February 2000
February 29
This will be my last update until
March 13, because I am leaving on a field study to Costa Rica. I
finished the Cloud mod, and it's not on here but will hopefully be available
on the main Drakan pages in a few days. When I come back, I'll finish
Dragonmech and make an online Costa Rica journal, like I made for Florida
and Utah. I don't know if I'll put up as many pictures as Utah, but
there will be pictures, unless something happens to them or any of my cameras.
There weren't any answers for the Question of the Week, but I'll put up
a new one while I'm gone and see if people reply.
Once again, I had a lot of homework,
plus a meeting to get ready for my trip to Costa Rica. There's not
much time to do anything now, but tomorrow, I'll have no homework.
That's when I will make that Cloud mod for Drakan. As for now, I
need some sleep, since I'll be leaving at 3:30 AM on Wednesday. But
with the winter outdoor final exam tomorrow, plus the Willa Cather presentation
that I didn't get a chance to do today, how can I sleep at all? I'm
really getting myself messed up, thanks to the School of Environmental
Studies. Actually, that's not true - it's mostly my fault for putting
everything off.
I didn't get any replies to my
Question of the Week. It's just as well, though, because the only
things I have time for are homework and Dragonmech. I finally finished
my Flatland project, but I still have the Cather project to start, here
at midnight, and I have to study for a big test on the winter survival
unit, including some Jack London stories I didn't get to read. This
is really unhealthy.
Well, I am so ashamed of myself.
I couldn't even get Dragonmech done before my Costa Rica trip. I
thought I could, but... well, anyway, there's no sense crying about it.
It's mostly done, and it will be done, and that's what counts. So,
I've put together the things I did get done and I'm making them available
here,
as a beta version. Once again, I'm sorry.
I'm afraid I have some bad news.
I won't be able to finish Dragonmech before my trip to Costa Rica because
there's just so much to do. Drakan editing is hard, and I don't want
to release a rushed project. So, for anyone who is waiting patiently,
and in case I don't make it back from my trip, I'm willing to make the
first two Dragonmech levels available for download in their present state.
I'll put them on this page, but I'm not going to announce it on the forums
or to any of the Drakan pages, because it's not finished yet and I only
announce finished levels and mods. Also, I have to do that Cloud
model file for Drakan that I said I would do.
More bad news: I may not even
get to go to Costa Rica. They're having this problem with my insurance,
and the school demands a letter from my insurance company stating that
I'm insured outside the United States. I am, and I know it, but that's
not good enough for the school. Of course, they only mentioned it
briefly when I could have done something about it, but now that it's the
weekend and the insurance company is closed, they tell me that it's absolutely
essential. That's just great.
I also have two big projects
to do over the weekend: a presentation on the writings of Willa Cather,
and a report on the book Flatland. The Cather project is supposed
to be with a group, but I haven't had the chance to work in the group much,
so I'll have to do solo research and cut out some of the information so
it looks like I did. As for the Flatland project, I think I know
what I'm doing. I'll create a model of Flatland on a piece of poster
board, and have the lines, triangles, and squares be movable shapes.
I could even think up a Flatland play or skit if I have the time.
Well, my overnight stay went
without many problems. I did have to wander around with my stuff
until I found a good place to set up, but I managed to get a fairly solid
shelter built out of two tarps, some nylon string, and a tree branch.
We went in the school for a while to watch The Edge, a really unrealistic
movie about being stranded in the Alaskan woods with a hungry bear, and
at 11:00 at night, it was time to go back to our camps. From my previous
experience, I knew it was going to be cold when I woke up, and sure enough,
it was.
Okay, if you'll settle down,
I'll tell you more about what happened on that fateful day... that just
sounds so dramatic, doesn't it? We had the final outdoor test, which
involved hiking to a site, building a fire, cooking a meal, and hiking
some more. This was the winter survival test, but it was warm and
raining, so it was more like a spring survival test. Nevertheless,
my group managed to get a fire going and make ramen noodles and S'mores.
We kind of got lost on the way back, but we made it in time.
I finally got a lot of work done
on Dragonmech. I'm done with all the layer building except for all
the little caves at the base of the mountains. The inside of the
big mountain still has the visibility calculation problems, but I should
be able to fix that once I create all the layers. You can't really
expect a really good visibility calculator in the editor because it doesn't
do all the time-consuming work of BSP or the Unreal engine.
I'm updating early today because
I'm spending the night at a campsite near school. This is an optional
overnight stay, and I usually don't do this sort of thing, but it seems
like it's good preparation for the outdoor test tomorrow. Also, it
will be a fun adventure, and I haven't had one of those for a while.
I have to leave - now - so I'll end this entry here.
There's not much happening in
terms of computer games or anything like that. I did get to watch
The Matrix again, on video, while doing some preparation. It's a
strange but fun movie with a dark edge to it. I've thought about
it, and I didn't want to accept it, but The Matrix was better than Star
Wars Episode I. I have always liked Star Wars, but the latest one
just lacked a lot of stuff that made the first series so good. Character
development, for example. I wonder if there will be a sequel to The
Matrix. There have been rumors of one.
Yes, I know I missed a day, and
for that I'm sorry. Here it is, the entry for February 22.
There's not much to talk about, just preparation for the winter overnight,
the winter test, my field study, and all the physics and math stuff.
Dragonmech is also a top priority, now that I have less than a week to
finish it before I go to Costa Rica. I don't regret spending time
on Hover Train, because we really needed some CTF levels. After I
get back from Costa Rica, I might make a swamp CTF level, or one on a snowy
mountain.
I said I would have the Question
of the Week, and any answers I received, on here today, but since this
is really tomorrow... well, no matter. Here it is:
---
Answers:
It,s me again. I like levels that are varied and interesting but that
are held together by an underlying theme. i like to feel there is something
going on not just monsters to knock down. Different terrains and environments
are good but a good level can be biult around a single unifying theme such
as a castle. I prefer spacious or outdoor levels if possible. A level should
be challenging but not chrush you like a bug. A really good level leaves
room for inovation and more than one way around some problems. Some monsters
that I hate ( Heretic ii rats or Drakan drones for example)can detract
from a level but thats just personal preference. lastly that undefinable
sense of "wow" really makes a great level. The one you get
when the unexpected detail or event takes you off guard while not distrubing
the level's theme or reality. Your giant spider in "Crossroads" and the
Parthenon in "Paradise come to mind. The "wow" can also come from little
details that make it seem
real rather than the staged run it is. Well, I don't ask for
much do I?
until our next exciting episode,
Steamteck
Personally, I think the quality of a level can be judged in many ways. First of all there's how much fun it is to play, and second, there's how good it looks. A level can be ugly but very fun, and it can be beautiful but boring. For me, the fun factor is a lot more important than good graphics, because it has more of a lasting impact.
I finally finished the homework
I needed to get caught up with, and then I posted Hover Train. Some
people found the level to be too linear, though, so I added some paths
through the middle and changed the fog to a uniform distance. The
first level is still good for online play, so I've made the new version
into Hover Train 2. There's not much
time for anything else, though, because I discovered some physics homework
that I needed to do, and it took me the rest of the night to finish.
Sorry about that. I promise I'll post the Question of the Week answers,
and the new question, tomorrow.
Sorry about the late update.
I'm afraid I strayed a little from the Dragonmech path to create a new
multiplayer level. It's called Hover Train,
and it's a Capture the Flag level that takes place on a hover train speeding
through a valley. I started with Surreal's Test Case 18 and used
the idea of the train level from Unreal Tournament. With a lot of
people, Hover Train could be a really fun level, and I hope enough people
are willing to play it.
I saw the movie American Beauty
today. Actually, by now it was yesterday. It was good,
even though it was kind of depressing. The best part was the editing
and cinematography, and how it displayed everything that was happening.
It got the most nominations for Best Picture, so the academy must really
like it. We were going to see it on Saturday, but it was sold out
because everyone who missed it the first time was seeing it.
The pathway to the top of the
mountain is now complete, but when I played it, a strange thing happened.
It seems the visibility didn't calculate the way it was supposed to, and
layers just disappeared and popped in sometimes. One of the layers
didn't appear at all when I tried to fly onto it, so I ran into an invisible
wall there. I guess I'll have to set the layer visibility manually,
which shouldn't take long but will be tedious.
Whenever I look for Heretic II
servers, there are only 4 that show up, and I'm lucky if any are even populated.
There aren't many people playing Heretic II in multiplayer. I did
get to try deathmatch with all the weapons, as opposed to bladematch.
It seemed like the phoenix bow was the weapon of choice, but with a few
spells, the blade staff could be very effective. The community has
abandoned complex conversation and adopted a style of chat involving two-letter
abbreviations. I think gf means good fight, and I know gg is good
game. n1 means nice one, and it's used in deathmatch as well as bladematch.
There have been some others, but they're not used as often.
I got some stuff done for Dragonmech
today. I changed the heights of the vertices in the Dragonmech cave,
which was really hard because it was a bunch of layers stacked on top of
each other and I had to hide the ones on top to get to the lower ones.
It's kind of a pain to make a vertical series of tunnels, but it's necessary
for this part of the level. Now, it's time for me to finally get
more sleep than I usually do.
For our winter survival unit
in school, we're using a coffee can to store some stuff that might come
in handy in an emergency. We're also reading poetry and stories about
the frozen north and survival in the snowy wilderness. It's getting
kind of hard to write this now, and I can't really concentrate, so I'll
end this entry here. I'll tell you more about my school stuff tomorrow.
Today, I was more sleepy than
ever in the morning, even though I got a few more hours of sleep than I
usually
do. Actually, I only got 5 instead of 4, so I think I need to make
a bigger improvement. At least tomorrow is Friday, so there's time
to relax, sleep in, and be focused for a change instead of lethargic like
I've been for the past few weeks. I finally got some real work done
on Dragonmech today. First, I changed the rock wall barrier in Dragonmech
Forest, which lowers after you get the ice missiles, to a huge ice wall.
This makes it look like you're absorbing the ice when you get the missiles,
so it makes more sense. Also, I started sculpting the interior of
the huge mountain in Dragonmech Mountain. It's going to be a bunch
of cavernous rooms connected by passageways, and one of the areas will
be right above where the dragonmech flies through after you destroy the
crystal. I haven't made the part of the passageway that goes up to
the crystal, so there's still a lot of work to be done.
The mountain interior didn't
have enough room to see the area above without looking up, so I made it
bigger. Also, I changed an area of the Dragonmech Forest so it's
more evident that a landing spot near the river is meant for the dragonmech.
Mostly, I tried to catch up on my reading of Into the Wild, but lately
I've been feeling really sleepy when I try to read books. Then again,
I feel sleepy most of the time, especially in physics and math. We
had a quiz today, and it was a real strain to concentrate. I know
I can get a lot done when I'm not feeling like this, but lately the sleepiness
has stayed with me during every day. I guess my bad habit of 4 hours
of sleep a night has really caught up with me. Well, I think I'll
get to sleep earlier tonight, even if I miss a little bit of homework that
I put off because I didn't have the willpower to get it done sooner.
This constant tiredness has even affected my Dragonmech productivity, and
that's not good at all. I'll still get it done before March, though
- I promise.
I built some more of the Dragonmech
Mountain interior today, but I think I may need to have more of an open
area inside the base of the mountain. I want it to be so that when
you fly into the mountain with the dragonmech after destroying the crystal,
you can look up at where you were but not be able to fly up there.
It should be an area where you can see it without having to use the freelook
key. I also tried some new player-created levels, including a new
map where we can switch between two levels: a rain arena and a snow arena.
Someone was saying how there was a clan with 51 Drakan players, and that
there was another one with more. I said I doubted there were anywhere
near 50 players, and that there were probably 30 regulars and a few people
who are only around for a short time and move on to other games.
Maybe the clans with a lot of members ask the visitors to join and keep
their names on even after the people aren't playing anymore.
Here it is, on Valentine's Day,
and I don't even remember to change my Question of the Week. Well,
the new one is on here now, so sorry about that. We started the Winter
Survival unit in school today, and we began with a walk through the snowy
woods with tiny branches hitting us in the face. I'm glad I wore
my boots and snowpants for that hike. Then we read the same story
I heard during Bioblitz - it was To Build a Fire, by Jack London.
We also have to read a book called Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, about
a young man named Chris McCandless who tries to live out in the Alaskan
wilderness but perishes. That is revealed at the beginning of the
book, so it's not like I'm spoiling the plot.
I played through Dragonmech Forest
a few times, and there were a few instances where the game would crash
when the primitive giant was about to throw a boulder. I don't know
why this happens, but there must be something wrong with Drakan's programming
when it comes to that. It never happens in the single player game,
only in Dragonmech. But I don't want to get rid of the giants...
maybe the problem is with the boulder debris or object generation or something.
Well, I did the usual stuff for
Dragonmech today. I textured a few layers, tweaked some stuff in
the Forest, tested out the ice missiles, added some lights, and planned
out the inside of the big mountain. There will be some small but
intricate caverns that lead in and out, onto mountain paths and to the
top, where the devastation crystal awaits. Of course, it will all
be guarded by heavy opposition, and the only way to defeat the crystal
will be to use the magic reflector.
Here comes today's Question of
the Week, and the response it received. It's from Steamteck, but
there was no response by Mike or anyone else this time.
Question of the Week: Is it okay for publishers to demand a game be released early and have a few bugs, as long as it will be patched later, or should games stay in development until they are nearly bug-free?
Answers:
There should be a happy medium between the two options. It seems almost
impossible to make a bug free game but Drakan's excess of bugs or rep for
it ( I actually found Heretic II more buggy on my machine but still a really
cool game) really hurt it's sales. On the other hand, developers can take
forever if not give some push, Daikatana for example. A few patches are
OK for unforseen problems but the game should be pretty strong off the
shelf. Often also the patches respond to comments by the community and
that is fantastic!
Steamteck
I think it's okay to release patches if their purpose is to add new things to the game that people want, such as the arena and CTF features of Drakan's 445 patch. However, if a game has a new patch released every month to fix really obvious bugs, then the game was unfinished and should have spent more time in development. As for Daikatana, I don't know what to think about that, whether Ion Storm is actually getting work done efficiently or just having a battle of the egos. From what I read about them, it sounds like there's a lot of infighting in the offices.
The missile in Dragonmech is
a reliable weapon, but I felt there needed to be a better long-range weapon
against flying enemies. So, I made the ice missile and put it in
the Dragonmech Forest. There are 2 modes of fire to the weapon: a
really fast missile and a homing missile. They should both come in
useful against the blade and bat dragons that will be in the Mountain.
Some enemies are resistant to ice missiles, such as ballistas and knights,
but sometimes it's better than regular missiles. I made it like this
because you don't get the beam attack until late in the game. Maybe
there should be a cave in the middle of the path between the beam area
and the big mountain, just so the dragonmech can use the beam more often.
Or I could have it so you go through some caves after you destroy the crystal
on top of the mountain. As well as making the ice missiles, I textured
the mountain path and fixed the path of the pirate ship.
It's sweeps time on TV, so all
the shows are being more suspense-filled and manipulative than usual.
However, things haven't reached anywhere near that level of activity in
the usual game communities. There hasn't been a new mutator for Unreal
Tournament released on any of the sites for some time now, and Gamespot
or any of those sites hasn't come up with anything really exciting to talk
about. The only exception is the Drakan community, but only because
of the new features in the 445 patch.
I created the lake in the middle
of the mountain path today. It's designed so the island in the lake
is only accessible by a pirate ship. Yes, you couldn't ride the ship
in Drakan's single player game, but in Dragonmech, it will be a necessary
task. The island will hold a key for the gate that Arokh is behind,
and then Arokh will need to get the beam weapon to activate a crystal switch
leading to the next part of the path to the really big mountain.
I also created the texture for the crystal on top of the really big mountain
and placed it in the level on top of one of those tower crystal bases from
the Islands world.
The servers were running Test
Case 18, just as I expected, so I decided to join in. There were
two teams, the Dirt and Sand sides, so I joined the Sand side and made
my way into the Dirt fortress. After I got creamed and respawned
back at my base, I went up to one of the Rynn animation demos and I became
a member of the warrior class. The other class was Archer, but the
arrows aren't very effective. Now I could defend myself as I entered
the enemy base, and I went into the dungeon and got the Dirt flag.
Suddenly, I was transformed from the sword-wielding Warrior into a translucent
Tuiri character armed only with a basic axe. It was clear that I
needed someone to defend me, but luckily the other team was distracted
enough for me to sneak by. I had heard that in version 445, you could
bind chat macros to talk to your team. You could also bind other
things too, and to test it out, I bound "Cleanup on aisle 5!" to a key
and used it whenever I got a kill. It annoyed some people, and others
were amused, but the novelty wore off quickly. The chat bindings
are useful in CTF games, especially team chat. You can say, "I'll
defend the base," "I'm going to get their flag!" and one of the most useful,
"I've got the flag and someone's following me! I need some backup!"
There seem to be more people on the servers now, and I hope they stick
around as new levels are made.
Today, I actually started my
homework as soon as I got home from school, and it's a good thing I did
because it took me the entire day to revise my toxicology report into something
that wasn't totally sloppy. I've converted the report to a web page
which you can read here. It looks kind
of messed up, but that's because Microsoft Word added a bunch of XML stuff
to the text. I did take a short break for dinner, and I tried one
of Surreal's test cases for the 445 patch, but only for a few minutes.
From what I saw of it, it looks like a Capture the Flag system has been
implemented. There's no separate score for flag captures, though.
The reward is extra kills for you and your team. The Drakan server
was probably filled with all the hardcore fans trying out the test case,
and I would have been there if it weren't for all this homework.
When Dragonmech is finished, and my Costa Rica trip is done, I'll try my
hand at creating a CTF-style Drakan level. I'm thinking about doing
one with animated textures that makes it look like you're speeding through
a desert valley on a hover train. That's an idea I got from the Unreal
Tournament assault level called HiSpeed.
I sculpted the entire outdoor
area of Dragonmech Mountain today, except for the path leading to the inside
of the mountain itself. Now there's one mountain that's larger than
all the others, going above the dragon flight ceiling, and on its summit
will be a craterlike place where you see a giant crystal. The crystal
will begin charging up its power, and you start to wonder what it's doing.
Then it fires one of those devastation shots into the middle of the crater
and you realize that it's the crystal that was causing all those fire bombs
to drop from the sky in the last two levels. It's the best excuse
for a plot revelation I could think of with my limited editing skills.
Now, I just finished typing up
my toxicology speech. Not my toxicology report, mind you, but my
toxicology speech. Now I have to present my case to an official from
a Dakota County environmental office. Tomorrow, I have to finish
up the actual report, including parenthetical citations, so there's a chance
I may not get to work on Dragonmech at all! The day after tomorrow
is Friday, though, so I'll have some time then to get more work done on
it. After all, I promised myself I'd get Dragonmech done before I
leave for Costa Rica on March 1. I guess I'm heading into crunch
time.
The new Drakan patch, 445, is
out now, and it supposedly offers a lot of new options to multiplayer.
Of course, levels have to be made that take advantage of these options,
and none are available yet even as a tutorial. Multiplayer still
crashes and has most of the same bugs as before, and when I asked about
it, the testers said it would require a major network overhaul and Surreal
is busy working on other things right now. The developers have posted
screenshots of their desktops on Surreal-News.com, and even though the
letters on their next project are blurred out, it clearly says Drakan 2.
I'm starting to get the feeling that Surreal has given up on the constant
patching of Drakan's mulltiplayer and they're focusing on fixing up the
Riot Engine for future use. With the new patch, I did notice that
the aim inertia is taken out of zoom mode so it controls more like a first-person
shooter while zoomed in, and you can't do flips or rolls in zoom mode because
they would otherwise mess up the view.
Well, I have confirmed that you
can indeed get stuck in the water cave in Dragonmech Mountain without the
dragonmech and not be able to get out, so I made a passage connecting the
water cave with the upper cave area. Now you can get anywhere by
foot, and I'm starting to realize that this is why Surreal made most areas
in the Drakan levels like Wartok Canyons passable by foot too. It's
so if you leave Arokh in a cave where he can't get out, you won't get stuck
without a way back to him. I can't believe I didn't consider that
before I made Dragonmech Forest.
The lava just didn't look right
in Dragonmech Mountain. First of all, the lava cave was right below
to the surface, and it was too geographically close to the Desert, and
that's mixing too many biomes. Second of all, lava would go against
the design of the rest of the level, which is in a valley with lakes.
Finally, lava is really overdone in games, especially in the final levels.
Too many times have I seen the last stretch of a game sacrifice the beautiful
vistas of the first few levels for a more "dangerous-looking" environment,
like a monotonous alien world or a drab spaceship. Drakan's volcano
level was at least more impressive than that, but it still suffered from
final-stage seriousness. Dragonmech Mountain will be challenging,
but it will also have the open spaces and exploration of the first two
levels. So, I changed the lava caves to water-filled caves, and that's
okay when it's next to the desert because it's on the other side of the
mountains, next to the river... well, who cares about geography, as long
as it plays well? I found a possible situation where the dragonmech
could get stuck inside the first cave and you jump into the water cave,
into the water, and can't get out. Now I have to make a winding passage
that goes all the way from the water cave up to the starting cave.
Maybe I could put some powerups in there to add a reward for either exploration
or getting lost. Either way, it works out well in the end.
There was another Costa Rica
meeting today, and I have to start taking my malaria pills sometime soon.
Even though they say the mosquitoes here in Minnesota are significantly
worse than those in Costa Rica, we have to be careful for other things.
For example, there are a lot of snakes there, as well as scorpions and
ants. If you put your hand on a tree, you could be swarmed with fire
ants instantly! They also warned us about the food, which has beans
and rice for almost every meal, and a few cultural differences. It
would be nice if I learned some Spanish, but I took three years of it already.
My memory of it is a bit shaky, though, and I keep mixing it up with Japanese,
which I'm learning now. The languages have practically the same vowel
sounds.
If you look at the Links section,
I changed a few things. I never visit ScreenIt or Den.net anymore,
so those don't really play a part on this site now. The links to
western national parks are now listed on the Utah page instead of this
one, and I got rid of the notes on Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, since
those aren't really useful to anyone except high school students who are
assigned the book to read and don't want to take their own notes.
That's not very many people.
Today, I went back to Dragonmech
Desert and fixed a few things. The drones are now below the artificial
ceiling instead of above it, so they don't get stuck in the air anymore.
There was also a situation where if a giant throws an orc at you, the orc
crashes in midair because of the artificial ceiling, so I erased the orc.
The dragonmech missiles still go through the ceiling, so it shouldn't look
weird unless you try to jump into the ravine before you enter the cave
or try to jump while on top of the platform structure.
For my Question of the Week,
I got an answer again... but it's not from the usual person, Steamteck,
it's from someone named Mike, who noticed my tribute to Darius. Here's
the question and answer:
Question of the Week: How much potential for editing do you think developers should have in their games? Should they keep anybody from editing at all, allow limited modification or level making, or give users total access to every aspect of the game?
Answers:
my quick and naive answer to your question of the week is "total access."
mario64 and kart64, for example, were great but their long-term value was
seriously hampered by the developers who made it impossible to squeeze
anything unusual out of those games. how many times did you wish you could
tweak the item randomizer in kart so that you could
customize each game? i just get really teed-off when software
developers avoid really simple, obvious customizations. it seems like most
game developers are obsessed with making baubles, by which i mean beautiful,
unwieldy, and unnecessarily original interfaces.
-mike
I'd have to agree with that: total access is what keeps the community alive. Even the Drakan community, which is one of the smallest, keeps going because of the customizability of the game. Quake was the first to really take advantage of the editing community by releasing QuakeC, which anyone could use to add cool stuff to the game. Unreal Tournament has a versatile editing program as well as a good interface in the game. Quake 3, though it has a better game engine, doesn't have as many features or potential for editing as UT, and its fan base hasn't grown as much. I've heard Half-Life has some cool mods, so I may have to check it out.
I'm doing the level sculpting
for Dragonmech Mountain, and I finally created a cavern made with the sculpting
tool instead of the vertex edit tool. It looks more natural than
all the other caves in the Dragonmech series. There's an area at
the beginning where you go underground through a lava tunnel below some
mountains, and another where you ride the dragonmech across a rock bridge
suspended over lava in a cave. That's the first area, but I'm having
trouble figuring out where to put the sky transitions. The caves
have a black sky texture, while the other areas have the volcano sky texture,
and when you go between the two areas, the sky changes suddenly.
That wasn't really a problem on my other levels, but it is on this one.
My dragon texture, Metal Arokh
2, has been out for a few days now, and it still hasn't been mentioned
on any of the official Drakan sites. There's another Rynn texture,
plus an origami Arokh, but no Metal Arokh 2! I don't know what's
going on, if I offended lowlight or someone, but it feels like I'm being
shunned. This brings up the question of what will happen when Dragonmech
is done: will they accept it from me or not?
Okay, since when have I lived
in an ultra-speed time warp? Tonight, I planned to play a little
Unreal Tournament, work more on my Dragonmech Mountain level, write some
e-mail, and maybe get a little homework done. So I started at 11:30
PM and played Unreal Tournament, and I continued the single player game
I had started. I was in the middle of the Capture the Flag set, and
I played through it, Assault, and the final challenge until I beat Xan
Kriegor, after many tries, and unlocked the Boss model for multiplayer
and practice sessions. After that, I glanced at the clock, and it
was 3:00 AM! Looks like I won't be getting that sleep tonight.
There goes my sanity, right down the drain, because I'm living in a time
speed tunnel.
I worked a little on Dragonmech
Mountain before I started the cursed Unreal Tournament game, but all I'm
sure of now is that it starts in a cave on the western side of the map.
I'm going to have some more intricate cave structures than the Forest,
but maybe just at the end. Too many games have all the cool stuff
at the beginning, including Drakan's single player game, so I want to make
Dragonmech's end as fun and interesting as possible.
If there is something about UT
that's a problem, it's that the game takes forever to load. It's
especially bad when you're first starting up the game. First you
have to wait 3 minutes while the title screen is showing, and then after
you bypass the opening sequence, it takes another 3 minutes just to load
the menu. Levels don't take very long to load, so it's not really
a problem as soon as you're in the game, but it seems like it would be
trouble for mod makers. Every time they wanted to test a change in
a mutator or mod, even a minor change, they would have to spend 6 minutes
each time starting up the game. That adds up to a lot of time spent
on loading. I think the reason for this is because it's actually
loading 2 games: UT and the original Unreal. Everything, except maps
and music, from Unreal was included in UT, and is loaded along with everything
else. In fact, even the original Unreal weapons are hidden away in
there. I've also noticed that if you have a lot of mutators in the
System folder, the time it takes to load the menu from the intro screen
increases a lot.
I went to the sewage treatment
plant today as a field trip. My science teacher scolded me for calling
it a "sewer" instead of a waste water treatment facility. I guess
the sewer is what takes the sludge from streets and homes to the treatment
plant, so it's a valid complaint. It did smell like a sewer, though,
and I think it was the same place I went in 7th grade. We learned
all about waste treatment processes and saw the equipment they used.
The two words I would use to describe it: loud and smelly. I wonder
what kind of person would become a sewage engineer. They said it
was becoming more automated all the time, so I guess there must not be
a real rush for that job.
Tomorrow, I go to the sewer,
but as for now, I'll make this short since I finally have a chance to get
some more sleep. It's only one hour earlier than usual - 12:30 AM
instead of 1:30 - but I take what I can. It's my fault, it really
is. I never have the energy to do anything anymore except trudge
through another day at school, hoping they don't make us do anything I'm
not prepared for, and then maybe make a few comments on forums, but nothing
that requires any thought. Maybe I've just become brain-dead or something,
or maybe lack of sleep has finally caught up to me. Yes, that's it.
It's caught up, and it's clung to me and dragged me to the floor, making
me crawl slower and slower. I'm really sorry about this spell I'm
going through, and I promise, promise, and promise again that I will have
Dragonmech done before March.
Today was my mother's birthday
(as well as Groundhog Day), so we all went out to celebrate and have dinner.
We ate at Tucci Benucch at the Mall of America, and I got the lasagna again.
The last time I had lasagna there, I got sick the next day, so I don't
know how I'll feel tomorrow. If I get sick, I'll know there's something
up with the lasagna, but if I don't, I'll know it was just because I ate
too much. I wonder if that can really happen, getting sick from eating
too much. My mother ordered something with mushrooms and a salad,
and she also got a tiramisu for dessert. The tiramisu was so good,
I can't believe none of us have ordered it before. Now I know what
I'm getting the next time I go there - even if it pushes me over the limit
and makes me sick, it'll be worth it!
Since it would be ridiculous
for me to ask the school to make me exempt from homework because I need
to do some serious level editing, and I can't very well let my grades drop,
I'm afraid I must take a few days finishing my homework instead of working
on Dragonmech. I'll still update this page, since it doesn't take
much time, but to work on my levels I have to get into the right mindset,
and I can work more consistently if I have longer periods of time to make
and edit levels. I'll start making Dragonmech Mountain on Friday,
so look for news on it then.
Well, here it is, the start of
a new month and a fresh start on life. I played some more UT, tried
out some new mutators, playtested Dragonmech Forest to see if there were
any more potential errors, and worked on homework. In fact, most
of my time was spent on homework. Also, I posted about my Drakan
mods on the forums and told the outrageous story of my dark history in
the community. It was really uncalled for, I know, but I just couldn't
take any more of the constant suspicion and backstabbing, and especially
the whining. I'm thinking about staying off those forums for a while...
it's probably for the best.
Once again I am going to the
sewer. I went once, as a field trip, in middle school and I am going
again on Friday, also as a field trip. Actually, they call it a waste
water treatment facility, but the smell says it's a sewer. I should
have known the toxicology unit would be a lot of fun. Well, going
to the School of Environmental Studies is still better than going to a
crowded normal school. That reminds me, since I leave for Costa Rica
in March for two weeks, I'll try to get Dragonmech done before then.