Temporary Hiatus

Just on a bit of a holiday until Uni starts later on this year. may comment about the festivities over christmas and new year a bit later on, depending on whether I end up with more work from Big W or not.

another Whoops + manifest

another whoops, I do forget shit... but there is plenty in store for O-LiT in the future... well... especially if we get beyond spontaneous together, but that's for another time.

for those who notice the change, Don't worry, I'm the same Sapph, and always will be.

Catch me on TF2 as Sapph! I managed to score the Orangebox for $29.95AUD (cheaper than the steam store + discs) and I be getting garry's mod soon too.

I'm learning to use Valve's Hammer editor... it's got a not-so-friendly interface but I'm getting there... the learning curve *should* be faster than it is though because of my experience with GTKRadiant (quake3 map editor)... I'll just put my excuse as "this interface stinks"

my poor notebook is dying, and I'm being evil in using it till it utters it's last dying words, but what can I do? I ain't got the money for a new one right now... on the other hand I'm borrowing on of my bro's computers which is working really well.

Manifest is on next month... august 20th-22nd YAY!
boo for the election being on the 21st! BOOO!
ahwell, absentee vote over at the nearest appropriate voting place...
*chuckles* so many people in costumes voting will surely intrigue the people at the polling booth.

on the other hand it looks like I need to get myself some more work or somethin because I currently have very little money for manifest >.> and it's getting to be less by the day.
hopefully everything works out, otherwise it'll be a day of hanging out with friends... although that's not too bad either.
need to meet up with the guys + girls from Deakin again... I hate not having a car now... ahwell.. $2000 and 80 hours worth of driving.... it can't be that hard... can it?

lastly: I am still working on that comic. there is currently no backlog to upload, but a lot of pre-lim sketches to filter through... and some scripting to re-write >.>
I'll post some other stuff up in the mean time.

- Sapph A.K.A. Rob

the worst games of all time?

well... that's not exactly true, but I was looking through the lowest ranking games on www.gamerankings.com to find that all the lowest ranking games where childish ones on the DS (or similar) and ones based off movies, and they all had rankings between 10 and 30 percent (1/10 - 3/10)

there were very few exceptions to this... but then, let's face it, in general without following the trend, you're not that likely to score that low without an extremely high ego and a crappy idea.

and so here comes the quest. go, look at all the games you know and post the ones you hate the most... (ongoing research follows here, so even if it's been years since this post was made, still post the game(s) that you hate the most).

I should be getting ready right now...

In fact I should be in the shower right now, because I need to head out for uni soon.

But, I decided I couldn't pass this little thing up, even if I got back to it later...

so the question is, how would Lucky Star look if it was made in the 80's?

well the answer has been done by a very talented artist on DeviantArt.
so first, for reference, here's the 4 main characters in their original animation style.

from left to right there's; Tsukasa, Konata, Kagami and Miyuki

so... we'll start with Tsukasa
is the artist a genius or what? I remember those old phones, we used to have one in the car as big as a house brick and probably just as solid ^_^
Then there's Konata
NES for the win, albiet the earings seem kinda out of place...
Kagami
ah, 15 songs on a device that clipped to your belt... another 15 in your pocket, just watch out for magnets and such ^_^
and Myuki
I've got quite a collection of those 5 1/4 inch floppy disks, and maybe even a drive somewhere in the house, Das Boot anyone?

so the artist is called wbd... http://wbd.deviantart.com/ I dunno what it stands for but I don't really care, I'm running late now ^_^; (that is, I'll be taking the later bus and running to get to my lecture a few minutes late) but I don't really care because I've taken the time to share an awesome thing with everyone

-Till next time
Rob

Gaming humor?

I'm wondering if anyone I know (other than my close group of friends) would get gaming humor...

even then I wonder if anyone knows anything about Diablo II...
and as such is it worth giving out some gaming humor around here?

but then what is so interesting about life when you live and breath games from a decade ago...
yeah, back before and only just after the turn of the century, games were good back then, with a decent storyline and replay values above 2.

of course there's the potential for those times to come back bolstered by modern technology, in the meantime there's the indie styled games... and don't forget about our friends in open source.

NAEV (I dunno what it stands for, or why they called it that) is a 2d top-view space-trade and combat (RPG/Action?) game, similar to Escape Velocity series (that's a Mac game!).

NAEV is still under development and needs some work to get something that's actually interesting together. but if you're creatively minded (particularly in writing) perhaps theres a place for you to give your input. Imagine putting that in your resume, "contributed to NAEV an open source game"

yeah, I'll keep dreaming...

anyway, it's late right now, and I have crit thinking and programming tomorrow...

'till next time
Rob

whoopseh

I'm absolutely hopeless at this, aren't I? I start one project and before I get even one twelth of the way through, I drop it and move onto something else... so if anyone tries reading the archives and notices that I started an episodic review of Kampfer, it ain't going to be finished... however, as a result of that original endeavour, I will probably review a series from time to time...

but on the other hand... I'm about to dredge up a few old favourite (web)comics from around the place and get to work on this blog's comic!

yes... and I damn well hope it goes for longer than a week because I've read more than 7 years worth of webcomic (with it's ups and downs and fillers etc.) in about a week...

yeah.
http://www.venusenvycomic.com/
for those who want to look... and yes I've read it from the first page to the most recent...

just gotta be careful of Deus ex machina (god from machine, or rather a plot device that solves a difficult problem, often with the introduction of a new character, ability or object (wikipedia, Deus ex machina). yes I paraphrased that slightly).

so...
well that's all I had to say... so I'll leave with a list of sites that I'm going to reference for humor and a link to that wikipedia page.

http://www.megatokyo.com/ - Fred (aka Piro) was my original inspiration for drawing, it's technically not fair that I steal his work, but then again I want to at least honour him a bit... so yah

http://www.dominic-deegan.com/ - I don't want to use as many puns as Mookie does, but well... Dominic Deegan, Oracle for Hire has been a great read... when I managed to read it.

http://www.paradox-lost.com/ - A more recent read (before Venus envy) which had some humor and plotness in it... I might steal a leaf from this one for the sake of a side-plot with some entertainment... but then again I might not. the artist seems to have stopped working on it, which is a bit of a shame.

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/ - Ctrl-Alt-Del... now this is an old one, it's where I actually went with "Webcomic" as opposed to "Manga-Inspired" (manga-inspired being megatokyo) and being the first actual webcomic that I read, I believe it holds many of the possibly 'tried and true' concepts... I dunno if I'll be able to work with them, but it's always good to *cough* ste... *cough* borrow ideas when in doubt...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/ - penny arcade, well... personally I don't enjoy reading it... and that may partly be the fact that it's rather in-your-face about somethings... that and the two characters seem to be just a tad... how you say? retarded? no offence to the artist or anything... just personal preference...

http://www.venusenvycomic.com/ - My latest read, and a big deal in a sense, transgender people are still people like you and me, and they have their problems... and Venus Envy has been a good laugh, particularly at midnight >.>

http://xkcd.com/ - self reference, Irony and program... I mean extremely varied humor... oh and Randall Munroe has covered the meaning of existance many times over, if you've read all his comics and still don't get it... try refreshing your inbox just one more time.

right... well apart from that wikipedia link... and the comics that I've forgotten ^_^;
there's not much else to say... (I was about to add 'do' but then realised that the amount of stuff I need to do tomorrow and on my holiday (ANZAC day monday) will kill me... so yah)
I'll be signing off.

yeah, I haven't forgotten... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

'Till next time.
Rob

Anime Review - Episodic - Kampfer

I've chosen some dangerous waters to swim through with this... but I have decided to informally review the anime series Kämpfer

Plot Summary: Senou Natsuru is your normal, everyday high school student. However he´s been chosen to be a Kampfer, who´s objective consists on fighting other Kampfer with either guns, swords or magic, however, there´s catch; first you can´t chose if you´re a Kampfer or not, and second, you must have the body of a girl to use your powers. (AnimeNewsNetwork)

The rest of this entry is spoilers

so far I've watched the first episode. and I'm only impressed by the somewhat interesting opening scene at the start.

I'll put it down to the point that most of the humor is by the same concept of my blog name. 'Lost in translation' "arousal, I don't mean it like that." when referring to the sense of arousal to fight as opposed to sexual arousal... and there's some sexual humor... suffice to say it's rather retarded.

summary for this episode is:
Opening action scene where two females, who we later learn to be Natsuru (blue haired-genderbending guy) and Akane Mishima (red-haired psycho/orangy-haired shy girl).
chase each other through city parks and through buildings, Akane attempting to shoot Natsuru, until Natsuru runs to the top of a very tall building, then jumps off.
((and then then the opening credits roll and I lose all faith in this show being anything but surrealist comedy))
Next we get a corny half-assed introduction to what a Kämpfer is (or rather might be) and Natsuru wakes up to find him/herself as a female... big-breasted and wearing blue striped panties of all things... and a disgusting, creature come soft-toy with it's intestines coming out speaks up, Harakiri tiger. Natsuru notices the bracelet on her arm, which will glow before she transforms. Natsuru picks up the soft-toy, by the intestine, (it feels pain for some reason) and she slams it into the desk yelling "I'm a guy". Natsuru is then knocked out by the soft-toy before he wakes up as a guy again.
He misses the bus but then walks into his love interest Sakura , who lent him that wierd soft-toy.
the bracelet starts to glow, he makes a poor excuse so he can run away. before, lo and behold, Akane jumps from the shadows shooting at Natsuru... Natsuru runs, Akane chases, they fight... eventually it's sortof resolved as Natsuru tackles Akane, to push her out of the way of a falling lightpost and from there it's a skip to school.
where Natsuru meets Akane in her non-Kampfer form where he is told that the Kampfers are made to fight against each other, they each have one of three types of weapons (told to us by another of these soft-toy animals with their entrails hanging out). The weapons are: Guns (what akane uses), Magic (known as Zauber, which is what Natsuru uses) and a sword-type weapon known as Schwert. ((there's a large amount of german here... and a lot of foul words, as well as references to the voice actors... Publicity much?))
and then there's the sexual humor "a big and black gewehr" (and for those who don't know a Gewehr is a rifle). More sexual humor... if you want to know what happens watch it for yourself.
Natsuru transforms for one reason or another, and they go through the female side of the school ((side note: it was mentioned early that there were to sides to the school for males and females however this is the first instance where we the viewers are shown it)). they hide out for a while and it turns out that natsuru (in female form) needs to use the toilet. More sexual humor (in a sense) and a skip to after school.
Sakura meets up with Natsuru (Male) and where she reveals that she likes Natsuru's female form.
the next day, natsuru and akane meet in the library, they become friendlier (no honorifics), and another kampfer shows up (sword type) there's a fight, no-one sees who was fighting, until Sakura just so happens to appear behind a book-case that was cut down. Akane rashly suspect sakura, cliffhanger.
End of episode 1.

I know it's not quite a summary... but the key development happens within the first few episodes so it's a bit more detailed... eventually I'll probably get down to x fights Y and z or something like that... or drop it...

References:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com.au/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=10861