Countdown

[Nate North]

Just a status update of sorts, I threw together about a minute of short clips from different parts of the movie/game I'm working on over the last 10 days.

For those not familiar with the project, this footage is from "The Labyrinth" a planned youtube game where you can win actual cash by being the first to guide a cat through a sort of multiverse maze.

Other work over the last few weeks involved running numerous calculations and creating custom python scripts to manage shifting maze layouts while maintaining a low probability of winning, preventing cheating from being effective (people skipping to the end of every video, which is the first thing they will all try), and similar top down design optimization.

Still using the original batch of cat animations at this point, but a second more advanced batch is already in progress. A lot of this stuff still looks a bit rough to me, not quite there, but at this point I can just refine as I go with no backsliding. Animation overall will smooth out to a polished state very soon.

I'm going to push for a fall release for this, with about 4-500 1 minute videos, and starting with smaller prizes at the beginning, like $100 at first, and then I can start recycling the ad money into the jackpot once google enables it, some thousands of dollars of lost cash later.

 

[Nate North]

I never knew what happened to him. I sold my Aprillia after one of the superbike world champions got mowed down by an SUV driver on the way to a qualifying race. It doesn't matter how good of a driver you are, if the other person is terrible at it. Hope Lucky is ok, always seemed like a nice guy. Sounds like a pretty bad crash. From what I understand, getting killed and then brought back to life is no picknick. First the recovery, and then I think it's mandatory to write one of those books "I have been to the afterlife, and will tell you what's there for 8 dollars"

 

[sfoster]

I never knew what happened to him. I sold my Aprillia after one of the superbike world champions got mowed down by an SUV driver on the way to a qualifying race. It doesn't matter how good of a driver you are, if the other person is terrible at it. Hope Lucky is ok, always seemed like a nice guy. Sounds like a pretty bad crash. From what I understand, getting killed and then brought back to life is no picknick. First the recovery, and then I think it's mandatory to write one of those books "I have been to the afterlife, and will tell you what's there for 8 dollars"

Yeah not to mention this creepy fuck that comes after you to study the afterlife

 

[Spike]

Off the top of my head, i like the reel itself. I like the rhythmic cuts, in time with the percussive sound track. This in itself is, for me, effective, inherently a little suspenseful. I'll be interested to see the upgraded cat, as he seems stuck, now, between a degree of realism and a degree of Impressionism. He might could go in either direction.

I havn't yet tackled the discussion above; the volume is a little, for me right now, daunting, lol.

 

[Spike]

Ah, just noticed the "hybrid" cat again. He moves nicely, I think, with the kind of slow and tentative steps you see in the front legs of a real cat. Cat's faces aren't, I think, very expressive, except when they talk, which this guy does nicely, and when they do stuff with their eyes.

 

[Nate North]

Yeah, at this point I've already improved the cats animation. In the hybrid video you see animation taken from a real cat, so that's about as real as it's going to get.

The new reels look even better than this, in a few ways, I just haven't gotten around to assembling and publishing them yet.

 

[Nate North]

And a lot of the bulk of the text is just me ranting about various things, which basically happens any time I forget to sleep the previous day. I'm a bit of a workaholic, but it's not bad because I'm really into what I'm doing.