived in Prague at that time, and the apartment I was renting did not have an internet connection. I think these two factors were the biggest boosters of my productivity, and without these conditions, I would have never finished Euclidean Lands. The other push towards a successful release came when I signed with a publisher because from that point on I had fixed deadlines that I had to meet.

To be clear: I am not a game developer. I have neither programming nor art background, and I did not have any experience with game development before Euclidean Lands. Yet I managed to develop and release two successful videogames, and I want to share my main takeaway from this experience. It might not be helpful or even applicable to all of you, but just maybe it might help someone who is dealing with similar problems I was dealing with over the past couple of years. Let’s start with the actual tips that helped me with the development of both games, keeping my sanity, and surviving the release. I tried to select points that are not too case specific, but rather more of a general approach, with an applied case study.

Euclidean Lands (left) vs. Euclidian Skies – a jump in complexity, gameplay and design.

Focus on your passion I am an architect by trade. This makes me very proficient at designing structures, objects, and hard surface modeling. Euclidean Skies is a game about architecture. I enjoyed designing it tremendously and obsessed about every little detail of geometry, about how shadows fall on the curved surfaces, about how the geometry adapts with every new shape, and million other details that are seemingly unimportant. However, it was essential for me – and it kept my spirits and motivation high during the development. The point is: You should take something you are really passionate about, and make the game about it. Are you into web design? Great, make a game with lots of perfected UI. Motion design? Tight gameplay mechanics? Whatever rocks your boat. If you feel burn out during the development, you can always go back to that favorite part of the game, and make it better, iterate and experiment, until you get excited about the project again.

Acknowledge your weakness and find a way around it I can 3D model pretty good, but I’ve never animated a thing. During early development, I used colored cylinders for the game characters; however, a game with placeholder objects is not presentable. This was at first solved by stationary figures – easy to model, no need to animate, and I had some presentable materials ready. The game is turn-based, so the majority of the time the characters would be still, on in an “idle” animation state. This meant that the poses itself were most important – the transition between them would be barely seen.

Each character has a set of poses; each pose is a unique 3D model. The models get switched during the motion when the character moves from one tile to another, and because the transition is quick, our brain interpolates between the poses. It looks like the characters moved, but really they did not. This also enabled me to have each pose super polished – a rig might produce strange deformations in places, or geometry overlaps, and since the character is stationary a lot, it might be noticed and ruin the polished image of the scenery.

Are you developing alone or perhaps in a small team. Chances are you don’t have everything covered – maybe you aren’t the most celebrated artist, sound designer, or perhaps your programming skills are a bit lacking. It is important to realize where your strengths and weaknesses are, plan accordingly, and turn a problem into a feature, rather than having a half-baked solution. Players would know, trust me, I’ve tried.

Take a break and experiment Sometimes it will be too much. You will not know what to do next, what to fix sooner, how to do it, or why are you even doing it. We have all been there. And yes, it is okay to take a break and recharge. Some of the best parts of Euclidean Skies came when I took a break and did something different for a while – the single-camera across level transitions came into my mind during playing God of War – something I’ve been putting off because I needed to work on the game for a long time. However, this idea reinforced the game’s presence and fluidity, and this small feature changed the user experience and his emotions while playing the game dramatically. Moreover, it would not happen if I didn’t give up a little and let myself have time off from the project. Maybe you should work on a smaller experiment for a while, something to take your mind from the daunting task at hand so that your brain can relax a little and regain much-needed energy and enthusiasm.

Augmented reality mode places castles in your living room.

Develop features based on your (future) interests I was always fascinated by the prospect of augmented reality. To have something imaginary projected on the real world, to alter your world with the impossible and unthinkable, was always a very appealing prospect to me. When Apple announced the release of ARKit, I knew I had to try to use it. It was hard, but it paid off very much. I pushed myself to create a mode for Euclidean Lands that would be playable in AR – this was before the release of ARKit, with a developer beta, and there was almost no help or whatsoever on the forums, and no tutorials at all. Because I am not a programmer, using this technology was incredibly hard for me. However, augmented reality seemed to be everywhere and became “the topic of the year,” and I knew it was a chance to stay relevant, so I worked extra hard. On the launch of iOS 11, Euclidean Lands was one of the few AR ready games on the App Store. This resulted in great features, the sales more than doubled, and it was in a lot of prominent news articles. Thanks to that, I received interview invites from the biggest companies in tech, and it helped Euclidean Lands in popularity so much that I’ve decided to make a sequel. Each of us has a unique skill set. Also, each of us knows what topics they would like to explore more. Very often, your interests could be easily incorporated into the development, help you with the game tremendously. Because, in the end, it comes down to the single thing – do you enjoy making this?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help While I work alone, none of my projects would exist without input from others – mostly friends, but often strangers. My friend Rene Vidra did the character poses – he is a great animator, and because I only needed about 6 different poses with no animation, and it was a matter of minutes for him to get that stuff done. For me, it would have taken days, probably weeks  He was glad I asked and enjoyed doing something a little bit different for a moment, and seeing the result in the game was a lot of fun for both of us. Same goes for my publisher, kunabi brother. They are in Vienna (and now we actually share an office), so nowadays we often meet and talk about the product. They have different views and opinions compared with mine, and talking about my ideas with experienced people helps me filter out the wrong ideas. Yes, maybe you don’t have a publisher, but you can still go to local game shows and show it to strangers, or make a little session with your friends where you talk about it (and drink beer and have some fun!).

Another important part is asking a stranger for help – the worst that can happen is that they don’t reply to your email, but more often than you’d think they will try to help. Early on in 2015, I had a prototype of Euclidean Lands, but no idea what to do with it. So I emailed the biggest Slovakian gaming company – Pixel Federation – asking for some input and guidance. Pixel Federation is one of the most successful companies over here, with over 200 employees. Still, the CEO took the time to reply to my request, looked at the prototype and shared some excellent business and gameplay advice that helped me incredibly. Not everyone you meet will be eager to help you, or even like your product, but you need to ask to get something in the first place. Also, an email doesn’t cost anything.

Don’t be afraid, but realize first that you can fail Making games is hard. Not only hard but very risky. There’s a good chance your game will not make it. No one will notice it, maybe the launch will collide with a big surprise hit, maybe you fail to convince journalists to talk about it, and perhaps you will run out of power and never release it. Regardless of the outcome, the journey is worth it – if only just for the learning. However, you shouldn’t drop everything you do and start working on your dream exclusively – there’s always a way to make it work otherwise. I developed Euclidean Lands after school and after work. Yes, my social life sucked for a while. Yes, it took way too long. Yes, maybe the game would have been better if I worked on it full time – but I knew that nothing bad would happen if I failed. I would still go to work, receive my Master, and continue with life without any dramatic change. Even after the success of Euclidean Lands, I did not stop working at my job for more than another year, and I only stopped once my daughter was born, to spend more time with her and work from home. Euclidean Skies was partially developed full-time, and you can feel it in the visual polish, but even so, Euclidean Lands remains a slightly better game in my opinion.

Learn to Google properly Unity forums, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Blender exchange and many other forums have most (if not all) the answers you need. Chances are someone already had the same problem as you in the past and found a way to solve it. You just need to find it. Learn proper googling practices, it’s not that hard, and it helps you in everything you do. Crawl forums tirelessly if you are stuck, and if you cannot find the problem you have, try breaking it into smaller problems and search those. If you absolutely cannot find it, post in the forums, but be sure to post correctly to raise the chances for a response. Forums are full of people willing to help if you ask nicely and precisely for a direction. Do not expect people to write your code, but most of them will gladly help you. I wrote shaders for Euclidean Skies with a lot of help from strangers on the Unity forums, and I try to return the favor to other anonymous developers whenever I can.

My mistakes and regrets after the release I think my biggest regret, for both games, was not getting enough outside input – especially for Euclidean Skies, which was developed in a stealth mode in hope to generate more press on the release day ( which did not really work out any better than Euclidean Lands).

Due to not having the game announced, I did not participate in any shows or conferences and therefore had almost no feedback from other people playing it. There is a big chokepoint in the first 30 minutes of the game that many people found frustrating, including editors and reviewers. This problematic level was designed because it fit the game format visually, but game development is not only a visual art, and the most essential part of the game, the gameplay, was neglected. I noticed this on my own after the game was released, and I could immediately tell it would be troublesome for other players, too, but it was already too late though. With the appropriate feedback from testers and other people, I could have noticed and solved the problem earlier, and that annoyed me a lot afterward.

The other point, in both games, was the audio. I did it myself, and you can hear it. In the second game, people are actually complaining about it. For Euclidean Lands, I did not have any funds to hire someone better than me to do it, but for Euclidean Skies, I really have no excuse. I thought that if I did it for the first game and it was fine, I can surely do it better for the second game. This was very wrong, as the sound is a vital part of the overall experience, and in this case, it almost ruined it.

My conclusion The release of Euclidean Skies and Euclidean Lands was a success for me. I sometimes think it was because of my hard work and dedication, but it was absolutely not. Sheer luck has more to do with this than anything else – meeting the right people, finding the right resources, getting the right inspiration, having the right people read and answer your email. It‘s a thousand little things, and all of them out of my own sphere of influence. Contributions of other competent people, like my publisher, play an enormous role in the release. Doing a game about something I love – architecture, plays a significant role in actually holding on long enough finish it. So the bottom line is: Do what you love, don’t be shy to ask for help, but don‘t count on success.

  Miro Straka is the creator of Euclidean Skies and Euclidean Lands. Before developing games, Miro studied and worked as an architect.

The post Making Euclidean Skies on my own appeared first on Making Games.

Making Euclidean Skies on my own published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[lechevaliermalfet]

Behind the Gun: A Look at Quake

It's summer, and in summer I get nostalgic for two things, game-wise: old Playstation games, and Quake.

Back when Quake was still new-ish, we had a Pentium PC (a Compaq Presario Penium 150, to be exact).  This was just good enough to run Quake without breaking a sweat... as long as we ran it at 320x240 resolution).  A popular online argument at the time was whether Quake or Duke Nukem 3D was the superior game.  Considering this article is about Quake, I think we can all safely assume what side of that debate I would have fallen on.

As far as first-person shooters went, I'd played a lot of Wolfenstein 3D on my parents' previous computer (a Packard Bell 386 that originally came with 2 different floppy drives and no sound card, and had the CD-ROM drive and Soundblaster added in a couple years later).  And I'd sort of played the classic Doom, albeit only the shareware version, and that running like a slide-show unless we shrank the screen to postage-stamp resolution.  But Quake was the first first-person shooter that really hooked me, just got under my skin and grabbed me and kept drawing me back to it again and again.  I dreamed about playing it, I think.

For a while there, it was a habit during the summer to play it for hours on end.  I'd retreat to my parents' basement (yeah, yeah...) to avoid the summer heat, and clock in time on Quake.

It's the first game I install on a new PC these days: Download from Steam, apply source port patches, and go.  There's a lot you can do with it nowadays to make it run at ridiculous resolutions with ludicrously detailed textures on everything, but for my money, I prefer not to do more than apply the anisotropic filter and make the water transparent.  It makes it clear exactly what the game is, which is to say a ferocious and fast-paced shooter from a bygone era.  

As much as gaming publications of the day painted Quake as the wave of the future, that's because at the time, it looked that way.  Hindsight suggests that Quake was less the vanguard of the new school of FPS design and more the beginning of the end of the old school.  But the publications of the day were mostly speaking in the strictly technical sense, anyway. Unlike every other FPS then on the market, Quake was the first to be rendered completely in 3D, from the environments to the enemies to the objects in the game world.  

From a design persepctive, the one thing this really changed about the usual FPS set-up was an increased element of verticality.  Given that most FPSes prior to Quake essentially faked 3D by way of programming sorcery, level design options such as having one room or area atop another, or having platform jumping, were off the table.  Aside from these additions, though?  From the arsenal of seven or eight weapons available at all times, to the firing of weapons straight out of the ammo reserves (with no magazines or reloading), to the very game-y level design, everything in Quake was familiar to fans of older games.

Which, just to be clear, is the furthest thing in the world from a problem. It takes a measure of getting used to after coming off a Halo bender, but it's old-school design at its finest.  

Speaking of old-school design: There's an interesting difference, which you pick up on pretty quickly, between how Quake handles combat compared to other games.

Most enemies in FPS titles these days tend to have behaviors and tactics particular to their type and situation.  Sometimes, as in the case of a game like F.E.A.R., the enemy intelligence is capable of surprisingly clever tactics.

Quake isn't one of those cases.  Enemies in Quake all basically have the same behavior programmed into them, which is to move toward the player in the straightest line possible, and attack once in range.  Which was par for the course with games of this vintage, really.  What was smart about the enemies was the way they were arrayed against you, with numbers, placement, combinations, and a level of aggression that kept players on their toes.  It means combat frequently occurs against groups of enemies, and occasionally hits a white-knuckled, breathing-heavy level of intensity that gives you a powerful rush when you come out alive on the other side.

There is overall a very game-like feeling to Quake that's hard to shake.  This may require some explanation.

More modern video games tend to occur in environments that feature at least a certain degree of realism (for a given value of "realistic"). Say, for instance, your game takes place in a zombie-infested mansion, a la Resident Evil. Modern game design (and Resident Evil is modern in this much, at least) suggests that the architecture should be at least a reasonable approximation of a mansion.  The number, size, and layout of rooms and floors should fit a realistic floor plan.  Helps with the verisimilitude.  An older game, from a time when this was difficult to impossible due to various technical limitations, would have the idea of "zombie-infested mansion" as less a guide to the layout and architecture of the level and more strictly a matter of its visual theme.

Between its inexplicable death-trap levels – whole castles built enirely with only one observable purpose, that being to kill anyone who enters – and its generously placed stashes of ammo and power-ups floating and spinning in midair all video game-y, it's difficult to say that the game is even remotely realistic in either its presentation or its environments.

And yet...

Those environments, thematically speaking, make the game.

Doom (just to contrast for a moment) sold itself by leaning hard into its over-the-top imagery of capital-H Hell.  You had fire and brimstone and demons of all descriptions with weapons cybernetically grafted to their limbs; you had pentagrams and skulls and inverted crosses and hearts on altars; you had legions of possessed soldiers; you had skeletons with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers; you had giant floating horned skulls who spat fire at you, and were themselves on fire.  And then all of it was amped up to a kind of comic-book excess that ultimately made it kind of hard to take seriously.  Not that this stopped it form freaking out the squares, mind you, but said out-freaking only wound up selling more copies of the game.  That was Doom: the distillation of a heavy metal album cover.  They went for that aesthetic, and they nailed it.

Quake tossed that aside and instead looked toward the sci-fi/horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.  Like Doom, Quake is fast, fierce, and in your face.  But its imagery, its whole aesthetic, is night-and-day from its predecessor.  Quake was cold, dispassionate, quiet, unsettling, turgid with implied menace.  Where Doom had Soundblaster-quality riffs on hard rock and metal songs for its soundtrack to keep you pumped, Quake gave you Nine Inch Nails.  The soundtrack never quite settled into being anything recognizable as music, per se.  It's perhaps better described as an ambient soundscape meant to layer a sense of dread and unease over everything.  It succeeded at this task, because it turns out that Trent Reznor is the guy you turn to for that.

Aesthetically, this is the difference.  Hell makes sense on a certain level, to the extent that any such mythological places and constructs do.  Hell cares, after its fashion.  It is a place of punishment, filled with beings who declare themselves your enemies, and who set themselves against you.  Hell (we are typically informed) is very intimately concerned with your thoughts and deeds; the horror and suffering it inflicts is always personal.

H.P. Lovecraft's mythos suggests a possibility more horrifying: That beings may indeed exist who move the cosmos, but that they do not care.  Not only do Lovecraft's monsters not care, they don't notice us in order to care.  On the off-chance that they do, it is to casually wipe us out because we are in the way.  Lovecraft's thesis, explored in much of his fiction, is that this was the true horror of existence, and that to understand exactly how little we mattered, was to be driven stark, raving mad.  His eldritch monsters were mainly symbols designed to express this idea, incomprehensible in order to express the utter incomprehensibility of the universe.  The main safeguard of sanity, Lovecraft contended, was human ignorance.  

This is the environment in which Quake takes place.  And, sure, maybe I'm overselling it a bit.  It is, at its core, a game about shooting extradimensional chainsaw-wielding, grenade-throwing ogres with nailguns repeatedly in the face until they die.  But these are the trappings that it uses in the service of that goal, and in that sense, they succeed.

In service to this aesthetic, the game features a dark, moody color palette that serves two purposes, I think.  One, of course, is to set the mood.  The other is to subtly obscure the sharp edges of the game's world.

As the first real fully 3D first-person shooter, Quake's 3D is really rudimentary.  As impressive as it was for its day, it hasn't necessarily aged very well.  But I suspect that the level designers at Id Software knew this going in, and they did what they could to future-proof it.  

The darkness of the game's lighting and its color palette hide some of the sharp edges.  For the rest, the game actually leans into is blockiness.  The hulking piles of stone which comprise the castles and keeps, dungeons and mazes, the rough-cut caverns in which the game occurs loom and oppress with their size and solidity, their rough and heavy blockiness.  The unnatural rigidity of the art design is actually bolstered by the simple polygonal shapes that the engine is capable of producing.  It would probably have difficulty creating more naturalistic environments without visibly falling short, as was to some extent demonstrated in Hexen II, made in the same engine by Raven Software.  But Id's heavy, menacing, oppressive architecture is a natural fit for the engine's capabilities.

The story, meanwhile, is almost nonexistent, partly as a result of Quake's trouble development.

The game was originally supposed to be an RPG of some variety, with the player being an axe-wielding barbarian (hence the presence of the axe as the player's melee weapon).  Somewhere along the way, this changed.  I've never heard an explanation as to why.  Maybe Id just felt more at home making an FPS.  The story I've heard most often about Quake's development is that they didn't really have a story for a long stretch of time, after they'd scrapped the idea of it being an RPG.  They just kept creating assets and building levels, because they had to do something. This is part of why the level progression is so arbitrary with little narrative or thematic flow.

Eventually, it occurred to someone that they were getting close to the finish, and no one had really put together a story yet.  And while Id Software had never been big on stories in their games, they realized that they had to have something to explain what the player was supposed to be doing, and why.  So they wrote a story that was basically Doom all over again.  Humankind is experimenting with teleportation technology (only the tech is referred to as Slipgates this time), which draws the attention of an enemy or enemies (extradimensional horrors this time instead of demons from Hell), and said enemy (code-named Quake, hence the title) sends its minions to attack. From there, the player goes on a rampage, tearing a bloody swath through the enemy's forces on the way to capture four runes which, together, will grant access to the enemy's lair.  Each rune is hidden in a different dimension, and each dimension is its own episode of the game.

This is a plot that you could fit on one side of a napkin, and when you were done, you'd still have most of the napkin left.

It doesn't matter.  Quake is awesome.

Playing is as easy as breathing.  Winning is considerably more difficult, of course.  But the act of maneuvering through the game's challenges is perhaps the easiest it has ever been in an FPS.  For whatever reason, Id decided to remove every extraneous element.  You no longer have to press buttons or throw levers; they activate automatically when you collide with them. Doors open on their own as you approach.  Your interaction with the game world and everything in it is stripped down to the absolute essentials.

Run. Jump.  Shoot.  Destroy.

Quake is in a relatively unique category of games for me.  I can pursue it as comfort food, but at the same time, it has real substance to it. Thin as its story is, its atmosphere is thick enough to cut.  As simple as its gameplay mechanics are, its levels and enemy encounters are designed to test the player's skill.  As much as it pays mere lip service to the work and ideas of H.P. Lovecraft, it nails the aesthetic of crushing, oppressive insignificance.  

[littleyellowdevil-blog]

[Final Evaluation]

This final project had us planning, designing and creating a game that was aimed at a specific target audience. Before anything else was done, we had a vote for who we would be aiming this game at. We ended up with a 3D platformer aimed at 13 year old girls, but the game had to be suitable for people aged 7 and up. We then interviewed for the roles that we wanted to take. I chose to go for the role of System Designer, as I enjoyed the coding aspect of the final project of the first year and wanted to learn more from this role. I also took this role as I was concerned that very few people would want to take this important job, so I wanted it in order to try and make a better game.

Before I could get to do any system design, I needed to do two important things. First I would need to learn how to use the game engine and then research what systems are used in games that are similar to ours, as well as explore how these can affect our game as a whole. As another member of the system design team wanted to do character movement, I decided to look into doing collectables and hazards.

 I began by looking into games that had collectables. I wanted to learn why they include them and their purpose. From this research I found uses of them that I felt were both positive and negative. This led me to decide that if our game would have collectables then they should serve a purpose and not be there to just be collected. I then used this at a later point and attempted to create a mini game that had the player control a ball trying to pick up some mini cubes. This was to both help me learn the engine and learn things like how to make an object be picked up by a player.

My next step was to look into the other aspect of system design that I would be doing, that being the hazards that the player would need to overcome. Similar to how I did my research on collectables, I chose a couple of games, one that was aimed at a similar audience and had a similar genre while the other aimed at an older audience and a slightly different genre. This was to compare the differences of the hazards. Doing this I found that the hazards from the game aimed at an older audience required more thinking, while the ones aimed at younger audience were more reactionary and required less thinking. I would later try to incorporate this into the game by having the main hazard in the game be reactionary, but also have a little timing in as we are aiming for a slightly older audience that the one I looked at.

This is where we hit our first hurdle. The game engine that we planned to use, Unreal, would not work on the college computers. This meant that we had to switch to Unity, meaning we had to go through several weeks of installing the new engine before it was useable. In order to ensure my time was not wasted I decided to do some work to help with the progress of the game that did not require the game engine.

As part of the project I created an asset that could be used in the final product. This was a Window, but I also decided that with a simple change then it could easily be a Mirror. Before designing the shape I looked into the art style of our game, that being Gothic. More specifically how it has been used in architecture. I used images of existing Gothic windows and some reading I did in order to develop the shape of the window. I also explored possible designs of the inside of the window from some primary research I did in Plymouth. The final design was made in Maya, a 3D modelling program. This would allow easy transfer into Unity at a later point. I also created a 3D model of a bath design by another person, as we needed some more assets and Unity was not ready.

  This is when we were hit with a major setback. About halfway through the project, my fellow system designer had lost all his work due to an unknown computer issue. This set his work back by several weeks. While at first I did not worry too much, as I expected him to get right back to work and catch up, I soon realised that he had lost all motivation. After about a week we decided to move him onto other, smaller pieces of work, but this left a massive component to our game missing. I decided to take on this work myself as I had already dabbled into character movement, so felt that I would be able to get it done the best out of the remaining designers. This did impact my work and would end up costing the game any collectables. We also had a group talk where I voiced my opinion on how to proceed with this game. I convinced the rest of the team that we should put all of our efforts into doing ONE level rather than a whole game. This would refocus our efforts and allow us to have a more polished product.

After this issue had been sorted out, I began to create all the systems that I would need in the game. This included a moving platform, a pushing piston and the character controller. One issue I had with the moving platform was that the character would not stick to it and the platform would move out from under their feet. To fix this I had to create a piece of code that told the engine to make the character a child object of the platform when they collided and remove it when they were no longer touching. The bigger issue however was finding a character control system that worked. I went through three different movement systems before settling on one. This was due to various reasons including; one not working, another being too clunky and another being too difficult to add animations to. Eventually I did find a system that worked, even learned a little about skeletal animation in the process and how to use Blender, Maya and Unity together in order to make high quality animated characters, as well as the importance of using the correct program for the correct job.

Once I had everything set up I finally received a copy of the first level, so I began to get it all working inside this level. This was going well, but I encountered several issues that I would need to sort out. These were no gravity, no collisions and cluttered asset window. The third was simply a matter of parenting assets to empty objects. But the others required a little more looking around for a fix. After Several hours, I was unable to find the solution. In the end I asked for the help of another system designer, my hope being that he might have an idea on how to fix this… Turns out I had not placed a collider onto the main character… Without his help I would have never seen this issue and would likely not have got the game running.

With this I now had a fully functional character in a level, and after some more messing around inside unity I was able to implement my hazard and moving platform too. Everything was ready for the exhibition.

The exhibition week finally came. It would take place at First Site and would last the whole week. Each of us was assigned into small groups and would look after the exhibit at different times and days. During the time I spent there I helped tend to the people playing the game. This consisted mostly of young boys, not the target audience we aimed for. As they played I took note of what they found hard and noticed that only one person could get past the first part. One kid also said they like the game but that it needs more levels. Sadly due to the incidents we faced towards the end of development, we were unable to add the full level, let alone more levels. But I also think that had we began level development sooner, instead of stretching out the design phase, we might have made up the lost time. I also would have slowed down the pistons too, as people had a hard time avoiding them at their current speed

[lewiskdavid90]

50% off #Unity 2016 – Build , program and publish a 3D shooter game – $10

Unity 5 Make a Shooter game – animate characters – code behavior and AI – publish to Google playand iTunes app stores

All Levels,  – 8 hours,  96 lectures 

Average rating 4.2/5 (4.2 (31 ratings) Instead of using a simple lifetime average, Udemy calculates a course’s star rating by considering a number of different factors such as the number of ratings, the age of ratings, and the likelihood of fraudulent ratings.)

Course requirements:

basic knowledge of Unity is not recommended but it’s always nice to have

Course description:

Note: Videos recorded using Unity version 5.3.2 (2016)

Important: all softwares used in this course are FREE to download and use on PC and MAC computers (no need to pay, cheers!)

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This is the most comprehensive course when it comes to build and publish a Unity 3D shooter game and publishing it to app stores.

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In this course you will learn how to design, program, and publish a 3D shooter video game in the style of MineCraft and publish it in the Google Play store and iTunes app stores (iOS and Android).

Why would you want to learn how to make a 3D shooter game?

Because it’s fun, and it’s proven to be top games in the app stores. People love to play these games. And the best reason of all: thanks to this course, you will create a good looking game by yourself that you can publish in the app stores, without having the need of a team of multiple people.

This course can be taken by anyone even if you’ve got no programming skills or very little

This course is meant for non-artists, meaning you don’t have to be an artist to be able to use 3D pixel art graphics.

You will learn how to use free tools to make an amazing game from scratch as I will show you every single line of programming and how to use Unity 3D to be able to make professional games all by yourself quickly and without having to spend money.

By the way as a bonus, this course includes free downloads of the finished 3D models, Unity projects and levels as well.

The skills you will learn in this course can be applied to so many more projects as they are the core foundations of any professional video games. Invest in yourself by joining this course now

What is 3D Pixel Art?

3D Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of 2D-like raster graphics software, where images are edited on the pixel level in the form of blocks. Graphics in most old (or relatively limited) computer, console, graphing calculator and mobile phone video games are mostly 2D pixel art, and now we use the new technologies t have the retro-cool style with the amazing functionality that 3d technology provides.

Note: This course’s graphic assets are used for educational purpose only.

Full details Download & Install Unity 3D Crash lessons on how to use Unity Opening a Unity project Launching a Unity project in the Unity simulator Navigate within Unity’s user interface Creating environments (roads, grass, mountains, and rivers) Adding objects to environments (like rocks, and trees) Adding the main player character Animating the 3D character (idle, running, death, shoot lasers) Create a state machine to switch between character animations Input controls for desktop computers and websites Input controls for mobile devices (Android and iOS) Enemy artificial intelligence Enemy smart path finding Create lifelike laser beams Create stunning Halo lights Smooth camera follow Main player taking damage Enemy taking damage Enemy spawn points Score point system Game Over menu buttons and texts Adding and using custom fonts Using background music Using sound effects Triggers sound effects in specific areas Adding cars, taxis, and trucks Making vehicles honk Making vehicles crash with player and enemies Adding levels to current build Switch platforms (Android, iOS, PC) Publish to iOS iTunes Connect settings iOS developer license iOS certificates and provisioning profiles Compile game for iPads and iPhones 32 bits and 64 bits architectures Code signing setup Uploading to iTunes Taking screenshots Uploading iOS build for technical review Monetize with in-game advertisements

Full details Game enthusiasts game hobbyists game developers game dev students artists computer science students

Full details

Reviews:

“First I would like to say that I like the enthusiasm that Yohann has about teaching the course. I was really looking forward to viewing some of his other video course but after viewing this one I do not think that I will be purchasing any of them. There is a couple of reasons that the score is so low. For some of the info that Yohann was teaching was incorrect. An example of this is in the Display/UI section of the course. He talks about why the text is disappearing when he makes the text too big in the Game Over Menu video. He states that the font Arial can only handle a certain size of texts and you have to use different textures (I think that he means fonts.) to make it bigger. In a later video (Working on the Score video) he shows how to change the bounding box of a text object in the inspector to make it bigger to allow a bigger font size. He could have avoided all of this by just modifying the text object in the Scene view window. You can see the bounding box and make it much easier to show why the text is disappearing when it gets too big for the box. You can also resize the box in the Scene view. The other reason is the poor information/teaching on the iPhone and Android sections of the course. Yohann goes over the registration on getting an account for Apple and that is fine. Yohann does not go over the process of testing out the iPhone app that he creates. He does not explain why the UI has changed position and size. He does not explain how to test the app on an iPhone or even the iPhone simulator from XCode. For the Android section Yohann keeps referring back to the iPhone section so you have to watch both even if you are just interested in the Android.” (Ray Jolliff)

“It is a very good course overall. the only reason it isn’t 5 stars is that in the course, you load the game to the android/apple store before adding more enemies and adds. Other than that, it is a great course. I highly recommend.” (Matt Silverman)

“This was a wonderful course that filled in a lot of gaps in my Unity knowledge, specifically Raycasting and how it can be applied. The instructor was knowledgeable and likeable. I think the code could be a little cleaner, but that is just my opinion. I really enjoyed working through this.” (Christopher Cummins)

  About Instructor:

Yohann Taieb

Yohann holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from FIU University. He has been a College instructor for over 7 years, teaching iPhone Development, iOS 10, Apple Watch development, Swift 3, Unity 3D, Pixel Art, Photoshop for programmers, and Android. Yohann also has plenty of ideas which naturally turned him into an entrepreneur, where he owns over 100 mobile apps and games in both the Apple app store and the Android store. Yohann is one of the leading experts in mobile game programming, app flipping and reskinning. His teaching style is unique, hands on and very detailed. Yohann has enabled more than 20000 students to publish their own apps and reach the top spots in iTunes App Stores, which has been picked up by blogs and medias like WIRED magazine, Yahoo News, and Forbes Online. Thanks to him, thousands of students now make a living using iOS 9, Swift 2, Objective C ( ObjC ), Android, Apple Watch ( watchOS ), Apple TV ( TVOS ), Unity 3D, and Pixel art animation

Instructor Other Courses:

Introduction to Game Development with Unity Yohann Taieb, Apps Games Unity iOS Android Apple Watch TV Development (22) Free Build Weapons Automatically Unity . Fantasy Edition Unity Asset Store …………………………………………………………… Yohann Taieb coupons Development course coupon Udemy Development course coupon Mobile Apps course coupon Udemy Mobile Apps course coupon Unity 2016 – Build , program and publish a 3D shooter game Unity 2016 – Build , program and publish a 3D shooter game course coupon Unity 2016 – Build , program and publish a 3D shooter game coupon coupons

The post 50% off #Unity 2016 – Build , program and publish a 3D shooter game – $10 appeared first on Course Tag.

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[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: The Shape of Indoor Space: An Interview with GIPHY Artist Peter Burr

Detail from “The Shape of Indoor Space”

Since visiting Peter Burr’s “Pattern Language” last September, flashes of imagery from his installation will occasionally come back to me. There’s a sticky quality to the work, so memories appear in the same way they might for a character in a sci-fi movie—suddenly and without warning.

Burr’s art conjures the future—projection screens picturing high density structures that resemble malls populated by people who move in slow motion; text by Porpentine that describes opinionless cultures; undulating black and white patterns designed to mesmerize the viewer. Unlike movies, though, which tend to center around heros and villains, there’s no morality attached to this environment. It’s not good, or bad. It just is.

Now, thanks to a commission by GIPHY, a section of that installation has been further developed for the online environment. “The Shape of Indoor Space” is a browser-sized 12 GIF maze depicting a near-infinite interior made for humans. While the grid structure of the building doesn’t move—the floors stay put—pretty much everything else does. Backgrounds made up of blinking lines, pulsating squiggles, and flowing wave forms create a complex patchwork of patterns. Figures congregate in groups and walking alone navigate the building—some even sprint through it. There are no children.

I spend far more time looking at this maze than I do most other art. Part of it has to do with the virtuosity of Burr’s craft. When Burr talks about the technical specs of his work, it’s with the precision of a painter who grinds their own pigments and stretches their own canvas. His hard-edged animations don’t look native to any one software, but evoke a retrofuturist sense of “computer art” that predates Photoshop or 3D rendering.

But mostly, it’s the meditative aspect of “The Shape of Indoor Space” that keeps viewers engaged for long stretches at a time. For an environment in which nearly every element is in constant motion, that’s a bit strange—like a puzzle without solution.  

It’s this quality that compels me to reach out to Burr to discuss the commission with him. We touch on everything from crispy pixels to Arcosanti and building utopias.  

Detail from “The Shape of Indoor Space”.

Tell me about The Shape of Indoor Space. What are its origins?

I’d describe the GIPHY project as a generous version of what I did with Electric Objects back in 2014. I reached out to Electric Objects when my project was in development—I was interested in turning my work into an object without compromising the formal continuity. Their hardware seemed like one way to do that. I was their first artist in residence and was given $500 to develop an artwork for their screen. Ultimately, though, this body of  work is beholden to the crispy pixels found in the GIF compression format, so I wasn’t able to fully develop the art until this commission came along.

What is a crispy pixel?

The short version is that a crispy pixel describes an aesthetic that privileges a visual delineation of each pixel. The screen of any computer is a matrix—a grid. When you are using a modern day Apple and you go into system preferences they don’t give you screen sizes by pixels any more—they give you a simple choice between small, medium and large now and that’s part of a cultural trend that privileges “invisible” resolution. (ie, The fact that Apple calls its screen “retina display”, a metaphor of our own optical mechanisms with a system of cones and rods we can’t detect ourselves.) My work pushes against that because it reads as low res. If you look at the history of GIF technology, it was developed with the understanding that the file would be small – friendly to a 56k modem. The strategy it employs to shrink the file size acknowledges the screen matrix as a consequence of its limited color pallette. While more contemporary display technology allows for much finer resolutions and higher framerates, I’m attracted to the speed and coarseness of this older format in its ability to simplify very complex pictorial spaces to point towards a more legible emotional focalpoint. There’s some real power to yoke from the infinite fill patterns found in old computer graphics applications like MacPaint. As the Artist Ben Russell once said about my work with this technology, “you find yourself learning not what looking feels like (as Bridget Riley painted) but what feeling looks like”.

Popular video compression techniques today tend to use a different strategy – one that employs heavy reliance on blurring and smearing between bits of information.The reason my work looks so different, is because a GIF is never going to smear between bits to interpret a black and white pixel as grey because I’m telling it not to create grey.

GIPHY saw this and I think it motivated them to work with me. They are interested in the way I am working with my formal purity and I was commissioned to make these GIF loops.

Ideally how do they get viewed?

Well, GIPHY’s main website lays out a grid of images, so that’s how they get seen on their site. I thought about how I wanted my GIFs to be seen in that environment, and I thought ideally the layout would resemble an infinite scroll so the GIFs look like a small section of an infinite plan of an infinite living space. It can function like a desktop background or, as GIPHY is thinking about it, a wallpaper.

One way I think about it, is that these GIFs give you a window into a larger picture plane—a little like Nicolas Sassoon’s “The Studio Visit” – a sprawling portrait of an artist’s studio that extends beyond the confines of a computer display. In a way, this work functions as a proposal to get people thinking outside the presets of technology (like the common 1920×1080 display formats of most consumer-grade monitors, for example) into new display shapes with different technical impingements.

How so?

The ideal display settings for my work don’t exist yet. THE SHAPE OF INDOOR SPACE, for example, doesn’t work as a background because it’s not practical – it is too busy to be a functional wallpaper since your desktop icons would get lost in the background noise. It talks too much. It’s not meant to be in a browser either, as I made this space to be looked at slowly and passively. Because most of the internet is used as a space for active ‘information-gathering’ it becomes a strange context for meditative contemplation. I know GIPHY just released a big set of stickers that are fun to use when texting. This work isn’t going to do well that way either.

When GIPHY proposed this commission, they reached out a week before Pattern Language opened. I had generated a ton of material from that show. The installation and subsequent film illustrates the philosophy of an imagined community living in a sprawling labyrinth., When GIPHY reached out it seemed a perfect avenue to explore the formal architectural aspect of Pattern Language. The commission allowed me to focus on this one section for three weeks. So it gave me the ability to get make the GIFs super dense.

Detail from “The Shape of Indoor Space”.

When you add visual layers to GIFs like yours how do you know they are done?

It’s never going to be done. It’s a modern day labyrinth. Last month I went to Arcosanti, an urban laboratory in the middle of the Arizona desert – the only living arcology that Paolo Soleri ever started to build. The place exists primarily to demonstrate the principles laid out in Paulo Soleri’s “Arcology: In the Image of Man”. An Arcology, as Soleri defines it, should be a super dense, lean, self-supporting architectural structure built in the image of a living organism. The book is beautiful and describes the human body as simply as an organism that self regulates. Of course, thinking about that concept in its totality—it’s untenable. But I do like how he thinks of the current trend towards urban sprawl and suburban expansion as a body spread out into a veneer of guts, gooey and inefficient.

Anyway, when I visited, Arcosanti was by definition flawed in the trappings of any utopic ideal. Construction has slowed down and only 4 percent complete. But it occurred to me that maybe this is a really important metaphor. If you have this thing that’s hanging out around 4 percent of its total completion, it will always be charged with the potential of its flowering. In a way, this GIF project embodies the same charge towards building an infinite labyrinth.

How does this relate to the game you and Porpentine are working on or does it? I know that’s still in the works.

Haha! Well, we are going to finish the game. And people do live at Arcosanti. The difference between a home and a video game, though is that we’re not being quite as ambitious in scope. There are different stakes and that makes the game easier to bring to fruition in its idealized form. It’s something I can just do with a small team and release on a screen with a finite set of variables. Building a utopia to inhabit off screen is just so much more feral.

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