11/24/96Well, I've gotten some feedback from some folks telling me to take it easy for a while and try to relax.. I think I'll do just that, after all, this is a holiday coming up. I had my blazer towed to the nearest shop to have that fuel pump problem taken care of and the thing started working on its own. Then yesterday it broke again... Its one of those problems that goes away when you show it to the mechanic... Now its outide sitting there dead and I need to go to college in the morning.
The shot you see this week is of my tile editor. I love that little program. I converted it over to make my sprite editor as well. You can try it out by downloading a copy of Splat. If you create any cool .set files for Splat, please send a copy my way and I'll post it on the Splat web page.
For history sake, tonight is cold and icey. There's a thick layer of ice and sleet on the ground outside (and covering my broken blazer). The air is still so it doesn't seem that cold. As you walk around sliding on patches of ice, thin sleet builds up in your hair. It doesn't take long to realize that your ears and nose are going numb and your hands aren't much warmer. Nights like tonight one can truely apreciate having a warm home. To be honest, I love this nasty weather. And I'm sure that if my vehicle was running I'd be out playing in it!
11/18/96Look, I haven't gotten anything done but a few town tiles I've been working on. Life really sucks right now.. I went to the bank to make a deposit to cover for a hot check I wrote to fix my blazer and while I was at the gas station I broke down AGAIN! This time it looks like its the fuel pump. That was a bad day.. good thing I had my girlfriend to make me feel a little bit better... Anyway, I'm broke, so PLEASE buy a copy of BOB so I can finish TLOT. I have no money, I'm falling behind in school, my job has me seriously stressed out all by itself, I am starting to get C and Pascal confused real good at times as I usually have at least one C program to write each week for school. I can't keep my blazer running. It seems like I have no time to think about TLOT lately. Its really sad, usually I think about the game every single day... and I keep having ideas. In fact, a while back I had a great idea that should really speed things up... But, this past week I haven't even thought about the game much at all. I'm seriously stressed out here..
Regardless, the image this week will probably be a good example of what houses will look like in small villages. Doing a roof isn't easy at all. The before mention idea I had was to put more into my map files and the editor. First of all, I need to figure out ALL the towns and castles that will be in the game. That means I have to first finish the plot. Then, I will make one big data file with all the maps. All the linking from one map to the other will be done in the editor. That way, not only is it easier to design, its easier to code. I was going to have actual code written in the game for each possible town and building (anywere you go from one map to another)... but really, thats a lousy idea...
This weekly update is way way late.. its Monday night while I am editing it. I made one other change to the site, I added a get BOB now icon to the meny frame (you won't see it if you are looking at the non framed pages). PLEASE go ahead and add this link to you site. Also, I rarely add to the BOB page as it is a finished product now and not really being developed, but there is talk about a BOB 2. I can't give out much info, but I can tell you there may be a very good programmer and a very good artist behind the project... who knows what could happen!
11/10/96Well, I reworked the entire web site. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go ahead and put it online or not. I really dislike frames, but they just work so well with this page. It took me 5 hours to do design the new pages. I still have the old page on my hard drive. Please, if anyone prefers the old format, let me know. The pages look ok in 640x480, I designed them in 800x600, but they rock in 1024x768.
This month's picture is of some cave tiles I threw together. I am practicing all that shading and crap to make it really look like he is in a cave. The colors still conflict some and its not really easy to tell what it is "suppose" to be, but I think I might have come up with a good wall tile. Tiles aren't the easiest thing in the world to do you know!
Theresa finished up the Aristocrat version of Seth. He looks pretty sharp. I don't like the way the stat screen images scale down and if I find a good graphic artist, I may ask him to scale them down for me and clean up all the stray pixels. I need a good artist, I just don't have an eye for that. I have about 4 people that look fairly promising, I will have to pick one soon.
I re-read all my weekly updates for the first time when I designed the new pages. Gosh, I repeat myself alot. I repeat myself alot. Hey, at least I never put the same image up 2 weeks in a row.. thats gotta count for something!
11/3/96The image on the right could very well me my final title screen. The character pictured there is Staulker. Although Seth is the main character in the game, Staulker is with the party for a reasonable amount of time. Also, Staulker serves another special purpose, but I am not going to give out that info on the web site. You can click on the image to see a larger scale and slightly different version of the it.
I am looking forward to christmas for some time to work on the game. Tonight I have hours of reading and studies ahead of me while I am working on this update. I am considering dropping the new demo so that I can focus my energy on the game... but I'm not sure yet.
Diing, a wonderful programmer, has been giving me secrets to good coding lately.. Maybe he can get my code a little more up to par. I am also looking for an artist right now. I've got several people who have submitted samples, but the door is still open for a while and will be for a good bit longer. If you are interested, check out the help wanted page. I am also thinking about starting a mailing list some day for TLOT, but that will be a while yet I'm sure.
