#diary2017

[monitocadaver]

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This year I have tried an experiment, drawing every day something about what I see / read or about the things that happen. When I finish it will be a gift for my girlfriend, she is the person who gave me the diary and wrote jokes on all the pages. Most of the drawings are not good, but when take a coffee with someone and ask what has happened during the previous months, I open the book and I can remember everything. #inktober #dailysketch #diary2017

[letterstoliane]

Today is not an excellent day.

I went to the school earlier for the scholarship. I was already on my way, and way too far from our house already when I realized that I forgot my Certificate of Grades and my Good Moral. I was so pissed, man. But then I found a solution, which is pumila ulit sa admin to pay for my good moral again and kukuha ulit ako ng COG. I don’t want to put everything here in detail. Basta in the end, checklist and pre-reg lang nakuha ko. Because wala yung mga prof. I wasted money, woke up early and bumiyahe ako for hours, for nothing but a photocopy. But hey, on the bright side, may napala rin naman kahit papaano.

And this is when the highlight of my day happened: I was hit by a jeepney. I didn’t manage to remember the driver’s face. I don’t even think I would still recognize him once I see him again. And di ko rin nakuha yung plate number!!! Now, the left side of my body was injured and I can feel the pain on my left leg. Magpapax-ray ako bukas and magpapacheck-up, without anyone in the house knowing about the incident. I don’t want to be their burden. And I have my own money din naman. Please include me in your prayers. I am hoping that my current condition or injury is nothing serious na dadating sa point na may bone fracture na pala or something. Please take care of yourselves. Do not be careless and be extra aware of your surroundings.

Learn how to value life as well. Everything was flashing right at my face earlier. Everything was legit in slow motion. I really thought I was gonna die. I remember myself joking how much I’d love to die because of a car accident. Be careful what you wish for. Please, pray for me guys. I love you all.

[kii-blog]

RACE TO THE END BOARD GAME

*Image is lost* We made a game under a time limitation. It was quite hard because the theme of the game was needed to be found in a newspaper. Here is our result.

[kii-blog]

Mise-en-scène

The arrangement of everything that appears in the framing……Mise-en-scène, a French term that means “placing on stage.” The frame and camerawork are also considered part of the mise-en-scène of a movie.

From Mise-en-scène - Elements of Cinema

The meaning of frame when it is using as a verb is “ to express something choosing your word carefully”.

[kii-blog]

New word lists

From Cambridge dictionary

Aesthetic - adjective -relating to the enjoyment or study of beauty minimalist - either noun or adjective - a style of art which used the smallest range of materials and colours possible, and only very simple shapes or forms contemporary - adjective - existing or happening now

[kii-blog]

BattleBlock Theater Review

The Trailer is from The Behemoth‘s YouTube channel.

BattleBlock Theater is The Behemoth’s 2D platformer game which was released in 2013. I have purchased the game in 2015 yet still cannot get myself off from it. This game always can magically keep its freshness and never let me down. The players are allowed to share their edited level to others, this feature is great enough to keep its playability and what’s more, the developers still updated the game such as giving new special characters etc. It has already stolen my 95+ hours so far, but surely it will steal more.

BattleBlock Theater maintains the art style as Castle Crashers which was cute, funny and crazy. This time, the player is not saving the kingdom anymore. You are on a ship full of friends ( which is a cool way to present friendship), unfortunately, the ship crashes onto an island. The kitties run a theatre on the island, however, the theatre is actually like a jail, they kidnap people, treat them as criminal and throw them into a theatre to challenge stages for their entertainments. In order to leave this island, the player needs to finish 80+ of platform levels. Doesn’t make sense? It’s alright. Nothing is logical, then everything is logical.

Just like most of the games, BattleBlock Theater has introduced its playing method through a few beginning levels. As long as you play, the hiding place of the Gems and a ball of Yarn are getting tricky to find and reach. Although the levels are getting difficult to be passed, and even it hurts the player painfully when the player cannot pass after trying hard, at the end the success the player get from games is always sweet and addictive.

The narrative is my favourite feature in this game. The new chapters always start with the narrator’s monologue which contains lots of jokes and some nonsensical descriptions. He really brings humour to the forefront. His fast pace, loud and vivid story-telling attracted me to keep playing and expect the story. However, the players might love the narrator and hate him at the same time. The narrator always reacts when the player dies, for instances, “Oh my goodness gracious!”, “Congratulation, uhmmm……DYING!”, or when the player has died several times in different he will say “That’s a new one!” or ”Don’t … don’t die.” These would be a very interesting dialogue when you are not playing the game, otherwise, for me, the narrator seems like laughing and making fun of me (tears in eyes). Sometimes, dying after thousands of times, when I hear the narrator say “OH MY GOD!”, I always want to tell him that I’m the one who needs to say "OH MY GOD" not you, the narrator!

[kii-blog]

Making changes to Battle Ships

We got homework of doing some changes to the game Battleships for a game design class. Before talking about the changes, let’s see the detail of the original version.

Battle Ships (original version)

Space: A piece of paper Goal: Winning the game (destroying all of the opponent’s ships) Component: Two players, a piece of paper and pen/pencil Mechanics: Choose the gird Outcome: Win, lose and draw Conflict: Man vs. man Rules: (1) Placing all of the ships on the grids, either horizontal or vertical. (2) Must placing all of the ships. (3) Guessing a grid that might be the place the opponent’s ship. (4) A ship is destroyed when the opponent knows all the grids of the ship. (5)  A player must guess one time in his turn. If a player guesses right, he gets a chance to keep guessing until he makes a miss. If a player guesses wrong, his turn is finished. (6) A game is finished when all of a player’s ships are destroyed.

Starting Changing Battle Ships

I had invited my mother to help me this work as Player B and I was Player A. In each changing version, there is only one adding elements, but as we learned in class, it might make a big change comparing to the original version.

I will list all of the elements of the new version and highlight the part which is different to the original version. After that, I will talk about how the new thing changes the game and how did the player feel about the game.

Firstly, I decided to let a dice join the game.

Space: A table Goal: Winning the game (destroying all of the opponent’s ships) Component: Two players, a piece of paper, pen/pencil and a dice Mechanics: Choose the gird and roll a dice Outcome: Win, lose and draw Conflict: Man vs. man and man vs the limited chances Rules: (1) Placing all of the ships on the grids, either horizontal or vertical. (2) Must placing all of the ships. (3) Guessing a grid that might be the place the opponent’s ship. (4) A ship is destroyed when the opponent knows all the grids of the ship. (5) A player must roll the dice in his turn to decide how many time that he can guess the grids, and the player must use all the opportunities he gets from dice to guess.  (6) A game is finished when all of a player’s ships are destroyed.

In the original version, sometimes one player might keep guessing through the game, this makes the player will have a chance to guess randomly and the other player don’t feel involved in the game. Base on this idea, I decided to limit the guessing time which could make the players to value each opportunity and guess more carefully, this idea might also balance the playing time of two players.

After we played through the entire game with this new change, we found out something. As we were playing, the players needed to guess and recorded on the paper during the game, therefore it became difficult to remember that how many chances of guessing were already used when the player rolled five or six.

We found it more interesting than the original version because the limited chances could help us or stop us depend on the situation. An example for helping players, a player had two chances in this turn, although he got a miss first, he still had a chance to keep guessing. An example for stopping players, a player had guessed right four times and the ship he kept attacking was Aircraft Carrier (which has five grid), but he couldn’t keep guessing after four guessing time because he got four times only from the dice.

In conclusion, this change is suitable to be played. However, if I could find out an easy way to record the guessing time, the game will be more completed with the change.

Secondly, I decided to introduce a new rule in the game.

Space: A piece of paper Goal: Winning the game (destroying all of the opponent’s ships) Component: Two players, a piece of paper and pen/pencil Mechanics: Choose the gird Outcome: Win, lose and draw Conflict: Man vs. man Rules: (1) Placing all of the ships on the grids, either horizontal, vertical or diagonal. (2) Must placing all of the ships. (3) Guessing a grid that might be the place the opponent’s ship. (4) A ship is destroyed when the opponent knows all the grids of the ship. (5)  A player must guess one time in his turn. If a player guesses right, he gets a chance to keep guessing until he makes a miss. If a player guesses wrong, his turn is finished. (6) A game is finished when all of a player’s ships are destroyed.

During the gameplay of the first changing version, I started to feel boring from the pattern of the ship placement. For example, once the player hits the opponent’s ship, the next step for him is thinking “is the next grid up, down, left or right”. However, according to the grid he hits, the choices might be less. Therefore, I decided to add diagonal to the placement.

After we played through the entire game with this new change, we found that it was harder than other versions because the new rule made the placement to be diversified. This change also expanded the time of playing from 8-10 minutes became 10+ minutes. However, it wasn’t too hard to play during the game compare to the original version.

Conclusion

Adding a new element to the game can make either a big change or a small change, however, the change could make the game become better and also worse on some parts.

[kii-blog]

20170301 Cinematic Fundamentals

Montage Montage was introduced by Sergei Eisenstein and were used in 1920s in Soviet Russia.

Montage is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. The term has been used in various contexts. It was introduced to cinema primarily by Sergei Eisenstein, and early Soviet directors used it as a synonym for creative editing.

From Montage (filmmaking), Wikipedia

Montage is a juxtaposition of different shots, therefore the audience must watch until the last shot, or they won’t know the meaning of this video.

Montage doesn’t tell a linear story (which means a series of events in which one follow another one directly).

Juxtaposition: Putting the things that are not similar next to each other.

＊Practice to use montage to edit a 20 seconds video.