MrDoodles

I'd like to begin this post with...

'DAMN YOU YAZOR!'

I am playing Mass Effect 2, ok. Bioware have done the best ever thing for a game franchise. Everything is persistant. I thought it stopped at the summary you are presented with when choosing a character to import to ME2. Every choice I made in the first game, even the little ones I didn't think were too important, has had an effect on this sequel. The persistant character thing (evidently not just my own!!), with the persistancy of the outcomes of my every decision, from how I talk to people to what I choose to do in life/death situations, is now an even bigger issue. I've learned that there's a chance that the romantic interest of Bruce Shepard may reignite in Mass Effect 3 if I do not persue a romantic interest to its finish in Mass Effect 2.

Do you know what this means!? It means I have to actually think like a real person and bear in mind all these people I would consider important if it were real. Except, because of this, I am now actually caring about these people and my decisions as if they WERE real. I'm sitting here and a rather less-than-ideal encounter with a character from the first game, and a subsequent personal message to my captain's personal console, is still going through my mind as a result!

I tell people off for caring too much about people in soap operas because they're all fictional. And here I am, in the same trap...

Bioware have done an amazing thing. I am actually emotionally involved in this story and especially its characters. Darn you all!

Don't get me wrong - I am loving that a work of fiction has actually managed to grab my attention to the same degree Braid had previously. It fully deserves the praise it gets but I'm not sure this whole persistant personal story has received enough attention from its reviewers. It means you don't only have the option of playing each game through again and make different choices but the entire series. That's quite an achievement.

Colour! I'm using extra techniques this time round, which may account for the extra time it's taking me... still worth it though.

Before now I've used cell-shading style. This style of colouring uses distinct blocks of colour with no gradients as such on the shades. In more recent posters I've complimented the cell-shading with subtle gradients and smoother highlighting/shading in some places, but not all. With this one, I'm going much further, steering clear from a very definite cell-shading style.

I'm nearly there..! Following this process throughout the poster, extra effects will be added. Light gleams, glows, fog, etc, all to come...

I must first apologise for another use of the same cliche (you know, what's up there in the title), but it's appropriate because the poster, depicting utter chaos in a world about to go mad, has begun.

See.

So without waffling on too much, ideas for this one were many, but hitting on one I thought would work wasn't easy. I wanted a vista of devastation, but simultaneously wanted to put us right in amongst the action. Ultimately I sketched something I thought could work very nicely and set about getting this done about a week ago.

Sorry KF... I realise this is another late one!

Okay, so here's just a snippet of the work so far. The actual image is far more expansive. I kick things off by sketching everything in skeleton form, fleshing out the shapes that will act as my guides. This takes a while because these have to be setup right and its at this stage that I can see if anything isn't proportioned correctly, or has dodgy perspective, etc.

On top of the guidelines I then draw much stronger detailing lines. These don't feature all the detail that will ultimately be on display, but they do give the image much more life and character. The purpose at this point is to finalise the outlines that I'll make permanent with ink.

But that step comes later.

I admit, I let myself get carried away with this idea.



Here's a little secret. Throughout this whole process of planning the last LAN party, we knew what the next theme would be for LlamaLAN XIII, because originally we intended the apocalypse for event number twelve. The very first suggestion from Kanonfodda was to parody 'Twelve Monkeys'; hence, ideas revolved around the 'End Of World' scenarios. Eight months later, Cyberdrac became aware that some members of the LAN community were keen on a Pirates theme and that perhaps we should capitalise on the enthusiasm. When the Pirates buzz started, I had the idea of parodying the 'Pirates of the Carribean' movie titles, the last one being 'At LAN's End.' I said at the time that this would lead into the next theme very nicely...





At first, despite the whole Pirates vs Ninjas thing being my suggestion after Cyberdrac's suggested theme change, I felt initially like it was a rather cheap bandwagon we'd just jumped on. Personally speaking, it didn't take too long before the whole idea actually started to become quite a bit of fun. No, I'm not just talking about the costumes.



Mostly this was due to the number of event, twelve. Every LAN poster since LlamaLAN 2004 has been an attempt at parody. However, only since LlamaLAN VIII did we actually start theming the LANs, and thus began a feature of LlamaLAN parties that I'm pretty sure goes a long way in making them such a hit with the community. The attendee count rocketed after LlamaLAN VIII to a consistent high. The themes seem so wildly different from eachother - Hawaiian party, Borg assimilation, Superheroes, Rock Music and now Pirates vs Ninjas - but each have been inspired by one common factor - that is, the number of the event.



LlamaLAN XII could have been different. After strong hints from some of our regulars that a Pirate theme would be appreciated, we went all out by throwing the ninjas in there too as mentioned above. But, still keen to maintain the numerically-inspired pattern, we thought about what possible significance the number twelve could have to either Pirates, or Ninjas, or both. We thought, a lot. After pretty much giving up on using twelve in the theme anywhere at all, it was one day at the gym that I spotted a clock on the wall and, after a series of related thoughts and memories came to mind, I quite excitedly realised that we could go even bigger with the theme. The whole Pirates vs Ninjas thing already hints that they've been at eachother's throats for a long long time, and you can't get much more of an epic battle than between two groups without going supernatural (or biblical). Time was the key!



That's why the Ring of Golden Llamas was so prominent in pretty much anything LL/XII related. It was all tied in to time, history, and the search for these twelve artifacts that, when combined, actually have the power to control all of time and space itself.



Or at least, end life as we know it.



Well, I couldn't stop there. Proposing an idea of such epic proportions needed more. We layered on more parody as we took inspiration from as many 'adventure hunt for ancient apocalypse device' texts as we could, Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider included. And it would have been hard to miss the reference to Lord of the Rings.



In like manner, the whole tale had to be an epic one, from start to finish.



At first the idea was whoever held the most llamas was clearly the master and would gain control of the world, and hence settling the issue. In time, my overdramatic apocalypse-obsessed mind presented me with a far better idea to lead in to LlamaLAN XIII. Yes, the Golden Llamas were the key to ultimate power. However, it was a power that could be used to protect, to control, or to destroy. An idea that really appealed to me was that the desire for destructive domination, fueled by a bitter rivalry, would lead to devastation for both sides. What neither side realised was that recombining the Llamas would spell the end of all things. It kinda hooks in to many stories and to certain truths about human nature. As the character Wade said in F.E.A.R: "It is the way of men to make monsters... and it is the nature of monsters to destroy their makers."



So then we had our plan and reason to say this was the big one - the Pirates and Ninjas now have a means to ultimately destroy eachother. This quest for the Golden Llamas, with the intention to ruin the other side, is what the whole weekend was themed on.





The teaser poster for LL/XII had 'EPIC' written all over it. We began discussing how to execute a clock-face scoreboard, depicting the progress of all four teams as the LAN proceeded. It was expertly executed by Kanonfodda. I had this idea to have it permanently projection on the ceiling, which is why I spent some months meticulously researching projectors and keeping a close eye on E-Bay deals, bagging a true bargain. I wanted this ring hung overhead because there was a deliberate duality to the slowly forming device - its look was appealing and magical. It's true nature is of violence - that was, after all, what the two sides intended it for.



Hanging it overhead was supposed to be another suggestion of its ominous presence and potentially malevolent power.



Like I said, it had to be epic from start to finish. We needed an epic finale. I considered how that would be possible. Simply announcing who won wouldn't be enough and so I set about planning a video to play on the overhead projection. It had to be as dramatic as I could make it, depicting the combining of the llamas and bringing about widespread cataclysm. I saw what I wanted in my head and got to work.



Carrara 6 is the 3D modelling and rendering tool I used to create most of the footage. It's very powerful stuff, providing means to create volumetric clouds, realistic skies, and complicated animated shaders with relative ease. For example, changing the moon and sky colour from white and amber to deep reds took just a minute to setup. Slightly more involving was the 'ash' effect. Inspired by the Max Payne movie's excellent apocalyptic skies, I wanted to scatter ashes from the sky for additional end-of-world horror.







Applying a glow wasn't too hard, but it took a little bit of random button pushing before I worked out how to apply a physics effect to every particle coming from the particle generator (the physics force in use is 'flow'; the reference manual states this is a good one for simulating fallen leaves in a breeze.)



But I was demanding rather a lot of it. I had to use a little utility called LaaTido to alter the Carrara executable so it was Large Address Aware (LAA), allowing it to use over 2gb of RAM while processing! And it took a couple of days of solid rendering on 4 cores of 3Ghz to finish the animation.



The lightning was a trouble. At first I tried creating lightning shapes in Carrara but this was taking up way too much time for an effect that didn't look all that nice. Real photos of lightning just looked way cooler. In the end, I ditched the idea of creating my own and superimposed every instance of lightning in the video editor - Vegas 4. Vegas is brilliant. You can apply envelopes to both video and audio tracks, and very quickly alter the length of a fade period, providing nice and smooth transition effects. On top of each appearance of lightning I added a Vegas-generated radial gradient of some appropriate colour for that extra big flash effect. The other thing Vegas does in a far superior way to Adobe Premier is Panning and Zooming, used on the Ninja icon and the final texts.



The golden llama ring itself was just a flat plane, texture-mapped with alpha-transparency, but I think this was obvious. You can see the edges of the image, a little annoyance which I didn't have time to sort out. Also, there were more falling fireballs than are easily visible. I wanted to fill the sky with them, and I have, but the cloud obfuscated most of them and their trails. It was a bit tricky because the camera had to be angled up at the sky, hence the distance available was limited. It had to be angled up so the LAN attendees saw it as if the fireballs really were falling onto our heads.



I really wanted to create that 'old world epic' story atmosphere and so drafted in my brother Gabriel Wolf to narrate, in his best 'narrator' voice he could muster. He did a stunning job. There's a lot of careful timing going on in this vid as well. The music from Tomb Raider: Underworld was timed so that after he's finished his lines, the church bell in the music track goes off. I tried to guide the viewer to make the most of the video by placing lightning where most of the visible fireballs were about to appear. I had a fireball impact near the viewer early on so the violence and peril was clear. The video was nowhere near as effective until I'd added the copious amounts of screaming sound effects and again I tried to time these so they filled the soundscape without overwhelming us too much and so they matched what was going on. For example, there is a single scream when the first fireball can be spotted, which kicks off the crowd, and I tried to follow this setup throughout so that they worked eachother up into a frenzy.



Finally, I had to finish off with a Wilhelm.



Thanks for watching!

With most of the projects and hobbies I take on, I believe in doing something properly if it's worth doing at all. This means I like filling up whatever I do with all kinds of minor details that most people probably wouldn't even notice; and then, even if they did notice, not really be fussed about. There's a certain satisfaction in going to this level of effort though, regardless!



Anyway, let's talk about what I want to talk about - when the concept of the Golden Llamas spewed forth, I set about imagining the setpieces for the legend and thus the artwork. I wanted to achieve something which actually looked mystical and ancient, and thus set about working out what kind of patterning would provide such an aura.



I am fascinated by constructs in nature, be they in physics, geography, biology or astronomy. One such construct was discovered by a bloke called Fibonacci. Here's the mathematics:



Imagine you have a flat square 1cm x 1cm in size and have it placed on a flat surface. You place another 1x1 square to the left of it. Now, if you place a 2x2 square above them, the lower side of the 2x2 square fits exactly against the other two. The combined left edge now measures 3cm, and so you put a 3x3 square alongside the left edge. And so on. You can start adding preceding pairs of numbers together to get the next one in the sequence - 1+1 = 2, 2+1 = 3, 3+2 = 5, 5+3 = 8, etc.



If you carried on placing squares, and fancied noting down the numbers in sequence, you eventually end up with this.







Great, what's so good about that?



This very quick but more interesting presentation 'What the Hell is the Fibonacci Series' helps illustrate why this is actually quite cool (as far as maths go.) What you end up with, drawing that spiral through all vertices, is a propagating spiral.



Again, so what?



That particular shape appears everywhere. Those particular numbers are, likewise, everywhere.



The total petals on many species of flower can be found in the sequence. The distibution of seeds on the heads of many flowers is precisely arranged to form several overlaying Fibonacci spirals, one famous example being the head of a sunflower. Or, you can check out the 'coneflower'. Evidently this is because this creates the most optimised distribution of seeds possible. Check out this little image to see it. The pinecone is another example of Fibonacci spiral distribution in nature. Even major galaxies display this particular spiral shape in their formation - The Andromeda galaxy (M51) has two. Many plants distribute petals and leaves in line with the sequence - a term for this is phyllotaxis. And, you can look up what the Golden Angle is all about, tied strongly to this mathemetical marvel and, again, ideal distribution.



Okay, so I've gone on about this a lot but I just wanted to make note of how vastly important this is in nature. It's related, honestly; As these shapes are so intrinsic throughout the universe, I figured something that is fabled to eventually be able to control aspects of it (according to our little legend) should reflect it somehow. I decided to create the ring on which those mighty Golden Llamas sit using just two shapes - circles and Fibonacci spirals.





The pattern you see behind the llamas, on the surface of the golden ring, is made up of just these shapes. There's a particular pattern I put together repeated twelve times around the ring. Here it is, but coloured to show the eight fibonacci spirals within it. I didn't know how it would turn out, but the result worked and actually ended up quite asthetic. This shouldn't have surprised me really - if this shape is indeed everywhere, we're probably very likely to find it an attractive one.



This wasn't quite enough though as I wanted to represent actual astral bodies on it somehow. The simple answer was to distribute several circles on its surface of varying sizes. But even their distribution isn't random and uses Fibonacci's findings. I laid them out in order of size, largest to smallest, using the Golden Angle.



So there you have it! I figured I'd explain it all here because I doubt anyone would have noticed. In all likelihood, you probably are still left wondering why the hell I spend so much effort going to this much detail. Like I said, there's a certain satisfaction in it all.

Today I bring you another little sneaky peek as, ten days later, we nearly have our twelfth poster for our twelfth event.







Very nearly done here. I've tried to make the detail as interesting as I can imagine. There's a number of things about the result niggling my need for perfection, but I'm trying to learn from them rather than get irritated by them. Not easy... Still here we are, a tiny little catflap of a window into the final result. Coming very soon, llamas...

I've always used references but before now had to study photos of athletes and other graphic novel/comic panels - then kinda make up the rest. This is not the most efficient way of doing things, especially when you work on paper, because I'll sketch something, decide I hate its direction, proportion or value and rub it out. Then try it again. This happens a lot.



I recently picked up Poser 7. It was recommended by my manager as perhaps a means to create the LAN posters more quickly. I had a slightly different idea; I could play with Poser and use it to provoke my creative juices, pulling virtual dolls all over the place to find the exact funky pose I want. In other words, I can create my own reference image, place elements and characters within a frame, then mess about a bit, see what would work better, try a few different expressions and tweak body part angles. I can produce a mock of what I have in mind before any sketching takes place!



Unfortunately, Poser 7 is a new toy, and I couldn't resist playing with its many features and spending WAY too much time fine tuning how a llama's tail might look if I used Poser's hair engine, animating walking, playing with lights, etc. This probably ate up some time, but worthwhile I reckon. One thing Poser allows is complete manipulation of the entire anatomy. Our Llamas in our posters have an altered physiology to human beings, but I could account for this by stretching necks and legs appropriately.



Their outfits are still sketched without strong references, but they're so much easier to do when the figure's form is spot on.





This week, I sat down and made a concerted effort to be productive. Monday to Wednesday was spent sketching in pencil, and last night I was determined to pen in the outlines.



So here's a little sneak peak of the next LAN poster as it currently stands (stage 2). Colouring begins tonight!

LlamaLAN enjoys a hell of a lot of brilliant coincidences.



I'll be honest, I had my doubts about this whole Pirate vs Ninja theme. It's not a meme I've ever been particularly fond of (unlike, say, Badgers Badgers Badgers.) However, I am happy to say I was wrong to be dubious. We're having a lot of fun with this theme in terms of style and event planning...



And, thanks to this direction, I've hurled myself headlong, screaming, into furthering the Llamacentric mythology in dramatic ways. And I love dramatic ways.





The Tales of the Llama



I don't know that I've ever stated it directly, but I think it's fairly obvious what I've been doing with the artwork 'til now, inspired by the big team-based warfare we see at LlamaLAN events. I've allowed the proceedings and expectations of each event to direct our posters, depicting the status of who's involved and who needs to be taken down. For example, I rather like generating characters which personify the teams, rather than the individuals. This was also inspired immensely by the theme of LlamaLAN 9, which itself was inspired by Jeri Ryan's Voyager character (Cyberdrac's requirement specifically stated 'very sexy Borg Llama'); hence, LlamaLAN 9's series of posters served to

1. take the mick out of the single-character-poster-series mentality of Eragon and other fantasy titles,
2. establish our new structure of four teams rather than two
3. honour every LlamaLAN event to date while drawing a bold line between what was then and what is now
4. parody every class in Team Fortress 2
5. demonstrate the supremacy of Green Team, establishing a story which we all love - the good vs the seemingly-more-powerful evil. This was only subtle, but every poster's dominant colour was Green, particularly the final, official LL9 poster featuring the cyberllama queen.

LlamaLAN X - and the cyberllama threat remains undefeated. Once again, pure coincidence was on our side. We discussed at length what theme could be drawn out of the number 10 but finally rested on the X-Men, topical at the time as the movies were still around about somewhere. The idea of superheroes in general pervaded. This also meant I could go in a wildly different direction in terms of atmosphere, balancing out LlamaLAN IX's rather malevolent ambience with X's bright and energetic air. This was most appropriate - the machine had to be thwarted (Green had indeed emerged the victor), so who better than a team of superllamas? There were nine cyberllamas to defeat, and I introduced six heroes.



At LlamaLAN X, Green team remained on top, for which I was happy about. Yes, it's nice for our team to keep its position at number one, but in truth I was happiest with this because it suited our plans for LlamaLAN XI.





So along comes the rock-fest, LlamaLAN XI. Again, a whole host of inspirations complimented eachother. First of, the haps of LlamaLAND. Here I took advantage of the chance to actually pit the two forces of good and evil against eachother. This suited nicely the theme in itself - turning to eleven means 'Go to the extreme!' So I tried, although in truth the poster did not turn out as extreme as what I saw in my head! Still, the big fantasy battle, taking place beneath a storm of epic scale, is a cliche for the front cover of a classic rock band's album artwork, except I had them weilding microphones instead of swords and guitars instead of axes (see what I did there. ) In this battle of CyberLlamas vs the SuperLlamas, who would emerge victorious? It is appropriate that we were actually defeated by the Red Team as we (green) only came second! This was yet another nice coincidence - the two foremost characters in LlamaLAN XII's art were the cyberllama queen (of course) and the foremost character of LlamaLAN X's poster, who I recostumed, Abba-style, to represent the Red team.



With Green defeated, that trilogy is over with. The cyberllamas arrived, assimilated most of the llamas of LlamaLAND, but were finally defeated. Now begins our chance to have fun with the next tome of the history of LlamaLAND.





Chapter XII - The Lords of the Golden Llamas

What are The Twelve Golden Llamas? Just what kind of Earth-shattering power are we talking about here? We're told that both Pirates and Ninjas now battle to weild the most of the twelve artifacts, believing the legend and that those who hold the majority will finally bring an end to this age-old war in bloody victory. What exactly does that mean anyway? Does it even matter?



Something for you to wonder about, and if you're so inclined, even look forward to.

Warning: Spoilers within are very likely. This contains my own attempts to interpret Braid's story-telling as something personal to each of us. If you haven't played Braid through, you should experience discovering its story and gameplay mechanics for yourself.



Yazor told me he'd been playing this little game named 'Braid' and that I really should get hold of it; he said it's right up my street.



For a tenner on Steam, I downloaded Braid and set about discovering the most challenging platform game I've come across so far. Despite no puzzle piece eluding me for more than a few hours, I call it the most challenging because, not only is the process of completing it a good challenge, but the story itself is mostly abstract. Until we reach what seems to be the end, at least. That feeling of revelation is rare - I'd recommend it to anyone. I resisted the urge to look up the solutions to both the gameplay puzzles and the storyline until the end, at which point I considered what Braid was actually all about before looking up what anyone else was saying.

The Beginning

The guy we play is named Tim and he starts out as a shadow against the backdrop of a gently burning city. We learn he is on a quest to save 'The Princess' because 'she has been snatched by a horrible and evil monster.' We're also told 'this happened because Tim made a mistake.' The storyline is unveiled through storybooks you open by running in front of them, their giant paragraphs floating above your head.



If you don't take the time to bother with the piece-meal storytelling you will miss about 80% of what Braid actually has to offer you.

The Gameplay

The gameplay takes place over six different 'worlds'. The game actually starts you in World 2. It appears to be a straight forward platform adventure until you discover upon your first death that you are in complete control of time, able to run it in either direction. Rather than be punished for your mistakes, you are given the power to learn from them, undo them, and become all the wiser for them. Already the philosophies of Braid begins to emerge.



Apart from collecting the essential key to unlock that door blocking you from the exit, each level in each world gives you the chance to collect puzzle pieces, putting them together to form imagery based on what you read about Tim's quest. All of this requires messing about with the flow of time in some clever ways, and each world introduces its own laws and mechanics that help to build the complexity of each level's solution.

The Story

There's an actual literal story hidden until the final part of the game, but from this story the ideas presented in the clouds preceding each level build a cautionary philosophical tale, which I'm focussing on.



As the gameplay mechanics of each world build on all those previous, demanding more complex thinking in several dimensions, so does Braid's story, and this is one of the reasons I can say that Braid can be held aloft as a champion of the 'Games as an Artform' concept. Some levels require us to create parallel possibilities running simultaneously to our own, interacting with eachother to achieve progress, and wonderfully enough the storyline is doing pretty much the same. The game we play, and what we can read in the books before each world, is a big metaphor for the storyline - while the events of Super Mario's adventure to save the Princess is taken as literal, we play a reflection of the layers of thought-provoking messages in Braid. This simple cartoonish concept (rescue the Princess) overlays a reality we discover as we go on.



As I progressed into World 5 I noticed the Ouroborus theme emerge and I began to actually gain a meaningful interpretation of what I was reading.



As I said earlier, we begin at World 2 and we're told he's on a quest to reach the Princess. The backdrops to the game's levels are Summer-like and blissful. We're reminded from then on that he is looking for the Princess, at all costs. We're told that some years ago, he and the Princess enjoyed a relationship that looked sweet and idyllic but disquieting notions murmered into his ear. One night he picked up his travel bag and, giving one last kiss, left her. At the beginning of World 5 (I think), we read that there was a girl in his life who he left in search of the Princess. We're told he didn't even have to tell her what he was about to do, like it was mutually understood - he just picked up his travel case, gave her a kiss, and left. During an unspecified time after Tim leaves her, she still imagines he is there each night to comfort her. This storytelling takes place before the world in which the key gameplay mechanic is creating concurrently running parallel possibilities - what is and what isn't, but could be. His mistaken departure from the Princess 'years ago' and the departure from his sweetheart to find the Princess is exactly the same.



Ouroborus: We start the game with the city backdrop burning orange. At about World 6, we're told that Tim is at odds with everyone around him and he seeks that perfect moment when he is reunited with the Princess and the world shines brightly, the sweetest perfection. And yet the point of view of the rest of the world on this event is fleeting in its optimism, giving way to the dark metaphor that it would be akin to setting your childhood home on fire, destroying all security. This is actually of particularly sad significance to the reality in Braid's story. Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure the last puzzle picture is of Tim near the beginnings of a fire, and while World 2's level backdrop was summery and blissful, World 6's backdrop is of a gently burning city.



Ouroborus: And in the final level of the final world, we actually see the princess whose existance by now is seriously doubted. The whole level is running backwards in time, including the soundtrack and every sound effect, even while we are running forwards - but which is actually running backwards in time: the world or Tim? She's running from the 'evil monster' above us, who has also initiated a wave of destructive fire rushing upon us while we're running to keep up with her. The two of you pull levers that open doors in eachother's half of the level, essential teamwork for both the Princess and us to escape. We reach the end, we're in arms reach of the Princess... and then we have to run time backwards to progress, but Tim himself is now running in the direction of time akin to the rest of the world - a corrected perspective. The princess and he run back towards the beginning of the level, and now it looks like she's trying to trap Tim, close open doors rather than open the way for him. I thought this was most clear (and was the first moment I realised what was actually happening) when what before was her covering a pit for me to cross now looked like a pit she was opening for me to fall into, but failing. She runs leaping into the arms of the what we thought was the 'evil monster'. Turns out Tim is no hero after all. Tim goes through the door back at the start of the level, and he emerges in front of a gently burning city. Not only does this make clear that Braid has been running backwards in time (something I didn't pick up on as fast as some others, it seems), but the endless loop theme is also made stark.



It makes absolute sense that the key gameplay tool of Braid is the reversal of time, because I believe Braid gives us warnings about incorrect perceptions of our own personal timelines - warnings about dissatisfaction. We're told that, during Tim's quest, he revisits memories of his time with his parents in his childhood, memories of his awkwardness in higher education. Almost his entire story involves his memories, revisiting past events as if physically re-experiencing them, using his memories as a protection against his present; never forgetting his impossible quest for his perfect prize - the Princess. For you and me, she represents the perfect ideal. Whether it's the perfect relationship, the perfect job, the perfect life, it doesn't matter. Tim has always wanted what he cannot have - one of the last stories we are told about him (funnily enough, one of the earliest events in his life) is from when he a very young child, wailing for his mother to buy him some sweet-looking confection behind the glass of a shop window, only to be told "No Baby, maybe when you're older."



I believe Tim is absorbed by doubt and discontentment fueled by this desire. The fact he leaves the girl who loves him to find the Princess, and remembers leaving the Princess in exactly the same way, and that he is living in an endless loop, tells me this could actually be the same event. At the end of the game we've discovered that what he believed was a noble quest was actually an obsession, stalking something he can, or should, never have. In his obsession for the perfect ideal, he finds uncertainty in what he already has in life - a wonderful relationship with a girl who understands him - and destroys it. Perhaps a lost chance at happiness that he is endlessly trying to restore.

Epilogue

Turns out, there's a story after all. It takes a little work to discover it all in the Epilogue, but in doing so we realise the sombre truth. One of the pieces of the epilogue story contains what appeared to be a few quotes from other sources, which I Googled - and in so doing confirmed the theory that this was a story about the quest to make, and the ramifications of, the atomic bomb. There may be naysayers of this idea but it's very clear once you read all the text available in the Epilogue level. That great wall of fire in the final level probably has some significance! If you want to find out more about this and read more specific interpretations of each world, check out this further reading:



This well produced article: The Story of Braid by XG3

There's also this well constructed forum post at rllmukforum.



So what do I reckon Braid is telling us on a personal level?



Blinded by a conviction that there is something greater to be had, something better in store, we risk losing far more. More often than not, when we can actually reach that unreachable star that we think is the key to happiness, the opposite is true and the sacrifices we made to reach it are made unavoidably clear. By then, it's too late. I think Braid's message is to put away the childlike obsession with that which we don't have and to recognise what we have right now - learning contentment with what is, rather than putting all our efforts into what could be. Else, we risk trapping ourselves in the endless cycle of trying to reach the unreachable, over and over and over, and never being happy as a direct consequence.



In short, Braid is the longest depiction of the phrase 'The grass is always greener on the other side' that I've experienced to date!

Every poster I do, I approach with some trepidation and doubt. Am I really up to portraying the image and do my idea, and more importantly the LAN, justice?



I'm really rather pleased with this one though.







The T-Shirts design is already agreed - that's coming soon, and they will look fantastic. As far as my work here goes, the LlamaLAN XII web theme has already begun. And, I've been encouraged to seriously consider starting the LAN XII poster within the next few days... and I think they're right.