Busy day

After going out for brunch this morning, I settled down and worked all day long. I did a good deal of Ossian stuff (though some remains to be done tomorrow), and I had a decent amount of homework and other school stuff to get done. So, busy, but not altogether interesting for you readers, I guess. :) I did manage to devote a little bit of time during the evening to working on that beach area I posted a screenshot of earlier; it's starting to look better and significantly more mystical, I think, which is what I'm going for...again, the following screenshot is taken in the toolset, so the finished product will look better in-game once the pixel shader kicks in on the textures and terrain.

300

I saw 300 last night as a pump-up movie for today's track meet. My expectations were pretty much right-on; it was totally insane hack'n'slash with the occasional cliche speech by Leonidas, all of which said more or less the same thing. Much pwnage, much gore, little plot, little anything else. My favorite scene was probably the last one, where we see the guy who's been narrating the whole movie (the one who lost an eye and went home before the final conflict) giving a speech to the Spartans 100 years later against the re-invading Persian army; "For Leonidas, and the brave 300! TO VICTORY!" Yeah, that was cool. I also liked the slow-motion interspersed with fast-motion combat scenes with the scimitar & shield-wielding duo of Spartans that fought back to back against, iirc, the immortals. Brought back some great Prince of Persia - Warrior Within memories. All the fighting (and much of the visuals--like the colors of the outfits and the sky, even) seemed ripped right from Warrior Within, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing...I just found the yellowish-blackish sky got a bit boring after an hour straight of seeing it. Anyhow, I'd give it an overall 6.5 out of 10. Next week, hopefully we'll see Dodgeball. :)

Regarding the meet itself, which I just got home from, my goal was to beat my previous 1500 time of 4:32; I went 4:24, so that was really exciting for me. :) My 800 was slightly slower than usual (2:12 high as opposed to 2:09), but I was pretty tired after the 1500. I really wanted to run the 4x400, but wasn't able to this week; we have 5 guys currently going after 4 spots, and I was the odd man out this week. It'll get even worse next week, when our number 1 400 runner comes back after injury...ah well, I'll just have to make a difference elsewhere. :)

I plan on spending the rest of the day doing some homework, but mostly doing Ossian stuff.

Good news (mostly).

1) CompSci test didn't go half-badly. Particularly since we'll all be getting 10 points added to our score, I'll end up doing just fine.

2) I only have 1 class today...meaning I had not-too-much homework last night and was able to get a lot of sleep. :)


3) This morning, I made a beach area...just for kicks (sort of). I won't post anything more about this yet other than to say I'm easily distracted (think The Island during the development of Art of Death). Could turn into something I throw away, or...something more substantial. Perhaps. Oh, and I wrote a little. Like, the opening premise for said more-substantial thing. God, I'm such a spaz. The below screenshot (taken in-toolset, forgive poor graphics) just might be said beach area in a very basic form.




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On the not-so-good-news side, I'm a little behind on doing some things for Ossian. Little things, admittedly, but I've gotta get'em done...and I'm not sure I'll have time to tonight due to having a paper due tomorrow as well as other homework. We shall see. In any event, I'll definitely have time to get stuff off my plate this weekend. Midterms week is a bit of a pain.

Download counts on the Vault

I tend to follow releases on the Vault pretty regularly--I like tracking various files and seeing how they're received in the public eye. It keeps things in perspective, and always inspires me to try to finish my own campaign faster. :) One thing I've noticed is that download counts on NWN2 modules are definitely living up to my hopes/expectations; Enoa4's recent release, B2 - Keep on the Borderlands, has already amassed almost 1000 downloads in 3 days, and Adam Miller's highly-anticipated first chapter of Dark Waters has almost 6000 downloads and 90 votes in only 11 days! Those are some encouraging numbers...I wasn't around at the beginning of NWN1, but hopefully these trends will continue, and the expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, will draw even more players into the community.

In any event, I had a relatively relaxing day at school today, other than a compsci test which was..."frustrating," I think, is an appropriate word for it. Other than that, though, I had a nice run in the superb weather and I'm even starting to get a bit of a tan. I mean, I wasn't pale before, but I wasn't tan either. Tan is good. :)

Weather

Only in New England is the weather a legitimate topic of conversation. Yesterday, it was, like, 80+ degrees...which I'm sure some readers from really hot places would be unphased by, but this is New England, and even though no one should be phased by now (and we aren't really), we love to pretend that fluctuating weather is killing us. It's just who we are.

Anyhow, it was hot yesterday, and we did a speed workout on the track, and it was NOT FUN, let me tell ya. The wind was blowing...but it wasn't a refreshing wind, just an oppressive one keen on keeping you from moving fast around the back straightaway. Not fun.

When I finished practice, I put the finishing touches (bibliography, cover page, etc.) on my history paper; I also studied for a compsci test on the case study we'll be responsible for on this year's AP Exam.

Regarding Moonshadows, I did get to make a few custom items over the weekend--they both have fairly humorous backstories, which is a common theme I'm going to stick with in this adventure, I think. Man, I totally can't wait to release this game! What I am not excited for, however, is voting on it to commence. While I think the new voting standards on the Vault are superb, I just don't really care about votes anymore...they're oftentimes more trouble than they're worth. Bah humbug.

Track meet results and other stuff

While our team was pulverized in yesterday's track meet against Milton, St. Paul's, and Exeter, there were still a few high notes for various individuals throughout the meet...so it wasn't all for naught. We had a bunch of PR's, I myself running a personal best 400 (54.7) and a personal best 1500 (4:32). My next goal is to bring that 1500 down below 4:30, which I think should be no problem at all, as I pulled back significantly in the last 2 laps in order to save some energy for the shortly-thereafter-400. I was also our opening leg for the 4x400, which we won(!), so that was a great way to finish the day even though we lost overall by over 30 points. :-P

Regarding Moonshadows, I don't think I've done any real new work since that custom VFX stuff, and I certainly won't have time to do any more this weekend. Ossian takes priority, first of all, and even more importantly, I have a really long history paper that I need to write today. I've got a bunch of notes I took this morning, luckily, and it looks like it shouldn't be too bad to write, but I've still gotta do it, and it's still 10 pages. ;) The next step in Moonshadows, however, is to design some custom items for a certain area in the game. Not sure when I'll get a chance to do this, but I hope to soon.

Nice weather...finally!

After several days of ceaseless rain and depressing cold grayness, the sun came out today and we finally had some real spring weather. I only had one class meeting--the second was cancelled after we handed our papers that were due--which meant I had plenty of free time to take care of various homework and to do some work on Moonshadows. I made six new custom VFX's today using the toolset plugin and added them into the game; they look great, if I may say so myself. :) I really think visuals are going to be one of the best parts of Moonshadows. Hopefully the story will do the visuals justice...I suspect it will, and more! ;)

Over the hump.

Well, besided the english paper I have to write tonight, I think I'm getting over the hump work-wise for a variety of reasons I won't bore you with. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good work in on Moonshadows in the next few weeks--I did some fun stuff last Friday that I forgot to post about regarding custom VFX's which should add some good flavor to the adventure. I'm really looking forward to seeing what people think of this... :)

100th post, Track meet, Away for 2 days

Well, first of all, hurrah for 100th blarg post. Let's have a moment of silence for double-digits. Ok, that's enough. On to bigger and better things...like, for instance, track meets.

Just got back from today's meet, which was a tri-meet at Taft against them and Deerfield. We came out on top after tearing up the last relay (we like doing that--a lot); as a member of today's relay team, it was fun to have the meet depending on my and my relay-buddies' performances, and we each came through with flying colors. While my times weren't anything special (2:09 on the 800m and a split of 55.6 on the first leg of the 4x4), they weren't bad either...so overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the day. The highlight was the cumulative 6 hours of bus-riding, which we spent watching Troy ("There are no pacts between lions and men!"), Lord of the Rings II, and, believe it or not, The Land Before Time I. I guess high schoolers need to go back to their roots occasionally. I found it amusing that I could remember the names of the characters (Little Foot, Sara, Petri, Ducky). Ah, the memories...

In other news, I'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon for a college visit and will be (more likely than not) away from a computer until late Monday night.

Dark Waters Released!

Well, Adam Miller's long-awaited first installment in his Dark Waters campaign was released yesterday evening, and it seems to be doing just fine in terms of downloads. ;) Big congratulations to Adam on reaching this major milestone...ok, now back to work with me!

NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer Announced; Hugie eaten by the homework monster.

First things first: the first NWN2 Expansion pack, called "Mask of the Betrayer", was officially announced today, which is exciting for the community. Personally, I haven't even played the OC yet and don't plan on doing so any time in the near future...as I've said before, I just don't enjoy playing this incarnation of NWN as much as the previous one, not to mention that I have no time to do so. In any event, I'll get the expansion for any cool new toolset features/upgrades that come with it, as well as for the new building content; always nice to have more stuff at your disposal. So yeah, good news, though I must admit it's a bit "in one ear, out the other" for me. I have more important things to concern myself with at the moment, such as tomorrow's computer science test, my upcoming jam-packed busy long-weekend, and my 6-page english paper due on Tuesday. It's a good thing homework isn't a huge, fanged monster, because a) that would be really freaky and b) mine would probably have swallowed me whole by now.

ACSL

I just spent several hours finishing the current programming contest question for the American Computer Science League (ACSL) that my AP Compsci class participates in. These questions are always reasonably straightforward--they involve a single-line input which means something, and which must be processed in order to yield a certain result based on a set of rules provided in the question. It's always an exercise in parsing and in logic, the latter of which is never particularly mind-boggling. Anyhow, it is rewarding to finish long programs such as these, so I'm in a good mood--now I'm off to read Plato's The Republic. :)

Urban Ninja

Well, I did some work for Ossian tonight...and then, I decided to procrastinate and watch some urban ninja videos on YouTube. If you haven't seen these, you must watch them immediately--they're SO cool, and the two mockeries are absolutely hilarious.

Watch them in this order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW3aCiWHSak (awesome)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2kJZOfq7zk (awesomest)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVlGm-s7Lz8 (hilarious)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9nVENReGBY (hilariousest)

Enjoy. :)

Busy

So busy that I'm not sure I'll have time to finish typing thi

A little bit of work, and a new idea

I spent yesterday catching up on homework--I didn't have a chance to do any Moonshadows development. The day before, however, I decorated an area, placed a creature in it, and created a bunch of scripts and a conversation to be associated with a placeable which should greatly add to immersiveness (if that's even a word) in the area. I haven't done a lot with Moonshadows over the past week or so due to a variety of factors, not least among them that I haven't really been feeling the presence of my "muse", if you know what I mean. However, I think my muse may be returning after a brief vacation, because I got an idea for a good sidequest this morning which should be fun for the player. Also, I have some Ossian work to do in the next few days which will hopefully rekindle the creative flame inside of me. I've had a relatively long break from Moonshadows, so I'm ready to go back to work on it at this point.

Exhausted

I spent Thursday and Friday visiting a college. While it was enjoyable and informative, the experience was also exhausting. I'm going to take a nap, and hopefully do some design work later today. Tomorrow will be a running and homework day.

Snow!

I can't believe it--it's April 5th, and it looks like a winter wonderland outside. Just a few days ago I was sporting shorts, flip-flops, and a t-shirt...and now I've been forced to don once again my socks, shoes, and coat(s)! We ran a tempo run yesterday while it was snowing like crazy...it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Ah well, this is New England, I guess!

I'm hoping to be able to do some work on Moonshadows this weekend, but I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not. This term looks like it's going to be one of my more rigorous in terms of academics out of my entire high school career, which is fine, enjoyable even, but it means development time will be fewer and farther between.

The first Obsidian-run NWN2 module contest was just announced as well; I won't be taking part, and in fact won't even be paying attention. I just don't have the time or inclination to play any of the entries that will doubtless start popping up. With my work with Ossian Studios as well as Moonshadows, my NWN2 schedule is booked for a good, long while!

Swamped!

I didn't arrive home to start my homework until very late last night. While I was able to get most of it done (everything that needed to be done, really), it took me until about 11:00 to finish, which is an hour later than I usually go to bed.

Anyways, I'm starting to feel that surge of creative energy returning to me despite my large amounts of homework each night, which is good news for Moonshadows (and in general, I suppose). I really wasn't feeling it this weekend, so it's good that it has returned to me once more. :)

So busy!

School, homework, and sports are taking up all of my time at the moment...as well as dealing with college stuff. I did some good Ossian work on Friday night, but the rest of the weekend has been spent at a track meet, a Bar Mitzvah, and doing homework. Don't expect any news on Moonshadows any time soon.