Sheesh, it’s been a little while since I’ve written anything here. I’ve been traveling a bit (I’ll post photos soon!) and working (I can’t post the stuff right now.)

Last night I attended my first gaming session with the “Story Games Boston” group. You ask, what’s a story game? The definition is somewhat sketchy, but Story-Games.com says:

A Story Game is a type of role-playing game or gaming experience with a lesser focus on My Character and a greater focus on Our Story.

It was a fun and memorable evening with lots of laughs, dice explosions and bottle-tipping. It will be awhile before I get the hang of this style of play. Playing is heavy improvisation and whenever I try to improv, a big “Loading, Please Wait…” message scrolls across my brain.

Great group of folks and I’m looking forward to seeing them again next week.

Heavy Weapons Guy and Medic

I have fond memories of wasting many hours playing “Team Fortress,” a class-based team mod for the original Quake. This is way back, now. Ooooh, ‘95 maybe? My buddy E.Flo would log on from MI and I from OH and we would pwn noobs until our fingers seized up from mad mouse+WASD skillz, and we called it a night. Or morning.

Valve just released their Orange Box which includes the beta for the new Team Fortress 2. I’ve been looking forward to this for awhile. Not only is it a return to a great, fast-paced, fun and quick online game (and I’ve already got a few days jump on E.Flo,) but the art design is, in a word, INCREDIBLES. Er. Incredible.

Team Fortress 2 Load Screen

Since this is somewhat of an art blog, let’s take a look at the design for TF2. I’ll leave the game stuff for my other, as-of-yet-nonexistent gaming blog.

Character Design

Character Line Up

Team Fortress 2 Character Design Video: Sweet video on You Tube of Jason Mitchell, Moby Francke and Dhabih Eng, designers for the game, presenting a paper to … maybe Siggraph?.. on the art design considerations and the technical rendering methods they used. That and a few other interview videos on You Tube provided me with this info.

They chose to go with this cartoony look after two other art iterations didn’t work out. The first was pure WWII realism, the second was some sort of dark scifi look they nicknamed “TF2 Invasion.” Eventually they realized that the game had exaggerated physics, unrealistic weaponry and a humorous approach, so the simplified, expressive cartoon look was the way to go.

Scout Chases Pyro (Click for a closer look)

The designers were influenced by early 20th century commercial illustration. These illustrators knew the importance of design elements having distinct silhouettes to separate forms and make images visually interesting. The art designers purposely designed significantly unique silhouettes for each character. They echoed the shapes throughout the clothing folds and interior elements.

Character Silhouettes

To emphasize the shapes of each class of character, they also used shaders and renderers that would produce rim highlights on each character, even when the lighting in the world wouldn’t actually create rim lighting.

Sniper and Spy

The result is that the player can instantly identify the class of their ally or opponent and make the appropriate strategy, say, run straight up to the heavy weapons guy as soon as you see him and torch him with your flame thrower because you know his gun takes a second or two to warm up and start firing… FIRE! FIRE!

Pyro Concept Design

Pyro - Fire in the Disco!

Architectural Elements

The thoughtful design of the art in Team Fortress 2 carries over to the structures in which the player pwns and is in turn pwnd.

The architectural design of the buildings differ between the two teams. Where the red team’s base is made of wood and features organic textures and plenty of angles…

Red Team’s Base

…the blue team is a bit more technological and industrial with cool “orthogonals.”

Blue Team’s Base

That’s what the guy said. For example, in the most popular map, “2Fort,” the red base looks like a lumber mill while the blue base appears to be some sort of industrial factory.

Every detail shows carefully considered thought and intentional design. I love that.

Muted colors dominate the world with small patches of color saturation, the narrator of the video said. The background textures for the red and blue bases stick to this color scheme.

Color Scheme

In painting the textures for the world design, the graphics used on top of the 3D models, the artists kept out the visual noise. Instead, “broad brush strokes appear in perspective on objects as if they exist in the 3D world rather than on the 2D image plane.” The narrator says a primary influence for this look was traditional 2D animation backgrounds, particularly those used in Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) productions.

Example of brush strokes in background, from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Spirited Away

I would love to see the work that was put into this game reward Valve in the same way Pixar has been so successful with audiences. The secret ingredient after all, (to this ultra-violent, blood-soaked, shooting game,) is love.

Highly recommend this game. If you play, drop me a note or comment and let me know where you are!

Don’t miss these videos:

They feature almost-Pixar-quality animation, and most of it is gameplay footage.

• The Official Team Fortress 2 Trailer
• Valve Paper: “Illustrative Rendering in Team Fortress 2″

Interviews with the characters.

• Meet the Heavy Weapons Guy
• Meet the Soldier
• Meet the Engineer
• Updated: Meet the Demoman

I feel happy. Oh so happy.

It’s time for a new diversion. I considered making my own beer or cheese, but a fattening pastime isn’t really the best idea for me, especially in winter. The notion of watching and recording the types of squirrels that visit my bird-feeder crossed my mind, but that wouldn’t last long: the Eastern Gray Squirrel is the only member of the Sciuridae family to grace my deck, and I’m usually at work when they pilfer my seed. Annotating Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes is fun in moderation, but I want more.

Here’s my new hobby, and I invite you to join me. I’m going to try my hand at emanating lower and lower spiritual modalities until a physical universe results, flowing forth from my self-aware, unmanifested sentience beyond comprehension. (Wikipedia) In short, I want to create!

I’m sure you’re the same, if you’ve ever felt the rush of making stuff. There’s no better way to put it than Hugh Macleod:

“Making stuff develops the ability to see, hear, taste, smell and feel. Making stuff is about problem solving, the openness to possibilities, development of skills, internal and external navigation and resolution, a sense of exploration and adventure. Making stuff transforms one from a consumer to a contributor. Making stuff is not passive. Making stuff involves making choices. Realizing you have choices and making them is empowering. Empowerment leads to confidence, and the courage to question and challenge the status quo.” (Macleod)

The empowering act of making stuff sums up the idea behind the PC game “Spore,” due out in the second half of 2007. In a recent interview at Popular Science, Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims 1 & 2,) describes the innovative gameplay of Spore where as a player, you design your own creature species and evolve it from a single-cell organism to a conquering, space-faring race.

“I want people to feel like they are Pokemon designers, Neopet designers, or Pixar designers, and the range of creatures is pretty astounding…I’ve had a lot of people, when I’ve demoed Spore coming up and saying ‘I’ve never played a game before, but I want to play this one.’ And I think those people are attracted by the empowerment of the tools, they would really like the experience of creating a Pixar character and having it come to life.” (Morgenstern)

The evolution of the species takes place in game levels until you reach the “space” level, at which point the game opens up to a sandbox-style universe populated by other players’ races, vehicles, cities, planets, where you play, build, destroy and progress.

“What it means to be human is to learn to use tools to basically expand your abilities.” (Morgenstern)

With the built-in tools to create important game resources and share those with others, Spore might be a game that, after a session of playing, leaves you feeling able to confidently create and share in the real world. At the very least, it moves you from “consumer to contributor,” from idea-sponge to, well, idea-garden-hose.

“Making stuff and sharing it is a social and political act, which opens avenues for communication.That can help prevent us from becoming mindless drones subservient to the mass media, politicians, advertisers and commercial interests…” (Macleod)

However, since it will be several months before the game comes out, I suppose I have time to make a little bit of beer, count some squirrels and try to figure out obscure MST3K references.

References

• Macleod, Hugh. "Why Make Stuff? ", Gapingvoid: "Cartoons Drawn on the Back of Business Cards", 30 Nov 2006. Retrieved on 28 Feb 2007.
• Morgenstern, Steve. "The Wright Stuff", Popular Science, Feb 2007. Retrieved on 28 Feb 2007.
• Wikipedia contributors, ‘Emanationism‘, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Feb 2007, Retrieved on 28 Feb 2007.