06.29.06
Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Rants, Writing
at 7:29 am
Hey, all– a few minutes here before I head out the door. I have been extremely non-focused these past few days. Bouncing from project to project, doing high-level design and not enough coding, thinking up new stories and not concluding any of the ones I have open, that sort of thing. And of course I never get around to actually doing any of that, because I sit and play CoH or FFXI once I get home. So, hopefully this will spur me to action (I do this every couple of months, and I never seem to commit to it, so no comments about “blah blah blah, you know you’re going to fail, give up”).
So, half an hour of writing once I get up in the morning. I’ve got the time, really, which I tend to spend reading 4chan or some other colossal waste of sensory log space. From June 30 to July 31st, every morning. And I do mean, EVERY morning.
Coding will be done in the evenings, when/if I feel like it. The game is a new project, actually, and it’s going to take a long time. I’d much rather delay starting that than rush through it while balancing fourteen other things at once. Besides, every time I said something was going to be a ‘quick hack job’ in my preliminary notes, I was wrong. Why? Because I’m a dumbass. Also because I still don’t quite get some of the code– owing to that whole ‘balancing fourteen projects’ thing.
I made a milestone in CoH last night– got Ayu up to 20. So, I’ll likely taper off of that for a little bit– or, more likely, concentrate on finishing my push to 50 with my other character. I’m in that ‘dead zone’ between 37 and 40 where my missions aren’t nearly as worth it (getting swarmed by baddies tends to kill the momentum of a mission, and absolutely wrecks the end bonus), and grinding Warburg is getting tedious. However, if/when I get into a good group, missions are much more fun; it’s amazing what the simple act of role-playing can do for a game that’s otherwise kinda repetitive. Which, oddly enough, is probably why I like CoH– it’s the first game I’ve actually done any RP in (any serious RP, anyway– my MUD days are kind of murky in that regard), and when I first fired it up (back around Issue 1 or so) I lost interest because doing RP was damn near impossible for me (still in my ‘too shy to speak’ phase). Starting… huh, just about this time last year, actually, I vowed to do more RP and to get myself to 50. And so here I am, still not at 50, but enjoying the game a LOT more.
Time to hit the road, folks. That smell– the one of decaying Plot– will soon be replaced by burning graphite. Metaphorically, of course. I don’t think graphite actually burns. Meh, whatever. The point is, John must write because he is a slacker!
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06.24.06
Posted in Site News
at 8:11 am
I corrected that pesky “stuff I said was spam appears on the front page” bug– poor theme coding on the part of whoever wrote this theme (ie not me). That’s actually the second bug I’ve had to go in and fix with this, and I got this theme from the WordPress site! I can’t believe nobody else caught this.
In any event, I’ve been doing some more browsing through iTunes and found a couple other shows of interest. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Invader Zim may be relevant to your interests. Zim is relevant to mine, I tells ya. I’m going to have to stop there for the moment because if I keep looking at the stuff available I’ll neglect what I wanted to do all day.
I’ve saved up two days of downloading from Galbadia Hotel, so I’m likely to spend tomorrow doing that. We’ll see; it really depends on if I can use downThemAll with the site.
Just going to take things easy for today. Talk to you folks later.
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06.21.06
Posted in Site News
at 6:27 pm
Just as a little test, I’d like to ask that anyone who’s reading this blog on a regular basis please, PLEASE drop me a line. I just want to know who’s reading, particularly from the family. My e-mail address is john.s.zeitler@gmail.com .
Yeah. More news about the Java engine when I’m not feeling so kicked-in-the-Wiibag.
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06.20.06
Posted in Rants
at 6:33 am
So I was arguing having an animated and vociferous conversation with the sibling unit last night, and it came up that she had recently become hooked by NCIS. My dear, darling little sister, who can’t really stand blood and gore, loves the adventures of Jethro and his wonderful band of ‘THESE are Naval officers?’. She’s particularly entranced by Abby, though I can’t say I blame her. ahem I asked her how she’s been watching, since I know she is usually doing other things at 8pm on Tuesday nights, and she said, “I’ve been buying them with the iTunes cards you give me.”
Wha? The last I’d heard, CBS was the only network steadfastly refusing to sell their hit shows on iTMS. But that was four or five months ago, which is basically an ice age for technology. Sure enough, I pulled up the Store and went down to Video, and there they were. But not just NCIS, no sirree. This glorious yellow bit road to bankruptcy is made of CSI, CSI New York, and Numbers (I refuse to put the stupid l33t-sp34k digits into the title). And while it’s not one I watch, I know that the rest of the forums would be interested to note that CSI Miami is on there.
Now, not all of the episodes for each series– or even all of the seasons– have been made available. I wanted my sis to see the NCIS episode where Tony gives the immortal line, “He did an episode of Trading Spaces with Satan.” But it was not to be found, leading me to believe that either they haven’t finished making them available, or some episodes are still going to be DVD-exclusive. Which, y’know, defeats the purpose of making them available on iTMS. But for my part, I’m thrilled. And my wallet cries in despair, knowing only the torment of being stretched even further beyond its limit.
Or something equally Goth that Abby would like. ANYWAY.
Much to do today. I’m probably going to start working on cross-development of the game system soon; I want to concentrate my work on one section at a time, but for right now my attention is split between three parts (mapping/collision detection, graphics engine, and event processing). Those are the three major pieces I need to get any general game functioning; I suppose depending on how development goes this week I can actually have something to show off next weekend.
Incidentally, the NetBeans IDE rocks heavily, steadily, and mightily. I can’t believe it’s the ‘base’, ‘free’ IDE for Java.
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06.18.06
Posted in Anime, Gaming, Rants, Site News
at 8:37 am
“…and if you ain’t got ‘em, then you’ve hit rock-bottom.” –Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Smoke ‘Em
I’m gonna be honest here, folks. This is the lowest I’ve been in a long time. My biggest problem to this point has always been money, and the poor management thereof. Fortunately, with this new job comes a bit more inflow than before; I’m not taking this as an opportunity to blow it all irresponsibly, as I have before, but rather as a way to set things right and prevent me from getting to this point again. I’m calling this my Stabilization Phase– the time I’m using to get back on my feet and profitable again.
The thing is, whether I’ve explicitly said anything or not, it’s affected me. I’ve become humorless and depressed, and I’ve neglected other things which I shouldn’t have just because I needed to distract myself from my troubles without actually doing anything. It’s been a struggle to do any writing for Incon these past couple weeks, but hopefully I’ll be changing that soon.
I’m taking a little bit of time away from Netjak due to a lack of ability to review anything new, owing to time constraints (I have a LOT of work to do before I can get to a point where I can buy games again, so I’m occupying myself with stuff that doesn’t cost to use). Unfortunately, without anything to review, going to that site is too much of a temptation, so I’ve decided to just disappear from there until I’m out of the Stabilization Phase.
Also, this means that Otakon will not be happening this year, due to extremely poor planning on my part. I’m sorry, folks, but if I had smart enough to take this approach when I started my LAST job I would be able to go this one. Instead, I blew my big trip on E3 and I still haven’t entirely recovered from that (but I will this week). I comfort myself in the fact that Tekkoshocon was close by, and that I did get to go to at least one anime con this year; then again, that does absolutely NOTHING for you guys, who I’ve let down. Please accept my deepest apologies and know that I’m going to start saving for Otakon 07, in cash, with paycheck number one.
As for what I’ve been doing, I’ve had Java on the brain for the past week, in addition to making the most of my newly-rediscovered FFXI account. (Yeah, I know, I really ought to eliminate either that or CoH, but you know what? My budget does allow for them, and I’m 90% sure I can afford their upkeep costs. So yeah.) My big goal in terms of coding the often-rumored game is to create a sprite engine. That’s actually influencing some of my decisions in game design; the game engine will be considered ‘complete’ once I’m able to code a Pac-Man clone, and then I can move on to extending it for my real goal (a console-style RPG, probably to show off as a technical demo at GDC to see about getting a job in The Industry, or at the very least, selling the game engine and concept/story to A Studio and reaping the rewards). Actually, the way the engine is shaping up, it could possibly be used for any type of game, from a basic maze game to an action-RPG like what I have in mind. My pipe dream is to get the game ported to the DS– pfft, yeah, like that’s going to happen.
It might seem counterintuitive to write a game in Java, but there are a few factors to consider: First, I know Java and I don’t know C++. (They’re similar, yes, but C++ has all that mucking about with pointers and memory and all that.) Secondly, Java has a decent and usable API for graphics (all right, so AWT might not exactly be ‘decent’, but it’s usable), whereas C++ doesn’t outside of DirectX, and DirectX means no cross-platform capabilities (which is one of my major goals for the game– it has to compile and run under both Windows and OS X; if it’s cross-platform, it can be ported to consoles, or at the very least might be able to work with download-game services like XBLA or Virtual Console; come to think of it, I’d love it if VC had ‘Java VM’ as one of its options but I’m not holding my breath). Finally, I like Java. I’m all for the proliferation of Java as a desktop application language because of the simplicity of bringing people together. Java can bridge the gap between Windows and Mac, between PC and Console, can do a lot of really neat stuff. It just needs half a chance.
Don’t expect anything usable on the game front for a while. I still need to get the sprite engine to, y’know, display sprites instead of text placeholders. Hell, I need to get it out of text mode to begin with. Once it gets to that point, it’s going to have some fancy tricks like layered activity and transparency. The tech demo will show off a little bit of this. Like I said, it’s a ways off, but it’s now officially on the radar again.
I’ve also figured out what my NaNo for ‘06 could be– it’ll be the novella describing the story of the game. Of course, since I have no idea what type of RPG I want to write, it’s safe to assume that I reserve the right to change this.
I’ve really gone outside of the scope of this rant, but the point is I have enough to keep me busy and happy for the duration of my poverty. I may even come away with something more valuable than just money– a good game to my name.
Wish me luck, folks. I intend to write more and more often, but for now this is it.
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06.09.06
Posted in Anime, Site News, Writing
at 2:47 pm
Mount Graham: Being in Arizona and named Mount Graham has got to suck. It’s probably right between Mount Honey and Mount Peanut Butter. What I wanna know is where Mount Big Freaking Glass of Milk is.
The Equalizer: You’re not going to find a guy like that on TV these days. Or if you are you’re going to have to deal with the knockoffs– the Splendaizer, the Sweet’N'Low Soldier, or my personal favorite, The Aspartame Assassin.
Venice Gardens, Florida: Anyone else come here and expect old people playing shuffleboard on gondolas? I’m a little disappointed, myself.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood (yes, this really did come up on random): Did you know they had a Greatest Hits album? Isn’t that a little superfluous? Or maybe pluralizing it was hopeful. Actually, it kinda works. The album produces a really awesome array of shrapnel once it hits the wall.
Slacklining: n. The time in between coming home from work and doing various house chores in which no real work is actually done. “I managed to get to Level Seven during my slacklining on Thursday.”
Gun Safety: This guy I know is really scared of his guns. He was so worried he’d accidentally hurt someone that when he was being held up, the mugger had to help him turn the safety off.
Work: n. An accurate way of measuring the Theory of Relativity.
Tops Friendly Markets: I remember the commercials for these back when I was little. Some really phony pop group singing “Tops Never Stops Saving You More”. I always changed the last little bit. “Tops Never Stops Ripping You Off”… “We’ll Never Stop Pimping Your Store”… “We’ll Never Stop Being Corp. Whores”.
Leopard Tortiose: I firmly believe that whoever named this animal was high. ‘Cause you have to be really messed up to think that applying the word ‘Leopard’ to a damn slow-ass turtle sounds good.
Sir Dick Franks (this really makes its own joke, but you pays your money and you takes your chances): I am firmly committed to discussing Dick Franks. I will ask hard questions about Dick Franks; won’t throw Dick Franks any softballs; will drive the point home about Dick Franks. Actually, come to think of it, Dick Franks sounds like what they sell on street corners in the Amazon village.
If you like what you’ve seen and think you have a good topic for a joke, it’ll only cost you a dollar:
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Posted in Anime, Site News, Writing
at 1:54 pm
Hi, folks.
I swore to you a very long time ago that I would never ask for money on this site unless it was for a good cause. Well, I still stand by that promise. See? It’s right there. Comes up to about my knee.
The thing is, though, I’m flat broke. Which makes going to Otakon on August 4th, 2006 more than a little tricky. So I propose an interesting solution. I call it ‘Buck-A-Joke’. Basically, pay me a dollar and I’ll write a short joke about any topic you suggest. It’s guaranteed to be unique, guaranteed to be about whatever you suggest, and guaranteed to be funny– to my sense of humor, at least. Your mileage, as always, may vary.
Now, I’m going to be completely honest here. You may or may not think that the joke I send to you– I’m looking to do the writing nightly– is funny. That’ll disappoint me, of course, but unfortunately I’ll have to say that you get what you pay for– and to be completely honest, you’re only out what, a buck? I know, I know, it is your buck, after all, but for the cost of a gallon of gas, you can get three jokes which I certainly hope will make you laugh as you take the bus. Still, isn’t enough to know that in some small way you’re helping out a struggling writer find his way to a glorious land of milk and catgirls? Won’t you please think of the catgirls the struggling writer?
Anyway, I’m toying with the idea of doing longer setups for more money– let’s say, a Reader’s Digest-length anecdote (100-250 words) for $5. But for now, I think we’ll see how Buck-A-Joke works out. This is a limited-time offer, folks– I’m only going to keep this open until July 23rd.
It’s certainly not fair of me to suggest that you leap into this sight unseen. So, in the next post, I’m going to go ahead and take ten random Wikipedia articles and write quick jokes about them, gratis.
If you want to go ahead and take the leap, you can toss me a buck via Paypal:
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