My trip to Scotland is over, about two weeks roaming around the highlands and Edinburgh. It was great fun, weather was not too bad, and I was left wanting more! Hopefully I’ll upload some piccies soon.

Thanks to Coque for the link to this article that details the history of Topo Soft. Every time I read about Stardust I want to bang my head on the wall for the multidirectional control system that Jose Manuel Muñoz proposed us – it was quite original and we loved it, but in hindsight, it made the game quite frustrating to play. That man really had unique ideas… if only I could describe his initial design for Stardust, you’d wonder why did we turn it into a "standard" vertical shooter. Ahh the times…

Lots of stuff to catch up with, including Devil May Cry 3 on the PS2 which came out yesterday, preparing a lecture for the next month at the Universidad Complutense… and fixing my desktop PC, whose motherboard (I think) broke before the trip.

Edit: this song is too funny, being passed around privately but you may be able to find it: tripod-lovesong.mp3

Edit II: Devil May Cry 3 is great! Dante is back for good, after the crappy DMC2. My thumbs are sore already.

Some stuff coming from GDC:

Raph Koster’s keynote transcription

More as I come across them.

Yes, it arrived in Europe, and went on to surpass all expectations. I’m finally playing it without the "beta hat", so I can put some effort into the chars I play.

It is every bit as awesome as it felt in the beta. Penny-Arcade wrote this about Burnout 3, but I think it describes WoW perfectly:

"Try to imagine a scenario in which someone paid you twenty dollars every time you had an orgasm. He just walks in there, hands you twenty bucks, and leaves. It’s that ridiculous. It is as though this game was optimized in some kind of amusement wind tunnel, and anything that wasn’t awesome has either been ground off or obviated with a unique polymer."

I’m leveling much more slowly than my guildmates, which I guess means I’m not playing much or not optimizing my progress. All is good, I’m having tons of fun every minute I’m logged in. I even had my first PvP encounters and found an excitement I never expected.

Yesterday we ran the Razorfang Keep instance, and I can safely say it’s the best dungeon crawl I’ve ever played, period. It wasn’t even a dungeon, but a linear path through a castle, with a big boss at the end, so technically I consider it a dungeon crawl. 🙂

If the aesthetics and sense of humor click with you, it’s hard to consider it anything but the best MMORPG ever created. Pure unadulterated 100% Blizzard.

Million Dollar Baby is the latest movie by Clint Eastwood. If you follow my musings about films, you may know I totally love his work. Well, I think this movie is a complete and flawless masterpiece. Script, dialogues, characters, pacing, everything about it totally blew me away. There’s little more to say, really.

3D Blasphemy posted some stills and a video of a photorealistic city render he did to experiment with postproduction effects and lighting. It’s really impressive, I recommend you check it out!

http://www.3dblasphemy.com/personal/CITY.html

It’s a pretty cool 2-part interview:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=6281

Despite the pseudo-standard language they use, their description of what makes World of Warcraft so engaging matches every bit of what I felt while playing the beta.

In other news, I finished watching the second season of Alias, and it was very entertaining! Lost of surprises, great pace, and an extremely ambitious cliffhanger. Also entertaining was Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. The action scenes were not very exciting, which detracted from the movie, but the unique style still makes it well worth watching.

I just watched Irreversible, a truly unique, graphic and brutal french film about (so to speak) violence against women. Only for people with either a strong stomach, or a complete lack thereof, especially if you’re a woman. Despite the "shock value" that one may read in the film, it has so much more.

Also watched Alexander which, while overly long and pretentious (european production kicks in), was still worth it.

Well it’s finally happening! I’m taking a 6-month sabbatical away from Pyro Studios and work, to replenish my batteries and pursue some things I’ve been NOT doing for too long. Game development is tough and stressing, and after this many years I feel the drain, so when the opportunity showed up I decided to take it.

Some people are betting after I have relaxed for a few weeks I won’t feel up to the task of going "back to the trenches"… All I can say is, I still feel the same passion for games development, so despite the hardships and headaches, expect me back in the summer.

Feel free to post your suggestions and experiences while taking a sabbatical, this could be fun.

On another note, the TV series 24 started running the 4th season, and it’s as engaging as ever.

A Spanish website reprinted a Wired Magazine interview with Hiroshi Yamauchi, retired CEO of Nintendo. It was all a hoax for the Dec 28th, which is Spain’s version of April Fools.

http://www.gamerah.com/noticias.php?bias=180#180

It’s awesome, outrageous, fun and… yeah I had to be told it was a fake.

By the way, Happy new Year!

Pretty interesting article:

http://www.overanalyzed.com/portal.php?topic_id=19