T Shirts and icons

I've been working hard on icons for my game I'm making with friends. Also I'm enjoying Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition that Anton gave me for my birthday. I haven't really recognized what is enhanced about it except the graphics resolution but that's OK because I never got to play Shadows of Undrentide or Hordes of the Underdark so there's plenty of adventuring to do.

Lastly I am trying my hand at making t-shirts for fun and profit.

Here's my first one I made on Zazzle!

C'mon, buy it. You know you want to! Especially if you have Asian family like me.

You can make one too and share it in the comments :) I'd love to see your creations! I might even buy one, with my spare change...

2019 - Busy busy busy

Sheesh,

One would think I'd dropped off the face of the earth. Instead I'm just really really busy. I'm busy at work making Genetic Sequencers become cheap. I'm busy at home helping my boys learn about dungeons and dragons, and I'm busy with my girls teaching them to read. I'm busy working on my game with Anton and Mordecai. I've got a loot system in place but it needs polishing and basic attack system is working but it also needs polish and lots of more cool moves. I'm busy avoiding listening to Trump on the radio. I'm busy trying to relax sometimes. My wife broke her leg this year and its better now, but that kept me busy being daddy/mommy. So yeah. So busy this year. But fun. Went to Italy with my wife. Played a lot of board games. I highly recommend Lords of Waterdeep, and Asara.

Best,
Thallian

What's going on this year

I've finished the rough draft pictures for all the character classes for my game but my wife has reminded me that someone might steal my art if I share it so I'm not going to share all of them. I'm working on the walking animations now for the warrior class. In the game playing department I've played a bunch of Stardew Valley this year. I highly recommend the game as its very fun and relaxing. I like it more than I liked Rune Factory Frontier which was overly grindy and too hard to marry the girls I was trying to marry, and didn't have the great of a plot either even though its graphics were more polished than Stardew, Stardew has serious charm and cute subplots. The dungeon gets boring pretty quick, though I'm glad its there. And the farming also gets old for me after a year. but the rate at which they give you new things to farm or raise is almost right, and the world is fin to explore and there are enough new things the characters say to keep you entertained for a good long while.

Trip to Japan

So I went to Japan last month for two weeks. It was really neat. They have really fast quiet trains (with video game commercials running on the walls inside and outside on the buildings), and quiet polite people, usually. The food was ok, I'm spoiled cuz I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I think our Americanized Japanese food is slightly better. Which is unusual since most countries I visit I think the authentic food is better than the Americanized stuff. Italy definitely follows that paradigm. Anyways so I was shopping over there in the malls for knickknacks and  I looked in the video games section cuz I have to, its Japan right? And I noticed that the prices are astronomical every place I looked just for the games. Makes me really glad to be living in the US. I'm attaching a picture for your reference.

Now just divide everything by 100 to get an idea of how much everything costs in dollars (yes I know the exchange rate isn't exactly that but its close)

68 dollars to buy Zelda Breath of the Wild (52.99 online in the US), 96 to buy that other game, 85 for Heroes 3, even the cheapest games were 47 bucks. Ouch, those poor Japanese gamers. At least it looks like they had the switch in stock but maybe that was just the display copy :)

Anyways, if you ever go to Japan, definitely visit in the spring, the flowers are gorgeous and the weather is nicest I think

Still working on my game

Still working on the turn based game I'm working on with family and friends. Adding some concept art i did. Needs a little more polish on the sword but its almost there.

What's up Doc?

You might fairly wonder if this blog is dead. Its not, we are just really really busy. Anton made a game with another friend and sent it live on the Playstation network last year.

I played Dungeon of the Endless to death, (great game by the way, I give it a 9 out of 10 due to it getting too easy once you know some cheesy tricks to game out the AI using the hipster scarf and someone fast to run back and forth around room with defenses agroing the enemies but very solid fun game and generally tough.

I played Invisible Inc (9 out of 10 if you want to have some fun for a bit) and really enjoyed it for a bit but it wore out for me eventually due to it becoming a resource management game (the resource being power in this case) the ai isn't smart and with some cheap tricks I can get the to go to the other side of the complex and leave me alone most of the time.

I played Pillars of Eternity which I really wanted to love considering Obsidian made it, but the "fun" of Baldur's Gate's NPCs wasn't there neither was the compelling storyline of Icewind Dale coupled with its tactical difficulty. Most encounters were either "everyone on your team runs out of energy and you die", or "you steamroll the enemy". I hated the new energy mechanic where your guys get tired super fast and all pass out even on easy mode (doubly fast if you are facing undead or mushrooms). If it wasn't for that I might have beat the game instead of giving up on it early but I didn't feel much inspiration from the plot regardless.

Now I'm starting working again on a tactical turn based RPG. This time I've involved more people, critically my oldest son this time, both to help him learn programming and art and also to keep me motivated, but also my brothers and sister. We'll see what happens. Going to try and make something tactically more challenging (but not at first level, AI will increase at every level, and will not cheat so you always have a chance) and more fun than any turn based fantasy game that has come out. Going to try and give it a great (compelling but sometimes funny) story. Going to need a lot of inspiration and suggestions and help from friends. :) Talk to you again when I get around to it.

Thanksgiving Thought

Count your blessings, not your challenges. :) Happy Thanksgiving everyone!