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You mean:

Down in the workshop all the elves were making toys
For the good Gentile girls and the good Gentile boys
When the boss busted in, nearly scared 'em half to death
Had a rifle in his hands and cheap whiskey on his breath
From his beard to his boots he was covered in ammo
Like a big fat drunk disgruntled Yuletide Rambo
And he smiled as he said with a twinkle in his eye
"Merry Christmas to all - now you're all gonna die!"

The night Santa went crazy
The night Saint Nick went insane
Realized he'd been getting a raw deal
Something finally must've snapped in his brain

Well the workshop is gone now, he decided to bomb it
Everywhere you'll find pieces of Cupid and Comet
Then he tied up his helpers and he held the elves hostage
And he ground up poor Rudolph into reindeer sausage
He got Dancer and Pancer with and old German Luger
And he slashed down Dasher just like Freddy Krueger
Then he picked up a flamethrower and he barbecued Blitzen
Then he took a big bite and said "It tastes just like chicken!"

The night Santa went crazy
The night Kris Kringle went nuts
Now you can't hardly walk around the North Pole
Without stepping in reindeer guts

There's the National Guard and the FBI
There's a van from the Eyewitness News
And helicopters circling 'round in the sky
Now the bullets keep flying the body count's rising
And everybody

Aye, the geocities bandwidth really blows. It's amazing that people even care to use geocities when you can use your bandwidth up simply testing your pages.

Nice artwork though. I hope at the very least you get hosting, if not here, somewhere that's deserving of it. Geocites gives hardly anything due justice.

I wouldn't mind helping in the coding aspect, but I need to catch up on homework and other duties to things like the Kanar site first.

Ha ha! He does exist! Take that non-believers!

That's some crazy stuff right there.

Oh, the system doesn't post?

You can always download the latest Ubuntu Linux iso and burn a new CD.

For the record, I am perfectly capable of writing such a thing. I seriously considered it during the overhaul to phase 2, but decided to forego it.  I don't WANT applying here to be as easy as signing up for hotmail or something. I know it sounds a bit smug, but the system is meant to be obtuse and freeform. The reason being that having a less than easy/foolproof system insures that the lazy and the fools are caught early on. Also, having a more or less free form system lets me actually see more of someone's character than you'd get with standardized forms.

Heh, I know.

And no harm no foul, I was simply commenting cause it was a bit annoying.

Why is it that people never read before posting?

Xepher, would you like me to write an application management systeml that would basically force people to at least view the information (as in load on their screen) before being able to submit an application? *sigh*

[any]

LMAO, oh so true. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux myself. But I'm not replacing the OS on my primary system with it. There is far too many things that I can do on my XP Pro system that I'd need to prectically relearn for Linux. It's not worth the time.

However, by saying that, by no means am I saying that Windows is superior to it or anything. Really... in terms of reliability, Linux is on top. But as a game developer I follow the direction of the consumer market. When I write games, I'd prefer to write them to be portable. Simply because I don't like to leave a portion of the market out of the loop.

I also understand that while I'm writing servers, never... EVER... write a server for any windows OS. It's simply not secure at all. On the flip side, the same holds true for all OS's if you don't keep up on updates, even Linux.

Different OS's have their ups and downs. You'd probably prefer a Mac in terms of media and graphical development, Windows systems for Gaming, and Linux/Unix for security/servers.

It all depends on what the intended use of the system is. If you're going to use your computer to play games, use windows, plain and simple. No "emulation" software can ever compare to the original. I have yet to see my friends system be capable of running every game I can with the same ease and smoothness as on my windows system. And he's used so many versions of Linux I've lost count. He's also one of those people who's really good at recompiling the kernal and optimizing the living hell out of the system. There's a reason that games are written in DirectX and not OpenGL. Simply better preformance on the OS that's largest on the consumer market.

If you can ever get the major game companies to actually write their stuff using OpenGL and porting it to other OS's than Windows, then other systems can become gaming systems too.

I'm not worried about it. I've been doing study of game design for many years, it's obvious that this is a blow off class for me. I would just like to see it taught correctly is all.

Design > Programming Language

Something like that would never work. Requiring a student to learn multiple languages in a single class would prove useless in the long run because they wouldn't gain a firm grasp of any single language. It's better to focus on one language and stick with it. When it's time for them to learn another language, they can take another class.

The fact that my class is full of students that know C/C++ very well and only like 2% that know or have any experience with Java (because it wasn't written anywhere in the course description that the Java was a prereq) means that the class should have focused on developing the games in C/C++ instead. It is after all a Game Development course, not a Introduction to Java/C++/VB/etc... course.

In a game programming course I believe that the fundamentals of game development are far more important than the language. This class that I'm in isn't teaching anything usefull in terms of game design so far. It's simply showing the students how to draw to the screen and whatnot using Java. All good game developers know that the programming is the LAST step in the development of any game, not the first.

Thus, this class dissappoints me greatly. It should have started out in spliting the class into teams to brainstorm and idea of a game, then the students should be taught the importance of a design document, selecting target audience, evaluating and selecting what to use and what not to use of their ideas, HOW TO WORK AS A TEAM, etc... Then the students should be able to choose (within reason) the language of choice to develop their game in. That would be a more sensible solution for a Game Development course, take the students through a virtual production simulation of real life game development, not "Here's how you draw a bitmap to the screen in Java".

Ok... I'm done.

Looks like that bear could have broken it's neck how it landed. Poor thing.

You know, I would much rather write this stuff in another language, but the instructor requires ALL projects to be written in Java. :/

[Updated Sep 28, 2005]

Updated Sep 28, 2005

Currently I'm working on a small tileset for a maze game for a class. It's kinda my first time doing tilesets, so I'd like a little feedback on the tiles I have so far. I also compiled the animation for the bomb to look how it would be rendered in the game. This is by far not a complete tileset. But I'll explain the game in a bit more detail at the end of the post. For now, here is the current images:

Tileset:


Animation:






The game will be a turn based maze game. You start out at a certain point in a map and must solve the puzzle within a set amount of time and moves. There will be pickups within the maze to help you along the way as well as items to increase your score. The object of the game is to complete the puzzle within the set amount of turns while obtaining the highest score you can under the time limit.

Within the maze are doors that will be locked that require a key of their color to unlock and open them. When you unlock a door it consumes 1 key of the doors color and opens the door. You no longer need to unlock doors after the first time. There are also cracked walls in which you can use bombs to break open (basically like a key except bombs carry over to other stages and keys do not). Inside hidden rooms (behind cracked walls) could be any number of power ups and traps.

Last but not least there are traps within the mazes which cause damage to your HP. Most traps are not visible to a player unless a pickup provides them the location or they trigger it. There are pickups that will allow you to replenish lost HP, and your HP resets between stages (I may add a difficulty setting which will cause HP to not regen between stages).

Pickups within the game can range from any number of things. Some pickups are instant use on pick up, while others you can hold on to. Pickups will exist that increase the number of movements you have remaining, replenish time, replenish HP, detect nearby traps when used, etc...

Also, even though I don't want to... This game's gonna be written in Java, so I'll probably (eventually) have test Applets for people to play.