Nightly Studios

Video Game Studio based out of New York

[nightlygaming]

Writing Thoughts: The Fear of Fear

We've all heard the quote: "The greatest fear is fear itself." And if you haven't until now, then welcome to the club of knowing its simple yet profound existence.

Being put in situations that could make me not seem or be fearless was one of the toughest fears for me to admit that I had, because I was afraid of not being fearless. Now during the day of age in my career, I've noticed that this resonates with me in a way that may be even more familiar with you than the fear quote: “writer's block”.

Now, the best way that has helped me solve any issue, or fear, was to face it head on. But sometimes that sounds easier said than done, no? By considering myself in my mind someone who is familiar with the creative process, or quite actually, "processes", I've created an expectation, a stigma of some sort, that somewhat states that my thoughts are so collective, that I "don't have the time". While I have been "not finding the time" to write more, I've simply just been making an excuse to avoid it. It's funny how simple it seems when it's put into plain text, but if it was so simple, then why does it happen to all of us so often?

Putting things into practice is always a wise idea, as creative processes are verrry conceptual, and can only be as creative as they are "unlimited." Writing anything, even if it's "bloop blop bleep" several times in a row, has always proven to me to be a better approach to curing writer's block, rather than writing nothing at all. "Bloop blop bleep"... Well, I hope you get what I mean.

This is because that's what writing actually is: A way of describing your thoughts. And if you realize what your thoughts AREN'T focused on, then it will help you describe what your thoughts actually are. And then, you can analyze them, thus the glorious classification of “editing” is born.

So in a way, writer's block is like a lid on a jar, blocking your thoughts from releasing out of the jar. So how do you remove the lid: taking it off directly, or letting those words get so bottled up that they eventually explode the lid off, and even the jar too?

Well the way I like to see it is this: If you see the lid, the jar, and the words all as the same thing, then the lid was never a lid at all.

- G

[nightlygaming]

Persona 5: An Aggressive Stance on Spoilers

Persona 5 released recently for international sales, April 4th 2017, but has garnered some bad relations with some streamers and YouTubers. In short, they are denying players rights to broadcast or upload videos that might spoil the game for others. Full rules here.

The penalties of breaking Atlus’ request are as quoted;

“If you decide to stream past 7/7...you do so at the risk of being issued a content ID claim or worse, a channel strike/account suspension.”

While this might sound like an innocuous suspension, it isn’t. For a YouTuber, a strike is devastating and can lead to a permanent ban with 3 strikes. More information here.

So what does this mean? Basically less video coverage of Persona on large gaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube.

What I’m unsure of is whether this move was intentionally made to stir up more press to talk about the game, or actually sincere measures taken to protect fans from spoilers. For most content creators they already know their audience types when playing a game that might be story heavy.

Such that, viewers who are planning to play the game actively take it upon themselves to not watch the video to avoid spoilers. The undecided viewers would come in to watch a bit of gameplay to see whether if they would buy the game or not. Lastly, the indifferent viewers are the ones who just don’t care about spoilers or the game, and would watch from beginning to end.

I don’t feel like Persona series itself has ever achieved mainstream notoriety, even though the Shin Megami Tensei franchise has been doing extremely well. So it surprised me when content creators talk about Persona when they would not even consider playing it otherwise. While on the flip side, those who do actively play games like Persona are not able to even showcase it, other than saying it’s a fun game.

-L

[nightlygaming]

Visit Original Link

Apparently, all you got to do is say the word “fact” and Giuseppe will show up with one ready for you.

Listen to the rest of this episode now if you haven’t already!

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes and follow on Soundcloud!

[nightlygaming]

Working with a Programmer as a Sound Designer

As a sound designer looking for work, I was used to doing everything by myself. I took videos and stripped the audio out and added all the sounds and music in ProTools. It took me a while to get used to that kind of work flow. Once I got used to it, I felt very confident in my audio skills. 

However, when I was introduced to doing sound and music for video games I realized it is a completely different ballpark. Video games are not linear and are completely interactive. For Nightly I had to give them music track by track so they can take the drums out or any sounds out based on how the player is interacting with the game. 

FX such as EQ sweeps and pitch shifting needed to be done in the game engine. Which is a heck of a lot harder considering most of the time you have to write a script for these kind of things (something I have difficulty doing). So working with a programmer is what I spend most of my time doing in making audio for games and it is a fun process. I give the programmer the sounds I made and tell him exactly where the sound goes and how I hear it should be in the game. 

As of right now this is how I work with a programmer but eventually (hopefully) I won’t need a programmer next to me and will be able to implement the sounds and music myself!

- J

[nightlygaming]

Drawing from Reference

A rough quote from one of my art teachers during a life drawing session, where we drew human models, “Learn and draw the fundamentals before you stylize it” This was addressing one of the student’s style of shading the human figure.

What they did was, more or less, shade the model to what they’ve imagined to be pleasing rather than what they actually saw. This happens a lot, even for me when drawing something in front of me. Such as drawing larger eyes, longer legs or slimmer figures. I might not even notice it, and most of this might reflect on how I view the figure.

These biased views might affect you on other works without you even noticing it. While “artist freedom” allows artists to modify how something looks, I still agree that creators should still understand the fundamentals of why something looks the way it does before they take the next step.

A common example are graphic designers using gears to design a logo. While they can toss together a few gear pieces together to make something look appealing, and not even notice they’ve designed a set of locked gears. This infuriates a lot of mechanical engineers.

On a similar note, when we were creating the visuals with bricks (as you can see above), it was important to understand the size of each brick and how it is laid. Instead of haphazardly drawing lines of where the bricks are, it is important to imagine how a mason might lay it out or cut a brick (I’ve cut tiles before and it’s a pain to make intricate form fitting cuts).

Once you get this fundamental understanding down, you can expand from it and still keep the seed of reality within your creation. This makes the difference between a believable exaggerated drawing, to something that looks oddly distracting.

- L

[nightlygaming]

Endless Polishing

In most cases, I could always improve something I’ve made. Whether if it is adding more, polishing the existing work, or trimming out excessive content. There comes a time where I have to decide when it’s good enough to move onto the next item.

It might seem like common sense, but I just find myself wanting to come close to completing something before moving onto to the next item.

It isn’t just about the diminishing returns, but about how much I’m also willing to spend the time on improving something. There are a few milestones for me when I create something; conceptual, functional, and presentable.

If I’m to address these steps for artwork, conceptual design could possibly be a spread of hand drawn works. This means it’s quick, and conveys an idea, but in no way can be used in the product. The functional step would be closer to placeholders, works that can be translated into the game maintaining the correct aspects required. Now this is where the polishing steps begins, which is when I spend the most time to make it presentable.

If I’m to address this to creating a game, conceptual design would be the ideas on pen and paper. This means fleshing it out on a design doc, which I’ve mentioned in a previous post. Functional would be actually putting together a playable demo, it doesn’t have to look pretty but it has to work to some degree. The presentable phase would be the iterations of adding content from user feedback, balancing the gameplay, upon a number of things. This can become unwieldy extremely quickly.

There is self satisfaction when I do make something better, but this would do. ;)

- L

[nightlygaming]

Flightly Studios

When the Nightly Moon rises, our team team gets on our weekly grind. But last weekend, I took the business to the skies. 

In a tube. 

In a building. 

I flew in a tube. 

They even added fart rock to the recording too, check it out above!

- W

What do you guys have planned for your weekend? Whatever it is, make it a good one!

[nightlygaming]

Future Proofing a Game

I’ve seen time again about discussions over graphics of realism and stylized art such as cel shading or pixel art. And this discussion is older than games itself, it also applies to paintings and photographs. You could see where more paintings started to move away from realism when photography filled that niche. And then came cycles of different styles such as impressionism and abstract art being two that are fairly recognizable.

I see the same trend in video game art styles. These waves of styles come and go, which means you can’t really future proof any game. When you lean towards the stylized aesthetic feel you avoid the problem where realistic games face with aging graphics. However, you can’t avoid current trends or saturations of similar styles.

On a similar note, you can see this happen in gameplay and design as well. Such as the Last Guardian, which has been pushed back and delayed for so long that you can actually feel the difference in the dated game camera controls.

The process with technology and style is ever changing, so it isn’t really possible to future proof a game. Instead focus on making sure what you want the player to perceive from the game is clear. And borrow from other visual media to make sure the style you're portraying is consistent.

This all of course comes at a cost, as more attention to detail usually raises the production value quicker than returns are worth. You can only have two of the three; quick development, low cost, or good production.

- L

[nightlygaming]

Line, Linee n' Liney

Ahh, cartoons... What a way to represent the pit stop between reality and the mind. People have been referencing reality's essence through art since the beginning of time, but then an idea turned into an action: To change it.

For example, I drew this animated gif featuring Cartoon Network's longest running TV series to date: Ed, Edd n Eddy. Besides being my personal favorite, this show was imperative at being FULL of life, while showing high amounts of variations of life as we know it. From three kids in a cul-de-sac looking for candy on hot, summer days, to dropping pianos on characters till they're flat as a pancake but being completely fine afterwards, this cartoon is relatable as it is imaginative. One of the most recognizable traits of this show that I featured in this gif is the constant movement of the outlines, what are known as "boiling lines". All living characters in the series have their line-work rotating in a constant loop of frames, as well as the objects they hold or are in control of. This also ties into the process of the show's creation: The entire show's line-work is hand-drawn, meaning every time those moving lines were framed, there had to be an entirely new drawing that was made by hand. That means almost every character frame in the show had to be redrawn three times! Talk about lines starting out the door (pun).

Remember that the next time someone says cartoons are too "simple".

- G

[nightlygaming]

Where My Passion for Making Games Began (or at least where I think it did)

When I was growing up, home entertainments systems were started to become somewhat affordable. And by that I mean, personal computers and video game consoles. I was lucky enough to benefit from my dad’s line of work. 

While my memory is fuzzy, I remember playing Who Framed Roger Rabbit on an IBM and having old arcade machines like Punch-Out in the garage. So, having access to games to play definitely fostered an early interest in it.

Though I never did ask for video games as a Christmas present, I was one of those kids who did ask for Legos (this is going to weave back in, so bare with me for a moment). We all know how awfully expensive Lego sets and models can be. But one year I managed to get one Lego castle set by bargaining that I merge it with my birthday gift. This was the Lego 70404 King’s Castle Set, and I still have it with all the pieces.

But what benefited me the most was the Lego bucket of assorted bricks, which was the last Lego gift I’ve ask for. The assorted bricks allowed me to create things that I could imagine, without following instructions. I would also kit-bash pieces together to make spaceships and mechs. However, without prior knowledge of building smaller Lego sets, I wouldn’t have known where to begin.

Now fast forward a bit, home internet PC gaming is now affordable than ever. And a lot of multiplayer games started becoming popular. Starcraft gained a huge following and people started making custom maps to share with other players online. It felt like the game was meant for the community to enjoy. These weren’t locked, so anyone could have downloaded the map, modified it, and resubmitted it back online for people to play. 

It was a constant evolution. It was social media sharing before that was even a thing. Custom games with good modifications kept gaining attention, and being shared and downloaded more. This is what  birthed games like DoTA and all its variants in Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2.

The barrier for entry was low, with the Map Editor anyone could open up and poke around to make the changes they believe would benefit the game better. This is what I believe got me into programming and creating games.

Now, I believe if I didn’t have the desire to be creative early on from building Lego sets, and just having a sense of enjoyment of drawing and creating things, I wouldn’t have made the jump to actually bother creating custom maps on Blizzard games.

- L

[nightlygaming]

An Honest Conversation Leads to Honesty with Our Audience

If it wasn’t painfully obvious to you guys, we’ve kind of been slacking to put it lightly when it comes to updating our company blog these past couple of weeks. But as it turns out, this is just one of those “growing pains” – as Scott put it – that our small start-up company is going through.

We’re a small dedicated team of 6 guys trying to do everything at once. And even though it feels possible at times, we’re still just 6 guys and we’re still working our way through this company.

And unfortunately, for you guys, it means we dropped the ball a little bit when it came to updating our blog and other social media outlets. And I think, one of the important things here, is our transparency with this issue. I don’t want to speak for everyone at Nightly but I don’t want to be know as a company that starts something and fails to finish it – whether it be a new game or something as simple as daily blog posts.

After realizing our impromptu hiatus, I had a long and in-depth phone conversation with Scott about all of this. I mention it because he was the one who brought up the idea of being completely transparent with our growing audience (as well as within the company). And it’s conversations like that – the tough ones with no clear answer (since we’re all still figuring it out) – that are important to have. But I bet you’re wondering what this means for you guys.

We’re going back to our daily routine of posts. And we’re also going to share more personal stories about our relationships with gaming/art/music/etc. and how those passions brought us all together. First things first, we want all of you to know who we are, inside and out.

All of that being said, I apologize for the lack of content for the past couple of weeks and here’s to our future and staying honest with you – our audience!

And while I have you here, why don’t you head over to our Facebook page and give us a like!

- P

[nightlygaming]

Drawing From Reference

Ever hear when someone says "I can only draw it when I'm looking right at it"? Well that WASN'T me. As a kid, my mind served as my main reference. Between doodling during class and not having internet throughout most of the nineties (maybe). I’m not saying I never used direct visual reference but most of the time I drew from memory and almost always as a cartoon. Well... I actually do not recommend this.

Don't get me wrong, the pros of relying on your thoughts can definitely be a good mental exercise, and being the kid who made "lightning drawings" off the top of his head was a perk. It is a great FEELING to create something from your MIND. But your MIND is a mental library, a collection of thoughts that can lead you into creating new thoughts and outward creations. As an artist, it is VERY IMPORTANT to expand that collection. You should be "copying" from reference as much as you can, which will build your skills and add more reference to your mind. And that makes it EASIER to use your mind as a reference after.

Attending art school was a great realization of how crucial it is to use our life as a direct reference. Figure Drawing should not just be a class to finish your degree, but an everyday practice. Even as a cartoonist, you'll get better by referencing other existing characters. But if your knowledge on anatomy is stronger, your character's poses will be much stronger. Now, actually, this is all pretty obvious. But when we are used to doing something a certain way, we may tend to continue to do it in that way only and limit our growth rate of learning. - G

[nightlygaming]

Nightly Session 009: THE TEDCAST

Hey everyone! This week's episode of the Nightly Sessions is unavailable due to the fact that it has -- FOR ONE WEEK ONLY -- become THE TEDCAST. Ted, who is a scientist, has been listening to this pod

Oh my gosh, it’s late but it’s here and it’s also sort of not here. This week’s episode of the Nightly Sessions is brought to you buy Ted and his podcast The Tedcast. It may be our ninth episode but it’s also the first (and probably lasy) episode of The Tedcast.

He came in, he invaded, and he drank sweet tasty beers with us while we talked about video games, Taking Back Sunday (for some reason), and craft beers. 

It was fun to have a guest and everyone here at Nightly would like to thank Ted for gracing us with his presence (even though he’s a jerk).

[nightlygaming]

The Art of Hosting a Podcast

Podcasting has grown in the past couple of years and it’s becoming increasingly easier for folks all around the world to start their own. But, in my opinion, there are a lot of things that go into it that most people don’t normally think about before they start.

The first thing that I noticed, when starting my own podcast/helping host the Nightly Sessions, was that people tend to become aware of themselves when they’re sitting in front of a device that’s recording them. And I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles to get over when you first start a podcast of your own. In my experience, I would start to feel a little embarrassed at the sound of my own voice. Which, honestly, is a natural feeling for anyone but being able to hear the awkwardness on playback was a jarring feeling. And at first, it became something that deterred me from wanting to continue podcasting. 

But eventually, the more I spoke on a microphone and with other people, I felt more comfortable speaking (which is a weird skill to improve or even have) and it started to show with each episode of my old podcast. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the best way to get better at podcasting (or any kind of entertainment) is to just start doing it. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and the way to become a good host.

Now, I don’t think I’m a good host at all (I honestly just love talking to my friends) but with the idea of being a host in mind is, sometimes, extremely stressful. While you’re recording -- or at least while I am -- you have dozens of things going through your head at once. You’re watching the time (because you generally don’t want to have a 3-hour podcast about nothing), you’re trying to move the conversation along when there’s a lull (because there isn’t anything worse than dead air), you have to try and keep everyone sitting with you engaged, and on top of that you have to stay engaged throughout the whole thing so you yourself don’t come off as someone who’s just there to ask questions. 

It’s a lot like working on the fly and trying to make a project work. It’s stressful at first but in the end, it’s ultimately rewarding. The more we record and the more we release episodes, I feel like we’ll all become top-notch podcast boys.

... and speaking of the podcast, why don’t you give it a listen? 

- P

[nightlygaming]

The Animator’s Survival Kit

An experienced animator will not only recommend, but will most likely insist on leading you towards a classic read known as The Animator's Survival Kit. Which was written by Richard Williams, the man behind directing the animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and many other achievements. It's an instant classic, as well as an essential tool to getting on your way to animate whatever your heart desires. And don't worry, it has a lot of pictures (duh)!

Animation will ALWAYS consist of more than one frame, thus the best -- and most realistic -- advice I can give you is to try and draw your keyframes down first, as you will decide how many frames will be in betweens as you go (Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose). 

Balancing these two principles (well, actually, they are technically one Principle but with two ways of going about it) can make the difference between having your time consuming work actually "finished" or not. 

But is artwork ever really finished? That can be a question for another day.

- G

[nightlygaming]

Recycling and Building off of Open Source Code

My personal view of coding projects in general is to make it accessible and easy to implement into other things I’m working on. I learn different ways of working by reading other people’s work and even more so by building on top of existing code after I get a solid understanding of it. Most of what is being written is not revolutionary, but instead it’s just a cog in a larger machine.

When I was completely new to the Unity API and library, I would look into something that was well documented. The Unity Tutorials are a good place to start (if you’re interested in looking into coding yourself). They have video tutorials and their code is easy to follow.

I started by not only following along in the tutorial, but by expanding little features or changing the behavior of the code.

For example, Unity does not have a step by step tutorial on how to create an isometric grid. But by reading up and working out on paper what needed to be done, I’ve expanded upon the already existing game grid code by manipulating how it was drawn and how the game objects moves within the grid.

This reduces the time of having to write the same code over again from scratch. While it does sound simple on paper, it does require some knowledge in computer graphics and linear algebra to implement the changes.

[nightlygaming]

The Principles of Animation

The very definition of the action to "animate" is to "give life." That being said, we are all already potential animators. "What the heck is this guy saying?" you ask reading this. Well look; one of the most key ingredients to understanding this can be found through the same way with anything in life: through the basics.

Whether you're in art school or not, The Principles of Animation are your best friends within the craft. This concept has been broken down by many legendary artists through time and again into twelve main principles, some being Timing, Anticipation, and Exaggeration. Although it can be widely agreed on that animation is a very complex and in depth study, it can be understood simply by anyone.

For example, If I took a picture of an apple, then took another picture where the apple was slightly moved, the two pictures back to back will represent that the apple has moved, without anyone having to tell you. Simple enough, no?

Another essential tip is understanding that animation takes time... A lot of time. Mapping out your animation as a whole can be done more efficiently by creating something that is known as a keyframe. A keyframe is considered a main frame within an animation. There will always be more than one. And it will be up to you to determine which ones are frames and which ones are keyframes. The frames in between the keyframes are called... In between frames. 

"You's was right, I totally's got's this!" you said to yourself while reading.

However, animation contains and is basically a natural law of living. There are some things that are what they are, for example, if you threw a ball across the room, the first keyframe is essentially the ball in your hand and the last one is the ball on the ground across the room. This is pretty much inevitable, just like the ball doing what it does naturally through the laws of physics. 

But here's the catch... How was the ball thrown? Was it bouncing? Did the thrower wind up a mighty pitch so it looks like Bugs Bunny's arm turning into a windmill? Now that's where more keyframes can be planned out, added and, most importantly, it’s where the animator can have a bit of fun.

- G