The Blog of Potatosheep

Bleh. We have standardized testing 2 periods a day 3 days a week for the next 3 weeks. Not gonna be fun to do. Those things are a waste of time and energy in my opinion. However, I do get to mist the english/history block that has so plagued me this year for the next 3 days. That is good. What is not good is that the teachers decided that, because there’s no class on those days, we should have to do work that we would normally do in class as homework. Thus, I have 4 homework assignments between those two that are all due friday.

D:

On the bright side of school we’re doing circuits in physics, something I’ve wanted to learn for a while. And our teacher figured out an awesome relativity paradox. I’ll see if I can find it online somewhere for the next post. I’m too lazy to explain it or his solution just now.

And speaking of physics:

Click to make it larger. It’s what I’ve worked out to be the sum of all the forces of all the particles in a planet of radius r that is distance d from another particle. Unfortunately I have no idea how to solve it…The reason I want to is so that I can test it against Newtons theory of gravitation. You never know.

But onto other things.

New Red Mongoose album! Wootwoot! Check it out here: http://redmongoose.newgrounds.com/news/post/438170. It’s actually quite good. His albums seem to get steadily better throughout the years. I now have eight of them.

Hurrah.

Last bit of news: I got to play a Korean kid at starcraft. Before anyone says I’m stereotyping Koreans, realize that this Starcraft a huge part of their culture:

Just check out the crowd at 2:28 if you don’t believe me.

So yeah, I got to play a guy from there. It was fun. He beat me of course, but it was close. A good game. And it got me back into the starcraft campaign, which I am now enjoying immensely.

Tis good stuff.

Zazzle is selling shoes now. Crazy, custom designed shoes. I don’t know if I like it yet. Time shall tell.

Well, not much has been going on lately. I was sick last week, so I’ve been scrambling to make up all my school assignments on time, which hasn’t been fun. Thankfully I’m pretty much all caught up though. English is no longer insanely hard, just fairly challenging now. The actual material hasn’t gotten easier, but either she’s grading more leniently or I’ve gotten better at writing. Either way I don’t have to worry about that so much anymore, which gives me more time to focus of stuff that I’m more interested in.

One of those things I can now focus on is art. This semester I’m taking drawing, having finished printmaking class. I’ll try to scan in my prints and upload them sometime, but I can’t guarantee anything. Right now I’ve got the drawing I did for the latest drawing class sketchbook:

We had to draw a “natural object”, so I chose an old shell that was sitting around the house. I think it came out pretty well.

Blah blah blah bleh

Going to hunt down an old gameboy color, or classic, and a copy of tetris/mario sometime in the next week or two hopefully. I found a gameboy color at a local store that specializes in retro games, but I’m going to look around to see if there’s one anywhere else for cheaper. We shall see. It’s been way too long since I played mario or tetris in their original format. Those were the days…

Nothing else to report today I don’t think. Duncan is working on a new game, which is looking like it’ll be done sometime in the relatively near future. Look forward to it.

Enjoy this as well…basically how most religions work on some level.

Finals are over, thankfully. I managed to pull off As in all my classes, like the slave to the system I am. Haha. 3/8 of the way through highschool…woo.

In more interesting news, I’ve been attempting to get a TF2 server up and running. I managed to get it to work over virtual LAN, aka Hamachi, but I can’t get it to work over the internet. I think my router is messed up, even though I have the port forwards set up correctly. Good thing is I know how to at least now, and I got one of my friends to convert his laptop to a server. So now we’ve got a server if we feel like playing with our little group of TF2 players. Woot. I’ve been trying to get a TF2 server online for a long, long time.

Speaking of things that I’ve been trying to get working for a while…

I found a copy of Gears of War for the PC today! Finally! After about two years of looking for that thing on and off, I finally managed to snag a copy at hastings. And boy is it enjoyable. I never had a chance to play through this icon of the shooter genre, or play it much at all, so now that I finally have it it’s like discovering something totally new. It’s been way too long since I actually found a new game that I haven’t played that’s good. Waaaay too long. Just in time for Winter-een-mas too. Hoo rah.

Bumbee dum…

Nothing else really. I’ve discovered that grooveshark is awesome, now that Imeem has been devoured by the horrible oozing pile of puss that is myspace.

I leave you with god warrior…the scariest person you will ever lay eyes upon:

Well, since I last posted I’ve almost beaten Red Faction Guerrilla. It was an ok game, but not too great. I liked the physics and combat, but to say the story was lacking is an understatement. Yet another victim of creating a gimmick (in this case the physics engine) and ignoring everything that doesn’t involve the gimmick. But it was entertaining.

Nothing much to report. Finals are soon. I think I’ll do alright on them, as I’ve got fairly solid As in all my classes. History and English are the ones I’m mostly worried about. And calculus. We shall see how it goes. In other school related news, school was actually delayed the other day! Apparently icy roads are more dangerous than -60 degree temperatures, as they didn’t close because of that last year, but hey, I’m not complaining. We ended up having 33 minute periods the other day for it. Awesome stuff.

Hopefully more news to come soon, maybe involving the new game. Maybe.

I figured I should put up at least one post on here over the holidays.

Christmas was good. Besides a ton of awesome books from a new author, William Gibson, I got a couple pieces of technology. The first was, surprisingly, an iPod touch from my aunt. I say this is surprising because I’m not too into music. But it’s still pretty dang fun to mess with that good of a touch screen. The second is a sweet Logitech gaming mouse, which works great so far. Not only is it more ergonomically correct than my old microsoft one, but its buttons are a lot nicer, and it has more of them. And it doesn’t glow annoying red. I also got a nifty art piece puzzle, which is part of series of puzzles that are all famousish paintings. All in all quite good!

In news involving the new game I said was coming, progress is slow. I have, however, solidified the idea for it, which I’m not releasing at present. The main obstacle so far is a physics engine. I hope to have one working by the end of the break, but that might not happen. I actually filled up 5 pages of graph paper with code while on a trip over the weekend, only to have it malfunction for no apparent reason. So now I’m going back to an Infinity Forever type of engine, which will hopefully end up working.

Speaking of flash games, Edmund McMillen recently released his “indie manifesto”. You can check it out here: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/12/opinion_indie_game_design_dos.html. Great verbalization of how to be a happy game developer. I’ve come to agree almost entirely with his view of development over the past few months. Before that I mostly made games in an attempt to get attention and/or become somewhat well known. Now I want to make games for myself rather than for other people. The next project is definitely going to be driven by that type of philosophy.

Games games games.

I’ve got a lot to say about them today.

Thanks to the amazing sale on Steam, I picked myself up a copy of both World in Conflict: Soviet Assault and Red Faction Guerrilla. I haven’t beat RFG yet, as I just got it yesterday, but I have beat WiC, which I got a week or so ago.

First I’ll talk about World in Conflict. For starters it is by far the best RTS I’ve ever played. Period. The campaign is amazingly original and story driven, something very rare in strategy games, which adds a great amount to it. The story itself is great too, with developed characters which you come to actually have feelings for or against. And of course the gameplay is superb too. Where and how you position things really matters, compared to the “build more stuff than the enemy and attack” method of most games. The special abilities of units, as well as artillery and air support, can turn the tide of battle if used correctly. Overall an amazing game. It’s still ten bucks on steam for the complete pack, so go buy it!

Red Faction Guerrilla is great so far too. Not really anything amazing, but the physics are pretty flawless and the gameplay is entertaining enough. And hey, who could say no to strategically blowing up buildings with explosive charges?

That’s it for tonight I think. Happy new year.

Good news. After several months of stagnation in the creativity department, I’ve got a new idea for a game. I won’t go into any detail about it right now, but suffice to say that it will take a looong time to make. I should be posting on the Cataclysm blog periodically as it comes along.

Other good news. It finally started to snow today. After a week or two of sub-zero snowless weather, it’s good to get some snow on the ground. Death sledding should be happening over christmas break if all goes well. For those of you who do not know what death sledding is, allow me to explain. Fortunately, I live in a town surrounded by fairly tall mountains. Several winters ago, the tradition of sledding down them, later dubbed death sledding, was formed. Basically what we do is hike up a thousand feet or so to the top of one of these mountains and sled down, stopping as little as possible. It’s amazing, trust me. Hopefully I’ll find a way to take the Vado along without destroying it and having it run out of batteries so I can get some video.

In the world of gaming, a large change has come about. The War Update, specifically. In my opinion, Valve has failed in their normally amazing ability to give their clients what they want. The update basically fills every server with demo/soldier spam, which they probably could have seen coming. For those of us who like to play one of these classes, like me, this is ok. But for most other’s it’s just a nuisance. In all honesty I find it a bit tedious as well. And a week of it too. But hey. It’s an update, something I’ve been waiting for for a while. So I can’t really complain that much. I hope the demo wins.

Another gaming thing I need to mention is this: Eufloria is awesome! If you haven’t seen it, go look it up in the Steam store. It’s by far one of the most relaxing and fun RTSs I’ve ever played. It’s not too long, though long enough to spend a week or so on. The simplicity of it is pretty great, unless you like micromanaging troops and stuff, which I don’t. Anyways, great game. Go check it out.

Happy holidays and stuff

Been sick lately. Some sort of cough, fever cold variant. Blergh. Thankfully it did mean I got a week off of school instead of 3 days. And I couldn’t have missed school at a better time. Because everyone was gone on holiday to visit family or whatever, combined with other stuff, there were very few people at school, which meant that the teachers did very little. So I don’t have too much makeup work I don’t think.

Point Lookout is a great addon for Fallout 3. So’s Broken Steel. It’s true what all the reviewers say, from what I can tell, that Point Lookout and Broken Steel are the only really good DLCs. The other ones still seem decent I s’pose. Threeeeee daaaawg.

If I didn’t mention it before, I got Starcraft, Mass Effect and BF2142 off of amazon with some gift cards I received. Three great games. I’d lost Starcraft and BF2142 a while back, so it was good to have them replaced. And Mass Effect is surprisingly fun. A lot more so than I expected it to be, as I’m not usually into the whole RPG thing unless it’s pulled off really well. Mass Effect 2 looks pretty good from what I can tell too.

Nothing much else to report today. I should have a new parkour video in a week or two. And my showreel should be done in the spring.

Hey everyone, I’m still alive. I haven’t been able to update lately as I just got a new harddrive and OS (windows 7), so I’ve been configuring all that the last week or so. I only got it fully working last thursday actually. There was some issue with the RAM not liking the slot it was plugged into for no reason. Fixed now though, and it functions fine.

But anyways.

Started making collagraph plates for art. By far my favorite type of printing so far. If you don’t know what it is, collagraph is basically a method of gluing a bunch of stuff to the plate and printing it. You can get some amazing textures etc. depending on what you use. I really like my plate so far, but we’ll have to see about the finished print. I’ll scan one in if it comes out well.

As for other classes nothing terribly interesting has happened lately. Calculus has gotten harder and more annoying. It happens. Physics has also gotten harder, but not really annoying, as it never has been. Biology is fine. PE was great for the last 2 weeks because all we’ve done is pingpong. Super fun.

Overall school is pretty monotonous. Thank god for thanksgiving break next week.

As I mentioned I got windows 7. Surprisingly, it’s actually pretty decent. Nothing great, but it’s functional and doesn’t overtax the computer. Much, much, better than Vista. It seems a bit like a middle ground between Mac OS and the old Windows which takes the good things from both of them. I recommend.

There was something else I was gonna talk about but I forgot it. Ah well. That’s all for now.

Oh, wait. I got the Vado HD. Great camera. I like it a lot. Especially for the price. Here’s a vid I put together with it:

And a wonderfully animated music video:

Quarter 1 of school is finally almost over. Next Friday. I can’t wait. Then 3 more to go…then 2 more years…Argh. Oh well. I don’t have any homework this weekend, so I’m going to try to get an art piece I started a couple of weeks ago mostly done. Should be cool when it’s done. Art class (print making) is getting better. Which is to say, it was good in the first place and now it’s improving. Tis fun. I’ll try to get some of my prints scanned in, if they’re any good. Oil based ink is horrible to work with, despite how awesomely it prints. The cleanup takes about half the class period.

Red Mongoose, a musician/animator I sort of follow, put out a halloween album, which I found out about via ZekeySpaceyLizard’s blog. You can download the album here. I really like most of the stuff on it. I recommend.

Aaand, last but not least, I have acquired Fallout 3, Game of the Year Edition. Man is it great to be able to play a game with a story line. I’ve been craving one for months. I’ve only had TF2 and Supreme Commander to pass the time, neither of which have any story worth following or getting interested in. Fallout 3, however, has sucked me back into the good old gaming addictions of past. Great stuff.

I’ll post my art once it’s done. Should be a few weeks, if all goes well. Hopefully sooner.

Just got back from the Gordon Lightfoot concert tonight. It was quite awesome. He played all the songs that I remember from my parents playing his CDs, like Sundown, The Edmund Fitzgerald and Carefree Highway. Good stuff. He was older than I expected.

I know I should update more often. School is my main excuse, as I’ve had absolutely smothering amounts of work lately. The English/History block is death. Death I tell you. But, next year, I’ll be able to write essays SUPER fast and well, and I’ll know a lot. So it’ll pay off. It just sucks for now.

Because of all the goddang block work I haven’t had enough time to focus on other stuff that I have a lot more interest in, primarily art and programming. So I don’t yet have another game underway, or any decent art to show. I’m gonna try to work on some stuff though. Won’t be done forever though.

Thankfully math, physics and bio are all relatively easy. Physics is getting harder, but not too bad. Math I pretty much just have free time in since I can pick it up pretty fast. Bio has a fair amount of classwork, but not too much homework, which is great.

And of course printmaking is awesome, mainly cause I have the same teacher I had for art last year, who rocks. I’ve already learned a bunch in it, despite a lack of time to do anything with it thanks to the block. Argh. We had the founder of the Northwest College of Art come in and talk to us, which was actually great. It sounds like a pretty awesome school, though looked pretty hard to get into. I dunno. I might could if I devote lots of time to art over the next couple of years. Though at this rate I won’t. Of course RISD sounds great too, though even harder to get into than NCA…And I’m still not even sure if I want to do art for college. I should probably make up my mind soon so I don’t waste time on something I don’t want to persue. We’ll see. The motion graphic student work from NCA was sweet.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to post a bit more often for those of you who actually read this.