January 2000
January 31
I didn't start Dragonmech Mountain
yet, but that's because I discovered a few flaws in the highland area.
That's the same place I was having trouble with the giant bugs a few days
ago. It seems I was able to climb the mountains, just like in my
Crossroads of Drakan level, when I wasn't supposed to. I remedied
that problem with a few well-placed walls and I was back on my way, when
I decided to give the knight in the cave a charged flame sword instead
of an uncharged one. The ice sword has magic, the thunder sword has
magic, and now the fire sword has magic as well.
You know, sometimes I can be
really forgetful. For example, I just realized that I forgot to change
the Question of the Week, so now there's a new one. Sorry about that.
I've also been planning to release the metal dragon skin that a friend
made, so I'm doing that right now, without further hesitation. Metal
Arokh 2, in all its splendor, is available here.
I've gotten rid of the system.odb replacement, so the dragon should control
normally. If you want the original Metal Arokh controls, you can
use the system.odb from the original. This one is just a replacement
for system.txd.
I added another one of those
dragon detector crystals to the end of the Dragonmech Forest so you have
to have the dragonmech with you in order to exit. That's to avoid
any inconsistency if you were to leave the dragonmech in the river cave
on the other side of the level, walk all the way to the exit, go to the
next level, and suddenly have the dragonmech appear right next to you.
I'm trying to account for every possible thing people might do, even if
it's totally crazy. After all, sometimes I do totally crazy things
in games to see if the developers considered everything.
Another fun mutator for Unreal
Tournament is FatGun Arena, where everybody has a gun that shoots arrows
which cause opponents to pulsate from fat to skinny and back to fat.
The more damaged someone is, the faster they pulsate. Finally, when
they die, they are either really fat or really skinny. It's a lot
like the Fatboy mutator, but it's more of a damage indicator. Also,
did I mention how cool NIUT is? I've been playing with that one a
lot. Here's how the typical NIUT-mutated game goes. I start
out with a random weapon, such as a flak cannon. It has regenerating
ammo and my health is at 250. Everyone else has a flak cannon too,
and we're all running around, having a big flak cannon party. Suddenly,
there's a warning sound, after which the weapon changes to the ASMD Shock
Rifle. Now everyone is attacking with that weapon. In the middle
of that weapon cycle, everyone gets a Damage Amplifier, and the weapons
do more damage. The warning sound appears again, and suddenly everyone
has... the Redeemer! Now all the players and bots have weapos of
ultimate destruction in their hands for 45 seconds, after which everyone
gets a Ripper and starts ricocheting razor blades all over the place.
And then, here comes that Damage Amplifier again...
I made the rough draft of my
toxicology paper today. Well, at least the intro and background section.
I'm studying diazinon, and it's one of the synthetic pesticides still being
used today. In fact, it could very well be the next DDT. Until
recently, I had never even heard of diazinon, but now I'm writing a technical
report on it. Now, in this technical report, I'm supposed to be completely
objective. This means making it so my writing isn't "completely biased
and unsubstantiated," as some people have said about my remarks.
Here is my Question of the Week
for this week and the answers it received:
Question of the Week: Sometimes user-made computer game projects are shut down because they use copyrighted content. Mods based on Aliens or the X-Files are especially known for this, as is Generations for Quake 2. Do you feel that copyright laws are okay as they are, or do they need to be stricter or more lenient?
Answers:
I'm back! It depends on the circumstances. In general the big companies
are too tight assed and don't really understand how the web works. Note
the current problems on "buffy the vampire slayer " sites. On the other
hand copyrighted material is the property of the producer. I feel stuf
based on copyrighted characters like X files and Aliens should be protected.
Generations on the other hand was just a more ambitious MOD in an environment
where MOD making was encouraged by the creators up until that point. This
one should have been left alone.
Steamteck
Now, with a controversial subject such as copyright integrity, I thought I would get more people to answer than this! I guess I should be glad that at least someone answers my questions, so I don't have to keep the same one up forever. Of course, here comes my completely biased and unsubstantiated opinion. I think people should be allowed to make mods based on copyrighted content, as long as they don't in any way cause the creator of said content to lose money. Isn't that what the whole issue is all about: money? Of course, there is also the issue of character integrity. If we saw a mod for Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament where the Teletubbies go around blasting each other with rocket launchers, we wouldn't think of the Teletubbies the same way, would we? Of course, for that particular case, I think the National Liberty Journal already accomplished that, and they didn't get sued, so character integrity doesn't seem to be much of an issue with corporations. I agree that Generations shouldn't have received all the litigation that it did, and neither should have the X-Files fan sites or anything else of that sort. Copyrighting was made so that people can't take ideas or products and pass them off as their own, not to silence people giving tribute to the creators.
It's decided that there will
not be any giant bugs on the Dragonmech Forest highlands. This is
due to the disproportional damage that the ticks and spiders do to the
dragonmech. A bug just shouldn't be able to bite a metal dragon tank
to death. I'm changing the bugs to another kind of enemy, like Wartoks
or orcs. I tested out the beam weapon and found that it crashes the
game if there are too many attractors spaced too far apart, so I reduced
the number of attractors. It still works like it's supposed to, and
so does the secondary energy bomb attack. I also raised the light
level of the outdoor areas to account for people who have video cards that
display a darker image. The level would be unfair if some people
couldn't see what was going on.
I've been spending some time
trying out Unreal Tournament mutators and mods. There are some really
cool ones, found on Unreality's Mutated
section, that I would recommend to everyone. My favorite so far is
NIUT, which gives everyone the same random weapon, changes that weapon
every 45 seconds, gives everyone the occasional Damage Amplifier, and regenerates
health and ammo. When it's Redeemer time, that's when the fun happens.
Another fun mutator is Unreal4Ever, which adds some weapons like a railgun,
a flamethrower, and the "Nuker," which can fire a powerful blast like the
Redeemer or Quake 2's BFG. Then there's Infiltration, with more realistic
weapons and some new options. Ever since I downloaded it, the Infiltration
logo has taken over the UT interface.
I have a new graphics set, called
Surfer,
available for Windows Centipede Extreme. This one lets you play as,
you guessed it, a surfer, and you have to throw frisbees while trying not
to wipe out. I actually made it and the Nexus set right after I finished
making the game, so they've been on my computer for some time now.
I think WCE is the only Nalenna game so far that supports mods of any kind.
Dragonmech Forest is finished
now, except for the very last area of the level leading into the Mountain
level. I've changed the null triggers into sky/fog switchers, which
made a bunch of link lines appear in the editor. Now it almost looks
more like one of Surreal's levels in its complexity. I put a few
dragons in the forest, even though it's dark, but they shouldn't be a real
problem. What am I going to make Dragonmech Mountain look like?
I mean the beginning sections when I say this, because I already have a
pretty good idea about the final area. I guess I'll just see what
I come up with.
I made a different graphics set
for my Nalenna game, Windows Centipede Extreme. The name of the game
is misleading, though, because it is just like the classic game but slower.
Anyway, you can download the new graphics here.
Also, I made another mod for Drakan. This one lets you pick up enemy
weapons and use them. You can't use dart guns, but you can enter
the code "gimme goblin dart gun" or "gimme goblin mortar" in developer
mode and you'll get a badly implemented dart gun weapon. You can
download the mod here or from my Drakan links
page.
I've placed all the cave objects,
including powerups, and I've started putting objects in the main forest
area of the Dragonmech Forest, so I can say that I'm almost finished making
that level. I've put the second devastation bomb effect at the end
of a canyon, and it destroys some special trees that were made simply to
be destroyed by the devastation fire rings. Since it's dark, I'll
have most of the enemies be giants on the ground and dragonflies, and there
will be only a few dragons to fight. Dragonmech Mountain, the third
level, will have a lot more air combat at the beginning, especially with
the beam weapon.
Over the past few days, I haven't
had much energy at all. I try to get things done, but I'm just too
distracted by other things, and sometimes even nothing at all. My
mind is telling me to sleep, but somehow I just can't get things done quickly
enough to allow for much time to rest. There's no school for me tomorrow,
so I'll see how I feel and try to get more done with all the projects I've
been working on. I really want to finish Dragonmech before it's too
late.
Since I already made a metallic
Arokh texture, I might as well go ahead and make a metallic Rynn too.
After all, it will be most welcome, seeing as how there's only one file-replacement
Rynn texture available so far. One skin artist is using it as a base
for new textures, but they're mostly just the existing armor with some
of the armor taken out. Some of the levels, like The Fallen, have
some cool armor textures, but those are specific to the level. They
could easily be extracted and put into separate files, but that's up to
the creators of that level to do. I'm only going to work on the metallic
Rynn skin once I'm done with Dragonmech, though.
You may remember that I have
a section of my site called Nalenna, where I put all my games and stories.
Lately I've run out of ideas, but I should be doing more with my current
story/game-to-be, Ethereal Light. Maybe I could start the second
part of the story, or draw concept art or something. But, that too
will have to come after Dragonmech. I hope I'm not taking on too
many projects at once again.
Calculus has become impossible.
We're doing something called u-substitution, and I always get things confused
with each other. For example, I was stuck on a problem that had variables
in both the numerator and denominator, and I finally figured out that the
integral of that involved natural logarithms after changing the division
to multiplication. We're working on integration, which is much harder
than differentiation... well, no matter. In the midst of this, I
did manage to place some more trees and plants in the Dragonmech Forest.
That's all, though. I'm doing a lot more school work than I anticipated.
It has been said that some people
can't see the forest for the trees, but that can no longer be said about
the Dragonmech Forest, because I finally placed all the trees in the main
outdoor area today. The trees are kind of sparse, to avoid strain
on the game engine, but some areas have more densely packed trees than
others. I also plan to put in shrubs, and I was thinking of having
clusters instead of spreading them out randomly. Of course, the placement
of trees and plants has nothing to do with the actual gameplay, but it
does add to the atmosphere.
I'm going to have a lot of work
to do for school over the next few weeks, so there won't be much to report
on here. I have a huge toxicology report to write, six short stories
to read and take notes on, and a winter survival activity at the end of
February. I also have to read Silent Spring and take notes on it
too. Add that to all the calculus and physics, and that's a lot of
stuff to get done. I'll still try to work a little on Dragonmech
every day, though.
The river section of the Dragonmech
Forest is done today, as well as all the caves except one. I was
going to put orcs in the cave with water, but if you try to load a level
that has a ground enemy in the water, it crashes the game. No error
message, no system hang, just a quick exit to the desktop. The thunder
sword and ice blade are in the level, and I'm still working on the alarm
system area. It seems that the sliding wall model I used is a one-sided
polygon, which means you can't go through it from your side but the enemies
can go through it from their side. I'm going to make a reverse copy
of the wall so that nobody can get through either side. It should
also be made so the dragonmech can't use the fire breath to toast the waiting
enemies. After I solve this problem, I still have to place all the
forest objects, such as the trees, cave entrances, and enemies. I'm
having a hard time trying to decide what to do about the enemies in dark
lighting. They look fine on my system, but people with Voodoo cards
have been saying that Drakan looks too dark sometimes. I may put
in fewer enemy dragons than I previously planned, since they are dark and
hard to see. But then again, it would be a wise move on the part
of the dragons if they attacked at night...
I got a response to my Question
of the Week, once again from Steamteck. Here it is:
Question of the Week: Would you prefer that new computer games use completely new game engines that require faster computers but make the graphics look flashier, or would you prefer games to use existing game engines that run on older computers too? One thing to consider would be total development time and how it's divided between programming the engine and adding features to the game.
Answers:
Cool graphics can often be made on existing engines, look at Heretic
II. Playability rather than supercool graphics is whats important to me.
Draken looks great but it's real appeal is the limitless space you have
to play with. I'm now playing Darkstone and the graphics are ok but certainly
no Unreal or Draken but it's sooo playable and rplayable with so many different
options. On the other hand, I'm not getting Nocture because of it's
high requirements and I'm not going to upgrade my system for an untried
game. New features on existing engines may be the way to go unless you
have something really different like the Riot engines vast outdoor spaces
and limitless size modification.
waiting breathlessly (*gasp*gasp) for
dragonmech
Steamteck
I think that if a game engine works and doesn't look too outdated, then by all means go ahead and use it in another game. Unreal Tournament, for example, uses the exact same engine as the original Unreal, so much that you can play levels from Unreal in UT. That means they had more time to balance out the gameplay and make it more solid, and that has really paid off. Quake 3 uses an entirely new engine, but the gameplay isn't all it could be. The time to make a new game engine is when the old one becomes severely outdated, like the Build engine. A lot of good games were made with Build, but it has too many limitations for what people are looking for now.
As for Dragonmech, I'm getting it done as quickly as I can, but I want to add more cool stuff to it. My page has been turning into a log of my progress on the Dragonmech series lately, and here's the gist of where I am now. I'm about halfway through the object placement on the Forest. There isn't really a lot left to do with the object placement that involves any difficulty. I'm already planning out the Mountain level, and I've decided that it's going to be a lot of air combat followed by Rynn climbing a mountain too high for the dragonmech, and then maybe some more air combat. This will be the level with the beam weapon, but I haven't decided if I want to make it hidden or not. I have an idea for a door that can only be opened with the beam, so I may have the first section be a big mountainous area where you have to find the beam weapon. Of course, like the other two levels, there will be some other treasure to find there as well. I would put up some screenshots, but I'd rather spend my time working on the level and sharing what I learn about level making.
I was pondering what to do next
with the Dragonmech Forest, and I realized that there could be a situation
where the dragonmech was left behind in a cave and you could be stuck on
foot, unable to return. This could only happen if you went into the
exit cave, got off the dragonmech, went all the way back to the ravine,
and jumped in. You could circle through the river and forest, but
you would be trapped on the other side of that very same ravine.
So, I made a bridge across the ravine, and I also slowed the river current
and made a bridge across it too. I also found out that my flying
enemy problem was caused by the enemy not having enough space to maneuver.
The cave going from the ravine to the river will have a sort of "alarm
system" with red lights and sliding walls, partly as a challenge, but mostly
to make it so Rynn can pass through the cave without the dragonmech if
she doesn't have the Glowstaff. The Glowstaff is a weapon that is
weak but lights the way forward in dark areas. It's the Rynn weapon
equivalent of the dragonmech light and flare.
Well, I refrained from saying
anything about the feuds that have been going on in Drakan, to avoid the
risk of getting involved in one. But now that they are apparently
over, I'll give you my opinion. The idea of playing multiplayer is
not only to have fun, but to support the community and try to make it better.
That means trying not to upset other players, having a good sense of humor,
and helping out people who are new to the game. I know that has been
said before, and it sounds kind of trite now, but it's good advice to follow.
Yesterday, I took care of the
layer lighting. Now I've finished all the static lighting as well,
which consists of the torches in the cave and light shining from the dragonmech
detector. That's what I've decided the blue crystal will be, since
I need something to be triggered when the dragonmech reaches a certain
point. I also finished the desert-to-river section, but I've encountered
a strange problem that appears on my other levels. Flying enemies
seem to hover near the ground instead of flying higher up. Maybe
it has to do with layer height or flight ceiling, but it will be a real
hindrance to level design until I can find the source of the problem.
You may have noticed that The
Sine Wave hasn't had much on it lately. Sometimes I just don't have
the energy to do much thinking, and other times I've been working on the
Dragonmech series a lot. Once Dragonmech is done and I'm not so stressed
out over school, I'll put more cool stuff on this site. I've said
it before, but I need more sleep. I was up until 2:00 in the morning
last night doing all that homework.
There's been a lot of homework
lately. I just finished writing a character analysis on The Plague,
and I typed up a lab report on tuning forks and sound waves. I also
worked a little on Dragonmech between those assignments. The cave
to the Mountain is now complete, and most of the layer lighting is in place.
I had to make it darker than the Desert because it was night, and also
to make use of the flare. When the level set is out, if you don't
get that flare at the beginning of the Forest, you'll have a hard time
getting through the caves. Don't worry, the flare is in the middle
of a big room that you have to go into with the dragonmech. That
doesn't mean everything will be that obvious, though.
I strayed from the Dragonmech
path a bit today by playing Unreal Tournament, trying out some old summon
commands from the original Unreal. I got some of the old bots to
play, as well as Nali and Skaarj to appear. The bots just ignored
the monsters, though, and the monsters seemed to only go after me.
I wonder what would happen if they could be summoned into an online game.
Maybe there could be a generator-type level to create enemies as a distraction
from the deathmatch play, like a living trap.
It wouldn't be a complete day
if I didn't work on Dragonmech just a little. I finished placing
all the caves in the main forest area, except for the cave leading to Dragonmech
Mountain. I'm nowhere near being done with the Forest, though, but
I'm making the Forest the most complex level, with caves and a river.
The Mountain will be a canyon leading to a huge mountain, where there will
be a force field in the main entrance, so Rynn will have to go up where
it's too high for the dragonmech to reach, enter the top of the mountain,
and open the force field. I know that's kind of an overused situation
in Drakan, but this time you can look up after you've entered the mountain
and see where Rynn went through and where the dragonmech can't go.
I'll also have a crystal at the end that you discover is the source of
all the devastation bombs raining from the sky. The only way to destroy
the crystal will be to find the magic mirror that can deflect the crystal's
power. That trick was used often in Zelda, but I don't have to be
completely original. There might be some other twists and turns at
the end, so prepare to be surprised.
There wasn't much time for me
to do anything with the Dragonmech Forest level, but I made three caves
in the main outdoor area. I'm kind of cheating in the method I use
to make caves. First I take a big triangular chunk out of the ground
layer, then I put the cave entrance below that, so cave entrances in my
level are often slanted and triangular. They still look all right,
but not as elaborate as they could be. I still haven't placed any
objects in the outdoor areas, so it should look considerably better once
that is done. Some of the caves have no light, but if you find the
torch weapon in a cave near the beginning of Dragonmech Forest, you can
light the way through them without the dragon headlight. I'll even
make it so you can catch enemies on fire with it.
My Dragonmech Forest level is
coming along nicely. I just finished texturing the mountains and
grass of the outside area, and I linked another cave to it from the river.
Now you can get to the forest before you open the gate, but you can only
explore a lowered piece of the area without the dragonmech. I'm going
to make it so you have to go into the forest through a small cave to get
the key to open the larger gate to the forest. There will be some
secrets in the forest hidden in the mountains and such, as well as some
more caves to explore. The Dragonmech series will be built around
the idea of exploration. You don't have to find everything, but if
you do, it makes it a lot easier in later levels.
I've started reading the book
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. This is the book that made people
aware of the dangers of pesticides like DDT, and the importance of preserving
nature. Even though it was written in 1962, most of the issues are
still relevant today, maybe even more so. I'm not going to do any
ecological preaching on this site, though, because there are other sites
that do that and they do it much better. I'm too busy with other
things anyway.
You might think that sculpting
a mountainous landscape in Drakan is a hard thing to do, but it's actually
quite easy. At least it's easy compared to texturing, sculpting of
caves and rivers, and setting up the lighting. Water and arches are
two of the most frustrating things to make. Today, I created some
caves along the river, and they will have stuff like potions, weapons,
and armor in them. Some of them will be big enough for the dragonmech
to go inside. The passage to the forest area will be blocked by a
gate, which can be opened with a key found in one of the caves. I
also sculpted the main forest landscape and gave it a grass texture, and
as soon as I add trees and give the surrounding mountains a rock texture,
it will look better. The fog looks like it's closer than usual in
the forest, but it's at night, so it doesn't really matter that much.
The dragonmech now has specular
highlights, which means it looks shiny. I think it makes it look
more metallic, but I needed a texture with less detail so it would look
realistic. I made another dragonmech texture that works well with
the shiny effect, but I don't want the work of the artist who sent me the
latest one to be for nothing. Maybe I'll use my new texture, but
include the other one in the ZIP file as an alternative, along with an
explanation of how to swap them. I wish there was some way to use
both, like making the other one a skin in multiplayer or having a selection
between the two at the start of the level, but sadly, there's no way to
do that without adding 4 megs to the ZIP file. The best solution
now is to make 2 files, one with the texture I was sent and the other with
my new one.
I made a new section of the Dragonmech
Forest today. It's a river surrounded by mountains, and it was very
hard to make. First I had to make all the river coast vertices a
uniform height, and then I had to manually put the river in piece by piece,
making sure the grid divisions are flipped the right way. Then, for
the sake of believability, I made underground caves for the water to flow
through, but Rynn can't swim through them. I also fooled around with
skies and lighting, and I found a way to reduce the geometry pop-in on
the Desert level. Now the fog color goes up a little higher in the
sky. For good lighting, the best way to render night scenes is low
ambient light, high projected light. That's because light doesn't
reflect as much at night, and there's more shading.
The Playstation is still a good
system, and I still play games on it sometimes. I've tried out the
two that my brother got for Christmas: Pac-Man World and Frogger.
First, I tried Frogger, and it seemed a lot like the original at the beginning,
but just as frustrating in all the levels. Pac-Man world was a lot
more promising, even if it most of it was inspired by Crash Bandicoot.
There are bonus areas that are like the original Pac-Man mazes, and you
can even play Pac-Man Classic, like it first appeared in arcades.
It looks like the retro craze is here to stay, at least for now.
I wonder if today's games will be remade in a future retro fad.
Even though the Drakan editor
is one of the most difficult things to work with, I think I'm finally getting
the hang of it. My skills are no longer limited to simple outdoor
height maps like my first level, or stacked layers like Arches. Now
I'm making combinations of caverns and outdoor areas with passages connecting
them. I've started the big outside area in Dragonmech Forest.
It's still a desert canyon, though, but it leads to a river, which leads
to the forest. There will be some caves hidden in the forest, with
secrets and treasure in them. I'll also have a good old devastation
bomb, once again from right out of the sky, drop on some destructible trees
to clear them away and make the weapon look really powerful. The
reason I'm making devastation bombs fall from the sky will become clear
on Dragonmech Mountain, the third level.
Remember that Zero Visibility
project I was talking about? Well, I've decided that it's going to
stay away from the criticizing and the finger-pointing about mainstream
culture. Instead, it'll be a place where you can find out about all
sorts of cool stuff involving ethnic and social groups that don't get seen
much in our society. The only thing stopping me now is that I wouldn't
know where to begin, and my top obligation is to finish Dragonmech, but
it would be nice to see something new on this site.
There wasn't much homework today,
but there was a lot of other school stuff. I had a graduation site
council meeting and a Costa Rica trip meeting. We're trying to find
out who would be a good keynote speaker for the graduation ceremony.
Initially, we wanted Jane Goodall to speak at the school, but she was unavailable.
Some people thought Mark Plotkin might be interesting, but it would really
be a better idea to find someone local. At the very least, we'll
get someone from the Koch Refinery, which has actually been criticized
by the school for its pollution. We narrowed it down to 4 or 5 people.
It was time for the Costa Rica meeting next, and I have to start taking
malaria pills on the 23rd. Even though we're going to the southern
region of Costa Rica, which is out of the malaria zone, I still have to
take the medication just to be safe. Oh well, I'm sure this trip
will be worth it.
I've made a big cavern room with
the light/flare dragonmech weapon on the Forest level, and I've also made
another outside area. All the outside areas on that level look really
artificial now, since there aren't any mountains behind the closest ones,
but that can be easily corrected by making the boundary-forming mountains
higher. I find myself constantly overestimating the size of layers
and layer heights because I forget how much bigger than Rynn the dragonmech
is. I'm lucky the cavern is still passable.
Whew! I just finished my
science presentation, which was not really complete on Tuesday, and I studied
for my math quiz tomorrow. My Japanese quiz was today, and I hadn't
studied at all. I messed up one of the kanji, but other than that,
I think I did pretty well. Japanese would be a much easier language
to learn if it weren't for all those kanji. Now I have to finish
The Plague, and analyze the character of Tarrou. There's still not
much due over the weekend, though, so I should have some time to catch
up with everything.
I just discovered that the dragonmech's
properties stay the same on transition from one level to another.
That means the ludicrously high flight ceiling of the first level, made
for the artificial ceiling above the whole outside area, is still in effect
in the Forest, even though it isn't supposed to be. I came up with
a solution for that, though: the artificial ceiling on the Desert has been
lowered to a constant height above the ground. It's still too short
to be noticeable, except for a few cases. You can't jump on top of
high objects now because of the invisible ceiling, and if you try to jump
straight into the gorge at the end, you get stopped by the same invisible
force.
Tomorrow, and the day after that,
will be busy days. I have a zillion things due for school on Thursday,
and I'm sure something will come up on Friday to make my workload even
greater. I was on the Drakan servers for a few minutes today, just
to see how things were going, and people are starting to get the hang of
that fixed-view Stranded level. Of course, Rotation is still going
strong, in all its one-on-one dueling glory. There was also time
to work on some of my projects, too. I got a chance to implement
one of the most important parts of my Dragonmech series for Drakan: the
level transitions.
The transition from the desert
to the forest is now in place. Unlike the levels in Drakan's single
player game, you can't go back to levels you've already completed.
This is partly because of the way the flight inhibitor in the Desert is
set up, and partly because it would mess up the advancement from day to
night to morning. That's right, it's going from bright sunlight to
the middle of the night when you enter the Forest. Maybe I should
have another quest inside the cave, to extend the illusion of time between
the two worlds.
It was another day full of things
to do for school. I read more of the book, and then I did my math
and typed up a really lame science presentation. I'm supposed to
be some kind of expert in mineral recycling, but I think I just stated
the obvious. It's just as well, though, because I have no idea what
I was supposed to do. There's a packet that I still have to read,
and there's a bunch of stuff to worry about for college and my upcoming
trips. My life has been kind of hectic lately, but I'll try to work
on my projects for this page as much as I can.
Okay, this time I'm really, truly
finished with the first part of my three-level Dragonmech set for Drakan.
I added a homing feature to the flare weapon so it locks on to enemies
and has more of a use in combat, and I finally put the artificial ceiling
above the desert area to inhibit the dragonmech's flight on that level.
Now I've started on Dragonmech Forest, but I'm just starting out with the
cavern that holds the light/flare weapon. The storyline for the level
set is now like this: when Navaros's forces attacked the land to the south
of Rynn's hometown, the people built a mechanical replica of the legendary
dragon Arokh to protect them. Unfortunately, the cave which was their
base for operations was seized by Wartoks, and some of the dragonmech's
components remained there, like the flight crystal and flare. They
sent the dragonmech out into the nearby desert and kept it safely guarded,
near a fortress which had become flooded with sand. When Rynn opened
the rift and went through it after her brother, everyone was warped to
different places, all in the southlands. When Rynn warped through,
her Runeblade transformed into pure energy and was absorbed by the dragonmech,
which began to show a life of its own, and it becomes bonded with Rynn,
just like Arokh. Rynn realizes now that even though Navaros has been
defeated, there is a greater evil. She must find a way to escape
the desert stronghold, restore the dragonmech's abilities, and travel across
the land to find her bonded companion, Arokh, once again.
What a day! First, I typed
up my analysis of Rob Roy, using my thesis as a start, but I think I strayed
off track a little. Now when I hand it in, it'll come back with all
sorts of "corrections" about it. Well, I can understand how some
things might call for correction in an English class, like spelling errors,
irrelevant comments, and really bad grammar, but I think it's all the other
imperfections that give personality to the writing. But then again,
this is a paper for the strict AP system of writing, which means write
what the judges or teachers want to read. Next, I wrote a letter
to my host family in Japan, where I'll be staying this summer. I
really couldn't think of much to write, because it wasn't clear who I was
writing to and I didn't want to say too much. I've always tried my
hardest to avoid offending people with my writing, especially to the people
I'll depend on. Finally, I read more of The Plague, which has gotten
more philosophical and gets more into the main characters.
Duncan, aka Sageous, one of the
main designers at Surreal, has created a new multiplayer level using a
fixed camera angle. I was kind of thinking about doing something
like that earlier, as a duel level, but it looks like they beat me to it.
The cool thing is that it actually works. In most multiplayer games,
when you make a level, it controls like every other level in the game,
with the same weapons, powerups, and special effects. In Drakan,
you can have level-specific mods, and virtually anything that can be created
using Drakan's class system can be implemented. There are some problems
with movable objects and sequence triggers and things like that, but there's
still a wide variety of stuff that works. I wish there was a way
to create new class types or edit the code through a programming language,
though, because that's the only way to create true mods and new kinds of
play.
"When that fool from The Sine
Wave tries to join our community," said the owners of HereticII.com, "we
shall close down our page for good!" It seems like that has happened,
for when I tried to go to HereticII.com, it brought up the Hexenworld page
instead! Maybe they messed up their FTP routes, or maybe they just
haven't told us about the change yet. I can still get to the H2 forums
through the Hexen forums, and the jargon is starting to make a little more
sense. What's a "llama", anyway? From the context I've seen
it in, I'm guessing it's someone who comes in and starts breaking the rules
in bladematch games. Maybe it's a Quake term or something.
In the Drakan community, we just call those people rude.
I've started 2 new links pages,
one for Heretic II and one for Unreal Tournament. I looked on Yahoo
for all the H2 pages I could find, and I saw a link to the Crowd Control
page that Sparrowslain made. When I clicked on the link, however,
it had been replaced with something called Paradise Lost, and there was
no mention of Sparrowslain, or even Crowdpleazr, who also worked on it
and whose name was in the URL. The Paradise Lost page hadn't been
updated since April 12, 1999, and it was for a Total Conversion that was
never finished. There were also links to other TCs, and all of those
had been abandoned as well. It's kind of sad to see the remnants
of a community after it has moved on, but I know there will be other, newer
ones that will be just as good. I'd better get Dragonmech out before
the Drakan community fades away.
There's just so much to learn
about the way things work in Drakan. I found out some new stuff about
the ring spells and object generators. If you have a projectile explode
into a generator that creates a ring spell, it will only work if it hits
the ground. If the projectile hits a building, object, or enemy,
it will look like the spell is blazing across the ground, but it will have
no effect on anything. I've remedied this by setting Detect Objects
to No, but since the only thing that uses the ring generator will be a
predetermined blast from out of nowhere, it won't be any problem.
However, I should remember this in case I ever want to make a ring of fire
explosion effect for a weapon. There was another problem where the
game would crash whenever the big ring of devastation hit a giant while
on the highest gore level, but that was caused by the burn effect, which
has now been removed. I also added a model to the light primary fire,
where the dragonmech shines a light that illuminates dark areas, and I
increased the rate of fire slightly on the mini-missile.
I finished Heretic II today,
and I have to say that it took me a while to figure out how to defeat Morcalavin.
In case you haven't played or finished the game, I won't go into specific
details, but I will say that it was like something out of a Zelda game.
It's always cool when they come up with a different way to defeat the enemy.
Now, let's talk about the ending. People are complaining on the message
boards about how Drakan's ending is short and really doesn't wrap things
up. Heretic II's ending is a little better, and it adds some closure
to the story, but it's not very long or elaborate either. That kind
of ending seems to be a trend with computer games, and I've even heard
that Half-Life's ending is the same way. I think computer game companies
could learn a lot about endings from console games, especially RPGs like
Chrono Trigger. That game had 2 or 3 normal endings plus about 10
hidden ones, and although they were of the traditional "big celebration"
type, I think that's better than a cryptic 15 second scene followed by
the credits. I noticed something during the credits of version 1.06.
It had a list of Enhancement Pack Beta Testers, and one of them was none
other than Sparrowslain, formerly of The Sparrow's Nest! Of course,
that was for version 1.04, which was totally messed up, but I think 1.06
fixed most of the problems.
I've decided that there are some
parts of the Dragonmech Desert that could use some work. One place
is a large area with a primitive giant, some boulders, and some Goblin
Minors, which I made as a toned down Goblin. That area is supposed
to be more stealth-based, but the goblins come at you right away, so I'm
changing it. Now there's just the giant and a Goblin Grenadier in
the building, and the giant has more boulders and debris to toss at you.
The trick is to either dodge the boulders or use an invisibility potion
so the giant doesn't see you. After you open the gate, you can come
back and blast the giant with mini-missiles from the dragonmech.
I also have to make it so the giant doesn't go after the armor knight and
throw it at you, because then you lose the challenge of defeating the knight.
To avoid complaints from those who don't know how to freelook with Arokh,
I've gotten rid of the first dragon and left the second one behind a dune.
The dragonflies will stay in, however, because they're near the end of
the desert.
People are just dying off left
and right in The Plague. It's a real coincidence that the time I'm
reading this book is the same time I'm playing Heretic II, which also has
a plague. I didn't get much time to play it today, however, because
I had so much other stuff to do. I had to think up a thesis for my
Rob Roy analysis and do another calculus assignment. There's no real
news for today, but I'll try to get started on the Dragonmech Forest by
tomorrow. It's going to be a lot more varied than the Desert, starting
with the end of the desert valley and winding along a river until you get
to the actual forest area. The level will be at night with lots of
dark caves, but you can pick up the flare to light the way.
It's been a long time since I
started the Dragonmech project, but I think I finally might be done with
the Desert level. I'm not going to release it yet, for it is incomplete
without the other two. I plan to release it all as one big file,
which will probably be about 10 megs. That's big for a level set,
but it's no bigger than a slightly larger Unreal or Quake level set, and
it includes new textures and music as well as the Arokh animation file,
which in itself is 3 megs. The camera angles in some places have
been programmed with the STOMP sequencer, but since I have very little
knowledge of STOMP, it's not programmed as well as Surreal does it.
I honestly don't know how they made all their levels with the same editor
that was released to the public. Whenever I look at one of their
levels, I get a headache. There are objects all over the place, as
well as links, and you can't tell where anything is just by looking.
Even though some of the later levels in Drakan aren't as good as they could
be, I still have to give congratulations to the level designers for keeping
their sanity.
There was an article in the paper
about how lack of sleep can cause severe health problems, like thyroid
dysfunction and obesity. It kind of freaked me out, despite my skepticism.
Anyway, I really do think I need to get more sleep from now on. I'll
start updating this page earlier in the day so I don't have to stay up
all night thinking of stuff to write. And look at the way I write!
I'm obviously not very coherent, and I can't keep a thought in my head
for any amount of time.
I gave Rynn the short sword instead
of the spear at the beginning of the Dragonmech Desert. Now, the
spear is carried by an orc and can be picked up and used as a weapon by
Rynn later in the level. I also created some new items: a scaled-up
ice crystal that works as a lamp, a single-player mode speed potion, and
the Crystal of Flight, as well as some more mechanisms. I added enemies
and doors to the cave from the Desert to the Forest, and I've decided that
there should be a river leading from the cave to the actual coniferous
forest, because it would just look silly if there were pine trees right
by a desert. But then again, it looked silly when there were tropical
islands right next to a snowy grotto...
Our latest assigned book for
the School of Environmental Studies is The Plague by Albert Camus.
It's about a small boring town in Algeria that becomes infested with the
bubonic plague. We were assigned this book because we're on the infectious
disease and toxicology unit, and also because we're studying existentialism.
That's the belief that we're in complete control of our own destinies.
Apparently, Camus was an existentialist, and people see it in his writing.
I seem to be learning a lot more about philosophy and psychology at this
school than I would at another high school, maybe because all the classes
are rolled up into one big session. We're taught a bit of everything,
but it's mostly about issues involving the future of the earth.
Now that I'm back in school,
it's time for big assigments and projects to fill up my time. I've
made a New Year's resolution: to finish Dragonmech as soon as I can.
But I must confess that lately my mind has been consumed with other things.
I've been playing some of the games I got, like Heretic II, Final Fantasy
VIII, and Unreal Tournament, and I barely scratched the surface of some
of them. Maybe I just don't have the time to play games a lot anymore.
I downloaded Pingtool yesterday
and tried out Heretic II online. Surprisingly, there were only 7
servers, and only 1 of them was populated. There were 4 people on
there, so I started up the game and tried to join the server. Of
course, I couldn't join immediately. First I had to automatically
download about 30 files, such as levels and skins, that were being used
in that match. Finally, it got everything downloaded, and I found
myself in the middle of a game. It seemed to be a level where the
powered-up blade staff was the main weapon, but the blade staffs only parameter
wasn't set, so I didn't know what to make of it. Nobody wanted to
play the duel-style bladematch game at first, but after playing a few more
levels (all of which I had to download from the server), we finally settled
into a duel-type game with multiple arenas. That's when I had to
leave. A good thing about H2 online play is that it's very stable.
I didn't experience a single crash or ping spike while I was playing.
I'm so used to Drakan deathmatch that I thought lagging out every 5 minutes
was normal. There was that delay in firing again, and sometimes it
seemed like blade staff hits didn't connect, but it's still a cool online
game. The auto-download feature is very useful, as is the ability
to use custom skins on any server. I think Surreal should implement
those features into their next game, because Drakan is lacking without
them.
There wasn't much homework for
me over break, and I'm surprised. I did have to take notes on a movie
(it had to have artistic merit) and I chose Rob Roy. Even though
it wasn't on the list, the assignment said we could choose another movie,
and I saw that Braveheart was on there, so why not Rob Roy? It's
another movie about Scotland and the British, but it isn't quite on the
epic scale that Braveheart is. It's about a clan in the highlands
that needs money, so they ask a British lord for 1000 pounds. The
lord's associates, however, betray the clan and attack their village, so
Rob Roy, who is one of the clan leaders and protectors, vows to get the
money back and restore honor to the land. One of the best things
about the movie is the soundtrack, which has drums, singing, and of course
bagpipes, and it creates the right mood for the movie. The dialect
is hard to understand at first, but it's not totally confusing.
I made a backup copy of Heretic
II version 1.0 and downloaded the expansion pack version 1.06. It
adds some new features, like a new player model for multiplayer and more
blade staff moves, and it fixes some bugs. Some of the major ones
it fixed were in version 1.04, like players turning invisible and the entire
server crashing when someone with an earlier version tried to join.
I've heard both good and bad things about the expansion pack, but in all
fairness, I think most of the bad stuff was fixed from 1.04. I still
haven't tried it in multiplayer, though, so I'm not in any position to
make judgments about that aspect. I do know that there is still a
large multiplayer community, in fact, a lot larger than Drakan. I
don't know how well Drakan sold, but if it's worse than Heretic II, which
only sold 13,000 copies in the first few months, then Drakan didn't do
so well. As it stands, Drakan is pretty much unknown to most people,
and there are few mods and levels for it. It's probably too late
to look into H2 mods, because it's an older game, but it'll be fun to look
around the web and find stuff for it.
Well, it's Y2K and there are
no serious bug reports, despite all the doom and gloom prophecy about it!
I was going to pull a prank on everyone and put up a messed up Y2K page,
but I was too busy celebrating the event to do it on time. I even
made the page in advance, but it never was up here. If you really
want to see my fake Y2K-bugged page, it's under the Sine Wave archives.
Perhaps my computer was affected by something, though, because when I opened
up the time/date panel it said the year was 1996! I think that's
just because I downloaded one of those Y2K prevention programs and it messed
around with stuff. It was supposed to be a good program, too, but
it seems there were compatibility issues. Well, at any rate, if you're
out there reading this right now, Happy New Year, and welcome to the first
of a thousand years starting with "2"! I hope you had a good millennial
celebration, because you'll have to wait a thousand years for the next
one!
I finally found Heretic II after
much searching. First I looked online at Amazon.com and the price
was listed at over $45. Now, this is an older game, at least a year
old, included in a lot of OEM packages, and with poor sales, and they were
trying to sell it as if it were new. Although I really wanted the
game, I didn't want to pay any more than the most recent retail price I
saw before that, which was around $35, so I decided to try one last local
retail store: CompUSA. Fortunately, they had 5 copies in stock and
on the shelves, for only $30, so my search was over. I went home
and installed it, and then I started it up to see what it was like compared
to the demo. The control system was the same - good enough, but there's
still a fraction of a second delay in movement. I got used to that,
though, and I find it to be a really fun game. The spell effects
are really cool, and the gameplay is varied enough to keep things interesting.
There are a few too many confusing mazes and button pushing puzzles, like
in the other Heretic/Hexen games, and sometimes you can get stuck and not
know what to do to advance in the game. The enemies are well animated,
but there's a bug in the movement of the flying bat-like creatures.
There weren't too many other bugs, but Corvus did get stuck in one place
sometimes so I would have to load a saved game. They move like lagged-out
Drakan players, instantly teleporting from one place to another, but I
don't think they're supposed to. I haven't tried multiplayer yet
- there's no in-game server browser, which is kind of a disappointment.
However, I've heard it's fun, so I may try a game search program like Pingtool
to try to join a H2 game online.