Driver’s License!

(Started writing on September 1st, so this first part when I mention “today” is for September 1st. Beyond the more line is written in present tense as in today.)

I would consider today to be one of the best days of my life. I finally got a dang driver’s license I have been waiting SO long for! Well I got it, already drove the PT Cruiser once just by myself. My mother got a new car today also so I probably will be driving the PT Cruiser for awhile. It’s a nice little car, works for me. The driving test wasn’t too hard. In general, I’ve driven so much and waited so long since I got my permit that it was all casual and nothing was surprising. I even parked perfectly which was a first. I was so scared when I did the 3-point turn as if you can’t stay in the lines and cones you failed and it’s quite tight, but luckily I didn’t fail (I practiced it like 20 times beforehand).

So now I just need car insurance. When my father told me the price of it, my jaw almost dropped (Which it almost never does), that’s a LOT of money, I feel sorry he has to pay that much to insure me, myself. It was quite fun driving by myself, I loved it. I said to myself, “I’m finally free!” finally part of the real world in a sense. I guess the next big thing I can look forward in my steps through life is college. Until then, probably the feeling and intensity of today won’t come by very often.

(Read more for everything else that happened to me since my last post)

Welcome to August…School…Yes…

So, this morning I promised to myself I would make a post. Yes, I’m still alive, living fairly well, and doing things on a daily basis, but haven’t gotten much chance (Or have been too lazy) to post on here. It’s usually easier for me to work from the most recent things to the furthest back events that are in my head, so it’s time to start.

First off, I have rejoined Fiesta for a third time. Sheesh, when am I gonna stop? But that’s beside the point, explained further below, Warinthestar has convinced me to start playing and doing things that I was doing 2 years ago. Man has it really been that long? Ah yeah, it has. So just yesterday, my cleric on Teva has reached Level 67, and I’m telling you, it doesn’t get easier. Joined guild SoulReaver, Warinthestar’s current guild, looks pretty fun, I’ll tell you that. So I guess I’m back to Fiesta.

Next up, as you may know, Warinthestar originally was an admin on the Twilight Server for the game BZFlag. Well guess what? I’m back to playing that too! (Now a third time also) So let’s see, Twilight has changed its global groups to TWILIGHT.SRADMIN, TWILIGHT.ADMIN, and TWILIGHT.COP, as in we’re in TWILIGHT.SRADMIN, and TWILIGHT.ADMIN is now for the original Jr. Admins. We’re trying to recruit old members from our past times playing Twilight, found Saber and boresnake who still get on every once in awhile. Twilight now runs 5 servers, 4 of them public including: Twilight Main Server, Party Time Server, Jumping Skillz Server, and BZSports Server. The private one is the Twilight Test Server. Also, we have started a new site on my http://sigonasr2.servegame.org server with my newfound web-designing skills I gained over the summer, we created a nice looking site and forum fairly easily. Check it out at http://twilight.servegame.org, and please join if you’re interested.

(Read onward for stuff that happened further back.)

My March Post

So, here is the start of my March post. I guess I have alot of cleaning up to do from last month, so let’s see how hard this’ll be. I’ll start with the hard and emotional stuff.

First off, I may get my comp taken away due to grades, so this might be my last post for a month (which would suck) but I deserve it…. I guess. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say it’s a big amount of grounding for something small.

Second, I think I have a problem with BZFlag. I’ll keep it as simple as that, but my ethics and morals on there have been like wiped out. Some of you that are on BZFlag and have seen me recently can probably relate. I can’t say I’m sorry to you guys, because I’m not…I can’t play BZFlag for fun anymore and now I’m going on just to tease people which is jerkish and bi###y, but I just don’t know…I should probably just uninstall BZFlag, forget it for good before I do something horrible.

[EDIT: As of August 2009 The scratched out phrase does not apply anymore. I play the game as-is and have fun. No more worries, sorry about typing that up in the first place, sometimes I hate myself.]

Thirdly, I lost the game.  What is the game you ask? Well, the goal of the game is not to think about the game, when you think about the game, you lose the game, and you have to acknowledge that you lost the game by saying “I lost the game” out loud, or in an IM conversation you’re having with someone. You can never win the game because when you try to make someone think about the game to make them lose the game, you think about the game and you lose the game. And now that you know what the game is, you are playing the game, and you have already lost the game. You then have 30 minutes to clear your mind of the game, before you can lose the game again. Today so far, I have lost the game 14 times including just now, which is typical for half the day gone (I keep records of how many times I lose the game each day). You lose the game more when you play the game.

Fourthly, Fighter’s Field 3D is almost out, but if I get grounded, it won’t be released on April 1st, but on May 1st. :\
Check out http://z-gamers.net and http://forum.z-gamers.net for more info on what’s going on.

Eh, I’ll stop with the starting phrases, but that’s all I can think of. I had alot more to say but I just had a mind sweep. Ugh, writer’s block, now I’m just writing whatever comes to my head. Eh, whatever, I can’t think when I am not in the good mood, so I guess this is it to the post. :\ I can’t believe I can’t think right now, I had this very long post planned out that would take about 10 minutes to read, but now I got nothing. Well, I should stop typing because this is just stupid…Bye.

Missing Out On a Whole Month

So, this is my first blog post I am putting on here for January 2009, and it will probably be my only one. Well, first off, Happy Late New Year to everyone I’ve made my New Year’s Resolution, and I hope you did too and have started this year off great.

 

To get things moving quickly, I’ll start off by talking about the biggest things that have happened during this month from January 1^st.

 

My year started off pretty exciting with me getting Spore and Sparkcash for Christmas. The game Spore is a computer game where you create your own creature and go on a vast adventure through time as your creature evolves through the 5 essential stages to become a futuristic intelligent society. I found the game to be very fun and have reached the Space Stage (Like most people). I’m sure if you had read other Spore reviews then you already do know this and do not need a whole new review, so I will not go into any details but I just wanted to mention that it is very fun.

 

Sparkcash is the currency used in the game Fiesta when you pay real life money to get Sparkcash. Now, you may find that it is very dumb to spend real money on an online game (I know the feeling, and I’ve been waiting forever for this) and you know, you’re right, it is a dumb game to be wasting real life money on but I guess if I’m happy then I do not mind (Of course everyone says that). I’m pretty sure if you played Fiesta for almost half a year now, you may be interested in getting Sparkcash. Sparkcash is now found at Target stores conveniently in Sparkcash cards of $10 and $25 values. You get a little more than 17,000 Sparkcash with a $25 card.

 

So, those cover the things that happened since Christmas. Now then, recently I have been reading more science fiction books. I did finish the Rama series and must say I really liked the series. Here I quickly rate each book from the series with a short summary of why I rated it that.

 

Rendezvous with Rama: 6/10 – So, this book was all about exploring a ship, with some life that doesn’t interact with the crew very much. Basically sets the stage for the rest of the books.

 

Rama II: 8/10 – This is where the real action starts. The crew that is talked about through the rest of the Rama series is revealed. About a quarter of the book is spent on Earth, then the rest of the book is mainly most of the crew escaping Rama, and then leaving Nicole, Richard, and O’Toole stranded in Rama.

 

Garden of Rama: 9/10 – This book is when all of the kids that Nicole has with Richard and O’Toole are born. I love how the book starts off with Nicole writing about the events that happened in the spaceship. This is where they meet The Eagle and finally start understanding what is happening. They set up what the City of Rama will look like, and now I see where the places from the final book come into play.

 

Rama Revealed: 10/10 – The final book in the series is full of action, romance, and stories all wrapped up in this book to make it probably the biggest and best book in the whole series. Everything gets wrapped up very logically and it’s very hard to get a story to close that’s this complicated so well. All the events that have happened in the previous books now have a large role in the whole story.

 

So there are my personal ratings for that series.

 

Upon Liberalphie’s (Name of friend from Fiesta) / Warinthestar’s (Name of friend from BZFlag) recommendation, he suggested I read The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. So I picked up the book and read the first chapter, then I stored it away for maybe half the week. I didn’t like the first chapter but then I thought, heck might as well see if I can figure out what’s so great about this book and I continued to read it. I soon figured out the whole story and was reading it through. Within the week I have finished the book and I love it.

 

The Andromeda Strain: 8/10 – The book was a cool experience. The concept of a virus from space was interesting and how it created the mysteries of the two survivors kept the plot going through most of the book. I loved how the laboratory was set up with 5 floors, each floor a more secured area. The only bad thing about this book was the ending which I did not like. It made logical sense, but it sure seemed boring. If you didn’t understand science and how strains worked, you may have thought that there would be a sequel or something like that. I just felt kind of disappointed by the ending.

 

As you know, I’ve read most of the books of Arthur C. Clarke after I got recommended to read those, so I did. Well, since I got recommended to read one of Michael Crichton’s books, I decided to start getting involved in more of his books. I just finished The Sphere, another great book by him. Fantastic, I loved it completely.

 

The Sphere: 9.5/10 – Fantastic book. I loved the characters in the book, they talked about how exciting or unexciting the adventure underwater will be, and I never thought the underwater environment would be so harsh. The Sphere that was introduced was so interesting too, the secret messages from what eventually became known as Jerry. This book was interesting from page 1 to page whatever the end was, but it was a great book. All the characters were so realistic with different developed attitudes. And because of this, the whole book was kept very interesting. Why didn’t it get a 10? Because, again, I thought the ending of this book kind of was bad. They just completely forgot about their power, never to use it again. I think I’m starting to see a pattern with Michael Crichton’s books. The endings resolve everything.

 

So what am I reading now? I am reading The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton. I’m almost halfway into it, very interesting so far. In my next post I’ll review the book too.

 

Enough about the book stuff. My birthday party is in 2 days and I cannot wait. (And my birthday’s on a Saturday this year )

 

Fighter’s Field 3D – Yes yes, the long awaited wait is almost over. When I release this, fighter’s field will be so much different. (Ok, maybe not completely but it’ll be funner [Yes, that is not a work{At least I don't think so}])

 

Here’s some of the features of this new version.

 

Class Split at Class Upgrade Lv40. You will be able to choose from two class splits once you reach level 40 and have completed Class Upgrade II. By doing this, you get split through class and your skills and stats will differ when you reach higher levels. This allows you to slightly customize your build some more once you reach this point in the game.

 

New Areas! Yes, lots of new areas. New places to explore, new challenges to face. The abyss, snowy areas, and more await you in this new release!

 

New Bosses! Each area will now contain a boss room, where you can challenge your strength and try to conquer the strongest there is in Fighter’s Field land. These bosses require endurance and lots of time to defeat and they will cast skills too.

 

Status Effects! Enemies now can poison, stun, and fear you, making your adventures more harder than before.

 

CPU PVP! Ever wanted to challenge another player playing Fighter’s Field, but I haven’t decided to make it online yet? Well, this will simulate this in that you can vs. a player of your choice to try and defeat! The higher level the player is, the more gold you could win if you defeat it. Even though it is a CPU, it’ll be able to use all the class’s skills that it has, and any HP and MP potions it contains. If you defeat the player, you get 50x(diflevel+5) gold, where diflevel is the difference between their level and yours. (You can do “fun matches”) if the player you vs. is 6 or more levels lower than you.

 

New Armor, Weapons, and Inventory! There will now be an official inventory for Fighter’s Field 3D. You will be able to view all your items from a simple interface, and use, equip, get rid of, or just see your items in general.

 

Everything’s 3D!!! Just the big change from 2D to 3D required lots of changes to the game engine, and now that it is almost complete, there will be drastic changes in the game play and game style you were used to in the 2D version!

 

And finally, New GUI! The login screen, class selection screen, stats view areas, and other things have been modified so that everything can be seen more clearly and better!

 

With all these great features to look forward to, make sure you look out for this version coming soon to computers near you!!!

 

Ok, I’m almost done here, now as you know, I use messengers so I talk to my friends a lot. Well, here’s two conversations that I thought were really fun and I had to show online. You decide whether they’re cool of not, but otherwise, here they are.

 

Joshua and Robert Talking:

 

…
(10:56:38 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I do not know
(10:56:55 PM) Robert Irwin: why not just say i don’t know
(10:57:03 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I don’t know
(10:57:14 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Can’t focus much at night
(10:57:25 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I am brain dead
(10:57:32 PM) Robert Irwin: so i noticed
(10:58:04 PM) Robert Irwin: wait if your brain dead…
(10:58:13 PM) Robert Irwin: and your still typing…
(10:58:28 PM) Robert Irwin: then that would mean you would have to be…
(10:58:29 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I must have some brain working, yes
(10:58:49 PM) Robert Irwin: A ZOMBIEEEEE!!!!!!!!
(10:58:57 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I am not dead
(10:59:03 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I am only brain dead
(10:59:17 PM) Robert Irwin: but part of you is still dead
(10:59:27 PM) Robert Irwin: you are the living dead
(10:59:35 PM) Robert Irwin: therefore you are a zombie
(10:59:39 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: okay.
(11:00:02 PM) Robert Irwin: you stay away from my brains!!!!
(11:00:10 PM) Robert Irwin: you zombie you!
(11:00:25 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Maybe so, according to dictionary.com, zombie could be
a person whose behavior or responses are wooden, listless, or seemingly rote; automaton.
(11:01:42 PM) Robert Irwin: according to mythology a zombie is a person who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket
(11:02:01 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Okay Robert.
(11:02:01 PM) Robert Irwin: and they’re dead too
(11:02:10 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: I can sound like a computer Robert.
(11:02:21 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: An auto-response mechanism that responds to text commands
(11:02:44 PM) Robert Irwin: so now you are a computer zombie who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket
(11:03:04 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Sure Robert. I am a computer zombie who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket.
(11:03:15 PM) Robert Irwin: k
(11:04:02 PM) Robert Irwin: this is starting to sound like something you would read on bash huh
(11:04:15 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: no Robert, it is not
(11:04:25 PM) Robert Irwin: k
(11:04:35 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: bash is a computer programming code created for the unix command line
(11:04:47 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: you may however Robert, be referring to a humor website called http://bash.org
(11:04:54 PM) Robert Irwin: yes
(11:05:13 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: If this http://bash.org is what you speak of Robert, then yes Robert, this may be something you read on http://bash.org
(11:05:30 PM) Robert Irwin: @$$#*!&
(11:05:43 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Invalid Syntax : Please try again
(11:06:20 PM) Robert Irwin: 692251 x 8 =
(11:06:35 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: 5538008
…

(11:09:19 PM) Robert Irwin: wait so you have to go in ten minutes
…
(11:10:41 PM) Robert Irwin: ZOMBIE auto-response unit
…
(11:11:32 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: According to previous definition, a zombie, a person who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket, would not be me, as I do not fit these characteristics Robert, therefore I am not a
ZOMBIE auto-response unit
(11:12:41 PM) Robert Irwin: hello
(11:12:45 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Hello Robert.
(11:13:18 PM) Robert Irwin: why is this zombie auto-response unit not zombie auto-responding
(11:14:30 PM) Robert Irwin: hey what is your news article on for world history
(11:14:34 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: It may be due to the factoid that I am not a ZOMBIE auto-response unit which was stated using the definition zombie earlier, which was, a person who terrorizes the local village by preying on their young and sucking the brain matter right out of their skulls through the eye socket according to you, which meant that I was not a zombie auto-response unit. Therefore with this inference, I cannot be a zombie auto-responding unit auto-responding
(11:15:34 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: World History is a topic in itself, usually due to educational purposes. However you may be referring to the recipient Joshua Sigona which you can address if you need to ask something specific to this client.
(11:16:33 PM) Robert Irwin: you could be a rusty cyborg with a human brain for cannibalism of the brain and then you would be a zombie and a person and an auto-response unit at the same time
(11:17:13 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: You speak of these things without commen logical sense Robert. Please elaborate or evaluate your response.
(11:19:24 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Joshua Sigona, a client is trying to contact you directly, the recipient, Robert. Would you like to accept contact with this client?

(11:19:50 PM) Robert Irwin: if you were a cyborg you would be a robot and a person at the same time which would mean that you could be an auto-response unit and a human and still terrorize the local village at the same time but you would have to be decomposing slightly at least to be considered the living dead so the rust would be the decomposition on this part and yes i would accept
(11:20:24 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Error : Cannot process two commands at once. Please re-evaluate your previous command.
(11:21:02 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Joshua Sigona, a client is trying to contact you directly, the recipient, Robert. Would you like to accept contact with this client?
(11:21:21 PM) Robert Irwin: yes
(11:21:36 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Output Accepted. Transmitting Input.
(11:21:40 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Hey Robert…lol

 

Joshua and Michael Talking:

 

(8:29:29 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: so how many days are you behind?
(8:29:35 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: 12
(8:30:03 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: …
(8:30:10 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: procrastination to the max
(8:30:34 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: if procrastination was a class, you would pass with flying colors
(8:30:52 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: Great, where do I sign up
(8:31:27 PM) lemons.mike@gmail.com: Well…. I would have the forms for you to sign up but I have been putting off on making them
(8:31:43 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: XDXD
(8:32:37 PM) Joshua / Sidaphela: ahah, that’s something for my blogDid you know that I am posting this using Microsoft Word 2007? I recently got Microsoft Office 2007 recently and I love it. It has all the great features from previous versions of Office, but now you get them in neat little ribbons with all the functions and even extra features. Some may argue that compared to previous versions of office that using a ribbon is hard and that they were used to normal submenus. Well, once you get used to the interface you will love it too. I give the program a rating of 10/10, good job Microsoft!

 

Ok, that is pretty much it for now. I will start posting more regularly in February. So, hope to see you all then!

Happy December!

So, it’s that time of year again, time to bring out the christmas trees, lights, and whatever, but I’m just glad it’s almost 2009. One of my favorite numbers if 9, so 2009 is a year I am looking forward to.

Anyways, enough of that, if you haven’t noticed, I haven’t made a single post in three weeks! It seems that I am quite lazy and procrastinate longer and longer to type it up, and now that I am taking the time to type up one long blog post, I have to include everything I originally wanted to say. So let’s back up about 2 weeks ago to Sunday, November 23rd. So what’s so special about this date? Well, this day was when I got the chance to do 2 saxophone solos for my church group. It was very fun, I enjoyed it, the crowd enjoyed it, and I didn’t realize I had such a passion for Saxophone. I guess it’s just that I never play it much, so I never see how fun it could be, but after this event, my views on playing the Eb Alto Saxophone has changed.

So then we head into the week of Nov. 23~29th. So we had school for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, pretty normal, but then Thursday until today, we had Thanksgiving Break. Had a good Thanksgiving, as usual, ate a bunch, then started work on an interesting concept developed by Z-Gamer member XSkulls. Fighter’s Field 3D. Now, if you’ve been following Fighter’s Field, I recently released the long-awaited version 0.3 which includes 5 new skills for each class, and the level cap being lv39. I am lv37 right now, but that’s beside the point. So I have worked hard over the past few days, and here’s some beta screenies of what Fighter’s Field 3D will eventually look like! (Forum post at http://zgamers.phpbb2.us/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26)

So, some obvious things from these images. One is that there are new healthbars, two is that all the drawing has been transformed to follow the camera, and three, I am still working on many things for this game.

But this was done over two days, and it was rapid progress. I am still working on it as of right now and pretty soon I will have a lot more done.

I also found a neat wordpress blog recently, called “Naked Paul Toast’s Insights” at http://blog.nakedpaultoast.com/. The reason why I specially mention this blog is because he has quite an amount of similar interests to me. He has mostly humor, Game Maker, and technology topics in his blog, all of which I like, so I now watch his posts every once in awhile also. Maybe you’d like to check it out if you like my blog.

Also, I have been balanced in my activeness between working on Game Maker, playing Fiesta Online, and playing BZFlag, so I’m kinda in a combination of everything I used to do now. That is all for today, hopefully I won’t delay my posts as long anymore, see you later.

Rincon High School

As you may know from previous posts, I am in the marching band for our school and we go to football games to play and cheer on our football team. So yesterday we went up to Rincon High School. By now, we’ve had 3 games and I didn’t expect to see much of an improvement from our 0-3 win-loss record for our football team. We arrived at the high school, got into the bleachers on the visitors side and started our normal stuff. We got to march our pre-game show and I say it wasn’t the best, but decent. Pretty soon (I think it was 4 or 5 minutes into the first quarter), we make a touchdown! Well, this happened in our first game, but we ended up getting beat, so we were like, ok that’s great, now let’s see what happens. So we wait and wait, and I think 3 minutes before the first quarter ended, we make yet another touchdown. The kick gets blocked, but that still has the score at 13-0. So the game continues into second quarter, near half time, Rincon gets their first touchdown and kick. So score is 13-7. We then got to watch Rincon’s half-time show, which I must say is pretty dang impressive. Although I did watch their off-step’ness happen here and there (They wore black pants compared to our white pants so being off-step isn’t as major for them), but other than that, they created some impressive sets. The fast follow-the-leader move at the beginning of the show was great, and near the end they got into a perfectly made diamond. I noticed there were a lot of gaps, but other than that they did impressive. Afterward, they played their fight song which was also one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen, not just the quality of the song, but what they did during it. They bobbed up and down, turned left and right, moved here and there, and was just all-out fun. I do not think any other band has ever done something as spectacular as this before. But this wasn’t the only thing that made this day probably the best football game I’ve ever been to. It’s also when we got to meet them. Rincon has about the same amount of band students as we do (A Division One band just like us) and we got to meet and greet them. These people were great, I couldn’t believe how exciting they were, how they felt about everything, and most of the Alto Saxophone’s names were short 3-5 letter names (Like Sam), which I found kind of funny. We got to make a crazy train of people and about 100 kids all ran around the tennis courts we were at turning this way and that with others grabbing on to the end, it was crazy fun, probably the most active group of band students I’ve ever seen. After that, we got to watch the rest of the game, and only from the third-fourth quarter did I notice their band in the bleachers and got to see exactly what they did. During some of their songs, they would start doing little dances in the bleachers, the trombones would duck while every other trombone turned to the left or the right, and they’d alternate this throughout the song. The tubas turned left and right and it was very noticeable as the bells were very large. And all the other sections also did nifty things in the stands. We were in awe at everything they did to make their band look so fun. (Even makes me think about joining them XD) They even got to play the Mortal Kombat Theme Song, which was amazing. And as if it couldn’t get any better, our football team won 13-7 and making our win:loss record 1:3. Go Buena!

Oh man, I just wrote such a long passage on that, but this is a moment I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life. I do not think I will ever forget yesterday. So, want to know what else is going on? Some less-exciting things (In my opinion) including that we’re gonna be joining in on this 3-month YoYoGames competition. The Z-Gamers are going to try to win money if we can and we’re gonna create hopefully what’s gonna be a great game. (For more information on this, see http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/competition04) This is going to be called Project GLOBE for us, since the competition needs to be based on Saving the Planet in some way or form. (From Natural Phenomenon, not Alien Invasions) So that’s something to think about.

I also have never talked about a neat little desktop-viewing program I found called TeamViewer. (http://www.teamviewer.com/) What is this program you ask? Well, it lets you easily view another person’s screen by just giving them a 9-digit ID and 4-digit password. You may think this is a little insecure, but who would really need to view someone else’s desktop and guessing could still take forever. Anyways, I can’t tell you how easy this program works. As a very convenient feature, you can simply run the program from the installer, and not even install the program! This is great for just trying it out and I installed the program thereafter. This program also easily passes a firewall, so you don’t have to sit around wondering why you cannot connect. The reason why this happens is because it authenticates through another server, so your computer won’t bother blocking out that connection in which a user can pass through. By default, the user that connects with you can interact with your desktop (As in move your mouse around) and type things, not just watching. If you do not want to do that, you simply go to the Options menu before connecting, and change what you want to let them control. I also like how it’s easy to simply switch to the other person’s monitor, this makes it so that you don’t have to restart the program and give out a new id and password. Also as a final note, your id will always stay the same, so you just have to give out a new password!

What else has been happening? (As if that’s not enough reading already!) I started playing BZFlag again! I think it’s kind of a bored-sense thing, but I’m back now, and I introduced to myself to the players that still played. It’s still pretty fun, and I still have my servers I run and everything. Warinthestar wants me to rebuild Twilight, but I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I just wanna play for now. One thing I want to create is a large randomly generated BZFlag maze, where there are different colored teleporters so that you can distinguish if you’ve been through a path already. This will hopefully be nice once I complete it, and there will be I think 400 different “squares” in the teleporter maze. This will make for a pretty challenging teleporter maze, and I’ll probably let it rotate mazes every once in awhile. (I may make an added challenge where you must find the flag, then the base!) This’ll be a fun Bash Script to create!

Hmm…Is there anything else I have to discuss? I think that’s it for now! This is the longest post I have made so far, but I think it covers 2-week’s worth of missing posts, so that should do it.

Fiesta Getting Funner and Tougher

This week I got to level 28. Leveling is becoming quite tougher now that I am needing EXP in the 30,000 range and each enemy gives me around 120 EXP. Well, at least the tough ones. Each monster I kill now takes about 30 hits and 5 heals on me before I can kill one enemy, but I like to do mobs better. One because you have to stay more alert, two because you get more experience, and three because it seems to kill a lot more enemies faster. I also figured out there’s a second and third page to the Cleric skills page and I bought Invincibility and Restore from it along with Cure. Invincibility may sound useful, but it only lasts for about 10 seconds on you and the cool time is…2 minutes. Restore is only useful in mob attacks, and like the other Cleric say, restore breaks your healing chain because of the fact that it takes 0.8 seconds to cast and then an extra little delay which makes you lose a valuable heal you could need. It does recover 35 HP every 1.2 seconds 15 times though, so it’s ok in overall healing. Cure is for curing low grade illnesses and poisons (Tier 1 only). Also I got Heal 05 which heals 500 HP. I now have about 620 HP and 780 SP and I now have two rings that increase my strength by 7, making 14 extra strength. I got so lucky yesterday. I found 4 equip item drops that are called “Greens” in the game. Only one of them was for Cleric, but it was really good, so I kept that one. Greens are basically stronger equip items from previous versions and have a green name and usually have extra bonuses too, such as extra endurance and strength when equipped. I set up my vendor and sold my three greens for 2 silver each (2000 copper) and sold them in minutes. (Because actually you can sell it for about 5 silver but it’d take a bit longer). Then I found 5 silver lumps, worth 1 silver each also. Sold them to the NPC merchants which bought it and then I had 11 silver total. I then bought a new riding horse (Which is a lot faster and doesn’t consume as much food) as the little wooden one. I also bought my new level 24 boots and level 26 pants and then once I reached level 28, I bought the new level 28 Shirt. It looks pretty cool with yellow linings down each side of the pants and shirt. So that’s what I did this week also. The GM Guild Wars Event was pretty fun. Our guild was too weak to really fight a GM (Game Master), but we did fight all the monsters they spawned. Yes, the GMs went crazy and spawned loads of monsters all day that destroyed lots of shops that people left out. It was actually quite hilarious to watch the monsters pick out the shops one by one from people leaving them there in hopes of selling their items for lots of money overnight. The Find the GM event was ok, but not one of the best. Although it was fun, once a GM gave out a second hint, it was very obvious as to where the GM was hiding. I think all they should give out is a location (The first hint) and then everyone just go looking with that. (There were just too many people looking that giving out the “I’m in a boat” hint makes it sort of obvious. I am very well expecting to play the Protect the GM event on Tuesday if you play on the Teva Server. The goal of that is that the GM will start in Roumen and start walking in a long time to a far away town. During that time, and I’m assuming lots of players, will have to protect the GM as he walks through forests, caves, and death areas and the players must fight off the enemies so that the GM doesn’t die. The GM doesn’t do anything but walk but if he dies, everyone fails. During this time all areas the GM is in will have extra EXP (Yes, I will be playing tomorrow for the EXP) and everyone must work together. I wish something like this would be a kingdom quest, I’d always do it. So that’s what I’m expecting to do on Tuesday. I also started an archer character named Sidafella. (See the resemblance to Sidaphela? ) So, archer is like mage with the range and all, but with more DEF and does less damage than a mage. They solo pretty well, but I am still not used to healing without a heal spell, but guess I’m going to have to get used to it. I am still going to play my Cleric, but I will play my Archer probably at night when I have nothing to do and have done everything possible in my Cleric. Archer is level 6 right now.

I talked with the Twilight members a little bit and have decided to start a final map, probably of Roumen from Fiesta! Take a look at the post at http://twilight.fairserve.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=135 if you want to see how that will go.

Video Game Mayhem Version 0.15 Released

So today I continued working on Video Game Mayhem and it turned into Version 0.15. Version 0.15 adds a new character called “Spawny” into the game. Spawny is a frog character and just like the other characters, has two distinct moves for that character. His normal attack is a tongue attack which does not have much effect when you first attack your opponent, but is a good finishing move, as instead of shooting an opponent upward, it shoots them sideways and usually far enough to prevent them from coming back. His other move is a spinout move which causes him to spin for a second and can rack up some heavy damage when close to the opponent. He is quite strong for a character you may think, but one problem with him is around 60-100%, he pretty much flies off and dies and has a very small defense, so using him would require some deep avoiding strategies. Future plans for this game include obviously more attacks, more stages, more data collection, saving the data, and level editor. And I will try to include 4 player games with 3 CPUs for now, and then eventually leading up to 4 player games. Maybe even…online games? I do not know, but one step at a time here.

I also played some BZFlag today, and we had 6 soccer matches on BZSoccer. A lot of people find the league exciting and I think its success will continue to grow continuously. We are planning on turning the bzsoccer fields slowly into ice fields from the center a few days and eventually ice covering the whole area, but obviously all that will melt during the summer, so we’d have to wait.

That’s all I really did today, I relaxed for most of the day and games do take lots of time to make, so it’s not as if I did nothing all day.

Bringing Back Old Games

A game I started working on long ago was called “Ball Amnesia”. It was a game where you were a simple ball, called No.1, and you had to navigate through levels avoiding walls. If you did hit a wall, you’d bounce off of it and couldn’t control your direction for a few seconds, which was bad in some cases. The game has aspects to it such as spikes, other balls which try to kill you, switches to unlock doors, warps, and power-ups which change an aspect of your character. I have decided to start working on it again, so look on the Z-Gamers page under “Individual Projects” soon for more info.

I also recorded my next Earthbound video, and am about halfway there. In total, I’ve taken about 6 hours to get this far, so I think I should complete the game around the 12-13 hour time.

I am planning to start a tournament for BZFlag called “BZRacecourses” which will feature numerous players competing in 3 different events on 8 different race courses. The time trial event, which includes the player avoiding all the good flags. Each flag grabbed will cost 5 points, and then every second of holding afterward costs 5 more points. The race battle event, in which 4 players complete 5 laps of racing while getting flags to either get more speed, or kill other tanks to slow them down. When the tanks respawn, they just start from where they last died. During this event, it is not possible to fall out and die. The final event will be the trick event. The trick event gives the player points based on how well they can perform various tricks. For example, if they jump over a corner, they can get 5 points. If they can do a whole lap driving backwards, that gives them 50 points, and if a player jumps and spins at the same time and land successfully, they can gain an extra 5 points. Only bad flags will be on the course during this time. If you can grab a bad flag, you can get 10 points if you don’t die with it. If you cannot complete the course in 1 minute, you’ll lost 10 points, every minute costs you 10 points. In some courses it’s not possible to finish the course in 1 minute and you’ll always lose 10 points. If you fall, you’ll lose 15 points, which can really add up if you try to perform lots of stunts. I am planning to start this within 2-3 days from now, so any thoughts on it would be good. Either we’ll need some admins that can accurately record time and know all the rules will reinforce the servers and determine when players will do the events, or maybe i will just try to find players that are online whenever I can and then contact them then. I think one week is sufficient enough to find everyone that goes online and drop out anyone that doesn’t participate. The races will be the hardest to manage as 4 players need to be online at the same time which is uncommon.

I am still confused by how Python works. I really want to learn and possibly make games with it, but I still need some really good walkthrough any comments or tutorials that help would be nice.

Ubuntu Theme for XP

So today I pressed the Stumble button and came to this page. http://www.kevinsblog.net/?p=199. The page lists 4 different desktop transformation packs for Windows XP, perfect I thought, since I was always interested in changing my desktop themes every so often for a different change. The one that caught my eye was the Ubuntu theme, since I am a UNIX freak now hehe. I already tried the Vista Transformation Pack back when it was 6.01, now it’s 8.01 and hopefully it’s alot more stable and less buggy, though I never tried it ever since 6.01. Anyways, I decided to install the Ubuntu one. The ubuntu pack is less automated and takes more time on your part to turn your system into Ubuntu, but personally, I loved it and it was very easy to configure. One thing I really noticed was that the system performance increased dramitically! Supposedly this theme is a lot simpler and takes a lot less CPU than Windows XP’s default theme. Two screenshots below, even though some things are changed around, it still has that Ubuntu feel to it.

  

That was pretty much all I did today. On BZFlag, I might get a new member for our BZSoccer team called “MegaLoManium”, but we’re still deciding.