Long time no see website. No, I haven’t abandoned this place, just had a lot on my plate, and wanted to revamp this to make it more professional.
So stay tuned, because by the end of the month this’ll be all shiny, updated regularly, and have other cool stuff added to it.
Also, if you’re in or near Middlesbrough on the 17th, you should come to Awesome Gaming Event VII. Tons of games, loads of people and a whole lotta fun.
That’s all for now, see ya on the flipside of my final year.
~ Slazo ~
Blimey, another month since the last blog post. Guess I haven’t had that much to say from July, as most of it was spent up in Middlesbrough getting ready to come back home to Wales and setting up a few uni things for the summer. There have been a few events however, so lets go through those.
Nemacon! Middlesbrough’s expo for anime fans everywhere. This is only the second time its been run, so I wasn’t expecting that much, so got a few nice surprizes while I was there. The Dealers Room was faaar bigger than I anticpated, so I managed to get a few new t-shirts / bags / posters for myself. There were cosplayers everywhere over the weekend, and some truly impressive ones at that. Midna (Zelda Twilight Princess), Sackboy (LittleBigPlanet), the Companion Cube (Portal) and Vash (Trigun) stood out in particular, but there were plenty of other gooduns (including lots of Ciel’s from Kuroshitsuji).
The talks and events themselves, while often delayed or in somewhat slapdash rooms, went well. I managed to see Tab Kimpton (author of Khaos Komix) do a talk on starting up webcomics (not the drawing, but the actual website and management part), Chris Jones answer some questions on stage fighting, and the cosplayers from before attempting to do little skits. Some of which were terrible, some of which awesome. You can see some on YouTube, the Sebastian “Old Spice” parody and Ash / Gary’s battle being the best of the bunch. But all in all, a good weekend, and worth staying up in Middlesbrough for.
NEXT. Village Fete. Not much to say here. The weather was superb, the turnout better, and we did a roaring trade on the skittles stand. My opening score for the day of 7 was quickly beaten, and a few people took out all 9 pins. Larry Lamb (actor from Eastenders) once again turned up and helped promote the event, and a good day was had by all. Just don’t talk to me about the effort to set it up and take it apart again. I was completely drained by the end of yesterday…
NEXT. Wimbledon. I’d be lying if I said this was the best year I’ve ever seen of it, while the weather’s been pretty good, the tennis hasn’t so much. Sure, there’s been flashes and sets of brilliance, and that one point in (I believe) Tsonga vs Djokovic was pure magic, but otherwise nothing’s really stood out. Murray lost to Nadal in the semis, as I predicted, because he just wasn’t ready for a proper battle against the best in the world. And Tsonga shot himself in the foot against Djokovic, he really should have won that first set, and the match. So now we get a fairly predictable Nadal vs Djokovic final (which Nadal will win). I’m not saying it won’t be good tennis, just that I’d like someone else in there instead of the “Fab Four”.
And that’s pretty much it for now. I’ll probably do an E3 post in the next week, and then some proper updates on how my projects are going throughout July / August. So take care y’all, see ya next time I update.
~ Slazo ~
Well, its June. White rabbits and all that jazz. And with my holiday and uni work all out of the way (all current results are passes), I can move onto being lazy! No, that’s not quite right. Its onwards with personal projects and the like, and hopefully you’ll see the fruits of them on here soon rather than later.
The basic mechanics of Null and Void are pretty much ironed out, so now its just deciding how to code it all and building some basic levels to test it out. Hope to have a video of that up within the next few weeks.
The platformer me and my friends are working on is now going through its early phases, with us working on various mechanics of it. Again, should hopefully have something decent to show for it within a few weeks.
And finally for the programmnig stuff, Java applets. My good friend Alex (BRBMoon) keeps nagging me to do this sort of thing, and I finally came up with an idea or two for them. So except some cheap and simple games on this very site in the near future.
As for other random projects, ONMers might be happy to know I’m bringing back The PokéManiac’s Quiz for its 2011 version in July. It’ll run over 2 months, making it bigger, better and hopefully not so insanely hard this time around. As well as that, I have a few other ONM projects planned, including a much overdue update for the DS Database brining it kicking and screaming into the 3DS era.
The Gaming Enthusiast will also be returning over summer, although I still haven’t completely decided where I’m going with that. There’ll still be reviews and the like, but the format and content of it needs to be altered for the better.
And then there’s other generic stuff like CinDep3 (a months worth of films down in half a year, going well), organising what Anicom will be doing over summer and into next year, getting a summer job, amongst all the gaming, watching and reading.
tl;dr – Its gonna be a busy summer for moi, so stay tuned for updates on my various things. =D
~ Slazo ~
Every year, after a load of tricky assignments and the stress they induce, all students claim they’ll do work earlier to avoid such things. And then do nothing of the sort. And I’m just like them. So, here’s a post explaning the mountain of work I currently have, and how I’m doing with it.
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Chat 2D (due 3rd May)
I’ve managed to make a TCP Server / Client and sub-classes in Java, so all the clients can now talk to each other. Next step is merging that with the text-entry part of my GUI, then onto the UDP Server and Client to control avatar movement. Then loadsa extras because if I don’t ace this ICA, I fail the year.
PigDust (due 3rd May)
I have a successful particle class, but I’m now having to convert it to drawing sprites instead of spheres. Because thousands of 3D models being drawn and updated every frame might make most computers cry a little. After that, its just a simple case of location manipulations for spawning, wind and gravity, and then collision to wrap up.
Mobile Games Design (due 3rd May)
We had a group discussion over various games we could make to implement modern phone technologies, and how we’d do them. Just need to type stuff up and organise the next meeting so we can make our presentations. Fairly simple compared to the above two…
A Little Bit Of Tower Defence (due 9th May)
Still haven’t managed to make the basic models for this (programmer, not artist), but a lot of the structure is in place, so when they do get added, I have a good basic game to work with.
Portfolio (due 9th May)
After all the 3rd May stuff I should have a tiny bit of spare time to tweek some of my older ICAs and put them up on the Portfolio page along with Chat2D, PigDust and ALBOTD. Watch that space.
Self-Improvement Essay (due 13th May)
Weirdly, while I’m not superb and writing, it is something I can do competantly (or at least, I like to think so). I’ll be writing up a draft of this after the 3rd May cluster, might even put it up on here after submission for people to laugh at.
Crystal Maze (due 16th May)
Not as cool as it sounds. Me and two others are creating a zone each, of which an AI robot has to clear at least one to either beat the game or unlock the final zone. Basically, its higher and lower tier tasking with multiple goal states.
Match ‘Em! (due 19th May)
I’ve managed to get OpenGL shapes just about under my control, next I need to deal with game states and touches. Not too worried about this one, oddly.
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Of course, there is one final kicker. In theory, I’m going on holiday in May. Starting on the 14th. So if I want to go, I have to absolutely blitz this stuff. This is without a doubt the hardest challenge and the highest mountain I’ve ever had to climb in my life, and I’m terrified I’m going to go down in flames and have to resit the year.
But at least, if I’ve learnt anything, its to do my work early next year.
~ Slazo ~
6 months ago, when I was visiting Scotland, I was told about a brilliant little website hosting service. A few months later, I bought this domain and its hosting. And now, finally, I’ve gotten round to setting this website up when my life is at its busiest. Funny how life works.
So hi. I’m Sean “King Slazo” Hickman, and this is my blog, and soon, my general website for all my projects, be they programming, ONM or TGE related. There’ll be an About tab soon, so click that to find out more about me and what I do.
And with that, enjoy! Or don’t. Feel free to comment, and I’ll do my best to respond.
~ Slazo ~
