Update!

I haven’t posted in awhile for a number of reasons, the foremost being the computer I usually sit and type things up on died over Christmas. Well, it turns out that it was just the video card that died and I’ve managed to get it up and running again.

I’ve had some people ask me recently about the Watchmen Movie legal case as it was supposed to go to court again back on the 20th. Good news is that Fox and Warner Brothers settled, and the movie is still on track to come out on 03/06/09. Here is a link to a Variety article, pardon the giant ad that pops over the screen.

There is a semi-interesting bit at the end of the article about moving release dates of movies opening on the same date as movies from the other studios so they wouldn’t compete and using actors contracted to the other studio. I really love the statement "Warner Bros. and Fox, like all "Watchmen" fans, look forward with great anticipation to this film's March 6 release in theaters." Which translates to, "We are sorry to have upset you with this fight Mr. Fanboy, please see our movies."

My friend Brad also pointed out if you keep with the whole counting down to midnight on the clock theme, that release date is pretty cool.

I’ve been watching the Watchmen Motion comics on iTunes and although I like it, I really wish they hadn’t edited it down. They didn’t cut it down very much, you would hardly notice, but they cut out a few of my favorite lines. There was also some critisim on the iTunes feedback about one guy reading all the voices, and as major fan of Audio books I agree. With a production like this they should have dramatized it with several actors. It isn't a straight audio production of somebody reading a story where is okay to have one narrator.

I have also been listening to Comic Geek Speak's Watchmen Footnotes episodes. Just eating up anything "Watchmen" until the movie comes out.

Another thing I’ve been doing is messing around with an Interactive Fiction editor. At first I started to use Adrift, which I had experimented with back in 2004. Although there have been a few bug fix releases, there really hasn’t been a new version since 2003. I quickly found myself having the same problems I had before all over again. So I switched over to Inform7 which appears to be much more powerful.

I also tried wearing my beard differently; I shaved my jaw line so I essentially had a goatee with full sideburns, pointed in. Nobody really commented on the change though so I took that as a bad sign and reverted back to my normal shaving routine. Speaking of which… I went to buy new razor blades and found that a pack of Gillette Mach3 blades cost something like (actual numbers may be a bit off as this was a month ago) $24 AUD. But at the same time they were selling the new Schick Quattro Titanium Freestyle razor on sale for $14 AUD. The blades for it were also on sale for that price. So I was able to buy this new razor with 3-blades, a 4th edging blade, and a battery operated hair trimmer and another box of blades for 4 dollars more than a box of Mach3 blades. Too back the Schick razor SUCKS! It isn’t giving me anywhere near as close a shave as the Mach3 did. Now I have to wait till I go through all these blades and buy a whole new Mach3 as I threw the old one out. BTW neither Gillette or Schick are getting links to their websites because both of them pissing me off with their auto-redirecting to Australian versions of their sites and requiring special version of flash players.

Finally, for my "in the news section" South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson, who has been blocking an 18+ rating in Australia has given an interview where he explains his rational. It basically boils down to the same old untrue crap about how games are more interactive and you are "rehearsing harmful behavior," "desensitizing children towards violence," and that video games are "addictive." He states that only a few very video games are denied classification (read as banned in Australia) each year. What I don’t think they is realizing is that a large number of games that maybe should be classified as 18+ are instead being classified as 15+.

Oh, one last thing. Every few months or so I would look up Fez which I blogged about last February. They have finally put out a press release announcing their publisher on their new website. They put up a new picture the other day comparing the old graphics to the new. I don't know what to think about the new graphics, they look like old school console graphics which leads me to wonder about what platform they are going to release on.

B.R.A.V.E. by Andy Hawkins

My friend Andy Hawkins at work has been working on a little pet project game for some time called B.R.A.V.E. "British Response to Alien inVasion of Earth." He is entered into a game design contest which has been running for a year now and ends on the 31st. Here is the forum with the competition. I think he has basically done everything all by himself except for the recent addition of his sister to do some modeling work.

Andy sent out an email at work a little while ago with a link to his latest version and I flagged it so I could check it out later. Unfortunately it just got buried in my in box and I forgot about it until he pointed out today that the contest deadline is in 2 days. I just wanted to make this quick post to wish him luck.

I started making my own little game twice now, once with the original Neverwinter Nights editor and then again as a Text Adventure using the Adrift engine. The text adventure one was coming along nicely until I tried to do several things that were dependent on which direction the player entered from and set it aside after two weeks fighting with the engine and then never picked it up again. That was about four years ago and I've no idea how far Campbell Wild has taken the editor since then.