Lone Star Blog

Hardly the worst song ever. All who say so either aren't BIONICLE fans or are ex-fans who dropped out before 2006.

*cue slew of comments referencing songs even worse than Piraka Rap*

It's been nearly a month without an update. Talk about wasting my valuable money.

Honestly, nothing interesting/enjoyable has really happened since I posted last. School work and extracurricular activities have been taking up most of my time. On top of that, I've been doing job interviews, while show me just why my GPA is low. Spring break for me, starts tomorrow, but I'll be spending most of the coming days finishing up my homework assignments that are due at the end of this week.

Speaking of which, I need to start asking people how to go about these Data Structures/Algorithms assignments. When you can't make heads or tails from the question, that is indeed a problem.

So yeah, lotta work and little reward right now.

Update 2: "On a Quest" has also been added. Like "Cy-Wahi," I was also going for the feel from the MNOLG soundtrack. Let me know what you think!

Update 1: The 'Cy-Wahi' theme has been added. To give you a frame of reference, I'm trying to go for the MNOLG feel (Le-Koro especially), with the techno/vaguely tribal feel. Please tell me how close I've gotten to achieving that. It would really help.

Part of any game development process is music composition (or music ripping if you're lazy =P). I've been having dozens of melodies and rhythms swimming around in my head for the last several months, and only I've recently built upon some of those melodies to the point that they're tolerable to listen to. I'm now in the final stage of these pieces. Usually, I wait a week or two after I finish a piece, and then go back and listen to it again. It allows the song to be fresh to the brain again, and I'll make it easier to spot issues. I'm impatient though, so I'm allowing you to be my ears.

http://cyanproductions.net/media/

If you click the link above, you will see the music section at the bottom. You can use the buttons to navigate through the 7 tracks. Just to make clear: these are DEMOs and definitely subject to change.

Also, I can't really explain the context of most of these tracks, except that Hub is the central location in the game where you will access all the levels, and Sa-Koro is the first level. Any additional information falls under spoilers.

Well, that's all for now. Enjoy!

Yay Packs! Congrats to them!

... yeah. That's probably when I'll go fix dinner.

In other news, how about them Packers?

... with a vengeance. The poor snow didn't even have a chance to plead its case. I almost felt sorry for it.

Almost.

Take note, kids. Don't mess with Texas - especially on Super Bowl weekend!

Speaking of which, this will be the second time I've been in a city where the Super Bowl is held. I wonder if there'll be any huge halftime controversies like last time.

I've never played any of the LEGO <insert franchise> games, and I thought it'd be a good idea to pick up LEGO Star Wars 2, especially since I already said in my Cyan Productions topic that Influx would be inspired a bit by this game. Hard to do that when you haven't played it.

I'm liking it so far. I'm only on the first level, but it's super easy. It's still really fun though, and I'm sure it's going to get harder as I go along. I'm already getting some good gameplay ideas to use in Influx, though I might up the difficulty for my implementations -- I think that it's better to get complaints of difficulty than complaints of simplicity.

Name: Lekori
Species: Le-Matoran
Gender: Male
Alignment: Good
Guild: Gukko Force
Mask: Teal Great Kakama
Power: Dormant Air element
Weapon: Knives
Color: His torso and arms are yellow-green. His legs and hands are teal.
Bio: Lekori is a brave, hard worker who is always there to assist his family and friends in Le-Koro. One night, two skillful bandits kidnapped Lekori’s little brother for ransom. Wasting no time, Lekori left his home and led a search for the bandits who took his brother, while his family remained in Le-Koro, scrambling for widgets to pay off the bandits.

Lekori is a very serious individual, but he is a respectable leader, and his willingness to always press forward always inspires the people around him to pick their heads up and keep fighting along with him.

Name: Kafua
Species: Po-Matoran
Gender: Male
Alignment: Good
Guild: Po-Koro Defense Force
Mask: Purple Great Kakama
Power: Dormant Stone element
Weapon: Hammer
Color: His torso and arms are beige. His legs and hands are purple.
Bio: A shameless cynic, Kafua gets joy from pointing out flaws in one’s logic, deflating pomposity, and all around saying what’s on his mind whether others like it or not. Some regard him has a jokester, but it is not always obvious when the Po-Matoran is jesting.

After bandits ransacked his hut, Kafua gathered clues and set out to hunt down the thieves and get back his valuable belongings.

Name: River
Species: Ga-Matoran
Gender: Female
Alignment: Good
Guild: None
Mask: Medium Blue Noble Kakama
Power: Dormant Water element
Weapon: Spear
Color: Her torso and arms are light blue. Her legs and hands are medium blue.
Bio: Intelligent and rational, River is very protective of her little brother Tam. She was a doctor in Ga-Koro, tending to the sick and wounded. When her young brother mysteriously disappeared several years before, River struggled to get permission to leave in search of her brother, and to receive help from the Guard. Finally, she left the village on her own accord and embarked on a journey to find Tam. She finally found him near Kauae Bay, but his mind was under some sort of Xa-Koronan curse. After fleeing from the two Xa-Koronans hired to find and retrieve Tam, the two wander the island of Mata Nui, moving from place to place to avoid the Xa-Koronan agents.

Name: Tam
Species: Ga-Matoran
Gender: Male
Alignment: Neutral
Guild: None
Mask: Dark blue Great Komau
Power: Dormant Water element
Weapon: Disc
Color: His torso and arms are light blue. His legs and hands are dark blue.
Bio: Tam is a broken child who was recently rescued by her older sister, River, from Xa-Koro. They are now on the run from two Xa-Koronan agents determined to bring them back to Xa-Koro for unknown reasons.

Name: Tahku
Species: Ta-Matoran
Gender: Male
Alignment: Evil
Guild: None
Mask: Red Kaukau
Power: Dormant Fire element
Weapon: Cutlass
Color: His torso and arms are red. Her legs and hands are yellow.
Bio: Tahku and his ally steal and ravage unsuspecting villages, taking what is valuable and selling it on the black market. When sales are low, they are also known to kidnap children for ransom. Tahku is the more cunning person in the duo, and he can be very manipulative.

Name: Lakea
Species: Onu-Matoran
Gender: Male
Alignment: Evil
Guild: None
Mask: Black noble Huna
Power: Dormant Earth element
Weapon: Disc
Color: Black.
Bio: What Lakea lacks in brains he more than makes up for in strength and brutality. Never hesitant to harm people who annoy him, Lakea is extremely dangerous to even experienced fighters.

Name: Booda
Species: Matoran
Gender: Female
Alignment: Evil
Guild: Xa-Koro
Mask: Black Great Rau with blue streaks
Power: Some Xa-Kuta skills
Weapon: Broad Sword
Color: Black with blue streaks.
Bio: Booda is one of Xa-Koro’s go-to women for tasks requiring speed and combat skills. She is very cunning, but has little patience for failure.

Name: Pest
Species: Matoran
Gender: Male
Alignment: Evil
Guild: Xa-Koro
Mask: Black Pehkui with teal streaks
Power: some Xa-Kuta skills, though they are different than what Booda can do.
Weapon: Broad Sword
Color: Black with teal streaks
Bio: Pest is exactly what it says on the tin. He is very arrogant and has a nasal accent commonly found in sociopathic nerds – of which he is. Pest regularly studies the history of Xa-Koro and is enamored with it. He wants to do all that he can to help the guild succeed and keep Makuta in control. Unfortunately, he does not see Booda as fit to lead the hunt on River and Tam, and this often leads to fairly intense conflicts between Pest and Booda.

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I know it looks like a lot, but they all travel in pairs, and will eventually travel in quads. So at first, it's going to seem more like I only have 4 characters.

... but do shadows expand or contract when the character is off the ground? I thought they contracted... but Unity is making me second-guess it, by having its default blob shadow expand.

And no, I can't just go outside and see because it's the month of January, and January in north Texas = no sun.

I finished my dialog tree system for Influx!

Did you know that a dialog tree isn't usually a tree but a complex directed graph? Yeah, that can mislead you into trying to create a Tree data structure that wouldn't work anyway.

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