XFunc_Home
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Welcome to XFunc, the
website and professional blog of Tim Carter. This site showcases the work I've done
developing game-based products - for promotion, learning and
entertainment - and various media and interactive projects, and is a place I write out some things. |
XFunc_News
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(25 Oct 2010)
In the summer, Valve held an
"Artpass
Contest". They released an old level - one that had only
been designed to the gameplay level - for community mappers to
do an artpass of. What's that mean? It means the level was a
world of blocky abstract grey shapes, with no artistic depth.
This meant the gameplay was developed - the maze was designed
already to facilitate the competition between Red and Blu teams.
But there was no artistic identity to the map. Was it a cave, a
series of urban buildings, a lumber mill, an abandoned town in
the desert? Who knew?
That's what we were to bring to it.
Anyway
here is my submission.
One poster described it pretty accurately thus: "You're
style is very unique and I think I like it a lot! It strikes me
as the more literal take on TF2's americana/industrial setting,
like Well or Granary shifted just a little towards real
industrial. Very neat!"
He did pick up that I explored a lot of the brickwork that
made older industrial buildings so beautiful. It's a shame that
we don't make buildings like that anymore.
Thematically, if you care to download the map, you'll see
that I played with the whole idea of TF2 maps in general. The
map is full of the standard props that exist in other maps - but
I made the area into a shipping hub. So instead of seeing these
props in their familiar context, you instead see them being
moved around, as if handled by cargo loaders, as if being sent
out to all the other TF2 maps out there (on the Red side).
Anyway, please check it out. |
Overhaul of pl_Industry
(8 Mar 2010)
Based on community feedback, I just finished remaking
pl_Industry. The remake is
called
Blu_Industries. See it
here.
The basic change was to focus it more. It was a large map, so
I converted from single-stage to multi-stage (players now digest
it in three 2- or 3-cap mini-rounds instead of one big 7-cap
round). I converted some maze-like hallway networks to open
arenas. Also, I added more props and improved its stability. |
(11 Dec 2009)
Just finished a map for
Team
Fortress 2 called
pl_Industry. It's a Payload map, to those of you familiar
with TF2.
You can see the map, and download it (over at TF2Maps.net) by
going
here... You can read my designers notes about it, and see
more screenshots, here... |
(26 Feb 2009)
Here is
a commentary I wrote, which appeared on the game industry
portal Gamasutra, 4 February (making this another of my belated
posts on this site).
Check it out... |
(26 Feb 2009)
Recently, I was interviewed by Michelle Macleod at
itBusiness.ca
for an article on serious games (published 5 Feb).
Read it here... |
(1 Feb 2009)
I'm still chugging away, working on stuff that reaffirms the
importance of design in game development. To that end, a busy
fall and early winter. Here's what's up... [More>>>] |
(26 June 2008)
Far north of Toronto - where in the winter you
often see the breathtaking Aurora Borealis, and in the summer
you can get lost in a vastness of the Bush in the lee of the
great lake Gitchee Goomee, having no contact with the outside
world for months and let deep creativity rise from a percolating
stillness of your soul... Up there is a land few Canadian
urbanites bother to find out about (to their detriment). Gather
around the campfire and listen as I tell you-
(...Okay, maybe I'm painting the wrong
picture for this. Let's start over...) [More>>>]
|
Ontario Game Commentary
Breaks give Ontario video game industry extra life
(5 May 2008)
I was recently contacted by Darren Zenko, a reporter for the
Toronto Star (Canada's largest newspaper), who interviewed me
for a story he was doing on Ontario's tax breaks for game
developers. You can read the article
here... |
(18 March 2008)
Some of the work I've done last year is starting to emerge...
[More>>>] |
(23 Feb 2008)
Last October (2007) the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC
got in touch with me trying to invite me to an event they
were doing called
Partners In Technology. They had been directed
to me by my friend Bruce Milligan, who runs the serious games
initiative of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in DC
(Bruce is a veteran of Avalon Hill, Microprose and others - I
know him from BreakAway where we worked together). I am the
Canadian serious game designer he knows. So anyway, I flew down,
crashed at Bruce's place (he and his wife have a charming
200-year-old home between DC and Baltimore) and then went to this embassy
event next morning. [More>>>] |
(5 Sept 2007)
I have been up to a ton of stuff that last few
months, but been neglecting my site. Probably I have too much on
my plate now. Anyway, here's what I've been up to... [More>>>] |
(15 April 2007)
In
The Art of the Start, one of Guy Kawasaki's rules about
starting up new things is this: [More>>>] |
(12 April 2007)
At the 2005 Serious Games Summit (which I did not report on
on my site), I remember one presenter saying something I thought
odd. He was promoting the making of serious games and said... [More>>>]
|
(15 Jan 2007)
At the Christmas party of
Kaos
Studios in New York City over the holidays I told one of the
level designers this: I had always wanted to get into level
design but had never made the leap. But by the end of the
holidays, I was up to my eyeballs in it. [More>>>]
|
(28 Sept 2006)
The first (or was it second) TIGC was a really nice little
event. Kicked it off with a presentation on serious games - both
in general and in Canada - and I hope I stimulated something.
Whatever... It was small - and in a good way. [More>>>] |
A Brief Rumination On The RTS Genre
(10 Sept 2006)
I have meant to write a long piece about the masterful
real-time strategy (RTS) game Ground Control because it had
accomplished something truly fresh (most real-time strategy games
have nothing to do with strategy). I still plan to. But when
Philip Goetz wrote a much-needed exposé of sorts on the sorrowful
state of RTS interface design I just had to write in something
then and there to Gamasutra in support of his position - and also
mention GC... [More>>>] |
Serious Games Do Hogtown
Carter @ The Toronto Indie Games Con
(20 Aug 2006)
I'll be presenting at the
Toronto
Independent Games Convention, which is 31 August to 2
September. My presentation is called
Toward A Canadian Serious Game Movement, and it occurs
after opening ceremonies on the 31st. If you want to hear my
take on the Who, What, Where, Why, When and How of bringing the
True North more fully into the serious game scene come on out to
the George Brown College Casa Loma Campus. It should be a good
time. |
(20 Aug 2006)
From my friend Baron von Feldspar, who says it with panache...
A long time ago in a galaxy far far way I, Baron von
Feldspar was a merchant prince who started, with some unindicted
co-conspirators, my own shipping line in the
Spinward Marches. At the
Traveller Wiki Major Heddon has documented some of the history
of
Bowman Trading and Salvage.
I am the one Major Heddon, whom Feldspar speaks of. And yes, I
am guilty of logging some of our old war stories from a long ago
sci-fi roleplaying campaign. I gamemastered most of it (save for
an adventure here or there, in which I actually got to play),
though we also had a unique way of playing - we collectively
gamemastered sometimes (and it worked - though ask me how
later). Some day soon I hope to crack open the Traveller
books again for more galactic romps (though I'll probably adapt my
Fire Zone rules to it when I do).
I love gamemastering sci-fi roleplaying adventures. |
(5 May 2006)
They say that only outsiders and tourists call Los Angeles
"LA". I have a friend (well, my writer-uncle's friend) - a
screenwriter (who is, in turn, friends with a bonafide
Oscar-winning screenwriter [won for penning a Clint Eastwood
flick: you do the math]) - who has a much better name for it: the
"Dirty Avacado". It contrasts with New
York's "Big Apple". So I
had the pleasure of staying at his Ventura-area home and driving
around the sprawling sprawl of the Dirty Avocado for a couple
days. [more>>>] |
(5 May 2006)
Head over to Serious Games Source to check
out
this article I wrote for them...
Gamasutra published a little introduction to
the article on
here... |
(5 May 2006)
The T.O. Jam crew have done a great job and the event starts
tonight. We can all see it will be a great success. [more>>>] |
By Tim Carter (16 Nov 2005)
Having returned from the recent Serious Games Summit 2005 I
find an observation buried inside me, something nagging to be let
out. [more>>>] |
Sitrep - November 2005
Just a quick note to say: Wow! What a year I have had... [more>>>] |
Game vs Movie Production
I have a background in game design and film production, which
is turning out to prove advantageous as the game industry
struggles to slough off an old skin and move into a new mature
phase. People draw many comparisons between these two industries -
and there are many reasons to do so - though there are also many
contrasts that need to be made.
I'd like to highlight a couple articles about this rift.
One I wrote some months back which I'll repost now. I sent it
to Telefilm Canada. (Sometime later Telefilm renamed the phases of
its New Media Fund to reflect proper game development lingo.)
Always the artist, my article compares and contrasts the "spirit"
of the creative and production process between game making and
filmmaking - not so much the hard business structure.
You can read my article
here...
The other is an article by Brian Hook. Brian goes much more in
depth into the business structure of either industries and the
reasoning behind this. He makes the case - a case I have pushed
elsewhere - that game production needs a central visionary who has
the final say over the creative decisions; much akin to a movie's
director. I agree with it, in theory, though I will say that even
in film the faith in director-as-auteur is probably given more lip
service than actual weight. Nevertheless, the film industry's
auteur model is probably one reason why it eventually became such a
significant creative form. (There was a time when films were
basically mere pop entertainment - kind of like drugstore
dime-novels - thus Variety, for example, always called
theatre "legit" [legitimate] and film, well... not legit. Sound
familiar?...) The importance invested in the film director did not
necessarily have to evolve. It was pursued; much to the benefit of
the movie industry and to movie viewers (which, today, comprise
the population at large). Will it happen in the game industry as
well?
You can view Brian's article
here... |
Stuart Roch, writing in Gamasutra, has just made an
argument in the mainstream game development world that is
something like one we have
been making for a few years now: that there needs to be a new
model for developing games, one more based on the filmmaking
approach. One that divides game development into three distinct
parts:
- The publishing sphere;
- The nuts-and-bolts work of running a game company and doing
development;
- The high-level visionary work of
designing creative new game concepts.
We at XFunc (myself and my associates) are already moving down this road: we believe in
the separation of high-level creative game design (our
specialty) from the other spheres of the game industry. (I addressed this topic
formally in an article called
The Imagined Game.)
It allows us to focus on pure game design and research without
having to manage a technical or art production company (which is
really a different job altogether) - much the way film producers,
directors and writers don't keep camera shops in their offices.
So it is good to hear that others in the game industry are finally
starting to seriously consider this. [You can read Mr Roch's
full article
here >>>] |
By Tim Carter (26 October 2004)
That term "game" is such a double-edged sword
(as I have written elsewhere). On the one hand implying fun and
lightness, on the other a term elemental in nature - it best describes what it describes.
The first, dedicated Serious Games Summit - which I attended in
Washington last week - would have been misnamed if it were the
"Simulation Summit" or something similar. Nevertheless, there is a
newfound openness to the idea - floating around the halls of the
Loews L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington DC - that fun leads to faster "knowledge
transference" (a jargon term if ever I heard one); and that what
has been learned in the entertainment world can lead to more
effective (and less expensive) learning in real world fields
of education, military, medicine, et cetera. [More>>>]
New Website, Renewed Vision (15 Oct 2004)
XFunc is pleased to announce the release of its new site and look,
and the renewal of its vision. These things are being done to get ready for some
new upcoming releases
we have planned. We've retained most of our older content as well, but
will be focusing on developing new products, and pushing forward.
Future work in XFunc will follow up on our successes in projects
combining "old school" traditional fields - such as education, mining,
banking, military, strategy - with new interactive and communication
methods. Expect to see projects from us that are engrossing and
educational, interesting and fun. We're looking forward to it! |
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