Timeline
of Accomplishments (and such)
aka: All the Crap I've Made
1995
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Created
a dinky ascii-based game in QBasic. You were a command base on the
ground, and had to shoot up at targets. I'd say it's similar to Missile
Command, but it wasn't even close. The game itself wasn't significant,
but it was the first real game others got to play, and I was proud
of it none the less.
1996
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A
buddy of mine started writing fiction based on the Legend of the Red
Dragon (L.O.R.D.) BBS door game world and the characters in our local
game, so I thought I would try my hand at it as well, and ended up
with several episodes over the next year or so. I still have'em, and
despite the earlier ones being pretty bad, I'll put them on the site
soon.
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Since
BBS's were big at the time, and L.O.R.D. was an influence, I decided
to write my own BBS door game. I taught myself Turbo Pascal, as I
began writing the original Defenders of Zentax.
- At
some point, I created a script in Commo, my terminal app, to play the
L.O.R.D. forest fights and events without user interaction. Why do I
feel it necessary to mention it here? Because I know of nobody else
that did it! Consider it lazy, or clever. It was a time-saver, if nothing
else.
1997
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- I'm
not sure of the exact date, if this is even the right year, but I created
a little app called J-Reader to read my Juno email from DOS. I had no
internet access at the time, but I was lucky enough to get Windows 3.1
and Juno running on my crappy computer. Since that was so slow for me
to use, I needed a faster way to read and even write email, so this
was going to be one of the handiest things. I had also planned to create
and combine UUE encoded emails, since free Juno didn't allow file attachments
at the time. But alas, at some point, Juno switched to a binary message
file format, which made this program obsolete.
1998
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- Since
BBS's had started drying up locally, I created and released PL-Net,
which was short for Personal L.O.R.D. Net. It allowed 10 people to play
the game via email, by sending daily "packets". I charged
$5 for it, which would unlock some extra features. It must have been
too complicated for most to use, cause it wasn't very successful, so
I eventually released a registration code for everyone to use it for
free.
- Released
beta 1 of Defenders of Zentax (DOZ). People seemed interested, as I
got a few emails about it. But with the state of the BBS scene, I decided
the game was past it's prime, and there was too much effort left to
finish it. So it kind of got pushed aside. Gone, but not forgotten.
- This
very website was also created during this year, by a friend of mine,
since I didn't have internet access. It was nothing like the website
is today, since it was only for the downloading of DOZ, but it was great
to have at the time. If you happen to read this, thanks again Methos!
- Not
wanting to let the DOZ storyline die, combined with the fact that my
programming skills were getting much better, I began work on a graphical
version. The project was called DOZ-G, and considering the limited hardware
I had to work with, I was impressed with what I had. But I'm not the
best of artists, and I knew it was going to take a ton of work, so this
was one of those projects that got left behind eventually.
- Also,
sometime during this year I think it was, I discovered a free BBS-like
internet provider, for "educational purposes". I had access
to a Lynx browser, so I had full text-based internet. It was great,
especially with BBS's dying around here. It gave me something to do.
But naturally, I wasn't satisfied with text-only internet. It never
had a name, but through a combination of Commo script, pascal programs,
and batch files, I concocted a very cool, albeit slow, method to see
web pages graphically. It would download the current page's source code,
parse it for the image names, download each image, edit the source to
point to the images now on my hard drive, and load up a DOS-based browser
(I forgot which one it was now) to display the page.
1999
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- I
finally got "real" internet access, and delved into the world
of IRC. After a while, I found the standard mIRC to be a bit boring,
and after not finding a script that completely suited me, I slowly wrote
my own, called Optical Illusion. It has the standard channel kicks and
bans, an mp3 player, etc. A lot of it is just stuff I wrote for myself,
and doesn't have a clean or easy interface, so I never put the script
up for people to get. I may polish it up and do so sometime, since I
had a few people interested in it. The current version is 0.65. I'm
not sure if it will ever be "finished", as I still add things
to it even nowadays.
2000
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- During
Napster's reign, I wanted to try making my own client, using mIRC script
no less. So, I did. It never had a pretty interface, but it was certainly
usable. But alas, Napster got shut down, so I never bothered working
on it afterwards. Though I still think of this as one of my best projects,
as I don't know of anyone else who did it at that time (or even today).
2002
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- During
the very long break I took in actually making anything exceptionally
useful, I had started teaching myself C++, learned some basic 3d modeling
skills, tinkered at making music, become a fair "graphics designer",
and gotten into web page design. Creative juices were flowing, and I
started thinking up some game ideas now that I had the skills to do
them, so I decided the website needed an overhaul to accommodate my
future plans. I created graphics and buttons, started learning how to
create Flash animations and stuff, and came up with the whole "Planet
Zentax" theme.
- At
this point, I was ready to make something good. I began working on Electris
(a tetris clone with an electricity-type theme) in August, and actually
set a schedule to have a version released by the beginning of September.
And in record time, I did, and even had an update version a week later.
I created everything in that game, from the graphics to the music. Some
people will say "yeah so, it's just tetris for crying out loud!",
but the fact that I did it all solo, in a month's time, and actually
finished it (for the most part), is something I'm proud of.
- Since
Windows 98 isn't all that stable (especially when programming), and
not all my (ancient) hardware was supported in Windows XP, I created
Multi-boot Rebooter, or MBR for short. It's a little app that sits in
the system tray, which you can right click and tell which OS to boot
to next by default. That way I can pick one, then select Reboot from
the menu, and get up for one reason or another while my computer takes
it's time to reboot to the other OS. Possibly another thing written
due to laziness, but it's sure handy.
- During
my free time, I started working on a 2d graphics engine that would run
on 3d hardware, so I could take advantage of rotation, scaling, and
all that fun stuff. The whole point of this was to be the engine for
a new version of DOZ, for which the storyline and game concept had evolved
greatly over the years. Due to the 3d hardware I had, and the fact I
was working on other things, I put this aside for the time being.
2003
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- Created
"Gordon" animated Flash web comic, based on Super Mario World.
I had always thought up comic ideas here and there, but never really
done anything for real. Since I had learned some Flash to create banners
for the website, I decided I would try making something animated.
- Currently
finishing the final touches on Electris v1.2, including extra music
and graphics, which will probably be the final version of the game.
Both 2d and 3d graphics engines are in the works, for use with a future
version of DOZ, along with some 2d side-scroller game ideas I have.
Gordon web comic will continue for an undetermined number of episodes.
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- Programming,
with experience in C++ (including DirectX), Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic,
QBasic, Basic, Flash's ActionScript, mIRC script, some CGI/perl, and
Commo script (not very useful now, but I had a lot of experience with
it none the less).
- Graphics
Design, with experience in and access to Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, and
3DSMax (yes, it can be used for creating normal graphics).
- 3d
modeling experience in 3DSMax (used to create all graphics and models
in Electris)
- Experience
in creating music, using FruityLoops (used to create all music for Electris)
- Flash
animation experience, with access to Flash MX, and Swish. All Flash
on this site was created by me.
- Web
page design (this entire website, including graphics), with experience
in and access to Dreamweaver, and Frontpage
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