August 2001
- 27 -
Madison photo log page
Well, I promised to make a Madison
photo log before the summer was done, and today I finally scanned in the
pictures and made the log. It's not very exciting, because I only
took pictures on certain days in the spring and I didn't have my camera
with me most of the time. You can read about it here.
There's not much more to do in
the latest Azenera 3 beta than there was in the last one I made, because
I spent most of my time creating all the layers, making new spells, and
changing things around. You can experiment with the spells or fly
around the level with the camera and see all the layers, but the gameplay
is still limited. The beta is on the Drakan links page, as always.
This might be my last entry for a while, so I hope I finished everything
that I need to for a while.
Only 2 more days after today
before I go back to college, and the last day will probably be spent packing
up the computer, so I'll have to finish the latest Azenera level 3 beta
tomorrow and post it here. There are some new parts to the level,
and I've finished making the loop around the level, but most of the texturing
and object placement still needs to be done. I also have to change
level 1 so that the rune gauntlet is repositioned to fit the new design.
I've been thinking about more spells to add, like one that creates a pushable
boulder and one that causes an explosion of darkness, and I'll add some
bows to the game. They'll have to have non-restorable ammo, because
the multiple ammo system is already taken up by the magic system, but it
should still work out well.
I'll be going back to my home
planet... I mean back to college on the 29th, so I might not be able to
update this site. Last year, you might remember, I was denied FTP
access to this server except for a few weeks in April, and I expect a similar
situation this year. There's also the fear that I'll get my computer
all set up there and it won't work at all, but it'll probably be fine.
I'll probably still post on the Surreal-News forums about level editing
and stuff, so you'll be able to see if I'm still on the Internet after
I leave. It's my second year of college and I really have to choose
a major before it's too late and I end up needing to take too many classes.
Do you want to know what I've
been doing lately? I've been playing a free shareware game called
Neophyte: the Spirit Master. It's the third in a series of games
that takes after the style of console games like Secret of Mana, Lord of
the Rings, and Zelda. Unfortunately, it fails to emulate the lack
of bugs in those games. It freezes often, the combat is a bit off,
the cursor is very jumpy, and sometimes dialogue boxes get stuck and you
can't move anywhere. It also sometimes makes the MIDI systems act
up until you restart your computer. The enemies consist of rats,
blue wolves, snakes that fire purple projectiles at you, gray blobs that
freeze either you or your computer, green blobs that can poison you without
even touching you, spiders, and snails. That's all I've seen so far.
The graphics are pretty good, the gameplay is all right, and it seems like
it could be a good game if it were just more stable. The company
that made the game went out of business though, so the bugs probably won't
ever be fixed.
I've found a bug that happens
in Drakan when you make a bow weapon that's less than 3 inventory spaces
high. When your inventory is full and you're carrying a weapon that
takes up 2 or 3 spaces, and then you switch from that weapon to the bow,
the weapon will be stuck in midair and you won't be able to pick it up
ever again. This means I'll have to make the rune gauntlet use a
3-space icon if I don't want this bug to happen. Either that or I'll
need to make all weapons take up one space. I can't believe I just
found this out now, and I really can't believe I didn't first discover
it on my own level series, Azenera. I discovered it a few days ago
on the new Breaking of the World beta by Mick, which uses almost the exact
same magic system as Azenera and also has a one-space bow weapon.
Maybe I'll redesign the rune gauntlet so it justifies the use of three
inventory spaces instead of just one.
The magic gauntlet weapons have
been changed! They no longer use the formerly unused Ice Crystal
model from Special Effects. Instead, they use a modified version
of the Fire Power Base from Resources and they look more like a bow.
That's a good thing because the gauntlets now use the bow icons and take
up 3 inventory spaces instead of just 1. I don't think it'll be too
big an inconvenience, and it'll make people choose whether to be primarily
a fighter or mage based on the items they choose to keep in their inventory.
Now the original gauntlet icons are free for other uses, like the directional
projector and the healing stream device I'm adding.
The cave leading from the tree
and ledge area of Azenera 3 to the ledge at the beginning is almost done,
but many of the smaller caves around the level have to be completed.
I haven't been spending my full time on Azenera, I must admit, because
I've also been downloading a bunch of shareware and freeware games to try.
Most of them are old ones from ten years ago that are for DOS and don't
work well under Windows ME. The problem is that most of them are
too fast! Apparently they didn't put any kind of speed limiter in
some of the games to make them forward compatible, and in the few cases
where there is a speed limiter, the slowest speed is still too fast.
Not that I'm bragging or anything. The old Star Wars game for DOS
went by so fast, a whole game can be played, or in my case watched, in
about 3 seconds! I need a DOS emulator that can also emulate a really
slow processor.
I downloaded the huge 124-MB
single player demo of the game Red Faction because it was getting so much
praise, and it was worth it. It's a standard first-person shooter,
but there are some really cool things about it. The enemies have
good AI and will go for backup, there are characters you can talk to, and
it feels like you're in the middle of the action, unlike some games like
Unreal where you feel like you arrived after all the important stuff happened.
Another cool feature is the ability to destroy some walls with explosives
and even make your own caves if you want to. You can do this anywhere,
not just on walls that have a crack in them like in other FPS games.
This is especially exciting because it shows that games like Super Boulder
Dash or Worms would be possible in 3D. The demo only consisted of
three levels in the mines, and I really don't know what the full game will
be like, so I'll look out for reviews.
Well, I'm getting more spam than
ever in my e-mail these days. It's ridiculous. I haven't received
one piece of serious e-mail from anyone for a week, not even an inquiry
as to whether I've gone insane because of a few of my latest entries I
wrote when there was nothing else I could think of to write, or any comments
about Drakan editing. Usually I'll get a few messages in broken English
asking how to do stuff in the editor or where to get a file. I've
heard on the Surreal-News forums that the site lost all its files and isn't
hosting anymore, so now all we have is Planet Drakan. If Fileplanet
goes down, then the Drakan community is sunk. It has already almost
withered away into nothingness by now, with the forums mainly being used
for threads consisting of the first post being a joke followed by several
posts that say "LOL" and a smiley face followed by a screen-high signature
file with an average of five images, some of which are animated.
Someone recently started a thread about whether a certain move in the game
is annoying, but that thread has been posted so many times it's not even
funny.
I apologized a few days ago for
how I cruelly and inhumanely lashed out at Panera and accused them of censorship
of my ideas and taking away my freedom to express my opinions that the
croissant should cost less and then I realized the error of my ways and
decided I was being too harsh and hasty and emotional, but no one has accepted
or even acknowledged my apology yet. This is really bad and I think
the reason people aren't saying anything is because they think I'm worse
than Hitler and I'm a horrible monster and if they're caught talking to
me they'll be ostracized from society. I didn't mean to fall into
such notoriety, all I wanted was to summon up the courage to tell the Panera
people a simple observation of price versus cheese content and I couldn't
do it, so then I got all arrogant and huffy and went off on a rant about
how I love freedom so much and how Panera was trying to censor my opinions
which belong to me and not them so they shouldn't be able to censor them.
It's true that I love freedom and hate censorship and want everyone to
be free to express their opinions, but Panera wasn't really trying to censor
me, in fact, I never even had a conversation about anything regarding the
prices with them, but I can't afford to take the risk that the lack of
responses to my apology is due to people not seeing the page or caring
enough but by a response of great disgust and the feeling that what I wrote
is unforgivable. I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and
not say the horrible things I said because I am filled with so much remorse
right now at the lies and libel which have spewed from my mouth, or keyboard
in this case, and I just want the pain and the guilt to be over.
I beg of you, if you're reading this, please find it in your heart to accept
my apology, I know the emotional damage of what I said might take years
to recover from with lots of expensive therapy, but I didn't think the
damage would be this severe. There's not much point in dragging this
out longer than it needs to go on, because the proverbial plane has crashed
and I just want to clean up the proverbial wreckage as quickly as I can
instead of beating the proverbial survivors to death with mangled, detached,
proverbial metal shards.
I'm working on getting the Gold
Chocobo in FFIX, and I've almost got it. One of the Chocographs just
indicates that there's a small reef in the ocean somewhere, so I'm going
to have to go on a little quest all around the world and stare intently
at the ocean to find one little bright spot. I read one of the FFIX
FAQs on GameFAQs and it said that
to get 1700 card collector's points and become the Ultimate Card Master,
I not only have to get one of each of the 100 cards in the game (you can
only carry 100 total), I have to have each one use a different arrow configuration.
There's no time for me to do all that! I guess I'm going to skip
that challenge.
The set of four trees in Azenera
level 3 is almost complete! It was easier to make than I thought
it would be, but now I should change a few of the ceiling vertex heights
and add vines so it doesn't look so artificial. There are enlarged
plants embedded in the branches to look like leaves. No one will
ever call them leaves if they e-mail me about the trees, I know.
They'll call them squished Plant Small 02s. People see the enlarged
ice crystals I use for lamps, and they always call them just that, enlarged
ice crystals. No one ever says "lamps" when they refer to them.
I think they look enough like lamps, and they give off light so their function
in the level is kind of obvious, but to the Drakanites they'll always be
misplaced objects with the wrong purpose. Before I add the Wind Slicer
spell, I'm going to redo the models for the magic system in Azenera.
They won't really look any different, but I'm making it so the magic orbs
are at a higher origin so they don't sink through the floor, and I might
do that for the health crystals too. I'm also turning the orbs around
so that the convergence points are on the top and bottom, so that way it's
horizontally symmetrical. The Energy Shot spell looks good so far,
and it should be one of the most useful. It's better against smaller,
fast-moving enemies, unlike Ice Bomb or Gas Cloud. Wind Slicer will
send out a whirlwind of magenta particles, and it will work well agaisnt
big enemies or groups of small ground monsters.
Finally, I get to fly an airship
in FFIX! I can soar around the world and land in different places
and maybe find a new place to play the Chocobo game! Technically
all my characters are waiting for me to go to the Shimmering Island, but
I won't be doing that until I'm finished with mini-games and leveling up.
It took me 40 hours to get to the part where I fly an airship, but I did
spend a lot of time leveling up on the Outer Continent, mastering most
of the abilities, and finding all the chocographs and treasure chests.
I guess I won't be able to pass the 12 hour challenge and get the Excalibur
2. But then again, there are probably lots of things I've missed,
like items I could steal off bosses or rare cards to find, and stuff I
could do but I don't have the patience. This game can be so complex
sometimes. Maybe I should just stick with trying to get all the Rage
attacks in Final Fantasy VI.
I have a Hotmail account that
I use for MSN, but I never use it for regular e-mail. I do, however,
periodically delete 99% of the messages I get for that account. Over
the past few months, it built up to about 300 messages in my inbox, not
counting the 100 that were filtered, and only 3 or so of them were genuine
messages. The other ones were spam, spam, spam, mostly the same spam
sent in different forms over and over again. No, spammers, I don't
want to visit your stupid porn site. I don't want your debt consolidation.
I don't want to you to have my advice for those files you send. I
don't want a fake university diploma. I don't care about your vacations.
From now on, maybe I'll just ignore those popup boxes that say I have a
hundred more messages and let the spam build up so I can see if it goes
past 999.
I didn't mean to get all upset
with Panera the last few days, I really love that restaurant and it's a
good place to go for delicious food. I don't want to fall out of
their good graces and if they would just forgive me, that would be wonderful.
They probably know who I am because of the pictures on this site and they
might secretly be trying to avoid me and they might be thinking badly of
me at a time like this. I wish we could all just get on with our
lives and forget about this whole thing because I am truly sorry.
Nobody is trying to censor me, but sometimes it feels that way because
I'm a very emotional person and I do hasty things sometimes. I'm
really sorry about what I said in the last few entries, but I'm not going
to attempt to do damage control by deleting them, because the damage has
already been done. Instead, I'm going to face up and accept that
I wrote some hasty things and even though I didn't actually say anything
about the prices to the people working at Panera, I wrote entries about
it on my site and someone who works there might have read one of them and
become guilty because of it. Please, don't feel guilty, it's really
not so bad. I really don't mind if the prices stay the way they are,
it's only a few cents anyway and maybe there is just as much cheese in
the croissant but it's spread out more, so it looks like less. Also,
a croissant might be harder to make and have more expensive ingredients,
so it's probably fair after all. I can understand if I'm not welcome
in that restaurant anymore after that online scene I made over the past
few days, but I hope everyone I might have offended can find it in their
hearts to forgive me. Please, I'll never say anything about Panera
again except that it has great food, which is the truth in my opinion,
I'll even let them overcharge me a little. All I want is forgiveness
and validation of that forgiveness because I really am truly sorry for
all the damage I caused. I just hope none of the damage is irreparable,
like people coming to rash conclusions to what I said and therefore to
their own lives, and if it is, I accept full responsibility. It's
times like these I really hope people don't take me too seriously, not
that it makes me any less of a horrible monster that deserves extreme punishment.
Well, even though they like to
censor my opinions which are my opinions and not theirs to censor, and
even though I love freedom and stand up for the freedom of everyone to
be free from censorship of their opinions and especially my opinions which
I don't want to be censored, I still enjoy going to Panera. They
have some really good sandwiches, and I find I can enjoy them if I don't
think about how they're closed-minded and like to censor me by taking away
my freedom and refusing to change the prices on the danish and croissant
so that the croissant costs less than the danish because it has less cheese.
Sometimes I find myself thinking too much about how they like to censor
me and take part in censorship because they're brainwashed and they don't
want to change their prices and be fair and listen to my opinions, but
I find that there are times when I can think about other things too, and
I've had to start taking medication to keep from dwelling on how they're
always censoring me and stomping all over my freedom like an elephant stomps
a patch of grass. But when the medication is taken, the elephant's
foot is lifted and like that patch of grass I spring back up and become
able to think about other things besides how everyone is censoring me and
people don't like my opinions because they are shocking and it causes cognitive
dissonance when people hear them because my opinions are so convincing
that they agree with them and it messes with their worldview so they hate
me and try to censor me. Well, I won't have it anymore, I'll keep
on going to Panera but I'll always feel a little twinge of self-righteousness
when I talk to the people there because I know I'm free and they're not
and so they're just jealous. Everyone's jealous of my freedom so
they try to take it away. I wish the world were a more fair place
and people were more open-minded, but they're not, so instead of agreeing
with me that the prices are disproportionate, they just refuse to change
them so they're censoring me and my freedom is hurt. My freedom is
what's feeling pain because people want to shamelessly kill it and remove
its corpse from this world. I try to find a weapon to arm my freedom
with but all I ever end up with is a breadstick. How is that supposed
to club off the attempts at censorship that have plagued me since day one
because people are so afraid? It isn't! But maybe a breadstick
will give it some energy in carbohydrates so my freedom and everyone's
freedom will find power in their fists to thwart all this censorship of
my ideas and personal values that's going on. I feel like I'm the
only orange in a group of apples, except everyone isn't really an apple,
they're really oranges who are trying to convince themselves they're apples
because the head apple has brainwashed them, and only I know the truth.
Now I'm not saying we should turn the tables and try to censor the apple's
values because that would just be blatant hypocrisy and I don't want to
become the villain. But that's never going to happen because I'll
never even get the chance what with all the censorship going on of my opinions
which are my opinions and they belong to me because they're my opinions
and that's just the way it is. I want to be heard but no one else
wants me to be heard, so they have to go out of their way to shut me up.
Well, I won't be shut up! I'll bide my time and enjoy the delicious
Panera food now, but in the future I might get up the courage to tell them
that they're just censoring me and they should think about the prices some
more and it's wrong to take away my freedom.
Look, buster. I have my
opinions and they're my opinions and not yours to do whatever you want
with so don't try to disagree with them or anything because that's censorship
and I don't want to be censored. Do you believe in freedom?
I believe in freedom and if you do too then you'll quit trying to censor
me because I want to have the freedom to express my opinions and I don't
want my opinions censored because you're afraid of them. Why are
you
so afraid? It's because my opinions are powerful and people might
agree with them and that's dangerous to your institution so you just try
to censor me all the time. I won't have it. I love freedom
and obviously you don't so quit trying to take away my freedom and censoring
my opinions which are my opinions and I want to be free to express them.
I wish people could see that they were just afraid and maybe they're really
agreeing with me and it's shocking them so much that my opinions are a
temptation and they are just experiencing cognitive dissonance. Everyone
tried to censor Galileo and Copernicus and they're censoring me as well
because I have opinions that don't jibe with their worldview. Well,
if you believe in freedom just as I do then you'll support me in my quest
to stop the blatant attempts to censor my views and force me by the wayside.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, that's what I believe and you don't,
apparently, because you're trying to censor me but somehow I find a way
to have my voice be heard by at least some people. I wish the world
was made so people could be fair and accept my opinions but they are just
not ready for them, and instead of changing their own worldview they just
try to destroy my words. My opinions are mine, like I said, and I'm
not taking away anyone's freedom by expressing my views and then people
just go and say that I'm wrong and in doing so imply that I should be censored.
Don't say I'm wrong. That's tantamount to censorship because it says
people shouldn't listen to me because my opinions are too challenging and
should be kept in a lead box like something the villains are trying to
keep Superman from seeing. This is a metaphor because Superman is
like the power to make good out of the world and my opinions are like the
anti-kryptonite gun that's in the box and the people in society that try
to censor me are the bad guys like Lex Luthor in this particular metaphor.
But in this case it's Lex Luthor that has control of all the institutions
and is brainwashing everyone into following his schemes and is keeping
Superman away from the anti-kryptonite gun. Look, this might not
be the best metaphor but I spent all my creative energy on the opinions
I have that everyone wants to censor. Do you want to hear my opinions?
Okay, I believe that a cheese croissant at the restaurant Panera should
cost less than a cheese danish, because the danish has more cheese.
Currently, a danish is $1.25 and a croissant is $1.45. The croissant
has a little less cheese so it should cost less. That is what my
opinion is and when I told it to the cashiers they said they weren't planning
to change it because those were the fixed prices, so they're just trying
to censor me because they don't hear my advice because it's a good opinion
and if they weren't trying to censor me they would have taken my advice
already so because they aren't taking it that means they like to take part
in censorship of views they don't like, such as my own. I hope you'll
join me in my quest to get my voice heard and break through the brainwashing
of society. Together we can stand against the evil forces with our
heart of courage.
It was my birthday today, and
it was a good one. My family took me to Macaroni Grill for dinner,
and then I went to Best Buy to look for video games and computer accessories.
I didn't find anything I wanted, except maybe for Max Payne, but I want
to try the demo of that first. They had a few controllers there but
I don't know if I wanted one of those either. I guess it all depends...
you see, I won't be able to take my Playstation to college, but I'll be
able to bring Playstation CDs and my computer... and if you infer from
there, you can see why I might want a PC gamepad that closely resembles
a Dual Shock controller if I can find a certain useful program on the Internet
and get it to work sufficiently well.
I've noticed that the things
I get really annoyed with in other people are the worst qualities I see
in myself. For example, I really don't like elitism. I tend
to think that people forming their exclusive little clubs with their own
rituals are really silly. But there's a part of me that thinks it
would be really cool if I could be part of some elite group. One
of my other pet peeves is conformity to stereotypes and herd mentality,
where people just passively agree with whatever opinion they hear and recycle
it. But maybe that's only a projection of my own susceptibility to
people's opinions, inability to come up with any of my own, and tendency
to do nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, this opinion I'm stating
right now has been stated before many times by other people. I don't
like spoiled and pretentious attitudes, but I have to admit I'm spoiled
rotten and I'd often rather role-play than just be myself. Sometimes
I think others are like this too, For example, people who try to
look for racism in everything and are extremely zealous in decrying it
might secretly fear that racist beliefs are true, and people who wail about
the decline of family values at every chance they get might just be ashamed
at their own deficiencies as a member of a family. It's easier to
want to destroy everything bad around us that we see in ourselves than
face up and take care of our own problems. That's why I try not to
hate anything irrationally, even hate itself, because it would most likely
just be self-hatred in disguise.
Azenera level 3 is going to have
tons of optional quests and places to explore. There's still a main
trail to follow, but there are different paths to take and some side paths
that will lead to some really good stuff like more spells and health crystals,
better weapons and armor, and some fun stuff to find. I'll be sure
to keep putting in side quests and multiple paths even after the plot kicks
into overdrive in the next level and beyond, so don't worry about it becoming
too linear. Right now, I'm putting together the layers so that one
of the early optional quest caves is visible from a cave near the end of
the level.
Today my family and I went on
a bike trip on the Cannon Valley trail. It's right near Cannon River,
which I went canoeing on in high school. It took a while to get there,
and we made a side trip on the way back and got lost, so we had to turn
back and go the other way, and it took up more time than expected. Later,
we went out for dinner, and that always takes a long time in our family
because my brother always takes about 3 times as long as everyone else
to eat. I'm the fastest eater. When we go to Chipotle, a Mexican
restaurant, we all get an equal amount of food, and I'm always the first
one done. That's basically all I did. I was thinking about
writing a sarcasm-filled entry today about extremism and opposition or
something, but I don't have the energy.
I've been playing more Final
Fantasy IX, and I've reached the outer continent. I've visited the
village of the dwarves with the Scottish accent and badly translated greeting
from FFIV, I've gone to the black mage village, and now I've gone throught
the mountain path to the summoner village with the Moogles. Unfortunately,
I've found a bug where after you gain access to the waterfall area, the
game stops responding and everyone just sits there, so I had to stop playing
and go back to a saved game. It's strange how the Square translators
seem to have been running the Dialectizer on overdrive when working on
both FFIX and Chrono Cross. I don't remember previous Square games
having characters or societies with recognizable accents, except for Frog
from Chrono Trigger.
Sometimes I just let the time
slip by without updating my web page. Lately it seems like any kind
of obligation is overwhelming, but then again, it's always felt like that.
I look at old projects and stuff I did and wonder how I ever had the energy
to do it. I need to go to bed earlier and not sleep so late... yes,
that's what will make it all better, won't it?
I've been listening to the Unreal
music lately. The Winamp UMX plugin will only play the first song
in each file, so at first I was missing out on all the battle and ambient
mixes, but I found a player that plays the whole thing. Sometimes
it plays too fast or too slow, like the Drakan music, but it usually works
all right. Other than that, people have kept asking if Azenera level
3 is almost finished, but it isn't quite there yet. I've finished
most of the lava pit and wartok base areas, so now I just have to plan
how I'm going to make that giant tree that leads up to the cliff going
into the cave.
Well, my sedentary lifestyle
has caught up with me and I'm fatter than usual now. Some people
put on their "freshman 15" in college because there aren't as many eating
restrictions, but I'm putting mine on now because I'm not getting the exercise
I got when I had to walk, or sometimes run, to class. It has been
really really hot here lately (you know what they say about those hot Minnesota
days) and I haven't been able to go on a bike ride or anything. It's
supposed to get better sooner or later.
I've come up with some more visual
effects for weapons. Particle spawners can be attached to weapons,
but they stay in the same place all the time. There's a way to use
them that still looks cool, though. I can make it so that whenever
I switch to a certain weapon, Rynn will be engulfed in rising particles
for a while. This can be used for effects like fire and electricity
in the weaponlike Sorilian spells which will appear on level 10.
Sageous has released a few tests of cool Drakan stuff, like a cold breath
effect and a compass, on this
page. There's also a map that replaces the New Game crystal when
you press Esc.
Yesterday's entry was just a
little experiment in style, so just disregard it. It was a mixture
of distant wackiness punctuated unnaturally by defensive paranoia, or something.
Despite not mentioning it all that often, I have been working on Azenera
lately and I figured out what to do about every micromanaged character
movement situation I'll ever need. For characters that have to speak
in a certain situation, I've been using visibility swapping. Before
the message detector activates, I put an animation demo where the character
is initially so it doesn't move around if I hit it with a spell and screw
up the scenario. After the dialogue, the animation demo is hidden
and a real character appears, moves in a predetermined pattern to a place
offscreen, and disappears. If I need it to stop and start repeatedly,
I'll continuously swap characters and animation demos in and out like a
maniac. I'm working on a lava pit area in level 3, and I've set up
a rolling boulder trap at the entrance to the wartok base.
Welwelwelcomecomecome tototo
Echechechoootototopipipiaaa. Thisthisthis isisis wherewherewhere
youryouryour eveveveeeryryry soundsoundsound echechechoesoesoes offoffoff
thethethe cancancanyonyonyon wallswallswalls ofofof thethethe Inininterterternetnetnet.
This is what it's like when Salix becomes bored and has an imagination
deficit. Echotopia is a place on the lost island of Lalo, where the
multicolored (that's not a racial slur, despite the presence of the term
"colored" - in the context I use it in, it does not carry negative connotations
so don't flame me relentlessly, not that I fear that because I have the
fortunate gift of not setting off political correctness police sirens in
people's heads) inhabitants go to hear their words being repeated back
at them. This gives them a sense of balance (if you're turned off
by anything resembling New-Agey therapeutic methods, then keep on reading
because I'm not going to talk about anything so cliché as energy
spirals or healing crystals (despite healing crystals being in computer
games, which are just works of fiction and if you can't tell that from
reality, that's your problem, not mine) or anything like that, nor am I
going to witness anything else because I never bring religion into my discussions
and if you think I do, try to find evidence of it, smartypants) and helps
them see themselves and hear themselves as others perceive them.
Did I mention there are mirrors all over the place in Echotopia?
Well, there are. And they're really good mirrors (but I'm not going
to say they reflect the soul or anything because that would be so predictable,
and it was on an episode of the cartoon Aladdin and I don't want to rip
that off, and if I've ripped off the Aladdin cartoon in any other ways
then you're noticing too much and you can just mind your own business)
that reflect a whole bunch of light. So that means it's pretty bright
there in Echotopia, and loud too. When the people, of all colors
(again not a racial slur, please don't call me a racist, some of my best
friends have blue and green skin... okay, maybe not, but they would if
they had the tattoos and surgery to make their skin that way, and if they
did then I would accept them for what they had become because I'm not intimidated
and steeped in ignorance or anything so don't accuse me before you really
know me, buster), realize this, they scramble to leave Echotopia because
no one wants to be surrounded by such bombardment of heat and light and
sound.
There's nothing for me to talk
about anymore. I don't want to talk about Azenera too much, I haven't
figured out that waypoint stuff yet but I probably won't have to use it,
and nothing special is happening in my life. Lately I've been reading
message boards, looking at some interesting topics, and thinking over new
storyline ideas. Sometimes it seems that most of the text I try to
create comes up looking like badly translated dialogue, and I blame it
on all the times I played Cadash in the arcades. I conjecture that
over the other side of the precipice might be close. There is a spring
of wonders in flont.
I've found a problem with waypoint
followers. If you group an object to a follower, it won't go through
all the waypoints. It, and all the objects grouped to it, will go
toward the first waypoint and just keep going that way. This is extremely
annoying and puts limitations on what I can do with waypoints. Mechanisms
work fine, so I guess I could put together a few of those or just learn
to use STOMP for some things. STOMP has so many bugs and failings,
though, like buttons being blanked out, sequences not moving along with
the level if it's mass shifted to another place on the map, and the inability
to snap to any kind of grid or align objects to layers. Maybe I'll
just keep setting up elaborate sequences involving visibility togglers
and mechanisms.