Emptyeye

This week here at Emptyeye.com, not a lot of note really happened. I found out that my computer is still acting up, and it’s gotten to the point where it is unfortunately difficult to actually work on the album (Whose page I should really update sometime soon). In reality, though, that’s sort of low on the priority scale at the moment, what with the news that I’m moving out soon coming to the forefront. Oh yeah, and my Astyanax speedrun has seen the light of Internet, causing a brief spike of traffic here.

Today I went to a huge party for Jess and her family, where her grandfather gave me a hand-made pen carved out of wood. Pretty neat, even if it isn’t a clicky wooden flashlight like Jess got. I guess this means I’m somewhat officially part of the family now. I also played some Rock Band, which was Jess’s brother’s graduation present. Fun stuff, and I can actually do some easy drums on the easy level.

Yesterday I posted that my Wizardry experience was going more or less smoothly. I spoke too soon–several character deaths and one character alignment change (Which I eventually changed back) later, I’m on the tenth floor (A lot of the middle floors immediately send you into complete darkness, which I was not dealing with even with some of the improvements made to the SNES compilation to make the games slightly easier. one example is that the mapping spell, which previously only showed your location in the maze, actually gives you a picture of the floor you’re on to the extent that you’ve explored it) and into the “liberal use of the Reset button (Well, the emulator’s Reset function anyway)” phase. I’ll probably pop back up to the castle a time or two more before making my final attempt to beat the game, but suffice it to say that at this point, the game is so “Screw you player” hard that I have no problem with saying “Screw you game” right back at it and hitting reset when a group of Greater Demons surprise me and wipe me the heck out before I can do anything. Also, and I think my cousin would agree with me on this, I have no problem with a person saying that they “beat” a Wizardry game even if they had to make extensive use of Reset, or even Save States, to get it done (I’m generally of the opinion that save-stating through a game “doesn’t count” unless you use the save states to, for instance, avoid entering really long passwords when you come back to the game.).

Until next time…

-EE

Yeah. Yesterday I went to do some work on The Six Day Exile. I decided to see what would happen if I put a touch of compression on the vocals to “The Secret“. I got an error saying that the audio was not in the right format. Fair enough.

Today is where I took another step toward a new computer, though. I went to remove the silent parts of the audio to my Rygar speed run commentary. And I got another error, one I’ve never seen before. It was approximately “Windows 32-bit error: 0×80070057: The parameter is invalid”. Bizarre. It happens maybe 20 percent into the silence removal. I wonder if this is because I’m going back through the Echo Indigo IO as opposed to the computer’s onboard audio that I used to record it. Nonetheless, it’s probably about time to start looking for another computer anyway–this one is close to 4 years old, and has a myriad of issues, chiefly the fact that it likes to randomly shut itself off.

Wizardry is going pretty well. I’m done with “part one” of the quest, getting the Blue Ribbon so I can use the Express Elevator. I can theoretically attempt to finish the game right now, but I’m wandering about the middle of the dungeon a bit first to see if I can’t scrounge up some sweet equipment first. Also, I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m using save states at times (I’ve made a total of two, and used a total of one–both were made just before I attempted to bring my Mage back from Ashen state, and the one I used was when the resurrection was botched. For those of you who don’t know the Wizardry series, “dead” characters actually have 3 states of deadness. The first is simply “Dead”, and you can have a Cleric cast a spell to try to revive a dead character or turn to the Temple of Cant to do the job. But there’s a catch–both the spell and the Temple have a chance of botching the resurrection. If this happens, your character goes to Ashen state [I think it’s technically called “Ashed” in-game]. Now you need a high-level Cleric spell, or the Temple again, to bring the character back from Ashed state [Paying more money to the Temple than you would for “Dead” characters, by the way]. But there’s a problem: The spell and/or Temple can both fail here, too. In that case, if it was the Cleric spell that failed, your character goes to “Lost” status, and can’t be revived again. Ever. That’s right, potentially hours of work go right down the drain, and you really have no way of controlling whether or not the resurrection is successful. At least you can theoretically unequip the character to give their goods to the next in line, though. This is more than you can do if the Temple fails, in which you get the message “[Character name] is buried”, and you simply lose the character and any items they had forever. Not fun.). My characters are all, I think, about level 10 or 11.

This weekend will be the graduation of Jess’s brother and her cousin. As such, allow me to congratulate them both here. You may be wondering why I’m not actually up in New York for Jess’s brother’s graduation. The truth is that I’ve never been a big fan of graduation ceremonies (Screwing up at my high school graduation didn’t help things in that department). I know that graduation is an important event and all, but part of it is I just don’t like listening to all those “follow your dreams, don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do” speeches being read by people who probably didn’t follow that advice themselves, followed by the reading of what seems like over 9000 names (Note that in all the ceremonies I was/would have been involved in, it was really a couple hundred) before you can finally leave the ceremony.

Eh.

In spite of that, congratulations to everyone else who’s graduating this year as well.

Lastly, consider this unrelated RANDOM FUN FACT since I just got done watching this year’s Jeopardy! College Tournament: Jeopardy! Uber-champ Ken Jennings missed more Final Jeopardies during his run than any other contestant in the history of the show has ever played. Of course, when you lock up about 6 out of 7 of your games prior to FJ!, you can afford to have a statistic like this and still take Trebek for every dollar he’s worth and then some (About 2 minutes in). Discuss.

Yes indeed it is. First of all, my Astyanax speedrun has finally been posted to SDA. Further, the traffic I got from there made today one of my biggest days ever in terms of traffic (There’s a link to the site at the bottom of the comments). I guess the audience for speedruns is actually pretty large, or at least large enough that a new Emptyeye speedrun caused traffic here to spike noticeably.

By the way, to those of you who got here via the link in the run comments, welcome! Hopefully you know of my other runs, and I hope I’ve done Astyanax justice. Don’t forget to check out my music while you’re here too.

The speedrun is really a minor thing, though. The big news is that today I put a holding deposit down on an apartment, making me (And Jess) one step closer to actually moving out. Sometime after Memorial Day, we’ll officially sign the contract, and hopefully move in around early June. This is a rather huge step for us, and it’s nice for me personally in that I’ll be about a mile away from work–close enough to bike or even walk if I want to. Put another way, since I like to complain that Americans as a whole are idiots and will gladly pay exorbitant prices for gas (A part of why prices continue to rise, which most said Americans seem unable or unwilling to figure out), I’ll be able to put my money where my mouth is and almost entirely eliminate my weekly gas consumption.

That’s just one perk, of course. I was trying not to get too excited about the whole deal until it was official, and while I’m not there yet, putting the deposit down is a big step toward resolving this whole thing. Oddly enough, the person (I’ve been communicating with several people, all of whom are part of the business) thought I and/or Jess had a dog, which isn’t allowed at this particular complex. I’m guessing wires got crossed somewhere, but he almost shooed us away before we pointed out that we did not, in fact, own a dog. After that, it was relatively smooth sailing–my credit is just fine, and I’m not a big partier (To paraphrase Lifting Shadows’s description of Dream Theater bassist John Myung, I simply prefer my own company to that of strangers. For that matter, I usually simply prefer my own company to that of my friends and family.), which he liked a lot. So out came the checkbook, and thus the apartment is being held for us until we decide to move in. This will likely be in early June, as between weddings and parties, we’re pretty booked until the end of May, unfortunately (The person seemed eager to have us move in as quickly as possible).

So that’s my big, life-changing news. This probably means that work on pretty much everything will be on hold for a bit while I take stock of what I actually need to get together, pack up, etc. before moving out, but I do plan on getting all of my projects done eventually.

Those of you who live in my home city of Waterbury, CT and read the local paper, specifically the Arts & Entertainment section, may recall reading this article about a local actress-turned-Broadway-star named Marissa Perry. You’re probably wondering why in the heck I’m bringing it up.

The title of this post is 100% true, although it sounds a heck of a lot more interesting than it actually is. See, before she was a Broadway leading lady, Marissa played Annie Oakley, the lead role in my high school’s production of Annie Get Your Gun, the synopsis of which you can read at the link. “So what?”, you no doubt say.

Also in that production, as Chief Sitting Bull: Marc J. Dziezynski.

Now, presumably, Marissa got the part of Annie because of some combination of singing, acting, and dancing ability (Although from what I remember of the auditions, singing was really the only thing we did to audition). I got my role because–and this was confirmed by my choir instructor, who was one of the judges as it were–my facial expression did not change once throughout the first audition (There were actually two–those who did well at the first got called to the second–though from the way my choir instructor told the story, the director of the play had already decided after–if not during–my first audition that I was Sitting Bull, and nothing could change his mind). This was probably for the best; I’m helpless at any form of dancing that does not involve arrows scrolling up a screen, and I’ve discussed my limited vocal range at length before. And as far as “name” roles go, Sitting Bull was probably the easiest one to play in Annie Get Your Gun (That said, I was indeed probably the best choice for the role from the pool of those who tried out. I don’t think I’m a great musical actor by any means–but I was a pretty darn good Sitting Bull) in terms of singing/choreography/etc.

Anyway, the title of the post comes from the very end of Act I of Annie Get Your Gun. Frank Butler has just run off, and left Annie a letter explaining as much. Annie, being unable to read, has Sitting Bull recite the letter for her, and proceeds to cry on his shoulder after he finishes.

So yeah, this is effectively an “I knew a Broadway star before she was famous!” sort of post, but I figured it would be neat to post anyway.

And because one live Rick Astley performance per post is not enough, here’s another, where he’s backed up by Brian May AND Phil Collins. Circa 1988, I guess. If the comments on the video are to be trusted, this gathering of British musicians was apparently an annual thing for awhile. But who cares how often it took place, Astley + May + Collins = World-Ending Amounts of Awesome.

<Nappa>There’s no way that can be right!</Nappa>

Earlier today, I managed to take the “Your comic should be the star of your page” philosophy of good webcomic site design and apply it to my music. To that end, you’ll note the link to the Latest Song as the top “post” currently. As explained here, it’s not quite a proper post, but it’s good enough for the moment. The Rygar speedrun commentary is done; I just have to edit it together for Youtube. So now it’s time to resume Six Day Exile work. That’ll start tomorrow.

And my Wizardry game is proceeding smoothly, even if I’m doing a lot of unnecessary stuff (Which, strictly speaking, is most of Wizardry I).

Until next week…

-EE

A quick note to say that some of the promised fruits of working on The Six Day Exile have arrived! Above this post, you’ll note a “Latest Song” pseudo-post. This will remain at the top of the blog, even as I make more posts. It’s not quite functioning the way I want it to yet–ideally it would actually be a fully-commentable post with the social links as opposed to my having to hard-code everything into the index template–but this way is at least functional and won’t get pushed down the front page as I make more posts.

This new track is a comparison, one after the other, of two mixes of “The Secret“. The first one is the close-to-final album mix, with a touch of reverb on the vocals, use of stereo, etc, while the second (Which starts about a second after the first ends) is the Slap-It-Down Mix that’s been available on the site since February. Coming immediately after the more (Although certainly not completely) polished version of the song, the lo-finess of the Slap-It-Down Mix really stands out even more now.

In the early 1980s, a company called Sir-Tech released a computer game titled Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. The game, heavily inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, was a huge success, spawning an entire series of games before the American division of Sir-Tech folded in the early 2000s due to a variety of reasons. Interestingly, the Canadian division is apparently still in business.

I first became acquainted with the series through the NES port of Wizardry I, and later of Wizardry II, plus the SNES version of Wizardry V. For some reason, the series didn’t do that well console-wise here in the States, though it’s apparently a phenomenon in Japan. One of the various console collections released in Japan was a collection of Wizardry I through III, on the SNES.

Earlier today, I found out that someone had patched said collection into English. So I eagerly downloaded it, since II was the only one of the first three I’ve actually beaten (And I’ve never even played III). So I fire up Wizardry I, and create my party. They were ready. They were willing. They were gonna kick Werdna’s butt and do the Mad Overlord proud!

Roughly 5 minutes later, 2 of the six party members were dead, a third was paralyzed, and I had no real recourse for bringing them back short of wiping out the entire party and creating a new one. I had apparently forgotten how hard it actually was to get started in these games.

And that’s when I got to thinking: There’s almost no way the learning curve on these games would fly today. Reviewers and gamers alike would dismiss them as being way too hard to actually get anywhere in (Indeed, this session served as a reminder of why I never really got anywhere in this game, even with a strategy guide for help–a guide that actually encouraged use of the Reset button to get yourself out of a tight spot…THAT’S how hard the Wizardry series actually was). This isn’t even getting into some of the fun unexpected ways to obliterate your entire party (My personal favorite: casting a teleportation spell such that you reappear high above the city and go crashing to the ground–and your party’s collective death). And the way Wizardry works, once your party members are dead, it is VERY hard to bring them back to life (Hence the “quickly reset before the death scene plays out” method of survival).

Despite that, I’m having fun thus far. After learning some restraint in the early game–Level 1 Thieves are in fact totally incompetent at disarming traps–I seem to be up and rolling in Wizardry I for the moment. Fun stuff, this Wizardry.

So as I’ve been posting throughout the week, I’d like to get the commentary for my Rygar run finished before I resume work on The Six Day Exile. Before today, I could sneak in a quick few minutes of this before bed, as my parents typically went to sleep before I did.

That changed today, because my brother came home from school for the summer. Now I’m glad he’s home and all, don’t get me wrong. But from a strictly “look out for number one” perspective, his being home makes it difficult for me to get anything audio-related done. This is primarily because he and I “camp out” as it were in the same room of the house most of the time; more importantly as concerns the Rygar commentary, he, being a college kid, tends to stay up a lot later than I do, even on weekends.

Speaking of home, sometime this weekend I have to follow up on the apartment thing.

But enough of my whining. Have some video of a fun Doom II mod. Fists are fun. The chainsaw is even funner. And the Astley Cannon, well…Nameless Space Marine would’ve had no problem defeating the forces of Hell if he’d had late 80s Britpop on his side from the beginning, as this video shows.

Imagine the title being said in a Real-Time Strategy game type announcer voice.

I don’t generally like upgrading stuff unless I have to–my post about Windows Movie Maker is an excellent example of this, as I should really just up and get another computer for other reasons not mentioned here besides the WMM crash–but when my webhost tells me “Hey, you’ve got some potentially vulnerable scripts on your site, you may want to upgrade,” I figure it’s a good idea to listen. As such, the back end of the site is now running Wordpress 2.5, upgraded from my previous 2.3.3.

The interface is completely different. I’m not sure I like it yet, though I’ll admit that this is as much because I hate change as it is a fault with the new design itself. I will say that one thing I really like is the automatic plugin installation. Suffice to say that the process of upgrading my plugins was a bit time consuming before, but now I just click “upgrade automatically” and boom. Done. Sweet.

Also, you’ll note that for the second time, I’ve managed to upgrade things on my end without destroying my database. Woo!