Doug’s Blog

09.18.09

Don’t look back

It’s been a long road, a lot of detours… But I’m finally here. I’m a senior! Yaaaaaa–wait, that means I’m going to college next year. Wait, where am I even going… Oh no, this is bad. But I’ll finally be done with school! Yaaaaaaaaaaay! I know I haven’t done a blog post in a while, and a lot has happened, but I won’t be covering it all. Do you want me to write a novel?!

Lots of work on Espionage Inc lately. LOTS. We’re making more progress than ever. In fact, we’ve completely restarted production from scratch and we’ve nearly completely rethought the concept in a lot of places. We have 5 developers: Two programmers, one mapper, one modeler, and one skinner. You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to coordinate all that, but when I’m dabbling into everyone’s work it gets a bit crazy. I’m incredibly happy that we could find another programmer, who’s actually good even. It makes the whole thing so much easier on me. I thought I was going to be the only programmer, and I thought I could handle it. Now that we’re pretty much fully head-on into production and we’ve got everyone working at once, I can definitely say that I WOULD NOT be able to handle it. I’ve barely been able to program at all, and I don’t think I’ll be able to. I’m modeling props and characters, animating characters, programming, and coordinating everything. I don’t think I’ll barely even have time for all that. And we still don’t have a sound guy… Okay, I’ll get off the soap box.

We’ve pretty much finished the general shape and layout of the first level, now we’re just adding detail and making all of the content to go in it. The concept of the whole game is pretty much 100% solid at this point, and unlike before, we’re completely planning out our levels and gameplay before we do anything towards them. I think that’s the main reason for our massive amount of progress at this point. I expect to have something playable by maybe even the end of this year. I’m hopeful. Maybe just even the first level. We’ll see.

I don’t want to spoil too much (if anything), so I’ll just stop there and not go into detail about exactly what we’re doing. We’ll do a media release at some point, I’m sure. In other news, I want to do a 3D animation but I’m not sure what. Or when or where to start. I have the skills, I have the motivation, but I don’t have the time. I even have over 9000 ideas to make it of. There need to be more hours in the day…

Also Batman: Arkham Asylum is amazing. Best singleplayer game ever right there. If you haven’t already played it, GO GET IT NOW. Or else.

05.31.09

Looking Up

…And looking down. I was playing some TF2 today, as I have been seemingly 24/7 since the Spy/Sniper update came out, and I was greeted by a rather unpleasant black screen while the sound of a heavy dieing looped over and over again through a frozen TF2. I manually rebooted the computer to find out that my graphics card was running at 112°C. Ouch. So yeah, my graphics card’s fan isn’t working anymore. Doesn’t spin at all, no matter what I do. Gunna call the manufacturer tomorrow to see if they can replace it VIA warranty, and if so ask if I can upgrade to a two-slot card, out of my own pocket of course. In the mean time, I’m gameless and renderless. Anything remotely graphically-intensive will shoot me back up to over 100°C, and I have to have all my case fans on high or else it’ll just slowly climb up on it’s own. And if they do allow me to send back my card to get a new one, I’ll be graphics cars-less until I get my new one. The mere thought of that brings chills down my spine. Maybe I’ll just get a new one off Newegg…

Anyways, I saw Up on Friday. Amazing movie, really, just like every other Pixar movie. However, this one nearly made me cry, so I’d say it’s way up there on my arbitrary list of favourite Pixar films. Got the soundtrack on Amazon too, and as always Michael Giacchino is one to impress. If you haven’t seen Up yet, go see it now. I saw it in 2D due to my natural feelings that 3D is gimmicky and deteriorates the cinematography, though I may see it in 3D later. My short review: Story is extremely touching, just the right amount of humour and action, never a dull moment. Did I mention that I nearly cried?

05.20.09

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.

03.20.09

Game Over

My addiction to SWG has ended, I’m pretty sure. I got level 90 yesterday, and while that’s all fine and peachy I’ve now found myself asking the age-old question: “What now?” It doesn’t seem like there’s too much to do after you hit 90 besides the odd quest you haven’t already done and PvP, which I’ll get into in a sec, and RP which is nice every now and then but peoples’ definition of RP in SWG tends to be somewhere along the lines of “waste as much time as possible by sitting down and just talking to people, which you can do in guild chat anyway”. Oh boy, so much fun. There are also heroic instances, which are actually really fun, but you NEED a rather large and experienced group for all of them, so that’s a bit out of the question most of the time. As for PvP, I’m a bounty hunter so I’ve tried a few missions–first one was on Mustafar, so I couldn’t use my droids to track him. Second was inside the Deathwatch Bunker, which I really can’t be arsed to get a group to go through with me. Third was in Restuss, which is a PvP zone that forces you into PvP whether you like it or not–hooray for getting ganked by every single Imp on the server. Rinse and repeat this several times for about 15 targets. Finally I found one that was just sitting on their speeder in some town, and I started to attack them but they just ran away. Okay, don’t want to fight me? I’ll just destroy your speeder, thank you very much. Then I tried another one which was in the Mos Eisely cantina, and without armor! Looks like I scored big time, right? At first, I’d say so too. I dropped their health down all the way in like 30 seconds, but to my amazement there was no dieing involved afterwards. They were just running around shooting rockets at me while they had no health. At all. I kept mashing my specials on them that should’ve rolled them right there on the spot but no, they just didn’t die. After ranting over guild chat, I’ve found out that my target had activated a special officer buff that makes you invincible for some seconds. Uhh, great–WHO’S IDEA WAS THIS!? I know SOE wants to get rid of SWG, but honestly is shitting down PvP really the way? Well, I guess it worked for me. I’ll continue to play every now and then I’m sure, but my addiction is over.

That said, back to coding and whatnot. I’m trying to get EXGN started up again. The other day I set up a CSS server for a friend from Facepunch and he’s got a “Zombie Escape Mod” server running on it, and it’s actually got quite a steady amount of players going on it. I tried it out myself, and while I’ll never be too big a fan of zombie games (besides the occasional L4D) I like what he’s done with the place. I’ve just finished updating Wine and reinstalling a GMod server from scratch, but there’s still the weird “I DON’T FEEL LIKE LOADING THE SURFACEPROPERTIES PROPERLY” glitch. At least the surfaceproperties files came installed by default this time, but they don’t seem to make a bit of difference. Perhaps they do, as the problem appears to be fixed in *some* areas, but it still exists in others so that’s where I base my assessment on. Not until it never happens again will it truly be ‘fixed’. Also, for now I’ve removed the CSS and TF2 servers, but if there’s a demand for them I’ll surely bring them back–just ask.

As for coding, I haven’t done anything yet but I’m planning on getting back to ToH. Like I’ve said before, all the hard stuff is done; all that’s left are all the details. This has got to be the shortest paragraph about coding I’ve ever written…

It feels kind of weird not being addicted to anything anymore. I kinda liked the joy of getting up every day to go directly to playing something; always knowing exactly what to do. Not that I don’t know what to do now, but I do feel a bit disoriented without knowing what I’ll be doing all day anymore. Somewhat related: I really just can’t wait for The Old Republic–you know, the new Star Wars MMO coming out sometime next year. I know I was kinda bummed about it earlier, but now I’m starting to welcome it with open arms. SWG is great, but like I said, not too much to keep me occupied after level 90. I’m pretty sure BioWare will take care of the “what now” thing after you hit whatever level cap they set, as their whole philosophy appears to be about PvE story telling–which is ideal. My only problem is that they seem to be focusing a lot on Jedi, which makes it seem like every single person in the game will be a Jedi. Hopefully not the case, and probably not the case since they’ve announced the BH class, but still something to worry about. Another thing that worries me is loss of features–will there still be space combat? Will there still be crafting? Player cities? One thing that was both annoying and great at the same time were the vast landscapes in SWG. Really, biggest playing fields I’ve ever seen in an MMO. Most of them (meaning NOT Mustafar or Kashyyk) felt like massive planets; you know, the way they should. It gives you a really nice feeling of adventure and exploration when you travel around in SWG. I’d like to see that kind of massive playing area make a return, as well as player cities to take up some space. However, I’d like to see a bit more selection when it comes to houses. This doesn’t seem like it’ll be a problem though, as BioWare’s documentaries seem to emphasize how every player will be able to look and play their own unique way. So like pre-CU? Nah, hopefully better. Another thing that concerns me is the art style, as it does look a bit cartoony but I’m optimistic. Anyway, lots of things to bugger up my mind with regarding ToR, but unless you want to read a novel I’ll leave it off here. Off to watch some Clone Wars (meh it’s pretty good), ‘night.

 

…Damn, how cliche am I?

03.12.09

A bit lost

I’m a bit lost at the moment. With everything. On one hand I want to continue coding EXRP Lite and ToH, as well as fix all the EXGN servers as well as put up new ones (I’ve had an itch to play DoDS lately), and on the other I’m stuck in an endless addiction to SWG. And then even in SWG I’m lost: I have a BH (bounty hunter) and a trader. I spent a lot of money from my BH grinding that trader. Structures require too many walls and structure modules (10 walls for 1 module, 10 modules for 1 small house), shipwright is kinda useless for me since we already have an excellent one in our guild, munitions is bloody impossible to make any decent weapons with as you need literally perfect quality resources, all the 100% perfect equipment attachments you could ever possibly get your hands on, maxed out assembly and experimentation stats, and extremely good crafting station effectiveness. It really is impossible. I mean, maybe if I had a couple million from my BH to spend on it, but I don’t. Next up is domestics: any piece of clothing that looks the least bit decent needs stuff from a factory crate, and I have no use for food buffs. My last choice is engineering, but that’s what Son’s alt is. Then again, I can always just respec to that and try to regain the money I lost from all that grinding and respeccing (yes, I’ve tried them all except engy). Engy can make some stuff that can be worth a lot of money if it’s 100%. However, I’ve had enough trouble finding good enough resources and yadda yadda to make even a decent gun with munitions, so maybe I should just not even try to afford the respec cost again and just try something completely new. Officer looks interesting, but I don’t really want to take the time to make a raise a character all the way to the top again just to experiment. Entertainer looks alright too, but there’s no benefit to me. I mean, all I’d do is just AFK dance all day and I have 90, then I give random people buffs. Yeah, soooooooooo much fun. Thing is, I’ve spent almost a million just grinding my trader, so it really does seem like a waste. I’ve always wanted a Jedi though, so I am considering making a new light Jedi character with an extremely similar name as my BH and get an ent to make him look exactly him, for the sake of RP. Then I could ’switch’ between BH and Jedi professions for essentially the same guy, as if he’s a BH with force powers. That’d be pretty cool, I think. Still, huge waste with the trader… On the plus, my BH is level 78 now and can take down a level 90 smuggler being brought down to about half health. Only due to shields though, which I guess is kinda cheap. Not if you’re doing a BH mission, though. Anything for the money.

Anyway, that’s my rant of mass confusion and rantness. I’ve been meaning to write a post for like two weeks now but I kept getting distracted. It was my birthday on the 28th, which was nice. I had to get up at 6AM to go to some stupid school thing for that class I have no interest in–I think I mentioned this before, did I? The rest of the day I was just way too tired to talk or do anything. That really sucked. Well, I haven’t been doing much else but playing SWG lately, so I guess that just about wraps things up. Ah well.

02.18.09

Allayloo ta nuv

Not much development recently, if at all. Espionage Inc is still in a bit of a hiatus, but really I can’t be arsed to pester anyone anymore–at least, not now. ToH is on a bit of a break too; I coded like 24/7 that one week that I’m all ‘coded out’ for a while. EXRP is about the same, as I’ve said in earlier blog posts I’ve just been really bored with GMod/Lua recently. Not to worry, everything will return to activity sooner or later.

So, what’s been going on with me? Both a lot of something and a lot of nothing. I’ve been really frustrated with school, since I was put in a class that I didn’t really want to be in, but was assured it was something completely different than it actually turned out to be, and now it’s too late to get out. Also, did I mention said class requires me to go to school on a couple Saturdays or else I fail–one being my birthday? Yeah, just brilliant. I’ve also been playing a lot of SWG lately, hence the post title. I’ve levelled up quite a lot since I last played, not sure how. It’s pretty awesome though, I have ~500+ DPS without using actions or buffs, a droideka, and I’ve done an assload of “higher-level” quests and instances–my house is full of trophies and crap. Really fun game, it’s a shame to see people leaving it. There was a free week of play last week that I was completely into that just ended today for me that I got really into, and I’m resubscribing when I get home.

 One thing that I’ve been playing with lately is something called “theta brainwave meditation”, which is basically ambient music with a soft hum in the background at a certain frequency called ‘theta’ that somehow tricks your brain into becoming more relaxed and everything. You can find some here. If you’re going to go out and buy that track you hear in the video, it’s called Astral Journeys. Very nice easy listening if you ask me, great for getting yourself relaxed after a lot of stress. Anyway, just thought I’d share that with you. If you’re in need of a good game to play, check out SWG. Now then, back to school…

02.11.09

No soup

Lots more progress, of course, however no soup. My stomach’s been really grumbly the past couple days, not sure why, but I’ve been really bloated and foul-smelling burpy. Seems to be getting better, though. I just think it’s coders’ withdrawal–haven’t coded as much as I did last week. Regardless, I have got some pretty cool stuff done. I’m nearing around 5000 lines of code, which is kinda freaky and kinda cool at the same time. Guess it just shows how much work has gone into this so far. Anyway, yesterday I implemented a map portal system for edge-based portals and tile-based portals to ‘teleport’ to different maps. The edge ones work by defining a map to switch to if you go beyond the upper, lower, left, or right bounds of the current map, and you appear on the opposite side of the map so it seems as if you’ve traveled to it. For example: We can have a huge field made up of several different maps, and you walk right to go to the next map, left to go to the previous map, etc… Instead of having just one huge map, which would be huge. The tile-based portal system was a bit easier in theory, as it’s basically just when you step on a certain tile you mark in the collision layer it teleports you to the specified X and Y of a selected map. I’ve also done a couple tweaky things to the map editor, but nothing specifically worth mentioning. Just look at the screenshots in the dump below and you’ll get the idea. Next up are NPCs and the sprite editor tab.

Image Dump

01.27.09

Get back to work!

Well, guess I’ve broken that rule that I had earlier about making one blog post every 2-3 days. I guess it’s just more like a guideline, anyway. Not too much new; you know, the usual frustrations with school, playing of games, coding, and thinking about coding. And also something I don’t do very often: reading a book. I’ve been reading I, Robot the past couple days–you know, the original by Isaac Asimov that has nigh nothing to do with the movie. It’s really great, rarely do I stumble upon any form of media that really gets you thinking philisophically. Plus it’s a great, classic Sci-Fi that talks about the year 2008 as if we’re flying about in hover jets all the time, so that’s always fun. As for my aforementioned playing of games, I would up buying Hitman: Blood Money and playing it again, and it’s great. I really hate the boat mission, though. I can never beat it, and if I do it’s just be sheer luck and a lot of killing of… Well, everybody.

Regarding coding: recently, I don’t know what’s been up. I’m kinda bored of coding EXRP since it’s really frustrating to just build upon what someone else has already made, especially due to all the restrictions and bugs that you can’t overcome and that he won’t do anything about. Plus GMod just hasn’t really been on my mind that much lately. Espionage Inc has been making some progress, but honestly not that much. Right now we just seem to be having some kind of communication problem between all the developers. I can’t do anything until I get some maps and models to work with, our texturer can’t do anything until he gets some models to work with, Son’s mapping on and off (which is great, at least he’s doing something), and I’m not sure what the modellers are doing. So until I find a nice way to motivate people that doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg (or anything at all), I don’t know if we’ll be making much progress. I love the idea though, and I’d love to get some content in so I can get to work, but… Well, you know. I’m also thinking of starting a new project that’ll feature “programmer graphics”–that is, everything will be procedural and made from code, no premade models, maps, etc.. involved. Which is great for me, since then I can do everything myself and therefor blame myself if I miss some deadlines. I won’t speak too much details of what the game is, as I think it’s definitely something genuine, original, and extremely fun–I don’t want to ruin the surprise, nor do I want anyone to steal my idea. Either way, what am I doing rambling on about it when I could be coding it!? Damnit Doug, get back to work!!

12.18.08

Proportionately long post title

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.

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.

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.

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.

07.31.08

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.