Emotional Design

Sometimes ago I read some pages of this book and I find it a treasure. In this book’s prologue the writer wants to show the importance and effect of the emotion in the way humans think, make decisions, and choose, and why we should consider it in our designs.

Also in his book, Chris Crawford points out that the low level API of human beings is the emotion. If you want to design a masterpiece you must reach this level.

I already mentioned that my first and most important criterion for choosing and evaluating computer games is my feelings about them.

So, if I want to create successful computer games I shouldn’t ignore such an important parameter.

My Criteria for Computer Games

From time to time this question arise for me that “What is my criteria for evaluating computer games?” What makes me so passionate about a game?

The first think that I consider about a game is its emotional side. I mean how it’s look and feel, its story and so on. If the game fails in this phase, I will throw it away. If succeeds, I shall consider its gameplay and other technical issues.

Consider for example XIII: this game’s gameplay is shit. It’s too hard for me. There’s no point in it, no innovation, no nothing; Just a plain old everyday shooter. So, why do I love this game? The first thing that I realized about this game is that it uses Toon Shader (a technique that makes 3D scenes look like 2D cartoons) for rendering to create illusion of comic books. Here is the why: I love comic book very much, so I can’t resist such a game.

I love Resident Evil series for their horror theme, Star Craft for its sci-fi theme and great story, and Shining Force for everything. I feel so strong about these games.

Logical justifications cannot make me so passionate, and cannot create such enthusiasm in gamers. So you see, it’s all about emotion.

Defrag Your Mind

Recently, I had a presentation about Managed DirectX. I knew that people that I was supposed to speak for them have no background on this matter; ergo I organized my notes to be comprehensible for them.

During the process I realized that I’m learning new thing and finding answer for some of my own questions about DirectX.

After some thought on this happening I ended up with this:

If you want to deepen your leanings about some concept try to describe it to someone else that knows nothing about it – even a virtual one in your mind. That person questions you about many trivial things that you consider obvious, but when you try to explain them you see that it’s not that obvious. So you should find some concrete answer for them. This way you find some tiny bits and pieces of information that tie all information about that concept together and make it a whole. Also you may detect some relationship between this concept and some other concepts that may be useful to know.

If you can’t explain something to a six-year old, you really don’t understand it yourself.

—Albert Einstein

Weblog Reloaded

It’s a long time since my last post, because it was exam time. But now I’m free to post. For starters here is some of my brother’s works:



He wanted to be a “3D Artist” – and I wanted one. So I offered him Maya. I didn’t believe in him but he surprised me. He doesn’t use even primitive 3D techniques such as extruding but he creates mind boggling images. So here’s my mission to teach him what I’ve thought about 3D content creation in past years.

Conflict

He peered through the shimmering light of the torch… searching. Suddenly he felt a presence. Turning back in haste, he found himself in front of a hideous monster.

The adventurer seemed pretty calm. After all, if he wanted to be safe he didn’t bother to set out.

“This behemoth is way bolder than I thought,” could he say?

The battle ensued.

FrontPage Rules!

It’s some time now that I’m working on my website, and I was playing with FrontPage for the first time. I always believed DreamWeaver MX is the best, but now that I’m working with FrontPage I see that it is way too easier to work with.

In this adventure I’ve got some experience that I want to share:

1. Never use absolute paths. Always type the relative path for images or other stuff. This way you can easily move your pages around (especially when you want to publish them, this is handy).
2. Never mess around too much with table borders if you want your pages have the same look on deferent browsers (If you want to be sure, you should see your page on deferent browsers).

I also mentioned during typing this post that Microsoft Word rules too (I’m typing my messages in Word and then copy/paste them to blogger).