Satan Sam.co.uk

I’m off for the weekend, but here’s a mini update. No pics this time because that Microsoft Writer thingy hasn’t installed correctly.

Mr. Tormishire now has 14 items! With about 10 skills to learn. Added in 2 more recently. So that’s going well. Up to 91 rooms now and the ultra non-linear gameplay is seeping in. My fave route is heading through the lake then into the first village, through the castle and the dark cave area, complete Elf’s side quest and into the power station. So that’s that!

I’m also working on a mad shooter game to be bundled with Tormishire. It’s a completely different game to Tormi so when you get bored of one you can jump to the other! Not that you’ll get bored or anything
It’s only a small project, this is no sprawling and epic adventure game. Will support 2 players and have lots of weapons, enemies and big explosion-y stuff going on. It’s using a slightly modified Tormi engine so that has cut months of dev time, just gotta throw in enemies and bosses now! And music. Which so far sounds very j-pop-ish. All that and I haven’t even got a name for it!

So I installed Vista about 5 days ago. It was going great until-

- The sound broke. Every 15 seconds the sound would stutter badly. Wouldn’t be so bad if I just used word processing.
- It actually does eat RAM. It’s no joke or myth or anything like that. It sucked all the juice from my Core 2 Duo (which flies by in OSX and XP).
- No drivers for my tablet, scanner or USB Midi cables.

Fed up with all this I decide to jump back to XP. And here we go!

XP fails to install. I don’t know why, it just doesn’t work. Something to do with a broke .dll file. This took me 3 attempts before I just give up.
Jump back into OSX with the intention of doing a full format of the Windows drive. Only it can’t find a mount point (botched XP install).
I run the Bootcamp setup app in OSX, restoring the drive to a single volume so I can re-partition it and get everything working again.

Oops! Turns out for OSX to do it’s Godly awesome partition-without-format it needs a lot of free space. Of which I don’t have.

Just finished making a big backup (260gb if you want to know!) and I’m now reinstalling OSX. Only I find the greatest feature ever – format OSX whilst keeping your documents and settings! What an afternoon saver!

So I’m not too pleased with Windows right now. It wants a fight.

*ooh, OSX just finished doing it’s business!*

I suppose now is a good a time as any to announce that Tormishire will make use of an internet connection. These features have been in place for a few months now but I might as well spill the beans since they’re now accessible in the closed beta.

An online multiplayer is still up for consideration. When the game is released there will also be user generated content sections which will be automated through my server.

And what are these current online features? A secret, that’s what! But they’re a little eccentric to say the least. Had to think outside the box a little bit. Pretty much the story to Tormishire’s life!

New option to reflect the new features.

Just thought I’d do a little update of sorts. Been working on the level design and new areas. Currently up to 72 rooms (including buildings). Which have spawned 3 new areas-

Updated boss 1 as well -

Ooh, and I whipped up this pic a few weeks back! Using chalks and stuff which I’ve never really tried before.

Tuki Tuki Island by ~JimmiLeRock on deviantART

It’s for a game a friends making. He asked me if I wanted to do some art so I… did!

I’ve started work on Chapter 2! I’ve no idea how many chapters I’ll be putting in, or if the later ones will be as clearly defined as this one. After the 2nd boss battle (regardless of which route you take – you’ll end up here, but with previous paths and their ramifications cropping up in the future), you’ll be taken the 2nd area of sorts.

The only purpose this serves for now is if the game gets cancelled for whatever reason then at least I can release a working abandonware! Maybe even a demo.

Chapter 1 is about an hour long and serves as the tutorial section. I’m aiming the full game to have a standard run through of 10 hours, but with enough variations and paths to warrant replays (and unlockables as rewards for finding such secrets and alternate paths), the treasure hunt/exploration ones taking much longer.

And I’ve ran out of Marks n Spencer cereal!

But I’m not really excited.

Up until this moment I’ve been dreading the thought of a new iPod, out just months since I bought my 80gb model. Then they go and release (or just update)-

iPod Shuffle
More colours! Great… but no more orange one!

iPod Nano
Got hit with the ugly stick. It’s starting to grow on me, and it seems to have the same features as the iPod Classic now, which leads me onto the…

iPod Classic
Good call. Shame about them smooth edges. 80gb and 160gb with a lovely 40 hour battery life.

iPod Touch
Poor. 8 and 16gb models, everything else sounds spectacular though. 8mm thin.

So glad that my 80gb model isn’t that bad off! I put it to the world that the 5.5G is better looking than the 5.75G (oh, come on).

Just a little trailer (it’s 4am, don’t expect a description!)