Master Chief-ness of the Halo Movie

Well as far as I am aware of the Halo movie directed by Neill Blomkamp is still on the go. The pre-production is on the way and we should see this movie coming out around 2009/2010.

But that's not was this post is about. Recently N'Gai got exclusive interview with Joseph Staten who's the writing director for Bungie, talking about how our enigmatic Master Chief will be portrayed in the film.

To a certain degree of surprise Joseph stated, during the Q&A interview, that the exclusive main role for the movie would not circulate around Master Chief as it is highly that his role become more as a supporting character.

To my understanding and knowledge playing through Halo series, portraying Master Chief would be very difficult just as Joseph stated:

"Where the Master Chief doesn't have a face, but he has a whole body to emote with, whether it's his spine, or his shoulders. or the tilt of his head, or the way he slumps or reloads his weapon. There are these kinesthetic responses that he'll have which will really easily communicate the character and what he's feeling. That's hard to carry as a main character for an entire film."

Then explains that the role would best suit him as supporting character, where the people (Marines) around him will have better focus.

Real live clips released in conjunction with the release of Halo3 focuses more on the Marines that try and die to help Master Chief on his mission and ideally that's my thought on where this movie will be going towards. If you think about it Master Chief would not be a legend himself without the help of his Marines, although game-wise portrayal they just seems to be of a nuisance and cannon fodder. What I'm saying here is that if the sophistication of the AI meets our standards as humans we here would be praising the Marines.

Keeping Master Chief's anonymity is better here in my own opinion. First of all Master Chief deserves a good rest. Secondly, some people might be as sick as hell seeing Master Chief through the trilogy and having him in movies gun-blazing down isles decimating grunts, may feel like that they're just playing the game again in real vision.
But, for me personally, keeping his real identity anonymous allow peoples creative juices to run. We all know Master Chief, and having his name pop up on other Halo franchise is great for the game and for fans. When you put a line to his story then that could eventually end Master Chief's reign.

In the end, what approach the film will take I'll take in with no effect as long as the film is good itself, and in conclusion and a slight respond to N'Gai's article, I would prefer the movie to go this way rather through Master Chief's visor assuming that Neill continues to use his camera-vérité filming technique were everything seems to feel as though it's filmed like a documentory or through a reporters camera.

Links:
- N'Gai Joseph Staten Halo Movie Q&A
- Halo3 Real Life Movie Clip (Youtube)

Excel Games. No really Excel games!

It seems the title has off with making it exaggerated but new you can go make games from one of Microsoft's office tools: Excel. Funny as it may seem Super Llama over at GameDev has done something like this. If you head over there (links at the bottom of post), read up on the mini tutorial and notes on how to run the game in excel.
The game uses VB macro system, and tells you at the end of the article how to set this to work on your Excel sheets if you insist on making an excel game for your own.
My thought is that if I have available time to spare I would get in and reproduce a simple copy of Tetris or Breakout. By manipulating each cell colour like its been done on this demo, you sure would be able to make blocks moveable and seem animated.

I'm more interested in the final comments of the page
Quote: "Keep your eye out for the Excel Maze API version 2!"

Links:
- Excel Games

Busy!

Back to lectures and first day sounds like good news for this blog/portfolio site. Why? well cause of Business of Computer Game module. No need to explain as time will show.

Anyways back to random ramblings. Was searching for fee prices for the halls in Bolton through Google. Yes I know, there's a perfectly fine search feature(a hint of sarcasm) on the Bolton uni website but since Google automatically opens itself for me then why not. Anyways I recently stumbled upon a link to "Good University Guide" and well decided its a good time to wilf about the net so I clicked the link and it opened up huge information about Bolton University. If you do care about the University then you may want to check up on this here and here. I trust all broadsheet infos, even though its last years, Bolton University has some distance to go.

Now what I did was made comparison to my first choice university. That's right, I did not get into my first choice due to 20 credits short. Wanna know where and what degree I was going to do. Check it here http://www.reading.ac.uk/Study/ug/ComputerScienceandCyberneticsBSc.asp
Reading Uni had cybernetics with computer science which what I really wanted to do. For the insurance choice I made sure that I'll get that insurance choice no matter what, and Bolton University got the spot. Nothing against the university here, nothing subtle.

Anyways I ended up comparing the two. Here's what I got:

From the tables student satisfaction I agree with, as I am in fact satisfied where I am, more satisfied than I was a couple of years ago. Other stuff, Bolton has a lot to work for and I'm sure I will move up a spot by the end of this year. I checked this last year and Bolton was joint 99th position with another institute, so it goes to say something at least.

------------------------

In my recent dev ramblings I found some nice infos and articles whilst I was wilfing around.

My AGTEngine portfolio work uses RakNet middleware and I usually ramble about how good and easy it is to integrate networking capabilities into your engine if you're also in the same process. This awesome UDP networking middleware is great for games and I recommend it alot if you plan to get the most of middleware codes. Anyways Jenkins (lead developer) has made a feature list video which you can check out here. Visit main webpage here.

Also found a nice article today on gamasutra headlining "
UK Government Considers Wii In Schools". Assuming Jack Thomson doesnt get there in time schools could be a little more interesting for kids. Report suggested that child obesity trebled in the UK and this could be one way of encouraging them to get some exercise once in a while. It's not suggesting that the Wii be used for something like cooking classes, instead of cooking, you're simulating, instead they plan on integrating and making the console available in PE sessions, making sure that in whatever forms necessary the child will get some sort of exercise out of it. It seems to even out the idea behind the fact that playing games could lead to less exercises and to the inevitable. Thanks to Nintendo.

Anyways the article; It may also be down to the department of health stated in the short article, and if we do face with this upcoming approach then my personal opinion would be is that kids are getting good at being spoilt. With any means necessary the government will do what ever it can. It seems nice for them to encourage children to play games but there's always nasty critics that would love to slate the hell out of this.

Just imagine when you have children-
You: "Hey matt, did you have fun today at school?"
Matt: "Yeah I played video games all day..."

For some parent that'll appall them but if the industry is well accepted that view may be all so different.
My response: "Tell me what game you played...was it on the 360?"
Surely a gamer's response and the inate response well here. At the moment education will just have to do with something else up their sleeves.

Just to leave with a nice article from Gamasutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16392

Peace.