Kroc Camen Writes

21/02/2004:

Your letter hasn’t even arrived yet and I’ve started mine – whaaaat? I know, but typical sods-law, as soon as I finally got around to sending you my letter I had a sudden burst of energy and started creating stuff like mad! You know that, ‘Leaving’ present for Clint Franklin I started†, oo – on the 28^th of January 2003? Well just after I sent my letter out I was off work ill for almost a week, during that time I would either not sleep at all (for 3 days at the end) or sleep until half two in the morning, eh afternoon? I didn’t feel like working on something current and a spark reminded me that something had to be done about that picture – the photographic print I sent you was missing the colour on the trousers and shoes, the parts (well the trousers mainly) that I feared the most. I am still trying to learn how to do clothing as I cannot see in my mind how the folds and shades should go, because of this I am planning a piece of artwork to practice this. Well anyway the stomach cramps gave me a reason to have a try, and try I did. I had to erase and restart several times – I tried so many methods, all coming out so messy as I couldn’t massively blur the surface like I did with everything else – it had to be sharp, so in the end I copped out and did a minimalist style of cloth, which will do for now. But I’m sure you’ve noticed more than just the trousers in the print attached (There’s me looking at the little details again) – the rain and the background! I believe that I had been inspired to complete this work, by an artist I had found browsing the astonishing artwork at Team Artail, after some hunting I tracked down this particular person’s site and what I found blew my socks off!

How, I don’t know, but Rafael Valencia has re-invented Sonic in this neopoliptic, bleak future style and there’s more mind-blowing artwork than just this – He’s even working on a comic with artwork of that quality, I don’t have the ink to print it all so there’s some thumbs below to give an idea. When I saw these pictures I was amazed at how he produced such realistic skies

and rain effects and I had never thought to include such a thing in my Clint Franklin picture – even from the start I never had a clue what to do with the background other than plain white, or plain black – dull. So set I was to have another go at the picture I started one year ago.

The first thing was to apply all the rain-drops; this was done with the Water Tube in PSP7 which allows me to just click to add a water droplet to a picture. Several thousand clicks later I had my water droplets, the next thing was the water trickles – something I couldn’t auto generate myself, so I had to think about it. Examining one of his other works, I realised that water trickles are simply a zig-zag line that is half white and half black to give it a tubular effect, but the water is transparent so that the white and black inherit the colours underneath them – which would be simple to replicate in PSP7, by changing the layer glue to ‘Soft light’. Below is a shot showing how it was done:

Nothing more than a set of zig-zag lines drawn as vectors all over the place – looks a mess, doesn’t it? To then change this to the water trickles you can see on the photo print, I selected “Effects” > “3D Effects” > “Inner Bevel”, which made the lines half-black, half-white and then changed the layer glue to “Soft Light” so that the black/white was tinted by the colour underneath.

It really is very lame how I’ve produced all this rain effect, no actual hard work at all, I feel like a cheat, claiming it was my own work when a child of nine could follow these steps and produce a similar effect! Pretty much all of this picture I could explain to you how to reproduce step by step and you would slap your forehead exclaiming “That’s so obvious!”

The grass was also a cheap-trick that came out better than expected. The grass started off as a gradient-ed green square occupying the space where the grass would be – nothing difficult. If you have PSP7 Anniversary Edition, it comes with a set of extra plugins – one of them being “Fur”. I tweaked the properties to give a grass like effect and applied it – tough stuff To make the “wavey” effect, I selected rectangular areas and applied “Swirl” to bend it.

I was just about ready to start drawing every blade of grass to go in-front of the boots when I had an idea – For the grass that’s in the foreground, I created another green square on-top, but this time transparent on top, that way when I applied fur, the grass would fade out over the boots, that saved plenty of time.

The Background Mountains and the trees were the real laborious things, taking two sleepless nights to complete. The mountain was a zig-zag line with curves applied in as many varieties as I could think of and I drew one tree, copied it and pasted it several hundred times to create the forest The A4 1405x1987px PSP image takes over 400MB of RAM just to display.

All the clouds were auto-generated with another plugin and the rain is no more than flicking the mouse a lot and then applying motion blur. So in no way is this picture technically good, as I kinda cheated doing most of it using plug-ins and what not. With enough time I could produce a tutorial on how to reproduce this picture step by step. It’s absolutely laughable to look at the old version now, so I guess I have something to be proud of, your thoughts?

Music News <jingle>

In latest news, I’ve bought the Evanescence album “Fallen” and F’Beans it’s excellent. The songs sound so much better through headphones. Also hunted down some Matchbox20, which I’m not sure if I’ve got the right file, but I didn’t realise they did “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”? If I get enough time I will try and download that song from Hoobastank you suggested and if it’s great I’ll go out and buy the album – Like I could download an album on my connection Here’s a few of my favourites for you to look up when you arrive home:

“Baby’s Got a Temper” – The Prodigy, “19-2000 Soulchild Remix” – Gorillaz, “Under the Weather”, & “21^st Century Meltdown” – Feeder, “Kick Some Ass” – Stroke 9, “The Planets: Mars” – Holst and one of my favourites “Ukrainian Bell Carol”

Badly Drawn Adventure:

Now onto more progress, The Badly Drawn Adventure has seen a small spurt of activity, hmm mainly concerned with making that large step into maintaining instances in the screen stack and then rendering them back. For yourself, the most obvious thing is the new wooden desk background, rather than just plain black – I’m still in two minds about whether or not this improves the game, but it’s much more in the Badly Drawn style by highlighting how he lives on a piece of paper.

I’ve added a few new buttons to the toolbar, first the “Screen Boundaries” button with Red Grid icon. Once on, the 640×480 screen boundaries are marked and indexed with +1, +2 etc so you can find where you are in the level easier. Second button is the “Frame Advance” button. When the game is being played in the editor and the user presses the pause button, they can then use the frame advance button to step forward frame by frame, which’ll be handy for aligning objects etc.

Oh yes, sorry – and the big obvious thing in the centre (there’s me looking at the niggley minor details again) – It’ll be the New Project screen. I’ve bought a graphics tablet and the picture of Yokozuki is the first thing I’ve drawn on it so far. By having a graphics tablet it means I won’t need to draw everything on paper, scan it in and then trace it – it’s going to save so much time doing the animation, yay! This form will also double up as the load-project screen as well. When you close the editor, it saves a screenshot of the editor window, shrinks it down to a thumbnail (thanks to your excellent bilinear code) so that on the load screen, each project has a thumbnail of what you were last doing when you closed the program.

26/02/04:

Perhaps you know what it is like to break down and confess you want to kill yourself in front of your boss, I hope you don’t for your own well being. But today has marked a bleak future for me, I’ve had to resign from my Job because of damaged relationships. Everything has been ruined because Chinese-whispers behind my back have blurred and distorted opinions and it’s not nice to be in a working environment where everyone greets you with a smiley face, but behind your back they despise how I have supposedly called them names, or declared to someone I think I’m superior to everybody – how do you think this makes everybody feel, to be called stupid? I was asked. “Angry”, I replied as I was read a list of slander brought to me and that I had supposedly given out. I was told how I can’t work effectively as part of a team, how I’m single minded, egotistical and selfish.

I don’t disagree. I am stupid, have difficulty spelling, have difficulty creating an effective sentence when I need to make my point of view. And for the first time, I stare back at myself from the watermark on this page – and I see sadness, not defiance. I see a soul, unable to communicate face to face with anybody, somebody who has difficulty connecting with others and somebody who tries, who doesn’t want to be egotistical but it slips out sometimes and destroys everything, it ruins relationships and sours them permanently. Ask any member of TLA what truthfully, they think of me, behind my back and the answer will always be – “He thinks he knows it all” Even what I’m saying now would be impossible for me to say verbally, I’m hiding behind a wall when I write my feelings down, because I’m protected from immediate backlash and I can form sentences given the time which I can’t do in front of somebody. I have nobody in my world other than me, and I seem to think I’m the best there is, I seem to think that my knowledge is unsurpassed and it just comes across, I curse myself inside because I don’t want that to happen. I go about things how I want, and everybody else is wrong, what I say is always correct and I can never be a part of any team. Nobody, truly, likes me – they only like me in front of my face. I need help, I need help to crawl out of my self-dug pit, my own self-obsessed world where everything is how I want it and nobody else gets a word in edgewise.

From now on I will not be stupid, because I was never intelligent in the first place – I shall pause every single time, before I speak and shall never utter a word until I can say something that will not harm others. I shall give way to others first, and I shall read this statement every time I feel I am not doing this. I shall simply help others with their decisions, not create my own decisions and force others to follow them.

02/03/04:

A week passes, and for the first time I realise what a weight off of my shoulders it is to be rid of that Job. Nay, the pressure of finding a Job is a sweet holiday compared to working at a crappy computer superstore. I am jolly and on a journey to town (the same direction I walk to work) my mind wasn’t eating at itself like before, I can actually think a sentence without visualising a whole gamut of pointless crap in the way. I’ve got a little more time now, for now and I promise I’ll write more often – I won’t leave it anymore than two months, it must be torture to have to wait nearly half a year for a letter (Damn British postal service, lol)

One Year:

Scary, but it’s coming up for the big one year since Badly Drawn was scribbled on a piece of paper at midnight 12^th March 2003. I’m certain I’ve explained this in the e-mail I sent you early-on (‘ProjectY’), but you won’t have that to hand – I decided to make Badly Drawn because I was fed up how I couldn’t draw a random scribble, my mind would just go blank. So late at night I decided – sack all this application programming, I’ve gotta make a game or I’m going to go mad. I was thinking of something that I would be capable of doing – although ProjectX (The XiaoXiao clone) was my idea of perfection, it’s way-way out of my skills. Going with the badly-drawn style of XiaoXiao, I knew my let down was art and music, the two key things – curses. Music I knew I could do without until I had finished the game, and if necessary just use some catchy royalty-free tunes from Dark Basic or similar. Art, however had to be weighed up, could I realistically, sit and draw 12/24 fps animations and tile work for an RPG? I couldn’t make a decent looking grass tile to save my life! So badly drawn was the marriage of something I was capable of, and something I wanted to be capable of doing – just sticking pen to paper, and not worrying too much about it before I had even started. This really is the first time I’ve started creating a game, but on commercial scale, no longer a piece of freeware to download off of my site. No, with each and every passing application I have burnt-in a set of things to improve next time. (I’m certain you’ve noticed the progressive differences in each of my letters). No, I didn’t have a starting clue how to create an accurate and fast render engine at the start and no nor am I some expert in game programming. But I’ll learn as I go because I’m determined to complete something so absolutely mind-blowingly large scale that few would believe that one person made it – that’s the kind of person I am.

Your support is so important to me, for that matter Badly Drawn Level Editor would not even be close to the state it is now, if I wasn’t writing letters to you, because, as delayed as it is, this is as good as IM’ing you and worrying about trying to impress someone with my achievements pushes me to get on with it. You know I want to be recognised for doing something right?

05/03/04:

The graphics tablet has paid for itself, It’s made this dreaded icon production a whole ton easier. I’m whipping an icon out one every ten minutes! (Well, considering that the icons themselves are nothing more than a quick childish scribble).

I had expected to grossly under-estimate the amount of work required, and I did. The animation was harder to produce than expected and I could end up with several thousand animation files and a download way over 20 MB. Well, whatever, by the time this game is completed (original estimation – 2 years) sometime in the next 3 or 4 years then everybody should be on 10Mbps broadband internet and the fastest computers will be double-digit GHz

Everything is kinda made up as I go, but writing these letters to you, really give me a chance to thrash ideas around which I wouldn’t otherwise do. Most ideas for the editor and the gameplay have come from me thinking of things to say in my letters. Off of the top of my head my plan is sort of like this:

1. Add full project support so that editor can load the objects from global and local folders
2. Add ability to click on item in editor window and move, resize and delete object
3. Create a few more objects to better test the editor such as the grass tiles and one of the traps
4. Add grouping support and recognition
5. Start library code by saving groups into library items and saving a preview icon into the file
6. Finally force myself to make all the animations for the player – walking, jumping, dieing and stuff
7. Get preliminary playability by making player controllable with keys or joypad
8. Create scripting class excluding the kernel functions to start with
9. Create basic script editor and compiler
10. Start adding kernel functions to kernel class and implement in the script editor
11. Get scripts working in play mode
12. Unknown for now…

Stuff to leave till last:

• Help files
• Cut Scene Animator – basically a flash-style animator, no thoughts or designs on this yet.
• External playtest – only once the internal engine is complete can it be linked to a full screen app
• Printing functions – yawn
• Security protection and licensing

Any input, no matter how minor (like a pixel you’ve spotted out of place) will be of great help to me. I need to try and stay fresh on the ideas and not get too lost in the project to lose the Badly Drawn Adventure style of thinking. Features, Ideas, Gameplay and funny stuff you can think of will help me becoming blind to the obvious. Even already I’ve become so involved in the Level Editor that when I looked at my early pencil sketches they “felt” different. (Which is why I’m whipping out some sketchy icons to get back in the design flow). It is no doubt clear my aspirations to make the perfect application, and though the game may not be a perfect game, I’ll do my best at making a good editor.

I don’t require Kroc-style 20 page analyses from you, and same I really don’t need you to write 20 page letters to me – you get your point across unawares in a short amount of space – I do not. So do not worry yourself over the monstrosity of some of my writings and no-doubt it must be a pain to try and to respond to something this size. I hope I’m not offending you with the amount of time and effort out of your infi-decimally short free time being spent on replying to me.

You’ve kept me going on the smallest of phrases and sayings and given me more encouragement with a 6 letter alphabet then the 26-letter one. I simply cannot doubt myself any longer, I can’t let Badly Drawn slip, now that I’ve started.

For a bit of fun, I read through all my previous letters and nearly fell off of my seat laughing. First they all look really stupid and poorly done, second they’re mind-numbingly short (like 6 pages for letter 1) I need 6 pages just to say hello! The funniest thing though is the earliest picture I have of Badly Drawn Adventure – there’s no toolbar! Half of the tabs are missing and it looks very, very crude! HAhahahA! Since the Badly Drawn Adventure project was started just before you went out to Canada (in fact I sent you e-mail with my ideas titled “ProjectY” just before you left) I suppose you’ve been able to track its’ progress from the very start, hopefully by the time you get home I’ll have a Level Editor that, although not complete, will allow me to build levels and playtest parts of them. That sounds like a viable estimation?

As far as music goes, if you want to help I won’t say no! Early concepts for sound were a pee-take of the Mario 3 music, a sort of tongue in cheek at other platform games. Although this may be good for one of the levels, an entire soundtrack in this style would only be irritating. Music will make or break this game – regardless of how perfect or flawed the game itself is. You and I realise the importance of music to evoke emotion and just like you’ve set me the impossible task of a “Mind Blowing” web site I would appreciate it if you could make an “incredible” sound track for my game, please

Intermission:

Let’s take a short break. I’m on 7 pages so far and your letter hasn’t even arrived yet, so I hope to get this out to you real quickly. In other news, TheLostAlliance.com has faded away and is no more and with it a whole load of memories. What are we to do? It was only yesterday I joined the project, it seems like only hours ago I created the website. All that conversation, those arguments and those good days – when things went right, those days when we had time and never knew it. <sigh> Who are we, the star-crossed team who, had they just gotten on with it when the time were good, could’ve gotten somewhere. It’s still eats at me that I cannot think of any “product” that we actually produced in two years of toil, could’ve at least had a map editor to show, but that was discarded, twice. Is it just me, or do you feel like an idiot to metaphorically be asked “Well what did you achieve?” and can only reply “Well, we decided on 2D maps, but that we weren’t sure of.” – great summery of 2 years work, pah.

That’s behind us now, and we learned a lot and achieved nothing, you can see now why I fear not getting Badly Drawn completed, eventually. Sorry, but I tend to go off on one like that. You have to wonder, where would you be if TGP never existed? Without TGP there would be no Vacant Brains, that means no reason for me to try making web pages and javascript – that means no VacantBrains template that interested a teacher whose wife owns an aupair agency and whose site I wrote (based on the Vacant Brains template), that means no TGP Awards as that was based on the JavaScript assistant, that means I would not have gotten the next contract, Acorn Fasteners and their online shop, that means no ASP experience and no Camen Design, that means no Badly Drawn Adventure. Without TGP, Clint would’ve not told me how to colour things in with Paint Shop, without that absolutely none of my artworks would exist and more so – without that knowledge gleaned from creating various wallpapers I would’ve not learned how to create site designs in Paint Shop. Without TGP I would not be a web designer, I would not be a graphic designer, I would not be Visual Basic Programmer like I am now. Who would I be without TGP? It scares me to think.

Without TGP, would the MSP’s have existed? Would songs like “Halls of Despair” exist as these were takes on DragonFyre’s style? How many songs could you say exist solely because of TGP/TLA? We must be missing out on something without the team since the team and the project gives us the reasons to create songs/art/programs and with each successive work we better ourselves. There is no doubt that, that random coming across TGP in March 2002 has defined absolutely everything in my life. I owe you more than you can possibly imagine DS, why do you think I want to help so much, why I do such insanely crazy things without being asked like that photodemon e-mail!

Now I don’t believe in fate what-so-ever, and I never think about the future other than the quick plans I make in the present. TGP has been a lucky strike that I underestimated. Thank goodness I got kicked out of that previous team just in time to accidentally stumble across TGP. Ha! Bunch of assholes, look at me now

The Gathering Project will live on, some other place, some other team, some other time. Goodnight and God bless.









“Here we were
But now we’re gone
Don’t despair
We still live on.”

06/03/04:

Phew, that was one late night, or morning - !? Whatever. Today I’m working on re-organising the startup procedures for Badly Drawn so that the “New Project” window pops up before the objects are loaded as creating a new project always involves loading the object set back in (because of the local and global object sets).

7–8/03/04:

The wallpaper in the background of that Badly Drawn Adventure screenshot is by an artist called ‘DivineError’ on DeviantArt, you should look him up when you get back. Well anyways inspired by the beauty of something so simple (I might be no expert in 3DMax but even I can make metal cubes!) I decided to try some cube arrangement to see what I could do.

A total fluke, no less by the way. The strange luminous shadows are not actually lights – by some stroke of luck a property I had not set correctly created a freaky inverted shadow effect and by tweaking this it makes this excellent neon glow. Instead of making the cubes ultra glossy I played on this “Tron” like effect I had stumbled across. It’s a painfully slow process as every time you adjust a property you have to wait 1 minute for the scene to render in low quality. The final wallpaper size render (above) took 3 hours which is not bad considering how long it can take for more complex things. I’m not quite sure what exactly to do with this picture (other than a nice wallpaper), or what to do next for that matter. I’m sure I’ll stumble across it soon.

I’m hoping to somehow put 3DSMax to use on THIS by creating some metallic objects for the site. Of course I’m not sure what yet – what do you expect from me? I was going to work on the site a bit today, but dreaded having to work on it, in case there’s anything major you want changed – or you don’t like it and I’ll need to start again – I’m going to have to wait for your letter to turn up with your thoughts on the site before I’m going to have the metal enthusiasm to crack on with it…

12/03/04:

It’s Clint’s birthday on the thirteenth (typical Clint, ) so I’m rushing to get him a present complete in time. You know that picture “Don’t Move an Inch”? (You should have a thumbnail of it on the screenshot of Camen Design’s Art section I sent two letters back) Well, I’m making a sequel to it where Mighty gets his own back! The importance of this picture is that whereas the original was the first image I coloured in Paint Shop Pro using a mouse – this is the first time I’ve coloured a picture using the tablet! I thought up until recent that the first one was good because it had a lot of tone in it – I look back at it and it’s AWFUL! There’s the tiniest piece of dark red here and hardly any shading anywhere. I am so massively proud of this work as I’ve managed to break into two areas I was stuck before and they are 1 – Effectively colouring with a tablet and 2 – Pixel work. I’ve never managed to create any decent pixel art but the background just astonishes me!

I’ve also printed this photographically on A4 paper with the new printer, framed it and hanged it on my wall - and it’s absolutely outstanding. I would send you one, but only have the ink and paper to send you the Clint V Franklin picture, attached. If you want any of my artworks or anything of your own printed out on A4 to hang on your wall, just give me a shout and I’ll wing it your way. I’ve also printed this letter on the new printer too; otherwise the pictures would have come out grainy and light coloured like my previous letter (that really annoyed me that did, lost all the quality on those pictures) – Don’t worry about the cost of this letter, the paper was very, very cheap and it makes the letter look just as it does on my screen. I’ll tell you what was expensive - that finalised picture of Clint attached has been printed no less than 10 times on A4 Ultra-gloss photographic paper – your copy must’ve cost me 20-odd quid to print Why? Well when you’ve got a picture that is of such sharpness and the water droplets are so small, and the grass is a mushed-together collection of green-shades that stretches the colour output of a 32-bit screen as it is – it’s very, very hard to calibrate the printer to create a pixel-accurate recreation on paper. Very Hard. I’ve printed it several times and it’s been too dark to see anything, the grass came out just one shade of green so it looked naff and the detail was not sharp enough to see the water droplets. Everything is so easy on a screen where each pixel is in its desired place, but replicating some of my pictures on paper has taken hours to get right! I hope you enjoy the picture. Be careful when handling it as unlike the paper this letter is on, the Clint picture is on full-gloss paper and absorbs dirt and fingerprints easily like a real photo.

Here’s a bit of fun for you, Clint made a hilarious little post on his forums, which I’ve cc’ed below.

Grab a pen and some paper, and for each one that fits you, mark it down. When you get to the end, slap a % after it, and then you’ll see what percentage of Clint you are. Be sure to let me know how you score!

So…

21/03/04:

In efforts to get better at 3DSMax I’ve tried creating a logo for a section of Camen Design known as “Cold Storage”. The original idea was a crate inside an ice cube, but I wasted a day trying to create an impossible ice-cube in 3DMax. During the many frustrating efforts I came across an effective way of creating “snow” using the cell-shader so eventually I decided to go with that and forget wasting more days on making an ice cube.

“Cold Storage” is where I file away anything that is no longer needed, but somewhere where it can be kept for historical purposes. For example if I update a site design, I could put the old design into cold storage so that it can be remembered for the future. I’ve started creating a very simple site at “camendesign/coldstorage”. Items are stored in “Crates” that are indexed by the database with a consignment date. I’ve started filling the warehouse by consigning very-high quality versions of artwork that a few people may need as well as website/artwork concepts and incomplete work. Currently I’m aiming to start whatever sections of Camen Design that haven’t been started and hopefully tie up lose ends with “Under Construction” signs. A very large amount of Camen Design has been done (and an infinite more to do) and I’m hoping to get it in a usable state so that I can purchase the domain and get it uploaded. Cold Storage just serves as a good reason for me to bear in mind all that development stuff that’s going on and to give me reasons for keeping hold of things I can look back on an enjoy. I’m still considering if I should put The Lost Alliance website into Cold Storage since it’s no longer online and people would be missing out on the great Music Extravaganza. I do hope you enjoyed your present whilst it lasted

If you like, I can give you an account at the Cold Storage warehouse so that for your own site, if you decide to delete anything instead of removing it permanently, it can be put into cold storage so that should someone ask you directly for it you can link them to the relevant crate in the warehouse and also have somewhere to store things that people may want to see, but are not good enough or not necessary enough to put on the main site.

23/03/04:

I’m looking at the submission dates on the files in cold storage and they seem to keep on catching my eye for some reason. I’ve seen those numbers 23/03 before? I wonder if you can guess where, or more precisely, ‘when’ before the end of this sentence? Bang, I was straight off to another section of my hard disk and my hunch was correct – it’s been two whole years since the day I started working on VacantBrains. Which is odd, because today, I unwittingly started making Vacant Brains 2.0 for Camen Design – without even knowing, weird eh? Must be a good omen. I’ll go with it. Woosh!

25/03/04:

In examining the whole of Camen Design to find what needs doing, I totally forgot about the web design section I hadn’t shown you. This template was actually created wahey back the day after I sent letter four (the one with the NN3 site). Typical that I seem to suddenly come up with stuff the day after I send out my letters. I forgot to include it in Letter 5 because it had not yet been translated to HTML. That’s the actual web page itself below and all flash animated – imagine each tile appearing white and then fading out to reveal the picture underneath, and then all the tiles staggered so that the image is revealed bottom-right to top-left with a delay on some to cause a more scattered effect.

As of today, Camen Design now stands at:

• 2’053 Files in 246 Folders – 110Mb (entire site + development files)
• 475 Files in 102 Folders (excluding development files) – 16.4 Mb (this will be the online version)
• 266 Files of JPG, PNG and GIF format (11.1 Mb)
• 79 Files of SWF format (905 Kb)
• 200 Files of HTM, ASP, JS and CSS format (1.13 Mb)

This is ill, I’ve never tallied up the file count before – I’ve actually hand typed 200 files and over a million keystrokes And we’ve gone from 8 Mb in letter 4 to 16.4 Mb of content!

These letters are also getting ridiculously large as well! I’m soo happy to be writing these letters, it really gives me a way to prove to myself that I am achieving something that I wouldn’t otherwise realise. Without these letters to leave a “paper trail” of the progress on various things I’ve been creating. It’s served as some form of measurement that I will be able to remember – that both Badly Drawn and Camen Design were started just before you left for Canada. I’ve been keeping track of dates, recording my history more than I have before. I’m designing the sites to maintain history too with things like Cold Storage so that I should never forget how far I’ve come. Without these letters I just wouldn’t have any purpose to continue, there would be so little point. But I’ve got an obligation to have something to say to you, I know – even though you are thousands of miles away and it takes a long, long time to get the correspondence to you, I’ve got a friend who is kind enough to listen and who can provide the constructive criticism I need. The speed at which I’m expanding what I’m creating is insane – each website is bigger, better in every way, I’m learning new tools, I’m building a repository of code and the file size of these letters is reflecting this literal exponential “building upon the previous”, like that which I haven’t experienced since my college years!

Letter 1 – 1.26 Mb > Letter 2 – 142 Kb > Letter 3 – 2.42 Mb > Letter 4 – 2.15 Mb > Letter 5 – 3.46 Mb > Letter 6 – 10.1 Mb

28/03/04:

Now for a twenty year step back in web design (and a 7 year step back for me). I’ve been investigating how to embed fonts into web pages for one sole reason: so that I can make an accurate C64 website with the correct font†. I’ve also got the correct colour palette from an emulator so that all the pictures and text are in the actual Commodore64 16-Colour palette.

Along with the C64 site I’ve also been making some windows icons for it and a wallpaper. You may remember a post made in The Gathering Project forums a long, long time ago about some screenshots I had made of my C64 Operating System. I’ve transferred the icon files from that into a PNG and have started working on creating windows icons from them. If I can do it, I may create a WindowsXP skin as well.

Regarding Clint v Franklin:

TheRAjE has found a new purpose to produce stuff – he’s been given a sub domain at programmers-corner and is working away madly at his new website. This time he has decided to learn XHTML, CSS and JavaScript and make his site the purist’s hand-coded way. Hey, but let’s not forget this is Clint. He was ready to give up only after having written 10 lines of code which was really beginning to bug me, so I gave him the answer and was quite firm with him, letting him know how much effort it is for us, to be bothered to help, when he wants to give up at every single opportunity. I think it worked though, the next day he had the whole home page almost complete

His new site is a massive improvement over his previous sites; the hand coding method has really shone through. In the screen to your right the news box appears when you mouse over the news category on the left and the little dotted line in-between is animated like marching ants. Very cool. Clint being Clint is also trying to add full support for alternative browsers like Netscape (using the word browser lightly and the word alternative heavily) and Opera. Difference is, he doesn’t have Netscape on his computer. There’s something not quite straight with trying to support a browser you don’t even have.

Also Clint would like you to write to him, he says he accidentally lost your address!

1 Year – 30/03/04:

Hard for me to believe but another big important day has occurred – the 1^st Anniversary of Camen Design. It is one year today since I randomly scribbled an ellipse and cut an eye shape out of it – to create the greatest logo I have ever made, and will ever make. A logo of this sheer relevance to myself, deserved the best site I’ve ever made – and so for the first time in 7 years a “personal” site for me. The fact that the logo consisted of a “C” and a “D” and created the eye design at the same time was just such a stroke of luck that it blew me away. And when I got it to blink the whole effect was complete – something of this design potency deserved nothing less than my full attention. After all the potential was staring back at me from my screen.

As proof of its’ inspirational randomness, I have never, ever been able to re-draw the Camen Design logo on paper. The first time I drew it on paper will be the last, it was so perfect that every attempt I’ve made has come out squiffed, no matter how careful I am, I can’t get the proportions correct. Try it yourself – it’s really, really hard to draw accurately.

Discontent with the downward spiral of my previous sites (The Lost Alliance being the most recent) that I wasn’t happy with as the colours were getting more and more grey and dulled down; I had lost the insane vibrancy I had stumbled across with the “independent software” design.

Which up until Camen Design I thought was the best I had made and that I had lost what I was good at not being able to meet its colours with The Lost Alliance. Thankfully I had a look at this whilst organising Camen Design’s structure and for the first time since I created it I finally thought I had surpassed it with Camen Design. That was a whole load of weight off of my mind to be back on track and not worried that I was getting worse and worse. Sometimes the sites I create are just inspired by other people (and mostly by those in TGP) and I struggle thereafter to just meet that kind of stroke-of-inspiration before. This worries me greatly that I am getting worse and worse at web design as I must always improve upon the previous.

Just like Badly Drawn only days before, I had had enough of this “routine” that created the TLA site and was ready to throw everything in the air and “get fresh”. I opened the palette and choose the most vibrant – un-tweaked – decent 32-bit colour I could find. Orange I was like “sack all this blue, I’ve had enough of being completely stuck wearing out the blue hue” and whacked together a whole screen coloured only in orange (now the entry point† for Camen Design) – I was rebelling against myself, doing things without thinking – “scribbling without drawing”. I didn’t care if the colours melted your eyes, this was my

site and I’ll do it how I like – I just wanted to get away from the design-disappointment that was TLA. And don’t deny that as technically-astute it is – I didn’t even get as much as a thank you or “it’s nice” from anyone bar-you. I call that a failure. “If it doesn’t blow them away it’s not good enough”. And Clint calling I.S. “bland” and “sterile” – that I was not prepared to take after working the entire night pouring out all my excitement at the prospect into the design, I hadn’t slept but my eyes were wide open – I was eager to hear people’s comments about something I had never had the skills to do before and all of a sudden, over night I was inspired to no longer make sites like “Vacant Brains” which were graphically basic at best and “felt” too “Front Page” and start making “real” sites.

You must remember that time I went mad at Machira for calling Vacant Brains pointless after I had spent all that bloody time on it – I had to be held back before I bit his head off and shat down his neck. One thing I cannot stand is people who will only point out the negative and care nothing about providing something positive to build upon. <Machira is dutifully added to the elegantly penned “List of people whom shall recieveth an ‘up-yours’ upon completion of Camen Design and/or Badly Drawn Adventure”>

Another Thing I Forgot:

Actually did this ages ago. Tested using the THIS skin on a program. When I plug the iPod in, this dock bar appears and backs up the whole system to the ‘pod. Nice etched text an’ all. Should be using this style for the upload prog on THIS.

Regarding Tanner Helland:

This is not bad – I’m on page 17 and I haven’t even received your letter yet. I was amazed to get to page 10 as it was. But enough about my day to day (if you could call it that) routine. There’s a lot I want to ask you too. In all this time, how have you been? What with the novel-and-a-half that was my last letter to read / reply to I can’t see how you could possibly have any spare time! It has been a long time since I have asked so I find it right to ask again how your novel is coming along. Your SLC submission was the largest word document I have ever seen! 41 pages, forty-one ruddy pages – HOW!? The largest document I have ever written was 22 pages long – with no images and that was at college, the thing took 3 damn days to write spending all day working on it. And I look at this and it’s 41 pages long!?? It’s insane! Anybody who can write a document of that length certainly must be able to write a novel of some kind. Although I am good at reading I’ve never found anything to read. In fact the only books I have ever read are the entire Famous Five series by Enid Blyton and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A.Milne. There’s so many books nowadays I don’t actually know what’s my style and what’s worth reading (that’s not a manual!) but I do know that any book you write would defiantly be worth my attention.

You must be enjoying your new CD’s, or at least I’m hoping you are enjoying your new CD’s – <DS can be heard screaming “Damn WMP Sound Font – I wanted the DX Font” from across the pond> I tell you, it would be impossible for me to live without my computer. And if I couldn’t have that then the iPod would be the only thing that could keep me sane/insane! (Delete as applicable). There’s a ton of errors on the CD covers – you sooo must’ve noticed. Give the signal and I’ll print out a correct version for you if you need to be finickery like me. Oh, also I wanted to ask you if you’ve had any thoughts on new music whilst you’ve been busy, now that you’ve got your good old block-rockin’ beats back.

Regarding THIS:

Now since Camen Design is made up of so many sections, I’m getting more and more ideas to carefully thread these together. This is controlled by two layers of design. Layer 1 is through obvious and basic hyperlinks from section to section. For example an item in the art gallery can contain a link to a crate in Cold Storage in its description and Vacant Brains can contain links to the NN3 and HoTMeaL sites as they are VB related. Layer 2 is by carefully weaving together data collected from one side of the site with other sides through the central database. In order to simplify matters – when a user signs up for a forum account, their account is valid in all forums under Camen Design so that they don’t need to sign up several times over. To centralise this collection of information each member will have a “home page” (much like DeviantArt) which can be viewed by clicking their name or avatar in any forum in any sub site. In ezBoard style the home page will contain their most recent forum posts, their personal info and so on – but that’s all regular stuff. To actually go the full hog and “pull” data from one side of Camen Design to the other we’ve got to take information specific to one sub site and make it available at the home page to bring all sections into a central area. Now what has this got to do with THIS? (since this whole paragraph has been about Camen Design)

This will be covered on the next page.

1. If the user has signed up for a forum account anywhere else, and they visit your site (assuming it is held under camendesign.com) they are automatically logged in, meaning they can post using their full forum account with their avatar and name. As an anonymous option anybody who is not a forum member can post without having to sign up but doesn’t get an avatar or anything special. Once they’ve posted they are offered a forum account – the only two things they need to type in to get an account are their e-mail address and a password. Additional details can be added later by going to their home page.

2. When browsing through your songs on the site, they can add any they like to their “Favourites” list. This favourites list allows them to go back and listen to the songs they have chosen, for example if they wanted to show a friend a song on their computer. This favourites list appears on the left hand side of your website, but also on the user’s home page! If they haven’t yet visited your site and have no favourites marked – a message appears saying “no favourites” and provides an enticing link to your site. (As a side note to facilitate this concept, the user’s Badly Drawn levels they’ve made, if any, will also be listed on their home page)

3. This is still concept, but hopefully I’ll be able to track the user’s position anywhere within Camen Design – so that if for any reason another user is on someone’s home page – the status at the top will read “~User is: Currently listening to <link>Cyaron’s Gate</link> at <link>Tanner Helland International Sound</link>”. Other examples would include “~User is: Currently viewing DMAI2 at the art gallery”, or “is currently making a post at the Badly Drawn Forums”. This will help bring the sections together and I’m hoping with your help we can really get everything very nicely linked together.

4. It’s ambitious – but I’m hoping to have it so that the user’s home page will be skinnable to their favourite Camen Design section. Skins will include – Camen Design Normal, THIS, Badly Drawn and C64 for now.

5. You will have an administrator account so that you are free to delete / modify any post made anywhere in Camen Design. Also whenever you post in any forum, or on any song / artwork so on, your name, rank, avatar and link to THIS will be displayed.

6. Me and you can have customized user home pages so that a section can be added to the header of yours to explain that you are the owner of THIS and j00 make k-a music. Reason being, if someone searches “Tanner Helland” on Google, they might find your user page first.

7. Featured news in THIS will also show up on the

Camen Design home page. I.e. “New song released at Tanner Helland International Sound – Check it out!”

1. Anybody who is subscribed to the Camen Design update newsletter, will receive an e-mail when you add new songs to

your site. When somebody comes across a section of Camen Design that’s not finished, they can add their name to the newsletter so that when the section is complete they will be notified. The newsletter also serves out updates on all sections of Camen Design so your music can reach people who may not have stumbled across the site otherwise.

Ambitious? I’d say it doesn’t matter as long as good use is made of it.

02/04/04:

Huzzah, I got a job! And it’s not in retail – w00t! I’m so amazed it’s hard to believe. It’s a job in the nearby town Horsham, as a technical support type guy in an insurance broker’s. Daily routine will involve start up procedures, backups, printouts, technical support as well as network maintenance and computer setups. The position is in an office environment so I no longer have to deal with shitey PC superstores who don’t actually know anything about PC’s. What’s so cool is that I went to the interview – was there about two hours, and as soon as I arrived home, I got a phone call saying they wanted to offer me the Job! YAY – I’ve never been so amazed. <Kroc does a little jig on the spot>

And because it’s an office job too, I won’t be doing absurd hours like I was before. It’s 9 to 5 but on some days there’s an early start – like 7.30! but then I finish at half-three – how cool is that. I’ll finally have time to do a Job as well as work on Camen Design and Badly Drawn Adventure – and not forgetting your website either, no I’ve not forgotten Now I can be “Crap, I’m late for work” too!

16/04/04 - the Badly Drawn Level Editor (Again!):

Some old untidy code was getting in the way of upgrading the graphics engine to the next step, so I decided to go through all the code in the project and clean it up as well as upgrading some redundant parts with new functions. Because I was going through the lot, I decided I would add a function to log system messages so that as the program operated, a log file was produced in case that if the program crashed at any point I would know exactly where it happened. That way if it crashed on a end-user’s PC the log file could be beamed back to me to debug the problem and get updates out quicker. And because I’d created this System Message Queue, I thought that it would be practical to create the console now, instead of later so that I can browse back the queue whilst the program is running and query internal variables and sub-systems without having to pause the app. I’ve created a console class that handles the data collection and logging so that I only need send a message to the console class every time I need to. The class handles line wrapping, colour formatting and saving to the log file.

The user will be able to press the normal console key any time to make it appear where the system message queue can be scrolled through. The console itself slides in quickly and slows down smoothly also.

I’m adding the console primarily as an advanced programmer’s tool and won’t be necessary for anybody who’s not hot on computers so I’m free to be technical here. Console commands will allow the user to, in the editor or in game, query the internal system variables and sub-systems such as the frame-animator and the graphics engine for figures like scripts per second and script execution time for particular objects. Commands can be sent directly to the scripting engine to influence objects and the user will be able to take quite some control of the internals. I’m adding this so that we can effectively debug the game and it helps with the development, but will also leave it in for the release so that serious programmers can totally customise the system variables for the editor and game. For example, a startup script could be written to show console in compact (4-line) mode by default, run the game windowed and display the extended debug variables from go.

I wish I had your code statistics program, I wanted to count how big Badly Drawn Adventure was. I had to download someone else’s from freevbcode. Badly Drawn Level Editor stands at:

• Total Lines: 9846 (Beating my previous best, HoTMeaL, at 8797 lines)
  
  of which Blank: 1099
  of which Comments: 2634 (Every sub is titled and almost every line commented!)
  of which Code: 4436

• Variables Declared: 884

• Constants Declared: 273 (Most of these will be API so it doesn’t give an accurate figure)

• Procedures: 307

• Functions: 48

• API Declarations: 86

NoNonsense 3:

Unfortunately it looks like the end of the road for NoNonsense3, simply due to the lack of programming know-how and time put into the project everybody else has quickly caught up and superseded it. Winamp 5 finally got around to including fade-in and out as well as global key hooks. Matey these other players were years behind me. I had NN2 fading in and out late 2000. Problem is that the expansion in NN3 to automatically recognise albums and artists is limited by the capabilities of the old Media Player 6 control, and to go beyond that would mean upgrading the internals to use the WMP9 core and that means that NN3 would require WMP9 to work, a bit pointless really. That has nothing to do with giving up on NN3 though as NoNonsense is designed to be a simple alternative to the other bulky b*stards out-there. But now there’s very little point, all the features I had that made mine usable beyond it’s major technical inferiority have finally been implemented in it’s competitors and I’ve lost every ounce of enthusiasm for working on the NN3 project. No, you can’t talk me into working on it, no matter how nice the website is and how good it looks. Let’s face it – to write an MP3 player these days you gotta write your own playback engine so you can trap everything as it goes through for equaliser and visualisation abilities. There’s just no place left for natty players made in Visual Basic anymore. I simply cannot compete in one market or another when players are so mind-numbingly powerful now. All I can do now is smile, to know that at one point I was way ahead of the crowd.

It does upset me to lose a decent web site also, NN3 can gather dust in Cold Storage now. You yourself should now that any attempt to continue NoNonsense would only be flogging a dead horse. (Only two people ever used it every day, and I doubt that included yourself). Let’s try and at least retire it gracefully…

24/04/04 – Your Letter Arrives:

Joy, sweet joy! Your letter has arrived, I was beginning to slow down in my production because I was writing this letter in anticipation of this day (and yes that was my fault for writing such a bloody huge letter!) Thanks so much for the photo, haha! It’s great, that’s unbelievably cold! Thanks for freezin’ your ass off for me Now this is where the real “letter” starts –

Preparing to reply to your letters is a bit like preparing for some type of final exam – it takes weeks of preparation and study

DemonSpectre

Non-intentional, but I just tend to treat anything I make in the same manner. The bigger in sheer scale and ambition – the better. At least you enjoyed the letter, you haven’t seen nothing yet – well you have now, you’ve read up to this point. My previous letter pails in comparison, and this time around, this letter will be winging its’ way to you ASAP.

RE: Thank Yous:

But first a number of thank you’s are in order…
…Thank you for all that you spend on postage and ink costs…
…Thank you especially for the 4 CDs and jackets…

DemonSpectre

Postage and ink bothers me not, if it ever cost me as much as £20 or more to send you a letter it would not bother me in the slightest. I would not hesitate (much to the annoyance of my parents) to spend my last ever £100 on writing to you should the cause need it. I am well intent in doing whatever is necessary to do my letters the justice their presentation deserves. I’ve got to keep up a respectable self-image here! (And I’m sure you’re probably proudly showing off your CD’s and the various pictures in my letters)

The CDs had to be perfect, but due to last minute time restrictions, they weren’t as good as I wanted them to be due to many writing mistakes; however the graphical presentation is not bad. It’s so cool to see an actual product of TLA, to have something physical in my hands that are a product of what was otherwise a failed project. It makes me smile every time to see the CD’s there, for real and presented the way they deserve to be. I hope you liked all the little touches I added to do the CDs justice (like the Special Thanks, and Tanner’s Personal Copy: Lose this and lose a limb!) It brought back a lot of fond memories of the hey-day of the project.

Believe it or not I managed to eh, “provide” myself with a chance to look @ your websites. But to my dismay, they wouldn’t appear! www.computerbitsuk.com was down, www.camendesign.com didn’t work and as I had suspected www.thelostalliance.com was nowhere to be found…

DemonSpectre

I think I had mentioned in an earlier letter, probably way back, the current location of Camen Design. I haven’t been able to buy the domain yet – due to lack of cash and yup you are right the TLA site is no more, a bit of a shame. Camen Design, whilst under development is located at www.computerbitsuk.com/kroc/camendesign/ - write it on your arm and don’t forget it, now!

RE: About Me:

…Within a week I was called to be a district elder – which entails watching overseeing 11 other missionaries, 9 men and two women – which placed a huge restraint on my freetime for writing letters and any other kind of personal business. Combined with this was my call to train a brand-new missionary simultaneously, which is also a time-consuming venture. So not only was I to run my area while training a new companion, but I was also to watch other and help 5 other companionships and their areas. I was to busy. But I loved it

DemonSpectre

I have no doubts that, despite any difficulty, you can handle responsibilities well, I think you did well at TGP especially in the early days just as I joined. You were always the organised one, who knew what to do when everybody was running around, bumping into each other, screaming “don’t panic!” But it’s even better you liked it. Life is all relative, everything good is only measured by the negative things and when you get to the end of a difficult job you are pleased at your ability to succeed at the challenge. That’s what I love about learning. It’s a complete b*tch but very self-rewarding to see what you can achieve.

I’m amazed at the size of your new area, it’s like here’s several million people, you know what to do – go. Lol! You’re right at how time has really flown. A year already, just like that – woosh. But at least both of us have achieved something in that time, and it has been time well spent. The shortest time is the thing you spend the most time on! But now you have less time left than you have to go, things should start going much slower. I bet those last three months will go sooo painfully slow in anticipation of getting home and forgetting how to switch on a computer, let alone use one!

So that’s my life right now :) How have you been? Are you still working?

DemonSpectre

Yup and see above. I’m well, I’m in an enthusiastic mood, I’ve been making stuff like mad (as you’ve seen by now) and I’ve picked up a whole host of new skills. I’m definitely getting better and I’ve got a measurement of progress by these letters I no longer feel the severe depression from when I was working at PCWorld, and I can only look forward to the next thing I do, that I couldn’t predict myself.

RE: TLA Resurrected:

In all seriousness, I have considered one last, grand final VBRPG project upon my return. The possibility of it working haunts me. I know it can be done. There is no physical limitation preventing it from working. In fact there are only two reasons TLA failed – lack of planning, and lack of unity. The talent was there, I would even go so far as to say that the desire & dedication was there for key team members…

…So obviously the key to success would be to have a recipe before gathering the ingredients. In TLA we made the mistake of doing things backwards. We gathered the ingredients before picking the recipe. And when we semi-agreed on a recipe, we realized the ingredients were all wrong.

DemonSpectre

This is always difficult to reply to, in that yes, everything is so obvious now, why it fell apart. But the feasibility of doing it all again is tainted with some form of doubt in how the people you have in the team will react in reality. A good plan helps, but then due to the way we have to communicate across the Internet and people’s lack of spare time it all falls apart. Conversations in the forums are slow, slightly unconstructive and begin to lead nowhere, this is totally unavoidable, I doubt there is anyway that you can make online discussion anything resembling constructive. This is why, at last minute though, I proposed to the team that we all go away and write proposals for an application that each team member will produce. I.e. me on MapApp, Asuka on the game engine and Clint on ABoxLt. I wanted to shift the focus away from chatter on the forums, to production of objects in each persons time, and using the forums only as somewhere to “report” progress. That way, there’s more development and production, and I made it clear that when you get to a point in your app where you need compatibility with another person’s app you should contact that person only via e-mail to discuss strategy. This spares anybody and everybody adding to the discussion in the forums, on a topic they are not actually well versed in – such as intrest86 bemoaning on how we should use VBScript for the internal scripting instead of custom script. That was needless and pointless and serves only to fray the teams communications and relationships.

I don’t doubt the possibility of a VBRPG. Having come this far on Badly Drawn, I know that even Badly Drawn, despite its’ scope is possible given the time and input. Hell, in TLA I wanted to try and prove to people it was all possible. The idea of an RPG maker was mine ages before I even joined the project. I demonstrated it to the team as an example of a map editor and then was told to remove all the RPG-Makey bits to make it just an editor. The more open-plan the better; If you spend a year creating an RPG-Maker and don’t bother to consider the story of your RPG, at the end of it what you have is an RPG maker you can use to make anything you consider, but also have something to show for yourself. You don’t create a word processor because you want to write one, and only one letter, and thus gear the application’s abilities to making only that letter. By being open plan you are free to change your mind later on and not be stuck on the course you are on. If someone wanted to make a VBPRG then they would want to have the tools first so that the focus can be ploughed into creating a story rather than too many unnecessary things on the side.

What do ya think: So here’s the catch – I’m getting too old to do this alone :) Hehe. If I were to do this, I would want a partner whose judgement I could trust. Say that partner was you… :) The two of us would probably do the majority of the design & script work before we even went public with anything…

…I can’t shake this burning desire to make a VBRPG project work. If you’re game, I say we give it one last try… “the grand finale” if you will

DemonSpectre

This is also difficult, as competent as I am now thanks to BDA and other things to come, I’m going to have to be blunt in saying that I won’t be available to work on the project as of yet. Approx. two letters ago I presented Clint with the idea that for the whole two years you were away I would sit down and create and entire game design document that would describe every inch of detail. All story, all programmatical constructs, every single design consideration and documentation imaginable so that the game would exist, just not in an animated form. This would rely on lending me total designership on the game to avoid all constant back forth pointless bickering about things that others don’t have proper experience of. Clint’s not interested. He has his own agendas with his website and progressively learning VB by producing a string of small games. And because of that I’ve now got Badly Drawn Adventure and Camen Design, which must be completed at all costs. I would not be able to live with the burden if I didn’t complete it, or put it to one-side permanently by taking up too much work. This is how I see it, we want to make something that’s never been done before, it’s large in scale (larger than Badly Drawn and that’s one hell of a big project), and it’s only going to be possible through doing nothing short of what a real game house would do – proper, full scale planning and production. Is it even possible to pull such a thing off across the Internet!?

Maybe, I even have doubts if a project could be planned to the nth across the Internet, It just has too many communication issues. Something like this should not be rushed into, not even in the slightest. I don’t think we should plan to start this not even next week, not next month, not even next year. Something like this needs time to marinate, for the idea and the abilities to slowly get organised and prepared for the planning. It would just be totally naïve to think that either of us has the skills to plan such a thing at the moment. It’s far too vast in scale. Absolutely nothing will come between me and completing Badly Drawn Adventure so until that’s complete I will not be working on any games of any kind, at all. Mean-whilst I feel it acceptable to mellow on the concept of how to go abouts the first proper VBRPG. Even though I have no intention of programming one now, I still have notes on what I would do, the features I would include, the design. I’m sure you have the same. I need plenty of time to carefully think about the idea and this should provide, every now and again, some great ideas on how it could be achieved. Also we would need to first have created something in similar before being able to do a VBRPG. It’s not clever to attempt to make this thing, when we don’t have a 100% completed map editor to prove solidly to ourselves we know exactly how to go about it and also our understanding of the logistical side of doing it as well.

It’s my evident intention to complete Badly Drawn Adventure first. This will serve as the spring-pad to launch into VBRPG. BDA can teach us the programatical, logistical and organisation skills (in a smaller scale) that we will for certain need in creating one of the most ambitious projects since TGP. Can you say that you have had the experience of organising the final measures needed to competently tie the loose ends up on a project and package it as a distributable 100% complete product, despite the logistical nightmare of having code and versions spread across the world and resources not in their desired place? I think that as large scale as Badly Drawn is to myself, it’s just within my reach (with your help, no less) and being able to click a button on the screen and say that that is it, that is years of work totally and utterly complete is going to teach us precisely what we need to go one step up and launch into a bigger team and a bigger project. Neither of us can claim to such experience proper, so It’s my intention to earn it now, before starting off on a bad foot and ruin our one and only last chance to complete a VBRPG, and possibly the last chance ever on the Internet if you think about it.

We have years and years of time, no rush needed. And you know with something so important to yourself (hell this has been your dream from childhood to complete this) that to rush would not be wise. You’re going to have to forcibly take it easy and ultimately well prepared. I do want to help you achieve this, I would love to see the final product, the ultimate accomplishment, but I can’t see it being at all possible right here, right now, not until I’ve completed Badly Drawn Adventure. It’s far too big, even for me. But not too big for TLA if it were just taken slowly and carefully enough from now. For now, until BDA is done and out the way, I recommend working on coming up with organisational ideas and generally scoping the RPG out to how such a thing could possibly be effectively managed. But don’t put too many hours in, just keep to a relaxed train of thought…

RE: Music for You… and Anything Else:

And you’ve got it – one whole musical score for BDA. Now I’ll have to warn you, that – as you well know – my music is far more suited to an in-depth love story will full blown 3D cinematics than it is a comedy. But I’ll do my best! :) It’ll be an adventure, that’s for sure. (Not unlike everything else we work on, heh). Also, any programming assistance I can provide is yours for the taking. No hope of payment necessary – if we do sell it, you can keep the money. You’ve certainly earned it…

DemonSpectre

I’m really proud to have you as the musician of the game. Oh I have fully intended to do you justice by have the T.H.I.S logo on the case, and when the game loads with “Music Produced by Tanner Helland”. I’m going to nothing short of placing as much advertising for the new website in the game as possible. When the user goes to choose the level music in BDLE there will be a link there. The about box too and in the game itself they’ll be able to play the songs in the sound test. This should bring in plenty of visitors for you.

If you could read my mind it would help, but as far as music goes I’m definitely leaning toward using a Music score that doesn’t necessarily match what the screenshot may say about the game. Think of it this way. Whenever I’m working on my laptop, I’m always listening to music whether I’m typing a letter or programming. This puts the music out of context to the action I’m doing. I’ve been listening to your songs whilst working on BDA to see what would work and I honestly think that a lot of your style would fit fine. I imagine the player as someone like me playing the game wearing headphones and the music being almost ‘detached’ from the game as if they were playing the game the same time they had an MP3 player running in the background. This style of soundtrack-detached music means that the music they are listening to is very enjoyable, and would help them focus on the game in question in the same way as if you were listening to any music whilst doing something irrelevant (such as word processing). I don’t think I’m making much sense here, but I’m saying that the music doesn’t necessarily or all be “comical”, but rather just a set of damn good ‘tunes to listen whilst you play. Right now I’m listening to Beethoven’s Symphoney No.5 and as much as it or anything by the Prodigy has no relevance to writing a letter, it serves to really get me focused and moving and I want BDA to be similar to that. To not have music that is there only to suit the player’s perception of what it should be, a failure of the many early platform games but more like the console games of today whose music is there to be cool and not necessitate the description of the players actions or environment that they inhabit. (other than where it is appropriate, e.g. a funky tune with a slight Egyptian twang to it, for a level in Egypt – but primarily made as a cool tune and not to stereotypicallize Egypt) I think you can be free to write a nice range of music for BDA from classical to heavy rock, just whatever gives the player total focus and determination and makes the rest of the world around them fade away so that only the game exists and they can enjoy it.

Quite a brief eh? And regards payment, I’m the person who won’t accept money – If, that’s if, I make any money. I want to pay you your keep for the essentially vital soundtrack. You deserve it and will only be losing out just for being too humble. If I earn anything from BDA, you’re having some if you like it or not, lol!

RE: BDA:

I love the editing pane idea. Brilliant, simply brilliant. It’s the little things like that that I would never in a million years devise. You never fail to amaze me, heh. The play / Pause button is also a great idea but I hope it’s not too hard to implement. The structure pane is possibly your best idea of all, simply because of how practical it is. It’s about time that an editor used something intelligent like that. Very good idea. In fact the whole thing is simply a masterpiece as far as the programming design goes, I love it…

DemonSpectre

Thanks for your comments, they let me know I am doing the right thing and not doing something that would really annoy someone. As for the Play / Pause button, I see it as more necessary than it is difficult to program. The editor would be useless without them as lining up jumps would be a total pain. I’m certain it’s going to be difficult to program, but look at it this way: All the data I need is already there, the editor knows the positions of everything and knows which scripts to run (because they are compiled when the object loses focus) and the editor is already in a CPU-Timer driven constant refresh. That means that positioning is already handled, and the graphical refresh is already handled. All that needs to be added is that when the game is being played, the CPU-Timer diverts to a subroutine to get the input and move the objects / run scripts appropriately. And with those various engines already implemented due to their requirement in the Level Editor, it’s not such a nightmare after all. Plus when the internal play function has been written – well then the game is complete. You have a fully playable game, just only inside the editor. I can then copy/paste that code into a new project which plays the game fullscreen – the benefits are many and everything falls into place better with the internal playtesting facilities.

The aim is that nothing will piss you off in this editor, you won’t curse at it because it’s doing something you don’t understand. You won’t curse it because it’s doing the opposite to what you asked it to do and finally you won’t curse it because you can’t achieve what you want. Not sure if I can achieve that, but I’ll certainly try hard.

The only thing that I doubt is the story, and that stems somewhat from personal experience rather than any significant fear… / …I would worry that an entire game based around a training camp wouldn’t provide the depth to entertain players for much more than an hour or two. I would see the training camp as a level or two or three, merely enough to acquaint the player with the basic controls and game mechanics. After that something more in-depth should provide the motivating factor… / …I also like that, especially if we send Yokozuki international, because then I can write a whole bunch of different style of music. If Yokozuki has to traverse the Egyptian Pyramids, I can write an Egyptian song! Same for Spain, India, whatever. It would be fun! :)

DemonSpectre

This is probably going to take a whole ton of verbal-poo to try and reply to and due to my total lack of English skills I doubt you’re going to understand a word of my grammer! But here goes.

I did myself a favour by not choosing the most obvious and simplest thing to create. I could’ve opted for an RPG – RPG’s are easy to design, easy to program (thanks to tile engines) and everybody likes RPG’s! No instead, I started with something severely flawed, a basic, almost retro platform game. Difficult to program (non-tile based engine, instead a difficult collision engine) and full of design flaws – such as longegevity, consumer recognition and limitations in gameplay depth available. I did this because I wanted to go in a new direction and try something new, rather than just try and do the TLA project on my own, to which I had no faith in by the end. As I’ve mentioned earlier in the one years section for BDA, I created BDA because I was tired of following a path I couldn’t get off. Time to break rules and do things I never thought I was capable of doing. Thus as mentioned again, somewhere way up there, Badly Drawn Adventure is the pursuit to take something inherently imperfect and perfect it as much as possible, to bring back those old days of old-skool platformers Sonic and Mario.

The best Brittsih sitcoms, always take a small situation and milk it for its’ rich comical potential. Rather than a more American view of gotta-keep-moving onto bigger better things or people will get bored in the next 3 seconds (What a joke the film industry is at the moment, it’s a new shite horror movie every week). For example, Father Ted is all based in a house on a totally remote island off Ireland itself. The best one is Porridge, if you’ve ever seen it where Ronnie Barker plays a coy convict in HMS Slade. In one episode the whole twenty minutes is spent talking with his inmate in their cell – and that’s it. No American sitcom would dare do something like that in ‘fear’ of boring their viewers to death. But that episode of Porridge is great, it’s really funny and really builds the characters up. It’s much more British to take things a little slower, and to get all the benefit out of a situation before moving on. I really think that the American industries have gotten themselves into a viscous circle of making everything too big, too fast, too cheesy in their attempts to keep up with their self-perpetuated perception of the consumer who’ll get bored if you don’t blow something up within 30 seconds of your film. I’ll tell you now that most Britains are tired of the film industry at the moment. Finally, after a very long period, the industry is coming around to doing more radical and original films to please people rather than just making the next big-cheese-action-thriller-whatever.

In this same respect I’m going to take the risk in not progressing way too fast, but take a more relaxed approach, that most people don’t really realise is what they’ve been looking for. I’m not sure about America, but in England the retro scene is huge! Companies are re-releasing old games and consoles (like the Atari2600/VCS) and tons of t-shirts with the old game logos on like Atari and Space Invaders. This has come around because of the nostalgia created by all the absolute crap that’s been coming out as of recent - tons and tons of “Yet Another Action Film” and so on as well as a real lack of decent television. So everything has folded back on itself, the industry accidentally creating demand by not providing it.

Regards Badly Drawn Adventure. It was my intention from the start to take a small situation and really expand on it to get the full benefit and experience from it. Each level would introduce a new concept, new object or new mini-situation in the same way any kind real “training” does. The first level would be a basic run against cannons and straightforward traps, the next level would include heavily something new, for example acid traps, then the next level would focus on another new, more difficult object such as the rolling bolder, and every now and again the whole style would be changed for a single level with the introduction of a slightly different situation. One level I want to be really tall, but very thin, and Yokozuki jumps off of the top of the cliff and parachutes down to the bottom dodging cannon fire and the like coming up from the ground. For every now and again this breaks up the paltformic style and resets the user’s enthusiasm for the game for another couple of levels, by not tiring them of walking along the same grass patch over and over again. Each level would focus on something they’ve not seen before, as well as building upon the traps they’ve seen before. I don’t know about some people but I do feel that some game objects are not re-used enough. For example some of the cool traps in Tomb Raider 1 only occur once. I would personally love to see some of those traps re-used in new contexts with a few minor changes in newer games but they’ve not done this.

I think you’ve gone completely to the other side, believing that the training levels being one one-two or three! What a waste of all the many hundreds of original combinations you can use your objects and what a loss in not being able to create more objects to spread out the training levels with more content, that’s almost ignoring a whole load of artistic possibilities by not making the most of the situation. I was thinking more like perhaps 10-15 levels. Each one simply introducing a new trap/enemy to suss out, some levels really short and left-to-right, other levels more explorative, having multiple routes and some levels that follow none of the others at all (like the parachute training) – All we need to do is design plenty of fun objects to fill up these levels with and I’ve already created a few, but need more. These are:

• Cannons for rudimentary beginner level style traps (a lot like Bullet Bills from Mario)
• Spike pits, also another rudimentary starting trap
• Acid Towers, as a basic run-under timing trap, later replaced by great big vertical pounding-hammers
• Balaclava thugs and dogs (For the anti-terrorist training level)
• Ninjas armed with Swords or Ninja-stars (for the ‘Training for invading Japan’ level)
• Wooden platforms (like scaffolding) that can be stacked up or across any number of times to allow the player to climb up to higher heights, provide multiple two-tier upperlevel/lowerlevel routes
• Rig systems (Moving platforms of any number, size, speed and direction)
• Perhaps some electrical or fire based trap?

• Pushable crates and oil drums to add a puzzle element as well as climbing element with multiple routes depending on where you push them
• Army training style, rope swings?
• Chased by a rolling bolder
• Parachuting…
• Night time, stealth infiltration, avoiding the machine-gun armed search lights…

Possibilities for filling levels are infinite. A while ago I was thinking that the game should end with Yokozuki completing training and being taken off to a real war, something he never expected even though joining the army (well, that’s Yokozuki for you), the animation would be of him in the back of a helicopter about to set down and in the background loads and loads of people fighting with plenty of comical stuff in the background, but the kind that shows what Yokozuki’s in for (like stick men slicing each other to pieces with swords and one person firing a rocket from one side of the background to the other and blowing one stick man to pieces) It would be a good open cliff hanger ending. But I do like the idea of making the game a little larger in scope, in part. For example, after a good number of very diverse training levels then we could move Yokozuki to warfare in other countries that America decides to invade In one cutscene (before the Ninja level), the sergeant will be explaining that this training level will involve learning to fight Ninjas should America have the chance to get back at the Japs for Pearl Harbour. To which Yokozuki relies “But you nuked Hiroshima!”, however the sergeant in front is too busy in a patriotic stance with a tearful eye “We lost a lot of good men on that day” <Patriotic music>. “He’s not evening listening to me!” Yokozuki exclaims before the level starts!

So I’m beginning to like the idea of moving Yokozuki around, but I want to ensure the most is made out all the possibilities that you get with each situation. Whereas you might possibly thinking of having one level training, one level Egypt, one level India, so on, I’m much more thinking 10-15 for training and 3-5 Levels for each worldwide location. And it’s your skills that will help us avoid this extended use of a situation (regardless of how diverse I make it) becoming boring. An excellent soundtrack in the way described thoroughly earlier would help keep the player motivated in the same way the music I’m listening to now has kept me going, writing this section of this letter for the last four hours. Without music Word would bore me to death in an hour and a half.

It could still be comical – maybe Yokozuki has to perform outrageous feats to impress his demanding Girlfriend, who sends him out on stupid missions to earn her love. Or maybe he loses his pet gopher and he has to pursue him through miles of (bumpy?) circumstances until he finally gets him. I don’t know – I just think that we should think bigger than just a training camp.

DemonSpectre

As for these suggestions, who knows, I’m kinda finding out what will happen to him as the editor progresses. In my previous comments on TLA, I was saying that a level editor should be developed open-plan so that any possibility could be covered and not programmed solely to meet the incomplete and undeveloped ideas from the start. The BDA scripting engine will allow the editor to remain open ended because almost any object can be catered for. I don’t know about gophers (no, literally) – what is a gopher? Any animals I’m including are going to be comically plain Brittish boring like some BSE Infected Cows enemies in one level (The Invading England level ) It’ll be great fun to take the pee out of stereotype countries!

I’m not going to be designing for worldwide travel at all until the level editor is 98% complete. Basically, spending too much time on scoping the game out is going to hinder the production of the level editor. So for now, the training levels and the objects they use will be what I will create to make the level editor and to keep the workload down as I won’t need to create hundreds of objects to test the editor, just the few I need for the training levels. Once the editor is in Beta I can draw all the new objects and use the open ended editor to handle these objects. During early development I’ll be using the training objects to create hundreds of internal test levels, e.g. one level solely to test cannon mechanics, one level solely to test rig systems and so on and these levels will all act as a scripting test and gameplay test. Once we are happy with the engine performing suitably well, we can start making the actual levels of the game (and perhaps tweak some that we’ve already got)

…and that stems somewhat from personal experience rather than any significant fear. In my limited experiences, the best games are the ones that draw me in emotionally. When I have some sort of attachment to the characters in the game, it provides a strong motivation for succeeding. After all, these are my fake “friends” at stake :) Hehe.

DemonSpectre

I’m also going to be taking an alternative approach to this. So far response on Yokozuki has been good. One girl said “eeeeee… check out that cute stickman” and others think he’s ‘cool’. In non-RPG style, the attachment to the character is stupidity. The reason he smiles all the time is because in the intro, just before setting off on the first level he says “My momma said if you just smile, you can get through anything”. So beaming, he sets off, unprepared on level 1. He’s hapless and needs

the player’s help. You love him because he’s so silly and if he dies or survives, you still love him the same for the comic stupidity of everything he does. From the way he walks to the violent and silly deaths he experiences. I’ve never had so much positive reactions about a character before like I have with Yokozuki, people seem to really warm to his charm for some reason. Sure you’re right that it’s not really “emotional” attachment like that you are speaking of, but I believe that the RPG style of emotional character attachment doesn’t have to be the only style that’s right, sure there’s gotta be other ways that are good in their own respects as well and this is just me exploring an alternative and if it doesn’t work as good as your suggestion then I will have learnt something, and if does work out just as good, or better, then I’ve learnt as well. Can’t lose there.

Blimey, that’s just added 7 pages replying to your letter without any real effort! Onward! Finally, after all this, it’s THIS.

RE: T.H.I.S:

Anyway, what can I possibly say about T.H.I.S? “Just mind blowing” should suffice :) Hehe. Kroc it’s amazing. I love it all. The colour scheme is great, the layout is intelligent and user-friendly; the menus look great and the feel of the whole site is indeed more than I could have imagined.

You have a gift for design. I couldn’t possibly offer any advice that would improve the site. It’s already a masterpiece. I guess my only idea would be to change “international” to “independent”, maybe even “Tanner Helland Independent Studios”. Or if you think international sounds better, have it. I trust your judgement completely.

I hope you’re only working on T.H.I.S when it appeals to you. Just seeing this much excites me beyond any hope I could ever have of designing a site for my music. You are truly one-of-a-kind. Amazing! Simply Amazing!!

DemonSpectre

As you’ve no doubt noticed, this letter is severely missing info on T.H.I.S, I’ve not been working on it unfortunately because I was not sure if I was doing it how you wanted, and couldn’t work on it, if I then would have to change it if you didn’t like it, or the colours, or something similarly major. So I promise that next letter, I’ll get some stuff done and give you some new screenshots. Badly Drawn has progressed massive amounts this letter, so I’ll let that rest for a while whilst I get T.H.I.S sorted out. Please give any suggestions you can think of regards functionality of T.H.I.S. as you’ve all the music know-how but I haven’t, and also refer to the notes in my previous letters and this ones for the suggestions I’ve made so far. As far as me and my ‘kind’, you’ve obviously not met many designers then, same as I’ve obviously not met enough musicians! I’ve got my own unique attitude and style when it comes to my designs, I’m a bit brash, wanna be different and like doing things how I see fit, regardless if that is following standards or not. (hmm perhaps a bit like you and your music!)

Oh and “independent” instead of “international”, what a fantastic idea – I would never of thought of that, it’s so much better. I had the word “THIS” just locked in my mind and was trying to think of words to meet the acronym but never got past “international” due to lack of ideas. I shall implement this right away!

As you may have guessed, it could take a very, very long time to complete THIS, I’m really doubting that it will be complete by your return, but at least with you back in America you’ll be able to help me work on it. I will promise you one thing though. No matter how long it takes to complete it, it will be completed, I absolutely assure you of it. And it will be nothing short of the best music site I’ve ever made. You’ve just gotta keep poking me with the proverbial stick to keep me enthusiastic about it if you want it hurried!

The Final Countdown:

Yeah, biggest letter I’ve ever written, biggest word document I’ve ever written (although it is full of pictures). It’s been fun to write and hell, most of the stuff in here, exists solely because I wanted to put something in this letter. I’ve got a new job, a new career and am out of that hell hole PCWorld that came very scarily close to killing me. Keep up the positive and constructive work in Canada, don’t let it grind you down at all and write to Clint and cheer him up a bit, he really needs it. As much as I fear-to-death hitting 20 years old, thanks to the positive things that have been happening to me as of recent, I don’t feel so old anymore, I feel like I’ve got more time to do whatever it is I’m here to do. Before I was frightened that I absolutely must achieve my life’s work before I reach 20 otherwise I’ve missed my opportunity to be ahead. I think I’m seeing 20 as the starting point to achieve my life’s work and Badly Drawn and Camen Design is the foundations for that. I sometimes wonder what I might be capable of doing sometime in the future? It scares me to think that wahey back when I was in TGP I could not have predicted in a million years that I would be able to do the things I’ve shown you in this letter. Your music has progressed loads thanks to TLA, I’m so looking forward to all the new things you might produce when you get back! Speaking of THIS, I’ve only ever listened to your music whilst working on it to ensure that I didn’t design anything that wouldn’t fit the music that would be hosted on it.

Sign Off - 24/04/05:

I’ve printed this letter in A5 book format as a sort of experiment, yes I know the text is small I’m sorry – if you’ve had real problems reading it then I can go back to A4 for you. I’m trying this size out because I think it looks real cool in A5 book form. The pictures, though smaller are sharper and of higher quality, and also I only have to print 7 pages and not 28 The paper this is printed on is semi-gloss double sided photo paper (the same used in the THIS full print I sent you), this paper is fantastic as the image pixels come out solid and dark unlike the printing disaster of my last letter, all the images were low-res and too light. Please do not worry about the costs, it really wasn’t much and it was well worth it simply to do the images justice.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you again, which probably won’t be until you get back since it’ll take that long to reply. Enjoy your CDs, and have fun checking out my websites and work. Man, we have really gotta meet up at some point, I’d love to shake your hand, and if it were only possible, I’d love to meet you as the crocodile himself. It’d be so much easier to work on something if we were in the same room, I really can’t stand the communication and expressive limitations of the Internet. After BDA, maybe VBPPG will be the “one”.

Kroc