DIGIPENDENCE - declare yours!

Dead Rising 2 level design director Josh Bridge has reviewed a lot of student design reels, and after noticing a lot of the same problems in them, he’s now written an article called A Guide For Aspiring Level Designers to help aspiring level designers improve their portfolios before they show them off to educators and employers, or put them online for anyone to see.

At the recent GDC Canada I had the opportunity talk with lots of soon to be level design grads eager to get advice on getting into the industry. It was great to have the chance to chat with them, as I have been reviewing student reels and portfolios for some time now.

Each year student work continues to impress me. The tools and schooling available today helping students to demonstrate their potential eclipses what I ever had at my disposal when I was getting started in the industry.

Though even with all of these great building blocks, all is not rosy in the land of demo reels and portfolio work. Since I have had many a demo go by my desk for consideration, I thought that it would make sense to share some common pitfalls along with some advice.

About Dead Rising 2:

Dead Rising 2 is an upcoming video game described as a survival horror with action adventure and RPG elements. The game is the sequel to the 2006 video game, Dead Rising. It will be developed by Blue Castle Games and distributed by former developer Capcom.

The game is set a few years after the events of the original Dead Rising. The zombie virus that originated in Santa Cabeza has spread all over the United States. The game will take place in the fictional city of Fortune City, which is modeled after the real city of Reno, Nevada. The new protagonist and player character, Chuck Greene, is a former national motocross champion who is caught in the zombie attack on Fortune City.

The game will be released sometime in 2010 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows platforms. (source: Wikipedia)

“The Sacking of Coruscant. It was the crowning achievement of the Sith Empires ambitious military strategy and the moment that changed the history of the Old Republic forever. You may have read about it before, but our first cinematic trailer captures this event with breathtaking action and beautiful detail.”

Republic leaders have traveled to Alderaan to engage in promised peace talks with the Sith Empire. The most powerful Jedi have accompanied them to safeguard against an Imperial deception. The Empires real motive, however, was simply to lure the Republics strongest defenders away from Coruscant and set the stage for an audacious attack. Under the command of Lord Angral, the Sith fleet approaches the Republics capital planet for the first time in centuries. In advance of the fleet, the strongest Sith Warriors have flown a stolen Republic ship into Coruscants orbit. Their mission is critical to destroy the planets defense grid mainframe hidden in the heart of the Jedi Temple.

Originally code-named ‘Apricot’, Yo Frankie! (Wikipedia) is the third open project from the Blender Institute. Unlike Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny, and the forth-coming Durian, You Frankie! is a game, not a film although the main character in the game is from Big Buck Bunny. It was released under a Creative Commons Attribution license 3.0.

The original project goal was to work on a cross platform game (at least Linux, Windows, OS X), using Blender for modeling and animation, Crystal Space as 3D engine and delivery platform, and Python for some magic scripting to glue things together. The purpose was to not only make a compelling 3D game experience, but especially to improve and validate the open source 3D game creation pipeline, with industry-standard conditions. Halfway during the project, we noticed the great advances made in Blender’s internal Game Engine, so we’ve added delivering the project entirely in Blender as a target for Apricot as well.

“Here’s a new run-through of the game in the Blender game engine, this time with the music playing in the game, 4x antialiasing, and a decent frame rate. There’s also a multiplayer demo at the end. ENABLE HQ after pressing play.”

Both the game and its engine may be downloaded from here. Source files are included. There are also a number of video tutorials available, and people are encouraged to expand the game by making additions such as levels and characters. Check the project page for more information. Keep an eye on the blog too as there are contests; for example, some very nice cash prizes (1st Prize - 250 Euros, 2nd Prize - 150 Euro, 3rd Prize - 100 Euro) were recently awarded for the levels competition. And of course, all the winning entries are available for download.

There’s also a DVD that can be purchased and “by getting the DVD you’re directly supporting future Blender Foundation’s projects like this, as well as Blender’s development itself”. Here is the official documentation, and GameBlender.org is a good resource for people interested in game development with the BGE.

According to a recent post on their development blog, Moviestorm is losing three key staffers.

left to right: Dave Pajak, Mitch, Philips, Dave Thatcher.

Art Director Mitch Phillips is returning to Ninja Theory where he previously worked on Heavenly Sword cut scenes. Dave Pajak (Head of QA) and Dave Thatcher (Tester) will be joining the exodus and trotting to Ninja Theory who are also still hiring (careers page). When I was the Community Manager at Moviestorm, these guys were great to work with and digipendence.com wishes them well, and looks forward to seeing their new project (currently top-secret, apparently). Perhaps we’ll even be able to score an interviews for the cinematic design category, so stay tuned!

Heavenly Sword follows the story of Nariko, a doomed heroine out to avenge her people, a warrior clan almost destroyed by the tyrant King Bohan. Had Nariko been born male, she would have fulfilled the prophecy that a Heavenly warrior would lead the clan to a glorious future. Nonetheless, Shen, her father, raised her to know the skills of warfare, imparting to her the arts and mindset of the warrior. When her father is captured by Bohan, Nariko is left with only one choice - to take up the Heavenly Sword.