Tuesday, January 02, 2001

Here are some refinements to look forward to in Mellow Player 3.1:

Sunday, December 17, 2000

Well, here is Mellow Player 3.0. This latest version will play Doom demos (lmp's), using any port, iwad, & pwad.

  1. Choose your doom port, iwad, & pwad (if any) by clicking the appropriate buttons.
  2. Load the desired lmp by either dragging & dropping it onto the Mellow Player (slick, eh?), or simply right click the Mellow Player to bring up a file chooser.
  3. The replay button will . . . yes, you guessed correctly. It replays the last lmp.
Sunday, December 10, 2000

The next version of the Mellow Player is going to reverse the trend of bloat. I want this thing to be extremely elegant, something that even the most proudest, most diehard command-line jockey will rely upon. Gone will be the abstruse interface & all the bells & whistles, like the mp3 player, web browser, etc. The next version will be like this:

Thursday, November 02, 2000

Bass.dll was left out of the 2.0 installation. Put it in your window\system dir & you should be all good. It's in the 1.0 installation, if you still have that one laying around.

Wednesday, November 01, 2000: Mellow Player 2.0

Here is the next iteration of the Mellow Player. I played around with the activeX M$ web browser control that was installed on my own, & no doubt all other borg desktops in the world. This means that you must have M$IE installed for Mellow Player 2.0 to work properly.

The interface has been straightened up quite a bit, & it of course can be used as a web browser. It's not as feature-packed as the big boys' browsers (Netscape, MSIE), but it is totally functional with support for java, flash, css, vitalize, etc. I still have a lot to learn about interfacing with activeX controls, & if anybody can tell me how to get the current url from the browser control in a string so I can put it in the url box (as we all take for granted in the mainstream browsers), I would appreciate it.

Planned for future releases:

Oh, & here's a screenshot:

Friday, October 20, 2000: Third Time's a Charm

This is getting emberassing. The previous 2 still had files missing. This time, it is all here, with a groovy installer, & it should be good to go now.

Thursday, October 19, 2000: Ack!

I am sorry, the player installer wasn't set up properly. I have everything in one exe now. If you got the original file entitled mp10install.exe, you probably noticed it asking for some dll's & other stuff. Trash it & get this new one.

Tuesday, October 17, 2000: Mellow Player 1.0

Here is the Mellow Player 1.0. It plays LMP's & MP3's in style. I was inspired by the interface of Winamp to make a player that was slick & easy to use. I would like to see demos, but without all the tedious work. Now, it is nose-pickingly easy to set your Doom port, & wad & then load up a LMP or an MP3 & hit play.

You can also search for MP3's & LMP's on the net. And there is a built-in tutorial.

This app is the result of my little learning process, & I made it in 2-3 days. Woohoo! Please try it & let me know what you think.

Greetings to all the Compet-N folks I met on CSDoom servers back in its heyday. Hopefully I can send more traffic your (& your colleagues') way.

Saturday, October 14, 2000

Well, I have been reworking the scroller. Conditions, events, & actions are being organized more sensibly. The way the level's textures are displayed is being redone so as to use far less memory.

I have been dealing with quite a learning curve in making the scrolling game, & it's a lot of fun. I would like to have a storyline, mission-based scenarios, & perhaps some sort of botmatch thing. The story will be centered around Flynn Taggert & his various missions vs. the hellish minions in different settings. This will all take time, & of course as I learn more, it opens more possibilities.

Eventually, I hope to redo my Doombot Arena app in win32, with lots of bells & whistles.

I have also made the Mellow Tunes Player, which is a little app that plays some of my mp3's, & can also play cd's. I'll upload it later, though. I even made a little shell chooser that comes up when rebooting & lets you choose whether you want to load explorer or EVWM. I'll add support for Litestep when I get around to getting it again.

Sunday, September 24, 2000

The mouse movement bug has been fixed. Pretty simple, really. Anyway, go enjoy. Some real level designs should start showing up soon. Also, the scrolling has been properly set up, so I can have some huge meandering levels. Once I have the single-player portion done, I should have sufficiently learned how to do multiplayer code. We'll see.

Thursday, September 21, 2000

Ah, yes, time for a long overdue update. I have posted an online beta of the sidescroller. Yes, you read that right, this is played online through your browser. You do need to get the vitalize plugin first, but you should be ready to go once it's installed & you restart your browser.

A bug I noticed is that when you stop moving the mouse-controlled crosshairs, the game stops moving. So just keep the mouse moving as you play, & you'll have a fairly good idea of how this game works. The demon cannot be killed atm, & his close-range attack needs considerable improvement. The imp does only ranged attacks, & it will bleed when wounded. There are many aesthetic & funtional improvements that need to be made, so this is just a preview.

Cursor keys handle movement. Right & left mouse buttons shoot & jump, respectively. Weapon switching is enabled, but currently only the rifle (replaces pistol), RL, & plasma are operational. I kind of liked the Q3-style weapon switching sound.

If I can fix the mouse movement bug, this will probably become a multiplayer online game, with some ctf/tfc/st/ut-type elements.

Wednesday, August 23, 2000

I have finally taken some screenshots of the work in progress:

As you can see, there is a mouse-controlled crosshair that the doomguy always aims at, just like in the game called Abuse. Left click jumps, right click shoots. Keys control the movement of the legs & select weapons. The crosshair will be changed considerably & animated. Almost all the weapons switch properly, but I need to add the chainsaw. The alignment of some of the sprites needs to be tweaked, & the projectiles for most of the weapons need to be done. Currently, only the rifle & RL are fully operational. I may add smoke trails to the rockets, we'll see. I'm thinking of having cutscenes, but again, we'll see.

For sure I want to add all the monsters. Currently, the imp wanders side to side & throws fireballs. The demon is next to add.

The levels will have traps & puzzles, keys, & switches. Lava & slime will hurt, & the powerups should all be there too. Scripted events might be in the works. We'll see. Maybe even some original tunes LOL.

Thanks for the suggestions people have sent in for a name for this game. Keep them coming.

Friday, August 18, 2000

There is a Doom scroller already in the works called "Doom Land" at http://www.destroyer0.com/. I remember also seeing some other scroller a few years ago, but I have no idea what happened to that one.

Re: my own scroller, I have weapon switching implemented, & visible weapons are working. I still haven't expended much thought on a name for this little project, so any suggestions are welcome.

Tuesday, August 15, 2000

The tracking has continued to be fun. One very cool thing about mods is that they sound much better than midi's, & they are easily converted to umx format for Unreal & UT. They can also be used in ZDoom, & encoding them into mp3's for Edge is simple to do. I have posted a song up at MP3.com, & you can even order a Captain Mellow shirt, coffee mug, or mouse pad. Pretty hilarious. I think Fanatic should put some of his stuff up there, he has waaaaay more talent than me.

Anyway, I have started work on a Doom sidescroller/platform game. I started with a Duke Nukem 1 & 2 style play, but I really love mlook, & couldn't stand the clumsiness of not having mlook. So, I put in a little mouse-controlled crosshair, had the top half of the doomguy's torso swivel around to aim at the crosshair, & before you know it, I had something that reminded me a lot of Abuse. So I then decided to try to get ahold of Abuse to see if I could get any inspiration, & wouldn't you know it, there is an Abuse community of sorts. The defunct Crack Dot Com released the source, & there is a free version of Abuse called Frabs. Well, I must say, Abuse is one very cool game. It has sinister atmosphere, excellent controls, & cool monsters. So, I will be working on the Doom sidescroller off & on, & should have some beta screenshots up by the end of the week or so.

Tuesday, July 11, 2000

I have begun tracking. In laymen's terms, I have begun composing music on a tracker. Here are 3 preview mp3's that I have posted:

Monday, February 28, 2000

I just posted the out-takes from the SkullTag textures I was working on. They look good IMHO, but they weren't what Brad was looking for.

Wednesday, February 02, 2000

I posted an animated lava texture that is 64x64, Doom palette, ready to use. There's an animated gif in the gallery as well.

Mike Tawney clarified that the textures I send him will be used in the Doom Resurrection project, which I must mention as being an excellent effort. He was kind enough to let me test the first level, & the use of scripted events is very impressive. Tawney is the only person I know of who has utilized the mod music support for ZDoom, & it sounds very nice indeed.

Tuesday, February 01, 2000

The page is up. It's a rather artsy-fartsy endeavor, merely to showcase my artwork. I love doing creative things, & one of the most satisfying things is to complete a picture & see people wear it on a t-shirt, use it in their Doom project, etc. My artwork was what first got me involved in the Doom community. Andy Baker took over the DosDoom project, & was recruiting others, including artists. I showed Andy some of my work, & he asked me to join. I then began to crank out many different ideas for a title page, before they finally decided on the one they used.

BTW, you need the avalon font to view this page properly. I'm not sure if it's a font that everyone has, but it fits in with the mellow, artsy look I was going for.

Textures are turning out to be a lot of fun. I am currently doing a set of textures for Carnevil's SkullTag project, & I am very pleased with how they are coming out. Also, I am doing some textures for Tawney to use in an upcoming map. Somewhere in the midst of this, I will be working on my own collection of Skulltag textures for 3rd party mappers to use.

FYI, Mellow Land was a BBS I ran for 3 years back in the early 90's. Anyone remember ANSI artwork? It was in those days that Doom & Descent came out, & those were the first days of modem dm for me. I have to say, Descent's modem support blew Doom's away, but Doom got way more playing time. I also ran VGA Planets & Falcon's Eye interbbs tournament games. I got my nickname from a VGAP tournament game in which one of my teammates began going by the nick "Captain Bob". I rather liked the sound of it, & began going by Captain Mellow ever since.