I’ve decided to post some cool things I’ve found in my web travels, hopefully daily. The first is Star Wars Episode IV in its entirety all done in ASCII art. It’s definitely worth watching for a couple minutes at least, after while it does get boring.
I’ve got a few more small things already lined up for the next couple days to share with everyone! Enjoy.
Been slow on updating this lately, I know. Things have been really screwed up for me recently. I’ve been turning to my guitar to keep my mind busy and to have fun. This video has been up for a week now but I never got around to posting it on here, so here it is! March of the Fire Ants by Mastodon.
I picked up my guitar over spring break for the first time in awhile. Made a little video:
Dream Theater officially announced their new album on Friday. Read the story here:
New York, NY:
Progressive metal veterans DREAM THEATER have announced BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS as the title of their tenth studio album. The band commenced work on the album - their second for Roadrunner Records, following up 2007's Systematic Chaos - in October of last year.
Roadrunner will release the record on June 23. In addition to the standard version CD, the album will also be available on vinyl LP, as well as a 3-disc Special Edition CD that will include the full album, a CD of instrumental mixes of the album and a CD of six cover songs, the titles of which will be revealed at a later date.
Six weeks prior to the June 23 street date, Roadrunner will release one cover song per week through digital retailers.
Drummer Mike Portnoy and guitarist John Petrucci are once again at the helm as producers, while Paul Northfield mixed the record.
The band will embark on a world tour in support of the album beginning in Europe throughout June which will be followed by the second edition of the band's PROGRESSIVE NATION tour featuring Zappa Plays Zappa, Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish throughout North America in July/August.
A video for the first single, "A Rite of Passage" will be shot in late March.
The track listing for BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS is as follows:
I’ve decided on how the player’s stats will vary based on their 3 base stats Strength, Agility and Intellect.
HP – strength and level
MP – intellect and level
Melee Power – strength
Ranged Power – agility
Spell Power – intellect
Armor – strength
Crit – agility, scales down with level (need more agility at higher levels for same amount of crit)
Dodge – agility, scales down with level
Block – agility and strength, scales down with level
Spell Resist – intellect, scales down with level
All of these stats are also subject to bonuses from items (especially armor because most of that stat will be from items). Strength, Agility and Intellect bonuses from items get added in first and used to calculate the rest of the stats. Then bonuses to crit, dodge, melee power, etc., are added in last. Melee, Ranged and Spell powers are also greatly affected by the current weapon being wielded. More on all of this later.
The inventory system is very simple. You can only have 1 “bag”. The bag you will start with has 24 slots. You will be able to find larger bags in the world to replace this one and their amount of slots will increment by 8. Through the optional, but highly useful, survival skill you will be able to sew pockets onto your bags that add 2, 4, 6, or more slots onto it. I have yet to determine if these pockets will stay on the bag itself so that when you replace that bag you will need new pockets or not. Chances are I will let you move pockets onto a new bag.
Also a note on leveling up. Currently when you level up you will be granted an automatic +1 to Strength, Agility and Intellect. On top of that you will have an amount of points to place into those stats. I’m not sure what the final number will be but my current idea is 5. You’ll also be granted an extra 10 HP and MP. Proficiencies will get an amount of points to be spent on them as well but I have yet to determine how many points per proficiency yet.
My progress on the game is going well. I have a login/authentication server program that is fairly complete. Character creation is also fairly complete. My next step is allowing the user to actually enter the world after making a character and this will be the toughest step. I’m really looking forward to having the whole game engine working so that I can focus on designing the world, items, NPCs and everything that will make this game enjoyable to play.
A lot of you know already that I’m working on a little MMO project. It’s hard not to say that it’s heavily influenced by WoW. Don’t bother telling me that I “took that from WoW”, etc., because I already know. :P
I’m still working on some of the details about character customization, classes, races, etc. My current idea is probably pretty close to what will end up in the game. Instead of forcing you to choose from premade classes and races, I’m going to let you name your own class and race. This means everyone will be able to have a unique class/race combo if they want and it’s purely cosmetic. To affect the look of your character you’ll be able to choose from many different looking character models. You can choose the one that looks closest to whatever you want your pretend or real race to look like.
The way characters will actually differ in terms of abilities is this:
There will be 3 different types of proficiencies: Combat, Trade and Skills. Each proficiency contains sub-categories, and you will only have a certain number of points to spend per proficiency.
Combat
Melee Attack 
Ranged Attack 
Fire 
Water 
Earth 
Dark 
Light 
Arcane 
Defense
Trades
Weaponsmith 
Armorsmith 
Alchemist 
Enchanter
Skills
Cooking 
Survival 
Poisons 
Tinkering 
Music
Every time your character levels up, you will get a certain amount of points to spend in each of the 3 proficiencies and you may place them in as many different subcategories as you wish. The trade off here is that you could spread them thin to have access to many different types of abilities, or concentrate them to get access to really powerful abilities but not different types. I’m also considering a system were you pick only 1 of the trades to work on and then can’t put points into the other trades, but the other two proficiencies would remain the same.
Your character will also have 3 stats: Strength, Agility, and Intellect. You will also have a certain number of points to put into these stats each level and may allocate them as you see fit. These 3 stats will affect your secondary stats such as HP, MP, critical strike chance, etc., much like any other RPG.
My wonderful Mom has agreed to do the artwork for my game! All those icons up there are just temporary ones I made for fun.
My game is just barely getting started and won’t be ready for a long time. But I’ll be posting my progress on here from time to time in case anyone is interested.
