| 5/10/06:
Testing Times I hope you've been reading
carefully, because it's time for a comprehension
test.
1. Who
would play the lead in a film version of 5 Days A
Stranger?
A. Jack
Davenport
B. Richard Roxburgh
C. Graeme Garden
D. Doctor Octopus
2. Who
was the best James Bond?
A. Sean Connery
B. The one who was in Highlander
C. The one who was Indiana Jones' dad
D. Timothy Dalton
3. Which
onomatopoeic word best represents the Doctor Who
tardis noise?
A. CHWERK
B. SHWORF
C. KEEUMP
D. BOING
4. Why
don't I update this site very often anymore?
A. Terminal
illness
B. Jet-setting playboy lifestyle
C. Heavy workload
D. Just need fifteen more gold for an epic mount
5. What
pairing does the relationship between Chris and
Trilby best equate to?
A. Laurel and
Hardy
B. Calvin and Hobbes
C. Tintin and Captain Haddock
D. Me and your mum
6. What
are your hands for?
A. Nose picking
B. Basket weaving
C. Waving to friends
D. Stroking things lovingly
7. Given
that waging war on abstract concepts is retarded,
and that the application of 'good and evil' in a
real world context is also retarded, the current
US administration is
A. Retarded
B. Super retarded
C. Off the retarded scale
D. BOING
8. The
big twist at the end of 1213 was that
A. 1213 was dead
B. Bruce Willis was dead
C. Everyone was dead
D. It was Earth all along
9.
Resident Evil 4 would probably have been the best
game ever if it weren't for
A. The level
design
B. The script
C. The controls
D. You pesky meddling kids
10.
Jerry is six inches taller than Mabel who is four
inches shorter than Tiddles. Tiddles is going out
with Montmorency who is eight inches shorter than
Jerry. Montmorency takes pictures of Tiddles in
the shower and posts them on a website owned by
Steve, who is eleven feet taller than Buzz
Aldrin. If Buzz Aldrin is five foot ten, what is
Tiddles?
A. A cat
B. An astronaut
C. A whore
D. Something else
11. Who
would win if Emperor Palpatine and Subway's Jared
had a fight?
A. Palpatine
B. Jared
C. Whoever secured the broadcasting rights
D. Everyone
12. Sign
here please.
A. X
B. Leonard Cohen
C. Professor Horatio Luxembourg Wanglesnatch III
D. Confused
THE
ANSWERS
God is either
dead or uncaring
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
19/9/06:
Problem Solved
Well, it's been
five years since the World Trade Centre - sorry -
Center bit the dust, and since there's been no
closure America still can't get over it, like a
problematic psychiatric patient. And also like a
problematic psychiatric patient they've been
taking it out on anyone they find remotely
offensive, although most psychiatric patients
aren't given the wherewithal to carpet bomb the
south west Asian land mass. On the whole it's
been a bad time to be a human being on planet
Earth these last few years, but that doesn't mean
the whole mess is completely beyond saving. So in
the interests of putting some use to this dusty
soapbox and cry for attention repository I call a
website, I've come up with a number of strategies
for the quick and straightforward resolution of
all the world's problems.
1.
George W. Bush committing suicide on live
television
You can't get
this fucker out of office because a crucial
majority of US voters are a bunch of
greasestained halfwits who have proved they can
be bullied into voting for whichever candidate
bellows his paranoid warmongering the loudest and
jams the word 'freedom' onto the end of all his
sentences freedom. You can't assassinate him
because the people who operate his pull-string
will then go on to throw five million bombs at
the first country to cough loudly. The only
option is to get him out of the picture while
simultaneously discrediting him and everything he
stands for. A guilt-ridden death by his own hand
should do the job nicely. How could you justify
continuing a war that its very instigator lost
all faith in?
It'd have to be
live television so that it doesn't get covered up
or blamed on the Palestinians which is just the
kind of sneaky shit I'd expect to be pulled.
During an address to the nation for preference.
Lights, camera, and an impromptu game of Russian
Roulette. Or are you supposed to call it Freedom
Roulette now?
2. Erect
an enormous wall dividing the eastern and western
hemispheres of the planet
The events of
the last few years have done more to polarise the
world's population than anything else in recent
memory. It's not like World War 2 when the enemy
were obviously and conveniently evil, now there's
all this grey area. And we can't talk about
creating peace when the left and the right wing
can't even sit down for five minutes without
kicking each other in the shins, so how about
this. Everyone who gets a kick out of war can
live on one side of the planet, and everyone else
lives on the other. There, everything solved. In
the left half, abortions, rock music and cultural
awareness. In the right half, self-flagellation,
Willie Nelson and free guns for the under fives.
Then everyone who likes wars can hit each other
with baseball bats and leave the peaceniks alone
to make tie-dyed daisy chains or whatever.
The sticking
point with this strategy is that, if everyone on
Earth has to pick a side, who gets to stand guard
on the big wall and man the mounted machine guns
in case anyone tries to cross over? Well, that
answer should be obvious: me. Me, and a neutral
army of trained bears.
3. Use
the Ark of the Covenant
Seriously guys,
we all saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, we know
you've still got it. Get it out of mothballs and
everything could be swiftly resolved. Osama Bin
Laden's evil plans will be ruined forever when
his eyeballs melt all over them and make the ink
run.
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
7/9/06:
Background Check
You want to know
how I make background art for my adventure games.
I'm going to show you how I make background art
for my adventure games.
It all starts
with this:
A game like 7 Days A Skeptic or Trilby's Notes has a great deal of very
similar rooms, all of which come from the same
template. Here's one I prepared earlier. You'll
notice that the walls and floor are kept
separate, for reasons that will soon become
clear. Two kinds of room can be created from this
template file: a large normal room and a narrower
one for corridors.
The back wall is
always kept directly above the floor in the
template, so if I want to make a less broad room
I can easily cut out an equal portion from both
wall and floor and sandwich the bits back
together. Note also the door graphics that will
be pasted on where appropriate, and a single
character sprite I use as a reference for how big
the room and furniture should be. I also like to
imagine him looking upon me, his creator, with a
childlike wonder and awe as I work.
Today we're
making a large room. Let's put all the bits into
Photoshop.
Before pasting
in the floor and the back wall I added a door and
some little elements that will be flat against
the wall and have some relevance to the room's
nature. The important thing to note is that all
three walls and the floor are on separate
Photoshop layers. The next thing we're going to
do is add lighting. I select the back wall layer
and choose from the topmenu Filter > Render
> Lighting Effects.
If there were a
visible light source, the light would emanate
from that, but in this room the lights are on the
ceiling, and I never draw the ceilings in my
backgrounds because I had a bad experience with
one as a child involving a balloon and a spiky
plastering effect. I use the Omni style of light,
which is basically the equivalent of a torch
aimed directly at the image. I tone the light
down to a nice gloomy level and expand the width
of the beam to light up the whole wall.
For both the
other walls I place the light above and to the
side of the image, and for the floor the
spotlight is right smack in the middle, implying
that's where the light is on the ceiling. Also
note that the side walls are in general a wee bit
darker than the back wall; this is purely for
aesthetic effect, as otherwise the eye would
smear the walls together.
Once the walls
were all lighted I moved them together and
squashed all the layers into one, completing the
basic room. It's time to furnish this barren
heartless place!
Going back to
the template image I make excessive use of the MS
Paint line and fill tools to create my furniture,
using the green floor mask as a guide for
perspective and positioning. I also copy the
little man over to make sure I get my proportions
right. Once we're done we delete the floor and
copy paste all the furniture into Photoshop on
the same layer.
The lighting
effect I used this time is exactly the same one
as the one I used on the floor, albeit elevated
slightly. So, all done? Not quite. There's no
such thing as vampire furniture so now it all has
to cast a shadow. So, assuming once again the
light comes from the ceiling, I use the Polygonal
Lasso tool to select the areas that should be in
shadow, like so:
And then it's
just a matter of selecting the Rectangle tool,
choosing 'Darken' from the Mode menu, lowering
the opacity to about 40%, selecting the
background layer and drawing a big black square
over the whole thing.
There you have
it, the completed Yahtzee-style background, just
the way your mother probably didn't make it. Now
I just need to do about ten million more of
these, once I've prevaricated for a couple of
months.
- Yahtzee
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Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
1/9/06:
Go Away 'M Tired
Sorry about the
lack of updates lately, it's not because I hold
you all in complete contempt. It's because I've
had trouble sleeping lately and I'm usually too
tired during the day to work on anything. And
because I hold you all in complete contempt.
Silent Hill The
Film has finally been released in Australia and I
saw it with an intimate group of good-time
charlies last night. I have to say it's certainly
one of the most faithful game-to-movie
adaptations, since it practically still WAS a
game. There were very clearly defined levels,
boss monsters and inventory puzzles. And Sean
Bean getting all wet and angry. That's not so
much like a game as it is like what goes through
my head on most evenings when I lie awake
thinking of ways to masturbate.
Blarg eyes heavy
writing mediocre zzzzzzzzzzz
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
15/8/06:
Resident Evil Revisited
SCENE:
The big industrial rig at the end of Resident
Evil 4, where you confront Saddler for the end
boss fight
DRAMATIS
PERSONAE:
 |
Leon:
A fop |
 |
Saddler:
A master villain |
 |
Ada:
An embodiment of fan service |
ACT
ONE
|
Hm, hm, hm! |
|
What's so funny? |
|
Oh, I think you know. The
'American prevailing' is a cliche that
only happens in your Hollywood movies.
Oh, Mr. Kennedy, you entertain me! To
show my appreciation, I will awaken you
from your world of - |
|
Okay, shut up for a
second. I have a question. What's wrong
with your head? |
|
What? |
|
Why are you still talking
in that stupid smug tone of voice like
you know something I don't and
everything's going according to plan? I
was giving you the benefit of the doubt
for a while in case this was all some
really elaborate trap I'm walking into,
but, well, look. I've destroyed, like,
99% of your army. I've decimated your
operations. I killed ALL your best
lieutenants, even the big lad with the
beard. I've bested and put down all those
genetically engineered secret weapon
monsters you kept bringing out. I've
completely foiled your really shitty
master plan that required the chimp with
the ears. And I've removed the thing from
our bodies that made us blindly obey your
commands, so... what the hell have you
got left? |
|
Oh, don't worry, you'll
find out soon enough, you pitiful
decadent capitalist American. I- |
|
And another thing, when
you talk in that really sarcastic tone of
voice, it would help if what you were
saying was actually sarcastic. |
|
Shut up. You'll find out
soon enough, you... you. I've still got
an ace up my - |
|
By the way, was it your
idea to have all your soldiers walk
towards me really slowly in single file,
only attacking with melee weapons despite
the metric fuckton of ammo hidden around
the place and my huge amount of
firepower? Because that wasn't a very
efficient battle tactic. |
|
Yeah, seriously. I almost
felt guilty when I was cutting through
those guys like a fucking lawnmower. I
killed about a million, and I'm a girl. |
|
Yeah, I killed, like, ten
million, and I'm a huge fag. |
|
SHUT UP. You think you've
won, Mr. Kennedy? I've still got an ace
up my sleeve! I still have my secret
contingency plan, and it will SPELL YOUR
DOOM! |
|
This contingency plan,
would it have anything to do with you
turning into a giant monster? Not unlike
the eight hundred giant monsters I
already killed on the way here? Because
every single one of your lieutenants
tried something similar and now they're
all piles of dogfood on the floor. |
|
I, er... no! No, my plan
is most certainly NOT to turn into a
giant monster! It's... well... you see,
I'm going to... |
|
You WERE going to turn
into a giant monster, weren't you. |
|
I SODDING WAS NOT going to
turn into a giant monster! Actually it's
a really clever Machiavellian scheme with
all sorts of... underlying... er... just,
you know, say hypothetically I did turn
into a giant monster - |
|
Oh, god. |
|
AND I'M NOT SAYING I WILL,
but say I did... you'd be doomed if it
was a particularly big and powerful giant
monster, right? |
|
Well, that all depends on
the capacity of this giant attache case
full of ammo I'm lugging around. And
whether there are elements in the
environment I can use to my advantage.
Hey, aren't those explosive barrels? |
|
Er... maybe... |
|
Because, you know, I can't
really see any reason why there'd be any
explosive barrels up here unless you were
intending to turn into a giant monster
with a rather obvious weak point and give
me a fighting chance in response to some
retarded sense of imagined superiority - |
|
Now, look, I wouldn't say
a huge eyeball on the end of a tentacle
is an obvious weak point,
strictly speaking - ow! |
|
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. |
|
Stop smacking me on the
head! |
|
Say "I'm a really
shitty terrorist." |
|
No! OW! |
|
Say it! |
|
I'm... I'm a really shitty
terrorist. |
|
"And this plan was
not very well thought out". |
|
And... OW... and this plan
was not very... well thought out. |
|
"And I am a big
girl's blouse who likes hairy bums." |
|
And I... Oh fuck it. RARR!
MUTATE! |
|
Ah, here we go. Now then,
we've had the big fish boss, the big
plant boss, and the big scorpion boss, so
what's it going to be this time, hmm?
Don't tell me. It's going to be the giant
dragon boss, right? It's usually
something like that at the very end. |
|
Or a giant snake boss,
maybe? |
|
Or a giant snake boss,
that's a classic. |
|
CRUNCH! MORPH! SPLAT!
GRRRR! |
|
Oh. The giant spider boss. |
|
I was pretty close. |
|
Eat explosive barrel! |
|
Ow! |
|
Why not have another! |
|
Ow! |
|
One more, I insist! |
|
Ow! (dies) |
|
What a fag. |
|
Yes. |
|
Are you going to untie me,
then? |
|
No. |
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
4/8/06:
Garry's God
I don't quite
know why, but there's something
primally
entertaining
about
posing
ragdolls
in
Garry's
Mod. Between it
and World of Warcraft this has probably been the
least productive period of my life since the time
when I wrote Beano fancomics.
Anyway, in site
news, I've decided to take the Donator List off
of the donation page. The special edition
thing has made the donation system more of a
straight trade than a charitable gesture, and you
don't get to put your portrait up in an off
license just because you went in for a six pack.
Oh yeah, and
forum user "setasouji" has done a
fantastic Trilby's Notes wallpaper you can find
on this page.
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
27/7/06:
Zombie Zone
I've been
playing around with Garry's Mod for Half-Life 2
lately, seeing how much fun can be had by
constructing a car out of a sofa and four
sawblades, nailing a ragdoll of Barney Calhoun to
it by his feet, then pulling it along behind an
airboat. I've also used it to make a little
feature I like to call Garry's Mod: Zombie
Apocalypse. You should probably go read it.
Here's a free sample:
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
22/7/06:
Music Of The Spheres
On a whim I've
been trying to make a list of all the songs whose
titles are structured verb-pronoun-preposition,
or 'verporeps' as no-one calls them. This is what
I've come up with so far:
VERB-PRONOUN-PREPOSITION
28 Days - Rip It
Up
Basement Jaxx - Get Me Off
Blur - Wear Me Down
Blur - Turn It Up
Cormega - Let It Go
Fefe Dobson - Take Me Away
The Donnas - Take It Off
The Donnas - Pass It Around
Elastica - Hold Me Now
Nick Cave - Lay Me Low
Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
Pete Murray - Bail Me Out
Powderfinger - Pick You Up
Powderfinger - Take Me In
Polyphonic Spree - Hold Me Now
Puddle Of Mudd - Spin You Around
Red Cell - Knock Me Down
Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Give It Away
Silverchair - Leave Me Out
Smashing Pumpkins - Take me down
Starsailor - Talk Her Down
The Stone Roses - Shoot You Down
VERB-PREPOSITION-PRONOUN
A-Ha - Take On
Me
Nick Cave - Far from me
The Darkness - Growing On Me
The Donnas - Fall Behind Me
Mark Lanegan - Come to me
Pete Murray - Fly With You
Eric Prydz - Call On Me
Scott Walker - Get behind me
DEBATABLE
M People -
Moving On Up
Soundgarden - Let Me Drown
Beatles - Love Me Do
Xavier Rudd - Let Me Be
Can you
think of any more?
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Previously on Fully
Ramblomatic...
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