Anyway, the site has gone live. CorkLAN.com. Now i do use live in the widest possible sense. It is entirely devoid of content and the registration system is broken but its something. I am picking up the flyers tomorrow and the advertising is gonna start in earnest. First place is midLANs.net. Its a bigger and more established event and its on this weekend. That means a chance to get a good look at the network and what they have on offer. Its running for the full 48 hours. Unfortunately i wont be able to go to the whole thing. Gotta be back here on saturday. I’ll try catch some sleep before driving back but it should be an excellent night.

And the reason I am cutting my fun little trip short is… Simon is coming home. He will be with us for 10 days before jetting off again and just heard that his flight will be 9 hours delayed in hong kong so forget about playing much on saturday. Still though It will be good to see him again.

And thats about it. Still plodding away at the project. At least i have something working, Kind of anyway. I have to throw a few extra little things in there. Once its finished though I think i will be putting up the story online for any poor sap that wants to read the whole thing.

Ok that was a hectic month. More hectic than previously anticipated. A full month of exams. 4 weeks with 3 exams each week and now its done. Thats the academic studious part of this masters course completed and on to the project which i will expand on later, or i would if I knew what i was doing.

This month was made even more interesting with the surprise arrival of Ian. Two weeks into the exams on the night of his brother Paul’s 21st birthday there he was. It was most unexpected and did cause some time management issues when it came to the whole sitting in a room trying to study thing. Any photos i took over the week have been thrown up on my Flickr account. Well after having a quick look i am afraid there are very few photos of Ian’s trip, four to be exact but if your looking for something to peruse then be my guest. For anyone looking to get an N95 then most of the photos there were taken with one and are unedited, in fact they were uploaded directly from the phone. You gotta love modern technology and having too much time on your hands. Anyway back to Ian’s trip. I think he caught up a bit on the games he has missed due to the whole him liking reading and playing outside now. Apparently the weather in Australia is pretty good or so i am lead to believe. I think the event of most note over his time here must be going to see Billy Connolly. I plan on writing a proper piece on that so I wont go into detail here except to say it was pretty good / fantastic.

So that was the last two weeks and i guess i will be working backwards through the month. As i said i had a total of 12 exams this month and while i was playing with people for the last 6 the first 6 i managed to get my head down and put in the real work i needed. So i got stuck into Civ 4. Its a multimedia course, i was studying character modeling and user interface design alright. Anyway I know i am coming fairly late to this one and in general turn based strategy just ain’t my thing, apart from the total war series, and UFO, and warlords, but other than them i think it was the turn based thing that put me off. That and the fact that in general any game that requires a name on the cover kills my enthusiasm. I take it all back though and now i am truly hooked. Even been trying to get a couple of friendly online matches in. Like Billy though, i think i will come back this in a more in depth way at another time.

Finally onto the exams. This post is starting to go the way of my study in general. Only getting to the actual work when i have run out of other things but i guess thats the way it is for everyone. The exams were all in all not so bad. Had a few slip ups maybe but i think its all good. I think they helped me cement what are i want to do my project in. Of course by cement i mean the really long drying, forever liquidy, improperly mixed cement. I still want to do a game but i don’t know how to go about making that in anyway relevant. Perhaps i will just try make a game on the side and see how it goes. Otherwise maybe a piece on user interfaces in games? I think the common theme going here is games and how much i want to play them for my project. I dont think thats an option though, pity.

So thats about it. Another stepping stone to getting done with college completed and a welcome surprise in the middle of it. Now that i have finished the exams i hope to be able to update this little blog a little more often, no promises yet though.

I have just uploaded 2 new flash games. They are meant to be used on mobile phones so feel free to doneload them. If you are playing them on the site then the return button plays the part of your enter button on a phone. Check them out over in the Flash Work Page, enjoy.

Since the last post some things have happend for me with reguards to gaming. With the good Mr foott aquiring himself quite a decent laptop, we have taken to playing more laptop LAN sessions. after an initial spell of returning to Diablo 2, what a game, we have stretched our wings and ventured into guild wars. I had started playing about a year ago and so i was happy to pik it up again. Mike was in a similar boat and with footsie getting quite hooked and darran following shortly after we have started our own guild. We are the Knights of the Gline and we welcome all those who will help us get a hall. I have also started with Rainbow Six 2. By started i mean i began the single player story last night, and by single player i mean playing with Footsie over live. Still its all good. Rainbow Six is actually more than good its great or excellent whichever you will. I love a game that encourages good Co Op play and this game certinaly does that. Given your play styles complement eachother then its the best feeling ever… in games… so far… i think. The game is pretty mush a refinment on the first, a few added controls, crisper graphics and i think slightly smarter AI but i am not too sure on that one. I need to play a little more to get a better idea.

That may have to wait however because the last of the assignments for college are due in the next month, starting with a quick CG animation which, may i say, is goming on swimmingly. And so with that i am off to continue my work. In the meantime i have gotten help with the addition of content. Ian will be the second person to write for the site, I think he is starting with a review of 10,000BC or something.

Bar that everything else is college work, including a very broken version of Blackjack. It seems the swf file works on a PC but doesnt work online so i cant put up an example. Sorry. I’ll throw it up anyway of course so look at the flash page for it.

And that about wraps it up. I might try and write epoch myself in my free time so if anyone is excited then expect a release date sometime next year and dont expect anything that would warrant that much development time.

Over the weekend i managed to aquire Call of Duty 4. It is quite the game and Mr Foott you were not lying. Our few hours playing on Saturday were most enjoyable and once i have the time free again it off to finish it on veteran, It is tough though. Those foolish americans an their large scale gunfights in side alleys, i never know where the bullets are coming from. But thats enough of that. Unfortunately it doesnt have a cool screenshot feature so no Album of ingame shots. There is however a level editor so i might try my hand at that sometime, see what people think, if anyone wants to try a map or two.

Now onto the big news. We submitted our design for the imagine cup. It was tight, everyone is pretty busy but we got it in. HUH HUH. The name is somthing of a problem. I know we had one but i couldnt remember it so on a last minute execuitive decision I changed it to Epoch. It means a period of time determined by a distinguishing characteristic. This is also subject to change but it is easier to remember and i just noticed it appeared in a recent XKCD comic strip which is always a good thing. Sorry Mike. So for those who dont know here is a quick synopsis of the story.

A civilisation has over populated and destroyed their planet but at the last minute finds a new home, but this time they don’t want to repeat their mistakes. Their survival depends on one man and the hope he can build a new home to allow their species to live on. The story evolves around a character named Vir, his civilisation’s last hope. An accident occurs while on route to the new planet. His ship crashes and he remains in stasis for an undetermined amount of time. Unknown to him, his civilisation has already been destroyed. The user controls this character in a forced perspective view in the main window which will scroll as the user moves Vir giving them as sense of exploring the new land. While they move around the Island they discover the resources. Once the resources are discovered they have the option to activate the mini-game allowing them to collect resources or simply continue to explore the island. The game focuses on creating a sustainable environment, using current and future technologies. The user collects resources and manages the levels of the cloned population in order to determine if the planet is sustainable or not. The user starts the game on a main island which has a source of all the resources. As the game advances the user moves off the Main Island to find new Islands, each rich in one of the four resources Discovery of each island is initially made by boat journey, activated at a harbour which will appear on the first Island after the completion of first four resource levels. A corresponding harbour will appear on each subsequent island. Once the game for an Island has been completed a bridge will connect it to the Main Island. The cloned population will use these bridges to develop their civilisation. The user plays different mini-games to collect the resources and depending on how well the user does this will benefit/damage the environment.

And so there you go. I will now be posting screens and othere tid bits of information about the game as we go. I think the concept is good, just got to get the finesse on it now. Bring on the second round

And speaking of Stumble Upon I have also gave a nod to Darran’s site and it seems to be filling up quite quickley. Hopefully he will get some new followers out of it anyway. Gotta love the returning Visitors.

Finally, thanks to everyone who congratulated myself and Orla on the six years, its been alot of fun and maybe next year we will have a party.