Category: Randomness

Ok, so Jake and Ken both tell me I’m pathetic. Here’s why: I play Star Wars Galaxies too much. Over the weekend I played til 5 am one night. It’s really a sweet game, but Monday night there was a disturbance in the Force.

And it manifested into a complex arguement with my wife, fueled by two months of resentment at Shadowbane (which I must add, I haven’t hardly thought about since Friday afternoon).

So, I have to tone it down a little…after next Tuesday…cuz wife goes outta town today for 6 days!

STAR WARS GALAXIES RULZ

Ok, aside from the fact that my pre-order copy didn’t come Friday (UPS blames Lucasarts for not shipping it out til Thursday…but then why does UPS tracking info begin Wednesday??)

Anyhow, I went to Best Buy and got it there, so I’ll be selling my spare copy.

Now, on to the game!!

Here’s the stats –

Hours played since Friday at 4pm: about 25hrs

Hours slept since Friday: about 15

Patches for game since Thursday (release day): 4 or 5 (ranging from 3 meg to 60 meg)

Times my wife has rolled her eyes at my gaming intensity: oh crap…my wife…so that’s who that is!!

The game is real fun. I’d have to say that it’s already as stable as Shadowbane, with a lot less noticeable lag. The number of bugs is about the same, maybe a few more in SWG, but it just released rather hastily…and Shadowbane has been out for 3 months.

50k screenshot…the graphics do get better…I have the ‘required’ GeForce 2 (Asus onboard video)….but my 9500 Radeon gets here July 2nd. My framerate right now never peaks above 13 fps, and it can get choppy in town.

Star Wars Galaxies game that releases this Thursday. I’m reading the forums, and am coming across in-game footage…some is interesting..some is funny!

1. boog.WMV – Wookie gets jiggy wid it (you need audio to enjoy this) 2.7meg

2. swg.wmv – a group of beta testers assembled this footage. 36meg

3. swghigh.wmv – short compilation of random footage…a little more random dancing…mostly combat though 12.5meg

4. wookiesmile.avi – this is showing the first person view…the game can run 3rd or 1st person camera 1.7meg

5. FinalHumancreation.avi – this video shows character creation/customization of character features. let me tell you, this is like 100x more customized than shadowbane…and this doesn’t take into account all the clothing options 14.7meg

all this footage is from beta, not all on the best machine..and the last one is a camcorder shooting the screen. all the sound is dubb’d in, but the video is really in-game.

the lyrics in the first movie are a little…colorful..so be careful at work (it’s Lil Kim)

I promised Jake I’d keep these brief and infrequent.

Kaytana has reached level 46 now. Much has happened. The Phalanx sub’d under the Death Head Legion nation, which made me mad cuz this character is supposed to be anti DHL.

So I mooched more levels and gold off the guild, and provided battle intelligence to the enemy when I could.

Until last night, when I logged on at 9:30pm and found 30+ members of ‘the enemy nation’ ripping down our town walls. Ever the opportunist, Kaytana quickly flipped sides, as this was the nation I really wanted to be under anyhow.

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The Centaur race is unlocked now (now in my second paid month)..so I made a huntress to toy with. However, Star Wars Galaxies hits shelves next Thursday, so I’ll maintain my shadowbane account thru some of July, and give SWG a try. All my buddies on SB have left due to the political struggles, and plan to play SWG.

Ok, so I’m playing this MMORPG called Shadowbane. It’s pretty fun, but I keep re-rolling characters instead of sticking with one past level 30.

Part of this is due to how many character class/race combos there are, and ways to tweak each combo into a unique style for gameplay.

So, I’m sticking with my assassin, Kaytana. She’s level 25 (easily attainable in 3-5 gaming sessions), a female Shade, and has been entertaining to play so far.

I’ve been running around in a region of temperate forests and hilly plains. The major city is Kings Cross. Times are difficult…I spent much of my savings on a fantastic dagger, but have been repeatedly slaughtered by wandering assassins.

What ever happened to honor among thieves?! Levels 21-31 are the hardest to advance through, because there are so many others out there who can take you out. By level 32, you stand a much better chance of fleeing from a higher level attacker and living.

Unless, of course…its an assassin…

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Update – I stayed up way too late last night, and made it to level 30, and joined a guild. I was recruited into The Phalanx…apparently someone’s been attacking the city (they destroyed our bank), so they are beefing up the population.

Here’s my very first, rough attempt at stop motion, with a little chromakey to make it interesting.

Click here to view it.

(1 meg, DivX format)

I’m gonna go ahead and post this, but I bet no one cares.

It’s about 3 mins, 25meg, MPEG format. It’s from a recent conference my company had in Chicago. Bad lighting, and fluctuating ‘auto white balance’ plagued the original footage, plus bad sound pickup from internal mic.

I found creative ways to fix the worst white balance areas (converted to b&w), some added green screen footage and post production audio, and several after effects tricks.

Here is the final movie I created after going through Chapter 1 of “Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects: The Essentials“.

My Version (4Mb mpeg) – Updated 2-4-2003

Tutorial Version (8Mb QuickTime)

A few differences, but some of that was my preference, not a mistake or error. Also, the book had some mistakes in it, which I had to compensate for.

Chromakey: technical term for “greenscreen” special effects…where you film on a solid color background (green or blue) and then remove the background and replace with something else (compositing).

Myself and a coworker (Jason) put this together late Friday night. Its basically testing my greenscreen to see if the color is usable.

Lame Hand Puppeting (7.5Mb mpg file)

Lighting was far from perfect, and we only used Premieres built-in chromakey…After Effects does a much better job…yet the overall results were amazingly good!

Also, its is supposed to go black for a couple seconds…just to prove this is greenscreening. (you don’t see the greenscreen because it remains transparent throughout the clip)

I’ll put up some more experiments as soon as my firewire card starts working again. Unfortunately, I think its all Windows XP’s fault…and I’ll have to reinstall XP.

(file removed)

I’ve got a little more footage that I’m going to work into a teaser trailer.

And I worked with a friend on a television commercial last night…which should be humorous.