New Blog Up

Hi everyone! Like I said a while back, I am slowly moving my blog here. I am in the middle of converting my layout to a WordPress friendly version. While I do this, some parts of the site may outright look like dog vomit. Rest assured it will be done later tonight / early tomorrow.

Everyone is urged to change the rss feed to the new blog. I also plan on being a lot more active with posting. Expect a few updates on past articles.

Review: Forza 2 Demo

All I have to say is WOW. The developers really rushed this demo out to the xbox marketplace. Within a fifteen minute period, the game crashed twice. Once while loading, and the second while mid-race. Apart from the crashes, the game doesn’t look all that impressive compared to other racing games available for the 360. I was a fan of the first Forza and really enjoyed fine tuning the car to be just right. It brought back memories of another game I used to play all the time (too bad I can’t think of the name).

If you are thinking about downloading the game, take this as a warning. If you do download it, tell me how it works.

Dear SONY And The Producers Of Spider-Man

Dear SONY And The Producers Of Spider-Man,

In regards to the release of Spider-Man 3, I have these words to say about the fourth installment:
NO
please same me some grief.

An Inside Look At The City Plots “City Map”

I thought I would take some time off this nice afternoon and talk about my upcoming game codenamed City Plots. The idea for the game came from many sources. The goal was to take the best aspects of online strategy games, and make one perfect game.

Without wasting any more precious programming time, I would like to explain how a very crucial component of the game works. When you register for the game, you have to name your city. You are given a small parcel of land (100sq. units). In that land you can build buildings. Much like traditional rts’s, you can choose where these buildings are placed. Most online games like City Plots do not allow you to chose where to put the building. Many times you only build one of them and expand that one. The flaw here is that a real city doesn’t have one building that everyone lives on, unless… well I’m not going there.

Upon entering the buildings page, you will be presented with a map of your city. You can scroll around to view any area you have expanded into outside of your viewing threshold. The map shows pretty little icons for each building type. If you click in an empty square, you can build a new building (assuming you have the existing prerequisites). This type of game model allows for rapid creation of a city. You can build two buildings at once, but you have to have enough workers available to do the jobs. The more workers you have, the faster constructions goes.

What types of buildings will there be?

There are many types of buildings in City Plots. At first you start out with very primitive structures as your city is small. As you grow, there will be a need for various services. You will be able to accommodate these by meetings the prerequisites listed. After all, you can’t build a weapon shop without an ore mine.

The technical side

No to fear! This isn’t that hard to understand. To create a city for each user, and array of all possible units must be created. Instead of doing this by hand (which would take an awful long time that could be spend doing other non-productive things), I used a simple loop to create the array.

$blocks = array( array( array() ) );

$x = 4;
$y = -4;

while( $x > -5 )
{
$blocks[$x][$y] = $blocks[$x][$y]['blank'];

if( $y < 4 )
{
$y++;
}
else
{
$y = -4;
$x–;
}
}

That creates what I call a ‘blank slate’. The array is then stored safely in the database. What the script basically does it start at the uppermost x value (we do have to make a graph-like system) and go through all possible y values starting at the lowest. Once the y value reaches the largest value it can, the x value is then lowered one step. This process is continued until all values are generated. When the x value reaches it’s lower limit, the loop breaks and the array is ready for storage. A similar method is used when adding new rows, et cetera.

That’s pretty much it for now. Expect more to come on the inner workings of City Plots.

Review: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl

I just got my new graphics card (x1900GT) and another gig of ram. I also purchased S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. And I must say, it is one of the more graphically advanced games on the market. I tried to play it with one gig of ram and my older x800GTO and it looked ok. The graphics were very comparable to those of Half-Life 2, except at a lower framerate. On my new card the game runs great. I can’t play at max settings with dynamic lighting, but that’s fine. For a graphics card that cost only 124 dollars from Newegg, it is holding up wonderfully.

Not much of a review, nothing really bad to say about the game at all. It plays much like Oblivion. If you have the hardware, go out and buy this game. You won’t regret it. Screen caps to come soon.

Account Registration For City Plots Begins

You can now create an account on City Plots (working title) as well as create your city. There isn’t anything to do yet. You can view the game’s change log to see exactly how the game is progressing. I would like to take this time to test the account management scripts for bugs that may appear. If you happen to find a bug, please let me know asap. Other feedback is also requested.

The game is located: http://cityplots.ojaisoft.com

Update To The Facebook Poke Stats

I updated the Facebook poke stats just a few minutes ago. Most of the updates are not viewable because they are server-side only. I did make some changes to the user interface though.

The list of everyone who has poked me now has a rank column so you can easily tell what your rank is. The latest pokes page has been reduced to the latest eight pokes. Last time it showed ten, which left two hanging on the bottom. I have more updates to do, and not enough time to do them tonight.

 Facebook Poke Stats Here

New Game – City Plots

Overkill games and Ojaisoft would like to announce the new game City Plots (working title). City Plots is a post apocalyptic text strategy game. Users take control of one of the few surviving families; starting from scratch. Throughout much of the game, players will discover parts of a survivors journal; revealing his story, and how it became such a desolate place. Below is from the main page.

Since World War 6, there is no longer an America. Israel, Russia, Japan, and most of Central Europe united against us and destroyed what once was. Shortly after, in 2085, the world powers turned on each other and there was nothing left other then four years of a nuclear winter known as “The Cold September.” No nation remained. The survivors faced an unmarked world. This new generation was dubbed “The September Children.”

Our world as we know it has devolved to a primordial state where packs communicate with violence and fight for their lives. What pack will you join? What will you do to rule the world?

- Client.1

Beta sign-ups will start soon. If you would like to be part of the staff, inquire within.

New Secret Game Announcement Update

Like I promised, I would post announcement for the new game. However, I am unable to do so at this time. A name has not yet been decided upon. A real announcement WILL come out Monday morning.

As for me, off to sleep. The LAN party was great and my body is paying for it.

The Death Of A SONY Camcorder

Today was a great day for me; apart from the chances of getting in royal amounts of trouble. It all started during first period Video Productions. Our iconic “teacher” made a huge mistake; he told us to take a broken camera in order to mask our shenanigans. Normally this would not be a bad thing. Much more this would be quite awesome that a teacher would allow a group of delinquents to leave class early, with no intentions of coming back. Knowing that we have had a past of vandalism of the classroom (such as changing the computer’s desktop backgrounds to the Time Walker ‘mumalien’ or pinning up poorly drawn pictures of said “teacher”), he should have seen the following acts coming.

Off to the computer lab we were. We really didn’t need the camera to get there, as none of the other school staff would have stopped and asked why we were walking around the campus (which happened to be day where a bunch of big-shots from the state were visiting; seeing how good the school was). Not too long after our arrival, the Computer Tech. class next door got wind of this broken SONY camera and took it from us. We had no problem giving it away. Now here is where the story gets good.

We go back to the class as I conveniently left my backpack in the classroom. Upon entering, our “teacher” inquired about the camera, and why we didn’t have it. None of us really knew what to say, and simply told him “We’ll go get it.” Well, we did go get it, but it sure wasn’t in the same condition. In the short amount of time it took us to walk to the classroom and back to the lab, they already had the camera completely apart. Every single piece, laying on the table. We told them that the “teacher” wanted it back. We all laughed. And we laughed some more. You would have laughed too if you were there. It was truly and amazing sight.

The teacher in the Computer Tech. class grabbed a box and we quickly put all the pieces into it. We took the box to the school office and told our story to a woman, who will remain nameless, and gave her the box. She told us that she would give it to our “teacher.” And she did give it back to him. And angry was he. But there was nothing he could do from that point. We had saved him the trouble of calling the office to report us. I also prevented myself from getting into massive trouble.

This come Monday after Spring Break, I am going to bring in a cake for our teacher. For those of you who don’t remember, this was the same teacher who kicked me out for not talking.