Design

And also a happy 2011 to everyone! WordPress has been updated to 3.0.4 by the way

I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions. Just never really bothered with them. That’s not to say I have perfect years or something. I guess I’ve always been too lazy to really care . I thought I might change that this year though. So I guess you could say my 2011 resolution is to make resolutions! Ba-zing!

2010 was a pretty good year I think. Well it wasn’t a spectacular year but it wasn’t bad. I finally got myself back in school and, so far, I’m doing very well! There’s was the Project Vega fallout which really had me a bit depressed for a while. But that was a fleeting worry seeing as how the project is back on track and doing very well, even if it’s minus one Mechadon now . There’s been a whole lot of drama and crap going on in my personal life (well, not with me but with my family) and that’s been a downer. I hope all of that will be in the past soon. I’ve learned a lot this year but I’m sure I’ll learn even more in 2011. Be it good or bad, I’m looking forward to it.

There’s hasn’t been a whole lot of work released by me in 2010. I would have liked to put out some more content but things have been really busy with me these days. As far as I can recall, I’ve had 4 DM maps released in 32in24 #10 and that’s about it. Even with the little output though, I’ve been working on a bunch of different things. I’m steadily working on Vela Pax and Supplice, I’ve still got some contributions to make for Vaporware and SpaceDM9 (sorry essel, I know I’m slow) and I’ve made contributions to Joshy’s Plutonia Revisited project. And although it pains me to say it, there still hasn’t been a release of the Toke It Up! project . So I don’t have a whole lot to show for it, but I have been busily working through some things this year.

I’m not going to bore all zero of my readers with any personal resolutions I may or may not have made. Instead I’ve made some mapping and design related resolutions which I will bore you with instead.

• 1. Finish Vela Pax. This project wasn’t meant to take this long. But as with everything I do, it inevitably turned into something grander and more complex than what I intended. But it will be finished this year given school and/or work doesn’t eat away at my free time.
• 2. Start mapping for Supplice. Unfortunately I’ve been having a really hard time getting the resources in place. I’ve even contemplated moving the entire project over to a different port to try and get the ball rolling a bit faster. But seeing as how I’ve been working on Vela Pax, it’s just taking a really long time. However in recent weeks I’ve made a concerted effort to try and get started on some textures and other minor things. And so far it seems to be working out pretty well. I’m really in need of a sprite artist as our one candidate seems to be too busy . But I want to be in a position sometime this year where the majority of the resources are done so mapping can begin.
• 3. Start on a map for Vaporware and SpaceDM9. I know esselfortium is probably super irritated that I haven’t started on something for Vapor yet even though I’ve promised him I would. What I need to do is try and develop some sort of talent for multitasking. But I’m going to try and get something started in this area soon. As far as SpaceDM9 is concerned, I’ve technically already contributed some layouts to it, one of which has been expertly detailed by esselfortium. I really want to detail a map myself too though. So that’s something to add to the list.
• 4. Look more into the Doom64EX engine. I love Doom64 and there’s even been some great looking things made for it even though it’s not exactly editing-ready yet. I don’t know that I’ll start on anything for it but I’m always looking in that direction. I even had serious thoughts of moving Supplice to the Doom64EX engine. Although at this point in time it’s looking like I probably won’t be doing that, I hope the option will still be there in the future.
• 5. Learn to compose music. Of the non-physical variety, I mean…with computers . This one is probably a stretch seeing as how my musical background amounts to ziltch. But ever since my introduction to artists like Boards of Canada, Autechre, Loscil, etc…it has become a bit of a dream of mine. Mapping is a great creative outlet but I’d love to add music to that list some day.
• 6. Finish up my design document. I guess I haven’t really brought this one up before. Well I’m working on a game design document which I’m hoping will have some sort of future. In the last month this project has actually been demanding a lot of my free time and I’ve made some pretty good progress with a couple of behind-the-scenes guys. The goal for this design document is to detail everything I can for the game it’s about. Which I will then pass out to possible contributors to try and get some of them interested in joining the team. It’s sort of my dream here so I hope it works out .

Who knows how many of these resolutions will actually pan out. That’s probably why I never bothered to make resolutions in the past. No one ever really follows through with them…at least no one that I know. But there’s a sense of positivity that you get when you make resolutions, and that’s probably the point. Even though you may not follow through with them, at least it sets you in the mood at the beginning of the year and gives you a glimmer of hope that perhaps this will be the year that something great will be done. Sounds kinda mushy to me, but we’ll see how this year works out :wink: