Halcyon | flow

Calm and peaceful; tranquil | Continuity and smoothness of appearance

American Heritage Dictionary 4th. Ed.

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not updating this anymore. I know you're all terribly disappointed. Feel free to wait a few years for the next update!

I had been hearing a lot about this epic-scaled space RTS game for the past couple of weeks, and almost everything I heard was positive. So, I decided to go out and buy the thing.

It turns out that Sins of a Solar Empire is actually a very good game. It's incredibly deep but not difficult to learn. I generally suck at faster paced RTS games that are heavy on micromanagement; Sins is slower paced and the fantastic AI eliminates much of the unit-by-unit micro that kills me in other RTS games. There are also some nifty non-combat means of harassing your enemy, such as outbidding them for the services of the local space pirates, or using propaganda to undermine their culture and win over the citizens of their planets.

This is one of those games that requires a good, long play session to get deep into, and I've only had time to scratch the surface so far. I may post a more detailed review and some gameplay videos later on.

Related Links:
http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com

A new update, nearly a year to the day after the last one? Yeah, I'm amazed too. Don't expect too much though.

I got myself a copy of Unreal Tournament 3, then created a deathmatch map for it. You can find DM-LiftKill in the Game Mods section. Enjoy!

As you can see, updates have become a bit scarce (understatement) lately. I've been busy with my new job, and with moving into an apartment. I think things are finally starting to settle down though, so I can spend a little time working on other things.

First of all, my PSP game project is dead in the water. It's too much of a time sink for me to work on now, so it gets the boot. Not to worry though, PSP fans still have plenty to look forward to. I'm currently playing Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, which is a very good game; definitely a strong MGS game even compared to the console releases. Silent Hill: Origins is also coming out soon. Can you tell I'm a Konami fan yet?

I will continue working on the website (including both news updates and site design), although progress will be slower now. The gallery page could use a re-write, and there are still other issues to be fixed. I also have some ideas for new content, including a music section. I should mention that the mp3s in said music section would be free/public domain stuff like the vocal trance mixes I've been listening to lately. Best to get that out in the open now, before the RIAA sends a hit squad to my apartment. I'm also toying with ideas for a new story, but none of them have really grabbed my attention yet. Also if I can do something about the framerate problems, I'll try to get some videos of Neverwinter Nights 2 up.

Also, Don't expect to see any more Ragnarok Online videos, at least not anytime soon. AnimaRO was having severe lag issues for a good long while, and it stopped being fun when it started lag spiking every 10 seconds. So now what do I do for MMORPG goodness? Get back into City of Heroes, or should I say, City of This Patch Makes Your Tank A Big Fat Ninny? Or maybe devote my life to World of Warcraft like everyone else? It's a shame that Asheron's Call 2 turned out to be such a crappy game. The original is still going strong. Hmm...

No, I haven't died or moved to Mexico; I've been somewhat distracted lately. The lack of updates is mainly due to my attention being focused on preparing for my new job. That's right: about four months after graduating, I am now gainfully employed! I had an interview with CGI Federal in Lebanon, VA on August 30th, and recently received and accepted an offer to work for them as a Crystal Reports designer. I have also been preparing to move out and find an apartment in the Lebanon area, so my mind has been occupied by things other than this website for the past few weeks.

Now for something completely different: AnimaRO. This is a free Ragnarok Online server that I have been playing around on recently, and it's quite a lot of fun. The game isn't ground breaking in terms of visuals or sound design, but it is addictive in pretty much all the ways any good MMORPG can be. I've posted a couple short videos of the game in action on the Gallery page, with more to come soon.

My PSP game development is temporarily on hold until I'm settled into my newly employed life. It's the sort of project that requires total focus, and I can't give it that right now with all of the other things I have to deal with. At least I will be coming back to it later with a fresh perspective to go with the new graphics engine.

The website has also been on hold, although I hope to get back to work on it sooner. I have most of the credits and other info for the About page ready; I just have to track down some more links. I also have changes and improvements to make; too many to list here, in fact. A major back-end rewrite may be in the cards soon. Stay tuned for details.

"Real life" has intruded upon my various personal projects and activities, but that's a good thing in this case. At the very least I'll be able to buy myself a keyboard that isn't held together by Scotch tape and a prayer. This one will be put into service as part of my next project: a dedicated Ubuntu Linux box. Why build a linux box, you ask? Just because.

I've had a busy weekend, but I'll be back to work on various things soon. The biggest recent development in my projects is the decision to switch PSP development libraries for my game. Oldschool Library has been useful, but unresolved lock-up bugs with the oslDrawTextBox function have forced me to find an alternative. LTE Studios Engine was recomended to me, and the documentation and examples have encouraged me to try it out. Although it is primarily a 3D engine, the UI and event handler functions seem ideally suited to what I'm doing with my advenure game. I'm going to begin implementing it later today.

Once I have the PSP project moving forward smoothly again, I'm going to continue improving this website. I have repeatedly planned and put off doing the About page, so that is a priority, followed by improving the formatting of the Links page. Next, I plan to change the way these news items are stored and displayed in order to clean up the HTML output generated by the PHP script. Later on, I intend to add pagination to all of the content pages, fix a bug that occurs when changing news pages while viewing a category, and improve the admin PHP upload function so that I can use it exclusively for managing files on the server, removing the need for an FTP client.

Before I go, I will leave you with something interesting, if you happen to be a horror movie fan. I discovered a trailer for Saw 3 on the IGN network, and it looks very promising. The movie opens, appropriately, this Halloween.