Spiffworld | Blog

Finally, a new video, this time for the song “Shop Vac”. This one took me forever to finish. Believe it or not, but I had this video probably 30% done before I’d even started “Bacteria”, “Live”, or “The Captain’s Wife’s Lament” all the way back in the summer.

It actually kind of worked out well for me though, because when I picked back up the “Shop Vac” project, I took a look at what I had done, and I wasn’t particularly charged up by the video. So I edited things and added some stuff and made it a little crisper and funnier (hopefully), and eventually had something I was pretty happy with.

I always knew that this one would have a dark ending (once you’ve seen the video, you’ll know what I’m talking about), but I was unprepared for how dark it was until I actually got the footage done and was looking at it. In fact, my original version was even darker in subtle ways. I had the camera staying still on the last two shots so the viewer was forced to just stare at what the wife was doing and what the husband was contemplating doing, which gave it more dramatic heft. In the end, I edited it slightly to change how the camera zooms and pans over the shots, and while it’s still dark, it’s a little better I think.

Funnily enough, lots of people tell me that when they watch the video the first time through, they don’t even pick up on what the orc has been building in the basement, and it’s not until the second viewing that they’re struck with it — “holy cow, he’s been building THAT!”. I like that kind of reaction.

I played City of Heroes back in the day. I remember it came out right before WoW did, and I played it on my wife’s PC until WoW came out, giving me a great game I could play on my own Mac. CoH was a pretty good game, with a spectacular range of options for creating your character. It failed a bit when it came to questing and the environments, both of which tended to feel a little generic after a while.

But they’ve continued to work on the game, and now they’re taking sign-ups for an open beta for a new Mac client, which is great news. Mac people should always try to support any developer who makes a move towards our favorite platform, if nothing else, to encourage even more people to make that move. See, it’s frustrating when game developers build their games using a bunch of proprietary Microsoft code like ActiveX and then turn around and say, “well, we can’t make a Mac version because we’ve got too much Microsoft code in there”. Well duh, if you didn’t box yourself in by using M$ code in the first place (like Blizzard doesn’t) then you’d have a shot at the Mac market (which Blizzard does). So I’m glad to see City of Heroes doing the right thing (something must have changed for them, because I actually emailed them way back in the day asking for a Mac client, and they gave me the standard “we would if we could, but we can’t” response).

So, I’m signing up for the beta (no word yet on whether or not I’m in), and if you’ve got a Mac, I recommend you do too. Who knows, maybe they’ll even come up with a model viewer like we have for WoW, kicking off a whole new renaissance of CoH/CoV machinima.

For 75 levels (so far) in WoW, my main character has been part of a guild that was put together so a group of buddies at work could play WoW together. And just about a month or two after the guild was formed, most of the people in it dropped out or switched to a “real” guild, leaving me and a few others left in the skeletal remains of our original guild. Which was fine with me, since I’m not a big fan of the wall of green text that tends to take over your chat window if you’re part of a guild of any size and activity.

However, I’ve just recently been in contact with Chris from Apt T Productions, the guys who do the “Dude, Where’s My Mount?” series of machinima videos (among others). Turns out Chris is a really nice guy, so I’ve decided to give up my solitary, nomadic existence as one of the last remaining members of my long-dead guild and finally join a real guild full of real people.

The “Dude, Where’s My Mount?” guild (on the Whisperwind server) has lots of members but not so many people who are online at any given time (so it’s actually a lot like being in my old crypt of a guild ). But I know they’re looking for more people, so if you’re on the Whisperwind server and you want to get info about joining up, you can contact the following people in-game:

Redmond, Telesuh, DaveJenkins, Spifflendil, Brainfrieze, Leuk, Ciarna, or Phillyness

Game on!