News Blog

03/08/09

The making of Takeshi's Castle

My last BF2 project has finally dawned after two years in the making. Obviously not proportionate to work time but it's certainly kept a strong fortification on my hard drive all that time without me deleting 100 Gb's worth of Fraps footage. Speaking of which, I used fraps for this film because it really did favour the short production times I originally had planned for the project. I mentioned the two years not being proportionate because it actually took more like 2 weeks for the "college assessment" part to be completed, only leaving out one last challenge and non-crucial visual effect works till 2 years after the project was handed in and marked, but not forgotten! For this was another internal thing, like Desktop Battlefield was before and the other thing was after.

So there's the history lesson over, BF2 projects are no more at last! I have no regrets about ending it with a seemingly anti-climatic release with no huge nuclear bomb going off at the end. (Besides, isn't there another BF2 film out there that's going to contain all of the visual epicness ever seen and forever more?) Well believe me, BF2 does need it now. Even I have grown tired of the drab scenery even though it’s sandbox nature and opportunity has kept BF2 strong so much longer than possibly foreseen, both as a game and as a machinima making tool.

For the last paragraph, I thought I would recognise a small trend in some of your comments out there, not just from the reception of Takeshi’s Castle but my machinima in general. Those who bring up the questions of “proper” films, you are not being ignored, I give you my assurance. The very notion has already been attempted just once behind closed doors. This isn’t just a intro piece with guns and explosions, my explanation for not making those kinds of machinima are far more trivial, yet you might have spotted a few hints that something is still kicking in that field. I’m talking about stage of machinima development that just isn’t something I could pull off in the current era of games. It’s nothing to do with graphics (or I would have moved to Crysis a long time ago) it has a lot more to do with the sandbox environment, suitability to machinima production and as always, is original, spectacular and unorthodox.

Latest Release

XaliaS Designs

Takeshi's Castle

A BF2 re-creation of the world renowned, low budget cult television Japanese gameshow, Takeshi's Castle. With authentic commentary from the UK's Craig Charles. Built in the Sandbox mod.

01/08/09

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