About to head off to LA

But I will be with a tour company 96% of the time. I will only have a free day the same day I have to leave for Vancouver again...

Hope it will be a good vacation.

Q4B update

"Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty will be promising to many players that have access to a PSN account. Unfortunately, this leaves out a young audience and people without PSN accounts. Either it's marketing via begful children (or adults) or bundle it with RCF2 or use a download ticket system for people that buy the Greatest Hits RCF1 or RCF2. I prefer the bundle on the disc with RCF2 a little better, but I'd be quite surprised if it also came on Blu-ray like Warhawk or GT5 Prologue. And there better be In-Game XMB Music support!"

One part is half-true, ONLY Europe will be getting the Blu-ray since "they requested it". This still will leave a ton of begful children and hopeless petitions. Hopefully the laws of Supply and Demand would force a US Blu-ray release.

Wrapped up Entourage

I am 100% caught up with Entourage and honestly... Season 3 and 4 are the best.

My overall best episode is the Aquaman premiere episode "A Day in the Valley". It also has one of my alltime favorite Ari Gold quotes: "I didn't even know Northridge survived the 94' quake."

2nd best is obviously "Chinatown" with a decent attempt at translating to Mandarin. Some grammar was off and the delivery was off for the ad. The ad with proper VO would have rocked.

3rd is "No Cannes Do", It's one of those episodes you can leave running in the background or listen as audio only and you still get caught up in a storyline.

Also this line cracks me up: "...Don't think, just pack that *****! Chop Suey!"

My favorite character: Johnny Chase

My new home for HD videos

http://hosted.filefront.com/jackvancouver/

I am now using Filefront to get to you full HD quality video files from my favorite games. Starting off, I have my HD version of the TV style intro for RCF I have on Youtube.

Viddler does allow HD but the quality is worse than Youtube. I've never seen quality worse than this since I saw Satellite IP Videophone reports from CNN.

I will also apologize in advance if you get an ad after downloading, just use an ad blocker to deal with it. Add this to your Adblock Plus rules in Firefox to allow closing of the blank frames that pop up after downloading: @@http://static1.filefront.com/ffv6/graphics/close_ad_button_01.gif

It is a sad day for gamers using Vimeo...

Vimeo has put an outrageous and outright ban on gaming videos on their site:

http://www.vimeo.com/blog:140

This means my RCF sizzle reel must move to the non-HD Youtube, and so will my tutorial to capture from a PS3 (If it even works...)

Bad decision Vimeo, sure you're not nearly out of budget for bandwidth costs like Stage6 was right before it crashed?

Another new drawing (or should I say... vector) Idea floating...

http://jack-y-zhang.deviantart.com/journal/19489394/

"This time, I won't be secretive, it's the Entourage cast in the vein of Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns' fundamentals.

This will be 100% done digitally, all hand drawings are for reference.

As for the Principals drawing, I'll start it up again in the new school year and promise to finish it by Christmas break."

It's sizzle reel time again.

This time, it's Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty to Death and his Friends by Coldplay. (What can I say? They're huge right now.)

I finished editing a teaser (a shorter version of the one that will eventually span the whole game and song) but will only upload it upon demand since all of the footage you already saw in the Brian Allgeier preview video from E3, it's just how it's edited that's different. I had no problem with the Linkin Park InFamous trailer but it's the people that have a bad taste in Coldplay that I worry about. Just FYI: There are no words in the teaser edit of the song.

That is, if I could even get my hands on the game and learn the storyline, then the full version is a green-lit go. If I can't get a PSN account by the time it releases, expect the full version of the sizzle reel to either be vaporware or delayed (if a BD release is planned, there are rumors, let's hope they're true.)

Edit: And yeah, it won't be on Vimeo.

A new primetime cartoon I'm into...

Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns is another attempt at animation in primetime. The previous example, Game Over, was a short lived show, got poor ratings and got canceled after 6 episodes. Since this stars 2 people from a real radio talk show (Car Talk), it has potential. This show is sorta like an animated version of what the Flight of the Conchords did with their own live-action show (but more PG instead of MA rated, though the comedy is aimed to mature audiences). Good episodes of this series find an excelling balance between comedy and situational actions.

What's surprising is that one of the designers from Kim Possible is in the cast for this show. Notice the trademark slender legs from that series? They are most noticeable on the female characters.

I also want to know what graphic designers think of this show, full episodes are up on pbs.org to see (although they are de-interlaced from 480i and the show is natively 1080p (which I LOVE.))

Post Sony E3 conference thoughts

1. Resistance 2 with it's massive Leviathan fight might just leave Crysis in the dust.

2. Ratchet and Clank Future: Quest for Booty will be promising to many players that have access to a PSN account. Unfortunately, this leaves out a young audience and people without PSN accounts. Either it's marketing via begful children (or adults) or bundle it with RCF2 or use a download ticket system for people that buy the Greatest Hits RCF1 or RCF2. I prefer the bundle on the disc with RCF2 a little better, but I'd be quite surprised if it also came on Blu-ray like Warhawk or GT5 Prologue. And there better be In-Game XMB Music support!

3. Although Dylan shoots energy bolts, I wouldn't be surprised if there was blood in inFamous. There's a hint in the trailer/intro video of blood, making it either a strong T (like Uncharted) or a full M rating. The newest trailer also bumps the release date further forward to Spring 2009. Sly fans, have patience, Sly 4 will come sooner or later.

4. Speaking of Uncharted, ND currently has no indications of a presence this E3.

5. One surprise is the Resistance IP expanding to PSP with "Resistance: Retirbution". Brought from the same guys that did SOCOM. This proves once again game developers don't own the IPs, the publishers do.

6. MAG (Massive Action Game) = Military recruiter. This looks like a military trainer and I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S or British or whatever army had involvement in development. On this basis, I'd steer clear away if you don't want to go to "Virtual" war only to have a mindset change to go to real war and join the army.

RCF: Q4B wasn't really a surprise once the secret was out. A leaked spreadsheet pertaining to Q4B then a message decoded in the "(pin)Ballz" video was a sure fire way to say it was real. Once the footage came this E3 however, it was a little surprise it didn't really deviate from RCF's tech specs. It's good to see a few returning gameplay mechanics and "borrowed" mechanics. (Doesn't the dark caves railsliding and propeller dodging remind you of Sly Cooper 1?)

Looks like CTV might be ready to go HD after all.

A CRTC application for a TON more CTV Specialty HD channels

This is one step to more HD on CTV networks, but the one surprise is none of the former CHUM stations are included, you'd expect MuchMusic HD after all the previous MMVAs were produced in HD.

Still it's gonna be a while before local news is all HD.

Did you just update to 2.40 on your PS3?

If so, and you were very hopeful that the in-game XMB will play music for all games:



You're out of luck. In-game XMB music is NOT universal. You must run a game that supports it or it refuses to play.

This is the same situation as the "Resistance: Fall of Man" 1080i glitch where legacy 1080i TVs are switched to 480p instead of 1080i. IG never tackled the issue by means of a patch and instead implemented it for their future games and ignored fixing the issue on the originating game.

In short terms: It is HIGHLY DOUBTFUL that developers would patch older games to support new features (with the ONLY exception being Resistance 1 being patched with DualShock 3 support)

Unless you need to contact your PSN friends in-game, Do not update, it is not worth it unless you're very active with the PSN.

Time for me to go and watch Entourage... But wow, 200 posts already.

Edit (July 8): Still the same with 2.41. It looks like Sony is going to ignore it's fans on this one unless something can be done about it. We need Universal In-Game XMB Music playback, this will put you at the head of the competition and not ignore all the people who bought games before this update who cannot make it work forever. Look what happened with the possibly millions of fans disappointed that they can't get their 1080i TVs to work with Resistance 1 in a true HD resolution (and instead getting 480p), are you going to do that again?

Capture setup pictures

Through all this troubleshooting, I totally forgot to show you a picture of my capture setup on the Quad-core:



There's still some minor troubleshooting to do before full satisfaction, but that must be done when our budget allows again...