Internet Art is Deviant

The other day I uploaded a new picture to my deviantart account which is in of it's self is a rare enough occurrence and has a long enough of a rambling nonsensical description that it might be worth a blog post of it's own (you might be interested in the picture or description if your interested in my silly romhack). In fact I am not sure how many people even know or remember I have a deviantart account. It's certainly not something I pay a lot of attention too. In fact, I mostly only got it to be able to view mature images and decided to upload a few of the old things I had laying around there.

Part of the reason for my lack of attention is because I have long ago given up on ever being an artist, since the only art I seem to be capable of making is either simple pixel art or stuff about on par with the pictographs I use on this blog (minus the ones that are blatantly traced). Most of the work I have in my deviantart account is either collage work or pixel art (and the new picture I put up counts as both), and none of it is very engaging I think. But another big part is because I am very apathetic about sites like deviantart in general and the type of art usually hosted on them.

Now I make no secret of the fact that I like porn, mainly hentai, cartoon, and furry smut, all of which is drawn art rather then actual live action porn. But Outside of x-rated art though I find I very rarely take a interest in much art online. But there is another side to it too. I quite like art used in comics, videos, games, and such, x-rated or not (but it's still better as smut, of course). Really it's only static images that usually fail to hold my interests without smut.

I think the thing is, when a artist draws fanart, or even original art, of random characters who sit there and look pretty, it seems to lack any real context or point. It just becomes a image. It doesn't move me, it doesn't inspire me, it's just there. There are exceptions to this of course, especially for interesting landscapes or interesting character design, but mostly it seems to run a little flat. Smut of course gives me a reason to care for more then the image it's self, but it has to be real hardcore stuff. Simply having a pretty girl doesn't do much for me, and sexy pinup poses rarely work either. Sometimes nudity isn't even enough. I guess I have just been exposed to so much really smutty stuff that it takes more to really wind me up.

Having a story or a game to go along with the art does the same for the mind as smut does for the body. It gives me a reason to really care more then just pretty pictures. And it works in reverse too, in that the art that goes along with the story or game gives the story or game more style and helps craft the world with the art. In fact, music acts much the same way in this regard. I am not quite as interested in music when it's just music, but when the music is put in to enhance a story or a game, it becomes a lot more powerful (but music and sex results in too much bad techno). But I suppose a lot of the time, at least with art, there is usually a story there I don't know about. A lot of original characters made by online artists seem to have roots in roleplaying chats or in progress works of fiction (in fact so does Jiggles, on both counts), and a lot of fan works seem to focus on exploring different aspects or ideas not seen in the original work (homestuck fan works tend to do a great job at that sometimes).

But as I said, I am not an artist, I do not know the mediums and techniques, and I tend not to pay that much attention to style or ability aside from a vague sense of aesthetics and some basic skill. I probably just don't appreciate all of the details that people tend to obsess over in art. I like well done art better then sloppy and badly proportioned art, but I can't say that's something I look for so much as something I notice when done wrong.

Vector Art is Doomed

Every once and a while I mess around with Inkscape and other vector art programs, but I find them lacking in many ways. Much of the reason for this is the way paths work. I actually think they should take a hind from Doom level editors (which are probably in turn based on CAD programs). Looking into the .SVG format it seems that the biggest problem is a lack of point or line objects.

SVG files define all the path info in a big block like this:

d="m 28.575867,107.0797 c -0.123355,5.53028 0.684603,11.10722 2.649974,16.27795 1.96537,5.17074 5.109136,9.92603 9.292245,13.54553 4.514219,3.906 10.122472,6.40535 15.917209,7.83924 5.794738,1.43389 11.795405,1.84498 17.764278,1.932 6.417683,0.0936 12.890473,-0.18795 19.126585,-1.7066 6.236112,-1.51866 12.259952,-4.33887 16.868082,-8.8066 4.61045,-4.46998 7.63175,-10.45068 8.97929,-16.7293 1.34753,-6.27862 1.07261,-12.84368 -0.30719,-19.11529 -2.314,-10.517816 -7.8188,-20.382009 -15.87312,-27.530932 C 94.938912,65.636775 84.32799,61.311069 73.558802,61.250674 61.69759,61.184155 49.967322,66.350885 41.745372,74.900291 33.523423,83.449696 28.840374,95.221251 28.575867,107.0797"

I much prefer the Doom way with vertexes, lines, and sectors. You place points, join two points to make a line, then have each side of a line be tagged for closed areas. The only thing doom lacks is curves, and that's actually easy to do, just make lines connect have up to 4 vertexes, two for the end points and two for the curve control nodes.

It may be possible to do some of this in SVG now with some javascript scripting actually, which would be handy for maps and such where a lot of lines connect at the same place. But some of the neat stuff you could do with a SVG-like format that uses this is interpolate the line width and color for each vertex. Mostly I just wish I could make solid shapes with outlines only on some edges. Oh well. Maybe there is even inkscape plugins that do a lot of this crap already. I donno, I didn't find any.

Maybe I just should learn to draw without relying on such silly tricks. I mean inkscape has a snap to vertex feature anyway.

Entertainment Tomorrow

I am sure anyone who bothers to read this blog has noticed I fixate mostly on games, and occasionally other forms of entertainment. A lot of my political views and such are also related to things like copyright and consumerism. So I want to take this time to sit down and share some of my views on the subject:

Why entertainment is important:

Entertainment in some form or another has been a important part of human civilization for almost as log as it existed. People may not thing the entertainment industry is a big deal, but if you think about how much time and money is spent by people on entertainment, and how passionately people follow this stuff, you may change your mind. Who tend to be the famous celebrities that most people recognize? Actors, musicians, sports athletes, writers, etc. All entertainers in some form. Sure powerful leaders may have the same fame, and a handful of inventors and scientists, but there are still tons of people who don't do much but entertain.

Along with that, I feel it's very possible that as science and progress grew and religion seemed more and more silly by a lot of people, fiction started to replace myth, and fandom started to replace old religious practices. Where before myths of spirits and gods motivated people to do strange rituals in the woods by the full moon, now fans start elaborate little cults to worship their favorite show, with rituals such as conventions and dressing yup as there favorite character. I am sure a whole essay can and has been written on that subject, and I probably mentioned it before, so I will say no more, except that entertainment is no longer entertainment to most people.

The difference between entertainment and art:

Entertainment by it's self doesn't have a much grander goal then giving a person a way of occupying time without doing actual work. And in fact the reason entertainment even exists is because when building early civilization mankind suddenly started to need to work less and less, and had more free time for which to do things. Entertainment is often treated as an alternative to work, but that's not it's function.

I have said before that "art is about invoking an experience or idea though different mediums. It is an act of reflection of experience or ideas". Perhaps it would be better to narrow that definition a bit, at least in this case. Art also probably was mostly invented to fill a gap, and that gap was meaning. At the same time entertainment started to emerge, art did to. This time the question was not so much "what should I do with my time" as it was "what does what I do what my time mean". By coming up with ideas of beauty and other things, and trying to express those ideas some way, art attempts to come up with a meaning that people can connect to, a drive to do things. I could go on and speculate that science, religion, philosophy, and other things are all also related to this revolution of free time, but thats besides the point.

The point is, entertainment and art are not the same thing yes, but they are deeply connected in a very fundamental way and come from the same root source, that human civilization has long since stopped being driven simply by survival. Thats simply not enough for us anymore.

Why entertainment might not be enough either:

Entertainment is a necessary thing to have of course. Even pets to be taken care of need more then just food, water, and a place to poo. Playing is an important part of a pets life. However few I think would dispute that humans can't be satisfied with such a simple life. Humans need meaning. Humans need art. Or do they? How much on TV and in films can you truly say give you a concept of meaning? Probably more then you might think, but there is a lot of "mindless entertainment" out there that is little more then the equivalent of jigging keys at a baby. Not that that is bad really, it just serves a different function.

Werther or not humans need art or entertainment, probably just depends on the person. If a person has no personal need for meaning, ether because they already came up with a meaning for what they do, or if they simply aren't introspective enough to care, art becomes mostly pointless. We could go into a whole discussion on if people should strive to find meaning or not, but that's not really relevant right now, even though in general, I would say yes.

But even discounting art, the same entertainment can get old and stale. Entertainment is constantly being driven by a need for more. More movies, more music, more games, more books, more everything. And most of it is pretty bad, but it's still worth it to people to do more. But just more of the same isn't enough for people I think, we also want something new, something to innovate and to inspire. If we didn't we would just be satisfied playing pretend with rocks like a small child.

Why the way we entertain ourselves should change:

The thing is, something new and innovative is exactly what the entertainment industry bad at, and they seem to often be even worse at doing art at times. The industry is run in the name of profit not in the name of entertainment or art. It likes safe investments, predictable trends, sequels, genres, and doesn't really care about how good the product is as long as it sells well, and will often meddle in it's own product to get a few extra sales.

Furthermore, entertainment has become way too expensive and addicting. We no longer seem to use it to enrich our lives, but instead let it control our lives. I do think fiction of various forms such as games and films are valuable besides their entertainment value, for artistic merit, or for the spread of cultural memes, but I don't think all our time and money should be spent on them either.

The real problem I guess, is that we live in a culture where entertainment is a big and binding thing, something people flock to in droves and use to define who they are as much as their political or religious beliefs. And the industry pumps more and more money into bigger and bigger things, without really delivering much substance or innovation. Entertainment is to most people no longer something people can do on their own within a reasonable budget.

Things that may help:

First, one thing that is happening already is a number of people are moving away from big budget industry entertainment. People in the "indie" crowd for various media are growing stronger, and entertaining things can be found online for free which are growing in popularity. The internet is full of ways to entertain yourself for nothing or almost nothing. Cell phones often come with free or low cost games, music and other options. The biggest problem is that as these alternate entertainment venues become more popular, the industry will try to get in on it. This has already started to happen on the internet as more and more things become commercial or copied by bigger budget cooperations. Even free ones are often plagued with advertisement and other meddling. In the end, unless we don't stop this trend, we will have changed the medium but not the problem.

There is one way we can attack the industry at it's core, and that is by reforming (or even ignoring) copyright laws. Copyright laws were created to give people an incentive to innovate by guaranteeing a brief time where you could produce the work without competitors. The problem is, that brief time was extended again and again and is used more as a way of controlling something and forcing others to do things the way you want to do it then protecting innovation. If copyright was extremely reduced or demolished, the industry would no longer have an excuse to profit on entertainment as much. Would this mean that no entertainment would be created? No not at all. There are plenty of people who are still willing to create, and plenty of people still willing to donate to have things made. It would simply mean the end of the massive bloated monster that todays entertainment has become.

But really, when it comes right down to it, people don't need to change or break any laws, all they need to do is become more proactive and more choosy about how they entertain yourself. Do you really need to see that new blockbuster movie, get that new album, or play that new game? Can't you write or draw or something? Can't you browse the internet for free things to do? Can't you try dreaming up something, or going somewhere with friends? And I am not saying never spend money or anything either, I am just saying, let's choose how we entertain ourselves more carefully.

Really I guess most people are totally content with the way things are now, but this is just how I feel about it.

Artsy smartsy, gamey wamey

I saw a discussion online about video games, if they can be art, if story is important, and such like that. Well actually I have been hearing discussions like that for a while in various places, so I thought I would share my views on the subject, even if no one is here to share to.

First of all, yes, video games can be art. ANYTHING can be art. I think wikipedia says it best: "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." Or, in other words, art is about invoking an experience or idea though different mediums. It is an act of reflection of experience or ideas. Thus video games can be as much art as anything else.

The problem that occurs is, most modern video games are a blend of classic game elements, and non-game fictional elements, which often have very little impact on each other. It gets so bad sometimes that the game and the story can effectively been seen as two totally different things. You can effectively often skip all a games story bits, and then look at ONLY the games story bits, or visa versa without either one seeming excessively out of contest. In other words, you might as well make a game with the gameplay and a movie or use other medium of storytelling with the story, without either one being really all that different. Thus some people refer to the "game" as only the game parts and discard the story as a tacked on element (It should be noted, even in a pure gameplay perspective, games STILL can be art -- People can and have used gameplay elements as a point in themselves).

This is not necessarily the case however. There are cases where a game and it's story are very closely related. You can for instance use the form of a game as a storytelling medium. In this case most of the time a storyteller will use a game to invoke sympathy and understanding in a character's plight. It is one thing to hear a character's hardships but another entirely to be forced, if only in a limited way, to actually go though them. This is often why video games were used for storytelling in the first place. Another reason to do this is to open a stories progression to multiple conclusions. Athough useualy seen as a way to give the players a feeling of control, it also serves a function for the story it's self. It makes the conclusions more meaningful because, for once, you can understand the alternatives, and appreciate the choice. It is no surprise that most multiple ending scenarios have a "good" ending and several "bad" ending. And when that's not the case it gives the teller a way explore multiple avenues. The thing is, while the player has the illusion of choice, and can explore themselves and others around them based on that choice, the choice it's self is often the whole point. Now you could say games that do this aren't really games. But they still involve game play, so in my mind, they count as games.

You can also do it in reverse, and have a game that uses storytelling as it's medium. This is what a real role-playing game is all about like in D&D and other tabletop games. Doing it in a VIDEO game can be tricky. However it's not entirely impossible. In this case you are given tools and story elements to build a story with, and often making the story as rich and deep as possible is the whole point.

So my point is, yes, games can be art, and story can be important. It's not always true, but it can be.

Zen and the Art of Level Design

So as you may know, depending on who you are, if anyone is even paying attention, I am working on a Super Mario World romhack and... wait where are you going? It's better then a normal hack honest! Anyway I got lotsa ASM, some fansy gfx, custom music, a brand new character (my imaginary catgirl named Jiggles), and all sorts of odd ideas, but I continually strugle with the hack, mostly because I just can't get a good grip on a fundamental feature all hacks need... Good level design. Becuase honestly I am not to sure, even after all these years of gaming, how level design really works. Especially Mario-style levels.

Because let's face it, Mario levels have always been a rather random collection of blocks that still somehow is fun to play. When I was young, I was highly confused with Mario's jumbled ascetics. What with floating blocks and coins, random platforms with no support, and generally fantastic layout. But a lot of the levels were fun anyway. Still I couldn't help but be a little put off by it. As I grew up, and saw more artistic renderings and other media, it became something of a whimsical and strange modern Alice in Wonderland look, which was fitting as elements of Mario were indeed based on Alice in Wonderland, especially the size changing mushrooms. But there were still major awkward design elements that stood out. Things like floating "?" blocks and bricks in open skies for example. But more then that it always looked cluttered and blocky. This was mostly in other media besides video games, almost a joke... a little visual reference to remind the watcher of the game origins, not really in my eyes a serious attempt at a new style. And while it has become seen as a rather charming style by many, it's not something I really want to emulate that much.

Interestingly, while particular elements of this kind of thing are seen throughout platformers, most do it quite a bit more subtlety, either by having less open areas over all, or fixing areas closely to themes of more real world locations. For instance, Megaman. In sharp contrast to Mario, it was much more focused and consistent. When you went though an area, you often knew exactly what it was for, and it's layout had much more structure. Of course it's downside was it's environments were less interactive on a whole probably, but it did have many many set pieces and gimmicks to make up for it, but these gimmicks had limited use really. Then there was Metriod, which had a few special blocks and was focused on exploring a vast world, but suffered form sameness, and a bit more of Mario's non-logical layout. Then there is Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario 2, which has a noticeably non-Mario ascetic in many ways. Even though I love it more for it's gameplay then it's levels, it has a much more, in my eye, natural feel while still being fantastic in it's own right.

When I started my hack, I started doing things mostly in Mario's way simply because the set pieces are set up to use it, and some of my romhacking associates donated a few levels mostly in this style as well. But I am not sure I really want to use floating coins (which are now cookies, although sprite coins are still coins and do something else) or blocks you primarily hit from underneath. In fact I kind of want to move to a style more similar to Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario 2, in some ways, maybe with Megaman and Metriod elements, but my big problem is, I don't have a really good set of pieces for what I want to do sometimes, and I have no IDEA what I want to do some others.

But it's about more then just looks and ascetics, and I know that. It's also about gameplay and how it relates to the levels. Mario is almost a pure platformer where your cheif method of doing anything is jumping, jumping, and more jumping. So, naturally, most of the levels and enemys invovle floating things and jumping aerobics. Megaman is more of an action game, and so levels are set up more as a progression of fights then of aerobic jumps, even though the later is still there. Metroid is exploration based, and it's twisting levels with loads of secret passageways reflect this. Doki Doki Panic, is almost a middle ground between the three. There is less action then Megaman but a tad more exploration. The gameplay elements of riding and throwing things are put to use both as an action element and a platforming element, and although it has much much less exploration then Metroid, it still has some, if you want to look for hearts and alternate paths in some areas, and the final level is almost 100% exploration based. One of these things these games don't feature very much is puzzles. There are a few, and some mario hacks have alot, even though they strike me as less "puzzles" and more "find the obscure bug and exploit it to proceed".

As for my hack, I think I need to take a good hard look over the gameplay elements I have programed and what ones I have planned and what ones I have already programed, and deside what ones to ditch, and what ones to add for the sake of interesting levels. My Original plan was something rather more like Doki Doki Panic then Super Mario World even though I ended up doing some more Super Mario World levels so far. This is mostly because it has been sorta frustrating doing alot of the ASM hacking involved. Still I have done FAR more ASM on the hack right now then most anything else, to the point where I wonder if it it is even worth it. The fact is, my ASM is mostly in silly areas that really provide no practical gameplay elements to level design. For example, I made a full inventory system you can use at any time. But I never really planned a use for it besides "this seems like a cool idea". And it is a cool idea. But it has no real use beside storing extra power ups which the player can bye at a little store I made. Which is again a cool idea, but it doesn't help me build levels around it. Besides the idea of bombs to find secrets maybe, which is harder then it sounds to do because SMW's bombs don't interact with the level at all, so I would probably have to code in a new explosion routine or a new sprite for it. It's on my todo list, but given the insane about of things on it, I may never finish it, and until I do, I really can't build levels around it.

If I worked on it more I may get something more done, but at this point I lack the energy or concentration to do a lot of the little leg work involved. But that may change soon... I finally got my sleepy-time mask that helps me sleep today. I totally forgot about mentioning it until now. Maybe I will tell you (nonexistent) guys how I do with it tomorrow.