4 posts tagged “ytmnd”
Today was the beginning of our project management week. It's a week-long class, from 8:30am to 3:30pm every day, divided into two halves. The morning is a period marked off for lectures and practical instruction; the afternoon is given to the teams to work on one of the major deliverables for the projects - outlines, schedules, and that sort of thing.
Today, all of the first-years were gathered together into C-316, on the third floor of our school, way in the back of C Wing. We had to make our first formal proposal to our team mentor; our mentor is the legend himself, Andrew Mooney, also our first-term programming instructor. Our team - Emily, Ella, Brandon, and me - are planning on building a game in Flash. We want to build a side-scroller; we feel that we could build one level and a "boss fight" in 5 weeks, and to a sufficient degree of polish that we'd want to have it in our portfolios.
It hard to put into words our game will be like, first because it's not all completely fleshed out yet, and, secondly, the
I hope it goes well. I'm excited about this. Brandon and Ella are going to begin work on level design and enemy AI programming. Emily and I will tackle the main character - getting him walking around and doing stuff. They're doing the bad guy, we're doing the good guy. (As Brandon observed today, "The level is a bad guy.") Andrew is loaning us his Wacom tablet so we can draw our own graphics in Flash. Now this is something I'm really excited about - we don't have to draw with a mouse! Andrew, I will treat it as if it were my own. We've got a lot of random stuff to knit together - when I think of this game, I immediately think of Earthworm Jim as a way to hint at it. Of course, if this turns out even half as good as Earthwork Jim I'll be pleased.
YTMND of the Week
This is a legendary YTMND, my friends. One that may be destined for the Hall of Fame:
Fans of 90's alternative music will appreciate this. :)
OK, that's all I got. The Fallout Journals will have to wait, because I didn't have time to play that game today :(
YTMNDs of the Week
Now that my Internet Love is very much alive and kicking, the flood of YTMNDead sites has ceased and people have begun to just start making stupid sites again. My buddy Aaron has sent me a couple of awesome sites over the last few days: Gumpin, ...but your kids are gonna love it, and ytmndwd: 100% Expert mode.
BRB getting Christine
Alright, I just got back from the Hamachi House, a fantastic sushi place around the corner from where we live. There is something so addictive about sushi - Christine and I have been mad for it lately. Thank God we're moving to a place in the North End that's also near a sushi bar! Before sushi, I picked Christine up from school - she got a 97% on her exam tonight! She's not just all looks, you know.
Me, I gotta give my YTMND of the week award to one that was just posted today - not only does it have Will Smith in it, which makes it an instant 5 in my books, but it's mashed up with something that is cosmically appropriate for this blog. Indeed, this YTMND was made for this blog. And so, I present to you, our YTMND of the Week:
This is a great mash-up, in my estimation. The eerie timeliness of its content makes it an all-the-more appropriate choice - the graphics are from Mario World, and the music is from Mario 3. There are actually quite a few fantastic Will Smith YTMNDs if you poke around.
Final Year Project: Making a Video Game!
This post, unfortunately, will not be long enough to address all of the outrageous allegations raised by the nefarious Torbox. I have a Hardware exam tomorrow, and I really must start studying for it soon. Alas, that requires my blog tonight to be shorter than I would like.
I would like to say, though, that I'll be starting up a team project in about 2 weeks - a five-week project where Brandon Tattrie, Emily VanZeumeren, Ella Silver, and yours truly are making a game! I'll be making a lot of blog posts on the development process during that time. Hopefully, we'll even have a game for y'all to try!
We're going to do a platformer, and I can tell you that it's gonna be a weird one. It'll be in Flash, so I'm hoping to have something that I can post here when the project is over. Maybe we can get it on Kongregate!
IMBC: Break Down Your Favorite Song
But I've been actually listening to a ton of Beatles lately, and I think I'd rather talk about my favorite Beatles song. The Beatles are my favorite band overall, and Tomorrow Never Knows is definitely my favorite Beatles song. Light years ahead of anything ever made before it, this song has been a massive influence on electronic artists and rock artists alike. It occupies a space in music all its own - hypnotic, transcendent, driving, John sing-chants his vocal a relentlessly groovy bassline, blending their Indian musical influences with some serious studio wizardry. When John sings, "It is shining, It is shining", listen for the incredible synthesizer swells and squiggles in the background. The pulsating backbeat and orchestral, trancey wall of sound can be heard in later genres as diverse as hip-hop, breakbeat, techno, and psychedelic rock. The Chemical Brothers owe their entire careers to this song.
Here it is. Lyrics are provided below.
and float down stream
It is not dying
It is not dying
Lay down all thought
Surrender to the void
It is shining
It is shining
That you may see
The meaning of within
It is being
It is being
That love is all
And love is everyone
It is knowing
It is knowing
That ignorance and hate
May mourn the dead
It is believing
It is believing
But listen to the
color of your dreams
It is not living
It is not living
Or play the game
existence to the end
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
YTMND
Watch: I'm Making a Note Here
Well, it appears my one true Internet Love is, like GLaDOS, is still alive. Another day has dawned on YTMND; more importantly, I still can offer you a sample of its genius to digest at your leisure. The first one is in honor of my first real guest (sorry, Pat you don't really count) to Gaming Zen, Amy. Amy is also competing in the IMBC, and she was kind enough to share with me her favorite site. It is a classic, and hilarious to boot - and so it becomes the first site of OML's YTMND Watch. Enjoy - but careful how loud you play this one if you're at work or school.
Being confronted with the possibility of losing YTMND has forced me to reflect on our relationship, and one powerful truth has emerged: I spend way too much time there. (My beautiful girlfriend, Christine, would definitely agree.) It's not healthy to have a single website consume so much of one's time. It's not healthy to have a single anything consume so much of one's time, really.
Maybe this blog will keep my mind off of it.
Readings
From the Sutra
Gamasutra is the Web's best site on game design and game development. I've been reading the game design and postmortem1 articles here for years; it's been an incredible resource for someone like me that has always been interested in video game design.
I love Ernest Adams' column, The Designer's Notebook. His semi-regularly published columns are always a must-read – he talks about game design theory in clear and accessible ways, and covers a wide array ot topics, from genres like educational games to general design principles like symmetry. I would suspect there would some of you out there who, even if you had no interest in making games, would find these articles interesting.
Anyway, I'll be doing regular readings from the Sutra in this blog, as game design is my thing. I am looking to get into a game development industry – mine eyes are fixed upon it. So, as I tend to be thinking a lot about this stuff anyway, I'll likely be writing a lot about it. Readings from the Sutra, I suspect, will be a semi-regular thing. Like Ernest Adams.
So a Gamastura new feaure in my RSS feed begs to be read, and after I get back from getting groceries tonight, I'm going to take a look at it: Fixing Online Idiocy: A Psychological Approach. So, they think they can stop dumbass kids from being dumbass kids online while they're sticking each other with plasma grenades, huh? Through the proper application of psychological technique? Yeah, I gotta read this.
I
think I'll post my thoughts on this later, if the article turns out to be as interesting as it sounds.
(1 A postmortem is an interview with a development studio, talking about the development process of a specific game. They talk about what went right, what went wrong, and what they learned for future development projects. Just in case you were wondering.)
BRB Groceries
This is enough to qualify me for today, but I do want to come back and write a bit more. And I have a few pebbles to throw in the pond. I'll see you soon.
Back from Groceries, Now Dishes to Wash, But First a Little Oui, oui, hohn, hohn, etc.
Actually, I don't really have much more time for this post, but I did want to say something about French.
I was a French Immersion student in Junior High school. Our family moved to New Brunswick when I was just finishing up elementary school. In Nova Scotia, you don't start taking French lessons until Grade 4. In New Brunswick, you start in Primary. So when I moved to NB, I was just getting my head around bonjour and au revoir while the kids my age had already been speaking French for some time. My first NB French class in grade 5 was an embarrassment; the teacher asked me in French what my phone number was, and the only word I understood come out of her mouth was "number" so I started counting, "un, deux, trois, quatre" like an idiot. The class thought that was pretty funny.
I had to go to school early for a month to get tutoring in French. It took a while, but I eventually caught up. Eventually I decided to study in a junior high French Immersion program, and at one point in my life I would say I was fairly fluent in French. I can still order food and find the bathroom and whatnot, but I couldn't sit down with someone and discuss Eastern philosophy.
OK, done again for another day. See you tomorrow.
Today might be the worst day of my life. Maybe.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm a huge fan of YTMND.com (and if you don't believe me you can ask this guy. He'll be happy to tell you why I'm retarded on this point). For those of you who are new to the Internet, allow me to elaborate: YTMND stands for You're the Man Now Dog, and it is/was without question the GREATEST SINGLE SITE ON THE INTERNET. Bar none. If you are shaking your head in disbelief right now - I respect your opinion, and that it differs from mine, and can only hope to God that you're not sitting there thinking about something like “4Chan pwns, OMG this guy's such a nub” because clearly 4Chan is the Internet's Toilet and should be desytroyed for the betterment of humanity.
I first stumbled upon YTMND in the summer of 2006 and pretty much only went online to look at new 'sites' for a solid 6 months. I never bothered to create an account – I didn't really care to become part of a 'community' or anything – but, man, did I ever watch a lot of sites. I took a look through the Hall of Fame, Moderator Favorites, Highest Voted, Most Watched, Most Commented – I was a YTMND vacuum.
The love affair with YTMND ended just around the time I went back to work (was gainfully unemployed that summer) and I stopped visiting the site with such fervent regularity. It obviously left an impression though, because here I am, 2 years later, sitting at my computer, beginning my foray into blogging with a post on the only thing I can think of right now.
I don't remember what made me start visiting YTMND again: I was probably trying to avoid my Web Dev homework or something. Anyway, sometime late last year (October-ish) I started checking YTMND out again, just to see what was up in my old neighborhood. Well, it was like I never left. Sure, there were lots of new names and such, but that uniquely YTMND sense of humor was still intact – irreverent, outlandish, absurd, sometimes even poignant. This time around, however, I got hungry for more; I started paying attention to names of YTMNDers whose sites I really liked. I read the comments for each site I watched – and, truly, the comments section are half the fun of a great site. I began to see different factions in the community: DarthWang and the FPA (Forgot Poland Army), the 'pinks' (Featured Users), the NARVs (look it up), upvoters, downvoters, noise site makers, ArtTMND makers (like Female and Roy4l), and the guys I liked to privately call the FSF Light Brigade, those exceptionally talented YTMNDers whose skill with Photoshop, GIF creation, and sound editing allowed them to make 'faggy short films,' inevitably drawing the ire and wrath of the FPA and its clingers-on. Of course, I loved the faggy short films. I discovered the difference between these faggy short films and the 'classic sites' – picture, text, sound, a singular focus. I began to appreciate all the different kinds of YTMNDs that were made and were still being made.
It got to the point where I finally had to create an account and start voting on sites. That quickly led to leaving comments on sites – and although I have zero skills with Photoshop, I even made some incredibly bad sites. Four, to be exact. I was routinely checking YTMND every day – hell, every hour, if we're being honest – to watch for new sites and new comments. YTMND had become part of my routine, like breathing. My classmates were amused at the degree of my devotion to what many of them consider a lame website (again, just ask this guy). But there is/was something about YTMND that perfectly fits with my way of seeing the world, and then laughing at it.
So this morning I logged into YTMND before school and was greeted with the worst sight I have ever seen:
Gut punch.
Quick check on reality.....oh, it's April Fool's right? Of course, no big deal. Catch breath, continue to news section. No....no wait, it looks official. Max WOULD do something like this - announce the death of YTMND on the day everyone would be like “HAHA Aprl Fool's lulz,” wouldn't he?
I've been wondering all day if this really is a sick joke. I pray to God it is. I had planned on doing a weekly thing like YTMND of the week for the blog – hell, I was even planning on learning Photoshop this summer just to start making these stupid things.
Instead of a “YTMND of the Week”, then, I think I'll be posting an awesome site a day until YTMND is dead – unless it isn't, in which case I'll probably be too happy to care about this stupid blog. So, let the candlelight vigil begin for my one true Internet Love. YTMND is/was a place where Internet and pop culture memes go to die – only then to be reborn, phoenix-like, as something greater. I hope YTMND is a phoenix too. Long Live YTMND, the greatest Photoship/Audacity pissing contest in the Webs.
What else, what else.....oh, yeah, this blog will contain lots of gaming-related articles in the future, if you didn't glean that from the title.
AND I need to talk about fonts for 60 words. Which, surpisingly, will be rather easy, since I watched an incredible documentary on fonts last week called Helvetica. It talks about the secret and actually-quite-fascinating history of Helvetica's creation, the modernist philosophy behind its creation, the 70s rebellion in graphic design against Helvetica which culminated in the 90s (remember Raygun magazine?), and the far-reaching politics of typeface. It's a documentary that makes you think about the powers words have on you – the printed word conveys a message beyond the simple meaning it tries to carry to mind. The very look of the word itself influences your perception of the message – for example, imagine reading War and Peace in Comic Sans MS. Wouldn't seem like such a grand piece of lit at first blush, now would it?
Anyway, I got a Hardware assignment to finish. Go and watch Helvetica – and if you hear anything about YTMND, let me know.
