I finished Lego Star Wars on Monday night. The game is pretty cool, and I made it all the way through the story line. You can actually go back and play this mode called Freeplay, which allows you to use any of the characters you unlocked during Story mode and get to hidden areas you couldn’t before because your characters at the time lacked the skills. I went back and got through about 50% of the Freeplay stuff, then decided that I had enough. So, last night I installed Star Wars: Empire at War and started running through the tutorials. I’ll probably play that again tonight. I played the demo for the game a couple of months ago, and liked it and, now that I’m re-learning it, I remember why I liked it so much. The game is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game, ala Command & Conquer. I’m going...
Category: Video Games
Zev Freelock
“Watch out ladies! Zev Freelock is back in Paragon! The debonair super hero is back in costume, helping the innocents of this great city. Keep looking up in the skies and you might catch a glimpse of him as he streaks by, on his way to vanquish evil-doers!” -Rodney Zelf, Paragon Times Yes, indeed, Zev is back. I installed City of Heroes on my computer a couple of days ago and also purchased City of Villains to compliment it. I’ve been having a lot of fun the last couple of days! I’ve added my Xfire information once again to the bottom of my homepage. Check it out and you can see what I’m playing. I ended up printing out all the maps for the game and have decided to give it another go – at least for a month. Fists of Flame, where are you?!? I need to go get...
Pucks and Wii
I’ve joined a fantasy hockey league up on Yahoo! with a bunch of people I know from work. It’s fun. I like it. I will do it again next year. I enjoy watching the games (the Lightning at least), but it adds a little more now because I have players on my fantasy team from all over the real league, and I think I’ll get to a point real soon where I’ll watch those teams play on TV as well. At least once in a while. Speaking of which, the Lightning play tonight. Excellent. I’m currently researching some ideas for some short films. I may start pre-production as early as November 1st. Keep watching the Suncoast Studios site for more info. I tried to get a preorder in on a Nintendo Wii. I called ten different EB Games stores throughout Sarasota, Bradenton, Tampa, St. Pete, and Mt. Myers around 10:30am...
Weekend Update
Last night Millard came over and we all hung out, as is our usual Friday night. We ate a bunch of chips and beef jerky and ate some chicken salads. I picked up a low-end PC for him and we put Windows on it and installed all the patches and so on. I also had a chance to show him all the new studio gear I’ve gotten recently. Today I played D&D Online for a while and got killed several times. I’m gonna go eat some more jerky and chips and watch some hockey for a few hours. Tomorrow I’ll be more productive, and will begin (finally) cataloging all the Will and Dana footage we shot a couple weeks ago. Sick Thought of the Day: Backpack midget masturbator.
Elves, Screens, and a Spyder
Yesterday I hooked up the new broadcast monitor, digital to analog converter, and camera. I got an ultra-accurate picture on the monitor and decided that the cabling I have was good, but not good enough. I ordered a really rare, 1990’s industry cable to hook the converter up to the monitor. Other than the fact the picture could have been crisper, the monitor was dead-on for color and chroma/hue. Tonight I calibrated both of my LCD monitors on my main editing workstation with my new Spyder2. I'll calibrate the monitor on the servers and Shauna’s LCD tomorrow or Saturday. I spent some time playing Dungeons & Dragons Online tonight. All I can say is that this game is absolutely beautiful and I really enjoy playing it. However, I got really tired (yawn) and had to stop. So, I figured I’d blog and go to bed. Goodnight. Sick Thought of the...
Tests, Logs, and Configs
When my editing workstation's capture drive failed a while back, I lost a couple of projects. When I say "lost", I really mean that the captured video went bye-bye, and I lost maybe a total of 3 hours of work (beyond the time it took to capture the video, which was maybe 2 hours). So, now the drive's been replaced, and I have a secondary drive in the system as well, which now gives me almost half a terabyte of storage space for rendering, video and film work. That said, I've re-captured then next project and recovered the scene logs from backup tape. So, now that the project's all set up, all I need to do is edit. I've done some tests with multi-pass VBR MPEG encoding, to see what settings I like the best and am happy with the results. The 3D models for the Transformers game (we call...
Approval
I got approval from the person heading up the Transformers Mod that it would be ok for me to post my work on the site here. So, I've started updating the Projects page with drawings. I'll make available information so you all can monitor the progress.
More Than Meets The Eye
A project I've been working on for quite some time now is the Battlefield 1942 Transformers Mod video game. For those of you not familiar with the Transformers, check this out. I've only been doing some minor work here and there, mostly 3D modeling. The project manager has asked that I start working on some alternate aircraft/spacecraft modes for Optimus Prime and Megatron. I'm beginning the sketches and concept designs today and will work on them throughout the weekend. I hope the begin modeling no later than Monday night. Stay tuned to the Projects page for more info.
Slacker
I've been a bad boy (yeah, you all know that). I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately and not spending any time on editing. I shall change my ways. Starting next week, tho. ;) My brother's in town this week so we're all going out for some dinner together tonight and will hopefully have bloated, sick-feeling programmer's belly*. I hope to be able to get back to editing tomorrow. We'll see. *Programmer's Belly: The condition where, after eating too much food (as in "Thanksgiving dinner" too much), one sits in a chair (preferably one that reclines), moans and rubs his/her belly, hoping that the tactile sensation will ease the feeling of imminent gut-split. Commonly experienced by game programmers after eating too much pizza and drinking too much Coke. Sick Thought of the Day: Up to the elbow.
The Holiday Event Horizon
This week's been nuts. I'm taking next week off (vacation), and I'm trying to get as much done as I can before I leave the office tomorrow at 2:30pm. I think it'll be ok... Friday (Christmas Eve), Shauna and I are going to go have a little dinner and present-opening party at her dad's house. We got him some pretty good gifts I think he'll enjoy. Saturday is Christmas day, so everyone that came over for Thanksgiving is due over. Shauna's decided that a large pot roast will be substituted for the turkey this year and green bean casserole will be substituted for the stuffing. Other than that, it'll be the same. Well, other than the present festival. After Saturday, there's going to be PLENTY of relaxing and playing CoH. Oh yeah, baby. Oh yeah. Sick Thought of the Day: Crashed Mapserver
