I could believe that!  :D

Cool article; thanks for passing this on. 

And "W." is just Tim's middle name?  Crazy.  So really it's not Tim W, it's Tim B (bottom of the second page).  Regardless, Indie gaming owes that guy so much! 

Wow; this is a really great thread.  Settings are incredibly tied into atmosphere, and that makes them even more relevant; a setting will make a very strong statement of it's own, and has to be treated like that.  If the theme of the game goes directly against the implicit message of the game's setting, then it's sure to feel "off."

So, yes, settings:

- Metroid Prime (1): best example of "archeological storytelling" as far as I'm concerned (I think I got that term from this forum, too, haha).  Really, the plot of the game is the game's setting; the ruins of the Chozo speak so much louder than any cutscenes could have.

- Cowboy Bebop; it definitely captured the mood of the show itself, and I definitely agree with that "humans in space are still humans" comment!

- Gibson; I haven't read Idoru, but I found the settings of the Sprawl trilogy to be quite amazing, in the sense that they felt like what I'd expect those cities to feel like in 20-50 years.  I read Mona Lisa Overdrive a couple weeks after visiting London, and the way Gibson handled the near-future version of that city was brilliant, and for me, entirely believable; "we still have Government here."  Simply the fact that Asia is this futuristic super-dense zone, Europe is still surrounded in it's history, and North America is a sprawling mess of different urban environments, still reflective of the Modernist tradition that created much of it's atmosphere in the 50s-70s, makes it far more believable than these pie-in-the-sky sci-fi futures that are so common.

- Knytt Series: the pseudo-fantastical, minimal, almost zen environments really highlight the feeling of exploring a lush exiting world just that little bit more unbelievable that our own

- REZ: exactly what hacking/cyberspace should look like.  I really want to know if Miz ever read Neuromancer, because REZ is incredibly close to the descriptions of cyberspace in that book.  The idea that really, all it is is a way to visualize data, seems to actually work in REZ.  You're not looking at abstract geometry per say, you're looking at data that's been given a form.

- The Science of Sleep: the DIY arts and crafts settings in this movie were really in a class of their own.  It's really inspired some of my current work, actually.

OK, I'm sure I'll be back with more sooner than later.

Great to hear that this is back on track! 

Thanks Nava; I was looking for a crit actually!  :D

And that was a pretty good one too.  The bottom stair thing: I know what you mean, but upon looking at it again, I think having it tilted makes the whole composition a little more off-kilter feeling, which works in the sense that the viewer is almost falling down the stairs.  I like your point about depth of focus; that might have strengthened the "tumbling" feeling perhaps.

I gotta say though, not having elevation changes like this really made those months in Winnipeg a lot harder to get these kind of photos in.  I think I rely on the North Saskatchewan river valley and it's ravine network a little bit too much.  We'll see what I get out of Winnipeg this year I guess! 

OK, I'll crit yours now:

That came out really really nice, especially the sky being analogous with its image in the glasses.  To me, that adds a huge element of visual interest and it draws me right in.  You the viewer are looking at the sky, but you're also looking at the sky through the glasses, sharing in the "view" of the person pictured (Alec, right?).  Overall, I don't think I'd change anything about this one; love the framing and colours, and the stuff I just said.  Oh, and how the sky goes from the purple ground to the dark blue clouds; very nice transition that helps frame things too.  Really great start for no-post-processing; keep this up and you'll rarely need it! 

OK, holy crap!!!  I just remembered this awesome nfb short film from my childhood that I'd forgotten about, and when I checked, IT WAS ON THE SITE!!!   

Anyway, it's always nice when something you vaguely remember from childhood is actually as good as you remember it; this was definitely like that.  Absolutely charming. 

So here it is everyone, The Sand Castle (the animation is made of sand; it's really awesome):
http://www.nfb.ca/film/sand_castle/

I got it today too; mostly because input stuff really interests me, and I expect that GlovePIE will support MotionPlus sooner or later.

So sword fighting is BY FAR my favorite.  It's just plain fun, even if the depth is lacking.  Table Tennis I just really need to get the hang of, and I thought a lot of the other ones were OK.  I think it's a game that really requires multiplayer, and I didn't feel like picking up another MotionPlus today (because I think my little sister is going to).

But yeah, assuming some devs do a good job with what the MotionPlus offers, especially when it comes to swordplay, then some pretty fun games will be coming out; but of course, saying that is probably being a bit optimistic.  Eh; we'll see.

All the reports I've had back of my stuff not working properly (due to the surfaces) have been by people who've all listed various types of GeForce cards whereas I didn't know this since I use an ATI Radeon which the surfaces work perfectly on.

Huh, funny you say that, because surfaces work fine for me and I'm using a GeForce card (Go 7400).

I've been waiting for better a better room editor personally...

Yeah, given that I've had to create myself a custom editor for my current project, I can definitely agree with that. 

OK, here's one from me:



 

I gotta say though, Berlusconi is pretty sweet free entertainment for the rest of us!  :D

The most practical one is the section that Chevy hasn't finished.  You can use a surface to scale up a low-resolution game without the awful blur issues that you'd get using GM's built-in scaling system. 

Hehehe, Alberta NO Provincial Sales Tax.

That said, we probably have the worst most despotic provincial government in the country, and massive amounts of services have been getting cut recently, so it's not really a fair trade-off.

Wow; thank you Chevy!  This is brilliant, because it explains it a lot more than that little resolution fix using surfaces thing you'd showed us all awhile back (which was also awesome).  And the polygon trick is great! 

 :D  Man, I don't think he realized who he was saying that to.  :D

Massive condolences and hugs from me Fuzz.  I read about this in the paper yesterday, and was massively shocked because the fire was at Eagle Bay on the Shushwap Lakes, and that's where my family had our summer vacation for 4-5 of my later childhood.  I have a lot of memories of Eagle Bay, and hearing that something as horrible as that happened there really shakes one to the core.

These people being your friends; I just can't imagine.  Hugs man; we're all thinking of you. 

I'm all for the photo contest.  I mean, I came up with the whole creative contest that was easy to enter thing, but then it just didn't continue.  There are lots of those now though, so having a photo one, at least for the rest of the summer (while school isn't making things hard), would be really cool.

Anyway, gotta head to bed now, but I'll try and upload some photos over the weekend; I'm happy to crit your stuff, though it probably won't be as informed a crit as maybe yours would be?  I dunno; I'd really like to take a small photography class at some point actually.

And funny that you've got a D40; D40X for me, and I'm quite satisfied with it, but I'm no camera expert.  And I think the types of shots really affect what one would want from a camera; the vast majority of my shots are landscapes, cityscapes, and human-scale urban and natural scenes.  I've played around with macro a little bit recently, but really not very much, and I've done basically no portraiture because I find it quite uncomfortable.

Heck, I think a critique thread for each of the large art disciplines would be in order (eg. painting, pencil sketching, graphic design, etc.).

And on the topic of post-processing, I'd say just don't do any, and really force yourself to get the shot right.  Brutal, yes, but it's the rule I've stuck to myself since I bought my dSLR 2 years ago.  I decided that I wanted to get good at photography, not just the creation of images; it's served me well, but admittedly there are some shots of mine that would be a lot stronger if I added that step.  Heck, I don't even let myself crop, so that I focus more on framing my shots correctly.  But don't think from that stance that I really hate post-processing in all instances, or are accusing you of being less "indie" or something silly like that because you've used it.  :D

I'd just advise putting the foot down now on post-processing, for some arbitrary time like a month, and then re-evaluating the role of it in your work. 

...I really need to just give in and get a Yahoo account so that I can get flickr and actually post work to this thread. 

Yeah, crits are really tough to pull off well; getting the right balance, etc.

Alec did use another technique to get the videos of Aquaria. He made the game play in a special mode, in slow motion and automatic regular screen capture.

Haha, when CamStudio wasn't working on my current project, I contemplated trying that method.  I think I may go ahead with it now.

Once you have all the screen caps, you just merge them all into a video then, right?

Really great visual style you got going there!  I'm definitely exited for the music/gameplay now!