by ·Comments Off on Portal 2 Music Video – Exile Vilify By The National

I have another film from the Tortoise Butler crew to share today.  This one was made for Valve’s recent Portal 2 music video competition.

 

I actually didn’t have such a massive involvement in this one.  I worked on some of the special effects and just sat at my computer churning out Half Life / Portal themed posters and citadel images that they placed in the film in post production to give the deserted streets of London a more in-universe feel.

The production was really done on a shoe string (with a steady-cam repair being carried out using a wooden spoon at one point) and in a very short space of time, approaching 48 hour film challenge conditions.

The way in which this one came out surprised me.  Some of the effects I worked on were much more effective than I expected they would be and it just went to show just how much you can do with the machines you have in your home and how even in a short space of time you can produce some decent quality content.

I also can’t believe they found someone who looked so much like Chell.

by ·Comments Off on Constant Internet Connections for Gaming

A growing trend in gaming is that more and more titles require a constant online connection.  This is even in games that do not actually use the internet for any of their features and pure single player experiences that never require you to team up with other people over the internet.

There is a temptation to rant about how this is frustrating, because it is.  There is a temptation to launch into a tirade about digital rights management, the main reason for a persistent online connection being required and how damaging it is to consumer rights, because it is.  There is a temptation to question just how much extra money it costs to run activation servers to monitor these always-on connections and what happens if the company goes out of business and the server goes down, because this is a genuine concern.

Instead, I’m going to comment on just how far the internet has come to actually enable this scenario to even exist, but that it still comes with a price.

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