Thursday 25 August 2011

Weak One

One week has gone by and I think I've only spent 2-3 hrs on flash game #1 which is a very weak performance on my part, largely thanks to learning more piano pieces and taking advantage of the recent events in Mabinogi. 5x EXP = 5 days of playing condensed into 1! I suspect I'll be a thrall to it's whims while it lasts... :P

Most of my focus will be on "flash game #1" which should end up to be a pretty small and wierd game. To that end I'll ditch the other two from the status list for now since they're not going to be changing till #1 is out of the way. I'm also tossing up the idea of salvaging some of my old flash movies and trying to monetise them somehow, if that's even possible. Would be great if I can as all the work is already in there, or possibly a compilation work of the best bits or something but I'll have to see how that goes. Unfortunately most monetising stuff I've looked at is aimed specifically at games. Also, I would need to add new sounds to the ones I have in mind either way.

Lastly, the mysterious book laughs at my futile attempts at starting a prologue. -_-

Apologies to anyone who stumbled across this page looking for flash stuff as I have none yet to offer, but I'd like so recommend Astromiau, or the mainsite of Vinnie Veritas (aka Kite-Ride). He makes a lot of Frame by Frame movies which are great to watch in any language. :)

Project Status:
Flash game #1 - 8% (most main chars animations done)
Mysterious book - 1% (no change)
Salvage mission: Hellsing - 0% (need to find fla, add sounds and music, possibly fix some stuff)
Salvage mission: Equilibrium - 25% (found fla, just need to find free music for it and alter credits a bit)

Thursday 18 August 2011

Repurposing - Not so Random anymore

Rather than continue with the "review" type site as my previous posts were leaning towards, I think I'm better off time-wise (both mine and yours :P) in using this as more like a creative journal. Hopefully it will also encourage me to be more productive!

So, just what thingies have I got in mind? At the moment a book and a few flash games, all of which are just distant goals in the horizon at the moment. The main difference to the other stuff I've made before is I'm actually going to try earn money from these, and I'm going to track how well or how poorly each attempt goes. Why these mediums? Generally my flash stuff always gets positive feedback and my forays into writing have won me little prizes here and there on the various MMO's I've been on, so I'm interested to see how well it does in the "real" world.

They're mostly planned out and really just need me to get on and doing them! At least I've got a logo for the flash stuff.


Yeah, well - it's better than nothing. :P

I'll be with-holding the actual titles until they are closer to completion, simply because I may decide to change them later on... and I like secrets! ^_^

Project Status:
Mysterious book - 1% (planned)
Flash game #1 - non DRM related. Small - 2% (planned - and now I have a logo. Ho ho ho. :P)
Flash game #2 - DRM related. Largish? - 2% (planned)
Flash game #3 - mysterious, even to me :P - 0% (rough idea only)

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Wandering a Nuclear Wasteland

Fallout in Vegas? What a stupid idea! That was my initial reaction when I first heard about it, despite me truly adoring Fallout 3 and all of its DLCs. However after receiving it after my birthday I soon found myself well and truly sucked in, so much so that my Mabinogi adventures went on the backburner for awhile - with a pet thunder dragon card waiting to be used! After one month of the wastes, I'm glad to say I've come out alive, though towards the end there I was going a bit nuts with the to and fro quests.

While the main quest line can probably be finished in a few nights, the abundance of side quests and locations to discover really got me hiking all over the Mojave, which was the part I loved. In general the surroundings seemed less hostile that Fallout 3 (even in the most difficult setting with hardcode mode turned on), which was a bit disappointing - save for some deathclaw infested areas and hidden boss caves. Everything else was pretty much ok and entertaining enough, but I wasn't as invested in the protagonist is this one (who is a courier that finds him or herself taking a central role in a large scale upcoming war) as opposed to the Vault dweller from Fallout 3 who leaves the vault to find his or her dad. One of my friends described it perfectly - New Vegas is like a big expansion to Fallout 3. It doesn't really build on anything gameplay wise.

The Honest Hearts DLC is even more of the same, centered in Zion valley where no nukes hit it becomes very cowboys and indians and that whole sense of post-apocalypse is almost removed entirely. When I went through it, it was also bloody easy with only one yao guai boss causing me any problems. It also features a pretty big opportunity to stuff the whole thing up right at the start, when I accidentally started shooting someone who is mandatory to the storyline. At least there are nice scenic views, and a mini collectible story in some some of the caves which is very interesting but all in all it's a pretty weak DLC.

Dead Money however, for me is -right- on the money. This story driven adventure has the best written characters, scary opponents and a real sense of dread and foreboding throughout. There are instakill devices and traps a plenty, and with the very air you breathe slowly killing you - you cannot afford to be too cautious. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea but I loved it, so much more than the base Fallout New Vegas game and is actually the highlight of the entire experience for me.

Not Hot enough being a Yahoo

Having an email account in both Hotmail and Yahoo for awhile now it has become abundantly clear over my years of continued usage that one is simply much superior to the other. Your opinions may vary but since I exclusively use them for one thing only (being EMAILS), the winner is...

Hotmail!

Why? Well, lets look at my judging criteria.

-Ease of use (tie) - They're both good at this. Though they both released new layouts recently which kinda threw me for a bit.

-Security (tie) - again, both pretty good. The weakness of passwords is always the users themselves.

-Adding attachments (hotmail wins) - Yahoo failed to attach a 4MB file after 30 minutes of trying to do so. Hotmail did it in under 5 minutes. Sure, yahoo may be trying to scan it as it uploads to the message but at the expense of -MY- time? I don't think so.

-Viewing attachments (hotmail wins) - Again, yahoo likes scanning stuff before displaying it to you. This is nice in theory, but can get really aggravating when you have a number you want to view. Nowhere near as bad as uploading them though.

-Login Page (hotmail wins) - Go to hotmail and you get a simple login page come up quick. Login, and you are taken to your email. Log out and you are taken to a sponsor page. Go to yahoo, and you get a full news page, search engine and have to follow a little link in the top right to actually login. Once you login, you are put BACK on that busy page and have to click again to actually get into your email. Those features are really good, UNLESS YOU USE IT PURELY FOR EMAIL.

In closing, if you are looking for pure email functionality and are choosing between these two, pick hotmail and save yourself some headaches and some time.