BLUEPRINTEDITOR'S DOCKING NIGHTMARES

Mike comments on the experiences he is facing along the process of building a UI for his XNA-based world editor: "Blueprint".

From Mike's post: "... As XNA runs using a DirectX graphics device its very picky about loosing its rendering state. So if a user undocks the window and moves it about and then redocks it, it doesnt like it due to the loss of rendering state. For now the XNA window has been fixed so that it cant be undocked ...".

Later.

WHERE DID SPIDEY'S "SPIDER-SENSE" GO? - PART II

Hi everyone. I had earlier promissed a sort of "in-depth" review on the third spidey's movie, so here it goes:

1. What happened with the so-well-known "spider-sense"?

As I said in my previous post, Venom has the ability to be around Spiderman without being detected because the black suit managed to learn how to surpass spidey's senses when Peter was the host. But that was after Peter was the host.

Let's start with the meteor crash. Pete and MJ were just looking the stars and when the meteor crashed closed to them, the spider-sense was what? Temporally out-of-order? Then the black matter approaches and yet again, still out-of-order?

Another one, when Harry Osborn strikes on Peter -when the latter was driving his motorcycle, just nothing, nope, zero ... Spider-sense was on vacation ... All through the movie the spider-sense was missing -of course, this is ok when fighting Venom, I repeat.

2. From light to dark.

The movies have been clearly follow a path to the dark side: the first one was ok, Spiderman was fun, say jokes during battle, usual stuff. The Second one was a bit darker, but still ok. The third one was the darkest, what in fact was already expected due to the presence of the black matter/custom, so maybe one may have thought it would be very easy to switch from one state of mood to the next one and transmit those states, changes and sentiments to the viewers.

Well, imvho, the scenes/script fails to transmit the mood, and make the audience go "wow", "ahh", "snif!", "yeah" -what in the previous 2 movies was more or less accomplished; in fact when the movie finished, nobody clapped -everyone left the room mumbling, and believe me when I say that the theater was really crowded, on a Tuesday's evening!

3. Still great villans?

One may argue whether -in the first two movies- Peter, MJ, Harry, Flash and others -even spidey- were all well presented to the viewers or not. But one great aspect of those movies were the villains: the Green Gobbling and Doctor Octopus, both excellent performed.

Now, let's face it, the sandman was never a great archenemy of Spiderman, in the sense that it wasn't the most clever one, nor a "real" bad @$$, but to be fair, the actor played the role nicely.

However, the origin of the sand man and the story around him and Pete's uncle was a mess. If you want step on to the middle of an atomic experiment, just climb a small unguarded fence, go to an unprotected container, and jump/drop. Wasn't contamination an issue? Not to these guys, since there was no roof on the silicon/sand container. It was funny then to hear one of the scientist say something like: "there was a change in the mass of the sand" when the sandman dropped in there. What about rain, particles in the open air, and such. Unbelievable!

Now, enters Venom. That should have been the real nightmare to both, Spiderman and Peter Parker, not Harry, but then again Venom played just a sort of minor villain role who also dropped dead(?). C'mon!

4. Every foe knows who is behind the mask of Spiderman.

Why don't you just publish in the Daily Bugle: "Peter Parker is Spiderman!", "Spiderman unmasked", or "Want to know who is Spiderman? Call 1-800-GOTCHA". It also happened in the second movie: a lot of people "happened" to see his whole face w/o the mask. Please, just stop doing that.

5. Almost everyone dies.

Every foe, or semi-foe, just dies. Perhaps this is a consequence of (4) above. But not the sandman!

"I forgive you", those were the words of Peter Parker after the final battle and the light explanation of the sandman. Only that foe and the spectators knew the existence of the sick daughter, who barely appeared in the film. And Spiderman w/o knowing any of this, stole Daredevil's lines.

Yes! Those were the words from DD to Wilson Fisk when the former finally decided to put and end to Kinping's reign. Something quite different to what was seen on DD's movie.

6. Harry and his butler.

I didn't knew that Alfred was on the movie. Honestly! "Sir, I loved your father ..." When? Where you in the first movie? "... And the wound/blade bla bla bla ....", that was enough to make "two-face" hurry to become a good guy again ... [face of lost guy] ... Errr ... O - k? [/face of lost guy]

7. Scenes Edition Hiccups.

This may be consider as a minor issue in comparison with the story, but in some places, transitions between scenes were a bit "jumpy" as if they were suddenly cutted, even you notice it because the sound was also drown.

And nope, it wasn't a problem with the theater projector. The movie lasted what it should ... so maybe the editor should have read Shawn's blogposts about the importance of transitions ...

8. What's with Peter Parker's character?

This is the one I must mostly complain about. Just read on to know why ... Peter was a bit shy, but never "that" naive.

In fact when he became Spiderman a big change happened. He also become a sort of player ... Gwen, MJ, Felicia Hardy, ...

But the interesting part is that no matter what he was always a common dude with common problems, a bit of financial/professional sort of bad luck, women, guys who didn't like him, JJ, Doctor Connors, classes, and such.

There was the drama, indeed, but he always was a funny guy, specially when using spidey's custome, who always tries to fool the bad guys with jokes and funny comments and things like that, also as a way to release some preassure during the battle.

Now read this: as I said the theater was crowded, a couple of rows behind my fiancee and I there was a couple and she suddenly said and I quote: "this guy is a stupid!". That's not the image in the comic books nor the one that should be projected.

And what was that "red kriptonite" behavior with scenes where Pete behave à la "SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER"? And then that "unspicy" dance with Gwen in front of MJ. Who are you? "The Mask"?

They writters/director want to make PP life funny so hard that they are making him look riddiculous or pittyful -when he slaps MJ in the face. Want to introduce fun? Just make spiderman mock the villains during the batlles ...

And I won't argue here why Gwen Stacey appeared in this movie -when she should have appeared in the first one- nor the story with MJ. But as a whole, the script was about to cross the edge to the fields of cheap soap opera plots. And to be fair, this was stressed when MJ abbandoned JJ's son during the wedding -on the second movie.

In conclusion:

If you are a comics fan who read and collects lots of regulars, graphic novels, and such -meaning you know a lot of superheroes stories, and you haven't yet watched the movie, my advice is: just forget everything you know in order to enjoy the movie. Otherwise, you'll keep saying "what ... ?!" in many scenes. Believe me ...

Given the technical advances in the Industry, specially on the gfx side, what makes a difference between a regular, good, great and excellent movie, is not the amount of gfx you include -of course, the more improved in quality and realistic, the better- but the script, as always ... the same for (almost any kind of) videogames.

Cheers!

[Jfyi, in case you didn't know it, JJ's son was for a certain period a werewolf due to a rock he picked as a souvenir during one of his trips to the moon, but that's another story ...]

WHERE DID SPIDEY'S "SPIDER-SENSE" GO?

I've just got back from watching Spiderman 3 movie, and I must say that as an old comic fan I am rather dissapointed with this sequel. It's not that I didn't like it at all, but in order to enjoy it I just watched it as if I had never read any Spider-Man comic book in my life.

I must admit that I'm a bit upset right now, so I need to take off my "black suit", rest a little, clear my thoughts and then I promise you I'll publish a my review of the movie.

Bye.

[Btw, I know the black suit "disables" Peter's spider-sense, so tomorrow I'll explain the reason behind the title of this post ...]