I maintain and populate, host a weekly podcast, host and present video packages, interview developers, organize community playdates, give stuff away, and generally have conversations with gamers. From April 2014 to December 2018 (4 years 9 months) San Francisco Bay AreaCommunity Manager Activision I'm the focal point for Activision's community management efforts on the publishing side. I let the audience know they're heard while telling the dev team what's on the minds of their most loyal players. Produced and hosted the weekly Twitch stream, wrote and managed social media postings (I was the steward of and all relevant Facebook outposts), forum discussions, contests, giveaways, even just-for-fun puzzles that hint at new DLC content. Community Developer Ubisoft Maintained a two-way street between the development team at Ubisoft Studio SF and the often very vocal players of Rocksmith.
#PALETTE SWAP NINJA PC#
Freelance Writer Self-employed Reviews, previews, and features about video games, music, and technology for publications including Wired, Time Out New York, Official Xbox Magazine, Guitar World, PC Gamer, PSM, NBA Inside Stuff, Slam, Family PC, and a few that even I've forgotten about. #PLSDSP San Francisco Bay AreaVoice Actor/Announcer Play Record Paws Productions Announcing and voice acting for corporate videos, interactive products/computer games, and all that good stuff. Swapping palettes and other tricks are a part of the process, and I’m sure we’ll see more as time goes on.Vocalist/Guitarist/Writer Palette-Swap Ninja Funny songs, sometimes. Creating better-looking assets, filling the screen with objects, and maintaining a steady frame rate with limited load times will always be a challenge. While modern gaming rarely deals with storage issues, there will always be technological limits when trying to push the creative edge. Developers used swapping intelligently to create wonderful gaming moments that are still remembered today. The palette swaps I mentioned were all born of memory limitations. The combination of art with technology presents many challenges that are overcome with skill, ingenuity, and sacrifice. Game development is one of the most grueling art forms around. Reptile was my go-to in MKII and nine-year-old-me didn’t think he was a boring re-use of assets, he thought he was a cool green ninja that could turn invisible. When creating a game, resources are finite. I’d argue that if the special moves are unique, it’s better to have a new swapped character, than none at all. The Mortal Kombat franchise was criticized for relying too heavily on swapping with the introduction of Ermac, Noob Saibot, Reptile, Smoke, and Rain all using the same model. They may look nearly identical, but MK fans would never call these two the same. Changing their special abilities however, makes all the difference when it comes to fighting games. The same actor and costume was photographed in different poses to provide the difference. Sub-Zero and Scorpion were much more literal palette swaps. Minor tweaks to hair, eyebrows, and clothing can go a long way to differentiate the same core model. Street Fighter II: Championship Edition gave Ken a different Shoryuken arc and Ryu’s Hurricane Kick a knockdown.Īkuma and Dan were introduced later as evil and goofy variations respectively. Who can forget the eternal rivalry of Ryu and Ken? They even had identical move-sets when first introduced in the original Street Fighter, but this was a Mario/Luigi situation as players could only control the two main protagonists to face each other, with the winner going to challenge the computer controlled opponents. And of course Luigi was created by swapping the main color of Mario to green, giving the second player an identity. Red Koopas turned back from ledges but their green counterparts foolishly walked off, even to their own demise. Changing Mario’s clothes to white denoted the fireflower power-up, while making him flash during invincibility. Super Mario Bros. used this technique heavily. This was so effective, the term Metroid-vania was eventually coined to describe side-scrollers that used this mechanic. This is an integral part of Metroid’s design, locking away parts of the game until a new ability grants access. The ice beam temporarily freezes enemies and allows the player to use them as platforms.
Make them red instead of blue and you get a brand new character/item/weapon/level without having to put the hours into creating it, or the memory to store it.Īn ingenious use of palette swapping came from the first Metroid. This was a very ambitious game for the technology at the time, and in order to save space, they created a new weapon (ice beam) by simply changing the color of her gun to blue.
The term palette swap originally meant shifting the colors of a created art asset in a game.
0 kommentar(er)
