That was a long break

What is this? A new blog post? Craaaaazy!

So yeah, I guess I'm going to try and start up the old blogaroonie again. It's been so long since I last did one of these (almost 2 years!) and quite a lot has happened since then. So this first blog is just going to be a sort of recap of what I've been doing recently. First of all, I'm in my third year of uni now, which means I'm doing my third year Major Project. It's a subject that goes over the whole year and by the end of it, we're meant to have a finished product that we can show off at the trade show. Also, the best product at the trade show, wins $1000. Of course that gets split amongst the team, that's still $200 each WHEN we win. We of course being my team, which consists of 5 people (if you're not very good at maths). We're going to be making a game for ours, specifially, a dungeon crawler-esque game. We're still mostly in the planning stages, but I've got a good feeling about it.

The other super awesome thing that I've done is at the start of this year I participated in the Global Game Jam. I think the website describes it best but I'll give it a shot. Basically, you get given a "theme" for the Game Jam and then have to make a game in 48 hours based off said theme. I went to the Wollongong Jam, organised by the wonderful people from Convict Interactive. The theme for this years jam was:



This was a great theme, not only does having a picture as a theme make it much easier for people all over the world to get the same theme, but I also really like the picture. I was in a team with my buddy Jarrad. It was the first time Jarrad and I had worked together on a game and I was amazed at what we managed to do. There are some things we wanted to add that we couldn't, either because of time or because I had no idea how to get it to work, but overall, it was a great success. In the end we produced what is probably the GREATEST GAME IN THE WORLD. It might have just been our opinion though, because we didn't win any of the prizes, but that's not what the game jam is about. I met so many people at the jam and got to see so many different interpretations of the theme and so many games made in such a small period of time, I'm really looking forward to next years.

Lots of other things have happened since my last post and I just can't remember all of them. The only other thing I can think of is I joined the Pokemon Universe balance team last year, but I'm going to make that into it's own seperate blog post.

I also went through a bunch of games too, Bioshock, Borderlands, Skyrim, Magicka, Dota 2, RIFT, Lord of the Rings Online, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, The Binding of Isacc and heaps more that I can't be bothered listing. Hopefully I'll make some posts about my impressions of some of them soon, and some other topics I've been meaning to make posts about for a while now.

Nuzlocke Challenge

Long time no blog post.

Well, first things first. The chess game.

It took me about a week to get started, then I got all the pieces moving, and taking. Then I pretty much got bored, plus I had a bunch of uni assignments to do. I still need to fix up a couple of things, like pawns moving and attacking properly, plus castling. I also grabbed some TF2 pictures and started using them in place of my hand made pieces. Here's a couple of screenshots.

Pretty cool, right? Anyways, I might get around to finishing it off after my exams are over.

Now, onto the actual topic of this post. The Nuzlocke Challenge.

So, I started doing the challenge a couple of weeks ago, at the same time as Mitchell, and it is really hard to get started. In a normal game, a pokemon faints and it's fine. You go back to the pokemon centre and everything is good. The challenge means that if you don't pay attention to your health, or fight someone too strong, you have to start all over again. I had to do at least 5 restarts before I got past the first few gyms. I started out out on emerald and eventually decided to give it a shot on Fire Red. Yesterday I finally finished and beat the elite four. This was my super awesome team.

I only lost V284 against my rival's Gyarados when I went up against the elite four. I did go through a whole bunch of full restores though.

So now I feel like playing through again, but I'm not sure how to restrict myself. So I'm putting it out to anyone who sees this post. What restrictions or rules should I use for my next playthrough of Fire Red? Respond in the comments or on the link I'm going to put up on Facebook.

Pokemon list.

So this was originally going to be a note on Facebook, in response to one by Zanda, for all my friends to see. Then I realised, "That's what my blog is for!!". So I started work on this post, and then I thought "Why can't I have my pokemon list and eat it?" Then I realised how stupid that sounded and was glad I wasn't talking out loud. Not that anyone would have heard me anyway.

The basic premise of this list is to say what pokemon I think are awesome, and why. Shouldn't be too hard, right?

Honourable Mentions

These are in order of National Pokedex number. I can't be bothered ordering anything more than my top 10. Some of them don't have comments. Quite a few of them do.

-Charmeleon

This guy is badass. Everyone says they love charizard, but they all know charmeleon is way cooler. If evolving didn't increase your stats, I would totally keep charmeleon instead of getting charizard. This guy is definitely my favourite out of the first generations "starters".

-Beedrill

A bee, with freaking drills for hands. I don't think I need to say any more.

-Fearow

The fearow I used in pokemon stadium was the most awesome pokemon I had. He just ripped into everything, and if he came up against and electric pokemon? HYPER BEAM TO THE FACE!!

-Nintales

-Primeape

I was tossing up whether to pick him or mankey. Then I remembered the episode where primeape chased ash around, after stealing his hat. Good times.

-Farfetch'd

This dude uses a leek for a sword.

-Kingler

I like kingler because he is a giant enemy crab. Also, crabhammer is one of my favourite moves and kingler already has a massive claw with which to hammer people.

-Weezing

Weezing just looks so depressed all the time. It's probably because it's just two koffings stuck together, and they don't like each others smells.

-Ryhorn

-Tauros

-Eevee

I was originally going to pick flareon, jolteon, vaporeon, espeon, umbreon and glaceon. So instead of that I picked eevee. I just love how you can get so much variation from one pokemon.

-Omastar

-Bayleef

-Quilava

-Unown

-Wobbuffet

This guy knows how to take a hit. Not having attacking moves makes Wobbuffet really original in my mind, and he really knows how to party.

-Shuckle

This guy also knows how to take a hit, but he cannot dish anything back out. Really annoying when you want to have a tank, because he can't really do anything else.

-Donphan

-Hitmontop

-Mudkip

Yeah, you heard right.

-Shedinja

This is another pokemon who's form of evolution I like. If you have a spare slot in your team and a spare pokeball when nincada evolves, you get ninjask and shedinja. Also, wonder guard is a great ability

-Loudred

-Sableye

-Swalot

This pokemon looks so distinguished even though it is a blob. Makes me laugh every time I look at it.

-Camerupt

I just like the colours on the shiny version. He's also pretty good in a fight.

-Spoink

He has a spring. On his butt. Hilarious.

-Drifblim

-Lucario

-Rotom

Top 10

10. Sandslash

I'm running out of things to say about these pokemon, so I'll just start describing the most awesome things about each of them. He's got knives for hands!!

9. Geodude

He's a floating rock with arms, I like that in a pokemon.

8. Muk

He looks gross, but all he really wants is a hug.

7. Onix

ROCK SNAKE!!

6. Paras

Mushroom crab!!

5. Arcanine

My favourite from the first generation. Fire dog.

4. Manectric

Electric dog. Reminds me of a super saiyan.

3. Breloom

Mushroom that can puch you in the face.

2. Blaziken

My blaziken is what basically soloed the emerald elite four and for that, I have a special place in my heart for him.

1. Absol

Absol is awesome. Looks awesome, has awesome moves, is awesome. I really like buffing absol's critical hit chance, since he gets it as an ability.

God damn, now I want to play pokemon again.

-Shadowfred

Invisible Chess

With the lack of RPG at the moment, I need something to do. Some of my friends were talking about different types of chess, and we eventually got around to "Invisible Chess". The basic premise is that you can only see your pieces, the same for your opponent (as in they can only see their pieces). There is another board somewhere that cannot be seen by either player, with a full chess set on it. When you move, an adjudicator will make sure it is a legal move, and then make your move on the full board, if you take a piece, they will take it off the opponents set.

I thought that this would translate very well to a computer game, as it eliminates the need for an adjudicator. I'm going to try and get it working; I'll probably make a normal game of chess, then a network game, then a network game of invisible chess.

Also, I've been playing a few new games recently, so I might post about them in a little bit as well.

-Shadowfred

RPG on hiatus.

As the title suggests, I am stopping work on the RPG indefinitely. I was going to post this up a few days ago, but I never got around to it. This was a big decision as I was really enjoying working on it, but I just don't have the skills at the moment to make the game work how I want it to. Multiplayer was going to be the main point of the game, but I don't know how to make it work. When I've learnt enough at uni to feel that I actually can do the game justice, I'll start work on it again.

-Shadowfred

Races - Gnolls

The gnolls are a relatively primitive people who once resided in the hills to the southeast of the Grasslands, before increasing passive arach activity began to infringe on their lands. Unwilling to risk the wrath of the mercantile arach’s many powerful allies, the gnolls instead attempted to retrieve a small portion of veloci land by stealth.
The attempt failed, however, and the veloci swiftly wrought their vengeance by displacing the gnolls from their homeland, pushing them back until they were well within the antheran-tiloca Grasslands. Unable to seek aid from their molluscan allies, who had been cut off by the manfolk merchant fleet in an attempt to bolster the naga against them, the gnolls sought refuge with the Grasslands races.
Antheran-tiloca recognition of their plight was minimal, and unwilling to make the same mistake as they had with the veloci, the gnolls avoided the antherans and began to shift towards the tiloca, eventually beginning to prey on them as their own food rations wore out. The tiloca fled their homes and began to migrate southwards, complicating the border dispute between the hnoca and naga.
The antherans, however, acted on overexaggerated tiloca reports of fatalities and used them as an excuse to refuse asylum to gnoll refugees and actively take up arms against the gnoll people. Strongly reminiscent of hyenas, gnolls rely more on cunning and guile than brute strength to get by.

Races - Veloci

Since it was my birthday yesterday, I'm going to post two races today. As a birthday present.

The veloci are one of two races inhabiting the escarpment on the eastern side of the continent, and have fought diligently to ensure it stays that way. Veloci are fiercely isolationist, spurning their nearest neighbours such as the podida, gnolls and arachs. Hnoca support of their ideals on a continental level has lead the two races to forge a wary alliance, though the veloci are content to let the hnoca wage their own war against the manfolk-antherans.
The recent attempt of the gnolls to capture a slice of veloci territory lead the veloci to rally their people together in an all-out assault on the gnolls, ultimately uprooting them and driving them westwards into the Grasslands. The veloci, however, did not see the full extent of their actions, and ensuing gnoll attacks on the tiloca lead the tiloca’s allies, the nearby podida, to sack the veloci capital in retribution.
The veloci themselves have now been pushed back almost as far as traditional gnoll territory, and the conflict with the podida is continuing to escalate. The veloci are a strong reptilian race with sharp claws and fast legs, making them perfectly suited for more combative endeavours.