Caleb Pond

First Drawing Release

Caleb — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:40:55 +0000

Hey everyone,

Yes I know this site is almost dead right about now. I intend to start posting stuff real soon though. Its been to find some actual free time to blog with school and stuff. Hopefully I will be able to add this blog to my EfterMath Games site if possible so you will be able to view both my personal blog and the collective blog there. Anyways, without further ado I give you my first released drawing.

Admittedly it isn’t the best drawing. I was simply experimenting with some new brushes I got in MyPaint. However it turned out pretty well and I decided it was good enough to release so I made a very cool looking sig and I put up here. I personally think its quite cool but of course thats your choice whether it is or not. =P

Some Comics I Did

Caleb — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:55:01 +0000

Hello everybody! I just thought you might be interested in some comics that I drew while I was in school and then later created in Illustrator. Hopefully you get some sort of amusement from these.

HTML 5 and Gaming

Caleb — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:53:37 +0000

Since the release of HTML 5 there has been a lot of talk about all of the awesome new features that it has. One of the most interesting features to me was canvas and the integration of games into a webpage without any plugins needed. While I have seen basics such as movement and clicking, until now I have never actually seen a full fledged game that didn’t need any plugins installed that was running on HTML 5. I have just recently (Today) discovered a site that actually has a game engine built around HTML 5 and JavaScript. I found this site to be awesome! EffectGames.com has a variety of games that are being developed by the people at EffectGames and by people who are members of their site. If you are interested in HTML 5 you should definitely check out their site. They offer a wide variety of tools to make coding a game inside of the Effect Engine quite easy. I intend to definitely attempt to make a game using their engine once I learn more about coding.

To give you an example of just how awesome their game engine is, here is an example:

Mario SES Recreation (Beta)

As you can see this is definitely a game and it does not require any plugins whatsoever. It is instantly cross-platform and it works on most browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari). You should totally check out their site. (Also a little sidenote, The game doesn’t work with Google reader so I don’t know if it will work with other rss feed sites/programs.) To see the game work go to the actual site please.)

StarCraft 2 Game Review

Caleb — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:03:14 +0000

Hey everyone I just got StarCraft 2 at Best Buy yesterday. I thought it would be a good idea to write a game review of Starcraft 2 and share that with you on my website, and provide with you an overview of basic game play for the single player and multiplayer modes.

Basically what they’ve done with StarCraft 2 is taken what made the original StarCraft good and improved upon it. StarCraft 2 has better graphics, better campaign storyline, and better units. I can’t really say much about the game play tactics yet as I haven’t got to playing multi-player yet, but I will get to that soon and update this post when I do.

So first off, the pros. The Starcraft 2 graphics look great! Everything in the game looks finely polished and high quality. Provided that you have the hardware to back up the games graphics. Personally I have played it on 2 computers now. My crappy computer, and my Dad’s high-end editing computer with 8 Gig’s of RAM, an Intel i7 Processor, and a screamin’ fast video card. On my computer the graphics don’t amount to that much with low-poly models and low quality textures. It however doesn’t interfere too much with the gameplay. However for a full experience with this game, I suggest a at least decent gaming computer. (And definitely not an outdated graphics card like mine =P)

They’ve definitely made some huge changes to the way they handle campaigns.They now have cuts-cenes! Yes, actual cut-scenes! Also, The cut-scene graphics look amazing. (With the right hardware as explained previously)

Case and Point:

Another thing about the cut-scenes some of them are controllable by point and click areas like the bar. This added an interesting game dynamic as well as a break from all of the action. A nice feature that I noticed was a jukebox with changeable music that plays in the background even if you activate a cut-scene in the bar. Inside of the bar there is also proof that the people at Blizzard at least have some since of humor because a funny music video plays in the background sometimes. I think it is the song that is playing that controls when it happens.

Here is a photo(Notice the section marked News):

The new addition of cut-scenes adds a whole different level of storyline and plot as we can now really see the characters emotions and focus on the cut-scene rather than playing the game. It is definitely a good direction for StarCraft 2. I haven’t played much of the campaign yet but so far I am really enjoying watching the story unfold rather than just playing certain storyline based maps like last time.

Example:

Now for some of the less good stuff. In the cut-scenes the acting was pretty good actually the voice of the character fit well with the animations. However, the voice acting of most of the non-important people during the actual gameplay is sad to say, pathetic. I don’t know how they could have thought that it sounded believable when they recorded it but they did. In-game they still have the cheesy scripted sounds for when you order people around in the game. I mean its different sounds but what they say doesn’t make much sense at all. Overall the acting and the scripted sounds don’t pull away from it too much. So it’s really not that bad.

If you haven’t bought this game I highly recommend that you do. It’s a well made game and its always easy to have a good time while playing.

Here is a gallery of photos I wanted to put in this review but couldn’t because it would have taken up too much space:

Sintel Posters Download from the Blender Open Movie Project by Durian

Caleb — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:26:06 +0000

Well if you haven’t heard of Sintel you should definitely check it out. It is an open movie project that is run by Durian and they are nearing the end of their production.

Recently they have had some issues with their download site for their posters of the original 4k renders. Their server is back up but due to all the traffic the download is quite slow. So I thought it would be a good idea to offer a different download option on my site. Here is the link: files.calebpond.com/posters-sintel.zip

As you can see the world that the people at Durian have created looks simply amazing! Well I hope you found interesting if not at least vaguely useful.

If you would like to share this post with your friends then here is a j.mp link: http://j.mp/sintel