Peter Lewis’ Portfolio

There are two main things to cover in this post as I haven’t posted in ages.

First, I handed in my final year dissertation on Monday. It went very smoothly (almost boringly so) and there were absolutely no problems. All on schedule and everything. Actually, I tell a lie: the actual program doesn’t work on the University computers, but that’s not such a big deal. At first I thought this project was going to be great, but after my supervisor and I discussed it I lost heart in it. However, after working on it and seeing what it can do I became enthused again and I hope that my enthusiasm carries through to my document. Maybe my supervisor will also see that we weren’t barking up the wrong tree all this time too.

Second, I am totally screwed next year. There are a number of problems and they all conflict. However, they all hang around this Masters that I wanted to do. I feel that I am not yet quite good enough to go into the film industry. I think a bit of animation would help, but to be honest I do feel like I am a Film Industry Virgin. I have been told frequently that I am more than capable of getting a job in the games industry, though, but that’s not where I want to end up. However, despite what these people claim I feel that my portfolio lacks any game-specific work, so I’m not sure I’d have the prerequisites to get in there.

So, my answer to this was that I would do a Masters in CGI. Now that Masters is very much what I want to do, but I went to speak to Matthew Holton, an assistant dean at the School of Computing, and he told me that the Masters was unlikely to run. This, unfortunately, screws me over a lot. Not that I could afford it, anyway. I’ve looked into Masters elsewhere, but one is too expensive and the other is only running for the first time next year, so I’m not sure I should trust it. The latter is in my home town, so it would be much cheaper to live there. However, that’s bad as I don’t really want to leave Teesside, despite that it’s a rubbish place. My friends are here and I know the lecturers (and more importantly I know their skills).

Another factor that makes this more complicated is funding. However, this could be potentially solved: I have been offered a job at a start-up games company that a few friends of mine are starting. They have funding and the talent, so there’s not a problem there. Though of course, I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket. They’re also applying for jobs, though… and as I say, they have the talent, so I’m reasonably sure that this company isn’t going to go ahead. But if it does go ahead it is definitely my preferred choice to stay here and work on my film portfolio in the meantime.

I’m now nearly at the end of my degree. This makes me feel very naff, to be honest. I will be separated from a lot of very good friends and not to mention my girlfriend. I was convinced that I’d be back next year, doing a Masters and living with my mates in our shiny new house, but this seems not to be the case any more.

It sucks.

To do this week:

• Finish re-installing everything
• Finish the Nintendo Demo for Halch (gulp)

To do in general:

• Get my raytracer working on Linux
• Start my AI project
• Start my physics project
• Start my visual simulation projects
• Check out Portsmouth Uni
• Sort out next year

I am going to die.

I have now upgraded to WordPress 2.0.2. Sorry about all the mess.

Oh, and muchos gracias to Nitin, the awesome support chap (or chapess) at Fuitadnet for getting my MySQL server back on it’s feet.

I get sick of people that can’t type. They seem to be everywhere. It’s possible I could make a tidy profit from selling these keyboards, so maybe it’s not so bad.

Fear my Photoshop skills.

The original image is of the very sexy Optimus Keyboard. I want one so badly.

I have now purchased - with some aid from a friend - a new webserver. It turns out that the reason that the other server was so slow is that I was going way over my meagre bandwidth limit, so I had no other option but to get another one. Hopefully this one will be less likely to fall over.

You’ll also notice the new domain name. I thought it was more appropriate.

Let me know if you discover any problems on the site!

I am currently staying at my parent’s because of my gran’s funeral. I return to Middlesbrough on Thursday, which isn’t far away, but is never-the-less becoming more and more of a problem. I was intending to get some work done on a project for a start-up games company, Halch, but my laptop’s USB ports seem to have died leaving me unable to test my work. I really need to get around to replacing it, but alas, I have no money.

Also, because the other projects I am working on require shader support, they have to be ruled out too because my laptop is old and inferior. I have several computers at my disposal that I could continue my work on, yet I have no copies of Visual Studio in which to do it with. I am well and truly buggered.

This means that I have to complete my final thesis in less than a week, complete the Halch project in the same week and then get cracking on all of my other modules. In the case of three (out of four) of them that actually means starting. This is becoming a bit messy. The reason that I’m so annoyed about this is because I planned all of this out, yet life (and now death) seems to have done everything that they can to screw me over.

I might turn to drink. That might be fun.

Edit:

Oh, and my web hosting company, Servelocity, offer a server with root access running Linux Red Hat, Apache & PHP, MySQL, 10GB of space and 10GB of transfer monthly, for only £9.95 a month. This is a dream come true for anyone that wants a server, but unfortunately they don’t tell you on the front page that you’re sharing the machine with several other people on a virtual server basis.

The thing is, the server package that I’ve picked is for very low trafic websites and games servers, which is fair enough. However, I seem to have misjudged how many hits I get a day and so the server controller is basically cutting access to my server completely to give other people a chance. Therefore there has been loads of downtime, the server is slow, constantly running out of memory and I’m getting pretty annoyed, frankly. Under normal circumstances I’d say “you get what you pay for”, but in this case I’m paying a whole load of money for a website that’s down more than it is up. If I want a stable server that supports the load that I need I need to pay at least £5 more monthly. I’m paying £10 already, which is already painful.

I think I’m going to have to change again.

The typical thing to do would be to say a few words about how she was a great and clever woman, about how I should have called more often, about how I should have appreciated her more, about how she helped those around her, or about her strange idiosyncrasies. But I am not going to do that. No humble words of mine would ever do her memory justice.

Instead, a simple farewell:

Goodbye, Gran. We miss you.

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As Romero once said, “Design is Law”. Normally I would agree, but from what I’ve seen lately most people have a totally incorrect concept of what game design really is. What I’ve been told is “game design” from 90% of the designers that I’ve met so far has just been moot opinion wrapped up in ego. In fact, I should really say that I have met many people that claim to be designers. Conversely, I’ve also met many people who claim that designers are nothing more than mere idea men with delusions of grandeur. I personally don’t agree with this last statement: I think a design team with a design lead is one of the most necessary parts of games today. What would a film be without a scriptwriter? Of course, the director could write the script himself, but a good scriptwriter gives the film that edge of professionality and a higher quality product. However, many people I know also claim to be good story writers. They are not.

This allusions to some kind of literary and artistic greatness seems to propagate through people where-ever I go. Only with close and prolonged observation does real talent show. This is why I think Blitz’ approach to interviewing people is so brilliant and exactly what I would do. For example, I know people that think game design is the same as the detail of the game world. I can’t even comprehend how people reach this conclusion without thinking to themselves, “what does the player do?” When asked this question they either respond with a, “I haven’t thought of that yet”, or a “well, they can explore the world” or something equally vague. The first is obvious and the second is not fun. These are the people that go through their lives thinking they are game designers but are in fact poets in disguise. Even their design documents are so obfuscated with pretty words that they are almost lyrics to some obscure love song. They concentrate on the detail of the world, but not on the detail of the player’s actions.

Things like this are for films, not games. Films are all about the experience and the emotion. Games are about interactivity and choice. In fact, until recently the latter hasn’t really been very important. Dressing your game world is important, but not as important as the interactivity. Imagine a pretty game with nothing to do? It will be boring and it won’t sell. An ugly game with lots to do? You’ve got Deus Ex. These same people will probably think that Deus Ex was a richly detailed game, when in fact it was a series of many choices laid down for the player to make his own path with a rich narrative to support these actions. It could be argued that this narrative was part of the world detail, but I argue that the world detail was a side-effect of the narrative. However, this leads to the impression that narrative is the most important factor in determining world detail and therefore world detail leads to choice. This is wrong. Many designers tackle games from a narrative perspective and fail. Hopelessly. Again, this is how films are made, not games.

Interactivity first, then narrative, then world detail. Even I know this, and I’m just a programmer.

I have just been presented this link, which is the most incredible thing that I have seen all year. The videos are fantastic and I recommend watching them. What shocks me most about all this is that it was created by three guys in their apartment, who are apparently the same guys that did Savage.

Also, this makes me re-think what I think NFJ Software could do. We are were 2 programmers, a level designer/programmer and a designer until about 4 weeks ago when our level designer, Luke, got a placement. Now that he’s creatively incapacitated for a year, we have absolutely no artists or level designers. Chrissy is hoping to fill in, but he’s never done level design before. I’ve met two other guys recently who might join the ranks, but they’re also both programmers.

You may notice the lack of any arists. This is our major problem at the moment: we don’t know any artists. Actually, we do, but we haven’t found any that a) we find easy to work with, or b) have the level of talent we are looking for. Yes, yes, I know that we can’t afford to be picky at this stage, but none of them match (a) which is a mandatory requirement.

In other news, I have nearly finished the SCL3D. All that’s needed now is a camera interface. Also, it could do with some preliminary model format support, but that’s an optional feature.

I’ve got my claws on a book called Abnormal Psychology, 3rd Edition. I must admit, I’ve only read the first chapter and it’s very interesting already. It deals, as the title suggests, with the psychocology behind “abnormal” people, why they are labelled as such and their motivation that drives such behaviour.

It starts by defining the word abnormal and makes it perfectly clear that it does not intend it to be a derogatory term. It then suggests that there are 7 ways of classifying “abnormality”, but it’s important to note that none of these reasons are necessary reasons: if there are one or more signs of abnormality present, that person is deemed so, but there is no consistent connection between all cases of abnormality. This is indeed very true.

Being at University, not to mention living in Middlesbrough, I have come to know a few “abnormal” people. From people that I know (whether they are at University or not), I have noticed a strong corellation between depressives and those that would be considered “abnormal”. Obviously, those with depression would automatically be considered abnormal (even though statistically, being depressed is quite normal). One could classify “normal” as the baseline for all subconscious attraction, or as what is deemed “socially acceptible” by any individual’s standards. Depression is neither of these.

I am referring to other signs of abnormality brought about by depression. For example, I know a chap that was depressed because he thought that he would never have a girlfriend when all his friends were quite successful. He was quiet, somewhat overweight and generally teased at school. He eventually started dressing in the hallmark “goth” clothing that’s associated with depressed teens; he also moaned about everything, and rarely escaped from his room. He eventually began to betray confidences of the people close to him, possibly seeing this as a way to leverage himself socially.

He then discovered the world of alcohol. During one of his drunken outings, he grafittied his best friend’s house. He also started having an internet relationship with a 14-year old girl over the Internet. When they eventually met, she immediately had nothing to do with him. This cut him deeply, but soon after he started persuing a girl that was dating his best friend. Now they both despise him.

In the final few months that I knew him, his life became a mess. I personally wanted nothing to do with him, he failed his exams, his mother started keeping an eye on him to the point where he couldn’t cope, he lost more and more friends and those that I know that do talk to him regard him with pity tainted with disgust. Obviously, because his actions are detrimental to his lifestyle and wellbeing, he is deemed “abnormal” by others.

If you’d allow me to branch off for a moment: my personal theory for the above case is that the depression he experienced is a very odd form: it is invented by the person to mask their true worries. Any observer can see that his case doesn’t seem quite normal. I personally believe that he was using that as a kind of mental skapegoat. I feel his true worries lay elsewhere but he was possibly in denial about them, consciously or otherwise.

From this theory I have been testing a method to bring myself out of a “low spot”. When I feel down or upset about something but I am never sure why, I try and find the root of the problem in my mind. Usually, I am simply not admitting to something that I know is true but refuse to consider (simply because it is not convenient to do so). I’m sure that when a wife finds lipstick on her husband’s shirt she thinks to herself, “no, no, it must be mine,” even when she knows that it is not. The brain locks down any thoughts that could be potentially harmful to the mind, which we refer to as denial. When I consent myself to facts that I am reluctant to admit, I instantly feel that I have more options open to me and I am able to deal or rectify the problem, even if life has been made potentially more difficult.

In the book I mentioned above it states that every action that a being takes is based on its “rules of survival”. I absolutely agree and I have concluded that each action is either designed to protect it from harm (psychological, such as denial, or phsyical, such as the fear of skydiving). These “rules”, or bases for judgment are accumulated during a being’s lifetime from the usual sources: parents, family, peers, TV, etc. If a father is in the army and is killed, any child that he has would probably develop a fear of firearms as the child would associate them with injury or death. Conversely, if he lives, the child would have no such aversion to firearms.

I know someone that copes with stress by sleeping. My conclusion is that when this person feels stressed, overworked or is reliving any past trauma, her mind tells her to sleep because in sleep the thoughts cannot harm her. This isn’t strictly true as she have the occasional nightmare, but her subconscious possibly deems this better than the alternative.

I think the trick here is that she needs to find a way of “reprogramming” her subconscious: she needs to instruct it that when she is finding it difficult to cope, sleeping is not an acceptible way of dealing with the problem. Instead, she needs to tell it to respond in a more positive and more helpful way, such as thinking calmly and logically about her negative experiences, to work through them and accept them as past. I could be talking utter nonsense, as I’m not a qualified psychologist, but these theories work for me at least.

If you’re ever feeling low, I’d like you to try an experiment. When you have a feeling that will not leave you alone no matter what possible reasons you blame for it, try searching inside yourself. And when you do it, make sure that you are honest with yourself: you will know when you are denying yourself the truth. If you are in serious debt but you’re sure you’ll run into some money soon, admit it to yourself: you’re probably not. If you’re with a man or woman that does not make you happy, admit it to yourself. If you find yourself attracted to someone of the same sex, admit it to yourself. Then try and fix it if you can. You’ll feel better for it in the end. If you find it trialing, remember the golden rule: believe in yourself. If you really can’t fix it, you’ll find that you can probably ignore it more easily.

If only this advice was infallible, though. If you are coping with a traumatic event, well, that’s something that is probably the hardest to deal with. Maybe, one day, I’ll discover the General-Purpose-Answer-To-Dealing-With-Life, and when I do, I will post it.