Weird Week

This has been a very weird week for me. I spent so much time working on EverQuest II, that I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not working on it. I'm grateful that Kander is keeping me posted on the additions he is putting into the new Runnyeye instance, and we have brainstormed out a few new fun things to add going in this week.

I got to skip my first EQ2 meeting in 4 years this Monday, and it felt pretty awkward. This team, the game and it's players are like family to me, so I find it hard to let go in a way. I've had plenty to keep me occupied, however.

For obvious reasons, there isn't much I can say about The Agency, in fact, I'm not entirely sure my new overlords are aware of this blog, but I do have a good track record of keeping the game out of my posts, and just talking about "working" so to speak in terms of making video games.

So far, I have spent all of my time reading up on how the game is put together, what the plans are, and learning how to use the editors and such, all remotely here in San Diego till I'm ready to move.

Communicating with my new bosses via IM is definitely different, and weird, but we live in that kind of age, and it's not all so strange so long as I get the information that I need to do what they need me to do. I've managed to get everything working on my own, and even made a test level already despite the fact it's only Wednesday and my 3rd day on the job. I've even done a playtest!

Once I know more about the game and what I can and can't talk about, you'll likely see more The Agency talk around here. I'm betting that will be quite a while, and most of my posts will be more related to adjusting to a new team, and adjusting to a new mode of work. How exciting to be working in the modern age instead of fantasy!

1)

I debated with myself whether or not I would post this, or go quietly into the night as they say, but I've made too many friends among the EQ2 populace to not say my proper goodbyes.
After four years of being part of this familly, it is time for me to bring this adventure to an end and embark on a new journey. Today is my last day officially working on EverQuest 2, and I will soon be joining The Agency team in Seattle.
I wish I could convey in words how much is has meant to me to be part of this community. You don't get a job every day that makes you friends around the world, and where you have such a widespread audience. It's been an honor and privelege to both befriend you guys and to help create a world that we all can enjoy being in together.
What else can I say? Thank you so much! I'll be around!
Steve "Saavedra" Kramer
www.devgamer.blogspot.com
p.s.
Halfling Wardens Rule! Give us Manaburn!

vote for this bottle

My sister-in-law Nicole's dog is up for voting on the jones soda website. We hope it's ugly picture can make it to a bottle near you!

http://www.jonessoda.com/gallery/view.php?ID=940266&offset=2 Please give it a 10 if you come across this message! Thanks!

Too Lazy

I'm too lazy to fix my terrible grammar and spelling in that last post. It's late, so give me a break people!

Long Busy Day

I usually don't play games all day, or sit on the computer all day that much anymore since we got a pair of dogs that get into everything. Today, I probably spent more time on my computer cumulatively than I have over the past 2 weeks.

I picked up Call of Duty 4 last night, because I have heard a great many good things about it, all of them warranted because it's incredible. Both the single player and multiplayer modes are fantastic. My last couple FPS purchases have been a little disappointing, so I'm really happy that I like this game.

Every once and a while I get the bug to work on FPS levels on my own time, but often just don't bother because the setup time is so long, the learning curve is steep, and I used to do level design as a job.

While i've found that I'm not entirely fond of Unreal Tournament 3 as far as a game goes, its game building tool in UnrealEd is great. As more and more game companies use the Unreal Engine to make their games, it only makes sense that I refamiliarize myself with it's tools. I have to admit, I haven't played with UnrealEd since it's first versions many many moons ago, and it has come a long way in terms of functionality and ease of use.

Just over the course of a few hours this afternoon, I had a couple rooms built with lights, stairs, weapons spawning and textured walls. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Some aspects of the tools in UnrealEd are not all that different than what we use to develop EverQuest 2. With EQ2, we have a slew of different tools for various tasks including population, zone art modification, scripting, and spell creation. They all integrate with each other in a different fashion, and it's a pretty steep learning curve to learn the nuances of each program as well. I think we have a great set of tools here at SOE though, thank god we have some talented programmers to make this stuff work. One of my favorite things that happened last year was the creation of our new population tool, which allows us to add creatures to the zones in real time and see them moving around. A task that used to take 10 to 20 minutes to add just a few creatures is reduced down to a minute or two tops. It's dope.

I guess sometimes, you don't realise how complicated your job is, until you try and learn a new skill or toolset. I was so daunted by the complexity of our tools when I first started on EQ2, but I am really well versed in them now, and think nothing of the pages and pages of tabs and functions available at my fingertips. It's all about exposure and practice. For you aspiring designers out there, use what is available to you and keep at it. The learning process is often painful, but pays off in the end as you get more and more comfortable with the tools out there. There are alot of similarities between an all in one package like UnrealEd and internal proprietary tools that a company uses. Alot of the terminology, and concepts are universal and translate into one another you will find.

To My Loyal Readership

To all three or four of you that might check this from time to time, I wanted to ask what kind of posts would you like to see from me? Most of the time I will write about this game or that, or whatever is game related on my mind, but maybe you are hoping for more design related posts? I have no idea how to gauge that, because half of my hits for some reason come from Eve Online players trying to delve into the mysteries of mining, while the other half either come from the EverQuest 2 forums or from Eq2-daily (Hi2ubtw!).

I have a few posts up my sleeves, that I keep forgetting to write, but generally don't get around to because I get too caught up in working on whatever I am doing at work. I guess I just want to know if I should just keep doing what I'm doing or not here.

Up Too Late

It's late, and some EverQuest 2 sounds like a good idea right? Wrong!

I just died fighting a even con solo mob in Fens. Not that outrageous, except I forgot to heal myself, and I'm a warden!

After I recover from that blow to my ego, I buff up on Sathir's Span and promptly walk over to the railing, jump up on it to look at the scenery, and walk off the edge to my death on the rocks below.

Time to log out!

Mass Effect

Mass Effect was going so well for me when I first started playing it, but the game has come to a grinding halt for me on this planet where I have to do these driving sequences that lead to me going on foot to fight some boss. I've done this same sequence a total of 5 times unsuccessfully and it's really starting to piss me off.

I don't see why I can't save in the middle of these things, especially when I'm having to fight against floaty driving physics in terrain that has lava that insta kills you.

I finally managed to get to the last encounter on this planet the other night and the guys that spawned from the ship utterly destroyed my guys, so now it's back to the beginning again!!

I don't know if I have the heart to keep trying this over and over. This situation reminds of the older games that made you grind your characters for a while before you could go to a certain area. I can't help but think that I've found this sequence of events before my characters are ready to deal with it. When is a good time to go then? It's so frustrating.

My Music

I don't normally try to be very self promoting when it comes to my hobbies, but I do try to get my music out there from time to time. It's motivating when I get both positive and negative feedback, and I just enjoy having it out there.

I made a last.fm playlist of the tracks I have so I thought I would post them here in case maybe even one of you would get a kick out of it.

I'll try and embed it in this post, but I don't know if I'm going to break something.

Nascar

I don't talk all that much about the media, tv, or movies here, but I figure this is as probably a good place as any to do that.

I was on the way to work this morning, and I was listening to this guy on the radio in a commercial who was losing his mind over 24 hour coverage of Nascar. I couldn't help but wonder to myself who wants or requires 24 hour coverage of Nascar, and why they would be losing their fricken minds over the concept of it.

While I live in San Diego, and I am sure there are plenty of Nascar fans around here, I just wonder what warrants all of the promotion that I see all the time for it over the past few years. I think stations generally just advertise to the local demographic, so I'm just wondering who in the world is so into this sport? I don't know a single person that cares enough to watch a full race here in SD let alone want to watch it all day every day.