Lighten Up

I'm hoping that City of Ember doesn't suck. The book was pretty neat, and the trailer looks fairly sweet. We'll see.

48 Hours of Goblins

Thunt, creator of Goblins, is going to be doing a 48-hour art marathon. Below is an embedded video of his work, live, or you can watch it here. I highly recommend people supporting him with money and the like, as he's now taken on the yolk of drawing webcomics as a full-time job. Maybe he be successful.

The marathon will being the 26th, and Thunt will be breaking only to stretch his legs, eat, etc. There will be audio, so you can hear him chat with those in the chat room (see link) about this and that. Note: there will, of course, be spoilers to the comic as you will see him drawing. I should watch just to see a master artist in action. Maybe I can learn something.

Watch live video from Drawing Goblins on Justin.tv

The Past, and the Future

Updates will be coming fewer and further between as college starts up again for me, but I felt it necessary to offer an old project I completed last year for archival purposes. It is a flip-calendar depicting the travels of a girl through this somewhat surrealistic world. It's obviously not on par with the kind of detail I put into this blog's header, but that was before I started using the stylus, so I had to place every point in Illustrator by hand. I took a long time, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out. Again, thanks to Adam Phillips for his amazing work and the inspiration it gave me.

Download the Calendar's files (pdf format).

UPDATE: Ok, so my download keeps getting lost, so I'll just supply the files in png format, in proper order, below.

And, for reference, here is a large version of the current header (raw file from Illustrator, before modifying in Photoshop).

Brief Update

So I'm, like, totally going to build a brand new gaming computer that will put its foot in the balls of any game out there. Hopefully then, I'll have the power to record myself playing Mass Effect with FRAPS and write an excessively extensive cheese and whine article about it. In the meantime, I may go over Batman Returns, the Tim Burton movie that at least one friend swears is one of the best movies evah. I'll point out why it's a campy piece of trash.

Stay tuned!

A+B+DOWN WITH SANITY!

Recently, I've been playing the classic Pokemon Blue on an emulator, reliving the few hours I enjoyed it as a child (usually by inviting over friends who had it, then ignoring them the entire time). During this period, I found this little number:



Huh. Does pressing A+B+DOWN assist in capturing the Pokemon? I'd never heard of this.

Having had the pleasure of bunking on the same floor as some noisy Pokemon fans in college, I decided to contact one of them and ask if this was some game function I didn't know about. The following is our conversation, complete with additional commentary by yours truly.

Me: Does A+B+down assist in catching pokemon?
Him [pretending to be a Buddhist monk, I guess]: the answer to that question can't be explained to someone who doesnt aleady know it
Him [being excessively poetic, as usual]: it's like asking me to define love
Me [confounded]: Whaaat?
Me [a bit annoyed]: Does it or not?
Him [adding to the madness]: it's not a yes or no question
Me [further confounded]: How is it not?
Me [and yet more annoyed]: Yes, it does make a difference, or no, it doesn't.
Him: see
Him [being wrong]: i know you don't keep chat logs
Him [referencing similar debates in the past]: but remember when i explained to you that you have no sense of subtlety?
Me [pondering this very post]: I do, I just don't read them unless I want to remember something I've said that is important.
Me [trying to make sense of this mess]: Yeah. You mean you're subtly joking?
Him: no
Him [being all poetic again]: i mean this is a gray
Him [further poetic mumbo-jumbo]: not a black or a white
Me: Graugh!
Him [being cryptic]: it is not a yes or no question
Me [quite annoyed at this point]: You know what? I'm going to try to catch a pokemon, press A+B+DOWN, and see if I notice any difference.
Him: you wont
Him [more cryptic words]: because you dont understand
Me [beginning to grin crazily out of frustration]: Then explain.
Him: i told you
Him [being rather pretentious]: you can't explain this to someone who doesnt understand
Me [chortling insanely]: You're trying to make me go nuts, aren't you? It's working. I'm beginning to laugh maniacally.
Me [randomly]: These grapes I'm eating taste like chokecherries.
Him [lying, I'd surmise]: no i'm not trying to make you nuts
Him [being quite accurate]: you dont understand
Him [being quite mistaken]: and it cant be explained
Me: Only because you make no sense.
Him [more crypticness]: you should be able to accept it
Me [trying to use reason]: How is there anything at all about a game that's beyond understanding and explanation?
Him: there you go again
Him [more poetic insanity]: demanding black and white

Okay, at this point I was willing to write him off as just being a little broken. He always did act a bit... odd when I spoke to him, always tagging mysterious, pointless poetry onto every normal topic, until I started asking other people on my contact list. Turns out, all who were into Pokemon says that he had it exactly right. They agreed that it's this big spiritualistic thing beyond understanding and explanation! What the hell?

So, after a bit of research (namely, looking at Scott's comment below the comic), I surmised that it is an alleged cheat code that probably doesn't actually work, but makes one feel like it does, kind of like blowing on dice before throwing them. I proposed this, and they all said it's nothing at all like that. One even claimed that, quote, "its something beyond reality dude."

Huh? Okay, let me see if I have this right. All these Pokemon players believe that pressing a fucking gameboy button combination transcends reality in order to make some purposeful change in their favor? Are these people downright insane?! I'm not a particularly faithful individual. I like things that can be explained, and, as far as I'm concerned, things that have no logical explanation merely have one that has yet to be discovered. This... mess absolutely blows my mind by how nuts it sounds. Does playing Pokemon cause your brain to melt?! God, I'm glad I never got into that game.

Seriously, it's a goddamn good luck charm. Why do these people insist on making it sound like some kind of fucking Free Masons ritual? Maybe now, after venting all this out, I can finally cool down. Let me tell you, I thought I was going to burst with my frustrated bewilderment. This is why I'm not religious or spiritualistic; it opens you up to things like this.

Dark Forces, Light Fun

A game that stands out as a classic in my mind is Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Yes, one hell of a title, but also one hell of a game. Borrowing the look and feel of Quake, Dark Forces II brought a semi-RPG element to the game, with two separate ways that one could go; light side or dark side, depending on one's actions (which really meant, depending on whether or not one pointlessly killed the harmless NPCs). Depending on which direction one went, they would become increasingly darker or lighter, and the live-action cutscenes would reflect this, either depicting you betraying your friends and taking over the galaxy, or defeating the bad guys for the good of all.



Speaking of the live-action cutscenes, that is something that the game was sometimes criticized for, but I actually liked them quite a lot. Sure, the CGI effects weren't exactly realistic, but I never had a problem with that (maybe I was just too young), and as far as the acting goes, unlike the Command and Conquer games, it wasn't at all bad. I've never been one for blaming bad acting, unless it's so outstandingly horrible you can hear the monotone in the actor's voice. No, the actors tried hard and did well, and it's fun to see the different paths that the game takes.



The game itself was a pretty typical FPS--walk through the linear levels and you'll find your goal. There are occasionally puzzles, like having to press a button to get somewhere, but I don't recall anything overly complicated. Though the game was truly 3D, it didn't actually use much in the way of shading technology, so a level was often only as dark as its textures, which usually wasn't that dark. "Dark Forces 2" was a pretty bright, primitive game, but damn was it fun. Also,if you swing your lightsaber right, you can cut off the stormtroopers' arms! Bad-ass.

• Windows 95


• 90 Mhz Processor


• 16 MB RAM


• PCI Video Card


• 16-bit Sound Card

If you'd like to have a taste of this great classic, I recommend the demo, which allows you to play through the first level.

Stupid En Masse

Roleplaying games are some of my favorite. I love feeling like I've made meaningful choices that have positively (or negatively, depending on how I like my character) affected the universe. It's a little chance for a real-life nobody to feel like a virtual somebody. Unfortunately, everyone else shares that same feeling.

The difference between a CRPG and an MMORPG is that, in the former, you, the player, are special in that you're the hero. Your choices affect the world around you, and everything can be bent around your pinky, should you so desire. It's all about you, and the world reflects that. In contrast, MMORPGs try to tell everyone that they're special and have that same power, but when everyone is special, no one is special, making everyone insignificant.




Of course, that doesn't even touch on the biggest reason that MMORPGs fail: people are stupid. Now, although I don't play MMOs at all, I have played roleplaying games with excellent multiplayer capabilities, and the problems are all the same. If there aren't enough people, it's boring because, unlike single player, you create your own story (or else, like in World of Warcraft, everyone repeats the same monotonous quests), and you need others to do that. On the other hand, if there are too many people, then you're plagued by people who don't care about roleplaying and just want to either be annoying or make a mess out of everything everyone else has created.

Maybe I'm a prick elitist for enjoying what I call "roleplay" by making up some character and playing him without interruption from the real world through a game, but it seems to me that most who enjoy a roleplaying game, whether it be single player, multiplayer, or MMO, agree on what it is they want: a fully customizable avatar that they can live through and interact with, as opposed to a lifeless mass of polygons to complete grindtastic quests and kill hundreds of look-alike baddies through.

What's worse is that there are tons of just such boring games that exist (and require regular monthly fees), with even more on the way. A friend of mine spoke highly of one such game, Star Wars Galaxies, that, while innovative and fascinating with open-ended true roleplay gameplay, a player-run world, and a non-standard level up system, quickly turned into what he called a "WoW clone", taking out all reason to really work towards any goals because the game hands you your cake and pats you on the head without any effort on your part like a lazy toddler trying to get through America's education system.

Maybe MMORPGs will change one day, but I somehow doubt it, as each new step towards something better, as was the apparent case of Star Wars Galaxies, seems to fall back into the same crippling hole. Sure, maybe the lack of individuality (or personality, for that matter) is a credit to the game for some, and maybe the repetition and static quests are lauded in gaming circles, but while all the other horses break their legs on prairie dog hill, I'll be perfectly happy prancing around in the thriving green meadows of single-player CRPGs. At least there, the only annoying person I have to endure is me.