I've been playing around with Flip Fluids, an addon for Blender that does liquid simulations that (seem to) go beyond what Blender's built-in liquid simulation can do. I've not made anything particularly mind-blowing yet, but I thought I'd post a render I made today just for fun. Behold: some orange-ish goop flooding down a staircase!
On this day, back in 2007, this happened:
I was in the middle of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas and about to start the original Saints Row. My Xbox 360 was only about 6 months old!
I've been a fan of Xbox for a while now. I bought a copy of Gears of War on Xbox 360 for my brother, for his birthday - a game I thought looked pretty amazing.
While I waited to give it to him, I became more and more tempted to play it myself. After a few days I caved, bought an Xbox 360, and ripped that copy of the game open for myself. I bought him another copy later.
Overall I think I had two Xbox 360's "red ring" on me. I still have the third one, an Xbox 360 S, sitting under my TV, but it doesn't get much use - virtually all the games I own for it work on my Xbox Series X.
It's a little crazy that the Xbox 360 did so well for its generation, considering the technical issues it had. But the PlayStation 3 had a number of problems as well, and the Wii was almost in a class by itself.
I'm glad the latest slew of consoles are so much better, in any case. Having constant dread over the "red ring of death" was not a good way to be.
I played the original Mafia a lot when I was in college. The game had many faults: it was brutally difficult, driving around was tedious, and it was sort of a technical mess. But it was Grand Theft Auto in the 1930's, and when it all clicked, it was still fun.
So when Mafia: Definitive Edition was announced last year, I was excited. I still have the original PC game discs, and I'd tried to get them to run on my modern machines, but it would never work. Finally, I'd get to relive one of my favorite games of old!
I finally got around to playing it in 2021, and honestly, the game is just great. Even though the game has been rebuilt and changed around a bit, it has all the missions I remember from the original - and everything is much more polished and thoughtful.
Mid-mission save points take a lot of the frustration out of the more difficult sequences, so one mistake doesn't mean you have to carefully redo the entire level. The game physics are also a lot more forgiving - to the point that, if you accidentally flip your car over, you can press a button to right it. Sure, that can break the immersion a bit, but I don't mind. It's too convenient for me to get mad.
This particular game engine seems a lot more robust than the original as well - I played the entire game, from start to finish, without one problem. I even left the game running over multiple days, using my Xbox's quick resume feature to continue from the same point each day.
The game is beautiful as well; the city of Lost Heaven (and its inhabitants) never looked so good! Everywhere you go, there is careful detail to be found - I could go on and on about how much care seems to have gone into this game world. Even though the scope is a bit smaller, it's on par with games like Grand Theft Auto V or Red Dead Redemption 2, in my opinion - and the team who made it should be proud.
The cinematic cut scenes are particularly great. I never found myself wanting to skip them because they are so well done.
I have a few minor gripes, of course. The music, though good, is one of the only parts of the game that seems to have been completely changed from the original. I miss the original music, even though it was quite repetitive.
I also miss the original voice acting - but not nearly as much as the music. The new acting is actually really well done, and by the end of the game I didn't miss the original voice work at all, but if you played a lot of the original (and you remember it), the new voice acting might take some getting used to.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this game, and I'm glad that, thanks to this remaster, it wasn't lost to time.
Now I need to get on Mafia 2 and 3 - both of which I've never really played before!
After the pandemic began last year, I decided I wouldn't get my hair cut again until we had gotten over the hump with it. I wear my hair long anyway - and only get the end lopped off occasionally at home - so it was one part solidarity, and one part laziness.
Now that my wife and I are fully vaccinated, and she's finally been able to safely go get her own hair cut, it seemed like it was finally time for me too.
So last night, I let her have at it, and my hair is about 8 inches shorter now! No more double hair ties. It feels good.
I've used OneDrive as a centralized place to keep all of my work for a while now, and it's great. Everything I do gets uploaded immediately, and it makes syncing up devices (and refreshing my computers) easy. I got rid of my old backup CD's a long time ago, instead opting to keep all my old projects in the cloud.
OneDrive surfaces my old work occasionally, and I low-key love it. Each day it creates a new "on this day" album, which will contain all of the visual stuff I made that day - photos, renders, etc. - on the same day throughout time. It can be a real blast from the past!
Yesterday was one such day, with the render above, which I created in trueSpace more than 20 years ago. My intent was to use it as a backdrop for an adventure game I was planning to make, but I had no idea how to actually make games back then, and so, like many projects back then, it was over before it even got started.
Still, I got a kick out of seeing this. My skill as a 3D artist has come a long way since then!
My work on the next iteration of this website is coming along well! My to-do list has been steadily shrinking, and most everything is looking just how I like it. As always, I've started having misgivings about the new color scheme, but I can tweak that as I go - no use getting stuck on that at this late stage of production!
Really, all that's left now is to tie up a few loose ends here and there, make some last-minute adjustments to my template names, make sure everything works alright on mobile... and hit the big, red Activate button. The closer I get, the more tempting it is to just push it and clean things up later, but I will control myself (for now).
I know nearly nobody is reading this, but I don't care - I like shouting into the void. If you're out there and reading this - thanks!
I got my second COVID-19 vaccine shot yesterday - and though I'm feeling quite tired today, that seems to be the extent of the side effects for me.
Even though I've been lucky to work from home during all this (that's my normal routine), and my family and I have remained safe, it's been a long road to this point. It feels like the world has turned a corner on this and I hope things will get back to some semblance of normal soon.
If you're not vaccinated yet, please do so, if you can. And please continue following safety guidelines until it's safe to stop. We are getting there!
I know I'm screaming into the void here, but I need to make a post and see how the date formats, so... here's an update. I'm still working on the new website theme!
I started playing this game, Octopath Traveler, in earnest after it got added to Xbox Game Pass. Lately I've been hesitant to get into RPGs, because I know they'll require time that I might not be able to afford.
I'm really enjoying this game though, and I'm glad I finally played it. I almost picked it up on Switch, where it launched initially - but I just don't spend enough time with that system to buy many games for it (plus, I have a crippling addiction to Xbox achievements).
It's good fun, and maybe thanks to it releasing on Switch first, sessions with it are very reasonable in length - save points abound, boss fights don't take an hour, and the overworld is easy to traverse. I'm happy for that, because it means I can take small bites out of it when I can, or extend my play sessions when I have more time.
The stories introduced with each new character are also very well done and help establish why each joins the party. I like how varied they are.
Anyway, I recommend it. It doesn't seem like it's going to be a short game (I'm about 25 hours in and still on "chapter 1", whatever that means), but it can fit into just about any schedule. And if you like role-playing games of old, it certainly scratches that itch.
Update: So, uh, some of the boss fights do take a second to finish. Luckily, the game plays well with Xbox's ability to suspend/resume games. I imagine the experience is similar on Switch. Anyway, something to note.
Making new themes for WordPress is fun and always a surprisingly complicated affair. The amount of pages you have to edit seems like not so much at first - and then you start tearing into the logic and stuff that's going on behind the scenes, and things really start getting crazy.
Anyway, the new theme for the website is coming along. I hope to have it done in... a month? We'll see.