Saturday, September 6, 2008

EPIC FAIL LIST; Comic #27

Sitting here bored, I began to think about all the unfinished projects I have yet to accomplish. Some of these WIP's are no longer Work in Progresses anymore. I gave up on them. But it would be interesting to compose a list of my failure over the past few years.

EPIC FAIL LIST:



Halo Survivor - Began production in 2005. We put out a few episodes on the PC version but then decided to move to the Xbox. After much time of preparation and gaining voice actors and writing scripts we have finally finished filming Episode One last month. Now all I need are the voices from everyone and I can edit it together and release the episode.

Sierra - A series made by my friend Andrew. I only participated in it as an editor and voice actor, nothing else. He gave up on the series temporarily because of lack of resources. Not so much my failure.

A Race Against Time - A series I made with my own clan in 2005. We made one episode, then the clan broke up and the project was dropped. The story lacked detail and effort.

Technical Advantage - A new series I started writing in 2007. This one is a revamped plot of "A Race against Time" with a much better name. The plot has been built upon extensively and I have written up to 13 episodes out of 18 for season one. I have yet to film any of it. I'm just waiting for the right time.

Downlow - A map I have been making for a year now. My friend Clark suggested the idea and I volunteered to make it with no promises. There has been so many attempts I have made at this thing. Three times I have erased everything and remade it with a much more efficient method of modeling each time. At this point, I am pretty sure I would stick with the model I have right now. I just lost interest in it. I may come back to it again. I did two times before. It just might be a while.

CondensationA map designed and modeled by Clark. I fixed all the MANY errors he had in the geometry and then gave it to him to skin. He's yet to skin it. I did my part, just waiting on his part now.

Movie Theatre - A map designed by Rik. Very little was done by me in this project aside from a candy booth. It's still an unfinished project nonetheless.

Sierra Map - I volunteered in making a map for Sierra. I had finished much of it only to realize that I saved it in the wrong file format and could not compile it into a Halo Map. There was a way around it, but it required much work to recover everything and I didn't feel like it was worth it.

Intertron - I made a map that was to be used in a scene in Halo Survivor. My computer crashed in September of 2006 and I lost everything, including this map file. I never bothered remaking it.

Conoid - Another map I lost in the computer crash that was based upon three cylindrical rooms. I never bothered remaking that either.

Halo Campaign - Very little was done but I attempted to make a single player mission on Halo once. I lost interest in it when the scripts became too hard.

My Room - I modeled my room to scale and made it into a Halo Map. Something happened with the bitmaps and they all got corrupted. I never fixed them. Though I did get it in game.

Halo CE Trainer 9.0 - The third installment of the trainer that I was working on. It was to have in-game menus so that you could control commands without minimization. Coding became too difficult and I put off the project until I was able to learn VB.net and dll's. I might take a course in college for this. I could come back to this.

Halo 3 UI - A current project that I was working on. I got much done with this one. The Halo UI map resembled the theme of Halo 3's UI. A lot of the menus are done and it received much feedback from a mini fan base. Something happened with the bitmaps one day and all my files became corrupted. I've been too busy to figure out how to fix them. I will come back to this. It isn't a lost cause and hopefully won’t be a WIP for long.

Ferris Wheel - A model I was working on. The model is complete but the explosion isn't ready yet. My most recent file has the asteroid modeled and the path created for which it will travel and crash into the wheel. I'll finish it up sometime soon.

Bunker - A piece of scenery I modeled but never got in game.

Battle Arena - A game I and Rik worked on a while ago. We finished up the demo but we never worked on the final release.

Bouncin Maze 2: A game I worked on by myself when I was young. I finished the first game, but it was very messy and thrown together. I then developed the sequel with a much neater interface and idea. Currently the demo is complete with 20 levels and 2 bosses. The game was never finished though.

The Experiment - A series that Andrew is making. I have been editing his videos, but due to resolution complications, memory leakages, and just loss of interest, I keep putting off this project. I usually begin working on it again a week later when I'm bored. Kind of funny how the ONLY video editing projects I put off are Andrews. This doesn't happen with anything else.

Tire Cannon - A weapon that Rik designed and I modeled. We got it in game and it is complete. It just was never released.

S Series Weapons - Another weapon Rik designed. I got a rough model in game, but I just lost interest with it.

There are so many other things that are too small to be listed or even remembered. I lost a whole bunch of WIP's on my computer crash in 2006. And some things I worked on last only like a day and then I get interested in something else. These are probably photoshops, flashes, or models. Videos that I edit usually always get finished. I enjoy editing too much to throw it aside.



This list is subject to change.

This list will be added to if I remember something else.


Now...after all that babble. I made a new comic. The idea might be a bit confusing. So I’ve been told by multiple people.










Basically things always go perfect in movies. Bombs are stopped, people are saved. I doubt it would be that lucky in real life.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Comic #26, Comic #26.5, Exploding Ferris Wheel

Yes. I realize I could have just made two panels in one comic. Do I care? No.
Visually, this one looks really good. I spent a good three hours on the first one. Ten minutes on the second.
^ Another reason I only draw stick figures in comics.


























By the way, that 3D person is supposed to be me. Well the stance is anyway. I traced a picture of my body once I got sick of messing up trying to draw it from memory:














Finally, I managed to explode that Ferris Wheel I showed on here a few days ago. It's now on youtube. This was just a test phase. It will get better than this.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Comic #25 and Flash Game

I made a new comic yesterday. This one was inspired while watching the movie Paycheck. Good movie too, if you're into action, mystery, tech films.














Everything always seem to go perfect in car chases...just as planned. In real life, I doubt you would be that lucky.

Also a semi-cool announcement: Our company Iceburg Inc has released a flash game on Newgrounds. This is the game I have been talking about the past few months. If you have enough patience and/or want a good laugh go check it out: Hitler's Strawberries.

















I say patience because this game was specifically made for Clock Day, a day for Newgrounds where nothing can get bad ratings. Everyone takes advantage of this, including us. So this game is intentionally supposed to be bad and make no sense at all. It turned out pretty good for a majority of it being done in three days tops. Rik and Batto are designers, artists, and composers of soundtracks. I programmed it and added weird text in places.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Comic #24, Games, UI, Animations

A lot of things have been going on in the last few weeks.

The first thing being the UI. I have stopped working on it. My tags somehow got corrupted, and now I can't use my editing programs. I'll be able to fix it, but I kind of took a break from it for now. It seems like the perfect opportunity to do so anyway.

The second thing being the comic. I had some downtime from the game programming, so I whipped this one up.
















We had a huge storm a few days ago, and this was exactly what I was doing while modeling in 3DS Max.

The third thing I started doing was modeling a Ferris Wheel in 3DS Max. (In a way, all these sections in this blog are interconnected.) I got the model finished and rotating. However my intention was to destroy it in a demolition type animation...of course. So I still have some work that needs to be done. Here is a bad quality preview of what is done so far.

YOUTUBE LINK - FERRIS WHEEL.wmv

The fourth and final thing was quite last minute. I am programming a game, as I mentioned above and back on May 26th, for my friends Lineman and Batto. I can't give away information about it, but it will be ready very soon. Once it's released, I'll post a link in here.

So that's about it. Summer is winding down. and I'm trying to finish all my Work in Progresses, which wont happen. Also I'm curious as to who actually reads the blog, rather than look at all the pictures. So if you see this sentence right here, let me know.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Monday, July 21, 2008

Comic #22

I told you I would finally do another one. An idea that sparked from last time I was at the theaters and how the screen ALWAYS freezes on the "silence your cell phones" bit.














Funny how he is the only one being yelled at. Almost as if the other people's ideas aren't stupid or moronic. Wait a second...

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Halo 3 User Interface

UPDATE #3.5
Here's a video preview of the UI and what is done so far:








YOUTUBE

Leave comments.



UPDATE #3

I guess this one is about done. I was going to add some extra buttons to the game to take you back to different sections, but I thought that would be kind of useless. I have discovered that the text input screen is hard-coded just about everywhere, so you will barely see any changes to that because I am very limited with what I can do. Besides that, nothing really special here...just new buttons and graphics that follow the theme.

SERVER SETUP SCREEN







TEXT INPUT SCREEN










UPDATE #2

PEOPLE SHOULD TRY READING THE BLOG FOR A CHANGE IF THEY WANT QUESTIONS ANSWERED. OK?
Here's the newest update, since everyone keeps buggin me about it. The gametype menu is pretty similar to the map menu. I made some custom images for each gametype, all of which wont be shown in this picture. Also I got a new font for buttons, so the map menu screenshot below has been updated as well. I need some sort of graphic in that empty space at the bottom. Any ideas? Let me know.

GAMETYPE SELECTION SCREEN







People are asking when it will be done. I don't know. I don't have a deadline. It'll be done when it's done. Seriously, I just work on it when I'm bored. When college semester begins again, I might lose more of my free time. The updates should be enough.




UPDATE #1


First time I think I ever used color in this blog. Oh well. Here's the newest update on the Halo 3 UI. The map selection screen, which I must say looks A LOT better than the original. Also as a bonus to these awesome graphics, you get to hold 14 maps on a screen at once, instead of 9. Convenient? I don't really know. Well without further ado:


MAP SELECTION SCREEN









Next thing I will be editing is the gametype selection menu. This update might be quick, because this page uses similar tags as the map one and half my job will be done. You'll also notice I started using my actual alias in the profile name, Lightwave is just another one I use.

Finally, apparently I am starting to get a little fanbase. X-fire helps a lot. So let me say this, I am not taking any beta testers at this time. You can bug me, spam me, or even threaten me (surprisingly I have gotten that) but you will not get an early release. I will take suggestions, but nothing else. One example is the descriptions for the maps. I will take creative descriptions for the maps and maybe even put yours in it. So let me know of any you think of. The first one, in the pic was done by me.

And if you're one of those people who just looks at the pretty pictures and doesn't read the text along with it, well I'll just ignore you for your ignorance.



ANNOUNCEMENT

I am making a new UI for Halo CE that will closely resemble Halo 3. Some parts I will make up for the sake of simplicity, but overall I will try to make the colors and theme match that of the game Halo 3. Here are some beta before/after screenshots of what is done so far. And no, I will not release until it is complete. Only a select few will be my beta testers.

MAIN TITLE SCREEN








PROFILE MENU







NETWORK SETUP MENU









Click the images they enlarge the picture. I still have much more that needs to be finished. My next part I will be working on is the select map menu.

Also yeah, I realize it has been a while since I released a comic. Expect one soon. I have an idea for one, I just have to draw it.

Xfire = gamerkd15