Topping Last Year

I made a mistake last year. I made what I consider to be the best Birthday card ever. I spent ages debilitating over what to draw for my friends card, and I knew I had to make it awesome. I was pretty proud of myself, and you can see the card here. Last year I collaborated with Mr Kaoskongo and the gang and it turned out pretty damn cool.

But that was my mistake. I had made the card TOO awesome. How on earth was I going to top that? I mean it had a sword! And an achievement bar! And a naked lady riding my friend drawn as a Centaur! 

Then Nakita Internington had the best idea. And it hit me, I knew what I had to draw. Here are the pictures. 

Cover of the card. The M is so that he figures out which way it opens. 

Detail shot of cover.

And then BAM! It pops up! 

Bula pattern cloaks. What all wizards are wearing this season. 

Oh noes evil centipede of doom! (Or Caterpillar if you're Sharky) 

That's right, you can move the lightning bolt around.

PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW

So materials were pretty much two A3 sheets of 250gsm glossy card, one sasa stick, a whole lotta glue and cellotape. I did all the art digitally this year, as I have been doing my hardest to master the wacom tablet.

We got that printed at the print shop, after working out a prototype to see how big we should make the individual pieces, then Nakita cut out all the little fiddly bits (she is very pro at that, way more patient than I am with the corners and in general)

Now...what the heck am I going to do about next year...

Workin' Progress

Hey hey! So in an effort to improve my art, I've been making a lot more prints lately. It's more an attempt to make sure I put enough effort into a piece instead of just half-arsing it, as when you print it out a whole lot more detail is on display for people. 

Speaking of display, I've also decided that next year I'm going to try put a couple of pieces of together for the art exhibition. Here are a couple of prints I made.

Bzzzt

Easter Island heads are awesome. 

Thoughts on Skyrim

I was going to have a more exciting title up there, but I thought what the fuck, let's get down to business here. Skyrim is a gigantic game, and pretty much all I've been playing for the last few days (I hit the eighty hour mark last night...so monies worth? definitely.) I will admit, I do not have much of a history with the series, my RPG needs usually filled by the ones that come out of the other side of the planet (Read: Final Fantasy, Pokemon, stuff like that), but since getting a decent PC rig together I've come to appreciate the differences from a good western RPG.

Where to begin, I wonder. The thing about Skyrim is, you can't really make a decent comment on the story. Every character will start in the same place, sure, but after that it's what you do that decides how the rest of the game will play out. There are certain plot points that could stand as similar experiences for everyone, but usually you are given free reign to do what you will. Most of the time.

No one is going to be able to kill the first dude that helps you out, which I found out after an unfortunate "accident" involving a bear and some fire. I set him on fire and he just kinda flopped around on his knees for a bit before standing up.

In a game where the majority of the NPCs are able to be killed though, do a couple of invincible ones break the game? I personally don't think so, it's the safer way to make sure that the player has something to do most of the time. Could it have been done better? Perhaps, although I can't think of a way that would be cost effective in terms of code.

My first level up looked a little like this. But the Deer was dead.

Instead of having defined character classes, the skills that you use define your character. The more you hit things with an axe, the better you get at hitting people with an axe. The same applies to magic and selling things and everything. So I guess what I'll do is tell you about my personal Skyrim experience (which most of the best reviews have done anyway).

My first character started off as one I didn't plan on getting attached to. I made an Imperial lady who looked angry all the time and was at the maximum end of the weight slider (which weirdly governs how muscular you are, not how chubby) I tried a little bit of everything at first, but slowly I got to leaning more toward the stealthy side of things. Even though I was wearing heavy armor, I could line up stealth kills with arrows if I was careful enough, and when things turn to shit, she became super good at using two one handed weapons to whirl through enemies like a dervish of death dealing.

What's that over there? ADVENTURE!

I'm also going to try my hardest to not spoil major questlines for people, so intentionally vage commentary follows.

I was having a good time helping people out, doing the main questline at a snails pace and levelling my smithing with a dude who is the best smith in Skyrim. But where I have had the most fun with my first character is the Thieves Guild. At first I wanted to be a "good" person, no stealing, no killing innocent people. But there is a certain thrill in sneaking through a bandit camp, pickpocketing their leader who's asleep in her bed, and then looting their entire treasury without anyone even knowing you're there.

That threw my whole no stealing thing out the window...then I started with the Dark Brotherhood...and man...those guys are twisted. Then that threw the whole no killing innocents out the window too. Sure, the majority of the marks that you get are kind of bad people, but some of them aren't...evil. Just mean. Or in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And that's what I like, my character went from a hero to...something else. She gets the job done, but still leans more toward the Thief than the Assassin.

Shhhh, sleeeeeep.

The main questline though, with its Dragons... to be honest I could use a little less of them. The first ones are tough as nails, and before you get their pattern down they are tricky. But then, that's all they are, patterns. Like any boss fight, once you work them out they lose their difficulty. Plus...once they land I can literally kill a dragon in three seconds. I showed my sister who is playing a mage-y character that once and she swore at me like a sailor on shoreleave.

And the horses. Shit man, don't get me started on the horses. They are crazy bastards, who will throw themselves at badguys with no regard to their own safety. And I have lost so many to fall damage now that it's silly. And it wouldn't be so bad if they weren't 1000 gold each.

Slight spoiler, I did manage to get a special horse as part of a questline who is actually useful in that she is much stronger than a regular horse, so doesn't die as easily. And that made a difference. But then she died thanks to glitch that moved her exactly 200 yards to the left once I dismounted. That 200 yards happened to place her in the air on the side off the side of the mountain we had just galloped up so of course, she falls to her death.

Buggy Infinite Dragons? Yes.

Oh, the glitches. I have seen flying mammoths, Dragons that don't give me their souls, floating people, a bug in the main questline that took ages for me to fix.

But in spite of all of that, I have had fun. It's a sandbox that I really enjoy playing in, and I am pretty sure I have at least a couple more playthroughs left in it before I am thoroughly sick of the snowy province of Skyrim. But first of course, theres that main questline to finish... after I help end the civil war...and maybe do some more Guild quests...perhaps level my enchanting...

Oh, and those helmets are everywhere! I was a little sad about that.

Breaking Radio Silence

Why helloooo there. (Read in George Takei's voice for maximum impact).

I haven't posted in a while, mainly due to busy-ness at work, and then I was on break...and then more busy-ness. Christmas is the busiest time of the year, so if it's not one thing it's another. Although, I did have to catch three birds that had flown into the office yesterday, and that took forever. They are slippery bastards, birds are. Mainly because they can fly and are really fast. Also, I got stung by centipede in a region that is quite unmentionable. Okay, it was my butt. In case you were wondering about other unmentionable regions (Don't do that).

Also, I've been playing a lot of Skyrim (which I simply must write about at some point, I am enjoying it a lot!). So that's in the pipeline once I put a couple more hours into that, although a lot of my time was just spent smithing armor. For some reason I really wanted to get my smithing maxed out and make some armor out of the dragons I had been killing. So look forward to that!

In the meantime, enjoy this picture I drew of a fairy and a spider.

The Minecraft Posts: Part One

So a while back I was pretty into that whole mining and building game, also known as Minecraft. However, I reached a point where I began to get a little bored. My fortifications were awesome, I had a decent stockpile of minerals and ore, and my mine was so vast and expansive that I would frequently have to just dig a brand new tunnel so that I wouldn't get lost.

I vowed I would give it a break until another substantial update to the game. And lo and behold, that time has come. The Adventure Update meant that it was time to once again dig into (ha ha ha) that blocky world and survive.

Piggy photobombed my sunset shot >_> 

It also meant I had to start again from scratch, but there was something cleansing about all that. It had been long enough since the last time I played that it was a welcome return. The first day in Minecraft is quite frankly, the most stressful. If you don't find a seam of coal you're going to spend the first night in darkness and terror.

Unless you play on peaceful, but that's for old people with weak hearts and fraidy cats.

An Enderman, one of the new mobs. This was pretty scary.

There were a couple of things I was hoping to find this time around. The update added random villages, abandoned mineshafts and ruins known as strongholds to the game. The villages interest me the most. What I liked about Minecraft the first time around was that sense of loneliness you get, and I wondered if adding Villages (and later NPCs) would change any of that.

As luck would have it, upon spawning in a brand new shiny world, it wasn't long before I found a natural ravine near a lake. Cutting straight into a mountain, it was pretty fucking foreboding. But I had some coal, and I had a flimsy wooden sword, and I thought hey, half the work of digging down is done for me, I may as well start here.

That was when I found the mineshafts. A maze of networks that ran like holes through swiss cheese. There were rail tracks (which I immediately stripped for later use) down there, and cobwebs and sweet, sweet ore.

I've explored an entire map worth of overland, with nary a village to be seen though. And the ruined Strongholds still elude my loot happy backpack. Perhaps it is time to venture into the Nether, and see where else I will pop up.

The current layout of my home base. 

Anatomy of a D&D Session

Last Sunday, someone mentioned they wanted to play D&D.

Oh boy, I thought, I'm going to be asked to DM again. Sure enough, my skills were once again called upon to get an adventure together. Since the last time we played (which was a few months ago)  I have gathered more materials than before. I now have not just one, but three D20s.

Hold up though, I hear you asking, what exactly is this Dungeons and Dragons you are going on about?


Dungeons and Dragons is a roleplaying game played with imagination, dice, friends and some pencils and paper. One person is assigned the role of Dungeon Master, who is responsible for creating the adventure and playing the monsters and characters you meet on said adventure. Everyone else is a player (or PC) who creates a character that will face the various challenges set upon by the Dungeon Master (or DM).


Wow, that sounds like a rip roaring good time! How do I go about playing this Dragons and Dungeons?

Whoa there sparky, you're going to need a few things first.

- Victims...er...friends to play.
- A whole bunch of polynesian....er...polyhedral dice.
- To read the books.

There are a lot of D&D books out there, but what you'll basically need are the Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters guide and the Monster Manual. They will give you a pretty thorough rundown of the rules, races, classes and ideas on how to roleplay. There's also a crapload of stuff that is a simple Google search away, you lazy bum.

Anyway, I'm here to tell you about how our D&D session went.

This was to be the fourth time that I have ever DM'ed ever, and I really wanted to try and write an adventure instead of using an existing one. First of all, I had to come up with a name. This is probably not how real writers write an adventure, but I needed somewhere to start off. As I was looking around my room, I saw a lego set that my sister and I bought in Australia. It came with little lego spiders.

And thus, the Web of the Spidermancer was born in my brainmeat.

I wrote the campaign outline, designed some encounters and wrote a whole lot of fluff for the players to go through. Then I tried to find some maps online for the adventure. No dice there, I could have pieced together some tiles or something, but then I thought what the hell, I'm a dab hand at photoshop, I'll just make some maps.

Not pictured: Hours spent agonizing over whether or not more skulls were needed.

The adventure was intentionally written as a small as possible. The PCs arrive in a village in the arse-end of the world, the problem is obvious and there are way too many rewards. I also tried to keep it as fun as possible, with little mini-games like a drinking contest and a sidequest to collect spider eyes.

I also prepared way more than I needed to. In total I wrote about seven encounters, and the players managed to finish in three encounters. I'm pretty sure they had fun though, and there was some groaning when I showed them an encounter that they could have done, had they gone a different way.

Yes, there were actual girls

Things that I learned? I need to prepare more. Sure, there are some things you can't prepare for, like a PC who goes on a totally different tangent from what you have written, or horrible rolls which mean that your miniboss misses every single attack it makes, but these lessons will hopefully make me a better DM.

And next time, I am totally going to cheat if Gargantua the Spider misses three times in a row.

Why Final Fantasy Tactics is Awesome

Pixelated men riding pixelated chickens? I'm so there.

The first time I saw Final Fantasy Tactics, I was visiting my stepmothers family. Her brother had just bought a couple of new games and asked me if I wanted to check them out.

He popped in the disk for Final Fantasy Tactics and started up a new game. After the game went on about how history is written by the victors of war, it asked him for his name and birthday.

Then, it started. Little sprites marched in time, waiting for their turn so that they could go and beat up other little sprites. I still remember the first thing he said, "Man, they look like little children." Then he turned it off and put in Resident Evil 2.

Yes, I gave myself the right birthday. 

He also let me take the disk home that afternoon.

Final Fantasy Tactics is one of those games I come back to every once in a while, like several of the games in the series, but it's definitely one that is different every single time. This is mostly due to the intricate battle system, that is simple enough to work with, but rewarding for those who dive in and fiddle around with it. (Just like your first time -Ed) 

The first few rounds are important for buffing, I like to let the enemy come to me. 

Battles are played out on a 3D isometric field, where units are placed and wait for their orders according to a Charge Time meter, which fills up depending on their speed. You can affect the flow of turns by using different techniques, so it's not entirely turn-based, and placement of units is important to avoid being pummeled to death by enemies, since they do more damage if they attack you from the side or behind. (Just like...never mind - Ed) 

Thats only half of the game though, the other half is in the setup of your units. Like a lot of Tactics games, FFT has a class based system, where each class specializes in different areas. Wizards are long range magic users, Priests heal and buff units and Knights are close range fighters who can destroy enemy equipment. Each character though, can change jobs between battle depending on what they have unlocked.

Mike never was able to unlock the Ninja class.

Heres where it gets interesting though, skills that a unit learns can be still be used provided that you assign them beforehand. What this means basically, is that you can turn a Knight into a Wizard, and still have access to the skills he had as a Knight. You wouldn't actually want to do that, but it's in trying out different combinations that you make the best units. 

Look at all these classes. LOOK AT THEM!

One particular example that springs to mind is my hero unit for my last playthrough. He was a squire for his base class, with battle skill as his secondary. But! He also had Two Swords from the Ninja class as his support ability, which meant that when he countered (A reaction ability from the Monk class) he would hit TWO TIMES. (I can see the eyes of your readers glaze over, talk about something else - Ed) 

But what about the narrative, I hear you ask. FFT is set in Ivalice, the setting for quite a few Final Fantasies, in a time known as the Lion War. The main story takes place seemingly in the background of this huge medieval war, with various plots, backstabs and demonic influences. I will admit, a lot of it went over my head the first time I played through, but now that I'm older it kinda reminds me of Game of Thrones, in terms of political complexity. 

You play as Ramza, who grows through the story from a young idealistic cadet to a hero of the war, but is remembered in history as a heretic and traitor. Through the game you learn how this happens, and of course, that history is written by those who win. Or at least, backstab enough people so that no one is alive who knows you're a bad guy. 

Tonight, we dine in Hell! 

There are a lot of characters in FFT, but enough memorable ones to keep you interested. Ramza of course, is a solid piece of character development, but there is also his best friend Delita, who kind of takes the "ends justifies the means" route. Even during my third playthrough though, there were a couple of times when I had to look up who someone was.

It's raining shards of Ice, Hallelujah...

Graphically, the game does look somewhat dated. Okay, it looks really dated. But the majority of the game is made up of sprites, with a lot of pretty painstaking animation for some of the cutscenes. In that sense, it still holds out. The spell effects are also pretty, with lots of glow and sparks. The sound is also top notch, with appropriate music for battles, and sound effects (particularly the death cry units make when they die) that have lodged themselves in my brain.

Warpin' time back to 1998. 

I'm going to be honest, I partly look at this game through rose colored glasses. It was the first videogame I actually started copying art from. I can do the first four battles blindfolded because for one entire long weekend it was all my friend Ryan and I would play, because we didn't have a memory card and the fourth battle is a fucking bitch to finish.

But it's also so very, very solid. I seem to learn something new about it every time I play through (Like that lightning spells become more powerful in the rain, or that when choosing a healer, make sure their zodiac sign is compatible with your attacking units).

There's a reason that it has attained cult classic status, and also why when they remade it for PSP they didn't just port it over, but added beautiful cel-shaded cutscenes with voiceovers.

It might not be everyones cup of tea, but FFT definitely deserves it's place in the series, and it's earned in the blood of a hundred slain enemies and spells rained down from the heavens.