Category Archives: Motivational

Learned lessons from life

Nobel Prize

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kawashimaThere are two important things that happened yesterday and two days ago. First, my family (and most of Indonesian) celebrated Id. We phoned our family and wish them happy days.

Second, Al-Gore won the Nobel price for his Inconvenient Truth. I have watched this documentary twice and I’m going to watch it again tonight. What I like from Al Gore is his concern for the environment and also how he does the presentation.

It’s important to have a good and attractive slide but more important to have a good stage performance (voice intonation, humor, and body language). Presentation is a show, a stage performance, and not about showing your slides hoping the audience will read all the bullet points on your slide.

I feel that bullet-point-powerpoint-style presentation is really *ugly* but unfortunately most of the game developer still use it. You can see this bullet-point-type presentation during the game festival or a game conference 🙁

It’s not their fault actually since that’s what they have learnt from the university 👿

One of my favourite resources to improve my presentation skill is www.presentationzen.com. I learn a lot from this website and I highly recommend everyone to check it 😉

slide1 slide2
Which one is better?
source: presentationzen.com

We need to change and leave those bullet-point-powerpoint-style slide behind. There is nothing wrong with the Microsoft Powerpoint (or the bullet point) but we really need to do something to make our presentation more intereseting and entertainment. The game industry is an entertainment industry, how come we’re still presenting our product just like a boring software or scientific product?

OMG! It’s been 3 weeks

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…since my last post on this Blog 🙁 Another busy weeks, I guess. But I try my best not to abandon this Blog 😉

This 3 weeks, I’ve been writing and making a software prototype for my master thesis. Strangely, my right brain is dying because of too much scientific and thesis work 😯 I become less creative and hardly done any designs or sketches.

CreativeLicenseLucky that I have a very good book to work out my right brain 🙂 It’s The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission To Be The Artist You Truly Are, by Danny gregory.  My wife bought this book from Kinokuniya Singapore 7 months ago but I start reading this book since the early of this month, when I was having 4 days vacation in Netherlands.

The book is very colorful with a very artistic layout. You get a lot of exercises to draw things. I am still practicing the 3rd exercise. The first excercise is to sketch a mug using a pen but you’re not allowed to look at your paper until it’s done. You have to stare at the mug and stay relax. Your eyes slowly trace the mug’s shape while your pen forms the line on the paper. It’s eye and pen coordination. Actually, you train to shut up your left brain and by tracing the mug very slowly, you brain get relax and that’s how you activate your right brain.

It really works! Well, at least it helps me to get my brain balanced :-p

You can check out the author’s website.

LEGO Bricks

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I am always fascinated if someone creating his or her own game engine from scratch in order to make a game. I mean they really did a lot of work, didn’t they?

Three or four years ago, I would have done the same thing. Make my own game engine and then starts building games on top of it. But now, I realize that I’ve changed. What I will do is try to find if someone’s game engine, choose to use it, and try to use it as it is.

It’s like building sculpture using LEGO bricks, those colorful plastic blocks. You don’t have the curved shape block on the standard LEGO bricks. Some people would have chosen to make their own curvy blocks instead of using the blocky standard brick. They could end up with a really nicely curved and seamless shaped sculpture but I would choose to stick with the standard block. I know that I will get a blocky shape but it’s still a sculpture. And it’s not impossible that you’ll get a great sculpture 😉

Nathan Sawaya with his sculpture, made by using LEGO bricks (taken from CNN) 

That’s how I work using other people’s game engine. I rarely modify the engine’s source code, just stick to the provided APIs. If I need an extra function, I will search other people’s plug-ins. Not that I’m too lazy to do any programming but I want to focus more on the design and the big picture of my game (but of course, without loosing attention to the details 🙂 ). I know that my game will be slower, or without any state-of-the-art 3D graphics or shader effect but that’s the compromise for not modifying the engine. It’s just not my focus and to code or to configure a game engine is really challenging. It takes a lot of time and passion (and several days of hair-pulling moments 🙄 ). Why not just using somebody’s work?

Well, there’s nothing wrong making your own game engine :). I am just telling that game development is not only about coding or programming. So, to anyone who wants to start game development, especially game design, you can use any tools. Macromedia Flash, C++, Java, C#, LUA, XNA, or even paper and scissor for board game!!

To see more of Nathan Sawaya’s works (the LEGO sculturer above), check out this link from CNN or his website at http://www.brickartist.com/

All You Need is Love

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What I mean ‘you’ is the game developer 🙂

This morning, I just realized that I haven’t got any newsletter from Gamasutra for a month. This is strange since I didn’t unsubscribe or change my e-mail address. So I just browse their website to see what I’ve been missing and found a heart warming article, What Father’s Day Means to Game Developers.

Here is the opening paragraphs of the articles:

Gamasutra had a chance to talk with a multitude of game developers who play games with, talk about games with, or are just influenced in their thinking thanks to their kids, leading up to this Sunday’s Father’s Day.

In talking to each of them about how being a father has changed the way they do business and make games, it became clear that proud parents think in completely different ways about the video game development and play process.

Most of those interviewed game developers avoid developing games with violence and sex themes. When developing games, they think about their daughter or son, how the games could impact their kids, the moral implications of the game, and imagining how this game could be enjoyable for them. I think, when game developers turn into parents, they will start caring about all these issues. Having someone to love or to take care of, can really change your life.


All you need is love, my friend

So the game industry need more ‘love’ if we want to see more light-hearted games. Maybe they should give game developer more time for family or encourage them to have one. I wonder what kind of game will Cliff Bleszinski make once he’s a father 🙄


No, no, please don’t eat that puppy

My Next Game Project

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I spent last month sending e-mails (including CV, game demo, and application letter) for job applications in UK & Germany. But until now, I haven’t got any positive response from 15 applications that I’ve sent 😥 Four of them said there is no vacancy yet, one just rejected me, and the rest didn’t reply at all 😐

Getting a job is not easy (since I am not European) but I will not give up 😉 I decided to make another game for my next game demo. Maybe Tokusatsu Agent was not enough to amaze my future employer, so here I am making another one!!! Fight 😈 !!

The last two weeks on May, I read a book about Microsoft XNA (by Benjamin Nitschke) and in the end, XNA is not a good choice for my next game platform. I post a blog about why I don’t like XNA (http://abiamy.com/abiyasablogs/2007/06/01/xna-or-irrlicht/). Maybe later, if I already got a job, I’ll make a game using it.

I like platform game but it’s better to make another genre. It could be action, RPG, or even a shoot’em up (shmup). Right now, I have three options, I mean, three games as references.

The first one is Ys series (Felghana, Napisthim, or Origin). It’s an action RPG game, where the hero runs around, jumps over the platforms, and hack-and-slash the enemies. Maybe I will change the theme or just stick with the medieval theme. Using the hero from the Tokusatsu could be nice 🙂


YS Felghana

The second one is Drill Milky Punch. It’s a very unique game, where the heroine punches the enemy and the punched enemy hits other enemies to make chain reaction. The main purpose of the game is to stay alive as long as possible since there could be hundreds of enemy surrounding and hits as many enemies as possible using the chain combo. Here is a Youtube link of this game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SREWdZSWjaE)


Drill Milky Punch with 6 Players and 273 enemies on the screen

The last one is SisPri Gauntlet, a SisPri doujin game. This is a shmup game with 3rd person view and you could expect hundreds of enemies shooting bullet hell to you 🙂 I am not good in shmup but maybe I am good in making one 😛


A Shmup game featuring chibi girls from the Sister Princess

All of these games have several things in common: massive enemies on the screen, 3rd person view, and super-deformed (chibi) anime character. And my next game will have those things 😎

The game will be coded using Irrlicht (I really love Irrlicht 😀 ) and source code from Tokusatsu Agent will be used as the base (with some modification). Right now, I am preparing a performance tester (some kind of benchmark) to measure how many enemies that I can put on a screen. I aim for 200 – 300 hundreds enemy with low polygon (but cute enemies 🙂 ) with 50 – 60 frame per seconds. Otherwise, I have to use pre-rendered 3D models on billboards.

Here is a screenshot of my progress, a 3rd person view camera with our hero who is able to move in 8 directions. Tomorrow, I’ll generate hundreds of enemies chasing our hero and see the performance 😎

PS: Last night, I register myself on the Irrlicht forum. Abiyasa is my username 😉