5/30/97
As I make this update, I don't really feel so good. I think I might be a little sick. Maybe I'm depressed cause I don't get enough time to work on TLOT! Ahh.. I think I'm sick or something. I went to bed at 9:00 last night just cause I was so darn tired. Anyway, on with the update.
Ok, I released the new demo for TLOT and found a bad bug in it pretty quickly. I had already scraped the code for the demo so I recompiled from the updated code on my hard disk and released a fix. Making demos takes away from the little time I do have so there probably won't be another one for a while.
I didn't get much artwork done, just some odds and ends here and there. The image this week is of part of the desert town tile set. You'll notice some tiles in there that don't look usable.. like the grass.. there's a handful of tiles in there that I need to get rid of later. Another one would be the armor and sword. The problem with that tile was the fact that the armor was way to big.
Uh... lemme think.. oh yeah, Nathan Seeley may be setting up a mailing list for TLOT as early as this sunday. I will post about it on the web site. Then we can get some discussion going about the game. I may even give some top-secret-none-more-secret-type info out via the mailing list! Who knows.
Golly, through the week I thought of lots of things to post about here, but now I'm tired and I can't think of much. I guess thats it for this weeks update.... Oh wait... one last thing, check out Aphrodite's Prom 97 page!.
5/17/97
This weeks image is of a background I attempted to render for battles in the cave tiles set I created a little bit ago. I used tiles from the game as textures for the background and that really rocked, but I'm not much of a 3D artist and I am no good with the trial version of true space one. Perhaps some day I will be able to afford 3D Studio or something. I still donno what I am going to do for backgrounds in the game... I have some that were done for me, but its not enough. I will need many many more.
I changed the tune back to Passive 1 cause.. well, I missed hearing it! Besides, Ionstorm picked Passive1.MID to be next week's Midi of the Week! I was very happy to hear the news. I sure hope they give me a link for it too ;) That would be nice. No word back from Romero on those questions. I figure that by now they are lost forever and that I will never hear from him.
Beta testing has closed. I've got plenty of people, no more please. I've started beta testing. I will have to start rejecting applications now. Sorry, but I can only handle so many people at once... and the number of apps is really growing.
Big news, I released a new demo. I didn't send this to my beta testers first, although I probably should have. I told a few people I would have it online this weekend so I tonight (just moments ago) I zipped it up. Go to the demo page to get it.
Well, I had decided to invest in a $1600 to $1800 computer and now I think I am going to chicken out. I really need a machine, but I just don't think I can handle another finacial responcibility like that. I may, however, be getting my hands on a 386 (woo hoo).. You can never have to many of those machines around eh?
I have picked up that some people feel that I have been "attacking their (my) peers through their (my) web sites". I don't recall ever attacking anyone and I never meant to. If I had, I feel that it would have been well within my rights to do so. I would have thought that through my actions, those peers would have appreciated my maturity in forgetting any past events other than my one comment on a web site. I would like to say, "I don't care enough to put up a comment about it," but obviously I do because I just did... I just don't like misunderstandings and I do like being treated fairly. Its also extra important to me when those people known as "peers" also happen to be considered "friends" in my honest yet obviously unimportant opinion.
5/17/97
Well, as you can see, Theresa
completed the status screen image of the party's only female,
Venetia. If you noticed, alot of the battle
screen artwork is a bit different from the status screen images.
The status screen shots of the characters are an artistic potrayal
of the character. They are meant to be dramatic and expressive.
Well, last night we battled it out on a LAN. I kicked butt almost as much in Warcraft 2 as I got my butt kicked in Quake. Although I fancy myself a good Quake player, I am playing with some pretty high brass fellows.. (desperate excuses there).. I was hoping to have some comments about TLOT from John Romero to put up here this week, but I don't... yet. I e-mailed him a few days ago asking if he would be interested in commenting on the game (everyone else is interviewing him, why shouldn't I?). I don't know if he will be willing to do it, but it would be cool to see what he has to say about TLOT. When we went down to Ion Storm to death match, I found out that he is a huge fan of Sqauresoft games. He's particularly fond of ChronoTrigger. We (him, a few other eployess, my friends, and myself) sat in his office while he played various midi files from Final Fantasy games and Chrono Trigger. It kinda made me feel good being there, but it also made me sick at the same time. I so very much wanted to be in the industry doing what they are doing. I'm working at it hard, I hope I make it, but the industry is changing and its getting harder to make your mark. I should have followed my dream a few years earlier, but hey, I didn't own an IBM PC until my senior year of high school! I'm learning as quickly as I can...
Well, that had absolutely nothing to do with the game =) I will be contacting beta testers soon. I've got a number of applicants. Its not to late to submit if you haven't already. Just fill out this form and mail it back to me. I made it a txt file so it would be more difficult to submit. An html form with a "submit" button would be to easy! I only want people who are very interested. Thats why I burried the link in the weekly updates section...
I keep changing the music on the page (like 5 times this week) and I still haven't hit a tune I like as much as the original. I'll probably end up putting the original music back on soon. I also added a counter to the site. I'm rather shocked, I put it on late at night 3 days ago (its noon Sat now) and I'm already up to 41 hits! I stole the counter from the old Fantasy Origin pages. I registered with Web Counter way back when they still accepted personal counters. When Fantasy Origin finally died I thought I'd put the counter to use. Funny thing is, all of the sudden I got an e-mail today from someone who wants to take Fanatasy Origin over and bring it back to life!! I was estatic! I will most likely let this person do it.. they're lucky I've still got a copy of the pages on my hard drive...
Well, I'm going to go pick a new tune for the web page, update this link, spend a little quality time with my girlfriend, then hopefully get some work on TLOT done... I think I can I think I can I think I can I think... oh.. sorry....
5/10/97
Ever needed to do an update but your brain was so fried you found it difficult to think? Lets see, this week I got screwed out of two A's at school. One was cause I should have studied a little bit more and the other was cause my professor was a dick head. I worked my ass off on a paper (more than the previous 2 papers that I got B's on) and he gave me a C+ making it impossible for the grade on my final to pull me up to an A in the course. Then, to make the week even happier a cop pulled me over as I was entering a 45 zone. It went from 70 to 55 to 45 rather quickly and he clocked me at 59 in the 45 (too bad I wasn't still in the 55). Now I've got a speeding ticket to deal with and I'm sooo poor..
But thats enough crying. I put up some more samples of the desert oasis tiles. If you click on the image you get another screen shot from the same map. These don't even include any inside the building shots. BTW- No, you can't walk "behind" the trees. Its a limitation of the game.. I'll fix it in TLOT 2.. Anyway, I've used about 155 tiles so far in this set. My editors were built around sets of 160 tiles, but I just improved my editors to handel 255 tiles giving me lots more room to work with.
Well, the summer is here so I need to hit TLOT hard. I will tear into the code, hopefully, about next weekend. There is a U2 concert Monday that I'm going to and I need to build a web page I am contracting out to do. Other than that I work five days a week... I don't exactly have lots of time (I might if more of you people would register Bob).. but I will find time for the project. This week yeilded some desert tiles and a little bit of code. I also have the beta testers web site set up as well as the files ready for download. I probably won't have time to choose beta testers for a little bit. I'm wondering if I should stick to my principles and tell one particular individual that he can beta test when he "learns to act like an adult." (in his own words). Or if I should be better than that and put the past behind me..
I had complaints from Lord Matrix and some others that the menus didn't match the game as far as feel was concerned so I turned them dark brown. You can take a look on the screen shots page. I decided to change the music on the page to change things up a bit and the peice I my girlfriend helped me pick doesn't sound that good over and over cause its too short so I ended up picking whatever you are listening to now. (I need to go pick something else before I upload this page, I donno what it will be yet).
And on a last and final note on a rather lengthy weekly update, I will be doing a new demo some time soon. The one on here now is very old and I am eager to show the world my new stuff. I also need to revamp the character list (update descriptions and stuff) as well as update some of the screen shots... work work work work work...
5/3/97
Ok, there's alot to update this week so I'll try to cover it all. First, near the start of this week I went out and bought myself a 10 dollar joypad at WalMart. It's actually a really good little pad! I also happened to have some joystick code on my hard drive so I thought I would check it out.. Much to my surprise, it worked really well! So, TLOT now has joystick support... I hope. I still have a few bugs, but the game is just totally different when you lean back and play with a gamepad!
Through the week I got some tiles done and Theresa got Shadonian Seth finished up. You probably noticed as it is this weeks image. I was really considering putting up an image of the new tiles I've done, but I obviously decided not to. I've run into some bugs here and there in the code. The music has been a bit of a problem and the new joystick code has introduced some minor bugs such as the caracter wanting to go left anytime a sound is playing.... go figure!
Perhaps the biggest news so far, TLOT's music may be in for a majoy change. I had a talk with ELC the other night about music and we concure that FM synth doesn't do his music much justice. The problem is finding good pascal lib to play midi music. We may have a solution though. I am seriously considering having CD music. I pulled down some code to control the CD Rom, but it doesn't seem to work with my Creative. I will keep working at it, and hopefully I will have a CD sound track for those registered TLOT players in the future. If I do go with CD music, that will mean there will be NO other music in the game. For those who pirate the game (and I'm sure it will be done) they will be missing out on what is one of the greatest aspects of any cRPG.
I wanted to mention that I now have my first official Zaskoda Soft Fan Page! A big thanks goes out to Ronny Salomonsen for that.
I have recieved a number of BETA test requests. It will probably be a few weeks before I go through and select my beta testers. If you submited and you are wondering if and when I'm ever going to get back with you, don't worry, I will.. It will, however, be a while yet.
