Blog for Samuel Lopez De Victoria at GarageGames.com

Thursday Dec 1 0:47

Samuel Lopez De Victoria — 2005-12-01T00:47:40+00:00

A look into what has happened in the art world and how video games are at the front of it all.

Hey there! I miss posting my plan on here ol GG. I have currently jumped back on to educating myself more on the use of the TGE as well as really admiring the progress made with TGE 1.4!

I really don't want to delve too much into what I have planned on a good project to do as my first TGE thingy, but as soon as I start I'll post pictures and such.

In the mean time, be sure to check out something that happend about 2 to 4 months ago here in Miami. I wrote this a while back for www.cheapassgamer.com. It's really nice what went on. Read on...

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Be sure to check out the gallery's site at www.rocket-projects.com/home.html

I am happy to report this amazing art show has done superbly well! So far many world renowned art collectors and currators have had nothing but postive response.

Here's the basic rundown of the show:

This was the first solo art show for both my sisters Tasha and Monica, who in the art world are known as The TM Sisters. They themed the entirety of the show after lightning and the energy that it holds. It was pretty cool for me (yes, the lowly CAG that I am) to program two games for the show for my sisters... and the awsome part was that the games were the main focus of the show. Pics will do justice here:

Above is none other than yours truely (ie. me) giving the game named Static a quick test right before the show started just to see if the equipment was working fine. You can also see some art mys sisters put together for their show.

Here as a shot of the main focus of the show, Super Bolt, a few minutes before the start of the show opening. The game was projected onto the far wall of the gallery. The game was then controlled by what you see on the floor on the picture (my sisters and I built the heavy thing... bleh!). You have to stand on it and use it to move your character left or right to avoid getting hit by lightning. The music and sound, composed by a local big name band bassist, turned out very well. This game litterally blew most people away, and at times, lines started forming for those waiting to play the game. It turned out better than we had hoped for.

Here's the side view of the area where the Super Bolt game was being played. The clouds were all sewn by my sisters and the lighting bolt was made by them also (I love the holographic look of it).

As time went by at the art show, the whole place started to get very very packed. My dad and I did a quick analysis of how many people showed up and it happened to be around 600 or more people... awsome :)

Here somone is playing the Static game. Alot of people to scared to play the Super Bolt game gave this game alot of time. Someone even got to the highest level in the game, something not even I, the programmer, was able to do.

Near by the Static game were some actual phsical art peices done by my sisters. Really nice looking IMHO. Some of them have already been bought which is real nice.

mmm... cookies (made by my mum!)...
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just a few things to note about the above:

- I did not use Torque for this, but plan to in future art shows (yes, more art games will be in development)

- The Super Bolt game just recently sold for over $7000, so that makes me happy as I get part of that income :)

- My sisters have hit it big already and are part of a show touring across the world, which has already started in Norway. You can check out info on the show here: Uncertain States of America

- If you live in Miami, starting tommorow you can see some of their art at the Art Basel show happening on South Beach starting tommorow. Super Bolt will be there.

Thanks for taking the time to read! I respect alot of people here and hope to get as good as most of you in working with TGE.

Wednesday Sep 14 1:25

Samuel Lopez De Victoria — 2005-09-14T01:25:40+00:00

The art world and the possible idea of a fighting game Torque Dev pack.

Well, la de da! (I write this from in between taking a break from college homework, bleh!)

Some good news. If anyone remembers me from my last plan (I doubt you would, it's not like I'm Tim Aste or whatnot) I mentioned I would be talking about the gaming and art world. Unfortunatley, I have been too busy with setting up an entire art show last week and attending the opening of it so I'll just talk about the art show until next time. It's my two sisters' solo art show in which I helped conceptualize and program some of the art. Here's one of the ads (low rez jpeg version) that ran in some national art magazines:

The main theme of the show was lighting and luckly enough, the opening night we had a huge thunderstorm (which was actually what my sisters and I wanted!). Amazingly over 500 people showed up for this show. Some big wigs in the art industry really liked what they saw and I have yet to hear of any negative feedback. The whole installation for the artwork and the "push art" (our label for the artsy games) was pretty awsome. It took a whole week for my sisters and I to set it up. I would love to show pictures of the show in progress, but I still need to get the pictures from our photographer of the show so you'll have to wait till next .plan...

Below are pics of the two games. These screens really don't give the games any justice, as they have to be seen in action. The first screen is of the game 'Super Bolt'. Anything that looks holographic in the screens actually was implimented with a neat little glittering affect that blew most people away. The entire game was controlled by a large circular stand in which one of my sisters and I built. It was the biggest hit of the show :)

the second game 'Static' , while not as complicated to program, was also a huge hit. The aspect of the game was to prevent the lines from the left from hitting your 'bases' by rubbing your in-game hand on the cloud to shoot a static bolt at the enemys. Some people even got to levels on the game I programed in that even I never was able to get to!

I can't really say what I programmed these games with (not for any legal or bad reasons), but I can say I was happy with what the end product came out to be. It was a bit better than I had expected. If you are at all interested in going to see my sisters' and my stuff, feel free to go, as the exhebition is still going on.

mkay... now that that I've said that, let me move on to what I have been in the process of evaluating in terms of Torque.

Seeing as how the Torque engine already has a FPS, Racing, and Strategy pack for purchase, I wondered "Would it be a good idea for more packs to be released to make dev time more realistic and open ended for developers?". Oddly enough, this is coming from me, a guy who has yet to really understand the full power of TDK (I am currently 80% done with "3D Programming All in One", but have had to take an extended break from it due to school). I came to realize that also, seeing as how the Torque Shader Engine is already being worked on for the new Xbox 360, I would love to put together a pack for one of my favorite genres: Fighting Games. I know for the Toque engine it may seem like a total twist of code for something that is primarily focused on FPS type stuff, but I think it is possible. Fighting games are a hefty thing to put together... Really from a programmers point of view it can be hell (yeah, I sometimes tend to think a good fighting game engine is one of those things that give alot of coders headaches) as well as a character animator. The transition of animations as well as other things are some of the stuff that may get people running up walls out of insanity... I would love to pull a group of people together to work on a project for this, but seeing my lack of experience may, and probably will, shy away most people from working with me on such a pack. If all else fails, this may actually end up being a better idea for Torque 2D, since T2D dosn't really have a 'pack' as of yet (I know it's not totally finished, but a pack is still valid possibly). If you're at all interested in this idea, please send me a message or e-mail me at RelentlessRolento@yahoo.com.

well, back to my schoolwork... I'm still missing some of my textbooks, and unfortunatley, have overdrafted my bank account for the first timedue to money being needed for the art show. Oh well... looks like I wont be getting those textbooks soon :-P

Hopefully I will be able to get to that article I'm going to write up about the Art world and the game world comming together. Till next time.

Tuesday Jul 26 20:46

Samuel Lopez De Victoria — 2005-07-26T20:46:37+00:00

My current progress on my learning the uses of TGE through the book 3D Programming All in One.

One might ask what the summer holds for me, and many others will not ask at all (including you). I can say this though: I am very happy with what I have been learning with the wonderful book 3D Programming All in One. If you are newbie to the Torque community, I highly reccomend this book.

My progress so far is at the end of chapter 16, I have completed pretty much the entire modeling chapters that are in the book. I still don't totally understand the Torque Script aspects totally, but I will run back and read those earlyer chapters once I have finished reading the book. I am very happy with my medeocre skill using Milkshape, though I will spend quite some time on improving. My modeling techniques seem to be working well, but I am not at all happy with my texture skills... here... I'll explain with pictures my progress:

as you should be able to see on the lower part of the picture, I have my untextured hero model. This was my second model I had ever done on Milkshape 3D. I like how some parts of the body turned out, but with a bit of polish (or a total redo) it could be better. So far for the hero model I have rigged the entire joint structure out pretty well with animations for idle, look, running (need to fix this one up...), and death (which I am still surprised how well it looks considering how much of a new thing this is for me). I tried doing textures for him/it but so far I have yet to make anythign I am happy with, so I'll keep him blank for a little while :)

The upper part of the picture shows a dog model, not taught how to be done at all in the book. I wanted to make the dog jsut to test my Milkshape 3D skills. I can say I am more happy with the results of this than my hero model. The feet and legs were the hardest part, and I am still not sure if I like them the way they are, but they get the job done. Again the texture was/is a little bland for the dog, but not too bad. I have jointed out his body, including a mount point for his back incase the dog can be used as a vehicle, and a mount for his head, incase I want to add hats/etc. and so on. The only animation that is present in the dog is his idle animation in which he wags his tail and pants (moving his mouth and bobbing his head). This is probably my favorite model so far.

Above is the last few models I put together. The gun was alot of fun to put together. I searched the web for a good side picture of a gun and I was lucky enough to fiind a nice looking shotgun (one barrelled, but I made it into a double barrel... two are better than one!... sometimes ;). It's a little blocky around the edges, but soon enough I'll fix it up a bit. The deadish trees only took me about a minute to make, and I think anyone here could pull off making one of these with just some basic Milkshape or modeling skills. So far I hope you can tell I have been enjoying modeling quite a bit!

I bet you are (not) wondering what the logo is in the pictures... well, it's the development team name I hope to have when I am able to put together a team of guys. Funny thing is, the name came from something totally different. Back in high school (I would say about 5 years ago... yes, I am still a youngen and all that good stuff) me and my friends were going to pull together a amature skateboard team. We had all our guys lined up to make up the team, but no name. Months later I came up with a few ideas for a name of the skate team, and Square Root came into my head (I even had the same exact logo you see in the pictures). We never got to make the team happen since alot of the kids involved moved away, but at least now I have a good use for it. I like the name alot. It means two things, but both really have no sugnificance. It would be nice to hear people talking about Square Root 10 years down the line, but that is shooting real high (but I can dream!).

I really have nothing else to say as of now, other than I am going to start learning the ropes on QuArK. If anyone has any opinions or suggestions let me know, anything is appreciated.

Next .plan (probably will be up in a few days) I will shift focus away from my progress and talk about the soon to be larger intertwining of the game industry and the art industry. Some very interesting stuff is happening there, and something I am proud to be a part of, which I will explain later.

Friday Jun 10 21:43

Samuel Lopez De Victoria — 2005-06-10T21:43:58+00:00

A large dream of mine for many years has been to blend the art world together with the gaming world. Video Game software is a new medium to artists that, in my opinion, is going to be the next movement in the art industry. Someone needs to open the doors to these willing artists and show them how to step into this new medium. As we speak I am already working on art peices involving interaction, or plainly put, a video game as an art peice.

...To be Submitted Soon...