Things around this ole blogosphere have certainly been very quiet and dead-looking these days. Granted I’m pretty sure this place rarely gets visitors so that it’s not a huge deal. But after a bit of not making any posts, I start to feel like I’m neglecting the place. When that happens, I make these semi-empty posts at an attempt to make this place seem somewhat active. So here we go!
In the way of site updates, you’ll notice yet another theme change. Yea well…I wasn’t kidding when I said that I’m very indecisive
. Truthfully, I was happy with the previous version (for those of you who didn’t see it, it was a dark blue theme). But, I dunno, I think I was looking for a lighter theme with more subtle blues instead of “blue overload”. So now I’m running a more minimalistic theme which, I hope, is easier on the eyes and a little more professional looking. I like it, so that’s all that really matters. I also updated the favicon to better match my dumb logo design. I still need to make an adjustment or two to the theme, like add in the site logo, tweak the CSS for tables, and maybe replace the background image too. We’ll see…it’s all low priority though.
Oh, and the site has been updated to run on WordPress 3.2.1 as well! There have been a few updates between now and my last mentioning of an update. But the thing to take away from this is that I keep the site running on the lastest WordPress version. That’s how much I care about all “1″ of you visitors
Ahem….umm, so….yea. What have I been up to lately? A metric crap-ton of things. Or that’s what it feels like anyways. Aside from my domestic going-ons (which I will spare you…but I have been very busy), I have stupidly put more work on myself in the Doom department. It’s clear to me now that I will never learn my lesson
. From that last update I left here, I was taking a break on Vela Pax after the release of the public test candidate and I was also working on Supplice. Shortly after that, I resumed work on Vela Pax (specifically MAP04) while still doing bits of work here and there on Supplice. And then something happened. At one point I was a part of the The Shores of ZDoom team (check that link for more info on the project), but I had to drop out because I had too many things going on and school was also taking up a major chunk of my time. But the TSoZD team has been having a tough time with keeping work going and keeping contributors on board. I felt bad that I left when I did, so I decided to join back up and try to help out. So with that decision made, I decided that I would try my best to balance work between Vela Pax, Supplice, and now TSoZD; since then, I have yet to work on any of thosee three projects yet. Why? Well, for one, I’ve been busy at home. But another reason is I recently started working on yet another contribution for a yet-to-be-announced vanilla project. None of this is counting the stuff in-between that I’ve promised to do. So work is really starting to pile up and I’m trying desperately to whittle down the list as quickly as I can. To date, this makes almost 7 different major projects that I have some sort of responsibility for or to (again, not counting small bits in-between). And I’m going to try my best not to squelch on any of them. Although this does mean that there is no way I’ll be able to contribute to any other project for the foreseeable future. So please don’t ask (because I might be stupid enough to say “yes!”).
Like I said, I’ll never learn my lesson
. Geez, it’s too bad I don’t get paid to do any of this stuff!
But enough of my lamenting. I have a few more posts planned for the future, some Doom-related and some not, so look for those if you are the least bit interested.
. But that probably won’t happen, heh. Before my hiatus, I found a couple things on Ebay that I wanted to buy. But since I almost never use my Paypal account, I had to verify it again before I could send any money. Soooo that has been the main reason why I’m even on the computer to begin with (don’t even get me started on the nightmare it has been to get all of that figured out). It’s about 1:00 AM here and I’m bored after talking to Ebay/Paypal customer service 4 times today…so here I am making a post.
). I’m hoping to have a test map finished to show off the new textures and sprites to the public sometime soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that!
. The general idea behind the game is to create a first-person shooter that is very fast paced but varied and focused on oldschool visual aesthetics with some modern features to enhance the experience. We also want to make it very modding and mapping friendly and we also hope to release the source code to the public down the line. If all goes according to plan, we hope to be able to sell the game for a modest profit and then maybe even start a small indie game design company with the team that ends up working on the game. So far the kicker for us is the art style I’m hoping to use – oldschool, early 90′s, low-res, pixely-style realistic FPS. That may not make much sense as you read it, but the idea is to place as much emphasis as possible on a sort of “pixel art” style where art assets are intentionally low-res and very crunchy looking. Your probably thinking to yourself “how is that realistic?”. That may not be the case today, but with games like Doom or DN3D, they were “realistic” for their time (or at least very immersive). So instead of going with a cartoon or modern-day realistic approach, I’m looking to take an olschool aesthetic that some think looks bad and dated and turn it into an art style. In fact you see it pretty often these days with the indie game movement…many developers are going back to the oldschool roots and the results have been very surprising (Minecraft is a good example as far as visuals are concerned). I’m hoping the end results will look something like Doom’s software render, except without the color or freelook or map limitations (maybe Quake’s software renderer would be a better example). And that’s all I’m willing to divulge about the project right now