Emptyeye

A more substantive post will be coming later–suffice to say I finally signed the lease on the apartment–but this SDA topic was too good for my speedrunning self not to mention (The actual video inside, not so much, but eh). The discussion actually reminds me of an old topic on the GameFAQs boards, which Bruplex might remember, where we created a fictional GameFAQs RPG that evolved into a “help topic” for the game. It was so convincing actually asked where to download said game…which didn’t exist.

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

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.

<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 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

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.

It’s time…it’s time…IT’S VADER RANDOM TUESDAY THOUGHT TIME!!

• So what exactly constitutes a “live performance” by a band appearing on television? This question actually formed in my head after Def Leppard’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars last Tuesday. Suffice to say that the band mimed along with an edited version (For time, not content; also, I should point out that it was actually a pretty seamless edit in that regard, so kudos to whoever did that job anyway) of the version of “Pour Some Sugar On Me” that appeared on Hysteria. I imagine this is standard practice for any artist on DwtS, but it was particularly jarring in this case (And really the first time I had noticed it), given that I’ve seen Def Leppard live and, as such, actually know how the song sounds truly live (It’s still very good, but also very different from the studio version). As such, to me, it was only a “live performance” in the loosest sense of the word. I even know that this is something of a time-honored tradition when it comes to bands on TV, but…I dunno, it still bugs me somehow.
• My Astyanax speedrun is apparently in SDA limbo at the moment. Don’t ask me how it got there. I’m guessing it still has to be timed, because I’ve done everything else. Alternately, this is karma coming back to bite me for…something SDA-related.
• I’ve been working on recording another version of commentary on my Rygar run. After that, I’ll get back to mixing The Six Day Exile; the two activities actually require different sound card setups, and I’m too lazy to switch from one to the other repeatedly.

This week here on the site, the main news was that I did actual work on the site that you could see, adding various social link buttons to every post on the main page. You can check out the details here; I used and then manually configured a Wordpress plugin called Sociable to make that happen. So if I make an update that you particularly like, click on some of the buttons and help me get onto Digg/StumbleUpon/etc.

Because I’m lazy, work on the album isn’t really going as fast as it perhaps should, but it is going, rest assured. By this time next week I should have something tangible to show for it here on the site.

In speed run news, I’m still waiting for my Astyanax run to get posted. There are currently a total of three runs that are listed as “Ready for Update” in the SDA queue; I’m guessing mine is one of them. I do plan on getting another commentary track for my Rygar run up eventually, but I was plagued with issues regarding that today (Though I did figure out Jahshaka enough to do everything I’d need to do on that front).

And I think that’s it for now. Until next week…

-EE

Work slowly continues on The Six Day Exile. This time it was properly fading clips into one another to, if not eliminate the annoying pops that come when one clip crashes into another, at least conceal it enough that you won’t notice.

I’m also trying to work with a program called Jashaka to ultimately get commentaries onto my speedruns. I think this program can do what I need it to (And probably a lot more than I need it to) once I get past the “Designed by Open-Source Geeks for Open-Source Geeks, screw normal people” interface.

Finally, here’s some interesting footage of an old game for the Commodore 64 titled “Cliff Hanger”. Despite the title, what it is is essentially if Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote were instead a bandit and a sheriff respectively, you’d have this game. Looks pretty neat.

This week at emptyeye.com, I returned from my self-imposed exile. Hooray! Since then, I’ve been slowly progressing on the album, doing a bit each day to bring it closer to release. I’d like to continue doing that until it’s finally out. Sometimes it’s significant progress, sometimes it isn’t, but every day it’s at least something.

My dance gaming has kind of taken a back seat as a result, though I did get my twenty-fifth home version Heavy/Challenge AAA, as evidenced here. High gas prices have also limited my trips out, to be honest, even though it really isn’t that far from my house to the mall.

In speedrunning news, my Astyanax run is in the SDA queue (Which reminds me, I need to re-send them my comments for the run), and I’ve begun practicing for a run of M.C. Kids as well. At present, my bugaboo is a trick that lets you skip pretty much the entirety of one level (Birdie’s Treehouse 6) that I learned from the Tool-Assisted Run of the game. It’s doable in real-time (And thus presumably, though I’ll admit I haven’t tried it yet, doable on console), but getting it consistently is a major problem, and the level is set up in such a way that if you miss it, you’ll probably have to go through the level the long way anyway, which isn’t good for a speedrun.

Finally, in book news, I’m currently read the epic that is KISS: Behind the Mask. I’ve said before that I’m a sucker for band biographies, and this is no different. It’s an interesting read, though the most fascinating part to me is a huge appendix of sorts, where KISS themselves review each of their albums one by one, and talk about the experiences writing and producing them.

Until next week….

-EE

Pretty much what the topic title says. For some reason, when I try to go into Timeline Mode in Windows Movie Maker to try and add some commentary in preparation for the Youtube edition of my Rygar Speedrun, it up and crashes on me. Not good.

So I’m putting the call out there: Are there any free alternatives to WMM out there? I don’t need anything super fancy, really, just something where I can load an .AVI file, split it up as needed, maybe throw a pause or two in there, and narrate over it (And be able to output this as a seperate file). Can anyone help me out here?