SSGX's BYOND website

New arrival!

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:57:20 GMT

My little* son, Jacob, was born on Wednesday, November 21st (almost a week overdue, and induced at that... who knows how long he'd have taken on his own; a procrastinator like his dad)

So that hopefully explains why I've been quiet recently (and not likely to be too active for a little while longer)

I'll post some more details later!

*9lbs 3oz, 21 1/2 inches (so not so "little"... of course, his old man weighed in at 9lbs 12oz, so it must run in the family!)

In mourning

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:14:43 GMT

"There�s a character named Ness who has appeared in the Smash Bros. series up until now"

Up. Until. Now.

: (

So, if I've understood this wording correctly, it sounds like Ness has been completely replaced by Lucas (as opposed to my hope that they'd include both of them, with different move sets)...

Goodbye, my friend...

Alas, this is the first (and hopefully only) disappointing news to come out of the new Smash Bros, so I think I can forgive them...

I guess, though, that aside from some added abilities, some tweaks to the familiar attacks, and a cosmetic change, he's still basically the same fighter Ness was... So as long as his style still feels like Ness', I'll be alright, I hope...

I still wish they'd give us Ness, though... Maybe there's still hope of him being included as an assist trophy or something...

Murder Mansion 2nd Annual Halloween Preview!

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:52:19 GMT

Well, it seems hard to believe that it has already been a year since I put up that download link to a preview copy of what I had done so far... It's also hard to believe that so little has been done since then...lol

But (and even though this post comes late... heck, I didn't even update the hub page until nearly midnight last night, right before work) I've once again put up a preview edition on MM's hub page...

I was hoping to have this update finished by yesterday, but I didn't make it... It's nearly to the point I want it to be, but it still needs a good chunk of work... However, it's playable in the current form, so feel free to check it out and break it in all of the many ways I'm sure it can be broken!

Stage editor in Smash Bros?!

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:45:53 GMT

http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/gamemode/various/ various10.html

Holy crap the awesomeness never stops flowing out of this game... I can't wait!

Relaxing by the pool

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:31:54 GMT

So, work on Murder Mansion continues full bore (well, compared to the last few months of getting nothing accomplished, even the smallest bit of progress looks like I'm racing along...lol), and I was just running a few test rounds, and ended up with the following screenshot to share:

That's me, standing in the rain, in a flash of lightning, next to the pool, with my latest victims resting at the bottom (now that I think about it, I guess they should be floating... oh well, though... I also suppose the blood should have turned the water red, instead of leaving well-defined splatters on the bottom, but oh well again) The shovel I used to kill them was dropped when I slipped on some muddy footprints and/or blood splatters on the deck, and can be seen nearby...

The funny thing about this shot is that both of these men took more than one hit to take down, and both had tried to run away from me, only to fall into the pool, where I finished them off...

Oh yeah, how do you like my snazzy new duds?

Each map will have its own clothing (formalwear in the Mansion, hiking/camping clothes on the Campgrounds map, hospital gowns on the Hospital map, etc.), and the overlays will be colored to match the room you've chosen for that round... You'll notice that the poor fellow closest to me in this shot was my roommate...lol

The AI is still not quite fully functioning, but I'm working on that next...

I'm still developing in 3.5, so the game doesn't yet have any of the 4.0 glitz (speaking of which: holy crap, it's going to look great with transparent darkness effects instead of dithers), but after I get this coming version knocked out, I'm going to move the game into 4.0 for a subsequent update (leaving both available so the few 3.5 holdouts can still enjoy it... Of course, by then, maybe everyone will have already accepted 4.0)

Anyways, back to work!

Hey, Hey! I want to be a popstar!

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:37:45 GMT

Alright, so I'll admit that Nickelback's Rockstar song is pretty catchy, and the video is awesome with all of the cameos, but I just ran across this spoof on YouTube that's absolutely hilarious:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uSlqI1AVUk

Hmmm, off to a good start...

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 13:51:43 GMT

http://www.pixelmade.com/

Hopefully everyone can spot why this made me go "Buh, wha?"

You think your dreams are weird?

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 05:27:06 GMT

Listen to this one I just had...

Now, I very rarely remember my dreams... It's to the point now that if I didn't know that I must be having them, I would swear that I don't...

But generally, when I do remember them, they tend to involve highly uncomfortable situations, that I'm always glad are just dreams when I wake up... Never of the scary "nightmare" variety (no monsters, no falling, etc.), but always a bit more psychologically distressing...

This one wasn't one of those dreams, though...lol

In this one, I was viewing a movie... It was a very strange movie, yet with an exceedingly weird but cool plot element that I had to get put down somewhere before I forgot it (hence this post)...

The movie starred Avril Lavigne, of all people... I'm not sure why, but it probably has to do with the fact that the protagonists were skater punks (even though Miss Lavigne is more of the poser variety, but meh)...lol

Anyways, our little group of skaters was at some fancy halfpipe-like ramp, doing tricks... I say halfpipe-like because it was immensely high on one side... We're talking tens if not hundreds of feet in the air, with an almost sheer drop... Presumably, it was so high to get them the speed required for the massive air they would get on the other side...

So there was all of this set-up before the big first-time jump of our little pseudo-punk heroine, with everyone standing on the top of the HUGE ramp, telling her she could quit if she wanted to chicken out, etc. while cutting to different angles of the enormous ramp.. But, she was a brave little soldier, and faced the task with conviction, desperate to prove herself...

For whatever reason, they were going in pairs (whether it was customary, or if they thought she needed some sort of escort? I dunno), so her and what was presumably her boyfriend (or at least the romantic interest that would bloom into love by the end of the film) finally dropped off the edge, and went screaming (figuratively) down the ramp...

They were gaining incredible speed as they neared the bottom and the camera panned back to show the ramp in its entirely, so we could see the full spectacle of their impending jump off the other side, and whatever ultra-cool tricks they would perform while airborne...

However, the "jump" ended up being very anti-climactic... Hardly a jump at all... They got to the bottom of the ramp, going at breakneck speeds, launched up the other side, and simply made a little hop onto the waiting platform... No huge air, no twisting or flipping tricks... Just this little, slow speed hop onto a nice soft landing, holding their boards on the platform... Where all of their momentum went, I have no idea...

I was expecting an accident... I was looking for the guy to end up falling, or flipping off of the ramp entirely... There was even the build-up leading to that sort of thing (right down to the ominous music) But nope, very uneventful...

At this point in the dream I'm wondering to myself why I'm even watching this movie... I mean, I'm not into skateboarding, and even the coolest thing going for it turned out to be a dud...

That's when it happened... That's when the extremely unexpected plot twist occured...

With the camera still zoomed out, seeing our skaters on the ramp platform, a gun shot is heard, and one of them falls...

Yup, someone was shooting at them!

But it gets weirder when we discover who is shooting at them...

The camera zooms back even further, and even races out into the surrounding desert (aparently, they're somewhere in southern California or somewhere else in the southwest), eventually rising over some low mountains, and focusing on a lone sniper, laying on the rock... He congratulates himself on a good shot, and we see that he's played by none other than Clint Eastwood!

He then lines up his next shot, and we zoom down the barrel to follow the trajectory towards its target...

The odd thing here is that he doesn't have a line of sight to that target... His shot is actually going up over the ridge of the low hill he is on... More like a mortar blast than sniper fire...

So how is he hitting his marks?

His shots are set up by some sort of map that he is viewing inside his head... I'm not sure if its supposed to be technological, or magical, but he's got this map in his thoughts that shows the area he's aiming for, and has little blips (sort of like the little diamonds over the heads of Sims) for all of the people, in different colors and sizes...

He's apparently going after only a certain color and size of blip... So I assume it has some significance... But what the significance might be, or what his motives are, I never really found out, as after his next shot, he got up, entered a ship of some sort, and flew off, ending my dream...

So yeah, I just had a dream where Clint Eastwood was picking off skater punks with a futuristically/mystically guided sniper rifle...

Can anyone top that??

Yet another piece of digitally colored art

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:54:28 GMT

Before:

After:

HD Sprite Makeover for NewGrounds Contest

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:26:02 GMT

So over at the NewGrounds forums, there's a contest (ending tomorrow, sorry!), for people to take a game sprite and turn it into a high-def version... It's inspired by the Street Fighter HD Remix project (which, by the way, is totally sweet, and worth looking up)

I decided to throw my hat into the ring, and this is my work in progress:

I've still got a lot of detail to add (mostly line work), but I'm exceedingly pleased with how it's turning out...

So, what do you think?

[Edit:] Here's the finished product! It's still not perfect, but I'm through messing with it...lol

Click me to see a slightly higher-res version