#teeny tiny detail but it's one of those continuity things that bugs me

[practically-an-x-man]

personal goal as an sfx artist: if a character is getting snakebites, they'd better reflect the species of the snake!!

[the-dude-of-hyrule]

Death of a Childhood

I know that many people absolutely love the movie for Howl’s Moving Castle by Studio Ghibli. And, by all means, please continue to enjoy it until your dying day.

I can’t fucking stand it. You want to know why? Because about ten years (ish) before the movie came out, I read the book. You want to know how much the book and the movie have in common? Not much. Some of the concepts are the same, some of the characters are the same, but that’s about it.

And I know this is far from the first book/movie pairing that has done this. Whether it be a childhood favorite or for things geared more towards adults.

Starship Troopers? The director absolutely hated Robert Heinlein’s book and made his own thing that had practically the opposite message.

Ella Enchanted? The villain in the movie wasn’t even in the book, and a handful of the main characters in the movie (Slanin comes to mind) was a BIT PART in the book. He was in it for only a couple of minutes.

Now, don’t get me wrong... I know that there are many times when a beloved book tries to get made into a movie... and it works. Not only does it work, it works hard. A large portion of the Middle Earth movies and Harry Potter comes to mind.

And I know that changes need to be made. Some things just don’t translate well from page to screen. Some things would be flat out boring if they did it that way, such as Ender’s Game. A lot of that book is Ender wandering the hallways of Battle School in quiet introspection. In the book, it’s awesome. On the screen, you’d be falling asleep.

But what I can’t abide are gross changes and stupid changes. Gross changes are things like I mentioned above, where the overall plot goes somewhere out in left field. Stupid changes on the other hand? Let me give you an example.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. We all know what Harry’s muggle family looks like. Uncle Vernon is a big fat guy that looks like he’s one tantrum away from a heart attack. Aunt Petunia looks like she’s in desperate need of a cheeseburger. Otherwise, they are rather plain looking folks that would not stand out anywhere (and they like it that way.) Except for one teeny, tiny detail that just gets under my skin. If you open up the book, pretty much right away in chapter one it states that all three of the Dursleys are BLONDE! Now, was it really all that hard to find 3 blonde haired actors that worked? Not to disparage the acting chops of the fine men and woman that got the roles. But otherwise, wouldn’t it have been possible to dye their hair blonde? Was the makeup department that stretched for a handful of people that were only going to be in the movie for about twenty minutes? My wife buys some hair dye that’s only ten bucks at wal mart. The temporary dye might be even cheaper. But let’s say it isn’t. You mean to say that for the week-ish that those three actors would be on set, it was impossible to pull together three boxes of blonde hair dye?

Now, I truly cannot explain why these bug me. I just know that they do. And please... anyone that agrees with me... let me know what other changes are made from book to movie that just annoy you. I’m sure there are plenty that I missed.

And I don’t mean cutting out your favorite scene. I really wanted to see the Scouring of the Shire in Return of the King, but it just wasn’t in the budget. I really wanted to see the scene in Percy Jackson when he had to jump from the very top of the St. Louis Arch, but they went with Memphis, Tennessee instead (stupid change).

[flyingflambe]

2017: Less Fluff, More Buff

Hey all!

Despite starting a similar hobbyist blog back in Jan 2016 using Wordpress, I ran out of cash and as a result, the site dried up a week or two ago. The other reason for the site being left at the drop of a hat was because Kevin (the other co-founder at Team Giga) and I shifted most of our dev-related updates to our company website. Due to some recent events, we wanted to stay in contact with our teeny tiny community even though our last project was suddenly put on hold, which left us little reason to keep posting project updates on the company site.

But before I keep talking about updates though, I should probably introduce myself before getting into the details, yeah?

For starters, I’m Robert (AKA flyingmeta, RAD, Rob, Bob, Bobert) and I’m an independent game developer. I started/dropped out of college 3-4 times and am still trying to finish getting my degree, but in 2015 I wanted to do more with my spare time away from college and taught myself various aspects of game development, starting with game design. I made my first game in Dec 2015 as an artist for Ludum Dare and have been on a game dev high ever since. Kevin, a close friend of mine, wanted to help out on the business side of things while I focus on the creative stuff, so we started Team Giga, LLC. with myself as the Creative Director and Kevin as the Strategic Director. I make stuff; he consults me and keeps shit on track (and if I’m broke and can’t pay a contractor, he tends to save the day-- without Kevin, we wouldn’t be where we are).

Aight, so I mentioned that we have a company blog-- why aren’t we using that?

For one, we mostly want to use those for company announcements and project updates. We don’t really have any company-related announcements, nor are we currently working on a project since Partial was put on hold, so that’s that. But we probably need to be a little more transparent as to why Partial was put on hold so suddenly.

Just developing the demo was getting ridiculously expensive. We were intending to break the mold a little bit by creating an audio/video game hybrid, but the audio costs ended up skyrocketing our elementary budget. We were already super duper broke, in addition to the other stuff listed below.

The project was too risky. Without a community, an established reputation, or even any proof of experience, the chances were very high that something could go wrong at every corner.

We weren’t good enough. Imposter Syndrome is a whole ‘nother topic for another time, but its especially true in our case. There were instances where we knew how to solve a problem, but were in the dark as to how to implement a solution. Neither of us were experienced programmers, and that hurt us on resources in many cases. If we could fix something, it’d take us 10x longer than if someone w/ experience did it. If we couldn’t fix it, the bugs would pile up-- and pile up they sure as hell did.

So last month, we decided to put Partial on hold for when the time is right. Many of us (not just myself and Kevin) really want to see the project succeed, but we aren’t confident in our current abilities... which is where this blog comes in.

Last year, I managed to reach my first real milestone: the 1st anniversary of my first game dev project, and my first full year as a game developer. But looking back at the prototypes I worked on in various game jams and week-long projects, I couldn’t help but kick myself in the shin multiple times-- I never finished any of my games, and it hurt so much to realize that.

The only project I ever finished (ie. “finish” meaning “implementing all of the intended features”) was Conception-- which wasn’t even a game, really. Conception helped me with so many projects from that point onward, but even since Dec 2015, the games I’ve worked on have never had all of their intended features implemented. The only reason for that is because my programming skills weren’t good enough. I, and those I’ve worked with, knew that the designs were fairly solid, but we could never test those designs because I simply didn’t know how to create those systems. They were small systems, too-- completely do-able within a day or two, if not a week, for your average programmer. This problem continued to appear during Partial’s development as well, and that’s my fault.

So this year, I won’t be working on an important project like Partial for a good while. How long will that be? I don’t know. In 2016, I honed my game design skills with weekly prototypes until I was confident enough to work on Partial-- I didn’t start working on its design til March, and didn’t start development til September. In 2017, I intend on honing my C# and Unity skills until I’m confident enough to work on a project with the intention to ship. Will that first project be Partial? Most likely not, due to the whole demo funding issue; small steps and all that. It’ll need to be much smaller in scope, more affordable to create, can be done in a reasonable amount of time, and can be made with just Kevin and myself.

Similar to the personal blog I started a year ago, this site will be used to help me learn and document my progress. Last year, I made a new prototype each week using Conception as a brainstorming tool. I intend to do something similar, though I’m not too sure on the details just yet.

What I do know is that I won’t stop until I’ve made 3-5 projects with their intended designs. I’m thinking about imposing a time limit, but again, I don’t know all the details just yet. I may keep them as personal projects, or I may upload it under Team Giga. In addition to practicing C#/Unity, I’ll be brushing up on my art and music composition skills, which should be a fun experience.

Global Game Jam 2017 will be coming up next weekend, and I fully intend to join for a second time. Unlike last year though, I’m thinking about meeting some new people and joining a team. Now that I’m using Unity, this laptop isn’t too great at handling the engine so I may resort to focusing on design and art. Who knows! New year, new goals.

Thanks for reading!