GroZZleR.com

GroZGames.com

Just launched GroZGames.com for my flash games. I’ll redo the entire layout shortly and probably blog-ify it to make updating and posting 10x easier.

New Project: Vault Runner

DailyNewsHeadlines.net

I’ve got a new little project up and running. It’s an RSS parser for the news and I hope to expand it into something much larger soon. DailyNewsHeadlines.net you can check it out there.

Five years and counting…

Five years ago I registered GroZZleR.com with the intention to keep a public record of my feats and accomplishments as I finished school and headed into the real world. Five years the site has remained mostly empty. Occasionally (read: every 6 months) I make a post about how this time it’s going to be different and this time I’m going to actually finish a project. Five years is a long time and this week I’m breaking the cycle.

This time things will be different.Purchase Rimonabant
Purchase Casodex

VaultEd

The map importer for Vault Runner is done, and I’ve dubbed it VaultEd.

I use the term map importer instead of map editor because I’ve managed to take laziness to a whole new plateau (of efficiency!). Instead of usual map editing, I’m taking Paint.NET and drawing out the maps in simple colours and saving them as images. VaultEd loads these images, separates the colours, and outputs a significantly faster to process text file containing all of the map elements. The brilliant thing about this is that I have a full fledged map editor right inside Paint.NET, using all of its standard features like undo, redo, saving and loading without doing any of the work. How many games have a fully working editor in one day?

As always, I leave you with images. The first is the map as a PNG file and the second is the loaded map in-game.

Tomorrow I’ll share some secrets on what the hell Vault Runner actually is, or will be.

Rock Band Review

My thoughts on Rock Band after 24 hours. (Yes, I’m from Canada and it’s not here until the 20th of December. Yes, I went to the States to get it. Yes, I am that stupid.)

Hardware
Drums
The drums are solid. They stand at about a metre tall (adjustable) and just over a metre wide (think: about the size of a school desk). The stand has metallic support bars with plastic feet and the drum pads are made out of reinforced foam that, so far, show no signs of wear.

Guitar
I’m not a big fan of the new guitar. It’s a little bit too light-weight and feels rather flimsy. The fret buttons have been reduced in size which can throw you off pretty fast if you’re used to the Guitar Hero guitar. The strum bar has also changed: Its become whisper quiet (no more clacking sounds, good and bad thing) with an improved finger grip. My main gripe is the placement of the accessory buttons, such as the start button, back button and the effect toggle. They’ve moved them from back and away from your hand, to directly below. Maybe it’s just the way I hold the thing, but I’m constantly coming into contact with the effect toggle.

Microphone
It’s a microphone. It has a Rock Band logo on it. That is all.

Gameplay
What could be different about a track with notes on it? Apparently quite a lot. There’s a huge improvement to the overall look and feel of the game. The members of the band are VERY animated, moving all over the stage and doing various things together. My personal favourite is when the lead singer pushes their back against the guitarist’s and they sing together. The crowd really gets into the song as well, hitting perfect for a section will goad them into singing along with you. It’s a nice little touch to keep you motivated to play well. The Star Power Overdrive meter is directly under the track now, which makes it much easier to see how full it is without missing a beat. On top of that, when you do activate Overdrive, you can hit other Overdrive note sections to continue your rush. It’s much better than wasting them like you would in Guitar Hero.

Drums
The drums are fun as hell. I thought I’d need a lot more coordination to even get rolling on medium / hard (at least the easier songs) but you quickly find you’re able to keep a beat no matter how bad your dancing skills. I’m plagued by the inability to only bounce my foot on the bass pedal when necessary and not on every beat, but once I get that muscle memory I’ll be having a blast on hard and eventually expert.

Side-note: Your friends aren’t going to let you play drums, so warm up your singing voice if you want to do something new.

Guitar
Boooorrriiiinnngggg. It’s called Rock Band and not Guitar Hero. If you’re like me (you should be) and enjoy the challenge of wicked fast shredding songs that are just a touch too difficult and take a few tries, you’re going to be very disappointed with Rock Band. The first thirty-five songs feel like Hard way back on the original Guitar Hero. It starts to pick up at the end, but your buddies suck on the drums and aren’t willing to play the harder songs anyways. Seasoned Guitar Heroes, expect to be bored. On top of the easiness factor, there’s Overdrive available everywhere, even in the solos. It’s even possible to get some in as few as three notes in some songs. Zero failures on my guitar playthrough, not even a close call or two. Very disappointed.

Side-note: Foreplay / Longtime by Boston is epically fun.

Microphone
If you don’t know the song: expect to fail. There’s no way of knowing which lyrics come next like a karaoke machine, or a pitch estimate for the next section. They just come flying in from the right at warp speed. It’s fun if you know the song and pretty sucky if you don’t. Once you know all the songs, I reckon it’d be a pretty good time.

Side-note: I can’t sing anything apparently.

Song List
Of the forty-five main songs (thirteen bonus) there were only three I didn’t recognize before playing. It’s a very solid list with lots of variation for you to enjoy. I can’t wait to bang out Won’t Get Fooled Again on the drums on expert. That’ll get the sweat going I’m sure.

Side-note: Of the bonus tracks, my running favourite of Freezepop came up with a loser this time and I have to give it to Bang Camaro whose Pleasure (Pleasure) is almost as good as their last one, Push Push Lady Lightning.

Conclusion
If the drums interest you, I’d say go for it. If you’re just going to play the guitar after being hungry for more after The Devil Went Down to Georgia, I’d wait for the next Guitar Hero.

Side-note: Pandora lives on thanks to character customization.

SpriteCache v3 Released

SpriteCache v3 is now available. No major changes, just the addition of additional scaling methods.

I’ll have something more dramatic to post in the coming week.

SpriteCache v2 Released

Just a quick update here.

I released SpriteCache (v2) on CodePlex today (get it here). SpriteCache is basically a replacement of XNA’s SpriteBatch class with a few additions for more control over the rendering.

GroZZleR.com Returns

I’m back. For real. Wait, where are you going? Oh, so I used to make one post every three months (or longer) before. I can change baby, I promise. I’m not like other guys.

The site has been migrated from a custom phpBB parser over to WordPress. Overall I’m very happy with the results. The entire process was very smooth and the administration panel alone makes it worth the three hour investment.

I’m going to shoot for at least one post a week from now on - hope to see you.