Just working on my silly indie game and hoping to launch a Steam Greenlight and a Kickstarter campaign in the next 2-3 weeks.
I can never predict what she’s going to do next.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tkeEkK1bPw
Or I will be as of tomorrow.
Long long story which I don’t want to recount right now, but the gist is, I’m 38, IT is not a kind industry to men of my age. Especially not corporate IT, which is all I know how to do at the level that I can be paid for it by an employer. My nerves are shot, I have no hope of finding another job and even if I did I’d just prolong this slow burning nervous breakdown I’ve been having for two years. I mean there’s professional frustration, and stress, and anxiety, and then there’s cardiac arrests and back breaking seizures.
Sooooo we may be selling our house, since Chris’ pay can’t possibly cover our basic expenses, forget about cutting the budget. Maybe moving south to saner markets (housing and food, not employment, because I am burned out. I am beyond burned out. This probably sounds ridiculous but my nerves are not just shot, it’s like I’ve got shell shock.)
I’ve been kicking around an indie game for 2 years now and I’m using some of our small savings to commission level and promotional art to give it a ride on KickStarter and see how that goes. I mean, I may as well. What I’m spending won’t even make one mortgage payment, and even if it did that would be one month longer to pull off the bandaid and not really much help. Maybe it’ll take off. Self employment I can do if I can get somebody to pay me for my talents. Sadly, taking in wookiee costume commissions won’t cover.
Sorry for sucking at updating this page and such like, and not being into Diablo clones and such well enough to converse. I’m glad that you few have stuck around, I like seeing your posts.
I’m off to finish learning the Unity engine libraries (I’ve got a pretty good start on them already) and diagram some level layouts for my artist.
We’ve been wanting to move out of Connecticut for awhile now, so maybe this will turn out to be an opportunity and everything will fall together. Fingers crossed.
Recently, when not doing Season 6 with ILA, I have been working on my demon hunter. I used not to care very much for this class because his early days were characterized by boring pew pew (which sounded more like ka-thunk ka-thunk). Of late, however, he’s pretty decent.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/simmery-1600/hero/41726719
As you can see, I finally managed to get him a Focus/Restraint set, though I’m not pleased by the rolls. I think the key with this guy is going to be legendary gems, so I’m working on leveling those. I’m also not happy about the Krelm’s bracers, but it shouldn’t be too long before I find some ancient Strong Arms or maybe something better. Of course, the big change is the Marauder set which, as you will notice, synergizes primary skills with turrets and thus increases power by about 8000 orders of magnitude. The belt and Magefist gloves are also very important. (Note: even though the page indicates that the 6-piece Marauder bonus is not active, it really is. I’m using a Ring of Royal Grandeur in the cube.)
The big problem with the DH is Blizzard’s strange skill set, which makes a bow indispensable. Nearly every DH skill comes with the proviso “Bow only.” I’m not exactly sure what this means, but the way I read it, a bow is what you think it is: an archery bow, the kind you would use with two hands. As far as I can tell, this does not mean crossbows, either 1h or 2h. If this is true (and I’ll have to research this further), it means that a 1h crossbow set like Danetta’s does not benefit from the majority of DH skills. Surely this is incorrect, but that’s my interpretation. All I know is that once I went back to an actual bow, all those skills went ape-ballistic. I was initially worried about the DH’s inability to cube the Furnace (50% bonus dmg to elites), but Marauders and the proper skill choices obviate this problem. I’ve been one-shotting every elite pack. Rift bosses are trivial. (Update: I discovered that “Bow only” refers to every kind of bow, including 1h and 2h crossbows — see reply below.)
The best thing is that ka-thunk ka-thunk has been replaced by asplosion-asplosion. And speed. Man, this guy can move. Throw in Vault with no cool-down and he’s a bullet.
Meanwhile, my crusader is also coming along. Like the DH, she needs a truly uber weapon. She also needs quite a lot more health and resistances, but she’s got a lightning-damage thing going that seems to work really well right now.
The monk is also coming up but needs better gear.
The Survival mode finally arrived so I returned to my unfinished game with my level fifty-something character.
The biggest problem of Survival is that ammo now has weight – each mini nuke weighs 12! Fusion cores weigh 4! I had to ditch most of my weapons so now I’m really afraid of Deathclaws again. This really is a game changer, I love it.
Also, the only mods I play with are Better Settlers and Don’t Call Me Settler. Killable provisioners! Now it really makes sense to have your settlers well protected.
Survival and these two mods really make the game great again.
UE4 looks like it’s a great tool for visualisation. I’m working on various projects to show the history of the development of my home town of Lodz, Poland and so far I’ve rendered a few things in Blender, but I wanted something in which I can create some interactive stuff. And UE4 is quite powerful and, most importantly, absolutely free for this!
Working on the history of Plac Wolności (Freedom Square), I live just next to it, here you can see how it looks now, I’m trying to recreate the architecture of how the place looked in various stages of its history since its founding in 1823.
Here’s how it looked about 1849. Basic geometry only, almost no textures yet.
If you’re interested, here’s the video project I made last year about a fragment of my town a bit north of here (has English subtitles – not my own translation):
So the latest patch was released with a bunch of fixes and a couple new maps. I’m actually impressed with Robot as they seem to be spending all their time on balance and fixes for Survival mode now which is what they should have been focusing on all along IMO. You can read the patch notes here to see what I mean:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/427270/discussions/3/361787186439543936/
One of the new maps is called The Wall. Its basically a beach siege map kind of like Normandy but with Orcs and Pirate Orcs.
As you can see from the map, its one large middle lane with two smaller lanes that open up later on in the cycle. My basic defense is to load up the main lane with every trap I can afford and place my Guardian in the back. This leaves me free to manually monitor the other two lanes. (also notice the pirate orc. very dangerous!)
After a couple of attempts, I seem to have figured the map out but I’m sure later on it will be much tougher.
Last night, I finally got to see Jurassic World. I also saw the first Game of Thrones episode for the 2016 season. Here is my catchy image for this post:
I’m using this image because I have a morbid fear of copyright takedown notices.
Anyway, about Jurassic World:
Total excrement.
- The effects haven’t improved very much since 1993. If anything, they’ve gotten worse. They should have called this movie “Jurassic Cut Scene on the Xbox One.”
- The characters are idiotic. I thought there might be an exception, but nope. Hated the kids; hated the “navy-paleontologist” character; hated the woman park boss; hated the rich Middle-Eastern Hammond replacement; hated the military nut. Not one redeeming person.
- The plot goes from stupid to ludicrous to face-palm to brain-damage. Every scene introduced a new improbability (and we’re talking way beyond the improbability of the fictional world here — I’m referring to intra-plot “luck” and other problems — the final scenes are just off the chart with deus-ex-machina stupidity).
This movie has not one single good thing going for it. I’m very glad I didn’t get the Blu-ray.
About Game of Thrones:
I’m pleased to see that various revenge plots are beginning to gyre up. I only hope they come to something. I especially want to see Cersei kick some ass. I also am interested in the weird Arya plot — will look forward to where they’re taking this “blind martial arts master” thing.
I dreaded that they might bring back Jon Snow, and it looks like that may be on the table. I got really sick of that character and his Tarly nerd sidekick, but I imagine a great herd of heartbroken girls wrote in protests, so Snow will probably be rezzed. Too bad.
The dumbness is strong in this one.