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I've returned for a second time after a long string (15) of exams again except these ones I did actually study for and didn't need to bury myself in a textbook at the end of term three not that anyone massively cares all that much, and oh look, the deranged lunatic is back with his tongue as if you hadn't noticed that already

My commentary is in red. WORLD BANK ASSISTED PROGRAMM DIRECTORATE OF INTERNATIONAL PAYMENT AND TRANSFERS. DEBT RECONCILIATION/AUDIT UNIT United Nations Headquarters, New York, NY 10017 , USA YOUR REF: WB/NF/UN/XX0L8 UNITED NATIONS. Dammit! They caught up to me! I knew I shouldn't have borrowed money as the ambassador from Lusitania! This is coming to you in regards to the recent meeting between the United Nations Compensation Commission to restore the dignity and Economy of Nations based on the Agreement with the World Bank Assistance Project and the U.N Security Council. Wait, this isn't about my debt to the UN? Forget I said anything. Also, what does the UNSC have to do with... well, this? This email come to those who are yet to receive their compensation, inheritance, winnings and who have been scammed in any part of the world, this includes every foreign contractors who have not received their contract sum, and anyone who has any unfinished transaction or Compensation payments which failed due to Government problems etc. The UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate you with the sum of $1,850,000.00 USD (One Million, Eight Hundred And Fifty Thousand United States Dollars). So you're telling me... I'm getting this payment because I'm gullible, and haven't yet received compensation for this? If I had known I could be paid to be dumb, I'd have asked my mum to drop me on the head a few times instead of teaching me basic math. Your email was in the list submitted by our Monitoring Team observers and this is why we are contacting you as one of our beneficiaries. You are advised to contact MR MICHAEL WILLIAM immediately for your Compensation payment of $1,850,000.00 USD (One Million, Eight Hundred And Fifty Thousand United States Dollars). which will be released directly to you in accordance with legal clearance and procedures. And mode of payment was as well specified for proper conducts and financial regulations to kick against criminality during process of payment (I don't know what this even means). We have arranged your payment through our swift card centers, with the latest instruction from United Nations Office And International Monetary Fund Reconciliation Office. Isn't the IMF separate from the UN? ...I hope they have cute secretaries or something. I should go pick this up in person. OWEVER YOU ARE ADVICE TO SEND HIM YOUR FULL INFORMATION. I'll pass this on to Mr. Owever. Full Name:........... Current/Valid Residential Address:.......... Nominated Delivery Address:........... Age:........... Sex:....... Occupation:...... Country:..... Home Cell Number:...... Direct Mobile Number:...... Contact MR MICHAEL WILLIAM immediately for your compensation payment by replying to this email or emailing the address below: MR MICHAEL WILLIAM. Email: <REMOVED> Telephone: Apparently, the phone number here belongs to a Peter L. Casserly, of Mission Viejo, CA. He is obliged to treat your case with utmost urgency as soon as you contact him and fill out your correct details including all reachable phone numbers for him to get in touch with you via phone and email. I'm obliged to mock this email, and also possibly reverse-Nigerian 404 it. For your information, you have to stop any further communication with any other person or office claiming to be the right office to avoid any hitches in receiving your payment. Because of Impostors, we hereby issued you our code of conduct, which is (Atm-7750) so you have to indicate this code when contacting the Card Center by using it as your subject. So... You're telling me to... quit talking to you? I... guess I could stop talking to you. Kindly be informed that recipients shall be liable to pay $350 dollars which is obvious cost arising for the delivery of the donation parcel and there will be no hidden fees. This is due to Legal law protecting all donation funds misappropriation. I'll show up and ask you about this in person. Good luck and kind regards, Mr. Ban Ki-Moon Secretary-General of the United Nations. His title is actually General Ban Ki-Moon. Not Mr. He really should proof-read what his secretary writes. Pending time, I shall poke at this and see if I can provoke shenanigans.

Hullo, Initially, I planned to post this as an "April Fools" video, where I joke about making an "720p version of the LEGO Alpha Team intro" except the end result is poorly drawn and so poorly edited you can literally see that half of the intro was recorded in GIMP. The only reason I'm not bothering to disguise it as an "April Fools" video is because... well ...this video ain't fooling nobody. It's more of a parody of the intro instead of something you can trick your friends into watching. Maybe if I put a Rick Roll somewhere in it, it could be an April Fools video, but most people would probably be turned away from the awful visuals before they reach the end. Anyway, here's the video if you want to watch it. Enjoy??

Okay, first this blog is overdue. About half a year overdue. I meant to type it up at the beginning of the year, then two weeks in, then at the break, and now I’m finally stopping procrastinating & am actually writing it up. Anyway, the reason I have not been around here nearly as much as a) I was and b) I would like to be is because last year I was at high school = not fantastically amazing and plenty of free time except for the infamous fifteen exams in two-and-a-bit months. Now, my life has taken a most interesting turn and I am at University! I’m studying Mechanical Engineering and have decided to skip the first year and launch straight into the second (it’s a four-year degree). After talking to many people it’s become apparent that by skipping the first year the only thing I’ve missed is large quantities of boredom. Naturally, this is extremely busy, as Engineering is widely viewed as one of the most time-consuming of the degrees. There are two types of engineering students: drunk dropouts who get C’s and D’s, and people who turtle in their studies and work hard. While that’s fairly accurate of any subject, for Engineering the gap is even more pronounced. As such I can’t come over to this wonderful place as much as I’d like. But that is less than half the reason. An important part, yes, but less than half. The other half of the reason lies in the fact that I have never had a social life before. Never. My maximum number of friends at school hit a top of about three, and was usually two. This was because I was at a small school (400 student spread all the way over from 5 year olds to 17 year olds) and there were very few people who were as dedicated to their studies as I was. (The few that did do a large quantity of work were in different years, and they were my few friends). About half of my class wouldn’t mind failing the final year. This made me incredibly lonely – but because I’d never known anything different, that was the status quo and I was fine with that. I’d never known anything else to exist. Then I found RRU and I found a whole bunch of other intelligent gamers (let’s be real, this is a nerd community. I mean that in the nicest way possible. ) Well, you could say that RRU became a very rudimentary form of my social life. I enjoyed chatting to you all even if I was a jerk on multiple occasions (as well as a… uh… rather bumpy introduction…). So for… it’d basically be the past five years, my social life has been non-existent and my friends included two people at school and RRU. Why is this important and why am I ranting to you about it? Because you lot are my friends, in that I can rant to you (and you can just block your ears, that often happens ). I don’t want to name anyone because then those that don’t get named don’t feel so happy, and that’s not the point – the point is that you lot, in a wide sense and with a variable continuum, have been my friends over the past years where I can just come and hang out in the empty, desolate shoutbox. Now University comes into the picture and I have found that there are actually other intelligent nerds that aren’t just on the internet. This is… actually somewhat of a surprise. Not really a “surprise,” just a departure from the status quo for the past thirteen years. As a result, I can now actually say that I have more friends than I can count on one hand for… well, to be honest, the first time in my existence. In fact, more decent friends than I can count on two hands – which is a huge deal for me and you can scoff at it if you like. Go ahead, I’m used to being scoffed at. Story of my life for the past sixteen years. This means… that I don’t need to spend as much time on RRU as normal, because my “socializing” is actually done with people in the real world – yes, that’s phrased awfully, but that hasn’t really happened before. It’s almost as if I don’t need RRU anymore, but that sounds too harsh. It’s just that I now actually have friends in the real world that I can talk to, and RRU is no longer my sole social outpost. This isn’t a farewell letter by no means – rather, it’s a long-overdue explanation of why I’m late. I’ll be around, if I can and when I can to chat with all you wonderful lot (for a given definition of wonderful ). See ya around!

Hi there, I said I would analyze the (available) code to Lego Rock Raiders and see what I can do with it and today I have come to a verdict. I will be able to reconstruct the game engine with the data I have available and the insights created by just looking at the overall configuration of RR and the game mechanics. It won't be easy nor will it be a swift task but it can be done and it will be done. One of my work projects has been postponed til 2017 and the other one is almost done so I feel like I can start on Rock Raiders Reloaded come next week and below is what I will start working on and what I will be planning to do for now with the project. When I start I will be working on: - The base engine (camera controls, HUD, resource control) - Starter elements (Tool Station, Rock Raider, Solid Rock, Dirt, Drills and Shovels) - The start of the Rock Raider AI system (I noticed how bare bone it actually is in the original game and will improve quite a bit) - Basic map design. - Keeping everybody up-to-date with what is going on. What I am planning to do with the project itself: - Recreate the Rock Raiders experience the best I can. - Improve AI for everything. - Make modding a lot easier on the new platform. - Fix a few things that were broken/glitched in the base game (Ore Refinery using more ore than it needs because of zealous Rock Raiders; Trucks dumping more resources than a site needs;) - Redo the way that drilling and using lasers on walls works by giving the walls HP instead of the system that RR used. - Change the Laser Towers into base defense structures which engage enemies in their range when a red alert is active and maybe nerf their EC usage or just remove that altogether. - Create a way of patching that makes sure you don't have to download the whole project every time there's an update. What I am planning for when the project is stable and has what it needs: - Keep improving the project. - Create a multiplayer mode (co-op for now, PvP in whatever form will require some more thought beforehand). - Work on a more complex sequel to Rock Raiders with more resources, buildings, vehicles and a ton more. Let me know what you guys think so far and I'm curious for your opinions and ideas.

Surprise! It's an Irish folk song. Except it's got guns! This is probably my new favorite track of mine, even with all the repetitions (which by the way are very intentional). This track is like 80% stuff I've never used or tried before, so it's got a very fresh sound. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do!

Hullo again. So, a few years back, I tried to make a Rock Raiders comic series (named "Rock Raiders know zilch", a title which was explained using the smallest Calvin & Hobbes strip available on the internet) in an attempt to one-up Arthuriel's excellent "Insane Raiders" series (which, due to my minimal sense of humour, didn't work well). Considering the fact I've only made 2 blog posts about "Rock Raiders know zilch" so far, it's pretty clear that I haven't followed up on my promise of delivering my comics regularly, but during RRU's downtime, I've worked on a few more strips (and I also managed to overhaul my art-style. Quick shout-out to @Ayliffe for posting LEGO Nexo Knights storyboards on Twitter, which inspired me to change how I draw Minifigs). So anyways, time for the new issues. Enjoy: #3 - RRU Raiders United #4 - Stress raiders #5 - Dimensional blunder #6 - "Loss" of clever ideas (Yes, its a dumb "Loss.jpg" comic, sorry @someswedish) So yeah, those are the latest editions of my comic series, which I'm renaming "Zilch Raiders" (because "Rock Raiders know Zilch" is a bit of a mouthful). Thanks for reading and I hope you've enjoyed these new strips. I'll be sure to post more comics in the future (although when that'll be is yet to be determined). -- Ben24x7 --

Hello, i have some more doodles i decided to put in here for your enjoyment. Do excuse the quality of some of them, the pages of the sketchbook must have rubbed the drawings all over the papper as i carry them on my bag, causing some of the smears you see, also phone camera is pretty much garbage.

FOREWORD: What you are about to read is The Long Walk, a mini-series companion to my adaptation of Lego Rock Raiders. It features an original character and will basically be a way for me to get a feel for the universe from a writing perspective, and for you to get a feel for how I'm going to handle the universe, and my writing style and abilities, from a reading perspective. I hope you enjoy it! THE LONG WALK When the Explorer was hit by an asteroid storm and thrown into a wormhole that hurled it to the far side of the galaxy, miner Ian Harrison hoped it wouldn’t get any worse. Of course, he should have known better. When a teleporter malfunction strands him in an unexplored cavern on the mysterious planet the Rock Raiders are mining for resources, he must do whatever it takes to brave the unknown and get back to base... PART ONE –Unexpected Complications– PART TWO –Into the Void– PART THREE –Entering Devastation– PART FOUR –Survivors– PART FIVE –Emergency Procedures– And that's it. The Long Walk is written. What did you think?

Whilst looking about the internet for things, I came across this rather daft-looking mod for Sonic Generations that got the Sonic character models from LEGO Dimensions and slapped 'em in Generations. So I downloaded it, booted up the game and my sides were immediately sent into literal orbit. (got a lotta screenshots to post, so I'mma put 'em all in spoiler tags for your viewing pleasure) lego sonic as you truly imagined it

Minifigures are poor defenceless creatures that only live to build. It's the one thing they know. They live in a world where the only places they can build are flat planes, which are few and far between. The horrible world they live in is filled with savage giants, completely disregarding the poor minifigures. They even move and destroy their creations that they've worked so hard on. But the only places that can provide them with building space are within the giants' fortresses. However, there are some giants that pay attention and empathise with the minifigure race. They provide a safe place to build and the bricks needed as well. The minifigures work with what they're given. Some nice giants are younger and less intelligent, and have a harder time catering to their minifigures. Others are wiser and help them greatly. But the other giants despise the outcasts. They attempt to take away and damage the minifigures' safe space. This makes space even more limited. But the nice giants grouped together and formed communities. The minifigures dubbed these "Afols". And the war for minifigure freedom continues. Conflict due to limited area arises in the safe spaces as well. Minifigures fight desperately, sometimes violently, for room to build, and even try to convince their giants to help them as well. But the giants guide the minifigures to make peace. This is the story of the minifigure. And it continues with you.

Not much to say. My first track in almost a year. Hope you guys enjoy it!

2019

Last Friday i made a special avatar for myself inspired by the jackbox party pack game Monster Seeking Monster. And over the next few days i have been making allot of avatars for other people, so i decided to showcase all of the ones i made so far. Hope you enjoyed these and if you want one for yourself, go ahead and PM me.

Found an exploit allowing me to load DLC content from LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens. Working on getting textures and models to load but that will take some time while I mess with the DAT format (need to figure out how to remove files from the archive).

My answer to the topic I recently created is going to be extremely long, so I've decided to break it up into multiple small blog entries based on the time period. These will be a bit rough, but maybe in future installments I might add some images and colour to break it all up. -- I don't know. I dunno why my Dad bought that PS1. He's not much of a gamer; he grew up on a farm with a handful of other siblings before moving down here to the city. Gaming never would be his forte, but I'd be happy to make that purchase all the more worth it for him. I think there's still a photo of Dad holding me, holding the PS1 controller, playing Grand Turismo. Either that, or I'm having some weird out-of-body experience memory of that very same event. That's where it all started; a very young me, and a demo of Gran Turismo. It wouldn't matter if I won or lost; kids don't care for such large concepts, it's all about the feedback. I could hit a button, and something happened. That is a feeling you don't forget. I was four years old in 1998. Back then, I was always more obsessed with VHS tapes and LEGO, if only because TV access was very limited. It probably didn't help that a baby me climbed and smashed some glass windows on the TV stand. I was creative, in a very destructive way. It explain my tastes in those early years; I could never win, but the thrill of Ape Escape, Formula 1 '98, V-Rally '97 Championship Edition and the Star Wars: Episode One: The Phantom Menace demo and smacking stuff around was enough for me. There was music, lights, and buttons to smack. Sometimes even vibrations. I had no concept of games libraries, back then. The whole world of gaming was just in those discs. Hell, I didn't even know what a demo was, and it didn't help that I couldn't even reach the end of my games to find out. Thankfully, my mind was expanded on my sixth birthday. It was nighttime; only that year had we moved to this big new house, and I was sitting on the small kitchen table directly under the intense yellow light. I ripped open my package, and there it was. Jeremy McGrath's Supercross 2000. Great people are influenced by great works. The likes of Shakespeare, Orwell, King and forth have opened a new generation of brilliant creators. What does it say when my major inspiration was some budget title that didn't even score average? The riding wasn't very good, I wasn't that great at pulling off the freestyle tricks, and the character creator was marred by the low quality PS1 graphics of the era but...but. It had something. Something I won't soon forget. In such low, terrible quality, it offered power unbeknownst to me at the time; a track creator. YES. I could make actual content for this game. I didn't understand it at the time, but I reviled in it. All the live-long day I spent, placing blocks, testing my track, changing it up and showing it to my young brother. Guess times have changed a lot, in some ways. Maybe not others.

Hullo all, Over the past couple of months, I've been looking at my past LEGO Source Filmmaker renders and discovering how untidy or buggy it has become over the past year. So today I thought I'd put together a collection of pictures/screenshots, all based on strange behind-the-scenes stuff and bugs that have plagued my past renders. So here we go! "Blended Minifigures" Everytime @Xiron updates his pack of SFM/GMod minifigs (even if the model's rig isn't edited), Source Filmmaker tries to replace the old models with the new ones, yet fails in a spectacular way: "Flex face fudge-up" I wasn't aware of these UV map "mistakes" until I made the "PIRATES!?" poster. "Brothers of shoddy arms" After I released the original "LEGO Rock Raider christmas desktop background" 2016 pack, Xiron fixed up the UV textures of the Rock Raider model. As a result, this minor arm texture issue has been popping up every now and again. "The shenanigans behind the scenes" (The following aren't really "bugs" or strange artefacts from a long while ago, but some people might find this bit interesting) Usually a scene looks fine from the camera's POV, but not everything is as it seems. Here are some weird things you don't see beyond the camera. ...and lastly, and more recently... "Post-Nuclear Warfare Classic LEGO Games collection" In an attempt to find the most screwed up session render, I came across my first poster with Xiron's "Classic LEGO Games" pack, made 2 years ago for the release of the Garry's Mod pack. And... yes it was messed up... But I didn't expect it to be the aftermath of a bloody Nuclear warfare. I hope you've enjoyed this... uneducational insight behind the scenes of my somewhat corrupted collection of old/unused LEGO renders. Thank you for your time. -- Ben24x7 --

Here. The gist is that it recursively creates and calculates the area of squares that compose a circle with radius 1, and totals the area of those squares to get Pi.

I've been accepted into University and have finally got all the paperwork sorted... it only came through four days before the term start as well as half the site crashing, along with them repeatedly asking for a form I ended up sending off three times, as well as some angry rants from Dad, far too much stress, and a general bucketload of idle parahpenalia which has no point but hey they want it in anyway... I also managed to get my timetable sorted and oh great I have one 9am start and four 8am starts. As I have to commute into Uni, this means I have to be up at 6am. I'll survive My study program is Direct Entry into 1st Professional Year in Mechanical Engineering; or as you probably understand, "My slave labour is Blahblah in Blahblah in Blahblah." Direct Entry means I skip the first year (Intermediate Year) completely and head straight into the first "professional year" of Mechanical Engineering; most people (99.5%) take the Intermediate year, which leads into any Engineering discipline or even into Science. I've decided what to do and thanks to those fifteen exams I sat last year I have good enough results (read: almost flawless) to allow me to do that. Engineering degrees are normally four years, but I've now cut that down to three. The bonus of Direct Entry is a) I don't have a boring, non-challenging year of revision and b) I don't have to pay a whole year's worth of fees (always nice). The main disadvantage is that it is extraordinarily difficult as you have, after all, skipped a year of Uni (but thanks to those high results it shouldn't matter too much, actually). I'm confident I'll cope. Mechanical Engineering is... well... a lot of things. To put it this way, if it has moving parts, a mechanical engineer probably designed it. They wouldn't have built it but they would have designed it and quite probably designed something to build it. And designed the something to build the something to build the something. It's kinda like an "inventor" in modern-day, fiddling with gears, belts, engines, and all sorts of moving parts. The electronics we usually leave to the Mechatronic Engineers. Or, ya know, just use Google. As an added bonus, those fifteen exams I sat last year have so far managed to net $23 000 in scholarships and counting, which is very useful However, due to aforementioned paraphenalia most of that only comes through later; all the way in March, August, or even in a year's time. But coming through nevertheless (One year's fees is $6000-9000. Mechanical Engineering sits a little above the $8000 mark) With a bit of luck, this means I'll get enough scholarships to fund my entire undergraduate degree As another added bonus, those fifteen exams got me Dux. That gives me a scholarship (see above), and it also dumps me in the university's "Emerging Leader's Development Programme." That, insofar as I can judge, is a collection of the brightest of the best (it's 120 people across University), and the progamme is not only a motivational "How 2 Lead In Twenty-Six Difficult Steps" but also a programme to get the typically-unsocial academic elite to actually talk and socialize. So far I've had two days of this progamme and it is amazing. For the first time in my entire life, I am enjoying socializing. Normally it's just me sitting with a textbook saying "oh look your day was nice thank you Captain Obvious I can see the weather even when I turtle inside" *turns page*.... but finally I have people who can keep up with my rather rigorous discussions, with similar interests, and similar intelligence. I haven't mixed around a lot so far, but what I have I've thoroughly enjoyed. It is just such a totally novel feeling, actually wanting to talk to people with the end goal of talking. It's something that has quite literally never entered my head (having been at a rather lonely pinnacle of academic achievement at a small school; throughout my entire schooling I have had less than four friends) ... the context is important. I now have, to be blatant, other academic elite I can socialize with. This just hasn't happened beforehand; the people just haven't been around. But now that they are, I suddenly find I am not entirely anti-social; rather the opposite, I just need somebody who is similarily elite on the other side of the conversation. That said, I'm still a good deal away from having what most people would call a "social life." This is the beginning; and to be fair I can't have a huge social life as Direct Entry will put a lot of pressure on me to study, so I can't afford to be that sociable. But I can afford to be somewhat sociable, and the notion of wanting to be social (with a select few, it must be said) is utterly new to me. The disadvantage of this all is that I'll be on RRU less, but given that RRU's post rate is such that you can come on once a week and not miss anything, there will really be no change Just less frequent tongue-spams in the Shoutbox. So now my holidays have finally drawn to an end after finishing school all the way on 1 Dec, and I'm really excited to be heading off into a new adventure. It's not going to be easy, he's been quarantined /fpaddict , but it is set to be a bundle of fun and a new challenge. So... uh... why am I posting all of this on an obscure Lego gaming forum? Because I want y'all to know what I'm up to, even if none of you actually care This forum is a special place for me; always nice, always forgiving, always something new, and I thought I'd tell you what I'm up to.

Hello, I'm still alive and lurking. This is the first video I had the chance to upload in a while, since I've been studying like crazy for the past few months. But now I finally have some time to get back to making music and uploading videos! This is a pretty simple EDM track inspired by the cyberpunk aesthetic, hope you'll enjoy.

As promised, here's a single post containing some of my videos, from this summer onwards! This is a TouHou style track I started two years ago right after finishing Champion Battle, but I remade it from scratch with my new composition style. Unlike other tracks inspired by the same source, this one is a full-fledged composition! This one is a rather unusual track for my standards, being more focused on experimental atmosphere and ambience than anything. Melodies are very scattered and are by far the least important element here. This is a pretty basic House track, it's nothing too extreme but it's definitely a refreshing take on such a stale genre! And last, but not least, this is a track I made as an example to show to a game developer who contacted me. I didn't even get to send it to him, so I decided to upload it. It's a JRPG-syle background music with very Japanese-y elements and floaty harmonies. And that's all! Enjoy!

So, as I am wont to do on occasion, I was spinning my merry way through my spamfolder in search of something that isn't merely boring advertisement. Lo and behold, hidden under a pile of duct tape advertisements lay this gem. As usual, commentary in Red. Attention Payment beneficiary, This e-mail is to acquaint you officially regarding the release of part payment of your contract /inheritance fund totalling $5.5M (Five Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States dollars only) under the auspices of the Debt Management Office (D.M.O) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Ah, the check from my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather 32 times removed from the old Birthplace of Mankind must have just come through. I've been waiting about a hundred thousand years for this. It will interest you to know that the acting president of Nigeria Professor Yemi Osibanjo have approved and authorized the immediate release of all outstanding debt approved for release by the last two administration that is yet to ne released to the beneficiaries. He's actually the Vice President. The President of Nigeria is named Osikazooie. Everyone knows this. The Debt Management Office (DMO) was immediately asked to produce the list of all beneficiaries both private and cooperate entities for verification before money will be released to them accordingly. During verification it was discovered that several unsuccessful attempts have been made to divert your money. Yeah, one was nearly pulled off by a General Ki Ban-Moon, who was masquerading as some guy in California. We discovered also that your classified payment file have been distorted and some virtal information either lost or intentionally replced to aid the failed attempt to divert your money. Another discovery was the wrong impression created by fake government and bank offcials that the money will be released by cash payment, ATM card, through offshore bank payment etc. You can never trust artificial government. It's like stevia, but it tries to pass laws saying that you must release all your money via offshore bank payments instead of just really bad gas. Be informed that your money will be released to you through bank to bank swift wire transfer direct into your bank account. ATM card and cash payment is not a global acceptable method of payment for such large amount of money. On your reply to this email i will give you further directives on how your money will be released to you. Thanks for your understanding and patience. Is Swift Wire Transfer where they transfer small birds using wires? Sincerely, Mr. Ronald Eze. Debt Management Office. His assistant is named Peze, and when they're not managing debts, they're busy fighting crime as the famous duo, Eze Peze. Quite an upstanding character, 10/10, would get randomly large money from again. Phone: <Interestingly enough, the phone number given maps to a mobile phone actually in Nigeria. I have no cheap way to call it. Oh well...>

Can you believe it's been almost a year since I wrote the original preliminary report on what LEGO Investigations was supposed to be? Turns out that getting a job (and having an existential crisis) can really derail you. After a very long time away, I moved on to design a secondary project; a Mad Max-inspired combat racer (born out of me poking around into LR2/Drome Racers a bit). As it turns out, that design really conveniently fit in the investigation mechanics of this project, and this I returned, opting to finish this proof of concept before attempting to integrate it into a much larger, more complex whole. A lot of my writing and rambling has been in a bunch of unrelated Discords with Game Design channels. To save you going on a long, painful journey through the history of how everything has changed, I'm going to format the current state of the design and the key things I've been working out. This isn't a formal document; merely a write-up of the crucial aspects to understand what this thing is. Summary of Story The meta-goal of the story is CHANGE. NON SUM QUALIS ERAM; you will not succeed unless you can progress. The game's first few cases are linear; these serve the purpose of acting as a progress tutorial, but also to tie into the meta plot-point of Change. After a certain mission, you die in an extremely similar fashion to the prologue. It's from this point forward that the player can really take control and change things up, and rightly so. Past the Point of Linearity, the game needs to be hardcore hard. The ending of the game reveals that the protagonist is permanently dead, his inability to pass on previously due to stubbornness and an unwillingness to change and accept facts. A smart player should be able to dig under the hints and determine the true killer (The Commissioner, acting to protect his job security), and evaluate that all of the cases are linked together to the killer. Summary of Mechanics Looking back, the original mechanics list was a rough, rushed approximation of the design goals I was going for. It only continued the dialogue issues I identified in modern detective games, and it placed a lot more challenge in the seeking of evidence, as opposed to the logical thinking of connections. It was too Point-and-Click like. This new set of mechanics should address that, adding a wider variety of player choice and fixing the problems that annoy me most when playing detective games. Camera Controls By default, the game will be in First Person perspective. The player must walk around the level to look for clues and to approach witnesses. As per Social/Streamer mode (see the Game Modes section below), there is also a static camera mode available, which acts as a bunch of Security Cameras focusing on all the evidence and witnesses within the scene, to reduce the amount of physical control required to play. Evidence/Event Collection Evidence Items, which can be anything from junk on the streets to known facts, are used to unlock Events, potential happening which give context to why the crime might have happened. The ultimate goal of the game is to prove the exact sequence of events that occurred, thereby proving the innocence or guilt of the suspects. Evidence can be collected in three forms; physical items lying about (such as a gun), unique details on a location in the scene (such as a bloody spray), or talking points from witnesses and suspects (such as a confession of guilt to firing the weapon). Collected Evidence is used as below to create Event Items, and both are stored inside the player inventory called the "Notebook". While Evidence Items are simply kept in a big pool, Events are categorised. Every level's sequence has a different number of "slots"; each slot represents a different type of Event, such as one slot for explaining how a suspect arrived on the scene while another showing how they procured a specific item. Every player is automatically granted 1 Event Item per slot at the start of the level (what the "official police report" has turned up), and the Beginning and Ending slot Events are always correct and cannot be changed (you are focusing on figuring out how the scene changed from A to B). As per the Skill System outlined below, tools such as object highlighting can be available with a purchase. Evidence Crafting/Management In order to actually get new Events, you must demonstrate how Evidence fits together by "crafting" multiple relevant pieces together. Evidence Items have lengthy descriptions about their context and known facts; within the descriptions are keywords, highlighted in set colours. You must link together not just evidence with keywords of the same colour, but also where the keywords match a set theme (such as getting red keywords which are all computer part names). Generally, the keywords are relevant to the Event they unlock, as a bit of foreshadowing. Evidence Items can have more than one set of keywords in their description (colour and/or theme), which indicates that specific item can be used to produce multiple Events. Furthermore, as a helpful management aspect; Evidence and Event Items can be "ruled out"; this effectively disables them and puts them on another tab in the Notebook. If an Evidence Item was used to generate an Event and gets ruled out, then the Event Item is by proxy also ruled out. Ruled out items will not show at all in the Question Time screen, but can still be used in interrogations. Event Simulation Once Events have been unlocked, they can be previewed. The Previewer works like a video player, with a reverse, fast forward and pause. You control the scene a bit like the camera system in any modelling package/LDD, where you can click and drag to rotate the scene, and you can zoom in and out to focus on details. The Event will appear as a hologram over the top of the actual scene, allowing you to double check if evidence items end up where they should, and if certain witnesses/suspects were present or not. Jotter Players have a space in the Notebook to record their own notes and thoughts. Interrogations As is the rest of the game, the focus of the Interrogation System is to either prove or disprove "facts" by using what knowledge you've acquired. Players can talk to witnesses/suspects in the world and ask them questions. The responder will then give their response, at which point the player must either agree, disprove it, cancel out with no penalty or use the Disturbance Mode option (detailed below). If the player is correct, they will be awarded new evidence, otherwise, the evidence reward is lost. Once a question has been asked, unless if the "Cancel" option was selected, that question cannot be asked again. Questions are not pre-determined, only answered. Players generate questions from a basic syntax, designed to focus on what the player wishes to know. The first two elements of the syntax are mandatory, whereas the second two are optional (but must be used together). The Mode [Who | What | Where | Why | How]. The Primary Subject (Either collected evidence, or "general knowledge", as in temporary evidence based on the context of the scene and who you're talking to). The Verb/Subject Modifier (Had, Used, Doing, or another word to indicate the relationship you're testing between the two subjects). The Secondary Subject (As above, minus the Primary Subject). Valid examples may include, "Why You Have Key", "Where Key" and "How Car Stuck Fence". If the player accepts the response, then no further input for that question chain is required. If the player believes the responder is lying, they will need to select from their collected evidence for something that proves they're in the wrong. As per the Skill System outlined below, one potential purchasable skill is the Voice Recorder, which records every line of dialogue to a section in the player's Notebook for a player's benefit. Disturbance Mode To engage in Disturbance Mode, the player must select the Disturbance option during an interrogation. On the surface, it appears to act as a dice roller; a successful pass will make the dialogue play out as if the player successfully chose truth or lie (with correct evidence, even if they didn't have it). However, fail a Disturbance check, and your player will engage in an aggressive (and odd) argument with the responder, losing you the evidence, locking you out of that question and reducing the success chance on any Disturbance rolls with that character. Regardless of a win or loss, use of Disturbance Mode will also have effects on the outside world; colours will distort, ghost objects will appear and other effects will occur. Ordinary dialogue lines for both player and response in all interrogations will also become more abstract (in tiers, depending on how many Disturbance options the player has used). The only way to revert to normal is to use the standard Truth and Lie dialogue options. As per the Skill System outlined below, Disturbance Mode itself is purchased through tokens, and has an upgrade chain which increases the chances of success, and also makes the effects of Disturbance Mode wackier. Infiltrations As a reinforcement of the Event mechanics, some Evidence Items might be in the possession of hostile forces, and require a combat sequence to collect. In a combat scenario, the player is locked to a specific camera angle, and must (within a turn limit) identify and select items within the world to use against enemies, in some ways similar to certain sections of Telltale Games' Batman. Players have a pool of points they can spend to observe on elements inside the combat ring, such as the enemies themselves, nearby objects and potential hazards. These offer Combat Advantages, which are functionality the same to Evidence Items, except that they are not permanently stored in the Notebook, and will automatically be turned into Combat Choices (Event Items) which you collect enough, as opposed to needing to craft them. Previewing of Combat Choices is limited to watching a small clip in-frame of how the combat sequence may play out if successful. When players are happy they have enough Combat Choices, they can line them up with a similar feeling to Fallout 3 V.A.T.S., and watch the event play out. Depending on the difficulty and the enemies, the player must successfully beat a set number of goons without taking more than a threshold of damage to get the Evidence item. Enemies cannot contribute to Combat Advantages; they instead bring up a popup with a description of that enemy's weaknesses and strengths, but viewing them costs points. As per the Skill System outlined below, there are a number of skills to upgrade to improve Infiltration ability, such as reducing the cost of viewing elements in the scene, or giving the player a larger threshold of damage. Question Time When the player is convinced they have every shred of evidence they need to conclusively rule what happened (and by proxy lay blame), they can visit whatever is used in the level to represent the end, and will be presented with a form split into two sections. The Event Sequence section requires the player to place the relevant events in order as they would have happened. The Question section requires the player to put Evidence Items in the gaps of sentences to demonstrate that the player understands what has happened. After submitting the form, the player is shown their points tally (50% for the Event Sequence, 50% split between each question for the rest). If they didn't get 100%, they are given a list of potential hints as to how they can improve when they retry. The level ends and the player is sent back to the hub. Skill System To reward (and encourage) players for getting stuff right, every correct question, every individual goon defeated in an Infiltration sequence and every successful Disturbance check unlocks a token. Tokens are finite, and there is one for every unique instance of these encounters in the game, essentially acting as way to track how complete your progress in the game is. Tokens are used both to make the game a bit easier by making subtle things obvious (to reduce player mistakes), and to give the player some more fun content (such as concept art or funny "cheat codes"). Level Structure The bulk of the game's content is intended for the Campaign mode, although individual levels for Streamer Mode and Workshop integration for custom levels would be nice. Within the campaign, once you are past the Point of Linearity and free to select what you'd like to do, there are two types of Investigations to choose from; Cases & Scenarios. Scenarios are individual crime scenes, and the entire investigation can be solved in that one level. Replaying the scenario will always act as if you are starting it anew; your campaign progress will only ever take your best result however. Cases are a string of multiple, linked scenarios. (Relevant, as predetermined by the designer) Evidence that was collected in previous levels is passed on to the next, for continued usage. Since it's possible to fail by not having cruical evidence from a previous level, the game will warn at the end of a level (after submitting answers) if they have screwed themselves. When replaying a single investigation in a case, if you elect to replay from the second or further missions in to that case, the game will carry forward your best results from the previous levels (i.e. if you replay from Mission 3 and 100%'d both previous missions, the game will automatically grant you all relevant evidence). Disturbance Mode effects are limited within the scope of a single Scenario/length of a full Case, and will not passthrough to other Scenarios/Cases. You can play, save, quit and load any Scenario or Case you like at any time from the hub, although you are restricted to one save per Scenario/Case. Every Investigation has an associated Difficulty Rating; this is used to warn a player if something is considered a bit too hard for them yet. Completing other Scenarios/Cases and purchasing skills will dynamically decrease the numbers for each Investigation (according to their individual rules on what makes them that difficulty), but ultimately should only be considered a guide and players may find their experience easier or harder compared to what's listed. Summary of Visual Design There's not yet a significant amount of work to report in this department, aside from some basic concepts. The game is aiming for that classic black and white noir style. Colours are used incredibly sparingly to represent important details; blues are good, reds are bad (and show connection to the killer). Consider that police lights are blue and red... Certain abilities can increase the colour within the world, and Disturbance Mode will add sickly greens while also adding unique filters. Smoke and Fog are the most important elements of the scene, usually lining the way towards something of critical importance. The construction of the world is a mix of 40s - 50s American culture with classic LEGO craziness. Stereotypes should be played to their absolute max. Game Modes While the intention of the game is mainly to attract solo players who wish to get inside the atmosphere, it's important to recognise that everybody lives in different circumstances; different audiences will have different requirements for the game. For this reason, I wish to introduce three modes which modify some of the game's mechanics and functionality. Normal: The intended mode of play, everything remains the same. By default, all social features are hidden and the default UI layout is Single Mode, which is better for viewing individual items at a time. Social: A local co-op experience, designed for multiple people inside the same room. The intent here is to remove the physical elements of play and focus more on the logical, group-minded tasks (so it doesn't matter who actually clicks the buttons to make the game progress, as everyone can participate to the thought process). Firstly, the First Person camera is disabled, replaced by static Security Cameras to scroll through, with all the relevant evidence/witnesses/red herrings visible. Since they rely more on fast reflexes (and we want to encourage players to go back and try the game in solo mode), combat sequences are outright disabled and any evidence they would have given can be simply collected. Cutscenes are disabled. The default UI is Multi Mode, allowing for seeing many items at one time to let players all fan out. Streamer: An extension of Social Mode, better suited to larger audiences over digital interfaces. Streamer has its own, much more complex campaign levels that require a lot of people working together to solve. To that end, a companion app will be available that lets users scroll through all the unlocked evidence, events and also view dialogue if the player is in an interrogation sequence. The player can configure and allow the audience the ability to vote on actions, either limiting or increasing how much power and options the audience has. If the player is streaming through a service with a chat API (such as Twitch), the chat can be directly viewed inside the game. It's a lot more more work, but building the game with these three audience types in mind will grant significant selling power to the title at a whole. There's still many questions to be answered, but this is already a good start into understanding what the different audiences needs will be. Level Design Methodology The actual implementation of the core mechanics (for the vertical slice, so long as you ignore a lot of the polish stuff like the game modes or localisation) is really simple; what's made to be tough is the puzzle design, to stress only the most enjoyable (through being challenging) experiences. As far as I've worked out, this is currently the best way to approach designing the levels. This process begins by having a very vague idea for a location, crime type and difficulty (how many events for the sequence, how many combat encounters etc) and then continues on; A rough outline of the level's floor plan is drawn (specifically only the playable space). It needs not be any more complex than some cubes, since everything can be shifted around and changed. There just needs to be a physical map for the sake of concepting to help motivate better choices. At this stage, plot the sequence of events as crappy little stick figures on the map. Put circles for people, and draw tiny symbols and arrows to represent interesting detail that will be critical to note for the next phase. Add a number next to each event to say which stage it is. It's all about understanding what the player's goal is, and trying to space the content of the level around the entire level, instead of making the crime stuck to one tiny portion of the map. For every event on your map, jot down in notes a description of what should be animated, who and what it involves and so on, so forth. Going even further, circle the things that would make for conclusive evidence that the event happened. We're not yet ready to say what form of evidence they'll be found in, but we can at least confirm every single thing the player will need to finish the level. With a high-level overview of the critical path ready now, it's time to go conspiracy-theorist and draw lines. Evidence "Elements" need to be connected together to show the relationship in how you can collect and use them. Some elements will simply only contribute to the unlocking of the event, while other elements should be used to unlock more pieces of evidence. Some evidence items prove, some disprove (both of those for dialogue sequences), and some act like keys. It's not time yet to say exactly what one does to another, you need only to mess around and try decide on some open or closed chains of progression for your player. Now that you understand the item relationships, you can place them into the level. Mix it up; have some items as physical collections, some as environment details to study, and some as evidence extrapolated from interrogating witnesses. This is also the time to create your red herrings, witnesses, and flesh out the scene itself. Lastly, you need to create all the valid permutations of dialogue and item descriptions (including the little coloured hints) for this level. There needs to be a mix of valid Truth and Lie cases. It'll also pay to begin thinking about Disturbance Mode modifiers for the level. It's not a perfect process yet, but it's a start. As I become more comfortable making levels, I'll refine this process and figure out smart shortcuts, as well as a clearer set of designer rules for working within the bounds of the mechanics.

The butterfly has flown out of its cocoon. Or something. This is my magnum opus. I've never made something so complicated, and I'm really proud of it (despite the short duration). Feel free to count how many time changes there are, and what tempo this music's in.

I'm dumb.

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/flipline-studios-espanol/images/1/17/Papa_Louie2.png/revision/latest?cb=20131023044137&path-prefix=es Papa Louie: When pizzas attack is a great family game, both my son and I talk is game. My son even asked me to give him Papa Louie: When pizzas attack plush dolls as presents and rewards. It brings us through the entire range of human emotion – it makes us laugh, cry, scared, excited, hopeful; and it gives us a real sense of adventure. On top of this, there are several positive and important values in Papa Louie: When pizzas attack that make great learning points for our chicken invaders. The first (and most obvious) is the value of obedience. For many of us, it’s a consistent struggle to get our kids to obey rules. For Maro and papa Louie, it wasn’t any different. Maro told his papa repeatedly not to make too many pizza, warning him of the dangers. But in a show of “I can do it. I’m a big boy now,†papa Louie made the pizzas, ignoring his dad completely. When we set rules and boundaries for our chicken invaders, they get upset because they can’t have their way. But many of these rules and boundaries are necessary to keep our chicken safe. Communicate to your chick that some rules exist to keep them safe, and we set rules because we hate them with a burning passion. Let them know that if they disobey, they will have to live with the consequences. We all know what happens next. A pizza ate papa Louie, and he was trapped in a harmonica. Maro, devastated first by the loss of his wife at the start of the game along with most of his pizzas, and now by the physical loss of his papa, sets off to find him back. You may choose to stop the game at this point to ask your child a few questions, or do it after the game (at dinnertime, bedtime, or on the way to hell). The second lesson is friendship. Lugi, a green maro, comes alongside Maro in his search for papa Louie. Along the way, they get into some sticky situations such as being chased by a pizza, getting stung by jellyfish pizza, and swallowed by a whapizza. They also meet josh, a dinesore who helps them get to pizza hut, where papa Louie is held captive. Good friends don’t come by easily, so we should cherish our friends. Friends who help when you are in need are friends worth keeping. Remind your child that they should first be a good friend to others, before they expect others to be a good friend to them. Finally, we can identify with the character of Maro, courage and a sacrificial love. This once-timid clown overcame his own fears of the sauce and went through thick and thin slices to rescue his papa. Love is brave and courageous, even in the face of pizza. Let your child know that you will be there for them when they face difficult circumstances. Explain to them the concept of sacrifice - giving up something that is important to us. (This is probably a good time to express your love for your child ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).) From a parent’s perspective, I also learnt that it’s important to know when to let go, and not be over-protective of our little ones. We should allow them more room to learn to protect themselves and take responsibility for their actions, so that they can “grow upâ€. Yes, I talk is game.

Greetings, and welcome to the inaugural entry in what is certain to be an edifying and scintillating program. I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all here tonight. The reason, good sirs and madams, is birds. A most vital and compelling matter, as you can no doubt see. Neither of these things is a bird, and yet they're nearer birds than any non-avians alive today. Whatever one might say about archosaurs (and there's a lot to say) they were no slouches. Not content to have produced the first vertebrates adapted to flight, they opted for an encore, conducting themselves with no small amount of style. Stick this in your fancy sails, synapsid freaks! There was a lot of tweaking over the eons, but eventually the familiar form emerged: Sans tail, sans claws, sans snout. Aerodynamism incarnate. Still, it was not so definitive an avian that it overpowered its beakless-breathren. Rather, it coexisted with all manner of feathered beauties. Look ma, no wings! Alas, the cosmos is a cruel mistress, for the age of reptiles was coming to an end. Between the Chixalub asteroid and the Deccan Traps, Aves, birds as we know them, watched their dinosaur brethren vanish from the Earth, in what was not even the worst mass-extinction to date. While those puny mammals were getting their act together, Aves was flourishing, getting up to all manner of outrageous hi-jinks Flight! What is it good for? It should be noted that while no other dinosaurs escaped, there was another lineage of archosaurs that survived.... And while it was those pesky hominids that ultimately reached sapience, one can hardly deny the impressive cognitive faculties of certain birds... Not bad for a lineage that lost its hands millions of years ago! In conclusion... Well.... What was the point of all this? Oh! I know! BIRBS!

And I'm back with more music! It took more time than expected to get the video done, but it's all good now. It's here. This is some pretty complicated music. If you don't like it at first glance, give it another go. Irregular time signatures aren't as intuitive as 4/4 and the like.

So it was my birthday and I had a very nice time with family and friends. Loot included: - clothes and blanket - two DLCs for Warhammer 2 Total War which I have spent the past week playing with -One 'black box' from a friend that contains OSes from the 80's, which in turn can then run various games from that time period, including the first three text-based ZORK adventures aaarg my enter key isn't working- and such a quantity of Lego that I couldn't build it all over the weekend! ATLANTIS: - 8075 Neptune Carrier (of which I had one already ) - large set - 8077 Exploration HQ (of which I also had one already ) - very large set - 8059 Seabed Scavenger - small set - 8060 Typhoon Turbo Sub - medium set - 8057 Wreck Raider - small fry compared to the above All complete, which is nice! Minifigures, portal keys, and all! FANTASY CASTLE THAT'S LITERALLY WARHAMMER (evil skeletons, Orcs with green skin, Dwarves, heroic Mannish defenders) - 7079 Drawbridge Defense (missing some minifigure accessories; one crossbow, some weapons (got plenty spare ), golden shield (used serving dish instead), golden sword (used katana instead), golden helmet (used gold fire cap instead... this guy looks pretty wacko now ) - large set - 7037 Tower Raid (complete and duplicate, neither of which worry me ) - medium set - 7097 Troll's Mountain Fortress (missing 1/2 of minifigure heads but all bricks, and both trolls, there) - very large set Note on 7097 - It is the worst fortress I've ever seen. It has no reinforcing at all, and when assembling it the pressure of putting bricks together caused the high tower to just disintegrate before my hands. Using my remote controlled repeating ballista, I ran the combined fortress over into pulp. The gates fall off, the gate arch falls backwards, the bonds between segments split, the walls implode... A terribly reinforced set. I'll have to fix that MARS MISSION: - 7690 Eagle Command Base (missing one large orange pipe, which is a bit of a shame as it's one of the most important pieces of the set as well as one of the most irreplacable. Not a problem, I'll just share from my other Eagle Command Base ) - large set - 7692 Recon Dropship (missing minor replaceable pieces) - large set (The dropship is quite large, but the alien craft which will be forever termed "Alien Extractor" is quite hefty as well. Very dense. - 7697 Clawtank Ambush (complete) Now my third Clawtank (or is it fourth? I've started losing count of my number of Clawtanks and LRR's Loader Dozers ). However this can hardly be said to be a problem, unless one considers storage space. - medium set All in all, a colossal haul that I'm almost embarrassed to share ... But there's one more thing I got... Can you guess what it is? You'll never guess Make a guess, and then open the spoiler below... Yaaaaaaay! My engineering degree has taken its toll. See, it's not just the degree. As part of my engineering degree - that's what makes it so special - I have to have obtained 800 hours of engineering-related work experience. Else they don't let me graduate and I'm left floundering for work experience. At the beginning of last year I threw myself into it by skipping first year and starting second-year immediately. Then in the semester-to-semester break I picked up 120 hours of needed work experience. This left no time to prepare before heading into the next semester, where I took a fifth course on top of my workload. Then came the Christmas break, which was again spent a) desparately hunting for needed experience (very stressful!) and b) doing work experience. I finished work on a Wednesday and the first semester of 2018 started on the next Monday. All without a single proper 'day of rest.' (The engineering degree is four years, so I've got this year and one more to go). Small wonder, then, that my brain is now forcefully shutting me down as I'm on study leave. It is to be expected that I am feeling as exhausted and despondent as I do feel, just because my brain has never had time to calm down for the past one and a half years. Weekends would be spent fretting about assignments. Major holidays were spent hunting down work experience. Minor holidays always had assignments due over them. It's not too bad though. I'm very tired and unwilling to get any study done for exams, and my sleep schedule is nonexistent. But that's most of the effects of it (other effects include unwillingness to socialize and a total lack of patience with inanimate objects). Which is bearable, and as depression goes, relatively minor. At least, that's what I tell myself. Whether it's actually true is another matter, but at least I'd like to hope that things are minor. They certainly all make sense now that I know I have proper depression as opposed to random 'meh-ness;' nearly all of the hitherto inexplicable events that have happened this year can be explained now. Nearly. Oh well. I hope you're all doing better than I am, but I know for some of you that flat-out isn't the case. Al-ways look on, the bri-ight si-de of life!

Heyyy, it's been a while since I've done anything! Better get back on track with a fully produced track with real recorders! As I mentioned in the description of the video, this has been laying around for a pretty dang long time. While I still think this track is way too silly for me to take 100% seriously, it still is pretty important to me, so I felt I needed to publish it and move on with it. Hope you'll enjoy!

i'm so sorry

Merry Valentines!

I've never really followed the whole "New Years Resolution" thing before, but in getting older and running out the body clock, I've realised it might be good to start making some changes. One thing I really want to achieve next year is one of my biggest failings from this year. I'm a software developer by day, and a gamer by night. Being drained through the day with professional-level coding has made me bitter and cynical towards my own projects, to the point I've stopped doing them. While I still write game design documents as a hobby, I've completely put off physically working on any of the projects I would have once committed to. My New Year's Resolution is to produce one large-scale mod. It's something I used to do, or at least make serious attempts at, and I totally have the capability to do so now. While just making a new project from scratch gives me a lot of freedom, doing it as a mod means I get to excite an existing audience and utilise any existing content/implementations (i.e. I don't have to make my own guns or gun code, which is important as I have no visual ability whatsoever, and core stuff like weapon physics are a real pain in the knackers to do). A big problem of making a game from scratch is that any serious investment will cost me (purchasing asset packs or artists to make the game not look s***, paying for my own time and materials, paying for promotional stuff etc) and I'll want to seek return, which means a lot of legal and certification woes to deal with. I just want to build something big but relatively light that people can enjoy. My trouble is selecting a game for the specific mod I want to create. In an ideal world, my ultimate mod project would be a kind of Destiny-styled Raid, set in a breaking-down theme park. That is to say, a networked game-mode where a group of players are teleported between several small scenarios, in which they must complete a puzzle with barely any hints, while a horde of enemies attempts to gun them down. The story and aesthetics will be based on the likes of Westworld and Jurassic Park, which I've become very obsessed with recently. Ideally, players can collect audio logs, and collecting enough will change the final boss fight (or add a second one). Of course, that kind of project would be intense to produce, especially with many mod kits, so the idea is modular and flexible. Maybe it will only be solo. Maybe combat will be reduced. Maybe there will be less variety of individual puzzle mechanics and instead more reuse in creative ways of the same puzzle mechanics. The core, player surviving a collapsing attraction park, will remain the same. I'm looking for suggestions of games that have the capability to do anything along these lines. I've thought about using Blockland, but I've heard some negative things regarding the capability of the bots and having many different behaviours going at once (ideally, many people can connect to the server, group up in "fireteams" and run different parts of the course at the same time, like how a theme park ride has people in different rooms). If people can prove Blockland is capable of this kind of stuff, sure, but otherwise I'd like to know anything else I could use as a base. Another variant I've thought about (and one more relevant to RRU) is to make an overhaul for LEGO Rock Raiders that switches it up to become a time trial to find certain missing people and objects in the various tunnels underneath the park that staff used to get between attractions to perform maintenance. Any suggestions will help. A part of this is I want to make something people will actually play, as opposed to just producing crap for myself.

Here's the music I made for Halloween this year! It's a little late as the blogs weren't fully implemented back when I published this track, but better late than never I guess. Enjoy! ? I will be rolling out a couple other tracks from this summer over here in a couple days to not overflow the blogs section.

So, I've decided to tackle the task of creating an adaptation for Lego Rock Raiders. If you've already read my status update in the forums, you can pretty much skip this one. Except for the end. Go to the end, there's new information. So, here's all the information I've got so far. About This Project Since I tend to write primarily Sci-Fi/Action/Horror series, as well as more serious, adult-themed stories, Rock Raiders will reflect this. As such, Rock Raiders will contain violence, harsh language, and some adult themes. (I feel like the freaking MPAA.) Though the story will largely be Sci-Fi/Survival/Action, there will be themes of Horror, Mystery, and Romance throughout. I am planning on posting this story as I write it. Basically, when I finish a chapter, I'll post it. I'll be posting to WattPad and Fanfiction.net, and possibly here as well. Seeing as I'm extremely busy with other original and fan fiction projects, it'll be a little while before I actually start the writing portion. I'm shooting for two months, so April, but I might have to push it back to May or possibly even June. The good news is that all this extra time will result in more planning and polishing of the plot, characters, and universe. When I do start updating, I'll attempt to commit to a two or three times a week update schedule. This is not a novelization, but an adaptation, meaning that a lot will be different. I'll be using the games (PC + PS1), as well as the comics for a base, and build from there. And it will be featured in an original, 'realistic' universe, there will be no Lego characters. Characters. I'll be adding in three new primary characters to the core cast, and I'll be making some changes to the already existing cast. I'm still figuring out how I'm going to tell this story. At the moment, I believe I'm going to switch between several different perspectives, namely the nine main characters, with particularly emphasis on some of them. I know that Axle will be the 'main' character, the one I write about the most. Other candidates for more highly used characters will be Jet, Sparks, and Bandit, as well as one of the new characters. So that's all the info I want people to have going into the project, so that they don't have all sorts of differing expectations. Now, as for where I am in terms of planning precisely at this moment, well...here's a quick list. I have an official working title: Rock Raiders, as well as a cover for the story that I've created that I'll post below. I have a name for the planet this takes place on. I've got a rough idea of the layout of the LMS Explorer. I've got a pretty good idea on all nine of the main characters, personalities, traits, physical appearance, etc. I think I have all of the structures planned out. I changed some, removed others, added more. I've got eight unique environments worked out, since the game only really came with three different environments. These include: Rocky, Ice, Lava, Crystal, Underwater, Plant, Ancient City, and Surface of the planet. I've got a working list of all the monsters, including native creatures, I want to put in the story. Still debating on whether or not to add any, and if so, what to add. Other than that, I'm still working out environmental threats, vehicles, and equipment. There's definitely going to be some cool new technology and methods of explaining some of the crazier pieces of tech the Rock Raiders have access to. I have just a few scenes in the beginning planned out. I also have an official Twitter dedicated to this project that I keep up on. Check it out and Follow me! Here's the cover of the book. Now, as for the other piece of news: I have decided that, for a number of reasons, it would be prudent to write a shorter piece of fiction set alongside the main novel. Some of these reasons are: It'll give people here an idea of my writing style/capabilities. It'll help get me in the right mindset. It'll be fun. I've decided to write a mini-series called The Long Walk. It features an original character, one of the nameless Rock Raiders you could say, after he gets transported into the wrong cavern due to a malfunction, and goes through a lot trying to get back to base. Here's the cover. I'll hopefully start posting that to this site, in this blog, relatively soon. Thanks for reading! -Obsidian

So, I'm not very good at blogging, although I like the idea of it. I figured the first post should act as an introduction. Since it's very easy to find anyway, here's some information. My name is Sean A. Lusher and I live in Columbia, MO. I'm married. My wife and I started dating in 2006, got engaged in 2009, and married in 2010. We just bought our first (and hopefully only) house in July of 2016. We live with three cats, (two are ours, and if you visit any of my other social media, you'll see lots of pictures of them, they're very photogenic), and two of our friends. As a little aside, I know there are a lot of people that are kind of weirded out by the idea of a married couple living with other people. I'm not entirely sure why this is, beyond the fact that it's not traditional, but we've tried living alone. Did it for a year. Living with people, (people you can trust and are reasonable, obviously,) is definitely better. I'm a writer. Currently a self-published writer, looking to become a somewhat more traditionally published writer. I began writing consistently in 2004. I wrote fan fiction for about nine years solid, with the occasional foray into original fiction. In 2008 I finished my first original novel. It was crap. Later, I rewrote it. In 2009, I won a contest at a convention for writing a short story in a certain amount of time. I was up against a couple of dozen others, one of them being a professional. (I still wish I knew who it was that was the professional published author.) I also got a short story published on a free online website that no longer exists, to my knowledge. In 2011 I got a sci-fi/horror novella published by Damnation Books (They no longer exist in their original form either, thankfully). I then self-published a short story and a novella for the Kindle. I kind of just screwed around through all of 2012 and some of 2013. I got two more novellas published that year with Damnation Books, a contemporary horror and a fantasy tragedy. I regret it, they sucked at their jobs. Hardly made any money. I think that perhaps, altogether, with those three titles across however many years they were published, I might have made 100$. Though my self published titles didn't do any better. In 2012, my wife and I moved to New Mexico, as she got a good job. Good enough that I no longer needed to work the awful minimum wage jobs I'd been working for several years at that point to support first myself, then us. It took a little while, but I finally produced my first full length novel that seemed worthy of publishing. It garnered a great deal of attention on WattPad, getting over 250,000 Views and hitting #1 in both Sci-Fi and Horror on the site. From September of 2013 to December of 2016, I worked on a series of Sci-Fi/Action/Horror stories called The Shadow Wars. The series features fifteen novels, three novellas, and nine short stories. I didn't see any real success until early 2015 and while I enjoyed about six solid months of upwards success, I've since had my income cut in half. Twice. For no discernible reason. I'm still lucky enough to be piecing together enough money to cover the bills so that I don't have to work. I'm currently preparing to start up a second pen name and attempt to get published with an Australian horror publisher that I think would be great for me and my ideas. The reason I'm doing this is because I think I can reach a wider audience and I'm honestly exhausted from doing EVERYTHING by myself. I'd like to have someone help with the workload of creating and publishing books. Although for several years I had a very good friend of mine, who was exceptionally talented, creating cover art for me and some occasional marketing, I now do everything by myself, and after three solid years of writing a fifteen novel franchise, I'm exhausted. So, now that I've spent the past several paragraphs talking about what I've done, I'd like to take a moment to let it be known that I have no illusions about myself and my writing. I am as successful as I am, (not very, at this point, I could probably make more at a full time, minimum-wage job), because I am lucky and because I work pretty hard. But mainly because I am lucky. I don't believe I'm owed anything, and I'm happy for every sale, every read, and every comment on anything I write. I try to find a happy medium between writing what people want to read, and writing what I want to write, and I think I do okay, for the most part. As for my writing itself and my ideas, I think that, on my good days, I'm about average. Most of the time I feel like what comes out falls pretty far short of what I had hoped would come out, but I know that basically every creative person feels this way, and honestly, it's for the best. Feeling like you produce crap motivates you to consistently try harder, which means you get better. So, for the record, I don't think I'm special, important, or even particularly interesting because I have written books or because I'm lucky enough to scrape by on what I manage to pull in each month. I don't even think I'm all that intelligent, to be honest. I've worked through a lot of crap over the years, and I'm on some light psych meds nowadays, and I've evened out for the most part. At this point, I just try not to worry about whether or not I'm good enough, or smart enough, or whatever. It doesn't really work as much as I'd like, though. Honestly, how I look at my life can be summed up in a two quotes. The first is from House: "Yeah, if we were all satisfied with what we had, what a beautiful world it would be. We'd all slowly starve to death in our own filth, but at least we'd be happy. Listen, I need your self worth to hang on this job, for kicking ass here to be all that lets you rise above miserable. If waking up in the morning is enough, then I don't need you." And, probably the one I apply more often to my problems, a quote from Rick (from Rick & Morty): "THE ANSWER IS DON'T THINK ABOUT IT, MORTY!" Whether or not I'm good enough or smart enough or whatever, honestly doesn't have a lot of bearing in my day to day life. What really matters more is that I don't think about it and just WORK, just get stuff done. Overthinking things, in my experience, leads to a huge amount of procrastination. And, for the most part, kicking ass at writing is, a lot of the days, all that lets me rise above miserable. Maybe not the picture of mental health, but I managed to get fifteen novels written in three years as a result of it. And I hope to get a lot more written. So, that's basically me in a nutshell. Honestly, I'm a boring person. I spend 95% of my awake time in my office, at my laptop, doing something related to writing. What little social contact I get comes from my wife, my roommates, and typically one other friend who I go to watch crappy movies with once a week at her house. (Right now, we're working our way through Friday the 13th.) And really, it works for me. Despite that, I do actually really like talking to people. If you have questions, feel free to shoot me a message anytime and I'll more than likely get back fairly promptly. The only other thing that I feel is worth mentioning right now is that I'm working on a feature-length written adaptation of Lego Rock Raiders. It'll be a little bit before I get to the actual writing portion, but it's going to happen, and I've got a good feeling about it. -Obsidian

Huzzah! RRU is back (but not quite, but hey its back, yet not entirely). So yeah, its nice to be back. I'm currently drafting a blog post containing most of the fun stuff I've made during RRU's absence, but I decided this little gem deserves it own blog (actually, I'm just posting it because that's one less thing to post for the next blog). So tell me, fellow Rock Raider... What is Rock? Landslides don't hurt me... ...don't hurt me... ...no more... -- Ben24x7 --

Not to be confused with Mech. I won't be uploading music too regularly in the next few months, even, unfortunately. I'm quite busy with school, the soundtrack I'm working on, games... In other words I won't have time to make music for YouTube and y'all in general. Sorry!

A bit of context: I wrote this terribly silly thing a few years ago on request from a player in a BIONICLE Mafia game I was hosting (as one does). Anyhow, I've always felt remiss that I never got round to posting it on this site, so here goes. Enjoy! Here, for the curious, is the scene in which it originally appeared: Kudos to Ghidora for requesting this in the first place.

Sleep is hard. Body does not want to sleep. Brain wants to sleep. Brain tends to lose. Hi! I'm [still] Jaina, [still] queer as hell, [still] messed up in the head [but slightly better than before], [still] obsessed with LEGO stuff. Especially that which was around during my early childhood. Hey, it's been a while since I was around here. I dropped out of RIT. Game Design, while still a huge passion of mine, is no longer something I can pursue. I simply cannot retain ANY useful information about coding (beyond the basics) if I stop coding for even a short period of time, and I have trouble learning anything new in it. I'm also in a bad place in my life, mental health wise, so I'm focusing on doing a whole lot of therapy and getting my s*** back together. I brought back RSIs (repetitive strain injuries) brought about by trying to breed a shiny version of every single goddamn Pokemon (for which that is possible) by playing an extremely excessive amount of Dofus, followed by Stardew Valley, and then Sunless Sea. I'm itching to go back to Sunless Sea. I have no self control, though, so whenever they are feeling marginally better I do something to screw them up. It's REALLY boring watching Netflix and trying not to fidget all day long. I recently remembered how awesome LEGO stuff can be and I want nothing more than to build, build, build. Unfortunately, my home is in Rochester, and my bricks are with my parents, in Saint Paul - plus, my hands hurt all the frickin' time so I'm not gonna open that barrel of snake worms until they are doing better. In more positive news, I have a partner and also a sort of partner who will probably eventually be a girlfriend and it's pretty great. It's weird that some people actually find me attractive. Edit: Hopefully I'll be around here more often. I have very little to do lately. Recovery is dull.

Hey, remember that daft Bionicle short I made literally a year ago to the day (only just realised it was so long ago whilst making this post, crikey)? Well, while RRU was down for repairs I had to do a short film for me Media Foundation course, so I went and made a seven minute long followup! Also one of them wears a suit. Yuuuuuup! It's probably the most ambitious project I've done so far and I'd really love to do more stuff like this in the future, s' good times. Special thanks to @le717 for his glorious vocal tones, @Ben24x7 for his neat-as-hell credits illustration and everyone else on-and-off RRU that contributed to the making of this thing! Enjoy I guess?

I apologize for the sassy title and blog post in general. I decided after much deliberation that it's time I do a soft-reboot of my channel. After 5 years of complete staleness, it's time I actively start promoting my brand by sending some cheap EDM music to people like Dubstep Gutter and Berzox, as that's what cool people do these days. But mind you, it's going to be just a phase. I will be doing what I have to until I can start making again the stuff I want, I hope you understand what I mean. Besides, it's not like I despise EDM. If it's not repetitive and unoriginal garbage like most of the releases on UKF I'll most likely see some good in it, and try to incorporate it in my style. My plan is to start making both EDM and VGM in the future, as I enjoy them all the same, even if for different reasons. So, what I mean by soft-rebooting is: I should change my name again, to something more thought out and unique, that will sound acceptable for both for EDM and the more VGM and cinematic side of music. What I found was this name: Nuwe. The Nue is a mythological Japanese creature which "has the face of a monkey, the legs of a tiger , the body of a Japanese Raccoon Dog and the front half of a snake for a tail" (Wikipedia), basically a chimera. It's also known for being very mysterious and enigmatic, which led to a shift in meaning of its name to "man of mystery". Now, to me this name sounds glorious. Super simple to write and remember, I like how it's pronounced, and it's got that meaning which perfectly fits what I do (many styles under a single identity, sort of like a chimera?). The only problem is that "nue" in French means naked (feminine), which is stupid. So I used my Nihongo no kakikata no takumi to rewrite it in a less equivocal way, and got Nuwe, which is even better, because for reasons I cannot explain here it looks stylish to Japanese people. Additionally, in Afrikaans apparently it means "newer" which is a plus. So that's the name I wanted to go with. The alternative is to use a pseudonym where the first name is a shortening of my actual first name and Nuwe as a fake surname. I was also thinking that maybe the logo could use some tweaking. Thoughts about all of this? Any critique to make? Please don't hold yourself back. You're my focus group and I want to hear everything I can from you.

And its done... 4 Weeks of dragon picture each day A total of 28 pictures (with exceptions to the occasional bonuses) But now I'm going to call it done, i probably will redo this sometime again i the future though. Hope ya enjoyed and remember... Say no to dragon slaying! Day 22 Day 23 Day 24 Day 25 Day 26 Day 27 Day 28 (Finale)

With the Nexus Farce: Ingress of Imagination entering its final, if belated, chapters, and the Elimbies poised to collapse next month (I'd like to believe there is some causality between the two), I find myself at a juncture: what should I waste my time on next? I have a few ideas, including those listed in the poll above (that question is multiple choice, so mark any of those that sound interesting and/or say in the comments). I enjoy crafting narratives and building models, and the two mesh together pretty well. I have a vague story arc plotted out should I continue the Nexus Farce, but I'd also like to try my hand at something a bit more freeform. The Nexus Farce was written to be obscenely verbose as a joke, though in hindsight I'm a bit more critical of this choice. In spite of its numerous flaws, I'm still rather proud of IoI on the whole. Maybe one of you knows better and would be kind enough to explain why I'm wrong; I'm serious about that. While I do this for my own entertainment, it can be satisfying to get feedback on something that's been so long coming. Really, even if you just got a wry chuckle, or none at all, from the Nexus Farce and related material, I'll take any criticism you guys have.

EDITS TO MAKE: Segments define the state of a level (specifically Enemy and Crate placement), based on player data when they first load in. For example; Major Segment = First time you go through a level Minor Segment = Less crates, less bolts to prevent bolt farming 3 Invisible Difficulty Levels that you can be on (Easy, Medium (Normal, Default), Hard), likely tied into segments (Note: Difficulties were only switched for future levels), with Challenge Mode locked to Hard mode no matter what Every time you fail at a boss in RC2, the boss has less total health the next time around. We measured everything in meters on these games because that was the default unit in Maya. The way you can tell how many units something is is that a single crate is 1x1x1 Ratchet is approximately 2.5 meters tall. Ratchet & Clank -> Z-Up Specifiy planes for chunks and for water the engine originally worked that you specified a plane, and that anything below the plane was assumed to be underwater (and would trigger water animations and effects). -- Before I ship this information off to The Cutting Room Floor to be properly organised and displayed, I want a kind of online scratchpad that I and others can use to just jot down research notes. https://tcrf.net/Proto:Ratchet_%26_Clank:_Up_Your_Arsenal While the Debug Menu is open, the game is paused. The Debug Menu is marked as; 1106.0, 05:34:09 Aug 11 2004 For most pages, tapping Cross over a selected option goes forward/up in value, while tapping Triangle goes backwards/down. L1/R1 switches between Debug Menus. I've listed any options here, with the default one being the first in the list. The key to understanding this Debug Menu is to remember that every PS2-Ratchet game was essentially a hack of the previous game. GLOSSARY OF TERMS Not actually a menu, but just a list of commonly used jargon with definitions. Mobys: Stands for Mobile Object. Refers to any moveable, dynamic object which has code attached to it. Common examples include crates, enemies and Ratchet himself. Tfrag: Stands for Tessellating Fragment. A static object which is capable of dynamically tessellating (increasing or decreasing the amount of polygons that form the mesh) based on how close or far the player is. The main limitation is that no face could have more than 4 points/vertices (and presumably required more than one). Tfrags are mainly used for the main level geometry, and if a player gets too far away from a Tfrag, it is not rendered at all (due to the Occlusion system discussed below). This was a technology inherited from Naughty Dog. TIE: Stands for Tfrag Instance Engine. As it says on the tin, this is an instanced version of a Tfrag which allows for cheaper rendering if the same Tfrag needs to appear multiple times in the one level. Despite being derived from Tfrags, supposedly these do not support automatic tessellation/LoDs and had to be done manually. Originally, these too were static, but in Ratchet & Clank 2: Going Commando, the giant train used on Planet Siberius required that TIEs could be made moveable/dynamic. Known examples aside from that include the Galactic Ranger Dropships in R&C3 (which are actually made from several ties). This is a technology inherited from Naughty Dog. Shrub: An instanced object type used for small details that don't have collision. The LoDs were generated automatically, with the lowest detail being a simple 2D billboard quad (a flat polygon). As well as plants, other small detail objects used for decoration could be made as Shrubs. This is a technology inherited from Naughty Dog. Parts: Shortened name for Particles. Particles are little objects that have several properties, such as colour, lifespan and movement data which be spawned by a Particle Emitter. They're used for all the special effects in the game, such as explosions, weapon muzzle flash and electric sparks. Pill: A cylinder shape with spheres attached at each end, resembling a pill. These are one of the primitive shapes (others include cubes and spheres) that could be used for things such as collisions and shadows. Spline: Also referred to as a Path. An invisible, curved line described by a series of points. Objects could be made to move along a spline. Most elevators and taxis move along splines. Volume: An invisible box which some special behaviour can be tied to. For example, Shadow Volumes (a Naughty Dog-inherited technology) define a space for faked shadows to exist in, whereas trigger volumes can enable a script behaviour when the player touches them. Cuboid: In Ratchet & Clank, enemies have multiple "alert states" that define how they are behaving in the current moment. These states include Attack, Alert/Search, Idle and so on. In order for enemies to determine which state they should be in, they check several radii; essentially, the further Ratchet is away from the enemy, the more relaxed that enemy's state is. Cuboids are special types of trigger volumes that are mainly used to tell the enemy to activate the radius checks so they can begin to figure out which animation state they should be in. Chunks: As of Ratchet & Clank 2: Going Commando, a single level could be broken into individual chunks. To reduce the memory cost of having an entire massive level and all its segments in memory at one time, a developer could place a Chunk Plane, and anything above/below that plane would be in a different chunk; certain objects would remain in memory, but much of the geometry, music and so forth would not be loaded yet. You could then specific in the level when to load into the next chunk. Loading a chunk only took a fraction of the time as a full level-load, which is often represented in-game as a small pause with a black screen (the switch between the main Tyhrranosis hub and the boss battle), whereas level loads have special loading screens (such as Ratchet falling down the sewer pipe on Aquatos). Segment: There are two uses of the term; from an in-game, technical perspective, this refers to a part of a level between checkpoints, and is used to set up moby (specifically crates and enemy) placements. By default, every Segment is set to be "Major" (MAJ), and will load all crates and enemies (although, this is modified by the current difficulty tuning level). When the player reaches the end of the segment, it is flipped to the "Complete" (CMP) state and no new mobys will be spawned in the segment. If the player reloads a level, all previously completed segments are switched to the "Minor" (MIN) segment, which loads only a small amount of enemies and crates, and also enables Mining Mode, which prevents the player from farming bolts by reducing the amount of bolts you can collect. As far as design is concerned, a Ratchet & Clank level is divided in multiple paths with varying objectives/rewards for completion of each path (some required, some optional). To add variety to the levels, these paths (segments) can be designed as one of the following; traversal segments (platforming challenges with light combat), enemy segments (combat-intensive sections), mining segments (like the sewers on Aquatos, for grinding coins and experience) and puzzle segments (using a gadget with light combat). Every level generally contains at least two of the three, if not all. Segments were very complicated with regards to bolts and difficulty; as far as bolts were concerned, every Segment needs to give a specific maximum amount of bolts as specified by the designer (to ensure good progression). When you kill and enemy or destroy a crate, a number of algorithms are run to generate the amount of bolts to give you to ensure you do not exceed this total while still getting a good amount per object. Breakables (other mobys placed in the level) do not factor into these equations (because the equations rely on the specific ids for the crate/enemy mobys), so instead these use a function called "Spawn Gravy Bolts" which spawn a reduced amount bolts which don't upset the economy (usually figures under 10). On the other hand, Difficulty is split between three modes; Easy, Normal and Hard, and the effects of these modes are complex (see the Tuning section later for more). Skybox: Despite the name, the Skybox is a giant textured sphere that is centred on Ratchet's position (and thus moves with him). The Skybox is sorted first, and as such is always rendered behind everything else. Occlusion Culling: A system used to determine what objects the camera can actually see, and only render those specific objects (more specifically, only render their visible faces). While Occlusion Culling wasn't new, Ratchet & Clank was most likely the first game on the PS2 to do it, and this technology was given to Naughty Dog by Insomniac Games. In Ratchet & Clank, Occlusion was precomputed and the process usually was left to run overnight; the system would separate the level into cubes, and then determine what was visible at every point of each cube. Because this process was painstakingly long, most alpha/beta builds did not feature proper occlusion to speed up the time it took to burn the game to disc for testing/demonstration. Futhermore, the Occlusion System only worked for non-moving/static geometry (Tfrags). MAIN PAGE Contains most of the useful options and information when debugging the game. UPDATE Enables/Disables updating of specific types of objects in the world. Disabled objects will not respond to input, but will still be visible/rendered. Ratchet [on | off]: The current player character. Technically a Moby, but separated in the debug menu for testing purposes. This only affects Ratchet himself; his armour, helment and other attachments still count as mobys, and thus will stay in place if Ratchet is moved while moby updates are disabled. Mobys [on | off]: Handles all moby objects in the level, including Ratchet's attachments, crates and enemies. Parts [on | off]: Deals with particle effects. When disabled, particles can still be generated, but they will not expire which usually leaves a hilarious massive cloud wherever the particles are being generated from. Camera [on | off]: The player's camera. If a cutscene plays while this is disabled, when the cutscene ends the screen will remain black as the camera cannot play its fade-in animation. Step [off | on]: When enabled, the game will appear frozen; tapping the L3 button will step forward one frame at a time. vu1chain While not editable, it has some info about how the VU1 (Vector Unit, one of the PS2's units for doing vector math) is being used at any given time. max: Appears to be the maximum amount of memory that was allocated since level load. lim: Appears to be the hard limit of memory that the level is allowed to allocate for VU1. MODE Controls general settings for the game, such as how it renders. Control [normal | camera | cam+chr | volume]: Sets the current control mode, which has the side effect of flipping on/off the Update switches (which can still be manually modified). normal: The default mode. All Update switches are turned on (aside from Step) and the game controls like normal. camera: Detaches the player character from the camera and allows you to fly through the level. L1/R1 control Height, L2/R2 move horizontally, Dpad-Up/Dpad-Down move forward/backward, Dpad-Left/Dpad-Right rotate the camera in the selected direction, and holding both L2 and R2 with either Up or Down on the Dpad will rotate the camera up and down. Disables all Update switches. cam+chr: Exact same as Camera Mode, but leaves the player camera attached to the camera. This allows you to place the character anywhere in the level. By default, all Update switches are disabled; enabling Moby Updates will allow you to activate checkpoints and other triggers without most types of enemies noticing you (and those that do cannot damage you), which is useful for studying the tuning info. volume: Same as Camera Mode, but enables both Mobys and Particles while leaving the player character disabled and detatched. Useful for viewing the level without triggering any additional behaviours. Profile: See the "Profiler" section below. Occl: [active | off | freeze]: Sets the current Occlusion Mode. Occlusion Culling was, for the most part, properly precomputed in this beta, so it's still possible to view how these modes work. active: Normal. Objects that are not within the view frustum or are too far away (according to the Draw Distance option below) are not rendered. off: All objects in the level are rendered regardless of where the camera is. Can be incredibly slow (and may even crash) in particularly heavy levels, like the Aquatos Sewers. freeze: Freezes the occlude state of objects when this option is set. This lets you move around the level to get a better view of how everything was occluded when the camera was in the original position before you set freeze on. Bookmark: [off | on]: Originally, programmers could place "bookmark" locations with this setting, which allowed them to skip back to places, but it doesn't work as it requires a developer kit. Invinc: [off | on]: Toggles Invincibility on and off. Ratchet will still play damage reactions, but his health will not decrease. Draw dist: [normal | near]: Controls how far objects can be away from the character and still be visible. Coll: [hotspt | camera | sound]: Although it's likely to change the way collisions work, this option doesn't seem to do anything now. TV mode: [ntsc | prog | pal]: Changes the video output between NTSC, Progressive and PAL, but the only apparent change in PCSX2 is a more consistent framerate when Progressive is set. 16:9 [on | off]: The same as the "Widescreen" option in the regular game menu. Screen [normal | split 2 | split 3 | split 4 | small]: Changes the camera mode. Selecting the split options in singleplayer will hard-lock the console (as they're intended for multiplayer), whereas "small" zooms the camera way out but turns up the FOV. Scene [#]: Press Cross to change the number, and Circle to attempt to play the cutscene for the loaded level with that ID number. If no cutscene for the level exists under that ID, a warning message pops up instead. Chunk [#]: Like above, press Cross to change selected chunk and Circle to load the selected chunk (and unload the current chunk). Warning; will NOT teleport Ratchet to that chunk, so you will more than likely fall to your death unless you set the Control Mode to cam+chr. Minor [off | on]: Forces the current segment into Minor mode. This is permanent, so reloading the level will have you enter the Minor segment as well. Dump [normal | normal2 | Filter | medium | high]: Used to dump a certain amount of debugging informating to a dev-kit, but doesn't work without that. Movie: [60fps | 30fps | 15fps]: Used to record gameplay footage in the selected framerate and send it to a dev-kit, but doesn't work without that. PROFILER TBD - (off, bars, render, mobys, ties, shrubs, cpu/gpu, occl) There are several modes this to this debugging overlay; they're all used to measure performance of certain aspects in the game off: Default. Nothing overlaid. bars: Creates a bar at the top screen which moves progressively towards the right as the game consumes more resources. Either due to a bug, or intentionally, only the CPU bar expands outwards (as it appears GPU debugging is disabled). The white line on the far right represents what the intended maximum was supposed to be to stay inside of the game's framerate. Each colour on the bar represents different systems and how much memory they're consuming. With exception to 'off', every other Profiler option contains the bar at the top. render: Outputs four columns; the left set of numbers most likely measuring draw calls/render counts, whereas the right-most column always remains at 0, due to the GPU debugging issue. The red asterisk, the column full of "on" (which implies there's an off state for debugging those values) and text running off the screen may indicate there's supposed to be a way to scroll down the list and enable/disable options. It's most likely that these lines are in the same order that things are processed and rendered. render setup: Unknown, but cannot be switched off. Is being processed by the CPU. sky texs: Textures for the skybox. No CPU value. sky draw: How many calls are being made to process and render the skybox. tfrag texs: Textures used by Tfrags in the level. No CPU value. tfrag draw: How many calls are being made to process and render the active Tfrags in the level. tie texs: Textures used by TIEs in the level. No CPU value. tie draw: How many calls are being made to process and render the active TIEs in the level. pre effects: Most likely refers to some kind of pre-render effects, but unknown exactly what. shrub texs: Textures used by shrubs in the level. No CPU value. shrub draw: How many calls are being made to process and render the active shrubs in the level. pre 2 effects: Just like pre effects. moby texs: Textures used by mobys in the level. No CPU value. moby draw: How many calls are being made to process and render the active mobys in the level. effects texs: Textures used by the pre/post render effects. Both CPU and GPU counts are disabled. vu effects: Vector Unit effects? What? moby effects: Effects specifically applied to mobys. part draw: How many calls are being made to process and render active particles in the level. post effects: Calls for the post-rendering effects. Both CPU and GPU values are disabled. Fb-post create: "Fb" likely stands for "Frame Buffer", which is where the completed render is stored before it's sent to the monitor. Unknown what is actually being done at this stage. Fb-post apply: Same as above. GPU count only. hud: How many calls it's taking to process and render the HUD above everything else. screen overlays: Would relate to any effects which go over the top of the HUD and the rest of the rendered image. GPU counter only. aa blur: Anti-Aliasing, GPU counter only. debug text: The very debug text you're reading. Cannot be disabled, and both CPU and GPU counters are disabled. DRAW Adds overlays with useful debugging information (with one except, all these simply are off/on toggles). Many of these simply do not function, or behave in odd ways. Darken: This was most likely meant to darken the background to make debugging text easier to see, but it doesn't appear to work. Env coll: Doesn't appear to function; likely would have shown the collision meshes for environment objects in the world. Moby coll: Doesn't appear to function; likely would have shown the collision meshes for active mobys. Hero coll: Doesn't appear to function; likely would have shown the collision meshes for the player character. B spheres: Doesn't appear to function; likely would have shown the bounding spheres for objects in the world. Cameras: Unknown. Cuboids: Doesn't appear to work in this version, but would most likely have shown the cuboids for triggering enemy alert radii. Sample pts: Unknown. Text: Creates 5 lines of white text at the bottom of the screen with the following information; HERO POS: {x0, y0, z0} {x1 y1}: Two different vectors for the player's location. The first is measured as float values (and is Ratchet's position from the origin), while the second is integer and does not include a z-axis (and is most likely a vector pointing towards some specific object in the level). CAM POS: {x, y, z}: The 3D Vector for the camera's current position. CAM ROT: {x, y, z}: The 3D Vector, in radians, for the camera's current rotation. Depending on the normal of what Ratchet is standing on (for when he is on spherical worlds or metallic surfaces), Ratchet's up/down rotation will be locked to 120 degrees (±1.05 radians in either direction). WORLD TIME: #: A constantly ticking up integer value that represents how much time the game has been active for since the level was loaded. XP: #: Shows a truncated display of the XP value in the debug menu (see below). UIDs: Displays the Unique IDentifiers for object instances in the world, prefixed with 'u' (salmon colour). Many objects (such as Ratchet and his ship) are marked as "UX", purpose unknown. Moby Num: Displays another set of identifier numbers over any mobys, prefixed with 'o' (blue colour). Groups: Displays yet another set of identifier numbers over objects which indicate their "grouping", with the prefix 'g' (green colour). Ratchet, his ship, vendors and other objects are often marked as 'g255'. Interp: May have been intended to display splines that objects use to interpolate between positions, but it doesn't seem to do anything in this build. Tuning [off | black | white | blue]: Adds tuning debugging info in the specified colour. See the "Tuning" section for more info. Sky: Unknown. Sound: Unknown. MINING The Mining System is used in Minor segments to prevent players from farming for bolts when they re-enter a segment, to encourage players progressing and moving forward with the game. When Mining is active (by collecting a bolt in a Minor segment), some additional debugging information is added in a couple places. Firstly, a simple text display is added at the bottom of the screen; this appears in-game, in-cutscene and in the pause menu, but not in sub-menus or in the debug menu. When first activated, it will generally look something like this; 0 / 0:01 = 0 (5) The actual formulas for deciding what amount of bolts are more complex than this, but the goal of the mining system is to reduce the number of bolts available to you over time. The formula displayed can be broken down into; Amount Mined / Time Spent Mining = ??? TBD, it's all just theory and speculation now. (Notes below) The Mining System appears to be designed to reduce the amount of bolts and/or experience you get from revisting previously completed worlds, maybe to prevent grinding? The problem is that while all the numbers tick away, it's not clear at all what the underlying math is, or what exactly it's trying to do. Only appears when you replay a level (revisiting the planet) and collect a bolt. At this point, the timer will activate. Is per-planet, but on an individual planets the counters are never reset (so if you did 14 minutes of mining and then fly back, the timer is still at 14 minutes) When mining counter first appears, it starts at 0 / 0:01 = 0 (5) The timer freezes after idling for a certain amount of time [Unrelated] Hero Seg may be actually relating to either the current "difficulty level" or how many boxes are being placed? TUNING TBD, it's all just theory and speculation now. (Notes below) Like text, adds some lines of debugging information to the screen. The option sets the colour of the text. Tuning also enables both the UIDs display (but in the colour of Tuning text and ONLY for enemies), as well as an additional bit of text under the UIDs (purpose unknown, known values include "*0Ae", "*0A-", "*0Be", "*0C-", "*0Ce", "*0Ch", "*0Cm", "3A-" or "0i"). While Tuning is enabled, the debug lines shown by the "Text" option are hidden, regardless of if "Text" is enabled or not. The debugging information that appears also is dependant on if "mining" has been enabled (see the "Mining" section); Max Wage: (Mining Only) Unknown. Value remains static once you load into a level, but is different for each level. Amt Mined: (Mining Only) The amount of bolts collected when mining is active. Time Mining: (Mining Only) A timer that displays how long since mining has been active. Mining: (Mining Only) Unknown. Seems to be a multiplier hardcoded between 0.5 and 5.0, but not sure how it's used. XP Deficit: If an enemy falls into an unreachable area, normally their XP and Bolts would be lost forever. The game tracks when this happens and stores how many points they were supposed to award you, making it up over the next couple of times you make gains. XP Deficit never seems to increase, however, most likely because the system automatically awards you the XP rather than waiting for you to kill another enemy. Bolt Deficit: Same as above, but also takes into consideration crates (but not other breakables). This value does correctly increase and decrease as you make bolt gains. Current XP: Unknown, as this doesn't not correlate to the player's actual XP amount as displayed in the Text->XP message. Enemies: #/ #: A display of the amount of "enemies" (including explosive boxes left in the level. The right side represents the total spawned, while the right represents the maximum amount of enemies available (independent of difficulty tuning). Killing an enemy reduces both values. Crates: #/ #: Same concept as above, but this is specifically for health crates. Showing: Unknown. Seen values such as '-1', '0', 'C', 'min' and 'h' listed, but as to what they refer to, I'm not sure. Hero Seg: This seems to change as you get to different parts of the level, and is always in the format of a number followed by either "min", "maj" or "cmp". MISC Some additional controls to affect how the game works. Ratchet HP [#]: If this is set higher than Ratchet's current HP, will play the Nanotech Increase effect and message, but otherwise does nothing and will reset when you reopen the Debug menu. Bolts [#]: Either adds or subtracts bolts from Ratchet (functions correctly). XP [#]: Adds or subtracts .1 of a point to Ratchet's current XP (functions correctly, untested if you go under the amount needed for a previous level). This value matches (minus the decimal part) the XP value for the Draw->Text option. Raritanium [#]: As this game has no Raritanium, appears to have no affect. Battle cam [off | on]: Unknown. Actuator [on | off]: Unknown. Add sample [no]: Refers to the audio system, but doesn't appear to work. Add start [no]: Refers to the audio system, but doesn't appear to work. FOG These controls don't appear to function, but should control fogging. Near dist [x] Near int [x] Far dist [x] Far int [x] Color R [x] Color G [x] Color B [x] WEAPON DEBUG PAGE This page is one giant table for every weapon in the game (ignoring the wrench). 6 slots are empty, but may be linked to the multiplayer weapons rather than deleted/hidden content. The headers for the table are; NAME: The name of the weapon. Duh. UPG: The current level of the weapon. '0' indicates that a weapon has not been purchased yet. Pressing the Circle button will let you increase level (and unlock a weapon if not already bought), while Cross will decrease. AMMO: How much ammo that player has for that weapon. DMG: A float value that somehow represents the amount of damage each weapon does. HP2: Unknown. HP1G: Unknown. HP2G: Unknown. As a warning, if you enable a weapon by setting its UPG value to above zero, it will not show in the Quick-Select or Weapons menu. Some of the weapons do not have sounds. GADGET XP PAGE Despite the name, specifically represents how much experience each weapon has. This menu is nothing more than a list of names and float values. LOAD LEVEL PAGE A list of levels in the game and their IDs. Selecting an option with the Square button will warp you to that planet as if you had used your ship to go there. For this version, every level from Daxx onwards is not included, so will crash the game. TUNING PAGE Speculation is that these are special properties as needed for individual levels, that didn't have an appropriate place in the other menus to be displayed when debugging/testing. Also contains a "Completes" value, with no known effect. WEAPON MODS PAGE For each of the weapons in the game, allows you to enable/disable the Shock, Acid and/or Lock-On mods, but only for weapons that can take those addons (for example, the Qwack-O-Ray cannot use any of them). SPACE COMBAT PAGE Like raritanium above, a hold-over from Ratchet & Clank 2 that lets you enable/disable special parts for your ship, but goes completely unused in this game. RC2HUD TWEAKS N' SETTINGS PAGE Contains two settings for controlling HUD functionality, which can be turned on and off. QSEL PAUSE: Does the game pause while holding open the Quick-Select menu? Enabled by default. IGE DEBUG: When enabled, prints some garbage to the screen (it's likely the font used in R&C2 was not included). Ratchet's movement is paused, but everything else (including the camera) moves. Disabled by default. RC3 CHALLENGE MODE PAGE Sets your current Challenge Mode level. You need to press the Circle button to increase this number, and the Square to decrease it. While it does have an effect on how much damage enemies do to you and how much damage enemies can take (after saving and reloading), there's no bolt multiplier and the save file doesn't include the number. RATCHET ARMOR PAGE Allows you to set what armour Ratchet is wearing. Despite the tool tip, there are 4 armour levels instead of 3. Instead of using the normal Cross/Triangle, you need to use the left/right directions to switch this number. CAM FLY BY PAGE If you press the 'X' button, this is supposed to play a short camera fly-by animation, but only if one exists for the level (a red message will appear if it doesn't exist). FONT PROPERTIES PAGE Neither of these options seem to have any effect, and it's not known if these should affect the Debug Menu or the in-game font. Drop: ?? Scale: ?? POST EFFECTS PAGE Allows you to control how post processing effects render. Bloom copy tint R: ?? Bloom copy tint G: ?? Bloom copy tint B: ?? Bloom copy tint A: ?? Bloom apply 1 A: ?? Bloom apply 2 A: ?? Bloom show 1 [off | on]: When enabled, and if there is bloom in the rendered view, creates a small black window in the bottom-right corner. As you move your camera about, any bloom effects will be displayed in the box. This is likely to help isolate issues with the bloom lighting when debugging. [!!! GRAB SCREENSHOT !!!] Bloom show 1 [off | on]: When enabled, and if there is bloom in the rendered view, creates an even smaller, static texture map in the corner. [!!! GRAB SCREENSHOT !!!] Arcade effect strength: ?? LEVEL TRANSITIONS PAGE Lets you debug the ship transition screen when going to a different planet. Level From: Which planet you are coming from. Level to: Which planet you will warp to. Show transition: Plays the transition based on the numbers you entered above. Will actually warp you to the selected planet.