Little Big Planet 2 – (week 50)

Posted on January 31, 2012 by benjaminfrog

Well, it took me a very long time to get around to it, but after a month of watching the Lord of The Rings extended edition DVDs for inspiration, designing new weapons, Elf friends and variations of Goblins such as Goblins that blow themselves up and Uruk-Hai with white hands painted on them, I finally felt I was ready to construct a rough version of Helm’s Deep.

It’s pretty good so far. I’ve set up main tents that sprout Uruk-Hai in the distance, with spots closer to the Deeping Wall where the enemy AI can set up more tents. I’ve got the doors and the wall’s weakspot that can be broken away. I’ve got it set to slowly turn from night to dawn with the arrival of the Rohirrim at daybreak. Playing through it I can get a sense of the hecticness that I should be feeling in that battle.

It could definitely do with some tweaking though. Once the doors and walls have been breached the Uruk-Hai don’t seem to have much incentive to come inside. Well, admittedly, I didn’t design their AI to be all that complex, but I definitely need to come up with a “getting overrun with orcs” mechanic so that losing the wall is actually a problem rather than just a minor sign of sucking that can for the most part be ignored.

Having been sufficiently inspired, I also finally constructed a Balrog boss for my Barbarian game.

What’s that? Not nerdy enough?

As I was watching the documentaries on the bonus discs of Lord of The Rings I came across the info that Peter Jackson had intended early on to include a scene featuring the “Slime Balrog” – the form that the Balrog takes after hitting the water at the bottom of Moria – but the concept was eventually abandoned due to time or budget issues.

Looking up the concept art on the disc for reference, I constructed my Balrog in Little Big Planet 2 to switch from a flaming state to a slimey state after taking a certain amount of damage, with his extinquished wings sticking out like long, skeletal hands.

I just need to make the Kraken from Clash of the Titans and then I can watch the battle of the century!

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Thundynamite

Posted on January 23, 2012 by benjaminfrog

I was lying in bed trying to sleep but couldn’t stop thinking about a TV show combining Napoleon Dynamite and ThunderCats.

The main character would be Napolion-O Dynamite, Lord of the ThunderCats, who would live with his brother and sister Wily Kip & Kap Dynamite, and occasionally their Uncle Tygrico whenever Grandma Jaga goes to the hospital. Napolion-O would ask this girl named Cheetarisha to the dance. His brother would end up with an amazon queen named Willafawnduh. Snarf would own a dojo where he teaches Snarf Kwon Do, and he’d be married to a muscular, white cat named Starmeow. And the main villain would be a blonde girl named Summer-RA The Ever Living who keeps calling upon mysterious, evil forces to give her a makeover.

Am I forgetting anything?

Oh yeah – vote for Panthro.

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Warrior Spirit

Posted on January 16, 2012 by benjaminfrog

It was just over a year ago that my dad took me to the ROM to see the Terracotta Warriors. I decided I should pick up something small to remember the day by, and when I went to the shop I saw some keychain ornaments of insects in amber.

It came down to choosing between a scorpion and a shiny beetle, and after long and careful deliberation I went with the shiny beetle. It could easily have gone either way, but one item was just slightly more intriguing to me.

On the one hand – scorpions are deadly, and therefore more masculine, and carrying one around on a keychain could be seen as a charm to symbolically endow me with scorpion-like power. But on the other hand – SHINY!  : D

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Little Big Planet 2 – (week 46)

Posted on January 7, 2012 by benjaminfrog

Had some downtime the past couple of days and have been in a creative/medieval mood, so I did a lot of work on the Barbarian game. Added some new weaponry and the option to breathe fire and bite people. I added The Mouth Of Sauron as an enemy, and did some tweaking on a character based on Perseus’ stepfather from Clash Of The Titans, who bleeds scorpions when you damage him.

I also experimented with a type of unit I had in mind to create a while ago but hadn’t figured out what genre it belonged too. I adapted the idea for the Barbarian game in the form of holographic swords that move at lightning speed. Conceptually, the idea was to have a swarm of fighters that move instantly to a target, surround it, mow it down with firepower until it’s destroyed, and then instantly surround the next nearest target until all targets are gone and the fighters instantly shift to surrounding you in a defensive position. Teleporting would have been preferable, but the programming to simulate teleportation would have created strict limitations, but using the Follower tool at maximum speed and acceleration creates the effect of teleportation pretty closely, especially with the object made out of holographic material so that it can pass through solid objects.

Anyways, I tested out the Living Sword units as a group and the results were every bit as cool as I had imagined, and surprisingly hilarious. Picture a swarm of light-up bees attacking something at several times the normal speed, stopping suddenly for a breather, then attacking again, and you’ve got some idea of what it looks like.

I’m undecided on what colours I want them to come in though. When they form a defensive perimeter around the Barbarian, in large numbers, and with blade pointing out they create an interesting star effect, which makes me think reds, yellows and oranges might be nice.

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Where My Cup Rests

Posted on December 22, 2011 by benjaminfrog

Sometimes people aren’t quite sure what I’m doing. I’ll be moving back and forth through the house without sitting down, or I’ll only sit down for a few seconds and then start moving again. When I’m on a mission I rarely explain why I suddenly leave the room. It makes it difficult for people to predict where I’m going to be sitting when I finally do settle down.

But there’s an easy way to tell where I intend on spending my time when I finally sit down for a rest – it’s wherever I rest my cup.

I’ve always got a drink with me – whether it’s coke, water, or some other kind of drink that’s foreign to me. I get dry throats easily so I’ve always got a drink ready for me, even when I’m not thirsty. I guess it’s my version of a safety blanket. I would never intentionally be away from my drink for long, so if I’ve put my cup down somewhere, you can be sure that that’s where I intend to spend most of my time, even if I’m moving around a lot. No matter where I go or for how long I will always be drawn back to where my cup rests.

I may leave the room now and then because I’m restless, or distracted, but if my cup is there, you can be sure that that’s where I intend to rest, that’s where I intend to stay, that’s where my heart is.

Jesus, my cup is with you.

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Doomsday Prophecy!

Posted on December 14, 2011 by benjaminfrog

The most accurate Bible verse regarding the exact date and time of the apocalypse…

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” – Mark 13:32

…Also the most overlooked.

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The Z List

Posted on December 5, 2011 by benjaminfrog

It occurred to me recently that I could turn off the music on my computer games, turn on the music player on my laptop, and listen to my own custom playlists while playing games. Having discovered that, I set out to create a playlist specifically for playing Plants Vs. Zombies.

Wanna see my song choices? 😀

Don’t Stay (Linkin Park)

Unwanted (Avril Lavigne)

Zombie Zoo (Tom Petty)

Can’t You Hear My Heart Beat? (Herman’s Hermits)

I Want It All (Queen)

Commotion (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Land Of Confusion (Genesis)

Wanted Dead Or Alive (Bon Jovi)

Under Pressure (Queen and David Bowie)

Get Rhythm (Johnny Cash)

My Happy Ending (Avril Lavigne)

Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

All That I’m Living For (Evanescence)

Place For My Head (Linkin Park)

Lookin’ Out My Back Door (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Sunday Morning Coming Down (Johnny Cash)

Easier To Run (Linkin Park)

The Show Must Go On (Queen)

I Won’t Back Down (Tom Petty)

Sober (P!nk)

Beautiful Day (U2)

We Are The Champions (Queen)

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Little Big Planet 2 – (week 41)

Posted on November 29, 2011 by benjaminfrog

Haven’t been working on this game much the past few months, though lately I’ve been in the mood for destroying buildings so, I finally got around to starting that Giant Monster level.

Now that I’ve actually started and am expirimenting and seeing what the potential is for a giant monster level, I can’t believe I didn’t get to this sooner. Experience has shown that when getting together my friends we get the most enjoyment out of LBP2 levels when the Grabbinator tool is involved. We really like tossing each other around. So what could be more fun than throwing each other into buildings – and then throwing said buildings at each other?

There’s been constant traffic jams in the urban environments during gameplay, and at first I thought it was because the exits I designed for the vehicles were too small. But further playing, coupled with basic logic, helped me realize that the real problem was that I kept chucking buildings onto the roadways. That seems like a natural recipe for a traffic jam.

I’m still tweaking the mechanics, and now that I’ve gotten started thinking of things like how civilians and vehicles should respond to certain events, I can’t shut my brain off. I’m wondering how I can incorporate the Power Rangers into this…perhaps having the Dragonzord as a boss battle.

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Deep Question #3

Posted on November 16, 2011 by benjaminfrog

Could Superman perform laser eye surgery on himself?

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Tapestry

Posted on November 12, 2011 by benjaminfrog

I have found Star Trek: The Next Generation to be a very inspiring show. I can’t seem to get into any other Star Trek series, but I’ve really fallen in love with Next Generation in particular. It was a family tradition during my childhood, and in my adult years I decided to check it out again as it came on TV, and it felt like coming home.

Going over my impression on the show as a whole would take some time, but there are four episodes in particular that I’ve kept recorded;

“Reunion”: Because it introduces the Klingon Gowron – who I find hilarious…

“Starship Mine”: Because Data makes a total Aspie of himself…

“Peak Performance”: Because it shows Data dealing with pressure and failure the same way I do…

And the episode I want to talk about in more detail is “Tapestry.”

This episode is all about regret. Regreting our mistakes, mourning what could’ve been. In this episode Captain Picard is given a rare opportunity to revisit a time in his life that he particularly regrets and see how things could’ve gone differently. Using Picard’s life as an
example, the episode shows how little things, decisions, and tests of character can drastically affect the person you grow to be.

This episode almost works as a kind of stand-alone, one-hour feature. The take-away is that good. But if you’ve never seen the show and you don’t already know who the characters are and how they relate to each other then some of the dialogue and the significance of certain character interactions will likely be lost. It helps that this is one of the episodes where the Shakespearean training really comes out, and that Q has a role in it all. The dialogue between that character and Picard is always intriguing to me.

One con in this episode is the weird attempt at a love story arc. Though, the love stories in Star Trek have never made sense to me, so that isn’t saying much.

Contrary to Picard, at present I’ve got more years to look forward to than to look back on (I hope), so my perspective as I watch this episode is a little different. I can point to things I regret, sure, mostly in my childhood, though at my current age I don’t feel that my life
has finished being molded yet. Rather than looking at how much my past has shaped the person that I am, I feel as though today I am still shaping the man I will become, therefore, I tend more to regret the things I’ve just done a few minutes ago rather than the things in my distant past.

In either case, this episode really helps to put a good perspective on things, on how my actions yesterday shaped the young man that I am, and how my actions today are shaping the man that I am becoming. – No regrets.

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