-=Quick Update=-

Hey look, its a forest background! All of the backgrounds I've been showing are being done by [drum roll] Tsugmugo. So now you know my super secret background artist. Maybe some day they'll actually be part of a game...

Anyway, as everyone noticed, I missed last week's update. This is going to happen a lot for a while. My job is absolutely crazy. I remember when I first took my job how great I felt with no stress.. now I'm just as stressed as I used to be. I've just got so much to do and only two days a week to seriously work on it. That and one of my classes this semester demands a great deal of time outside of the classroom..

Thus, I think I'm going to be quiting my job soon. Yeap, I may no longer be Gathering of Developers' web monkey. The only problem is, I have to find something else to do to support me. Arg... This sucks.

As for all you guys who've been e-mailing me and not getting a responce, I'm going to reply.. I swear I will... someday.. I hope...

Back to the meat grinder, I've got physics due tomorrow. I'm averaging 6 hours to complete each assignment... better get started soon.

-=TLOT Stuff=-

I made a new background for the menu on the right No big deal. I was inspired to do one, while it didn't turn out anywhere near as good as the inspiration, its still usable. More importantly, I've continued to work on the menu system for inventory stuff. I'm actually having more trouble with this than I thought I would, but I'm still chugn' away at it. You'll notice the "-more-" at the top and bottom of the list. Basically, this scrolls up and down your list. (I only mention this because its what I worked on mostly, what it does is probably obvious.) I sure didn't end up being able to display many items on the screen at once, but I think this will work out ok. I'll try to set up the list of items so that most of the frequently used items are near the beginning of the list.

-=Links=-

Bay Sonthipanya's Home Page has been updated. He's got a new demo of his RPG (Emerald Genesis) available for download. I've mentioned this game in the past, it looks pretty good. I've also found that TLOT was listed on a new website with some pretty positive comments! Check out The Role Programmers Home. To quote him:

This is one of THE best non-professional RPG out there!!!!

-=Personal Stuff=-

I'm not in the groove like I want to be as far as keeping up with Inet relations. Many of my webpages a terribly out of date, in particular my Bob page. I burning myself up doing html at work and then I offered my services to a friend of mine wich consumed about 20 hours of art and html work. The result of my work was a html based CD Resume/Portfolio for the FPS levels he's designed in a number of engines. The CD is complete with an autorun. I was pretty proud of the final result. A screenshot of the first menu is available by clicking on this week's screenshot. I've got a lot of mouse roll overs and such in there. For example, as you move your mouse over each of the three main choices, a little sign in the top right will scroll up and then back down with whatever your mouse is over (resume, portfolio, contact info). Hopefully this will help land him a new job. I'm also hopeful that my big HTML projects are nearing an end. I have to pretty much redo the entire gathering website now, and then I should have a fairly clear road ahead of me. HTML is something I get burned out on very quickly, too bad I'm a webmaster ;)

BTW- I played the Get Medievil demo tonight, I love it! later...

-=TLOT Stuff=-

I did some good work this week.. well, I did some work anyway. I started coding more on the inventory system. I jumped into it and started making it work. Decided to leave them inventory menu on the right but I decided to list the items in a different font. This was really the only comfortable way I could fit a 8 character long name on the list. The number to the right of the item is your quantity. This is the part that lights up to show you wich item you have selected. I put "exit" at the bottom but I need to move it to the top to be more consistant with other menus. Also, there will be a "more" option at the top and bottom if you have more stuff than is listed here.

I've had mixed feelings as to how I'm going to store everything. I just set it up as 2 1-byte arrays from 0 to Num_Of_Items. The first byte says what you are carrying, the second says how many. Sounds simple, but because I'm using a byte, I can only have 256 items in the game (wich for this caliber of game, is pleanty). That begs the question, why not use an array from 0 to 255 or 1 byte. Thus, I only have 1 array to manage with each element in the array pre-defined as an item type and the byte storing how many of that item you have. Both have goods and bads as far as programming techniques and speed, so I might re-do everything I have. I'm really not sure how I'm going to do it yet.

This weeks image shows the menu pasted on top of a fake battle screen, the background here was done by my super secret background renderer. If you click on that image you'll get an actual in game shot of the menu and the little popup "rusure();" menu.

-=RPG Scene News=-

Arg, I got a message giving me a pretty good explanation of the story with Age of Mystics, and its on another machine so I can't post it here for everyone... wich is what I planned on doing. But, in a nut shell, the site has mysteriously dissapeared from the Inet. In this e-mail I also got a url for someone who was planning on developing a site to do the same basic thing as AoM was doing, but when I tried it, the link didn't work. When I find out more later, I'll let everyone know. I'll prolly post that e-mail next week as well. You know, this would be a good chance for Vito to get Fantasy Origin up and cooking.

-=Personal Stuff=-

I don't understand... last summer I planned on finishing this damn game and I didn't get anything done. All I could think about is how much time I'd have to work on the game during the summer. I didn't get anything done. But when school started I hit TLOT pretty heavy. Monday was my first day of classes this semester and when I got home I jumped straight into coding. Maybe its some force inside of me that knows I can avoid homework by working on my game. ;)

My job is hell. Its hard to keep up with everything when I can only get into the office twice a week. Oh well, I'll just have to work harder. Arg... I'm never going to be happy until I'm my own boss. My biggest complaint about being webmaster is the fact that everywhere I've been a webmaster, marketing has to get involved and mess with something they don't know anything about... grrr... I guess the Inet has gone from an information resource to a fucking advertising medium. I think the thing that burns me up the most about it is the fact that I'll NEVER be able to do anything about it.

Sorry, got a little emotional there.. see you next week..

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