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.)

1 Month has Passed…

Oh man, last time I posted on here seems to be forever ago. So this summer has been quite fun but at the same time most wasteful. I’ve been wasting my time playing games this summer, but I’ve done some studying and a little game-making. So, let’s get started with what’s been happening.

After I got out of school, first there was not much to do. Fiesta’s Cypion Server Release was coming, and I was in action to get ready to play. Me and Dan were going to try to level fast, but we can’t possibly get the 1 million sparkcash, at least we can just grind as fast as possible. Whatever that happens, we were going to get to 105 eventually and not start an alt. However, things have changed recently (which I’ll explain below) and I’ve quit Fiesta again. (I also quitted Drift City not too far back.)

First off, Fiesta is pretty boring. I think eventually it gets old, you just kill monster after monster and nothing really happens after that. You have to grind now 105 levels and it is insanely hard to do. In fact, I don’t think it was meant to be done in less than a month and some people are killing themselves over trying to reach that 1 million, but I’m just giving up in general.

Now, an argument between my friend and I [and previously before] was that why do I always quit games and never stay “committed” to one. Well, here’s my case-and-point:
Games are meant to keep us entertained, right? So when we end up getting bored by them, the game has no purpose anymore. We need a new game that’ll keep you entertained again. So why should you be committed to a game if the whole point of them is to keep you entertained and you’re not being entertained? Yeah, you don’t and you pay more money to get a new game. xD

So then I obviously was bored and needed a new game. I tried to entertain myself with Game Maker, but you know…I really think I need to learn C++ or C and I’m gonna try using OpenGL eventually.

And now I bring myself into the present and past week. My sister and I always get along and sometimes we do stuff together. Well recently, we’ve been playing The Sims: Life Stories together, and even though you may think what the, this isn’t the kind of games Josh would normally play (Or you would) but I swear, it’s very fun. Maybe part of it is because we used to play The Sims on the Gamecube quite often. So I guess now I play The Sims: Life Stories. And we don’t just play it, we have a huge family tree thing we created awhile ago and we’re going to re-enact all the stories in the game. We’ve both almost completed the first family with their kids, and it is very fun. What makes it so fun? I think it’s the depth and complexity of the game yet how simple it is all implemented. I have fun building the houses, gaining relationships, and raising the kids from young babies to teenagers. If you like simulation games and haven’t tried it, The Sims: Life Stories is fun. And not just that, I heard The Sims 3 is going to be real good too.

So, that catches you up on what I’ve been up to. Sorry to my Fiesta people in the Cryptic_Fate guild on Cypion, I decided to give up…Again. So that is all, I am off now.

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.

Fiesta Lv60 Whoo!

Yes, hear it here folks, thanks to Lanowar_Elf and weareghost, I was able to level to 60. It took two good days, but I went from 20% to 70% the first day, and after the patch, (Which I will discuss in a bit here) I gained the other 30%. Completed the job change quests pretty easily, even though some say it is hard for Clerics, I found it not very difficult. Yes, I did record it and have uploaded it to Youtube. (Videos are posted below)

Part I:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Now I wanna talk to you about the new patch Fiesta recently had. In my opinion, it is just like any other patch. Outspark put it out for a reason (What it is is beyond me) but you cannot change what has been done. I am just hear to summarize the recent patch, and the good and bad to it.

Summary:
The patch changes a few rules, guidelines, and level limits to the playing of Fiesta.

The Good:

• Lv10~xx can now go in abyss. So the level 20 abyss is now for levels 10~36, level 50 abyss is for levels 10~65, etc. Why is this good? It allows for powerleveling, and some people may consider it good because you get to kill noobs.
• Kill points now work (For the abyss)
• Movers in Dungeons (Allows for quicker movements)
• Enemy DEX fix in Burning Rock (Some enemies were not hittable in the high 80s.)

The Bad:

• Lv10-xx players going in Abyss. This is bad because noobs can be powerleveled and level up quicker, making for players that cannot control their character as well as the lv50~60s later on that used to be “better”.
• All levels can go in Dungeons. (This one I don’t get. Why would you do that? You can just get a really high leveled player to help you through it, and people will kill bosses easily.)
• Movers in Dungeons (Again, a bad thing because people may train the dungeons a whole lot more instead of slowly going through it.)
• Certain Enemies in Burning Rock Have Raised Damage
• Getting killed in an abyss makes you lose experience, even from a player kill now.

So the good and bad are the same, just like the last patch, you won’t find anything too good or too bad about the patch, and everyone has their opinions, but since it has not made such a large impact on the game, Outspark will not remove it.

Next topic, Rubik’s Cube! That’s right, I recently learned how to finish this marvel of a toy and do it through memory now! I will eventually provide instructions here, but you can find Youtube videos and online instructions on it all over the internet, so if you want to learn, get searching!

Concerning Marching Band, I say we did a VERY good job at Ironwood Ridge. We got all the caption awards and our teacher said we could go to state! Unfortunately, over 30 band members said they did not want to go. I didn’t get this at all…We did so well in Ironwood Ridge, and I was really hoping we could go to state, it would’ve been fun tripwise, and competition-wise and I say that’d be a day I’d remember forever…Now I will always wonder how well we would be if we could go to state. So the marching season is over again, and I’m kind of saddened by how quickly this year went…

Reading Rama Revealed, I recently have finished it, and I must say, it was a great book. I found all of Arthur C. Clarke’s older storytelling in this book, it was great. I am now reading Rendezvous with Rama, the first book in the series, again, read the last book first, now going in order to see how Rama Revealed connects to the whole story.

My friend Charles recently heard the song Delirium by Smiley on my CD player during the Ironwood Ridge band competition. Now he likes the song and has overplayed it. XD

This basically sums up this week, in Z-Gamers news, just been updating Fighter’s Field a little bit, stuck on level 28 on my game, so I don’t know how much farther I’m planning to go. From my website, the updates I have made recently:

-Added in lv30~40 Kingdom Quest
-Level Cap is now lv39 instead of lv35
-Enemies have increased power and health, but give you a lot more experience now.
-Buffs have been fixed to show up next to each other correctly.
-Fixed glitch where hovering over an info box makes your character glitch and messes up your file.
-Modified Experience given from quests.
-ALL Quests are now repeatable. They slowly get harder but give you more experience.
-Download Link has been changed, you can still access it as normal on this website and in the game.

So that’s that. New features I plan to include:

-Equips
-Online Multiplayer
-Higher Leveled Enemies

Watching the election right now, with McCain leading 13 to Obama’s 3, but of course, this is just the beginning…So we’ll see how it all works out within the next few hours.

That’s about it for now, stay tuned for next week’s post!

The Usual Fall Break

As normal, during my fall break I do nothing special, I just chill and relax and try not to think about school, because that’s obviously what you are supposed to do. I did work on a few things during fall break though.

Mostly Game Maker related, here are 3 projects I will definitely be slowly working on (Including Screenshots):

Elite Beat Agents Simulator

I have loved the game Elite Beat Agents and so I am recreating a version of it. The version I found on the Game Maker Community is such a crappy version, so I decided to remake it. Here’s a screenshot for now, it uses midi files to conserve space, and the notes are in sync. I have been working on a very good syncing system to keep the notes in time so you can enjoy the song and the game.

Wings3D OBJ to GML Converter

As another note, the current type of OBJ file converter does not work for Vista users, and is always quite complicated. All this will do is take a Wings3D OBJ file and converts it into GML code automatically with just the file needed for user input so that you can just paste into your 3D game as a model of points to use.

Why Wings3D only? Well, first of all, Wings3D is a very powerful program itself, so that statement itself should let you understand why I’m restricting the file format to just that. If you want to use this once I finish it, you should simply get used to using Wings3D now to create nice models for Game Maker, which is our goal with this program.

Super Mario RPG Game (Possibly a Sequel)

The game is based off the super popular Super Mario RPG game from the SNES. Although the game is quite vague to most people for Mario games and got a low amount of sales, it is a very good game with lots of challenge. As an isometric RPG, it had lots of cool features and I want to make a possible sequel for the game with great implementation. Right now I have finished the jumping engine, there IS a z variable for this game and jumping makes Mario go “higher”. I have allowed Mario to walk in all 8 directions and given Mario the ability to jump in all 8 directions. Now I am going to start importing platforms into the game and then start working on the battle engine, it’ll be fun! (Screenshot below shows Mario jumping SW)

As you can see, I have got quite an amount of projects going, all of them should keep me busy until I get close to finishing them, in which I stop. Tune into this blog for all the latest info on all three of these promising games!

In addition to Game Maker, I have started learning some Visual Basic, a minor thing that I may never get enough experience to make advanced programs in yet. Hopefully I can find it useful in the near future.

We also went to ASU on Saturday, 10/18/08 to perform for our marching band competition. Buena got an Excellent rating, and I think we deserve exactly that. (I’m sure all of the other Buena members would agree) We will be working hard in the next week or so to hopefully do better at the Ironwood Ridge competition. Good luck to me and all the Buena Band members, let’s work hard to go to state!!!

I also surprisingly started playing Fiesta. Now, if you’re read previously, I also started playing BZFlag again. I must say, I am going back to all my fun games I used to play, and I like it. So I’ve started playing again (I’m glad I never gave away my account items even though I wanted to), so now I’m continuing my slow trek to level 60 as a cleric. I have had some help from Lanowar_Elf (Charles from previous posts) to gain about 20% while helping him level to 78 on his archer, so he’s still much higher in level than I am.

That sums up all that’s been happening during this week.

The Big Gap

This blog may become another useless blog that starts off as active and dulls down to nothing. I know I said I’d go longer, but as you obviously can see I am literally posting monthly. So what’s been happening recently?

First, Z-Gamers has developed in the last few weeks. We now have three other members which help contibute. We also have some new games come this time around. We have Button Hero 2, some updates to Fighter’s field and Z-Tower Defense, and the start of Virus Attack and MegaLoManium.

School is starting again, so I don’t have much time to do anything at home and on the computer anymore. I haven’t been doing much on Fiesta either.

I’m only level 58. I could be level 60, but I don’t have any time to do anything, and I put Game Maker over Fiesta often.

It seems like I am liking Game Maker too much, but we’ll see what happens. Hopefully you’ll still hear from me on occasion.

Also, I am loving the Space Odyssey books. I just picked this book off of my school’s library shelf, started reading it, and got hooked. Reading 2001 A Space Odyssey now, but read 2010 odyssey two already.

Fighter’s Field Game Starting

So, it’s been close to a month since I’ve posted, but I haven’t been very active on here only due to the fact that I have been working on this new game and playing Fiesta often. It seems that I am becoming much better and more efficient at coding with GML, and it’s a matter of time before I start working on 3D games. (I have recently learned how to make an online game, so all that’s left is to make 3D games) Now that I have pretty much mastered everything about Game Maker, it’s going to be time to start putting it to good use. Right now, this is a very simple version of what my game is going to be like. (It is based off of Fiesta completely) It is at the moment a simple game where you can kill various enemies and participate in “kingdom quests” and do a “job change” quest, just like Fiesta (Except from my own perspective). Basically you choose from one of the four classes, Rogue (Basically a replacement name for Cleric), Fighter, Mage, and Archer. Probably the most interesting ones are Mage and Archer since you aim your attacks and magic. Fighters are just really powerful and Rogues can heal themselves. I continuously update this game, but please check it out, it is quite fun. You can head over to http://sigonasr2.servegame.org/zgamers/MiniRPG/fightersfield.php to download the game. Updated it this morning with EXP fixes, (You get less if you fight enemies too weak or too strong, just like Fiesta) Game Speed fixes for first kingdom quest. Also there are now notification icons on the right hand side every once in awhile when you level. These let you know what new things you can do or letting you know what’s happening.

In other news, I’m level 54 on my cleric now in Fiesta. Pretty decent. It’s getting pretty tough to level now. I want to save my quests, but grinding is just plain crazy. Asaph also handed over RadiantDawn to me and now seems to regret it a bit. Oh well, I’m the guild master now, so I call the shots.

School starts in a few days. Can’t wait, and kind of down at the same time. It’s like you miss school, but you just can’t go back just yet. Since school starts earlier now, that feeling is starting to happen more often.

New Challenges Await…Everywhere

So, this week has been rather exciting, probably one of the most exciting weeks I could come up with at the moment. Let me start with what happened at the beginning of the week.

I am going to be driving soon and my father decided that it was time I got some good hands-on experience on driving. We drove a manual shift Toyota truck that my dad has kept for a very long time (and keeps it polished and waxed so that it still looks shiny and new). Truthfully, driving is not that hard at all, the only key things I have to work on is starting off the clutch very slowly (Especially with an older car) and accelerating at a decent speed. Shifting and steering was the easy parts as I’d assume is true to most people.

I also have started playing Fiesta again since I have more time to use my computer now. Getting from level 43 to level 44 was so difficult due to the fact that I could not find any balance in leveling, but now I have found Ancient Elven Woods to be a very great spot to train. I kill about 300-400 of these monsters and I level up, and the recent EXP boost for this week will definitely help with that. On the other hand Liberalphie (warinthestar on BZFlag) has found a much better way to level, quests and obviously people do it to get major experience and level. I just don’t see it as much of a benefit in my opinion, I even recently deleted all my current quests since I didn’t have the interest to continue them. Oh well, I like my method of training and everyone plays differently anyways.

As you probably know, I have been working on Game Maker still and continuing my tower defense game. The current latest version is 0.7c with 0.7d being released soon (probably tomorrow or Sunday). This is one of my first games I’ll actually finish since I have made such a great system out of it (and I learned Particles in the process). My future plans will be a mass multiplayer online game where up to 10 players cooperate to complete missions together in a large amount of levels. I was originally thinking about doing an RPG, but I think it would be better to do a top-down shooter game where you either compete to destroy other player’s units, or work together to defeat computer players as a team. Seems like a good idea to me, I will first have to do lots of experimenting with online gameplay in Game Maker before I start on this though. I will probably be starting this around the time school comes along. Also, private beta testing of Z-Tower Defense begins on 7/15/08, please email me at sigonasr2@yahoo.com if you want to be involved in it. These versions will just be a bunch of level updates and I will be asking for all bugs, glitches, and errors involved to be reported before I release a final product.

I’m pretty much posting here on a weekly basis now, so expect longer posts, but over a larger span of time.

Fun Stuff Happening

So a lot of things have been happening with me recently, and I’m going to take a few minutes to type up what has been happening.

First, I’ll say that I’ve been working on Z-Tower Defense, and it is turning into a quality game. I’ve probably said this a bunch of times, but this release is packed with great new features, graphics, and a lot of new ideas put into it. I spent three days on this release, and I think it turned out good. You can check it out at http://sigonasr2.servegame.org/zgamers/ztowerdefense.php. It is now Version 0.7a and private beta testing will begin on 7/15/08. If you would like to join in, feel free to email me at my email address. (It’s on the Z-Gamers website but if you didn’t know, it’s sigonasr2@spamyahoo.com [remove spam from the word spamyahoo]).

Next up, my friend Charles and I had a great PvP (Player vs. Player) fight in the Uruga PvP yesterday and boy it was some fight. It was a 40 minute long fight, but we recorded the fight and turned it into a 4-minute long video. You can watch it either at http://youtube.com/watch?v=_z36×3juzgA or on this blog right below.