July 1999
July 31
Here it is: the end of the July
page. Next it's on to the August section and this page will be in
our new archives. Unlike the New York Times Online, however, these
archives will be free and accessible to anyone. Well, it just turns
out that I will be here tomorrow and I'm leaving on August 2nd. Tomorrow
is just "packing day" for the Utah trip, so I'll get to spend one last
day here getting this page ready for dormancy.
If somebody, ANYBODY, reads this
page I have a question: What can I do to make this page better? Is
it too boring? Are you tired of reading about my life? Even
if you don't have any suggestions, if you are reading this, just send me
an e-mail right now! I don't
even care if it's a flame or spam! I know I must have given my Web
address to some people in school... Where are they? Sorry, but I
feel like I'm writing all this for nothing. Oh well... I'm not in
it for the attention anyway. Less attention means fewer restrictions.
I did it! I finally beat
Unreal (on Medium difficulty)! Is it just me, or do the Skaarj get
stronger in the last few levels? I faced a Berserker at the end of
The Darkening that took about 10 flak cannon shots. For the most
part, single player Unreal was good as far as graphics and unique environments,
but the gameplay was pretty much the same as in other first-person shooters.
I finally got to use the detail textures with the new Direct3D support.
I've got patch 225f, but I don't know how much the Internet play has been
optimized. It's stupid how computer game publishers think they can
release a game without getting all the bugs out, especially in multiplayer
because that's where the longevity of a game is. Single player will
be the same every time, but with multiplayer you can go against thousands
of human opponents. I really don't have much experience with multiplayer.
I played Quake on a LAN a few times, but my 56K modem doesn't give me good
performance so I don't play over the Internet much.
On the Drakan forums an order
(clan in most games) called the Immortals is forming. It consists
of three members so far: Eclip§e, Conner Macleod, and Trev the Immortal
Moose. They even have a homepage, which I have added to my Drakan
links. They claim they are good, but what do you say? When
the full game is released, they will have tryouts for membership.
There's also another order called the Flight of Dragons consisting of Bryagh,
Smyrgol, and one other member. They will also have tryouts.
I'm already sensing some tension between the two orders, even before the
game is released!
I stopped typing the year 1999
as part of the date because it got too redundant. When the year 2000
comes I'll divide it into a separate section. Unless, you know, the
world ends in Y2K or something. Only 3 more days until I leave for
southern Utah. This trip sure isn't going to help me get any Sine
Wave readers, and I'll have a huge gap in my Drakan previewing. When
the full game comes out, I'll be back from my trip, so everything should
work out. I might be too busy playing it to update my page, though...
Remember on the 24th when I got
all psyched about seeing The Haunting remake? Well, I finally got
around to seeing it and found out that the critics were right - this movie
bites. But it's an over-produced, loud, summer movie kind of bite,
so it wasn't a total waste. I should have known remakes weren't a
good thing because I saw what happened with the new Psycho. In The
Haunting, they totally changed the story around from the original, and
not in any good ways, either. The horror is much more visceral and
much less psychological. I never really had that sense of dread like
something bad was coming but you don't know where. I always knew
where because the camera always revealed it. You might want to see
it for the special effects, but some of those are pretty dumb, too, such
as a statue coming to life in the middle of a pool and vomiting a stream
of red food coloring. Or better yet, see Lake Placid - at least that
had witty banter.
I've been playing the game Unreal
for some time now. So far I've gotten to Na Pali Haven, a floating
island. I recently got nVidia's latest drivers for the Riva TNT,
and Direct3D has never looked better. However, the latest Unreal
patch seems to have a problem with that - they improved the D3D support,
but now when I access the menu some of the letters don't show up.
Also it doesn't tell me how many flares or Nali fruit seeds I have and
it might be a real problem if I ever used those items. The OpenGL
support has been severely diminished with the new patch, for reasons unknown
to me.
I never have time to write anything
on here anymore because I'm too busy getting ready for the Utah trip.
Well, I found out today that August 3 is not the official release date
for Drakan. Apparently, nobody knows what the release date will be.
Surreal is still fixing bugs in the Internet play, and they don't know
when they'll be finished. I'm really looking forward to this game,
and I still have hope that it will be released in August. The Drakan
forums are especially lively today, and the programmers are still answering
questions.
Today I'll be finishing up my
Darius tribute and putting this page on the web. So that means you
can stop looking at the old Nalenna page and start out with a little more
content. So, just to begin... Hello loyal readers, and welcome to
the daily updated journal/news page called The Sine Wave! My name
is Zeoc, and I am the owner, author, and graphic designer of this page.
I chose the color purple for this page because it's different, and also
because I'm a bit weird. I make games under the name "Nalenna."
Nalenna comes from the Japanese word "narenai," which means "it cannot
be." Currently I'm working on an overly ambitious game called Ethereal
Light, which starts out kind of like the movie Hope Floats but then goes
into a Stargate-like warp and becomes an adventure across another world.
It will be mostly adventure, with few if any battles. I also have
my version of the arcade classic Centipede, with customizable graphics
and sounds.
On August 1, I will be leaving
Minnesota to go on a field trip with my high school. I go to the
School of Environmental Studies, which offers more nature-themed subjects,
and I'm going to southern Utah to explore the canyons. I've already
decided to have my "major" subject for the trip be paleontology, so I'll
be digging up dinosaur bones part of the time. Or at least wishing
I was. I'll probably be passed out from heat exhaustion most of the
time because I'm really not in shape for this trip. Computer nerds
and nature just don't mix very well. Anyway, I'll be back on August
14, so look for me then!
Guess what? The printscreen
button doesn't work while I'm running the Darius emulator, so I don't have
any screenshots yet. I'm looking for a program to run in the background
that will let me press a key anytime to save a picture of the screen.
I think I might already have one somewhere on my computer. I really
want to show some pictures of this awesome game!
The emulator has a built-in screenshot
function, so I'll have those pictures up in no time. Take a look
at my Darius page now. Remember this arcade classic? I know
it wasn't in very many arcades, at least not in Minnesota, so you might
not be familiar with the game. But if you are... all the more reason
for you to check out my tribute!
Well, it's almost 3:00 AM central
time (on the 27th, actually,) and I still need to update this thing.
I haven't got any Darius screenshots yet, but I'm working on it.
But it doesn't really matter what I write here anymore. Nobody reads
my page yet, nobody has e-mailed me about Nalenna's zero-budget games,
and it's likely nobody will read this archive as soon as this page is on
the web. Skip ahead to the 27th...
Guess what? If this page
were ready for web implementation yet, I would be FTPing it to you from
my new computer! But alas, I still need to do my Darius tribute page.
In fact, I think I'll do that right after I update this. Did you
know that Darius was three TV screens wide? Or that it had a pyramid
level structure? Or that the bosses all looked like sea creatures?
I'll give you all the info on this fantastic game.
I knew that Nalenna, a site closed
to the rest of the Internet, and linked to by no one, would never become
part of the Net community. That's why I made The Sine Wave - to offer
a true update to my original Info Page. At first this site was just
going to be called Wave and offer nothing but obscure stories. Then
I thought Sinewave would be better because in Latin "sine" means "without,"
as in without inhibitions. I looked on the Net and discovered that
Sinewave was already taken so I added the word "the" and separated the
name as you see it. That's how I got the name.
I was just getting to that.
I chose this color scheme because nobody else uses it, at least no other
computer game-related site. People will come here and go "What the...
what's up with the colors?" It's more memorable that way while remaining
unobtrusive.
I don't want to talk about myself
constantly like some egomaniac, so I'll inform you as to what's up with
Drakan: Order of the Flame. The Sparrow's Nest reports that Drakan
hasn't even gone gold yet (that means it is not ready for shipping).
Oh well, I'm sure Surreal is still patching up a few bugs or working on
multiplayer. At least they're not rushing an incomplete game like
Daggerfall or Battlecruiser 3000.
You know, there are just some
movies that would have been better off not having been made. I'm
not talking about independent films here, or even weird avant-garde mainstream
efforts. I'm talking about Hollywood rehashes of cookie-cutter stories.
A good example of this is Event Horizon. It took the cool space concept
of Alien along with the creepy feel of The Haunting (the original - more
on that later), and it still managed to mess it all up with poor acting
and no originality. The storyline was really lame, too. Sorry,
I just had to get that off my chest. I'm better now, so let's talk
about...
Well, on the forums everyone's
talking about how there will be improved server play but no modem play.
It seems modem play has gone out of style for multiplayer. That's
cool for people with faster connection speeds but since I'm just a HPB
with a 56K modem, that means lag city, even for one-on-one play.
The Drakan demo, which you can download from the official site, has a lot
of bugs, but the programmers at Surreal have promised to fix most of them,
such as the one where you can fly outside the level and become invisible.
Ah, Internet video - the last
salvation for people who don't want their content dumbed down for some
mass audience, right? Right? Wrong. It seems that video
on the Internet has, and this is remarkable, been dumbed down even more
than TV. This is mostly due to bandwidth constraints which force
all net video to be condensed into short, choppy music videos consisting
of sound bites and flashy effects. For example, everything in the
Den is basically the same - short videos about kids in the big city, short
movie snippets and previews, adapted high school health class videos, etc.
On the upside, though, you can download this video at any time instead
of being confined to a schedule. It's a promising medium, so we should
at least give it a chance.
I don't care what those critics
say about the remake of The Haunting, I am totally psyched about this movie!
It's probably not as good as The Blair Witch Project, but what can you
do? Blair Witch is a genuine horror movie with genuine fear.
The Haunting remake, from what I've seen, has some of the flashiest special
effects since The Phantom Menace, and it seems to be a lot more fun than
the original Haunting. Sure, it loses its horror feel a little, but
who doesn't enjoy a good graphics showcase? I've heard they totally
changed around the story, although the characters have been kept (somewhat)
the same. I recommend seeing the original first if you want to experience
the classic horror movie. If you like a lot of mood and atmosphere
in your scary movies, see Blair Witch instead. I hope to see it,
but it's only showing in Uptown, which is kind of a bummer. The "mainstream"
cinemas don't know what they're missing.
The Blair Witch Project is an
independent film by a few filmmakers working on a shoestring budget, and
surprisingly enough, people like it a lot better than all of last
year's Hollywood flicks combined. It has won awards in film shows
like Cannes, and it will probably be a contender for an Oscar (unless it
is eclipsed by Eyes Wide Shut). Blair Witch succeeds on its level
- a scary movie that's actually scary. No fancy special effects,
no inane side stories, just pure horror. Some would call it the scariest
movie of all time, but that remains to be seen.
So I saw American Pie a few days
ago and I pretty much got what I expected. You know, a lighthearted
comedy about a bunch of high school boys seeking sex. It's an old
story and it's told well. However, I just found out that the MPAA
is trying to censor another movie along those same lines. The movie
called "Coming Soon" and this time, it's about high school girls seeking
sex. It's not even as raunchy as American Pie and they're still trying
to censor it! There seems to be a double standard where it's okay
to show boys being horndogs but with girls it's taboo. That's really
a pity, because I'm tired of the old "horny boys" theme. It's funny,
but I've always had kind of a strange attraction to girls, and it would
be nice to see them in more prominent film roles.
Attention fellow nerds who know
what I'm talking about! I just found out that the game Sonic CD,
for the Sega CD, was changed in its translation from the Japanese version
to the American version. It seems three-fourths of the music was
redone by Spencer Nilsen, who also produced music for other Sega CD games.
In the game, each level has four time periods: the Present, the Past, the
Good Future, and the Bad Future. In the American version, the Present
and both Future music were redone, but the Past music is the same as the
Japanese version. It's in a completely different format, too - the
American stuff can be played from the disc while the Past music is stored
in compressed PCM files on the disc. That's really weird, and kind
of a bummer that they didn't leave the music the same.
If you're like me, you probably
remember an old arcade game called Darius. It was a side-scrolling
space shooter that spanned three screens wide. Well, classicgaming.com
has an arcade recreation of this awesome game for the RAINE emulator.
To play it, you'll have to set the screen resolution to 1024x768 and the
game will look severely letterboxed but it's worth it just to play this
awesome game again! It was really cutting-edge in 1986, when it was
released, and it still looks surprisingly good today! I've put up
a page about this arcade sleeper.
Truthfully, I haven't even started
on Nebula. In fact, I've forgotten a lot of my C++ programming skills.
I'll try to get something done, but for now, my focus will be on this web
page. Even though nobody reads it, it will be my focus, at least
until August 1. I'm leaving to go on a field study with my school,
the School of Environmental Studies, to southern Utah, where I will study
the canyons, dams, and deserts. It's going to be a grueling two weeks
camping out on the rocks and learning about the heritage of the land and
its ecosystem and all that environmental stuff. I'll be back on August
14 with all new stories and inspirations.
Today I watched the movie Lake
Placid, starring Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, and Oliver Platt. My
brother didn't want to watch it because it broke some weird pattern he
has about being informed the day before seeing a movie. Instead he
wanted to see some old repeats of Seinfeld and Frasier. Anyway, he
missed out on a great movie - not great in the sense of good plot, good
acting, or even good special effects. The great thing about this
movie is that you can really see the influence of its writer, David E.
Kelley. For example, the Bridget Fonda character looks and acts exactly
like Ally McBeal, and the Bill Pullman character is a lot like Billy.
Oliver Platt reminded me of John Cage in his role as the strange crocodile
expert. It's an okay movie, but it's better if you've seen Ally McBeal
before.
To tell you the truth, I've never
really believed Ally McBeal. The dialogue is so ridiculous and cheesy.
Add that to the fact that Ally herself does nothing but whine whine
whine and you've got a recipe for a doomed show. It's just like
that terrible waste of air time called Conrad. Remember Conrad, about
the poor loser guy and all the women bugging him about stuff? That
one sure got canceled quickly. Well, Ally does have some redeeming
qualities, such as the witty banter, the choreography, and the fact that
there's no laugh track. I've never liked laugh tracks - they make
it seem like the TV producers are telling us what's funny instead of letting
us decide for ourselves. Come on, we're not all idiots!
While I was watching the Lake
Placid previews I saw an ad for this thing called www.den.net,
an Internet video site aimed at teens, with all the "teen" staples - movie
reviews, health videos, and urban stories. I've been watching Rated
DG, an online movie preview site. The video's not all that great
on my computer since I only have a 56K modem (AAARGH!) but some of it's
still cool. Also on the web are many cool sites about a game called
Drakan. Only the demo is available now, but I swear it's the awesomest
demo in the entire gaming world. I don't care if "awesomest" isn't
even a word, that's what it is. I've played the demos for Sinistar
Unleashed, Heretic II, Re-Volt, and Requiem, but the Drakan demo outshines
them all. (Re-Volt was cool too, I might keep an eye on it...)
Hello! If you're a regular
reader of my web page (which is doubtful, since nobody reads my page -
oh, well...) you may have noticed that the format has changed several times.
First it was The Homers, then it was Nalenna, and now it's the Sine Wave.
This is, I hope, our final change, and we're going to stick with this setup
from now on. I still develop games with Nalenna, but you won't find
anything new yet. The Sine Wave will add a lot more, such as this
journal updated daily, if I have the time, as opposed to monthly.
Also I will provide computer game reviews and tips, as well as a preview
of Surreal's awesome new game, Drakan: Order of the Flame.
Yes, that's right! I am
totally into the Drakan demo and have been reading nothing but praise for
this game at the ActionExtreme forums. The developers moderate the
forums and answer questions people have. That's really cool that
they would do that because I know some companies that just crank out software
without considering its quality. That's why there are so many games
for systems like the Playstation that have flawed control and not much
substance. Much like my web page... I'll try to get some non-text
graphics onto here.
What do you think of my new color
scheme? I was going for sort of a Seashell Purple Hippie-style look.
Is it too much?
I wanted a name that represented
a kind of a flowing motion that lasts for an eternity, and a sine wave
is just that because it is smooth and does not converge on any limit.
A sine wave is also the purest sound waveform and is used in creating melodic
tones.
Zeoc is my screen name and online
game alias. When I'm deathmatching in Quake II or Unreal I am known
by this name.