Breakfast Topic: Are you a closet roleplayer?
WoW Insider just published my second article! This one is a Breakfast Topic on creating back-stories or thinking as your character without actively roleplaying within World of Warcraft.I very rarely roleplay in the actual game, but I think I “closet roleplay” actively!
Oh, the glamorous and very adult life of Peter!
So I finished the first season of Batman Beyond! I haven’t really read much DC, but as a casual fan, I really enjoyed it. The new Batman seems to be fantastic at martial arts with the only explanation that he was once in a street gang. Overlooking that, having Batman be young and new to the job is an interesting take on the Dark Knight. I enjoyed seeing villains that I knew, but I think meeting the new ones was even better, especially the Blight reveal at the end of the season!
Excuse the bad art. They’re placeholders. I’m not an artist.
I finished the parser and data structures to hold terrain (ground, walls, ceiling, etc.) tiles. Of course, they will likely be changed over time to accommodate new types of tiles, because right now I only have one – grass. The point is that it works and that at this point it can go through the entire data structure of tiles during each update without any slowdown.
I’ll probably want to add a second tile type soon just to make sure parser and data structures can handle different types. I guess I should expect error and add in some error handling for when the data file has incorrect characters in it.
And then I’ll be on to gravity and, with it, collision detection for the ground.
I’ve been thinking that documenting my work on Mr. Bear’s Adventure might press me to work on it a little more. It’s a basic platformer (or it hopefully will be) that I’ve been attempting to make. The idea isn’t to make some fantastic game; rather, it’s to just make a platformer at all. The only way to get practice is to churn out some simple games.
I had already created some sprites and done character movement, excluding any kind of collision detection or gravity. So, I hadn’t done much of anything yet actually. When I returned to work on it, I started on the parser to read external data files containing the level layout. Along with it, I started working on the structures used to store the levels.
I’m still reading Little Fuzzy, the original book that Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation rebooted. Despite having the same basic plot outline, it’s different enough to still be quite entertaining.
I have four books in my queue now thanks to the store making me impulsively purchase books. First, I still have Agent to the Stars, which is written by one of my favorite authors, has a plot that seems fun, and has a gorgeous cover. In the book, aliens want to make contact with Earth but realize we would find them ugly and foul-smelling, so they get a Hollywood agent to help them.
Anyways, today I purchased two more books. I picked up The Lonesome Gods based on a recommendation after feeling like giving westerns a try. I don’t really know what to expect, and I don’t have particularly high expectations. I should remind myself to give the genre another try if this book doesn’t work out. Lastly, I also purchased It’s Superman today. I saw it sitting on the counter a couple weeks ago and decided to grab it today. (Also, I like it’s cover.) I guess it’s a reimagining of Superman. Lucky for me I’ve never even read a Superman comic, so it’ll all be new.
I need to stop buying books.
Breakfast Topic: Has your perspective of Azeroth changed over time?
WoW Insider just posted the first of three articles they purchased from me! I have to admit, checking their site has been the first thing I’ve done every morning since they purchased them. I’m very excited!
Barnes & Noblia (the B is silent), which is the full and official name, tied with Updog for most golds! We also had more silvers than them, so I think that makes us the winners. Of course, some teams only had 3 people, but I consider it part of our strategy that we showed up with a full team.
I had a ton of fun today. Also I guess I suck at video games. Oh well.
