New Site is Live!

Woohoo! I finished my new design faster than expected. Soooo... my new site design is now up and ready to be viewed by the world!

I'm actually rather proud at how it came out. It may not be the most complex site in the world but it works great for what I need it to.

Everything that was up on the previous site is now on this site. There are a few things that aren't quite done yet, such as the history of my site (a look at my site from 1999 to now) but I can add that at a later date.

GO CHECK IT OUT

New Website Design Coming

I've finally gotten sick and tired of my current website design. So I'm working on a new one. It's going to be a little easier to edit pages down the road if I want to add more pages to a certain category. It's also brighter.

Here's a sample image.



Hopefully this site will be done in a few days.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 07

Well, everyone, this is the end for this short little movie. I have finished all I'm going to do with it.

Honestly, I'm disappointed at the final result. And I'd like to go on record and state that I really dislike the post stage of filming. Filming the scenes was interesting and kind of fun, despite having a lot of lighting issues. Thinking up all the various ideas (even if I could never actually get them to work) was also really fun. Editing and trying to add sound/music and get the effects to look right.....not so much fun.

I'm kind of upset that half of the scenes I had in my head didn't make it at all (due to editing problems or just being unable to do it). I'm also rather mad that most of the sound I recorded didn't come out either (most of it came out with a high pitch whine that caused headaches and ear-gouging pain). And after spending so much time on it, and wanting to move onto something else, I had to just finally say "that's it, no more" lest I spend months working on the smallest details.

So what you'll probably see is nothing like what I wanted it to look like. But you know, that's okay. It's been a pretty interesting learning experience and I have a new profound respect for those individuals out there that do this stuff for a living.

Will I do another (better) video in the future? It's possible. I'm itching to do a better video to prove to myself that I CAN do a better video. But it won't be for awhile. This has really burned me out. So who knows when it'll be done or what it'll be about.

And that's really all I have to say about that now. I suggest you go watch it and see for yourselves.

CLICK HERE TO GO WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 06

Editing in After Effects is really a lot easier than I thought it would be. Despite saying this, however, I have to say that I'm really frustrated with at how hard some things have turned out to be.

A few of the effects have been extremely painless to add to the video. The one in this photo has eaten away several hours of my life and it's still not done. Ah well. I'll get it eventually.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 05

Filming has finished! WOOHOO!

I'm quite glad that I managed to finish filming. I'm disappointed with how dark the scenes came out though, even with the addition of extra lighting. I'm not able to fix that at this time, however, so everyone is just going to have to deal with it. Sorry. Even if I were to try and reshoot every scene again, I don't think I could make it any lighter. I've already added as many lights as I could find and it's still really dark.

But since it's not a fancy production meant to rival Hollywood, I'm not going to worry too much about it.

Here's a preview image.



Now I'm off to spend a week in post, trying to do the one major special effect and combine all of this mess together into a movie.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 04

Work continues on the movie!

I have filmed the final live action scene to appear in the movie. The acting is so bad that it should be funny to see. I would do takes over and over to try and get the acting better but keep in mind that this movie is not meant to be taken all that seriously. It's supposed to be cheesy. And besides, most gamers aren't actors to begin with.

With that in mind, I can't show any pictures from the final scene. Sorry. Instead I will show a picture of a "place holder" I've been using to hold places in the film until I'm ready for them.



The entire movie has been structured and all of the title cards have been finished. The opening and credits are also both done. I have a little bit of live action left to shoot and then quite a bit of post-production to do with editing and, hopefully, movie layering. The latter scares me as I've never done anything like this before and hope that I CAN do it. If not, I might have to rethink an entire portion of the film.

But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 03

I ran into another snag earlier today. It seems that FRAPs, the software I use to capture the screen, has stopped working. I have yet to figure out WHY it randomly decided to stop. I can't seem to fix it though.

To make matters worse, I've been unable to get any other screen capture software to work, including VirtualDub and Camstudio. Either they record at a weird size that won't work for me or they won't record sound (or both).

THANKFULLY, I had a backup plan. And while it's been a royal pain to make work correctly, I have been able to record the footage of the game that I needed.



With all the game footage recorded I have to now focus on recording the live action stuff and piecing it all together.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 02

It took awhile but I finally beat Vundo and got my machine back to normal. Production has resumed.

I went ahead and filmed the first live action scene.



Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture, it's rather dark. I hope the rest of the live action footage will not turn out so dark.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden: Production 01

I'm already having technical difficulties on the first day! Can you believe this?

While getting all the software installed I somehow contracted the trojan Vundo. It has proved incredibly difficult to remove completely from my machine.

To make matters worse, a cleaner I got to remove Vundo has more or less wiped out Windows. I'm in the process of restoring my computer and getting everything back up and running.

Production cannot continue until I get everything back up and running.

The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden

Time for something a little different. Instead of a computer program I've decided to try my fate at creating a short little movie dealing with Ninja Gaiden. I'm calling it "The Five Gamer Stages of Ninja Gaiden" and it involves what "stages" a gamer goes through while playing one of the most difficult NES games ever created.



Please stay tuned to this exciting new project!

Attn: Sears Employees

This post is very disturbing and I would recommend everyone read it. I bring it up now because we're entering what Sears is calling "Operation Fresh Start" (or, alternatively, "Operation Spring Cleaning"). As those who work there know, this operation involves everyone cleaning the store from top to bottom. Everything from dusting to repainting fixtures. I post this as a caution and as a "please take care" while you're doing this stuff.

This post below was taken by an ex-Sears employee from 2004 during a topic about cleaning the stores.

Not too long after I went to work for Sears I developed a severe asthma like lung condition. I couldn't walk across a room without panting and gasping for air and I had coughing spasm so severe that I would separate ribs and even pass out due to the pressure on the carotid and temporal arteries during a cough spasm.

It was diagnosed as adult onset asthma and since there is no cure, I began to receive treatment for the symptoms which helped somewhat. I worked there another 6 years before the symptoms got so severe that my doctors decided to look for a trigger. I had one coughing spell so severe that I actually had a small stroke that lasted until I passed out and the cough spasm subsided. These symptoms would grow in severity when I was at work and then subside somewhat when I was forced to take time off so I began to sense a pattern.

Aside: That's why my typing is so terrible today. I use the middle fingers of each hand in my hunt and peck typing technique and my left hand tends to fall behind my right if I try to go to fast. I used to type an accurate 40 wpm this way, and now I'm lucky to get 25 because I have to keep correcting right/left typos.

Anyway, I was sent off to LA for some extensive allergy testing and other tests that would determine what there was in my blood. Turned out I had no common allergies. My blood was full of mold spores from the type of mold that grows inside air conditioner ducts when they aren't maintained and I tested reactive to that.

The dust samples I took in, obtained simply by wiping a clean paper towel over the merchandise that I was dusting every day contained a significant number of asbestos fibers. The store had asbestos floor tiles that had been laid down when the store was built in 1975 and they were cracked an old. We suspected the floor buffers were stirring them up and causing them to float around in the air in the store. This was also during the remodel and they were constantly tearing these floors up and grinding them down to install new flooring in certain areas.

Their only precaution was to hang some loose plastic sheets around the construction area. The guys (contractors) doing the work all wore masks to prevent infiltration. We, as store associates, were of course not allowed to wear masks. Might frighten the customer into waiting until the project was over to come in and spend his dough.

The last thing that I tested positive for was organic spores brought about by... don't laugh... the infestations of pigeons that lived on the roof of the building and in the air ducts and AC air intakes. Our LP manager went up there and he said that not once did his feet actually touch the roof but that he was walking on inches deep crusts of pigeon crap. They had pulled all the rain gutters and downspouts off the buildings because they'd plug up with pigeon shit and flood the roof. The sidewalks under the edges of any overhang were often 2-3 inches deep in the stuff, especially in the winters when the rain would wash it off the roof itself.

So, pigeon mites, pigeon crap and the various little critters that existed in the dead, decaying carcasses of dead birds turned out to be not as harmless as you might think. This stuff was all being sucked in by the AC, and spread throughout the store and while others had various symptoms, yours truly had a hypersensitivity to all of it. In other words I got REALLY sick. It joined up with my heart failure to make me the grouchy old fart I am today.

Anyway, those are the three things you can look for if you're having any chronic respiratory problems or allergic reactions that ordinary testing isn't finding a trigger for. Toxic mold, asbestos fibers and pigeons. The unholy trinity Of Sears.

Oh by the way, once I had exposed this situation, Sears refused to run the air conditioners that year until mid-June, well into the 100+ degree season here in California's central valley and only after a couple of customers had nearly passed out and complained. Two associates had actual health problems with the heat also, but the BC manager accused them of being wusses, which was exactly what he had accused me of.

Remember, corporations may or may not care about you but no matter how they feel us employees should know better and deserve better treatment than something like this. Stand up for your rights and don't let them walk over you.

Escape from Zearz - Version 1.0.2

Another update!

I have completely recoded the game from scratch yet again because I have found a better method of drawing the graphics to the screen and for storing rooms. The end result is that I can go back to my original idea for directions. The compass is going to disappear, though right now the graphic for it is still present on the GUI. I haven't figure out what I'm going to replace that area with.

No snapshot for this version but if you download it and run it you will see the progress I've made. You can now interact with an NPC ("Ed") and talk to him a few times. He has a few different lines to say.

As of right now I'm borrowing a few sprites and backgrounds from other games. I'm still not completely pleased with it, but it was just meant to test the other stuff anyway. I'll be going back and revamping all of that in a future version.

This will probably be my last post about the game for awhile as the next version will take awhile.

Escape from Zearz - Version 1.0.1

So far so good. I haven't dropped the project, though all the work I did today on it really made me wish I could.

I had to change the GUI interface a little bit due to some serious complications I was having with some of my code. I also decided I really don't want to try and mess with a graphical inventory system for my first game. The complexity of that would be extreme for my first time so I'll stick to a text one.

As a result, the new GUI looks like this:

I'm fairly certain all of the GUI stuff is set. I also added the updater that I've used in three programs now so that the users can check for updates. It's under help->Check for updates.

Now I need to work on actually writing the game and getting interactive objects/puzzles in there.

Download Link
http://iyou.cyberbotx.com/programs/C-sharp/EscapeFromZears/

You can find all the various versions there. Keep in mind that until I've made mention of it, none of these are "official" demos and are just works in progress. You may not be able to get far into the game, if anywhere. Download and run at your own risk.