I have been insanely busy for the past couple months. I have been working up to ninety-five hours per week. Is it worth it? I think so. I’m learning a lot.

Today we had two guest speakers, one from Animal Logic and one from retro Studios. Animal Logic is a visual effects studio in Australia that does special effects for films and for commercials. They are releasing their first feature-length film this weekend: Happy Feet. They worked on the special effects on The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, Moulin Rouge, Lord of the Rings, and numerous other recent movies.

Retro Studios is the only first-party Nintendo developer in North America, outside of the Nintendo of America headquarters in Washington state. They are located in Austin, TX, and are best known for the Metroid Prime series, which will soon see its third iteration released for the Wii.

The Animal Logic speech was very motivating, but was primarily aimed at artists and would-be producers. They only employ a handful of programmers, in their R&D department. I have to give the speaker credit, by the end I was contemplating a career in visual effects.

The Retro Studios speech was given by a software engineer and was much more technical, even going so far as to give us a high-level overview of the software architecture of Metroid Prime. The speaker talked a lot about Wii development and about the technical capabilities of the Wii. (Basically, it’s a Gamecube x2.) He also talked about the business practices used by Retro, a relatively small studio, in contrast with EA Tiburon.

There are three weeks left in the semester, including next week which is only two days long. Although I’m enjoying the work, it will be nice to get a little respite over the holidays.

I am ridiculously excited to see what developers can do with the Nintendo Revolution controller. There’s an article on Gamasutra right now where developers weigh in on what they want to see from the Revolution controller. Some excerpts:

“I thought up ideas like kayaking and being a matador as a joke, but I then realized that I would love those games!”

“Much like the analog thumb stick was added to the Playstation controller I expect within two years of the launch of the Revolution, both Sony and Microsoft will be packaging controllers with similar functionality with their consoles–and if Sony manages to really nail the functionality of the EyeToy, the combination of a spatially aware controller and the camera will be one that people will wonder how we ever lived without.”

“samurai sword-slashing”

I close with my personal favorite:

“As much as I’m excited about the possibilities of new genres, I’m also very excited about playing existing genres in new, and possibly better, ways. Here’s an obvious example: A Harry Potter adventure game. Yeah, you can wave the wand around and cast spells, everybody’s said that, but that alone is boring. What I want to see is this: You walk and turn with the thumb stick attachment, using the buttons for actions and to lock onto targets and circle them like in Metroid Prime (no aiming with the wand in this game, Harry Potter isn’t about head shots). The wand is used to case spells - in conjunction with a microphone attachment!
Imagine having to speak the spell you want to cast, and using different wand movements to create variations on the spell (maybe the closer you are to a ‘correct’ movement the more powerful it is, or maybe you can flick it in different directions to throw people about). This would add a whole new level of immersion to the game. No more lame button pressing or cycling through a spell list, just speak and cast like a real wizard! And learning spells would be much more fun to, having to recite the incantation (so that you match the preset words while at the same time the game recognizes the uniqueness of your voice).
Finally, let people create their characters and spend a year at Hogwarts – the kids would go nuts over it – and hell, even I’d buy it.”