Doug’s Blog

Woosh.

Wow, I’m bad at updating things. All my projects for one, as well as my blog and now my Twitter. And I was supposed to update my Twitter more than my blog… Well, I suppose I have, but still. Perhaps it’s because I’ve just been doing the same thing since the last Tweet that I have nothing new to talk about? Maybe, *sniff* maybe. I have yet to see one who can outsmart me.

In other news, lots of TF2 playing lately. I’ve been becoming a lot better than usual, especially as spy and soldier. Pretty cool, I think. Finally got around to putting the EXGN TF2 server back up too, this time better than ever. I’ve finally found the perfect balance of SourceMod plugins! Bwahahahahahahahaha!!! Anyway, check it out on exgn.ca, always good to see people playing; new and old faces alike.

Progress has been slowing down with Espionage Inc, and I worked on ToH for a couple days but got bored. Everything seems to happen in short spurts, so don’t worry; I’ll get everything finished eventually. Note that the key word here is “eventually”. I work on semi-Valve time, just a tad bit faster. But how much faster? It’s impossible to tell. As for EXRP, I’ve been working on it here and there in my spare-spare-spare time, but at least it’s progress.

Today I recieved a USPS package from the Neatherlands. The postal worker just practically dropped it on my doorstep and ran away, not even ringing the doorbell or anything. That’s why UPS is better, they have these RULES all workers have to obligue by, detailing everything from how to carry the package, place it on the doorstep, mandatorily ring the doorbell, walk away, and even scratch your ass properly. Seriously, these guys are like the badass militants of shipping–you don’t wanna mess with them. Although to be fair, I don’t think they have UPS in the Neatherlands, so moving on… I got a couple books about character creation and (mostly) animation in Blender. Should help a lot, I plan to make my first short in the summer hopefully. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyways, stop by the TF2 server if you have the time. I need to Tweet more.

Two projects at once

If you haven’t read my latest EXGN news post, do so now. I’m planning another rehaul of the script, but this time building off Lite since that’s treated us well over the past few months–or however long it’s been. I basically need some crazy ideas that I would’ve otherwise classified as “over-complicated” or “too much trouble to code” so we can set ourselves apart from other RP servers and scripts. As DarkRP is to DM, EXRP needs to have it’s own spotlight for something. So, get suggesting.

Anyway, this brings up one thing: I’ll have two big, high-profile (for me at least) projects going at once; EXRP and Espionage Inc. Now, you may think that I’m abandoning one and going for the other–definitely not. Right now I’m waiting for some more content (models and maps) to work with before I start the majority of the coding. After all, most of the coding involved in a SourceMod is just adding weapons and map-specific things like triggers, cinematics, etc… I’d just like to clear this up. When I was posting the news thread, it occurred to me that people may think I’m giving up on Espionage Inc. or putting it off for a while. I’m not, we’re still going to be in constant, active development, and I don’t want it to wait just because I’m doing my own thing. Just thought I’d get that out there–especially important to post this, if not just for the other devs to see. I’m still around, keep working!

Proportionately long post title

...22 and a half foot poooooole!!!1

Lots of stuff has been going on lately. Really, lots–it’s crazy. I haven’t even had time to update my blog all this time, and I know I kept saying I’d update more frequently. I’ll keep saying it again! Ha! Anyway, I have a lot to cover in this post, so bear with me if this turns out to be really long. Even if it does, I assure you it’s well worth the read. Now then, hopefully I can try and tackle this in chronological order without completely screwing up…

First up we have EXGN. Basically, we used to be EXRP (a strictly GMod RP community and server), and now we’ve officially expanded to EXGN (a multi-game community and server network). We used to have a CSS and TF2 server before, but they were always kinda in the background and nobody really paid any attentionn to them. Now it’s official and we have everything flawlessly set up internally to run all the servers at once, so we’re good to go. Since my last post, I got a new server; completely dedicated this time–that server is all mine! Really good specs too, quad core, assload of ram, buncha space, connected to 3 backbones, etc… I’m set for quite some time with that server I think. Then I had to configure all of it, which took a while since the hosting company I’m with didn’t provision the IPs properly, after that I set up the sites again, set up the new EXGN site, and then all the games. Everything’s running suspiciously smoothly now, so I’d say I’m quite proud of myself.

Ubuntu is good for laptop

In order to set up the Garry’s Mod server without using a graphical X environment, using Xvfb, I had to use the -Y argument while connecting to SSH. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that this only worked when connecting to a Linux server from a Linux client. I had dualbooted Ubuntu before on my desktop, but I really have no use for it. However, I’ve gotten a laptop since then, and Vista really doesn’t run too well on it–bam, there’s a good reason to put Ubuntu on it; let’s do it! It took a while to get the partitions planned out so that I could have a primary NTFS partition for Vista, a primary FAT16 for it’s recovery and boot crap, a primary Ext3 for Ubuntu, a logical Ext3 swap, and a logical NTFS “data” partition to share between the two OS’s. Problem was for some reason Vista only wanted two primary partitions as Ubuntu would allow four, but then if I had four Vista wouldn’t allow me to have any logical partitions–it made no sense at all. After about an hour of deep thought and frustration, I finally got it figured out and installed Ubuntu with my carefully devised new partition table. Once Ubuntu was installed, however, the wireless card didn’t work–even after following all of the guides and forum posts online. After a couple days of trying to figure it out, I accidentally installed a module called linux-backports-modules-intrepid that automatically gets the wireless cards working. So, this is to any of you that have AR242x wireless cards out there: Just install that module, don’t do anything with modprobes or blacklists, and everything’ll work out just fine on your first try.

Next up: School. Ah, lovely, lovely school. I’ve been having some problems with my Algebra 2 teacher, such as when she gives us homework on stuff she hasn’t really explained, and that really set me behind–so much so that my final grade was failing and that I had to pull off an 88 on my semester exam toady. I really hope I did, I don’t know how I’d live with myself if I didn’t. The way it works here if you fail a class is you have to take it again the next semester. Then you take what would be the second semester not the first semester of the next year, but the second semester. Since I’m a junior right now, that means I would have only one chance to pass that second semester–if not, I wouldn’t be able to graduate. So yeah, this is really eating away at me and haunting me when I try to go to sleep at night, so I really hope the above situation doesn’t become a reality. I think I did well on the exam; at least an 88 I’m sure. I didn’t struggle with anything, everything seemed completely logical, and I’m positive I didn’t make any stupid mistakes like bubbling in the wrong answer or using the wrong method to answer a question. …Enough talk of this, I really want to get it out of my head so I can enjoy my Christmas and vacation.

FPS-town awaits me

Speaking of Christmas, my parents are surprising me with some new computer hardware I picked out and watched my dad order today. I’m really happy about that, as the hardware is really good. A general rundown: E8400 Core 2 Duo, 8800GT, 2GB DDR2 RAM (my old RAM was DDR, and wouldn’t be compatible with my new mobo), GIGABYTE UD3R motherboard, and an Antec 900 case. Nothing bleeding edge, but still really great and definitely a big upgrade from what I have now. I’m really excited for this, and can’t wait to play games on my new rig and see how amazing my FPS is. I’m taking stuff like the power supply and hard drives from my onw right now of course, and my old parts may go to my mum or dad. Depends if it’s better than my dad’s right now, which I think it is–he’s using a PCI 4x graphics card. Yeah, I didn’t even know they made those anymore either. Well, that settles it I guess.

I went to chop down my own tree last weekend (I think, my concept of time greater than two days is nil) and that was really fun. My parents and I drove up to the mountains of Cloudcroft, NM. There was about two feet of snow in some areas, so that made everything better. I brought my camera to do a kind of mockumentary (of Bear Grylls and Cloverfield if you’re interested), which is downloading right now and so far I think the footage is turning out quite nicely. The majority of it near the end is the epic struggle of dragging a tree up an 8-story hill. I’m glad there was snow, as it would’ve been impossible to drag the tree up to the top with dirt. Even with the snow, it was really tiring. There was really cold winds, and the temperature got somebit below freezing at one point, minus wind chill. As I said, it’s converting and stuff right now so I’ll have to edit it tomorrow. I’ll try to post it real soon, mmkay? It should be quite entertaining. I’ll try for tomorrow.

Last topic to cover, unless I think of something else, is the ol’ dreaded search for the perfect MMORPG. It keeps going. And going. And going… Ashen Empires released a massive update that fixes nearly every problem in the game, as well as adding and tweaking with a bunch of new things like nicer graphics, GUI redesigns, etc… They also released a new expansion pack titled Tides of Fate, which basically adds boats to the game. Pretty cool I think, as it opens up a whole new element to the game which is great, but the boats seem to be rediculously overpriced–the starter boat is around one million gold–I only have 1.5 million, and Son has around 4 or 5 I think, but he’s level 101 (I think) and I’m 34. People say the top-tier galleons cost around 15mil, which is ridiculous.

Above: Lucia Noxnoctis

I tried Guild Wars today from a trial code Lawrence got when he purchased the game. I set my expectations rather low; just expecting it to be another failed WoW clone. However, it’s actually really good. It’s themed just like your generic medieval crap, but it adds some nice quirks and twists that make it unique. Really, it seems like a blend of SRO, SWG, and WoW, which is really nice. One could say Ashen Empires in some cases, but that’s a whole different genre I think. Anyway, F2P is a definite pro, and the combat is quite nice. Questing is also good, as it isn’t just grinding like most RPGs are–like WoW. Yes, I’m aiming that at you, WoW fanboys. Go play a game that’s the least bit fun, mmkay? The biggest con I’ve found so far is that all the male characters are rediculously ripped to the point that they just look really, really unsightly. I’m going to be looking at my character for the whole time I’m playing this game, and more specifically: their ass. I really don’t want to be staring at a ripped guy’s ass all day, so I made a female character. Actually, that’s not much of a con at all. Hmm… Well, the FPS is good given the quality of the graphics, so surely something’s wrong there. Yeah, let’s go with that for cons.

Steam Mods

You may or may not know that Steam has released 5 SourceMods through their servers–Synergy, Insurgency, Age of Chivalry, DIPRIP, and Zombie Panic. I’ve tried the first few (I don’t think any zombie game can live up to L4D, so there’s no worth trying it) and they’re pretty good, at least as far as mods go. First, I think it’s an amazing thing to do; release mods for free on your otherwise commercial servers. Kudos to Valve for being such an awesome company. I can’t wait for L4D.

Anyway, first up: Synergy. Basically, it’s a HL2 co-op mod that works with HL2, EP1, EP2, Sin: Emergence, and some other game that I’ve never heard of. I’ve only been playing HL2 so far, as not everyone I was playing with had EP1 or EP2 installed, but I must say it’s pretty well done. It’s a lot more stable than other co-op mods that I’ve tried, and the simple game mechanics it uses to keep toe co-op in line are quite nicely done. For instance, when a player dies they spawn near the last player alive. Then when there are vehicles, there’s always a “ghost” of the vehicle where it spawns that anyone can press E on to make it into an actual vehicle to drive away. Overall, Synergy is quite good. There’s nothing too ‘fresh’ about it as it’s just HL2 maps, but it’s nice to play HL2 again with some friends. It does crash on certain maps for me, at least on a listen server.

Next up is Insurgency. I’ve played it before, I think when it first came out. It was nice, but was horribly unbalanced, laggy, and spawning was massively fucked. The spawn points had no shelter, and there were only two spawn entities so everyone got jammed inside each other. I’m happy to say that everything’s been fixed, and I can finally see how awesome a game it is. I guess you can call it a mix between BF2 and CoD4, but a lot more tactical. You can’t just run and gun, you have to do a lot of careful planning to get from point A to B and keep a constant watch on all your surroundings. It’s very realistic, so you have to keep an eye out for friendly fire, especially so since just a couple bullets will kill you. I really liked Insurgency, I’ll definitely be playing more of this. My only problem is how long the spawn time is, it’s amazing.

Age of Chivalry is decent, but gets old fast. The concept is great–somewhat similar to Dark Messiah in terms of game mechanics. It’s a medevail-based sword fighting and archery game. You can build objects and buildings, use catapaults, and combat of course. It’s fun, but the sword fighting is so incredibly slow paced that it gets really boring after a while; archery is a lot more fun, but that gets old too. Honestly though, you swing your sword so incredibly slowly that the animation doesn’t even look the least bit natural. Overall it’s quite decent but the gameplay is so slowly paced that you’ll be bored of it in just a couple plays. It’s pretty interesting, though.

DIPRIP [Warm Up] is… strange. It’s a total conversion mod to where everyone is in a bunch of tank-like vehicles driving around and shooting other players in tanks. It’s really strange though, you have these massive tanks rolling around and the guns are just these puny little pea shooters that sound like a cat meowing. Yeah, they really make you feel threatened when you’re up against them. The aiming for all but one of the weapons is god awful, so everyone’s just whoring the little pea shooters, making it take forever to kill just one guy. It sounds like a good concept, but I don’t really like how it’s executed. It’s impossible to tell where you’re supposed to go, so you’re just rolling around trying to find enemies to poke with your spit wads.

Anyway, that’s about it. I recommend you try all the SourceMods, and hell; I may even try Zombie Panic even though I know L4D will put it in between a rock and a very hard place–just like how TF2 pumbled that TFC SourceMod remake. See, I don’t even remember what it was called! In other news, LittleBigPlanet makes me want to buy a PS3. I wish I had the money to blow $600 to play just one game, I really do. Maybe if Sony had a better lineup with some original, fun-looking games that aren’t multiplatformed with the 360, that might help. As for the 360, I want TFU but I’m saving up for other things (namely, L4D). Nintendo’s been pissing me off with all it’s shovelware and pedometers. The Conduit looks good though, and apparently it makes use of Motion Plus–hopefully that little addon doohickey will save the Wii from the doomed fate of monthly My Little Pony episodic games. Oh wait, we already have that. That PS3 is looking very nice right now…

Aaaaaand for your blogly EXRP banter: I’m trying to fix displacements, I really am. I was told the problem was some missing files that define how friction on different surfaces work, but I’ve been unable to find them. I was told they were in the scripts folder of “some shared GCF for some game”, but after extracting every file from the scripts folders of every game, nothing works! I’m having an even bigger problem finding all the mattypes for all the broken surfaces so I can get my platform fix working on different maps, but then each map conflicts with eachother! I’m thinking of emulating Steam then logging into my account and running a listen server, as it seems this problem only occurs on dedicated servers. We’ll see, we’ll see…

Server switch

I can’t believe I haven’t made a blog post in so long, it amazes me. So much has been going on that would be blog worthy, yet I haven’t made a post–is it laziness or forgetfulness? In no particular order:

• Got Spore, played that for a long long long time and it pwns
• Tried the TFU demo, liked it but hated the targeting system
• Played GTA IV on XBL for a while with PP, XBL trial expired and I haven’t been arsed to renew it
• Got a new server, it’s amazingly fast, moved everything there
• Played the Battlefield: Heroes beta, enjoyed it
• Drooled over all the awesome new games coming out soon
• Finished EXRP Lite, put EXRP back up
• Redesigned sites (somewhat, still in progress)
• Couldn’t be arsed to reupload all my huge videos via FTP, rehosted them all on Vimeo
• Dropped the 18th century MMO idea for now, going with the sci-fi FPS
• Played a lot of games, enjoyed all of them except the crappy ones
• M3DS broke, using tape to fix it until I can get a new R4.

Changes and updates galore

I haven’t made a blog post in a while–I know! Stop bugging me about it, I know!! I should be like FPS_Doug: “YOU WANNA BLOG POST? YOU LIKE MY BLOG POST? YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH WWWWWWSSSSAAAAAADDDDDDDD”. Anyway, there’s a lot to cover, and I digress. First things first: School’s back. Huge bummer. Junior year seems a lot easier than Sophomore and Freshmen which is nice, but it’s still school so meh. Vacation was great though, but I’ll cover that later with pictures, videos, and other visual media to entice your puny insignificant brains. I kid.

I’m back on track with EXRP, although it’s on hold for about a week until I get a few last-minute things off my plate. I got that awesome quad core server that I wanted, except there are a few problems. I expected there to be a few problems when I first got it, but this is just rediculous. Apache, Dovecot, and PHP aren’t installed properly (probably because it’s 64bit), and the host insists that I can fix it from my control panel. Well, I probably can fix it from SSH, but that ain’t no control panel. I’m new to the whole dedicated server scene anyway, so it’s beyond my skill. They’re supposed to install it anyway, not me. I may just cancel my control panel subscription with them and get the actual control panel developers to install it for me–at least they’ll do it right without problem. As far as hosting games on it goes, I’ve figured out how to use WINE without a proper X11 server which is great, and CSS/TF2/L4D run natively on Linux so we’re fine with that.

I’ve been starting a couple projects recently, mainly an 18th century online RPG and a sci-fi FPS. I’ve had the latter in the back of my mind for a while, but I’ve finally got the right approach so it’s finally something really original. The 18th century ORPG does have pirates in it, but I’d like to refer to it as an 18th century game instead of pirates–that way people try out different things like merchant, navy, sailor, etc… Instead of just saying “OHMAHGOD PIRATES I WANNA BE ONE PLZPLZPLZ” and completely ignoring any other activities in the game. Yes PotBC, I’m referring to you. Anyway, these things will keep me busy for a while, as well as some friends who’re working on it with me. I’ll talk about this more later.

Last but not least (at least for this blog post… damnit, I said least when I said it wasn’t least) I’m changing around my sites a bit. First off, Dvondrake Studios will become a more company-oriented site as opposed to the personal “hay look at mah stuffz” it is today. I’ll move my blog onto another domain, I’m not sure what yet–probably a .ca, they’re hawt. Since I’ve got that new server, I’ll be creating a gaming network as opposed to one server under one name, one under another, etc… EXRP will be ‘merged’ with this network, so the forums will be moved there. I don’t know whether to keep SMF, go with something more main-stream like vBulletin (only if I can afford it), or make my own forum software. I’ve been meaning to for a while, but I feel like I’m just now ready. Before I wasn’t near experienced enough. So EXRP’s forums will be moving to a new domain, yeah. I have a lot of redesigning to do. New blog, new gaming network site/forums, new design for Dvondrake Studios–gah. I also have a site to do for my dad that helps you keep track of laptops if someone steals it. I’ll be busy for a while, but there will still be time for GTA and TF2–no doubt. I’ll talk about my vacation and Battlefield: Heroes in my next blog posts.

EXRP Classic

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “Didn’t you just finish EXRP-Script?” The answer to that is, well, ‘yes’. However while EXRP-Script was in development, a few things went wrong. It all started out as an upgrade from LightRP. I got the idea to put in a character selection screen, and put that in. That upset the whole balance of the potential RP, so I made it save jobs. But if jobs save, what will I do with cop and stuff? Create a company system. But then we need a way to do blah blah, so I added blah. It just keeps on going, and ultimately EXRP-Script is now nothing like what it was supposed to be in the first place. It has way too high a learning curve, and is a bit bloated; has a lot of features that aren’t really needed. I posted a poll on the EXRP forums the other day asking if people think the same, and the response I got was overwhelmingly affirmative. Looks like I’ll be going ahead with this, then.

As I said before, EXRP-Script was supposed to be a recode of LightRP with all the EXLRP modifications, with money saving and inventory tacked on. That’s it. And that’s all it will be. I won’t go into detail about what won’t be making it from EXRP-Script to EXRP Classic, but you can read about that in this forum thread. For the basics, we have doors, money, admin system, chat commands, class-based scripted job system, day/night and time. As for the specifics, we have the F1 menu, the F2 “action key”, F3 to holster/unholster, and F4 to drop your weapon. In the F1 menu we have four tabs: Character, Inventory, Jobs, and Store. Under the character tab you can change your character name, model and job description. Inventory is the same as before, except it will be a bit cleaner in terms of the front-end, functionality, and back-end code. Jobs will be a list of scripted jobs you can have such as Mayor, Chef, Police, and Thug. Clicking on these will start a server-wide vote to see if people don’t mind you being in that scripted job. Scripted jobs are lost every map change or disconnect. The store is exactly like the buy menu except with some cleaner VGUI. Since we’re using classes for scripted jobs now, you will no longer be able to buy class-specific things.

Pretty much all the SWEPs will be coming back. Radios, flashlights, papers (although optimized), food, etc… I’m debating whether to bring back the realism guns, as some of them fire too fast and are too strong. If anyone wants to help me fix this, I’ll be more than happy to fork over the code for these so you can fix them for me. Otherwise, I may just go back to all the Night-Eagle SWEPs. I don’t know yet. Also, yes, Chefs will have an extreme discount on food–they will also be able to combine different food SENTs to create bigger and better ones. I’m debating if only chefs should be able to buy food altogether, but we’ll see. Last character name, job description, and model will save in a text file on the server using the player’s SteamID as a reference. This is much more efficient than a MySQL, as the power and capacity is not needed for such a small scale operation–Plus this is a lot easier to code. Money will save to the player’s SteamID as well.

The F2 menu will now be the “action key”. When looking at various types of objects, this key will do various things. While pointing at a door, it will own/unown the door. While pointing at any kind of physics object, it’ll carry is. If you’re carrying something, it’ll drop what you’re carrying. When pointing at the world (or nothing), it will open up the radial menu for character animations. As to the rest of the door actions, these will be commands. Keys will replace the unarmed SWEP, and will function just like before. I think this new “action key” method will make things a lot easier to comprehend and remember.

That’s just about it. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please take a look at the thread I linked to a few paragraphs above, as well as the news thread. This will be a lot easier than EXRP-Script for several reasons: I already have 80% of the code needed, I know exactly what I’m doing this time around (I won’t get side-tracked again), and it’s just a lot simpler than EXRP-Script. I expect this to take a couple weeks.

As for regular blog-type stuff, I got a new monitor the other day. It’s a 22″ flat-screen LCD with a 10000:1 contrast ratio and 2ms response time. I love it. It doesn’t tilt though which kinda sucks because the top 20 pixels or so are slightly darker than the rest of the monitor, but that’s fine. I’ve looked around, and not that many do–especially with these specs. If they do tilt, they don’t tilt enough. Also, I’ve reformatted and reinstalled XP. Everything is so much faster, it’s amazing. I can play CSS and CoD4 on max settings at 1680×1050 (my monitor’s native resolution), it’s great. There’s just so much detail that I haven’t noticed in these games, especially in their textures. I don’t know whether you can say I’m still on mental vacation or not as I’m coding again, but I’m still playing a lot more games than usual–and pwning. It feels good to pwn at games you haven’t played for two years. A physical vacation should be coming soon, probably to Disneyland. I wouldn’t mind going to Toronto to see my grandpa (he was diagnosed with cancer again after not having it for a few years) and friends and stuff. The Pure Pwnage premier is on the 9th, so it’d be pretty cool to see that with PP and possibly other people too. I’m also planning on building a computer sometime soon, probably sometime after Christmas with present money. It’s a wild shot, but I think I’m ready. The only ‘hard’ thing will be the thermal paste, as it gets all goopy and you have to put on the exactly right amount. Then I’ll go all OCD and try to spread it evenly on the thing.

I don’t really have any more to say, unfortunate you. Be sure to let me know what you think about EXRP Classic and give me as much feedback and suggestions as possible. I really appreciate it.

Relaxing

You may have noticed that I haven’t been doing much lately–whether it be with EXRP or blog posts. Well, there’s a reason for that. And a good one, too! Well, not so much a good one, but if you consider the amount of effort I’ve been putting into things recently, you’d understand. I’m just relaxing. I’ve released MistCMS, I’ve made a new logging system called FireLog, and I’ve been administrating EXRP for the past year nonstop–whether that be coding or moderating. It’s about time for a break–and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been spending a lot of time playing CoD4, CSS, 1.6, and WolfET lately, and I must say, it’s good to be able to just get up in the morning and play something for once. Usually I have to deal with 20 things from EXRP and 10 things from work, but not lately. It’s a good feeling, although I think some people are starting to get the feeling I’m avoiding them. Well you know what? Forget them! I’ve been working my ass off 24/7 for them and get nothing in return, they should be the least bit grateful instead of giving me all the grief they always do.

I wanted to see The Dark Knight the other day, but everything was sold out except the latest showing, which I apparently would’ve had to wait 2 hours for to ensure I got a seat. Uh, no thanks. I’ll see it sometime during the week, then. I also went to a really nice sushi place this weekend. I love sushi, but I haven’t been able to find a decent place to eat some here until now. The only other place has the sushi coming in and out of the kitchen on a conveyer belt, which is cool, but you don’t know if anyone’s sneezed on it. Or how long it’s been rotating for. The waiter looked like Batman, which was cool. I didn’t tell him that of course, that would’ve been awkweird. “Do you like Batman? I like Batman.”

A friend of mine got Pirates of the Burning Sea a couple days ago, and he says it’s really good. The patch takes a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong(cat) time to download, but it’s apparently worth it. I played the beta months ago and it was quite fun, but got old after a while. They’ve improved it a lot, except for the sword fighting. People say it’s a bit lame, but in that case I think the developer may change it sooner or later. They seem like the kind that care what their players want, unlike LucasArts and SWG’s combat upgrade. Boy, did everyone get screwed with that or what? Everyone agrees that PotBS suffers from one major thing besides lame sword fighting: It isn’t newbie friendly. People say that it doesn’t explain things very well when you’re new to the game, so you’ll get bored with it easily if you don’t have someone there to tell you what things are and what they do. However, if you can stick through the first couple days of newbness, people say it’s a great game. I think it’s worth a try, as I liked the beta, so I’m thinking I’ll get it sometime this week. Hopefully SOE doesn’t fuck it up like it does everything else.

Speaking of publishing giants that fuck things up, I bought Mass Effect this weekend for the PC. Although I’d just use a crack once this comes up for me, someone at EA thought it was an amazing idea to only let their customers install the game 3 times–then you can’t install or play the game again. A crack can get around this, as I’ve said before, but who’s bright idea was that? How daft do you have to be to think of a scheme as mentally handicapped as that? Oh well, it’s still a good game. I don’t really need to tell you about the game it’s self–everyone’s played it, I’m sure of that. Long cutscenes are long. (Cat? Perhaps not.)

Anyway, that’s all that’s up with me. I’m still in the process of redesigning Dvondrake.com, so don’t think anything is final yet. I like the general theme, I’m just thinking about changing the banner once Roggy sends me the logo he’s making me. Roggy pwns, especially because he hasn’t gone apeshit about us calling him ROJJAYYYYYYYYYY yet. I’m unsure about what to put on the front page, though. Something about what’s new or coming soon would be good, but I’m unsure about how to word it. Oh well, I’ll think of something sooner or later. Right now, I have PotC music to listen to.

WAAAAAAALL-E

I saw WALL-E today, and it was great. And by great, I really, really mean GREAT–and I don’t say this about too many movies. Sure, Iron Man was great, but it didn’t really play with your mind or touch you emotionally and philosphically, giving you a fresh new view on things. Basically, it’s about a robot (WALL-E) who compacts trash on Earth for a living. If I told you anything else, it’d be a spoiler. The concept of the movie is small, yet with the emotion Pixar (somehow) put in all their characters, it just makes the movie so much bigger. I applaud Pixar with that in mind. So, you’re making a movie with robots that can’t talk. Okay. Now how do you show what they’re thinking? How do you show emotion? By having rather extensive and highly movable limbs and eyes that can rotate multiple ways, Pixar was able to put in a lot of emotion into their characters. Robots with effective emotion–who would’ve known?

With that said, the robots don’t exactly behave like robots. They have a certain personification to them that gives them all a distinct personality and attitude. For example, WALL-E is very curious. His lady friend EVE is very directive, as she tells us multiple times. A cleaning robot named Mo is very… Well, cute. The list goes on and on for each character, of course. When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I thought there would be no humans or talking at all, and that it’d be rather kiddie because of that. I mean, if you can’t talk or anything, why not just do a lot of kiddie humor like bash into walls and stuff? Pixar did a good job of avoiding this. There are humans who talk and play a big part in the movie, and the robots do talk in their own way. Imagine how those voice synthesizers on guitars talk, make it 8-bit, and there you go. To give you a bit of an idea, WALL-E has a lot of trouble saying EVE’s name.

Overall, this was a really good movie. The plot was nice and original enough to be very enjoyable. The humor was really good–maybe a bit better than usual, considering these robots show a lot of emotion. (More than other Pixar characters, as the robots’ emotion was a big aspect of this film.) The character design was just amazing, as is the soundtrack. And as always, breaking their previous record, Pixar’s graphics and rendering are better than ever. Would I recommend you see this movie? Of course! 10/10! At times, it seems a tad bit uninspired with not too much humor, but the majority (being 98%) is absolutely amazing. WALL-E is a great contender for a best animated feature film Oscar–as if there was any competition. Elaborating on the soundtrack a bit more, Thomas Newman is a genius. I’m listening to it right now and especially with this new sound card, my ears are in complete bliss. Now back to the movie, it really has a big philosophical side to it that gets you thinking. What if we really had AI like that? What if what happened to Earth in the movie really did happen? What if we all got fat an immobile!? The main idea is AI that is self-aware, that can think for it’s self, and can have emotion. With that in mind, WALL-E may just be my favourite movie this year.

Really, I wouldn’t mind working for them. Game development being a hobby and Pixar being work would work out perfectly. At Pixar you get to ride scooters and stuff through the halls, they have talent contests, and parties in the lobby whenever a movie opens. You also get to use whatever operating system you want on your computer, and there are no internet filters. If that isn’t already amazing, you get to paint your office whatever colour you want. Sure it’s not that big an office–more like a cubicle in terms of size–but it has walls and it’s own door. Niiiiiice. Now, lets compare that to the gaming industry: You can work for EA or Valve. EA’s working conditions would obviously treat you like utter crap, so I’m not even going to go into that. Valve is more of the “prime realestate”-type when it comes to game development jobs I’d think, and even there I’d think it’d be a bit boring. Sitting in an office all day with internet filters and everything, forced to use Windows. Then you don’t get anything new, it’s just munging around old, probably poorly written code written by someone else. I’ve done a lot of coding myself, and I know that I hate working with other peoples’ code. Therefor, having Pixar as a job and game devleopment as a hobbie, as it is now, would be perfect. That’s my goal/plan, at least. I’m trying to get back into Maya, so hopefully with a little amatuer experience I’ll be ready for Pixar University.

Anyway, other stuff: EXRP’s meeting was moved to Monday because some key members couldn’t come, and that’s fine. It would’ve been nice to have it today, but then I would’ve wanted to see WALL-E today anyway (which I didn’t realize on Thursday when I scheduled the meeting originally) so that would’ve conflicted and screwed things up. On monday my family has to take our car to the shop ’cause the wheels are squeaky, one of the side doors doesn’t lock with the remote, and someone keyed the driver’s door in the theater parking lot today. The latter problem probably isn’t on warranty, which sucks. I wish I had more non-movie stuff to say, but I don’t. WALL-E just blew my mind–go see it, and it’ll blow yours too.

yyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmssssss

I’m still not knowing what I’m doing. EXRP’s general activity has died down a bit–I don’t know if it’s just the time of year, or if I majorly screwed up with EXRP-Script. Either way, we’ve having a meeting on Saturday to discuss a few “radical” ideas to gain more appeal. Who cares if it works or not, it’ll be a lot more fun for everyone. That is, assuming it is agreed upon. I’ll let you in on it after the meeting. I’ve surprisingly got a lot of important things to say and discuss this time around, unlike last, so a note to any staff members reading: Be there or I’ll rip your head off and shove an overheated AMD chip down your neck. Those things are sharp too, yowch!

A lot of game ideas have been coming and going, but mostly going. I really don’t know what to do. I’m at a point where I want to do something, I know exactly how to do it, but I have no concept at all. I want to make something simple, fun, yet somewhat innovative and fresh, but I have no idea what. It’s like I’m just waiting for an idea to just fall out of the sky and hit me in the face. Just watch, now a flying hippo or something will come crashing through my roof and crap on my face tonight. Whatever that idea is, I’ll be using the C4 engine, PhysX, and Lua. I’ve already assembled a team of developers, which include other programmers, sound artists, 2d artists, concept artists, and level designers. Also, writers and stuff. The only thing I don’t have immediately covered is modeling, but I can model a few objects and stuff. Character design is a load of crap though–at least, that’s what my attempts at it look like. I’ll definitely need someone to specialize in that. I’ll be using C4 as the engine, PhysX as the physics engine (as it’s actually really easy to implement into C4. Maybe Newton if I magically find out otherwise), and Lua or Squirrel to make the actual game in. Face it, C++ is like traditional Chinese. A lot of game developers are using simpler languages, though making their framework and interpreter in C++, to develop their games. I don’t blame them, it’s just so much easier. An e-book (seriously who does these anymore) is coming out in a week or two, along with build 149 of the C4 engine, that should be a lot of help. I’m thinking I’ll get it–I mean, it won’t hurt. Always good to have a little extra documentation.

As for other stuff, I have none. I haven’t played anything too much lately, so I can’t talk about how exciting my gaming life is. I’ve been playing around in GMod as usual, and like I mentioned in an earlier blog post (I think) I got Flight Simulator X. It’s really fun, and I’m getting quite good at it. However, it really is a pain in the ass to find and line up with an air strip to land. Even with radar it’s painful, so just imagine without. I’ve been into a lot of music with more soft vocals lately, I don’t know why. I mean like Rusted Root, The Postal Service, Cold Play, Royksopp. Hell, even Gary Jules. It’s just really relaxing and easy to listen to. I don’t know, maybe I need that relaxing quality right now. All this “wtf am I doing” stuff is frustrating me.

I saw Get Smart yesterday, and I must say it greatly exceeded my expectations. It was non-stop funny, although a few of the jokes at the very beginning were a bit lame, but you’ll definitely come out of the theater feeling good and ready to crack a few of your own. If you’ve ever seen the show Maxwell Smart that the movie’s based upon, it’ll be a lot more enjoyable. They butchered the cone of silence, though, which I was very upset with at the time. However, the pro’s outweigh the con’s, and it’s a great movie. There are a lot of movies coming out soon; WALL-E on Friday, then sometime later Hancock, and sometime later after that The Dark Knight. Sounds like a good year for movies. Games too, I can’t wait for The Force Unleashed and Spore. Also, Far Cry 2 looks nice. Tomorrow I have to get up early to go to IHOP for breakfast with a few family members. Also, randomly changing the subject (I wonder why), I got a hair cut a couple days ago. Before I had rather long hair, but now it’s a lot shorter. It’s still kinda long at the front–just above my eyebrows–but the short is a lot shorter and a lot comfier. I like it. And again changing the subject: I haven’t had yams in a while. Maybe I’ll try one again soon–thanks Viva!