Thanksgiving Aftermath

Not too much to say about this. Thanksgiving was pretty good, I ate a lot, etc. Anyway, we made a LOT of food, even though it's only me and my two parents. Because of that, we had a few leftovers:



I'll definitely have a post tomorrow, since I'm going to a TSO concert tonight! Yay!

I Knew That Would Happen

I write the below post two months ago, and saved it in draft hoping I would remember to update it before the day came around. But that didn't happen. Anyway, so my blog's been around for six months now. Not much to say about that, oh well.

Anyway, so Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Only 27 days until Christmas!

PS. Me and AP might have a demo of our game soon. But don't hold me to that, knowing how I am with predictions.

6 Month Blogiversary

I actually wrote this two months ago. I hope I remember to modify is when the blogiversary comes around.

Cold!

Right now, it's pretty cold and windy up in New England. Yesterday, we had a wind chill of 10 degrees, and the temperature's been hovering in the 20's. This may not sound that bad, but it's not November weather. We shouldn't be getting this until February. Apparently all this cold air's been coming from Canada, so.....I blame them.

And yeah, nothing new to talk about this week. Just the weather.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

What a Boring Week / Questions for You

I feel like I'm wasting a post this week, as I don't really have anything to talk about that I've done. So instead I'll make a list of things I would do if I had unlimited free time.

1. Redesign my Website

I actually am working on this one. I've finished most of the homepage and basic layout, but I need to fix the Flash menu (try moving over a button, then moving out of the menu. I don't want it to stay lit when you do that), and the homepage still looks a bit bare, but it's coming along.

2. Work on my/AP's Game

Right now, I'm working on some pretty complex "dynamic-level-loading based on camera movement" code. That probably doesn't make sense to you, but the point is that the entire level isn't moving around, just individual clips that it needs at that moment based on where you are. Again, I haven't had much time to work on this lately, but hopefully I will sometime this weekend.

3. Make my Own Blog

I've said it before, but I don't really like having a Blogger blog, because of the lack of customizability. I want to set one up on my own server, but ideally, I don't want it to be just a blog. What I want to create is a hybrid blog/forum, where there's one main post that's always visible created by the admin, but members can also create your own topics/threads. Sorta like a combination of Wordpress and bbPress. As usual, their code is too complex for me to figure out on my own, so I would have to start from the ground up. And I know I could do it, but it would take time, something which I don't have much of these days. What are your thoughts on this? Should I try to make this once I get a few other projects out of the way?

4. Make "Maze Adventure Flash"

I've wanted to do this since I got Flash 5 back in July, but AS1 couldn't do tile based stuff. Now that I have CS4, I tested some code, and it works! Unfortunately, the original Maze was made out of graphics I made with gradients in Powerpoint. If I wanted to make this into a serious Flash game, I would need to do a lot better than that. And I've found that drawing stuff from above is MUCH harder than drawing things from the side. Add that to the fact that I can't draw, and.....yeah. It actually wouldn't be that hard to code, but the graphics wouldn't look that great. If I did somehow get good graphics, do you think the game is good enough to make it on ArmorGames? Perhaps even get sponsored? Remember, I won't get around to this for a while, so don't worry about our game, AP. That's still on.

So, if you have any response to those questions scatterd throughout this post, please give them in the comments. Thanks for your help guys!

New Site Demo

In case you didn't notice, I added a link to the blog's RSS feed over there -->
Certainly wouldn't mind if you guys wanted to click that.

Anyway, this is what I've been working on for my own website. I haven't redesigned my site for about one year, and I'm very restless when it comes to the design of my site. If you're wondering, this is what my original homepage looked like:
http://andrewanimation.biz/old.html

Looking at my current site, it doesn't look that much different. Although I just don't think it looks very professional. It looks like some 13-year-old who had just learned how to make a webpage that wanted to put something online (which was true, but that's beside the point).

Anyway, I've looked through a lot of other web design websites, and sortof based this new design for mine off of those. You can view my prototype design here:
http://andrewanimation.biz/old/new.php
(path is a bit ironic, don't ya think? well, /old is just where I put all my junk files)

Note: there is no content on that page yet, and the links do not go anywhere. It's just a demonstration of the new design for the site. If anything looks off, or just doesn't look good, please comment. I want this new site to look real professional.

I've really got to start talking about my collab game with AP. I'm just having some problems getting the levels together. Once I get those fixed, maybe we'll post a demo or something...

Epicer News

Now, you're probably thinking, what could be more epic than me getting Flash CS4 as a Christmas present? Well, here it is. My Halloween pumpkin!


Not epic enough for you? Well how about this? I got Flash CS4 now! After my insane first quarter at school, it was sorta moved up to be an early Christmas present. So I have the software now, and let me say, it is AWESOME! Of course, I haven't really tried anything new, except Bitmap Cacheing, which works great. The large levels I've been working with scroll without lagging at 30 FPS! I can't wait to try out some more stuff.

Besides, it's great to have software that doesn't crash half the time you try to start it up.

Epic News

Wow. Two posts in October. That's IT? And only one of them actually contained something important. Man, this is staring to look like Nyubis' blog. :-D

So, yesterday was Halloween. As usual, we bought loads of candy. Which would have been good like, 7 years ago, when there were a lot of little kids in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, there aren't. We filled half of a cardboard box with candy, and by the end of the night, it barely looked like Halloween had passed. So now we have a big box of candy sitting around that has to be eaten. Poor me.

No, but seriously, I will get sick of candy within the next two weeks.

Next, remember the "6 Tests in 2 Days???" post? (I certainly do) Well, I just had 5 tests in two days on Thursday and Friday. So I guess some things never change.

So you're probably thinking: "Was that the epic news? That wasn't that epic." No, it wasn't. I'm not sure why I titled the post that and then talked about my lack of posting and Halloween. And now you're thinking: "There is no epic news, right? This was all just a scam to get me to read this post." And yet, you're still reading this, hoping that I will say something epic, just so that you feel like you did something useful in your time. Well, if you haven't given up yet, here's the news.

I have FLASH CS4!! Well, officially it's a Christmas present, so I can't use it until then, but still, it's pretty awesome to know that in 53 more days, I won't have to put up with annoying Flash 5 anymore. I consider that pretty epic, anyway.

Also: I've begun a redesign of my site. Don't expect anything that soon (it'll probably take a while, knowing how busy I am), but I am working on incorporating the new logo into it.