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.
I’ve been working on a new program lately. I have always been frustrated with weather websites and their programs that “put weather on your desktop.” They always seem to have advertisements and other crap, and who knows what else is running in the background with their programs. I just greatly 
dislike anything with ads. SO! I made my own weather program. You put your zip code in so that it will give you the weather for wherever you are. It will display the current temperature in your system tray (see picture). If you click that little icon, it will give you a little bit more info about the current weather conditions. If you want, you can also check out the 36 hour forecast. How accurate is all of this information? It is all pulled straight from Weather.com so I’ll let you be the judge of that. What I can tell you though is that there are no ads and no funky things running in the background. Someday I will add some more features, but for now it is still a handy little weather application.
By the way, as with any of my programs I’ll be putting up, you’ll need Java to run them. Chances are you already have it, but in case you need to download it there is a link here.
Please leave comments/feedback/concerns!
Download Java
Download: Weather.zip (170kb)
I just wanted to do a brief post to give a few, uh… shout outs I guess to a few random things that I find really awesome!
First up is Digsby. Digsby is hard to describe because it does so much. It is mostly and instant messenger program, but the catch is that you can log into Digsby with ALL of your different IM accounts whether they are AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc. and talk to all of your friends from one program. That isn’t the only thing it does though. You can get E-Mail notifications and even send E-Mail from Digsby. You can also get notifications from websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. On top of that you can use Digsby to send files, send text messages, and to video chat! It' also has a very customizable user interface. So with all these features packed into one program I think it is definitely worth some time to check out for everyone! Did I mention that it is totally free?
Second is Royale Noir, a “secret” windows XP theme. This is a theme that was (partially) developed alongside Royale (the Windows Media Center Edition theme) and was never officially released to the public. Someone eventually uncovered it. You can download it and find instructions on how to easily set it up here. Enjoy!
The last thing I would like to mention for now is Eclipse. Now I don’t know its full capabilities, but I know that it is a wonderful program for Java developers. It also has C/C++ capabilities and a few other languages I believe. It has wonderful auto-complete features and auto importing of classes. I also like the exporting feature that allows me to easily make runnable .jar files from my java programs (which you’ll be seeing some of on this blog soon). The only annoying thing I have come across is the fact that every java class you make must be in a “project” which makes it somewhat difficult 
to switch from computer to computer and work on the same files because you have to make a new project and import the files, etc. Overall this is definitely my favorite IDE for Java so check it out!
If you’re into experimental/progressive/jazzy style music, here is an album you should check out if you get the chance. This was going to be just a normal LTE show until Jordan’s keyboard broke down. Instead of disappointing fans, Mike, Tony and John proceeded to jam for almost an hour! You can buy it from YtseJam Records for $15 (before shipping). I believe someone had posted the album on YouTube if you wanted to preview it before buying it (no telling how long it will be on there). Needless to say, the musicianship from these guys is as top-notch as ever and worth checking out if you’re into virtuosos.
I’ve also been listening to Lamb of God’s new CD, Wrath, lately. Check that out if you are a fan of metal!
I’d like to use this blog to post some things that i create from time to time. So here is the first! It’s a World of Warcraft wallpaper I made from a bunch of different wallpapers.
So I decided to start a blog, as you can see I am sure. I had to make a post so I can play around with some of the visual settings. More to come later!
