Pixel Pushing Monkey

Meanwhile I'm working on a completely new template for my blog, I made the decision to temporarily rever the blog's template to something very simplistic. This will give me the flexibility to be able to add richer content without having to worry about the constraints of the previous blog template, and start looking forward to the eventual implementation of the new one.

I did run into one snag: Since WordPress's own default theme is really formatted for a fixed width 800x600 screen, it doesn't jive with my new design & content areas. I looked around and found this theme, which is a 1024 adaptation of the original WordPress template. You can download this template here:

WordPress Default Theme 1024 Wide

I've been contemplatinng creating a new blog template... perhaps something that's completely written from the ground up by yours truly. Can't say when I'll have it done, but at least by making the fact public, it might give me enough push & motivation to get it done.

In my younger days, I used to mock my father about how far he is behind the time, the fact that he can't touch-type (he's a classic two-finger, and on occassions where he's striving for productivity, three-finger, typist) or really grasp any idea of what this whole internet deal really is. Occassionally, he still asked me whether sending me email across the ocean, from Taiwan, would cost me any extra fees (naturally, he's more worried about me having to pay for receiving the email, than the fact that he might have to pay to send email... I love my dad).

It's an old, used, beat-up cliché, but I never thought I would one day consider myself closer to my dad's category rather than being one of the hip kids that's ingrained with all of the happenings in the tech world. The fact remains that I'm moving towards being one of the old geezer of the internet. Even though I'm still a notch below thirty, I have been in this tech bubble for nearly a decade.

(more...)

Through a sequence of unforeseeable events, I ended up becoming a XBox 360 owner over Christmas. I have never been one to adapt a new console platform upon its initial release, since I was burnt by NEC's vaunted PC Engine platform as a kid. Given that, I had plenty of catching up to do.

I was a happy XBox owner, happy enough at the time that I sold my PS2 for a very cheap price including a bundle of games to a friend. That turned out to be one of the worst decisions I had ever made, because PS2 continued pumping out quality games for another two years, while XBox failed to pick up much more momentum and lacked quality title until the introduction of the XBox 360.

With that aside, Halo was the reason why anyone bought the XBox at all, even though it was not a particularly innovative game at the time. First-person shooter was already a very well developed genre, although it never fared quite as well on outside of its computer-platform origin. Halo marked the first time, that anyone was able to prove the FPS games can be done just as well on console as they have been on PC.

That brings us to the point, that Halo wasn't a genre-redefining game of any sort; it is however, very much a genre-refining game.  Very much like Blizzard software, another company that's been known for their refinement of existing genre, Bungie Software's accomplishment with Halo is not to revolutionize, but refine and balance everything until it is near perfect.

Small and subtle game mechanics goes a long way towards changing the overall experience of the game. At a time when most FPS was about hoarding the biggest gun and the highest amount possible (in all descendants of Doom-like games, you carried as many weapons as there are in the game at all times, and you only used weakers weapons when the best weapon ran out of ammo), Halo limited the player to carry only two weapons of their choice, with limited ammunition. You had to constantly juggle the best situation to use a certain type of weapon versus another, and that results in drastically different approaches to encounters depending on what weapons you were carrying at the time. One little change to the traditional game mechanic at the time, yielded a completely refreshing and different game experience.

Somewhere along the line, Halo 2 lost of that magic. The developers in various interview admitted that Halo 2 wasn't quite as balanced and polished as they liked it to be. I felt some of that too, since I could never bring myself to play more than half-way through Halo 2 in numerous opportunities. There was something intangible that bugged me about Halo 2, something that made it stale & boring. A weird balance that I never quite pinned down, but can only react by quitting the campaign.

I was not exactly excited when Halo 3 came out, due to my experience with Halo 2. However, since I got my own XBox 360, there's no reason to not own the most renowned franchise on the platform. I could've picked up a number of other games on the aisle, but most of which I would just rent from Gamefly and then dump once I'm done with them. Halo 3, for whatever its historical value is, should be owned regardless.

The logic behind buying Halo 3 had really little to do with the game's playability, but in retrospect, after finishing the single player campaign entirely by my lonesome (I didn't even do that with the original Halo, a friend and I co-oped through the entire game), this was one of the best gaming experience that I've had in a long time.

At no point in the game, did I feel that I wasn't challenged enough, and I was never so frustrated by the difficulty to just "give up" either. Most importantly, is that every battle encounter had a multitude of solutions, the encounters never play out exactly the same way, you are never pigeonholed into doing anything just one way. This is where the subtlety behind the game shines. The balancing of AI, the clear mission objectives & direction, and still having the flexibility to deal with every single battle in a multitude of ways dictated by you, not the game.

By comparison, I've also been playing CoD4 through the single player campaign. It is the most mundane & boring single player experience I've had in a long time. The feel of the battles might be authentic, but at no point did I ever have the flexibility to play the game the way I want to, versus just following directions that's being constantly hollered at me. Of course, that is the trademark of the CoD series, it's a "shooter on rails". You follow directions, you camp spots, you fire away at enemy from cover for 5 minutes, you move to the next spot. Plant a beacon, pull a switch, more 5-minute cover fights. There are people who appreciate that type of focused, linear gameplay.

However, it is much harder to program a game where the AI reacts to what you do, and you're given freedom to roam and reach resolution by your own devise rather than scripted events. On that alone, Halo 3 is a much more well made game than CoD4. Toss in the balancing of all the weapons, abilities, even sub-weapons and equipments newly introduced to the game, it is really the best FPS that I've ever played.

Of course, this brings up the question if it's better for a game developer to rehash old gameplay and just refine and polish it, rather than innovating and revolutionizing the industry (and possibly, most likely, falling flat on their face for doing so). That's an entirely different topic for another day.

Warning: This post is undoubtfully, 100% emo.

Traditionally, I only post emo stuff following you know, some sort of a heart-breaking event in my life. This time really isn't any different. Yes, there is a heart-breaking event in my life (of a very typical & easily guessable nature). However, that event in itself isn't to be talked about here in a public forum. As far as this post is concerned, that event only serves as a catalyst for me to think about posting something here that is related to the mood itself, but not the subject matter. It also serves to explain why this "blog" uses a publicly available template, instead of a customized, made-just-for-me template that all proper designer should have.

The heart of the matter is, I loathe everything I make.

I had a conversation with my best friend last night, it was brought up that I have this huge void, a yearning and desire to be loved. She thought that I wanted to be loved by everybody as much as I loved myself, seeing that I always seem to self-righteous and stern about my ideals. There's no question that she was definitely right about my need to be loved, but the reason is actually opposite of what she thought. I don't love myself, not even a little bit.

Part of being a designer is that you need to have very firm belief in what you're doing. Design is subjective, although you may support your design choices with as much rationalization, facts and data as possible, you can't avoid debating over subjective opinions. For example, if I chose a shade of light green as our branding color, I can support that choice with the rationalization that it is a friendly, approachable color. Thus allowing our brand to stand out against other brands which are more tech-oriented, with a clearly defined male-dominant target audience. At the same time the color will not turn away the tech audience by being too effeminate. I've made this choice based on my experience, my personal opinion, and gut instinct.

So when someone asks, "Why can't we go with blue?" Or even better, when someone says, "I really don't like green, we should go with a color that's more, you know... (insert your choice of pretty/normal/like what that other company does/pink here)." As a designer, you need to have the conviction and confidence to stand up for your point of view. This need for conviction is why I seem to be self-loving. "Steve thinks he's always right," is a statement of what I seem to be in front of others, not necessary of how I process thoughts internally.

I like to blame my job for this weird personality disorder of mine. It is also very possible though, that I chose this career because of that personality disorder. So in a way, I would've been the same whether or not I'm a designer, but by some strange twist of fate I happen to have a personality disorder that allows me to perform better at my job.

So, I have no love for myself. In its place is really a constant stream of self-doubt, insecurity and self-loathing. I can't really explain how or why it started, it goes back for as long as I could remember, even as a child I was introspective in the worst way possible. I'm constantly examining my own faults, and rarely happy with any of my accomplishments (if one could call them accomplishments-worthy at all). Worst of all, is that even under this constant self-examination, endless number of personal flaws still slip through the crack. Thus the endless cycles of self-examination, loathing, and fixing what isn't fixable.

How is this an essential part of my creative process? One of the most important lesson that all designer must learn, is that everything has flaws, faults, and must be critiqued. If you can't identify what is "wrong", you can never figure out what is "right". Then you may or may not look at what you've just corrected into the "right" and try to determine whether or not the new "right" is now also "wrong" as well. The only thing that stops the cycle, is the deadline imposed by some other department outside of the design process. This pursuit of perfection will never end, and perfection doesn't exist.

When I'm done with a major design project, I usually sit back a bit, admire all that has been accomplished, and feel good about my existence in the universe for a few brief moments. It's only a matter of time before I find flaws in what I just accomplished, then there comes the fear and desperate hope that no one else has noticed the same flaws I just found. "How did I let that one get away?" "That color isn't right." "I should've done something different here." And it's only a matter of time before the momentary relaxation turn into another round of complete self-loathing.

Yes, I loath everything I've ever created.

There was a time when my portfolio was small enough, and my ambition for my own design-oriented website was just a few pages. I designed the website over the weekend, have everything coded, up and running by the end of that weekend. If I had any time at all to go through the self-examination process, it just stops. I hate what I've just created, I must destroy it and rebuild it again. This is also why PixelPushingMonkey has no real website and no real design of mine at the moment. I have not found enough time to complete this massive project in as short of a time as possible, before the self-loathing kicks in, before I want to destroy it all just to rebuild it half-way again.

I guess, this is the quality that makes me at least somewhat decent at my job.

It is also a very slow deterioration that eats through my very own being, a bit at a time, making that heart devoid of self-love even more empty. The void continues to grow, and my yearning for love goes along with it.

It would be a misnomer to say that the cycle never ends, because at some point, I imagine, I would have to stop. I would collapse, I would give it all up. At some point... maybe.

I could let it continue to eat me up inside, or I could force a change of perspective on my own life. How do you change someone into something that they're not, that they've never been? I don't think it's possible to change one's personality and their belief in life by rationalization and willpower. Aren't we all exactly just as dysfunctional as we're meant to be?

For the moment, the void is manageable.

Oh, this is just too, too good.

B3TA : FEATURES : Phallic Logo Awards

The game designers across the nation are playing is; can they design a logo and get it approved without the client realising it's a big spurting penis?

We asked our readers to send in the best cock logos from around the world for our team of experts to evaluate. Now we present to you the very cream of the cocks.

ROFLMAO!