Well, the main machine has been rendering all night, and it doesn't look ready to quit soon. That being where all the actual work for the blog gets done, and where all the resource files reside, it's gonna be a bit before i can prep pages. So, let's ramble about some of the work on the game for a bit. (Now you know, and can go ahead off somewhere else to read something enjoyable)
For some strange reason, this deaf old coot starting working on sound for The Third Colony. Up until this point, the only audio for the game was opening music, music for a couple of festival/party scenes, and minor sound effects like the Grav Lifts.
But, as we know, the ol' peripatetic mind meanders where it will and somehow it decided that the jukeboxes and stereos needed music. And that background music was needed (though optionally, on a user controlled toggle).
And more than just Hugh Masakella's Emavungweni for the festivals.
I set a hard limit of 50 songs, and fewer would be better. Currently there are just over 40 songs installed in jukeboxes and on data disks scattered around the game which the game player can install into their own music player.
(EDIT: I should also have noted that the craze on PoD9 is for 20th Century music, mostly latter decades.)
Popular Jukebox Songs
song (artist)
Bad To The Bone (George Thorogood & The Destroyers)
Blasphemous Rumours (Depeche Mode)
Boogie In Your Butt (Eddie Murphy)
Church Of The Poison Mind (Culture Club)
Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)
Dead Man's Party (Oingo Boingo)
Dear God (XTC)
Get It On (Marc Bolan & T-Rex)
Goin' Down (The Monkees)
Heavy Metal Poisoning (Styx)
I Touch Myself (The Divinyls)
I Eat Cannibals (Total Coelo)
Institutionalized (Suicidal Tendencies)
It's A Mug's Game (Soft Cell)
It's A Sin (Pet Shop Boys)
Jump (Aztec Camera)
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) (Kenny Rogers & The First Edition)
Killing Moon (Echo And The Bunnymen)
Kiss (Art Of Noise & Tom Jones)
Lady Killer (The Vandals)
Love Missle F1-11 (Sigue Sigue Sputnik)
Mama Told Me Not To Come (Three Dog Night)
Nowhere To Run (Martha Reeves And The Vandellas)
Obsession (Animotion)
Sex Machine (The Flying Lizards)
Ship Of Fools (World Party)
Stop This Crazy Thing (Cold Cut)
Super Freak (Rick James)
Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
Tainted Love (Soft Cell)
The Masochism Tango (Tom Lehrer)
Tush (ZZ Top)
Urban Struggle (The Vandals)
Walk The Dinosaur (Was Not Was)
We Got To Get Out Of This Place (The Animals)
Welcome To My Nightmare (Alice Cooper)
Where The Streets Have No Name/Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (Pet Shop Boys)
White Lines (Don't Do It) (Grandmaster Flash)
Why (Bronski Beat)
Wild Thing (Ton Loc)
You Sexy Thing (Hot Chocolate)
Part of that selection reflects upon the game world, part upon the game creator.
I'll let you sort which be which.
I do hate to not include images, so let's take a peek at some of the boring work going on (mostly because there's pics on the stick leftover from email with my son)
One of the complaints about RPG Maker games is waiting for slow text to appear and having it chopped into little 4-line boxes. These can be very valid complaints, and i'm not fond of that either.
But, it doesn't have to be that way.
All text messages in T3C appear instantly, with the exception of the occasional dramatic pause inserted. And those are measured in quarter seconds.
And as for that 4-line limit on the text blocks...
Really - it doesn't have to be that way. One simple line of code and textboxes expand to fit the need. (I also avoid the word wrap plugins that lead to those awkward mid-sentence breaks.)
And a lot of the boring work i've been doing is interface bits. Every district has a News Stand from which one can pull the daily news feed. Now it has a simple full screen display & interface -
As you can see, they're not big, detailed stories. But they do carry the basic happenings of the world outside the player's view, and set up ongoing plots and potential quests, as well as merely set the tone of the world.
I've mentioned that the colony is contained in disconnected cavernous pockets carved within the mining planetoid. These caverns (or Halls) are connected via a TransMat system. Each Hall has one or two Primary TransMat Stations that are connected on the Alpha Network, and each TransMat may link to two destinations. This can make it a tad tricky to learn one's way around PoD9.
Fortunately, you can pick up a Free TransMap from Admin or at Terminal Island (the Offworld TransMat station) -
So, now you're all good and ready to run around, right?
Maybe not so right?
Maybe very wrong?
OKAY.
We gotcha covered.
That map is more than just a "pretty" picture. It also remembers where you've been and becomes a Quick Travel map allowing the player to jump straight to any previously visited TransMat -
As i said. Lots of boring little detail stuff. But it's slowly turning this mess into more of a 'game' along the way.
For some strange reason, this deaf old coot starting working on sound for The Third Colony. Up until this point, the only audio for the game was opening music, music for a couple of festival/party scenes, and minor sound effects like the Grav Lifts.
But, as we know, the ol' peripatetic mind meanders where it will and somehow it decided that the jukeboxes and stereos needed music. And that background music was needed (though optionally, on a user controlled toggle).
And more than just Hugh Masakella's Emavungweni for the festivals.
I set a hard limit of 50 songs, and fewer would be better. Currently there are just over 40 songs installed in jukeboxes and on data disks scattered around the game which the game player can install into their own music player.
(EDIT: I should also have noted that the craze on PoD9 is for 20th Century music, mostly latter decades.)
Popular Jukebox Songs
song (artist)
Bad To The Bone (George Thorogood & The Destroyers)
Blasphemous Rumours (Depeche Mode)
Boogie In Your Butt (Eddie Murphy)
Church Of The Poison Mind (Culture Club)
Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)
Dead Man's Party (Oingo Boingo)
Dear God (XTC)
Get It On (Marc Bolan & T-Rex)
Goin' Down (The Monkees)
Heavy Metal Poisoning (Styx)
I Touch Myself (The Divinyls)
I Eat Cannibals (Total Coelo)
Institutionalized (Suicidal Tendencies)
It's A Mug's Game (Soft Cell)
It's A Sin (Pet Shop Boys)
Jump (Aztec Camera)
Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) (Kenny Rogers & The First Edition)
Killing Moon (Echo And The Bunnymen)
Kiss (Art Of Noise & Tom Jones)
Lady Killer (The Vandals)
Love Missle F1-11 (Sigue Sigue Sputnik)
Mama Told Me Not To Come (Three Dog Night)
Nowhere To Run (Martha Reeves And The Vandellas)
Obsession (Animotion)
Sex Machine (The Flying Lizards)
Ship Of Fools (World Party)
Stop This Crazy Thing (Cold Cut)
Super Freak (Rick James)
Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
Tainted Love (Soft Cell)
The Masochism Tango (Tom Lehrer)
Tush (ZZ Top)
Urban Struggle (The Vandals)
Walk The Dinosaur (Was Not Was)
We Got To Get Out Of This Place (The Animals)
Welcome To My Nightmare (Alice Cooper)
Where The Streets Have No Name/Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (Pet Shop Boys)
White Lines (Don't Do It) (Grandmaster Flash)
Why (Bronski Beat)
Wild Thing (Ton Loc)
You Sexy Thing (Hot Chocolate)
Part of that selection reflects upon the game world, part upon the game creator.
I'll let you sort which be which.
I do hate to not include images, so let's take a peek at some of the boring work going on (mostly because there's pics on the stick leftover from email with my son)
One of the complaints about RPG Maker games is waiting for slow text to appear and having it chopped into little 4-line boxes. These can be very valid complaints, and i'm not fond of that either.
But, it doesn't have to be that way.
All text messages in T3C appear instantly, with the exception of the occasional dramatic pause inserted. And those are measured in quarter seconds.
And as for that 4-line limit on the text blocks...
Really - it doesn't have to be that way. One simple line of code and textboxes expand to fit the need. (I also avoid the word wrap plugins that lead to those awkward mid-sentence breaks.)
And a lot of the boring work i've been doing is interface bits. Every district has a News Stand from which one can pull the daily news feed. Now it has a simple full screen display & interface -
As you can see, they're not big, detailed stories. But they do carry the basic happenings of the world outside the player's view, and set up ongoing plots and potential quests, as well as merely set the tone of the world.
I've mentioned that the colony is contained in disconnected cavernous pockets carved within the mining planetoid. These caverns (or Halls) are connected via a TransMat system. Each Hall has one or two Primary TransMat Stations that are connected on the Alpha Network, and each TransMat may link to two destinations. This can make it a tad tricky to learn one's way around PoD9.
Fortunately, you can pick up a Free TransMap from Admin or at Terminal Island (the Offworld TransMat station) -
So, now you're all good and ready to run around, right?
Maybe not so right?
Maybe very wrong?
OKAY.
We gotcha covered.
That map is more than just a "pretty" picture. It also remembers where you've been and becomes a Quick Travel map allowing the player to jump straight to any previously visited TransMat -
As i said. Lots of boring little detail stuff. But it's slowly turning this mess into more of a 'game' along the way.
stuff by -3- (2020)
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