WangNet

I have a moderately strong urge to make my own resin/vinyl toys. Clearly I do not have the sculpting board tools (damn you carpentry!), and I was never good at slicing foam; so I think I might use some sort of clay. I hear Sculpey is good stuff... hmmm...

Thankfully it appears dickblick has the: sculpey for the figure, silicone for the mold, the resin for the casting. I am moderately concerned about having resin and what not in an apartment. hmmm....

Another project for another day.

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/2d__and__photoshop/cast_a_designer_toy

http://www.ehow.com/how_2320863_sculpey-statue-figurine-maquette.html

http://www.tesselate.me.uk/tessetoys/html/guide1.htm

Here's the basic graphics I have been using to get the back end code up and running.

screen example

While it's not much visually at the moment there is a butt load of back end code that had to be worked out...

- the user animates when moved.
- there's a map builder that allows me to quickly build unique.. er.. maps.
- item pick up and application works
- there's an enemy that takes damage when attacked by the user.. and drops and item when killed.
- i even have a background animation for 'waving grass'... but that's not shown at the moment.

Obviously this was saved in mspaint (the screen shot).. the graphics are a bit more sharp.

I made a bit of head way.. I have my basic map builder done... well for the background tiles and writing it to xml (and loading it back).

I have to get a new xml grid for the items.. a grid for the enemies (and enemy properties).. and the integrating this load of a map to the game itself.

I am more or less back on board with my KPS the RPG. (Think top down zelda style game over lay for a purchasing system).

Depending what happens this evening I will have some of the non check off items done.

Yeppie.

Major miles stones
-x- background
-x- -- background test animation
-x- user sprite
-x- -- movement
-x- -- minor animation
-x- -- stat reporting
-x- items (attack bonus, defense bonus, bombs)
-x- item pickup
-x- enemy class fleshed out
-x- functional font based dashboard
-- attack
-- item drop
-- level builder
-- npc
-- -- npc interaction.

When I get the last of these things prototyped I will dump the class outlines and demo out on my page.

Main executable
|-> Game engine
.......|-> Background animation
.......|-> Game world
..............|-> PC sprite
..............|-> NPC sprite
..............|-> game objects
..............|-> enemies

I am back on the XNA wagon again. Over the weekend I had a day (Saturday to be specific) where I milled about and talked to zero people all day. It is interesting and somewhat sad that a day like that occurs, and lord knows points to a reason why I should get a girlfriend or married, and I opted to spend some time reviewing the ol' KPS:The RPG projects I have dicked around with over the years.

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http://sixrevisions.com/resources/cheat_sheets_for_web_designers/

For future reference..


How to Draw Heads Advanced Techniques"
http://www.mangarevolution.com/tutorial_display.php?tutorial_id=146
"How to Draw Heads"
http://www.mangarevolution.com/tutorial_display.php?tutorial_id=21

Story.. story.. hmm… well there was this one time where I was working for the Testing department of a previous employer. I was in our low key period (we went through a month or three of intense work then had two or three weeks of a lull where we were supposed to be brushing up on our skills, learning new areas of system testing, and so forth. I usually spent my time in “meetings” where I chatted it up with folks from other floors, “meetings” where I went to the arcade for hours on end, or playing NetHack (the graphical version) for extended periods of time. On a fairly droll afternoon I was approached by my boss to check out a system irregularity on a client’s test bed.

After some poking around I noticed a few console commands were made available to me that usually are locked. I leaned over, and saw the old codger in the cube next to me was not at his desk and his pc wasn’t locked. I jumped on his keyboard and started tapping away furiously. It turns out the client also had a low key weapons research facility under a subsidiary’s name and neglected to have the foresight of NOT putting it on the archaic terminal system in our test bed. Oddly enough this was where the initial irregularity was coming from – research data on their end was bleeding through and sucking down processing time thus throwing off the testing. I shut down what I needed, but lingered reading through their fairly unimpressive robots schematics, dumby artificial intelligence programs, and weak friend/foe identification software. I was mulling over if I wanted to add a few pointers for their R&D group when I heard the tell-tale sounds of jackboots clomping off the elevator and on the tile. I quickly rebooted my neighbor’s pc, shoved the keyboard over, and wheeled around to my neglected game. The hired goons were gesturing wildly in my direction to my boss, and both stomped over but stopped at my neighbor’s cube. Expletives flew as they saw the final reboot sequence then they turned to me. The grilling was intensely predictable:

“Did you see so and so today? Yes sir.
Was he here recently? I think so sir, but I was busy and didn’t really pay attention.
Did anyone else use his PC? No sir, I would have noticed an undesirable from the general humdrum of the office.”

Thankfully my neighbor was returning from what looked like an exhausting trip to the little boys room. The thugs swarmed him, grabbed him each by an arm, and drug him off to the elevators. I watched from my third floor window as he was unceremoniously chucked into a black van. The van idled for a minute longer, and they leisurely pulled away from the curb and merged into the afternoon traffic. I knew it wouldn’t take them long to figure out that fossil lacked any forward thinking to do what I did, so I started packing my backpack in preparations of a quick escape.

Three more attempts at my game was all it took for the black van to make a reappearance. I calmly snagged my jump drive, mp3 player, and hat. I am certain they were not sure who might have infiltrated their first grade defenses, but I know they would want to “ask me a few questions” which for some reason always ends up with me in the hospital. I would rather like to avoid that line of “questioning”, so I make for the elevator. All four were moving up, and I am not sure which one held my soon-to-be close friends. The bell rang, and I peered over my backpack shielding my face. Oh! Luck has favored me and this was the elevator I called. I punched the lobby counting on the goons to not be lingering. As the door was closing I saw them getting off! Huzzah!

I hit the lobby and skitter across the wet marble giving the old janitor the bird. Why wash the floors in the middle of the afternoon? Pure ludicrous! I burst out into the afternoon sun to see four guards smoking next to their van. They raised an eyebrow, but ignored me. I weaved through the parking lot until I came to the back lot where I stash my bike. I gunned the engine and made for the streets. Safety, security, just another freak in a city of irrelevant little lives. I was twenty feet from the street when the first of the bullets wizzed pasted and embedded themselves in the company’s sign. A stream of swear words flowed out of my mouth like a rainspout, but were lost in the engine whine.

A epic chase developed leaving at least four cars in flames, twenty or so people scattered across the trauma charts, and thousands of dollars in property damage. Two of the four goons learned that you are never too old to learn how to fly off the side of a bridge, one learned what a karambit was ten seconds too late, and the other probably will not see the light of day outside an asylum. I weave through the outlying fields of corn in the fading sun lackadaisically making my home for some well earned rest.

The next morning the financial reports indicated a “breach of trust” with the client company leading to a complete pull out of federal money, their board in jail for fraud, and dissolution of their interests. Good, I’m in the clear. I skip past the Jones’s sprinklers and saddle up on my bike. I punch my mp3 player for random and get the familiar guitar rift from Radiohead’s “The Bends”. Ah… it’s going to be a good day today. “Where do we go from here? ; The words are coming out all weird…”.

I am going to probably start back up my 2-d, top down, RPG based on my company's purchasing system. A bit final fantasy.. a bit form fill outs.. but I think it would make an excellent edition to how things are entered... why just *create a purchase order* when you must kill enough enemies to be at the right level as well as have the right ingredients to make a po... heh.. minor random achievements are a wonder!