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LOS Targeting

Minor but important progress. Holidays (and Skyrim) were not as conductive as hoped to progress.

Map entities (monsters and PCs) now scan for the nearest visible targets within their field of view and as within LOS on the level map.

Monsters now have a new behavior available on spawn which is to start stalking a Random PC.

The goal is to have several behaviors available for monsters to utilize what cna be mix and matched during levels.. (patrolling.. random walking, waiting,) and then have events and triggers switch them out asin-game events etc..

Next up.. either monster spawners or starting the prep work for combat mechanisms.

 

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Tales of puppets, babies, games etc

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So here we are, another year is already on the way and it’s time to get busy.

As of today baby Jude is ~45days out and counting, lots of house prep is being done and more still to do.  Excitement is high and nesting mode is in full swing.  The home office has been moved into the game room and the new space works well and the start of a dedicated baby room is in progress.  Super Awesome GFW has got her etsy store up and running, and a whole kitchen studio full of paint and canvas.  90% of all pictures on the walls in the house are now original art, and man is that nice.

Christmas came and went in a blur of cookies, candy, family and food.  When it was all said and done my very own muppet Whatnot was here to stay.  He’s pictured above, and it’s very very cool.  I have plans for him.  Big plans.  But first I’m gonna need a couple mutant sheep puppets.

Speaking of Mutant Sheep.. With the death of my POS Kodak all in one printer I no longer have a scanner.  So I’m having to switch to an all digital pipeline.. which may be faster once I get rolling on it.. but it does mean that I can’t doodle out the roughs at work and then take em home and ink em.  Other than that, it’s back to grindstone and get em finished asap!  Progress on it has been pretty abysmal lately and I’m not exactly thrilled with that, not sure what the mental block/holdup is but it’s time to work through it.

That is, just as soon as I wrap up a bit more paying design / web work.  The freelance developer & designer side of things is really picking up lately and I hope to keep it rolling throughout the year.  So naturally that stuff comes first, before Sheep.

Gaming

The holidays were full of super end of year sales, the most impressive was probably the insane Steam sale, lots of awesomeness was picked up at a pittance.  So here’s a list of the gaming highlights.

  • Dragon Age: Traditional fantasy RPG, polished like nothing else.
  • Kings Bounty: Insane Fantasy turn based combat with a happy disregard for tradition.
  • Mirrors Edge: First person runner.  Not sure why this wasn’t a bigger hit.
  • Garrys Mod:  A multiplayer physics based playgound, had a lot of fun building airships with kiddo an just doing strange stuff.
  • Left for Dead 2: Better than the first one, more zombies, more guns, for when you just want to shoot.
  • Machinarium: A beautiful hand drawn adventure game with so much character its hard to believe.
  • STALKER – Clear Sky: Post Chernobyl fps world to explore full of mutants and more.

And in board games:

We have played the first game of Pandemic.  A co-op board game where you have to work together to save the world from 4 diseases, HIGHLY recommended.  And I have a copy of Arkahm Horror sitting on my desk waiting to have a day dedicated to it.

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Wandering

Ok so it’s been a bit hectic with a bunch of things that just had to get done, which turns out to have sapped my usual laser like (HAH!) focus.

But the creative itch is growing and I have a feeling I’ll be cracking open the acrylics soon.  (that and I owe lil sis some cute animal pix for superbaby’s room).

With the help of GuitarTricks.com I’ve been attempting to get a grasp on the whole playing guitar thing, and I’m getting better.  The best thing I did was to buy a decent guitar (Rouge acoustic/electric Dreadnought from musiciansfriend.com), not having to slice your fingers trying to jam down the strings makes a huuge difference, and it sounds better too) .

Other than that, a super co-operative project with GFW is underway and we’re having fun and getting some serious progress made.

Programming at work, however, is pretty much making sure it’s the last thing I want to go home and do as well.. so BSDDoD! may have to stay on the backburner for a while.

But first, vacation in 18 days.

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unscheduled diversion & waves of light

So Progress on the main project has been really slow this week.   That’s not to say a bunch of stuff didn’t get done.. It’s just not tangible stuff.   I got the high scores put in and it seems to be working fine, and then I just ran into a mental brick wall of ‘now what?’.  So I just let things stew in the noggin while I did other things.

  So what other things did I keep myself occupied with one might ask?

Well, such things as going ocd in trying to lean guitar.. step 1. hurt fingers daily until you can press a string for more than 10 seconds without pain.  well.. im still working on that one. 

More interestingly I dusted off my lightwave 9.6 and started digging in to finally trying to learn the damn thing.  Sloooowly making progress.  I have managed to make a cube and some ovals and give them a texture.  The whole layout side of things is making a bit more sense as well with the lights and timeline etc etc.  Anyway the results of this is:  

box-v8-desktop

And in the meanwhile, I’ve been jotting down whatever ideas that have popped into my head as things to add to the game and I’ve now got a pretty handy idea of what i need to do next.

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Turkey Time approaches.

Well the year sure went fast. 

Been playing with some basic python and pygame stuff.  Seems like a pretty easy to learn language and api, just havent gotten myself convinced for the need to learn yet another language… oh well Im sure I’ll think of something to use for an excuse.

But it probably wont be until Xmas.  Letting the brain relax and just enjoying some neglected games and movies and such.  blah blah blah blah..