Back from a weekend of silicon debauchery (read: playing Pharaoh until my eyes bleed). Still having some wierd development environment problems. Luckily, I have a few backups at home to code on (yes, my house is what some call “little NASA”) so I’m moving my blueprint development to another one to see if I can track down the problem.

A few tidbits. I do not support any previous versions of blueprint, mainly because I’ve lost the source code to it and the file formats. I still get emails about people with no clue as to what to do with files made with these versions. Sorry, blueprint will never support this format, now or in the future. Also, the grayed out option to create an object from scratch in the current version of blueprint is just that, grayed out. It’s not available and no matter how much you beg and plead to the great paper-clip god on your desktop, it’s not going to appear. It’ll be available in a future version (I know, I shouldn’t even show you if it’s not enabled right? User interface design 101).

Speaking of paper-clips, I’ve finally managed to utterly vanquish that #@%@! paper-clip creature that keeps appearing on my desktop, courtesy of Microsloth Office. It’s the most annoying creation every made if you’re actually trying to do something (like write a book). Every few minutes the little bastard pops his head up asking you if you need help writing something or if you want to auto-format your document because apparently, just typing words isn’t good enough for him. I wouldn’t mind the pop-ups if it was something like Lara Croft instead of Blinky the retarded office supply.

“It appears that you’re searching for ancient treasure! Would you like me to:

• *Load my sidearm?
• *Find a better camera angle of my ass?”

Geeks can dream can’t we?

What a tangled web we weave. Well, this weekend I’m going to take some more time (from an already hectic schedule) to get some artwork up on the site. Old stuff and sketchbook scans. That sort of thing. Also some Bryce stuff that I need to touch up once I re-install PhotoShop. I’m converting over completely to PS6 from Paint Shop Pro 7. I really like Paint Shop and have been using it since version 3 but in the long run it really just doesn’t measure up to the almight Adobe. Plus I just got my copy of Illustrator 9 so I’m going to install that and be an Adobe devotee. It’ll help with the digital comics I have in the works (PSP can’t seem to open .AI files that I make in Illustrator, and my balloons for comics are all in .AI format).

About 2 weeks ago I began a new revolution. Well, okay, it was awhile in the making. I guess I started writing BBS doors back in the mid-80s or so (with MajorBBS 5.x and some DOS based BBS systems). A few years ago, Galacticomm folded and basically the death of MBBS/Worldgroup was inevitable. BBS’ have been on the decline for the past few years with the Internet rearing it’s ugly head but recently a few new packages are appearing and there’s hope for the old girl yet. Synchronet is a new version of an old commercial BBS that has gone open source. The cool thing is that not only is it free and open source, but it’s a really great package and you can really customize it to look like most other BBS’ (I have mine to emulate MajorBBS so there’s some consistancy there when moving between the two). Anyways, so my newfound friend in the BBS is back and I’ve dusted off some old games to revisit them and build new versions. I just put up Phantasia, a multi-user RPG hack’n'slash game onto Dreamvision BBS for beta testing and it looks pretty good (well, my opinion may be biased). Anyways, so I’m back into door/game development and will be releasing regular door, synchronet and worldgroup versions of the games as they get completed. I’ll set up pages for the various games elsewhere, just waiting for a response from a service to get some space.

I have a new program that I’m just getting ready for release that will allow you to publish comics on the Internet. It’s pretty slick and is just a glorified layout manager. You import scans for panels, arrange them into pages, put them together into a book or story and upload the whole thing to a website for publishing. Very handy for those doing daily/weekly strips or whatever. I’ll add the pages for that with screenshots and such shortly.

Lastly, I’m working on a new interior design program that will allow interior design students to create rooms without having to purchase (or try to understand) something as massive as AutoCAD. There’s also plug-in modules that I’m adding to allow to add Feng-Shui templates to your designs. Should be cool. My real goal with the program to create kioks for IKEA and have people build their rooms virtually but I have to sell IKEA on the idea first (and they’re in Sweden). Wish me luck.

Hmmm… so comics, programming, games, writing, and whatever else I can squeeze in now. That’s the skinny so far.

Hi guys. Whew. Made it and I’m still kicking. So many things going on now.

Okay, blueprint 2.0. This is the big guy that you’ve been waiting for. I’m in the final stages of getting things together and there’s so many things here that I’ll need a full new post to describe them so I’ll do that when it comes out. The Reader’s Digest version… v2 will add many new 3D formats, enhanced 3D geometry functions, full object editing including strings, menus, sprites, object animations, etc., custom application skinning (design your own!), many 2D and 3D exports, scene builder mode including many other game model support for importing, raytracing support, external renderer support (including POV-Ray), and much more. The only major things missing will be multi-tile (sorry, just can’t get it completed this time round) and character editing. I do not have a date for the release but you’ll be the first to know when via yours truely.

For anyone following my personal site, I have my fingers in gobs of other projects. I’ve recently got back into writing (or re-writing as is the case) some new BBS door games and WorldGroup modules so drop by if you’re into that thing. I’m actually updating that site these days.

There are some whacky things going on with the forums (besides the flame wars going on, what else is new?). Recently I’ve noticed it’s using the cascading style sheets that are on this site (to maintain a consistant look with here) but some of the fonts are all screwed up. So much for consistancy. Oh well.

That’s about it. Taking a break this weekend to catch up on other projects, sleep, gaming and other Real Life 1.0 stuff. Seeya on Monday!