March 2000
March 31
(This was really written on April 1)
Nothing really happened today,
except for the complete disbanding of the entire Heretic II community.
All the members, in unison, said that they couldn't take any more of the
Great Dancing Squirrel that had plagued the servers since September, and
they would be leaving unless DraX signed the petition to build the Giant
Mango Cannon that would take care of the situation in no time flat.
Of course, DraX preferred a Humongous Guava Launcher instead, and a flame
war of no small magnitude ensued, so after the chaos, all that remained
of the once mighty Parthoris was a charred blade staff stuck in the dirt.
The voices in my head tell me
that Dragonmech is a lost cause. I'm sorry, but I will never finish
Dragonmech because it's a cursed level set and I never want to look at
it again. How disgusting! It should be called DragonBLECH!
I can't believe I spent all my time on such a stupid pursuit... what was
I thinking? The time I spent thinking I was actually enjoying making
Drakan levels, but really hating it with all my heart and soul, is wasted
time that I will never get back. I think I'll go lie down now.
We had another meeting for the
Japan trip, but I didn't get to tell my story of infatuation. So,
I've copied it to the Nalenna page and you can read it here.
I started the object placement in Dragonmech Mountain, placing the sky
and for switchers and the cave entrances. Next I'll be placing the
lights, and finally the buildings, items, and enemies. Also, I have
an idea for a new experimental CTF map, which I'll try to make a reality
after I finish Dragonmech.
I finished the layer lighting
in Dragonmech Mountain! Now all I have to do is the object placement,
which of course is more than half the work on a level like this.
I might even make a new dragon-type enemy with a different projectile weapon,
such as one that fires a triple fireball or Arokh's lightning secondary.
The Dragonmech series will be complete, so if you're one of the few people
still waiting, don't lose hope!
Tomorrow, I have until 4:00 PM
to come up with a narrative story to share with my Japan trip group.
When it's finished, I'll post it on my Nalenna page along with my other
stories. It's supposed to be about infatuation, written as sort of
a diary that shares thoughts and feelings. I was thinking about using
one of the stories from my old page with all the references to Greek mythology,
but I'm going to write a new story instead.
The condition of the Drakan online
community dropped from serious to critical today as I tried to join a game
but found that only 3 people were playing at the time. One possible
source of this decline may be the fact that the 445 patch has not yet been
released in any other versions than the English one yet. If any game
needs support from the whole world to keep its community going, it's Drakan.
The Heretic II community has been going through some serious flame wars,
which they say they're used to by now, but at least there are people playing
the game. There are some cool people there, and it definitely has
more spirit than the listless Drakan community.
Lately I haven't been able to
summon up the energy to do anything. I try to get all my homework
done but I can't concentrate. I want to do work on Dragonmech and
my Costa Rica page but I never get around to it. Maybe the problem
is, once again, that I need sleep. I'll try to get to bed an hour
earlier tonight and see if I feel less lethargic tomorrow.
Dragonmech is coming along nicely.
Today I did some more color tweaking with the sky so that it's a nice blue-gray
color, and I set up the rest of the lighting. I think Dragonmech
Mountain will be the best one of the series if you like air combat and
cool architecture. No other level lets you go inside a huge mountain,
surrounded by open air on all sides, without changing levels.
I haven't yet organized all the
pictures I want to scan, but I have copied more of my journal into the
Costa Rica page if you want to see it. This thing is going to be
better than both the Utah and Florida trip pages, I think. I wanted
to get some good pictures of toucans and howler monkeys, but they were
always too far away, so I might just use pictures from field guides.
Yes, it's cheating a little, but it's better than looking at a speck in
the sky.
I finished my Anthem reading
guide today. It was one of those things where I had to interpret
imagery and get into the minds of the characters, and since I've done that
so much this year, I'm starting to get the hang of it. There wasn't
much else going on today except the Academy Awards. You probably
already know this, but American Beauty won the Oscar for best picture.
Also, The Matrix beat Phantom Menace in all 4 sound and visual effects
categories.
Lately I can't seem to get anything
done, but I've started on the Costa Rica web page and I should have more
graphics made and some pictures scanned by tomorrow. The pictures
aren't as good as the Utah ones because there are more busy "wall of green"
shots, and the lighting is off for some of them. My journal has a
lot more than just a trip log, though, so it should still be an interesting
page.
Today, I worked on Dragonmech
Mountain. I made the sky for the final mountain area and adjusted
the lighting for most of the layers. Yesterday I played Dragonmech
Desert and Forest again, and I've decided that something different needs
to be done with the giants. Now they will throw some crates and barrels
instead of just boulders in the Forest, because I suspect that the movement
of the boulders against the giants was what crashed the game sometimes.
Soon, I'll start putting the
Costa Rica web page on here. Originally I was just going to do it
for fun, but now I'll make it a little better and more organized and turn
it into a school project. We have to do a senior project, which involves
community service or doing something for the school or the environment,
and since there's no Costa Rica web page for the school yet, my project
will be to make one.
I heard that some people were
playing my Swamp of Mystery level for Drakan, but I wasn't there.
They said they liked it a lot. I still don't see many people on the
CTF server, but there have been more dragon battles, which are nice.
Maybe I should make an air combat level after Dragonmech, with all new
dragon weapons. The weapons in Drakan are completely customizable
for specific levels, so that can make for some real variation. It's
not like Unreal Tournament, where there are a fixed set of weapons that
can't be changed on one level without changing them for all the levels.
Dragon weapons are especially open to creativity because they are projectile
weapons and they can have all sorts of impressive fire trail and explosion
effects.
There have been some interesting
discussions going on in the Heretic II forums. Just today, people
gave their opinions and theories about evolution, and someone brought up
the abortion issue a few days ago. Surprisingly, that didn't turn
into a flame war, or any kind of confrontation at all about the issue.
Even the Drakan community has had some tension about religious issues.
The one thing that upsets many members of the Heretic II community, however,
is people's behavior in the game. You wouldn't believe how much people
argue over what blade moves should be used in combat, and who's been rude
during a game. Also, they tend to be suspicious of new members, since
there has been some trouble with impersonation and name changing.
I just finished Anthem, and it
certainly was interesting. It's about a society where everything
is controlled and there's no freedom, and people are only taught what the
Council wants them to know. People who break the strict rules of
conformity are tortured. Also, people only use plural pronouns such
as "We" instead of "I." In the system, there are some who know more
than they're supposed to, and the story is about a man and woman who escape
the city, go live in the forest, and rediscover knowledge and individuality.
Well, now I'm reading Anthem,
by Ayn Rand. It's about the future and controlled societies, and
how something is lost when you work for everyone instead of a few people
or yourself. Rand's philosophy is called objectivism, but I'm not
sure what all the details are yet. I'll discuss it more tomorrow.
Now, I've almost finished catching up on my calculus homework, but I still
have to do my assignments for the Japan trip preparation. Also, my
college stuff still isn't done, and I'm running out of time, so that will
be my first priority tomorrow.
What a slow day. After
doing practically nothing but work and quizzes in school, plus a new load
of group assignments and things I have no chance of understanding completely,
I got on the Internet, and there wasn't much going on at the pages I visit.
Then I tried Drakan, and still nobody was playing Swamp of Mystery or any
CTF level for that matter. I really want to see how that level will
do online, and I don't want to impose on the community and demand it be
played.
Lately, I haven't had time to
write any stories for my Nalenna page, but as soon as Dragonmech is finished
(I bet you're sick of that excuse), I'll start writing some. My first
one will be the continuation of the Drakan story I started in September.
I finished Ethan Frome today.
That's the book I've been reading over the weekend for my AP Literature
class. Ethan Frome is about a bleak town in New England where a man
and the woman he is having an affair with become wrought with despair over
their situation and decide to commit suicide by crashing into a tree on
a sled, except it doesn't work out right and they become disfigured, but
they're still alive. Supposedly there's a movie based on the book,
but it's such a short read that they must have dragged out some of the
slow scenes. I identified most of the symbolism, like the bleak winters
of Starkfield, and it was easier for Ethan Frome than for other stories.
Next, we're going to be reading Hamlet and Brave New World.
Today, I stopped by the Drakan
servers for a while to see if the new 445 features were catching on.
They sure don't seem to be. The server playing CTF levels was empty,
while the other ones were full, and when I tried to get people interested
in it, nobody was very enthusiastic about it. Most of the servers
just play the 3 ground levels that come with the game, plus one dueling
level like Rotation or Resurrection, but not much of anything else.
For a game that has so much versatility with level-specific equipment and
design, little of it is being explored.
The new trimester at my school
just started a week ago, and already I have a ton of homework to do!
Not only that, but the latest physics assignment set is practically impossible.
We're learning about electrical charges now, but the problem set we got
is not based on the book, so I'm having to consult other sources.
Not only that, but tomorrow I'll have 3 math assignments to catch up on.
Also, I have to take care of my college housing application, and I don't
even know much about that. I won't be able to do any more Drakan
stuff, or anything else for computer games or the Costa Rica report, until
I'm caught up with all of the issues in my life.
After getting some much-needed
sleep, I am back in business! Lately I've been trying coffee, even
though I never drank coffee much before. Maybe it was the Costa Rica
trip, and the sweet smell of the coffee plantation we went to on the first
day, that tempted me. I've gotten some chocolate-covered coffee beans
and a Caffe Mocha drink, and I brought back a bag of coffee beans from
the Tropical Youth Center in Costa Rica. I hope this is just a passing
thing, because I don't want to become dependent on coffee for energy.
But then again, usually I have very little energy.
My latest Drakan CTF map, Swamp
of Mystery, is now complete! It's more open-ended than the Hover
Train levels, and there's more space to explore and more places to hide.
Of course the powerups aren't as obvious, especially the speed potions.
I'm still working on Swamp of
Mystery and Dragonmech for Drakan. I have a lot done with the Swamp,
but it relies on its atmosphere so much that I have to make sure everything
looks right in the end. I'm putting in sniper platforms near each
team's base, and there will be a lot of bushes and rocks to hide behind
because CTF maps usually have an element of strategy and stealth.
The Swamp is far less linear than Hover Train.
I got my Costa Rica pictures
back today, but they're not as good as I thought they would be. Sometimes
a view that looks breathtaking when you see it in real life just looks
ordinary on a photo. Also, there's a lot more contrast between light
and dark, and the rainforest environment makes for some busy scenery.
Maybe I should get a real camera instead of just using those one-time-use
ones. A digital camera would be nice because I could save the pictures
as computer files immediately without having to scan everything.
Not much to talk about today.
I spent all night working on a paper about Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian
writer. His stories incorporate elements of magical realism, which
are supernatural events told in normal language, as if they were ordinary.
Marquez grew up during an interesting and troublesome time in Colombia,
with the constant governmental deception and betrayal and the oppression
of workers in the fields. The paper I wrote wasn't the best quality,
but I only had a week to prepare what I was going to write because of the
Costa Rica trip.
Before I finish Dragonmech, I'm
going to finish my Swamp of Mystery level because it just looks so cool.
I'd show screenshots, but the level isn't done yet and I don't want to
spoil the surprise. Actually, I'm kind of swamped with school work
tomorrow. I have to catch up on my math, physics, and English homework,
and I'm supposed to write more about Costa Rica. Lately, I've been
tired as well, because I didn't even get much sleep on the trip, so I think
I'll just go to bed right now, but not before giving the report on:
I went and downloaded that Heretic
II mod, The Heretic Fortress, where you play as different player classes
on a team. There are wizards, warriors, clerics, enchanters, and
other people to play as. The server I went on had severe time out
problems, but from what I did see, it seems fun. It reminds me of
the Drakan level called Legacy of Tibor, where you choose a class and battle
through a snowy arena.
I have a lot of stuff to catch
up on, for school and everything, so I can't really do much editing stuff
right now. I'm also looking into college housing, but I haven't even
been there yet, so I might go during the weekend. I have been catching
up on some of the latest game news, and there are some new levels for Drakan,
as well as some cool new levels for Unreal Tournament on Project 2501.
The Heretic II THF version 4.5 final build is out now, but I haven't downloaded
it yet. I'll have more info tomorrow, and I'll continue making the
Dragonmech Mountain level.
I'm back from my trip to Costa
Rica! It was great to get away from my normal life for two weeks
and see new things. There was just so much to see there. We
saw rainforests with gigantic trees and shrubs, toucans, and howler monkeys,
we went surfing on a beach as the tide came in, and we walked on a bridge
above the treetops in a dry forest on a mountain. Soon I will have
pictures and a journal of the trip, but now, I have to prepare for school
tomorrow. Yeah, I'm going back already... but it's the beginning
of a new trimester, so it shouldn't be too hard.
When I tried to send the Cloud
mod back to its creator, the e-mail server rejected it because it was over
the file size limit. Now, I'm doing whatever I can to get it back
so it can be released to the Drakan community. It's on my site right
now, right here, and I've sent it off to the
Drakan pages.