Liliana blogged

Well, it seems that whenever I see a game on the shelves of a store, and it's something not well talked about (I.E Halo, Pokemon, ect) I really want to pick it up.

I, for one like Baten Kaitos Origins, which is a game barely ANYONE know. I LOVED the game, and I really enjoyed playing it. Now, this brings up another question: Are Secondary games alot more enjoyable the games all up to hype today?

I've always wondered this, and I really think, well, in my case at least, that this is true. Ever played Dark Cloud? That one game not well talked about, and I loved it. The plot, the characters, the weapons, and all were amazing for their time.

What do others think? Do you think alongside me, or do you believe the opposite?


protest the hero signature holiday musingsthoughts gaming related
Synyster blogged

Right. So at half 8 tonight, I FINALLY got a go with the demo. And continued to play through it about 4 times. Haven't played with the editor yet, and maybe a few other things, but I think I kinda got a good grasp on things.

I didn't like it at first. Some areas I still don't. I think the thing that annoys me most are the things I can't pick out, the things that just don't feel right, but don't jump out at me either. But theres a lot to love in it, without a shadow of a doubt.

I guess I'll start from the beginning.

CAS -

It's good. Real good. Faces looked better than the somewhat cartoony one I got landed with in Skate, though the hair options were annoyingly sparse. But clothing is looking good. I say looking good because there isn't really any indication as to how "limited" the demo is in comparison to the final game. I hate to say it, but it looks like the locked stuff is the stuff we get in the final game, as theres no way to unlock it in the demo. Ah well.

The ability to add a brand logo to a plain shirt, cap, etc, while simple, is great. Whats funny is I wished this was in last years game so I could wear my plain Green DC tee, and this year, they put the exact shirt in the game! Was glad to see it. However, to change the colour and size of the logo would be better.

To anyone who'd read my review of Skate, they'd see that a problem I mentioned regarding the CAS was layout. To some it may not matter, but when you want to change clothes you want to do it quickly and easily. And Skate 2 does go to great lengths to fix some problems I had with the system. Being able to sort my top-type is great (even though there is some questionable placement, like the flannel shirt in the jacket section,) and having brands as a sorta drop down list could be cool, or just an option to search either all brands or a specific one.

Things load faster! Don't know if my skate always loaded things slow, but it has recently, and it was a breath of fresh air to be able to scroll through and see stuff fast. BUT, having to buy things to see the style options or colour changes isn't ideal. Just add a "buy" button to the bottom of the colour/style section, instead of making up change things at the receipt just cause we tried them.

Now. The game. It's Skate. Only, it's not. I can't understand it. When I first played it, I was put off. I felt like turning Skate 1 on, not really understanding how the gameplay was better. But with time I grew to enjoy the changes quite a bit. I also like discovering tricks, accidently pressing buttons and doing things I hadn't done before. It was cool, ALMOST like cracking an ollie for the first time in Skate.

Walking. Hm. I hope it's better when the game gets here, but it's not so bad that I'll never use it. I imagine that the more I get used to it the more I'll like it, but right now it feels awkward. Turning is a hassle, and the desire to just get a birds eye/god hand version is undeniable when first trying it out.

And now the things I can't really explain. I LOVED the cutout style of skate, it was fun. The elevator music in the loading screens, the cool backpack, a sorta DIY approach to game design that I really enjoyed, and didn't get old for me. Skate 2 immediately struck me as too clinical in a way. Too many cutscenes in a 5 minute period, and that freakin' Hall of Meat thing got annoying, quick. Hopefully the pop up screen can be disabled, and the slowdown.

Overall, I'm enjoying it more with every restart of the demo, and as short as it is, the fact you can just restart is cool. Also, I thought the inclusion of the old tutorials was kinda cute. Anyone else catch the loading screen that said "need cash to buy a park or gear?" Sounds interesting.
Harvest Moon Angel blogged

I changed my blog name to Faith... Hope... & Love because that is always what I tell my self. To always have Faith always Hope and try to always Love.

Today was a lot of fun. School rocked! I had drawing and Jap. and Chem with one_wing_angel-Jesu. Then we had lunch together. History went by fast with no home work ^_^! I came home and talked with my friends until my brother got him self locked in his room. And after 30 min of working hard to break down his door I finally got it unlocked and guess what! He hated me for doing it. What a little jerk evil 7 year old! At that time I was baby sitting so we were the only ones in the house.

Now I'm off to do home work for math. Pooie...

I'm currently really into this song called "I hate this part" By the pussycat dolls.

I'll write more later!

music other
tekmosis blogged

If you're a frequent member on the site I'm sure you've noticed blank star images which when clicked switch 'states' to this image and perform an action such as adding a blog to your favorites.

In this post I'll go over a method on achieving a changeable state when you click on the image.

HTML:
code
<a href="#"><img id="preimg" src="https://i.neoseeker.com/f/neo/unsubscribed_star.gif" border="0" /> <span id="word">hello</span></a>


JS:
code
star_on = new Image(15,15);
star_on.src="https://i.neoseeker.com/f/neo/subscribed_star.gif";

star_off = new Image(15,15);
star_off.src="https://i.neoseeker.com/f/neo/unsubscribed_star.gif";

function changestar() {
	var star_is_blank = new RegExp("unsubscribed_star");
	var star_image = document.getElementById('preimg');
	var star_text = document.getElementById('word');

	if (star_is_blank.test(star_image.src)) {
		star_image.src = star_on.src;
		star_text.innerHTML = 'goodbye';
	} else {
		star_image.src = star_off.src;
		star_text.innerHTML = 'hello';
	}
}


Let's go over the JS first. You can place the JS in either an external .js file and include it on the page. However, in this example we'll add it between our header tags.

For optimum performance we'll want to do some preloading. We're doing this because without utilizing preloading you'll get a "flicker" between images while they change states after being clicked. Adding a preloading smooths things out and makes the state change seamless.

code
star_on = new Image(15,15);
star_on.src="https://i.neoseeker.com/f/neo/subscribed_star.gif";

star_off = new Image(15,15);
star_off.src="https://i.neoseeker.com/f/neo/unsubscribed_star.gif";

In this we are preloading images for both states "on" and "off". Both images are 15px by 15px (width / height) so that's what the "15,15" in the Image instantiation represents. Then, we're setting the source for the newly declared images for preloading. Now, lets take a look at our function which will handle the changing.

code
var star_is_blank = new RegExp("unsubscribed_star");
var star_image = document.getElementById('preimg');
var star_text = document.getElementById('word');

We'll set all of our variables to start with so that our logic will look a lot cleaner. Here's a brief run down of our variables and their purpose.
star_is_blank is a regular expression looking for the text "unsubscribed_star" we'll use this to check the current image that is being viewed on the page so we can determine which state to properly display.

star_image this will grab the actual html image tag itself so we can get information we need from it, in our case the source (src="")

star_text this part is optional and only benefits you if you want to change the text on the state change.


code
if (star_is_blank.test(star_image.src)) {
	star_image.src = star_on.src;
	star_text.innerHTML = 'goodbye';
} else {
	star_image.src = star_off.src;
	star_text.innerHTML = 'hello';
}

Now we get to the bulk of the code in the function which handles the actual changing of the image and the text. As noted in the section above with the regex you can now see how we are using it. We'll check if the src of star_img is "unsubscribed_star", if it is then we'll change the src star_image to the src of star_on, take note that we're using star_on and not "https://i.neoseeker.com/f/neo/subscribed_star.gif" itself. If you were to call "https://i.neoseeker.com/f/neo/subscribed_star.gif" rather than star_on users browsers will not be intelligent enough to know to use your preloaded image. You must use the variable in which you set for your preloaded images. The second step in the if block is to change the text and the else block will contain the opposite state changes using star_off and changing the text to 'hello'.

web development
chautemoc blogged


Just wanted to tell everyone if you haven't heard the song "Pushit" by Tool, particularly the version from their album "Salival", you haven't yet fully lived. Not everyone can get into it I'm sure and that is wonderful but if you would try, that would be so lovely....

Been listening to it for about eight years now and it blows me away every time..the whole album is essential for anyone that can dig it I think.

Okay, peace. :)

music
Synyster blogged

Today was an intresting day to say the least. The morning started off with the usual moans and whines of my younger brother. Now usually this would put somewhat of a dark cloud over my day, but today I doubt anything could, for reasons I will explain later on. S

School was decent, nothing really special happened. In Health and Career we had a substitue which we eventually convinced to let us watch a movie the whole class. She picked something called "Glory Road". I hadn't see the movie before, but after watching the first hour or so, I quite enjoyed it. The main plot is a former girl's basketball coach takes control of a poor college team. His recruiting of black skinned players catches the league by surprise and the team goes 17-0. That's when the bell rang and we had to turn it off...

After school I hung out with two of my friends at one of there houses. It was a great time. Playing a couple games of pool and doing some songs on Rock Band 2 took up 3 hours. Well, it wasn't a total waste of time. I managed to beat both of my friends at pool and sung a song on expert without failing :).

Finally, 7 O'Clock came. I finally got to Mats Sundin in a Canucks Uniform. In short, I was very dissapointed. I know I shouldn't have expected much from the guy, but still, I couldn't help myself. I was, however, very impressed with the play of the checking line of Ryan Kesler, Alex Burrows and Steve Bernier. Bernier got 2 goals less than 15 seconds apart which were both assisted by Burrows. Kesler assisted one also. The final score was 4-2 in favor of the Canucks.

Well, that basically sums up my day. Yeah I know, not that intresting, but it may be for some people. Look tomorrow for my review of the Skate 2 Demo.

Take care,


musingsthoughts
The Answer blogged

Well, the highly anticipated Comiket 75 finally arrived a few days ago and I managed to get my hands on the also highly anticipated Touhou non-official anime's first episode, entitled: A Summer Day's Dream. Much discussion formed in the pre-release period, concerning the (judging from the two previews leaked on the web) questionable animation quality and the ridiculous list of voice actors hired for the project, but I'll explain in detail later on.

Before I continue, for those of you who don't know what Touhou is, it's a series of games, developed by a one-man team, going by the name of ZUN. Most of the series' games fall into the category of bullet-hell vertical scrolling shooter. In the game, you must defeat the enemy all the while dodging a ridiculous amount of different bullets. The series has gained an immense amount of fans and has been subject to countless fan works.


An example of bullet-hell or danmaku, in one of Touhou's games (Mountain of Faith)

By the way, catch Moonrise beating Imperishable Night's extra stage. The game is pretty intense, haha.

Anyways, back to the main topic at hand. Skimming through the blogosphere, forums, and friends' comments, we were all expecting the animation to be a let-down. From the two previews we saw (a second link would be pretty much redundant since it has basically the same thing), you could notice that the animation and character design was kind of meh. However, for a fan project, it was pretty good, especially the background designs.

A few days before C75, the release date and list of voice actors for the adaption was revealed, and needless to say, everyone was impressed at the amazing cast they were able to round up (and of course the speculations of the veracity of the cast list ran wild). Then came the date of Comiket 75. A day or two after it started, I had "acquired" a copy of the adaptation's first episode. I sat back, grabbed a snack and watched.


Twenty minutes later, I was blown away. The animation wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and while the story started out a bit slow, it was very enjoyable and I found myself smiling the whole episode! So yeah, if you're a fan of the series, it's definitely worth checking out.

Basically, the story takes place in Gensokyo, a world alternate to ours, in which many mystical beings live. It centers around the main character, a shrine maiden named Reimu Hakurei, and an unfortunate incident that occurs when her shrine donation box is stolen. She then sets out with the help of others to find the culprit of the theft. It's a light-hearted, calm, and comical story so far.


Suika(right): Needs moar sake.

From a fan's point of view, even though I had some trouble getting used to some of the character's voice actresses (the personalities, not the voice acting itself which was excellent), it was great nonetheless.


Reimu: Oh my god it's a *bleep*.

The music, while not something stand-out-ish, was good as well. All of it fit nicely with the mood of the moment and did its job. The intro song of the episode was nicely done, by the way.


Taking nude pictures while you're in the shower is no challenge for Aya.

There was a also a fight scene near the end of the episode and, surprisingly, it was very well animated. The effects were top-class and the fluidity and movements were pretty impressive for what the anime was.


Bringin' Marisa along for the ride.


Embarking on a search for Reimu's missing shrine maiden donation box.


At the Scarlet Devil Mansion.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable watch. I thought it was pretty amazing for a doujin animation. I expect the next episode to be better, although I am not sure as to when it will come out. It seems the possibility of another episode will depend on the sales, but I can't be too sure about this either.

2008 has been a good one. Oh yeah. (H)

Oh, by the way, apparently Patchouli has Wikipedia on her library.

comiket 75 touhou anime
Artificer blogged

When I participated regularly in the Neoseeker IRC chat, Dynamite would have no shame in poking fun at me because I was heavily involved in software development using the Microsoft .NET platform (specifically C#). This is most likely because Dynamite doesn't like Windows (and accordingly, doesn't like Microsoft), but that's another story entirely.

Sometimes he would joke about my working for Microsoft. Well, Dynamite, I am proud to tell you that I have accepted a software engineering job with Microsoft starting at the end of this month. I am joining a team that develops a portion of the .NET platform, so this is a fantastic opportunity for me to help be a part of a framework I've been using for almost four years now. I am very excited to see what's in store for me up there. Seattle will definitely be a huge change from where I am currently situated, and I can only hope to continue learning as much as I can to become a better software engineer.

On the Neoseeker front, I don't believe this will change much. NAMFox will still be my night hobby, and I will continue to moderate. Of course, I don't fully know what to expect, so that may change...

musingsthoughts microsoft career
Katsumi blogged

Team NUBS is going quite smoothly, though we did a rough job in the Digital graphics large piece contest with Kat dropping out of it giving Circe our team Looking up for her on the score, She didn't do have bad!

MastaHazuki almost got us a medal in the Pokemon battle, but lost.

For the live drawing, Neither Aether nor Circe entered, but I replaced Circe, Asking her, I got third place.

In the brawl battle, we didn't win anything....

Circe is Going out and writing till the end in the Creative essay match.

Me and Catboy14 are participating in the Photography contest.

NObody in our tean is participating in Halo 3 and Modeling or the Guitar Hero 3 match..

Peterkins is Rhyming his heart out the the Rap battle.

So far, It's good...But not good....XD

I truly thing Team CLIT is going to take the gold medal for this year.
Not to be a bad sport or anything, But still, GO TEAM NUBS. :3



neoseeker related
Blackfalcon blogged

So, stuff has been happening, and stuff will be happening soon! Even have a bit of good news!

Digital Graphic Large Piece

This event has come and gone, and we didn't do too bad! Our two awesome entrants were Linkin Park Fan and Sapphire Dragon. Here's what they came up with:

Planet Starscape (SD)
Becoming Mother Nature (LPF)

Here's what the judges said:

quote Fevernova03
Linkin Park Fan

I was pleasantly surprised by your entry. The color, the concept, and the blending are all great. I'm not a huge fan of those overlapping circles, though, and the typography is terrible.

Score: 9.0

------

Sapphire Dragon

What hurts you most is the lack of creativity. It looks like a pretty standard tutorial. Also, in the future, try saving as PNG or higher quality JPG so you don't get that ring effect coming from the lens flare.

Score: 6.5
quote aphex
Sapphire Dragon

Space themed works can be interesting. Firelight did a fairly good job at that a while back. Not sure if you were there but he added various effects to his pieces and added a lot more depth then I see in yours. It's simple, and feels incomplete. Simplicity is good, except when there is so little to go by that it becomes boring and therefore lacking. It's great that you ended up doing something that not many people in G&A choose to do but something we have seen from time to time.

I applaud you for doing most of the work without the help of google images. But, I feel you can do a lot more to this that you just chose not to.

5.7/10

-----

linkin park fan

You really pulled together are brought a pretty ace entry. I was never really been a fan of the colors until I viewed the full version. The colors are nicely blended, even though I think the yellow stands out a bit more then it needs to.

The whole piece has a nice feel that just draws everything together. It has an excellent color scheme and a very well done compilation. You had an interesting concept and pulled it off well.

8.5/10
Harsh judging there, they had their work cut out for them! A big well done to both of you! Congrats to LPF who came second place, and hard luck to SD, who didn't. :_oops: Thanks to LPF we're guaranteed some measure of glory at the end of the games, so no pressure on the rest of the team! No slacking off, though! >=P

Other events have started, including Creative Essay, in which Whitefalcon and SpaceWalker are participating. Both are hard at work, though SW tells me he'll be swamped with work this week. We'll see what happens! Good luck guys!

Also started is Guitar Hero 3- Best of luck ButchSmudge31!!!

neoseeker related neolympic games team caption
Candle blogged

Well life goes on they say, and well I suppose its true. I have found another girlfriend, well actully odd thing is, I didn't find her, we where great friends for a long time, and suddenly wham outta no where she confeses to loving me, said she always has, and couldn't hold it back anymore, so I guess I got a brand new girl friend.

Other than that, I got a great new job, with the leagal stuff, my army career is postponed pending a trail agasint my dad, he came over today with a gun and told me to step outside, well the cops arrested him, but I gotta wait for trail before leaving, so I got a job with the Texas Highway Department for now, and things are starting to look up.

I did get myself something today though, bought a 94 F-150 XL for 750, it needs some work, but it runs well, it just doesn't stop well lol. Im looking at upgrading my PC again also with my new job, I can afford it, I'll start making 2400 a month so im told, and my total bills are around 500 a month, so that gives me some play money ya know. All and all I can say my life is improving.

other
Synyster blogged

Well boys and girls, here it is. Synyster's first EVER blog.


I'm fairly new to this site if you haven't already seen. Been here...what, 5 days? So far, I've really been enjoying myself. It's great to see all the people on here togather in one big happy community (God how cheesy did that sound?).

Anyways, I look forward into gradually joining the community and hopefully people will eventually learn my name. I'm really not that much of a talker, on the internet or in real life. I just say what needs to be said and thats it. Hopefully I will get some friends on this forum because it seems like many of you are really nice people. Loungin' and the Canada forums have been my favourite places on the site so far. Loungin' because, well you can basically talk about any shit you want on there and Canada because thats my homeland.


So yeah, that wasn't so bad was it? I guess not, but we'll see as things get going a bit.

Bye for now,

Syn.




musingsthoughts
Shana blogged

I'm glad I came back, I missed this place a lot. So much has changed. I didn't even know that Neo had blogs until like yesterday! Hopefully I'll start making this blog pretty and stuff.

I missed talking to Toni and Jeff. I'd say Ron, but we still talk all the time. ;P Now I'm starting to make new friends, and it is verry awesome.

Today, I woke up at 4 AM and went to the hospital to have an upper endoscopy. They basically just put me to sleep and shoved a small tube down my throat to look at my tummy on the inside. :] Nothing was wrong, and next week they'll check out my gall bladder to see how that's doing. Hopefully they'll find out why I'm always sick to my tummy. ;-;

I loved being put to sleep, though. They drugged me up first, and then they sprayed my throat to numb it. xD I accidentally turned my head out of fear, and then my whole left side of my face was numb, too. And then soon after that, my eyelids started opening and closing really fast, and I fell out. Next thing I knew, I was like "WHERE AM I?"

The nurse said I asked what blood pressure was around five times. :P I've always been curious, but unfortunately, I don't remember her answer.

musingsthoughts
Kazooieman blogged

Finally after many months of having to use my Wii's internet (which I couldn't use to edit the Banjo-Kazooie Wiki), my parents have finally bought a new computer.

Now time to go all out on the BK Wiki again.

waffen ss wwii world war pc musingsthoughts neoseeker related
Redemption blogged

Some Browser Cookie gotchas from research and personal testing:
  • IE6 and IE7 Support max 20 cookies per domain.
    • If you set a 21st cookie the oldest cookie is no longer available to the server
  • IE6 has a bug where the max length of all cookies combined can be no more than 4096bytes (the RFC states a browser should support 20 cookies up to 4096 bytes PER cookie).
  • IE stores cookies for a domain and its subdomains separately, so you can store 20 cookies in each of abc.foobar.com, foobar.com and xyz.foobar.com. In such a scenario going to abc.foobar.com you will have access to a total of 40 cookies (20 set for domain foobar.com and 20 for abc.foobar.com)
After the August 2007 IE update:
  • IE7 supports max 50 cookies per domain, but the 4096 limit still exists!
Note that regardless of the above, reports seem to indicate that Opera had a 30 cookie limit (not sure if this is still true).


****Even if a browser supported unlimited cookies, the more cookies you set for your domain the slower a site gets!!!*****

Good Practice:

Set paths for your cookies. IE and other browsers only send cookies to the server if the requested URL matches the path of a cookie. This can potentially save alot of bandwidth and improve performance. For instance if I am setting forum specific cookies I would set the path to /forums/.

web development wwii world war ie6 ie7 cookies
(0.1297/d/www3)