‘Jonesy!
As I probably mentioned before, my parents picked me up LEGO Indiana Jones the other day for graduating. So it isn’t a car, but it’s still a very good game. It keeps everything that made LEGO Star Wars such a huge success, improves on it, and gets rid of all the annoying repetition in puzzles. Graphics have most certainly improved, although I can never get AA working properly, but the gameplay is top notch. I haven’t gotten far, but from what I’ve played through it certainly goes past expectations. One big feature in LEGO Star Wars that I think made it such a hit was that you could play as many different characters. In Indiana Jones there aren’t that many reoccuring characters other than Indy himself, but they did a good job of putting in some of the ‘lesser’ characters too–and although I usually find myself playing as Indy, there are some perks to playing as the other characters. For example, ladies can jump higher, short people can go into certain areas, people with shovels can dig up treasure, people wirh wrenches can fix things, etc…
LEGO ‘Jonesy is a lot more physics-based too, which I like. you can pick objects up and throw them at people, or use them in puzzles, and of course you can swing from vines/ropes and your whip. Nice. One improvement that I saw within the first couple minutes of playing is that LEGO Indiana Jones seems to play more like a sidescroller than before. Sure, LEGO Star Wars was a sidescroller when it felt like it, but it was more of an isometric view most of the time. I found a lot of trouble with the controls in it due to the camera, but I’ve yet to experience any problems with the camera in LEGO Indiana Jones. As far as the puzzles go, they’ve improved a lot too–no longer do I find myself just looking for levers; now I find myself trying to figure out what the hell to do. That’s good, though. As far as AI difficulty goes, it seems to have a new adaptive difficulty setting that you can turn on and off in the options menu, and it works pretty well from what I’ve seen so far. If you start sucking horribly, the AI does too. If you go all pro on them, they fight back. I’m still waiting for something with I, Robot AI, though.
In other news, I got a new chair. It’s really comfy. I’ve tried a lot of new chairs before, as the one I was using before was a broken plastic IKEA chair, but I’ve never found anything that was just right. Then there I am at Sam’s Club with my folks when they start debating wether or not to buy a certain brand of something–I don’t remember what–so I sit down on a chair near me and relax. Now WHAAAAAAAAAAAT? This chair is actually comfy! So I got it. Very nice chair, will sit in again, A++++. I’ve also gotten a Facebook just for the hell of it, and you can see my profile at the link on the bottom right of my blog. Feel free to add me if you have one. I’ve found a lot of my friend back in Toronto there, which is nice. I don’t know if I’ll keep it, though. I don’t want to go along with the seemingly popular social networking site whoring, but Facebook seems to have a bit more class than the others if you don’t spam it up too much. EXRP’s been great, and I really am done coding now–at least for now. I was having some server problems yesterday and earlier today with awful lag that had be at 100% CPU even when nothing was open VIA Remote Desktop, but my server host fixed that for me. However, the Icecast server seems to lag things up a bit, so I’ll be hosting that elsewhere. For now, no radio, but it’ll be back up soon. As for my talk about playing SWG: I finally did today. I did for about 20 minutes yesterday, but it was more like an hour today. I always seem to have to take care of some EXRP problem when I first get up for a few hours, and by the time I’m ready to play my SWG friends already have to go offline due to time zones. Hopefully that won’t happen tomorrow, I’m dieing to play and leverl up. Anyway, that’s it. NN
06.10.08Finally able to relax
This last 6 months have been quite hectic for me, but it’s finally over now. Yesterday I finished ironing out all the bugs and adding in some fancy new features like the ability to change characters after a countdown without having to relog, and welfare so people would stop complaining about not having money. Overall, these past 6 months have been great; I began as a novice coder, and came out as somewhat of a guru. When I first started EXRP-Script in December, I found it hard to make something from scratch. I had to check the wiki for every single thing I did, and ask for help with a lot of things. Now, I can code without testing or looking things up. It’s really a great feeling, as is seeing my brain child in use. It’s just such a satisfying feeling to see people playing (and enjoying) it, as well as seeing them talking about how it’s supposedly better than other scripts in OOC. It’s just such an amazing feeling, and I thank you all.
As for my life (wow, finally I have time for it again), not much has happened recently. I’m out of school now, which is great. I went to a party yesterday which was fun, and I beat everyone in Brawl except Bob. I’m thinking I can finally play some stuff today–whether it be SWG or Lego Indiana Jones. I’m dieing to play both, really. Then again, I’m also dieing to have a good RP again–and have been for the past 6 months. All in all, that’s pretty much it. I just can’t get my mind off the fact that I’m finally done, and then how satisfying the end result was–especially the feedback. It’s just an amazing feeling, and I can’t get it out of my head.
02.29.08Birthday
So it’s my birthday today. I keep on forgetting. I got a really early night last night, mainly because I was sick, but I’m still sick today anyway. I have some kind of stomach flu. Yesterday it was vomiting and some sharper pains around my tum tum, but today it’s mostly just gurgling inside my tum tum and a headache. Maybe a fever too, I’m not sure. Yesterday I was at 101. Meh.
Anyway, I got a Creative Zen, a couple LEGO sets, and some chocolates. I’m happy–that more than makes up for the tum tum stuffs. Yes, I like saying tum tum. I was going to go to dinner with my parents, but I don’t know if I can. My tum tum still isn’t feeling too well. (Okay, I’ll stop.) We’ll have to see for later.
I’m 4 today, so, thanks to everyone who said “happy birthday” to me today! Tony, especially. You know why. ;p
Lets hope I get better soon so I can continue coding. I’m back in the zone.
12.26.07Christmas
I know, I know. I keep saying stuff about updating this more frequently, but I never actually do it. Meh.
Anyway, as a followup to my last blog post: Assassin’s Creed is really good. It plays just like a movie, really. But keep in mind, it’s not for people who aren’t stealthy at heart. A lot of stealthyness and patience is required. Either way, I like it because it reminds me of assets from the Bourne films, so I’m happy. A lot of people say that it’s really repetitive, but I disagree. If you just try to rush through the game and take shortcuts, each assassination will feel a bit repetitive after a while. But if you play the game it was meant to be played, it’s fun.
As for Christmas, mine was great. I got CoD4, an HD wide-angle lens for my camera, some lens filters (UV, florescent, and polarized), Phantom Hourglass, some huge binoculars, a 2008 calendar that has a funny Bush quote every day, a DVD with all of Pixar’s short films, all the Bourne films, 512mb RAM (now my mobo’s topped out), a LEGO set of Darth Maul’s speeder, around $100 total from friends and family, and last but not least: the C4 Engine.
CoD4 is really good. The singleplayer is fun, and doesn’t get old fast like other FPS’s singleplayer campaigns, but the multiplayer is where it’s always at. The multiplayer in CoD4 plays a lot like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory’s, and I loved ET. You have your basic gamemodes like team DM, CTF, etc… But you also have some new ones. There’s headquarters, which I’ve yet to try, and there’s sabotage, where you have to play CTF with a bomb and plant it on the enemy’s missiles. It’s pretty fun. You also have your standardized classes: Assault, Spec Ops, Demolitions, and Sniper. For every kill you get and every objective you hold down, you get XP. You get new weapons and ‘perks’ with that XP, which you can use to customize your own class. A perk is a kind of upgrade, to put it plainly. There’s some basic ones like deep impact, which lets your bullets go through more harder materials like some soft metal, harder walls, etc… There’s also special grenades, like flashbangs, smoke grenades, and my favorite: stun grenades. Think of it as a tazer, but in grenade form. Anyone it’s blast hits gets ‘drowsy’, making them slower and less accurate. Very useful. It also does a little flash of light and a puff of smoke, so it’s almost like having a frag grenade, flashbang, and smoke grenade all in one, except it doesn’t hurt. Anyway, there are also some really fun perks like Martyrdom and Last Stand, which let you pull the pin on your last nade (if you have one) when you die, and let you lean up a bit and shoot your killer with a pistol before you finally croak, respectively. You also get special stuffs every 3, 5, and 7 kills. At 3 you get to launch a UAV (radar plane), at 5 you get an airstrike (location of your choosing), and at 7 you get to fly and shoot your own helicopter (which is really fun). These are quite hard to get sometimes, though. I’ve gotten the helicopter two times since I started playing yesterday, and one of which got shot down almost immediately, and the other I didn’t get to use since I shot some guy in the head right after getting the thing and we won. 
All in all, CoD4 is a great game. 
As for C4, I’ve yet to try it. I’ll try it sometime soon, though. Anyway, I just got home from some boxing day shopping. They had all console and PC games 35% off, so I got myself Super Mario Galaxy with some of my Christmas money. So far, I haven’t played it, but I can confirm the rumors as true: The box does say “U R MR GAY”. Where it says “Super Mario Galaxy” on the box, there are little stars under some of the letters, and if you read just the letters with the stars under them, it spells the above. Freaky, huh? I wonder if they did that on purpose, or if they even noticed at all…
As for some coding news, I’ve been working on a complete remake of EXRP’s current server scripts. Before, I built off an existing gamemode called LightRP, which is pretty poorly coded if you ask me, and then I just kept stacking stuff on top of it, causing it to become the lag monster it is right now. So I’m remaking it from scratch, doing things right the first time around. So far, I’ve done the new naming system (since the new GMod 2007 uses your Steam Friends name instead of letting you change it ingame like before), and I’m working on doors. I’m using a lot of meta functions, as in entity:Function( args ), so it’s really organized. I’m just having some trouble getting those meta functions to refresh in GMod’s HUDPaint hook, since it doesn’t seem to want to change. I can see how it’d save a lot of resources only having the HUD refresh when the game knows that the stuff it’s displaying has changed, but why would you do that in a game like GMod? It already takes up all your computer’s resources to run in the first place, so optimizing little things that stifle a developer’s abilities is quite useless. Hopefully I can finish this before my vacation is over. I’ve been playing around with my Christmas presents and getting together with my family Christmas’ing and stuff lately, so I haven’t had much time.
Well, that’s about it! Hope you had a good Christmas.
My Birthday!
So yesterday/today was my birthday, and I’m 3.75 years old now. Yup, I was born on the 29th. 
I’m actually 15.
Anyway, I got a Panasonic PV-GS300. Simply put, a 3CCD miniDV camera. 
It has manual focus.
Just a simple test shot I took in about 2 seconds…
(Click to enlarge)
I’m so excited; I can’t wait to make a new brickfilm!
Just in case you were wondering, I also got a neat little carrying bag/case for it, and a Lego Star Wars Imperial Shuttle. Hmm, that gives me an idea…
Anyway, I set myself up a new Youtube account. This time, it’s director.
I might post some VLogs in the future…
CGI and stuff
So, does anyone remember when I was trying to make realistic-looking CGI Lego bricks? Well, I’ve finally done it–After months of procrastination and failure.
Feel free to tell me what you think via contact page. 
Also, the forums have officially gone bye-bye. Bots were somehow exploiting the insanely out-of-date SMF that was installed to spam, so I’ve backed up the database and replaced the subdomain with some excuses for my procrastination of getting a new forum up.
VFX test
I was bored today and I knew that I’m going to be working on a brickfilm sometime soon that’ll require visual effects by the truckload, so I made a little VFX test video thingy.
As you can see below, I ‘remastered’ it, played around with the color palette, greenscreened it, and did a few other tweaks.
Origonal screencap
VFX screencap
Remastering
I was bored today, I had just watched the new remastered Star Wars DVDs, and I also had to test this out sometime, soooo… I ‘remastered’ BSOD. It has redone visual effects, better picture quality, a bigger color pallete and color correction, vertical sync, remastered audio tracks, and all the likes.
Anyway, just so you know what’s about, here’s an example of what a remastered screencap would look like.
Origonal
Remastered
And just because I was bored, I did another.
Origonal
Remastered #1(Too little?)
Remastered #2 (A little too much?)
As you can see, I got a big lazy with the above example.
Anyways, check it out on the Films page, I’m sure you’ll like it.
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