Teaching!
Wahoo! I get to teach web design this summer. I'm totally psyched on that, I really do enjoy HTML/CSS stuff in all it's uber-pickiness. Lesse, I have a small site up that displays my current prowess at design. It looks rather pretty so far... in Firefox... don't look at it in IE! Please! ...hehe, I love transparency.
White rose
Here's an image I did pretty recently, had a bunch of fun with it... I might do a bit more for it later.
Newer screenshots, with shaders!
I finally implemented shaders in my engine! They're pretty cool looking... normal mapping and specular highlights... but there's still a bit of a problem with lighting. Cool nonetheless. But anyhow, here's screens of the exact same engine as below, with a few rather small modifications. Most of the stuff that's visible was actually done within a week or two after the semester finished. I also got a photobucket account! Photobucket's pretty cool...
End of semester!
Alright! Semester is finally over! Now I can resume my coding for Ferria. I created a -lot- of really nice code this semester, including a very functional world editor. The vast majority of this code will be reusable, so everything is feeling pretty awesome for this summer.
Also... if anyone is actually reading this blog... that wasn't me in the last post. That was Neko-chan, my one and only; so you may see some of her thoughts/works on here in the future. n_n
Intro screen! Artwork by a classmate...
Ingame footage! XD a bunch of placeholder images... but fairly satisfying to look at.
There's actually combat and stuff, in all of it's Final Fantasy style glory... but it's in deep need of a lot more work
Welcome me...perhaps? (Mwahaha, I have taken over!)
I am the new one! I am taking over the world slowly, and slowly!
This is step one! To take over this blog! Tweak a little here later...Pinch there...Move this over there and here.
WA LA!
Well, almost. We'll see later.
Anyway, Hello. I'm ah... Well how to introduce myself. I'm the other use now going to be using this journal due to some personal and social reasons which, depending on my leader (...leader *snicker*) will inform the willing.
On the more personal side, i'm the female, the older, and the cuter (psh), one of us. Also! The one who is helping him somewhat work, though i'm more of the artistic creative one. Programming is such a weak point of mine. Moving on.
Ahhh... School is almost over and now I can work on an AMV for the upcoming convention. Hum, I so need to work on that as the cut-off date of submission is the 15th.
Onward!
(Who the hell am I? Call me Neko.)
Firebird
Here's a quick wallpaper I did... it's not the best I've done 'cause it was a tad rushed... but I think it turned fairly well regardless. ( This was originally from a sketch I did in my psych class... )
When the semester's over, (very soon) I'll post screenies of TFLoS... it's coming along quite well since I posted screens of it last.
Planet Textures!
Well, it seems my artistic muse has woken up again... I think I go in cycles, some months I'm creative/artistic, and other months I'm all code. So! this is near the start of my creative cycle. I re-discovered a wonderful site for planet textures, they're completely free to use for just about anything, and they're frikkin huge O.o. So I spent my free time today with that stuff...
Today I also went to see The Last Mimzy with Neko-chan. It wasn't the best movie I've seen this year, but it was certainly quite enjoyable. If I was still into writing, or I wanted -another- game setting, I'd almost definitely draw from it. As it is, it might provide inspiration for a drawing or two, or perhaps some fun to play around with before I fall asleep. Sci-fi scenarios like that are always pretty cool. Then after that, we went home, ate, played chess/other stuff, and watched some anime... fun stuff, n_n very satisfying day.
Not perfect by far, I know... I'm gonna work on it more tomorrow, sleep calls ;)
Today!
First! I must say, this little comic made my night quite cool. I haven't experienced Vista firsthand for incredibly extended periods of time, but I have had it on my laptop for a while (I had to re-install XP around that time... for an unrelated reason, I think... which broke my Vista install >.<) but from what I've heard from just about -everyone-, I'd have to agree. Today! err... yesterday, I spent mostly drawing. I colored line-art from applegeeks.com, and drew a piece or two of my own.... I completely forgot what else I was gonna say...
Yeah, not mine, I just colored it... it's from applegeeks. ( hawk is a frikkin awesome artist )
TFLoS
Alright! My current project is called TFLoS: KotWoQfP (short for
The Final Legend of Scrolls: Knights of the World of Quests for Princesses) which is not only a parody on a number of different games, but also a parody on a person or two in our classes. The game concept was not my making, but rather, my friend Antonio's, who is also leading the project. It's a class project again, but this one is actually one we can potentially finish, mainly because it's a 2D game.
So at the start of the semester, we were considering using Torque to build TFLoS, however, Torque sucks, and we all know it... I quickly modified my now awesome Game Engine to support 2D graphics such as would be used in a 2D game. I also tacked on a lot to the UI and the scripting system, which are now incredibly wonderful; virtually all UI stuff is script based.
Here's the entry screen, which demonstrates that this isn't just a pansy 2D engine... (The text is actually a rotating 3D model)
Here's a screen of the current game loop... there's not a whole lot in it yet... (the grey cubes are actually animated! n_n I just put that in today)
And here's a quick screen of the frikkin awesome world editor!
Bringing a game this far along is actually quite healthy for my game engine, I've added lots and lots of cool code to it just to get here. Progress! When I get back to Ferria, I'll be all set!
Wallpaper
Alright, alright... not -quite- yet for those screenshots... This is a widescreen wallpaper I made for myself using Blender and Photoshop last night, I really love Blender...
Ooh ya! And I really love the png format too n_n
Sound!
I am incredibly happy... it's wonderful when I can simply write code for a day and actually see the results of it at the end. I spent today putting sound effects into my engine, using OpenAL. It was about as easy as I figured it would be n_n and incredibly satisfying to hear. All I need right now is to code in support for streaming audio O.o
Screenshots later! I promise... (2D project, so don't get too excited yet...)
Hello again!
It's been... 7 months since my last post? A very long time, whatever it is. Lots of stuff has changed! Lets start with.. new semester! I officially graduated from High School and am going to CPCC full time. Most of my classes are iNet based, so I only really have to be there on tue/wed/thu, but I go just about every day now. Reason for that is the people.
I finally found a home in a group of people here, collectively I think of us as SAGES, since we all participate in a club by that name. We got together sometime before Christmas, and we added a few people since then. Shortly after the Spring semester started though, lots of drama started happening. A girl named Dee joined us, and had a stomach ulcer among many other things; she was (In my opinion) the spark on a tank of gas that's been burning pretty much since then. So we have... a love triangle, a stalker or two, deception, and misunderstanding. But overall, it seems to have turned out for the better.
Yeah, and I fell in love. I broke up with Beliuzka last year and fell in love... Neko-chan is now the top of my life, (she speaks english! so awesome...) and has made me incredibly happy. Just because of her, this year has already become my best year yet.
Next post! Advances in my code... there's plenty of them. I'm not gonna post quite yet, I need to save something for the 'morrow.
Torque
I've been spending a lot of time lately with Torque. Evidently, Microsoft's new XNA studio will somehow use Torque as it's game engine, so our school made a good choice for using toque to teach. If you haven't heard about XNA, it's a development tool that lets you create games for the PC and the 360... at least, that's what I got from what I've read. The beta version comes out the 30th of this month, se we'll see then.
Other than Torque, I made some slight progress with my own code... I've been switching over to a new system of object management, and the base code is all in place. I just need to write the application specific stuff, and I'll be all set; stuff will be really easy. But I'm gonna be incredibly busy, I doubt I'll have enough time for it :( Farhad produces ideas faster than I can finish them off, but I'll get there...
Dells....
Ugh, I hate dell computers, they bundle so much extra software with the OS, it's ridiculous. Thank goodness I decided against getting one... My girlfriend just got a laptop, a dell inspiron, and it has at least five different windows that pop up when you log in. None of these applications have the link from the Start-Programs-Startup menu, you have to go into msconfig in order to turn them off. It's pretty stupid to sell computers laggy... but hey, you can't tell when you buy them online, so I guess they can get away with it.
Speaking of my girlfriend, she's going back to Venezuela this tuesday :'( It's been almost a year now since I first met her... ah well, at least it gives me extra time for schoolwork.
Dark Messiah
Well, I downloaded the game and tried it out... and I definitely would like to buy it when it comes out. As I suspected, since it uses the HL2 engine, th emaps are BSP based, which means it's map based. No vast landscapes and endless fields filled with innumerable objects, NPCs and monsters. But on the plus side of that, the action is faster, and the graphics are incredible. Combat was great, I just wish I could have done some knife throwing in the demo... The poses were a tad silly too, but I think I'll study those and put them in my game ;) It was a really cool demo, so if you can wait throught the download, you might want to try it...
Summer's over, and the fun begins...
Summer has finally ended, and I now have a bit of free time. I got straight 'A's in my college classes, and the classes I've been teaching are also finished... I have a very full semester ahead of me, I have 5 CPCC classes (15 credit hours) and a few more at home, and I'll be a lab facilitator/teaching assistant there. I love being smart. Getting payed for helping out in Simulation and Game Development classes is awesome.
By the way... My computer got struck by lightning last weekend, It won't turn on anymore. So I bought an awesome laptop with the money I aquired over the summer, let's see, dual core at 1.66 Ghz, 2 Gb RAM, 120 GB hard drive, one of those cool CD/DVD drives that cars have, and an ATI x1400. It's great, I can run HL2 (deathmatch) with full settings, and it barely flinches. So yeah, life's great right now, except that I still have to recover some of my less important files (my important ones have sooo many backups, it's almost funny ;)
A Cool Game
Here's a cool game I saw, it looks really awesome. One nifty thing I noticed about it was that it used the Source engine, whichi is interesting because this is an RPG. Anyhow, the demo came out 2 days ago, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, (only a 1.5 Gb download) The name is Dark Messiah, Might and Magic, something like that.
Here's a trailer for it, mind you it's a tad gory... heads flying around and such.
Blender 2.42
Blender finally released the next version. This one has some very nice new features because of the Orange project (aka Elephants Dream, the first open movie). The coolest new feature is the materials, which look so much better from the preview window. However, my favorite modification was for the UV mapping. Their unwrapper is now soooo much better, they no longer come out lopsided and squished together, they're symetrical ;) At last they've released a version that I actually want to switch to. I can say goodbye to 2.37... and... re-write my export scripts... Okay, so maybe 2.37 isn't gone all the way quite yet for me.
Gary Tonge
I've been very impressed with the work this guy does for a long time. I first saw his work about a year ago, it's incredible. I almost always use his paintings as my desktops these days, when my own start to bore me. Check it out, it's cool...
And another one...
I just finished up a door model, which works pretty well with the houses.
