Epyo

I've tried to play Hexen a million times but could never get past Seven Portals before getting stuck and losing interest. But last week I was having problems playing 3d games and loaded up Hexen just to see if it worked. For some reason I could not pull myself away from the game for 3 hours, and a few days later I finished it. Other games I've bought in the past few years usually can barely keep my interest for one hour, and I almost never finish them.

Anyway I'm really excited because today I remembered that it has an expansion pack, so I'm starting that right now. I also downloaded Hexen 2, Hexen 2's mission pack, and Heretic 2, so I can't wait to start those as soon as possible as well.

The past 3 months of gaming for me have been excellent. Started off with Hexen, if you remember my hexen thread, you know I effing loved the hex out of it. Weeks later on a bored night I bought two $6 games on WiiWare called Bit.Trip Core and Bit.Trip Beat, and they were totally sweet for the price and even my girlfriend liked them and she hates everything.

Three weeks ago I bought Return to Castle Wolfenstein and was very impressed--although really I'm impressed with fpses 80% of the time anyway. I really enjoyed it, but near the end of the game I had an urge to play the PS2 medal of honor games, and then I played through Frontline for the next week. And I was getting close to the end of that and now...

Torchlight has been released! I thought everyone knew about this game but I didn't see it mentioned at all on any message boards I frequent, except gaming reddit a little bit. If you haven't heard of it, its made by the ex-Blizzard guys who created Diablo 1&2, and if you enjoyed either of those, you'll effing love Torchlight. I just played for 3 hours straight for the second time today, really enjoying my Alchemist character =]

Anyway, has anyone else played it yet? It's only $20 (and only single player), and it's on Steam, sooo, maybe you should play it.

Hi, I've reached my final project in my Multimedia Programming class: create a game! If you feel like it, you can watch the game develop right here, and if you feel like it, you can make fun of me right here too. The project is due in ~2-3 weeks, so I'll be really cracking, pretty fast.

Previous simpler flash projects:
-Three-scene flash project. Basically, first scene had to be a ball bouncing off of a shelf, second had to be a repeating motion, third had to be a rocket taking off, all with navigation buttons.

-Cannon. This was a simpler project, just to get the hang of motion with actionscript, not tweening. (wasn't worth points booo). Didn't draw any of that.

-Smoke Grinder. Create a machine that does nothing (but grinds smoke). The gears were provided, but we had to use those and more. (here is my first attempt at this project)

-Demonstration assignment. Here we had to demonstrate something to the user, and then test them on it.

Game Blog
DAY 1: Started the game, woo! The game is top-down action, and so I drew my character today--or at least my first attempt at him. He's a wizard! This took 30 minutes. Then I wrote some code to get him moving, with arrows or WASD. Then I took an hour of being very particular about it, adding acceleration/momentum to make the controls fun. Criticize me here of the movement is not awesome--I want awesome movement. The last thing I did today was draw a rock class, and then cover it in rectangular boundary objects. Then I coded the player to bounce off of these boundaries, slightly. It works surprisingly well.

Total Dev time: 4 hours.

DAY 2: Worked on the game twice today, total of 6 hours. There was a lot of struggle. First, I drew another rock, put boundaries on it, made it a class, put it in my level. Fine. Next I made an enemy, mc_enemy1. I drew it rather nicely, considering my artistic integrity. Then, I made my first weapon: the laser sword. I drew it rather terribly, and I'll have to re-do it. I did all of this in about 90 minutes.

But then the trouble started. I could get the sword to hit the enemies I put on the screen, and take their hp down. But when their hp gets to 0, and removeChild(enemy); is called, the game errors and crashes, something about not using removeChild properly. This took me 2 hours to fix.

Then, I wanted it so that when the sword is hitting a rock, it will instantly shrink, and keep shrinking, until it isn't hitting the rock. I could not get the sword's array of small collision objects, to detect collision with the rocks, using hitTestObject. Damn. After spending ~2 hours on it, I think I'm giving up. As it is, the sword goes through rocks :/ I guess I'll just make it smaller, or not use the sword at all. If I have an idea to fix it, I can implement it later, I think.

Total dev time: 10 hours.

DAY 3: Worked around 6 hours total today. I got my pathing to work, you should check it out. There are three paths, each made of nodes. Enemies are spawned at the beginning of one of the three paths, off screen. Then they go to each next node. If there's a fork, they might take the fork, and then keep following it, until the fork ends. Then if there's more to the main path, they'll resume following that. (surprisingly, adding fork capability only took one hour!)

Total dev time: 16 hours.

DAY 4: Serious problems today. But first, I added 7 mana meters to the bottom left corner, for the weapons. The player can switch weapons with number keys. Then I made it so that the sword is for weapon 1. Then I made a new rapid-fire bolt-gun, as weapon 2.

But then came a problem. The bullets are supposed to be removed permanently when they hit a rock. And it LOOKS like they are removed. But once more than 200-300 bullets are shot (and removed), the game runs a lot slower, very gradually, as if the bullets are still sitting around.

After 4 hours of trying to fix this, I think it is fixed, for now. In addition, I found the same thing happened with enemies spawning and not really being removed. I got to "fix" that too. Hopefully these worked.

Plenty of work still ahead!

Total dev time: 21 hours. (site updated! gun 2 doesn't hit stuff yet)

DAY 4 PART 2: Took a leisurely hour and got gun 2 hitting/hurting enemies now! The game is addictive.

Total dev time: 22 hours.

DAY 4 PART 3: Took another 2 hours and now the enemies shoot. The bullets don't do anything though. That'll be first on the agenda. Then I have to make a third gun, which will be difficult, and then a second enemy, but then every gun/enemy after that will be a lot easier because I'll have the code set up just right. Then, I'll be pretty much done with coding, just will have to do art and level design, and a whole lot of polish.

Total dev time: 24 hours.

DAY 5 PART 1: Took an hour after I woke up and redid the enemybullet spawn code, as well as the player bullet spawn code, so now it should be easy for me to add new weapons and enemy weapons. About to start working on the enemy bullet detection. ALSO I added the shrine that you are supposed to defend. Looks ugly right now. Also I'm not liking the design of this first level.

Total dev time: 25 hours.

DAY 5 PART 2: 2 more hours of work...and...enemy bullets hurt you! and your shrine. I've also added more mana meters in the bottom corner--there will be two more weapons. shrine hp and your hp are still the last ones. I've also modified the colors of all the bars a little bit, for more consistency, I think they're easier on the eyes now.

Here's a big change: the bolt gun is now your primary weapon! It blows mana fast, but if you're accurate, you'll get a recharge bonus. The "laser"/"sword is now weapon 3, and it looks a lot more pleasing--more like a shortrange sonic soundwave cannon or something. It blows mana, but you can make a little go a long way if you're stingy.

There is no weapon two yet. Or weapons 4-7. Some of the health bars are hard to see now. And a strange bug has appeared where an enemy is spawned, but his hitboxes don't work. And they are visible. He's kind of creepy. I could make him fail to spawn, but I'd prefer to know WHY he's spawning...<_<

Total dev time: 27 hours.

DAY 5 PART 3: 2 more hours of work down, I'm really happy with the way the game is shaping up. NEW GUN 2 ADDED! The yellow sun gun. I spent a lot of time on how it looks, but it looks stupid...so, I don't know what to do.

The gun itself is extremely fun, and reminds me of the BFG now that I think about it, because it's got a little extra trick that makes it useful. It's basically a big shot that does 100 damage, but when it disappears, 7 little pink bolts come out, in a cone. Fancy thing is, the cone comes out in the angle of the player, not of the projectile itself! So if you need to hit guys around a corner, but you're far away, you can send a shot, timed correctly to hit the front man, then twist your player 90deg so that the cone comes out and hits the friends.

Because of this cool thing, I've changed the pink bolts a bit. They do enough damage to kill the little guys in only two hits (4 before). Less bullets per second come out of the bolt gun as well (slightly), so that it takes a bit more skill to use. In addition, the mana cost is higher, and the mana regen is higher too, making the player more likely to have to reload.

These changes also help optimize the game, because having ~20 bolts coming out per clip was unwise, now there's usually 6-10.

Total dev time: 29 hours. (two thirds done, IMO. hardest is over)

DAY 6: I made a new enemy lol! it's a burrd. it shoots firee. I'll work a bit on that flame breath code, it's a little weird now. Needs more animation on the bird's part too.

Weapon 3 (sonar thing) now blocks projectiles!!! Useful. Might want to nerf damage.

Total dev time: 33 hours.

DAY 6 PART 2: Many, many touch ups, from procrastinating on adding the next gun...speaking of which, GUN 4 ADDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The idea sprang, and I realized I could do it very easily. An hour later it is done. I highly recommend you check out weapon 4.

Total dev time: 36 hours.

DAY 7: Mostly behind-the-scenes changes, hopefully you won't notice anything change. God I hope I didn't break anything. I'm organizing a lot of the code that was just out in the open before, into functions. That way I can just call back those functions in later levels. Side note: had a bug with turrets, they only cost 25% mana but it was forcing you to have 40% to place one. Should be slightly easier now--slightly.

Total dev time: 38 hours.

DAY 7 PART 2: Changed the gameplay of level 1. Starts off slow. Then returns to normal speed, sans birds. Birds are slowly added. Ends with a bigger battle.

Total dev time: 40 hours.

DAY 7 PART 3: AUGH that was an awful three hours. Still working on coding the whole level-switch schema. Had a bug that was KILLING ME SOFTLY THIS WHOLE TIME. What it was? I had boltarr, and it was supposed to be eboltarr. CHRISTLY. I looked that function over THIRTY TIMES.

UPDATE: level 2 added (bare bones. get there by beating level 1 (might not work yet) or just PRESS SHIFT--cheat code! takes you to next level. Should you be allowed to walk in water? Maybe there should be a ripple effect, if you can.

also, PAUSE works. I think you can press CONTRL or P?

Total dev time: 43 hours.


DAY 8: Finished up coding the higher level stuff better. Much more flexible, this'll help me when I add menus and the upgrade system (different from normal upgrade systems!).

Also created a new gun, gun 5. It's all right, I don't know. Took a lot of work to make, mostly because I couldn't get the math right.

Shift doesn't skip the level any more, unless you press it like 15 times.

I'm still worried about the speed of the game on worse computers. Just worries though, I don't really have proof. This new gun might be slowing the game down a fraction, for some reason I hate that.

Total dev time: 46 hours.

Day 8 Part 2:

designing these last few weapons is hard.

gun 6 is definitely a gas cloud that slows enemies down.

My first idea for gun 5 was a disc that goes through walls and enemies. It was weird. Then I thought it would be cool if it was affected by momentum. It was still just weird. Then I decided it should bounce off of walls, but still go through people. But then if you wanted to do the most damage, you would want to just shoot it while moving backwards,so it moves really really slow, to get the most frames where it is hitting the enemy.

But not only does this negate the bouncing aspect, and also makes you never want to shoot it at high speed ever, but also that has overlap in design with the gas cloud, which is a stationary projectile.

Then I decided to scrap the disc altogether and make a ghost gun. It would shoot out little ghosts that go through walls and people, but it would be weak, so you wouldn't want to use it besides through walls. It turned out to be too weak no matter what, when you can just wait for the enemies.

I returned to the disc idea and thought...let's make the damage based on the speed! I got rid of the enemy-penetration (doesn't jive with high speed or gun 6), and I kept the bouncing, so that you don't have to aim so much since you want to be running fast mostly.

Now I'm rather happy with this. Yellow ball, sonar beam, and metal disc are now the biggest dpsers. Sonar beam is dangerous to use. Yellow ball is easier to use on single enemies than disc, but does best damage on groups. Disc is easiest to use on groups (just shoot a few discs over there), but does best damage on single enemies...which is difficult to pull off.

And it doesn't overlap with gas cloud or turrets. Good.

AND it's momentum-based shot and momentum-based damage are interesting from a gameplay perspective. Great.

Total dev time: 49 hours.

Day 9: Scratch all of that! I got rid of that stupid gun. The gas cloud that slows people down is now gun 5, and it's slime you put on the ground. Although I guess it shouldn't work on the birds, then, right? Dammit.

Total dev time: 51 hours.

Day 9 Part 2: Gas cloud is working out pretty well, maybe the graphics need a little work, otherwise, sweet. Also made a new enemy, which spawns in level 2. Might change the color of it. Shift skips level 1 again.

Total dev time: 54 hours.

Day 10: Don't know about weapon 6 yet, no idea what to do there. The new enemy in level 2 is adorable. The level is just about done I guess, I guess I should create the order of the enemies coming in. It's a lot easier than level 1 right now...I think. I should probably make level 1 easier, I don't want to scare away players. Especially since a lot of the people in my class aren't even gamers, and part of the grade for this project is by your peers.

It's actually pretty interesting, in addition to the teacher's rubric, each student will receive copies of three other games. They get to assign ten points to the three games--like 7 to one game, 3 to another game, none to the last. And they are not allowed to give the same score twice--like 4, 4, and 2.

I've glimpsed some of the other projects, there's a mario-like, a poker game, and a simple pinball game is in the works I think.

Total dev time: 55 hours.

Day 10 Part 2: Created weapon 6, it's pretty sweet. It takes a hell of a lot of mana, but it's very very powerful. It also can make a lot of mana its own back if used properly.

As far as weaponry, just need to created the healing weapon 7, and the time-stopping weapon 8 will surprisingly not be too difficult, I think.

Total dev time: 56 hours.

Day 11: Anyway, just coded the time-stop. I'll have to put an hourglass over the player or something, for extra feedback that, indeed, time is stopped for the enemy.

Yesterday night, I did the healing thing, "weapon" 7. You keep clicking on yourself or the shrine, and little whitish sparkles coming out letting you know it is being healed. In the future I'll make it so that when you click somewhere random, it'll remind you (inform you) that you can only heal yourself or your shrine.

I also re-did the graphic of the shrine, it's prettier, but doesn't really make much sense, I'm guessing I'll make it again before release.

Total dev time: 58 hours.

Day 12: Yesterday night, I worked on level 3 a bit. Got an interesting layout, no monsters yet, graphics not done.

In addition, I've created the first pass of the upgrade system. If you've played a lot of recent flash action games, they've all got this identical mundane upgrade system that everyone's sick of, so hopefully my system (described in post 20ish below) will shake things up. I'm never interested in using the upgrade systems, but since this one is required, and dreadfully simple, and you don't have to worry about saving up points of any sort, it'll be enjoyed.

You can still press SHIFT to advance to the upgrade screen, and then get to the next level, indefinitely. (you also get full manas). I'm going to paste the current possible upgrades in a post below. As of now, you can't get the same upgrade twice...but I might change that. I'm just scared of people having 10 turrets and the game lags to hell. But it would be rare...

Total dev time: 61 hours.

Day 13: Not much obvious work went on today, just balancing stuff, fixing the overall code. Level titles appear when you start a level, but they're not done yet. They still look a bit odd. I have to do other homework today, but after today I'm on thanksgiving break for a week, so it's gonna be a huuge push. Hopefully I'll have 7-8 levels, a week from today...Wait, the project might be due a week from today...Can't remember.

On a side note, I played the game for an hour last night, I was really addicted. I really enjoy this upgrade system, you can get some great synergies with good upgrade chohices. Just now I worked on souping up weapons 1 and 2...which means every upgrade to weapon 1 also helped weapon 2, since it shoots bullets of weapon 1...it was awesome, I was shooting yellow orbs all over the place.

Total dev time: 63 hours.

Day 15: Almost done with level 3, also, made a new enemy: zombie! He comes out of a hole. The next level is the cave inside the hole. His attack is not done yet. The level is exciting, especially if you use weapons 3-6.

Still working on weapon balance. My brother thinks weapons 1-3 are way stronger than 4-5, but I disagree. I think the real problem is the high-learning curve on both weapons. So, I want to take steps to make these two spells easier to use at first, but not affect their final value, and not effect the framerate. Making the turrets shoot more would be great, or turning them into flamers, but I'm too scared to do that. The game is already pretty laggy on my girlfriend's laptop.

So, so far, I made the bullets shot from the turrets a tad bigger, and they are fired a taaaad more often. Little bit. As for the gas clouds, I'll make them shoot farther, and perhaps make them a bit bigger, although I really am pleased with the way they look, visually, at this size.

Total dev time: 66 hours.

Day 16: Just put 2 hours in, and I think level 3 is about finished! It's by far my favorite level yet. The design and order of creature-spawns makes a lot more sense, and is a lot of fun.

Worked more on balance. Gas clouds shoot farther, dunno if it's easier or harder to use. Turrets shoot more often and last longer...and to prevent loss of framerate, the bullets simply go faster! That way there's a lot less on the screen at once. That's really what I'm afraid of--someone getting really bad-ass turret upgrades, managing to get 8-10 turrets on the screen at once, and their frames go to hell. Everything's fine! There's always a way.

Just implemented level 4, it's blank right now, but it will be a darker, indoor bluish cave level. More zombies inside! Project due in: 10 days!

Total dev time: 68 hours.

Day 16 part 2: Put 3 more hours of work in, mostly on designing level 4. Still trying to figure out the layout I want, give the level a different character than the others, I want a much more scattered feel, but it should be also more enclosed since it is indoors. The level is strange right now, but interesting. Another reason it looks weird is the gradient background, but that will look a bit better when I make shadows for the rocks, I think. Which can't happen until I'm done with layout, of course. I think I'll draw a rope in, symbolizing where you dropped down from the building above.

Also still playing with balance of course. Level two is hard to convert mana in, and level 3 is easy to convert mana in (specifically with weapons 4 and 5). I don't like that.

Wish I had more time, I don't know if the game will be as finished as I like when the semester ends. It'll definitely be 100% for the contest, though.

I've thought about different modes a lot. After completing the game on normal, the game will give a stats screen, but also the game will then wrap around to hard mode. Sort of like a New Game +. Or you can always just choose hard mode on the main menu. My idea for hard mode is, for hard mode, monsters gain 5% more speed and 10% more hitpoints, for every further level you go in hard mode. It's a good idea.

Other modes, I've been thinking about an engineer mode, where you only get weapons 4 and up, and 4 automatically refills. Maybe a simple shooter mode, where you only get weapon 1. Maybe a melee mode, only weapon 3. Stuff like that sounds cool to me.

Total dev time: 71 hours.

Day 17: Development is slowing down a lot because I can't stop playing <_<. Anyway, I've got enemies spawning in level 4, but the level still feels a bit boring. The different gameplay--having to fight the zombies with mass hps, is fun, but the layout of the level is leading to the player wanting to camp the shrine, basically. But this is what the player is doing for the first 3 levels. I want the player to want to move away from the shrine this time, and really go chase the mobs right where they spawn. More hitpoints, perhaps? Don't know what to do. Different layout? Probably.

Total dev time: 75 hours.

Day 17 Part 2: Got a lot more done! Finished the zombie (who is really a frankenstein monster) and his attack animation. It's a zap! Tell me if it looks dumb/unprofessional. My brother thinks it looks fine/pretty sweet.

Fixed a bug! In case you didn't know, enemies sometimes don't shoot straight at you--they shoot slightly off. If you've never noticed, go to level 1 and stand next to some purple guys, and watch some of them miss. I like this bug, but I didn't like it on the melee-ers, because meleers shouldn't miss. So I fixed it on meleers.

Started a new enemy! I'm not sure about his sprite, looks funny right now. His attack looks like the dark bishop's bolts from hexen. Except they don't home. Instead they go through walls. This helps make the cave level more interesting, helps make the player want to leave the shrine a bit more.

Total dev time: 77 hours! Can't wait!


Day 18: Started working on level 5, shouldn't be too hard to make. I was hoping to get it done quickly, in two hours. But there was a strange bug while I was making it: it was laggy. I went through all the code twenty times, couldn't understand why level 5 was different than any other level. In fact, when playing in Opera, the lagginess wasn't there, it was just in adobe's flash player for Flash CS4. Didn't make any sense.

So, I literally moved level 4 on the timeline to be ahead of level 5--to the right of level 5. So it goes 1 2 3 _ 5 4. The lag was gone. I shouldn't have been that concerned about it since it was just in the editor, but I hated it.

So, hopefully that's solved for now. Waste of 3 hours really.

Total dev time: 81 hours.

Day 19: I think the above bug is just some sort of bug with the garbage collector with that version of the flash player. Because, the same problem was happening with IE. And my copy of IE has the same version of flash player as my CS4, both are older than my Opera copy of flash player. And strangely enough, now that I've created a level 6, level 5 doesn't lag anymore. wtf?

Anyway, I finished level 5 yesterday, it's really cool. My brother playtested it and said, okay, this game finally got awesome. Thanks Paul! I agree, each level I make is twice as interesting as the previous.

Today I didn't get to work on it too much, but I just worked on it for a couple of hours, in level 6. This art stuff is so fucking hard. Level 6 is a large plateau on most of the stage, but a huge river divides the level, the river being down in a deep canyon. Drawing this river took the full TWO HOURS. Jesus, my first level took about fifteen minutes! The second level took about five! Oh well, I think it looks pretty cool, will look better when the level is more fleshed out.

The biggest problem with drawing it was...understanding how. I've never actually taken a drawing class, and I've been shown how perspective works on buildings and stuff a bit, but this took a lot of trial and error. Since we're seeing this canyon from above, and the canyon runs both horizontally at times, and vertically others, I had no clue at all how to draw the height lines--going from the top of the cliffs to the bottom.

The strategy I finally adopted was rather clever I think. The canyon cuts the north and east parts of the stage, from the middle/southwest parts. So on the inner side of the canyon, I drew a curvy brown line, representing the top of the cliff. I copied this curvy line, and pasted it in place. Then I moved this new copy up-and-to-the-right, about 50 pixels? Then I shrank it. This line would represent the bottom of the inner cliff, where it hits the water. Then to draw the depth lines, from top of cliff to bottom, I just had to draw them from recognizable matching parts of my squiggly lines. For example, if I saw a strange bump in both squiggly lines, I drew a straight line between them. Pretty easy! Press shift and skip a few levels if you want to check it out.

Total dev time: 85 hours.

Day 21: Yesterday I worked on level 6 a heck of a lot, and I think it's done. I'll have my bro playtest it and give suggestions, it might be too hard, or too taxing on the engine. I'm a poor coder, so I'm not confident in putting an effload of enemies on screen, even though it looks sweet, it's not really fun. Hopefully the level is tasteful.

So it's officially crunch-time I guess! It's monday night, the game is due friday morning. I hope to do all of level 7 today and tomorrow, level 8 on wednesday, and then add everything else on thursday--game over stuff, main menu, quick, simple instruction slides. After the game is submitted to school, there's a few more things I need to do before the contest. I want to add a few extra modes, like hard mode, engineer mode, etc, and maybe a few more weapon upgrades that are more interesting. One I want to do, that isn't too difficult, is to make it possible to upgrade your turrets, so that when they get walked over, they explode into discs.

Total dev time: 91 hours.

Day 21 part 2: OMG YES! I'm very happy with my knight and level 7 now. I got rid of two towers, added the castle wall at the top (just a hint of it), and added shadows. The level looks totally fine now, in my opinion. My knight, I forgot that I was shrinking him every time he spawns, so I set him back to normal size, and I like how he looks too.

In addition, the sonic weapon 3 now stuns enemies. Previously, you'd attack with it, and the enemies would look like they're attacking, but the projectile would disintegrate. Or if they were melee, it'd look like they're meleeing, but it wouldn't hurt. Now, they just get stunned. This also makes weapon 3 a lot cooler of a combo to use with the turrets now :) :) :)

Excited to finish the level today, hopefully work on level 8 or the menus tonight. HAPPY

Total dev time: 93 hours.

Day 22: Got 5 hours in so far today, hope to get 5 more at least. Created a main menu, it's pretty bare for now, created a history of awards(upgrades) gained, it is shown on the pause screen and the awards intermission screen. I'll work on the scrolling tomorrow, should be easy. Just in case someone gets a lot of upgrades in a long game of hard-mode.

Also, changed the ui style. Buttons look a lot nicer, and the overall color scheme makes a bit more sense (level name boxes, upgrade screen colors, main menu. Took a long time to get something I was okay with.

Alright! Time to start level 8.

Total dev time: 98 hours.

Day 22 Part 2: Three hours straight of work later, I've got a nice-looking level 8 going. Now I need to just art-up the boss, and figure out the boss battle. Then I need to design the game end and game over screen/code, optimize some of the code, do as many finishing touches as I can, and the game will be ready for school. One day left to go!

Then for the contest, I'll add multiple modes, more upgrades, etc, then do the kongregate API stuff they make you do on the site.

Total dev time: 101 hours.

Day 23: After another, ehh, six hours of work, I'm almost ready for the school-turn in tomorrow morning! If you are reading this, PLAYTEST FOR ME! Shift lets you skip levels. Still not quite done with the main menu obviously, and the game over screen is rather bare, and the game complete screen is bare too.

Total dev time: 107 hours.

Day 23 Part 2: 5 more straight hours of work. There's definitely some sort of memory leak with earlier flash players, but not if you have the newest! So it's fine. And the game starts lagging if you play through like three times, but then at some point the garbage collector solves it and it plays like new. I think it only happened because I skipped levels as fast as I could for a full minute.

Good to go for class tomorrow! Hope to submit to the contest within 10 days.

Total dev time: 112 hours.

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Day 24: Ho ho! Not done yet! Today I added Hard mode, which is also infinite mode. It is hard! Also, I added statistics. When you die or complete normal mode, you'll see statistics. Like, spell 1 accuracy. Or, total shrine damage taken. It's swell.

Total dev time: 118 hours.

Day 25: Not much done today, mostly playtesting, fine tuning. Gas is no longer translucent :( Let's face it, flash games should not use alpha. Also, I think the time-stop spell (8) only uses your shrine's hp now. It won't use all 7 other manas as well. Mostly because every single time I've ever tried to use time stop, I was out of spell 2 or 7. (Also it's always been either level 6 or 7). Anyway, there is a new upgrade called "Turrets are traps when stepped on." This is from the upcoming engineer mode. Basically, if your turret gets stepped on, normally it gets destroyed, but now it'll pop 3-4 metal discs out. Not too useful, but it's a few free extra damage, and free mana to spell 7 (since discs convert to mana 7).

Close to completion!

Also, yesterday I added "Conductor Mode." Not sure about this one, it's mostly a simpler-mini-game. You only get weapon 2, and instead of it popping out a spray of little bullets...it pops out another big orb! So you have to bounce the orb around and get combos to survive. Also you can't move.

It's interesting, except on level 4 it's a bit boring.

Total dev time: 124 hours.

Day 26: a LOT of small things changed. There's an engineer mode, there are a lot more hints now, and level 1 and 2 are much shorter now. I also worked a bit on the Kongregate API stuff they require for their contest. It's easier than I expected. The default image quality is now Medium. There is also a preloader that is probably useless.

I had a few more people playtest, and they're getting bored before getting past level 4. Hopefully the shorter levels 1 and 2 will help hook them better, and hints will help them get farther (as well as hook them even more).

I hope people are noticing the Second Chance button.

Total dev time: 129+ hours.

Day 27: Much deliberation...Normal mode now has easier conversion rates! Easy mode has even easier conversion rates. Hard conversion rates are what normal conversion rates used to be.

I just implemented score, I'll be playing with it today and tomorrow to make it the most fun. Points are from damage done, but there's a visible multiplier! You can watch your multiplier count upwards, but if your shrine gets hit...watch it get halved! In addition, your health amount effects your multiplier, and the multiplier is multiplied by 3 during Time Stop.

Total dev time: 135+ hours.

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LINK TO THE GAME:
The game is here.

Press N to skip levels now

I posted this on Board 8 first, but threads permanently purge after 3 days of inactivity there, so I'm posting it here also, because it's a bit more lasting. Although over there, I posted pretty much one game per post in a thread over a period of 7 days, and here I'm posting it all at once, so it's going to be tl;dr, and I recommend you skim it. Well actually, frankly, I don't even recommend skimming it.

Anyway, let's begin, everything from here on is unedited exactly how I posted it on Board 8...Well, except I'm giving you the full system breakdown instead of the top half, because you're not going to read it anyway:

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I've finalized all the final finalizations, so here are the final breakdowns. All stats are final. However, I won't give you the Full System Breakdown, because I don't want to alienate any final fanboys, or others.

And for the record, there are not that many Castlevanias. An unhealthy amount perhaps, but I’ll try whenever I post a Castlevania write-up to post the next game with it, because I care.

I'd also like to tell you that there are no Final Fantasies, Zeldas, and even Marios are rare. Reader beware. You’re in for a scare.

22 Sidescrollers
7 FPSes
4 Action (usually top-down)
3 Racers
3 Puzzlers
2 3d Platformers
1 Strategy
1 RPG
8 "Other"

14 Konami
9 Sonic Team
5 Namco
3 Midway
3 Intelligent Systems
(All others are 2 or 1)

11 PC
8 Genesis
7 PS2
7 GBA +1 ported
5 DC
5 PSX
4 DS
2 NES
1 GC
1 SNES +1 exported

51-Devil Dice:
THQ/Shift
Puzzle
PSX
1998
You're a miniature cute devil, and you're walking around on gigantic dice, trying to roll them over and match them up, to make them sink. If this doesn't sound awesome, you need to get your awesome sensors checked. There's a puzzle mode, where you have to get rid of all the dice on the field; but that's only half the game, the rest of the game is slapping you on a giant field, maybe 32x32, and there's dice rapidly rising from the ground, and you gotta walk around on 'em and keep matchin' 'em up as long as you can. You can get combos by putting a matching dice next to already sinking dice. If you get stuck on the ground, you've got to run onto a cube while it's spawning out of the ground. If the grid fills up and you can't roll anything, it's over.

There are different kinds of dice, like wood, which you can roll over from the ground, and icy, which slide forever, and metal, which can't be moved. It's a good balance of simple gameplay with constant complications to keep it interesting. Did I mention the co-op? Two players is bestickulously fun. It's PS1, so if you missed it, bummer man, this is a great game, and I've never once heard it mentioned on the intarweb.

Then again, all cutes are opinions, and some opinions are cute.

50-Alien Hominid:
The Behemoth
Sidescroller
PS2 (Xbox, GC, 360, GBA, PC)
2004
This very recent sidescroller on PS2 (and its rival systems) was originally a flash game on Newgrounds. It was high enough quality and popular enough, that the creator started a game company and remade and expanded it into a full fledged console game. Well, low priced-console game I guess. It has a wonderful retro 2d Metal Slug feel to it. Generally, you jump around, jump on heads, knife people, shoot stuff, toss grenades, get temp-upgrades to your gun, fight a gigantic boss every 30 feet, explosions occur, climates change, and jumping around occurs again. One thing I'd like to note: you almost never have a chance to fall off the world in this game. Hooray, right? God, I love when people know how to make side-scrollers. I also love it when developers don't follow everyone else and make their own game.


49-Hydro Thunder:
Midway
Racing
Dreamcast (Arcade)
1999
This is an Arcade -> Dreamcast boat racing game. You know what? Boat gives sort of the wrong idea. Really, they're more like ships. No, I guess that makes you think of battleships. I guess we'll call ‘em crafts. They all look very different, for instance, one looks like a drag racing car without wheels, one looks like a titanic with one of the smokestacks bent back to use as a booster, another sort of like an X-Wing. The racing is somewhere between San Francisco Rush and F-Zero. It's fast. The turning is not all about power-sliding like serious (read: boring) racing games, and they don't like it when you turn around. But it's filled with secrets, and side areas with energy for your boost meter, and underground shortcuts and such. Some tracks are basic, and you go around 3 times; others are complicated adventures from point a to point z. The one player mode has great difficulty ramping, and all the tracks and cars are lovable. The mutli, as typical with Dreamcast, is another saving throw.

You know, one of the best things about the Dreamcast was that it was very easy to port games from the arcade straight to DC, and many of DC's best games were that in this way.

48-We Love Katamari:
Namco
Weird
PS2
2005
The sequel to Katamari Damacy. This game took the old game, and made the overall sequence of the game a bit more non-linear. They added some creative complications to levels to keep each one unique. One level is underwater, and there's fish swimming around, and gravity is oozy and low. Another is a gingerbread house made entirely of sweets. The constellation levels in Katamari Damacy attempted to be interesting in these ways, but now it's more polished. The game never feels like the same thing all over again. The game is different than the last in the same ways that each level is different from the one before. They keep it random, keep you choosing what to play next, and let you have the fun yourself, giving you a fun-checklist, not a fun-stepbystep-guide, typical of video games today. We need more games with fun-checklists, don’t you agree? Gotta love those fun-checklists.

47-Sonic Adventure:
Sonic Team/Sega
3d Platformer
DC (GC)
1999
Sum up Sonic Adventure? I'll do my best. There are six characters, each has its own storyline and path through the game, and different gameplay in his/her levels. You start off in a hub, and then you run around, do stuff, go to an action stage, then you beat it and you're back in the hub again. Then you do more stuff, travel around the city, or the mountains, or the airship, maybe raise some chaos, and then go to the next action stage. Some think the hubs were annoying, I thought they were cool. The action stages are well made--usually part of the level will be very linear and fast, and then you'll fall into an area that is more non-linear and free roaming, and then you'll return to fast romping again. The different characters have radically different gameplay to keep it interesting. Music is kick-butt, also, there's some good remixes of 3d Blast's music, for instance.

46-Doom III:
id Software
FPS
PC (360)
2004
Hi, id NAILED the mood in Doom 3. It's really incredible just how well they NAILED it. The gameplay, the graphics, the noises, the PDA voices, the story, everything was just perfectly executed (NAILED) and they all fit together to make an outstanding (NAILING, jaw dropping, perhaps) experience. The polish of Doom 3 is almost unrivaled. The amount of polish that went into Doom 3 should belong in the polish hall of fame. (It is quite shiny, too) The game is worth the money just for Hell. The story is IMO high quality, really, my only beef with the game is the shotgun. All the guns rule except that one. The Double-shotgun in the expansion pack, on the other hand, is one of the coolest FPS weapons in existence. Have you used the D3:ROE double-shotgun? Have you experienced the awe-inspiring power of it? Have you lived? My first time through Doom 3 on release day was definitely one of the best video gaming experiences I've ever had. The game definitely deserves a spot. Too linear though, so we’ll push it to 46.

45-PaRappa the Rapper:
NaNaOn-Sha/Sony
Weird
PSX
1996-1997
Talk about sweet. Go ahead. Talk about sweet, and I guarantee PaRappa the Rapper will be referenced in the conversation, because that's how sweet he is. At the top of the screen there's a line with buttons on it, and then a small icon of your face scrolls along it, and you have to hit the buttons at the right time. When it hits the end of the measure, it goes back to the left side and the measure changes. The rapping prose greatly depends on how well you hit the buttons on time. Sometimes you can switch it up, you know, freestyle it a bit, and you are awarded for your skills by raising your rank in the corner from GOOD to COOL sometimes. If you completely do random crap, it won't even sound like rap, and you might even get game over before the song ends. The game follows a six level progression, rapping with a different partner in every level. It all flows on a big (or maybe small) storyline, where you're trying to impress a girl, by learning to bake cakes, learn karate, etc. Finally at the end you get to rap at her birthday party at the end. The graphics are also unique, all characters are paper thin and two dimensional in a 3d world, sometimes the camera rotates around and you can barely see them. Since the actual gameplay only happens on the top sixth of the screen, there's plenty to watch on screen. The game also has a great sense of humor and the rapping itself is catchy, I still know some of the songs by heart, 10 years later.

44-Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance:
Konami
Sidescroller
GBA
2002
This wildly unpopular Castlevania title is actually one of my favorites. Like cotm, it brought whipping action and merged it with exploring of post-symphony Castlevania, and added some sort of magic system. The difference is, cotm had a lot of design flaws. Save points were placed as annoyingly as possible, sometimes forcing you to RE-explore areas if you die to the boss, miles away. If they made me travel a while from save points to boss, that might be okay, but if they make me re-explore, that's bad.

HoD does a much better job with all around map design, than cotm IMO, too. The dual-castle idea was interesting, although you may deny it if you really wish. The areas in the game are also very abstract. Other recent Castlevanias might place you in a ballroom, or a study, but this one would put you in a cavern made of skeleton bones, or a creepy aqueduct, or a red-skied cemetery. Curse of Darkness's aqueduct also ruled, so frankly, Castlevania needs more aqueducts in the future. I'll write a letter for you. My personal favorite area was the red-skied cemetery, it's one of the last places you go, and there are skele-belmonts all over and a lot of tough sweet rooms. Dissonance also makes use of the Konami code, letting you play as very Old-School feeling Simon Belmont in boss rush mode. Oh yeah, and the magic system was sweet in this game, I don't care who you are, it ruled, and heart-items weren't a joke either.

43-Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire:
Game Freak/Nintendo
RPG
GBA
2002-2003
Pokemon! What an amazing series. It's like, an RPG, but simpler, funner, and less about the story, and more about an adventure. This RPG is not about plot. It's about following a journey. To become a pokemon master, you're going to have to explore the darkest reaches of the country, travel long distances, and beat the best of the best. I chose Ruby/Sapphire to be on my list because it is my favorite of the series. Notably, it has probably the best aftermath, that is, things to do after the elite four. Plenty of legendaries to track down, secret dungeons, pokemon to catch, and generally entertaining things to complete before you've seen it all. I'm also a big fan of how the screen never cuts away while you switch from city to a route.

42-Castlevania:
Konami
Sidescroller
NES (MSX first)
1986
Castlevania one. Hell yeah. What's that? You've never played Castlevania one? That must be an awfully nice rock you live under. Do the pipes leak in there? There can't be much insulation for 'em. Only a matter of time until they bust during the winter buddy, I highly highly recommend you do some refurbishing. Get some insulation in there. Call the pink panther! Teehee. Do you call the exterminator often? The bugs down there must be terrible. You know what? I don't think I could ever do that, what you do there. I could never live under a rock like you, you know? Lot of hassle, housekeeping, you know? Too much. I don't like that, but I guess you don't mind it, huh. Ehyup.

Anyway, six level side-scrolling adventure through Dracula's castle. Entrance hall, outer wall, the high ruined chapel tower thingy area, the cave/courtyard, the dungeon, the keep. You get a whip that can be upgraded 3 times, goes away when you die, usually you'll have it back to max in 10 seconds or so. There are 5 subweapons, you can only hold one at a time though: knives, axes, crosses, holy water, hershey kiss. It is NOT a stopwatch, so there. You hit candlesticks for ammo, aka hearts. That's all there is to it. That's like, the perfect set-up for an adventure. If I was going on an adventure IRL, it would be like this.

41-Pac-Man Collection (GBA):
Namco
Pac-Man?
GBA
2001
This four-pack of Pac-Man games for GBA would be even higher on the list, but sadly, it's only near-perfect. Pac-Attack is a lame block-falling game, and it's missing Ms. Pac-Man. However, the plusses outweigh the minuses by far.

We've got the well-emulated original pac-man here, a masterpiece of video gaming. Pac-Man's gameplay is mimicked somewhat by a large amount of video games today. Pac-Man keeps it simple, challenging, and deeper than it looks. Billy Mitchell is my idol.

Next we have Pac-Mania. It's isometric, and you can jump over most ghosts. The gameplay is slow, but it's got a nice difficulty ramp-up to it, and it's pretty long, so it's fun.

Then there's Pac-Man Arrangement. This game is godly. You travel through 6 worlds, like colored block world, forest world, arcade world, and such, and 4 different mazes in each world. The gameplay is lightning fast, if you eat a ghost, there is no pause, when you get eaten, the ghosts don't reset, you just spawn and the game continues. There's also a fifth ghost, if you eat him, it's like eating a power pellet, but if ANOTHER ghost eats him, they become super ghosts. Each of the 4 super ghosts has different abilities. The graphics are like, warcraft 3, you know what I mean? It's like, you know how isometric is from the top and diagonal slightly? This game is from the top, and from the side slightly. That's my favorite point of view in video games. Oh yeah and there's a boss at the end too.

Oh yeah, and then there's Pac-Attack, hate that crap.

Pac-Man is one of the best ideas for a video-game ever. Amazingly creative for it's time. Collect things without getting caught. You can say "I could have thought of that", but it's always easy to say that, but difficult to actually do something that other people say that about.

40-Tiny Toons: Buster's Hidden Treasure:
Konami
Sidescroller
Genesis
1993
Konami can do no wrong. This simple platformer for Genesis merges Super Mario World with Sonic. The gameplay is fast. With good reflexes and strategy, you may not even have to slow down, but it's still challenging. The world map is not nearly as complicated as SMW's but it does have a sufficient share of separate paths and nonlinearity. The music is fricken sweetle. One problem with Mario World was that if you run out of lives, who cares. Lives are a mostly an annoyance. With TT:BHT, you've gotta put a little effort into it. If you're down to one hit left, you are going to be careful. You're going to play better. There are no check points inside the levels, and they're a little touch smaller than the average Sonic2 level. And if you run out of lives (probably won't) it's back to the start of the world area.

By the way, the world areas are pretty generic themes, but done very well, and they feel special--gotta love Konami. They look unique. For instance, the snow level, you may climb to the top of a huge mountain during a level, and the background make you feel VERY high up. Sort of like in Yoshi's Island, in the high up areas, you feel high up because of the background, you can see clouds for miles.

The physics, also, is spot-on in TT:BHC. Physics is very important in classic platformers. For instance, Sonic Rush, has poor physics: if you have to jump from one platform to another, you may have some issues doing it. Mario, in my opinion, also has crappy physics usually, but that's just me. I have issues with how you land and you slide for a few feet. It's just so darn slippery. Anyway, TT:BHC rules. So why isn't this higher? It's one of those games that you LOVE to start, but HATE to finish. Did I mention the awesome music?

Anyone have any ideas on a fun game to start with? Preferably a shorter game, shorter than 3 hours. PC, 8-bit, 16-bit, or GBA or PSX games are fair game. I figure I'll make a thread on DW and my other board I frequent.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2431

There's a day brightener.

This may have saved my bracket, but Castlevania still needs to beat KH and MGS, then FF needs to beat Zelda, and then the $400 is MINE!

1-New Modest Mouse Album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank leaked. I haven't listened to anything else since I got it, I've listened 4-5 times per day, it's soooooooooooo good. Dude. Serse. Man. Awesome. And it's still getting better with each listen. Second best album ever? Maybe!

Modest Mouse have tried to make a theme album before (sort of). The Moon & Antarctica more had a theme with the sound/mood of the music and not so much the message. The Lonesome Crowded West had a theme of the city and cars, however, there wasn't a specific story going on, and no real continuity between songs besides the spread and rotting of cities, which is a very impersonal subject.

However, this album is a much more successful theme album. The first song of the album is called "March Into The Sea", and the ending chant of the album is We're crushed by the ocean but it will not get us wet--crushed by the ocean but it will not get us wet--crushed by the.... The songs nearly all somehow tie into a story of shit-luck-sailors setting off and realizing their ship is doomed, but they don't care. The sound of the album nails this mood. A few songs break character, that is, have nothing to do with the sailors or boats, however, they still have an impending doom and careless fun feeling to them. Steaming Genius especially.

The cover of the album cleverly fits into the theme as well, it's an emblem of a hot air balloon but instead of a basket on bottom, it has an anchor. It's a doomed flight surely!

The lyrics are top-notch.

-"Treat me like the sea/oh so salty and mean/ah ha ha/Bang your head like a gong/'cause you got it all wrong/clang clang clang!"

-"Even as I left Florida/Florida, Florida, wasn't far enough"

-"Like trying to save an ice cube from the cold/Like trying to hide the daylight from the sun"

-"We've got everything/we've got everything/we've got everything down to a science/so I guess we know everything/we know everything/we know everything/we know everything was built to expire/so I guess we've done everything"

Hell, all three of those quotes tie into the theme now that I think about it.

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2-http://everybodypanic.org/linegame.htm Try this excellent and incredibly simple flash game Everybody Panic! Now. Choose mouse mode. Tell me when you beat all levels (there are only 8). Level e is not as hard as it says!

Hey Doomworld! I browse yur furums LURL! Here's a blog I'm typing while waiting for 1 vs 100--kids edition to come on, and I don't feel like playing WoW for a few seconds. After that, Monk will be on, then Psyche, and then an excellent episode of House I've already seen. Good times. Anyway, maybe you'll know what the hell I'm talking about sometimes, but probably not. In order of CRAZINESS!:

1-I'm sooo close to level 67 that I can sense it with my nose. What do you call that again? I forget, because you can't do it in world of warcraft. Wait, you might be able to do it with an emote actually. SMELL.

1.5-I am very impressed with the levelling content of Burning Crusade. The zones are wonderful and blow any other zone they made before out of the water. Felwood, my favorite zone before, is like a joke compared to every single of the seven Outland zones. Of the four and a half I've played so far anyway. I'm halfway through Blade's Edge Mountains. Netherstorm looks saucesome.

2-I turned 17 on Monday. Happy birfday! PBF comic! etc. To be honest I've felt 17 for forever. Glad to finally be it.

2.5-For my birthday I got a chromatic tuner, so I can tune my new 12 string bass in less than a half hour now, and also it's chromatic, which makes it a whole lot easier to tune it to power chords, which is CRAZI. I also got a Gogol Bordello hoodie and a new joypad which is an upgraded version of my old P880--it's got more triggers, it's wireless, it has built in mouse support so I don't have to use joy2key to play HL2/Doom3 engine games, and it's called P990 or something like that, like a higher number. For the record, the color scheme is better. So there.

3-http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39340/ NEW CASTLEVANIA MAN

4-I dunno if I've brought this up, but the Castlevania that came out 2 months ago called Portrait of Ruin on DS is the greatest game I've ever played besides maaaaybe DooM.

5-New Modest Mouse album on March 20! Especially exciting! We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. Kick butt title. They've released the first song Dashboard, it is excellent, and I snagged a bootleg of a november show they played with a lot of new songs, and they are excellent. Favorite band in case you couldn't tell!

6-QWANTZ/Dinosaur Comics hit it's 4th anniversary today or yesterday, grats to them. My favorite website ever.

7-The new Sonic for Wii is looking mighty fine, I'm not sure if I should still buy a wii though. I'm sure I'll get one at some point anyway, and won't worry about it. I know I'll have to get a PSP in the fall for the new Castlevania. Maybe I'll just stick with portable systems from now on. If that's all Castlevania's gonna be on, then hell yeah.

8-I sent my DS-X back and they're sending me another, should ship in a week or so. If you don't know, it's a DS homebrew device, so I can play Castlevania III, DooM, Hexen, and Megaman 2 on my DS Lite basically. Totally worth $130 m i tire ya i m tire

9-Penny-Arcade is good today http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/02 It's about Vista! Screw Vista.

10-Those manly Burger King commercials are really well-made. I like, really want to buy food from Burger King because of them.

11-Kraid's Lair is the most fun song to play on guitar ever. Also, learning this song felt like my skills doubled. Sometimes certain songs just double your skill, it's weird.

http://images.redial.net/Virtual_Console_promo.jpg

Took me forever to find the Metroids too. Zelda is barely represented at all!

Desktop it. Nao!

TOP FIVE TOP TEN LISTS IN _________ ORDER (the one where the best is last)

10- Gigantic - Pixies
9- Bi-Polar Bear - Stone Temple Pilots
8- Way Out - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
7- Slob - Weezer
6- Doin' The Cockroach (Live) - Modest Mouse
5- Haltura - Gogol Bordello
4- Revolution - The Beatles
3- Surf Wax America - Weezer
2- Dramamine - Modest Mouse
1- Exit Does Not Exist - Modest Mouse

10-Scrubs
9-The Colbert Report
8-Daily Show with Jon Stewart
7-House
6-Monk
5-Futurama
4-South Park
3-Frisky Dingo
2-Tom Goes to the Mayor
1-Bleach

10-Undertow - Tool
9-Life Won't Wait - Rancid
8-Tiny Music...Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop - Stone Temple Pilots
7-Voi-La Intruder - Gogol Bordello
6-Pinkerton - Weezer
5-Weezer (Blue) - Weezer
4-Lonesome Crowded West - Modest Mouse
3-Multi KONTRA Culti vs. Irony - Gogol Bordello
2-Baron Von Bullshit Rides Again - Modest Mouse
1-This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About - Modest Mouse

10-Sonic Adventure 2
9-Akumajo Dracula X: Chi no Rondo
8-Sonic 3 & Knuckles
7-Wiz 'n' Liz
6-Klonoa
5-Klonoa 2
4-World of Warcraft
3-Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
2-Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
1-DooM

10-Febreeze
9-Tallahasse
8-Amen't
7-Geologist
6-Teledildonic
5-Telekinetic
4-Nutrinomicon
3-Dromiceiomimus
2-Celestial
1-Topography

THAT IS A WRAP I TRULY ENJOY THAT WORD TOPOGRAPHY

http://www.urban75.com/Mag/bubble.html

http://www.2211.com/dialin/universe/pop1.htm

http://fun.from.hell.pl/2003-11-24/bubblewrap.swf

http://www.snapbubbles.com/

http://www.snapbubbles.com/index2.htm

http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/popnow.shtml



The last one is my favorite :) :) :) :)

At first I was like noooo they've ruined the balance of sonic 1! You're not supposed to be able to spin dash and the levels were designed that way!

And then I was like hoooo sweet I've played it the old way so many times, finally a new way to play, this will be interesting.

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/06/26/sega-to-demonstrate-blast-processing-on-gba/

c wat i did thar? posted a link to a blog...in a blog!

Although this post on joystiq is all I've heard about this news. I wonder if it's even true.

My mom just told me some news about her cousins in California. She doesn't know them too well but hears from them every few years.

Backstory: A few years ago (5 I guess) they put some money in a stock and it exploded, they became millionaires and moved to California. About a year ago they came back to visit and bragged all about their fancy house they were working on. They seemed pretty arrogent and snooty.

Frontstory: Ok so they keep working on this house, and they tell their builders to keep adding new things and new things and more rooms. Appearantly there was an arguement and the father decided that's it. Begone! I've paid you enough! My house is complete! Woops, appearantly they had an important contractual agreement. The builders sued and won. The family had to give up their house to pay it off, and the parents are now looking for jobs. They had it all!

She keeps talking and it gets funnier. The older son was in the top 5 of his class in his exclusive private high school. Uh oh! The younger son participates in worldwide tennis tournaments. Oh dear lord no!

Please forgive me if I seem to be heartless to smile at something so cruel. But you see... But hey... Well actually I have no excuse. Guess I'm heartless then!

Game link

This is a blog for my second flash game! My first flash game is at http://www.kongregate.com/games/Epyo/wandslinger-the-mana-cycle so that's pretty cool. Anyway in this new game, it's like a roguelike RPG sort of thing. Mouse-only. Click outside the circles to move, click in the outer circle to use primary weapon, click in the inner circle to use secondary weapon (whichever is highlighted at the bottom. those are clickable to select).

So anyway this will be done in the summer some time.

BLOG:

DAY 0: Before totally deciding what game I wanted to make, I spent an hour making this simple game, if you can call it that (it is indeed rather addictive.) I wanted to test out this control scheme where you move your cursor away from your player to point/move him. It works, somewhat. The part that doesn't work very well is that the player has the ability to put the cursor on his player to pause gameplay for a second, to think. But the player probably isn't going to. I don't know if it's because there's no reason to, or if it's because the pacman isn't in the middle of the screen. So I decided for my real next game, to always keep the character in the middle of the screen. (By the way, I played this for an hour and could only get to 3 points. Today I can get to 13+).

DAY 1: Started the actual project. Took the wizard sprite from wandslinger, made some tiles, made it so that the level moves instead of the player moving. This game is programmed entirely with code, whereas the last one, the levels were designed right into the flash timeline. This should work better, but before, I just wasn't ready.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 1 hour

DAY 2: Implemented a dumb level generator, just cause I don't know how to do that yet, and I want to play around with having a grid system. Basically, it covers the grid with random black squares here and there. I don't like it. The real game will look nothing like this.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 2 hours

DAY 3: Added the player's projectile system. Coded much cleaner this time around; I'm very happy with it. Right now I've got you shooting a simple little blue circle. Keep in mind you can hold shift to let the game play in real time (or enter if you prefer). Since the game is so unfinished, holding shift makes the game make more sense. There is also the word "Paused" when the game is paused, when the game is done, I'll invent some other way than simply putting that word there.

Still brainstorming on how to generate levels. I've got some okay ideas...Maybe I can use different coding plans with different areas of the final game.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 3 hours

DAY 4: I'm going to go with a small tile-system, for the art (not gameplay.) This is because it's probably going to be an easy way to do generated-levels, and it's going to be easier to make the level art this way. I'd like to make it look like a tile-based NES game like original Zelda or Metroid or Castlevania. Castlevania might be out of my league, but I could get the Metroid 1 tile-based look, I think. Generally your tiles don't even have to look that great, the repetition and grid is usually easy on the eyes.

The tiles are 40x40 pixels now, you should check it out. I've also got a simple uncovering-system going on, everything looks black until you get close up to it.

Progress is slow, but this game is a lot harder to make than my last one, and I'm learning a lot of things by trial and error. I'm being more careful this time.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 5 hours

DAY 5: MUCH better rendering code now. Tiles that are not on screen are not only invisible, but removed from their display containers. I'm going to try to find a bad computer to test my optimization on, I code like an asshole and I can't tell anything's wrong on this computer.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 7 hours

DAY 5 PART 2: Bullet collision detection with the blocks is working, it might need more work later. Movement collision with blocks is mostly working...but when you're sliding up against a row of blocks, you get stuck. That's going to take some thought to fix.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 8 hours

DAY 6: First attempt at new art today. I made a brown wall tile. It looks extremely meh. Practice is good, though.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 9 hours

DAY 7: Got a lot done today in just one hour! Added enemies (just one for now, reused from Wandslinger), added enemy hit detection with hitpoints, the enemy can move towards you and chase you, he dies in 10 hits, stops his animation when the game is still...I did more stuff I forget!

Also, lowered the FPS to 30, because 36 was a bit excessive (this might still be a little excessive, but because of the gameplay, it's not really a big deal if it runs a tad slow on older laptops, besides the fact that it will take longer to travel around.) Maybe I'll end up lowering more, but since the bullets are so small sometimes, that might be unwise.

Still pondering on enemy pathing, how to code their AI. I think they should just walk randomly until they're pretty close to you, or if you damage them...but when they chase you, I need to make them go around rocks and walls, obviously, and when they're waltzing about, that will require some thought as well.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 11 hours. (1 unrecorded from a few days ago)

DAY 8: Worked two hours tonight, worked on the vision. Before, it was just a big square arond your character that got uncovered. Now, it's a sort of circle. Looks a lot better, and it should even work faster. There is also a system in place for a night/cave vision mode, where you cannot see behind walls. It's not done yet, so you can't see it, and the first level will be outdoors anyway.

I think I know an easy way to make monsters invisible when out-of-vision.

Tomorrow I need to either work on art, level-building, or enemy pathing/actions, or start the decal system (blood n rocks n stuff).

TOTAL DEV TIME: 14 hours.

DAY 9: A frustrating day, worked on enemy pathing, don't have much to show for it except a bit more know-how, and a bit more of an idea on what I want.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 18 hours.

DAY 10: Wow, after a LOT of work, I got something that should have been very simple working. Code posted below. I suck at geometry I guess <_<

Almost ready to implement the pathing. The way I plan it to work is that every enemy has two invisible little boxes in front of it. One 10 pixels away, one 50 pixels away. If they feel an object in front of them, they'll choose a better direction, and gradually turn and avoid the object.

It'll be easy to improve the system further from there.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 26 hours.

DAY 11: Playing around with pathing ideas, simple ones right now. This very random map is hard for them to maneuver, harder than the real game will be. I've got a simple hit detector in front of my lizard for now. It has obvious problems.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 30 hours.

DAY 12: Fun progress today! Pathing is still extremely simple, but it works, for now. Random maps are removed, for now, I'm reading from a string. I like the lighting system. Enemies now aggro when you see them (and they see you).

I'm getting sick of the tiles I'm using, so I might get around to "art"ing up some new ones on Monday? Maybe?

I'd call the game almost playable at this point, whereas yesterday and previously it was a mess, it kind of resembles a future game right now.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 32 hours.

DAY 13: Haven't updated in a while <_<

Pathing still not perfect, but you won't see the guys run through walls much. Anyway, a lot has happened in the past week or two, haven't posted much cause it all happens in little bursts because of all my homework. Just today I made it so that you can sneak up on the enemies, for example.

I am happy with how the game performs. My gf's computer runs swfs agonizingly slow, but my game runs almost perfectly.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 42 hours.

DAY 14: Can't decide if you should click-to-move or hover to move, with spacebar letting you free your mouse...

Also, there's a bomber/flamer class up right now instead of the wizard. The explosions are invisible, I'm working on those right now. I'll have to test the flamethrower on some other computers because it's probably really laggy.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 50 hours.

DAY 15: I think this new class is pretty cool. There's one more thing I want to do, and it is implemented, but not visible yet: If the radius of two bombs overlaps, I want a dotted line to appear between the two bombs, so that if one bomb goes off, the other goes off.

Also, enemies need to be more difficult, and you need to have a bit more health. There will soon be a food system too.

Below your hp bar will be a food bar. As long as its above 25%, you'll regen health at normal speed. But if it's below 25%, your health regen will be a lot less. If the bar is empty, you do not regen health. You need to eat food to replenish your bar. Strong foods will fill the bar, and make it a little bit bigger too. Weak foods will fill the bar only slightly.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 55 hours.

UPDATE 16: Everything's going great! I'm really excited for what I'll be doing for the next couple of weeks on the game. Today I coded in so that numbers pop up when you hit enemies, showing your damage. It's actually a bigger challenge than I ever expected, on my third try, I'm very happy with the way I coded it. Still need to work on the font though, needs to be more interesting than just yellow typewriter font.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 60 hours.

UPDATE 17: Still awesome. Just implemented levelling up and exp system in the past hour. These past two weeks I haven't got to work much ~15 hours maybe, plenty in though. The BOOMERANG is realllllly cool, I recommend you check it out. I've started the item/inventory system. Tomorrow I'll be implementing some code that will let me throw enemies around--for example, when hit by a mine, they should go flying a couple of feet, stunned for a second. Should be very very easy, I'll have a flag for the stun, and two stun vectors are assigned upon stun. I already implemented the flag with the boomerang, you'll notice a star comes out of the enemy as soon as the rang stuns it.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 75 hours.

UPDATE 18: Did some pretty extreme surgery on the game last night. You can now pick two different secondary weapons at the start, and toggle between them at the bottom of the game during play. Think it works, but sometimes you can crash with mines. The way mines are coded is a bit ugly, so it's going to be hard to figure out what's wrong...But it might not even be the mines, I've only seen it twice, and it just so happened to be while using mines...

In addition, my new tile is a lot laggier than the plain brown from before. So rendering is a bit modified: dimmed tiles no longer stay dim out of range. There is now a ring of lit tiles round you, and outside of the circle it's all black ground, except for solid blocks, which remain visible permanently after first seen. I actually like this visual strategy best of all the styles I've tried so far, so, great! Best performance, my favorite look.

Will add a new weapon today.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 85 hours.

UPDATE 19: Woops, didn't update this for weeks. ~20 hours later, rocket guy plays pretty well, there's a combat log in the bottom-right corner ( I really like that feature), all sorts of good stuff is going on right now. Next up is either the inventory system, or redoing the level code so I can have multiple levels...actually, before either of those, I think I need to add decor. Decorations will not block vision, and not block bullets, but block movement. I'll need to use this for water, pits, boulders, voids, bushes, and the like. Yeah. That's next.

Oh yeah, there's teleporters and stealth too. Stealth is a little bit easy. Need to implement crits from behind or something, and then make sneaking harder.

TOTAL DEV TIME: 105 hours.

About 3 minutes.

I also downloaded the soundtracks to sonic the hedgehog 1, 2, 3, & & knuckles last night. Tasty tasty internet.

1-Grats to Mordeth nabbing the final post in blog one with an extensive burning crusade post. Have you done any instances in BC yet? How are they? I've only seen my brother do blood furnace twice. Looks cool. Really short, good looking, and phatty lewt. I'm holding off til 70. Which should be tomorrow, since I'm a third through 69.

1.5-Started the Karazhan-key-quest-chain right outside the tower just now. Just thought I'd say that. It's a blog. It's pretty tough, had to go beneath the tower (non-instanced), really hard mobs down there, was bandaging every other kill, had to go deep down and find two lakes.

1.75-Ranking the 7 Outland zones:
Netherstorm > Blade's Edge Mountains >>> Terokkar Forest > Zangarmarsh > Nagrand >>> Hellfire Peninsula > Shadowmoon Valley, although to be fair, I haven't done Shadowmoon Valley, I just stepped in to check how much it costs for a flying mount. Looks ugly though.

1.99- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl0PQHT34_0&eurl= "Nerf Druids" (It's :37 second video SFW)

-----HERE ENDS WORLD OF WARCRAFT BURNING CRUSADE NONSENSE

2-The Final Fantasy VII soundtrack is 4 discs. The game is 3 discs. Riddle me that.

2.5-I downloaded it for background music while playing WoW. It's better than I thought. It occurs to me that, throughout most of FF7, the only thing you're hearing is the music, no voice acting, no sound effects really. To me music is more than half of a video game, so, yeah. Anyway, the music is way more emotional than I remember. I thought it was the dialogue, the characters, the plot that was disturbingly sad--and not even Aeris's death, that never moved me at all, but just every second I play FF7 it feels sad. Finally I figured out that it's the eerie music playing at any given time...And all those other things too I guess.

2.77-You know what? FF7 needed more variety in battle music. You're hearing the same song or two a third of the time you're in the game.

3-You think you're decisive? I bet you can't rank the Weezer albums in order of your love for them. You'll only hurt yourself.

3.5-Ok, I'll try: Blue > Pinkerton > Maladroit > Green > Make Believe. Ugh. That was difficult. Probably the hardest thing ever done by man. It's like trying to pick a favorite beatles song or something. Good luck.

4-Lost is on, but I give up on it. The show is sooo different than normal right now. Feels like a whole different show. I never really liked it in the first place.

5-You guys heard about the mooninites thing right? The viral marketing causing a panic and bomb squads came and got pissed? It's exactly like the mario blocks as bombs panic! Clearly terrorism has won.

5.5-The guy who makes QWANTZ/Dinosaur Comics, was involved with the mario blocks as bombs panic thing. Remember that? What a small world! Because I love QWANTZ!

6-Half Life 2 Episode 2 is allegedly coming this fall. Can't wait until it comes out next year!

6.5-I didn't like Half Life 2, but Half Life 2 episode 1 rocked my socks. How disturbing.

7-My DSX still hasn't arrived...

8-Beef jerky. I got a bag of beef jerky. Scary as hell the first time I ate it a few days ago, but it's tasty and fun, so now I always keep a bag on my desk. It's hilarious. Like BBQ chewing gum that you have to rip off pieces of and choke on, on purpose. And then you die. Not so funny now, is it.

9-I had two snow days this week.

10-Signing up for 12th grade classes tomorrow. Picking: AP Chem, H-Engineering, AP US History, English 4, H-French 4, H-Calculus, and possibly AP Economics, but then I have no lunch, but I don't eat anyway.

11-I'm not getting a Wii. I don't have the time for another system, what with my DS, WoW, and later this year a PSP, which I'll probably only ever get one game for. I don't have a job anyway. Not enough Castlevania on the system anyway--None.

11.5-Frankly I dunno about you guys but I judge a system by how much Castlevania is on it.

11.75-Oh crap, virtual console. You got me there. But still.

12-I have not touched Captain Mancubus 2 since January 15.

13-I can 4-star Trippin on a Hole in a Paper Heart blindfolded.

13.5-I tried Can't You Hear Me Knockin' on super speed, and got my best % ever on it, 98%

13.51-Five starred Less Talk More Rokk. That's my favorite song in the game. That and Can't You Hear Me Knockin' are some of the best songs I've ever heard ever. I don't even like the Rolling Stones.

Yesterday: Bought Sonic Mega Collection Plus for PS2. I'm in love with this game, got all the genesis sonic games, the game gear games nobody played, and ristar, the ooze, comix zone, and flicky. That's all the good genesis games there are, right? Oops they forgot tiny toon adventures, but I'll let it slide. Hey, it was only 20$!

Problem with it is I have to unlock those last 4 games. I can't even play ristar yet, because I haven't unlocked it. And the way to unlock it (and all of them) are dumb. I have to start all the genesis games and exit them 20-30 times each. Yuck. Can't wait to play ristar and comix zone, have great memories of those games.

Today: World of Warcraft release date announced by blizzard. November 23! Hope I can find 80$ for the collector's edition by then, my brother might help me pay though.

1-That's from a comic from asofterworld.com, where a girl does the photography, and a guy does the poetry, and it's neat.

2-I quit WoW because Desktop Tower Defense-- http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/ is a whole lot more fun. Upgrading pellet shooters 5 times makes them sniper towers. That's good to know. Also, I have friends now.

3-Got my license on my second attempt.

4-Kid A >>>>>>>>>>>>>> > > >>>>>>>>> OK Computer

5-SotN was released on XBLA and I've been helping punks out on gamefaqs. The main problem I find with gamefaqs is that, yeah, the FAQs/Walkthroughs are right there, but nobody wants to explore a half megabyte of text when all they needed to know was the general location of echo of bat, and they'll probably get spoiled too, anyway. So, I made my own simple no-spoiler guide.

---

1-Buy Jewel of Open: Long Library

2-Find Leap Stone: Top of Castle (not through Clock Tower area!)

3-Find Mist Form: Colusseum (area above giant-analog-clock)

4-Find Bat Form: Deeper in Long Library

-(Fake Ending: top of castle)

-(Turbo Jump: giant-analog-clock)

-(Breathe Underwater: east purple caves)

5-Find Echo of Bat: Olrox's Quarters

6-Find Gold Ring: NE purple caves (purple save point)

7-Open Catacombs: Destroy purple caves' bridge (puzzle)

8-Find Spike Breaker Armor: East Catacombs

9-Find Silver Ring: Break Spikes in NW chapel

10-Find Holy Glasses: Wear Gold/Silver rings in giant-analog-clock room

11-Find 2nd Castle: Wear Holy Glasses during battle at top of castle, kill red orb

-(2nd Fake Ending: don't kill red orb, but wear holy glasses)

12-Find 5 pieces of Vlad:
-2nd clock tower's boss
-2nd chapel's boss
-2nd outer wall's boss
-2nd purple cave's boss
-2nd abandoned mines' boss

-(Poison Mist Form: 2nd Catacombs' Boss (Hard!))

13-Final Battle: 2nd castle's giant-analog-clock room.

-(3rd ending is -196%, 4th ending is +196%)

---

6-Excited about the new Pokemon DS games coming out.

7-Happy Easter

8-The game froze at the boss of Hill Top zone today, but it turns out, there's a level select code in the Knuckles version of the game too: up up up down down down left right left right a start. Who knew? But I only had 3 lives then, and I spent one at the spike pit in mystic caves 2, and I tried to cheat through the ocean at the bottom of oil of olay, but with knuckles it's harder, because you accidentally glide, and kill yourself. I did get to Metropolis, but screw that zone.

9-Amusing anecdote, my family has always called oil ocean "oil of olay". It never even occurs to me most of the time that I'm calling it by the wrong name.

10-Dunno if I should do a playthrough of Curse of Darkness or Lament of Innocence during the remainder of my spring break.

11-BTW, you call this a spring break? We didn't have nearly this much snow on winter break!

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Epyo/wandslinger-the-mana-cycle

Yup, after ~40 days, 200 hours, I finished it. Still no music, sadly, just couldn't make it in time, too hard, and didn't want to buy music off of anyone. I made the flash game I wanted to play, and I wanted it to be mine...

So, if I have one of the top fifteen scores by dec 27, I get to go to the judging round of the flash contest. =] Wish me luck! I really like my game, so excuse me if I celebrate a little.

1-The only Kirby game I've played before now was Canvas Curse, which was incredible too, but I thought it was only incredible because it was so unique with the touch screen thing. But I just got Kirby Squeak Squad for DS an it's disgustingly good. DUDE IT IS. So I got the original for NES and it's awesome too, I'll probably play through it once I'm done with Squeak Squad.

2-My homebrew piracy device for my DS Lite finally arrived, and I've got an NES emulator on there, which is sweet as balls, and I've got some DS games on there too. Here's the DS games I just got:

-Kirby Squeak Squad: Already said it's awesome. Can't believe I've never played a real Kirby til now, and also that they're awesome.

-Mr. Driller Drill Spirits: Same Mr. Driller as always. Good times.

-New Super Mario Bros.: I'm torn on this one. It's really boring compared to Kirby, if I hadn't played Kirby first maybe I'd like it, but still wouldn't love it. It's slow, boring, every once in a while there's a neat surprise, and then back to jumping on koopas. Graphics are nice to look at, but so far they've been pretty much the same the whole time. Maybe I'll like this one more as it goes on. Certainly not worth all the critical acclaim I've seen.

-Pac-Pix: Cool for 5 seconds

-Phoenix Wright: Haven't tried it yet.

-Point Blank DS: Entertaining. It's like Warioware, but you spend like 30 seconds on each minigame instead of 5 seconds.

-Rayman DS: I thought it was going to be a sidescroller, but it's a 3d platformer. Bleh. Pretty ugly too.

-Star Fox Command: Haven't tried it yet.

-Super Mario 64 DS: Haven't tried it yet.

-Super Princess Peach: Tried it for a few seconds, and it's probably good, but I'm going to wait til I beat Kirby to play it.

-Tetris DS: Very fun! Good times.

-Trace Memory: I had no idea what it was when I downloaded it. Turns out it's a point and click adventure. Bleh.

-Trauma Center: Under the Knife: The surgery is hard as hell and the characters are always all up in your grill. It's more of a hospital drama than a game, really. Pretty good though.

3-Any other DS games I should get? Chances are, if it's remotely good, I'll like it. Besides the games above, I also own Children of Mana, Yoshi Touch 'n' Go, Brain Age, Nanostray, Electroplankton, Warioware, Sonic Rush, Kirby Canvas Curse, Advance Wars DS, Meteos, Yoshi DS, CV: Dawn of Sorrow, and CV: Portrait of Ruin. A puzzle game would be nice, or a block falling game.

---

4-Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job is on tonight on adult swim at 11:45 est. Watch it, it's awesome, episode 2 is tonight, titled, "Friends". Last episode was "Dads". It's made by the same guys as Tom Goes to the Mayor. Don't watch Saul of the Molemen, which is on right after. It sucks.

5-Tom Goes to the Mayor DOES rule, kay.

6-LOST was really good this week. But I still hate it.

7-Wendy's > Burger King > Taco Bell > McDonald's >>>>> Subway > Quiznos > Arby's, but Arthur Treacher's is better than all of them.

7.5-Not that I hate McDonald's, it's just not as good as the others. Barely.

8-LAWL remember when "Everything Else" was the "Polls" forum? Or something like that. Good times.

End of Closed Beta Test - Nebu on 10/28/04 - http://www.worldofwarcraft.com
The closed [World of Warcraft] beta test is coming to an end. This Friday, October 29, at 3:00 PM PDT, the closed beta servers will go offline as we prepare to run another stress test. All active closed-beta accounts will remain active, and closed-beta testers will be receiving an email with instructions on what to do to continue playing in the stress test.

We will post more information about the stress test in the days ahead, so please stay tuned to WorldofWarcraft.com.

We also want to take this opportunity to thank the closed beta testers for their months of dedicated testing and hard work. Thanks to all of your suggestions and bug reports, World of Warcraft is closer than ever to being ready for launch!

My beautiful happiness, don't take it away from me, noo :(

On a side note, I learned today that qwerty keyboards were designed to slow typers down to prevent the keys from jamming on typewriters. That's neat.

http://www.wheelchairunicorn.com/thereisacave.html

Welp, this project I started back in January is still going, with about 350 hours so far. The game's structure is somewhat different but somewhat the same.

You're this rabbit that's dressed up like link, with a sword and crossbow, and you're on this set of islands that you can freely explore. It's divided up into themed zones. You find consumable items, armor, new weapons, and elements to put into your weapons. You explore, level up, and search for The Cave.

[How to play: Use WASD to move, or arrow keys. Click within the big circle to attack. Click outside the big circle to move if you don't want to use WASD. Click inside the small circle, on your character, to use your highlighted Secondary. Choose a secondary in the top left. Secondaries use hearts. Choose a main weapon in the top right. They need no ammunition. Equip new main weapons through the inventory.]

--------------------

So once again, I'll be blogging in this thread for a while while I work on the game during this semester. Hopes are to finish the game by Christmas. That won't happen. But here's hoping anyway.

September 1st: ~350 hours in
What's done so far: Many weapons are implemented, but they are all "Weak ____". Soon, there will be normal and "Strong ___" versions of every weapon. Stronger weapons will have slots to put Elements in. Elements are like Frost, which slows enemies down upon hit, or explosive, which causes explosions of course. Elements are not yet implemented, but are next on the list.

Two levels are implemented, but nowhere near finished. The first level is a campground for some purple guy enemies. The level to the south is a Wetland. Next on the agenda is a town, east of the first level. South of that will be a swamp. Some resources have been started on these levels.

Anyway, I just implemented knockback. Whenever you get hit, you get knocked around a bit, but you still have some control. I like it. I'm immediately starting to implement the Elements (like materia) TOMORROW! During work.

1-My computer died a bit after it's 2nd birthday (little over 3 years after birth). So I chipped in with my brother and we bought a new one. It's dual core! We thought we could put our old 1.5 gigs of RAM from the old computer into this one, but it doesn't fit for some reason. LAME. So it only has a gig of RAM for now. And it needs a new video card I think too. It's running WoW on minimum settings at 10-20 FPS :( So we really need to upgrade it, because that computer is basically a WoW-only computer.

2-Vista is not that bad. Quit your bandwagoning.

3-My old computer has some things on it's hard drive that I absolutely need to get off. Captain Mancubus 2 that we've been working on for some 3.5 years or so (although I might have some copies on this computer somewhere), my 33 page novel in progress, my DooM iwads, music, screenshots etc. Actually I was able to get my 5-6 gigs of music off my mp3 player. I think I have most of my screenshots on there too come to think of it. But still. Can I just plug the hard drive into this computer somewhere and that will be cool? Probably, right?

4-How long before an album is released is it usually leaked? I'm tired of waiting for we were dead before the ship even sank!

5-Sidescrollers are the best genre of video gaming. FPSes be damned!

6-I take back anything I've said about Auto-scrolling 2d video game rooms. They still suck horizontally, but auto vertically up scrolling rooms are actually pretty fun!

7-Has a melee FPS ever had an excellent melee system? Besides like, Hexen's? Which wasn't really an excellent system anyway?

8-One of my favorite episodes of Tom Goes to the Mayor is up on adult swim's fix, called, BASS FEST. Go watch, and I'll guarantee the 15 minutes of your life back if you are displeased. Actually, I am in no position to put myself in that position. Also on the fix is tonight's episode of The Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job. I nearly spoiled it for myself!

9-It's the same blog every week isn't it man.

10-3438 shadow bolt crit, no ruin last night. 15% priest shadow vulnerability, 5% misery, 10% shadow mastery, 5% Blessing of Auchindoun. With ruin it would have been about 4600. It was the greatest shadow labyrinth group of all time: Shadow Priest, Warlock (me!), Paladin, Bear-Tank...and Hunter. Honestly, shaman would have been better than Hunter, but the group was already ridiculously awesome.

1-They're my favorite band, Modest Mouse. This will be my first concert. I'm 17. Yeah yeah, I know. Lul, I'm excited!

2-Going with my friend Steph, hoping to go early so we can stand in the front, bringing my zen vision: M and going to try to record the whole thing.

3-Band of Horses (who?) and Love as Laughter (oh I've heard of them...I think?) are opening. I downloaded some LaL and it was pretty good. Cross between animal collective and built to spill, I'd say.

4-I told my brother I'm going and he's like o rly me too lul

---

5-I see wendy's has some new frosties, twsited frosty, which is basically a blizzard it looks like, and frosty float. Root beer is basically one of my 5 favorite things in the world. Anyway, has anyone tried these and would like to review them for me?

6-I got Resident Evil 4 for GC 2 weeks ago, finally. Oh my god. It actually lived up to the hyped, and more. That's gotta be one of the best games I've ever played. In fact:

10-Sonic & Knuckles
9-Katamari Damacy
8-Heretic
7-Castlevania III
6-Final Fantasy VII
5-Resident Evil 4
4-Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
3-World of Warcraft
2-Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
1-DooM

There, that's always fun. I also like Wiz 'n' Liz.

7-I saw people on another board drooling that Heretic and Hexen were put on Steam. I've given Hexen a lot of chances and it's just too hard. After like 5 tries over the years I made it out of the first hub and then got bored.

However, I gave Heretic another chance 2 weeks ago and started getting bored in level 2 as usual, but I had nothing else to do, so I went on to level 3, and then level 4. Holy eff, level 4 is one of the best levels I've ever played in a video game. I think it was 4, anyway. And the rest of the episode kicked butt too. Still working on the rest of the game, but I love it.

8- http://xbox360.joystiq.com/2007/08/15/xbox-live-arcade-statistics-galore-from-gamefest/

Play ROFLATTACK, now! http://www.flashplayer.com/games/rolfattack.html