Emzee

Nope! Just a fan. Brick Fiesta reunion 2015! Leggo!

If the Brick Fiesta folks* are going to continue to have their cons on the same weekend and in a different city than RTX, I'm not sure how they expect me to attend... Not saying I definitely won't be doing Brick Fiesta coverage next year, but... chances aren't very high. Driving between San Antonio and here takes 90 minutes - 3 hours round trip. Whoever plans on attending should remember to bring their camera and their photography skills, and maybe some notes to take. I still really want to see how well our Texas LEGO con continues to grow. * yes Fiesta announced their dates first... but RTX is bigger, and they use the same convention center at year. I'd say BF has the easier time budging on their dates, not they should HAVE to, but... ah, forget it. Just move everything to Austin. That's always the right choice.

Thinking over 2013 reminded me that despite certain issues, this year was pretty good. Not better than 2012, or 2011 (or any other year except 2007 and 2005) but still pretty good. It started off disappointing, then awesome, then horrible, and has been steadily getting better ever since. I'm glad I was able to make it to PAX East, BrickFiesta, and Brickfair VA this year. The BZPRPG is (in my opinion, both in writing and community) the best it's ever been. Lastly, I got a new job in Austin, which is cool, even if the lack of college ties in this city makes it hard to find a group to repeatedly hang out with. I'm not so glad my first job out of college was a waste of my time and theirs. I'm not glad that it's apparent that certain problems I've had since childhood will never be going away (nothing quite like learning that there are somethings in life that you will never be able to do well). Ironically, life in Austin has been borderline lonely. There's not a lot of people where I work and constantly trying to find a new group to chill with is quite draining to an introvert like me. The fact that I'm a lot more selective of who I hang with and less tolerant of certain mindsets doesn't help matters there either. There were a lot of lessons learned this year, and overall, I'd label 2013 as one giant learning experience. Lots of people are going through issues that I didn't even know existed just a couple years back. Lots of people I know also struggling with the high demands of adulthood, and being harshly criticized for not meeting the mark. Sometimes I really miss living in Houston - not because those days came with a lot less stress and expectations (they didn't), but because the consequences of not always making the best decision weren't nearly as harsh then as they are now. Young adults everywhere are realizing we now have a lot less room for error then we did before. 2014 will basically be about what I do with what I've learned, and what decisions will I be making in the future, now that I know more then I did before. Happy New Year to you all!

Cool. Thanks for the answers everyone! Topic closed.

Happy birthday, GSR. Have fun today!

Odd how I forgot about that one considering that's also a route I'm considering for a couple tracks / levels. Yes, if you have the will and the musical inclination, you could learn how compose your own tracks. I'd say the cons are the same as they are for reaching out to the community, plus the fact that learning to compose, or even if you already know how to write music, producing a soundtrack yourself, can take away even more time from developing or filming your masterpiece. For me, I quality of the tracks I've made could use a little more work (which I can't put in for various reasons). Besides that, I'd say setting aside as much development time as possible is really important to me. It's definitely something else for everyone to consider. And yeah, the site's formatting might still be a little wonky. I was offline for the vast majority of that so I wouldn't know for sure.

Hi BZPers, I know it's been awhile since I've posted something. Well, here I am! I felt like rambling about soundtracks in Bionicle fan-works, and you're more than welcome to partake in the discussion with what you think. So about soundtracks, I'd say that there are three major methods (this probably isn't the word to use... I'll try and think of a better one later) to providing music in your game or movie: 1) Use official Bionicle music (ie. MNOLG, Mask of Light, Bionicle Heroes, etc.) Pros:1.21 gigawatts of Nostalgia - especially if music from MNOLG is used. "Free" (in a sense) When trying to get that perfect tribal/techno/quasi-orchestral Bionicle feel, you can get much closer to that than the original music that established what we know as the "Bionicle feel" [*]Cons: Not actually free - there are likely copyright issues when ripping and using even the MNOLG music, much less the Bionicle Heroes soundtrack or something that you had to pay money for. Because the MNOLG was designed with dialup in mind (I know this, I remember those days of the Mata Nui clock and they usually only took forever where there was an awesome cutscene coming up), the soundtrack has lower bitrate and doesn't sound very good by today's standards (at least I don't think they do). To be fair, even some of the newer tracks I come across sound like they were recorded from a microphone. At any rate, most Bionicle tracks that weren't ripped directly from a CD seem fall short of the quality one would expect from studio-quality music. [*]Personally, neither of the cons really bother me all that much just because I'm a sucker for good ol' fashioned nostalgia. If you ask me, from a moral point of view, using music from these content creators doesn't do harm since this products are fairly obscure anyway. From a reality point of view though, how Lego, Templar, Miramax, and the other studios who made music for their products feel about you using their music is the only thing that ultimately matters. Even if Lego doesn't mind if you use their stuff for your little fan game or movie, the folks who made Bionicle Heroes might. 2) License / Buy production quality music (lots of places online to do that -- even the Unity Asset Store has some tracks that would fit rather well with Bionicle media) Pros:Music sounds a heck of a lot better - with their super high bitrates intended for film scores and what not. Royalty free - a must if you don't intend to charge for your fan media (which I hope for your sake that you're not) [*]Cons: $$$$. The "you get what you pay for" rule generally applies. If you're not like me and still in High School or College, even the "budget" prices mind seem unreasonable. Always remember though, that, like artwork, you're paying for someone's talent and if they're starving to death, their quality of work isn't going to be as good as it will be if their living costs are taken care of. Basically, artists gotta eat too. [*]Not much to say here. If you get your music from a professional, you're going to get professional-quality music. Didn't know that now did you? Personally, I might go this route, simply because I have that good ol' disposable income. But the soundtrack (and by extension the overall feel of Power Lies Beneath) might not be nostalgic though. 3) Reach out to the community for help Pros:Might be free. Even if not, you might get a good discount by hiring folks here on BZP. Obviously, BZPers will know the "Bionicle feel", which might be worth more than the film-quality production music. [*]Cons: I don't know of any truly professional music composers or producers advertising their services here on BZP. It's unlikely that you'll find film-quality music among these artists like you would with royalty-free music sites. Most patrons here are in school or are otherwise busy with their own lives. As such, they can be hard to get in touch with, or they might have trouble getting content to you on time (especially around finals time) [*]I realize what's considered professional-quality might vary from person to person, and indeed, a more accurate term might be "film-quality", except this term cannot apply to just films anymore as video games have had "film-quality" soundtracks for years now. But yes, I do mean "film-quality" in this case. This is a route that I probably won't take, as I have other options and would rather not take up so much of someones time like that if I don't have to. For those without a good cash flow, I think this is a great method, and yet another way to make a good friend. So, those are my thoughts on the matter. What are yours? Before I close out, I should probably give a shoutout to OverClocked Remix - quite a few of their (recent) tracks are studio-quality, and some even fit with the Bionicle feel. You can use their music for free as long as you give credit, don't edit the music files, and aren't charging for your work. I've already claimed quite a few of them for Power Lies Beneath though.

Hi Malignus, I'd suggest add a line at the top of this topic that states clearly that Leppy made this game, to make things clearer. Anyway, it's cool to see this game back. I remember it from way back in the day, but never got it to work after I upgraded from Windows XP. I have Windows 7 now so I might try your method.

Happy birthday, sir Grump!

Well, at least I'll be able to contribute to discussions about this now. For real though, one way I felt I could get a feel for what to do (and what not to do) for Bionicle-themed games is by experiencing an official one (I've only ever played the online Bionicle games. Yeah really). It was crazy cheap too. I mean, how bad could it be?

Those were some good times in VA. I'm glad BrickCon turned out to be (besides bad keynote speakers) legit as well!

Hey guys, NaNoWriMo's cool and all, but let's try and stay on topic here, even if there's slightly less to talk about right now. Thanks! P.S. listening to the podcast now to gather some more news as well.

Well, this isn't nearly as bad as last time. Let's just hope the RPG downtime's length doesn't match the first's. I've been trying to find a cache of for the Mata Nui Daily, have Google isn't turning up anything - probably because Rules and Index doesn't have many posts. I'm now looking through caches of this topic and hope to restore MND soon. Also, congratulations, Tyler Durden! We definitely appreciate your dedication.

(This is the only blog entry that I'm reposting from the data loss. These updates help me keep track of my progress) It's hard to believe it's been a whole month since my last entry. I must have been a lot busier than I thought. Anyway, I thought it might be time for another update for you guys on progress. First thing, I've purchased more assets to use from Unity's Asset Store. It had some duds, but occasionally you can find something good, and on sale too! I paid for some animation sets to use on my player character and NPC Matoran, and thanks to Unity 4's Mecanim animation system, getting them to move was not all that difficult. I've also ironed out the overarching (but simple) plot for the Le-Wahi course. I don't really want to describe it too much to avoid potentially spoiling any part of the adventure. With this game, like the MNOG, you're supposed to learn even the basic story elements by playing through and figuring it all out. Next, I added a music track and some more sound FX to the level. The music will range from totally nostalgic to totally obscure for you all. I think it will fit very well with the environment though, and it is from one of the many Bionicle themed media that we've been given. The HUD is more or less finished and I love that I made it to be mostly like the HUD from the canceled PC game. Even the UDD symbol spins! I made some changes to the course itself, technically making it bigger and thus giving the player more room to explore. I'm also adding more of those "coins", treasures to find, Rahi to fight, and all of that typical action-adventure game stuff. Finally, I'm adding a game mechanic that will be a surprise for when the beta is released. I don't want to reveal it because many of you have encountered this mechanic before and some of you were not impressed due to it being rather dull. My implementation won't be dull at all though, and it'll actually be one of the more challenging parts of the Le-Wahi course (next to the Boss Challenge, which I also won't describe just yet). The secret feature requires a lot of design work and art, so I'm currently working on getting all of that modeled and put in place. Hopefully, the coding won't be too demanding. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it is. I have to model all the props for this game feature, and then put in some fun game mechanics for the "extra space" in Le-Wahi. I still can't give you guys an approximate date for release, but progress is still going strong. Until next time!

The words "Rahi" and "Voya Nui" immediately triggered an interesting memory, and I immediately turned to Mak, Janus, Sumiki, and Kakaru. "We should bring Jen back a Kardas dragon," I said as we headed back towards the jungle, "You think it's still around here somewhere?"

I would have to say that MNOG is my personal favorite, but to be fair, I haven't played many of the other games like Bionicle: The Game and Bionicle Heroes.

I was actually one of the people who voted for this in the semifinals. I think this project has great potential and it's hard to fail with a MNOG-esque theme (as shown by certain other fan games here ). The only issue I foresee is graphics. What makes MNOG-style games work so well is the art, since there's really not much gameplay. MNOG: The Bohrok Swarms struggles with this as well, almost any time a graphic was used that was not drawn by Templar, just because they were so good at those elements and they had that style down. Maybe you'll be able to recruit someone though. Best of luck if you decide to actually develop this!

At this point, my thoughts on this game aren't exactly new, but still: I love the humor and the characterization in this game. It's not often that a fan work accurately captures the essence of popular canon characters. Great job in that regard. I also love the minigames, even if some of them were very tedious (like the snowboarding). Even so, it's hard to complain too much about that since you're not punished in any way for doing poorly in that game. My only issue is, actually, with the misspellings of the Bionicle names. I understand how they can be hard to spell, and editing those text files looks like the stuff of nightmares, but every time I come across a misspelled Bionicle name, it just kills the authenticity for me and it (for moment) no longer feels like a game that Templar would have made (nostalgia is a fragile thing). Well, that's all I got. Great job overall, and the best of luck to you on this project!

I immediately ceased my mating ritual once Janus and Mak caught my attention. It looked like they were dueling one another. "Same team! Same team!" I barked at them. I needed no one getting hurt, even if it was just a sparring match. If someone was gonna get stabbed, I preferred that it was someone who wouldn't settle for that. Because those who refuse to settle for that are, in essence, the losers. Aren't I supposed to be doing something, or lots of things, right now?

I imagine these instructions are what Lego fans envision when they picture the 9th level of Lego Hades.

I, quite frankly, was paying little to no attention to the peers around me. I dared someone to try and challenge these moves.

Mata Nui Daily [*]Fake Po-Koran Sentinel Sighted: Reports from Po-Koro tell the Daily that a Matoran wearing a forged Sentinel badge was sighted in Po-Koro. The criminal managed to fool several merchants before being discovered by a real Sentinel. The Sentinel unfortunately lost the offender in the following chase. Reports indicate that an individual later matching his description was seen leaving the Po-Koro gates.

!!! Updates !!! Mata Nui Daily [*]NM Research Hospital looking for prospective Applicants: The famed Nuju-Marillion Research Hospital in Ko-Wahi is looking for prospective staff members. Healers, surgeons, herbalists, and psychologists, and PT instructors are all open for candidacy. Pay will be based upon prior experience and quality of success. Inquire at the front desk. BZPRPG NEWS [*]Ga-Koro Dive Expedition Underway: The crew of The Invincible have made fall at the Kumu-Islets and are beginning to explore the ruins below the waves.

DeeVee will always be my teammate in spirit. So I didn't vote for him.

Yeah, on modern machines it can do that, sadly.