Well here's a new update, finally. Not a lot to mention on the Planet Zentax front, though I've done a lot of stuff at Hazard Labs lately. Pop on over and click on the Rec Room button, and you can try the Memory and Spug Shock games I made. I've also done a lot of html work and stuff lately for the place. Not to mention, there's about 4 Hazard Labs-related Windows games that've had work started on'em. No idea on release dates on those, though. Right now I think we'll stay focused on Flash, since it's easier to put everything together using it, despite my computer being the slow beast that it is and not running it well. I'd like to get several Flash games under my belt, anyhow.

Also, for those missing new Gordon episodes, you might be happy to know the Spug Shock game was partially based around it. Go play and see!

That's about all I can think to ramble about for now, so until the next time.

posted at 2:07 AM

The Tripod ads are getting a little outrageous. I got 4 just loading the main page just now. Though I think that's cause it's a frames page, so I may try to go non-frames to reduce the number of ads for now, unless I can get at least $5 flowing to them each month to get a pay account.

I'm still working on a programming project for Hazard Labs (or well two, actually). Both have come along pretty good so far. Though this is that frustrating stage where you try to make all the core components work, and work together, so that you have something to build on. I believe I see the light at the end of the tunnel now though. And I've definately learned how to do a few things which I'll need in the future. One of which is that I finally figured out and perfected mouse-clicking on objects in a 3d environment.

Speaking of which, I've seriously considered lately having a section devoted to teaching others how to do DirectX programming and such. I've read countless tutorials and web pages over the years to learn this stuff on my own, so I thought I'd try to return the favor by helping others learn it.

Anyhoo, I have 99 of the 100 secret thingers in Vice City, so I have to go through the entire list to see which one was missed. Blah!


posted at 12:03 PM

Blah, Tripod is throwing up ads when you click on any of the buttons now. The whole point in me making the site frames was because the only ads you got back then was when you first went to it. Oh well. Maybe when I get some cash rolling in I'll pay Tripod to stick the ads somewhere else.

After discovering that collision detection is pretty difficult to implement in anything that's not pure 2d movement, I've put the graphical DOZ project on hold for a little bit again while I work on a joint project with Hazard Labs. It'll work out for the best though, as you learn stuff with every project which you take with you to the next one. It can't hurt to get in some more basic collision detection experience with this one.

I noticed in the Bio that I said "jaz" and not "jazz", which I fixed earlier. I'm not stupid, trust me!

Now that my computer has decided to behave (or at least I hope), I'll try to get some work done.


posted at 2:43 PM

Believe it or not, but I finally finished up v1.2 of Electris. After looking in the code and thinking about what exactly I needed to do to get the new version done, I realized it wasn't gonna take much time at all. So I finished up the loose ends and tada, v1.2 is done. I still didn't add multiple music tracks, but at least the Ogg Vorbis support is there, along with the full version of the original track.

In any case, go to the Electris page to download a copy.

posted at 5:17 PM

Woo look at that, I did some updatin'! I finally added that Downloads page (though a couple of the links don't work at the moment). I also touched up the Bio page, and added in the years 1999 and 2000. Note that the "Main" button is now gone, for space reasons, but you can click the Planet Zentax button above the bar there and get back to the main page just the same now.

I worked on Gordon #4 some more, and actually got some inspiration for part of the story. I ripped the sprites and backgrounds I needed (for the moment), so hopefully I'll get that finished up soon. I just hope I have all the sound effects I need, cause it sucks trying to get those recorded from the SNES.

I've just been in a "real life" mood lately, and the computer seemed about as interesting to me as a toaster. When I was actually on the net, I mostly just checked email so my accounts wouldn't fill up, and looked over my daily sites. Well, and played some lan games of Counter-Strike, but that didn't involve the internet, so they don't count. ;)

Anyways, MacGyver is on, so that's enough yackin for now.

posted at 12:12 AM

I am a very bad non-posting person lately. Well, mostly cause there's not much of anything TO post. But I thought if I started to type, something would find it's way out.

Lessee.. I worked on Gordon some. I need to find where I put my roms and such since I need to rip more backgrounds. Whenever I do that, I'll try and make myself work on it some more. I've just felt lazy with that whole thing.

Playing single-player against bots in Counter-Strike is more fun that against strangers online, if you ask me.

I've just been going to bed earlier lately. Since I used to do most of my work at night, I just hadn't gotten around to much of anything lately. Though I still feel tired most of the day though, so a lot of good changing my schedule did. ;)

I have that itchy feeling to make something, though. My mind is back at the graphical DOZ thing again. But I like the whole idea of a starship simulation or something. I've toyed with that idea for a long time. Whether it ends up as a DOZ thing or not is yet to be seen. But I think micro-managing a ship could be fun. Doing repairs, upgrades, etc.

Anyway, at this rate, I won't get much of anything done on any of that programming-wise in the immediate future, but I'd need more idea-making time first anyway before I tried to code anything. There's prolly other things I meant to ramble about on here, but I'm tired, so I'm off to bed now. *poof*


posted at 1:12 AM

Wee yet again another month has gone by with no post! Things have just been weird lately. I haven't worked on a lot of stuff lately, at least computer-wise.

I do finally have that 20 gig drive now though, and have taken full advantage of it! I can finally keep Linux on my machine. I've thought about learning some SDL or OpenGL, and converting Electris to use it, so I could port it over to Linux, but that would probably be a big job. Might be worth it to mess with sometime though just for the learning experience. I've used up a lot of the space already though. But it's going to quality gaming and such, so I can't complain. ;)

For any Linux geeks, I installed Mandrake 8.0 (since that's the newest distribution I have laying around, and don't choose to wait 3 weeks to download 3 discs for the newest Mandrake or Redhat). I've done some tweaking though. I upgraded to kernel 2.4.20, and switched to the ext3 filesystem. I got the newest versions of XMMS, BitchX, KVIRC, Squid, etc. All the good stuff. Now that I think of it, I downloaded some stuff about a week or so ago that I never got around to trying. The only thing left that I want to get working is my webcam, but I don't think I'll have a lot of luck with that. It's one of those older Alaris Weecam things, that runs through the parallel port.

Well my room is in a total mess, and I still have to find places for some of this stuff, so I'm gonna finish this up. Btw, I'm using this w.bloggar program again this time. Had I forgotten about it, I might have been too lazy to made the entry at all! So for that reason, I recommend it. ;)


posted at 2:43 AM