The site is complete! (Well, nearly. One final feature will be added soon, I hope. I’ll keep it under wraps for now, though.) So, I deleted MEDIA, Music, Programs, Gamer, and Member, mostly merging them with other pages. All content, besides the archive pages, only takes one click to get to now. I’ve created two completely new pages: Texts and Messages. Texts takes the works I’ve uploaded to Fictionpress and compiles them nice and neat, but it also has a preview for both of my upcoming books. Messages is a system of posting and reading messages easily, and I mean it. Enter your name, (or username), and you message and BAM. It appears at the top of the list. I really want to get your feedback, (yes I know for now iI only works really well with Firefox, hence why I changes the description above to reflect that. Should only be temporary, though.) I’ve changed a few page names, PERSON to Profile, PRESIDENT to Company and so forth. Which reminds me, I’m unveiling CloudBerry Labs, the final name of my company, which will focus on the gaming industry, plus my writings. I hope you enjoy your stay at the new Temple of Andrex, the site should see more jumps forward because I made sure it’s easy to update and even easier to add a new page.
Temple of Andrex version 2.0, “iI”, is here! After much tinkering, there are still kinks to be worked out, (particularly to you Opera users), and one feature needs to be added, but this is it! I am very very proud of how this turns out, and I’ll be working for the rest of the night to upgrade the other pages. I was so bored, I decided to release it on the Temple of Andrex’s 1 year anniversary. I was rushing to finish by midnight, (12:05 AM right now), and here we are! Hopefully, by the time you read this, everything will be squared away. Now, I’d usually give a speech on what a year it’s been and my changing views, experiences, etc., but all I wanna do is upgrade the rest of the site so when it hit’s the “official” birthtime, (tentatively 5:00 PM), the entire site will be upgraded to iI. The site is much easier to access certain things, and I’ve also deleted a few pages, (Music and Programs come to mind.) Enjoy the new Temple of Andrex!
Man, the only thing going through my head this entire week has been Glitch. It shows, too. Go to MEDIA and click on Games, and you’ll find the tremendous triumphs I’ve made with v0.03. Not only are the two rooms much bigger, (doesn’t effect view size), but I’ve added a battle system! Clicking on a monster should make it glow blue, then clicking “F” will turn it’s outline yellow, hurting it. Currently there is only one monster, and yes I do know that sometimes there are glitches with the system in the dungeon only, but it’s a vast improvement. I can use this upgraded game engine to complete Glitch, which shouldn’t take more than 5 months. Expect it to be very small, and don’t expect many people on at one time. It will still remain free, but I’m liking the idea of a “money shop”, (when you pay real money for in-game items and such.) When Glitch becomes presentable (20 monsters, inventory system, health+experience system, full online capabilities and storage), I’m planning to present it to the denizens of the OnRPG game development forum. That shouldn’t take more than 2 months. There, it will gain a few experts of the trade for sprites, sound, and level design. Sure, I can make this game all by myself, but that would take a year or more. I wanted to have a pretty good demo for the presentation so that I won’t appear like a n00b, (there are a huge group of such people that ask to make a “free MMO like WoW based on some other game” which will not only take years and thousands of dollars, but also be copyright infringing. Like a “Naruto MMO” or, (even though I dearly want it), a “Dot Hack MMO like teh show”. iI is on the back burner, shouldn’t take too long and the release date is still a long way off. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I’m adding a cool picture, “Miyamoto Believes”, as a homage to the man that’s brought us the best videogames in the world. I’m very happy with the way it came out, go to MEDIA: Pictures to check it out.
According to my calendar, it’s July. As in the third quarter of 2006. As in I totally forgot to clear this page and add Q2 2006 to ARCHIVES. Well, that’s what I’m doing today. I have almost finalized iI’s look, and it looks really, really sweet. I have at least two new features that I’m keeping under wraps until it’s released. (Read the post below to find out what iI is.) Wow, I can’t believe it’s Q3 already! It was Q3 2005 when this website was first created, and it appears to have weathered just fine. One thing that really makes this site so frequently updated, with content added each time, is because it’s a very easy codebase to develop on. I hope I don’t lose that with iI, although I don’t see how I will. Guess we’ll just have to find out.
Hapy Independence Day! I’m uploading some really funny anti-Sony pictures, fixing a spelling error above, changing “sometime in July” above to “sometime in August” because it seems more probable, and later I’m going to upload my friend code for all my games. But here’s the real motive for updating today: Temple of Andrex is going to get a facelift! The entire website, except maybe the archived pages. When? I’m aiming for August 23rd, because that would be the one year anniversary of this website on Freewebs! I thank Freewebs greatly for their generous bandwith and file size limits, and also because they reqcquire absolutely no form of forced advertising. I do provide a link to them below, and on each and every page (minus the columns because those are .TXT files), unlike my former host, Geocities. Why am I updating? Well for one, the interior code of this site is very sloppy, I started just when I learned the basics of HTML. This go around, everything will be streamlined from the start and I can apply some newly learned coding styles. I’m still finalizing what it will look like, but expect a much darker ToA, one that won’t strain you eyes. I also want to compete a little with my sister’s site, (let’s face it, my blog already beats her’s hands down), because her site is much more pleasing to look at. This means I will strive to make the site more “ergonomic” on your eyes, and you know what that means. The font on the banner above and the buttons below has gotta go. Don’t worry, though, I will still use a cool, (yet easy to read), font. Lastly, although I plan an August 23rd launch, it seems it might be finished by then, but don’t get your hopes up.
Glitch 0.03 is on the way, fixing some problems with following the character around. What I’m doing right now is uploading the first complete column, the other two were rushed out when I created the page. I’m also adding Digg.com to LINKS and, da-dum, a button to link to me with. Two buttons, actually. Head over to LINKS to see them. I’m also adding my Digg profile link to MEMBERS, and I might tweak some other stuff.
Glitch 0.02 is here! Finally, right? I know I promised a lot of bunk in one of my previous posts, however Glitch has gone through a great deal of changes since 0.0.1, including different engines, tile sets, sprites, and even implementations. I switched it from Game Maker to Visual Basic for a little bit, but then switched it back too game maker. Everything in 0.02 is mine, minus the tiles. No music because I find it annoying when I’m constantly debugging it. Next version will have at least five rooms, maybe a cut scene, and maybe a monster or two. I have an idea for a battle system and how to implement it, it just will be difficult. And while I’m over in Games updating junk, I think I’ll reformat it to fit in with the site. I’m also adding a sentence to the description above and changing my browser of choice to Opera. No I’m not some biased Nintendo fanboy, (well actually…), Firefox is just screwing with me. I have no desire to fix it, although since I can only edit this site in Firefox, that may change.