Ye Olde Blah

With the old one getting a bit stale and moldy, I figured that the creation of a new one is in order.

I'll start out with some funny facts. A couple of months ago, we started a band here:
I play ze keyboards (+ operatic vocals), OSIWM does the vocals, MadKow does guitar together with ShaidarHaran/Deus, Darius BloodAxe plays the bass and Olli (who also dropped by here once) does the drums ;).

All our work is kept very secret, but nevertheless I couldn't resist giving you guys a heads up ;).

So why the Vintage Classic Edition? Well, because that's what we're playing sofar. Vintage classics in our genre. Like "Fire Water Burn" and "Wild Thing" ;).

You should name your first album "Revenge of the Bee Man". I guarantee it would go platinum ;) When do we get to hear some of your tunes then? I'm intrigued by the operatic vocals ;)

I'll see if I can haul in a camera/microphone during the next session, and tape a small impression ;).

Peanut butter jelly time into "peanut butter devlyn time" and vintage rock it up.

I've run out of milo.  WHAT CAN I DO?

[miserable]

It's ok I found some regular drinking chocolate!! I'm saved!  It's not quite the same, but at least it holds off the withdrawal symptoms.

So today I'm going to meet with Hort research representatives about doing a summer project with them.  They do research on plants, both on the full size beasts and at the cellular/genetic level.  Have been working on my biology skills for two years to get an opportunity like this so let's hope I don't stuff it up.

Anyway since Devlyn didn't do the customary questions to start off a BONET, this one seems to be having the hardest trouble of all getting its motor running.

So remember, it's the BONET!! You can post whatever you like, any time.  Whenever you read it you should reply with _something_ even if it's just to say "i hate hate" because you're a rainbow loving beast.  Not replying on a read gives you 7 minutes bad luck! yes that's right! 
That 7 minutes doesn't happen straight away, only when you're around slippery floors and in casinos and whatnot, so POST POST POST.

On the topic of my recently averted crisis, what are your 5 favourite non-alcoholic beverages?  I want brands and recipes  :D

Also, who loves waking up when they don't have to get up yet and its raining?  I love it, destresses me totally.  Almost better than sex.

Apple juice
Apple/pear juice
Apple/orange juice
Apple/raspberry juice
Apple/Avocado juice?

On a different note, I am leaving for Tokyo today and Serj Tankian rocks, in case some people haven't discovered him yet ;).

Greatest Drink: Tea with milk and sugar :D

Other great drinks:
 * Orange juice mixed with lemonade (the fizzy kind)
 * Fizzy grape juice (Shloer)
 * Water?
 * APPLE JUICE

As a bonus, here's my most hated drink...Cranberry juice. That stuff is horrible. HORRIBLE.

Nice nice :)
Milo(do you have it?) chocolate drink(ample amounts), hot water, milk, sugarrrrr
Miloffee - Milo + coffee.
Grapefruit and Feijoa juice
Ice cold water
Coke

If you could speak/read/write any other living language fluently, what would you choose?  (I'm guessing right about now devlyn will be wishing he knew more nihongo).

Hell yes! I know a couple of kanji characters, but interpreting everday symbols is very difficult.

E.g. The japanese combine the kanji symbols for "protrude/stick-out" and "mouth". They think it means exit, whereas I think it would mean blowjob.

Needless to say, thinking like a Japanese is not easy at all...

So what are you doing over there?

He's crushing Tokyo city under his giant feet.

Going to his whale eaters anonymous meeting?

Whale eaters anonymous? I didn't know Devlyn went there too...

I mean...er...I don't eat whales...

I've said too much.

hehe :)

Well since I'm here I better reply.
I'm currently learning Bonnie Mary of Argyle for a quartet, it's kinda nice.
In other news the fire has been going for 4 days, which is my own personal record.

Fire? Which fire?

The one in my fireplace.
I'm not much of one to start the fire, in fact I've only had about 6 of them this winter.
However once it's going I'll be damned if I'm gonna let it go out.
My flatmate worked out that(against all logic) even with the air vent totally closed the fire kept going very very slowly. . . so I guess some other air is getting in there somehow.  Anyway, this means I can now chuck on a big log at night and it'll be going in the morning.

Ah, the joys of a fire that won't go out. The longest I ever kept one going was a week. It was for a camp, and even though it rained and somebody tipped water all over the fire, it could not be defeated. I was sad to see it go :(

Do not pour petrol on a fire though, unless you don't want your eyebrows.

You should have told me that before I started arguing with my girlfriend about how I was right in saying hi to my friend first(who i hadn't seen in 2 years) before I said hi to her.
hehe.

I think I would have argued about that too. I'll assume you lost :P

Yeah.

In the olympics we have a couple gold medal winning talents from NZ.  A pair of twin girls in the rowing(who won gold last olympics too), and an easy win for womens shotput.

We generally get these sort of medal counts, a gold or 2, a silver or 2 and a few bronze.

Yesterday morning we had no medals... This morning we have 2/1/2.  Big day for us : )

So our olympic chances have finally come to a close.
We ended up on 3/1/5, which is very good for us with all of 4.5 million people.

It would be nice to see olympics as a town theme in a shining game, where characters you're going to see later on in the game(or were heroes earlier on in your story) come to the town to take part in jousting, wrestling, fencing, caber tossing, chicken chasing etc etc.

I'm sure it's been done in various rpg games but I'm not sure if it's been done so blatently as gold/silver/bronze and other themes from the real world.

I've never seen chicken chasing at the olympics, but that would be pretty cool for a Shining game. Maybe a Colosseum style town, where medals can be exchanged for stuff. Maybe winning gold in different disciplines would give access to special characters or something. Maybe I should stop using the word maybe.

Great Britain did pretty well this time, considering we usually suck at everything. Especially stuff we've invented. However, if public drunkeness was an olympic sport, I would expect Team GB to win their own weight in gold medals.

I remember in landstalker they had some pretty neat minigames you could play.
because you bet gold on them though, once you got the knack you could(if you didn't get bored too easily) get as much gold as you liked.
I remember some sort of race from an oldschool rpg game too, but can't remember where it was.

Still Alive Mates!

Bleah, the posts are few and far inbetween arent they? sorry about that...things went and got busy around here.

Oddly enough nothing special really just a bit of a move across town and back to the olde grind stone of whoring myself out to companies in the hopes that they'll actually pay me to do something for them, here's hoping. There are a right many things i'd like to buy and they say this is really the only way to go about getting the paper to do so!

Hope everything has gone well by you all, things seem steady here so far. I'll Try to think of things to type on a somewhat regular day to day basis, or at the very least read the olde threads and keep up on things.

Havnt heard a whole lot from the Newts, he doin' alright?

-Seani

Good to see you still around mate :)

Newts is fine, he's just without internet access at the moment. He should be back online within the next month or so. I'll let him know you were asking :)

Pff, the next month or so. I am online NOW! It's good to be back on YoB, even if I'm finding my return to the 'net rather bewildering. There's so much to do, but by the time I've sat down at the PC I've forgotten what it was I wanted to do... I'm sure it'll come back to me.

I don't have a favourite drink at the moment, but my culinary addiction is Blue Dragon Thai Sweet Chilli Dipping Sauce. Don't let its name confuse you - it has nothing to do with the Mistwalker/Akira Toriyama 360 RPG, and can be used for things other than dipping. I rather like it on burgers.

(http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_01/newtST_468x327.jpg)
:D

(http://www.smg.net.nz/lan/images/smglan.jpg)

:D

Ahh yes, the life of a geek with friends is never secret for long.
I'm in one of those actually, the smoke filled room I'm in a black jacket, white shirt(with "dragon" kanji on it) and not so recently bleached hair.

Fun times, that lan.  Anyone else here do much lanning?

I thought that was you.

Never really got chance to lan before, seeing as my old laptop could only just manage Doom before falling over :( I think my new machine will be going on more adventures once I move to the States (it's one of these (http://techreport.com/articles.x/8002) - much nicer than my old laptop (http://www.whatpc.co.uk/articles/bigpicture/2013006)).

So now onto important questions: What's your best excuse for taking the day off work? Apparently "I don't feel like working here" isn't a valid excuse anymore :(

I once got away with "I'm lagging behind with the laundry." :P

"I am unable to speak."

"I have a sore stomach."

"I intentionally ate some moderately undercooked chicken in order to give myself an upset stomach and so score the day off work because I hate working for you."

A bit extreme I suppose, but if that didn't work I would have been saying "I walked into traffic because I hate you so much"

Thankfully these days I don't have to avoid work because I actually quite enjoy it!

I can't remember,. . . I've been working for myself for several years now.
Though one time at highschool I told my parents I was being bullied to get a day off, which unfortunately backfired and ended up with me being forced to attend in order to stand up for myself against my non-existent nemesis.

God save me, I've just bought SPORE.

I would ask if it's any good, but I think the real test will come after 10+ hours with it (if it lasts long enough). I'd still like to give it a try, but I'm not keen on the copy protection scheme they used. Seems I'm not the only one (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080908-gamers-fight-back-against-lackluster-spore-gameplay-bad-drm.html).

I too was sucked into SPORE.

Its not a bad game but you have to see it for exactly what it is. Those who come into it thinking its a completely custom RTS explosions and such kindof a fare will be disapointed. The game is really simplistic in nature throughout the stages of life clear up until space travel. At Cell you just eat things, which makes sense, when you come out of the water new aspects are added in but kindof stay there for the most part until you launch into space.
Once in space it becomes more of an explorer sort of game, with lots of goals and such but it all appears to me at first glance like a real deep easter-egg hunt.

I guess the real kicker for this game is the level of customization you have on your buildings/vehicles/creatures. It can get pretty complex or extremely simplistic, all up to you. But if that were the selling point for you perhaps you should've stuck to the free creature creator :(

Im genuinely determined to like this game, hell i bought it..


Elv if your interested in my first go at creating life the name i go by is Brownzerg :)
Tachimos is very basic and since i dont have a mousewheel i didnt know how to increase the girth of the poor guy's midsection but i think i managed alright!

I like it.  It's not my normal cup of tea, but I didn't expect it to be.  Really I could have bought the creature creator alone but I thought why not go the whole hog.
My first one was Failkitty Sean...   My idea at the moment is to try to make a race of kittens to take over the universe, but at my first attempt I did poorly(unknowngly pressing the irreversible "herbivore" button at the start, thinking mammals started as herbivores).
So I added hands and that was the end of it being anything like a kitten.

To get to space mode takes just a few hours if you rush, but to beat the game it looks like it would take 40 hours or so, not sure yet.  Of course it will be open ended at the end as well.

One problem I found was that since the stages of evolution are so quick and you spend so much time perfecting your first creature, you're ready for some action when you hit civilisation mode but you're forced to create four building types and many different vehicle types all at once.  This put a lid on my creativity, as I was happy to build things, but sometimes you just want to play te game, not worry about your buildings - and of course you don't really want to go with a default maxis building or vehicle because well, this is YOUR unique civilisation.. it's quite the uneasy paradox as you slam together a few models and end up with shabby architecture.

This is the first game I've played in a long time, and it's enjoyable, just a pity I don't have more time to spend on it now to see where it goes from space.



One update I'll wait for is more creature pieces.  I don't think I'll play again until I really can make a kitten that looks like a kitten.

I ventured one more time to have another go at making a cat, which I did.  It's called Kitten under Elvenfyre.  Anyway I swear that's the last for me for a while :P

ps: would be awesome if you could export your creation to a 3d design program so you could use it in shining games.

Man why did I click on my own post.  Way to end up in the BONET and having to post.
Umm.  I'm about to eat leftovers.

Today I got up late.

I have a note on my phone which asks the question "what proportion of people go to work on their birthdays".  I also recorded two beats which could be good game tunes by humming them over and over again into my phone.

What's the coolest tattoo you've ever seen?
-dude with the thundercats logo on his back.

The microwave is beeping at me, my leftovers must be ready.

I got up early this morning, so the natural order of things is now restored.

I don't know about the coolest tattoo, but my (future) wife's cousin has 2 tats: One is of two penguins (on her back), and the other is a Celtic design with her fiance's World of Warcraft character name in it. I don't think even I could be that geeky.

wow brings people together. . . . .

i'm getting this weird urge to visit the forum every day.  I might have to open the source code and start looking at it.

Sadly WoW brings them apart. He's on it non-stop, to the point of neglecting other things, like eating and sleeping. He'll happily cancel plans with her to go raiding instead. I'm no expert, but I don't think that'll do a relationship any good.

I always get the Shining bug at this time of year. Reminds me of the good old days of thrashing out terrible code but playable demo's.

Yeah I had a flatmate recently who was hooked real bad.

I've made my commitment in TSS forum, and although I have other deadlines I'm already considering opening up a text editor today.  I better do some real work first.

Last time I attempted something my real problem was a lack of OO experience, which I've dealt with now.  It doesn't seem like it but it has been 3 years since my last TSS push.  5 years(i think) since Devlyn released something in it, and 8 or 9 since he and I first got on the bandwagon together.  That's a long time for me not to have released something specific so I'm determined.

My current girlfriend can believe I'm playing wow for a couple weeks for all I care, she has exams anyway so as if she needs me to get in her face right now.  It's been a love affair between me and this project for longer than I've known her, so BAM.

So what got you back into the Shining mood? For me, hearing any of the soundtracks always gets me going. I haven't sat down and done any solid Shining programming for a long time, and the last release was back in April 2003. That's a long time ago.

I think just coming on here each day and seeing posts, along with just the right amount of pressure from other things in life.

: )  Fingers crossed no walls are hit too early.

eat it newbs I made a news post. hahah.
ahh now I can go back into obscurity.

I had to remove the question marks so it would fit :( Serves me right for making an inflexible design. Anyway, I've added it to main download section too.

Downloading and preparing to play :D

Yeah thanks for fixing the post, adding tags and whatnot.
I should put some images too but at the moment I need to focus on my deadline :E

Woke up sick this morning, which sucks because tomorrow is a huge day for me.  Don't know whether to go for a run and make myself sicker and then load up on vitamins and water to try to get over it in time or just to ride it out.  I think I'll be a whuss and hide inside.

Luckily I don't get sick often.  Is this something about being mid twenties?  What do you others think?

I think I've been ill about three times in as many years. It doesn't seem to last so long now, and I can generally keep going without too many problems. Coding is a bit tough when my head's knackered, but other than that I can function pretty well. I don't get hangovers any more either, just tiredness from being up late. It's awesome :D

I've never gotten hangovers but from wine.. . . talking about the wheel, it's time for me to celebrate :D

Got through the day ok, I drugged up.  Not much of a one for drugs while I'm sick usually, so these ones worked a treat.

Ho now, look and see who is a shining chest wig : )

I don't know what I was on when I came up with those titles.

Posted about the new demos at Shining Force Central ( Topic is here (http://forums.shiningforcecentral.com/index.php?showtopic=12636) ). TSS has also had a mention on SegaSaturno.com (http://www.segasaturno.com/portal/index.php) (in Spanish).

ahh, personally I didn't really want this release shouted out, I probably should have mentioned that.  it's ok though I'll take the crap that may come ;)

No worries, it's the only other place I've mentioned it. Thought a few more eyes on it could stir up some interest in the Source again :)

so. . .
Oh.  I see.  My giant kitten race has come, taken over the control of everyones tongues eh.

WHATS UP YO BLAH?



story for today.  short structure.
went to bar, as going inside noticed it said birthday celebrations.  asked bouncer if it was a private function.  he said yeah, but they only have the other half area, we can go in to have a few drinks at the bar.
have a few drinks, laughs(me and a mate), talk to a few people.
Even found out the birthday girls name and when she was standing right beside, said happy birthday.
All of a sudden after being there for a couple hours, birthday girls big brother comes and asks us how we know her.  we tell her we don't, and we are just having a drink.  he tells us we have to leave the bar as its a private function.  i try to explain that we were explicitly told we were allowed in there.  There were also several other groups of people not from the birthday at the bar with us, but this guy was talking directly into my mates face.
he is right up in my mates face and my mate stands up from the bar stool, and the brother takes it as physical time, so he takes a swing at my mate, and misses, falling over bar stool(lol times, i back off though trying to tell my mate lets just get away from this dick).  However my mate is angry now and when the guy comes at him again he dives on him, fight ensues.
Bouncers come and pull brother off while i take my friend off.  whole angry mob of birthday party goers coming for me and my friend telling us to piss off.
Eventually leave the bar and on the way out my mate passes the birthday girl, and tries to say sorry to her for anything.  She screams at the top of her lungs that if we say anything to her she's gonna punch us.  She goes on to tell the bouncers it's unfair her brothers(the other brother got kicked too, i don't know why) got kicked out when its her party.  I can't help myself and say to her that actually, her brother played a pretty big part in the whole affair, and blame couldn't be placed entirely at - KAPOW - she socks me right in the face.
So I say to her "congratulations on just getting thrown out of your own birthday party", and we go home.

I think that might be the greatest birthday story ever told. Did you get a good bruise or a black eye?

tiny bit of bruising on cheek, but the kapow was more shock than real hurt I think.

i thought of a shining battle where.... you've been put in prison or similar, your weapons stripped from you.
The battle-magic users of your party are under some kind of magic forcefield (a seperate area from the rest of your guys) so they can't do jack shit.
so you have to use your unarmed dudes to take out a couple guards and free your magic users who you can then use to take out the rest of the guards in order to win.

I think that's proof that inspiration is everywhere ;)

Unfortunately my party stories aren't quite as exciting as that. Probably the most interesting one was driving to a party, turning a corner and watching someone wipe out on the bend and smash into a lamppost. The guy was ok, but his brand new sports car was a complete write-off.

Oh, and another friend sliced his side open on a metallic sign in a bar. The manager didn't seem too interested (very much a "oh, more drunks complaining" attitude even though we'd only just arrived). The sign is still there, about 4 years later. Hopefully that manager isn't.

I don't remember many good party stories, although obviously that's because I don't go to many parties. I do remember one chap who got drunk for the first time on three Stellas, then when his parents came to pick him up said "about fucking time"! Poor chap - he'll never be allowed to forget it.

There's also something about vodka and Yngwie Malmsteen, but I think that's enough for now...

SPILL

:)

A new portion of time has begun for me.

Party stories? Oh, I have so many it's not even funny. Naturally, most involve me getting too drunk, but there are others.

I went to a friend's house party, and folks started throwing bottles at someone's house. They came around and asked to speak to the host, but they were busy popping pills upstairs so I had to negotiate. I told everyone to stop throwing bottles, or the police would be called. So someone threw a chair instead.

Good times.

The second time I got drunk was on vodka and orange, and after recording my burps I phoned Hannah with the immortal words, "I can't be drunk - I can still say Yngwie Malmsteen", which I proceeded to repeat many times.

A few years ago I lived a few doors down from a wannabe DJ, who would often stay up until gone 3am with his banging tunes. One night I'd had enough and stood outside his front door at 4am, in my dressing gown and slippers, banging on his door to ask for a bit of quiet. He was actually quite reasonable, if you ignore the 4am MCing.

Anyway, I obviously wasn't the only person who objected to his hobby - a few days later his equipment was confiscated and he was later evicted!

When we first moved into this house we had a loudmouthed Irish woman living underneath us, with a voice so shrill it's a wonder the windows survived every time she spoke. Well, I say "spoke" but she really just shouted everything, and we'd hear her at all times of day and night. It was like being stuck in an episode of Father Ted, only much, much less funny.

Anyway, this story doesn't really go anywhere but it lets me mention how happy I was when I saw her and her boyfriend loading their possessions on the back of a van and driving off! Sadly they've been replaced by an extremely argumentative couple, who seem to want to do nothing except scream at each other about how hungry and tired they both are. It makes me wonder whether our neighbours complain about any bizarre rituals Hannah and I have...

Well I'm moving into a new house in a weeks time, it's the beginning of a new era.

Also of note, we(YOB) received a porn post today.  I deleted it but I don't know if you guys will notice the user or want to do anything more about it.   The user was Viemunicepe.

Moving to anywhere nice?

I've gone through the memberlist and deleted the people I think would be bratwurstming. I've also upgraded the messageboard software, so hopefully that will help. Looks like we're popular again ;)

We're only truly popular again when we all start to imitate each other and resurrect the last tram :P

HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS

Public service message!

It's easy to spot the real Newts as he has posted far, far too many times here. He also has a very good-looking avatar and probably smells really nice, too.

Thank you, continue about your day!

Oops! I guess the first rule of imitation should be "remember attention to detail" - I'm still posting with my original avatar!

I'm already confused.

Nice reception at SFC :P. Anyway, you may see some stuff from me this year, i have some cutting edge stuff i want to try.

We're so popular :P

Any hints on what you want to show? It's the start of a new year, so don't be afraid of making grand promises you'll never keep ;)

Nothing outstanding, basically i want to adapt my Javascript TileEngine to load maps dynamically and then put a simple battle engine on top and that's it. I figure that by initially targeting a battle engine rather than an RPG i can avoid alot of the stuff that usually gets in the way (graphics, storyline) and focus on something concrete that is realistic and that i (or others) can later build on.

Sounds good. I've never been crazy about Javascript, but I've used it a little more recently and it's growing on me.

Btw. did I mention that I got a Mega Drive with Shining Force 1 for my birthday? :P

I guess you're playing it so much that you can't post on Blah as much :P

HOLY FLASHING TOAST OF DOOM YE OLDE BLAH IS ONLINE!?!?!?!

I thought this place died sometime back, I guess it was just someones webhost being mighty crappy :)

Hi everyone!

Oh, and bratwurst

Bloody Hell, didn't expect to see you around Saiy. Good to see you again.

And yes, we had trouble with the previous host. They took money but didn't renew the domain so some bratwurstmers got it instead. Moved to somewhere much better now, just a shame we lost the .org :(

What've you been up to?

Uni rubbish, finishing up a master's degree. Somehow managed to get a project where I coded a bluetooth multiplayer space invaders clone for my phone. Lots of fun :) Gaming wise I only really play Trackmania these days. Curently stuck in some shoddy coding job for peanuts and a curly wurly in pay...

.org/.net both the same really, no dot com :(

Could be worse. I moved from sunny England to rainy Florida about 2 months ago, and I'm tying the knot in 5 days.

Multiplayer space invaders sounds cool. I thought programmers got paid the big bucks though ;)

You're living in Florida nowdays? What the heck art thou doing there? O_o

Getting married on the 4th ;) I met a young lady online about 7 years ago. Went to America for a bit, she came to England too. Decided last year to make the move, so here I am in America :O It's weird here.

April fools?

If not, Congratulations Ty :)

Definitely not an April Fools - I was his Best Man this past Saturday. With his permission I'll post some photos so you don't think we're completely mental :P

hahah awesome!

keen to see some pics. 

Awesome indeed! Congratulations dude! :D

I'll be somewhat nearby in May, staying in New Orleans for a few days... ;)

I've bought a new hat.  It's called a cheesecutter I think.

I wore a Stetson, but it didn't really suit me.

Also, I'd never heard a tree frog until last night. It's been storming and now there are millions of the buggers outside. They sound a bit like car alarms.

Euhm... tree frog? What is the difference between a tree frog and a regular one?

-Devlyn, who contemplates a Bung Ole Never Ending Twitter :P

Ever seen a regular frog up a tree? ;)

I've seen this one:
http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2006/05/kermit-kitten.html

So I've started reading the D&D players handbook(4th).  Having never played before I don't know how I would find 3+ people to try it with but I figured I will at least read how to play it.

If I didn't already have cufflinks sorted, I would like to have some of these. (http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=26200180)

One day I do intend to produce some little SF sprites in beads or Lego or something, and when I do I'll be sure to let you all know :)

BONET Twitter sounds good - my Twitter account is DaddyNewts :D

I saw a kid riding on the handlebars of a bike yesterday. They went over a speed bump, and the kid fell off and cried. I laughed.

What's the funniest thing you've seen this week?

I was observing a concrete pour and a guy's foot got caught into the rebar when he was backing up, fell on his ass, and the concrete shoot smacked him in the face.

It wasn't very funny for me, but my friend enjoyed it: I walked into a door  ::)

I took apart a computer earlier and put the screws in a cup to keep them safe. No prizes for guessing what I just tried to drink.

And the computer caught fire. Lucky it was an old one I was trying to salvage as a server, but still...

I'm extremely behind right now on a particular deadline, and low and behold I get a sudden fit of enthusiasm for doing something shining. 

Is this the space I need to be in to have this motivation?  Ridiculous.

I'm not doing anything shining.... other than playing through 3 again.

but that doesn't count right?

dunno, maybe it does :) 
where's our accountant who can tell us if playing shining is duty free or not.


damn pangolins, never around when you need them.

Just in case anyones interested, I have 3 beta invites to Heroes of Newerth to give out.  It's a better graphics version of Defense of the Ancients, but this one is built stand alone rather than on the warcraft 3 engine.

Do you guys eat kiwifruit?  (maybe also known as zespri, or chinese gooseberry)

Just curious.  Here it's our biggest fruit export.  I'm working over the summer on a genetic database from kiwifruit which should be fun.  They've also just released a peel-able kiwifruit which should be interesting to try.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've never tried it :(

I eat it occasionally. In Amsterdam the kiwi is hot. It's used as pure fruit, in juices, smoothies, ice creams, dildos, soft drinks and candy!

That's an interesting use for kiwi...

I just burnt my hand on the stove. Tell me of your stupid injuries, Blah, so I may feel slightly better :(

it's also used as a meat tenderiser, which is pretty strange.

I haven't really injured myself since I walked into the door as I was opening it.

A lizard has taken up residence on the porch outside my house.

What kind of cool animals live near my fellow Blahians?

Just a snowman. A snowman, and a cat. And some screaming babies. No lizards :(

I demand a photo of the snowman.

I have a stuffed turtle which is on my bed if that counts?  Otherwise none.. birds in the trees. . .

I'm heading over to Australia's gold coast for new years tomorrow.  Should be fun in the sun and surf and plenty of tales for the wheel.  Hope everyone had a lovely christmas and has a happy new year.

The wheel goes round and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and then you fall outwards due to centrifugal tendencies.
After this you roll all over the ground, go comatose and wake up wondering not why your head is feeling like it's going to explode, but why your face is covered in peanut butter. . .

That was...inspired.

Perhaps next time a game is released here we should all smear our faces in peanut butter or something.

Sounds good to me! Better than eating a salty cracker with duck paté, whipped cream and a chocolate coffee been anyway, which  I did at Christmas and made me throw up :P.

Also, Amsterdam is the home of large populations of parrots and rabbits :D.

I saw a turtle yesterday. I really don't see how my life could become any more exciting.

That food sounds disgusting. Most disgusting thing I've ever eaten? Probably a cigarette.

Including the filter?!?!!???

I didn't eat the filter, but I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

Good for your man points, bad for your insides.

On another note, the pure pwnage online video series is being made into a TV series. 

So, if you had network money to make 20 episodes of 22minute TV, what would your show be about?

My show would be like Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs", except I would pick jobs that are boring. Even better if they sound exciting but turn out to be dull. Naturally the first episode would focus on computer game programmers ;)

I'd start a very big reality show to reconstruct the first level of Sonic the Hedgehog in real life :D :D.

Think of WipeOut gone 16bit ;)

Phew.  That's a load off.

Just came here on my daily check and it said the page didn't exist anymore.  All of a sudden the internet just wasn't worth my time.  Remembered that I did have one more thing to do but that didn't load either.
OH THANK YOU ROUTER FOR FAILING AND NOT BEING SHINING SOURCE.

I think I renewed the domain until 2012 this time ;)

Awesome :D.
The Shining Style yet lives ;).

I'm sure nobody noticed, but we're back from the downtime now ;)

Ugh, I'm in the middle of packing my house for (another) move. Hate it so much :(

I may have a few Shining style surprises in the months that follow. Fingers crossed ;)

Sadly I didn't get the surprise I wanted, but I did dig up a bunch of old interviews (http://www.shiningsource.net/shining-aid/interviews), including the one with me (turns out I had a copy saved). Might have something else to show in a week or so :D

Nice work on the site updates by the way :)

BONET questions:

What image comes to your mind when I say "ninja" ?
Biggest broken bone?
Two equal opponents, let's say MAX at level 9 unpromoted, go at each other - one with a (metal)rake and the other with a spade(not shovel).  Who wins?
White, Milk or Dark Chocolate?

1. My gang in Saints Row 2 :P.
2. I never broke any bone in my life, though my right pinkie is completely down the crapper due to an extreme dislocation.
3. Definitely the rake. The rake is a reach weapon, the shovel guy wouldn't even be able to get close :P.
4. Dark with hazelnuts ;)

So....what's your favorite 2-wheeled vehicle?

Has to be a kruiwagen with a spare wheel ;)

It's the only dutch word I know so I gotta use it when I can.

Hows life, what does a normal day consist of for you at the moment?

dun dun dunnnnnn

Well, with me living in London right now quite unusual! I'm still trying to settle down here, and get all my thingies sorted out ;).
Otherwise life's treating me good though. How are things on ye opposith end?

It's ok, I'm having fun with a new job at the moment, well kind of an old job, but it's complicated and challenging so yay.

What are you doing in London?  Studying stars still? (you became paparazzi huh :D)

actually finished my first campaign of D&D (i was DM, ran H1 in 4e), everything went pretty smoothly and fun was had by all.  amazing what adults can accomplish with the help of the wheel.

I know no one cares, but I just bought an extra-terrestrial forward.  :)

Ooo, I care, but don't know what you mean  ???

Baby?  :D

I was playing with the new HTML canvas element the other day and it reminded me of the Shining Flash days.

No, just Hattrick.  :)

Are you familiar with GWT (Google Web Toolkit)? It compiles Java to HTML/JavaScript. Some guys at Google (i'm working there now btw) ported an open-source version of Quake to the browser using GWT and Canvas, plus Ajax to talk to the server:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW--Wlf9EFs

It would be cool to do the same for an established Java tile/game engine and use it to build canvas based games.

Congrats on getting a job with the big G ;) I haven't tried GWT, but I managed to get a simple tilemap up and running pretty easily. Not sure if I'll use it for anything, but maybe I'll release the code if I get it to a decent state.

Ahhh the BONET *hugs BONET*

The one place you can blurt out whatever strikes your mind and its all perfectly alright, seeing as it just never ends. It is only revised.

Nice to see Job is still in hattrick! I managed to make a return myself, like the addict i am..

*hattrick withdrawls*

Too bad Devlyn isn't back, i would finally be "the one with the better team".  :)

Surely we could set about some jars of peanut-butter and perhaps he will be compelled to return and smear it about his face ;)

Ahaha, yes could call a team the "Peanut Butter Jar" and have the fans use it as war paint.

Poor old BONET, nobody loves it anymore :( About to start coding whilst tanked up. Wish me luck ;)

I just realised I haven't put any peanut butter in the game yet. Will have to do something about that.

Also...

Tell me you're programming drunk again, go on :)

I plan on getting stuck into some pixel art after letting the wheel roll a bit later.

Let's find out how unidentifiable a creature I can actually make!

Poor old BONET, so lonely. Sadly I have nothing interesting to report :( Maybe I should buy some booze and have a marathon coding session.

That is always a productive exercise :). I'm currently making a 40 minute presentation of time, while running out of... well, time :P.

You can always tell when I'm procrastinating because the site gets updated ;)

Yep, and I start doing the dishes.

And with the Sims social on Facebook, you can even procrastinate inside your computer game :P.

Merry Christmas all :)

Merry Christmas mateys :D

Merry Christmas peeps ;)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328554.900-ai-designs-its-own-video-game.html

So there we go. In the time it's taken me to get a sprite moving on the screen, machines have evolved to make complete games.

That's still pretty neat though :)

Nice stuff indeed! Making games does take far too much time, it's good to see people trying to automate a part of the creative process :) :)

I'll be making something this weekend for Ludum Dare (http://www.ludumdare.com/). I also made a little page to automatically update when I push code to GitHub or post a screenshot / tweet etc (here (http://lab.sodaware.net/game-jams/ld-23/)).

How much time do you have to make a game? Only 24 hours?

It's 48 hours in total, so pretty tight. I've done a few jams before, but this is the biggest one I know of so wanted to give it a try. It's kicking my ass though ;)

Oh dear ;). Well, even a game finished in 96 hours is worthwhile though ;).

Which reminds me... did I ever officially release the vastly updated BABS + main storyline crap at all? I can't find it anywhere online ;).

Here's the finished thing, for those interested: http://lab.sodaware.net/game-jams/ld-23/

It turned out ok, although I wanted to put more features in it like a shop or upgrade system. Maybe next time. Still, it's almost playable ;) I can't help but think I could come up with a small Shining style game in a few weeks using flixel.

I'll dig on my hard-drive tomorrow for any BABS releases :)

Poor bonet, you are so lonely :'(

Are there still others around? Or is it just you and me here... mano á mano?

Well we get a lot of bratwurstbots, so that means we're popular, right?

Well, at least it means we're loved, and that means something too I suppose :P.

I completely forgot that s.p.a.m. got changed to bratwurst by the swear filter. Over 10,000 bots caught in the last two years. Not sure if it's increasing or not, but at least I don't have to manually delete all those accounts now.

Yep, I forgot about the BONET,.  Like really old good friends, I had spent so long coming here that whenever something reminded me of it I smiled, but did not recognise how long it had truly been as it still seemed like yesterday.

At the moment I'm still in Auckland, my side interest from my job at the moment is android development, which is quite nice.  My programming abilities have become guru-like, and my artwork is still at the level of a 3 year old, you know.. play to your strengths. . .

I'm very excited to hear that Newts got a job at Nintendo!  What's he doing there?

Hope you are all well and that 2013 has seen you safely around the wheel.

Lots of extremely low resolution graphics love to all of ya.

ELV :D

Newts was pretty excited about working for Nintendo too :) He does online content for Nintendo Europe, like news on the website, info about games etc.

How's Android development? I keep thinking I should mess around with mobile stuff but never get the time. Will you be porting Shiny Sword? ;)

:)

Well it's going pretty well thanks.  I don't think I'd be porting that though :(

However I have recently come up with an idea not dissimilar to my old 1v1 team fight that I'm probably going to have a crack at putting on Android.  It'll have a lot of the same movement mechanics as shining force for ease of use, but battle calculations a bit closer to the current d&d version.
I don't know if it'll even get off the ground with a beta due to well, the sunshine calling me, but thought I'd mention it because the idea is entertaining, and I've only just come up with it a few days ago so there's still a chance I'll give it a crack.

Hows things for you?

Every time I do my 48-hour contests I think maybe I should just take a weekend or two to mock up a quick SF style battle using flash. I can't imagine it would be too difficult to get just a basic tech demo running and then build on that.

I read, so I must respond.

I checked my profile and saw I joined here in March 2004, nearly 10 years ago. I wonder if I'll be popping back in another 10 years' time to see what's changed? [Edit] In fact, it strikes me that it's 10 years since we moved across to PHPBB (right?) so I've actually been a member even longer.

Here's to you, Blah!

Most likely you've been around since August 10th 2000 or so? ;)

Btw. I wonder when the first Shining Mobile game is coming on the market...

Is it just me or would SF style battles work really well on mobile platforms?

I still have most of the files from the early TSS, but no database backups from acmefiles. Good times on the Ikonboard :)

I think it would actually... however, I've yet to see them! I wonder how difficult it is to make apps these days...

I keep thinking about writing a really light web-based version of Shining Force and then testing that on a mobile device. I need more than 24 hours in a day ;)

 :-*

I'm giving YoB the kiss of life :P

Happy New Year :)

This crowd funded game is finally nearing release and has a bit of a shining feel to the battle system.
The Banner Saga
http://stoicstudio.com/

Yeah I did a browser based game back in here
http://www.shiningsource.net/forum/index.php?topic=542.0

actually I should dig that out and re-host it for the lols.
would have to update code and security a bit though i guess.

Will post back if i get around to doing that.

Ok so i found the code, no database, and no db creation scripts.

I'm reconstructing the database from guesswork...

it's pretty old ajax to be honest, but looks like most of it should work.

presently being re-crafted on http://www.elvenfyre.com/shining/

Happy New Year Elv, good to see around again :)

I've done a lot of ajax work for clients the last few years - one big advantage is it works on just about everything. The new HTML canvas element is pretty neat too for rendering more complex scenes, so I think a JS approach would definitely be a plausible route to take.

Yeah well it was back in the day, I got put off for all sorts of reasons, but the idea was nifty.

Now that jquery exists I've just cut out a lot of the old code which you had to hand craft to handle the requests back in the day.

Anyway it's back to some kind of basic functionality, but work calls me, i'll get it so that games are actually competitive and not buggy after work.

See the attached picture.

ok so it's working in a nice enough fashion now.

i can't remember if i allowed "move+attack" but at the moment it's either or.
the alternate mode is more of a 'catchup enabled' mode.

http://www.elvenfyre.com/shining/

anyway. 
any feed back and more will happen with it.
good times all :)

happy shining.

Thanks Ty, that was enough to make me happy to consider V2.

I've moved the discussion on this topic into General Project Discussion for now.

Happy New Year everyone! I'll give the game a shot too. Let's see what will happen...

As for my Shining side of things, I've had Shining thoughts...does that count? ;)

Time to give the bonet a hug.

(http://www.shiningsource.org/forum/Smileys/classic/hug.gif)

 :hug:

The Banner Saga, by the way, just getting it to try out, one of their influences is shining force.

Also finished Divinity Original Sin, pretty amazing turn based strategy in its own right, just not as much party goodness as I want.

Banner Saga was nice, short but sweet.

Also: On the steam store for US$10
SEGA Mega Drive Classics Pack 4
Landstalker: The Treasures of King Nole, Shining Force, Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, Streets of Rage 2, Alien Soldier, Light Crusader, Gunstar Heroes, Streets of Rage, Shining Force II, Shining in the Darkness

Bung, definitely.
Old?  Hell yes.
Never ending?  this posts does it!

woop

If you were a bean, what kind of bean would you be?

Has bean :D