So, it's been a while since my last blog post, eh?
Well, let's ignore the fact that this seems to be a recurring theme here at Marty Blog lately, and do a bit of catching up. A lot has happened since the last time I posted anything here, and as always, I've got a lot to say about things.
Rather than putting it all in one big topic that nobody wants to read, I'm going to write up a series of posts in (what I hope will be) rapid succession that cover everything and make my blog even beefier, simultaneously.
Sound good? I hope so! Stay on the lookout for updates in the coming hours/days!
Just wanted to throw down a quick update here, since it's been quite a while, and I'm sure many people out there are sitting on the edge of their seats, wondering if I'm lying in a gutter somewhere. Many sleepless nights were had, courtesy of my lack of updates, and I am sorry.
Fear not, however! I am alive and well, and have just been busy with a lot of work and, of course, a lot of play.
I don't think I'd posted the above picture on the blog yet, so there it is - a tree painting I'd done some weeks ago for a contest and auction for the Sacramento Tree Foundation. Sadly, it didn't get accepted into the limited space of the show, but I'm glad to have made it, and I have more ideas for some other paintings in this style.
This painting was done in acrylic paint and paint pen on a 15" x 30" canvas. Here's the sketch the painting is based on (ink on 5.5" x 8.5" sketch pad):
During my time away from the blog, I got to go up to my parents' house for a bit one weekend, and went out on a small vacation to Sonoma with my girlfriend too. I had a great time with both, and the time away from doing work has been refreshing.
Speaking of work, I've got more work lined up for No Love Skateboarding - along with the rat image I posted a while ago, which was used for a shirt design and then reconfigured for a skateboard design, I've done a Denver cityscape and have a few other projects for shirts and boards on deck which I'll post here eventually.
I'm also working on a disc label and CD jacket for a friend of my dad's, Johnny "Guitar" Knox, who is a local blue guitarist in the Sacramento area. That project is going a bit slower than originally planned, but it's getting done slowly.
I've also got a logo to design for my girlfriend's cousin which I have yet to start.
And finally, probably the biggest time sink of them all, I've finally completed Dragon Age: Origins, after about 60 hours of play. The game was good, long, and fun. I'm glad I finally got into it. I've already started another play-through, but I think I'm going to take a break for a while so I can finish on my aforementioned projects, as well as re-acquaint myself with some of the other games I've neglected over the months.
After the somewhat botched Gears of War 3 announcement last week, I've been thinking about running through Gears of War 2 again on Insane difficulty, so I can grab all the collectibles I missed and have some more action-oriented fun for a change. I also want to sink my teeth into some of the Mass Effect 2 DLC that came out while I was playing Dragon Age, but I'm just not in the mood for another epic gaming marathon right now.
Anyway, thanks for checking in, hope the lack of posts hasn't kept anyone away, and (again, I know!) I shall try to be better with the updates.
Lately I've been working with Andrew Gelber, a buddy of mine, to help get his skateboarding company off the ground. So far this has included creating a logo, re-skinning a WordPress theme, and doing lots of other various graphic projects. It's not a lot of work, and it's been fun and challenging to see how creative we can get.
The above rat image was created to be screened onto the bottom of a line of skateboards Andrew will be putting out soon. I sent it off to him yesterday, and I'm excited to see the final product. It's a remake of the lino-print below, that I made in college for one of my art classes:
The no Love website can be found here. it's still pretty basic, and definitely a work in progress, but it's getting better all the time. If you're in the Denver, CO area and are interested in this sort of thing, give it a look.
In lieu of making any actual posts in February, I've been working on getting my old, outdated games page set up on the blog, and I'm just about done with it. All that's needed to do is add a few more games to the list, dress things up a bit, and maybe convert all the old games to GM8. You can find the link to the new page in the header menu, or by clicking here.
And yes, I've also been working on the Reflect Games re-design again. It's slow-going, as always, but it's coming. CSS always gets me down when it comes to turning a Photoshop comp into a working design, but I'm getting better at it. There's a lot to like about CSS - and in my opinion, a lot to hate too.
Anyway, I just wanted to explain my absence and point out the new section above - hopefully this turns out to be a better home for my games than the old site. I'll be shutting that site off and linking the "games" subdomain to that page soon. Consolidation is good.
Well, that last post was a doozy. A bit of a hard act to follow, eh?
Jokes aside, that last post really was partially to blame for my recent hiatus from posting here. After the fallout over the old-new Game Maker logo settled, the dust cleared, and (some of) the anger subsided, YoYo Games stated that they'd be open to suggestions for altering the new logo. So, I helped produce a topic on the Game Maker Community to get everyone's suggestions in one place, and we eventually ended up putting logos to vote and submitting them to YYG as the community's official suggestions.
As many of you might already know, it worked out well, Sandy Duncan/YYG liked our ideas, and they ended up changing the logo. It was a great accomplishment for the GMC, and I am glad that we were all able to come together and set things right - but keeping it all organized left me quite exhausted. That, and I have had a lot of other work to do lately, helping a friend get a website off the ground, working on my own games/projects, doing the last Reflect Games game development competition of the year, fixing my laptop, shopping for the holidays, etc.
So the blog got left behind a bit. I did manage to sneak in and fix up some of the graphics on the theme. It's that time where I've started wanting to change it (again, I know), but a quick refresh of the sloppy parts has satisfied my urge to change it for now.
Most of the things I mentioned above are over or winding down now though, so I'm hoping that after the holidays I'll have more time to play with Game Maker, website development (yes, the ongoing Reflect Games website is still in the works!), and other related stuff. It's just been a busy time.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll be updating the blog again before the bulk of the holidays hit, so I just wanted to wish everyone out there a happy holiday and a good new year! I hope the end of 2009 turns out to be well for everyone!
Thanks for reading, and I will see you all in 2010!
I haven't been able to update the blog as much as I'd like over the last few weeks, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about things to write about. Instead of letting all of my random thoughts go to waste, I thought I'd present them here as a collection. If you're just looking for a few moments of entertainment, you like reading the musings of the slightly insane, or you're looking for something to spark your pent-up rage, the following list is probably for you!
Never Too Zune
Each time I plug my iPod (5th generation) into my computer and it freezes up, I secretly hope that it won't come back on, so I have an excuse to buy a Zune HD. From everything I've seen online, these things look pretty nice, and I'd like to try something different than iPod for a while. I have absolutely no interest in the iPod Touch or an iPhone; the 32gb Touch is $110 more than the 32gb Zune HD and being tethered to AT&T again just makes me feel sick.
But I digress; the Zune HD looks slick in its own right. Wireless streaming capabilities and built-in HD radio are great, and I also like the idea of being able to output HD video and, of course, web browsing. If Microsoft opens up the Zune to user-created applications, it will become an even great alternative to the iPod. They seem to be making an effort to get developers to consider their other mobile devices, so I don't think this is too far-fetched. So far, however, they've been pretty tight-lipped about it.
Marvel Comics Feeling a Little Disney
Though I am not a huge comic book buff, I still felt as though I could almost hear the collective groan of fans as Disney scooped up Marvel Comics for a cool $4 billion early this week. Though both companies are distinctly American, and I am sure DIsney will handle Marvel with care, I still feel like Disney is starting to (or maybe already has) hit that critical mass where a company gets so big, with a reach so broad, that it ends up losing focus on all fronts.
There are plenty of companies out there who handle the multiple prongs of modern media quite well, but Disney has already been in danger of losing its grip on things in the past, and with yet another large addition to their stable of interests, I can't help but wonder what the future will be like for both Disney and Marvel.
Will Disney change how Marvel presents its franchises?
Will we see Marvel characters integrated with Disney's other mainstays, in titles like the Kingdom Hearts games?
Will we see another feud in Disney's management as these things happen?
Who knows? It could be interesting to watch, but it'll be a shame if either brand is hurt because of this.
All-Out Fallout
When I got sick a couple of weeks ago, I spent a few days laying around my apartment, relaxing and recovering. My girlfriend had some things to do up at her mom's house, and didn't want to risk getting sick, so I was all by myself for much of that time. Instead of doing anything productive, I used the time to get re-acquainted with my Xbox; I decided that there was no better way of doing this than by collecting all the achievements in Fallout 3.
I did all that I could with my existing character (why did Bethesda choose to make one bobblehead impossible to go back and get?), and then made another so I could focus on slightly different talents to pick up a few odd achievements, like the one for 50 speech successes, and also so I could hit the appropriate levels with neutral and bad karma.
I've now gotten every achievement in Fallout 3, as well as in Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt, and have had a lot of fun in the process. I've seen a lot of things that I missed in my first go-round, and have grown to appreciate, for a second time, the vast world of Fallout 3.
Hackintosh is Dead
Though I usually get my fill of OS X at work, a few months ago I got OS X up and running on some old PC hardware I had laying around at home. I was mostly interested in trying my hand at iPhone App development, so I downloaded the iPhone SDK and got everything up and running without many problems. I didn't use the old rig often however, and I let it sit around for a while before firing it up again last week.
Though I've been told it isn't a good idea, I've used the system update on my Hackintosh before, and everything's turned out fine. When I booted up to find a 300+ mb system update waiting for me, I thought nothing of it as I proceeded with the download and installation. Unfortunately, the update broke my installation, and for some reason I haven't been able to re-install it since. Either something has changed on my box (something which sticks around after multiple hard drive re-partitions?) or I simply can't remember the settings I used to install OS X the first time. It's a drag, but frankly I haven't had time to learn to code iPhone Apps anyway. I'll probably dig into this a little deeper one of these weekends when I've got nothing better to do.
Can't Take the Heat
Recently, I was playing some World of Warcraft on my desktop computer, wrapping up a dungeon with a group of others, when the image on the screen stuttered, a strange dot pattern appeared around my cursor and the UI elements, and then the computer locked up. After a quick restart, and about a minute of play, the same thing happened. In a hurry to get back into the game (and in an effort not to be the reason for the deaths of my entire group), I threw open my laptop and loaded the game up there. In-game disaster was narrowly averted, but it left me worried about my desktop machine.
In my experience, most graphical glitches of this kind are attributed to overheating hardware – the bane of all computer gamers.
So earlier today, I opened up my desktop computer and dusted it out. Then I turned it on and started World of Warcraft again, and let it sit. About 10 minutes later, I came back into the room to find the screen flickering and the computer frozen. Not good.
I guess this is a good excuse to get a new GPU, something I've been wanting to do for a while anyway, but my existing motherboard doesn't have a PCI-Express 2.0 slot on it, so I'm back to the same conundrum as before I assembled my current desktop - upgrading one part means upgrading two or three others as well. And since these are all the most expensive parts (GPU, CPU, motherboard), I might as well just splurge a few extra hundred bucks and update the rest of the hardware. But if my apartment is getting too hot (it's hot here lately, but not that hot), I'm not too keen on buying and subsequently ruining more computer hardware either. It's a problem, I guess.
That's All For Now
Anyway, I think that's enough of this rambling for now. I've been a bit of a scatterbrain lately, and now the madness shall spread!
Time flies when you're having fun, I suppose - I'm back from BlizzCon 2009, and though I don't quite feel ready to head back to work, and all the other responsibilities of non-vacation time, it's good to be home.
My trip started off as the typical Marty-planned trip does: poorly. I happened to hear about when tickets were being sold for BlizzCon 2009 only a few days before the first sale, but I wasn't able to grab any of the tickets in the first round, as I wasn't home that weekend. My luck turned around somewhat quickly though, and I was able to get in and score a couple of tickets very early in the second (and final) round. I also got two cheap plane tickets. As was the case last year, this trip was to be for myself and my brother, to celebrate his birthday.
As the old saying goes, however, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry, and Spencer (my brother) found out only a week before the trip that his work couldn't give him the required time off. He was upset, and I was faced with a dilemma; I wanted to go on the trip, but I didn't want to go alone. Geeking out simply isn't as much fun by yourself. I felt bad too, since the trip was originally for Spencer. So I could skip the whole trip and just spend the time off with him instead. A friend of mine was attending the show this year, and he could pick up our goody bags if I chose to stay home.
After a few days of mulling it over, I decided I'd just go on the trip by myself. I wasn't entirely pleased with this, but I didn't want the money spent on tickets for the show and for flight to be a complete waste. This way, I would also be able to pick up our bags of junk myself, so my friend didn't have to bother with it, and I could attend some of the panels of the show, which I knew would be interesting and fun. I made some changes to my flight times, jumped on a plane, and made it down to BlizzCon for a fun couple of days.
Lucky for me, I didn't have to go it alone after all; my girlfriend happened to have enough miles on her frequent flier rewards card for a free flight to Anaheim and back. So, my trip, which had up until this point, looked like it was going to be lonely and somewhat disappointing, actually turned out to be quite fun. My girlfriend isn't really into games, but she still had a good time as I showed her around the exhibition, explaining all the odd sights and sounds. And we got to venture out and do some shopping, as well as just hang out and relax, something we'd both been needing. I really appreciate the effort she took to come with me, and it was a great impromptu vacation!
But now we're both back at home, and at work. My new World of Warcraft pet, Grunty, is prowling around in Azeroth. My n00bz is guarding the rest of the junk on the shelf in the computer room. And even though I'd rather be off on vacation again, I'm happy to be back. Hopefully my next vacation isn't so long in the making - and better planned to boot!
Has it really been an entire month since I've posted here? it honestly doesn't seem like it. I've visited the blog frequently (every day), and though I've had a lot of ideas for things I've wanted to post, and have even written a fair amount of half-finished articles, I never got around to posting much of it all.
I guess I've been a bit busy. Not enough to completely excuse me from my absence here, but pretty busy. Since I feel like I owe an explanation to anyone who's been visiting the site and wondering what happened to me, I'll briefly run through everything I've been up to.
To kick things off, I got myself a new bike a little over a month ago. My girlfriend and I have enjoyed going for walks on the roads and trails near our apartment since we moved here, and we both thought it would be fun to have bikes to better take advantage of the bike paths, as well as for a simple form of local transportation. So far, it's been a lot of fun to be able to hop on a bike and jet around the area for a bit, and it's also been a good amount of exercise. So long as the weather stays reasonable, I'm sure we'll be doing this for many months to come this year (if not the entire year).
I also started putting a more serious effort into re-tooling the Reflect system/website, and though I've only been able to dig into a little bit of the core system so far, I'm happy with the way things are turning out on this front as well. Reflect has grown to include a lot of talented members of the Game Maker community, and I want to provide these developers with as much function as possible, as well as make the system more attractive to other developers who might be considering putting in an application to use it. I'll elaborate on all that later though, as I make more progress with it.
In order to help me develop the new Reflect assets, I also decided to get myself a laptop. Up until now, I've not had a laptop, and have used my desktop computer for everything. I'm still partial to my desktop, because I enjoy the power and comfort of the desk/chair, but I am happy to be able to get away from the "computer room" at my apartment, too. One of the biggest hurdles for getting started on new projects lately has been having to spend lots of time cooped up in the back room in my apartment, and now that I am free of this burden, I've been able to do a lot more.
I've also had the chance to see a few movies. My girlfriend and I have watched Public Enemies, Harry Potter and the Half blood Prince, Proposal, and a bunch of random rented flicks. My brother and I saw The Hangover as well. I enjoyed all of them, and in my opinion, it's been a pretty good summer for movies.
Last weekend, I went hiking with my girlfriend and a few members of her family down at the John Muir Woods national park. It was beautiful, and the I had a great time marching up and down the hills with everyone.
As you might have guessed at with my new bike and the hiking, I've been trying to spend a little more time exercising. I've also been trying to get in more time with my girlfriend. And since all of these things take a significant amount of time by themselves, I'm sure you can imagine how its been with it all happening at once.
I will try to update the blog more often than monthly intervals, of course. I've still got to post the editable version of my long-abandoned competition entry, as well as my animated water texture tutorial. I'll get around to those soon!
Thanks for reading and staying faithful enough to come back and find this new post! More to come soon, hopefully!
With less than a week to go until Father's Day, the ridiculous parade of allegedly dad-focused marketing is already well upon us. On the way to work this morning, I heard a countless number of commercials trying to convince me to buy my dad a new cell phone. On TV, I've survived a constant barrage of pleas to pick up new flat-screen sets, stereo equipment, and various implementations of carpentry hardware. Online, it's been cameras, camcorders, USB memory sticks, hard drives, and all sorts of other computer gadgetry.
Each holiday it gets worse.
I'm not against the idea of getting someone a thoughtful gift, either. I think that if your dad has been pining for something for a while and you've got the means to get it for him, then maybe you should. But isn't the whole idea of the holiday lost when you're stuck in some infinite loop of trying to one-up last year's gift with something more and more expensive and outrageous?
The idea of buying someone a cell phone as a gift is utterly absurd to me. A cell phone is a personal thing that you should shop for yourself, since you're the one who's going to be using it most of the time. Not only that, but if the gift receiver doesn't have a cell phone already, he/she's going to be stuck with a new monthly bill, thanks to your thoughtfulness.
The notion of gifting a new television is just as bad. As if people need another $1,000+ added to their burgeoning credit debt.
Since when did the idea of showing your appreciation for someone include buying them a menagerie of electronic gizmos?
While retail world is busy buzzing in peoples' ears about its newest pile of shiny garbage, I'll be taking a quiet trip up to the country to my parents' house. I'll probably end up wrestling with some technology anyway; I hear my dad's been having some computer problems. But I think that he'll appreciate the help a lot more than being saddled with an unwanted new cell phone.
Unfortunately, the balance of the entire universe will be thrown off anyway - because for Mother's Day, I only sent a card this year. Sorry mom!
After missing out on the first round of tickets a few weeks ago, I'm happy to report that I was able to swoop in and grab a pair of BlizzCon tickets this past weekend!
My brother, Spencer, and I had been planning on attending BlizzCon this year, but during the first round of ticket sales, neither of us was able to get to a computer in time to get some tickets. I had just returned from a short vacation in Arizona and was on the road the same day for another short trip to Lake Tahoe. I had a lot of fun that weekend. Spencer had to go to work in the morning.
To fill in for our absence, we armed my dad with my brother's credit card and all the relevant information needed to make the purchase, but demand was high, and by the time he got in the ticket queue, he was about 25,000 people behind. When he got to the front of the line, the tickets were sold out.
This last weekend, Spencer was again not able to stand by for ticket-buying, but I was, so I set my alarm for 9:00 AM, got up and played around a bit, and then logged into the Blizzard Store and waited patiently for the clock to strike 10. At 9:58 I began refreshing the page every 10-15 seconds, and at exactly 10 o'clock, the drop-down box appeared for ticket purchase. I fumbled for a second, selected the wrong number of tickets, backed out and fixed the error, and proceeded to get in line. I was approximately number 250 in line.
A few seconds later, I was in front. I proceeded with the purchase, and it all went very smoothly. Much more smoothly than last year, where the store continually broke, and left a lot of unhappy people out there. I was pleased that I had remembered to log into the Blizzard Store the night before and update my credit card/contact information, so I didn't have to worry about changing it at purchase time.
Directly after I finished with everything, a friend of mine who had gotten tickets during the first round logged in just to see how long the line was; in about a minute's time, the line had grown to over 31,000 people!
So, I guess I am pretty lucky to have been able to get BlizzCon tickets again. I expected things to be a bit slower this year, with the economy and all, but I guess it's true that during hard financial times, people are always looking for entertainment – a way to escape from the troubles of life for a while.
Hopefully this year's show is just as much fun as the last. It's not until August, but If it's anything like last year, it should be worth the wait.
