Bert Vandecasteele

Blog

  • Austria

    Austria

    People often romanticize being a writer. They think it’s just chilling in a log cabin somewhere in the mountains, sipping from a steaming cup of coffee and letting the words flow onto the virtual Macbook paper while people outside wait eagerly to devour what you’ve come up with.

    The truth, unfortunately, is slightly different: Mostly, writing is sitting in your office keeping warm on instance soup, trying not to browse Youtube as you wonder what will kill you first: The cold or the existential angst of being a failure in life.

    Mostly.

    Sometimes, you actually do get that cabin in the mountains. And when you do, you have to go for it. That’s how I ended up in Austria, near the border to Italy, surrounded by four dogs and a whole lot of mountains.

    And that’s where I was that guy. The romantic writer in the cabin, sitting at his computer and writing, developing something cool with colleagues, petting dogs, baking cakes, watching Star Wars and then going out to watch the actual stars.

    Okay, I was that guy plus baking and geeking out.

    Pretty cool, nonetheless.

    IMG_20151003_124418093

  • Mia on TV

    Mia on TV

    It’s been a bit quiet on the Mia front – which is normal, seeing how a) we’ve been hard at work at our next project and b) it’s been two years since the short was released.

    (Jesus? Has it really been that long?)

    (You’re growing old, man.)

    Mia, however, is not dead and buried. A while ago, we were surprised to see the short pop up on Belgian on-demand television. And now, I’m proud to announce that Mia will be screening on actually, non-demand TV next Sunday!

    So check your TV guides, get a tiny bag of potato chips and enjoy those nine minutes.

    In the meantime, here’s the trailer:

  • Hack ‘n’ slash

    Hack ‘n’ slash

    Here’s a familiar feeling:

    You want to like something, but you’re unable to. The stars should be aligned, but somehow, they’re not – instead, you get a nagging feeling of frustration. A feeling that says: Have fun, damnit!

    So why aren’t you?

    Sometimes, you know the answer. I, for instance, know precisely why I don’t like Game of Thrones (but that’s a post for a different day). Often, however, the reason for disliking something is more subtle, and while you can point in the general direction of a possible cause, you can’t really nail it down. I’ve never liked Discworld, and I’ve never understood why. It’s funny. It’s creative. It’s good. All the stars should be aligned – why aren’t they?

    Enter: Double Fine’s “Hack ‘n’ slash“.

    Hack ‘n’ slash is, in essence, a Zelda clone with a twist: Instead of a sword, you wield a USB stick that enables you to plug into objects and change their code. This way, you can move boulders, burn bushes, and manipulate enemies in ways that bend the game on your knee and makes it cry for mommy.

    Manipulate their health? Their damage? Their faction? Go hog wild.

    It can all be done at the flick of your stick. It’s one of the best videogame ideas I’ve heard in a while, and it’s done with great consistency. Hack ‘n’ slash features sets of increasingly complex puzzles that at first feel impossible, but always have a way out.

    So here we have a creative game that does something truly different. I can feel the stars aligning.

    They’re so close.

    But I’m not having fun.

    Ugh.

    So which one is it, Bert, I can hear you ask? Is it the “I know what’s wrong” kind or the “I have no clue” kind?

    Well, dear reader, it’s a bit of both, I think. Hack ‘n’ Slash has real obvious problems that bring the coding party to a sudden stop. The puzzles can be agonizingly hard. The movement feels a bit sluggish. The story feels like it knows it’s terrible, yet it insists on interrupting you constantly.

    But are those dealbreakers? I turn that question around in my head. Maybe Hack ‘n’ slash isn’t the problem. Maybe I am. Am I being too harsh? That must be it, right? Just me being a dick?

    So I boot Hack ‘n’ Slash, play a bit. I find myself wanting to check a walkthrough. I’m looking away from the screen as wait for the character to finally run all the way over to the next map. And I’m rolling my eyes at the (skippable!) story in the most disdained way possible.

    Nope. I’m not having any fun.

    Sorry, Hack ‘n’ Slash. I love that you exist. But I guess your stars are all a tiny bit misaligned.

  • (Smells Like) Teen Fiction

    I’m working on something. It features these two snippets:

    “Penny wanted to reply she would take Adele’s word for it, but before she could, a microphone screeched, and a crackling voice that sounded like it came from a can of peas echoed all around the pool.
    “Good afternoon! And welcome to the start of the new polo season.”
    The crowd burst into cheers. Penny smiled as she heard Marco’s familiar voice. Marco was a former Arndt student. He was twenty-one, studied radio at the free university and commented small-time sports events his free time. He felt as much a part of the team as any of the girls, and half the team had at some point had a secret (or not so secret) crush on him. Penny was ashamed to say she had been one of them. Marco had been charming and respectful as he let her down. Penny had never felt her heart break so gracefully. “

    And

    The girl knelt down in front of the wheel chair. Penny watched her wet hair drip all over the table. Drip, drip, drip. “I’m Freddie”, said the girl.
    Freddie. Penny would remember Freddie. She would find out where Freddie lived. She would come over to Freddie’s house. Pour acid on Freddie’s face while she was asleep. She would watch as Freddie screamed, her freckled skin smoldering to leather, her flaming red hair curling up and withering. Freddie would be beautiful no more. No more and never again.
    “Pleased to meet you”, Penny said.

    So yeah. Basic teenage fiction.

  • I made a thing.

    Lately, I’ve been wanting to learn something.

    Anything. Well, not anything. Nothing to do with writing.

    I tried learning how to draw or how to play the guitar, but those two creative activities are too similar to writing. I also considered learning Russian or Chinese, but living abroad and speaking a non-native language on a daily basis really sucks the fun out of language acquisition.

    Then, I stumbled on game development.

    Now, it should be no secret that I love me some videogames. So why not learn how to make them?

    So yeah. I’m doing some tutorial stuff with Unity. For instance this dumb little game I made myself. At the moment, I’m blindly following the tutorials on the Unity website, trying to wrap my head around the logic of writing C#.

    So yeah, to summarize: Writer wanted to do something different and ended up writing code.

    You can play the game by clicking the above link or by downloading the windows build here.

  • The Lion King

    The Lion King

    Hi kids!

    Today I wanna talk to you about the Disney classic The Lion King (or, as the Germans call it, Der König der Löwen).

    Now, Lion King and I, we go way back. It was one of the first movies I watched in the cinema, and the first time a  movie was an event rather than a timewaster on a rainy day. I remember getting up early, putting on some nice clothes, and then driving all the way to Brussels (the capital of Belgium, and, as far as my seven year-old mind knew, THE WORLD!) to attend the film’s premiere.

    I was stoked. I had gotten a Donald Duck magazine subscription a few months prior, my sister had gotten me a Goofy hat from Euro Disney, I had a Dale plushie and an Aladdin poster… I was a Disney fanboy, hardcore to the bone.

    Needless to say: I loved the shit out of the Lion King. And for years to come, I loudly proclaimed it one of the great Disney classics. The music! The art direction! The story!

    What a masterpiece!

    21 years passed – a little something like this:

     

    2015. Saddam Hussein was dead, Facebook had taken over the world, and I found myself in Hamburg, on a boat across the Elbe, on my way to watch the stage musical version of, you guessed it, The Lion King. I was excited. This was going to be epic.

    Only it wasn’t.

    Now, the musical was great! Brilliant performances. Great costumes. Incredibly creative design.

    But what the fuck, Disney?

    This isn’t a story about heroism, or growing up, or taking up responsibility and finding your place in the philosophical Circle of Life.

    This is the story about asshole lions who rule the land – “everything the sun touches”, so pretty much everywhere liveable – by preying on their powerless citizens and rationalize their debauchery by saying “it was meant to be”.

    The Lion King is 18th Century France.

    And Simba is the Sun King.

  • Writing

    A little quote from something I’ve been working on:

    And finally, just like that, lying in her mother’s arms, Penny started crying. Uncontrollable, wet sobs, not like the adult she would never become, but like the child she was. The child that just realized no matter how hard it fought, nothing would ever work out, because life had fucked it over.

    Stay tuned! Or don’t!

  • Final Fantasy XV

    Is it wrong to be super excited about Final Fantasy XV? Can I be excited about Final Fantasy at all, now that I’m not a teenage Japanophile anymore?

    I mean, look at that trailer!

    That’s a trailer to be excited about?
    Right?

    But still, I’ve been burnt so many times by poor stories, terrible voice acting and horrific editing. Some serious Final Fantasy related backstorywound lies on my heavy soul. I still shudder when I think of twelve’s blandness, thirteen’s idiocy – and the sequels! So many sequels!

    Sure, fourteen’s been a roller coaster ride. But it’s online, Final Fantasy. And online doesn’t count.

    Can you do it, Final Fantasy?
    Can you make me love you again?
    It’s like you’re on my doorstep with flowers and chocolates, rain drops splashing on your leather jacket.
    And even though I know you will probably end up drunk on my couch watching porn and I will wonder if I deserve not to be loved, I’m gonna to let you in.

    Please. Be gentle.

  • Jurassic World

    Alt. title: No, I don’t know any shame. Why do you ask?

    So yes, I went to the movies and watched Jurassic World. And yes! I did so out of my own free will. Nobody forced me, nobody kidnapped me, and nobody threatened my family via webcam. I just went to the movies with a couple of friends, sat my fat butt down in a comfy chair, put on those terrible, terrible 3D glasses and checked out a movie about dinosaurs like I was a seven year-old.

    Jurassic World takes place 20 years after Jurassic Park. The Park has reopened its door and is now a thriving amusement park complete with rides and     who am I kidding nobody cares. Jurassic World is a movie in which dumb science dudes invent a crazy dinosaur called Indominus Rex, sexy Chris Pratt domesticates raptors and quirky-hot Bryce Dallas Howard dukes it out with the T-rex from the first movie.

    Let there be no mistake: Jurassic World is a dumb movie. You really have to check your brain at the gate. If you manage, though, the reward is tremendous: While Jurassic World might start sluggish and boring, it quickly turns into a wild ride. The action scenes are nice (which some good editing between dino action and response at the park’s HQ), Chris Pratt is dreamy and hilarious, the screenplay goes from the bad kind of terrible to the best kind of terrible.

    Seriously. Look at this screengrab:

    will-chris-pratt-s-velociraptors-be-allies-or-enemies-in-jurassic-world-415570

    That is an actual line from this hilariously dumb and incredibly expensive Hollywood movie. And if you turn off your inner cynic you might actually think it’s pretty rad.

    If life hands you lemons, ignore the lemons for two hours and go watch this instead.

    And that’s really all there is to say.

  • What is a Photocopier?

    Sometimes, life can be better than the best comedy. Take this dramatized transcript of a legal disposition, for example. Six minutes of absolutely absurd, hilarious and at times downright existentialist dialogue about the true nature of a photocopier.

    Enjoy!