Monday 4 June 2007

Welsh Game Space




I took this last time I actually got out to see some of the beautiful countryside we live in. Phone camera picture, unfortunately, but it really struck me that it was an arrangement of features that shouted ‘game’ to me. As far as I could work out the thing that looks like a huge overflow plug hole is… a huge overflow plug hole. Better than a Narnia wardrobe or a great big glowing gate to signal a possibility of an imminent somewhere else. Nice rickety steel gangway right over the top of the plug hole to the austere tower where something waits.

It may be too many WWII films and a childhood spent following my RAF father around the world from one military base to another, but dams always speak to me of moonlight and covert action. When they don’t have bouncing bombs skipping across the surface. Nice regular geometry as well in the main dam wall, which would allow you to pick out the areas of interest for the player quite easily. And the scale is nice for first or third person. Not a Hoover-clone, which is all about wowing a player with spectacle, but something far more discrete. And we got there on an old steam mountain railway, which is always a winner.

I do worry that I may border on the obsessed. I remember when I used to commute from Manchester to Liverpool and spent far too much time staring at the girders and glass of Lime Street Station trying to work out how I would model it in 3DSMax and what I would do with it when I got into engine.

Maybe I should get out (even) more.

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