joeldg - navigating the surface

When I am not programming and learning 3D applications sometimes I just need a break and enjoy watching anime. From time to time I like to check out new Anime, additionally I like to see anime that is based on manga and even wrote a system to view differences in anime/manga side by side.
Lately some/many of the shows I like to watch have entered into ‘filler-hell’ (Naruto, Bleach etc) and I am poking around looking for new ones to watch. Usually how I do this is look on th torrent sites and collect a bunch of episode #1’s, or ones which are below about 15 episodes that are easy to catch up on so I can bail out on before I watch 200 episodes and have it piddle out on after suffering through a year of fillers in hopes they will save it.
Some of the new anime that have come out this spring are pretty good, a lot are pretty bad (some so bad I don’t get past the first ten minutes)

Here are a few new ones that I will offer my personal reviews of. My reviewing methods are really not like other reviewers. My method is to start off with a beginning value (this is the same way that spamassassin works in classification of spam) which I would call “the perfect anime” and then as some of the crap and garbage that hoses so many animes creep their way in I shave off ‘points’. Some elements of an anime might be “anime killers” for me personally, so for instance, on a one to ten scale, an anime that is about “giant robots, mecha or revolves around or features them” I would consider that an ‘anime killer’ and stop watching. That particular theme, mecha, I consider a -5.0 (or -4 depending) which in my idea of scale anything -4 or over is a killer. Other killers are pure Otaku jerk-fest panty-raid anime and tentacle sex anime. I am just not interested in watching that. Some things like the phrases “mana, chakra or other mystery power words”, “just a normal high school student” and “entrance exams” are minor negatives while “Shinigami” or “vampires / vampire themed characters and/or creatures featured in the anime” is a -3.5 for me, almost a killer, but can be saved. I have a few bonus point items that I like, which are “amazing artwork and look and feel of the anime as a whole” (Dennou Coil would fit into this category) or “true originality in spite of cheeseball super powers” (Darker than black) etc.

What would I consider near ‘perfect’ anime? I would have to say, Lain (serial experiments), Cowboy Bebop, Dennou Coil, and similar ones. If enjoy those, you will appreciate my tastes.

I want to set up this system in ajax so you can select various items that bug or don’t bug you and watch as animes are removed/added to the list in various order though my list is not complete.
Anyway, on with my reviews, first impressions are everything, so I am just reviewing episode one of the following animes.

GHOST HOUND Episode 1 : Score 8.1 of 10

Ghost hound episode one has some good potential. The sub I found had perfect 3d audio (left and right was awesome in my headphones) and the quality and ‘feel’ of the anime was perfect. It is based in a school setting and this set up episode has me interested in continuing to watch. It *really* has the feel of the anime Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, which I found fascinating as an anime, as it is probably the only one that has ever actually affected my sleep, it seriously it throws you for such a loop.
I was intrigued from the beginning of this anime to see what going to happen next and the first ep only had hints at special powers, mostly what we see is a ghost/spirit. I was happy that things don’t enter the world of absolute insanity with flying around and swinging huge swords or a secret club of kids with powers, you can actually have time and connect with the characters and develop interest in what is going on with them.
Ghost hound is almost like an alternate Kure Nai (which I review next) in that both of these do not features demons, monsters, special mana-powers or other such wild stuff (not that I don’t enjoy that at times, but I do like to see creativity in true storytelling without having to fall back on old cliches of anime to fuel the story arc).
In this episode we are introduced to the assumed protagonist and several other characters and “situations” that we may be dealing with in coming episodes. In a short amount of time we come to understand that the protagonist is narcoleptic and when he falls asleep he goes on a sort of astral projection and can see some of his current surroundings and the people around him. One neighbor girl was able to see him during one of his projections which is naturally curious. This ‘ability’ seems to stem from a traumatic event that happened when he was younger. It appears from some interestingly well done flashbacks that he was kidnapped, and is undergoing counseling for.
After all the introductions and firm understanding of his place in the world and at his school we are finally teased with the ‘namesake’ ghost at the end, though not through our protagonists eyes. There is some suspicion raised with some new people who have showed up in his small home town, a new student who acts odd and his counselor was abruptly replaced and wants access to the ‘dreams’ that he has recorded when he wakes on a cassette tape.

Kure Nai Episode 1 : Score 8.6 of 10

Sometimes I watch an anime and feel like I am watching a story that is human and believable, that perhaps it was taken from the pages of a book or was a story that inspired a movie. A story that has the feel of ‘life’ in it, that maybe it was not all made up.
Kure nai gives you this feeling, there is nothing really remarkable about any of the characters, but none of them “act” like you would expect them to in an anime. Many of these characters actually surprise you and kind of turn the ideas you would initially have (and the anime ‘lets’ you have) on their heads. This ‘twist’ make you get the feeling you are not watching just another anime, you are watching something new and interesting.
Kure Nai is perhaps my favorite new anime so far, I am now downloading episode 2 so I can find out what happens next.
The basic idea (without spoilers) is that “something” has happened and a young girl has been removed from her extremely wealthy family and placed in the care of a person who hires people to do certain “jobs” around the city that people pay for such as stopping vandals for a shop owner, or stopping a stalker for a client, and our one young and inexperienced school boy who is under the wing of this person is charged with taking care of this girl. You would expect this to end up in antics and head-bonking cheese anime style with nosebleeds, pantie-shots, and little sweat drops and stuff but this story never bothers with elements so trite and from the looks, and depth of the characters, I doubt they ever will take this story there. It is touching and human, and the way the ‘feel’ of the anime is and the quality of it, I think this one will be a good one to follow if you enjoy anime for real stories and not just crazy swords and ninja-powers.

EDIT: After watching episode 2, I would probably bump up the rating on this anime, it just gets better and more interesting. Maintains the story, which is human and real and sets up some movement into the arc of the series. It reminds me somewhat of darker than black in the way it treats some aspects of the story and characters. If you have watched DTB then you know this is a good thing.

Soul Eater 1 : Score 5.2 of 10

Watching this show there are some things that I just want to start screaming about, but the production quality in some of the shots is just top notch and I cannot just toss it out the window. There is also no pretension about being serious in these portions of the anime. I also have read a good deal of the manga for this so I knew what I was expecting and it is just a funny romp that almost makes fun of a lot of the genre all while throwing around some western sterotypes out and doing a few things that are original.
The basics are that in episode one we are introduced to Maka and Soul Eater. Soul eater is a young constant drooling boy who is also a scythe that maka wields to do their work for the “shinigami-sama” (which would be a huge negative but because of the way it is portrayed is almost a poke at Bleach) is too funny.
I swear this anime was inspired by A nightmare before christmas with all the various little areas and scenes of the “death city” and the “hook cemetary” etc. It is a fun romp worth the effort if you are looking for a non-serious anime that is just fun to watch, actually pretty fun, not to mention the future episodes will just continue the fun with Blackstar and Kid coming in the next two episodes.
I wish I could rate this higher, but it really hits some points for me that get close to making me not want to watch it .. ever, but it has some saving graces.

Rosario + vampire : Score 1.9 of 10

Sometimes I will read a summary on some anime news sites and be interested and then kind of disappointed with an anime. This is “sort of” one of those cases and is reminding me of why I have the “vampire” rule about anime and avoiding any “jampire” anime (that is MY term for it.. I COINED IT).
The idea that got me to download the first ten eps before watching was the base idea that the young protagonist is accidentally placed into a private school for “monsters” instead of the private school he was supposed to be assigned to. While there he must hide the fact that is actually human or be eaten all the while maintaining a best friend a girl who is actually a vampire but has a seal to keep her true nature from coming out or if so she turns into a suddenly older badass (which is funny cause i am not sure why she would need to go to school). There is some real meat here they could work with to make some seriously fun storytelling. I will be honest and say that so far it is just slightly better than average for some random otaku pantie-shot spew’ime. I will probably finish out these eps in hopes they figure it out but the story so far is not compelling and is making slow headway into actually gaining my interest in why I care that he can remove the seal or why he was not detected coming into the school.. My guess is that it will turn out he does indeed have some “monster” in him or something, but will I really care at all then, doubtful. Might as well watch “Love-hina” or something if I wanted the story thus far.

EDIT: watching episode two of this like being dropped in a boys middle school creative writing class where the subject is alternative sexuality and humor. I am not sure I want to waste more time on this.

Allison & Lillia : Score 7.9 of 10

This particular anime was not exactly what I was expecting. In holds the promise of a grand story and high adventure for sure. The sounds production is excellent, the art production is good, not the flash of some of the new ones, but still excellent. The beginning reminds me of Last exile in that you have an alternate world country with familiar tech from about 40 years ago and the country is split between two warring nations in a ceaseless war. At the start of this adventure we have the typical class genius who gets a visit from an old friend who is the typical fly-girl who thumbs her nose at the establishment she works for (in this case the military). The two meet up with the typical “seer” in this case the old man who tells them a fantastic tale about a treasure which could end the ages-long war and then is swiftly abducted in front of them and whisked away. Our heroes naturally make chase and that is the first episode. However, the methods used were somewhat done before, they still approached them in kind of unique ways leaving much open and witha great promise for a large and expansive adventure ahead. The classic formula is the main reason I knocked some points off this anime, as everything else is set up perfect and it seems this will be one to watch.

Macross frontier : Score 5 of 10

Oh god why did there have to be Mechs in this anime! They are not needed and it is like they threw them in for the fans. Luckily it seems that from this first episode that they are NOT the main focus of this anime, which is the only saving grace I can give this otherwise amazing work. The sound quality is excellent, the animation and chase scenes are some of/if not perhaps the best I have seen. The computer overlay work is great, really I have only two major issues with this anime and one is the mecha (which are actually transformer mecha and in the context of this anime I suppose could make sense) and the other is the gratuitous ’singing’ scene they managed to work into it, though it did seem to fit so it is excusable.
The base premise here is that mankind has gone out exploring space in huge grouped fleets with “city” vessels which have huge cities inside them. They are being chased off and on by some creatures which for some reason (unknown to us) want to destroy them. (bsg’ish … anyone?). In the beginning we are introduced to the female heroine of our story who is about to go see a concert by a super famous singer. We are also introduced to our heroes who are aerial acrobatics experts in flight suits who do a special part of the singers show (they are loosely connected to the military it seems) our young girl tries to get around the line and stumbles into the acrobats and they meet and she offers them some food at her restaurant etc etc the show starts and there is some drama, meanwhile out in space the alien baddies decide to attack the city and manage to get through. The concert is evacuated and our young girl is stranded in front of the alien creature. In swoops our hero who jumps into the flight weapon of the leader of the squad the alien just destroyed and then it cuts to the end. From the preview the next episode is a chase scene.
Normally due to the fact there is a mech in this I would toss it, however I think this is a damn good anime and the mechs are not the focus so I might be able to deal with those parts. If however this turns into another “mech” show where the government decides to give a 14 year old kid a billion dollar mech to trash the countryside I will stop watching right then and there.

xxxHolic : Score 3.4 of 10

First off, and I should get this out of the way, the xxx portion does not refer to porn or anything like that. On first inspection I watched this and went WTF?!? There is one of those little pikachu things in it and I *HATE* those things. Then there is the whole girl crush/head bonk little sweat thing with the cut-scenes of huge grins in silly drawing style. *slash* .. *slash* go points on my rating scale. Then we get into the story, though there is not much yet, and it is mildly amusing.
If you have seen Mr. Magoos wonder emporium (the movie) then you can understand ‘kind of’ what the setup here is. Our main protagonist helps out a ’shop’ which as it turns out is run by a mysterious lady who lifts curses and grants wishes. However, the wishes she grants seem to always have side effects that people would not comprehend until later, so they are sort of a learning device. This entire first episode revolves around the protagonists friend who gets a curse placed on him by a spider which closes his eye, so he decided to help his friend out and so swapped seeing in his right eye to lift his friends curse. A lot of talking and antics in the shop later we get to where his friend is trying to counter the counter curse because his father happened to be a shaman of some type. The preview of the next one looks like much of the same, I might watch it but overall I do not think this is an anime that I will be watching. Pikachu thing.. pfft

I have a somewhat simple idea I want to make into a game. I ‘know’ that I can do it in PHP with a mix of css/ajax/json tied together with JQuery but I would like it to be something that I do not have to maintain as heavily as a browser app where I need to worry about various browsers and what might be coming along in the next incarnation of Firefox or the dreaded IE (which has been a horrendous thorn in my side on every web project I have ever built). I decided that I should look into a game engine for speed and OMG I entered a whole new world of hobby projects, half-baked ideas, expensive solutions, HUGE specialty engines, paid as your go solutions shamelessly pandered like a vanity press (Torque) and then the do-it-yourself engines.

After reading reviews and actually looking through a WHOLE slough of these various engines I came to the conclusion that like everything else there are ‘tools for the job’ and you need to pick the right tool for the exact job at hand while maintaining flexibility for things that you may need to do later and for growth. It is also helpful to work with languages and tools you currently know and enjoy working with. So I came up with some basics for what I need for my project because picking a game engine is perhaps one of the single most important parts of coding a game.

1. Cross platform - windows/linux/mac in that order of preference with at least win/linux
2. scriptable - Lua/Squirrel or Python bindings with good network support
3. large and active community - Busy forums that are helpful where people share code (I personally like to share code when I solve a particularly vexing problem)
4. ability to handle 3d - but NOT specifically a FPS engine (this was a major issue with a lot of the engines I looked at), I am much more interested in third person and or 3d/iso’ish with bounded-selects for my particular game.
5. Free or very cheap - Why on earth would I want to pay a lot of money for something that I would then be limited in my ability to share my enhancements with the community later? (especially when this is a small project with one coder) There are many other ways to make money on software.. Host servers for games, write books, paid support contracts etc.
6. Speed of use and decent learning curve - I do not want to spend a year learning some crazy API or some language some developers made up to create their own games.
7. No click and drag / piecemeal engines - I.E. If an engine states that you just need to click together parts and then fill in some info to create your game I get really suspicious.
8. Customizable - Why would I want my game to look just like someone else’s game and have reviews go “Oh this game is just like ___ but acts sort of like ___ don’t bother because you have seen it all before”

Once I started comparing a lot of the engines to my list they dropped off like flies. So in the end, because of my particular needs and want of simplicity, I was left with OGRE3d and Irrlicht, both of which fit the bill nicely and are well documented and used render engines that are not specifically boxed into one corner or another or limited by insane design schemes and/or unusable for my purposes. While being somewhat simple (Irrlicht is dead simple and I would highly recommend for hacking out quick 3d visualizations). Both engines are specifically for C++, which is all good but after taking a nice close look at my projects needs, and the fact that it really is not that complex graphically, working with optimized C++ is really not a big need as I am thinking I might have at most 20 characters/models on my screen at the most and the rest will interface changes that are done via network. Having to comb through the myriad of C++ libraries that I am only passingly familiar with and having to learn their syntax, quirks and funky compile issues all while ‘also’ learning a render engine left me with a foul taste in my mouth. However I pressed on and started to brush up on my C++ (which I have not used Visual C++ or Code::Blocks in a very long time and both these have changed dramatically since my last foray into C++). Then, I ran across something interesting while perusing the OGRE wiki.

PyOgre is a python binding to Ogre and I started looking into it and thought to myself “hey, I know python and I know a lot of the libraries as well.. this could speed up my development time.. hrm”. PyOgre bindings hook directly into the Ogre libs and Python runs anywhere. This might actually fit the bill, it easily fits into my list of needs and is lightweight enough and has a very good learning curve for me. So to be thorough off I went to the python game resources on the python site and I decided to look into the other engines that are out there for python that may been an even better fit for my particular needs. Most of these are HIGHLY specialized libs for doing things like math visualization or specific bindings to other engines I had already thrown out. Then while combing through the list I found ONE engine (unfortunately) named Panda3D (also see the wikipedia article) (it rises above it’s cheeseball name upon inspection) that seems like a decent fit and I am now in early stage playing around with it. So far I have found sample code for almost all the elements of the game I want to create and it appears to have the full features of other engines as well, though I would not be locked into having to deal with more than I want and can easily crank out a server app using stackless python (which on a low end box could handle many more clients than I could probably find for my game)

So finally at the end of two weeks of downloading, compiling and trying out engines, attempting to interact with the various communities and ducking shyster companies that want to nickel and dime every naive, hobby or wanna-be game maker (which by the way I find deplorable as some companies could actually be discouraging a lot of potential talent from actually creating their games by doing this, thus hurting the industry as a whole) *cough* Torque *cough* I have found that I came full circle back to python (pygame was the first engine I worked on the initial stages of this idea, that was three years ago) and ended up blending some preconceptions I naively had about game engines.

I am left with a choice between two engines that are different but fit the bill.
On one hand I have the very open ended and extensible OGRE via PyOGRE which it easy enough to be up and running with and on the other I have Panda 3d which already has many of the Pathfinding, audio, animation and import modules I need but I could extend it out quickly (and if I want can also program in C++ for parts or all of it)
In a straight comparison to be up and running quickly I am leaning towards Panda3d but I am still doing a little research into PyOGRE. Hopefully my next post I will plop some code and screen shots in here.

In the meantime, I hope this post saves someone some time their search for an engine for a game that is NOT an FPS (sorry they all look the same to me now, and are boring) but it not some 2d 1990 nintendo looking mess.
If you looking to build an RTS (real time strategy) or simulation style game (think ISO’ish) I would recommend you look into what Python has to offer.

I have been poking around looking at various 3d engines for development for a little webgame idea I had and decided it would be better suited being built in an actual game engine.
After a small amount of research I looked into the Torque engine (not linking there right now, read on) and it was highly lauded and rated well. I downloaded the demo’s and joined the rather large community that works in Torque and things seemed pretty cool, though a few things started to make me suspicious and so I went ahead and did some digging around and then got more suspicious. After some small amount of googling I found an interesting post from a game dev company saying “After thinking long and hard about the (lack of) progress we’ve made
over the last 10 months while trying to get Torque running as a decent
game engine, we’ve decided to scrap it altogether and return to our
previous engine, which was based on Ogre 3D. We’ve got it all building again and it looks great so far!”
Now this got me taking a serious look at Ogre 3D and I have to say I think it fits the bill for me, so I sent the following email to the guys who wrote the post above.

Hi,
Thanks for the comparison of CS and OGRE as well as your post about
switching away from Torque..
I have been messing around with it and was considering it as a game
engine but lucky me my ’spidey-sense’ kicked in looking through the
completed and in-development games and so I started digging around and
OGRE really seems like where it is.. Been pointing some folks to your
post about 10 months of Torque and you guys quit it.. (sorry about
that btw..) but at least you could point some of the rest of us away
from the torque engine..

Few things that should make anyone suspicious of the Torque engine is:
a) they have the largest base of users (or so it seems) but one of the
lowest numbers of actual games created with it.
b) all the ‘paid plugins’ and ‘packs’.. smells of a money pump to me..
like one of the free mmorpgs that you have pay for stuff to get
anywhere..
c) the restriction of content only for license holders, like the
tutorials that you can only look at if you paid for the license.
d) the walled garden approach ‘feel’ you get with all the above..

thanks again, OGRE seems the way to go.

Which in turn got me this response

I’m only too glad to share my experiences with others in similar situations.
I hope I can save you some time in your search for a decent game engine.
IMO, Torque isn’t it. I’ve lost faith in Garage Games as a company. I feel
they’re somewhat unscrupulous and/or random in their business approach.
Certainly not the kind of company or platform I want to base my livelihood
on, as I’m hoping my game will eventually be.

Best of luck to you in your project as well.

I replied with

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, in my experience open source projects are almost always the best
when you are doing things to base a business off. I used to work for a
Microsoft shop that in it’s early phase was almost done in by
licensing.
Later I went to a domain name registrar (directnic) which was at
the time very profitable and built their entire business on the back
of apache/php/mysql and all 100% open source projects and they did
very well (until godaddy ate them up and they switched primary
business to parked.com)..
Anyway.. as a ‘test’ I dropped a fishing for a job post in the forums
there.. Manhattan coder looking for *paid* work in a physical office,
7 years experience coding, etc and not one response except one guy who
tried to give me job hunting tips.
I am now convinced that Torque is a hobby/learning engine and nothing more..
Not to mention the new license..

Anyway, I am rambling.. they almost sucked me because what I want to
do is basically take an idea I had for a web game move it into an app
so I don’t need to deal with browser issues and can have some real
animations and such.. Torque seemed the way to do it..

Good luck on your game, will definitely check it out.

and the following came back

That response doesn’t surprise me at all. I think the whole GG community
are unrealistic people who don’t realize how bad Torque is, otherwise they’d
already left and gone to a different engine, or made their own.

And thanks for the good luck, we can always use some of that!

now..
This is basically the response you get from people who have used this engine..
I am glad that I didn’t let myself get suckered in and I suppose I hope that this post can help others who may be making a choice about game engines.

My two cents on the matter is, Torque is a great learning/hobby engine but to even consider it for any serious development you might be deluding yourself. OGRE 3d is not tehcnically a ‘game engine’ it is more just a rendering engine, and it requires knowledge of C++ unlike Torque which has it’s own scripting language. OGRE has a lot of tutorials and many many external libs can be used easily with it. Not to mention the number of games made with it is impressive.

The other engine I seriously consider is irrlicht after reading a post about it byt the guy who wrote raknet which I am hoping to use with OGRE.