Want to help me pay for my wedding?

Click the button above to donate $5 to my wedding.  You can get a ticket to a Cafe event (like a stag and doe) we are hosting to help us pay for the wedding.

Se an overview of my life so far. I was born.... no wait not that far back...  I've been dating the same girl for what will be 10 years in july, and just last year she finally accepted my proposal for marriage.  If you read back to march of 2012 you can see some of the drama I had around that.  In 3 months I will be getting married, but I don't have a job anymore.  I lost my dream job of fixing computers back in October and my job hunt has been fruitless so far.  I've decided to dedicate my time towards more fruitful objectives, and thus I am teaching myself (thru online and free resources) how to 3d model using blender, and how to put my models together into a game using UDK.  I know these aren't the best solutions out there, but I am trying my best with free tools first.

Anyway if you live nearby (Niagara Region), and want to come to my wedding cafe you are welcome to join us.  It'll be at 1136 Vansickle Rd. N. St. Catharines ON, on July 6th at 5:30pm.. There will be games and prizes, you can pick up some baked goods and have a coffee with us.  Here's a link to the Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/256729154460219/ so you know where to get tickets.  Love Facebook for this stuff, everything gets encapsulated, and updating everyone is so easy.

Content creation

This has got to be the slowest bloody part of making a video game....  What on earth could have posessed me to think that after only a couple oblivion mods and skyrim mods I was ready to make a game from scratch?  UDK is nothing like Creation Kit, it reminds me very much of the old UnrealEd from Unreal Tournament.  Ugh how I hated that thing.  I never knew how to use it, the help file was nearly useless, and I didn't even know how the units worked. How anybody was able to use that thing to make such awesome looking levels was way beyond me.  Granted, I was never much of an artist, what I put on the canvas was never quite the same as what was in my head.  And for some reason I could never get it to look the same as what I wanted.  Frustrating...  I've since tried to learn both patience and acceptance when it comes to drawing.... I know now that I will never be able to draw something exactly how it looks in my head.  Some call this giving up.

Any way on to what sort of content I am creating....  This week I was working on the player model, nothing fancy just a placeholder for testing purposes, but I can't seem to rig the thing.  I apply the childOF modifier to an arm and it jumps out of place, and I just don't know what is going on.  I will get it but this sort of stuff shouldn't take so long.

UDK, Blender 2.66 and The GIMP

These are the tools I am using to create assets for my first Video Game.  I'm not going to fall into the trap of creating a Unreal Tournament clone, or even another Jazz Jackrabbit (though I did enjoy those games quite a bit).  The world doesn't need more shooters or more running games, what I want to do is mix an classic PC type RPG using weapons and armor pieces and maybe even magic, with a an old school River City Rampage style Beat 'Em Up.

I realize that these two genre's have been put together before, and I also realize that like the Shmup before it, the Beat Em Up is primarily a 2D game, but that's kind of my point, why not render in 3D even if it's only 2D or limited 3D movement anyway.  I will be adding to this later, so keep checking in from time to time.

Wedding Cafe or Stag and Doe?

Either way it will be a circus.  How many games are too many? 6 or 7 seems about right, what with loonie toss and twoonie toss, 50/50 draw, Sjoelbak, guessing jar, a hula hoop competition and maybe even corner-shot hockey.

I'm just not sure that my Bride-to-be's friends understand the duality of my personality enough to get what I am trying to go for.  I want a both a swanky cafe, with mocktails and special coffees and teas, and a room full of games.  I want people to dress up and have fun.  I want the cut the stuffiness with some good old fashioned Dutch Sjoelbak.  I want to see people in suits trying to get a puck in the five hole.  I want to wear a goofy hat with my wing tips.  I want both worlds represented in my Wedding Cafe.  I would like to show both of my heritages, and let Christina's shine as well.  My Canadian heritage can be seen in hockey, coffee, the twoonie toss, and probably the guessing jar, while my Dutch heritage shines through in the Coffee, the Sjoelbak, and the desserts.  So coffee is a major thing in both sides, so why not showcase that?  I'm not looking for a harvest festival, or a carnival, or a circus, or video gaming theme, or even a wildwest/country theme, even though those are all things I love too.  I want something that's a little bit country and a little bit city.  Like a sidewalk cafe with a pinball machine in the corner.  Or a gelato bar that serves good Pierogi.  Or a diner that serves out of this world pie (ok that's not really a dichotomy).  It's a cafe.  It's a games night.  It's a me (mario)!

Do we need to give a buffet at the beginning of the night?  Probably, or most of Christina's relatives will be really put off.  I hear they expect food early at any function.  I had not even considered that, I just assumed everyone had tea and cakes at 4 and dinner at 7.  I hadn't even thought of serving a full meal, I just assumed it would be nibbles and appetizers, like bruschetta; and chips; and a meat platter; and little sandwiches; and no soup; and a veggie platter; and fruit; with coffee and pastries throughout.  I would like there to be a few large tables and a couple more intimate tables (like a sidewalk cafe), with chips and cheezies and such on them (like a party).

Now I think I've said nearly enough on this subject tonight, really I just needed to get all of this off my chest.

Star Trek inspiring design choices.

Just one look at www.freshco.com tells you that the Charcoal and Green of it's website is very modern. They are the colours chosen for the recently minted (3 or 4 years old now) Sobey's brand grocery store Freshco.  It seems to me to be inspired by the starfleet uniforms protrayed in Star Trek.  Dark charcoal, bright green thin bands, and lots of round corners just screams Star Trek The Next Generation to me.  Do you suppose this will bring about more of an LCARS style User Interface in our smartphones, even more so than the windows phones below.

And just to see what I'm talking about you can to drag up an example of LCARS from http://www.lcarscom.net/ I know it isn't really the official Star Trek website, but that website dropped the LCARS look ages ago.  I'm not even sure the wayback machine web.archive.net will take you back far enough to find it.

Anyway, just to drive my point home even further, watch this next round of new graphic design after this star trek movie comes out.  You'll notice some correlation between what's on screen there and what graphic designers come up with.  I know art often imitates ART, but it has to come from somewhere.  Does this mean that the designers for Star Trek are more brilliant than everyone else so we all have to follow suit? Or does it even matter?