Well, let's see. Quite a bit has happened since December of last year. I've been trucking away at schoolwork, and treading uncomfortably close my own unsatisfactory level for my physics grades. Guess that's the price I pay for taking a more advanced one than necessary. Oh well.

Got into a bit of a writing frenzy (in essay form) over the FOX News bit of idiocy involving Mass Effect last week. Wrote a couple of essays on games for different classes, and touched briefly on it.

Introduced a new squad of people to PSO (as I'm certain would come to no surprise to our old clubbies). Think there's something like 10 or 12 characters floating around now as a noob squad. Fun stuff. We've got a lot of androids, and I'm playing one of two (maybe three, might be wrong on the count) forces. So I gets me fluids. Plus, since I'm one of the only people with a copy of the game, and the memory cards our characters are on belong to the ET (Entertainment Technology) Lab, nobody levels without a buddy. It's a good system.

Also got people to finally try bot-stomping on Starcraft. It always seems more fun when it's everybody against the comp to me. Might be the 'everybody wins' bit.

Got a bit hooked on Gunz Online. Haven't played recently, thanks to a used game I picked up that's had me tied down--Elite Beat Agents for the DS. Damn fine investment, hilarious game, and one of the best lined up difficulty curves I've ever seen. I'm almost done with Hard mode, and almost ready to start Very Hard (have to unlock it first).

Been chiseling away at an old FFTA file. Never got a full-clear, so felt like I should. Not much to say on it.

I've had the worst luck with flash drives recently. One got stomped a little while ago (thanks to somebody on here, although he's been beating himself up about it more than I have--it was an accident, as I've been reassuring him multiple times), and just last week, somebody stole the replacement, along with my dorm key and mail key. That sucked. No luck in finding who pulled it out of the computer (while I was helping other students with the programming homework, no less). Guess I'll just have to own up and buy some replacement keys, but I don't like having to blow my money unnecessarily. Tough luck, I suppose.

Haven't done much spriting for Bard Game. Need to get back into the swing of things. Losing everything I had done for it twice within two weeks of each occurrence kind of demoralized me, though, so I've been working on B Murph's little side project--a scifi shooter style game with Smash Bros.-like mechanics for his 2D Graphics class. I'm one of the game art people he pulled in, since, for some strange reason, his group (in a 2D Graphics course) didn't have anybody capable of making sprites (or other 2D art). Go figure. So, I've been processing source art for that.


We have been making a LOT of writing progress, on the other hand. Macro-level's getting cleaner and cleaner with every meeting. Should be able to swap over to dialogue editor / spriter roles soon, hopefully. As with everything else for that project--we'll just have to wait and see. The way it's been rolling, I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up with a limb in each branch of the project (except maybe source art, because we have amazing people working on that). We'll see.

Been sketching every once in a while, when I'm bored out of my mind in Discrete Math. Teacher's somewhat incompetent, but that's a rant for another time and place. Probably won't end up scanning 'em in, dunno. Got a bunch of Apoph fractals I need to put up, too. They might end up on here. As above--we'll see.

Between that, and just keeping up with homework assignments, I've kind of had a full plate. Thinking about polishing up the rest of a D&D campaign idea I've been sitting on for awhile. Might let it sit a bit longer--most of the development notes I had for it were on my flash drive. The first one, I should say. Most of it's still committed to memory, but still.

So, yeah. News.

Dropping my DS seems to have fixed it. Guess it was just a weak contact.

Huh.

Now, ordinarily, Nintendo makes a very, very durable product. Barring the NES's consistent need for cartridge jobs, I've had only two problems with Nintendo hardware. Well, one, really. Most people know it as 'the L button'. My problem with it is connected to its use--its very frequent use, especially in connection with the Megaman Zero series of games (an excellent set of platformers that I never got around to finishing). Back when I first ducked into the series with MMZ2, I managed to disable my SP's L button through mashing it to dash as quickly as I could through the stages (ended up almost S ranking the whole game). For a good two or three years, I used my old school GBA because my SP's L button would not function.

Unfortunately, I was neither finished with Megaman Zero games nor newer portable handhelds. I picked up MMZ4 (the final title in the series) and crunched through Capcom's usual batch of eight bosses, only to have the L button give out in the eleventh hour--in the final stage of the entire game.

I am moderately frustrated with my DS as of now. It's quite unfortunate--Nintendo definitely made it roughly as durable for miscellaneous abuse as its previous systems, but it can't seem to stand up to focused use as well as the older versions.

So now I need to ponder what to do about it. I definitely want to finish Zero 4, but I am hesitant at best to get my L button repaired. After all, most actual DS games never go near the shoulders, it seems. I also have the option of playing Zero without the L button, although, maintaining my A ranking at the end of the game without dash ability will be a Herculean task. I am considering writing a note to Capcom complimenting them on their ability as the only company capable of designing a game I actually manage to break the console playing. Then there's the fact that I want to play the rest of the series, but there's no way I'm doing it on anything more recent than the old school GBAs, as they're the only ones that can take it, but they have no backlighting. Well, stuff to ponder.

Let's see--I'm teaching myself how to use Hammer right now, to better prepare myself for the possibility of a mod for Lib Squad, and doing some basic spriting for some friends--one of their little sideline pet projects, a Harry Potter game, needed some diagonal positions and more head orientations from the basic ones they hunted down, so I volunteered. Might put the sheet up when I finish. Don't know where they got the starting sprites--probably should ask them.

Got a pair of them up in scraps, along with a doodle sheet due to my microeconomics lecture class being equivalent to a drawing class. Have a look.

Oh, and I've hit 2 pages between my fractals and Lib Squad. Yay.