Thursday, June 29, 2006
EA - Minimal Wii support
A source, someone I know, works for EA's European division. He isn't particularly high up the chain but he informs me that his team have been told EA's support for the Wii, at least for the first year or so, will be very minimal with little in the way of useage of the Wii's special features. He says we are to expect Harry Potter and a couple of Sports titles (with little in the way of motion sensing innovation) and essentialy no new games or licenses. Feel free to treat this as unfounded speculation but I for one am not expecting much at all from EA. Bummer.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
SPIDER-MAN 3 TRAILER GO NOW!!
No time to type stuff just read the title, look at this picture then click THIS LINK!
FF III shaping up nicely
Heres a huge selection of Final Fantasy III screens for the Nintendo DS. It really looks like this could be a fantastic game so keep your eyes on this one!
SCREENS GALORE!
Monday, June 26, 2006
Wallpaper, get your wallpaper...
Heres another wallpaper I whipped up in the event anybody wants it, just click the thumbnail. I had a chance to play brain training the other day, I was terrible at it and now I don't want the game at all because Dr Kawashima is pretty sinister and mean to me.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
I see Pwn3d people...
A new design for a black T shirt is available at our RPG-TV store and here it is now for your viewing pleasure!
Friday, June 23, 2006
FF III to feature WiFi
Square Enix have confirmed that the upcoming DS remake of Final Fantasy III will indeed have WiFi online play. The only question mark remaining hangs over what capacity the WiFi will have. I hope it's a little more fleshed out than mere item trading and such but I fear the worst.
How wii make RPG-TV...
We've been asked a lot lately how we make our webcomic and I did promise a step by step how to so now is as good a time as any give it. What follows is OUR step by step method of making a webcomic, what works for us may not work for you and visa versa, we're still pretty new ourselves so don't take it as gospel. With that said I think it's safe to continue.
1) WRITING
This can be the most tricky part of making webcomic. Typically myself and James will get together and just run through gaming news blogs like Kotaku and Joystiq etc. If there is a story that sounds pretty funny we'll just toss possible jokes and idea's back and forth. If none of the news stories are that good we'll focus on a character driven gag between the two characters, Seth and Josh.
2) ART
When we first started the comic we decided on our 3 panel layout and made the template from which all comics would be wrought in the crucibal of Adobe Photoshop. To start with I drew the characters by hand in ink then we scanned them in and both of us would colour them on photoshop. This gave us our basic characters but as you can see in the first 50 or so comics meant our art was never dynamic as the characters were essentialy always in the same pose. What we do now is re-draw bodies, arms, legs etc in Illustrator and lay them on top replacing the old bodies so that we can have them doing different actions. A perfect example of this is the middle panel in comic #57 where you can see his new arms are not shaded (yet it somehow manages to look nice IMHO)
2.1) Okay this is an indepth description of what to do with you're hand drawn art once its scanned. If you want to do all your art digitaly skip to the next step.
Right once you've scanned your ink image and your looking at it in photoshop the first thing to do is crop it so the surrounding area is smaller. Once this is done, if you zoom in, you'll notice colours in the once black ink lines SO what we do now is desaturate the image. Once this is done play with the contrast and brightness settings to make the black lines show up stronger and to make artifacts and bits of dust dissapear. Next select all of the white bits, internal and external of the character using the magic wand and delete so that all you have is the skeletal outline. When this is complete try a STROKE blending option; this will make any hidden bits of mess or scruffy areas show up so you can manualy erase them.
Okay now you should have a clean and clear outline ready to be coloured (or colored if you're American). Copy the layer and place the new outline over the top exactly. This will remain on top ensuring your inked lines are not affected when your start paint bucketing all over the place. Select the lower layer on your layers window and start colouring in you're art. Hopefuly all of your lines will connect otherwise, for instance, when you drop the hair colour on the hair it will also spill into the face so be extra careful to make sure the lines all connect. When colouring don't forget the whites in the eyes if you're using a white background, same goes for teeth and any other white areas you want.
Now you're art should be looking pretty neat. Whats left is shading. I do this one of 2 ways. One way I've started to use recently (a good example is the merc in comic 59) is simply to render some lighting effects so just play around with that until it looks right. The other way demonstrated on Josh and Seth is to select individual area's with the magic wand and just paint brush with a faint edge brush and then apply cutout filter to make the colours block again.
PHEW!
2.2) Ok this is a brief guide on how we make our art in Adobe Illustrator.
Using a cheap Wacom tablet (The model is CTF-221 and was £35 at PC World) I simply draw all the lines with a simple 1 pixel stroke. Illustrator can be a bitch for beginers to use and I really dont have space to write an indepth tutorial so I'm afraid you're going to have to look elsewhere for that. Once all the line art is complete I copy and paste the image into photoshop for colouring and shading which I outlined in detail above in 2.1
3) Constructing the comic
Now you have all your main art we're ready to construct the comic. This really is simple layers work, move the characters and objects around within the panels until they look right, try and leave designated areas of negative space for the speech bubbles and also don't use comic sans as a font. My advice is to google for comic book fonts, that should unearth a veritable treasure chest of goodies. Once this is ready you're all set, now you just need a website to publish your comics and BAM you're done!
I hope this was useful to some of you, if I missed anything out or you want specific info like what speech bubbles and how to make them just drop a comment!
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Now this is an education...
I'm sure some of you have considered doing one of these new fangled gaming degree's, you know, the ones with names like "Game Design" or "Fluffy wuffy studies", that sound so much more pleasant than say "Neuro-Science". Well a friend of mine is doing a degree in Game design and was kind enough to share with me an exam paper for one of his modules.
EDIT: This is simply one module from the course and I'm assured the course itself is very serious and strenuous involving coding etc, however for the sake of giggles check out some of the questions!
20) In the 2D platform game ‘Jazz Jackrabbit 2’, there is a point where your character gets dizzy and doesn't respond to the controls properly. What causes this?
a) Drinking from a beer bottle.
b) Jumping too high.
c) Inhaling smoke rings.
d) Drinking dizzy water.
e) Being hit on the head.
That ladies and gentlemen is a student loan well spent. Click here to download the full paper in Adobe reader format.
EDIT: The guy in that image is not me btw people. Seriously.
Scott Ramsoomair talks...
The creator of mega popular gaming webcomic VGCats has done an interview with popular Nintendo blog 4 Color Rebellion. What better way to whittle away your time I ask? Check it out here.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
DS Lite Euro launch imminent...
This Friday (June 23rd) the Nintendo DS Lite finaly hits our shores in classic white and exclusive black flavours. Who will be forking out, who will be trading in and who wants what colour(s)? Let us know you're thoughts and whether you're satisfied when you finaly take the plunge!
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Wii games to cost £50 according to PLAY.com...
A quick peruse through PLAY.com revealed some disturbing and hopefuly inaccurate bits of information. Nintendo Wii games are available for Pre-order at £49.99 or roughly... what? $70 US is that? Regardless this is definately contradictory to what Nintendo have stated regarding their pricing strategies. I hope Play.com are just assuming because if this turns out to be true I for one will be most put out.
Since Duke Nukem Forever was announced...
Kotaku bring news of a list of events. A list that details events that have happend since Duke Nukem forever was announced. The game has been in development hell for 9 years. So without further do do, here are a few things that have taken place since its announcement...
"Over 75 games based in the Mega Man universe, and 12 games featuring Mega Man universe character cameos were released.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft has travelled 8.8 billion miles from Earth.
19 wars have begun. 5 wars have ended.
Every single Grand Theft Auto game (13 of them!) was released.
Over 350,000,000 consoles and handhelds were sold worldwide.
Most embarrassing of all, from a product release standpoint?
Valve released both Half-Life 1 and 2, with several expansion packs and countless mods for each."
Go here for the full list...
If there's one thing I'm a sucker for...
...It's the Pokémon universe. Those little RPG's get me everytime and so naturally I'm getting quite excited by the nuggets of news IGN is surreptitiously feeding us off their main DS channel.
"The game features a redesigned Pokedex, which now just happens to resemble a DS in shape and functionality, with dual screens and a d-pad. You control the Pokedex using the stylus and now have access to, in addition to basic Pokemon data, tools for playing with the Pokemon voices and comparing size and weight."
"In addition to the new Pokedex, you also have access to a completely new item: the Pokewatch. Shaped like a digital watch, the Pokewatch's screen is shown on the DS's bottom screen when you move about over the main fields of play. The watch, in all, has 20 functions, including basic time telling, a calculator, a camera and a tool for viewing Pokemon that you've captured. When you first get your hands on the watch, you have only a handful of these functions. One of your goals in the game is to collect more applications."
Sure these arn't dramatic changes in the least but don't they just sound crazy fun?... Maybe its just me.
Friday, June 16, 2006
I scare myself...
Sometimes I scare myself. The accompanying image is a Pokémon trainer card displaying myself. This was really an excercise in pixel art that I eventually ended up taking toooo seriously. Anyway click away and marvel at my geekhood!
Bill Gates to world: "I'm taking a chill yo!"...
In a press conference today, Gates said:
"I've decided that two years from today, I will reorganize my personal priorities. I have one of the best jobs in the world. I believe with great wealth comes great responsibility - the responsibility to give back to society and make sure those resources are given back in the best possible way, to those in need. It's not a retirement, it's a reordering of my priorities."
What does Bill know that we don't? Oh I get it! Halo 4 comes out then and he wants to make sure he has enough time to play it!
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Pokémon Diamond and Pearl screens...
These games havn't received as much widespread coverage as I would have anticipated. Here's a link to several pages of screens. Doesn't look mind blowing but has a nice oiriginal GTA style 3D scrolling effect to it, nice to see some colours in the battle scenes too!
Check out dem screens!
Advance Wars DS for £12.99
Anyone in Britain looking for a cheap copy of Advance Wars Dual Strike, the fantastic strategy war game for the DS should pop down to their local Comet. I was in their today picking up all the gubbins to set up a wireless network in my house and spotted the game for £12.99.
Whether the game is this price across the Nation I cannot say but certainly Comet in Slough is selling it for this much. Go buy it!... Now!
Mercenaries 2 wallpaper...
From this coming Mondays strip I decided to whip up this Mercs 2 wallpaper, here to take if anyone wants it :)
Black DS Lite shipment goes AWOL...
Apparently a large shipment of Black DS Lite units has vanished and likely found its way to the Hong Kong black market. Play Gadgets reports...
"Looks like the black Nintendo DS Lite is hotter than ever. A container (those large metal structures that carry cargo) full of black Nintendo DS Lite and DS games had gone missing in Hong Kong when it was making its way from China (where the DS Lites are made) to Europe (where the black Lites are launching). The reported loss was $18 million Hong Kong dollars (US$2.32 million).
The Hong Kong police suspected that the black DS Lite units sold in Hong Kong recently were part of some loot and was willing to offer HKD$1 million ($128, 831) to anyone with a tip off or two."
That is one hell of a heist! I wonder how damaging this will be to the Eurpean launch on the 23rd?
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Mercenaries Tattoo Contest...
So, the developers of Mercenaries 2 are running a contest where by you must design the tattoo's that will adorn the main character. At RPG-TV we thought that might be a good excuse for a cheap laugh so heres the comic we came up with. It wont hit the site until Monday so I guess this constitues a preview? *shrug*
Template for photoshopping DS skins...
Wow, the unexpected pimping from Kotaku has exploded my hit counter in one day which is awesome! Anyway a few of you wanted to know how I made the custom skins and I replied in the comments but heres the template for those of you that want to give it a try your selves!
5 mini bargains
So i drove down to my local Gamestation earlier and picked up a whole bunch of cheap ass N-gage software, namely: Worms world party, X-men legends, Rayman 3, King of Fighters extreme and Call of Duty. Seriously i know the N-gage isnt a great gaming system but as a phone that can play games I really dont know why so many people slag it off. I guess its just cool to hate.
In other price news...
I've noticed that GBA micro's are going new for £49.99 in most major retailers (inparticular Gamestation). Was this an official price drop because I never heard anything about it. Regardless if you've been thinking of picking one up now would be a good time especialy with Final Fantasy IV just around the corner (or available now from CD-WOW.co.uk).
£2.99!!!
Sweet samba de amigo! I just found my local Gamestation selling new N-gage games for £2.99! Obviously for N-gage haters reading this please feel free to skip this post but for someone like me who recently descovered that a phone that can play Chaos Theory can't be all bad this is great news! I'm going to head in later and pick up Rayman 3, Colin McRae, King of Fighters Extreme and Worms: World party!
Skin up...
Before I was fortunate enough to acquire a DS Lite I really wasn't a big fan of the original DS's design. Everyone could see it was ugly, some hated it more than others but my feeling was one of mild dislike. So rather than fork out money for a skin I took it on myself to make some. The end result are the FFVII and Jet Grind Radio surface clingers you see here. I really liked the FFVII one I must say.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
The real Lauren?
Could it be? Behold the real Lauren, this girl introduced me to X-files DVD box sets and a process called "Cleaning". I'm crazy lucky. God i love Mulder so much, *hugs a lock of Duchovny's hair*
Holy fanboy fatman!
I got bored this evening and fired up illustrator, the end result is the wallpaper you see here. It's not especialy funny but to be honest I am so fatigued from kicking a football around and watching the world cup. Tiring stuff I think you'll agree. I really need to work on my shading and take my colouring to the next level but I'm really not sure how to start. Think I best start reading some tutorials!
The one where we didnt post the comic
This is a strip that never made it to the website because pretty much everyone we showed it to thought it sucked. I still think its okay but meh I'll stick it here for anyone hardcore to check out. Be gentle.
A Wallpaper
For those who don't frequent the RPG-TV forums here is a wallpaper that was exclusive to the people that did. Bit of a plug for our new True player shirt but thats life. Beautiful!
Time time time
I've fiddled with the site and got it looking the way I like, that green template that came with the site wasn't to my tastes but hey. Between a job, the webcomic and the forum (and the worldcup) I'm not sure how much I'll get to post but lets just play it by ear and see how it goes.
The first post
Well this is the first post to my blog, i'll see if I like it and if not then this will probably be left to drift the internet as a shrapnel of cyber junk. If I do like it hopefuly this will be a cool place to leave my art and whatnot!