New Jobs and Torment
I started my new job last week.
After 10 years of bouncing from job to job, getting either sacked for reporting a client to the Police for arson, or getting retrenched when the company directors had a bit of a tish, or just plain working myself to nearly death (literally) for the joy of being told I was 'not working hard enough', I finally seem to have landed a job at a nice small firm, that does quite interesting houses with fairly distinct character.
I would love to tell you where and whom, but I can't as most of our clients are stratospherically rich and don't like people knowing where they live unless it makes the cover of Domain on the SMH. That does give me pause for concern as traditionally I don't get on very well with people like that. We shall see.
Anyway, what does this have to do with Torment?
The Torment to which I refer is of course the best ever computer game*, Planescape: Torment. Based on the AD&D 'Planescape' setting, PS:T was made by Black Isle as an offshoot to the extremely popular Baldur's Gate series. PS:T used the same graphics engine to create one of the most stunningly well-crafted recreational computer games ever. It had plot; bucket-loads of it. You are immortal, but cannot remember who you are, expect that as the game progresses you find that you aren't... well, you're not what you think! It had characters; individuals so well written you didn't care if they sort of liked to set fire to things a lot, or had no body, or had thousands of bodies, or in fact were just living incarnations of the letter "O". Of the soundtrack, one piece stands out as one of the most hauntingly beautiful 1m 30s of music you will ever hear. The rest is still top-notch, if you like big doses of weird with your reality.
Apart from the reality-shaking philosophy behind PS:T, one of the things that I enjoyed was the art. The backgrounds are all beautiful mixtures of hand illustration and computer rendering, but what really stood out for me was the architecture of Sigil, the rather odd city where most of the action takes place. Sigil's buildings all take their design cues from the enigmatic being that seems to rule the city in an entirely nihilistic way - the Lady of Pain - who is described as a floating woman in a kimono with a head-dress made of knives. Nice. Hence Sigil's architecture is no place for birds to happily roost, as most buildings design is best described as 'sharp'.
Way way back in the day, when I was at uni I had a bit of a fancy for buildings that had a bit of danger and shall we say, aggressiveness to their design. My wildest designs were always curtailed or somewhat blunted before being submitted, though a few crept through. One was an Environmental Education Centre - that happened to look a lot like a B2 'Spirit' Stealth Bomber carrying a load of kitchen knives into battle. The second major 'sharp' design I did was my final project, an aircraft museum. Parts of the museum were made out of airliner tailfins and tailwings, and the large curving roofs had ribbed structures with big pointy eaves. More knives. So I sort of like knives on buildings, which must say something extremely important about me from a psychological point of view.
Torment, being full of buildings that I would have been proud to design, helped me keep the idea of deadly buildings alive.
The new job allows me design freedom. Quite a bit of design freedom. Nothing says 'beach house for stupidly rich client' to me quite like 'KNIVES' does. The first design I am working on is fairly quirky already, being one of the most expensive blocks of land in The Leviathan, overlooking one of the more expensive beaches on the planet, let alone the Antipodes, so of course the clients want "a medieval Italian hill-fortress". They have the money, I have the mouse, so off we go!
Just how many knives will work their way into this first design I am not sure, but don't worry, they will be there...
* Don't flame me too much, my list of 'Best ever...' also includes GPL, UT, Elite (C64), Gyruss (arcade), Beyond Good and Evil, Gran Turismo, GTA:VC and Gridrunner++, all of which are equal first. If I had to choose one though, it would be PS:T. And Elite.
After 10 years of bouncing from job to job, getting either sacked for reporting a client to the Police for arson, or getting retrenched when the company directors had a bit of a tish, or just plain working myself to nearly death (literally) for the joy of being told I was 'not working hard enough', I finally seem to have landed a job at a nice small firm, that does quite interesting houses with fairly distinct character.
I would love to tell you where and whom, but I can't as most of our clients are stratospherically rich and don't like people knowing where they live unless it makes the cover of Domain on the SMH. That does give me pause for concern as traditionally I don't get on very well with people like that. We shall see.
Anyway, what does this have to do with Torment?
The Torment to which I refer is of course the best ever computer game*, Planescape: Torment. Based on the AD&D 'Planescape' setting, PS:T was made by Black Isle as an offshoot to the extremely popular Baldur's Gate series. PS:T used the same graphics engine to create one of the most stunningly well-crafted recreational computer games ever. It had plot; bucket-loads of it. You are immortal, but cannot remember who you are, expect that as the game progresses you find that you aren't... well, you're not what you think! It had characters; individuals so well written you didn't care if they sort of liked to set fire to things a lot, or had no body, or had thousands of bodies, or in fact were just living incarnations of the letter "O". Of the soundtrack, one piece stands out as one of the most hauntingly beautiful 1m 30s of music you will ever hear. The rest is still top-notch, if you like big doses of weird with your reality.
Apart from the reality-shaking philosophy behind PS:T, one of the things that I enjoyed was the art. The backgrounds are all beautiful mixtures of hand illustration and computer rendering, but what really stood out for me was the architecture of Sigil, the rather odd city where most of the action takes place. Sigil's buildings all take their design cues from the enigmatic being that seems to rule the city in an entirely nihilistic way - the Lady of Pain - who is described as a floating woman in a kimono with a head-dress made of knives. Nice. Hence Sigil's architecture is no place for birds to happily roost, as most buildings design is best described as 'sharp'.
Way way back in the day, when I was at uni I had a bit of a fancy for buildings that had a bit of danger and shall we say, aggressiveness to their design. My wildest designs were always curtailed or somewhat blunted before being submitted, though a few crept through. One was an Environmental Education Centre - that happened to look a lot like a B2 'Spirit' Stealth Bomber carrying a load of kitchen knives into battle. The second major 'sharp' design I did was my final project, an aircraft museum. Parts of the museum were made out of airliner tailfins and tailwings, and the large curving roofs had ribbed structures with big pointy eaves. More knives. So I sort of like knives on buildings, which must say something extremely important about me from a psychological point of view.
Torment, being full of buildings that I would have been proud to design, helped me keep the idea of deadly buildings alive.
The new job allows me design freedom. Quite a bit of design freedom. Nothing says 'beach house for stupidly rich client' to me quite like 'KNIVES' does. The first design I am working on is fairly quirky already, being one of the most expensive blocks of land in The Leviathan, overlooking one of the more expensive beaches on the planet, let alone the Antipodes, so of course the clients want "a medieval Italian hill-fortress". They have the money, I have the mouse, so off we go!
Just how many knives will work their way into this first design I am not sure, but don't worry, they will be there...
* Don't flame me too much, my list of 'Best ever...' also includes GPL, UT, Elite (C64), Gyruss (arcade), Beyond Good and Evil, Gran Turismo, GTA:VC and Gridrunner++, all of which are equal first. If I had to choose one though, it would be PS:T. And Elite.
posted by Corinoco at 4:02 pm
1 Comments:
what on earth is a medieval italian hill fortress?
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