April 2000
April 30
My new level, Orpheus, probably
hasn't been noticed yet, but if you downloaded it before 4:00 PM Central
time today, you'll need to download it again. I replaced it with
a new version of the level that places the walls in the lowest tower closer
to the edges. It's a small change, but it's still enough to cause
a server mismatch error, and there have been too many of those already.
I apologize especially for Dragonmire Swamp, which has gone through plenty
of confusion. Maybe I should start testing my levels more thoroughly
before sending them to the Drakan sites.
Our latest book for the School
of Environmental Studies is Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Even
though it was written in 1932, it still seems futuristic, especially because
it focuses on issues that are still controversial today, such as cloning
and conditioning. In fact, cloning is a rather recent issue because
of the cloned sheep Dolly. There are some dated ideas, such as Ford
becoming a godlike presence after inventing the assembly line, and it doesn't
mention anything like the Internet. But still, some of the ideas
are eerily accurate.
After checking everything twice
and making sure there were no silly bugs, and after tweaking the weapon
effects and appearances until they looked exactly right, I finished Orpheus
and I think it's one of my best works so far. I don't think I'll
send it to any of the news pages until the contest is over, because I already
have 3 of my levels automatically entered in that thing, and I don't want
to look like I'm just making levels for the contest. So, if you're
reading this page and are thinking about saying something about the levels
on here, wait until May 1. It's not like I would win anyway, because
my last 5 levels have been run-of-the-mill deathmatch-type maps.
Orpheus still isn't complete,
but I did fool around with the weapons and came up with a new axe weapon.
The Axe of Storms is like the other two multiplayer axes, but its magic
attack is slower and lasts longer at the expense of power. At first
I was going to make a Blizzard Axe, with an explosion-generator-based freeze
cloud, or a Poison Axe, with a poison ring and damage effect, but I couldn't
get the graphics to work right. Those would have been lame weapons
anyway. I also moved the entire upper part of the level even higher
so it wouldn't be so ridiculous to have the ground be an instant killer.
I'm working on a new Drakan level
based on the Unreal Tournament map Morpheus. In fact, I'm even calling
my level Orpheus as a tribute to its inspiration. It's going to be
a low-gravity battle on a group of rock towers on an island, with 3 bow
weapons, 2 magic weapons, and the Soultaker. I thought I could finish
it tonight, but I really want this level to turn out well so I'm going
to spend another day on it. It even uses a new sky, assembled from
one of my Utah photos.
After I finish Orpheus, I'll
be scanning in my Costa Rica photos and putting the trip page together.
Lately I've been slacking on this, but no more. From now on, I'm
going to be dynamic and productive. After all, if I can churn out
Drakan levels like this, then surely I can work wonders with the Costa
Rica report.
You thought I was done with Drakan
level making for a while, but I had a great idea for a level I just had
to make. The only user levels being played online are duel levels,
so I decided to make a simple duel arena. The new map, Edge,
is based on the same design as Vortex, and it
has a central arena with surrounding health powerups and particle streams
where you can power up your sword to 8 different strengths, respresented
by different flame colors.
My Internet connection went crazy
yesterday, so I wasn't able to update this page. You didn't miss
much, though. It's just the usual school business now as I have to
spend all my time studying and preparing for exams in May. Of course,
I'll be too tired to do much else, but I'll try to do some more with my
Costa Rica page. That will be my primary focus from here on, now
that Dragonmech is finished.
I tried the Daikatana demo again
and finished it, but there wasn't much past the point where I crashed last
time. This time it was a little more fun, especially after learning
to issue orders to the sidekicks, but it was still just like Unreal.
There are a few other games I would get rather than Daikatana, such as
System Shock 2 or Quake 3 Arena when some good mods are out for it.
It has struck again, the feeling
of a 4-hour sleep. It's still my own fault because I'm doing all
this Internet stuff instead of sleeping. Well, that's it. From
now on, I'm doing this page earlier in the day and going to bed at night.
I'm going to start right now, as soon as I write this entry and finish
up a few other things.
It's over now. Spring break
is now ending, and it's time to go back to school and learn more about
air pollution and stuff like that. I can't believe it was over so
fast! Today, I didn't do much except the usual Easter celebration
of eating a bunch of candy and chocolate. I also watched the first
part of the Kenneth Branagh version of Hamlet. It's 4 hours long
and faithful to the original play, including all the soliloquies, and it
got to be very boring. Maybe it was just because I didn't understand
much of the language. There were some very cool effects with the
ghost, though, and it had good acting and costumes.
While I was watching Hamlet,
I went and downloaded that 102-meg Daikatana demo, just to see if it would
be as bad as people were predicting. I installed it and it actually
worked, despite my computer being so prone to errors in games. I
started it up, configured all the controls, and began the first level,
which was a green rainy swamp. When I turned or moved, there was
little friction, so it felt like my character was on roller skates.
Also, it was really hard to see anything, especially the mechanical frogs
and huge mosquitoes that were everywhere. I picked up the Ion Blaster,
a shameless self-promotion weapon from the creators at Ion Storm, and tried
it out. It wasn't a great weapon, but it would do. The sound
effects seemed a little off, and it sounded like a pinball machine whenever
I blasted one of those mechanical frogs. There were some nice ambient
effects, though. I made my way through the first level and found
it to be very linear, with practically no exploration, except for when
I got lost after opening the final door. The second level, ancient
Greece, started, and I finally had the Daikatana in my possession.
It didn't control well at all. I tried using it but could get nothing
but random swings with collision errors. I knew it must be a special
sword because it left shining scratch marks on the walls and weird stuff
happened to enemies when the sword finally connected, but I found it to
be inferior to the other weapons on that level, especially the flying disc.
The disc was a very good weapon and fun to use, especially on the griffins.
I made my way through caverns, streams, and temples until I met up with
one of the sidekicks, Mikiko. She didn't really do much except run
away from spiders, but she didn't appear to have any weapons to start with.
Neither did the other sidekick, Superfly, on the next level. I guess
the sidekicks get better as the game progresses, or at least, they should.
Next, I entered the third level, which was the snowy mountain landscape
of Norway. I didn't get to see too much of that because the game
crashed when I fell in the river and I hadn't saved because I was saving
up all my save gems. That's another thing: there's a console-like
save system, right out of Tomb Raider 3 for the Playstation, where you
have to collect special gems in order to save the game. I guess it's
supposed to prevent people from saving every 20 seconds, but a better way
to do that would be to just have specified save areas like in Turok 2.
Overall, I found the Daikatana demo to be an average first-person shooter,
not much different from Unreal. I don't think I'll be getting the
full game unless it turns out to be really good.
I don't know why I keep making
multiplayer Drakan maps. People say they like them, but I never see
any of them being played. It's not just my levels, it's all the user-created
ones. Everyone just keeps playing Hill of Fire, Relic, and Sanctuary,
over and over and over. I've gone back to the single player game,
and it's still fun to play. For multiplayer, however, I tried going
on some servers and there's just not much variety, not like there is in
Unreal Tournament, a game I also play very often. I'm still going
to wait and see what that Traveler's Quest mod is like, though. It
looks like it has potential.
Reality is creeping up on me
again. I go back to school in 2 days, and I have to remember what
homework I had to do. I've finished reading Hamlet, and now I have
to fill in an analysis sheet about it. There's also another dreaded
School of Environmental Studies group project where I never feel like I'm
keeping up with anything. This time, I'm really going to try.
Lately I've been suggesting to
the Drakan community that there should be more air combat instead of just
ground all the time, but I realized that it was a bit hypocritical because
I hadn't made any air maps. Now, I bring you Oasis,
my first multiplayer air level for Drakan.
I have for you today yet another
Drakan map. This one is a ground battle level called Vortex,
and it uses the standard weapons, armor, and powerups from Drakan multiplayer.
It seems those are the items people are most comfortable with, since the
3 original ground levels are what the servers are playing most of the time.
Remember the new version of Dragonmire
Swamp that I made yesterday? Well, it seems people had a few more
suggestions about what to do with the level. So, I slowed down the
arrows and gave them a bigger blast radius, and I made the level darker
except for the center, which is now lit by torches, and now there is Dragonmire
Swamp 3. The name of the level is now "Dragonmire Swamp 3" to
avoid confusion with earlier versions, and it is placed in a different
directory.
It seems there were a few problems
in Dragonmire Swamp, my latest multiplayer level. The missile bows
weren't powerful enough and you couldn't hit a dodging player very well,
so it was easier just to use the katana. Now, I've made Dragonmire
Swamp version 2, which has a more powerful bow with bigger arrows.
There are still a lot of collision detection issues with projectiles in
Drakan, though, so I don't know if it will ever be able to work well.
I have some extras that I made
as an addition to my Dragonmech level series
for Drakan. First of all, I've put together a Dragonmech
music pack that includes 2 versions of each of the 3 music tracks.
There's a high quality MP3-encoded WAV version that is for listening only,
and there's a version that is of lower quality but can be put into custom
Drakan levels.
If you find yourself getting
lost in one of the Dragonmech levels, here's something that might help.
I made overhead screenshots in the editor of each of the 3 levels.
These pictures are more for the cool factor than they are for any actual
help, but I could make a Dragonmech walkthrough if people want it. For
now, here are the level overviews. Click on one for a bigger picture:
Dragonmech Desert
Dragonmech Forest
Dragonmech Mountain
Dragonmech
is finally finished! I've been working on it since November, adding
new enemies, weapons, and obstacles, and now it is finally complete!
In case you haven't been reading my page, Dragonmech is a set of 3 single
player levels with a mechanical dragon in place of Arokh. It has
some new terrain and new challenges to face, and there's a different style
than Surreal's original levels. If enough people like Dragonmech,
I might put together a file with some of the resources I used in making
the levels, such as the music, and perhaps a walkthrough of Dragonmech
if people are getting stuck.
I'll be honest with you.
I didn't work on Dragonmech today. Instead, I deviated from that
path to create a new level based on Swamp of Mystery. It's a deathmatch
level, Dragonmire Swamp, that uses the
archer's bow with exploding arrows, and now there are 3 versions of that
bow to do battle with. The level can be played as a duel, with the
arena in the center and the health powerups around the arena.
The area inside the mountain
is now populated with enemies, and there are a few obstacles too.
I still need to work on the top of the mountain and the area with the Skulldragon.
That's the final enemy you face before you fly out of the caverns and find
Arokh. Then comes the very last part of level creation, which is
making sure everything works right and adding the final ambient touches
to the levels.
I tried to play a game of Rocket
Arena for Unreal Tournament today, but it crashed my computer when I selected
it in the menu. I have no idea why this happened. Oh well...
I guess it is just version 1.0, but knowing my luck with Unreal mods and
editing, this problem will only happen to me. Maybe I should mess
around with some settings or check the functions to see why it's crashing.
The specific error is an infinite function call.
The caves around the Trail of
Terror, and the outside area of the huge mountain, are now complete.
I put in a few magic crystals and some stashes of health potions.
Also, I fixed the visibility bug at the base of the mountain by manually
changing the visibility information. Tomorrow, I'll start, and try
to finish, the inside of the mountain.
I finished the Trail of Terror
and the Stormblade cave, and now all I have left to do are the mountain
interior and the final tweaking of the entire Dragonmech series.
This level set will definitely be complete before the end of spring break.
It may take some time to coordinate the devastation weapon on top of the
mountain, but other than that, it's just basic object placement.
Right now, I am downloading the
Rocket Arena mod for Unreal Tournament as I write this. I've heard
it's one of the more popular mods that was originally made for Quake.
Rocket Arena uses small maps and implements a fighting system where each
player starts out with all weapons and two players battle one-on-one.
Other than that, I don't know much about how it works. There's so
much that I want to explore with computer and video games, but I can never
get around to it. I have Final Fantasy VIII and I haven't even gone
past the first area yet. There's catching up to do in Heretic II,
not to mention the new Drakan mod to look out for. It looks like
Sageous and PharCyde are really serious with this thing. They say
they're totally reworking the network and game code to make it suitable
for a lot of players, and that it will be like a persistent world RPG,
like EverQuest, but it will be free to download and free to play.
The only problem is that there just aren't many people playing multiplayer
Drakan as it is.
The announcement of a new Drakan
game is sweeping the forums. The thing is, it has only been announced
for the Playstation 2, which worries me. I hope they make a PC version
as well, because the control is better suited for a keyboard and mouse
and you can't make new levels on a console system. PS2 Drakan, as
it is called now, looks like it has extra stuff, like a shield and sorcery,
and the levels look spectacular. One of them, the Goblin Swamp, has
treetop houses and pathways that remind me of the forest moon Endor in
Return
of the Jedi. There's also a canyon level with arches and lakes
that looks like it would be a cool place to explore. There is the
question of whether multiplayer will be supported or not. I think
it should be, because the multiplayer game is the basis for the community,
but I also think that if they are going to have multiplayer, they should
spend more time on the network code. Switching some of the attacks,
like projectiles and magic, to server-side would make it a whole lot better.
No more getting hit by fire rings that you ran away from 5 seconds ago.
Tomorrow it will be spring break,
which means lots of time for goofing off, but mostly it means I'll finally
be able to finish that Dragonmech level set. Today, I started making
the Trail of Terror that leads from the lake area of the Mountain to the
huge mountain area, where the final battles will take place. Of course,
since you get the beam weapon before the trail, there are plenty of tough
dragons and giants to battle along the way. On the trail, there are
caves that hold equipment for Rynn that will be useful inside the mountain.
My Indoor Air Quality unit for
school will be done tomorrow. I never really talked about that, so
I'll share some info here. We were assigned to take readings for
carbon monoxide, sulfates, particulates, and other pollutants in a building.
Then we wrote a report on the effects of the pollutants and recommendations
for the future. The air quality of our building was good, except
for high particulate levels near the kitchen.
I spent most of today working
on my air quality project for school, but I did get a chance to modify
that tornado weapon in Dragonmech. I got rid of the emerald motif,
and now the Stormblade, as it is called now, only has 5 magic charges because
they're so powerful. Also, I made another spear, this time a magic
one with a burn effect. Some other weapons I have in mind are the
2-bladed axe and a life-stealing weapon such as the Mourn Bringer.
I've mostly been playing Heretic
II and Drakan lately, but I've missed out on a lot of Unreal Tournament
stuff. One reason for that is that I often feel like playing a quick
game, but UT takes forever to load on my computer. Maybe that's my
fault, though, because of all the mods I have installed. It seems
like they all have to be loaded into the browser, and when you have hundreds
of those files, it can add up to a lot of load time.
Speaking of mods, Sageous and
PharCyde, from Surreal, are making a new mod for Drakan that will be some
sort of persistent world kind of thing. It's called Traveler's Quest,
and I've seen it being tested on the servers, but I have no idea what it
will be like. Maybe it'll draw more people into the world of Drakan,
but seeing the lack of popularity of the CTF feature, I have some doubts
about it.
One disadvantage of updating
this site every day is that sometimes there is just nothing new to say.
For example, all I did today was go to school, work on some projects for
school, get caught up on my math homework, and play a few quick games of
Heretic II and Drakan. Now, here it is at 1:30 AM and the whole day
is gone. I've been getting to sleep at 3:00 lately, so I may try
an hour earlier tonight. It's not much better, but it's something.
I made a new Dragonmech weapon
today. It's a green glowing sword called the Emerald Storm that has
a tornado magic attack that whirls around the area and damages enemies.
It is one of the most powerful attacks in the level set, but it can be
unpredictable. Of course, it will be well hidden in Dragonmech Mountain,
where it will be useful for the final battles inside the mountain.
There are also Emerald Arrows that create the same tornado magic upon impact.
Well, I just got back from a
trip to the forest to study how the use of energy in Dakota County affects
the environment, so naturally, I didn't get to do anything today.
I did some homework before I left, and now all I have time to do is write
this page. School really cuts into my Dragonmech schedule sometimes.
I was planning to work on it some more because I'll be finished soon.
Since there's nothing else of
interest to write about, I'll just share some of the stuff I learned in
school. It has been proposed by the School of Environmental Studies
that by the year 2020, Dakota County should reduce its use of non-renewable
energy by 50%. This should be accomplished without decreasing the
quality of life for the county's residents, and it should preferably cause
less environmental damage than using primarily non-renewable resources.
Currently, most of the power in Dakota County is shipped from the Black
Dog Power Plant in North Dakota, which burns coal. A small amount
of energy comes from a wind farm in southwestern Minnesota.
Don't forget that I also have
the answers to my Question of the Week to share! As usual, I only
got one response... guess who it's from?
| Question of the Week: Free speech was intended to keep information
from being withheld and to let people voice their opinions, but do you
think that lately it has become more of an excuse to be rude and vulgar?
Answers:
best regards
|
Notice the new framing around the question and answers. That's to keep it separate from my own comments at the end. Isn't it nice? I could just use different colors, though, but that would break the harmonious monochromatic look of this page. Now, as for my views on free speech, I think everyone should be able to express themselves without being censored, unless their remarks are meant to damage someone. If you hurt someone's feelings unintentionally, the nice thing to do would be apologize, but you shouldn't be punished. However, if you do nothing but insult people, I wouldn't blame someone for trying to stop it.
I finished the beam weapon area
of Dragonmech Mountain today. First you have to go to the river valley
without the dragonmech, because the door is too low, and you have to go
around to the other side of the lake and ride a ship to the island in the
middle, where the key to the door is protected by goblins. Then you
open the door and fly the dragonmech into the river valley, but you can't
go to the final area yet because it's blocked by a force field. First
you have to fight a few enemy dragons and get the beam weapon, which is
the only thing that can disable the force field.
Today I put the obligatory Dragonmech
fire bomb in the Mountain level, as well as some more doors, a few weapons,
and a new enemy or two. The morning part of the level is finished,
and now I just have to make the final area with all the caves and Dragonmech
will be done and ready to go! I have a lot of new levels planned
for later, but most of them are for multiplayer and it seems like there
are only servers with the 3 original ground levels. Maybe when the
international 445 patch is released, more people will be playing.
I've been having some trouble
with UnrealEd since I installed the 405 patch. It seems I can't use
the mouse to move the camera or objects around anymore. There's nothing
on the Internet about how to solve this problem, and I'm wondering if it's
just something stupid I did. Oh well, I can always reinstall Unreal
Tournament and see if it goes back to normal.
I added some new stuff to Dragonmech
Mountain today, like the entrance cave to the main mountain area and the
gate that needs to be triggered with the energy beam. I should be
able to have more time during the weekend to try to finish up Dragonmech
without the ominous presence of homework due the next day. There's
still nobody on the CTF servers, even though more people have tried it,
so I might go back to making deathmatch levels again for multiplayer.
We're reading the Shakespeare
play Hamlet in my English class. It seems like in all of Shakespeare's
plays, the characters never say things outright. Instead, they say
everything as eloquent speeches filled with imagery and allusion, and I'm
starting to think that people must have been a lot better with language
back then if they could just think up that kind of language on the fly.
Or perhaps Shakespeare's dialogue is not really an accurate representation
of actual conversations during the Renaissance.
Tomorrow, I have to give a speech
about a topic of my choice, and I chose the problem of fertilizer runoff
in coastal areas. It's a case of too much of a good thing, where
excessive nutrients cause algae blooms to grow and take all the oxygen
from the water. There were also articles about how tobacco companies
target teens and how teens are fighting back, donated organs being limited
to one state, and the ever-raging abortion debate, but I chose the fertilizer
runoff one because it deals with issues I've learned about at the School
of Environmental Studies.
Today I spent most of my time
preparing for the big renewable energy debate, which for most groups is
tomorrow but for some, including us, is on Friday. On Thursday, we
get to listen to our very own governor, Jesse Ventura, give a lecture about
environmental issues. I have no idea how that will go. Also,
I just finished a science report about a project I did part of but don't
know much about. I hope I did something right.
I finally got the chance to play
a few of the older player-created levels for Drakan. First, I started
a server with DrakanChess, but I only have a 56K, so Lilith Faire decided
to play the level on a better server and we all joined that one.
We also got to play Ice Arena, one of my favorites, and Hill of Ice, which
is like Hill of Fire except it has ice instead of fire, and most of the
weapons have that "freeze" effect.
Like I promised, I have some
of those Costa Rica pictures scanned and ready to be put on the trip page!
Don't worry, that's not all. I plan to choose all the pictures I
want on my page, scan them into a picture set similar to the one for Utah
but smaller, and integrate them into my journal and trip log instead of
having them on a separate page. If you want to see the pictures,
take a look at the Costa Rica Adventure page.
Today, I finished the first section
of Dragonmech Mountain. I added all the necessary enemies, weapons,
and obstacles, and now I need to do the same for the rest of the level.
Dragonmech will soon be finished, and then it will be time for final playtesting
and some last-minute tweaking before I post the complete version on here.
Dragonmech Mountain is closer
to being complete now, as I have finished placing all the torches in the
caves and shrubs on the mountain ground. Next it will be time to
add the final ambient objects and the weapons, enemies and obstacles, and
Dragonmech will finally be complete! I'm sorry it took this long
to get done, but I feel like I barely have time to do anything. As
for the Costa Rica pictures, I've been having some trouble with the scanner,
and it's all fixed now, but it's too late for me to scan them right now.
Don't worry, they will be posted soon enough!
I would try pulling some sort
of April Fool's Day trick right now, but since it's actually April 2 as
I write this, and yesterday's entry was the April Fool's trick, I'm just
going to make this one normal. Did you notice that the Sine Wave
title graphic at the top was replaced by a similar one that said The Sine
Wvae? I bet you didn't notice that! Also, I'm not actually
giving up on Dragonmech. Today, I changed the mountain sky again
so it's darker, and right now I'm placing torches in the caves.
Tomorrow, if I don't sleep through
most of the day, I'll scan in the Costa Rica pictures and put them on my
site. I really mean it this time, I'll have the pictures on the Costa
Rica page! Of course, I won't use every single picture like I did
for Utah, so that means only the good ones will be on there.