Birth of Legends

I haven't the faintest clue as to what I am doing. I can't figure out where these things are being or are supposed to be being stored.

-Mark

Ok, I'm getting a little bit of a better understanding as to how this works. I really have no reason whatsoever to post here as no one except videguy has a clue about its existence. If only I knew how to change colors of things, or to put in my own pictures. But I may need help for that... Oh, and if anyone is reading this feel free to leave a comment.

-Mark

Well, I've said that I would be working on making this wiki look better and everything, and I will, but I haven't yet. I haven't even taken another look since the day after my last post. So, I'll try and stop procrastinating soon and fix everything. As some of you (videoguy) may have noticed I was having some problems when I did the initial tests on redoing birthoflegends.com. I'm realizing that it'll probably to best to just start totally over from scratch, and dust off my html skills again (which by the way were never very good (I always thought html too basic to really learn)). Part of my laziness is due to the fact that I've felt there to be little to post about, since I can't really get into programming everything again until I have a server open to the public to work with. The server that I'm using now is great except for the fact that I don't own it, and that the real owners don't exactly want a lot of extra traffic at their bandwidth (this is like a friend of a friend now since the first one was never revived). As for how BOL is going, it depends on which aspects your talking about. Serverwise, and therefore codewise, it's not progressing quickly but it is progressing. Ideawise, it's progressing a lot. Even though not much activity has commensed much (at all) on the forums there have been many "private" conversations that have gone over some of the more finer aspects of BOL. So, and maybe I'll do this in my waiting of the server, I need to go through all of those conversations (most where through email or an IRC and have been recorded) and write out the information somewhere and then post it on the site. As mentioned before I plan to update and integrate all the old information (most of which is still relevant) with this new stuff, and put it into wiki form so that I can let others help me update it and also make it easier to update. Graphicswise though, which in some ways is the most important progression right now, I think has stopped completely. I never claimed to have any real artistic talent when it came to modelling so I've been unable to do much. However, it is possible that a few people who said they had stuff for me before still do and that I'll recieve it someday.
In other news, I've been going over the collision to make it more dynamic, realistic, and just better in general. This is providing to be partially difficult though I think I can do it. That's about it for today. Also, I just remembered, my foot that was bitten by the spider is getting much better. I am now only using one crutch instead of two, and have even tried walking without it a few times. So, that being said, by sunday I think I'll be able to walk again without crutches and by next week I might even be able to run, which I've missed. So that's it. Hopefully next time I post the layout will have changed.

-Mark

Not much has been accomplished with the site. I haven't been all that busy but I have been doing a lot more work for other people and for the camp video which I've been a part of, which I'll post on the site when it's done. Not a lot has happened with BOL since my last post but an IP for the server is in the works. This has all been more then I wanted to deal with and I'm considering just buying a server and running it myself (which I would if I had any money :P ). Anyway, as far as the website goes, I tried to implement some basic things that I made in fireworks but it doesn't seem to have worked. When loading there is a quick flash of where it would be and then it goes back to the boring look of before. I'll need more time and possibly mroe help from videoguy to figure out why that is. On another note, after looking at the CSS I figured out some things but it will take about 2 hours I'm guessing to fully understand it all. It is very poorly documented (like not at all) which makes it difficult to figure out what defines what. So far I can change the color of the links and some text, but I'm still looking for the background color. I don't yet have the time to document that with camp coming up but I hope to make progress on it soon after camp. The homepage still hasn't changed, as you might have noticed. I'm not sure how exactly to integrate the page there with the page here but I'm deciding that I can't use frames and that I'm going to need some help as I lack all motivation to work on it. Feel free to leave comments and such, feedback is always nice.

-Mark

Things with the wiki-like setup are starting to fall into place. As you may have already noticed a new Links section has been added to the right that has different links for information. I'm still working on it and right now the information that is there is just a direct copy from the old stuff, so there are still some mistakes. A new thing though is that you can make comments right under each section, which will help me with the updating of it. I'll read everything that people post and if it's correct then I'll add it into the already existing stuff. Right now the links on the outside frame above me still go to the older pages, except for news which goes here. The reason for this is that first of all this site doesn't look that great yet and also I've been too lazy to change it again yet. One other thing, you may wonder if I've managed to finish my English project for school, as I said I wouldn't work on this much until after I finished that. Well, who cares about school anyway? I'm just taking a little bit of a break as I finished the dictionary and the essay. All I have left is some had-written notes, which will take time since I am terrible at writing. So, enough about me, go and comment up the sections!

-Mark

Ok everyone, today as you've probably noticed by now I've slightly improved the frame situation. There is still a little bit of a problem but at least it's a lot better. If you were checking the site while I was updating it then I'm sorry for everything being screwy during those 10 minutes. Now I need to go and I'm not sure when I'll get back today. This will give you guys plenty of time to add comments throughout the site. Also, I've updated the demon and gameplay pages with some newerish information.

-Mark

Ok. Today I have added all of the links that had been grayed out before. Now, I haven't even attempted to finish all of them do some of those pages are just a kind of filler, though they still have basic descriptions about what they're about. And also they all have a warning at the top of them that will tell you if they actually are a filler or not. My reasoning of this is that this main page and those pages aren't really connected, I have to connect them semi-manually, so creating pages for them to link to and then linking to them makes me have less work and not have to update the links quite as often. You may have noticed that the links in the outer frame of this post (the ones on the top of the page) still mostly all point to the old stuff, except for the news one, which links to here. Well, firstly I haven't decided what I want to do with the download pages and the screenshots, and secondly I just haven't gotten around to that yet. Also, I need to finish up my English project as I only have today and tomorrow left to do it, so updates might be slightly slower (for a few hours). During my posting today I realised that I forgot to make a section in the links for crafting. If you guys can help me think of other things that I'm mising that would be great.

-Mark

Guess what everyone? I now have a mouse wheel! That's right! Now I'll have to fix the website and the game to actually work properly with mouse wheels. So that's one less complaint for you guys to make. :) So yeah, that's the only thing I have to say for this post. Leave comments, read the other pages, yada yada yada.

-Mark

Just so everyone knows, I'm not going to be doing much updating today of the site. I have 7 chapters to summarize of a very boring book (basically the history of the Oxford English Dictionary). So, possibly I'll do something tonight but no garuntees as I also just got a ti-89 today so I'm having some fun with that. So far I've been able to update the site everyday, which is good. Because of school I think that I'll have even more time to update the site, but who knows?

-Mark

I have finished my entire English project now, and I still have over three hours before I should think about sleep, awesome. I'm not going to do any more work, site or otherwise, and instead take a break. Never, I repeat, Never read The Professor and the Madman unless you absolutely have to. One last thing, this main page, at least at my computer, is having a hard time at refreshing after changes, mainly due to being shown in a frame. I will work on that by the end of the week and I'm sorry for those of you who might be missing posts because of it. That is all.

-Mark

Today I had some time to add new content. Over on the Fighting and Travel page there is a big update about how the leveling system, SBDLS, works. It should be a pretty interesting read. I'm eager to read any feedback you may have.

-Mark

Today I've been making a lot of changes in the background. I haven't fixed it everywhere but in some places, comments especially, some of the links are wrong which could potentially cause people to become very confused (because this page and the special links to the right are only theoretically connected, though they are at the same general location. I'll be working more on this later on. Now I'm going to have some server fun.

-Mark

p.s. Reading other people's comments is a good idea. Like Ix just posted something interesting one of these posts down.

First of all, this weekend I will be gone for most of it so, yeah, updates will be slower. The server is coming along, it's more of the networking part that I'm having trouble with as not all my computers like each other. For website stuff, I will be trying to work on that as much as I can today. For the more wiki-like atmosphere, it's coming. Making blog software, which is realyl nice by the way, into s fully functional wiki takes a bit of work. Though this way it should all look better. I'm not sure how much I really want to open up to everyone, because of porblems we've had recently with spam on the forums, but I'll work on it. Maybe we'll just have usernames that are the same as on the forum. So, enough talking from me, I know I forgot to say something, but I'll just edit this post later.

-Mark

[EDIT:] I know what I forgot. Yes, comments immediately show up, as in within one second. The reason you don't always see it though is because our helpful browsers don't automatically refresh, so you end up not seeing them. Either hit the refresh button, or just wait a while. In the future I will add some javascript so that it automatically refreshes the page. But that probably won't be today. [/EDIT]

[EDIT2:] Guys, when making links in posts remember that what comes after the href needs to be in quotes. [/EDIT2]

So, I haven't posted in a few days so here's my update on what's up. The server needs windows to be reinstalled on it but Jon forgot to give me the license key and it's at his work so I can't do that until tomorrow. I'll do something graphical today that looks cool so you guys can have something to see or do. I'll also see if I can get the server to work temporarily before tomorrow.

Second order of business, Eric has nominated Tronjheim as the name for the third Dwarven city. Post your thoughts on the name. If no one has any big objections by the end of tomorrow then I'm going to use it.

-Mark

Ok, so I was looking more into how it might be possible to use the server without fixing the OS, and I got close. I could connect to it though I wasn't able to stay connected. I think the problem is that I didn't open one of the ports in the firewall, as I can't come up with any other explanation. But, I'm also in lack of time to fix that now, and I'll be reinstalling the OS tomorrow, so there really isn't any point in me doing that. If everything works we'll be online on wednesday. Oh, and a breakthrough on the messed up head on the main character; it's not a problem with the mesh nor the skeleton, it's a problem with the animation file. I figured that out today by accident when I saw that the login animation worked perfectly. So I'll work on re-exporting them. Until tomorrow, vote at the post below. A dwarven city is in your hands.

-Mark

Today I was still unable to find the cd-key for windows *cough* jon *cough* so I've been playing around with textures. Also, I'll try re-exporting the animations tonight to see if I can fix the main character. So, the server won't be up tonight. But I'll keep updating everyday with word on the progress. Oh, also, remember that old bad looking map of the continent of BOL? Well, it's getting a new makeover by green_eggs_and_spam. He should really pick a shorter name, but oh well. I've seen a preview of the map and it looks amazing. I was going to post a sketch he sent me but I'm too lazy, mwuhahaha. One last thing, I can officailly post here on the main page, or any other page for that matter, from school. Sadly though, I like my programming class and there is this new city bus that allows me to not go to school early and still be on time, so I'm not sure how well I'm going to be updating the site from school.

-Mark

p.s. As a last reminder for the 5 and a half hours left on the vote, vote using comments two posts down.

Ok, the server isn't fixed, so I spent some time today on other improvements. First of all the character's head bug is fixed!!! I'll put up a patch later on. Proof of this can be seen here and here. Also, I figured out what was wrong with the texture loading, and have begun recoding some stuff that way. Now the new characters that you haven't as of yet been able to use can load their textures correctly. I think that after the server is finished being a pain I'll make an update that has npc guys walking around. One final thing that has been fixed, though I haven't finished integrating it yet, is the screenshot function. No longer will your screenshots be taken upside down. So that's about it. I didn't post this sooner because my internet was down for a little bit. Hopefully it will be up the rest of the night though.

-Mark

The stuff below in italics is old. I just think that having three posts in one day might be over doing it. Anyway, here is the long awaited head bug fix. Just read the readme that comes with it to know what to do. If for some odd reason that doesn't work then tell me, and I'll get right on it. And, if your like Nick and don't like to post comments then email me at support@birthoflegends.com. Or, you could also post on the forums. Server update; I'm still awaiting that magic number, though I've been assured that I'll get it by tomorrow. Today if I have time after calculus homework and Dune reading I'll put up some screenshots of new characters with textures, though I don't know how that will all go yet. Until then.

-Mark

This is my first post from school. The security now has more holes then ever, which is awesome. I forgot to bring my files with me, so I can't upload a patch from here. You'll just have to wait until I get home. But don't worry, you'll get correct head action by 4:00 pm my time (I'm thinking). Until then...

[Edit:] The voting has ended. The third dwarven city will be called Tronjkrahm. Case closed. Now I'm going to "pretend" to continue my schoolwork. [/Edit]

First of all, I have another monitor now so I don't have to use remote desktop within remote desktop (which was a cool concept but also a real pain). I've had no luck reinstalling windows so far on the server, which isn't as cool. Basically, whatever is causing the weird error messages also causes the windows cd not to be able to run setup. I've checked on another computer so I know it's not the cd, so I'm currently coming up with a plan to remedy that. On another not so cool note, shortly after fixing the screenshot thing (in BOL) the code stopped compiling (now has messages which I know I caused but I'm not sure how). So, that may or may not affect things depending on how fast I'm able to fix it, but it's still a pain. So, in case anyone asks I officially hate servers and networking code. It seems that whenever I get close to getting it all to work something big decides to crash. It will be fixed though, eventually.

-Mark

I've figured out a way to fix the server. Basically, I'm going to have to reinstall windows twice, first using an older version and then using the right version. This will take longer then I would've liked but already this has taken too long. While I wait for it to compile I'll work on graphics for BOL, so that there can be more content released in the server test. I'll report back in a few hours as to my progress.

-Mark

Ok, good news. I've finally managed to get a clean copy of windows on the server. Now I just need to reconfigure everything, fix the MySQL tables, etc. I don't feel like doing all of that tonight but the configuring should be done tomorrow. Then I'll just need to figure out a few networking things before I open it back up to the public, but if all goes well that will be done within the next two days and then you guys can start flinging snowballs at each other to see if I've gotten this to work or not. Until next time.

-Mark

p.s. Here is a preview of another snowball type that you may see around during the test.

Ok, so I've almost finished the configuration. MySQL and PHP are both setup and seem to work. The server applications though haven't been able to connect. I'm not certain if windows is blocking the port or whether I've messed up with the login settings, so I'm not sure how long it will take for me to fix that. My last problem is that IIS headers are getting in the way of the php scripts. There was some way to turn them off but I forget, and will have to relearn it. So, I'll give another update once I've figured out those.

-Mark

Ok, so I figured out what was wrong with the MySQL thing, and it all works fine now. The last problem is what to do with the dumb IIS headers. I wish there was an easy way to turn them off, and there still might be, but I haven't found it yet. Because of these headers the client is getting very confused when it first accesses the php scripts to see if it can connect or not. If anyone knows how to turn off IIS headers then please tell me, because I really can't remember what I did the last time.

-Mark

I haven't had much time at the computer today so the server isn't up. Though I don't think it really matters since the people I talked to couldn't play tonight even if they wanted to. Apache is installed and works but I haven't gotten php and apache to talk to each other yet (simply I just haven't yet had the time to). Once they work properly again everything will be ready. One last note is that I still haven't been able to figure out the wierd code crisis, and I can no longer compile the client. I tired opening a different version as well and it appears to me that visual studio is having a spasm. So, sadly there will be no penguins for at least a few more days.

-Mark

Well, progress has been made. I finally got apache and php to talk to each other after some more googleage. Now, for some reason the php scripts are "working" but keep sending back empy responses, which I think means that I killed them somehow. So, I'll look over them and see what can be done. I don't plan to let other people play until tomorrow though.

-Mark

Luckily, nothing was actually wrong with the scripts. It ends up that I hadn't configured php.ini correctly, I forgot the little extension_dir variable so it couldn't find the right plugin and therefore couldn't talk to mysql. Though of course, as things have been going, that isn't the end of the problems. Somehow the wrong cookie is being sent back to the client and it isn't able to continue the connection. I bet that I just put in the wrong address in the config.php file, or something small like that. I'm going to tackle the visual studio problem again today because I'd like to have a few more bugfixes in this release, along with updated in-game messages and stuff. So, I'll post back later tonight and see how it goes.

-Mark

Ahhh! This wait is killling me! But, sadly it continues. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the server as far as I can tell, so I'm not sure why the client can't stay connected. Oh, wait, I just had an Idea...

Amazing, it worked even though I had the wrong idea! Basically, while typing a few minutes ago I thought that a port was being blocked which was preventing me from actually connecting with part of the client after using the scripts. But, actually, ther server was sending the wrong ip. It was sending 127.0.0.1 of all things instead of the right one. So, I now know where the problem is and how to fix it. But I still won't be opening the server to the world tonight because I promised Jon I'd start making a 3d movie for him and also that I want to fix some more coding things. And about the coding things I've almost totally fixed the visual studio problem. Almost.

-Mark

I finished the configuration thing and the server works as it should now. I'll upload the new files and open it to you guys tomorrow sometime after school. Now, for some food and sleep.

-Mark

Ok, so today is going to be the big day of reckoning. Today I need to configure the server through the router so that it can talk to the outside world. Then, I need to update one of the configuration files so that it talks to you guys through its new public IP. And then finally I'll link you guys to the client. I'll be posting back every few hours until it's done updating you guys on the progress, even if no one is currently reading this :) .

-Mark

[EDIT:] There is a problem with recompiling the demo which I need to fix. It will be up tomorrow, I can almost promise that. [/EDIT]

Sorry guys, I've been getting distracted. I am currently watching Dune, the first mini-series that sci-fi put out, and it's quite interesting. Update on the server; It has a static IP now and as far as I can tell it fully works. Slight problem though, I can't test it with it's IP, only people totally outside my network can. So, I need to figure out a way around that so that I can play too. But I really want to continue watching dune too. So, I may not finish things today, sorry if I don't. I'll post again later.

-Mark

Well, here's the thing; I was hoping to be able to recompile the client to add some really good bug fixes and animations into the online demo. Sadly, that didn't work. The main thing was the login screen from inside the client, as right now I'm using the launcher from another game to launch the demo. But, it's not working like I planned and I may not have time to finish that tonight, so I'm just going to release what I have already done. Post on the forums and here with your results, problems your having, and so forth though I won't be home for a while tonight. The main goal is for people to be able to log on tonight. Tomorrow I'll totally stop the watching of Dune (because I'll be done watching it) and I'll start the great fixing of everything. Link to this online test is here.

-Mark

p.s. I'm unsure whether I can sleep with the server on, so there is a possibility that it will be unavailable after 10:30pm or 11:00pm my time (which is in MA).

Ok, so there really isn't any traitor, but making random titles is fun. It has been reported that I messed up with some dlls and also I think that dlls is what causes the demos not to work on windows 2000 and 98. But anyway, back to reality, there currently isn't a need to update dlls because no one has been able to connect anyway. For some odd reason nothing is actually getting to the server. I'm doing some tests outside my network on a remote computer and will post back with any progress as it comes. I'm sorry that this isn't working, and just so you know it's really bugging me as well.

-Mark

I have so far found no logical reason for the server not receiving incoming traffic, except for one far-out thing. I just so happened to look at the connection settings today and found that the physical address was missing, which is a problem. What's worse though is that somehow without a physical address it can still access the internet and do evrything else just fine. So I'm very confused as to what that all means and I'll try again tomorrow. Maybe I'll have time to work on the situation from school. Until next time.

-Mark

So, the server doesn't like being public. Or, Verizon doesn't want it to. Either way, I seem to have no luck at getting it to work. I'm thinking that I'll have to bring the server back to Jon's house and try it again from there, since his ISP definitly doesn't block the ports. This whole fiasco has been a huge setback for BOL but hopefully it will be solved soon.

-Mark

I don't have anything to say but I feel bad for not updating the site so here is a link to a forum post I just made. Not to worry, it isn't anything serious, just something funny that I "found".

-Mark

Wow, it's become so barren here. So this is to change that. Basically, the server working from my house totally failed, so I have to get it back to Jon where we know it will work as it did before. The bad thing is that this could take a little while because of the lack of times I see Jon. So, it will get to him by Sunday at the latest. In the mean time I'm still working slowly on animation, English projects, modelling, lab reports, and some small movies. So, this and this is what I've been doing (I've done more but these are already on the site right now). And I'm tired of writing.

-Mark

This has been fairly depressing. My updates have gone from 3-a-day to once a week. Basically, my personal computer won't start anymore so I'm using the server computer to update the site and check email, meaning that it hasn't made it to Jon's house and therefore isn't online. I am hoping to change this in the very near future.

-Mark

So, now for a mroe hopeful update. There are now two BOL servers; one which Verizon is blocking but I can still use for dev testing, and the other one that is currently half-open to the public. So let me explain. All the ports are open to the public except for the web port which public users need to be able to connect. I'm working on this but this isn't a problem with anyone blocking the port, rather a me not having direct access to the router this box is plugged into. So I'll keep you all updated and we might see things being online by tomorrow, though I can't promise anything as all of my promises tend to go against me.

-Mark

[Edit2:] For those of you with dll problems or errors use this to aid you. These will also make it work on windows 98 and 2000. That is all.[/Edit2]

[Edit:] I made a mistake in the config file. So, now it's updated again and will actually work now. Sorry for those of you who had this problem. The links are the same.[/Edit]

Wow, I'm able to keep a promise, hooray! Ok, so here is the deal, because of my sad computer situation I am not currently able to play. But, all of you should be able to, so you can tell me what works, what doesn't work, and so forth. I've updated online.rar so that it goes to the correct location. If you don't want to redownload the whole thing and just update your config files then do that. Just so your warned, here are some potential bugs that you may encounter in your journeys; you may create a username and it tell you you don't have priveledges to log in (solution: tell me and I'll fix it), you may see that someone's name isn't shown correctly and instead comes up as "Entity###" (solution: tell me, send me the log, and I try to fix it), or you might get bored because no one is online (solution: get me to a computer that can play the demo and I'll entertain you). There's bound to be lots of more errors and bugs with the server/client system so your help testing things out is much appreciated. Fixing things will be a little slow because motherboard issues have limited me down to 256 mb of ram, so compiling new builds to fix bugs is very hard to do. Not to worry though, I'm working on it.

-Mark

So here is the status of life: Everyone can connect and play fine. But, the server is having a problem with updating people. I probably need to recompile a part of the server, but that will take some time as I need to find a computer to compile it on. But you can still have fun because if someone else logs in or is on when you are you can still see them, they just won't move. :)

-Mark

There is a very good reason for me not updating anything yet. That reason is; I haven't used my computer for the last 36 hours. So, granted, I have yet to take the three hours it takes 256 ram to compile a simple program with debugging information and then upload it to the server. I know where the general area of this problem is occuring but I don't know why. Anyway, when I get home from school today I should have enough time to accomplish that. In the meantime the server is still up for those of you who wish to be online.

-Mark

[Edit2:] It's time for the next round of testing. I'm not sure whether it's actually fixed or not (can't test it myself), but things do appear to be working again at the moment. Sorry for my slowness, I was dragged to a college fair which was unexpected and longer than enticipated. I'm not sure how much more work I can get done tonight, we'll see. If you get an error message 13 then what I tried didn't work, otherwise, it did. And I'm not sure if this fix fixes everything or not, so sadly snowballs might not be seen. Enjoy testing! [/Edit2]

[Edit:] I now kind of know what was going wrong, so I'm going to first eat supper and then get to work on it. In the meantime you guys can try and set a new record for players on at the same time (right now the record is two). I'll post here or email people individually when I'm ready for more tests. [/Edit]

Here's the deal; The part of the server that seemed to be having the problems has been recompiled. Packets are being sniffed. So, now all that's missing is people trying to play. If the problems from before are still happening I'll hopefully be able to figure out where the packets are going.

-Mark

I'm sorry for how outrageously long this is taking. I'm doing a lot of compiling to get everything talking properly again, and that takes a long time with only 256 mb of ram, so try to be patient. Maybe I'll be able to make some cool screenshots on another computer while waiting for it to compile...

-Mark

Oh, and before I forget: A special thanks goes out to videoguy217 who has continued to help by even trying to log in when I didn't ask him to. Thanks also to Achenar who has helped out a little.

[Edit:] Just realized that people who hadn't seen the post like 10 posts ago don't know where to download the current demo. I'll fix the download page sometime soon, and here it is. For those of you who have dlls problems and don't want to redownload online.rar just download these. [/Edit]

There hasn't been much updating lately so I thought I should. I'm taking a look at the core engine now for the networking stuff to try and figure out what is wrong. What I'm wondering is if nothing is wrong and it's just not working anyway, but there isn't any good way for me to know. If I can't get anything to work within the next week then I'll consider totally rewriting all network code with network code from an actual engine like Raknet or something, but I don't really want to spend the time that that would require. On another note I still have been unable to find the warranty papers, and because of that I'm going to try out a usb-mouse on wednesday to see if that will bypass the ps2 port problem. If it will then updates will be faster again because I'll be able to comiple everything in a much much shorter time. Today I'll just be reviewing code and animating, because that is fun. That is all.

-Mark

Here's the deal with the forum; Over the past two days the forums has been hit really hard with spam bots posting, and I can't find an easy way to turn off guest, so I'm just going to lock the whole forum for a little while until this matter is settled. Posting comments here or emailing me will be the only way to communicate for at least today.

-Mark

So, today I haven't been able to use my computer. I tried starting up the computer with a usb mouse to no avail. Then, I scoured the internet to a solution to my problem. I found lots of explanations, none which turned out to work or be true. I switched ram, cleared bios (which worked once but then wouldn't start up again), swapped graphics cards, and basically found out through testing that absolutely nothing hardware related is wrong (though ps2 port failure is still a possibility). Sometime when I find the desire to waste more time I'll clear the cmos again and try to use different settings. Naturally, as you may have guessed, I haven't been able to work on BOL at all today, and very little yesterday. I'll check on the server but as far as I know it should still be up (yet not fully functional, blah). I'm done ranting.

-Mark

So, in case your wondering, my computer still isn't working correctly. I got it to work once, and then made the mistake of shutting it off. There is something seriously wrong with one of the connections though I've lost all patience to figure out which one. On a better note, I've figured out a way to get the server to work properly, though I still don't know what was wrong in the first place. The bad side about this is that it will take some time as I need to rewrite a big part of the code for the network (I'm implementing a different server solution from another game, that I can integrate with what I have already written). What will make this slow is that my time with my 256 megs of ram is divided between BOL and another project right now which I'll post a link to later once it's closer to completion. And that's about it.

-Mark

[Edit:] BOL is down for a few days, as I've just learned. A battery died (not sure where or what exactly). Just so you know.[/Edit]

Today wasn't completely a bust but I got very little done, in the way of BOL that is. I started and finished a quarterly project for english class that is due tomorrow, and that took some time as I hadn't read the book yet. Not to mention of course that my computer rebooted in the middle of paragraph five and I hadn't saved it at all yet. Good times. But that's all behind me now. Just so you know I am working on things but it keeps taking longer because today I was working on three projects besides school stuff like english. I'll finish the recoding project soon hopefully, and maybe have a new screenshot or two, and actually change/fix the downloads page, and the developer's page, and fix the wiki part of the site, and fix the forum, and make another movie...but all in good time.

-Mark

So here is an update on what's happening:
Forum: Is back up. Only registered users can post but anyone can view it. I'll work with videoguy on other fixes later.

Server: This is still down. Is scheduled to be fixed by monday. I'm doing a lot of coding today and hopefully will have some positive results by then.

Wiki: I haven't looked at it in a while. Maybe I'll work on getting users to work with it again (though I may need to fix the forum first so that people don't need to register twice).

Website: I have in mind to update many many things and maybe even add in a java application or two that I made at school, but that won't happen today. One thing I might update today is the developer section, as it would be nice to have more content to add in.

School: I'm done with projects for a while, and I have quaterlies all next week, which means that I'll have less homework and more free time to do stuff. So, hopefully I'll stop being lazy and get on with something.

Movies: As some of you know, I've been spending some time with Lordclark Productions and making movies. Now, I won't link to that site yet as I've made some big mistakes on the pages and it doesn't at all look good, but just so you know that will be forthcoming (it will be updated weekly with different funny raw footage that will later be made into a movie. Some animated movies are also in the works and will be shown there too.).

That about wraps things up. So I have work to do, no ram to waste, and some eating to do.

-Mark

I hope everyone reading this has had the benefit of one extra hour this weekend, I know I sure enjoyed mine. Anyway, here is an update:

Server: The part that needs replacing hasn't come in yet but will probably come in tomorrow. So, it will be up soon if ups comes on time.

Wiki: I still haven't looked at it.

School: I have both my physics and calculus quarterly tomorrow. Orcs!

Movies: I'm having fun with animating. Still nothing of quality that I wish to show, but something will turn up someday.

And that's all for monday the 30th.

-Mark

The UPS guy was attacked by a trunk-monkey and it is now very uncertain as to when the server will be back up. Please send all your complaints and flames to Jon, who doesn't have work tomorrow. Other news:

-Site no longer has that annoying grayed out horizontal scroll bar, score!
-Computer still is slow but situation has improved somewhat with my remote possibilities.
-I'm having lots of fun coding (not so much right now) and have put in some "new" features that for now will remain classified.
-The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel is currently playing on my computer.
-Lordclark.com has a link on the bottom of it's homepage with links to what I've been working on. Feel free to find all the bugs that I know are there (I'm just to lazy to fix them right now).
-In case download page is wrong and I don't feel like fixing it this is the most recent version I think, though that link might not be right since I wrote it off the top of my head.
-I finished watching season 3 of stargate sg-1 today.

:Mark

Hey everybody, I have great news! If you want to help BOL come out faster you can donate money using the donate button! The new donate button can be found at the bottom of the links thing to the right. So, now even if you have no time, ideas, nor artistic talent you can still help the Birth of Legends cause. Horray!

-Mark

Remember the really old forum that had over 3000 posts and was full of useful information? Well, that site never allowed me to create a copy of the database but I've decided to make an archive of all that information anyway. Using internet explorer's (yeah I hate to use it) option to make websites availible offline I'm creating an entire copy of the old forum. So, the good thing is that we'll be able to talk about a lot of the old discussions. The bad thing is now I have to sort through 500 megs of junk that IE decided to download to find what we want. So, it will take some time but I wanted to let you all know that it was in the works. If anyone has a lot of free time and would like to help me sort through everything I'm more than willing to give you a folder. So that's what I felt like saying today.

-Mark

As those of you who read this know I'm not very consistent with posting here and/or updating the site. So, I've figured out a fairly good way to change this. Basically, instead of have the last five posts on this page what will be displayed is all the posts from the last week. This means that I'll have to post at least once a week for something to be displayed, which will force me to create news even if there isn't any. So, that's good news for everyone because I'll be working on the site more, making updates frequently, overall working more on BOL. Oh, and also as a side note, today during school a few of my friends pointed out some spelling errors I had made on one of the information pages. I tell you this because that is something I like to see; people who actually read and care about what they've read. So, if anyone finds an error in what I've written somewhere on the site please tell me as it's nice to know that you've read it and it's also nice to know that the site is accurate and free of mistakes.

Something else that was brought to my attention today; Should there be any incentives within the game to donate? That's a good question and I think the answer to that is yes, there should be. So, I'm still deciding what in-game rewards there should or shouldn't be for donating money, and I'll tell you once the server is back up and playable. For anyone who donates before the game gets up and running again, you will recieve access to unreleased content, special demos, unreleased demo movies, and also will gain a place in the credits for donating to BOL. So tell me what you think of this whole idea, and I'd like to say that I've already recieved one donation!

-Mark

Today I've worked a little on fixing errors on the archive pages. So, now hopefully you'll never be taken to a page that doesn't exist, or to a page your not supposed to see. In other news, I finished a basic database of the old forum (or a forumbase). You can download it here. It's a 30 meg download but when you unrar it it gets to somewhere around 200 megs. Those of you who originally posted on that forum will probably have the most laughs when reading through some of this, if you choose. I'll be trying to fish out the relevant information about BOL that isn't already on the site and add it. I once talked about putting the entire archive online here, and I still plan to, but that will take a lot more time. If anyone wants to now help me find the relevant information in here then go ahead, do it, and I'll be more than happy to transfer what you've found here on the site. One thing I realized was missing from the site was a basic FAQ about BOL. That can now be found by one of the links on the right entitled: BOL FAQ.

Server update: It will be up monday or tuesday. In the meantime I'll work on getting something new compiled by then. Until then, I hope to hear some feedback.

-Mark

The forums are starting to come back to life, slowly but surely, now that it has been cleared up that the forums are not currently locked as some of you thought. Some have asked why I haven't posted much recently and said that that was a reason why you hadn't posted at all. Well, it's mostly because I haven't thought of any good topics to discuss, nor had any questions to answer. So if you have a question or a topic you'd like to have discussed either write a comment here or, even better, post it on the forums.

-Mark

Yes, you read that correctly, I'm about to attempt to revive the old motherboard in the craziest attempt every attempted. For those of you who've seen my current setup, with a motherboard out side of the case, that's nothing like what I'm about to attempt. I'm going to pull in a third motherboard, a second power supply, three additional hard drives, a lot of wires, and a few prayers that I don't blow anything up. So, basically I'm posting this message now just in case it doesn't all go well. This computer will have to be turned off for a few minutes though should be turned back on five minutes into the surgery for moral support. Wish me luck.

-Mark

(the participants of this surgery have signed many papers so I can't be sued)

Well, luckily for me and possibly unluckily for everyone else there was no explosion. Yet, I haven't tried turing it on yet because I feel a need to look over all the wires a third time to make sure nothing will explode. One other aside before I tell you the details of the surgery is that there was a computer from California that was claiming to be a relative of one of the patients and tried to sue me. Luckily he had misplaced his papers and brought no evidence to court. So I wasn't sued.

The surgery was very intense. It took me ten minutes before I could safely turn this computer back on (if having an entire computer including the power supply and excluding the hard drives outside of cases is safe). After another ten minutes we learned that one of the main arteries (the aorta to be exact) was too short. Then when relocating the heart to a better location there was a kidney failure (floppy drive) and a liver (power button wire) problem that we hadn't diagnosed before. Luckily for our patient there was a liver availible from a patient who had died many years ago. Unluckily, this new liver wasn't a perfect match, and it was very old, but it looks like it will do for now. About the right kidney, well I rewired his brain (bios) so he no longer thinks he needs it. I think if we pump a constant supply of medicine (software) into him he'll be alright. He is currently recovering in stasis and I think he'll be alright, but I think I may want to take a picture before I jumpstart him (press the power button), just in case. So, wish me luck.

-Mark

p.s. The server computer is back up, and I'm working as fast as I can to set up the fixes, but it will take some time with all this thanks giving activity that is taking place right now. Hopefully I'll have it up by tonight.

[Edit:]Old edit deleted: Server is online and ready for testing![/Edit]

Hello everyone! Now, I can't test it, but I think that BOL might be working properly now, so if people could test it that would be great. If things are working properly you should be able to throw a snowball and also be able to talk in the chat box. If you can do one and not the other tell me. If you can't do either, tell me. If you can do both tell me. What ever you do, tell me, because I like input and need help :) . Oh, yeah, and yes this means that the server is back up.

-Mark

So, two people tested the server, I think. I heard from one of them, and everything worked. They were able to throw snowballs, talk, the works. For some reason I noticed that a part of the server crashed when they logged out, but it didn't affect others who were coming in. So, we'll see how that turns out.

-Mark

Yay! Everyone celebrate by logging in, shooting snowballs, and taking screenshots! For those of you who haven't already you can download the client here. I figured out what was up with the whole crashing thing, fixed the code, recompiled it, and even tested it so I know it works. So, go on, play!

Now that the network is working fairly normally I need to figure out which one of the things I said I'd do next, that I should do first. So, here's what I think the choices are: Npcs, new models, actual physics, or better fighting/a real weapon. Or, if I had said something else, which I probably did, and didn't list it here, and you'd rather see that, then tell me. I'll need some input of what's wanted the most before I start doing it. So, leave a comment here, or post it on the forums, or email me.

-Mark

So, I'm now working on a proper login screen for the client. I thought that it shouldn't be too hard and that it'd be done yesterday, but I was wrong, as always. For some reason the screen comes up but it never actually connects to the server properly, so I'm still working on it. For those of you who care though, the old launcher has been fixed up quite a bit and is now in the download. So, I'm really wishing that my good motherboard worked again so it wouldn't take so long to do anything. But enough of that, I'll get back to work.

-Mark

News: I'm very sick. I did little work on the game today but I did upload a patch to the server. Now for the explanation:

As far as I can tell from the logs no one experienced any problems but a part of the server software crashed again today. Luckily, today I also figured out what was wrong with (wow alliteration) part of the server in the first place, and I even knew how to fix it. This was the first time in many days that I wasn't confronted with any errors trying to fix something. Awesome. I have a really big headache right now. Ok, so, so far no two people have logged into the server at the same time, though there have been four different people who have logged into the server in the past two days. I'm sorry for the lack of new things but I have made some huge advancements with the server, so thankyou guys for testing it out. I have some ideas for how to get my login screen to work (what I only told Ix was that I programmed a login screen but for some reason it wasn't displaying properly). Though, I barely have the energy to respond to email and write this, so I won't look into it again till tomorrow. For character selection I'm going to add in something I think, if I remember to code it tomorrow, because it shouldn't be too hard to do a basic selection. And now I can't think straight anymore, so goodnight, and I'm going to bed...

-Mark

[EDIT2:] The problem with the cooler launcher has been eliminated. By the time you read this it will have been uploaded here.

[EDIT:] So, there was actually nothing really wrong with the server. I improved it further, found the fix not to work and then realized what had happened; the new launcher that I had made which looks so good doesn't actually work. See, I hadn't bothered to test it because I really can't, and so basically if anyone had downloaded the new version it won't work. So, I'll upload a new working version of the better looking launcher in the next 24 hours if I can't get this blasted login screen to work first.[/EDIT]

What I tried today went down in flames with over 100 errors. So, I have no binary updates for today. Yes, there is still time today but fixing all those errors tonight seems unreasonable. What I did accomplish today was I updated the MySQL tables so that it's ready to deal with character customization, though I haven't finished with the 3d content yet. One bad thing that I discovered today; somehow in yesterday's update I messed up the service that I fixed, so logging in doesn't seem to be working properly. I'm working on that now. I'm still tired.

-Mark

I won't be home much tonight so, not much coding will be done today. I'm starting to get tired getting a side project, that is only sort of related to the bol gui, to work so I'll just have to review the other code and figure out what was wrong in the first place. Oh, and I just got called down to supper. So, I'll do some work sometime soonish and release something new in that time. Now for food.

-Mark

Well, (takes a look at last post), oh right, I got that side project to work, which was an alternative method for the BOL gui, basically getting CEGUI to work with BOL. For people who don't know CEGUI is an open-source gui api kind of thing to save game programmers a lot of work when it comes to creating a gui. So, anyway, I'll need to spend some time to modify the demo around an actual gui system. In the meantime (and hopefully it will be a short meantime) I'd be very appreciative of anyone who would want to use their artistic skillz to create a cool background for the login screen.

About character creation/selection, I'm realizing that I need to reconfigure the database in a much more major way to get it the way we want. Basically, how it is now is that you have a login and a password for a single player, and the adjustment I made to add customization was that there is a numerical value that determines your appearance and color. The problem with this though is that as it's only set up for one player per account I can't think of a good way to set up customization and character selection. Furthermore, since the final product is supposed to allow multiple characters per account, and since I'll eventually need more then a number and switch statements for character customization, I'm going to have to redo the whole database. Usually this wouldn't matter at all to users but I'm unsure of how to set it up so that people can still play without problems while I'm in transition and/or how these new accounts will or won't be able to interact with the old accounts. So, just a warning in case you find yourself unable to log in. So another feedback item then, is whether or not you want both login and character selection at the same time or login first and then character selection.

This is a long post...but it's full of good news so it should be long. Something I constantly forget is that even though I can't play BOL from this computer at the moment, I can still play from the family computer in the next room. So, if anyone wants to play with another person online just email me to see if I'm availible, which I'll try to be as much as possible. Talking about people playing online, Videoguy and myself were the only people online in the past 24 hours, so thanks goes to Videoguy for trying. And talking about being online, this brings me to another topic which I thought of today. Since the MySQL tables keep track of whether or not a player is online, I think I could set up a little info box at the top of the site saying who was currently logged in, as well as the last person to log out, which would be cool. But, I'll wait till after I change the tables around to write that script.

So, quick recap, I would like someone to help me make a cool background for the login page. Secondly, I'd like some opinions about whether to release login and character selection in separate updates or to spend a little more time and do them in the same update. Third, if you can't login it's probably my fault, and please report it. And the fourth bullet; email me if your going to go online and would like someone to play with. Until next time!

-Mark

Well, I know that few of you read this, but I'll post anyway for the one or two people who do. I still need to spend about an hour to get the switch statements set up properly. Right now the login screen comes up, you can connect, but then you can't see the game because I still need to write some more code and finish changing all the old code to work with the new code (basically I need to write another switch statement). So, I'll do that tomorrow morning when I can think straight (hopefully). So, I'll post again tomorrow morning.

-Mark

Ok, so, as the title implies, the login screen won't be out untill this afternoon. That's all I can say because I'm out of time.

-Mark

So, I still have time but right now it doesn't exactly look good as I have 46 errors left that I haven't settled. Though, that might not mean much as I just fixed 20 errors in my last swipe. You'd be surprised how many errors can be found when going from login screen to gameplay. I'm almost tempted to get rid of server selection entirely, which I may do, but I have to go...

Ok, I've returned to finish my post. Mothers can be very demanding. But anyway, I still have 46 errors as I just got back home and it looks like it won't all get done tonight. But, you can still download the current stable version and play online without any problems. Once this login screen is done with character creation should be a lot easier to implement, and then you'll have more reasons to play. So, until tomorrow.

-Mark

So, I'm writing this from school because I'm bored. Good news, there are only 14 errors left as of this morning. Bad news, I'm not at home so I can't fix it right now. So that's the current status.

-Mark

[Later] So, now I'm home and I'll be working on those 14 errors shortly. But, I feel that I should finish my school rant. Basically, I'm fine with being bored in school, but they really need to stop trying to prevent me from doing things during my boredom. Like, for instance, I redownloaded BOL today at school, and I try to connect, and I get a "cannot connect" error. And I knew for a fact that the server was still up so it was so annoying, as you may imagine, to realize that my school was blocking be from contacting the server. Because of my anger I'll be spending the next few days at school figuring out how to route the demo through the school network. Once I figure it out I'll tell all of you so you can play from school too (of course, if it wasn't blocked for you in the first place you won't care). So that's my school rant of the week; I hate my school's network. [/Later]

So, those 14 errors kept regenerating and all in all I think I went through about 700 errors today. But, to my horror, after it finally compiled, I ran it and the login screen never showed. It just went straight to the game. And after all that work! Oh, and I just started thinking about it and I know why, it must be because I accidentally commented out one of the switch statements when I was getting rid of server selection after all the problems stemming from that. I'll get to that right after I write three pages of an English paper, a Physics lab, and some calculus homework...

-Mark

So, today, or right now, I'm playing online with a friend, and we find out that the debug information hadn't been turned off, so it was really hard to talk. So, anyway, you can get a client fix here, or the full thing here.

-Mark

And now back to the game.

For those of you who were really hoping for the login screen, I'm sorry. I haven't actually looked at that code at all today. But, now for my bug report/findings that me and Adam discovered today:

Bug #1; The clouds aren't rendering properly in todays' update, which is kind of a pain but still better then all of those debug messages. It isn't too bad, but it's all boxy, so it looks a little weird.

Bug #2; For some really strange reason, unknown to me, after playing with another person for about ten minutes they appear to stop moving. This seems to be something server-sided but I can't figure out the real cause yet. Even stranger about this though, and also kind of cool, is that while they won't appear to move they'll still spin and change directions as well as throw snowballs from their actual location (not the location from which they appear to be). This bug, though, might be client-sided, and not server-related, because it first was only happening to Adam, and then seemed to happen more frequently for him until it finally happened to me as well. What I did do to try and fix this problem is reset the server, so who knows if it will happen again. During this whole bug we were still able to talk to each other, which was a good thing.

Bug #3; Sometimes the snowballs would go through me or Adam without seeming to actually hit (there is a hit animation when such events occur). This is a bug, not an error, but I know where this one is coming from. It's from the lack of actual physics (something I'll be implementing in one of the next updates). This also caused a few collision errors, as had been reported back before this was online, but those didn't really matter as there are easy ways to get free, like hitting f1.

Bug #4; I can't think of one...that might have actually been it. If it wasn't Adam will hopefully remind me sometime.

So, all in all, the first half-hour or twenty minutes that Adam and I were able to play bug free were a lot of fun. I'll fix the login screen and then go on to getting real physics, npcs, and other models into the game.

-Mark

That's right, you read it correctly, 68 pages of code. And that's not even the entire thing. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about the massive amount of changes I'm adding to the game. In the main cpp file alone there are 3056 lines of code, which comes out to 68 pages worth. For people who've seen me lately I've been carrying around this clipboard and constantly reading code, which is kind of weird and cool at the same time. But, because of me carrying it around today I got a lot of more people interested in BOL, and they might be reading this right now, or heading over to the downloads section to try it out. For those who want to play online, you want to download this version. The only thing lacking in that version is that the clouds aren't working for some reason. So, if your obsessed with having clouds, and don't care to be online, then download this version. If any of those links aren't working then please leave a comment so I can know to fix it.

If your the only one online and feel lonely, email me and I'll play with you if I'm availible (which I usually am, though I won't be tonight). So, enjoy, have fun, and be warned: I am still in a pre-beta stage. This means that the RPG part of BOL hasn't been coded yet, that these are not the final graphics, and that there are still some errors and bugs that need to be worked out. If you have errors or find bugs please either email me, leave a comment here, or post something on the forums. For more information about the games use the links on the right -> ->

Enjoy!

-Mark

Don't ask me why I wrote that title, it has almost nothing to do with this post. But, anyway, I've been sick today and have also decided, once again, to take a break from the land of errors which is the login screen. Also, about a gui, good luck with that. Onto better news, what I have had the courage to try and fix are the clouds. Why they misteriously stopped working I'll never know. Right at this very moment what I hope to be the fix is compiling. So, I'll come back and edit this post when that great thing arises.

-Mark

[EDIT:] It didn't work. However, I was able to do another test to see that it could work, and that I didn't mess up anything in the engine. So, I'll finish fixing it tomorrow, and hopefully I'll feel better. Now for food and sleep. [/EDIT]

Other people from school were wanting links to my older games; so here they are.

Monster1 : Platformer, basic, only six levels.

MTTB Arcade : Just a basic arcade, lots of fun.

Extreme Pong : Just what it sounds like.

Fooseball : The first ever fooseball game for the computer. (still looking for where I put it)

-Mark

(p.s. links to come)

Ok, so recently there have been more people coming to the site, and I've had many questions as to where to download the game, where information about the game can be found, and other such things. To help those with downloading the latest version of BOL, there is now a Download the Game link over to the right. For those of you who are unclear BOL is not finished yet and what you can download is more of a demo. I'm working on adding many more features, some of you have even seen the code to prove it, but my schedule lately has not been allowing me much time, so I'm sorry for the delays. I have made a small update that fixes the scroll wheel bug where you could zoom out to forever and I've also made the loading screen more amusing. I didn't make a separate upgrade download for this one because it only addresses very minor things, so if you want to get it you'll have to redownload the whole thing. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The downloads page has finally been integrated into this portion of the site, and I've learned a few new html tricks, so I'll be trying to fix up problems with this site and make everything easier to access. If you have any ideas or thoughts as to what you'd like to see please leave a comment. I'll make a page for my older 2D games tomorrow so that those of you who wanted to see them won't always have to look to the post below.
Server news: Today during programming class my teacher was absent so I had some fun and, for the first time ever, there were four people logged on at once. Once I figure out a good way to get through the school firewall I'll create a school version of BOL so that those of you who want to play at school, who might normally get blocked, will have that opportunity. And that's all for today's update.

-Mark

I've been very distracted lately, and, as you might have realized, I haven't updated much of the site yet and I haven't released any updates. Honestly I haven't looked at the code for a little while, but npcs seem like the easiest thing to create at the moment, strange as that sounds, so I think I'll go populate the world with adorable little creatures that you can throw snowballs at.

-Mark

p.s. If you want to know the distractions, you'll have to ask :) .

I have officially finished my last day of school this year, and now have the next nine days off! But, of course everyone does, so now I'll get to the important stuff.

During school today I ran out of time, but was able to get seven computers connected to the server at once, with over 100 moving objects on the screen at any one time (me an a friend were shooting snowballs like crazy) and there was no lag. So yay for the server! By the time we have twenty people playing at once I'll have fixed the click as fast as you can unlimited snowballs bug. On another note, the npcs work, but I'm still trying to figure out how I should do their AI (for now that is). Hopefully I'll come up with an update later tonight, and have a great vacation!

-Mark

First of all, I want to wish everyone a happy Christmas:

Click Here for the full thing

And now, for my release plan: Instead of have a release everyother day, and always posting my status, I think I'm going to set dates for releasing the next update/s and then not post again until then. That way there aren't so many useless posts on my part. So, that said, the next planned release will be on christmas, when hopefully you'll be able to see little guys from the screenshot above running around. In case you didn't know that screenshot was zoomed in pretty close.

For the upcoming release of 12/25/06; The new things will include npcs, realtime shadows, a proper login screen, and character selection. The bugfixes will include the mouse wheel problem, the camera bug (the one where it goes up too high), and possibly the snowball rapid-fire (vote whether or not I should get rid of that by leaving a comment). If I have a little extra time I might even change the controlls to WSAD and/or make them customizeable for those of you who've been complaing (politely of course).

-Mark

I wasn't really thinking when I said I'd put out a new release today. Yesterday I wasn't home very much, and today I've been busy with Christmas. I'm leaving in a few minutes as well, so I'm not certain that I'll be able to get everything done in time for today, but here's what you'll definitly have by tonight:
Realtime shadows,
Mouse wheel bugfix,
Camera bugfix,
the optional WSAD control.

As for everything else: I haven't actually looked at the login screen so I'm not sure whether I'll have time to get that up or not. For npcs, the client part is finished but I still need to fix a few bugs client-side. So, even though you might not see npcs by tonight, they will be around. Also, because it's an easy thing to do, I'm going to be adding a whole lot of fuctionality in the config file, so those of you who want to see other features, or have fun playing around, can. The config file can be edited while the game is running and changes will be made in real-time (for most things anyway). So, I'm off to a Christmas party of sorts, and I'll post here again later tonight when I have a better idea as to what's going to happen.

-Mark

I don't know about all of you, but I've been having a great day. But, I won't bore you with the details. Basically, I've had less than an hour to work on this release since the last time I posted. And, on top of that because of some technical difficulties I'm currently unable to test it myself, so, long story short, I wasn't able to bring all the features to this release as I had originally planned two posts ago... but I did still get in the most functional ones :)

Release of 12/25/06:
For those of you who've been aching for WSAD you can now have it. Basically, for wsad people, there is now an option in the config file that allows you to switch from arrow keys to wsad. And, for people who aren't brave enough to change it themselves, included in the download is a WSAD.cfg that you can just rename to client.cfg if you want an easy fix. Side effects of WSAD; it will type in the command console. To help this problem you can easily erase whatever has been typed in by hitting escape or control. I'll work on better functionality when I can actually test it myself to make sure such a change would work.
There are now realtime shadows for all characters. This is turned on by default but can be turned off in the config file. In testing of this feature it seems that it might not work at all with some computers. I think that was fixed, it definitely works on my computer right now, so if you see no difference I'd like to know.
The mouse wheel and camera bugs have been fixed, as far as I can tell. If you find otherwise or find any new bugs please report them.
Another thing, clouds have been turned off as a temporary fix to their ugliness. If you liked them and still want them, however, just change cloud_count at the bottom of the config to anything besides 0.

Next release date right now will be set to this Saturday. In saturday's release I plan to put in all the features that I wasn't able to fit in this release, as well as some voice over ip action, as I now have a headset to test it with. Merry Christmas!

-Mark
(p.s. The updated everything can be found here.)

There was a small problem with Monday's release that I recently discovered so I'm sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused for those of you who had downloaded the Monday's release. It is now fixed. About shadows: They always work for other people's characters but they only sometimes work for your own character. The exact reason for this is to be determined and I'm still working on it.
In today's fix npcs are starting to become possible, but there are as of now a little spazzy. If you want to find out what I mean you can create your own by using the new command "/addBot". The parameters of addBot can be found by typing "/help addBot". As a warning: if you give /addBot the wrong parameters the client might crash, but it does give you the possibility of having more fun. Most of the issues with npcs that are left are clientsided. I hope you enjoy the fix.

-Mark

So, I said I wouldn't post again till the next release date, but I can't help myself :) . Some interesting statistics some of you might be interested in is that although the server will only allow 20 players at a time right now, the server does allow for 1999999999 npcs to be on at one time. And yes, that is in the billions, I didn't miscount. The thing is though, I don't have the time or patience to create nearly that many, nor the desire, which is why you can. All npcs created by players can be seen by other players and will remain online when you log off. Remember, this is using the /addBot command. If you decide you want to get rid of any you can just use the /removeBot command to get rid of whichever one you want. To figure out the identity of certain entities you can use the command /entities. Also, the great thing about this is that so far everything is backwards compatible with older versions, so even though older clients can't create or remove bots they can still see them (of course, they could just upgrade to get the current fix). WSAD has been tested and does work, which is something I had forgotten to check yesterday. By the time you read this there will be an edit at the bottom with a link to an even more up-to-date client. So have fun! With your help we will be able to do better stress tests of the server. And, furthermore, as the day goes on I plan to get more interaction between npcs and players working, and maybe they'll even start moving. Also, about voice-over-ip for BOL, I'm working on it but I can only do so much at once. Post any comments you might have either here, on the forum, or email them to me. Enjoy!

-Mark

[Edit: Here you are; just an update of the client itself can be found here. The entire thing can be found here.

This is like the second post in an hour, but I have nothing else to do right now :P . So, first of all make sure you read the previous post if you haven't already. I've updated the client download about four times so far today, and I'm not done yet, so if your not sure whether or not you have the latest thing just redownload it. So far the npcs are becoming much more stable (they no longer are so spazzy in their movements) but they don't all move properly. If you log on you might wonder why all the npcs have a number in their name. That's their ID, just so it's easier for me and other people later on who want to play around with them. If you accidentally try to create an npc with an ID that already exists it will give you and error and try to crash, but hitting ignore will usually get you out of it. And now for the real reason of this post; pictures!

-Mark

Here's what should be coming to the public tomorrow:

That's more then what it looks like, it's 100 npcs, an army, charging and throwing snowballs. I think I'll have them ready for everyone else tomorrow. Enjoy!

-Mark

As anyone keeping up with the site should know, I was making all sorts of progress with BOL and then all of a sudden haven't posted any updates. Well, there are some good reasons for this. First of all, I very recently acquired the code of a game that is very interesting and is helping me to get the physics working as it should. And yes, amazingly enough this means that jumping off cliffs might become possible soon. Also, because I have a new player model, and because everyone has been wanting one, I'm doing a makeover of the character code so that it isn't so hard to update all the time. For npcs, as many of you have already seen some of them work great, and some of them don't. I still need to finish the code for a server-side npc handler, since as of now they've always been client-sided creations. This is close to completion, so, if I don't keep getting distracted, I should have many new updates by the end of today. I'll be updating the developer's page so that those of you who care can see what's being worked on right now.

-Mark

Some of you might recognize the title of this post from another game. Well, because my sister is using the testing computer right now I can't check to make sure what I just wrote works or not. So, in the boredom that comes from waiting, I decided that it would be a cool thing to have random loading messages. Of course, half of them go by too fast to read anyway, but it still gave me something to do for a short time and I'm pleased to say that the next release which will come out in a couple of hours will indeed have random loading messages. Also, because I forgot to mention it before, if you take a screenshot now it will come out right side up, instead of flipped. Also, in the last two updates some of the animations were really off, so I'm happy to say that at least for the player character that has been fixed. Another addition to the list of what you'll probably see tonight, most of the npcs move now. So, whether or not I want them to, as I'm not entirely sure I want all of them to, I think that they do. Though, I can't confirm this until I'm able to test it out again.
...
Let's see...Oh right, also now there is a new player character. I'll probably just have the new character as the default for players until the character selection screen is up, though tell me if you want otherwise. Hopefully I'm able to test it out soon, and if not I'll add some other feature that no one cares about :) .

-Mark

I uploaded it yesterday but I forgot to post about it :) . Minor changes from yesterday's plan include that it is still possible to mess up the animations of the main character, you don't start off as the new character, and that was it. So yeah, read the last post for the updates of this release as I'm in a rush. Download it here.

-Mark

Well, it's been a few days since I last posted anything, and you might all have wondered what's up, so I'll tell you: My computer works again!!! I got a new motherboard from Newegg yesterday, though sadly I wasn't able to try it out because I was already helping other people with their computers and doing some modifications, plus I had to figure out where I was going to take the parts from, but that's besides the point. So, today, and still going on now, is a big transition back to 1 gig of ram. But, unlike I had originally planned, I decided to practically build another computer instead of just switching out the old motherboard again so that I'd have two computers to work with which will hopefully increase productivity. So, lets count... I currently have 8.5 computers in my room. 8.5 instead of 9 because I don't have enough power supplies to run them all, as if I had enough outlets :P . But now I have an additional 80 gigs to add to the 120 gigs that I've been using recently. That will hopefully last me till the end of the month, but I can't be sure.
So now for BOL news; I haven't looked at the code since the last time I posted. The current download is still the latest build. Tomorrow if I have time I'll add some more fun and try to finish up some of the old promises, but I might be sidetracked for a while now that I have a decent amount of ram again. I'll post again tomorrow. Lol, tomorrow is in 1.5 hours.

-Mark

Someone at school a couple days ago told me that they weren't able to log into BOL recently, and then today when I actually tried to test something new, I wasn't able to connect either. So, I reset the server and, lo and behold, it works again! It was a minor problem with the log files getting too big after server neglect for a few months, so I'll have to recode that soon. But, back to the server, a side-effect of resetting the server is that the npcs have all gone into hiding (they don't exist anymore). So, when I upgrade the server I'll have to create a better way to save and load npcs. So, enough of that. The moral of the post is that the server works again, snowballs can be thrown, and npcs are still waiting to be recreated (which by the way is something you can do).

Now as for actual updates: I'm still working on one but I haven't been able to put much time into it for a few reasons. One, and this is a big one, is that I lost the installer for Visual Studio so I have yet to get it working on the good computer. Two, and this equally as big, I'm currently playing a free trial of WoW, which I know is a sin but I thought would be good to do eventually to have a better sense of what BOL needs to accomplish. Three, there are a lot of other games that I haven't been able to play forever, and it's taken me about a week to settle down. Though, I still haven't looked at Oblivion.... Maybe I'll hold off on that for another week. If your all very lucky I'll have finished an update for tomorrow, which involves graphics, animations, and fireworks. That's all I can say for now, hopefully everything works out.

-Mark

Yes, I didn't forget to update today. And, yes, I did actually manage to fix something. And yes, there is even new content. So here's what I did:
-I fixed the character animation once and for all.
-I put some of the npcs back in there places (you can place npcs yourself, type "/help addBot" ingame for more information)
-I added fireworks. I was too lazy to put in more then two because it took a while to get them to refresh correctly. I'll add more next update because they look cool.
-I changed the sky. I did this mostly because the old sky looked terrible compared to everything else and also because this sky looks better :P . One big change with this sky is that there is no sun, meaning there is no flare. I'll try to make another good sky that even has a sun, hopefully in the next week or so.
-I increased the snowball speed. More then one person complained that the snowballs weren't moving fast enough and both that it wasn't realistic, nor hard to dodge. Both of these statements were true and therefore I changed the speed of the snowballs.
-Aiming of snowballs has been improved; you can still throw a ridiculous distance as some of you claim, but the aiming hemisphere doesn't jump around as much as it had before.
-And finally, there are some visible penguins in the game (check out the pingoo village while online).

Screenshots from today:

-Mark

p.s. Download the full version here, or get just the update here.

I really hope that I don't find enough bugs to have to declare a bug of the week every week, but there is a pretty big bug right now. When I was trying to fix how names are displayed over players (I want the actual play name displayed, not that dumb entity######) I found that when I changed how people are created I messed up how players get connected to the server, meaning that two different players couldn't be online at the same time without errors being created. The good thing about this is that it was also at the root of the problem where names don't get displayed correctly. So, moral of the story is that I'm close to having a solution and should have another update tomorrow. And that is the bug of the week.

-Mark

p.s. Also today, I found that I hadn't updated all the files in the release yesterday, meaning that the sky had still been the old one. So, I reuploaded both the full and upgrade downloads and you can now get the latest version using those links.

Good News! I was successfully able to squish the bug of the week. Not only can multiple people play online again, but your actual name is displayed now instead of "Entity####" or "Self". I figured out how to properly use the registry, which is cool, and also means that you can even play multiple characters at the same time if you want to (this will be taken out once BOL gets into an official beta). I know I still need to create the whole login and character screens update but I seem to do a lot better with gameplay and graphics updates.
Current bugs left in this release: Penguins sink a little in the snow as well as are sideways. The fireworks don't always update properly. And finally, the camera still has issues every once in a while. If you find other bugs please tell me.
Upcoming: Login/Character Selection screens, fixed penguins along with other actual character models, real physics, and items/weapons.

Hope you enjoy! Latest patch here. Latest full client here. To open rar files head over to rarlabs.com.

-Mark

I made a breakthrough today in the art department. I haven't worked on getting this into the game yet, but it's becoming more and more possible. Textures work even. So, here is a short movie (14 seconds) showing a character model that may or may not find itself in the client soon. Word of warning though, while this quality of character will be in the final version of BOL, this particular model will not. The reason for this is that it's from another game and is copyrighted. But models like this one will be much nicer looking placeholders until I'm able to acquire actual models for BOL.

-Mark

I didn't have time for another update today, though if you want to see an overview of what's being worked on take a look at the developer page. What I've been working on today has mostly been 3d graphics/content.

I also need to do some major improvement of this site so that everything is easier for people to understand. I'm not entirely sure how to do this, so any input you readers might have would be helpful. If everything goes as planned I should have another update tomorrow. Until then, this has been the 100th post.

-Mark

I wasn't able to finish the next update today, and I won't be home much the next two days so I think the next major update will be this sunday. Anyway, I thought I might as well tell you what I've worked on so far today. First I made about 6 new animations for the gnu so that he can hold a sword or axe, which I think will be the first weapons to be seen in BOL. Also, I perfected some new particle effects so that in addition to snowballs we can have some spells, fireballs and the like, to cast around at folks. Also (and this is partly theoretical still) I was thinking of putting in some targets so that even when no one else is online you can have something to find and shoot at. For targets I was thinking of putting little igloos with a bullseye painted on them randomly on the map. When you hit them they'd explode and respawn somewhere else. So, as I said that part is still mostly theoretical but I think I can do it without too much problems. Also, since I now in a way have more time before this next release I'll try to at least have proper physics for snowballs. Any other ideas or requests would as always be appreciated.

-Mark

As you might have noticed, I didn't update yesterday like I had planned. The reason is that I was sick, and I still am. I feel so good that I didn't even go to school today. So I don't know if I'll be able to concentrate on creating an update or not. Probably not but who knows? I'll post again tomorrow with an update on the situation. In the meantime, having a custom character may be possible soon (graphics wise).

Enjoy!

-Mark

I'm not going to be able to finish an update for today. The reason for this is that I'm still a little sick and haven't been able to concentrate on code. However, I have managed to work some more on animations, and particles, and graphics in general. Here's what I've done today:

Along with that cool sword I also have a battle ax. I'll try to have this by tomorrow, but we'll see how I'm feeling then.

-Mark

I'm very close to finishing everything, but some small problem is coming up with the sword and the compiler isn't liking me right now. So, I'm just going to give it a break and finish up this release tomorrow. So, until then.

-Mark

As can be seen in the screenshot above, there are now swords in-game. I just decided to give all players a sword because it looks cool, and because my theoretical item system doesn't fully work yet. After talking about magic and fireballs I realized that I hadn't made animations for spells, and as you guys want actual characters anyway I decided not to spend more time on that. For the curious few who are wondering I didn't release this yesterday because I wasn't at home pretty much at all yesterday. So now for the update:

-Shiny swords! Everyone can thank videoguy for making them, and they look great. Funny side-effect of swords is that they always have shadows, even though the character's shadows don't seem to work. And a side-effect of the shadows is that they aren't always the same color...

-New blue outfit. At first I was just making it in addition to the yellow outfit but while I've been using it for all the screenshots recently I've found that I for one think it looks better, and I'll leave customization for an actual character.

-New Animations! To go along with the swords I have new animations so that they aren't chopping their heads off (though sometimes they do nick themselves). I was going to add an axe as well, but it was a 2-handed one and these animations don't work for that, and I didn't want to spend more time on that.just yet.

-New start point! Eventually you'll start off where you were last login, but for now why not just end up at the other side of the map? :P

-Bigger penguins! I have nothing else to say about that.

-Solar Flare without a sun! It's kind of an easter egg because it can only be seen from a certain angle which is hard to find. Good luck in finding it!

Wow, that wasn't too bad of a list. So, next tasks: I want to take a look at the login/character selection screen again, I plan to change how the MySQL tables are accessed so that the former idea is possible, I will put in some fire somewhere, I will actually try to make those target things I had talked about (I didn't even try yet), and I will add a points system so that you can have a something to strive for. And that's everything I can think of on the list for the next update. If you have any other ideas feel free to mention them. I'll work on acquiring those character models again too. Oh, and I'll create a highscore table here on the site so everyone can see how many points they have!

-Mark

The way things are going I think I should be able to release targets on wednesday. So far I've updated the server about four times (which I know for a fact that no one experienced), so now collision works better. If you log in now, most of the npcs will be hit if you throw a snowball at them. For example, if you hit anyone near the pingoo village your bound to see them get hit. Unfortunately, for unknown reasons, some of the npcs don't get hit when you throw a snowball at them. The reason this is so important is because it's hard to give points to people who've hit targets when the server doesn't seem to realize that they have.
In other good news, I've figured out a way for the server to save and load npcs, so even after a server reset they'll still be there. So, for those of you who've forgotten, you can create your own npcs in-game using the command /addBot. Correct usage of the command is explained if you type in /help addBot. If you have any other questions feel free to leave a comment. I'll get back to work now. Enjoy the superbowl!

-Mark

So, something that everyone, including myself, often likes to see is stats. Now, as I'm still rearranging the database I can only display a limited amount, but I think you'll like it anyway. To get to the highscore page you have to click on the sneaky link over to the right. Now, as there aren't any targets yet, and therefore no way to gain points in-game there is another benefit of the highscore page, it also tells you who is online, if anyone. Also, as targets don't come out till wednesday, I've decided to have a competition for extra points.
As I'm not perfect in my creation of 3d content there are various holes in the map throughout the game. Such a hole, or crack, can be seen outlined in this screenshot:

Everyone who finds this particular hole will receive 5 points, and 10 points for any other hole. To prove that you've found a hole you can email a screenshot to submit@birthoflegends.com along with the coordinates (which is in the screenshot if you just hit f12). This little competition helps me find places that need fixing, so it's much appreciated when you find these errors for me. So, good luck in your search! Feel free to add new npcs whenever you want.

-Mark

No matter what I do it seems that you guys just don't want to play BOL anymore... which is kind of depressing. No one has logged in for a few weeks, so why do I even bother to update? Well, the thing is, no matter how boring you all are I'm still going to continue in the slight hope that someone will come along who cares. For people who want to know, Mankar (me...) has found two more cracks in the time-space continuum so it is possible to earn up to 35 points at least before (or even after) tomorrow. I'm pretty certain that there are more cracks then that so I still encourage people to go out and find them. About the targets, I'm still figuring out how they should respawn, and I also need to finish up the mysql code, but I still think that I'll be able to release it tomorrow. After targets, and through targets the solidifying of a basic point system, I'll get some actual character models and make the login/character selection screens once and for all. I'd love to hear any other requests, ideas, or wants you might have as I love to get feedback. Have a good day.

-Mark

Finished but not... I finished the target system but I haven't had time today to test it and I don't have time now to upload the patches (sorry but I'm tired and haven't been home all day). I'll get them up tomorrow.

-Mark

Targets are now officially released! You can download the updated client from here or the full thing from here. But, the bad news is that the targets also officially don't work right. Or, they do but the server portion isn't working right. As the collision is mysteriously not working for some of the npcs, it is also not working for most of the targets. So, until then the definite ways to get points is to log in, find wholes or cracks in the earth, and an added challenge which is to find the solar glare. For a few weeks now there has been no sun in the sky, but a small glitch in my programming means that there is still a solar flare in the sky, though it can only be seen from certain places and at a certain angle. For every 5 solar flares that you find (and take a screenshot of) you'll receive 5 points. The rule is that they have to be from different locations. This isn't too hard of a task as I've found about 30 different places where solar flare is present in my travels. So good luck! I'll be working hard until I can figure out what's up with this whole collision thing.

-Mark

I've noticed some server lag today, so it's possible that for short periods you may not be able to connect or may get disconnected. I'll try to work on it. Don't forget to read the update below.

-Mark

I've been very sick and haven't even gone to school the last two days. The title of this post refers to how many hours of sleep I've had the past two days. I may have time to update something later today, but don't count on it as I still feel pretty sick. Thanks to Kotosha, Tzade, Kaminariuchi, and Orion who have been logging in and helping out with BOL in the past five days. Some of the points need to be increased for different people, so sorry for not getting on that yet. The one thing that is always updated on the highscores page right away is whether or not a player is online. Also, if you ever get a connection error when trying to connect to the BOL server you can just check that page to see if the server is working (if it isn't the page will display an error). Hopefully I'll have another big update by the weekend, but no promises right now of what that will include. I'll go work on getting unsick now...

-Mark

I hope everyone has been having a good day today. I for one had a snow day. And in trying to do something productive I rewrote part of the server so that it logs more information about collision. So, by logging in and throwing snowballs at stuff you'll be helping me figure out why the collision works some times and not others. I have nothing else to say, except that I'm feeling a little bit better then I have the past couple of days.

-Mark

I wasn't home much tonight, again, but I did upgrade the server again, and I'm very close to figuring out this whole collision issue. I also discovered a bug that no one else had discovered where some of the player and npc ids overlapped, causing crashes if certain players were to log in (no one did but I tried it out myself). This problem has been officially fixed and no one has to worry about it anymore. Also, for the collision problems, I realized that the server actually wasn't calculating enough of the collisions. Basically the client, leftover from it's standalone offline days, was still trying some of the collisions itself, so the server never knew about some collisions, couldn't alert the client, and the client never responded to them. This is being fixed tomorrow. Also, I have no school this next week so I should have plenty of time to figure everything out, have a good weekend!

-Mark

p.s. If you live somewhere like California or go to private school and therefore don't have vacation, good luck.

Edit: The server is back online. Enjoy!

[old] I'm still looking into the why but it seems that the server is down right now, so if your unable to connect; I'm working on it. Sorry for the inconvenience. [/old]

-Mark

A long long time ago I had talked about what my chaotic computer setup looks like. Well, here it is:
(click the pictures to see a bigger version)

-Mark

Great news today! I finally got visual studio installed on the good computer! That's basically what I've been working on the past like four days. So, now that that is finally setup I can compile new code a lot faster, as well as compile two different things at once (like server on one comp and client on another). So, right now I'm just recompiling all the code, engine, dependencies, and game, to make sure that everything really is set up right and also to get rid of a few errors that might have carried over from the other computer. So, that should take up most of today, and I'm having a Starcraft party tonight with the East coast "staff" of MTTB Games, so that will take up the rest of today. I've figured out some of the collision problem but a few things are still to be worked out. So, sorry for nothing really new but that's all I have for right now. You can still play BOL at any time. Have a good day!

-Mark

Well, I'm very sad to announce that I don't have a new update for today. At the moment priority has been given to finishing the login/character selection screens (I did fix the collision problem just forgot to make an update for it, I'll do that tomorrow). All I can say is that I'm very close. It now compiles properly and even logs in properly except for the minor problem where you don't actually connect because of a certain string not being transfered properly. So, I should be able to finish this up tomorrow, if I have the time. Sorry for the delay.

-Mark

So, I have been spending many hours on this login screen seemingly to no avail. I did get it to work partially, but for one it still looks really bad and secondly it's buggy and doesn't fully work all the time. So, I'm going to keep working at it but no guarantees. But, as this is making me very tired/annoyed, is there anything else someone wants me to work on right now? I know I still need to implement actual physics, real models (which I still don't have), and get the quest system going. Oh, and about those targets that were supposed to be fully functional so long ago, let's just say that they work fine over here now, but that only two people have tried logging in since that time. If they don't work for you please tell me. Ok, I guess that's it really for today, unless I have a big breakthrough soon.

-Mark

So, here I am again not quite an hour later, and I have an update! But, it's not quite a login screen yet. While that part is still buggy I know that it would still be nice to login from inside the game, so now with this update all you have to do is open the game, type "/Login username password", and your in. So, I've tested this only limitedly, but it does seem to work just fine. One thing to remember, if you try to /Login when your already connected you'll actually disconnect yourself. The full download can be downloaded here. Now I'll get to work on gameplay!

-Mark

p.s. If you haven't updated recently then you'll need to download the full thing to get the new content from a few patches ago.

No, I haven't forgotten about the game, or the site, I've just been a little busy lately. The biggest thing being worked on right now is 3d content. Kotosha and I have been making new models to eventually put into the game. Sadly, as this isn't our strong point, it will take some time before they are really good enough for us to use, so please be patient. Oh, and I just had a really cool idea, so I'll go see if I can complete it tonight. I'll post back here later. And feel free to play around and look for bugs.

-Mark

Ok, so that awesome idea that I had last post wasn't quite as easy as I had thought it might be, but it's just as good. Anyway, I'm not going to give away what I'm doing just yet but I am going to say that I will make the game much more playable and fun. What I'm doing now is creating the main animations for each of the major races (I created rough models that look good in the way they are for each race. Character selection is going to go along with this next release. I can't reveal more at this time.). So, be prepared in this next month for some sword swinging, snowball slinging, and fireball casting action in the near future, along with customizable controls, working shadows, and physics (the ability to jump and for accurate everything else). These aren't empty promises, as some of my past posts have turned out to be, but actually coded features that are simply waiting to be used (well, not quite so simply... I still need to finish those animations, but close enough). I'll be hard at work on this in the next few days and hope to have something by Saturday, with the rest that I promised by the end of the month.

-Mark

Tomorrow will have an update. Whether or not I finish what I wanted is still to be decided. I'm going to have to spend many hours on animations for the races, but I do have enough human animations to put in my new character model (I won't show a screenshot until tomorrow, but these new graphics are still just placeholders). My mind is blank. The code beckons me. I'll post an update tomorrow. I need to fix this site layout.

-Mark

There are a number of bugs with what I have right now but I did promise that I'd have an update today, so here it is. Starting with the release I am declaring that we've moved into the alpha stage. While all that's different in this update compared to the last one is a new character and a few bug fixes I feel that we're getting close enough to good gameplay to put the title alpha on it. BOL won't get to the beta stage in my opinion until I can get at least the basic rpg elements into the game. I should be able to get a lot farther soon with some more content but unless others help me with graphics beta is still a long way away. I would have tried to fix a few more things for this release but the unexpected event of snow (10 inches) has taken up a bit of my time, shoveling. So, I'm leaving what I'll call the old demo on the site because it was one of the many stepping stones of BOL, and it is kind of a fun mini-game (when multiple people are online playing). Now I have an ever increasing mountain of bugs to go wade through while I force some code together between animations. Have a good day!

-Mark

(p.s. Be sure to read the README.txt file to know how to log in and play and stuff.)

That title is about all I want to say about it. I had just finished fixing 651 errors about five minutes prior to the computer rebooting and telling me the above mentioned error. So, I'll see what I can do, and try to figure out what caused this problem in the first place. What this does mean though is that there is a chance that I've just lost all of my work from the past month at least. So, I'll keep hoping for the best. Wish me luck, because I sure need it after my experiences today.

-Mark

The transfer worked mostly and my computer now seems to be working again but I still need to reinstall all of my programs and fix a few things up here. So, the next update will probably be next weekend. I'll post here again tomorrow if my status changes any. Now where did I put that install file...

-Mark

I have almost fully recovered now from the fatal boot error of last week. And, there has even been a good amount of feedback from videoguy. So, after I finish setting up Visual Studio again I'll release an update that at least addresses the issues that he brought up. In the meantime, enjoy the alpha version!

-Mark

Well, as most of you didn't know I was planning to fix a few of the things brought up by Videoguy today. Sadly, though, I am as of right now unable to because some of the vital includes are missing (they were on the third hard drive which is currently unplugged). So, I will get it updated soon, but it might take some time because I don't want to turn off the computer until/unless I have to. I'm sorry for my laziness. May the force be with you.

-Mark

There have been a few problems since the hard drive failure. The most recent of these problems is that the latest code was used in the last build was misplaced (possibly deleted). This is why it has taken so long for me to update. I was able to rewrite most of it and fix a few of the mistakes pointed out by videoguy. There are a few things to be worked out still so today's update is just a small one. WSAD controls have been fixed and I don't remember what else. Lots of the code has been changed but that isn't exactly something you can notice in-game. So, hopefully I'll have more for you soon. Enjoy the update.

-Mark

I think that that is a pretty good question; What am I doing? Right now I'm watching a movie while trying to fine-tune the camera so that it looks better. But, I've also been doing a lot of tests and changes and should have something to show for all this work by the end of the week. In the last update I didn't update the full download because of the new bugs that I haven't figured out yet, being a) after you login the "your connected" message won't leave and b) throwing a snowball will occasionally cause a crash (though I haven't seen this problem since yesterday). Those two bugs weren't there before the hard-drive crash so I don't know how they got there, but I'm working on it. Also, for the wsad people, I've been trying to create an activate command window type key to make that process easier, and it almost works. The only problem I'm having right now is that because of bug A that is mentioned above you can't use the chat box after you login at the moment, which is bad. So, just so everyone knows, you can use the escape key to erase whatever is typed in the chat box.
Other things I am working on; fixing up the stick figure guy, adjusting the camera as I mentioned before, fixing the sword texture, making the npcs talk, and getting that login screen to not crash. Wish me luck.

-Mark

I know that it's been a while since my last post, so today I have an update! I can't remember everything that I changed since I last posted but between yesterday and today I got the sound to work properly. Also, I've managed to fix the errors caused by the hard drive failure with the exception of being able to use the chat after login. As far as I can tell it's some sort of linking error so I'm still working on it. I adjusted the camera a little but realized that it won't do much good until I get the characters to not sink into the snow, but I've been a little distracted lately. I've been working on the overall code and fixing multiple problems at once which is why there has been such length between updates. Like last time I only changed alpha_update.rar because of a few issues but I think I'll have another update tomorrow which makes this kind of pointless (since I'll probably update again tomorrow before anyone reads this). Despite this fact I thought that I should still at least update this site. So enjoy the update! I'll post again tomorrow.

-Mark

So I failed on the update for today but it was caused by an absence of work, ironically. Today I uncovered an old scanner that I had never gotten to work and decided to fix it. So, I spent most of the day figuring out that I needed to use a Windows 98 box because the drivers were so old and then I spent a lot of time scanning in different things. Taking a brief look at the code right now shows me that I need to rewrite a few switch statements and comment out some other code to fix the chat box issue. For the waist deep in snow problem I need to adjust how the skeleton is loaded and to fix the shadow problem I just need to cast the shadows individually instead of trying to set them for the characters and swords as a whole. Now that I finished the sound implementation I can use that voice-over-ip stuff that's been sitting in the corner of my desktop as well as add sound effects. So, now that I know what I'm doing again I'll have another update by saturday (because I can't guarantee that I'll do much work tomorrow). Until next time.

-Mark

windows died on me Today. this computer have no keyboard. I'll post again tomorrow.

-Mark

Good news; I was able to get windows to work again without killing anything.
Bad news; I had to disconnect one of the hard drives for windows to be happy again.
Now, there isn't anything actually wrong with that hard drive, it's just that windows doesn't want me to be able to use it for some reason (this is the same hard drive that windows had beef with last time). That being said I found out that the shadows problem wasn't actually from the code but rather from how I exported the character. That would normally be an easy thing to replace but 3dsmax needs to be reinstalled and the installer in on that disconnected hard drive, lucky me. So I'll try to do that later (I don't want windows to crash for at least a few more hours). I think I have the chat box under control again, so I'll work on the Voip and the sinking issues. Until next time.

-Mark

As the title says, I'm sick. And I have been since my birthday, go figure. I won't be working much on BOL this weekend if at all because of three AP tests that I have next week as well as because I need sleep. Sorry for not updating the site in so long and then having this news.

-Mark

Progress on Birth of Legends has greatly slowed down this past month, for various reasons which have been posted previously. Since my last post I've had a toe injury and a small amount of homework for once. But, these small excuses really aren't what's slowing me down. So I've been thinking about what should be done for progress to be made and have been trying to figure out what's really slowing me down. And, after much thinking about the situation I have figured out the biggest thing that's slowing me down: lack of goals and preparation.
What that means is that while yes, I have had many goals from week to week, I never really solidified the big picture of the game causing chaos in the order of goals and in the code. Chaos code-wise is the biggest problem right now. To fix this problem I'm going to have to use the second thing that I've lacked in the past; preparation. It's true that in the forums, on paper, and in emails I have created the big picture which is BoL. But, what I've failed to do is to put all that information into one place so I can rationally work on coding everything without chaos. So, for the next week or so I'm going to be working mainly on that and finish what was started at the beginning of this project. During this time of planning I'm going to be updating most, if not all, of the information pages here on the site as well as reassessing what my programming goals should actually be. If anyone wants to help me with compiling information I'm welcome to the help. I can't wait to get back to the old trend of constant updates.

-Mark

p.s. The server is down. I'm not sure when this happened but I noticed it yesterday and I'm going to send some emails to find out the problem. I'll post again once I find out what's up with that as well.

No, I haven't updated any of the information pages yet. Yes, I'm still planning to in the nearish future. What I have done though is figure out the big picture (compiled all the information about BoL into one location) on paper. The next step is to convert it to code, or construct an outline of what the code should look like when everything is finished. Hopefully I'll be done by Saturday so I can have something to show anyone who might be reading this now. Of course, there is a bit of bad news. Mainly windows decided that my license expired the last time I reinstalled windows so unless I register in 2.5 days I will be locked out of the computer. I think I know a good workaround for that but if not, wish me luck. I hope your enjoying your week.

-Mark

Yes, I am alive. No, the server isn't back up yet. No, the person in charge of the server is not feeling well (and is not me). No, I don't have an update to give anyone. Yes, I have been working on it some. Yes, I had to do some final projects which took up my time. And yes, I should have my time back starting tomorrow. I think that's enough for the unanswered questions.

I was recently looking at some cool effects in an open-source project that would look good in BOL, but I'll actually look into it more after I code in all the new things that I have so far. As always I'd love to hear some feedback, or if anyone would like to help me with updating the site or sending me some more models I'd be really happy.

-Mark

Well, first off if you've made it here you must know that Birthoflegends.com is currently in transition. For some reason I can't get bloglines to find the rss feed on this page, so I'll try to fix that befor the transition is complete. I still need to change this first page quite a bit, revamp the new forums, and figure out how I want everything to work.

The biggest question I've been asked lately is why I haven't updated the mainpage and how's the game going. You mostly know the reason of the mainpage; at the time of this post what you see at Birthoflegends.com is not the most recent page (this one). About the game, well, here's the scoop on that:
First, the old BOL server computer can't be brought back to life and Jon and myself have yet to find a good replacement that's available.
Second, I haven't been home a lot lately due to driver's ed, trips to Boston, and other vacation things which means less time to work on stuff.
And third, After Effects. It's the time of year where my church group makes a movie for a summer camp movie competition, and I need to make some new logos to put in the beginning of them. Also, a small group of friends and myself have been making small videos for a while now and it's great to be able to add extra effects to our movies, like the light sabers below:

And with all of these things along with the pressing need to finish transferring/upgrading this site I haven't made any big updates to the game besides some of the physics stuff that I haven't released yet. I'll keep working and try to have more done soon. In the meantime you can help by making suggestions for the site and/or helping me to make 3d models for the game itself.

-Mark

For the next three days work will get interrupted by my final driving lessons and by hard drive transferrals (my hard drives have been running really low lately so I'm getting another one on wednesday which should help my progress). After that I'll have four weeks before teen camp, with school starting about a week after that. If only I had more time. After talking with Jon we have a good idea as to where we're going to host the BOL server, and this time it should be a more permanent solution. By the time that gets up and running I should have finished rewriting the client with physics so everything looks and interacts better in-game. Along with that I also have a new map to run around on. Before I do all that though I need to finish fixing up this page, get a few movie logos rendered, and finish up the forums (which are almost set up). That's what the future holds.

-Mark

I have some excellent news for BOL: a new server has been found. Now, it will still take some time before it gets up and running again because I'm still in the middle of movie stuff but it should be coming in the relatively near future. If anyone has been clicking on the links on this page it shouldn't take too long for you to figure out, as I just did, that most of them don't work. I have a lot of work to do here on the site and I'll try to fix it as quickly as possible. Thankyou for your patience and support.

-Mark

Last weekend my family and I went camping. And it was a lot of fun. But now that I'm back, I've been swamped with work to do; Teen movies, website maintenance, coding, editing, and modelling, to name a few. As I've been so slow with updates and such I thought that I might at least show you something I was working on yesterday:

Those little goodies are what they look like in-game, and I'm working to have a bunch more. If all goes well then I'll have something up on the server and a new client for everyone to mess with and complain about :) . Until then.

-Mark

Birthoflegends.com has now finally been fully transfered here to the new host. Now, I know that I have a lot of work ahead of me, but at least I won't have to keep moving things around here on the site. For the observant people out there, your right, I haven't put the buttons on the top yet. The reason being that I think that I really need to redo them, along with the fact that there are still broken links and unfinished pages that need attending. However, before I go fixing all of that and getting the site looking good again I'm going to finish a basic client for people to play with. As a warning for people who might complain later, the old accounts are going to be reset (what that means exactly I haven't decided yet), and much of the old stuff you saw in previous clients will be no more (and I haven't decided exactly what's being left behind). So I'll go work that. Thanks for being patient.

-Mark

This week is kind of a countdown, for what I can't be sure of yet. On Saturday I leave to go to teen camp and I hope to have a playable client up by then. Last Saturday (or maybe it was Sunday) I made a checklist of what I wanted to get done before leaving for camp, and it goes as follows:
1. Finish the database (MySQL) layout. Check.
2. Finish the server/client network code. Almost Check.
3. Finish the rest of the server. Will be checked when 2 gets checked.
4. Finish a playable client (not playable as in done but playable as in players can actually do something besides just waling around). Not Checked.

So that's the BOL status at the moment. If I was doing nothing else but working on BOL I might promise the above checklist to be done by friday. However, since that is not the case I can't promise that it will be finished. I can promise that I'll have something done by saturday but what that something is exactly is still to be determined. The something else I've been doing is working with 3ds Max and Aftereffects to work on movie projects for teen camp. Below are some side things I did in Aftereffects. Enjoy.

Get Flash to see this player.

So I leave in twelve hours and I was really hoping to have something up for people to play. Sadly though, for some unknown reason, I can't seem to connect to the server computer. The server has been finished but I haven't been able to install it yet because of this. The client is very close to completion and should be done by the morning. If I still can't connect to the server computer tomorrow morning then I'll see if I can manage to do it from camp. Thank you for your patience, and a special thanks goes out to Ixnius who helped me today to fix up the site a bit. Have a good night!

-Mark

I've been a little bit slow in updating but I have a reason. I originally planned to update sometime during camp but I never got around to it. I would have set up the server and let people start playing, but shortly before I left for camp I became unable to connect to the server. And, I am still unable to connect. I believe that the problem is that the "static" IP changed however as I don't have any way to directly talk to the owner I can't confirm that yet. So, until I Jon gets a response and forwards it to me I won't be able to put up the server.

In other news, I got my license! Now of course I don't have a car that I can drive whenever I want, but I do have it. Well, I'll go and finish up the client now and hope that the server is found soon. Thanks for being patient.

-Mark

The server is back. It hadn't changed IPs but rather there was a power failure and it hadn't been reset yet. Thanks go to Jon M. for fixing this problem. So now for the client news:
I think that it's mostly done, but Microsoft doesn't agree. When compiling I currently get 2747 errors and 162 warnings. That said, I think most of these problems are small things that are being repeated multiple times. I'll post again later tonight, and hopefully I'll have it compiled by then.

-Mark

So it's not finished yet and this is really starting to annoy me. It had been compiling fine before camp but now all of a sudden it's having massive problems, which seems to always happen. I'm now down to just over 1000 errors, which is an improvement over the 2700 I had earlier but still isn't fixed. I try to solve it in my dream tonight which sometimes works. I probably forgot something really small that is now making everything a nightmare. Tomorrow I also promised my mom that I'd finish (and start) my AP English project, so I'll see how that all goes. Hopefully I'll have time to complete everything. If anyone wants to help me by making character models or items for the game I'd love some more 3d content to work with. Until next time!

-Mark

So why is the client not done yet? Because of life. The last update of the site was made in between sessions of a church conference I was at which kept me busy till Sunday. Then Monday and Tuesday I had doctors appointments and an AP English project to finish for a return back to school on Wednesday. Wednesday after school I had about an hour at home before I had to go to college Orientation for some classes I'm taking this year, which pretty much took up the rest of that day. Thursday after school my family left to go on a camping trip, from which I have just returned. That isn't to say that I haven't been working on the game though. During the camping trip I figured out some of the problems I was having, in theory at least, and I think I know what caused all those error messages now, which is good. I'll have time to look at it again tomorrow afternoon and all of Monday since there is no school Monday. I'll stop rambling now and get back to coding. I'll post again on Monday.

-Mark

I'm still in the middle on reformatting/resetting everything up but at this point it looks like a lot of the latest work I did on BOL no longer exists. I hoping I have a recent backup or that it's saved on the other hard drive but things don't look very promising right now. What this means fully, I don't know. I'll post a damage assessment tomorrow. It's really sad and frustrating but something bad like this seems to always happen when I'm about to be done with BOL. Go figure.

-Mark

All of the latest BOL stuff that I had been working on is gone. All of my school assignments that I did on this computer are now gone. My desktop picture is now gone. So, consequently, I feel a little bit sad (I think I'm still in shock). What this means for the future: I'm not sure yet. Honestly I haven't checked all my backups yet or thoroughly looked at the other hard drives because I don't really want to know how much work got erased. In other news I have to go find the visual studio installer so I can start working again. Besides BOL I also need to write up my resume, a few college essays, do calc homework, and edit about 30 minutes worth of light sabers. I'll know more on the game status when I get visual studio back up. Hopefully things will get better.

-Mark

I found a backup! All is not lost! I found a backup on the other computer finally. It is a few months old but at least it's something. I've fixed virtually all the problems once already so fixing them a second time should be much easier. The biggest problem now is simply finding the time. I've been feeling a bit sick this week (I even stayed home from school today) and there is also still a lot of school work for me to finish. I still need to finish reinstalling everything on this computer, including visual studio, before I'm able to continue working. I need to go get some sleep. I'll update as soon as I can. Sorry for the slow release.

-Mark

Ok, I haven't posted in a very long time, I haven't had an update in even longer, and I have some explaining to do. Basically after the last post, when I still hadn't quite reinstalled everything I needed, school started to crush me with work. Five AP classes is actually a challenge, and I actually have homework now. This concept of homework is something that I had forgotten after the fifth grade and have had to relearn this year (technically I've always had homework but I've always had time at school to finish it, not so this year). Also, the whole college thing keeps getting in the way as well. Like two weekends ago, for example, I had to go visit Champlain College in Vermont so that my mom would finally get off my back (yes, it was a good time, and I'm glad I went, I just don't like the idea of spending my weekend at a school). The weekend before that trip I had to take the SAT subject tests. This past saturday I participated in a walk for HOPE Worldwide, which is a charity that my church is a part of that helps the poor and needy throughout the world (This was a really fun time, but it took me away from a computer and the chance to work on BOL). In between those weeks I've had five big projects for various classes, three lab reports for Bioengineering, and two essays due. Also, as I was relearning the whole homework thing, I had gotten a little behind in three of my classes and had to work extra for a couple days to catch up.

So, now that school is balanced again, will I be able to devote my full attention back to BOL? Not for a few more weeks. This isn't to say I won't/haven't been working on BOL at all. I fixed the clouds (you know how unimportant that is) and I've gotten most everything BOL related back up to date. BOL still lacks the main thing it lacked a month ago, which is 3d content. So, I've dusted off my lack of 3d modeling skillz and have started creating some base characters/creatures/plants/objects/buildings that I'll be able to put into the game and start making it look better than the empty wasteland with strange character and snow that it was previous. Oh, and because I feel bad for not having anything here besides my useless talking here's a random picture I "made":

I just want everyone to know that I'm not dead. Oh, and also to show off this little screenie:

Yes, the login screen is currently functional. For those who want to complain about the gnu character, give me something to replace it and I will.

-Mark

Just so people know, my main computer won't be working for the next few days because of something I did to fix a friend's computer. This might mean that I won't have an update for people to play on saturday like I'd planned. In the meantime anyone who wants to send me 3d models for the game (of anything really) I can still put them in, I just won't be able to do any programming for the next few days. Hopefully this will be the last fiasco for a while and I'll be able to have BOL out soon. Until next time.

-Mark

Many people have been asking me recently about how BOL was doing, why the server was down, and when will I release more of the game/when can people start playing. So here's to answer some of those:

Q: Why is the server down/when will it be up again?
A: The server was down (as I learned today) because the server computer was reset and I didn't have all the startup configuration set up properly. It is up again now, but you must understand that the server that's running and the client you can currently download are very old, are mostly just an alpha or pre-alpha test, and don't really reflect much of the game besides graphics quality. The more recent updated actual game stuff is on the hard drive that is still lacking a motherboard.

Q: What's up with this motherboard thing, and why isn't it fixed yet?
A: It's complicated. Long story short I'm waiting for my friend's mom to finish talking to newegg and get me a motherboard (last I heard it should be here by next wednesday at the latest).

Q: Has any work been done on BOL without your main computer?
A: I'm not sure yet. Basically, I've tried doing some stuff with my other machine but this computer can't currently run BOL, so I can't test anything, and it was work on older code then the stuff on the currently unavailable hard drives, so I don't know if it actually works.

Q: With the server being an old version is there any real reason to try it out right now?
A: Yes and no. Yes, because you can still find bugs for me that can help me to make improvements later. No, because you'll probably be playing by yourself and I think I forgot to reset the npcs (I'll go fix that in an hour or so if I remember). There are many changes that I really want to release like right now but I can't until that motherboard gets here, so have fun finding bugs but it will still be some time (a few weeks) before actual gameplay is available.

Q: If I'm new and want to find information on BOL, where should I look?
A: Right now information is kind of scattered throughout this site and the old forums, and a lot of the site information is outdated. I'll post some links here a little later as well as fix up the site some more if I find the time (college essay to write, VHS homework to do, Christmas party tonight, house work to do). Sorry for not having a better answer.

Q: Talking about the forums, is there a current forum to go to?
A: Yes. I haven't told anyone yet but there have been forums at http://birthoflegends.com/phpBB3/ for a while now, I just neglected to mention it because I wanted to change the page style first. Now that it has been up for a few months and I've failed to do anything about it I don't think I should bother to wait any longer. You can ask any questions you have there and I'll try my best to answer them quickly.

-Mark

I don't remember when I last updated anything here, but for the past week I've missed school due to being sick in bed. Needless to say I didn't get much work done on the game either. But don't worry, from now on I'll be working double time on everything:

-Mark

I've been busy catching up on the work that I missed last week when I was sick. My clone however has been fooling around with After Effects. So here's another logo for MTTB Games:

edit: He (my clone) has made some more short random movies, so I'm adding them to this post instead of making another post. /edit

Get Flash to see this player.

-Mark

Get Flash to see this player.

-Mark

Get Flash to see this player.

-Mark

Lately, like the past three months or so, I've been telling people how I'm planning to release the game soon and also how I'm going to release the game. I'm still planning to. This website needs to be reorganized between movies, old games, and BOL. About BOL, right now I've having issues with Visual Studio adding extra unwanted dependencies. It's kind of a minor thing but I haven't quite figured out which options in the project properties needs changing.
Ok, so onto more interesting stuff. I went on a three hour bike ride yesterday and in the middle of that bike ride I decided to take out the camera and film some good clone action in a field. I'm not sure how good the sound is going to be since it was a little windy, but we'll see. Movie editing, filming, and cloning of me is a lot of fun and has been detracting from my computer time. But don't worry, it's still coming.

-Mark

Edit: I've fixed all of the dependency/dll problems and the game now works on other computers. The server is also currently running. However, my upload speed is horrendously slow right now and I still want to change a few things anyway, so I'll update the download link tomorrow maybe.

Well, now when the client tries to connects it does successfully and then crashes for some unknown reason. Once I have this new problem fixed I'll upload the client and fix the links. And that's what's going on right now.

-Mark

[Edit:] It's not ready for today. I got the client and server to talk to each other again but the character selection page isn't working as planned and it's still crashing randomly at a few points. Maybe tomorrow. [/Edit]

The game is almost ready! For alpha testing :) . I figured out that the client is sending the wrong thing to the server, which is in turn sending the wrong thing to the client, which is in turn crashing. But it's really not all that bad. I'll I have to do now is talk it over with them until they can agree.

In other news I made a new world map (I found it in a folder today, edited it a little, and then put it here). You can click on it to see the full thing. I've also figured out a working workaround for the whole not having models thing, which you'll find out later.

-Mark

[Edit 2: I'm sorry for people who downloaded it earlier but I found out at school today that I forgot to include some dlls. They are included now. If you want just the dlls you can ask for them either by commenting here or emailing me. ]

[Edit: It's done, you can download it here or at the link to the right. Disclaimer: This is not the game, this is was a test for importing terrain/plants/water. It won't snow at the beach in the actual game, terrain will be smoother, and other stuff... I probably know all the bugs you'll encounter but tell me anyway. Also, if for some reason this doesn't work for you tell me. ]

So a few minutes ago I received a phone call from Caleb begging for something to play. And, since I just so happen to be working on maps and new content I thought I'd finally put something up. This is an offline demo because I haven't gotten these maps onto the server yet. This is just a test client, missing many things but there are still all the dev/gm commands (If you want a list of them type "/help" in game). It hasn't been uploaded yet because the folder on my computer is about 3.5 gigs, so I'm still working on getting just a few maps in one folder and working. I'll update this post when it's up.

-Mark

Over the past year I've set many deadlines for when certain parts of BOL would be complete. Each one has come and past, some multiple times, and only small progress has actually been made. So, this past week, I looked at what really has been done and what really needs to get done still and found that BOL, besides being a long way from completion, won't really be able to progress until I can get some help from a 3D artist (or artists).

Basically, I can't just use placeholders for things anymore because all of the general code is done. So what I'm I planning now? Well, until I can get help from someone else BOL will have to go on a partial break while I work on improving the graphics engine, make more content creation tools so it's easier for people to help me, and figure out where to go now. If an artist steps up today I'd be happy to work on finishing the game. As that seems fairly unlikely, it may be a while. For now I've created a progress page that I'm still in the process of finishing that tries to go into more detail as to what is missing and where I need help.

So, where should I go from here? Honestly I'm not really sure. The past few months due to school and other distractions I've spent very little time actually working on BOL. From here I'd like to improve the game engine, make some smaller games, and have something new to show every week. I'm still considering what I want to do with the current BOL update and whether or not now is a good time to release it. If you have any thoughts or suggestions feel free to leave a comment or email me.

-Mark

When you have a job it becomes increasingly difficult to find time to do the things you want to do. This summer I've had little to no time to work on games, but I have had some fun with wiimotes. More recently, I've been working on making a movie for this year's Echo Lake Film Festival. I can't reveal much about the movie until after the festival but I can show off this render which will become part of the NorthWest Studios Logo this year:

It's early in the morning and I need to start working, so until next time I remember to write something...

-Mark

I'm back! I haven't done much here for a while due to school and getting used to a new laptop, but now I finally have something to put up here:
Energy Ball Video
Flash video is extremely slow here at WPI due to the tech guys throttling flv files, so I'm going to work on some better way of doing this. Streaming web video to come. I'll write another post here later when I'm not in class...

No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac

-Mark

Playing with the webcam in my mac is pretty fun :) .

.mov download

.mov download

-Mark

I've been meaning to post this here for awhile now and just haven't gotten around to it. My final project for Intro to Game Design this past term was a fun collection of mini-games called Karnevil Madness. Basically your a kid who's trapped in a carnival-like place and have to defeat the evil clowns in various mini-games to escape. The game was made by me and two other students. All of us are considered "Tech" people, with little or no artistic ability, so remember to think about the gameplay more than the graphics :) . There are a few unresolved bugs due to us building our mini-games separately and then squishing them together with an interactive menu screen in the last 15 minutes before it was due (which I made and turned out pretty nice by the way). Also, we forgot to integrate the story line until the last 5 minutes before it was due, but hopefully you won't notice too many typos :) .
On another side note, there is a small problem with this version. Version 3.2 had lots of bugs but the load/save menus still worked. In the final version, 3.3, they no longer worked for some unknown reason (we hadn't even looked at that code). What is actually in the download will not be 3.3 but a sort of 3.35, with no extra bug fixes but rather a change of the tier system since the murder-go-round had been a required mini-game to beat originally and suffered from the most problems (making it hard for most people to beat it). Hope you enjoy it!

Download rar
Download zip

-Mark

Today I've been experimenting with music editing, so here's a nice little loop I made that sounds nice at 2:30am:
http://birthoflegends.com/audio/First_Mix.mp3

-Mark

After some input from over seas I expanded upon what I last posted to make version 2:
http://birthoflegends.com/audio/First_Mix.mp3
Hope you like it! :)

-Mark

This was my midterm project for my Art of Animation class. Parts of the movie are rushed due to us running out of time when rendering, but it's pretty good anyway. I'll have a flash version up here later, but for now you can download it here.

My final project last term for my Art of Animation class was Movimento Part 2. Sadly, once again the school's renderfarm gave me and my partner many issues. I'll let you determine these issues for yourself:

The conversion from mov to flv caused some odd aspect ratio stuff and added some black borders, but it still looks pretty good. This is my groups' final project for a Machinima class I took this term using the Half-life 2 engine through Garry's Mod.

Get Flash to see this player.