Well, I'm across town visiting with my mom this weekend, and we decided to be lazy and have movie day today. We started with Across the Universe, the DVD I got her for Valentine's Day. It was pretty cool; unlike anything I've seen before.

We just got finished with The Kingdom, which was a lot better than I had anticipated. It had one of the most intense action sequences I've ever seen.

Now we're watching The Brave One, which I've already seen but don't mind seeing again. The story was a bit ridiculous, with way too much deus ex machina in the ending, but it was still a decent enough flick.

Well, gotta get back to it. Later peoples.

"If you want a vision of the future Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." - The immortal lines so eloquently recited by celebrated Shakespearean actor Richard Burton in the exceptional film adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. Maybe you read it in school. If not, I weep for you. The movie was filmed in and around London in April to June of 1984, the precise setting of the novel. Sadly, it was Richard Burton's final performance. He died shortly after filming. Even though the story presents an overwhelmingly pessimistic view of the future (at least from the perspective of the author), it is one of my favorite novels, and without a doubt my favorite movie. Richard Burton's performance as O'Brian is one of the most powerful and skillfully exacted accomplishments to be found in film.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the premise of 1984, it concerns the life of Winston Smith, a citizen of Oceania. Winston struggles with, and eventually succumbs to the ideologies of the totalitarian government of his country. O'Brian, played by Burton, is a senior party member who deceives Winston into revealing his dissent for the government and his desire for freedom. After Winston's arrest, O'Brian explains the subtleties of Oceania's regime to Winston:

[In the novel]: After the last great war, all modern governments of the world failed and were replaced by totalitarian states. Those governments failed, explains O'Brian, not because of the war, but because of inconsistencies within their doctrines. They attempted to achieve two paradoxical goals simultaneously: to gain enough power over the citizenry to enforce their laws, and to provide ever-increasing amounts of freedom to the citizenry, thus negating their power. Oceania's goals would be the exact opposite. The government would strive to take as much freedom and quality-of-life from its citizens as possible, while forever increasing its power. O'Brian explains to Winston: "Power is not a means Winston, it is an end".

...not the most uplifting subject matter, I agree, but it's probably the best movie you've never seen.

Every now and then you come across a game that gets you so hooked that you just put everything else on hold and lock yourself in your room for like a week. It's been awhile since I found one like that, but I recently dug up my copy of Warcraft III. I had bought the game a long time ago and had played it a little, but never long enough to get the hang of it. A few days ago I was going through my stuff, found the CD and decided to give it a second go. Holy crap. I can't believe I let a game this good sit in my closet for two years. It's tough, especially for me being as how I've never really been into RTS games, but it may be the most addictive game I've ever played.

The worst part of all this is that it not only got me hooked on one game, but a whole genre of games that I'd never taken the time to appreciate. All the sudden I'm checking isohunt for Command and Conquer and Age of Mythology. I'm probably headed for the game store tomorrow (before the superbowl) to see if they have the Frozen Throne, which was the expansion pack for Warcraft III. But for now, I think I'll get back to the game. I've got short cut keys to memorize, races to learn, maps to learn, etc.

What was the last game that got you hooked?

The internet at my house has been going off and on (mostly off) for the past week or so, but finally it seems that the problem has been worked out. I really didn't know how addicted to the net I was till it went away. Well, it's good to be connected with the rest of the world again. That's all. What? Everyone else can have short blogs except me?

Here are the first two screen shots of my new game Elements. Keep in mind that all of the graphics so far were made in paint, and are for test purposes only. The ship is now controlled by the WASD keys, while automatically rotating it's self to face the crosshair controlled by the mouse. And I used some simple trig to vector the bullets towards the crosshair. I can't believe that frikin trigonometry could get used outside of school. Anyway, the ship and the bullets change color if you fly over one of the three orbs. It's a very early build, and really just for testing and feeling out the design, but it's nice to at least get a little something up on the screen.

Some things that will need some special attention already: the bullets do not fly towards the center of the crosshair. They fly towards the upper left corner of it. Sometimes a rogue bullets flies in the exact opposite direction that it should. I think there's a division by zero problem somewhere, but my buggy compiler doesn't pick up on it. Also, the bullets start looking really weird and the spacing gets jacked up whenever I turn the speed up. I may have to get creative with that problem, but I honestly think that they'll look and behave a lot better once I put some decent looking graphics on the sprites.

I worked out the code for some simple gun turrets that pace along the edges of the screen, and I want to get them into this build as soon as possible. It'll be a good opportunity to see how many enemies/bullets I can get away with on-screen before the frame rate suffers.

But this week, I think the focus will mostly be on graphics, at least until the weekend. I usually like to do art during the work week, and save the coding for the weekends when I'm not all beat up and tired from work. I messed around with Bryce earlier today and got some really good ideas for the look of the game - kind of a semi transparent colored glass sort of thing. I'll have this game looking at least somewhat decent by this weekend, along with a little more functionality. I also want to start experimenting with the HUD layout. Right now, I'm thinking of having it in a strip along the bottom of the screen. Oh, and I'm definitely switching to a finer screen resolution than 800x600.

As always, if anyone wants to play the game or has any ideas about it, feel free to let me know.

Concept drawing (windows paint) for my new game project, tentatively titled: Elements.

What we're looking at:

The black ship at the bottom is the player's ship. It is moved about the screen via the WASD keys. The yellow circle above it is the crosshair reticle controlled by the mouse. The ship rotates to align its self with the crosshair and fires it's bullets along that vector. All dotted lines are bullets. The three colored circles are the orbs. The orbs control the state/color of the player's ship. For example: moving the ship over the red orb will turn the player's ship (and it's bullets) red, fly back down to the blue orb and you will turn blue. Enemies in the game will come in one of the three colors as well, and you can only damage/kill enemies that are of the same color as you.

The red and blue boxes at the top and right-hand edges of the screen represent basic enemies, like gun turrets.

The three polygons in the middle of the screen are what I'm calling plates. They act as mobile shields from fire, absorbing any bullet of the same color. They move slowly from the top of the screen to the bottom (or perhaps they move in other ways depending on the level).

I'll have a bare-bones build done by this sunday. If anyone wants to play it, let me know.

Well, new years has come and gone, and my hangover is wearing off, so here's a rundown of my favorates of all things 07:

Favorate thing about 2007: that it's over.

Best movie I saw: I am Legend.

Game purchase I'm most happy with: FIFA 08 believe it or not. (I haven't had the chance to buy some of the other great games, namely CoD4 and Bioshock)

Best book I read: Atlas Shrugged (even if I didn't agree with all it had to say)

In sports: the Texans almost made the playoffs, but the Dynamo won the MLS cup for the second time in a row.

I'm sure I'm leaving out all kinds of cool stuff I came across this year, but it's late. And did I mention the hangover?

Below are some screenshots of my first attempt at 3D modelling. I started out with basic primatives; the body is composed of two spheres. Each leg is made of one multi-segmented cylinder welded to extruded polys in the body. The neck was made from a cylinder as well. I wish I would have made a screenshot of the early goings-on of the model, but what can you do? Keep in mind that I am by no means a professional artist, and this model is by no means finished. Also, as is the paradigm with game model creation, I'm trying to use as few polygons as possible (still need to cut down on some of the geometry in the torso). So anyways, these three shots will kind of show how a game model comes together, with more to follow as I work on it (these go from earliest to latest).

It still needs a lot of work. I've been really swamped at work lately, so I probably won't get to mess with it too much till after the new year. As soon as I get the model where I want it, I'll photoshop up a skin for it, rig up a skeleton and get this thing animated. Then I can seehow it looks in a game engine, namely Torque (I'm poor).

First Screenshot of the Tetris Game I'm making.

I like to write small video games in my spare time, just little ones that one guy (namely myself) can make. Thought maybe some of you guys might like to see how a small game comes together. I'm programming this one in DarkBasic Pro, but I'm also learning the Torque Game Engine at the moment. I've been programming for most of my life and I get a lot of enjoyment out of piecing these things together.

Some stats on my Tetris game as it stands now:

'bout a thousand lines of code. (I know what you're thinking, but that's what it takes. My code is nice, clean, and efficient.)

made the background images (there's 5 right now, one for each level of drop speed) in Bryce3d, the blocks in Photoshop.

the next piece display in top right still uses the test block images I made in Paint when I first started coding.

there's a main menu (still with test graphics)that you can't see here when you first load the game. it has only one button that says: GO

Below is a screenshot from my first game, Orb Miner. If you've ever played Sokoban, it's the exact same thing. You just push the orbs into the slots. Seemed like a nice simple game to start with. Had a blast making it. It has 20 playable levels, sound, animated sprites, music, even a spash screen at the beginning. I should probably add a HUD someday though; count the moves and pushes; that sort of thing.