Thursday, January 26, 2012

Lazy Posting

Well not lazy really, just don't have much to post about. I suppose I can give an update on the "game", I have drawn some more concept work. Basic sketches of what the game board will look like, and some a couple of the windows that will appear when inspecting ships and planets. Also I've been learning more about programming, though that's going slowly. Actually making and assembling parts of the game is hasn't even begun yet. Though I have messed around with trying to get a basic map setup, I feel like I will need to learn more about programming before I will be able to make much progress there. So that is whats going on with the game.

Weather here has been pretty nice, suns been out and its warmed up a bit into the 40s.
As for the recommendation I want to suggest a book this time. Glen Cook's Chronicles of The Black Company. It has great characters and a great story and is well worth taking a look at.

Well that's all for now hopefully I'll have more for the weekend, take care!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Wall of Text Attacks! Critical Hit!

I took a break over the weekend mainly because I felt that make a post everyday was a little to much. I've decided to do about three post a week, odds are they will be on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Also I meant to talk about this back when I was talking about art, but there is a setting on blogger to add a warning that a blog contains mature content. At some point I may turn that option on because I have drawn nude pictures for art in the past and will probably will in the future too. Though any pictures I do add to my blog, that are nudes, will not be seen on the main page, I don't want to surprise anyone with a full front right off the bat the first thing they see when they come to my site. I am looking about setting up a page that will act as gallery and that is where all my pictures I upload will be. I haven't decided on when I'll do my first art post or what it will be about but I thought I would throw that disclaimer out right now ahead of time. Onto the main reason for this post!

I am making a game! Woot! There's probably a better way to go about announcing that but oh well. Some of you may already know this, but some may not. Right now there is only myself official working and unofficially there is only myself working on it =P. Since there is only myself working on it the going is going to be slow. I have a plan/guide worked up and have been working on concept art. Today I also spent some time dusting off my old (and now decrepit) programing skills. I already have programs in mind for creating the games graphical assets and a game engine to assemble it all in. Thankfully there are some free software out there for this, though the downside is they aren't nearly as powerful or as robust as the programs that cost money but that's to be expected. Onto what the game will be about!

In general the game is going to be a turn based strategy/rpg space game. The rough idea is that you start as a captain of a little fighter, and you can work your way up to bigger and better ships. While there will be combat that won't necessarily be the main focus of the game. There will be exploration, trading, controlling an empire are some of the things that you will be able to do. Also I want to see about having multiplayer be an option to play, either as cooperative or competitive. That is loosely the idea of what this game will be; I have quite a bit more details worked out but by no means everything. As I get more and more added and worked on I'll post about here, because this is the main reason for this blog. Yeah I'll more than likely have art stuff here and other random post, but the main reason for this blog is for the game; a place to store ideas and post progress and changes that are made along the way. If you're reading this and want to help, feel free to contact me; at this point, this is still at the very early planning stages and I'm not sure what-all I'll need help with. My main skills are more with the art and design side of things, then programing is probably the biggest thing I'll need help with but who knows.

Also for each post I do I think I'll do some sharing, 'cause sharing is caring, and that will be down here at the end. For today I would want to recommend a game... Minecraft. This is a great game though it is a bit unique in that there really isn't much to it at this point that would make it a game. There is no quests to do no clear objective on what to do or how to win. The main idea with Minecraft is to create and to destroy, the closest thing I can describe it to is Legos. Basically you spawn in a world that has near infinite resources, the maps that are randomly generated are huge. You start with nothing but your fists and you have to gather resources to get better gear and equipment to get better more rare resources. And with these resources you build whatever you want. There are plenty of videos on youtube that show what people have made. One main flaw (and maybe the only one in my opinion) is the fact that for the items you can craft there is no in-game guide and you need to check the wiki to figure out a lot of the recipes. This went on a bit longer than I originally thought it would, but it's hard to exactly explain what Minecraft is and how it is such a great game. I leave you with what is that and you can decide from there. Also if I guess I'll add this here, the restriction for today was to not use the words “so” and “like” mainly because I have been catching myself trying to use them way more than I should.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Waaaagh!

Gets yer choppas and shottas ready boyz, cause there's some killing to do!

For today I'm a gunna talk about gamez, n' nah juss video gamez. I wanna start with talkin' abou a tabletop game dat I use ta play quite a bit back in de day. It wus called Star Trek: Red Alert. Dis here gamez wus simple; ya had shipz, teknolagee, krew n' udder stuffs n' ya did de misseons on da cards. It wus design ta only be played wid two er three humies. But dere wah a problem. Dere wus five o' us wantin' ta play. So we'z fix it up so dat we'z all o' us could play it. Got rid o' da lame misheons n' made arr own rulez n' game. It seemda like each time we played, we wuld add more rulez and ideaz ta de game n' it steadily grew. From what I rememba dere wus never a objective to win, besides by domination. Domination being killin' all de pieces of anodar playar. So the games where long n' I don't tink we ever actually got finished a full game. I still have all me pieces, cuz for me it's a game I have always liked n' enjoyed playin'.

Nowadayz I aint be plain' any board games. Sumting I'ma kinda upset about cuz d'eyz gotta unique fell ta playin' dem dat I have never experienced playin' video gamez. Plus for me da more complex da game da bettar, which not all ya likez n' enjoyz. So now I'ma mainly a video game playar and not jus any ol gamar, a PC gamar! I could go on a fightin' as ta why da PC is betta d'en dem consoles, but I won't. De main genre o' video games dat I like n' me all time favorite dis da first person shootarz. For me dey'z are a great way ta fightin' offar playars. Its a fightin' jus like every offar game/sport n' FPS are abou reaction time, hand eye coordination, n' learnin' da maps and remembrin' da layout. Sure ya could say I'ma jus using da cheap, overpower, imba shottas n' in a lot o' FPS dere are da shottas dat are bettar d'en offars; but da shotta can only git ya so far, de rest is up ta ya. While FPSs are me favorite, d'eyz ain't be all dat I play. I gotta several different types of gamez dat I like. Right now da main one dat is takin' up me time, is a MMO. MMOs have been kinda weird for me n' while I enjoyz playin' dem, dere are many things about dem dat I don't like. Me firsta MMO I ever played, like so many offar people, was da World of' Waaaghcraft. Now teknikally I sup'ose you could say dat Diablo and Diablo 2 would be me fist MMOs I played, but I din't play dem as mmos so for me d'eyz dont count. I could go on for a while abou mmos n' in fact I just did. But now dat is erased to get dis here post down ta a reasonable size. Since dis here block o' wordz is gettin' long, I'll jus add dat RPGs be anoffar form of gamez I play.

So dat be me post for da day, it wus a right and proper nightmarez and dis here is da endz.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Through Victory, My Chains Are Broken.

And for now I  truly am free...

The last and first  post I did, The First Step, I put a restriction on, I could not use I; as in referring to myself. At first this may seem a bit odd, after all blog tend to be about the author and can be personal. I think of them as journals or diaries, so having a post that doesn't use "I" ( I'm sure there is a proper term for this but whatever) is a bit odd. The reason I put this constraint on myself was because I feel that limiting yourself in what you can use/do in art helps you think of creative solutions (and yes just saying I couldn't use I isn't that major of a restriction, but it was my first post so I wanted something simple and easy). So hopefully this idea of imposing myself with restrictions on how I post stuff will carry on, though this post actually doesn't have a restriction to it, at least not so far, who knows maybe by the end I'll make one.

And onto talking about art! My art to be more specific 'cause there is a lot of art out there and talking about all of it would be a bit overwhelming. I do plan doing a post showing some of my art and talking about it but that won't be for a while 'cause I feel like for week-ish of posts is kinda going to be like the first week of school, nothing important or interesting ever gets done but you got to show up anyway or your going to get dropped. So I'm kinda getting the boring stuff out of the way, like talking about what this all will be about and wow I got off topic fast. Back to art. my art will be up here hopefully in a gallery but also some pieces may get highlighted by being in a post. If I do put art in a post it will be to talk about it in detail cause I think it is horrible/awesome or it may have a story that goes along with it that I feel is worth adding. But in general the art I do has mostly been using traditional media, while favoring towards graphite and charcoal. More recently I have been dabbling in digital art using Gimp (a free program similar to Photoshop) and some other programs. And I think that covers all the art stuff for now.

So I feel like clearing the air... I have lied to you. It's true, i know shocking and amazingly only two posts in I have already lied at least once. What was the lie? Editing. I do edit, not much mind you its not like I re-read what I've typed or anything like that but I do go back and make some changes if a couple sentences later I don't like the way I typed something. I had to get that off my chest it was starting to crush me, because at the time I knew it was a lie when I typed it and sent into the indelible ink of the internet. But I feel like I should explain why I lied. I did it because at the time trying to explain it all seemed like to much, and lets be honest what I am calling editing and what probably the rest of the world refers to editing isn't the same. So I lied to tell the truth, and in all likelihood  I will do it again. Whew... glad that is settled.

I think now I will take some time to talk about a few sites that I try to visit regularly. Firstly: Blogger! I know, I know your probably thinking "no duh you have a blog", but while that is true it isn't for my blog it's another one, The Piebald Penguin's to be more precise. It's a bit of a shameless plug for a friend's blog but he deserves it and more; just wish I had more people to send his way. Secondly: The Chive! Probably the best site in the world. Often has funny and epic photos. Thirdly: xkcd! Perhaps one of the greats comics ever and well worth following. In time this list will probably grow but for now those three are a great start. I normally won't have plans laid out for what I will be blogging about the next day but today I fell generous and inspired, so tomorrow I will be talking about games! And for the restriction I'm going to type like an Ork from the Warhammer 40k series. It should be fun.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The First Step

And a new blog is born...

Suppose this first post can explain why this blog was created and were it will go from here. Enjoy (or don't, all the same)

The idea behind this blog is to have a place to place idea, art, work and bit of my life, mostly for my own benefit, but if someone out there finds what is in here interesting/amusing/crazy/weird/whatever than that's good too. There will probably be little order to what is placed in the posts and the only editing done will mostly to fix whatever the red squiggly line tells me too, unless I don't. So what is put down is just whatever seems appropriate to placed there.

So it feels like this first post would be a good place to explain the title of the blog whether it needs explaining or not. This blog is a spot for The Pox. Well that's done. Now onto what will be posted in this blog, stuff. Suppose that could use some more details. Firstly, art: original creations and whatnot, more info on this in future post. Secondly, games: Non-original creations and maybe original creations at some point, again more on this later. Lastly, life: this is kinda a catch all for anything else that is put up here.

Expect the layout and design to change. If this is being read several weeks/months/years after this has been posted don't expect the layout or the design to change; though still consider this your warning just in case it does change. This seems like a good place to end, so this is will be the end. Not the end of the blog though (hopefully, who knows what will happen if SOPA/PIPA gets passed) so your more than welcome to come back.

Well that wasn't all to bad. Though there was an interruption... you know who you are...