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Posted by Godmode
Sep
09
2009
Thankfully it turns out a Bamboo Fun pen will work with a Graphire 4 CTE-440 according to their tech support, so one’s on its way. Guess I get to start experimenting with how best to make a comic that I can still draw somewhat quickly but that doesn’t look like total Ass when it’s done.
Thinking I’ll probably try still doing sprites to get the general layouts done for each frame, then going back in with the pen and over-drawing -everything- to get rid of the jagged edges scaling a sprite up leaves behind.
That might go out the window though, gotta see how it fits in with my style of RUSH RUSH RUSH then FIX FIX FIX later. But for now, I’m back to replanning stuff for the fake ingame world – the old Offworld comics took place inside the game world Offworld, and in the home of the designer and administrator. I’m thinking I might redo some of the old comics from the very first version, if only because I made some massive screwups in the past and I’d like to fix them.
First and foremost, GODSDAMNED SPEECH BUBBLES. First ones had text with no outline, then a few strips in I started putting an outline to help make them readable, but the text is so damned small to begin with that it just looked like strawberry swirl ice cream.
Stay tuned I guess, we’re gunna be putting ComicPress to work soon enough.
Theme’s messed up obviously, I don’t really like this one, but it’s the default that’s required to get ComicSys running. Gunna be taking a peek around later for others, might end up having to gut it and do one myself!
But for now, good to roll!
I’m gunna be restarting an old project called Offworld; at the time it was just a crappy sprite-comic, but with my replacement Wacom pen on the way, I’m thinking I’m gunna go back and re-do it -again- but not with sprites (or at least limit my use of them SEVERELY).
So while I get ComicSys up, it’s possible the entire site will go AWOL for a bit. It’ll be back, dun worry if it dies.
But I lost the pen for my Graphire 4 and can’t find it. Looked everywhere, debating just chewing the $30 and buying a Bamboo Fun pen off of Wacom’s eStore if their tech support replies that it’ll work – their site seems to indicate so, but there’s a few sites on Google saying otherwise. Figure they’re the best to ask since it’s their bloody product 
Other than that, my 320gb hdd is finally starting to fail after having given me 17,590+ hours of wonderful performance, so I’m looking at a 1tb replacement.
Course, now that this pen went AWOL, if I can’t swing the $29.95 I’ll end up docking my 1tb to something like a 640 (has to be at least 440gb so I can replace both my 320 and 120’s, the 120’s starting to have a predicted-fail in January). I’ll keep you posted I guess.
Been debating re-starting the old craptastic comic Offworld, although if I do I want to get away from sprites and do at least SOME of it by hand (hence the pen). Might get some use out of the multitude of drawing books I’ve used coupons on over the years; probably will still have -something- with sprites, but the major hassle with them is they don’t scale up well without looking like ass, and it’s hard to do detail when the thing has to get scaled up to 4x to be visible, which results in jagged edges.
More details later this week; for now I did find the mouse for the tablet so I might see what I can do with that, although honestly I’ll probably just use my Logitech mouse if it comes down to drawing with a mouse. At least the Logitech feels nice; the Wacom Graphire 4’s mouse feels like a slab of brick in my hand.
W7 looks friggin great, no troubles yet other than Daemon Tools doesn’t work on it yet.
I can live with that though. There’s other free software that does well enough to work with the ISO’s I already have, although it doesn’t quite do all the same stuff DT has. Works for now though.
So after my 10th or 11th BSOD as a result of whatever the *fleep!* XCFEX64.sys does (on a new install of Vista), I’ve ditched it.
I have only two things to say:
Good Riddence, and
HOLY CRAP do I like how Windows 7 looks. Might run like crap later on, I have no idea, but for now it’s running and it’s not BSOD’ing with some bull*bleep* driver that I can’t find a way to uninstall/avoid.
Time will tell, as they always say, and I was really a Vista advocate when it was running sexyfine. I just can’t excuse mysterious BSOD’s caused by a file that has not been modified by -anything- since install.
Theme change. Inanis Glass was fun for a while, but it’s come to my attention that it really freakin’ lags on anything that isn’t strong enough to run Vista Aero.
So I’ve saved everyone the hassle and downgraded to a theme that actually looks better in my opinion, and also doesn’t lag like a biatch.
Cheers!
Yes.
For anyone not having a clue what A* is, here’s the short version. A* is a way to determine a path out of a network of interconnected nodes. In particular, it’s quite adept at doing so in a network of nodes where not all nodes are linked together (such as a grid of A B C D, where A and B are linked, A and C are linked, A and D are linked, and C and D are linked – the only way to get to B is through A).
Think I’m going to do some testing sooner or later with the possibility of re-implementing fuel usage in the space simulation (I had it disabled because of a lack of patfhinding ability). It USED to be that if Alstair and Conmir were 10,000 units apart, you’d still fly it because there wasn’t fuel to worry about. What I WANTED is that the ships would stop at Beta or any other stations along the way to refuel if they couldn’t make the jump in one shot.
The really -ugly- part is I’m NOT sure A* will work with the Trade Lane idea I wanted to borrow from Microsoft’s third person space game Freelancer – part of A* utilizes the remaining straight-line distance to the end planet, which is offset by Trade Lanes (fuel is usually used at a constant rate for each unit of distance, but in a Trade Lane that amount is decreased DRAMATICALLY). Gunna need to test to see if A* can still find either the absolute best path, or at least get one that is -close-.
One minor piece of good news is I can still do that with the existing simulation code I have, although it still needs a rewrite for stuff like Cargo and whatnot (which I did a horrible get-it-done job of the first time). I can at least get waypointing up so it’s not possible to go from Altair to Conmir in a light craft without stopping, cause the fuel tank just isn’t big enough.
Haven’t been in much of a coding mood as of late, looking into possibly reviving an old zero-graphics Space Simulation I had worked on a while back. Thinking I’m gunna stick some extra graphics on it via XNA and re-release; not meant to actually have a game behind it really, but with a bit of work it wouldn’t be too difficult to make it be one.
Been working on the LWAR project, a php-tick based racing simulation game, so there’s been very few updates here. I’ll post more on that once I get it to a point where there’s more to it than a page that just shows news, but has no game attached to it.
Also, updating plugins and WP to 2.8, we’ll see what happens.