Design

Just in case the 2 of you here didn’t get bored enough from the previous post, here’s another post full of text and no images :P.

Firstly, Mekworx has been updated to WordPress 3.0.1! Yay WordPress, how I love thee

I can’t remember if I mentioned this here or not, but recently I sold my Alienware Aurora M9700 gaming laptop on eBay for $800. The reason? I’m planning on building a brand new box with the help of Super Jamie! Well ok, to be fair, the laptop was still in perfect working order and still suited my needs. However the fact of it being a laptop never really had any use to me; it sat on my desk pretty much the entire length of my ownership of it. So it was basically a desktop that was prone to getting really hot (the thing had two video cards jammed into it…not so good when you’ve got all those components so close together in a laptop case). The heat never actually caused any problems as it seemed to be ventilated just good enough…but I didn’t like it. So that’s why I’m building a new [desktop] machine. Super Jamie was kind enough to help me with the list of parts based on my price range; this is what we came up with. (big thanks again to Super Jamie for setting that spreadsheet). It’s subject to change, of course, since some of those deals will probably change before I can buy the parts, but that’s gonna be it more or less. Super Jamie’s setup is very similar so it should turn out to be a pretty good machine . I’m planning on chronicling the building process with some pictures and a post…if I’m not too lazy :P.

For some more immediate news in the realm of Meka-projects, a couple of things – Vela Pax is currently on hold, Supplice was briefly in-progress but is now back to on-hold status again, and I started a new vanilla map for Joshy’s Plutonia Revisited Community Project. And now, explanations – Since I sold my laptop, which was my main computer, I’ve been relegated to two much older and much slower machines; my mom’s old ThinkPad (just for internet usage when I’m around it) and my old Win98 box [running XP] for everything else. The Win98 computer is atleast 13 years old though it’s had a few minor upgrades done to it since then. But it still can’t run a whole lot. I attempted to try and work on the latest Vela Pax map in it and it basically laughed back in my face saying “I don’t think so, scooter”. I then attempted to run GIMP on it so I could possibly do some texture work for Supplice. Well, needless to say, it was waaaay too slow for my tastes, so I promptly dropped that plan. Then I remembered back at Joshy’s new community project. I had thought briefly about contributing something to it since I was sorta itching for some vanilla-style mapping. At the time I was too busy with other things to help out though. However, now that I’m stuck on my older box that can’t do what I need it to for my projects, I decided I’d try and contribute a map. And so I started something a few days ago! No shots right now, but I’m hoping to have the bare layout done in a few days. The work-in-progress name for the map is “Atlatl” and it’s probably going to be a episode 1 map (both in terms of appearance and difficulty). There’s not much else I can say about it right now so keep your eyes peeled for shots.

Lastly, as many of you are probably already aware, QuakeCon started up not too long ago! And why am I mentioning this here when I obviously am not there and really have nothing to do with it? Well, because Carnevil and gang made it back there this year to show off the latest work on Last Bastion. Even though I’m not part of the team working on the project any longer, I still follow the project and support it 100%! Carn almost didn’t make it this year, which would have sucked. But with the help and advice of a few Doomer’s, he was able to find affordable lodging and make it down there this year . From what I’ve been told, the reactions so far have been very positive. Be sure to keep an eye out for more news and updates on the project’s blog as well as Carnevil’s twitter feed. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m really looking forward to seeing some new shots and vids by the end of this year’s QC

Well that’s all I gots fer now. I’ll be back with some pictures in the next post, I promise!