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[Jun. 11th, 2008|11:29 am] |
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Kerry is such a wonderful person. Every day with her is an adventure. My life is very exciting right now and having her as my daily superfriend has been essential. I love her. It's almost our 11 month anniversary of getting married! |
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[Feb. 24th, 2008|12:05 pm] |
Cool weekend. On Friday Anthony and I went to the card shop to see if we could get the cards we needed for our T2 decks. We were unable to do so, so we signed up for a draft. The draft never materialized, so we talked philosophy and politics and came over to my house.
We all hung out with Kerry and ate candy and played two games of Carcassonne. We also listened to music and had a blast. Kerry went to bed and me and Anthony stayed up and talked more philosophy, politics, and now video games, too. Then we played some MWS into the wee hours.
The next morning Anthony had to go to work earlier than he thought, so he left and Kerry and I went to Sharis for breakfast. It was really good and we were now ready to go to the Science Factory, which is Eugene's version of OMSI.
It was really crowded because there was a LEGO building competition for kids. There were a TON of kids there, all wearing little plastic construction hats. It was hard to move around so Kerry and I just went from thing to thing trying it out then moving on. There was a lot of cool stuff there because it was about light & color and illusions and such!
We left after not too long, then we came home and napped! Then we went to dinner with Anthony at Roadhouse Grill. They raised their prices. Then we went back to our place and played a game of Munchkin. Then we went to bed!
Now it is today. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 14th, 2008|08:30 am] |
Today I discovered something awesome. If you go to Google Image Search and search for "captain obvious", then the Captain Obvious picture I drew in MSPaint in 2003 is the FIRST RESULT. It also is the result multiple times. Apparently it has become the most popular Captain Obvious image on the internet......... !??!?!
EDIT: Okay maybe not. The captain obvious results have been fluctuating like mad and now mine isn't even on the first 5 pages!! |
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[Jan. 17th, 2008|10:49 am] |
Recently Metallica has been talking about the new album that they're working on. They say that Kirk is gonna have solos, and that it will be an attempt to return to the 80s sound they grew popular on.
Ever since Metallica entered their "dark ages" I've been hoping, yearning for them to suddenly release an album that surprised us all by being awesome again. I remember that I had such hopes for St. Anger, and was crushed after hearing it.
So when I heard that they were going to turn things around for the next album, I was already somewhat jaded. I couldn't get excited because I had been let down so much. Besides, I had moved on. Metallica inspired my first "metal" search on filesharing programs, which led me to HammerFall's Legacy of Kings album, and it took off from there. Who needs Metallica anyways? I have plenty of awesome metal bands to listen to. Metallica is dead and I cannot forgive them for the last 15 or so years.
Then, the other day I was taking out the trash. As I threw it into the dumpster, I noticed that someone had thrown a burned CD away. I dove in and snagged it. It said, "Metallica - Master of Puppets."
That album was like the 5th CD I ever bought in my life, and it significantly changed the sort of music that impresses and entertains me. It was the beginning of my journey into metal. But during college I misplaced and lost it, and by that time I never bothered to download the album and incorporate it into my computer playlists. So it had been a long time since I listened to it.
And there it was, found in the dumpster. Someone threw it away. Thing is, though, there was nothing wrong with it. I put it into my car's CD player and it worked perfectly. And over the past couple of days, I've been listening through it -- Battery, Master of Puppets, Welcome Home, Orion, Damage Inc. The "masterpiece 5" on the album of 8.
And suddenly I realized -- I needed Metallica back. I needed new 80s-quality Metallica. Because they did so many things right. I thought about those songs, that I listened to for about a year straight, and how I had forgotten how immaculate they were with regard to metal music. For instance, HammerFall's latest album features their best instrumental song yet, and yet Metallica's instrumental Orion is ten times as good.
I had forgotten what they're capable of. And thanks to a burned CD in the dumpster, I am now awaiting their new album with interest. I'm not exactly excited, but I'm hopeful. I'm not exactly eager, but I'm ready to listen. |
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[Dec. 13th, 2007|01:46 pm] |
It's been 5 months and I never updated about the wedding and honeymoon. They were both completely rad, and went off awesomely. The wedding was very nice and Kerry was outrageously beautiful -- I was outraged, to be sure. Anthony gave an awesome speech and was a the best best man, and Soderberg and Kyle were two great wingmen. It was also sweltering there. We had a ton of fun and it was cool.
The honeymoon took place at DISNEYWORLD. Disneyworld was a fun week. Kerry and I visited almost everything and had a great time hitting the rides and walking around and then relaxing back at the hotel room. It wasn't as immersive in the Disney culture as Disneyland is, and things are a bit too spread out compared to Disneyland, so that was lame, but there were many experiences you couldn't get anywhere else, like lizards everywhere, the Epcot World Showcase, and tour groups of South American teenagers who would constantly sing and chant.
The food was amazing. Our food plan eliminated all worry and let us get anything we wanted for our "fancy" dinner each night. The German dinner was especially great. I had a cold, gray fish chunk salad that was ridiculously good.
Kerry was a great vacation partner and she made every day fun. We rode rides and watched shows (including a really neat Lion King show and a Beauty and the Beast musical with plot holes such as not mentioning why Gaston knows about Beast) and over the course of the trip I read Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide during our downtimes. Other shows we saw include the Indiana Jones show, a car racing stunt show, and Fantasmic.
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The first five months of marriage have been great, which is like it was before we got married. The difference is that now I have a neat ring that I get to fiddle with, and Kerry has double ring power which she uses to punch her siblings and me. Kerry is just the greatest person and I can't imagine being married to anyone else. She's the ultimate combo of everything great in the universe.
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This year has been the Year of Design for me. I've been in the design department at Buzz Monkey for almost the whole year, and it's been great. I discovered that I was a bit out of my league relative to the other programmers here -- during college and before, I would program only so far as it would get me to the point that I could make a game, then I would do art and design. Wanting to make my own games growing up has given me a jack of all trades, master of none kind of issue, but with regard to design I think I'm very well equipped, and that's borne itself out at the workplace. Being in design has been VERY successful for me, and I'm excited about the directions it'll take me.
(Into WoW. I have a Tauren Shaman at lvl 38 on Icecrown and I've been doing Arathi Basin multiplayer combat with Kerry, who is an Orc Hunter also at lvl 38. Horde!) |
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[Jul. 28th, 2007|10:16 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gemrogue | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Pink Floyd - Dogs | ] |
I got married to Kerry! The wedding went wonderfully. I will make a real update about it soon.
Kerry and I went to Walt Disney World for a week! It was awesome fun. I will make a real update about it soon.
I've spent the last few days chilling with Kerry in Eugene without working. It's been great. I successfully converted Gem Rogue from C# + DirectX to Java + GTGE, which means the system requirements are now:
"Have a computer with Java and be able to go on the internet."
Instead of:
"Have a computer with Windows and the .NET framework installed."
The deployment is now infinitely easier. All someone has to do is visit the web site, instead of having to visit a web site, download the file, install it, then run it from their computer. I think that's just fantastic, and I'm loving the possibilities of working with embedded Java.
Here's a DEMO of the new embedded Gem Rogue. The level is randomly generated and there is no goal. The map is 256x256 tiles, and my fake goal while playing around with it has been to go from the lower left corner to the upper right corner.
If you get stuck, refresh.
Arrow keys to move, hold Z to run, press X to jump.
Gem Rogue web site |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 19th, 2007|02:25 pm] |
[14:24] kerryineugene: hi snugz
[14:24] kerryineugene: :D
[14:24] kerryineugene: how are you?
[14:24] ExtremeStan: : )
[14:24] ExtremeStan: GU JERRT! |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 21st, 2007|10:51 am] |
Don Phau, a member of Lyndon LaRouche's political action committee, addressing the Virginia Tech Review Panel:
"[FPS games] were developed after the Vietnam War… But the video game industry in the year 2000… when we had the Y2K phenomenon, the video game industry decided to make a lot of money. They developed the first-person shooter games and Counter-strike was developed by Microsoft." |
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[Apr. 27th, 2007|11:37 am] |
Over the last week, work has been really slow, and so this morning I whipped out a C# tool for the Java game, Wanderer's Way. Based on the export stuff from CashPod, it exports a miniature database of items, weapons, NPCs, monsters, and script flags for use in Wanderer's Way. It spits all the information to a big text file which will be able to be read in by the Java game.
My desire is to abstract out all of this information so that there's very little hardcoding. In other words, I wanted to make it super-easy to add new items, people, and dialog using a tool instead of having to code it.
The tool is called WayEdit.
My next step is to use the a carved-out version of WayEdit (which is, in turn, a carved out version of GemRogue) to create WayMap so that I can start creating game maps. The reason I made WayEdit first is because WayMap will allow placement of items and NPCs. So I had to have some items and NPCs available!
One funny thing I realized is that treasure chests are better treated as NPCs rather than as items. Likewise, signposts are better treated as NPCs rather than as landscape tiles, but I already knew that one. |
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[Apr. 23rd, 2007|11:03 am] |
This weekend was awesome. On Friday we invited Sarah over and watched Spirited Away while just hanging out chatting and using our laptops/DSs. On Saturday we went to a concert for Kerry's friend Evan's composition thesis. It was mindblowingly good, and featured a lot of craziness like
A trio of oboe, English horn, and marimba (the latter two players were in army fatigues)
A fiddle and beatbox
An accordion and bucket
A slideshow of Edward Gorey's "A Doubtful Guest" put to music
Bursts of spoken/sung poetry throughout
but it wasn't totally crazy. It also felt very cohesive and beautiful to listen to. There was a string quartet at the end that was especially moving.
On Sunday we decided to just drive, so we explored far south Eugene. We drove over some wooded hills and around some crazy slopes, and ended up driving around a bunch of rural hills with very high-class homes. We finally found ourselves in the town of Creswell, which is on I-5 about 11 miles south of Eugene.
During the off-time this weekend, Kerry played Paper Mario 2 while I worked on my java game project next to her using her laptop. It was an extremely pleasant and relaxing weekend, but with little curveballs to keep things exciting. |
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[Apr. 19th, 2007|02:48 pm] |
If I had an abundance of money, I can't see myself NOT getting an X-Box 360.
link: XBLA Carcasonne
But I committed myself to a Wii. Which is fine, I mean, it's much less expensive, and missing out on Nintendo's exclusives would be anathema. Still, though...
It doesn't help much that Super Paper Mario is not what I would have liked it to be. It's pretty fun, sure. But it's too easy to be a true Mario platformer, and it's too shallow to be a true Paper Mario.
And the cut-scenes... man alive, the cut-scenes are excruciating. I don't think anyone can play through a couple chapters without thinking, "Just stop. I want to play the game. Stop. Stop. Don't talk to me. I don't care. Stop."
When I have little kids one day, this will be a fine game for them; it's easy and shallow. And the overflow of text might encourage them to read or something. |
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[Apr. 18th, 2007|10:34 am] |
This Java game engine I'm learning about is really cool. It gives you everything you need to program a 2D game without having to dive deep. All the concepts he fleshes out are ones where, in C#, I had to roll my own. But they're the same concepts. I'm very excited.
Yesterday I finally got the sample game to run as an embedded applet in a browser window. That means that nearly all the barriers are now broken. I now have enough knowledge to create any game I want and embed it in a browser window for everyone to play.
What I don't know, though, is how to read data from files, like character dialogue, tilemaps, etc. Hardcoding is for suckers, so I gotta learn that.
I also gotta learn how to do saving. Apparently there's a cookie-like way to save out player data to local files, which would be key for the RPG (instead of having to use statecodes).
Oh yeah the game is going to be called Wanderer's Way. The games from which I'm drawing major inspiration for the design are, in rank order:
1. Paper Mario
2. Animal Crossing
3. Zelda
4. Major MUD
5. Harvest Moon
One of the cool things about designing an online game that is not multiplayer is that I don't have to worry if I get hacked. If someone cracks into it and cheats or whatever, who cares? It's like a Game Genie. That's fine. |
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[Apr. 16th, 2007|11:00 am] |
Alright, finally finished the new Manowar. It's okay. The concept parts of the concept album are terrible. The "normal" songs are pretty good musically, but the lyrics are all about the same thing and very, very boring.
By contrast, Hammerfall's "Threshold" is their best since Legacy of Kings. Threshold has a great mix of different tempos, as well as the perfect mix of themes -- power metal "battles & steel," judas priest style 80s band anthems, and more vague commentaries on more amorphous themes. "Carved in Stone," a pretty killer song with a chorus that musically pays homage to "Dreamland," may be the first Hammerfall song that actually says something that matters.
Recommended! |
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[Apr. 13th, 2007|09:30 am] |
So I got ahold of the new HammerFall album "Threshold" and the new ManOwaR album "Gods of War." So far, the HammerFall album is EXCELLENT. I'm lovin' it. It's simultaneously ridiculous and amazing. Haven't started the ManOwaR yet. Maybe I'll force Kerry to listen to it while we drive to Portland today?
lol |
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[Apr. 10th, 2007|09:58 pm] |
Today I hung out with Kerry a ton while she played Paper Mario 2. I had plenty of things to occupy my time, but one thing I kept thinking was, "Man, I wish there was a browser-based old-school RPG that I could play, and that I could keep coming back to randomly when bored."
Then I realized, "Whoa, is that something I could build?" And thus I decided to start my billionth game project, Dungeon Game Online. But how would I make a game people could play in their browsers?
I could do Flash, but... I hate working with Flash. I could do an ActiveX control, but ActiveX controls are so redundant and silly with regard to online games (essentially, the person downloads the game in full to their hard drive, but can only play it when they visit your web site and the web site runs the game in the browser). The final possibility was Java. But I didn't want to have to deal with learning all the low level crap of game development, like input and drawing. I'm soo sick of burning time on that stuff. And that's especially sticky when Java is not the best performer.
Then, I found a FREE game engine & library that makes Java games that you can embed. And it's FREE. You can even sell the games you make, and all they ask is that you credit them for the engine. Score!
For saving, I'm thinking of using the MOVECODE system I developed with the last game of GridLord I hosted. Basically, whenever you want to save, it spits out a paragraph-long encrypted code that represents your gamestate. The player would then paste that code in a notepad document and save it there. If they wanted to continue their game, they would simply paste the code from last time into the game. This would make it so that the server would not have to deal with any user accounts or anything. Everybody would be responsible for their own game.
The other awesome thing? I could perpetually add to the game! How cool would that be. |
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