July 2001
- 31 -
New Azenera spells!
I'll be adding a few more spells
to Azenera. The first one is the Energy Shot, which is basically
a better version of Lightspark. It's a fast beam of energy, and its
main purpose is to be effective against flying enemies like succubi and
death mages. You'll find it on level 4. Then there's the Wind
Slicer, which is a wide-range, medium-speed group of particles and is a
little more powerful than earlier spells. I'm also planning to make
more powerful fire and ice spells later on.
The Internet is back up and I'm
no longer the grand high ruler. I guess if I want all that hate speech
restriction stuff to pass, I'll have to use the old fashioned method of
independent grassroots activism. Speaking of that, I really don't
like that new Lenscrafters ad that uses the 60s "theme" of revolution,
complete with demonstrations and a folk singer and everything. I
wasn't around during the 60s but it seems like it's just cheapening the
whole scene and turning it into just another setting used to target a specific
demographic, which was carefully selected by a marketing team. It's
just like all those Mastercard ads that say the cost of everything and
the last thing is always priceless. You can just hear the team who's
designing all of those: "Let's show a baseball game to appeal to a young
male demographic, with emphasis on fathers!" "Okay, but we should also
do a mother-daughter shopping spree." "But what will be the priceless thing
there? We don't want to break the pattern!" "How about 'Getting to
know your mother all over again: priceless'?" "I love it! But now
we need something ethnic, for all the minorities out there." "How about
a store selling... I dunno, crafts and stuff? From Africa or something."
"Yes! Good work! We just won the minority dollar, and we're
on a roll!" Just to spite that series of ads, I should come up with
a special service that provides all the things deemed "priceless" by the
Mastercard advertising team and sell them for a price. Want to spend
time with your kids? For only $500, we'll force your kids to spend
time with you! Want to have memories of a water-skiing trip?
For $150, we'll show you a video of people water-skiing and brainwash you
into believing you actually did it! It's cheaper than buying all
the equipment! Yes, our mission will be to prove that everything
has a price no matter how much Mastercard smarmily tells you otherwise.
There's no more Internet!
It all crashed! Every page I've tried to visit, except for my own,
is not working at all. This might be caused by my ISP losing its
connections to other servers again, but I choose to believe instead that
this page is now the last webpage on Earth. That makes me the grand
high ruler of the Internet, and if you want to express yourself online
you'll have to contact me from now on! Don't worry, I respect freedom
of expression and I'll let everyone express themselves, but be warned that
I might do a little redrawing of the line between "expression" and "hate
speech." By order of me, the grand high ruler, from now on hate speech
is defined as follows: insulting Salix or any members of Salix's family,
saying anything bad about Drakan aside from laughs at the humorous voice
acting, saying Waterworld was a bad movie, using the expression "you reap
what you sow," saying "alot" instead of "a lot" or any other spacing errors,
overusing emoticons or Internet shorthand, or misinterpreting Salix's jokes
as serious comments. From now on this will be regarded as hate speech
and will go on the record of all offenders, cause every crime they commit
in the future, no matter how small, to be regarded as a hate crime and
result in a more severe sentence and brutalization by fellow inmates.
Now it is time to talk about
the dark, murky depths of the caverns under the town of Marinade.
While the citizens above ground are busy going about their everyday activities
of pacing back and forth, jacking up inn prices, and sacrificing young
women to Kraken, there's some evil stuff going on underground. Under
the surface, there is the Endless Army of Blue Cavemen. They fight
off pesky adventurers by going up to them, stopping, and throwing bones
over their heads. Judging by their basic survival skills, it's apparent
that they rely on rapid breeding to stay alive as a species. But
the females are nowhere to be seen. Maybe if your character could
go into the background instead of walking along the same vertically oriented
plane, you could see them. Then there are the Pop-Up Trees.
Like ads on a Tripod or Angelfire site, these trees pop out of the ground
when you get near them, and they shoot a star-shaped projectile at you.
There are also Grabby Hands, which are hands made out of stone that reach
up and grab in a predetermined pattern, and Poison Bees, which are very
annoying and also make an appearance in the plant caverns, but in a different
color. In the water, there are things that move up and down and shoot
electricity at you. Finally, there's Kraken, the giant octopus.
Kraken is mostly stationary, only moving two of his tentacles around in
circles all the time and shooting goop at you. It's a wonder the
people of Marinade even worry at all about a creature who is so far underground,
never moves, and has such limited attacks. Also in the underworld
is a weapon merchant who sells better weapons than the one above ground,
although it's hard to imagine that anyone would think it's good business
to set up a shop that's only accessible to people who have the Scale of
Mermaid.
There are actually three versions
of Marinade. This is because Cadash was made for the arcade, the
Genesis, and the PC Engine, and it was translated differently for all those
systems. The arcade has the worst translation, and the Genesis has
the best, in my opinion. But there are still some elements common
to all of them. First, the mother on the bridge threatens to feed
her son to Kraken if he doesn't stop lying (even though there actually
is a mermaid spring, so it could be the truth), then tells him to hurry
up. But for the entire duration of the game, all they do is walk
back and forth across the bridge. Apparently this is some kind of
exercise program, where you walk on a bridge until you're in shape, and
the mother is a strict participant in the program. Perhaps in Cadash
2: Return of Baarogue or Balrog or Whatever, you'll get to revisit
the town of Marinade and the mother will have set up her own shop called
"Walk That Bridge for Fitness or I'll Resurrect Kraken!"
I made reference to the town
of Marinade once, but I guess I should explain that. In Cadash, an
old arcade game, one of the towns you visit is called Marinade. It's
the first place you can buy weapons, armor, and medicine, and it has an
inn with prices as low as 100 gold for the first night to 20000 gold for
the fourth or fifth night. You are introduced to this town by a friendly
nurse who says "Here you are in the town of Marinade." There's a
young boy who walks across a bridge and tells random people about the mermaid
he saw, and his mother walks right beside him and threatens to feed him
to Kraken, the giant octopus, if he keeps telling lies all the time.
There's an old lady who sits around in her house waiting for visitors,
addresses everyone, including women, as "the brave man," and talks about
how a girl she adopted, who was really a mermaid, chose to become a sacrifice
to Kraken. This is all that happens in the wonderful, magical town
of Marinade.
The Gas Cloud spell in Azenera
won't work very well on armored enemies, but on the plus side, it doesn't
do damage to Rynn when she's wearing armor. Even chain mail stops
poison damage if it's around 15 damage per second or lower. It'll
be good for doing damage to giants and ticks later in the game. Right
now, I need to figure out where to put the Speed Gauntlet and how to set
up the fire skeleton trap. The latest test version is done, but there's
not much to do yet and the path is fairly linear. When you reach
the huge boulder in the swamp, that's the end for now.
It hasn't been a good year for
me. Well, for me it has, but for my vicariously-lived community,
it hasn't. I live a very precarious and shaky fantasy life, and to
see it go down in flames like it has been is simply too much for me.
This isn't really anything I have to worry about at all, but it's just...
well, have you ever had something you wanted to say but you could just
never say it because it's embarrassing and you feel like it would crush
you? I went and deleted most of the July 1 entry and the part of
the July 21 entry that refers to it. Well, that's it. No more
fantasy life for me; from now on, my state of mind depends on me and my
own experiences, not some imaginary foundation that has zero to do with
me. It's time I took back the thunder from the town of Marinade.
I swear tomorrow I'll start making sense again.
Today I played Final Fantasy
IX and got to the second CD! So far it's pretty good, and there's
more to do than I thought there would be. I can ride a chocobo, play
a treasure hunting game, and play cards with people. I'm still a
card-playing novice, but I'm learning, sometimes the hard way. The
battles are tough at first but become easier as I level up and get new
equipment. I accidentally went the wrong way out of the Gizamaluke
Grotto and ended up on the overworld, fighting really powerful monsters
like a big dragon. They annihilated my party in a few moves, but
luckily I found I didn't have to fight them just yet, so I moved on.
I promise I'll make progress on Azenera 3 tomorrow and maybe put up another
test version.
There's just not enough time
in the day to do everything I want to do! I want to read a few books,
finish the games Final Fantasy VIII and IX and Chrono Cross, finish making
Azenera, write a new Sine Wave entry every day, keep up with all the web
pages and message boards I visit, and maybe go on MSN or play Drakan multiplayer
if I'm feeling masochistic. There hasn't been anyone on the Drakan
servers the last time I checked, and the Surreal-News forums are down so
I can't post any level editing stuff on there. Maybe I should just
focus on the console games and Azenera. Looks like I'm not going
to become one of the 4000-post members of the Straight Dope Message Board
after all. So far I'm still a zero-post member.
I'm almost done with the first
part of Azenera 3. The first part is a swamp with pools of water
and dirt ridges. The next part will be an area with a grassland and
hills, and then the wartok base, and finally a cave where you'll fight
a monster. I've already added the area that leads from the cave back
to the entrance. It's a tram that crosses a valley, and it's only
activated after you go the long way around the level.
The Azenera universe is going
to go in a different direction than the Drakan universe. I'm going
to expand on the character biographies and give them a greater sense of
personality. Although my resources are limited in terms of what I
can put into the game and still have it be a small file size, I can make
up whatever information in the text message system.
I'm such an idiot. When
I released the Gobrynn model, I forgot to add the Goblin Body texture,
so the main part of the model wasn't even included in the archive.
It's fixed now, so go to the Drakan links page and download away.
I also received an e-mail a while ago, informing me of several broken links
to files on Surreal-News that changed directories, so I just uploaded all
those files to my site. By the way, I'm using the Gobrynn model in
Azenera 3. It's used for the Kavoh Morph Crystal, which is basically
just a piece of indestructible armor that turns you into a goblin hybrid
when you use it. There will be several more of these in the series,
including one that is crucial to getting past an obstacle on level 10.
Basically, you'll have to run into a stream of healing projectiles while
going through a toxic liquid, but the healing projectiles will heal so
little health that you'll actually need armor that makes you more susceptible
to damage in order to survive. I expect to get a lot of emails about
that, so I'll make a FAQ or something. I already almost need one
for the Ice Skull.
My heart is pure and my soul
is clean. At least that's what I thought before I started the journey
to the lost island of Lalo. On my way there, I had a strange vision
of my dark side, facing me and reminding me of every evil thought I have
ever had. Every desire to strike, to lie, to commit rash injustice
was there in my face, and there was nothing I could do. "Go back,"
it said, "this is my one line of truth to you, that almost kills me to
say. Go back and never try to find the island of Lalo. Your
presence will bring nothing but chaos and destruction!" So, I went
back and decided never to try to go to Lalo, at least until I felt like
it again. Maybe that vision was just a weird dream caused by having
too much pizza the night before. Maybe I'll just venture out into
the seas, and if I happen to stumble upon the island of Lalo, I'll praise
myself on my good luck and hope all that chaos and destruction stuff never
comes true.
I'm starting to get back into
the groove of things. I'm up to Shooter mode in Castlevania CotM.
That's the mode where you're just as weak as you are in Magician mode,
but your sub-weapons are really powerful, use half as many hearts, and
you can carry more of them. I've chosen the cross as my weapon of
choice, despite the availability of the homing knife weapon in this mode.
The knife is the only sub-weapon that has a new feature, and I think they
made it like that because the knife uses one heart in the normal modes
and there's no way to halve that for Shooter mode. My favorite mode
so far has been Magician mode, because I get to use all the spells and
magic attacks right from the beginning. I can summon Thunderbird
on everyone and go into skeleton mode and use the big bone to destroy the
first few bosses in one hit. I've also been texturing the first part
of Azenera 3, and it's harder this time because the landscape is on a smaller
scale and there are some slopes that can't be matched up exactly with the
correct transition textures.
In the ocean somewhere, there
exists an island called Lalo. I don't know where it is exactly.
Nobody does, except for a few travelers that go between Lalo and the rest
of the world, and they have promised not to tell anyone. In fact,
none of us know who these people are, and it's probably better that way.
The people of Lalo should never be found out by ordinary people, anywhere
else in the world, because they have a secret that would be corrupted by
our presense and our ways. The people there have existed in pure
harmony, without any hatred for each other whatsoever. Their skin
is several different shades and colors, some not found among any known
cultures - black, white, blue, purple, green - and yet there is no racism
and no discrimination at all. The people there know, by instinct,
that they should treat everyone as equals and see nothing as wrong unless
it causes harm to others. It is unknown what would happen if the
people of Lalo were to meet ordinary cultures, but the worst fear is that
they would lose their harmony and become just as destructive as the rest
of us, or that they would be conquered, enslaved, or wiped out. We
must protect the people of the lost island of Lalo, and find ways to keep
them from being discovered.
All right! My last two
incredible singles topped the charts with a golden bullet made of pure
platinum-coated silver! And since good things happen in threes, or
is that bad things, I don't remember, here's the third in the series.
It's a slow love song called "Eyes of Skull Has a Secret."
Oh, baby
When I look into your eyes
I see the stars in the heavens
And the whispers in the skies
When I'm with you, darling
It's like I fly like an egret
Then you whisper softly
"Eyes of skull has a secret."
Oh, baby
That's when I fell in love
And I know I can't run or hide
From the powers above
The eyes of your skull, honey
They really say it all
Eyes of skull has a secret
In love with you I fall
This time I've come up with a
surefire number 1 hit on the top 40 radio charts in America and overseas!
A follow-up to the smash hit "Buy Somethin' Will Ya!", here's another great
one, "Let's Play Money Making Game." It's all about the pastime of
gambling, and the horrors it can lead to.
Do you want some Rupees
So you can buy a candle?
I've got a little game for ya baby
Is it too much to handle?
Ohhh, let's play let's play
Money making game
Minus ten, minus ten,
You gamble it the same
Will you get nothing, will you get it all
Will you stand up, or will you fall?
I played it once before
I lost all my money
I lost everything
Including your love, honey
So let this be a lesson
Before you make your choice
Gambling is so risky
Do you hear my voice?
I'm going to stop talking about
the same old boring stuff all the time and start doing some new material.
First off, I think I'll try my hand at writing some pop songs based on
the things people say to you in the very first Legend of Zelda game.
You can buy a red potion
Or a heart container
But you can't buy the heart beating in my chest
I couldn't say it plainer
Buy somethin' will ya! Ooh...
But ya can't buy my heart, baby, oh no
Buy somethin' will ya! Ooh...
But ya can't buy my soul, baby
Not for all the rupees
In all of Hyrule
Can you purchase my love for ya, baby
Don't you be a fool
Buy somethin' will ya! Ooh...
But ya can't buy my heart, baby, oh no
Buy somethin' will ya! Ooh...
But ya can't buy my soul, baby
The Kalak and Scavengers sequence
is already in place, and it works pretty well. I had to cheat a little
and make it so all the missiles automatically gibbed every scavenger after
15 seconds, because otherwise one of the scavengers might wander out of
the line of fire or be trapped behind a dead scavenger so the sequence
would go on forever. I'm also starting to do texturing, using three
texture sets instead of the usual two for the first part of the level.
I made a sky, but it doesn't look very good. Even though a color
might look good and fitting to a certain theme under Windows, it usually
ends up looking strange in the game on my first try. The sky I made,
which was supposed to be a dark misty green color, instead looked neon
green. There's just something about the game that makes all colors
seem exaggerated. Maybe it's just that it's better to have more contrast
between light and dark, or a background that's much less colorful than
the foreground.
I'm making it so that Kalak the
death mage visits you and helps you by killing a few scavengers.
I also tested out a version of the level 6 boss, Seerlik, and it messes
up whenever he's bigger than normal scaling, so it looks like I can't make
Seerlik any bigger than any other ghost enemy. There are also some
plot elements that I need to work on. You probably won't be able
to trust me to make a good storyline after my little Waterworld revelation
a few days ago, but I promise it'll be as painless as possible. I
need inspiration from a better source, from a real community, people I
can identify with and who can't simply be shattered when I read some stupid
article on the Internet that messes with my sanctuary of the mind.
Thanks to everyone who wrote
in saying I should stick up for my beliefs, but I thought the entry on
June 6 indicated I was just doing another one of my warped experiments.
But I understand. People are always saying they can never tell when
I'm serious and when I'm not, so I'd better just not be serious any of
the time. Better yet, I'll let my actions do the talking, but if
that were the case then the best kind of talk would be to have Azenera
complete by now. Thanks, but no thanks, because now I'm all guilty
about being such an apparent deceptive liar. Good night.
I have faced persecution, my
friends. I have been spit on, thrown out, and banned by those who
do are afraid of what I believe. I have had my words censored and
treated like an ebola-laced dog turd by the spineless people who believe
they hold positions of authority, but are actually slaves to their own
brainwashing. You might be asking why. You might be saying
that no belief should warrant such a violent reaction, unless it's truly
horrible and disgusting. What is the opinion I hold that causes such
turmoil in my life? Well, I'll tell you. I am continually cast
out for the apparently unforgivable sin of thinking that Waterworld wasn't
such a bad movie after all. Yes, I'm talking about the Kevin Costner
movie about the future where the earth is flooded and our heroes are searching
for dry land while fending off bandits. I know the science was bad
and the acting wasn't so great, but it was a fun story, with decent special
effects and a campy adventurous feeling to it, and I kind of liked it.
But no one can accept this. They all hate the movie and expect me
to, and I end up losing all credibility once I disagree with them.
The first discussion I went to was about what movies we liked, and no one
could believe it when I said Waterworld. The movie message board
administrators all thought I was a troll. Then there was the auditorium
at college, where there was a series of lectures about movies, which was
mostly attended by film students. The people from the discussion
heard I was going to be there so they tried to block me in the aisle, and
it didn't help matters much when the first slide I showed to them was titled
"Waterworld: it wasn't a bomb to me!" Then there was the review I
sent in to all those college papers which was rejected by most of them
and protested by the others. This all ties in to the point I was
making yesterday - the problem of bad movies that my ideological opponents
are fighting isn't really a problem, because no one is forcing anyone to
watch movies. We no longer, and we probably never did, have institutionalized
forced movie watching, except maybe health videos in schools and everyone
is subjected to those equally. They are ignoring the real problem
of cultural elitism that ensures nothing new is ever tried, because it
might end up causing too much variability in people's opinions. That,
among other things, is what is wrong with America today. It can't
get its head out of the sand and realize that it's wrong to censor opinions,
even ones like the belief that Waterworld was an enjoyable movie.
I'm glad to have gotten that off my chest, and I feel like a great weight
has been lifted from my soul.
My ideological opponents are
monopolizing all political arenas, and by doing so they are letting a self-destructive
cycle keep going and sending this country into ruin. They have manipulated
the populace into agreeing with their cause and joining in their fight,
and anyone who disagrees is automatically branded as a horrible, evil monster.
Just look at what happened to most of the people who think like I do.
Simply mentioning their names in any kind of discussion, and showing any
hint of understanding of what they say, often leads to warning or automatic
banning. My opponents think they know what the real problem is, and
they are determined to fight against it at any cost, but the problem has
long since been eliminated, for the most part. They are so desperate,
they are manufacturing the very problem they claim to fight, and if they
can't do that, they seek out any trace of it in a modern-day witch hunt.
In effect, they are becoming a bigger problem than that which they fight.
There were once many people who tried to point out this fact, but they
faced such harsh punishment and censorship for their views that now many
of them find it much easier to simply swallow their pride and blindly agree
with the conventional ideology. It's time we made our voices heard
once more and try to let people understand, before this country falls further
into ruin and people start to understand all too well what they should
have done.
In Azenera 3, I'm making the
landscape closer in design to some of my old MP swamp levels, like Swamp
of Mystery. It has the jagged dirt-textured rocks and relatively
low boundary rock walls, and there'll be water areas and small cliffs at
the beginning. The sky will be green-blue, and the fog will be closer
in so there can be more plants and rocks without messing up the frame rate.
I'm thinking of putting in a bunch of spiders and ticks near the beginning,
and getting more use out of the spellcasting goblins I designed.
There's already a secret path that leads to a caged area with an item inside.
Later areas will include a Wartok camp, a group of giant tangled trees,
and a big cave where you find the item you need to disable the force field
in level 2.
It was clear that the right to
free speech is a lie in this country, but I decided to see how bad it really
was. Perhaps my loudest dissenters were in the minority, but they
seemed more dominant because they made every effort to be heard over me
and drown out my voice. Perhaps there were some people in charge
of a medium that could make the right decision and let me be heard.
I wrote up a brief editorial describing my beliefs and views, and I sent
it out to fifty college newspapers to be published. Forty-five of
them declined immediately, stating that my editorial did not meet their
journalistic standards. Three did not respond to me, and still have
not printed the editorial. The remaining two were no better in their
results. One college newspaper in Montana printed the editorial,
but later wrote an apology for it, explaining that they had all simultaneously
had a severe lapse in judgment and begging for their readers' trust again.
They wrote, "We do not endorse Salix's views, and we will never print anything
like them again. We apologize for unintentionally turning our newspaper
into a vehicle for extreme offensiveness." Another college paper
in Kansas, which had already been under attack several times by the local
thought police and proponents of selective censorship, actually printed
my editorial and stood by their decision, stating the truth that it was
the right thing to do but emphasizing that views in editorials did not
reflect those of the newspaper. This newspaper was savagely attacked
again by my extremist ideological opponents, who protested loudly for several
days and stole over a thousand copies of the newspaper that had the editorial
in it. I was not surprised, based on my previous experiences, but
I had no idea the brainwashing, censorship, and closed-mindedness in our
country was truly this overwhelming.
Having tried voicing my thoughts
on yet another message board, only to be banned and threatened, I decided
that I would try to reach people in a setting in which they could see me
in person and know that I am only human, and not the terrible monster that
people imagine when they think of those who hold values like mine.
I reserved a spot as a speaker in a local college auditorium, where I would
give a short speech and appeal to reason. There must, I thought,
be someone out there who is a kindred spirit, who will actually listen
to me or at least silently acknowledge my beliefs and begin to seek them
out on any medium that does not immediately censor me. When I arrived
at the auditorium, it looked like a promising crowd. There were men
and women there of all races, religions, and social statures, and it was
pretty obvious who was there to support me and who wouldn't agree with
me at all. They weren't too aggressive at first, but when I started
walking toward the podium, a group of people suddenly rushed into the aisle
to block me. They had fire in their eyes, and some were wearing shirts
that said "Ban Salix Now!" I was having flashbacks to every message
board discussion I ever started. I said to them, "Please let me through,"
but that only made them more determined to keep me from going on that stage.
It took four security guards just to restrain them enough to let me barely
squeeze through. As I finally reached the podium and looked out into
the crowd, I could see a glimmer of hope in the eyes of some, but it was
almost lost in the sea of pure hatred emanating from most of the people
there. Nervously, I started speaking. "It is an honor to be
here," I said respectfully, "and I hope you will truly understand what
I have to say. I am here tonight to express my beliefs on..."
Voices rang out from the audience, "We don't want to hear it!" "We just
want you to leave, now!" "Don't inflict your words on us!" I said,
with a hint of defensiveness, "But you haven't even heard what I have to
say this time! Don't judge me before you understand where I'm coming
from." That wasn't good enough for them. I continued to speak,
but the people in the audience who disagreed with me began jeering and
booing so loudly that I couldn't be heard. Disgusted and disappointed
beyond belief, I ran out of the auditorium and headed back home, to search
yet again for someone out there on the Internet who would listen to me.
It's sickening how so many people are so adamant about censoring voices
that go against what has been ingrained in them from the beginning.
It was my brother's birthday
today, so we went out for lunch. We went to the Macaroni Grill, which
is a very good Italian restaurant. There are tons of Italian places
here in Minnesota, like the Olive Garden and Tucci Benucch. Tucci
Benucch is in the Mall of America, and we used to eat there all the time,
but they changed their design all around and everything was more expensive,
and they stopped having my family's favorite salads, so we stopped going
there. My mother is a vegetarian so it's hard for her to find restaurants
she likes, because the vegetarian option always seems tacked on as a second
thought, and sometimes there is none. We've recently started going
to Chipotle, a good Mexican place with a nice veggie burrito.
People tend to have sympathy
they otherwise wouldn't have for those who are censored. If the system
wants
to bring you down, then there will inevitably be those who will stand by
you and hang on to your every word, because censored ideas have power.
If they didn't, then there wouldn't be anyone trying to censor them.
It's circular logic, but it works. Now, I don't have many strong
convictions about much of anything, but I do think it must feel nice to
be perceived as a voice of reason in a sea of chaos. For the next
few days, I'll be railing against my ideological opposition's attempts
to censor my words. I won't get into specific details, other than
the fact that there's a seemingly unstoppable force of wills out there
that is afraid to accept, or even listen to, my ideas and beliefs.
Allow me to demonstrate:
The instructor at the meeting
seemed very kind and rational at first. "What do you believe?" he
asked the woman sitting next to me. "Well, Tom, I believe..."
She went on to state her beliefs, all of which were canned sentiments and
doublespeak that all people learn to believe in our totalitarian educational
system. It was all I could do to keep from pulling my hair out in
anguish. The woman finished regurgitating her words, and the instructor
turned to me and said, "What about you, Salix? What is your outlook
on this topic?" I stated my opinions frankly and clearly, keeping
my eye contact with the audience and reading their facial expressions to
try to connect with them, in the hope that they might understand my point
of view. The night before, I had predicted that my ideas might make
the others in the group a little uncomfortable and I had prepared for that,
but I had no idea they would react so violently and strongly. The
instructor's eye started twitching, and it looked like he was going to
explode. After he regained his calmness, he firmly told me that I
wasn't the kind of person they wanted to participate in this group and
that I should leave before I further embarrassed myself. The woman
next to me suddenly swiveled in her seat and screamed at me, "You horrible
monster! Why are you saying these things?" The instructor said,
"Now, Anne, there's no need for that kind of outburst, but I admit it wasn't
unexpected. Please, Salix, just leave the room before more people
get upset." I was banned for life from that group, just for stating
what I thought was right. Now, I ask you, the audience reading this,
was my idea so horrible that it warranted that kind of reaction from people?
This is just another example of how my ideological opponents are so brainwashed
that they must partake in censorship of every idea that doesn't conform
to their narrow world view, and so they continue the endless cycle of indoctrination.
Well... I don't want to talk
about Azenera too much, and there are lots of other things to discuss on
this site, so I'll keep the Azenera discussion to only major updates or
new features that are really cool. Sorry I couldn't post today, I
was being suppressed by my ideological opponents who I am casting in the
role of an evil overbearing empire that wants to censor my every word.
Yesterday I was at a reading discussion at college and people were blocking
the path so I couldn't get on stage, and then they started booing me, and
it seemed like they had it in for me from the beginning. It's tough
being outspoken and having convictions, especially with all the brainwashing
going on in the media and academia, but somehow I survive.
I'm too tired to write anything
meaningful right now. Just pretend there's a big huge rant in this
entry about the true meaning of Independence Day, the day, not the movie,
and pretend it really opened your mind and changed the way you look at
things while making you laugh, cry, and learn three different languages
and how to truly empathize with others in the process. That's how
thoughtful and well-written the speech you're imagining in place of these
words should be. The fireworks were pretty cool this year.
At first I was afraid, I was petrified, thinking I had picked the wrong
place to sit along with a bunch of other people and the fireworks were
on the other side of some bright lights, but then the lights were turned
off and the real fireworks started, and they were really at a good distance
after all.
Sorry, I didn't update today.
I was too busy playing Castlevania on the GBA. It's a really good
game, but I've been trying to get the Pluto card from the Trick Candle
for half an hour. I'm also enjoying the new Zelda games, Oracle of
Seasons and Oracle of Ages. I'm on Ages now, in a linked game, and
I'm going back and forth between the games exchanging passwords and getting
cool stuff.
I've been planning how I'm going
to make level 3 of Journey to Azenera. It's going to mostly be a
swamp, with a few other areas, but it all has to make sense with a closer
fog limit. This means I can put in a much higher density of objects
than I could in the last two levels. Level 3 will probably be shorter
than level 2 because it's basically just a side trip off into the swamps
to pick up something that can get you past the force field, but it'll be
the first place you can really use your magic spells and weapons without
Arokh being there. Kalak will appear in JtA3, and he'll help you
a few times by killing some monsters, like a horde of scavengers.
Azenera level 2 is finally done!
At least, the part that leads up to level 3 is done. I'll be changing
some parts of all the levels as I add more to each one, but for now, levels
1 and 2 are playable, up to the point where you reach the cave that leads
to level 3. Then the credits play. Don't worry about the force
field that has no noticeable mechanism for getting through, because that's
the entrance to level 4 and I don't need to worry about that for a while.
You can get version 2.24 here.