My latest video is now online! This year Infineon Raceway is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and I made a "short history" of the racetrack for the official webpage. I'm really happy with the final result, and have grown a lot as a "filmmaker" (I don't know if this term applies yet). Filtering through several hours of material encompassing 40 years, wriggling that material down to 8 minutes, and then have everything line up with the interview portions that I shot for the documentary was a nice challenge.
Watch the video on Youtube or go to the Infineon Raceway webpage!
The free Lair Dragons and Control Pack is now available on the Playstation 3 store.
Two new playable dragons, analog control
option, and a whole bunch of fixes for free!
January 1, 2008 - Happy New Year!
Good luck, good health, good...other stuff. We celebrated in semi-German style in Tahoe :)
For the uninitiated, that's Feuerzangenbowle. Basically, you heat up red wine with mulling spices, put a sugarloaf that's been soaked in rum on top of the bowl, then set it on fire. The sugar drips into the wine, semi-sweet drunken happyness ensues.
December 20, 2007 - IndyCar Large Frames
One of the necessary but unfortunate side effects of creating video for the web is the resolution. The movie is usually tiny and heavily compressed to account for bandwidth and dial-up users.
So I thought it would be fun to post a few fullsize frames from the IRL Testing video posted recently.
December 18, 2007 - IndyCar Test at Infineon Raceway
Update: The video has completed its initial run, but will be rerun later. In the meantime, you can view a YouTube copy below.
My latest video is now available for public view on the official Infineon Raceway website. IndyCar drivers Scott Dixon and Ryan Hunter-Reay visited the racetrack on December 6 and 7 to test for the new season, and I was there to document those two days.
Expect more of these kind of videos in the 2008 season. The Infineon Raceway staff are giving me great behind-the-scenes access, so the videos should turn out even nicer than the ones I already made this year. Go to my Youtube page to get your additional fix of IndyCar, NASCAR, Karting etc. at Sears Point :)
As a sidenote, I'm still working fulltime on new game projects for our company. But you shouldn't expect any announcements for quite a while, it's still too early.
October 08, 2007 - Video Awards
My Indy Car video has been nominated for the (probably-not-so) prestigious WeShow Awards. It won the first round and is now running in the Auto Sports category.
It's an interesting experiment, I wanna see if I can get enough votes to get this video on top of the main Sports channel.
Please take a second and vote for my video! Just find the "Motorola Indy 300 Test Session" video, move it to the top of the chain and submit you vote (you have to register first, but it's a minor hassle). All the other nominated stuff is lame TV captures, it would be nice to see some original content win this thing!
September 20, 2007 - Page Status
The server that this page is hosted on crashed and some of the data got corrupted. Still hunting down everything that needs repairing, but the content should already be back up and running.
September 19, 2007 - Indy Car Video
The finished Indy Car video is now on Youtube.
I played it much looser with this video, just throwing shots against the wall and seeing which ones got soaked up by the music and which ones didn't seem to fit.
The ending happens a bit quickly, but that's okay :) I'm happy with the final routcome. I'll post some frames from the HD version later.
September 16, 2007 - The Wheel of Time stops turning
I hadn't read any of Robert Jordan's books when Glen Dahlgren contacted me in 1997 about working on The Wheel of Time computer game. But I was intent on doing my research, so I immediately went to Baedeker to buy the first volume of the series. In English, of course, because the game was going to be in English.
E3 1997 happened right around that time. I'd made contacts with several other game companies in America and I had potential job prospects (Legend could only offer me a remote position from Germany), so several regulars on the #level_design IRC channel were encouraging me to fly to Atlanta to mingle with the crowd and maybe make something happen. My parents were on vacation, so I borrowed some money from my late grandmother and bought an improptu plane ticket to America.
It was during the four-hour train ride to the Frankfurt airport that I started reading The Eye of the World. My English was still rather bad and I didn't understand every word in the book, but the writing was so good that I was captivated anyway. Sure, when it really came down to it, Jordan was treading familiar territory, but he did it in a wildely imaginative and evocative way. The characters and world felt very alive, and everything was relatable.
Of course I ended up working for Legend and on Wheel of Time anyway. By that time, I'd already read all available novels even though I hadn't been working on the game (as had Charlie Wiederhold, another potential WoT level designer who ended up working elsewhere). And I can guarantee you that every designer involved with the game cared about and was a huge fan of the books.
I'll be the first to admit that the series eventually died on me and I only ever made it to book 7. That wasn't necessarily because the story had become less interesting. It just seemed like there was no end in sight! ;)
I think I'll read all those remaining books now. It sounds like the final volume will be finished in one form or another, and I want to be ready for that. Thank you, Robert Jordan, for all that you've given us!
P.S.: The trip to E3 1997 didn't actually happen after all because of a snafu at the airport. I spent four additional hours riding back home (and reading).
September 02, 2007 - Lair in stores
Lair is being sold in stores all over the America now. Try it out, let me know what you think! :)
By the way, if you have a PSP and a PS3, you can do this:
More
news in archive. And of
course there's the blog.
