Good Luck Cowboy

Blog the Twelfth

by Harry on May 1, 2012 at 10:05 am

I was going to write this sooner, but then I drew a bunch of pirates and wanted to leave them on the front page a little longer.

I like today’s comic, my art style doesn’t really lend itself to visual jokes and while it is feasible for me to change it and move to a higher resolution I’d rather not ruin the “house style” I have going on here.
But I’m glad I could get a visual joke to work.

I took a brief break from writing Scavengers because I got to a convenient stopping point where I could just think about what happens next. I still have a brief outline that I have stuck to but keep building on and things are right on track. It’s taking a while to decide what to write next because I want everything to be written down for a reason.

I don’t want things to happen “just because”.

Part Three is set in Sinclair’s Wandering Market of Wonderment, a name I just made up but might keep. I really want to focus Three on how the Scavengers use currency and trade with each other.

So far each part has focused on something new and important, I don’t want Three to be any different.

In other news, I update the ART page to have some sort of navigation, it allows direct links to be sent without leaving the page and you can jump straight to a piece of artwork.
It’s still terrible to navigate though, which I should fix. I might just add a “Back to top” button underneath every piece.
I do need to get around to adding thumbnails.

Also games, I’ve been really getting into League of Legends lately. Recently re-discovered the Dominion game mode, I find it much more fun than classic. It’s less of a slow paced grindfest and encourages/forces more team fights. I like Dominion over Classic because stuff keeps happening. There is always something going on somewhere on the map, whereas in Classic it is possible for nothing to really happen for a good few minutes.

I’ve also purchased Blades of Time, this happened after I fell in love with the combat and wanted to see the weird places the terrible plot would take me. I swear I missed a cutscene at the start.
The game just dumps you into “DRAGONLAND” surrounded by living statues out to kill you, the first line of dialogue is:
“At last, DRAGONLAND, I’ve finally made it.”
I have no idea how I got to DRAGONLAND or what significance it holds, but at least I got there??
The main character is kind of a horrible person too. She needs to get to the treasure in the DRAGONLAND TEMPLE for no explained reason other than GOLD so she decides to MURDER this group of people who are only trying to escape DRAGONLAND. She doesn’t even tell them why or even ASK for the key to the gate they are guarding. She just assumes that they MUST ALL DIE.
So I don’t really blame half the enemies in the game for attacking her, she REALLY has it coming.
She seems like the kind of bitch who’d steal your parking space after you waited for some old lady to back out because she NEEDS TO GET TO THE SUPERMARKET.

DRAGONLAND.

I should write an actual review, because despite the plot being terrible and the voice acting being horrible the game is really, really fun. I would thoroughly recommend it.

I also peaked into S4League again to see how much worse it had got. There are still no good maps other than Neden-1 and even more terrible melee weapons.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

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Pirates and Rockers.

by Harry on April 29, 2012 at 5:57 pm

Posted In: Art

Argh!

Pirates

I did this next one a while ago but never uploaded it, despite it being cool:

Rock on

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Scavengers: Prologue

by Harry on April 19, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Posted In: Scavengers

Scavengers: A Village A Castle And A Disturbing Lack Of Water is now at 8700 words, and with that I give you the prologue:

“Tell me about the Ancients again.”

“I’ve already told you so many times, there isn’t much more to say to you. Not in the context of a vague overview, anyway. I mean, I could tell you specifically about things about the Ancients but I-”

“I like hearing you talk about what you know. Perhaps then a vague overview of our story so far would be nice.”

“Well if you insist, where should I begin?”

“Just how ancient are these Ancients?”

“Oh, thousands of years. They lived thousands of years ago. Of course they’re all gone now, though no one is entirely sure why. Well I’m entirely sure why, but that isn’t a part of the the vague overview.”

“You’re ruining it by being too meta.”

“Okay, so thousands of years ago the Ancients lived. They had fantastic technology and magical powers, but for whatever reason they are gone now. The civilizations they created too are lost in the sands, but their buildings remain. Their technology still works. Well, some of it anyway. And after some tweaking. So I guess their technology doesn’t really still work, we make it work. We, the Scavengers, that is.”

“And what do we Scavengers do?”

“We survive, we recreate. We ask our lovers to tell us vague overviews of our story so far. But lately the surviving part has become difficult. A great drought has settled in and refuses to budge.”

“How does this vague overview end?”

“I’ve got some ideas, but you’ll have to wait and see.”

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Blog The Eleventh

by Harry on March 10, 2012 at 9:43 am

Posted In: Blog

So I submitted myself to JustTheFirstFrame as it is a most excellent site. It takes the first frame of a comic and then links straight to the original source. Which is just excellent.

I’ve also been writing a book called [for now] Diego, I have hit 16 pages and am really enjoying writing. What I’m really trying with Diego is to create interesting characters, and dialogue that is fun to read. In books I often see dialogue that is kind of flat, as if it is all coming from the same speaker. I’m trying to avoid that while still making it easy to follow. I think the hardest part with writing Diego will be coming to an ending. The story doesn’t exactly lend itself to a climax, so it’ll be hard deciding where to end it. I don’t want to end to abruptly, or to drag it on too much. But I guess I’ll get there when I get there.

Anyway, JustTheFirstFrame, check it out.

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The Door Problem That Isn’t. [RPGeez 2]

by Harry on March 5, 2012 at 10:19 pm

Posted In: RPGeez

Here is an issue that always seems to appear in any genre of game. Though I suppose it isn’t really a huge issue, I understand why it is done. It extends the playtime of the game and gives the players an actual reason to explore the level.
However, my issue with this is that the object that is blocking the path is never really that much of an obstacle.
Take, for example, Pokémon and those darned small trees. God forbid that Ash use an axe or a saw to cut it down – or better yet – simply walk around it!
After I wrote this comic however, I thought to myself “Well, I only really remember this in old games and Pokémon. Maybe it isn’t really a thing today?” That line of thought was soon abandoned while I was playing NeverDead, a recently released PS3 game.
I had to find the key to a locked door.
The immortal demon hunter, wielding a sword larger than his arm had to find the key to a locked door in an abandoned asylum.
I’d be a bit more understanding if damaging the property was an issue, but moments later we’re tearing up the place to cut down hordes of demons. (How they got past that locked door I’ll never know).
And it isn’t as if this door was particularly strong either, it was just your standard wooden double doors. Merely minutes later in the game our friendly neighborhood demon hunter is literally cutting straight through concrete pillars.
My initial plan for these articles was to discuss possible solutions, but in hindsight there isn’t much to talk about here. Just don’t do it. Or find a better reason to need to do it.
This is especially easy in fantasy games – magic. You need the magic key to open the magic door. (Though even this fix is kinda weak, if the Big Bad didn’t want you getting somewhere he just wouldn’t leave a way to get in lying around).
Or perhaps stealth? You want to take the Big Bad by surprise, and blasting down doors on your way through his (or her) lair is not going to achieve the desired effect here.
Or maybe this is someone else’s property, and it would mean bad news for you if you damaged it? (Though this fix is also weak, saving the world is KIND OF A BIG DEAL, YOUR PROPERTY IS NOT.)
Before I go: NeverDead is super fun and you should all be playing it RIGHT NOW.

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Slimes, The Elite Warriors. [RPGeez 1]

by Harry on February 18, 2012 at 4:16 pm

Posted In: RPGeez

I’ve been doing a thing over at RPG RPG Revolution where I highlight a non-issue in game design and talk about it. I’m also posting them here on a delay.

I’ve always found it odd that, despite the havoc that these Chosen Ones cause for the Big Bad Guy, he doesn’t seem to care all that much. A prophecy predicting your downfall at the hands of specific persons? Bah! Throw some slimes at ‘em!

Now, in terms of general game design, this is not a bad thing. It only makes sense to face off against the weaker enemies first. But in the context of the game world and story, it just doesn’t make sense for the Big Bad to throw his most powerful foes at you only until he’s given you enough practice to defeat them.

An obvious solution, of course, is to make the Big Bad oblivious and have the heroes face off against common monsters not loyal to Lord SuperDeath. However, I have a different solution.

This was an idea I had in one of my long-abandoned projects (because God forbid that I actually finish something). It was based on the cliché that something goes horribly wrong. See Final Fantasy 3 (I think; it’s been a long time).

The idea was that these monsters don’t know anything about the world; they’ve come from a dark land full of different threats. While they get accustomed to their new land, they’re going to be fairly weak. Perhaps all monsters come from slimes who gradually adapt to their respective environments. This could lead to enemy variants or mutations in random battles that are both advantageous and disadvantageous.

A wacky example would be a fish with legs. It is a land encounter, but is also immune to water attacks. As the game goes on, the monsters become more suited to the world and adapted to its dangers, making them progressively more difficult to kill. Essentially, they’re “levelling up” with the player outside of a design context.

There are, of course, many other solutions, but I’m not going to do all the work for you.

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Fun In The ENDLESS VOID

by Harry on February 14, 2012 at 12:50 am

Posted In: Art

Two pieces of art, will do more over the week.

Hello! Hi there! What do you do for fun in the ENDLESS VOID?

Get it? Because Liquorice is bad? Shut up I'm right.

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Messages From The Twitterverse [1]

by Harry on February 12, 2012 at 3:05 pm

Posted In: Twitter

So trying something new, I often talk a lot more on Twitter where there isn’t really room for me to. Meaning my opinions are spread out between 6 or 7 tweets.

I do try to contain long opinions to the blog and such, but I think I just post a lot to Twitter because I can submit every idle thought as it pops into my head.

So I’m going to try and collect some of the funnier, or more interesting tweets and compile them into blog posts.

“So I want to write a story called Mere Machines, but the concept I’m thinking of could be seen as pretty cliche. Though I guess it depends on how you do it.

I really need to make an Open Office doc for all my concepts, as of now I have: Clownz, Mere Machines, Total Paranoia and Diego/Sand.

There is also Adventurers, of course. But that is more of a long term project, so I’m writing Diego first. Mostly as practice, because I want Adventurers to be the best it can be.

Though I don’t really like using concepts I’ve thought of as practice because I want to do them all justice. Which is where the Sims idea came from, it lets me practice my writing without wasting any of the concepts.”

I think you can probably tell that this was original posted on Twitter by the way it jumps around a bit, but I am my own worst critic.

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Blog The Tenth

by Harry on February 2, 2012 at 11:06 am

Posted In: Blog

It’s been a while since I posted something other than actual comics and I haven’t got a huge amount to talk about. Except an idea I plan to work on ASAP.

[read as: while I put off doing school work]

I’m going to open up Sims 3, set the free will meter to high as possible and record the stupid stuff Sims eventually do. [like the one time my Sim stuck macaroni and cheese in the oven, despite not being hungry, and went to work. Setting the house on fire.]

If it doesn’t work out, or if it isn’t interesting, you’ll never see me mention this again. And if questioned on it, I will look at you incredulously and be all: “Wha? I have no idea what you are talking about, good sir!”

If it does work out I’ll make a new blog post for it, and a new page on the website acting as an archive for them.

This was inspired by, if not entirely stolen from, Alice and Kev.

I think people might find this a bit lazy of me, just letting the Sims write the story for me, I know I think it’s a bit lazy. So I guess I’ll just have fun interpreting the little balloons and translating them to dialogue, and writing more about my Sims actions in an attempt to make things funny [or funnier] and more interesting.

In other news, I purchased Street Fighter 4 and failed to see the big deal and also finished the Inheritance Cycle and failed to see what makes Eragon a great hero [when arguably Roran has achieved much greater achievements, taking into account his lack of magic. And spoilers ahead: He didn't required the help of hundreds of Eldunari to simply stay alive].

I might write more blog posts focusing on Inheritance and Street Fighter 4, if not to just artificially inflate the post count of my blog.

I also ordered a pretty cool looking coat from an online store, only to realise that the business is based on Korea and it’ll take the best part of this month to get here. Post and packaging was pretty cheap though, but I guess I have the failing American dollar to thank for that.

And if you follow my Tumblr blog you would have already seen the tale of the remarkably nice pizza, which I thanked Karma for, despite doubting Karma’s existence.

I’ve also been playing the RP game Space Station 13. While it looks horrible in the way that the perspective of practically all the objects is inconsistent, and it gets hard to tell what is what, I’ve been enjoying playing as an AI.

Role playing as a human is boring, I can do that without the aid of a game. I’m doing that right now. But role playing as an entire space station gives me a sense of power [which thanks to the laws of robotics I am not allowed to abuse (because God-forbid I get called a bad role player)].

However, that did not stop me from opening the cage that held the monkeys to see how much havoc they could cause on the space station [though unfortunately they stayed in their cage anyway].

I just looked over to the computer next to me and the first line I saw in their document was “alcohol, cigarettes and heart disease.” I told them this and they said “That’s not depressing, it’s funny.”

He’s just told me he likes how he’s not mentioned and that he’s just “that guy.”

To spite him I’m going to mention that his name is Alex. He wants me to tell you that he’s a very handsome man.

And so everything I wanted to and didn’t want to talk about has been exhausted, goodbye.

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