Delving into Impure Thoughts (2008-10-03)

CD5K > FU > DWB > fab > journal8_09

[August]

2008-09-02
School's closed due to hurricanes.

2008-09-03
And so it begins. I spent the extra day off attempting to master a few levels of the extremely addictive Bonesaw: The Game, which in itself is concentrated awesome in video game format. I was also unable to sleep last night due to flushing the blood out of my caffeine system, and thought of humorous and ridiculous boss ideas for the game experiment. I still lack a basic concept or even a general idea for why the various characters are working together to accomplish whatever it is they hope to do. I hope to rethink the game and develop something usable so that I can quickly degrade it into ridiculosity.

2008-09-24
In addition to a few new boss ideas, I have put additional thought into the game project and have decided to make it have one playable character, a Chinese chefette. During each level, she will be accompanied by one other member from her social group composed of various other crazies (they call themselves the Radioactive Ninjas of SupaFlyMcVillaStan) as they partake upon a quest to reduce everything to a pile of smoldering rubble. I hope I don't lose interest in this project as fast as I have some others. I have many other ideas for games but there's usually only one which takes prevalence, and which one that is depends on what I'm being inspired by at the moment. If the sheer ridiculousness of this project doesn't keep me interested, perhaps I'll go for 100% on Bonesaw.

2008-09-05
Jacob and I collaborated this morning to form the ridiculous idea of a three-phase microwave boss. We also figured out a control scheme and how the level system would work. If this never gets finished, it'd be an extremely extended idea that someone else would hopefully pick up on and complete. This weekend, I plan to completely forget about whatever projects for other classes I have to do in favor of being lazy and unproductive. I might work on a website layout (what a surprise) but the site in its current incarnation is pretty much complete as far as both layout and content go, at least until Impure Creation is made into a game design corporation. At present, it's a good personal site.

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2008-09-08
We gathered everyone via MSN and had a Socom Portal Party last night. It was great fun and had a good turnout. However, only three of the nine socom flashes (and three other flashes from people hoping to cash in on free protection points) passed, two of which were submitted by me. Development and pondering on Overkill continues. I must decide what system I wish to emulate with the graphics and sound style, a choice between the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC, and the ZX Spectrum. I think I'll just use either MOD or SID format music files for the sound track.

2008-09-09
I find it odd that the district is upgrading to Office 2007 when an open-source alternative (OpenOffice.org) exists, and contains programs compatible (sort of; there is no known released specification in existence for .doc and similar files) with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I earlier entertained the idea of a top-down shooter game about an open source crusader called Software Wars. In this game, each boss would be a megacorporation, and every fight would be preceded by PROPIETARY SOFTWARE ALERT flashing across the screen accompanied by blaring klaxons. Perhaps that will be a side project that can prepare me for programming Overkill. I read up on the technical specifications of the ZX Spectrum last night, and found a tracker able to emulate chiptunes from the system. This has led to the consideration to create the game while following the hardware restrictions of the Spectrum, a system that is beyond retro (3 MHz CPU with 12KB VRAM :)).

2008-09-10
I'm starting to debate with myself again over whether Overkill should have one playable character or four, choosable at the beginning of each level. While the variety would be nice, balancing the unique aspects that give the characters advantages would be difficult, and flaws are accentuated. At the same time, I'm unsure how to keep just one character fresh and interesting throughout the entire game. I spent some time doing a whole lot of nothing last night, and it seems that most of my teachers all had the same brilliant idea of having projects due at the end of this week. Speaking of brilliant ideas, it seems that every time I come up with something, it's already been done, but this only drives me to do it again, and do it better. Perhaps that's why I'm able to draw inspiration from other games.

2008-09-11
LISD may be the only district having school today, but the upside is that we know for certain that we don't have to come back tomorrow. It seems that the weather's been going completely berserk as of late. I recently thought up a sequel to Overkill, the final boss of which will be located in Chernobyl. I'm currently unsure whether or not to continue the story using the current main character (in reanimated zombie form) or switch to a completely new one. I shall ponder this tonight while watching YouTube.

2008-09-12
School's closed due to hurricanes.

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2008-09-22
I've been completely braindead the past week. Our house suffered no damage during the hurricane, aside from the yard being a mess and the back fence having a tree fall on it, but we were without power for five days, and are still without an internet connection, which is driving me completely insane. It gives me more time to spend with the voices in my head, but I don't want to spend time with those freaks. I've worked on some of my game ideas, played some games, and started work on a Knytt Stories game. I still plan to work on my previous projects, titled Delta and Overkill, but this new game, Otromedi (shortened from El Otro Media, literally translated as "The Other Half"), can be built with an existing tile-based engine which doesn't require any programming knowledge to use. I've constructed a few screens with it, and found it to be quite fun to work with.

2008-09-23
While entertaining random thoughts this morning, I came up with yet another game idea, except it fills in the story gap in the adventure game I had planned. In the envisioned cinematic sequence, an outcast member of a normally warlike species has become kind and caring, much to the amazement of two forest-dwelling onlookers. I worked on the story for Otromedi a bit, and it will be a save-the-alternate-universe adventure wherein your character must rid this strange realm of the obligatory oppressive overlord. I haven't any idea how pacing will work or even how large the world will be, but this should work itself in as I design. This promises to be an interesting project (just like all the others :F)

2008-09-24
For the envisioned cinematic sequence (above), I came up with the game title "The Puppetmaster". I'm not sure if this one will go anywhere but I could work on it as a side project between proper game releases. I think I'm starting to contract secondhand stupid from my third period class (hey just like last year) because nobody in there is capable of shutting up. I tallied all the projects due over the past few weeks and it has now reached six; one in first period, one in fifth, and two in sixth and seventh. Work is being slung around at a ridiculous pace (our first period teacher hopes to cover six chapters in the month of October alone), so I'm glad that at least this class has been somewhat calm in that respect.

2008-09-25
Okay, seriously, they've had to fix this air conditioner how many times now? Other than the cost, I fail to see why they haven't replace it yet. Aside from that, today seems to be better than most others as far as the quality of school days is going. I'll regret saying that during seventh period, since that's when we have to do our skit (the script for which I just finished last night), but third and seventh period are my only bad classes thus far. Everything else has been a cakewalk.

2008-09-26
Yet again I find myself sketching out mockups of website layouts for impurecreation.com. This pattern of design and implementation shall never cease as long as the domain is up. At the same time, I'm creating absolutely nothing for the other domain, socomsquids.net. This should say something to me, but it's almost lunch and I can't be bothered to use my brain for anything useful right now. I'll try to do some documentation of ideas this weekend, but chances are that won't happen either.

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2008-09-29
Journal was not fabricated due to professionals and their developments.

2008-09-30
I have got to get out of that damned Chemistry class. The course itself has been simple so far, but my peers are freakin' idiots who cannot comprehend that the class would run smoother if they'd shut up for two seconds and take some notes. I slept through most of the weekend, came up with another game idea (the more the merrier lol), designed Impure Creation 8.0 in Flash, and placed an order for Invision Power Board for the long-awaited socomsquids.net/power/. This new game idea is an actionventure RPG in that good old text-game engine, ZZT, which borrows lots of ideas from past failed games of mine. There will be four playable classes, each with their own distinct abilities and personalities, and these are: Ranger, Sorceress, Enchantress, and Druid. A bit of an over-reaching project for such a simple engine, but considering I decided to not have a leveling-up element, it should be somewhat doable. I suppose it mostly rests on my ability to make things interesting.

2008-10-01
I uploaded the forum last night but had to delete everything and start over due to another program rewriting the forum installation files. I'll set it up when I return home today. I did a bit of expansion upon the above game idea, but came to the conclusion that I have no idea what's in between the graveyard, the abandoned house near it, the dungeon under it, and the final boss sequence. Perhaps the only change the class system should have on the game should be the dialog and story. Perhaps I should stop coming up with ridiculous, overreaching game ideas :)

2008-10-02
Most of last night was spent organizing the new forum, which is totally fabulous thus far. It's only a matter of time before somebody ruins it. We'll see how long that takes, but until then, we have a fully-paid, fully-usable forum, and access to the community developments surrounding it. I still have to upload the website intro and some mods that Pineapple would like to have, but it is essentially complete. I fleshed out a bit more of the dream sequence in the above idea, which I'll either call Ultraviolet or something completely ridiculous.

2008-10-03
Another day, another game downloaded. I spent some time looking up the hardware specifications of the NES, and came across the history of the floppy disk. How far we've come; to 8-inch (cheesy crust) to 5¼ to 3½ to magnetic-optical disks. I forgot about the class color junk and wore red today to celebrate Red Friday. My official excuse is that it's to throw everyone off. Insert pep rally diss here. I'm looking forward to this weekend; I've developed Ultraviolet's story and beginning to a point where I might be able to create the beginnings of a fun and interesting game (using a 17-year-old engine, no less).

[October]

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