-=Pre-TLOT Stuff=-

There's not any TLOT stuff worth showing this week, so I thought I'd bring back a blast from my past. Unfortunately most of what I had is lost in the bit bucket from a un-expected hard drive format once. The screenshot you see here is from an early version of what was going to be Lord Von II, the sequel to a game I never finished. If you click on the screen shot you'll see a shot of Lord Von I, the game that was lost in the reformat.

I started off writing an RPG for the apple II in high school. After making a lot of progress, I started getting into PC programming on a 286. My Apple RPG was called the Legend of Zargon or something stupid like that. I restarted it as Lord Von on the PC. What I had kinda blew. I learned a lot in the process so I started over. I had an almost playable game when all of the sudden my hard drive crashed. I recovered but it happened again... then it happened a third time and this time it was really bad. I bought my computer in to a repair shop to see what was going on. Turned out to be faulty cache chips. I specifically asked that if the leave the hard drive in its corrupted state and let me clean it up. I knew this woman liked to reformat and start over a lot so I made a very big deal about it. She agreed to contact me before reformatting my hdd. When I got my machine back, I found a freshly formatted disk with a fresh install of DOS and Windoze 3.11 on it. I was very angry but there was nothing I can do. And people wonder why to this day I don't like those people. (There's more stories, worse stories than that one).

Anyway, the 640x480x16 screenshot of LordVon 1 that I have up this week is from a very early build I had backed up on a floppy disk. Its a shame I don't have something more recent, I had some kick ass stuff in the game. Ah well...

About that time I met another coder, Chris Shaffer, who was pretty damn sharp. He tought me how to directly address the video card and helped me write some asm routines to switch video modes and such. Before I knew it, I was writing all kinds of neat little programs. This was bout the time I was spazzing over the great demos from groups like Sonic, Triton and Future Crew. I started getting into graphics programming and started 3 or 4 games. Lord Von II was one of them. My problem was the fact that everytime I got started I learned so much playing that my code was worthless to me within a few weeks. I finally started The Legend of Talibah when I learned how to make a scrolling engine and I've been working on it ever since. Unfortunately my dedication to this project has cost me a LOT of advancement in coding skills. My life in general has a lot to blame for that as well. I digress...

Somewhere in there I wrote Bob, Splat, Scrocher and many other silly complete games. Bob was by far the largest project I totally completed, I think Splat was the easiest as most of the code (graphics and sound) was pulled from a current build of TLOT at the time.

I've got class in the morning, I first day of class actually. I need to get to bed. In fact, I'm so tired after this weekend I don't have the energy to read over my weekly update and check for mistakes.... Dont worry, everyone hang in there with me a little longer cause I think I can pull this whole thing off ;)

-=TLOT Stuff=-

I suddenly got inspired to create a whole new race in Talibah, something a little different. As I started to flesh out my idea I liked it less and less. I guess the closest description I could give is that alien chess peice on Star Wars with the long arms and long neck. Anyway, here he is walking in a cave. I think that idea isn't going to work out.

I started getting back into Talibah seriously this past weekend and realized I'd forgotten how I did a lot of things. Honestly, my way of doing things in Talibah are extremely unorganized and somewhat crazy.

This is the first TLOT update I've actually composed with my new computer. I'm still not sure what material I want on this macine and what material I don't. I'm trying to keep TLOT on the 133 but everything runs so good on this box!

-=Links=-

Shadow's Heaven is hosting a Splat contest. Here is the text from the website:

If you're really good, why not show the world that you are the ultimate SPLAT Master? Send me a screenshot from the highscorelist with email. I need your name and email address. The 3 best will be placed in a list below!

If you download the unit-editor, please send us your .set files. We might place .set files here too!

-=Other Stuff=-

I'm getting geared up for school next week. I feel like I'm in crunch time at work as I'm trying to get things done. Come next week I'll only work 2 days out of the week as apposed to 5 right now. My work load will be fairly heavy. What I've learned in just one summer there is staggering! I'm looking foward to the next year or so there. I'm afraid at that point I will probably be searching for work somewhere else. I love my job, but I just don't want to work for a publisher, want to be with a developer.

Anyway, I'm outta here.

-=Quick Update=-

Not a lot to say, just getting an update online this week. As for TLOT, still going but slow as hell. As for me and my girlfriend.. we're great! She's not Aphrodite anymore though. That nick was commonly used and she wanted something more original. She's now SnowCreekBerry.

The animated TLOT now button is now much smaller in file size. The one I made before was much bigger than it should have been. If you're using the old one you might want to snag the new one. Anyway, the button recently found a new home. Be sure and check out the website of one of my most faithful fans, Shadow's Heaven. There is an entire section of his website dedicated as a Zaskoda Soft fan page! A major thank you goes out to shadow for all the support.

Also, many of you may have heard of Septerra Core. Well, recently they found a publisher. That publisher also recently let Gathering of Developers know they were looking for someone to aid them with US distribution. I don't know if Gathering is going to get involved, in fact I doubt it, but you can bet I'd be 100% for it! Too bad I'm just the webmaster.

-=Tlot Update=-

Check out the image this week. I've had a bit of a problem with the battle scenes since I opened up the viewing area of the screen a bit (by removing the 20 pixel thick border you see in the last dmeo) and got stuck with a lot of wasted space at the top of the battle screen (click on the image to see what I mean). I was playing around, trying to get a feel for where things needed to be, and I realized that I might could adjust and try to use that space to show information or to use as a menu. How's that look to ya? It shinks the actual window of action, wich I really don't like, but hey, it was just dead space anyway.

Also, I put up a new ELC song, Fight 14. It might get a little old quickly if you have a bad sound card, but I needed to change the tunes around here.

-=Links=-

I've got some links for ya this week as well. In my massive pile of un-answered e-mail, I've got a message from Michael Hoopmann who let me know he's got a link to my site. He's head programmer for Dark Knight Software. His RPG appeared in PC Gamer, thats worth bragging about. Michael, don't worry, I'll answer you e-mail soon, along with everyone elses. Also, Aphrodite has been updating her site and I suspect that she will update it again soon. *smile*

-=Personal Stuff=-

Ok, I missed a weekly update again.. things were slipping. My life was pretty shitty for a while. I didn't realize how much I loved and needed my girlfriend until we decided it was time to split up. Seems that now we've decided we screwed up and we're back together. We just thought it was the right time in our lives to see other people, and we didn't really listen to what we felt. Hopefully we'll spend some more good times together now. Additionally, I won't come home from work, lay on the floor looking at the ceiling thinking about puking until its so late I fall asleep and get up for work the next day.

I've got a new finger file, scott@mail.godgames.com. I donno if I will use it much, but I might. Maybe I'll get listed on quake finger or something. (If I really cared about quakefinger that much, I'da linked em). Also, I bought a new machine for home use. I got a pII400 w/128 megs of ram. Its an all scsi box so its pretty damn fast. I don't have a modem in it yet so I still use the 133 a lot but the 400 is spoiling me. I'll probably keep tlot on the 133 to try to stay in touch with normal machines to some degree. AFAIK, TLOT should perform good on a p60. Maybe I'll have to get one of those just for testing purposes.

Anyway, I've got lots of work to do. bye

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