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.

Escape from Zearz

What happens when Iyou has played too many SCUMM games and gets really bored? A new creation!

I think I have officially abandoned The Kingdom of Crim, though I may one day pick it back up. Instead I've decided to make a SCUMM-ish type game called "Escape from Zearz."

For those who have never heard of SCUMM (what, have you lived under a rock?), it's a scripting language used by LucasArts to create such games as Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, the Monkey Island series and countless other games. All of them are considered classics and some of the best adventure games ever created.

Will my game even come close to that? Probably not. I'm not really trying to make a game on par with LucasArts and this is merely a learning tool for me. Still, I would like it to be somewhat fun and playable. That's my overall goal.

As of right now the title and the basic GUI screens are completed. I am borrowing the look of the GUI from the Indiana Jones SCUMM game for the moment. I suppose this really makes it more complicated than it needs to be, since I could use the later Monkey Island series style and limit myself to fewer verbs and commands, but what's life without challenges?

Here's a sample image:




With luck I won't completely drop this project and a playable demo will be out in the next few months. So stay tuned and hope for the best!

Kon version 1.0.7 release

The last time I touched Kon was back on Feb 28th. When I had closed down the IDE that final time I thought that it was probably the closest that I'd ever come to being able to make Kon "learn." To be honest, that feeling hasn't wavered all that much, but I have found ways to improve and enhance Kon since then.

First up are bug fixes. After having run Kon for a few weeks observing I've noticed a few major bugs that have popped up. Two of which caused the bot to go BOOM. I also discovered that it wasn't replacing "UNNAMED_USER" correctly with someone from the channel. That has since been fixed. Also fixed: when a user used to talk to Kon in query he would respond in channel. Now he responds in query to queries.

Another thing I really wanted to get done with the last version but got tired before finishing was separating commands into three types: admin, users, and everyone. This version has achieved this. There's one admin that must be set, then the admin can add multiple users. All of the commands have been split into one of those three categories.

One last thing I've done was go back and redo the LB brain so that it splits questions and all other lines ("statements") into separate files. If the user asks Kon a question he will ALWAYS respond with a statement. Otherwise, it will be a 50/50 shot on which one he'll do. It's not a huge change, but it might make things a little easier in the future should I choose to pursue other ideas I have.

Download Binaries: Click here
Downlod Source: Click here (and download all the files)


Complete changelog:

• Fixed an error when you toggle the LB brain off that caused the bot to crash.
• Fixed an error with !LBinfo when the LB brain wasn't loaded.
• Tried to fix the reconnect command, again.
• Seperated the IncomingCommand method into its own file.
• Seperated the ConsoleCommand method into its own file.
• Seperated the logging method into its own file.
• Added !konInfo to the list of commands. This will send the version information to the channel.
• Changed the way the LB brain works by seperating questions and statements. Now when someone asks a question to the bot, it will reply with a statement (a non-question). Otherwise, it'll be random whether or not it asks a question or replies with a statement.
• Fixed a channel user list bug that wasn't showing the list of channel users after someone talked to the bot for the first time.
  
• Added a !channelusers command that will display all the users in the channel (for testing purposes) ** warning: don't use this command in an extremely busy channel with a ton of users (more than 30) or else it might crash the bot.
• Added an !utter command that will Kon to randomly say something to the channel.
• Added an admin section to the config file. Admins have access to all commands and have the ability to add 'users' to the list.
• Commands have been broken down by type: admin only, users, anyone.
  
• Fixed a bug in previous versions where Kon would spout two responses for one input line.
• Fixed a bug that caused Kon to reply to the main channel when someone messaged him in private. Now he will respond to private messages by messaging the person who is talking to him.
• ADMIN ONLY commands: !addUser (nick), !remUser (nick), !quit
• ADMIN AND USERS ONLY commands: !reload, !reloadAIML, !toggleAIML, !toggleGoogle, !toggleLB, !channelUsers, !utter
• ANYONE commands: !splash, !konInfo, !brainInfo, !LBinfo

Until next time...