*Blinks into existence again!*
Whoa, got lost for a... month? *Shrugs* I got a lot of work to do. Here goes.
I saw Dodgeball last night. That was SWEET!!! I haven't seen a movie where I was laughing my ass off at it in the theater, but this was Excellent, with a capital E. I don't want to spoil many of the jokes, but I will say two words: "Chuck Norris".
Here's some news: I enrolled in college. Twice. Once at Tech, but that you know about. The cool one is the 2-D Gaming class. Yeah. I'm gonna make a game. It's gonna kick ass. My game is about ninjas. That's all I can tell you until I get the first release out. Trust me, you'll be the first to know. I CAN tell you about the game our class is designing together. We aren't going to make it, it's just an exercise in game design, not implementation. But yeah, the pitch is basically Grand Theft Auto meets Star Trek. And not the new GTA3 or Vice City versions. Its a 2D game, so this is based off the older GTA games, the top-down ones. They're amazingly deep, and such. Anyway, I wrote up a little description on my professor, seeing as I'm going to NJ during the last few weeks of the course. Luckily, I can e-mail him my final video game. This is what I sent him:
"Here's my idea for the Grand Theft StarShip or whatever we're calling it now. You play as an independent mercenary for hire, willing to work for whoever you want to. You move around the galaxy or whatever map you use in a small one man shuttlecraft that can dock with larger cruiser craft and assume control of it. You use this ability to complete the missions given to you from various warring factions. As you complete missions for the different races, your reputation with them, good or bad, varies based on what you do for (or to) them. For instance, and I'm using Star Trek faction names simply because I'm too lazy to make up new names, say you take a Romulan mission to steal a Federation starship and use it to attack a Ferengi outpost. The Romulans will become happy with you, and the Federation AND the Ferengi will dislike you, some. This will also start a war between the Federation and the Ferengi, and open up a whole new set of missions. Missions will range from simple hit and run destroy missions, to stealing enemy ships for various reasons such as: they are powerful new secret weapons, or they carry hostages, or they have important cargo or data. Another possible mission would be one where you steal a Klingon ship, then use it to sneak deep into Klingon space, dock with another Klingon ship, and board it to kill a dignitary, with a high speed escape / battle against impossible odds to get out to safety. The game would be naturally open ended, with any number of possible game plans to follow, allowing unlimited replay value, letting the player play however he or she wants to. Either as stealthy secret agent, playing all sides against each other, or a simple attacker, blasting away at whoever his chosen faction tells him, or anything in between. One could also completely disregard the storyline all together, start the game, and head for the nearest biggest ship to steal, and wage war against the entire galaxy. Of course, that plan isn't wise, and usually leads to a big fiery explosion of the player's craft. But it is fun. Another note is that all the different ships have different ability profiles, such as speed, weapons, defense, stealth, tractor beams, and what have you. I think it sounds cool."
Okay, I'm going to Jersey tomorrow morning, so.. I gots ta go. I promise more tomorrow from the garden state... I hope.
