Your forgiveness I implore, but I’ll be posting something a little off topic. This is actually intended for the UnrealEd Blog on my portfolio; Alas, it’s currently down. I’m digitally jotting here whilst I have it in my head.
It’s no secret I like computer games. What I like however is my generation of computer games. My first proper experience, my first owned console with my own money was the Nintendo 64. I had a Gameboy too, I did truly grow up the Nintendo fanboy. Like most fans of the ‘Big N’, I owned a copy of Goldeneye. This for me, was an excellent reason to be awake at five am on a Sunday, playing all the way through to nine am (at which point a break is needed to watch Power Rangers somewhat religiously), and onwards to ten am, at which point I would be dragged from my beloved console to attend Church.
I loved that game. I still do. It is one of my top games; not because it’s amazing. It was amazing, but in relation to today’s games, it’s winning factor is nostalgia. Anyone who owned a copy of that game, and genuinely enjoyed it knew the levels back to front, including the popular ‘Facility‘ level. It was my favourite too.
Another favourite game, also of the shoot-em-up genre, is based on my favourite western graphic novel ‘XIII’. Besides loving the story, This was my first proper foray into cel shaded gaming, when every other game was made to look as realisitic as was technically possible. The soft, comic book graphics of XIII were a delightful change, and looked excellent to boot. It played like you were in a comic book, and I loved every minute of it. The ‘BOOM‘ effect never got boring.
There is reason to my rambling. For those unaware, XIII was built using the 2.0 incarnation of the Unreal engine. The bad thing about the Most recent UDK is that it is rebuilt heavily since those days, and does not recognise texture packs, static meshes, particle effects, and other assets from previous versions of the engine. I’m a happy bunny however, because I found an extractor for those previous packages, and I’m now able to rebuild the materials for use with the most recent version of the Unreal Engine. I’m not sure why, but mixing the cell shaded textures with the phong shaded meshes seems to create a new spirit of inspiration in me.
..and I fully intend to abuse this.




