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m1kclark

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Recent Game Reviews

22 Game Reviews

It's not very thoroughly planned. For example, Level 12 solves itself: if you simply wait, then the ball will actually roll onto the exploding barrels all by itself, killing all the enemies without you firing a shot. I expected something more Rube Goldberg or riddle-like, whereas this was altogether un-challenging.

This is one of the most ingenious mixtures of modern technology I've seen for a game. The integration of YouTube and any handheld video camera makes for easy-to-generate content, and you've built a really simple Duck Hunt-like interface to mix it with. The apparent level of interactivity is a real jump from any seemed Flash game, despite the jumps when you cut from one video to another.

The best part is that this framework has a whole new way to generate content. Instead of making entirely new art to make a new game with a different feel, now you need only shoot one day's worth of video. Dress in a leather jacket, find a dump or a construction site, and you could turn this western into a Half-Life reference without much programming.

Good thinking, and great delivery.

Kenney responds:

Thanks for your review. We indeed created this engine for future projects to come, although it won't be as easy as inserting a new video and going with it. We're trying to improve, reading all the reviews people give to see where we can make the game better.

There's a HARD level set!!??

I won! All 40 levels ... only to discover there's an alternate level set that's labeled "Hard".

O_o

Fantastic game design. The user interface could have used an "erase this block" button instead of just overwriting. The music loop would have been better if it were longer, but the content of the music and instrumentation itself were great. ... I may have to actually do the hard levels now ... dammit.

Skellus responds:

You can use space to clear blocks

Recent Audio Reviews

17 Audio Reviews

The ambiance is incredible. There is no theme to determine the mood, so it's completely open to interpretation. It seems overall optimistic, but is soft enough to allow for sadness. The added noise is an excellent touch, suggesting chaos in the background and that this music described a moment in time that is separate from the mundane world and connected to something much, much bigger. I think it's wonderful, and I'm happy to see you keep uploading things, sir.

Slug-Salt responds:

You are to kind, I hope you are well my friend!

Nice mixture of timbres

As a background for a game, this is perfect. The piano and strings lend it beauty and emphasize the dramatic impact of what the player sees, but the omnipresent percussion give the song some drive and impetus to match the movement and task-oriented nature of the game.

It would make a poor song for a puzzle game, RPG, or RTS, but it is perfect for a visually striking FPS or 3rd-person adventure. The scope of the music also suggests a 3D game, rather than a side-scroller, because of the level of detail and the sense of space that the reverberations give. It's truly perfect for its goal. Hats off, sir!

ZaronX responds:

I honestly find RPGs and side scrollers to make the most use of music and crank out the more memorable tunes in gaming (but maybe it's time to change that?), and think 2D can get a lot of depth into a world in its own way. You pair the right elements together, and dimensions or even genre don't matter anymore; you're in this world now! And that is how a well-designed game should be!

The question being if I can pull that off. x:

Unfortunate coincidence

The musical content is very nice, a good sample of the genre and of your talent for combining sounds, and I like other works of yours for this reason. But it suffers as a result of a random coincidence.

There's another song "Frost" on NG (http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/list en/385985) that uses many of the same instruments and even some of the same melodic motifs and general structure choices. I've been listening to "Frost" for a year or two now, so it's really familiar to me. The similarities to "Frost" cheapen your new song in my ears. It's unfair, actually, because if the order had been reversed and I heard "Life" before "Frost", I'd feel like the other guy's song was cheapened for being to similar to your work.

The take-home message is this: it's a great composition, but you might want to get experimental with new instruments, sound fonts, and filters. With all the users on NG submitting music, it's hard to remain unique when several people are using the same exact toolboxes.

F-777 responds:

Thanks for the review!! I listened to the song and havn't found a single
same sound XD. The chord progression is the same but its used in
a million songs. Actually i can name 20 off the top of my head hehe.

I do appreciate the note though =).

Thanks again for the review!

Recent Art Reviews

325 Art Reviews

Excellent. Just excellent.

Your work in textures is so far beyond my skills that I cannot make any useful comments, except to say the mapping, interpolation, and resolution are perfect for the model. The label, the woodgrain, the steel look like real materials, which justifies the 10 hours you spent.

The geometries, meanwhile, are all nice and smooth; there are no "telltale" signs that its CG, and the object design is really nice. I actually applaud you for that dishtowel! Did you use a Wave modifier, or did you hand-model the folds with SubSurf modifier, or did you use another technique?

The one and only thing that I would give a 4/5 on is the lighting. It is *almost* there, but there are some strange things going on. For example, the wine glasses aren't casting a shadow on the countertop. Also the shadow of the wine bottle clearly shows that you have 3-4 lights arranged in a horizontal line; the light from a big window like that would cast one broad, soft shadow instead of those multiple shadows. The soft shadows looks perfect elsewhere, it's just on the wine bottle that the shadows are weird. The last lighting problem is that the apples, the wood of the window, and the glass vials (on the left) all seem to be lit from the front, while the drawers under the countertop are not. It makes the apples look a little like they are glowing compared to the bottom of the image (I would check Materials for the Emit setting on those apples).

I hope my comments were as constructive as you were looking for. Cheers!

DoloresC responds:

Thank you! Your comment is very constructive! :) And yes, I was looking for one like this! Thank to that I can open my project once again and study mistakes or check why there is good setting and bad looking :)

About textures - thank you. If you need help, try searching some done textures in net and suit them into your model. It will help u in the beginning to understand how it exacly works :) then just low the opacity of it and try to draw it. After sometime you will do it alone automatically :)

Dishtowel - it's just simple simulation of the cloth. Of course was done thousand time before we made it like this :)

Lightning - hmm. that's very interesting thing, because there is only one light. And the light is behind the window. There is no light inside! So shadows should be correct like in real world.

About shadow under glasses - tbh I was suprised when I put the same glass (I've got reference in the kitchen) in the middle of the day on the table and there was no shadow under it O.o I searched through the internet and finally read that not every glass casts shadow. It depends on it's thickness! More shdow - more thickness.

Hmm, you are right about glowing apples. But there was no emit O.o hmm, i think maybe plate and window are a little bit too glossy and because of that we've got optical illusion that apple is glowing and in real it's just reflection? Hmm...

Thank you! <3

I love the style of the gemetries, the textures, and the colors, and I'm really into how expressive the character is. Awesome!

I said this elsewhere, but I want to emphasize how important it is: Bevel your edges to make them more realistic. Excellent otherwise.

mematron responds:

Beveled edges is a personal choice, not some some 3D modeling axiom. It's realistic. That's why it's identifiable. I'm taking a painterly approach to this so some parts are tight while others, loose. Still, some are lost and found.

The end result is hyper-real like this http://www.mematron.com

If I wanted real then I would have uploaded a picture of the real microscope.

I don't spend much time here anymore, but it's nice to see the site still with its wide spread of user-generated content.

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Columbia University

Joined on 12/16/09

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