Recently in my DDA class, we have been working with three different Adobe products- Adobe After Effects, Premiere, and Animate. All three of these have their strengths and weaknesses; some more so than others.
Once you get the hang of it, Animate is at least tolerable. That's the only good thing I have to say about that program. After Effects was easy to use, if a little bit more clunky than Premiere. I enjoyed making my motion graphic on it, and it was really easy and cool to see what I'd done. I've only used Premiere once now, and I think it's honestly the best of the three. If you've ever used iMovie, you'll get the hang of this program pretty quick. It's literally just that, but a whole lot nicer. I found Animate frustrating and annoying to work with, and I can't say that, concerning quality, I'm terribly proud of the things I made in it. For example, I thought the brush tool was broken, making it so that I couldn't use tweens on a layer where I had used it. But no, I just had no understanding of the symbol system (I still don't). After Effects is a well polished program. It's easy to use, and I have no problems with it. I really can't think of anything I don't like about it. On the other hand, while this hasn't happened to me, my teacher mentioned the Premiere is a drain on system resources, and one kid had problems with the program crashing. Each product has their advantages and disadvantages. I personally felt let down by Animate, as I was really excited to start animating. I ended up glad that we only did two assignments in it. Otherwise, I've been really happy with the programs we've been using. In Summary;
0 Comments
I recently bought Dark Souls 3 for $25 on a Steam Weekend Sale, and I've been playing it a lot. Over the course of my playthrough, which I still haven't completed, I've realized something. The Dark Souls series is known for its intense, brutalizing difficulty, for youtubers screaming into the mic after they die to a horde of undead. However, after spending quite a while playing the game, I saw that Dark Souls is not difficult- Or at least Dark Souls 3, which I have heard is objectively the easiest of the trilogy. But regardless, I don't find myself believing it's a terribly difficult game. I've died countless times, lost hundreds of thousands of souls, but I've always pushed through after a few more tries. I have also realized why the Souls series is considered so hard- You die so much. But to me, death is not difficulty. It's just learning.
Difficulty to me is looking at a sprawling, complex level, seeing it as a whole, looking at it thinking "How am I supposed to do this? It's so intricate, so complicated." But then you try it again and again, and realize that the level is made up of little pieces that you know how to do easily, and then you do it. Once you see the level not as the sum of its parts, but its parts themselves, when that realization hits you that you know how to do it, you might fail a few more times, based on your skill, but you still beat the level. The point of this is that part of what makes a game difficult is that you can't push through a game through brute force and button mashing alone- A hard game requires deep, complex thought and strategy. Dead Cells to me is hard, because you can't memorize the levels. You die quickly, but so do your enemies. You die and die hundreds of times, but eventually, something clicks. You instinctively see recognizable parts from previous playthroughs, (If you don't know, Dead Cells is a roguelike- It generates its levels randomly) and it makes the level feel more familiar, but you also realize yet another thing. You also get an instinctive sense of enemy behaviors and patterns, and it helps you get better and better, learning something new from your deaths. Difficulty to me implies serious, complex planning, paired with the need for instinctive knowledge and memorization of mechanics and enemy behaviors. Death is not just a setback in difficult games. It is valuable, in fact, and it should be almost required. You should gain something from each death- knowledge. You cannot brute force your way through a difficult game by specing into a particularly strong build. No, each playstyle that the game supports is equal in it's difficulty. Difficulty requires you to engage in nearly all, if not every one of the game's mechanics. If it's a game focused on combat, the player is forced (In a good way) into a dance with the enemy. The player treats every single enemy like a major threat, which they are. They regard the enemy as equals, having been bested so many times. The two engage, and the player enters the zone- dodging and weaving through enemy attacks, yes, but still taking a few hits themselves. The player emerges victorious, feeling a sense of accomplishment, as if this common enemy was the final boss because it had killed them so many times. They emerged battered, yes- but victorious nonetheless. Difficult games do not require mastery- In fact, mastery of a difficult game is nigh on impossible. Instead, difficult games simply require proficiency. Yes, Dark Souls 3 is a hard game- Close to difficulty, but it falls just short, for one reason alone. Yes, it requires planning, and critical thinking. Memorization of enemy patterns is intrinsic to beating the game. But for one reason, and one reason only, I do not consider it a difficult game. You can simply brute force your way through. On my first playthrough, I was terrified of fighting this infamously hard boss- The Dancer of the Boreal Valley- and when the time came to fight it, I was surprised. I nearly beat it on my first try. I succeeded easily on my second. No guide, nothing. I just held up my shield, and rolled through like, one attack. I believe that I succeeded where others failed because of my build. I had a ton of health and strength, which allowed me to tank through hits while still dealing moderate damage myself. Now I can see how a light armored, low-health mage, a popular build in the Dark Souls games, could have struggled. That's where I don't see Dark Souls as a hard game. It all depends on your playstyle. Difficult games should be difficult throughout- I'm sure that I struggled where others succeeded. But really, it's all objective. For a guy like me, who enjoys really digging into all a game has to offer, while not becoming to emotionally attached to losing or dying, Souls games and Dead Cells (That's what I consider a difficult game) can be downright relaxing at times. For other, more serious involved people, it's just a frustratingly addictive game, which has a lot of struggles for a relatively small payoff. While some scream into the mic after lose 20,000 souls, I barely let out a sigh when I did. Thanks for reading; sorry for the long post. Cave story was published a year after I was born, and people apparently have a lot of nostalgia for it. I myself never actually played it until recently, and so I can safely say with an unbiased opinion, the game is good, even now, 15 years later. I played the original, freeware version, not the remaster. The art, progression, story and mechanics are all solid, and I can't think of anything I don't necessarily like. I played through it ~1.75 times (Still haven't finished the second playthrough).
The game is all about running around and shooting things, trying to escape an island while also uncovering the mysterious events that took place 10 years ago. Along the way, you collect upgrades for your guns, meet new friends, and do whatever it takes to escape. The game, being freeware, is kind of short, but has 3 different endings and even a secret level and boss. The writing is fairly good, and I found no problems with it. I personally really enjoyed Cave Story. I've been aware of its existence for a little while now, but didn't know it was freeware. Once I found out, I downloaded it and played it immediately. There were no problems running it on my Windows PC, even though it's so old. I know that there are countless versions on other consoles, (There's even a WiiWare version, of all things) so not having a PC is no excuse not to play this game. I recommend it to anyone who likes video games, and my one wish is that I found out about it years ago. Idle animations make up a largely unknown part of games. They provide movement to an otherwise stagnant world, breathing life into a game. They go mostly unnoticed, being taken for granted by most. And yet, a game feels stiff and dead without them. They can be used to convey emotion, be it playfulness or a character's grim mood. They're add so much to a game, and can sometimes mean the difference between a mediocre game and a decent one. When I was young, I played Super Mario 64 on my DS. At the time, I didn't even know that it was a remake. I had never even heard of an N64. Regardless, one thing that kind of blew my mind back then was what happened when you left one of the characters idle. I think that it was Yoshi who fell asleep, and I think Mario just sat down and dozed. But back then, when pretty much the only other game I had played was Lego Star Wars, I was amazed. I thought it was so cool how these little animations made the characters seem so real. Idle animations breath so much life into a game. But in order to do so, they need to not be too real. They need to be exaggerated, obvious to the player that the character is waiting for them to pick up the controller. They can't be too subtle, like the character just continuing to bounce back and forth on their heels. Sure, that can be acceptable, but if I put down the controller to go to the bathroom, I expect to seem my character doing something funny when I come back. In short,
Couture, Joel. “What Makes a Great Idle Animation? Devs Share Their Favorites.” Gamasutra: The Art & Business of Making Games, gamasutra.com/view/news/318163/What_makes_a_great_idle_animation_Devs_share_their_favorites.php. Anonymous. “Idle Animation - Create, Discover and Share Awesome GIFs on Gfycat.” Gfycat, Gfycat, 30 June 2017, gfycat.com/mindlessniftyguanaco. |
AuthorHi! I'm Thomas MacDougall, a sophomore at DSA. Here you can check out my thoughts and recent activities. Please note that the views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Archives
March 2020
Categories
All
|