Primer: One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies
Shane Carruth, writer and director of the lo-fi scifi flick Primer, has uploaded the entire film to Google Video so you can watch it for free.
The plot is quite complex - so pay attention and lay off the mind-altering substances, you won't need them. It's about time-travel. And it's tricky stuff.
Superheroes
In terms of special effects, I'd love to know how they do the superhero style special effects like in in Hancock
and more recently, an EMINEM video (forward to about 3 minutes):
and Push
I've not been posting much because I've not been gaming much. I need to do something about that for the latter half of 2010.
THE RAVEN
THE RAVEN is a short film, looking a little like a far future version of The 23rd Letter. This made it a lot of fun to watch and I'd love to see it made into a feature. I don't think it's necessarily going to win a prize for originality (especially seeing as we have Scanners, The Fury, Push out there) but it's nicely shot and the budget was miniscule.
Summary: Chris Black possesses a power that could lead to the destruction of the current regime, and they will stop at nothing to destroy him.
The chase is on as Chris runs for his life in this sci-fi thriller set in an alternate and futuristic Los Angeles.Director : Ricardo de Montreuil
Producers: Ricardo de Montreuil & Eliz Eskeranli
Writers: Ricardo de Montreuil & Antonio Perez
Cinematographer: Andres Sanchez
Composer: Angelo Milli
Special Effects Supervisor: Aaron Burns
3D Modeling and Animation: Juan Somarriba and Francisco Concha
Visual Effects and Compositing: Ricardo de Montreuil
Editing: Ricardo de Montreuil
Color Correction: Santiago Padilla
Sound Design and Mixing: Martin Seltzer
Budget: $5k
Format: RED 1920x1080
Special thanks: Filmosonido, CO3 and ConverseYou can find concept drawings, 3D models and production stills at THE RAVEN facebook site:
Contact: info@theravenfilm.com
Amazing content on Games and Reality
This is 28 minutes of chuckles and amazing insight on how everything we touch will become a game. Eventually.
Who is going to lead us?
Dark Water Studios’ Dogfighter: Spring 2010
I don't normally go for PC games but I'm enthused by Dogfighter by Dark Water Studios, a Derry-based outfit who plan to release their game in Spring 2010.
I'd love an iPhone/iPad version of it.
Boom!
Via @hitman2victor:
Using the High Yield Detonation Effects Simulator:
Be a terrible shame, eh?
Surviving the Z-Apocalypse
Paul Anthony sent me this:
Click through and have a full read. It's Zombtastic!
Left4Dead, on Expert
"It's a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, I can't be held accountable for my actions!!!!"
Some of us (me, Savage_MF, kinnygraham and Pulse4333) have been playing this in the evenings and I must say it's probably the best FPS I've played in a while due to the need to be co-operative rather than selfish.
And it has Zombies. So it's win-win as far as I'm concerned.
MURDERDROME: iPhone comic reader BANNED!
Wednesday afternoon I popped round to Paul's house for a quick chat (and a couple of headache tablets) and I saw a demo of MurderDrome, the first iteration of a new comic application for the iPhone.
There have been a few comic reader apps for the iPhone/iPod touch out there, most notably ClickWheel Comic Reader which gives access to a lot of content produced for 2000AD.
The Murderdrome iPhone comic demoed to me that day had a few very startling and fresh ideas.
The content was perfectly sized for the high res (160 dpi) screen of the iPod touch and iPhone. The side-side swipe of the finger moved from page to page but the UP-DOWN swipe of a finger took you through the content on that page. It removed colour, then inking, then brought the images down to the base wireframe. You could see the process on how it was made. You can, at a touch, remove or re-add speech bubbles and there are other settings (greyscale etc) which I didn't have time to play with.
Paul (art, letters, colour) and Al (writer) have collaborated to make Murderdrome specially for the iPhone/iPod touch screen. The code was written by Philip Orr who you'll also recognise as one of the names behind infurious. Watch Phil's Blue Pilot for some very interesting developments soon.
See the Youtube video for more
The business model is simple. Aiming for a $1.99 price for a standard comic (equivalent to 22 pages in a standard American size comic), Apple take 30% of the money as their commission. InfuriousComics take 10% and the remaining 60% goes to the creators. Seem harsh? Not so much when you hear tales of how much comic creators get when their comics are sold - sometimes they have to sell in excess of 9000 copies just to break even - even if carried by a major publisher. This new model would mean creators get paid for every book they produce. If you sell 200 copes, you get 60% of cover. If you sell 3000 copies you get 60% of cover. That's a lot better than the rates offered in print.
BUT....
MURDERDROME has been banned from the App Store for breaking rules about content. Please view the video and show some support for content being made available on the App Store by commenting on the article here.
You'll also find links to other coverage of this cool new application.
Why is this relevant to LateGaming?
Apart from my association with Paul and Philip and subsequent involvement in InfuriousComics, there has been discussion about using their cool reader technology to build 'decision tree books' or as we used to call them 'Choose your path' style books. That has interest to me!
Dectet
The Decktet is a deck of cards with suits, ranks, and named images. It is structurally unlike ordinary poker and tarot decks, meaning that you can do different things with it.
This looks very cool and makes me think about the SeaFarers game.
For each suit, there is an Ace and a Crown. Between them are other cards numbered 2 through 9. These each have two suits. For example, the Market is a rank 6 card with suits Wood and Knots. Suits are not repeated at a rank, so there are three cards of each numbered rank.
Government scrambles to conceal UFO
On June 20th, there was a report of a UFO over England.
Today the BBC announced that it was a 'glow lantern' and not actually an observer from another world.
Very convenient...
[No, I'm not taking this seriously]
Lucky Ringo
Greg Stolze writes on his web page:
What I learned ... is that the best creative partnerships are the ones where each of you thinks the other guy is doing 70% of the work, and you’re the lucky Ringo along for the ride.
(crossposted to my other blog)
UFO files from The National Archives
Lots of PDFs, a video and an MP3.
The files contain a wide range of UFO-related documents covering the years 1978–2002. So if you want to find out more about lights in the sky over Waterloo Bridge, near misses by pilots, crop circles - and what the UK government thought of it all - this is the place to start.
Vader escapes custodial sentence
You couldn't make thisup.
"The judge was on the verge of sending the Dark Lord to prison for the maximum possible term but abruptly changed his mind when Vader lifted his hand and waved it from side to side, while at the same time telling the judge that he “found his lack of faith disturbing”.
The world needs more 'characters'.
Portraits of the Dead.
MetalFloss has a link about death:
"From Stanley Burns’ book Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America:These photographs were a common aspect of American culture, a part of the mourning and memorialization process. Surviving families were proud of these images and hung them in their homes, sent copies to friends and relatives, wore them as lockets or carried them as pocket mirrors. Nineteenth-century Americans knew how to respond to these images. Today there is no culturally normative response to postmortem photographs."
I've been asked more than once to "re-create" the impossible. Adding the dead to portraits of the living.
The Stars Are Right….over there….
The Internet STELLAR DATABASE is a lot of fun.
Look at the entry for Barnard's Star especially the submits at the bottom where you can search for stars within a certain radius. How I wish this had been about when I was working on 2300AD scenarios (My favourite being 'Bayern' which exceeded the 7.8 light year limit on inter-stellar travel)
Looking at the entry for Sol we find:
"The "8" in the Detected Planets entry is not an error. Pluto is not a "planet," but a huge, close-orbiting, low-eccentricity Kuiper Belt object. With a big moon. Of course, some die-hards out there still insist that it really is a planet, more for sentimental reasons than anything else. They're welcome to live in their little fantasy world. Neener neener."
A Box brimming with Scary Things
Joshua Hoffine's online portfolio is truly creepy. Take one part Little Fears, one part Monsters and Other Childish Things, add in a little Lovecraftian degeneration and a dose of John Carpenter and Clive Barker.
Fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. Fills my head full of ideas and sends me scrabbling to the local game store to see when they will have 'Monsters' in.
Images from the past…
Autochrome images from around the world from the start of the 20th Century.
My favourite?
No, it doesn't look anything like that any more.
How good would it be if some of the art we have planned for WotW appeared in autochrome (ignoring somewhat that it wasn't invented until 1907).
[Credit to Mike Cane for linking to this otherwise I'd have missed it.]
What if… daVinci…
This image is brilliant.
Check out the BBC video.
"A Swiss amateur parachutist made a successful drop using a replica of a parachute designed over 500 years ago, by Leonardo da Vinci."
Creed/Testament/Rapture – queries and comments
It's always nice to get some kudos from people you respect and Balbinus on RPG.net has come through again with Creed/Testament/Rapture - queries and comments.
He has a few comments, mostly clarifications and does make me realise that the character sheet I provided for Creed was entirely inadequate. Or, if I meant something else I should have noted it by pre-filling in one of the sheets.
It puts me in the mood to work on something - like tidying up Creed and maybe even finishing the text for Rapture. I've already got so much on my plate (getting a new job, house stuff, kids, never mind working on War of the Worlds) that it should be the last thing on my mind. Ahem.
It was also cross-posted to TheRPGSite. I reckon I should hire Balbinus as my publicist.
What’s He Building In There?
Title taken from the Tom Waits track.
This blossomed into a scenario where the PCs were sent to investigate a murder. A newcomer to a quiet US suburb was found beaten to death in his home. The house is trashed. And no-one else in the suburb heard or saw anything...
Anyone else have done something similar? Created a scenario out of a song? (And let's face it. this song is pretty much the entire inspiration for Desperate Housewives. Imagine the pitch - "It's like that Tom Waits track....but with boobs!"
Starship Concept Art
Picked up this link to amazing starship concept art over on theRPGSite forums.
Good read
Odd quote.
"Now as a Person of Size and a Person of Color...""
Me too. I'm a slightly (Ha!) overweight white guy.
The NaamenBlog is a good read especially for interpreting the motives of oppression. It uses a lot of big words.
Priest Chaser
...that the citizens of Perugia compelled the surrender of the citadel of Gerard du Puy, the cardinal-nephew of Pope Gregory XI, during the War of the Eight Saints with a trebuchet nicknamed the cacciaprete ("priest chaser")?
I think that the modern day Catholic Church has dire need of this.
Return of the Great Old Ones.
Found this gem when I added Pooka's blog to my blogroll.
"In 1901, New Year's Eve, the Stars Were Right. The Great Old Ones Returned, bringing with them all manner of being from their starry prisons. Fortunately for humanity, while the Old Ones were certainly horrible to look upon, they were not nearly as great as they would have had us believe. Intergalactic layabouts, Cosmic conmen, and Trans-temporal thieves, the Great Old Ones may be functionally immortal, but they also happen to have little work ethic."
It's a setting into from Spirit of the Century. Read more here.
Made me laugh. In a crowded office. Terribly embarrassing.
Feeling Planetary Love
OMG, I'm feeling the love for Planetary all over again.
I'm itching to run a Planetary-like game using Wild Talents. Soooo much....
Real Creepy Places
Real Creepy Places is a link for myself.
Any self-respecting GM should be able to pastiche one of these into a game.
It’s my birthday soon….so….
Brooklun Superhero Supply Company
Sadly just a graphic. Always wanted to find a thrifty place to get new Anti-Grav Boots.
But there is a STORE
Here's the Times article talking about Microtrends. The idea that you can ultra-specialise in something and establish enough of a presence that your store becomes a tourist attraction 
I'd like some canned antimatter.
Current Inspirations
Portal - for the non-violent nature of it and the neat teleportation physics puzzles. And removing half of the stupid ways to die. And for this.
Mirror's Edge on iPad - for the simple swipe-based mechanics, showing us a new way to do a simple platformer. For showing us how to convert a FPS for touch. And for this.
Left4Dead - for uncompromising 4 player co-op on both sides. For re-inventing the entire zombie genre. For much fun and great instakills. And for this.
Myth - for showing us that you don't need to spend two hours building an army for a 10 minute fight. And building a kick-ass story around it. And for this.
And two movies.
Primer - for providing an all-round mind-fuck of a movie. and it's available for free (linked here) on low-resolution web video and of course, available as a DVD.
Inception - only just out and not long out of the cinemas so there's not a lot that I can say without introducing spoilers. So go and look at the trailer here and then go watch the movie. All I can add is "BRRRRANNNNNGGGGGGG". You'll know what I mean after you watch it.