the sine wave
August 2000

August 31
I'm trying to start my own set of Drakan servers, with different kinds of levels alternating after a certain amount of time.  Right now, I'm thinking of changing it daily, but I'll just have to see what happens.  There's not much time to write today, so I'll just leave it at that.

August 30
There's nothing much going on tomorrow, so I'll have some real time to wander the campus and see where all my classes are.  Madison is a huge college, with a lot of people, and it's easy to get lost.  I come from a secondary high school, the School of Environmental Studies, which only has juniors and seniors, and there are only about 400 students there.  This place has almost a hundred times that.  So, it's a bit of a change, but I'll get used to it.  I'll even find a way to update this site from here, I'm sure.  If you see this entry, of course, that means I've figured it out.

August 29
You won't see this entry for a while.  I successfully set up my computer at college, and got connected to the Internet, which is much faster through the dorm's Ethernet cable, but I am no longer able to use my FTP program to upload files to The Sine Wave.  I'm still keeping up with my entries, though, because I'm not giving up yet.  I'm just glad most of my other programs work, and I can still make Drakan levels.  But will I have time for that after classes start?  I'll have to wait and see, but now, I must go to bed because there's a convocation or something tomorrow in the morning, and I don't want to be missing events during my first few weeks.

August 27
This entry will be my last one from my house here in Minnesota.  From now on, The Sine Wave will be written from my room at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, if I manage to get my computer set up there.  I'm leaving Tuesday, but tomorrow my family and I have to get everything packed up, so I won't be able to use the computer.  My pre-departure multiplayer Drakan ground duel level, Cosmos, is ready after being tested by Axial.
It may not be much to look at, but since having a high frame rate is important for control in Drakan, I had to be minimalistic with this one.  The only real graphic effects here are the particles coming from the healing pads and some weapon trails and burn effects.

August 26
The time I have left before college is almost over, and in case I can't play Drakan through the firewall there or something, I'm putting Meridian on hold for a few days and making what may be my last new multiplayer level.  It's a duel level, because they can be done quickly and work well with Drakan's net code.  I have compensated for errors in the game engine, as well as the complaints from players about other duel levels.  My new level is called Cosmos.  Just as in Edge, there is more than one duel weapon, but you start out with all of them in Cosmos with the katana as the default.  None of these weapons have sparkle effects or flames or anything like that, because there's a bug in multiplayer that sometimes leaves the effects behind from dropped weapons.  Also, to make this level the best I can, there are four arenas, each with a different setup of healing pads.  These pads can be used during a duel if everyone decides the rules allow it.  I hope this level will have staying power in the online Drakan community.

August 25
Once again, there isn't a Meridian update today, but this time it's unplayable in the state it's in right now.  That's because I'm adding an entirely new section to the level.  In the original Drakan, Arokh didn't get to do much while Rynn was away in a cave.  While I can't change Arokh's autonomous AI or switch control over to him alone, I can make it so it's implied that Arokh did a great deal of work while Rynn was elsewhere.  In this case, there are two paths in the level.  On the easy path, you return to Arokh after deactivating the force field and travel further through the canyons and go into a cave, destroying some power crystals that deactivate another force field.  It's important that I make this so you don't have to get off Arokh at all, because if you go the difficult way through the canyon alone as Rynn, then I'm going to set up a detector to perform a series of tasks that makes it appear as if Arokh deactivated the force field and destroyed the enemies in his path all by himself.  The enemies on the easy path will be weak, of course, because I want it to look like it's possible for Arokh to not take damage on his apparent solo quest.  I'm not going to have Rynn take damage arbitrarily to simulate Arokh getting hit.

August 24
Getting packed for college will be a daunting task, but it's something that has to be done.  Today, I planned out with my family what I would bring, and what we still needed to get.  This is going to be a major change in my life, and I hope it's for the better.  I'll be getting a higher education, but there will be so much responsibility and I might not be mature or experienced enough to deal with it at first.  This page will still go on, though, but it might not be updated for a few days after August 28.  You probably already know all this from earlier entries, so I won't talk about it anymore.  Nobody was answering my Question of the Week, so I've removed it, and it will return after my computer is set up at college.

August 23
In 6 more days I'll be at college.  I don't know if I'll be able to set up this computer in my room there, but I'll try my best to find some way to keep this page going if it won't fit.  That's why I'm trying to work harder on Meridian lately.  I got a lot more done today than I usually do, but there's a bug with the fortress section of the game that keeps the player from seeing that the canyon after it is textured and now has a few enemies.  Here's a tip: when the switch disappears after you get the rune, type in "opensezme" in chat mode, and the stone will lower.  There are also some stones at the end of the fortress that need to be lowered in the same way.  Sorry I didn't get those finished.

August 22
It's really not fair that Meridian is taking so long and isn't available to play yet, but I talk about it all the time.  That's why I'm going to periodically release different versions of the first level, still in development, until it's done.  After that, I'll release new versions every time I make a new level or fix any really bad bugs.  Most of the fortress is done now, and here's a view of it:
I haven't done all the meticulous layer visibility work that Sageous, one of the developers, does on his levels, and I don't know if I'll have the editing skills to do it, so the frame rate inside the fortress might get a little choppy.  You can download the current version here, and the file will be updated as new ones are produced.  I'll have it listed on the Drakan links page with the version number.

August 21
The world is constantly shifting and changing, and I'm always the last to know.  Today was kind of a dark day for me, so forgive me if I don't have much energy.  It's not as bad as it could be, but it's made me start thinking about stability.  Maybe Internet forum communities aren't as stable as I thought, particularly the Drakan forum and a few others I visit.  It just seems like they're all falling away sometimes.  I worked on Meridian earlier today, tweaking the magic spells so thay have the right sound effects and inventory icons.  But that's not the real reason why that level series its taking so long.  The truth is, I try to work on it every day, but I only spend about an hour to 30 minutes on it.  I don't have much free time on the computer anymore, and I've been busy playing multiplayer Drakan, plus those three games I got for my birthday.  But like I said, the Drakan community seems to be fading to the point where I can't find a populated server late at night, and maybe if I spend more time on Meridian and finish it faster, it will bring more life to Drakan.  Perhaps I'm just dreaming, but I like to believe it will make things better.

August 20
Linking to a text message in Drakan to activate it is impossible, but I am able to have a certain area for which a message works and have it be disabled at first, but enable it after an event happens.  I've set it up so at the beginning, after half a second, Rynn and Arokh have a dialogue after Arokh flies up into the air and sees that the force field is closed.  I'm also making a new style of door, with the frame being the jump gate model from multiplayer and the actual door being a stone that slides underground when the door is opened.  It's one of the new styles of mechanism and architecture which were lacking from Dragonmech.  In one of the later levels, I'm planning on putting in an indestructible domed city with a door powered by an underground energy source.  This will be integrated into the plot.

August 19
Today, I added more sound effects to the first Meridian level, but I haven't even finished the fortress area yet.  I did set up the force field deactivation lever, which is also going to control a gate in the city because I have it set up so that the cave entrance on the other side of the canyons teleports Arokh to where you are, and it wouldn't make much sense if he went right through the force field, especially if you don't even deactivate it in the first place.

August 18
I'm not taking the Playstation with me to college, so it looks like Final Fantasy VIII will remain a mystery to me until I come back in December, and I don't know how long that vacation will last.  My Question of the Week hasn't been answered yet, but it's kind of a lame question because rumors and industry news don't really matter, and unoriginal games have already been talked about plenty, so it will be changed on Sunday if I can think of a better one.  Once again, I spent most of today getting ready for college.  It starts in less than 2 weeks now.  Sometimes I feel like I'm going to be the one who freaks out all the time as soon as I get there, or soon after anyway.  On all my trips, I've been the freakout spaz, always doing something to make a fool out of myself, but my trip logs don't really go into that because it's kind of embarrassing.  At the Japanese camp, Mori no Ike, I got picked on and obviously didn't take it well because they didn't stop.  In Florida they said I had negative energy.  In Utah, I ended up saying some really disturbing stuff, and on my birthday, too.  In Costa Rica, I had a really bad sunburn for half the trip, after the surfing at La Cusinga.  That's why I didn't include any pictures of me in Monteverde or San Jose.  In Japan, I kept my cool for most of the trip, but I spazzed on my host family when I thought I might have put them in the poor house by leaving the Internet connection open for too long, and again when my umbrella broke in Tokyo after I tried to shake the rain off.  Speaking of which, I should probably contact my host family again, to see if my blunders actually did cost them a lot of money.  If they did, then I'll demand that those costs be charged to the trip sponsor, New Perspectives: Japan, on account of the fact that I'm an imbecile and they should have expected this kind of thing from me.  My number one priority in college is to not freak out, followed by a healthy social life and good grades.  It may not be the best thing to focus on but it's something I've failed at for my whole life.  All right, enough self-pity.  I don't need you to pity me either because as of now, I'm not going to freak out anymore.  If I do, I'll isolate myself from all other humans, never go on the Internet again, and live as a complete and total hermit in the wilderness.

August 17
Most of my time lately has been taken up by preparation for college.  I'm still studying that Japanese textbook, learning all the stuff that doesn't overlap with my high school lessons, and getting in shape for all the walking and biking I'll be doing.  It's going to be hard, but I'm sure I'll learn the layout of the campus soon enough.  Now, there's not much time to do anything computer game related, but I hope I'll get some time in school away from studying that I can use to update this page, work on projects, and play games.

August 16
Today, for a change of pace, I played Diablo for a while, as well as trying to get a few of the cave entrance object classes to work in Meridian.  Now I can see why Diablo was so popular - it has a simple system to learn, and you can spend a lot of time accessorizing.  If you don't like that shield, for example, you can buy a new one after slaying some monsters and taking their gold.  If you want to be able to wield that long sword, then you can build up your dexterity and strength until you're powerful enough to use it.  It's kind of like System Shock 2 because you can customize your character, but you have to start as a character with one skill built up at the beginning.  I've been playing as the Warrior because the melee combat is easier than archery or sorcery, and there's a good selection of weapons and armor to choose from.  I don't have to worry about strength requirements, but I am limited on some items by magic and dexterity minimums.

August 15
Cutter Slade, the Ulukai, has been exploring more of the landscape here on Adelpha.  Today, through the eyes of the Ulukai, I paid my first visit to the temple Fae, but was quickly shot down by the guards.  Somehow I need to weaken Fae Rhan's army, but how?  Perhaps I should finish my first task, finding Maar and getting more information.  I had that hallucination about the human and the dragon again.  This time, they were exploring a mysterious world of sand, rock and water, battling strange-looking bearlike creatures and armored soldiers with flaming javelins.  My fellow Talans, I suggest we try to find this world by recreating a daoka, which can only be done with a material known as Grimstone.  I know not what this material is, or how to find it, but I must continue my search.

August 14
I have been exploring the world of Outcast, my friends, and I have much to tell you.  I am the Talan, Zeoc, and I come to you with a request.  Read this account of my travels so far in this mysterious world of strife and intrigue, of power and chaos.  As I assumed the form of Cutter Slade, I jumped partially up a mountain until I hit the limit, and then I talked to the Talan elder, Zokrym.  He told me to find the five Mons and defeat Fae Rhan and Kroax, the evil usurpers of Adelpha.  They had brought much suffering to the farmers and the workers of Shamazaar and Talanzaar, and turned Motazaar into a wasteland.  It used to be a beautiful place, with mountains and grass, but now it is merely a pile of rocks on magma.  I looked with my usual wide-mouthed concerned face, saying things I knew not, about the rods of hot and the eleven of seven hut.  As I jumped across the platforms, I had a feeling that in a past life, I was a female of Cutter Slade's species and I had a reptilian companion waiting for me somewhere.  I paid no heed to this hallucination and was soon in Motazaar, where I wanted to see if the crusher would kill me instantly.  Did it ever.

August 13
You may have missed it last year because I was on the Utah trip, but today is my birthday.  That's part of the reason why I got those 3 games - they were gifts, and they were also only about $10 each, so the combined cost of those games was less than a single one of the newer games.  I'm putting this entry up early to see if anyone wants to wish me a happy birthday.
The results of the early posting...
Well, nobody saw the page, but I only had it up since about 12 hours before now, so I should have said earlier when my birthday is.  Sometimes it all gets caught up in the story of the moment, like the latest games and demos and info on Meridian.  Anyway, I tried Diablo and it seems like it could be interesting.  I haven't played it much because I'm playing so many games at once.  Today, I reached the second world in Outcast.  Before that, I downloaded the demo of Heavy Metal FAKK2, and I haven't even gotten to the real combat yet.  Also, I worked on Meridian earlier, putting in some hidden magic crystals, some landscape objects, and the force field generator.  Sometimes I wish there was more time in the day, or that I could make a warp bubble around me that would make everything around me and my computer appear to move really slowly.  But then I wouldn't be able to surf the Internet, for obvious reasons.  Maybe I should just give up sleep forever and go insane.  I'm pretty much there already.

August 12
I got 3 games from the bargain bins today.  So far I've been playing Elder Scrolls: Redguard and Outcast, but I still haven't installed Diablo.  Redguard is a game that unfortunately came out between the time when most games didn't need a 3D accelerator and the time accelerator support was absolutely necessary in the eyes of gamers.  It only supports 3Dfx, which means me and my Nvidia card are basically out of luck.  I have to run the game in software mode, and even at 640x480, which is its highest resolution, it runs slowly on my system.  The company that made it, Bethesda, doesn't seem to be supporting it with patches for Direct3D or mouse control or any of those other things we take for granted in games.  At least there's an interesting story and game world behind it.  Outcast also has a great story, and the gameplay is better because it supports the common mouse and keyboard combo.  The graphics are rendered differently than other games, using voxels and antialiasing and water reflection effects that aren't supported by 3D accelerators.  I know antialiasing is supported now, in the newer cards, but Outcast doesn't support acceleration at all.  It is confined to low resolutions, the highest being 512x384, but my TNT card messes up the display in Outcast with resolutions higher than 320x240, so I have to use that.  But unlike other games, Outcast makes that low resolution look fairly decent.  It's not like in the Quake series, or Drakan, or Unreal, where 1024x768 is the norm and anything below 640x480 looks like a mess of pixels.  I think it's mostly the antialiasing that makes Outcast look good at these low resolutions.  Tomorrow I'll play more Outcast and install Diablo, and I'll see what all the Diablo fuss is about.  Maybe I'll get the sequel if the gameplay style is fun for me.

August 11
Now I'm placing all the enemies, and their obligatory waypoints, for the special items in the fortress, such as the armor and the rune gauntlet.  The orc leader waypoint thing works great now.  If you catch up to the orc and kill it, the minions in the gauntlet room will all be behind the rocks, but if you don't, it will be waiting for you there and its minions will be ready for the attack.  I'm also placing plants and trees there, but they're making the frame rate worse so I'll have to use visibility togglers in some of the hallways.  I have a feeling like I'll be the visibility toggler expert once I'm done designing this blasted fortress.

August 10
One thing you may have noticed in Dragonmech is that there weren't any ambient sound effects.  It wasn't that obvious, though, since you can't turn off the music when it's playing as a looping sound effect that's always on the camera, but sounds really add to the atmosphere.  I've added some dripping water effects to the caves and put wind up high in the sky, in open spaces.  If I have rope bridges, the obligatory triggered creaking sounds will be there, and perhaps mysterious voices will appear when the villain is near.  The villain this time is Andar, a ghost who acts friendly at first but then decides you need to die.  I didn't really spoil the plot because Andar will be suspicious from the beginning anyway.

August 9
It seems that in the first orc attack in the fortress in the first Meridian level, with the scripted waypoints, has a flaw.  You can escape the minions, chase down the orc, and kill it before it gets to the rune gauntlet room.  This could actually be changed from a flaw to an advantage you can take.  If you don't kill the orc leader, the minions in the rune gauntlet room will be ready for you.  If you do, it will never reach that room to tell them about it.  Maybe I'll have them be sleeping behind the rocks or something.

August 8
Today, I got to practice some Japanese in kind of a real life situation.  I was playing Drakan online, and there weren't any Japanese people on there but there were some of my friends speaking Norwegian.  They wouldn't tell me what they were saying, because I had joked by turning all the words into English ones that looked like them, so I started to speak Japanese to them.  Of course, they started doing the same thing to me that I was to them, so it wasn't really study per se.  But earlier today, I did really study some Japanese from the textbook, and there is some stuff I haven't learned yet, like the cause/effect syntax and a lot of the vocabulary.  The reason I started playing Drakan today was because I just wanted a quick game on the Arena levels, but I ended up testing a level online.  It's called Lunice Siren, by Lirah, and it looks like a good duel level.  I don't know if it will be on servers as much as the mainstay maps Rotation and Resurrection, both by Mr. Anderson, but if it has a good catch, like the sharks swimming around the edge of the arena, it should be interesting to a lot of people.  There are a lot of Drakan maps that are really good but are underplayed, like Andhorn by Lord Stone.  That's one of my favorites.

August 7
I did it!  I made a sequence in the fortress in my new level Meridian using triggers and waypoints.  When you're seen by the armored orc in the passageway, it yells at the two other orcs standing beside it, and they come get you.  Then the armored orc runs into the room behind you and yells at the two orcs there, making them come get you too.  Finally, it runs all the way to the room where the rune gauntlet is, where it waits along with four other orcs, who will come at you from behind the rock ridges.  I'm really getting the hang of this waypoint sequence stuff.

August 6
There is a limitation with the text message function in Drakan.  If you try to type in or copy into the parameter box a message that has more than 512 characters, the editor will crash.  I don't know why this happens, maybe because of a memory overflow or something, but it just won't support big dialogues.  It looks like I'll have to split them up.  As for the Tuiri character, I've decided to use an animation model that disappears in a bright flash on the screen when the text message disappears.  When I need her to move, like from out of or into the sky or to another room, it looks like I'll be using STOMP for that.

August 5
I've finished the texturing in the city, which is actually more like a fortress, and now I'm working on adding the Tuiri spirit and putting messages into the game.  My first efforts, which were to use animation demos or waypoint followers, aren't working as I planned because Tuiri won't move after the message is triggered, so I might have to use STOMP for this one.  I'm really inexperienced with STOMP, but I think I can learn it and use it well once I master the interface.  The editor crashed while I was making up the first of my text message dialogues.  That's not a good sign, but I'm sure everything will work out in the end.

August 4
One of my favorite mods for Unreal Tournament is Unreal4Ever, because it has a lot of cool weapons that you can make appear randomly on a level.  I especially like Full Nodepath Spawning because you can fill the level with all the weapons and ammo from the mod.  There are about 30 to 40 weapons, and most of them are effective and fun to use.  My favorite is the katana melee weapon.  When you equip it, you can run really fast and jump really high, so you can outrun your opponents, and it does a lot of damage.  It also has a secondary function that works like the Translocator but takes a while to charge up after you use it.  It shoots out a purple beam, that teleports you to where it stops.  You can telefrag opponents this way.  I played a game of single player Unreal through UT and summoned the katana on the first level, and found it to be very useful in the game.  It even let me go places that I'm not supposed to, like over the gate to the Chizra temple and on top of mountains.  When a titan showed up, I would just activate the purple beam and teleport into it.  This trick also works with the Translocator if you summon it.

August 3
The ground level of the city in Meridian really needs some work, so I'm adding new textures to it.  First, I made some rock ridges in the ground that are inside some of the rooms.  Then, I put a grass texture on the outside of the city.  This was only necessary for where you could see outside, but it was easy to do and I wanted to be thorough.  I'm only going to put plants where you can see them, because I don't want unnecessary models to lower frame rates.  When I put enemies in the city, I'll probably use visibility togglers, partly because of the unnecessary model thing, but mostly because if I didn't, all the monsters would come to me instead of waiting in their rooms.  That would be a good strategy sometimes, so I might just use togglers on some enemies.  I just don't want to have an enemy that's supposed to be guarding treasure but charges at you even if you don't approach it.  Now, I'm still doing texturing, and I'm adding patches of dirt to the grass in some places.  It adds more variety to the graphics, and it makes sense because the city walls block out some sunlight.

August 2
I'm trying some new things with layer design in Meridian, like underwater caves.  In my last level series, Dragonmech, as well as all my multiplayer levels, there haven't really been any complex underwater layer structures.  I'm working with a basic one in Meridian, but I'm having trouble with the ceiling layer not being recognized as being underwater.  This doesn't affect swimming, but when the camera moves around to under that ceiling, the screen doesn't have the blue filter anymore, and the ceiling doesn't shimmer.  I have remedied that by placing an invisible layer between the floor of the cave and the ceiling layer below it, of the underwater cave.  The vertices over the ceiling have been changed to the water type, so now everything works all right.  I also finished with the flooded canyon, placing health crystals on the cliffs and adding some giant dragonflies as initial enemies.  Then you go into the cave to fight spiders, but don't worry, you won't be fighting bugs all day.  The city on the other side of the cave is home to orcs and Wartoks.

August 1
There's only one month until college starts, and I need to get in shape for all the walking I'm going to be doing at the huge UW-Madison campus.  I went on a bike ride today, along the usual path, and got tired more quickly than I have before.  Of course, I did just recover from pneumonia, but now I need to do other stuff to get ready as well, like learn how to be more independent.  This isn't one of my two-week trips for high school, after all.  I'll be on my own, away from my family, for a while.  I plan to keep in touch with them, but I won't see them until the holidays.

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