MicShazam

I've been thinking about doing a journal for everything I'm interested in that isn't music... so this is going to be it. I'm not actually quite sure what to do, so it's more likely than not going to meander around with no particular goal in mind.

And the maiden voyage post...

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A homebrew computer game project: Idion: Cybil II

Been working on this game for ages. The current iteration of the idea must be the 7th or something. I'm building it in an old, archaic game creation system named MegaZeux, which, despite originating from the early 90's, is still kept alive as a semi-frequently updated open source project. It features a simple coding language by the name "Robotic" and a game creation system built into the game engine that runs your created game files.

Due to the aforementioned frequent updates, this old MS-DOS system supports MP3 files, and can handle more complex coding ideas than I even know how to do.

I've got a fair handle on the system though, since I've been toying around with this thing since the early 2000's. I've got a major amount of old, unfinished projects floating around on my drive and I take no small amount of enjoyment in creating my own little games. Since the system is so (relatively) simple (it's nothing at all like coding in C#, which I tried learning last year, causing me many a headache), that it's as fun to work on my games in this engine as it is for me to play most other games.

I've always had a fascination with game creation, dating back to well before I even owned my first video game console (an Atari 2600).
When I was about 9-15 years old, I used to make all sorts of games out of paper (a hobbby which I've picked up again in recent years), although rarely finishing anything. I just had fun messing around with my games, usually dropping each project when I got a more exciting idea.

When I started making my own computer games around in year 2000 (age 18-ish), I pretty much continued in the same vein: Innumerable abandoned projects - nearly no finished ones.

I used to do my work in ZZT, another, even more archaic MS-DOS creation system, which eventually became the foundation for MegaZeux.

Yeah I know, sounds like I'm making this stuff up, as most people haven't ever heard of either, but trust me when I say that both systems have had quite the long and rich history of online communities. There are thousands of home made games available through obscure online databases and I find the whole thing very interesting.

Anyway, so this MegaZeux game I'm working on currently (and intend to actually finish), looks something like this (pictures taken from the most recent version, but it's a work in progress):



A small village. The illustration to the left is Cybil, our main character. If the drawing seems familiar in any way, it's probably because I based the placement of the pixels on a character from the old Lucas Arts game Maniac Mansion, although with more changes than not. I just needed a guide for how to proportion a large character for very low-detail graphics. It's hard to explain, but everything is drawn by using an editable version of the ASCII character set, which is why the character is built from tall rectangles. These are all individual ASCII characters, stacked to form a character. When the game plays, I've made it so that she blinks her eyes now and then. Ooh, fancy graphics! I've spared no expense!



Our heroine is using her inventory. The game is a sort of RPG/adventure combo. Think Zelda with a sort of 1 vs 1 turn based combat system. Resource conservation is important, so it even takes a bit of inspiration from games like Resident Evil in that sense.



Speaking of the combat system, here's Cybil hitting an enemy with a stick! Combat actions result in a text readout of the results of virtual dice rolls. Exciting stuff, I know.



I love drawing cute little gravestones, so of course I had to do a cemetery. Remember that each and every little rectangle (placed on an invisible grid) is an ASCII character, so each gravestone is an edited character of some sort that I didn't need for writing text or anything, like an "ö" or whatever else I found that I could do without.



The starting area, featuring a few things to pick up (pink objects are pick-ups) and a few wolves to fight.



I really enjoy putting together environments with such strict graphical limitations. That very dated combo of pitch black background and 16 color sprites has a certain charm, I find.
Here's a slightly larger version of the same image for better detail.



The inventory screen. All numbers mean something, but I'll avoid boring anyone with an explanation. It's not quite a standard RPG system, so the numbers might not mean what you'd assume.

So that's it. I just wanted to show this little project of mine. I've got waaaay more where this came from, but this is one of the few I really intend to finish.

Thanks for reading.

MicShazam

I plan to make this journal about these things primarily:

- Talking about movies.
- And comic books.
- And regular books, (both fiction and non-fiction, but mostly the latter).
- Maybe even video games, although I don't feel as excited about that as I used to.
- Maybe a rare experiment with writing essays (I suck, but that's arguably why I should do it).
- ... And not least all of the weird creative projects I'm always fooling around with... So that means games, drawings, graphics, and not least the music that I make.

On that note, I thought it would be fun to deep dive into my massive vault of unfinished music, occasionally posting various things that I find when I dig through the mountain of files that I've amassed over the last 18 years of amateur music composition.

I'll just jump right into it, so here's four selected, old tracks from the vault:






If anyone ever thinks I should try and finish one of the "vault" tracks that I post, let me know.

EDIT: By the way, while I personally like the four tracks that I picked this time, you can expect things to get pretty crap somewhere down the line. I've got some pretty horrible bits and pieces floating around that I just might post as interesting little curiosities of failed creativity.

Mondo Bungle

those would make great cybergrind tracks

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MicShazam

Google'd cybergrind. I'm not convinced

Mondo Bungle

what do you mean bitch

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MicShazam

I mean that it sounds like a genre that I desperately need in my life, but that I'm also not going to be able to make good cybergrind myself.

Mondo Bungle

I'll do it for you with them tracks as the base

it's like alchemy

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MicShazam

Feel free to rob absolutely anything I ever post. If you need any files, just ask. Due to the way they're made, out of probably not terribly high quality samples, a youtube rip might be about as good quality as my original waves, though.

Frownland

Only if it isn't music.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Mondo Bungle

give me all those vault tracks and I'll make you famous

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