| Everyone |
[07 Sep 2009|06:56pm] |
: / I miss you guys.
It's really nice here out in the valley, but I still miss hanging out with everyone. Sucks more that nobody seems to use aim or anything anymore.
How is everyone doing?
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| Ultima Online, Relive the memories... |
[07 Jun 2009|11:56am] |
I know most of you haven't heard of Ultima Online, but it's my single favorite MMO, ever since I first got introduced to it back int 1998 or so. It was an early MMO that featured classless characters and a skill-based system where you could build up any combination of a set of skills rather than just mindlessly leveling up a character. That means what a character could do could be mixed and matched in any way (Magic Swordsman, Magic Chef, Chef Swordsman, Tamer Necromancer, Ninja Paladin...)
This also with handling weapons and equipment being based on strength means anyone can use any equipment (provided they have the skills to use them.)
Customization as well, including 'Dye Tubs' that allow you to dye clothes, Black Dye Tubs as a rare item, and special kinds of dye tubs for things like furniture and armor.
Events means rare items exist out there (I want Cold Blood, the ice blue Butcher's knife.) and high powered monsters means there's always a challenge, especially in "The Gauntlet" and dungeons.
Crafting skills are available and ranged from Tinkerers (mostly useless items), Tailors (clothing and leather armor), Blacksmiths (Metal armor, weapons, and furnitures...) and Carpenters (Wooden things, Furniture) amoung them.
One can build houses which even leads to some player towns sometimes and houses allow for storage, saftey, and allows you to set up vendors for items. The houses are just as insanely customizable, provided you can afford one.
All this and more in one massive, nearly seamless world that gives you lots of chances to explore and discover things.
I play on a free server called "Demise" here: http://www.uodemise.com/
If you wanna play, download the following:
(The Actual Game Client): http://www.uo.com/uoml/downloads.shtml
(The Client you play Demise through): http://www.runuo.com/razor/ (you load the game by loading this and pointing to the correct server. Details on the Demise Page)
(And finally, the out of date but ever useful UO Automap): http://www.uoam.net/
Read the guy's stories for some amusing tidbits about Murderous Barneys, Santa Claus, and a touching ending to his game experience.
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| NES days... |
[30 Apr 2009|01:35pm] |
Ren gave me the NES emulator for the DS.
Pick up and play, that's what it's all about.
As sad as it is, I find myself enjoying it far more than most of the DS games I have. Gradius (after I discovered Save States) is a real blast, and I'm getting to experience the amazing 8-bit amazement of Final Fantasy...1....when there was ONLY one. Suddenly everything in the comic makes sense now.
But yeah, it's possibly a dream come true to be playing in higher quality what used to take a 5 LB Brick of plastic, 20 minutes of blowing, a TV, and a Power outlet to manage.
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| HAY KIRBOPHER, ANSWER ME THIS |
[30 Apr 2009|01:32pm] |
I had this discussion with a friend of mine and we got into a debate over how to pronounce your handle...
Is it "KERB-AH/OH-FER?"
Or "KER-BAWFFER"
He seems to think it's KirBoffer.
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| By Special request of Daniel... |
[19 Apr 2009|03:18am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 accomplished |
] |
Meet Buzzasaur, who for all intents and purposes, has now been rechristianed "Furadigon (Fyer-rah-dih-gawn.). He's a really old Pokemon idea I came up with in Junior high for our fabled DnD style game, the Text Game. The concept was a misleadingly small and feeble looking lizard would become a huge, unstoppable and enraged force of destruction when provoked with even a small gust of wind...
His new look is based on the Frilled lizard and the Dilophosaurus, the famous frill neck dinosaur from Jurassic park, though he was always supposed to resemble a kind of Chinese dragon. He can fly like one through the power of the "Magnet Rise" attack. When enraged, his frill opens, but in sleeper mode, it's flat against his neck.
( To see more, including rough sketches... )
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| ART |
[14 Apr 2009|02:01am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 amused |
] |
Yanmega dun' take none of yer shit.
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| I am weak... |
[07 Apr 2009|11:24am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 listless |
] |
I saw devin's post on just getting Pokemon Platinum...and then I thought "Hay, I should get Pokemon platinum."
So I got Pokemon platinum.
...and now it forces me to trade once again. WITH MSELF.
...when will I ever learn...
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| For Tim's Game... |
[05 Apr 2009|12:32pm] |
So here's a decent design for me...the Photoshop Mage who's always tired.
The laptop thingy kinda floats in front of me. I knwo the hair doesn't make much sense, being in front of the lip of the hat, so maybe you could just cover that up. I was just too lazy to fix it.
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| Knex Ranting |
[30 Mar 2009|08:01pm] |
I've managed to build most of the pieces that I used commonly for the action figures I used to construct from Knex.
One still eludes me however... the panels.
The panels are large square and triangular pieces that really never served much purpose to me in real life, but considering I get to void all physics with 3D pieces, they could be useful now, especially for wings.
I had planned on using them to create some flying robots that resemble those things from Castle in the sky. Only evil. Thing is, they appear in the first panel of the first planned comic, so urhm...I can't do anything until they're FINISHED. Awesome.
And I've been putting them off, like I put off alot of things. Seems like I always quit for a while when I hit a snag.
3D is such a pain though... I have all these fun ideas, but 3D just doesn't seem to jive with me. Why couldn't I just eat kelly's left over talent for it?
I'm also paranoid a bit because eventually the knex story would need backgrounds, my ultimate nemesis. Doing 3D alone is a tough gig, let alone scenery.
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| More Knex Shit |
[30 Mar 2009|07:45pm] |
I made another model the other day... this is tripod type thing that carries a nasty little energy cannon around with it. A good sentry type unit.
( See the units )
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| TURKEY DAY |
[27 Nov 2008|11:44am] |
Hope everybody has an enjoyable Giving of Thanks Day.
Also, Ren. If you see this, I'm totally down for having you as company. You need to call back though
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| Retardism: A pandemic |
[12 Nov 2008|01:16pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 ~facepalm~ |
] |
I don't understand it sometimes...IMVU is a fun program to use, but god the people... 89% of them are only there for online sex. 50% of those are also not the same gender as their avatar.
It seems like only a small percentile are actually capable of conscious thought. Usually my conversations with a randomly selected person are something like this:
"Hi." (2 minute gap of silence.) sexy6969 has left the chat.
On occasion, they reply back with "hi" then leave. Rarely, I get me saying "How are you?" and they reply with their name. There's rampant rudeness where people just leave without a second thought. I guess it's because I dress weirdly, which is useful because it drives off idiots not worth my time. They'll see me, assume I'm some weirdo or not interested in Cyber Sex or being krunk online, and ditch for somebody named "Sweetass9669_1990".
I've had some interesting ones. One person claimed to be a fallen angel from god and was there to smite all sinners, which included everybody but herself. Her rant was rampant with contradictions which were solved by claiming "Silence, you're a sinner and I am will cast god's judgement on you."
Another started our brilliant conversation with "SEX SEX SEX SEX."
They act like spazzing epilepsy victims sometimes, pounding out gibberish on their keyboards or repeating motions over and over with no cause or reason, and speaking to them exhibits no response that can be discerned as 'human.' I wonder if it's just the island of deranged howler monkies on PCs again. I tend to run into one of those every so often on the net. It baffles me how they're entirely incapable of understanding what I'm saying, even though we speak the same language.
This one right here though...this took the cake for the month. Try and figure this out.
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| Project help needed |
[20 Oct 2008|09:33pm] |
Come this Tuesday or Wednesday, I need as many people as I can get to play extras in one of my photoshoots.
I plan to do it outside the nearest outside gamestore. There's really nothing required other than a bit of silly acting. I appreciate any help I can get, and I'll try to get people copies when I get the chance.
Post here if you can help.
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| Sonic Chronicles: The Good, the Bad, and the FUGLY. |
[28 Sep 2008|01:21pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 disappointed |
] |
Okay, so I recently got a copy of this game, and I decided to a do a little review for it. Right now I'm past the first "boss" and I've played enough to make a decent analysis of the game.
So here's the break down: Sonic Chronicles takes place after, once again, Eggman has been defeated "for good." Sonic recieves a message that Knuckles has been Kidnapped and so have the chaos emeralds. Bad news, but Sonic makes it a point it's not surprising. The first part involves you running around green hill and fighting. It's an RPG format, with 3D models in 2D environments that vaguely resemble how Sonic Battle was done. Enemies are seen as characters on the world map, allowing you to avoid them if you want too, and rings are placed in classic sonic style around the environment to collect, as well as Chao eggs laid about. They play a part in the battle system.g
The good:
Sonic Chronicles feels like Bioware took on this game with absolutely NO knowledge of the blue blur prior to beginning the project. I say this like a bad thing, but I mean it in a good way. It's almost as if Bioware did research on the internet to find out about him, and used elements of the things they found, rather than Segateam's indepth knowledge of the character and their ability to stylize him in ways we don't appreciate (swords, furry furries...)
On this note, the game ACTUALLY feels slightly more classic than recent games by seateam. Even the new characters, like Rouge, aren't such a brainsore. The way the rings are laid out are cute too. All in a line, like classic games. You even begin in green hill!
The dialog... yes I think this is one of the better aspects. Taking what I said before, Sonic makes alot of jokes that are amusing to the fans. A brief stint about him talking about 'good memories in green hill' prompts tails to remind him: "You mean how Dr. Eggman took our animal friends, shoved them in robots, and pitted them against us?"
Sonic replies "Yep...good memories." There's a choice of how you respond to characters, giving different interactions, but it doesn't really affect the gameplay (as far as I know.)
The battle system... so sorry Tim, you were only half right. The battle system is a turn based, slightly RPG style battle system. However, if you've ever played "Elite Beat Agents" then you can recognize how the reaction system works. Sometimes an enemy attack can be dodged by performing a number of actions with your stylus. This also applies to your character's POW (special) attacks. If you follow the patterns right, you do more damage.
The characters fight with their natural abilities, which I like. Sonic does sonic spins (the old style, not that blue ball shit) Amy uses her hammer, Rouge kicks... I think the battles are kind of fun. Leveling up allows you to learn more moves as well as 'movement abilities' which play a role in the world map.
The other aspect to battles is if the enemies run, you go into a chase sequence which involves jumping boxes, getting boost pads, and grabbing rings. The system isn't bad...
The Bad:
So the battle system is alright, but so far, it feels a tad bit easy. And they haven't used any classic green hill enemies. We get shit like boars, armadillos, and bees...strange, eh?
Using 2D backgrounds and 3D characters just doesn't work very well.
The FUGLY:
GRAPHICAL GLITCHES! God, I can't believe Bioware let the game go with such OBVIOUS flaws going on. The edges of graphcis are rough, the characters go through environment elements, there's graphic glitches here and there...
Just, everything feels rushed and half finished. Especially the opening animations and the art. Everything feels like it was designed by fans at Sheezyart, and that's not an exaggeration.
The models are rather ugly looking... Really, they could have done a much better job. While I like the cartoony art, sometimes it just looks amateur which is kind of shocking.
The SOUND...and not just the music..
Some sounds I like. They used classic game sounds for jumping, speeding up and even collecting rings. The characters don't really talk, which is okay in some senses, but...I don't know. Anything not sonic related feels like they pulled from the online library of sounds. They're ugly and out of place. Some grunts and noises are just...irritating.
When the enemies appear on screen, they make a noise, and it just sounds bad.
The music...or the lack thereof. There's no composure to the music at all. In town is just simple clinks and clanks of some instrument, a single one, that sounds more rough and midi-ish than even old nintendo games. The opening music just sounds garbled.
We're not talking bad music as in "It's his world and life's an open book." It's just plain NOT music...it's ugly noises, so far, and there's no melody to make it catchy. What happened, Bioware? There's so many things off about just the sound alone...I don't understand it.
The rough graphics, poor animation, bad music and sound... I mean, really, this game feels like one huge fangame. It's that unfinished... I wonder personally if I got a beta, because it's just that poor in quality.
Also, it threw me off that they even have an advertisement for a secrets site right in the game...that was kind of tacky.
Also, there's almost no scene transitions. Things jump from one scene to the next, battles begin with no WOOSH or anything. IT goes black, them you're there. And that happens with any other situation there should be a transition.
Really, if more effort had been put into this, it would have ROCKED. I mean, I AM having fun playing the game, but the ugly graphics are like... dating someone who's got a great personality, but their face looks like a train wreck. You just have trouble getting past the looks.
Oh yes, the other thing.... Swatbots.
Yes, SATAM's classic Cyber Soldiers have become enemies in this game...so that reassures me that Bioware looked sonic up on the internet.
I'm gonna keep playing, cause it's actually fun to play. I hope for their sake they do a few things... Have Gemel as a character, make Super Sonic playable before the last boss. Fans have been blood thirsty to rip this game to shreds, and sadly even though I want to give it a good review myself, it's going to be easy for them to rip on Sonic Chronicles.
It could have been great. It really could...they have alot of good ideas, but at the most, it's only going to be 'Eh' and the reviewers are just gonna bash on it. Shame, Bioware...we had high hopes for you.
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