July 2002
- 31 -
Don't steal my heart
Oh yeah, I'm still trying to
use the Tick sword as much as possible so I just got to fireball the giants
and use Soul Steal on some enemies at the end of Bonegrinder's lair.
Soul Steal hits twice now, and it seems to work well against single enemies.
I fireballed Bonegrinder's energy crystals into oblivion, and then I used
Soul Steal on Bonegrinder and hid behind a pillar to recharge my magic
when it wore out.
I got my level up to 5 before
the Isles, so now I am completely satisfied. It doesn't take much
to satisfy me, no sirree, I just need to win at my video game and I'll
be A-OK for the rest of the day. Now I can do some serious fireball
action and maybe see how well Soul Steal works at its second level.
Another thing I'm trying to do
is use up a weapon to its fullest potential. I feel like I'm not
living up to my full potential if I don't wear out at least one weapon
beyond repair, so I'm choosing the Tick sword. It has medium durability,
high speed, and it takes more hits to defeat an enemy than other weapons.
The enemies in the first few levels will indeed be really "Ticked" off.
Well, I'm playing another game
of Drakan 2, this time as a full mage with a few melee points thrown in
at the end, and I'm looking to maximize my stat building early. I
know there's a way to get to level 5 before you go to the Andrellian Isles,
and sometimes I get there but other times I just get through level 4.
One time I almost got up to level 5, but not quite. I want to beat
those giants in the Crystal Mine with level 3 fireballs!
Finally, I beat the game without
raising any of my skills! When that Pain Golem fell down, my melee,
archery, and magic skills were all at 1. Of course, I got the Mournbringer,
which requires only 1 skill point but it's as powerful as a level 8 melee
weapon and gives me 100% of the health it takes from enemies, so that made
it significantly easier. But I also ended up using some of those
elemental blade secondary attacks that I didn't normally use. When
I was in the huge room in the Necropolis where four golems attack you,
I used the lightning blade secondary attack. One of the lightning
bolts must have found its way to the urn in the next room, because the
floor of the big room suddenly lowered. I also found that a good
combination for defeating golems is to have the ice blade secondary active
while you wield the Mournbringer, so the golems will freeze after you hit
them a few times.
I got through all the ice levels
and beat Maulgak, and it was really weird how I beat him. I took
out my Earth Blade, and I had hit him with two secondary attacks and saw
that his health indicator wasn't turning from yellow to red very fast,
so I thought, all right, I'll use up my earth attacks and then hit him
with a melee weapon. But then when I hit him with the third Earth
Blade secondary attack, he keeled over and died, even though his health
indicator was barely orange! Either Maulgak has a weakness to the
earth attacks, or there was a glitch in the game that randomly made that
third attack do an extreme amount of damage. It would be pretty cool
if it was a true weakness, because then Maulgak's "Spirits of earth and
steel" speech is actually a subtle allusion to his weakness.
Today I went through Kragmor
and beat two giants and Snotmaw, and I also beat Daemog the yeti and defeated
the ice golems, all without raising any skills above 1. I found that
the Earth Blade secondary tends to be more powerful and reliable than the
Lightning Blade secondary, but the Lightning Blade is still good against
really big enemies like Daemog. When I went through the Ice Golem
valley, I just ran straight through to the Visionary Amethyst after drinking
an invisibility potion, without attacking any golems. When I got
the amethyst, all the golems were destroyed, but I didn't get any experience
for killing them. That doesn't really matter, though, because I don't
need any experience in a no-skills game.
Well, I got through the Andrellian
Isles today. Before I went there, I made sure to have the alchemist
in Surdana recharge the Earth Blade. Like everything else, the maximum
number of charges goes down by a tenth of its original value when you get
it fixed, but it'll still be useful for a while. I'm still using
up my Bitter Touch and Tick swords, and I'm going to get as much use out
of them as I can before I get the next big 1-point melee weapon, Clineschmidt's
Blade. I also need to get the Lightning Blade from Kragmor.
I'm still playing through Drakan
2 on a no-skills game, and I just finished getting through the City of
the Damned, where Khossa Vole lurks. I've been using the earth blade
secondary attacks on bosses such as the Inquisitor and the other ghost
enemy, and it's been working pretty well. Of course, the real trouble
is going to come when I have to deal with the ice golems and the giants,
but I'm sure I'll find a way to deal with them.
Well, I've been getting some
very strange spam mails lately. You know how most spam consists of
ads for exciting things such as help with debts, weight loss, and enlargement
of certain body parts? Well, I've been getting messages that are
nothing but a string of random letters. The return addresses seem
to be randomly generated too, and they're addressed to #recipient#.
The subject of the message is a dot followed by a few lower case letters.
I hope it's not a virus, and if it is, I hope Netscape Messenger isn't
spreading it. I turned off JavaScript support in Messenger, but there's
still HTML support but I don't think that has the capacity to spread viruses
around, or else people would be getting viruses just from visiting web
pages.
I've been doing another one of
those huge changes to the Azenera world that affects all the levels.
I'm changing the healing crystal system so that it's harder to heal instantly
in battle all the time, but not impossible like it is in Drakan 2.
In Azenera, you'll still be able to get as many small healing crystals
as you want, but now you can't just press the H key to use one. You
have to equip it like a magic crystal and activate it. When you do
that, a shard will fall to the ground and create a sparkling powerup that
you can run over to restore health. This might be kind of frustrating
because you have to be able to put away your current weapon and equip the
crystal, and that might involve dropping an item from your inventory for
a while, but I think it's still always best to have a few inventory spaces
open because there'll be a lot of one-space items like the North Star and
Healer's Blade that you'll want to be able to equip. The large blue
health crystals, which now restore all your health instead of just most
of it, will work as usual, and you can use them by pressing H or whatever
key you have set to instantly heal. This means you can still heal
while you're riding Arokh. But now there's a catch: the blue crystals
will no longer be stackable. That means that for every one you pick
up, you'll need a new inventory space. I know this will make the
level series harder, but I think it'll be better to have the challenge.
After all, if you pick up enough healing items and you can use them instantly,
like the old system, then you basically can have almost infinite health
during boss battles as long as you don't encounter any instant-kill attacks
and you remember to keep pressing H. My system changes that, and
it also forces you to choose between having a bunch of items and spells
and having a lot of blue health crystals. I'm making a few more changes
in the series as well. Because the new health crystal system might
lead to inventory worries, I'm giving some of the new weapons and items
increased durability, especially the Speed Gauntlet and the Tracker Gauntlet.
Nobody should have to carry around more than one spell gauntlet weapon
except for people who want to specialize in magic attacks, and now if you
don't plan to use spells much, you can just carry around one of the more
powerful but breakable gauntlets and use it when you need to. Also,
I'm giving the goblins a weapon to carry called the Spellstaff, which replaces
the invisible thing they used to carry in Azenera and the dart guns and
mortars from the original game. When you pick up the Spellstaff,
you'll be able to use it as a melee weapon. It's weak and has low
durability, but it has a secondary energy bolt attack that's like the lightning
axe secondary but not as powerful.
It's already near the end of
July and I feel like I haven't even started summer yet. There were
a few things I wanted to do this summer, and it seems like I'll never get
around to doing them. I can't even take anything seriously anymore.
It's like I haven't really been living, just existing and going through
life every day, always trying to pass the time and wait for the next interesting
thing to happen. I couldn't even think of a good thing to talk about
today, but I hope I can find something tomorrow.
Recently, I've rediscovered the
joys of the arcade game Gauntlet. I've been playing Gauntlet IV for
the Genesis and Dungeon Explorer for the Sega CD. Dungeon Explorer
has the same kind of gameplay as Gauntlet, where you run around dungeons
and mazes and shoot hordes of enemies that are created by generators.
There have been a few games lately that are kind of like Gauntlet.
Diablo has you killing a bunch of enemy swarms, but there aren't any generators.
KISS: Psycho Circus, however, was a first-person shooter that did have
generators, and that aspect of the game was compared to Gauntlet in many
reviews. I've only been able to play single-player, because nobody
else wants to play, but it would be cool if I could play in four-player
mode with some people like it was intended to be played. I'd let
the warrior and valkyrie go in front, while the wizard would collect and
use potions (Use magic to kill Death!) and the elf could snipe at
enemies through diagonal walls and grab all the food (Elf has been eating
all the food lately!) before anyone else because the elf is really
fast and sneaky.
I'm playing a no-skills game
of Drakan 2. What that means is, I'm still gaining levels from defeating
enemies, but I'm not putting any points into any of my skills. That's
right, my melee, archery, and magic levels are going to stay at 1 for the
whole game! It'll be a challenge, but if I make sure to get all the
elemental swords, Clineschmidt's Blade, and the Mournbringer, I think I'll
be able to handle it. It'll be tough without the Time Slow spell,
especially around the ice golems, but I've discovered that I can avoid
their ice beams if I run around constantly around them. I anticipate
trouble with all the giant-type enemies and the golems in the Flesh Mage's
palace, but I'm sure I'll find some way to beat them, even if I have to
hit them with a zillion level 1 fireballs. I beat the golems with
melee weapons when I was specializing in melee, and I'll probably be able
to beat them with the Mournbringer.
I get spam mail all the time,
just like most other people. Sometimes the spammers give a real return
e-mail address, but other times they just make up a fake one. Lately,
they seem to be too lazy to even do that. Do you know what the spammers
are using as their return address now? They're using my e-mail address!
That's right, I get spam that looks like it was from me, to me. They're
just not trying anymore!
You might not know it, but I've
started a few Drakan levels that I never got around to finishing.
Azenera doesn't count because it's a big project and I'm still working
on it, but there are some MP levels I've made that I've just lost interest
in because there's really no way I'll get to play them with as many people
as I hope. One of them is Toxic Bog, which is a level where you get
treasure on islands surrounded by a toxic pool of mud, and the only way
to get across the mud is to have you and another player hit each other
with a healing weapon. Then when you got to an island, you could
betray the other player by rushing off to get the treasure first, or the
other player could betray you first. Then there are a few normal
deathmatch levels, like Chaos Updraft, which is a floating temple in the
sky with suspended platforms. Also, someone on the Drakan forums
mentioned that they wanted to see a level where you fought with swords
and there were a bunch of rings of invisibility, so I made a level called
Chameleon Forest where you start out invisible and stay that way the whole
time. Imagine, no more complaining about typer-killers, because if
you want to type, you can just stow your weapon and no one will be able
to see you! But I haven't released that one because lately I've figured
it's just not worth it to release an MP level this late. Even when
I was busy making MP levels, there was a time when they were being played
and there was a time when no one played them at all. For example,
Cliffs seemed to be played on servers sometimes, but it had a few problems.
It was kind of big for a deathmatch level, and there wasn't much room to
roam around and avoid attacks. Later, I made a level called Kaleido,
which used all the Cliffs weapons and more. I thought it was much
better than Cliffs, but I never saw any servers running it. Even
a few months after Kaleido was out, Cliffs was still played more often.
I guess I should focus on single player now, because it can be played even
when there are no servers left.
Perhaps "The Sine Wave" is a
more fitting name for this site than I originally thought, because I really
am going through sort of a sine wave that goes between being interested
in updating the site and total apathy. I've had a lot of stuff going
on in real life, too, so I haven't been on here as much. Mostly I've
just been lazily searching message boards and playing games. I finally
got Baldur's Gate a few days ago, and I've been trying that out for a while,
but I haven't left the first town yet.
I sold it to someone in Balmora.
I lost too much fatigue when
I tried to use it, so...
I bought a new sword, but...
I went to Vivec, and...
I have been playing Morrowind,
and...
Have you ever played a game and
found that you get a bunch of cool items, but you hardly ever have the
chance to use them? Have you ever been so reluctant to part with
items you get that you always end up saving them for later, but you never
actually use them? That's been happening to me in a bunch of games.
In Drakan 2, I make sure to collect all the invisibility and invulnerability
potions I can find, but I never use them until I fight the final boss.
I also pick up a few weapons that seem like they would be really useful
or fun, but I save those up as well and never get the chance to use them.
In Morrowind, I'm always saving up my potions and scrolls but finding I
don't really need them because a swift sword strike is enough for most
enemies. Maybe other people are more likely to use special items
and weapons, but I'm always saving stuff for later and never using it.
I think a system like Zelda works best for me, because in that game I know
I'll always be able to find more items such as arrows and bombs, and there
are some situations where these items are necessary or work best, so I
use them more often. Another "saving" issue I've come across is the
problem of constantly saving and reloading that I end up doing in some
games. I was always saving and reloading in Half-Life and Max Payne
because I didn't want to end up in bad shape. If I used too much
ammo, or lost too much health, it was reload time, because something even
more deadly might be around the next corner and I might need that ammo
or health! That's why I like games where you can regenerate lost
health, or at least turn back and get more health from somewhere, and it's
why I always make sure to get that Rejuvenate spell as soon as I can whenever
I play Drakan 2. Actually, I might not need it so much, because there
are plenty of health potions and I know for sure that there are enough
to get me through the game, so I might actually try a game of Drakan 2
where I don't raise my magic up to level 4, and I might try using some
of those invisibility potions. Maybe I'll try to play through without
raising any stats at all! Then I'll know for sure what to sell, but
I'll probably use those potions because it'll be really hard to fight the
Ice Golems without the Time Slow spell.
I haven't been doing much lately
except playing Morrowind, and I've noticed that ever since I increased
my maximum encumbrance (sounds like a spam message, doesn't it? "Increase
your maximum encumbrance by 500% with this new, totally safe procedure!")
and started carrying more stuff, it's taking a longer amount of time to
look at containers and take stuff from them, and the game is crashing more
often. I guess it's a strain on the system, having to sort so much
stuff. All the ash statues take up their own inventory space, and
so do items like diamonds and daggers that have some kind of script attached
to them.
To prove I'm not just a one-hit
modeling wonder with no new ideas, I have come up with a few new Drakan
weapons I made in the Surreal modeler. The first is something I call
the Splitsword.
It's a branching blade that looks like Rynn just took apart a fence and bent it and is now using part of it as a sword. I gave it zebra stripes for some reason. I placed all the vertices by hand in the Surreal Modeler without using grid snaps or anything, just like the Drakan 2 sword, so it's really not perfectly symmetrical. Another weapon I made is a small axe called the Round Hatchet.
This one doesn't have as many polygons as the others, but I actually used grid snaps on it so I could convert some of the triangles to quadrilaterals. Also, I think I did better texture work on this one. It was originally going to be a bigger weapon, like a rounded blade at the end of a pole, but I decided to make it shorter and this is how it turned out. I think I'll turn this into a weapon carried by some of the orcs on the first level. And while I'm at it, I'll turn that crazy "Hookblade" weapon around 180 degrees and change it into the curved dagger it was originally supposed to be.
I can get to experience level
3 by the time I go through the Shadowmire swamp without using the trick
I discovered a few days ago, but even if I do the monastery quest, go through
the Grull and Wartok caves, and even destroy the giant chicken and all
the Kragmor guardians, I can't get my experience high enough for level
4 before I go through Shadowmire. I can't even get to level 4 before
I reach the point of no return in Shadowmire, where you drop off the platforms
into the swamp below. I can almost get there, so close I can see
the blue bar just below the top, but it looks like facing Toadfist and
then using the Rejuvenate spell to recover without cheating is truly an
impossibility.
3D modeling is really hard, especially
if you're just using a basic program like the Surreal Modeler. I
can make 2D shapes fine, but then when I have to connect vertices to make
polygons, I always lose track of which vertices are in front of which other
ones, and the whole thing ends up looking like a big spider web until I
rotate or pan the camera around to get some perspective. But despite
my difficulties, I was able to produce this weapon:
It's the short sword from Drakan 2, although this one might be a little bigger. I made it by drawing a picture of the weapon on paper, opening up the modeler and using the Drakan 1 short sword model as a reference, and then placing a bunch of vertices where I imagined the edges of the weapon should be. Then I made one side of the sword, moved the middle vertices up, and then the hard part was creating the other side of the weapon to be as symmetrical as possible to the first side, without accidentally connecting the wrong vertices and making a polygon through the middle of the sword. It took a lot of checking and flipping polygons and rotating the camera before I finally got everything connected right. I really wish the Surreal Modeler had a feature where you could create half the model and then make the other half by mirroring the first one over a plane. After I made this model, I compared it to the original model in Drakan 2. My model's spikes aren't as sharp-looking, the notch in the back isn't as deep, and there probably aren't as many polygons in mine, but I think it's still recognizable as the Drakan 2 short sword model. If you want it, you can get it here. I don't know if I'll be making any more of these, because I just made this so I could replicate the Bitter Touch or Tick swords in Azenera if I wanted to.
I just started playing Drakan
2 from the beginning again, and I tried the trick to get to the rest of
Surdana before you get Arokh, and it actually works! Now I can go
to the monastery, the Grull cave, the Wartok cave, and the giant chicken's
lair. I can also go up to the entrance of Kragmor and destroy the
ballista weapons using only magic or arrows. There's still no way
to go to the necromancer's tower without Arokh, but you couldn't get to
the top of the tower anyway and I wouldn't want to try to fight off a bunch
of bone dragons using just Rynn's weapons and magic.
Well, it's the 4th of July, and
there are fireworks in the sky all over the United States tonight.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to go see any of them except some ones on TV.
I was going to start playing Azenera and shooting a bunch of those magic
spells up in the air and letting them explode, because some of them kind
of look like fireworks, but it was getting kind of late.
I've been playing Morrowind,
and I'm tired of managing my inventory all the time, so I cheated a little.
I created a mod that changes your maximum encumbrance to 200 times its
current value. No more checking my ingredient weights all the time
and looking for shops to sell all my heavy-but-cheap items! I guess
after all the inventory stuff I keep having to do in Drakan 2, I'm kind
of burned out on looking at icons and shifting them around. Maybe
I should just play more Unreal Tournament or something.
That's the third time so far
that the gate in Shiverbane has not been there. There's supposed
to be a gate there that Rynn can get through but Arokh can't, and the first
time I played through the game, it was there, but the last 3 times I played,
it just didn't appear at all. I don't know why this happens.
Maybe it's a bug caused by a faulty level-of-detail model transition, because
I know that sometimes a few models, such as the Ravenshold gates, get stuck
in a lower LOD version even when you get close to them. Even though
the gate doesn't show up, that doesn't mean you can just take Arokh into
that valley before you're supposed to, because as soon as you walk Arokh
through where the gate is supposed to be, you get stuck in an animation
and lose all control of your character and the only thing you can do is
press Start and load from a previous save. It's a good thing that
gate showed up for me the first time I played, because if it hadn't, I
would have tried to walk Arokh all the way through the tunnel and I would
have gotten stuck, and I would have thought there was seriously something
wrong with my game that kept me from going any further!
I saw Minority Report a few days
ago, and I really liked it. I know I'm always saying that I like
all the movies I see, and I don't remember ever talking about a movie I
didn't like, but that's mostly just because I always see movies that get
good reviews instead of movies like Scooby-Doo that get bad reviews, and
Minority Report really was good. At first, the movie really made
it seem like the pre-crime system was a good, effective way to stop crime,
but then it revealed all the corruption that was possible in such a system.
I really liked all the futuristic technology, like the animated paper and
the eye-scanning spiders, but I hope advertising in the future isn't really
as intrusive as it seemed in the movie. Of course, people would probably
just get used to it, just like we've gotten used to seeing banner ads on
web sites and having commercial breaks during TV shows.