June 2001
- 30 -
Really truly almost done
The second non-test version of
Azenera will be out really soon, after I finish a few more details and
fix some minor problems, like all the powerups in one room being on top
of the ceiling instead of the floor. The Valley of the Giants isn't
really the dangerous place I thought it would be, but I guess it's reasonable
since level 2 is still pretty early in the series. I like the way
the Ice Giant turned out and I'm glad everything worked out there.
I was having a problem with faders suddenly stopping and making the screen
flash white, but Sageous helped me identify the problem. The ice
skull's shots were creating flash objects, which were messing with the
fader even though I was out of their range. That has been fixed.
There was a storm today, so I
didn't get a chance to work on my level very much today. Oh well,
I guess I don't have to get it done before July. I've been thinking
about going over level 1 again and changing around some things there, for
the better, of course. I'll move some cave entrance detectors and
maybe put in one more weapon for one of the orcs. Remember that each
version of Azenera listed on this site includes all levels completed up
to the current one.
I've been having trouble with
screen fade objects, so I might have to just use a bunch of particle generators
to create a storm of black flames before the Shadow Rynn fight instead
of having the screen try to fade into black but flash and flicker instead.
I'm putting sounds in, but there's not much to do with those, except put
in wind gusts and grimstone humming. One of the caves now has Wartoks
in it, and they have new axe weapons. I didn't like the look of the
old ugly axe weapons with two paper-thin polygons as the "blade," so I
enlarged the multiplayer normal axe weapon. I made it so Rynn can
pick it up and use it, but of course it's really slow and has low durability
like the orcs' weapons. The lighting in the giants' territory still
needs to be done, and also the big grimstone cave.
Azenera 2.22 is ready, and hopefully
it'll be the last test version of level 2 before the final one is ready
to go. The layers are finally calculated correctly, so you can go
through the hole in the floor in the Wisp cave and get underground from
the town. I'm hoping to get this level done before July.
The first major boss in Azenera,
the Ice Giant, is now set up! First you'll go into the valley, then
a barrier of snow will form at each exit and you'll be trapped, and you'll
have to beat the Ice Giant. It throws snowballs at you from atop
a platform, while an ice cannon fires piercing missiles at you and ice
spikes circle around to protect the giant. When you defeat the giant,
its weapons will self-destruct and you'll be able to collect the dragon's
ice powerup. Once you do that, the barriers will break and you'll
be able to enter the Valley of the Giants.
I cut out all the blank parts
of each new layer, so everything will at least be ready for visibility
calculation. I'll still have to manually change some things, like
the winding cave at the very beginning and the ladder areas in the town.
I'm now working on the Ice Giant
and its collection of weapons. I have the giant itself done, and
now all I need to do is put in the ice cannon on top of the rock.
I tried putting a small cannon object inside a solid crystal, but it doesn't
fire at me.
I finished making all the layers
in Azenera 2! Now I can fix the visibility and finally make it possible
to get to the cellars without having to use the floy/drop cheat.
There are two exits at the end of the Valley of the Giants. One leads
to level 3, and can only be accessed by Rynn because it's a non-dragon
level. The other leads to level 4, and I put another barrier in there
to make it so you have to have Arokh with you when you switch levels.
This time it's a lava river instead of a rock ridge. Level 3 will
be a swamp level, level 4 will have the power stations, succubus fortress,
and Photon Dragon to fight so you can get the Flare weapon.
Some people believe the earth
is flat. Others believe we never went to the moon, and that the moon
landings were a hoax. Most people do not agree with these beliefs,
but they don't try to censor them. Instead, we either ignore them
or make fun of them. There are some from both the liberal and conservative
side who try to silence their ideological opponents and keep them from
being heard. This is not a good tactic. Mockery is a much more
powerful tool than censorship. When someone tries to censor someone,
they are only proving that the ideas of that person are dangerous and powerful
and might actually have some impact on people, and that only makes the
opposing belief seem stronger. Mockery, on the other hand, makes
it harder to take the mocked belief seriously. The only time I can
think of where censorship might be good would be if there were a belief
that is truly damaging, but the majority of individuals in power would
be inclined to agree with that belief if they were ever exposed to it.
But that says a lot more about the people in power, and society, than it
does about the ethics of censorship.
If spells are really going to
be an important part of Azenera, like I was planning in the beginning,
then I should really find a way to make more use of them. This would
ideally involve several enemies with ranged weapons, no armor, and flying
abilities. That's why I've decided to add a band of rogue Kavoh spellcasters
in level 3, in addition to the Wartok base, because I really should make
more use of the redesigned enemies. Level 4 will have a succubus
base, and level 5 will have you fighting dragons from the ground with the
aid of the Tracker Gauntlet, which lets you cast homing spells. But
for now, I'm going to concentrate on getting the Valley of the Giants done
so I can finally get level 2 done. The next version of Azenera will
have the spells all fixed. The sounds and icons are replaced with
better ones, and you'll no longer get 10 spells when you pick up a Thunder
Shock, Gas Cloud, Force Beam, or Swarm of Locusts orb. You'll just
get the usual amount of 3. Sorry if I got your hopes up.
I've decided to finish all the
layer geometry for now, so I can finally get all the visibility information
fixing done. The main part of the Valley of the Giants is done, and
the Ice Giant's platform is there. I'm trying to decide if I'm just
going to have the Ice Giant as an enemy or if I should put in a few dragons
or something as well, but I think I'll just have the giant and its ice
cannon.
Well, I've encountered a showstopping
bug in Azenera that was probably carefully tiptoed around in Drakan.
Sometimes when I leave Arokh in a cave, and he is able to fly there, he'll
become lost if I travel very far. When I call him, it'll sound like
he's right there, but he won't be anywhere on the level. Mick, who
was testing the level, ran into this bug too so I know it's not just a
random fluke. What lousy design on the part of Surreal to let something
like that go unchecked.
Azenera 2.19 is done and you
can find it on the Drakan links page.
It's not the final version - I'll update the first Azenera link when that's
done - but a large part of the level is finished. The layer visibility
isn't complete yet, so you'll have to use the floy/drop cheat to get to
the underground area under the town, and the health fountain doesn't work
either. If you start on the second level, you'll have to use the
gimme cheat to get the weapons from the first level.
The town in JtA2 now has a population!
There are ten Kavoh who speak to you with information about the world around
you. Some of them explain what you must do to get to the Ice Giant's
valley. There are dragons and spiders on the fields too. I
went and changed the sky to a new one that doesn't look so much like the
mountains and clouds above them are part of a big dome. So, now all
I have to do is put in a few triggers to make the force fields toggle correctly
and finish all the little treasure caves scattered around the land, and
then I'll be done with part 2 out of 3 of JtA2! Part 3 will be the
Ice Giant and Valley of Giants, and it'll be easy to make compared to what
I've done so far.
I haven't been working on Azenera
as hard as I could be, I'll admit. There's always something else
I have to do, or something that captures my interest. But the obligation
I have to work on Azenera is less than the obligation lowlight has to work
on Surreal-News, and today I just found out what he's been doing all this
time instead of updating levels and news. There's a woman who posts
mainly in the Mature Discussion section of the forum, and she's posted
a few pics of herself, some with a tattoo displayed on her arm. lowlight
became obsessed with her immediately, and even discussed cheating on his
girlfriend for her, but he believed the tattoo was fake. Well, it
seems that he was taking time he could be using to update his site to instead
do background searches or picture identification to find out more information
about this woman, and yesterday he comes along to the Mature Discussion
forum all in a huff, whining about how she has been posting fake pictures.
To lowlight, this is the biggest deal in the world, certainly much bigger
than supporting the Drakan community, while in reality it doesn't matter
one iota if some forum crawler is posting genuine pics. I'm not usually
one to demand people stop being so lazy and get back to work, because it
would be a bit hypocritical sometimes, but lowlight really has no excuse
for looking through porn sites all day instead of supporting us Drakanites.
All this time he told us he wasn't posting our levels because he was coming
up with a new system for uploading. What a load of double-dipped
bull.
I watched two movies on video
over the past two days. The first was A Taxing Woman, a Japanese
comedy. It was by the director of some other Japanese movies I had
seen, and it had a similar style. It was about a woman working for
a tax collection agency and her efforts to uncover tax fraud committed
by a shady owner of an adult hotel. The other movie was Hilary and
Jackie, a true story about the Du Pré sisters. They're both
musicians during their childhood. Hilary moves out to the country,
gets married, and has children when she grows up. Jackie continues
being a cellist, and she also gets married, to a conductor. She notices
her performance degrading and finds out she has multiple sclerosis, and
her health continues to get worse until she dies. It was really sad,
watching someone go like that. I don't know when I'll be watching
another movie in the theater, but I hope to see one soon. I was going
to see Tomb Raider just for a fun action movie, but the reviews really
don't look too good.
My computer just restarted by
itself because of a power surge. Some lights in the room also went
off and then on again, and the dehumidifier outside my room restarted too.
That's it, I'm going to bed now. It's a good thing I wasn't in the
middle of saving my Drakan level.
I didn't get much of a chance
to work on Azenera today. First I got out of bed at about 11:00 AM,
which is earlier than usual, but then I looked over some games for the
GBA that my mother might want. She's only interested in games she's
heard about, like Pitfall. It's the same as the SNES game, The Mayan
Adventure, and it was really just another side-scrolling action game with
Pitfall characters and traps, but my mom thinks it'll be like the original
Atari and Commodore 64 versions. It seems most of the GBA games are
at the same level, technologically, as SNES games. Hopefully the
GBA library will include more than just ports of old games. After
looking over games, I went online, chatted with some people, and tested
a few Drakan levels. Lightblade made one called Journey to Darklands,
which said in the text file that it was the sequel to Journey to Azenera.
That's really weird. It's like the Matrix 2 and 3 being made side-by-side,
except in this case the storyline for Azenera hasn't even been finished
yet except in a few short one-line statements mostly describing general
environments and where items will start appearing. I don't even know
why Lightblade would bother with Azenera when Dragonmech would be better
for a sequel. After all, the end of Dragonmech is already established,
it's open for continuation, and the database isn't in a state of change
anymore so it would be safe to use. Arokh's Twin keeps calling my
level series Azerena, but that's not so bad; some people spell the name
of their own level inconsistently in its own archive! One example
of this is the MP level Cragsleft/Cragscleft Prison. People, choose
ONE spelling for your level, and if you're going to change the name even
slightly, change every instance of the name please! Spelling is very
important for MP levels, because an error will make it fail to work online
or even load in the first place. Anyway, after I tested levels, it
was time to go to Best Buy with my family and then eat dinner. We
looked at accessories for the GBA and my mom bought three of them.
The AC adapter works well, and the light is okay but there's a glare if
you shine it from the wrong angle and it lights some parts of the screen
more than others. After dinner, I watched the movie Being John Malkovich.
It was really weird but it was good. I liked the part with the universe
where everyone looked like Malkovich, and all that everyone said was the
word "Malkovich." There was even someone singing a song that consisted
of only that word. The 71/2th floor with the
really low ceiling was great too. After the movie, I went online
again and now here I am, writing this entry for The Sine Wave. I
actually registered on the SDMB yesterday under the name Salix, but I haven't
posted yet. How do I start off my posting career on that message
board, especially in the midst of so many smart, if argumentative, people?
Some forum members on Something
Awful started a fake cult a few months ago. They took the name
Geno and joined the online community Habbo
Hotel as the same character - a short-haired, pale-skinned character
dressed all in gray - and spoke endlessly of following the true path of
conformity. Now they're invading other communities, including the
Straight Dope Message Boards! I wonder when they'll get to ArsTechnica
and Surreal-News, or even if they'll bother with Surreal-News at all.
Speaking of that, the front page of Surreal-News still has that stupid
All Your Base line, which was another inside joke from Something Awful
until everyone else started taking a liking to it en masse. Does
lowlight even know the whole Zero Wing thing is passé now, or has
he just not bothered to change it? I bet in two years, everyone on
the Internet will have forgotten about Zero Wing, but that line will still
be perfectly preserved there on Surreal-News, even though all the links
on the page explaining the line will be long since broken.
I've added the Shadow Rynn and
Wisp sequences. First you'll fight Shadow Rynn, which is really just
an orc/wartok class character using the Rynn model lit by a pitch black
layer. The Wisp is simply a particle effect set to follow a mechanism's
rotation, and when you talk to it, a lot of the message detectors are replaced
or added in level 2. After this, I just have to inhabit the town
and finish all the other caves, and then work on the Valley of the Giants.
There was a storm tonight, so
I had to turn the computer off. I couldn't write an update or even
work on JtA2, so I started playing Zelda: Oracle of Seasons on the Game
Boy Advance. It's technically my mom's game system, just like this
web site, but I'm the only one who plays Zelda on it. But I have
to wonder if the side-by-side production of Oracle of Seasons and Oracle
of Ages, and the linking of the two games, is just another marketing ploy
like Pokemon that makes us buy both games. I got both of the games,
so I guess I fell for it. The only way it would be unfair is if both
games only had half as much content as they would if there were only one
game, and that doesn't appear to be the case because there's plenty of
things to do in Oracle of Seasons so far and it appears to be just as big
and imaginative as Link's Awakening.
Well, I just stayed up late watching
the movie Hollow Man. It was pretty bad. The special effects
were all right, especially the body animations and the way things seemed
to really be affected by an invisible man, but the story and acting were
terrible. Most of the technology and effects in there looked like
they were just there for show, like in a video game, and it was extremely
unrealistic to the point of self-parody. I also worked more on JtA2,
and now the entire Guranga underground section is really close to being
done. Kalak the death mage is in there, ready to speak to you about
the force fields, and Tuiri waits for you when you open the gate that lets
Arokh out into the fields. I've figured out what's making the game
freeze up for a while when you go into the Ice Skull cave, and it's the
accumulation of a bunch of periodic ice rings. Apparently they don't
finish going off and just build up, and if you look at them, your computer
freezes up for about 10 seconds. I'll have to put in triggers or
something to stop them from doing that. It's getting warmer here
in Minnesota and the bugs are starting to come out. There's one crawling
on my lamp right now. Many people think Minnesota is cold all the
time, but it can get really hot during the summer because it's in the middle
of the continental climate zone.
I just finished a bunch of dialogue
for the Kavoh city residents and the Wisp cave in JtA2. It's really
hard for me to do dialogue because I don't really have a natural manner
of putting thoughts into words, even though I've seen it scripted so many
times on TV and in movies. Even the words on this web page have to
be really stilted and forced, or else I would take 3 hours just to write
a small entry every day. It's frustrating, having a story that I
really want to tell but not being able to come up with language that isn't
full of repetition or badly stated expressions. My biggest problem
is with manufactured dialects. I can't seem to convey the information
I want to in a few short lines while maintaining a consistent tone of gruffness,
eagerness, or mysticism. I'll just have to keep learning, and hopefully
the major characters will become easier to write once I can tell what they
would probably say in a situation.
Today, I tried using the Serious
Sam editor but I didn't even know where to begin. It was even more
confusing than the Drakan editor was when I first started using it, but
at least it has a few tutorials I can look at. It's a real 3D editor
as opposed to just a layer-based 2D landscape editing system, so I would
have to keep more depth factors in mind. I've always been better
with 2D editing than 3D, because in the side views I would never be able
to tell the depth of the object I was selecting, or I would end up selecting
the wrong objects. Maybe I would be better with those editors now
that I have experience making vertical layer structures in Drakan.
I created a few of my own textures
to use in the grass particle generator, and after a bit of experimentation
with different styles and colors, I think I've come up with grass that
looks pretty natural. It's not the best-looking grass in a computer
game but it'll do nicely in Azenera.
There are a few problems with the technique I've used for grass. First, it's very difficult to cover hills because the particles always spawn along a flat plane. I would have to decrease the radius and use a higher density of generators. Second, the particles always face the camera and keep the same orientation. That means the grass will look like it's laying down flat on the ground if you're rolled sideways on the dragon or looking straight down. I can't find a way around this using the particle generator system. If I had any kind of programming access, I could make up a new class just like the particle generator except it would keep the Y axis orientation of all the particles, but unfortunately there's no way to create new object classes or add new parameters. There's also the problem of the particles always appearing behind alpha textured models, no matter what, but that's a problem for all particles in Drakan, like weapon effects. I've decided to add a link on the Drakan page to the latest Azenera versions so you can try them out, if you like to test unfinished levels.
My latest experimentation in
the Drakan editor is a success, at least by my low standards. I've
been working with particle generators in an attempt to simulate fields
of tall grass, and it actually works pretty well with the right parameters.
The rain drop texture seems to work well, but it makes every plant look
the same, it always slants to the left of the direction you're facing,
and part of it looks cut off.
I might replace it with the lightning textures, but I'm afraid it might look too much like green lightning coming from the ground and people will be scared to walk in the grass because they think it might zap them. I just want to find some good vertically oriented textures, but I could also make my own. Sorry this picture isn't anti-aliased. I turn that off most of the time to improve performance. I've been having another problem as well, with the Ice Skull. There's a noticeable frame rate drop as soon as you go near the Ice Skull's cave, and the longer you wait until going there, the worse the drop is. Maybe particles build up infinitely from the ice shot weapon it uses.
I've been thinking about getting
a job involving the environment, so if I ever become a serious vocal environmentalist
I can at least be doing something to help instead of just talking.
There's this site I found out
about at the Earth Day events at college. The site describes some
jobs I could supposedly get in Wisconsin, but also maybe in Minnesota.
There seems to be an office in Dakota County that I could call. Maybe
I can help clean up that polluted, mercury-filled Minnesota River, or help
build a better bridge across the creeks on the bike trail so it'll be more
accessible
to people and they won't have to trample all over the hills below.
I notice on the map there are tons of offices on the east and west coasts
where the population is high, and maybe it's not a coincidence that the
offices are mostly in states that voted for Gore. There's an office
in Hawaii and another one in Alaska so they must deal with all sorts of
climates. I worked on the Azenera landscape a little more today,
adding a few trees and shrubs. There's still a lot of little stuff
to do though. I see they're still confusing me with my mother over
at Surreal-news.com. This
time it's not lowlight doing it, it's Lord Stone. I swear, he finishes
all his paragraphs in the forums with ellipses... those are the three dot
things... it seems like he's trailing off all the time or not saying everything.
It's not as annoying as some of Sageous's persistent spelling and grammar
habits though. I'm sure I have a few quirks that get on people's
nerves as well. But anyway, I gotta get a new URL for this site because
it's been in my mother Cathy's name since the beginning, and people think
that's me. I am not my mother, jeez! I should find a way to
get the part of this site's URL after the ~ changed to "austinh" like my
email address, because my mother doesn't do anything on this site.
She never wanted to, despite my offer of putting some kind of bead, pet,
or nature theme on what was once a family page. The page eventually
became The Sine Wave, but it kept my mother's name in the address, and
that's the situation today.
I wonder what that new Enterprise
show is going to be like. It's a prequel to all the other Star Trek
series. They'll have to make the technology look even more cheesy
and primitive than it did in the original series, or else they'll redesign
it and say that the technology was represented badly in the original series
and the way it looks in Enterprise is the "real" version. Anyway,
it's a pre-Federation story that was only touched on in the shows and the
movie First Contact, so it should be interesting to see how they portray
the universe and the transition of human society. I'm still working
on JtA2 and the entire story for that series. Praxam doesn't really
seem like an orc's name, especially since the alphabet in their language
doesn't use X. I think I'll change the name to Brakshem. I
also thought about changing Halin to the more consistent Khadlun, but we'll
say Halin is the name he took on when he became a revolutionary.
All that won't matter for a while since I'm still busy making level 2,
but it's something to think about for the future. I got through the
Kleer skeleton ambush in the Metropolis level of Serious Sam, and went
through a bunch of other seemingly impossible ambushes too. It's
getting to where I can predict when enemies will spawn near me, because
they always spawn! Whenever there's a suspicious-looking or really
helpful item, it might be a trap that spawns a few missile launching robots
and a horde of suicide bombers, or a trap that spawns in a hundred skeletons,
or a trap that spawns in biting Gnaars and distant snot-throwing aliens,
but it's never just a helpful item out there for me to pick up! Now
I'm fighting magma monsters that split into smaller magma monsters, but
I picked up a really powerful cannon that deals with them easily.
You know what would really help the Azenera storyline? Something
that dealt with the whole "Sorilian" issue, but didn't beat it into the
ground. I know many a series of, well, anything that stuck too long
on a single issue and forgot all about the fun. Even the political
message boards switch between about 7 common topics and report new stuff
as it happens. But the sorilians are only mentioned among the Kavoh
of East Azenera, so there's something else I don't have to worry about.
I just thought of it because of an article I was reading. Lately
it seems like I'm always just waiting for Friday because that's the day
my family always gets together to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants,
and I just feel good during that time but also a bit like it's just a regression
back into my childhood days and I'm just scared to face the harsh realities
of life. I am scared sometimes. Well, I've rambled on for too
long already, so that's it for tonight.
The landscape of Azenera level
2, especially the part before the battle with the Ice Giant, is almost
done. I added the Guranga engine room to connect the underground
with one of the caves next to the entrance, and I put in all the layers
and textures for the cellars under the town. Part of the cellar's
design includes a place reminiscent of some of Dragonmech's caves, with
areas of varied height, brick objects from the ruins building blocks, and
a wooden bridge. This will be the Moss Knights' cave, where you can
get a few spear weapons. I've also added a Shadow Rynn enemy to the
database, which you'll fight before the Wisp joins you. There will
be more Shadow Rynns to fight in later levels like the canyons of level
6, or the island on level 10. I've created an item checklist for
Azenera here, but it's still in progress
just like the levels. There are some spoilers in there so don't read
it if you want to experience the whole story just through the levels.
I just got the game Serious Sam
today. It wasn't expensive, and the demo was fun, so I got the full
game. I like it so far even though there's not much variety in the
action. You basically just go from one area to the next, fighting
monsters that spawn in. Some places have a ton of monsters that ambush
you all at once, and you have to keep moving or you'll get blown up by
rockets or run down by a werebull. What makes it so fun is that although
you know a bunch of monsters will spawn in as soon as you get that powerup
that's right there in plain view, you don't know how many there will be
and what kinds of monsters will appear. It could be a row of giant
bio-mechanoids, it could be a legion of screaming headless suicide bombers,
and there was even one major danger that consisted of a swarm of thousands
of toxic leaping bugs coming at you from the walls. The action isn't
completely mindless, because you often have to make quick decisions about
which way to run or what weapon works best. There's a level editor
that comes with the game, but I haven't tried it yet and I'm already working
on Azenera anyway. Some people like to start out their level editing
by making a big room with a ton of monsters that attack all at once, but
it's not really necessary to do that for Serious Sam because the game is
already like that.
Sometimes it gets hard just to
make layers in Drakan and arrange them in the right order, especially when
making twisting caves and walkways. I just spent a few hours making
a new style of cave in JtA2. It's a grimstone mine with a twisting,
snakelike rock ledge that descends into the depths of the cave.
The hardest part was getting each "floor" to match up correctly. I really need more practice dealing with spatial coordinates and figuring out where all the polygons end up. This cave will be optional, unlike the Wisp and Ice Skull caves, but it'll have some cool stuff in it, like maybe a better armor-piercing weapon or some thunder spells.
I haven't given up on my photography
yet! Even though I'm out of high school, and I haven't been going
on any really cool trips lately, I have some pictures from Madison.
They're still in the camera, and as soon as I get all the pictures on that
camera taken and developed, I'll scan them in and put them on this site!
I might also add an experience log, but it wouldn't be much of one since
I wasn't out as much as other people. People would laugh, not at
my lousy attempts at jokes, but out of joy that they're not as intellectually
stunted as I am. Really, I need to learn how to interact with people
in real life. And on the Internet. And also by phone.
And I think the voices in my head are starting to get annoyed with me too!
Nothing happened today.
It was a total fluke because there was literally nothing that happened
on this first day of June. The day wasn't even special enough to
have been virtually wiped from my mind already, as that would take a day
with some kind of active quality, like boredom or dreariness. Today
didn't even have those. The worst part of it is, this entry will,
for the complete month of June, be in a prominent position at the bottom
of the entries list, instead of tucked away harmlessly and forgettable
in the middle, between the Azenera update where I add a few shrubs and
make them bigger, and decide they look enough like trees, and the one where
I wonder if maybe those shrubs need to be paired with some different kind
of shrub in order to look convincing, then finally decide again that it
doesn't need to look realistic anyway.