Greetings zombies! Terrormaster has crawled out of his grave. Our eight year anniversary is slowly approaching. Wow, has it really almost been EIGHT years since DN?! Yup, just checked our domain registry - March 2001. Is anyone out there still? Has everyone decayed back into their graves, rotting away? Or have they been sucked into the mundane world of real-life?

I’m not sure when the final days of our once proud rule ended but they are not forgotten. I, Terrormaster, have crawled forth from the rotting stench of the underworld. And I hearby call forth the minions of the necropolis to rise once again. The sigil is broken, the runes are cast, the circle has been enchanted, the candles lit, the dark tome opened, and the incantation spoken thrice. Come forth necropolites near and far as the call of darkness beckons for thee. There is much work to be done. I know not what work it is yet, but it calls to be done. Come, the gathering is at hand. Do you not hear the call to be and do something greater? Answer for thou hast been calleth!

There was much talent among us: programmers, designers, writers, and artists. The industry is ripening for a reawakening of something new and different.

So um yeah, I’m putting together a little team…

After a REALLY long break doing various other things, as well as revelling in the madness of Halloween, I’ve decided to pick up work on the Adrian Blackwood legacy known by many as Shadow of the Necromancer.

I’m not certain of even an engine at this point. This may be an XNA game or it could be done in one of the Makers.

None the less I’m gutting the whole thing and taking a completely fresh start. I want to get the complete premise laid out before I do anything else. I may even bring in some outside talent.

Keep an ear to the ground as this has always been the one to watch.

The day had started bleak and plagued with one technical issue after the other (many of which our guests never had a clue; others, such as the overabundance of fog and crowd control at the table, were painfully obvious). However, all of the problems I did have are being chaulked up as lessons learned. And despite it all, even though I was working right down to the wire, it all turned out very well.

I’d like to thank everyone for making it a fantastic year, it was one of our best yet. The compliments poured in from nearly everyone and we saw an estimated 300 Trick-or-Treaters pass through our front yard (thats up almost 100 from last year’s count). It was a lot of hard crazy work getting to this point. But having the fantastic reaction and reception from nearly all our guests made it all worthwhile.

And in these times of financial struggles and a teetering economy it brings great joy and pride to my heart to have been fortunate enough to entertain so many in so little time. To make them feel alive and, if even for just a brief fleeting moment, make them forget the troubles of the world - and for some adults, like a child again.

Thank you to everyone who made Halloween 2008 a success. I thank my wife for her loving support and putting up with my crazy hobby. I thank my daughter for being the light and encouragement to keep trying even when an idea seemed not to work or head me off at the pass when another was too silly even for a six year old. And of course my friends, my family and the many great people of the Windsor community that poured through our front gates.

Honestly my only single regret is not being able take any photo’s before the end of night tear down. If anyone out there has any great shots to share let me know and I’ll be happy to post them up in a community gallery.

Thanks again. Until next year, lets all kick back and enjoy the holidays.

Sorry for the lack of updates. As you know it’s that time of year and I started wicked early this year compared to years past - and I’m STILL behind. Basically I’ve been busy getting Necropolis Manor ready for the Halloween season - loads and loads of manual labor building props and decor for the yard. It’s tough, a lot of work, and totally time consuming. But I love it cause I’m doing something I like without having my ass plastered to the chair and updating code and page content all day long.

This year I’ve gone a bit overboard but nearly every addition to the yard display has been handmade by yours truly. Here’s some pics to show whats been worked on so far:

I’ve got more props in the works that have no pictures yet cause I’m just not ready to show them or haven’t started (yes I’ve only got less than 3 weeks).

As you may or may not know, all Halloween related content was moved to http://necropolismanor.com which has a lot more pictures than above (including last year’s pics). Please feel free to swing by and check it out and maybe sign the guestbook.

After this year’s season is done I’ll slowly be slipping back into gear here and resume work on the Darkside Traders engine and maybe pick up work on Ultima Obscura as well.

Enjoy the season and have a safe Halloween.

-TM

Sheesh, just found out Myspace is reporting all links this site as a source of spam, spyware, and/or viruses.

Anyone who knows me and is familiar with this site and what we do here (and have done since 2001) know better. Not only is this site clean of spam, spyware, viruses, and phishing tactics. You’ll also find it’s totally and completely free of any ads, banners, or link exchange programs. I do not make or even attempt to make any profit from this site. Nor do I promote or condone any activities which would harm anyone or their property.  IMHO, Myspace is completely full of shit for even blocking us. Hell you probably stand a better chance of getting a virus or malware from Myspace than you ever would here.

-TM

Well, today I hacked my first ATX PSU. Wasn’t much to it really, just followed the directions over at http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.batts/ps/powersupply.htm and it went pretty straight forward. I took a few liberties with the general design (blame Radio Shack, they were out of Binding Posts) - actually like the way I did it better anyways. The plan is to use this one to power the talking skull (5v) and the DC motors (12v) which control both the neck of the armature and the stirring action of the witch.

Here’s a quick peak at my handy work.

I covered the vent where I zip tied the sandbar resister with a strip of electronical tape. The reason being is that I didn’t want to expose the heat sink lube as it oozed out - that stuff is like super toxic and I don’t me or anyone who happens to handle this baby the unknowingly touch the stuff.

An astute observer (at least one who’s done this before) will notice I’m missing the blue -12v wire. That’s because the dag nabbit thing came loose from the circuit board when I was organizing wires. I didn’t bother soldering it back because I was feeling a bit a lazy not wanting to remove the circuit board from the chassis to get to the bottom. And because I figured well, the motors only run off +12v anyways so I currently don’t need it.

I have it powering a miniature string of Christmas LEDs that typically ran off 4 AA batteries as a load test. We’ll see how she does.

-TM

Well the time has come to put coding projects asside and start gearing up for Halloween 2008. “Wow TM, it’s still only May?! October is a way off still, starting a little early?” you may ask… YES! Last year I nearly ran myself to the ground trying to get the all the things I had planned going - money and time were extremely tight; I was making last minute adjustments not just days but mere minutes before the ToTs (Trick or Treaters) arrived; and even with that I cut a good number of corners and ideas from the final display.  At the end of the evening I tore most of it down alone. The next day I had to take a PTO from work just to wrap up the cleanup and recooperate.

I’ve got a big agenda planned for this year where I’ll be introducing some cool new custom built props and concepts. The theme will center around another peak into the haunted lands of Khatharia, this time we’ll take a look into a yet unnamed disenchanted woods of dark faeries, black magic, and of course the undead. The theme is loosely based and inspired by Nox Arcana’s latest CD entitled Grimm Tales.

Some of the things to keep an eye out for is the faerie queen’s fortress, an old crone brewing a cauldron of fright, living trees and vines, and perhaps even an appearance by a distant cousin of El Fauno (of Pan’s Labyrinth). The graveyard will see several enhancements including a more realistic fence and a few new denizens to boot.

So yes I have a busy summer lined up. Keep an eye out for updates.

-TM

Well I’ve toyed with the demo of RPG Maker VX (used the English mod). While the return of world map support, random dungeons, and even character portraits were welcome, some of the newer features leaves much to be desired.

Why can’t Enterbrain just leave features in and just add to the existing product instead of rebuilding the engine entirely each time? Don’t any of their developers reuse code and keep a library of stuff? While XP was lacking in a few areas (most notably missing was support for world maps, vehicles, encounter areas, and character portraits) it added a crap load of fantastic features which are no where to be found in VX.

The largest area with missing and limited stuff are maps. Gone is the ability to add fog to your map (granted this can be emulated with script). Pictures are again now limited to 20 (this used to be the limit in 2000 and was upped to 50 in XP - this MAY be a demo limitation only but I thought I’d point it out).

Gone is the ability to assign tileset/chipsets to a map. In fact tilesets are completely gone from the database. Instead you are given one large chipset/tileset thats shared across your entire project. This severely limits the diversity in maps. Once you fill the five banks (A-E) thats it, you can’t even expand the PNG file downwards to add more chips. I know it was a neat idea to share world chips with town chips but come on Enterbrain what the hell were you thinking here? The way it was implemented in XP was a step in the right direction, now you’ve taken at least two steps back.

Auto-layers - ok, this is a neat idea that makes map building easy for even noobs. But at least let those with mad leet map skillz edit on layers if we want. Also, the third layer added in XP seems to be gone.

Auto-shadows - another nice feature that should be optional. Not all of us want to see a shadow for a wall along the east side. What if the sun or light source is coming from the east? What if we’re indoors or underground? Not to mention the feature is a bit buggy and doesn’t always calculate where the shadow should be. This fluff should have either been  dropped from the release or made optional at the map or database level.

Battle-system. I admit I didn’t dig too deeply here because I always roll my own in each project. However they’ve returned to the PhantasyStar style combat. Personally I feel that they should have included several different combat models as plugins and let the user decide which one to use in their project.

There’s a lot of other little things that irked my nerves but this isn’t really a review so I won’t go into details. But my overall reaction is there’s nothing in this product to justify upgrading or the $40 price difference between VX and XP - yes, VX is gonna hit the English speaking market this February at a whopping $100 US.

My advice is if you’re gonna dish money out on a maker pick up RPG Maker XP and stay clear of VX. Otherwise stay with the reliable RPG Maker 2000 or 2003.

-TM

Man, I get engrossed with my Halloween projects this past October and Enterbrain goes and make an announcement when I’m not looking. I know this news is probably old to anyone who’s been avidly still following the Maker line. But apparently, as the title suggests, Enterbrain is about to unleash RPG Maker VX unto the masses. In fact the Japanese version will be released this month followed by an official English release in February 2008.

Ok I’m sure that those who were disappointed by the last release, RPG Maker XP are probably thinking - oh brother (or some other explicative)! But let me be the first to tell you right now that from what I’ve seen of VX, everything that pissed off fans of 2k and 2k3 when XP came out have been addressed in VX.

Thats right, Enterbrain has gone back to a lot of the winning features from both RPG Maker 2000 and 2003. Miss world maps? Miss vehicles? Miss character portraits? Miss the random dungeon generator from RPG Maker 2003? Miss being able to pile multiple characters in one chipset? It’s all back while still maintaining a lot of the powerful features they added in XP. It’s like they’ve taken the best features from 2000, 2003, and XP, and created a new product. In addition, it looks like they’ve also borrowed some features from other popular makers such as wall shadows from RPG Toolkit and added some things that we’ve been hacking into our games for years such as character emote bubbles.

Don’t take my word for it, head over to the official Enterbrain RPG Maker VX English page: http://www.enterbrain.co.jp/tkool/products/rpgvx/eng/index.html

Also check out http://www.rpgmakervx.com/ to follow the latest updates and scoops including screenshops and direct from the developer technical information not present on the official site.

-TM