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Ah inept staff and flamers.......the forums are no place to be....... the point of the thread I posted was to tlk abotu my charatcer and crap and mbaye jsut have a bit of fun as well, its hardly spam unless you think anythign that dose not revole around this site its remivews and its ass kissing of publishers is spam.....

Draft picture:thanks to IVstudios

Draft picture:thanks to IVstudios
version 1.9

I have been adding/changing more and more, refining the way I do a characters bio

(un)=means unfinished so it can be changed or deleted.

COTLOP=Sandy

Sandy
A.K.A: Assistant, secretary, partner, sister, Sandy or Sandra with the last name of Powers or Lords.(un)
Real Name: Sandy

Symbiotic. Artificially intelligent. Nanny. Droid. Yeti (don't ask……)(un)

Substitute name: blasted, crazy, inhuman, devil, cranky, damned AI/Woman

sis, sister ,sibling , Vice Commander, Captain. (un)
Age: Appears to be in her early to late 20's
Sex: Female
Bust:39(might be off 1-2 inches)(un)
Waist:28(might be off 1-2 inches)(un)
Hips:38(might be off 1-2 inches)(un)
Height: 6.0
Weight: 180-220(due to materials used in the artificial form)(un)
Physical look: A tall, non muscular, almost large blond female humanoid.

—————————————————————————————————————–

Personality: Sandy is an open outgoing personality to match the lord of powers quietly mad introverted one, unlike the lord of power she likes like to wear reveling skin tight out fits and revel in her appearance as much as she can.

She's not overly stern but can be when need be, she prefers a balanced mentality with a extra bit of wit and humor.

She prods the lord of power as much as she can with her wit and sexauless to show him it's ok to let it all hang out, sometimes she makes some headway in getting his head out of his arse, sometimes she has to grab the nearest heaviest object and whack him across the head.

Battle field personally

On the battle field she is a demon in command, quick and efficient she rarely plays with her food, but once in melee combat she lets loose and enjoys herself , it has to be the dual energy whip/sword/pistol(possible name tag'a'longs) like a cat who finally wants to play she can level and area with pride and unlike the Lord of Power can fix it up without much trouble..
—————————————————————————————————————–

Motivation: Mainly to enjoy herself but also to aid her creator in dislocating his head he tends to firmly place in his rear, she takes things as they come and rarely gets annoyed by much of anything other than the ships condition or the lord of power himself.

—————————————————————————————————————–

Appearance: Until she has her android form she is either seen in a floating nagging orb or a repair drone of some disrepair, even after she acquires a body she follows him by his side in orb form on most expeditions, doing most of the "thinking" so he does not have to.

Her android/biodroid form is that of a tall well built blonde female her preferred "dress" is a black leather body suit with stylized spandex leggings and sleeves to revel bits of the legs and arms, her chest has a revealingly deep V on it, she wears a utility belt to hold her side arm and twin "hand" cannons. (un,this needs to be redone)

She also favors Light Force st y le uniforms, armor with a metal skirt, slight V on the chest and revealing midriff, it has forearm protectors on the arm that hold scanners and control panels in them they are worn like gloves that dover half the forarm and hand she prefers the gloveless model so she can show of her fingers, comes with a matching pair of boots, this armor set can become full body armor, but she generally prefers "showing the skin" as it were since the legs and arms are uncovered and sometimes she puts panty prints, or embeds real panty's on the "under carriage" of the armored skirt just for the hell of it. (un,this needs to be redone)

Outside of combat she wears a basic uniform based on LF designs, and sometimes wears casual clothes with a lab coat, engineers jump suit or uniform overcoat over them depending on what she's up to, outside of "work" her clothing s t y l e is elegantly that sometimes can be sexy from woman's business suits to gowns and full dresses, to simple trendy but elegant casual wear, whatever it is she wears it with c l a s s and pride in her herself and her appearance.

—————————————————————————————————————–

Settings/Bio: Created when the Lord of power was at his wits end trying to repair his crashed ship on a desolate planet, he was brought into existence when he tried to mental download some AI routines to get the repair drones functional.

After some time she created her own humanoid form at first android then through upgrades and tweaking she built a biodroid or biological android form, later she was given a piece of the lord of powers essence encased in what called a reality drive that boosted and focused his powers making her truly his sibling.
—————————————————————————————————————–

Powers: She attains powers and abilities in 4 main processes; one is nothing more than a repair droid or floating orb with abnormal but small energy/matter manipulation, force(solid energy manipulation akin to telekinesis) and energy manipulation with the first android form, the bioroid form comes with a wider array of powers and abilities based from high energy and matter manipulation, the last form is from the reality drive and part of the LOP(a shard of his soul) that she is given.

Also able to multi task and be in few places at once who's very comfortable with the flow of data from multiple sources.
—————————————————————————————————————–

Weapons: She is a skilled fighter and energy user, but even she clings to some weapons to make fights less..mundane.

Side arm: A multi functional weapon with whip, saber and gun modes, she carries one on her hip and another in her cleavage, or hidden elsewhere for the fun of it.

Twin "DD" Bust cannons: 2 "Hand" cannons each almost the size of her whole chest, they can lock on multiple targets and fire many energy different energy modes from tracking shots, to beams to mountain reducing blasts, they can be combined by attaching them together front to back making a larger more devastating weapon, and if you are wondering of the name….she made it up.

She carries them either on her back or stores them on the ship or in reality buffer in her suit to be teleported to her as needed.

—————————————————————————————————————–

Artificial Body

The first body is synthetic android which is different than a normal one if Data(startrek) is on the high end of normal a synthetic her frist body is more like the one from aliens IE a "lite" boney structure made of metal or composite compounds that have tubing for fluids small wire like nerves, with white or off color synthetic muscles with flesh above it, the 2nd form is bio/organic something more "human" like with synthetic materials/compounds replacing meat and bone.

—————————-

Quote's

(un)=means unfinished or could be dropped back into the quote jar.

"I have an artificial body of course I am perfect in every way!*wink*:Sandy COLOP(un)

"Oh why do I put up with you…….. ah yes, you iz my brother so I must carry you… lest till I find a husband/harem of my own*smirk*.:Sandy COLOP(un)

"Oh perfection don't fail me now!":Sandy COLOP(un)

(Got a few more I need to put in when I find them)

==============================

On my word press page

http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/writing-and-wutbits/sandy/

Zippy plus Copyright profit sharing and changing the nature of distribution.

In this musing I look (poorly) at how profit is derived from copyright distribution, I am ignoring most of the set in stone and vague rules and laws as I am trying to get to the core of the matter and not get distracted by superfluous things.

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Distribution methods.

Starting with legal distribution you have the publisher selling to the retailer, web store, or end user via their website. You also have licensed deals where revenue is made from advertisement or direct broadcasting over the air or the internet. There are also books and magazines.

The next area is the grayer one, used sale while first sale doctrine allows the resale of copyrighted goods without paying the copyright owner. In the modern age why a used copyrighted item should be treated differently than a website that is trying to make a profit off ad revenue and donations? I did not mention direct sell in this area as that's equitable to bootlegging.
Next in the gray area is what I would like to call "distribution without intent" IE via donations and ads you try and keep the site going while freely sharing copyrighted and other goods.

The blackest area is where flagrant disregard for copyright comes into play where items are reproduced physically and digitally and sold competing with the legal licensed copyright process. This is where I think it should be treated as a drug crime once you hit a certain monetary amount your property is taken, ect.

---------------------------------------

Distribution rights.

Now with this in mind let's not forget that copyright grants the copyright owner exclusive rights to copying, distribution and profit obviously, first sale amends those rights to allow for legal, reasonable slights against the copyright owner. Fair use tries to do this as well but due to the vagueness in it, it's easily circumvented and nullified lessening the rights of the consumer and public and it also threatens their freedoms via unintended consequences.

Now how do we balance the rights of the copyright owner and the public, well first off you slot things into 3 categories licensed, protected, illicit. Licensed and illicit are rather simple you are either making a profit via the copyrighted goods under an agreement with the copyrighted owner or you are a criminal. Protected is basically distribution without attempting to make a profit period. This means one shall not attempt to make money from the process of distributing files or information that gains you copyrighted files from the site or links to and or from the site. Educational sites may be exempt but that needs decent standards to make it so the average joe cannot easily get the exemption.

----------------------------------------------------------

Profit distribution sharing

Now let's make the process of sharing profit easier as so everyone can enjoy the wealth of information and inspiration of the world's media. First off if a site is found to be making unlicensed profit the copyright owner may request them to join their profit sharing network, basically a page view/click based ad system that is injected into the site and can track bandwidth and files. Now if you have a web advertiser that's compatible with the profit sharing network they pay copy right owner via that if not the site owner dose. Donations can also be tracked and 15% of it taken for the copyright owner. If they do not request it then the site must drop all ads and donations, a 2nd violation of this means you have to audit your finances and show you are not making money from this site or their files, a 3rd violation it all gets sorted out in court .

The site owner can counter a denied request if willing to file as a nonprofit and pay 5 times the page view, click and donation percentage amount (75% on donations). Basically you do monetary damage to the site until they go under, if the site really wants to try and make a profit off copyrighted items.

Taxes and levy's can also be invented to balance things more used sale on the retail level, digital storage devices(flash, harddrives, discs, ect) internet service providers will be hit with a simple 10% tax.

The profit sharing network would be regulated under the regulatory board that manages the 10% media tax.

-------------------------

In final

I really do not mind infinite copyright IE copyright that's longer than half the average lifespan of the populace as long as the populace has their rights and freedoms intact. But if they continue to focus on copies and distribution it will lead to fascist rules and laws to protect information from the populace…..

__________________

http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/zippy-plus-copyright-profit-sharing-and-changing-the-nature-of-distribution/

Not picking on LOS but rather how CV has been treated in the last few years, while the N64 Castelvaninas where flawed they had more of a Castelvanina/adventure feel to them than the PS2 versions of the game which were more flawed they might have played better and were better paced in some regards but the games themselves felt like generic hack and slashers with a Castelvanina theme.

SOTN revolutionized the series if not the "metrovina" genre itself, Circle of the moon was pretty damn good too, dissonance of harmony was a bit generic but offered 2 freaking castles,Aria of sorrow continued the generic feel of the series but it was nicely polished. Only the newest DS title Order of Ecclesia is pretty good, good to see it get away from the "of sorrow" story line that was getting rather played out.

If anything 3 things hurt 3D Castelvanina's the most bland level design leads to boredom as you are just moving from place to place and not exploring a new world,lack of depth of combat can lead to both frustration and repetitivity and finally if skills,magic and items are poorly paced it just stacks all the negative feelings about it.

Also if equipment sucks (FF12 anyone?) and dose not really have any depth in equipment that can also play a role in being annoyed with the game.

Now as far as them taking the series in the God of war direction, GOW is just an action/adventure title with a fixed camera and some QTE for the most part it did what it did well, I would not call it great but its good because it brought some attention to the better designs of the gene.

Still I think that Castlevanvina is better suited to being more like Zelda or Fable than a more....er.... static action type of game.
-------Started the thought starter.
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/lordsofshadow/video/6257416?om_act=convert&om_clk=hot-stories&tag=hot-stories%3Btitle%3B2

==========================

CV reboot rant, how zippy would do it

Castlevania CV 1 reboot.

Plot generic medieval region is terrorized by Dracula and the darkness that surround him, for decades the Belmont blood line has been fighting such evils in secret now its time to take the fight to the light of the day and night of the moon.

The Game will be setup as a ARPG leaning on combat and exploration akin to Zelda and Fable with hints of Witcher here and there.
The region is kinda laid out like Zelda:OOT, where the castle is always looming off in the background like mount Hiryules mountain.
You have the main quest on your journey to unlock the secrets of darkness around you so you can get to the castle and side quests to do in order to accomplish upgrades, new abilities and pad content.
The basic mechanics and or skills are:
Basic attributes: Health, Defense, Courage and Will, Health is obvious as you level this att up you get more health and a tiny regeneration rate(read below so you don't freak out, you shuld be allowed to turn it off which sticks regen at 0.1 percent and makes healing items do 12X the effect they normally do minus any healing over time after effect) , Defense is well how much damage you can soak up and a tiny bonus to regen, Courage is basically manna which is healed by heart drops, hearts are metaphysical offerings to darkness, where you find hearts you find darkness least in the CV world. The hearts can be simple flower light bundles of energy that appear as a beating semi translucent heat that is kinda made out of tiny petals.
Anyway…. Courage works as Mana max and tiny bit of regen will works for a tiny bit of regen and your magical and mental defense.
Items: Yes ITEMS say it with me game industry ITEMS that you can stock, sort and use….. for the sake of the noobs auto use the lowest carried non special item so they don't have to fumble with an extra button. Also calculate items used per area and offer to sell them off(that's right we have stores too) all in one button push at the shop but keeping X amount to be used. When needed. Items increase the regen rate of healing items, up to 2X the rate of the item so you can balance it out without losing anything much less flow.

Dexterity Jump,wall jump, double jumping ,charged moon jump, auto dodge, moon walking, easy backward flips, running and dodging are all things that fall under this category, whatever improves dexterity improves all of these abilities, and equipment can be specific or general. Each primary Dexterity skill offers 3 levels of itself to find, each level offers more protection and greater speed.

Whip skills: Basically everything you can do with a whip, the whip is both a weapon and a tool and can be enhanced with elements and statuses, it's possible to have 2 whips a general grab bag vampire killer that handles everything and a utility whip which dose little damage but if enhanced right can hold, knock back enemies or be used as a shield and can be used to pull or lift(as long as there is something above it) heavy objects.
Combat: Combat revoles around a mix of lock on and unlocked but assisted aim combat (which you can adjust the sensitivity of) ala god of war, Fable or Zelda. Combat pretty much covers your combo list, you can perform 3 different rows of combos depending on the primary enchantment, ect of the whip, the primary enchantment, ect of the utility whip and the level of secondary skill you are using. Combos tend to be 3-4 button combos long, also while in the air you can use in air combos,kicks and wall jump off enemies. More potent combos use courage to power them

Secondary skills: Secondary weapons fall into their own c l a s s (dagger ,holy water ,axe ,magic ranged, magic radius, boomerang, cross ,ect) they are equipment like the whip only more interchangeable( you can make it so they only drop if you do not have them in inventory, also can make a cruse attack dose damage, not letting it cool down dose damage to the weapon, each weapon c l a s s has 3 or 6 basic versions then 3 or 4 levels of those versions that last long and use less courage to power, maybe a 5,5,5,10 drop so you get a 35% reduction in using the highest version of the weapon, you can also bring in the forge and forge various items and weapons if you want to put even more customization in,let people make crazy cross c l a s s weapons but the more crazy it is the higher chance of failure and losing your stock, sure save and retry is an option but making it 1 in 100 or 1 in 100 would make crazy weapons all the more fun to get and use ), Using the c l a s s i c CV weapons as a base you start off with a free to use under powered very short range attack for the weapon, larger secondary weapons are melee based while smaller or nonsensical ones can be used in the whips range in a 360 closet target manner(IE behind you or hitting multi targets at once ala batman).
Lvl 2 is basically the c l a s s i c version of the weapon a dagger flies like an arrow, holy water becomes explosive ,ect it puts the fuel in the fire as it where. Lvl 3 is over kill and you can unlock a lvl 4 with an item set to wear offering even more crazy stuff.

Equipment: Basic set of equipment and augmentations, Head,neck,glove left,glove right,boots and armor, all screwing with all kinds of stats,buffs and bebuffs. You can work out 12,24 or 48 in each category.

The vampire killer can gain many abilities and upgrades , the whip is made of 6 parts, the base of the hilt, the main body of the hilt, the band or neck of the hilt, the head of the hilt , the whip proration and the velvet stinger on the end, now we could use this with 2 accessories and the main armor to tweak and play with stats and buffs and crap. But to keep this simple you have 4 slots if you will on the hilt , any augment can be put in any slot giving the whip access to the ability of the augment(simple crystallized thingies ) the head of the hilt or last slot access the main combos for that augment if you have the whip unlocked enough to pull it off(say flaming whip combo that dose 360 radius damage instead of a lighting combo ,ect).

Now we can take this to the next level and tame various vehicle c l a s s monsters (skeleton motor cycle, flaming skeleton horse and the like) and make the game even more wild and fun.

==================

On a side note I wrote a steampunkish dracula plot acouple eyars ago.

http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/writing-and-wutbits/dracula-rebirth/

blah I forget I can blog here to that and me being slow to do much of anything of late......*yawns goes back under his rock*

Video games and the over simplification of visual raciness and violence

Video games are nothing more than a varying in size video production. The interactive components are nothing more than various do over's of various scenes in part this leads to the outrage over it being able to interact with this form of media in any quasi sexual or violent way. Another reason for the outcry is like comics and rock and roll not so long ago were mediums that youth enjoyed as much or more than adults. This leads to notions that the mediums were warping the mind of the young and naïve or like theater, radio and books before it lowering the moral standards of the public.
Before we move on let's look at that for a moment young and naïve to me dose not sound dumb as much as open minded and the age old "lowering the moral standards of the public" as a bad thing seems silly to me as widening of morals means society is growing up and letting go of childish fears and innuendos and accusations, basically humanity getting over itself but I digress.

There is some debate to the interactivity of games(I could find some articles "to&fro" if I spent a few weeks gathering crap up but I am not that dedicated to may random ranting) and how it settles on the mind of the "gamer" not to mention the effect of TV/FILM on the watcher, but there are also studies about how literature sinks into the active mind and forces one to use their imagination thus having a more…er "traumatizing" effect upon the reader, note I am using their words for the use of what I'd call the "imagination of interactivity". The mind is a funny thing the less active it is during consumption the more dramatic the effect it has on the person, I use the term dramatic because who does not feel emotion/energy when they watch or listen to something they like, that is at the core of the "traumatizing" effect media has upon people, humanity has been consuming media in various forms for millennia so is it media that's to blame for human ills or humanity just being filled with humans?
And that is the crux of any anti media argument, is what we make and enjoy the problem to a preconceived issue "we think" is a problem or is it just "us" being "us" that's the problem?

One could say but video games are different due to their interactivity, and in that I agree but I think they are more on the scale of books than common video productions, at least when it comes to over all use of the mind. But really books were different ,theater was different, radio was different, film was different, rock was different, comics was different and now the internet and video games are different…. See a trend here….every few decades humanity thinks "it's different" when the only thing that has really changed is our social tolerance's for each other and the things humans do.

Zippys Wolfenstein mod

A lot of crazy stuff going on first off solider HP is tripled from 20-40 to 40-80, heavy trooper has 60 or 70 a part, elite troopers and scribes have 80+ HP sniffers have 200 or so, despoiled has 200+ HP other tweaks here and there.
Player has 50 less max HP, starts with 6 grenades and upgrades to 9, up'd the FOV on most weapons, doubled it for scopes, lowered max ammo for both MP40 and karl98 both get ammo upgrades with their clip upgrades. Changed prices of most items, trying to add upgrades until then nothing is finished or finalized.

Player is lighter and faster and so are grenades I might fix their mass later on but I think it's funny you can lob one across a level
Can't find re fire rate or corpse stay info, lowered bobbing some, you can sprint for longer distances, lowered or tried to lower what veil powers consume and raised the regeneration rate as much as I could.

This is a mess and I am forgetting stuff I want to do a lot more with it and rebalance things out but everything kind of hinges on getting new upgrades in the store so I can add, edit and get things better balanced , so this will be a work in progress but it's a fun messy work in progress IMO.

——————-

New file

Old file

===========

Just figured out how to add upgrades to the store, but I still need to change fire rate which aludes me for now as well as change teh resell price for upgrades..

Short/simplified thoughts

The best way I can think of to balance it all out you separate whats done for profit and what is not, that which is not done for profit will be heavily marginalized in a slightly more policed world this leaves most profit channels for the CP owners to gain a profit from.

Also to aid policing it and ensuring the people have the right to backup and distribute in non profit settings(remember a clip,a picture even a part of a script or lyrics is considered distribution these days) you can tax the net, media devices and PC hardware by about 10% local governments(UK,US,Japan,ect) take up to 10-20% of that to run the regulation and policing efforts the rest of it is given to the main media organizations.

Normally I would be against bigger government but media has injected itself into government and is basically bullying the public. This is the best setup I can think of that balances out everyone interests.

Well I finally finished off Bionic commando and well I am surprised and disappointed, the core game play is solid but the further you get away from using the arm the more lose and unpolished it becomes.
========================

Music/sound/Visuals,

Could have more covers of Bionic commando tunes and less event music.... Sounds are ok but nothing to write home about. Visuals are nice.
========================

Level design,

Levels are paced well enough but highly linear, the worst thing about level layout is the radiated zones are not that well defined, the collectibles can be hellish and fun to get but if you die you have to re-get them and that becomes nightmarish.
========================

Pacing,

Ammo sucks, health regen makes it so they can ignore or be oblivious to item pacing then again Bioshock didn't have it and had to many items all over the place.. but I am regressing again ... ammo is rarely randomly dropped so randomly it forces you to use the arm which cannot be used to attack other than zip kick for almost half the game. Ability pacing kind of sucks because it takes so long to be able to use the arm to attack with.
========================

Weapons/Melee,

The shooting elements are ok at best but could be better developed, AMMO is scarce and you really need to carry almost 5X as much of it. The weapons themselves have to be dropped to you, you just can't pick up any bloody weapon that's dropped... which annoys me to know end its anti intuitive.

If they went with a setup where the super dropped in weapons have 5-10X the ammo/power and the picked up ones only have a clip size loads that have to be tossed after use that would have been a much better implementation. Melee is very lose and kinda weak.
========================
AI,

The AI is not to bad wish grenades tossed by the AI didn't damage them so much. The AI can die on lightly disturbed objects it's like they trip on it they die, there's no real level of physics calculation if it moves it kills them. They also have a tendency to fall off ledges....
========================
Major glitches,

The only one I found was with the death from above challenge, it only works with adrenaline only no matter how many are killed from being knocked off ledges and from disturbed objects.

Its not so much a glitch but they use 360 buttons to denote what key/button to press...

========================
Story,

The dialog is not so bad the voice acting is damn good for a capcom game but the plot and its plot points are horrendous and the ending is just blah.
========================
I wish it had,

Have a points system where you can buy more ammo/weapon space, arm moves and damage/zoom abilities. Make it a bit more than a lose lulz fest, more like DMC in that respect but have it so you get less points from re-trending a old level.

A over world map/hub setup where you can easily travel to old levels and chose to redo them or just re explore them with re arranged troops..

When you accomplish part of a challenge it tells you with a quick on screen message and percentage count remaining, it does for some but not for others.

Lives, yes lives, not the old s t y l e of your dead if you run out of them kind but a kind of token you get 3 of at the start of a level you can collect more and use them as you wish. If no coin is used the level is reset on death, if you use it you restart from the last safe position you had before death.

This is a middle point between quick save and a bajillaoin check points in a level, because the user has control over them IE you have a minim of 3 then the extras you collect which you can choose to use it or just restart a level on death..

=================
Final thoughts
It's a fun game once you get use to it not worth 40+ but 20-30 is not so much a loss. I'll give it a 7 since the dialog dose not rape my ears.

Zippy labs persent the Hellfire cannon in various stages of denail..er...working...or not.

I made a nice hotrod flaming skin for it and have recolored the Shock cannon/ADSM rifle primary effects, also slaped some rocket junk effect to them both, I am still learning effects and trying to get them just right.

Primary Fire fires fast and accurate but lower powered bullets with a small radius on them, alt fire fires heavy duty bullets at 2 a pop with rocket style radius damage.

Video from my youtube page below,music is from the minibosses....

Do mind the volume I think I set it to damn high....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtAU2tolwtU

Udate!!

HFC effects video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyulCK1cfdk&feature=channel_page