Emptyeye

This doesn’t really count as “Working on the panel” per se, but I took some time to check out laptop speakers today. I did manage to find one set of speakers that is, sadly, sold out at Best Buy. Maybe I’ll try and see if I can order them somewhere else.

Also, even though I’ve yet to actually beat the game, I’m having serious second thoughts about speedrunning Flying Warriors. It’s just a seriously cheap game; I’d go so far as to say that Flying Dragon is actually better designed in that regard. I am still going to go ahead and beat the game though, if for no other reason than to add another game to my trophy case, as it were.

Taking my role as the guy who runs really obscure old school games Beyond the Impossible, I believe I may have found my next target.

That game is Flying Warriors on the NES, a typical Culture Brain title that blends beat-em-up, 1-on-1 fighting game, and RPG. Unlike The Magic of Scheherazade (Another Culture Brain game, and one that I have a run for), it doesn’t do the genre-mashing thing quite as well–in particular, it likes to pull the time-honored NES trick of “constantly respawning enemies near bottomless pits” that enraged so many people when they were younger.

Flying Warriors itself has sort of a Power Rangers-esque vibe to it, only without the humongous mecha–five allies? Check. Transforming into more powerful forms? Check. Martial artists? Yep, that too. If Wikipedia can be trusted, the game is actually a kind of mashup of two games released in Japan, Hiryu No Ken II and Hiryu No Ken III (The first game came to U.S. shores as Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll).

I have even less experience with this game than I did with Chuck Rock when I said “Hey that’d be a good game to run.” I’m really playing through it for the first time right now, other than a brief rental when I was much younger and got stymied by a seemingly impossible jump (As it turns out, the solution requires kind of a speedrunning train of thought: Use a Cyclone Spin Kick to carry yourself to the platform). This time is going better, although as mentioned above, the game itself is kind of frustrating as a whole. Still, I do want to at least beat the game once.

-EE

When I was about 6 or 7, my aunt, grandmother and I went to the house of another of my aunts. I don’t remember what for–what I do remember is that my cousin was tasked with keeping me entertained (As he would be many times in the following years). It says something about both of us that his method of choice was to show off his shiny new Sega Genesis. The games he had were pretty much all launch titles, but amongst Space Harrier II, Golden Axe, and Altered Beast was one game that particularly stuck with me, arguably the crown jewel of the Genesis launch lineup.

Phantasy Star II.

Yep, seven years before Final Fantasy VII made it cool to like RPGs in the U.S., Phantasy Star II had quite a bit of hype behind it in 1990 or so. It made the cover of an early issue of GamePro, and an early Game Player’s had quite a bit of coverage too. In any event, seeing the game made quite an impression on little Emptyeye, even though at that point all I got to see was my cousin repeatedly trying (And failing) to kill the final boss. Actually getting to play the game later on only increased my “must have this game” desire.

Unfortunately, I was a Nintendo kid growing up, not actually owning a Genesis until it was all but dead in the U.S. I finally got Phantasy Star II in my early teens, and loved it, especially the ending (Which pretty much confirmed everything a 13-year-old me in the peak of his I-Hate-Everything phase needed to know about humanity).

A couple years ago, I played through the game again intending to speedrun it. I never actually a completed a speedrun, other than a pseudo-test where I got through the game at Level 18. While I still love the game on a personal level, looking at it objectively, it really hasn’t aged very well.

In case you don’t know, when the game first game out, it came with its own full strategy guide. This is because you needed it. The dungeons were huge, and especially in the beginning of the game, you had to do quite a bit of level grinding in order to survive them. This wasn’t quite as much of a problem later on, although the dungeons themselves got even more fiendish. Here’s one of the later dungeons; the black squares are pits, and your two goals are the chests marked Neislasher and Neishot. Have fun getting to them even with the map. The pace of also rather slow, and any characters not in your party don’t level with the rest of your characters. This basically means that several of the characters you get will never be used in normal play.

Despite all these flaws, I still like the game a lot, and might play through it again on stream sometime. Maybe once I don’t have to constantly stress out about So You Want to be a Speedrunner.

Literally the only thing I did to make progress on this today was inserting the Final Fantasy VI excerpt into the slide show. And I’m going to be busy enough over this weekend that that level of work is likely to be in the next couple updates as well. But it’s something–as long as it’s moving forward, however slowly, it’s moving forward. if I stop for a day, though…well, I know how I am. One day becomes two, becomes three, becomes a week, becomes “Oh hey it’s convention time and I’m not even close to having anything presentable.”

Speaking of projects, I plan to resume work on Hysterium once either this or my Dragon Warrior Liveblog are finished. the liveblog is likewise being worked on slowly.

I’ve been holding off on posting anything about this until it was 100% official that I would be doing it, and I got word yesterday that I’m good to go on that front, so here it is:

At Gobble-con, I’ll be giving a panel titled “So You Want to be a Speedrunner: A Leisurely Guide to Playing Video Games in a Frantic Manner”. Those of you who know me are no doubt laughing hysterically at your computers, knowing how confident and outgoing I am.

But in truth, as I mentioned previously, this is something I’ve actually thought about doing for awhile, in part because it’s so contrary to the image of me that most people have of me. That said, the fact that I’ve never lost the Best Vocalist Award at Connecticon‘s Rock Band tournaments, in which performance is a factor, does show that I can fake the confident, outgoing persona for short periods of time when it’s required…and I figure I’ll be fine as long as I keep telling myself “I don’t have to actually be outgoing and confident, I just have to fake it for an hour or so.”

More seriously, the fact that Gobble-con is a small (Don, the guy running it, told me he’s expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 people. In contrast, Connecticon had roughly 8000 people this year.), first-year convention was what convinced me to take the plunge and try to do the panel there. For one, I figured that, being a first-year convention, they’d be looking for panels (And more willing to grant a panel to someone who has never actually given a panel before), as opposed to something like Connecticon which more or less has its pick of panel submissions. For another, the smaller audience means that if I do badly for whatever reason, not a whole lot of people, relatively speaking, will see my spectacular failure.

Truth be told, I’m excited about this. I’m hoping to use some of the stuff I learned in the How to Run a Panel panel, and I’ve been scouring the Internet for public speaking advice as well, using my judgment whenever I come across any contradictory advice. I also plan to use this site (Yeah, the one I’ve been neglecting for the past six months) a bit more to post my progress in this endeavor. I should really change that “Newest Song” at the top to more or a “Latest Progress” kind of thing, what with not having done any recorded music stuff in about two years.

Until next time..
-EE

Well, Connecticon 2010 was certainly my most…eventful convention to date. A quick warning: This is absolutely huge even by my “Massive post-Convention Post” standards, weighing in at over 5000 words according to WordPress…before this disclaimer. So, in addition to the traditional “Cut”, I put in some links so you can skip directly to the day you may want to read about.
Thursday Night
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
(Continue reading…)

Yes, I’m pretty terrible at this “Updating the website” thing lately. Fairly soon, though, that should get better.

We’re now less than two weeks away from Connecticon. On an individual level, I honestly don’t think I’ve practiced as much as I did for last year’s tournament. As far as my band situation goes, though, I’m in far, far better shape, with an actual band (Who won’t desert me this year!), and a solid set list to practice between now and then. Hopefully I’ll come out of it with my entire band victorious, as opposed to just me winning Best Vocalist. Not that I would necessarily complain about that outcome, mind you.

In writing news, I’ve started a liveblog of the original Dragon Warrior. Unlike my Wizardry Liveblog, I actually expect this one to end in success, if only because dying just sends you back to the castle minus half your gold (And because you have to do enough experience grinding anyway that this penalty is effectively meaningless in the long run).

Hysterium development is still slowly going on. I plan to really ramp that up and turn it into an actual writing project as well once I finish the Dragon Warrior liveblog. I figure that forcing myself to write about what I do every day, no matter how small, will motivate me to get something playable out into the world.

Yes, so suffice to say my posting here has slowed down somewhat.

However, I continue to work on Hysterium. This is probably the longest I’ve stuck with a project since the songwriting process for the basically-aborted album I was making in 2008. Today, I think I overcame the last great programming challenge, in that I can now save and load my progress in what little bit of the game I have. Now it’s just a matter of actually implementing everything, and then the frankly kind of boring process of testing (Barring the occasional spectacular crash of the whole thing because of Argument Out of Range Exceptions and the like). I like the basic skeleton and idea I have for the game, although by the time I’m done actually making and balancing everything, I’m going to be totally sick of it. I must admit, though, that I was giddy like a little kid when I realized that my saving and loading actually worked properly, like “I did that! Awesome!”.

I managed to win $72 at Mohegan Sun yesterday as well. Professional Poker career, here I come!

….not quite.

This is just a quick post saying to check out The Speed Gamers marathon of the Mother series Friday through Sunday, May 7th through 9th. American gamers will know the Mother series by its second entry, called Earthbound here in the U.S. They’ll be playing for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a charity dedicated to fighting breast cancer.

Check it out if you have some time this weekend!

Yes, yes, I’m still working on Hysterium. Quite honestly, even I’m kind of amazed at that. I know how my personality is, and you can see the remnants of past aborted projects even looking through the posts on this site (RANDOM FUN FACT for newcomers: This site was originally intended as a headquarters for my music).

Luckily, the game is not one of them as yet. I don’t know that I’ll make my goal of having a playable demo out by the end of April, but I do try to do at least a little with it each day, even if that little is just “Restructure something so that it doesn’t make people who actually know what they’re doing with Object-Oriented Programming cry unicorn tears when they look at the source code”.

In other news, I’ve been getting back into playing Rock Band, since we’re less than three months from Connecticon and I have a title to defend. I’ll probably take the next month or so to work primarily on LEGO Rock Band, which I’ve not given enough love since getting it for Christmas, and spend the last two months or so working with Matt, Dan, and Whoever-We-Get-As-A-Bass-Player (TravellinMan, if you’re somehow reading this, please respond to the private message I sent you on Scorehero like a month ago. Thanks. Love, Emptyeye) on potential setlist songs for this year. Hopefully that’ll produce some quality results.