Adrew Griffiths and a friend of him were asked to write the software for an interactive VJ editing system for the Ford stand at the Geneva motorshow. And guess what? Yes, you're right! They decided to use XNA for the implementation.
Not a believer, ugh? Then just watch the following video and be prepared to get spellbound:
What did I tell you? So now you're interested ... well, you can find more info about the project here.
Cheers!
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 ...]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 ...]From the post: "... What We're Looking For:We are looking for experienced Engineers, Web Developers, Marketers, and QA Specialists ...".
Hurry up!Maybe we can find the answer to this question in this video.
Intresting ...From Joe's post: "... As we finish up the refresh release to XNA Game Studio Express, we are looking at the next major version and some decisions that need to be made. I wanted to get some impressions from people around a particular topic that I am currently looking at.
As many of you know, Visual Studio is releasing a new version at the end of this year (codenamed Orcas). One of the major features we are planning to add in the next major version of XNA Game Studio Express is the ability to create games in all SKUs of Visual Studio (Express, Standard, Pro, etc). With Orcas coming, the next obvious question is which release of Visual Studio should/can we support ...".
Also, there's a thread on the Creator's site on this regard.
This is an important step in the future of XNA GSE, so c'mon and share your thoughts!From Major Nelson's post: "... Got a great idea for a TV Show? How would you like $100k to produce your great idea AND have it digitally delivered over Xbox LIVE?
Hit this site for details on how to sign up and get in on the competition. To enter you must be over 18 and live in any of the 25 countries where Xbox Live is available. Fire up the camcorder and good luck ...".
Are you one of the lucky guys living in any of the eligible countries? If so, start thinking on an idea, right now and join the compo!The rules and How to's are useful for any register beta tester, so if you are one, and need some guidance to play the game, just pay a visit to this blog and read on.
More news after the brake ...No, the above is not part of the plot of a movie scene, it's life, real life and it's just happened to me. Fortunately, I found this thread on MS forums which presented a quick and easy fix, which -at least in my case- worked.
The fix:
Take due note that "%vs80comntools% ..." is an environment variable, so the above-mentioned command lines should work "as is". However, if it doesn't because the path is not found -maybe some or all of the environmental variables set by the IDE are currently messed up in your system- just replace the "%vs80comntools%" term with your real path to the files' folder and the command should now execute.
Now, try to re-create the project again and it should all now go ok, as if nothing wrong had happened in the first place.
Cheers!I think I have posted a great bunch of news, some from this last weekend, some from today, but still news.
I gotta rest now, and watch for my daily activities (I need to "live", you know? I mean, out from the XNA ring).
Hope you have found the news' posts useful.
'till tomorrow.Interested? The reply to the original post.
Bye.After a short week-end off with my family the pimping nightmare is back ... sorry, folks ... :)
I'll be mainly catching up with all the news related to XNA today so please be patient while I publish all the posts since you know I like to publish one post per news item what takes a lot of time (and Mykres Space does a great job with the summary-styled news report).
So, enough talk and let's get started!Still, I'm aware that there have been some great news lately so next Monday check out this blog for the cascade of news I'm going to publish.
In the meantime, I leave you with 2 great links:
From Mykres' post: "... it as been another quiet week in the world of XNA, but this week we have seen a few new Bloggers come onto the scene (Lets hope they keep the content flowing). We have also seen a refresh of the Garage Games Torque X Systems and the introduction of another starter kit, 'Platformer Starter Kit'.
Ziggy has posted an update to his tutorial collections, and we have seen an example of a Windows GUI System for the XNA Framework.
Just a Reminder guys that a lot of the XNA Community already hangs out on IRC on the Efnet Server in the #xna Channel, please drop by and say hello… it has been a but quiet there as well ...".
Find the whole news update here ...
So if you want to help the guy just get in touch a.s.a.p. (just read here for details).
Stay tuned to Kobingo's blog for more information.From the announcement: "... The site was formerly known as The TextureBin and already has over 1700 seamless high resolution textures! XNATextures.com is membership based though... we offer 3 types of membership:
From Mykres' post: "... It has been a relatively quite week in the world of XNA; this must be due to the April Update coming soon. But through the week we have seen some discussions on Performance. I remember with Managed DirectX everyone seemed to be talking about the Perfect Game Loop, but with XNA it seems to be Performance and the Foreach functions, this month cornflower Blue gives us some thoughts on the Foreach loop.
We also got to see the release of some more applications including Sky burner and Realms of Keldar, both of these are games ported from another code base.
This week David Weller gives us an introduction into Source control with the express products, as well as giving some praise to Sharky on his Air Legends Game (Which now includes Multi Player Split Screen). But most of All David tells us that the XNA Teams are Hiring, note that you do not send your information to David please follow the correct path for any applications or Questions.
Also George from XNADevelopment has posted a brief game design spec for his Dream Build Play entry. ...".
Find the whole news update here ...
Michael Klucher explains who are behind "XNA", or in better words, the teams in charge of the respective areas that make up "XNA" as a whole.
From Michael's post: "... To translate that a bit, XNA is a brand that encompasses all of the game development products, initiatives and services for developing games on Microsoft platforms. So you may be wondering "Who's responsible for the development of XNA Game Studio Express?" There are several teams that make up XNA ...".
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