IkimashoZ.com

San Francisco!!

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:08:00 GMT

Well, I haven't been keeping a very detailed log of my recent activities. That's because I've been preparing for the CALICO conference, which actually just ended today. I went to one presentation this morning and then hit the road. I saw the twisting Lombard Street and then headed down to Pier 39, and finally hit up the Golden Gate Bridge, pictured left. I crossed the whole thing by foot. Twice. Total distance walking to all this stuff: approximately ten miles.

The weather was beautiful all day, and pretty much all three days I've been here. The conference was incredibly productive for me, and I'm really glad I did it. Especially, the presentation I saw this morning. The last few days have been filled with stuff on Second Life. I was familiar with underlying concept of Second Life, but had never actually played it. After hearing the third (of five total) presentations on using the game for educational purposes, I decided to download the thing and try it myself. It was easily one of the most unexciting gaming experiences of my life. It lacks overt structure... scratch that. It lacks any structure. The teacher can create structure, but the if the teacher needs to do that, then why doesn't the teacher just create his or her own video game? And if you're going to do that, why not base your design on sound SLA principles instead of falling back on commercial software that wasn't designed with those principles in mind.

Anywho, aside from the Second Life fanaticism, it was a very productive experience on the whole, especially in terms of networking and developing ideas.

Early tomorrow I'm leaving for Seattle. It'll be my first time there too. Should be fun! Expect more pics soon.

An Evening of Cho

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Last night, I saw a Margaret Cho performance live for the first time in my life. Her new tour, Beautiful, debuted in Australia, and her first stop on her way to the mainland was Hawaii. Beautiful, in my opinion, was Margaret Cho at her best since I'm the One that I Want, her first DVD. If you have a chance to go see it, I can highly recommend this show. Cho is awesome.

In other news, I have a list of new stuff that's changed in The Online RPG 2. Here goes:

Users' names are clickable on Naj -- they link to that player's status page
Added a link to the status page so that you can message another player
Implemented item usage during battles
Made Naj a bit more graphical
Added the area "MedVendor" to Level One of Tachadine

I'll probably have a new list of stuff soon. Anywho, I certainly enjoyed my weekend. Good stuff. Now it's time to get back to work.

Ikimasho Games Episode III: The Return of the CPhon

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 01:09:00 GMT

Once, on an island far, far away there lived a man named Matt Buscemi. Matt Buscemi, tormented by the emotional turmoil, relinquished his weekly musings upon the Chinese phonemes, and disappeared into seclusion where he would spend a month playing Guild Wars, reading science fiction novels like Postsingular, writing item analysis papers for his testing class and laughing his ass off upon discovering the book Our Dumb World.

However, one day, all that changed. Matt was able to cast off his depression, and thus did CPhon arise anew from its month long dormancy, bearing new graphics and enemies and Chinese phonemes.

Eat that, Lucas.

Seriously, here's a specific list of some of the updates that I've achieved in the last twenty-four hours.

CPhon

Added a new store
Added a new battle area
Added new sounds
Added new monsters
Added new skills, but unfortunately, they don't work yet. I know I've been promising them for awhile. Next Saturday, that will happen.

The Online RPG 2

Messaging system implemented
You can now view player status
Implemented a quick link to take you back to the last place on Naj you visited
Added a new quest
Added the exploring system
Various bug fixes

The thing I'm kicking myself most over is that today's CPhon update doesn't complete the section I started, the Shenme Plateau. This is because my work on The Online RPG 2 ran over into today. I'm happy with the progress I've made on it though. Next week I will get the Shenme Plateau fleshed out, for certain. I want to have it done before I leave for CALICO, which is coming up in less than two weeks now.

And once again, kudos go to Burton Parker for the monster graphics. Excellent job, Burton!

'Til next Friday then!

Restabilization

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:11:00 GMT

After a rather emotionally hectic month, I feel I have finally begun to regain my footing. I payed for my summer ticket to Thailand recently. I'm doing a teaching practicum at a university there this summer. I bought the Thailand ticket shortly after reworking some of my travel plans so that I will be going to San Francisco, Seattle and Portland over spring break, although I had originally planned to spend that time in Chicago. Needless to say, all of this ticket buying has left me a bit financially drained, on top of all the emotional discombobulation I was feeling in my life.

If you follow this blog, then you can see that I was making pretty consistent Saturday CPhon updates for about three weeks or so. This pattern came to a grinding halt in early February. In its place -- silence.

I now plan to reinvigorate CPhon with weekly updates on Saturday as before. Tomorrow I will be posting again with a CPhon update, which will include some new artwork by the very talented Burton Parker. The game is finally free of the "No Monster Here" graphic... at least for the first battle area. More good stuff to come.

But wait! My job only covers my living expenses. How am I to continue to fund artwork for CPhon, especially after paying for all those plane tickets?

After much deliberation, I've decided to revive an old project from the middle of 2007, established and abandoned before this blog even began. It's called The Online RPG 2, and the concept behind it is actually more than a decade old. It has two predecessors. The original Online RPG was a game I made in high school which was basically a play-by-email game further mediated by a website. It was followed by The Online RPG v2, which was PHP driven and lasted about a year (not to be confused with the current incarnation, The Online RPG 2). It died just before my senior year of college ended.

This game was designed to turn a profit. You'll see the banner ads right away. I still have one big problem with this project -- it's not a pedagogically oriented game. I don't want it under the Ikimasho Games brand. In the end I decided, fine, I won't put Ikimasho Games on it. But it's the easiest way at my disposal to make some money to fund my other projects, and perhaps, in time, even support this site. Development of The Online RPG 2 will take place on Friday afternoons.

Enough babbling. Must get to work. Now that my world has stopped spinning, it's time to get productive again.

Matt is a Sad Panda

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:10:00 GMT

Unfortunately, due to extenuating circumstances in my personal life, there will be no CPhon update today. As you can see from the picture, said circumstances have transformed me into a large, and incredibly depressed Asian bear animal.

Many of you may have many questions. For example, you may be wondering, "Matt, how are you typing the article that we are now reading if you no longer have thumbs or fingers?" or "Matt, how are you able to process language with a panda-sized brain?" or "Matt, if sadness turns you into a panda, what animals can you morph into if you become angry or afraid?"

These are all very good questions. Unfortunately, my predicament has left me fatigued, and I have neither the time nor will with which to answer them. Before I leave, I will say only that I hope to revert to human form tomorrow and actually do CPhon work. Now get some bamboo, guldarnit.

A Genki Evening

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:30:00 GMT

I've just gotten home from lifting. I have the most whacked-out schedule for a 25 year old. I wake up at 4:30 AM. I go lifting at 24 Hour Fitness, which is a mile and a half from my apartment. I usually run or ride my bike. Then I lift, run or bike home, get ready for work, and show up there by 7 AM or so. I usually go to bed sometime between 8:30 and 9:30 PM. Crazy, huh? I think this is the first time that I've posted this early in the morning...

So, that was pretty anecdotal. Has nothing to do with the picture I posted. Which is me and my friend Katie at the new Genki Sushi at the Ward Centers in Honolulu. We got seated just underneath the giant genki sushi logo (as you can see), and just had to make a completely weird picture to go with the evening.

Good times.

I'm still slated to work on CPhon the day after tomorrow. Looking forward to it. 'Til then I'll be incredibly busy with work.

Ja, mata.

Another Week, Another CPhon

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 23:39:00 GMT

There's lots of new stuff in CPhon this week. The fifth section of the Hao Grasslands is now complete. I really enjoyed doing this background stills for this section. My inspiration came from a zone in World of Warcraft called Thousand Needles. I think they turned out really well.

There are a bunch of other little changes. I streamlined some code, so that it would work better. I also updated the credits and the year next to the Ikimasho Games tag. I added some explanatory text to the main menu, which I've been meaning to do for awhile. And, monsters now support the four frames of "animation" that they're supposed to have. You can see this in action in any battle. Since there are still no monsters or characters in the game. Just blank spaces where monsters and characters should be. Though, the monster text will change to indicate that if there was a monster there, it would be a different frame of animation. Finally, I've modified the way that items can be bought. All the same items are still there, but now their appearance has been staggered so that you can't overpower any of the bosses.

Now, what's been left undone. I have put off programming in the three attack skills in the game yet again. They were originally supposed in the shop in Tian. I then decided to push them back to the Spiretop Village, which is in this week's release. However, I decided when I got to Spiretop that it would be best not to have Spiretop be a shop. And so, they will definitely be in next week's update. The next zone in the game will be a shop. I swear this on the functionality of a my new computer. For, were it to die, I would be utterly screwed.

Nothing new in my life in general. Lots of work's been going on, on websites, on research projects, on materials development for a class I hope to be teaching next semester. More details to come as work proceeds. Until next week!

Weekly CPhon

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:43:00 GMT

Head on over to the download section and pick up CPhon version 0.8.3. This update includes a LOT of new artwork. Hao Grasslands, Jiu Mountain Town, Jiu Town Square, The Jiu Shop and Behind the Jiu Shop all have brand new, updated 3D backdrops. Naturally, City of Tian is now complete. This means that CPhon is now officially one eighth complete!

I found a problem with the finals... namely that a final was missing from the table. In correcting this problem, I created a problem for old saves. Anything save created after fighting a Still Elite will be faulty. And, if you keep using the save, you'll never unlock 'ing' as a result. If you don't want to start a new game, go back to the Jasmine Cave and fight the Still Elite and it will unlock the position correctly. You'll have a prematurely activated 'in', but that's less of a problem than not having access to 'ing' for the duration of the game.

As far as further development goes, I have a general idea in my head of how pretty much everything will proceed up through the end of the Hao Grasslands, the game's first big region. If all goes as planned, that should be complete on March 1st. I'm looking forward to being able to say that CPhon is one fourth done.

My work life is pretty crazy. The new SLS website is proceeding slowly but surely. Javascript is being a real pain, but that's nothing surprising.

At first I didn't really get into Linkin Park's new style on their most recent album, Minutes to Midnight, but it's really grown on me over the last week. A very good album indeed. If they come to Hawaii, I might just make time to go see them.

Backtracking

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:00:00 GMT

So, yesterday, Monday, I had a game dev day, which I posted about. And two days before that on Saturday, I hung out with Adam and Misty, which I didn't post about... 'cause I was feeling kinda lazy, I guess. Anyway, I'm posting about it now, after the fact, which is kinda strange, but hey, my world's kinda strange, so you'll have to bear with me.

Adam and Misty got me on a tour around the island, which was really awesome. Even though I live here, I rarely get away from Honolulu, since I'm so busy with school. My two favorites were Hanauma Bay and the North Shore. Those are two places I'd definitely like to visit again. The waves at the north shore were amazing. I have no idea how to gauge wave height. Some of the waves were taller than me, so maybe seven or eight feet? Not sure.

Anyways, great time. If you guys are reading this, hope you had a blast, and it was great having you guys out here!

On a more studious note, I almost have everything together for the CALICO conference in place. I'd really like to get back to working on the various projects I have for... um, my job.

Finally, I've found myself planning the next section of CPhon in my head. I have the general direction of game through Tian and its subsequent region layed out in my head. If I find myself with an adequate portion of time after school/work tomorrow, then I may end up doing some render work.

It's night time. I'm out.

New Chinese Phonetics and My Life is Crazy

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:50:00 GMT

So, somehow, between two jobs, tutoring and old friends coming to visit me, I somehow made time to update my game today. Now, I've set aside Saturdays as my usual game dev day, but the aforementioned friends wanted to hang out on Saturday. So, today being a holiday, I moved my dev day up a bit.

Lots of new stuff, but nothing terribly exciting in this update. Lots of story stuff here. I think I might have doubled the total amount of text in the game with this one update. New battles of course, but no new shops or skills. The final battle in this area is a bit tricky to finish for two reasons. First you have to figure out how to even fight the battle at all. Then, I added a twist that might surprise you. Good luck.

My jobs are coming along well. I'm the Technology Coordinator for the Hawaii English Language Program, which you can see here. My other job involves remaking the website for the Second Language Studies department. You can see the current one here and the new, in-progress one here. Of course, I have lots of work left to do.

I'm also busy preparing to demo CPhon at CALICO. I bought my ticket last night. I'm excited and nervous all at the same time. Should be a good time though.

That's all that's new here. Expect to see more here soon... at least on Saturday, anyway.