Well...well...well. Dark Souls has taken over mine for the past few weeks. Awesome game, very difficult. Tedious even. But it's good and I'm not even half way through yet. I'm at level 50 and chipping my way through the game.

Kind of a downer day but I'm not letting it get to me. Very tired, melencholy even. I took a week off from work and came back and just can't get back into it. Not refreshed at all. I don't think I've been able to re-energize for months.

Turning point is up ahead, but which way do I go?

For those in the know, we achieved level 6 (or was it level 7) last time I was on the Peninsula. I'm hoping we can hit level 8 sometime this winter. As I described to my esteemed colleagues, level 8 is as high as I've ever reached, and man, I would say that level 10 means the forest is on fire. Just saying.

So 9. Can we do it? I think so, but it will require planning and preparations. We've batted some ideas around and I think what needs to happen is that we prep the level 9 bonfire in the fall, tarp it, and then it is ready to go come New Year's Eve. Let the preparations begin.

Anyway, I finished Gears 3 and kinda went "meh". That's not to say the game is unremarkable, I'm just saying it isn't hitting me like it's hitting other people. I played with the audio off most the time so that may have been my problem. Another part of my problem may be that I'm just not absorbed in the Gears world. So it boils down to just shooting monsters. Nothing more.

You know what's awesome? Zelda and Skyrim hitting this november. I just pre-ordered both. On the record- I put 350+ hours into Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. I got all the achievements. I played all the DLC. Skyrim is going to consume me.

Zelda I think is going to come along and surprise alot of people. There has been so little information and hype surrounding this game over the past few years so the build-up has been- almost non-existent. But I think we're getting glimmers now that the game is going to be huge. Add on the fact that they might be mixing it up a little in this one and people are getting excited. I know I am. I think Nintendo has been keeping expectations in check on this Zelda game and that will pay off once people finally get the game. I have this weird feeling that this game is going to exceed people's expectations.

Anyway, it's a great time to be a gamer. Valve released free DLC this week for Portal 2. I haven't even had a chance to download it because I left my copy of the game at my home away from home. Dang it.

I ran into my neighbor this weekend. At midnight. I think he was surprised to see me and my brother walking the road sometime in the early morning hours for no apparent reason. I was surprised to see him driving around in the early morning hours and drinking beer at the same time. I think we'll get along just fine.

Anyway, I'm playing Gears of War 3 and it's pretty good so far.

Alright, well it is pretty much official. All my fun, leisure time projects have been effectively sidelined- for now. That's what happens when you get sucked into something. That something for me right now is work, which makes me dissapointed in myself. I'd much rather just goof off for the rest of my life.

Well, my desktop died awhile back. So I bit the bullet and got myself something good this time around. No, I'm not hardcore enough to build my own PC- yet. But I did the next best thing and ordered a nice one from Velocity Micro. It's awesome, and I'm loving it so far.

So, what we have here is a nice package. Yes, the case design is fairly boring. But take a look at the LED-lit interior. Very cool, also gives you an idea of what you are up against when you want to add components of your own. Which I did.

I can't say it was super easy to get my second hard drive installed but once I figured out how to get the power to reach both drives without a major fuss, it went very easily. There is a reason why this interior is so clean; the fine folks at Velocity are very TIDY with the way they route and bundle the cables inside these cabinets. Holy hell. I'm impressed.

For those who know about these things, you'll take one look and scoff at the fact that I'm not running dual graphics cards here. But hey, I'm not a big PC gamer so this thing is more than adequate for the few games I do play once or twice a year. To be fair, I upgraded the CPU to the quadcore i7. It's chewing up Windows 7. Very happy. I'm ready to put it through it's paces on video encoding.

Utilizing my old drive from my deceased system puts total on-board storage up to 1.2 Terabytes. Toss in my 500 GB external drive I've been kicking around for a couple years and I'm up to 1.7 TB. If motherboard allows, I would like to install two more drives: a 1 TB standard magnetic drive and a solid state drive. Probably around 256 gigs. Eventually migrate the OS to the solid state drive.

Anyway. I think most my immediate fires are put out and I can get out of this god forsaken town this weekend.

I'm still alive. It's a month and a day since my last update. Time tends to get away from me! To get some stuff out of the way, I'm not giving up on IWBTG, it just happened that my copy of Snag-It stopped working, even though I purchased the software and have "activated" it. Not happy. So I need to work that out.

In typical fashion for me, I've got almost too many things going on at once to finish any one of them. I've finally started on Nazca and actually making good progress, considering the last game I programmed was a Tetris clone in God-Knows-When-Ago. I want to say late 90s. I remember clearly enough how cumbersome the Windows Platform SDK and DirectX was to program in C++. Well, I'm not going that route this time around. I'm writing in Java and enjoying every minute of it. Sure, you can't make a high performance graphics engine with Java, but Nazca does not require advanced graphics. I only need a competent 2D tile engine, nothing more. Think 16-bit era graphics. You like, yes?

What's new this summer overall? Well, not much. People keeping getting killed on the seward and sterling highways, traffic sucks, and I actually got down to the beach to catch fish this year. I've had plenty of crazy weekends out at my cabin with my bros. Can't really complain at all. Oh, and I befriended a baby squirrel at one point. I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but out of nowhere this rodent decided it wanted to climb up onto my shoulder. It kept trying to burrow into our clothing to sleep. I actually tried to feed it and it wouldn't eat anything given to it. So yeah, there's that.

I'm not sure what my future is going to be in terms of leisure time. My life may be getting a little more busy pretty soon and more difficult to get away but I'm going to do my best. I also know I'm going to need to put in some serious hours ahead to make this game a reality. The more I work on it the more it is taking shape in my mind- which is a good thing. I've just found that programming at night isn't working out for me. After I get home from work and sit down at my computer, my mind is literally dead. I struggled last night just to stay focused enough to figure out what I was doing. I've always been a morning person and that's when I like to program- with a cup of coffee. Nothing like sleeping on a problem to help work a solution.

For some reason I'm listening to "The final Countdown" on youtube. I have no idea why. Some moments just have a song, even if that song pretty much sucks any other time.

Wow, it's been a month already since I posted. I have to put it back into gear and keep going on IWBTG. In the meantime, I'm sitting here after a (fairly) good extended weekend hating the fact that its back to work tomorrow. Bleck.

Well, I picked up a 3DS a week before last. Here's my mini-review. Great system, but has some annoying flaws. A couple things: button placement and button quality. Nintendo's patented cross-pad squeaks. Yeah, it freaking squeaks. The original DS had a superior d-pad and buttons. Also, what's with the select, home, and start "buttons"? Why are they not real buttons? Gawd. Oh, and thanks for putting the power button where the start and select buttons should be. Damn, I keep hitting it by mistake and guess what? When I'm playing Link's Awakening DX, I have to completely shut the system down and back on again. Too bad I hadn't saved my game yet! Dang it!

Seriously, there are some odd design choices here which is particularly baffling considering how perfect the DS Lite is. Oh, and one more thing. Battery life. Not so hot. Now, I understand this has a more powerful chipset, a larger 3D screen, etc but geez. If Sony comes out with the PS Vita and it has a comparable battery life, something is seriously wrong. Because the Vita has significantly more horsepower.

Oh, and by the way, Vita is the dumbest-ass name ever. EVER. Oh wait, not it's not. Wii U is the dumbest-ass retarded name, EVER. What do you suppose they smoke when they sit in a room and congratulate each other for coming up with this shit? You want to know the answer: it doesn't effing matter because it sells 80 million units. Double-gawd.

Alright, so moving along to the 3DS high points. The 3D screen is great. I'm actually impressed with the quality of the screen- the black level is nice and the colors are quite vibrant. The lower touch screen looks exactly the same as the DS Lite's so not much change there, does the job. The 3D effect works well for me, and Ocarina of Time looks sweet in 3D. In fact, I haven't been playing that game in 2D at all, the 3D works so well for that game.

The built-in game, Face Raiders, is hilarious and crazy. I swear, when Nintendo trots down to the psychiatric ward to hire people to name their products for them, they also pick up game designers. So, in Face Raiders, you freaking take a picture of your face (or anyone for that matter) and you shoot balls at it. Yes, you shoot balls at your face.

I don't know, the original DS has a very good game library and I'm sure the 3DS will eventually have one as well. However, don't buy one now unless you really want one. It might be another 12 months or so before we have alot of good games to play on the 3DS. Also, I think Sony is going to force Nintendo to cut price. For $250 you can get a 3DS or, soon, a PS Vita which is significantly more powerful.

Another thing- with the issues with the system itself, we could really use a revamped model (already). I wouldn't be surprised to to see a 3DS Lite hit eventually. If they can improve the buttons and get that power button off of the front face of the unit (where it has absolutely no business), then we're talking.

Small update- just to say I haven't given up on IWBTG yet. I just got busy and didn't want to deal with it. I played a little tonight and should have more videos posted tomorrow. In the meantime, why not chuckle at the Reaction Guys? (fyi; reaction guys are Matt Casamassina, Craig Harris, intern guy, and Peer Schneider all who, unintentionally, started an internet meme a few years ago. ).

In the year 2012, an unnamed explorer happens upon an ancient tower built into a mountain by the hands of a lost civilization. Obscured by erosion and hidden by the countless cycles of growth and decay, the tower holds an untold secret. Who built such a temple and for what purpose? As he makes his way up through the elaborate dungeon, our young explorer begins to realize that in order to see what is happening on the earth, you first must peer down upon it from the clouds...

Jesus: "18:00 21-May-2011. Rapture completed. Ahead of schedule, light duty. I only took one of my childen, a particularly charming gorilla from the Congo. I had to leave the rest behind. Since I had time left, I made a quick stop at Hell to give some peeps a hard time. Big ole meanie (AKA Satan) asked when Harold would be showing up. Me and my gorilla doing fine, the party cake up here is excellent.

That's in reference to life, in case you were wondering. Well, need to get caught up on guy, so see below for the latest. Castlevania was bad. I fought the jump controls from beginning to end. I was starting to lose hope. I finally got a breakthrough, and, as it turns out Dracula wasn't a big deal. Imagine that. I then proceeded to the Tetris part which I can't post because Snagit went haywire on me and I lost the footage. Oh wells. So what's next? I'm battling wall-jumping at the moment.

5/16/2011 - The GUY- Video Playthrough 23

5/16/2011 - The GUY- Video Playthrough 22

5/16/2011 - The GUY- Video Playthrough 21

5/15/2011 - Dang. 20 videos in to this thing!

I had more trouble on Mecha Birdo than I was anticipating. Glad that boss battle is over with. Too bad I get stuck on the next couple screen for so long. I finally made it the Castlevania portion of the game tonight, waiting for the videos to finish processing, then I'll have that posted.

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 20

5/15/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 19

5/15/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 18

5/15/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 17

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 16

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 15

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 14

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 13

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 12

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 11

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 10

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 9

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 8

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 7

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 6

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 5

5/11/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 4

5/10/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 3

5/10/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 2

5/10/2011 - The GUY - Video Playthrough 1

The madness begins. My journey starts here, with the very first episode of "I Wanna Be The Guy". I got my controller issue ironed out. I think I even have my audio setup correctly. So lets do this.

5/8/2011 - Drats

Well, I got home this afternoon to find my bright shiny new USB NES controller (proudly made in China). Behold:

I quickly downloaded IWBTG to test it. Bad news folks, the game only recognizes the cross pad and one button. I can't jump. Son of a gun. As far as I know there is no way to configure the control in-game so I'm screwed. So, what this means is I'm on the hunt again for a gamepad that is compatible with this game before I begin my video-playthrough. It's too bad too. Even though this controller isn't manufactured by Nintendo, the build-quality is surprisingly good. Better than the one I got for my Wii awhile back. Oh wells.

5/6/2011

OK- I'm organizing this page a little more and starting over... again. Here's a recap on my progress on Super Meatboy:

5/5/2011: I beat "The Kid" warp zone. Amazing, I thought this would plague me at the bitter end but once I broke past the first stage it was not impossible after all.

I have just over 11,500 deaths and 307 levels beat. That leaves 3 dark world stages on world 7 to finish as well as the final boss level on world 6 (dark world version). I don't think the boss level counts toward the leaderboard so I'm holding to 310 stages as the final number that counts. Those people with 313 levels beat... has to be some kind of glitch or cheating of some kind. Or there is a secret warpzone I don't know about (nor does the internet, apparently).

In other news, I've ordered an NES controller for my PC so that I can play "I Wanna Be The Guy" properly. I hope it works. My IWBTG video playthrough should begin next week.