How many of you would be interested in a website that's focused around listing all the games you have beaten/owned/played? I know websites like that already exist but I don't know anyone who actually uses them. It seems to me like a great way to keep track of all your games and also, for multiplayer games, a good way to find out which ones your friends own.

CheeseMod
So a new version of minecraft came out and that means a new version of CheeseMod too! I have some big plans for the 1.5 CheeseMod but I decided to save their release for after the 1.5 recommended build comes out because bukkit keeps breaking stuff. Anyway, you can check out the changelog and download it from: http://pycosites.com/cheesemod/index.php?cmd=change&id=9

I also set up a twitter account for CheeseMod, I don't know how many CheeseMod server admins actually use twitter (wouldn't surprise me if it was none =p) but it seems like a convenient way to get the word out about dev builds, bug reports, website updates and so on. Here it is: https://twitter.com/CheeseMod If nothing else, it should be useful once I start advertising CheeseMod on the bukkit forums.

Yeah, Friday was my birthday. I got a nice digital camera (powershot sx150) and 3 games and probably some xbox points later on. So a pretty good birthday, though it was the first one in years that I haven't gone out to eat.

Anyway I've been keeping busy lately, although I'm not making as much progress on programming as I would like. I've been working on a minecraft forge mod with JeremyDF93 in my free time and I've been doing website work like I always do. I lost some of my website progress though because it was a "test" account on a shop site and when the test ran up they decided to completely lock me out of the account rather than just disable the shop like I thought they would.

But aside from that I'm hoping to start making better progress on PycoForums, CheeseMod and some other stuff later this week. That way I'll have something better to blog about =p

Also, I posted this on the fb group a while ago but I found about a pretty good game/music bundle at http://groupees.com/bma

Most of the games come with steam keys so it's a pretty great deal for just $1 or $5. It ends in 2 days though so don't put it off =p

Well my resolution this year was essentially to make a ton of progress on/complete a lot of my major projects. So let's see how I've done so far:

CheeseMod:
I've made relatively minor progress on CheeseMod this year, a lot of planning but not a lot of programming. I did release CheeseMod 1.4.7_b1 which contains various bugfixes and a few minor features but the big plans are still on schedule for 1.5. Also I'll have a guide up for the giveaway command tonight hopefully. Anyway, as usual the download is available on the CheeseMod site

Websites: Feel free to skip this section =p
I decided to do these mostly one at a time starting with OrbScape, which is my RuneScape guide site. I started with OrbScape because it's the simplest to finish, all I have to do is spend a week or two gathering info in game and then finish translating it to German and it should be done until the Spanish translation comes out later this year (my big plan is to be one of the first sites with proper Spanish info, hopefully that will bring in a ton of hits =p)

After that, I'm thinking I'll work on Game Plague next and then PycoForums after that. As for the CheeseMod site, I'll just work on it in my free time. My goal is to get all these websites earning profit before summer, which depending on how you look at it is either relatively easy or fairly hard.

Excluding the expensive server costs, domain names themselves cost me less than 4 cents a day. So while overall I need to get a lot of money to pay the hosting costs, each individual domain only has to earn 4 cents a day to pay for itself. OrbScape is the only one I really expect to stay even near 4 cents though and once finished it will take minimal effort to maintain so it doesn't really matter.

There's also the high chance that I'll upgrade my server once I get some money, so hopefully I can get my profits up before that needs to happen.

Pokemon Twilight:
For new years, Bouncy Ball (PTs spriter for everything except the pokemon themselves) released a few screenshots of the new graphics he has been working on for v5.5 You can view them on his deviantart

Other Stuff
I ended up spending my Christmas gift card and some of my Christmas money on a Panasonic 3DO (a console that came out between the SNES and PS1) that came with 3 controllers and a bunch of games (no cases, but it came with a lot of manuals and a nice disc holder). These game systems always seem to pop up in stores at the most random times.

So I'm officially a college graduate now, we did the whole graduation ceremony thing on Saturday and today my grades were finalized so now I just have to wait for the diploma to ship. It's been great having free time again, I didn't really have any true vacation time since January. I'm getting a lot done in programming and in video games =]

Speaking of programming, bukkit finally released a recommended build for 1.4.5 today (but 1.4.6 is coming out Thursday lol) so it's CheeseMod update time! If you haven't updated bukkit in the past few weeks, this new version will likely break most of your old plugins including CheeseMod. There's been a lot of structural changes in bukkit recently.

As usual, the download is available on the CheeseMod site and the changelog is available here. I'm hoping to make some good progress on the CheeseMod site in January, hopefully by February I will have all the features documented. There's a lot of minor stuff added in these updates that's too small to list, so I think people are missing out on a lot of what CheeseMod has to offer.

Also recently I released a new CheeseMod plugin called CheeseCity. It is a separate plugin which allows you to get information about npc villages, as well as create npc villages wherever you want. For information and the download, go here. It's a small plugin right now, but I plan on expanding it in the future.

As far as video games go, I've been playing through Halo: ODST and Halo: Reach on legendary. I'm hoping to beat them both before Christmas because that's when I'm going to get Halo 4.

Not really, but yeah its been a month. So like 2 weeks after saying I didn't need GM:S, I ended up getting GM:S because of the Cyber Monday sale. To be perfectly honest, I'm disappointed with it for a variety of reasons. It's ok, it's just there's a lot of annoyances that probably could have been avoided or reduced.

Midi support is half dropped, but it isn't really aware of that so it attempts to convert them to mp3/ogg (and it fails but doesn't tell you it failed) every single time I run the game and causes freezes In HTML5 mode. Compiling is much slower, standalone exes are replaced with installers on windows, the HTML5 precise collision engine works slightly different so porting code is stupid, the load screen defaults to the C drive every time (and it doesn't have any favorite folders on the side either, so you have to go through all the layers to wherever you store your stuff if its not in the recent files.

The lack of a PHP style isset() makes the lack of "set undefined variables to 0" annoying to me, surely there must be some way to check if a variable exists with compiled code. Otherwise it wouldn't know when to error =p Setting it up in the first place was glitchy, it tried to force me to use android mode even though I don't even own the android portion. I could probably go on if I thought about. but yeah my biggest worry is they'll finally fix some of this crap but it will be in GM:S2 or something. It's easy to focus on the bad, especially since I'm porting a lot of old code over. I'll probably be pretty happy when I make my first HTML5 game in it. That said, I'm still working on the project from my previous blog because it wouldn't work well in GM:S.

Outside of that long complaint, I've been ridiculously busy with class stuff lately. I made this crappy website: http://omega.uta.edu/~sxg6959/4350/index.php As my final project for my major. Basically what happened is, my client was another class so students in that class made the logo, wrote the articles and took the pictures and then I made the website based on what they wanted ("we want it to look like pinterest") and formatted everything.

CheeseMod got a new beta build earlier today, nothing major though but recent dev builds of bukkit have broken a lot of stuff so I had to update.

I have 2 finals this week and then I graduate on Saturday. Please send all graduation gifts to 555 Five street, Fake City USA.

When you can do HTML5 games on your own >:) Yesterday I realized that since my new PT engine doesn't use the built in GM collision engine, I could probably port it to javascript myself without spending hundreds of dollars. 24 hours of off and on working later and I have this: http://gameplague.com/test/collision.php It has basic collisions, walking, running and depth. I'm thinking I could eventually export maps from game maker, if I ever decided to port PT itself. Obviously this alone isn't too impressive, but its a lot better than I thought I could do in that short amount of time.

Considering how quickly that went together; I think I could make an entire Pokemon engine in javascript/php with relative ease. The overworld engine is probably the hardest part, the battle screen and menus are just basic website design stuff hooked into a PHP engine with AJAX. Client side storage = hacking, so this could finally solve the biggest security worries I had with PT.

Of course I need to finish up the engine and create some large rooms to see if it gets too laggy, but even then if I just wait a year or two browsers will be faster. As a bonus, if its not too laggy then I should be able to get it working on any modern browser. Including those on game consoles, cell phones, etc.

But that's not what has the most interested in this idea, the biggest possbility is if I toss the pokemon name and turn this whole thing into a giant pile of profit. The main game alone could earn me advertising + a "dlc" store. If facebook has taught me anything, its that people will spend a ridiculous amount of money on worthless junk if its in a game they like. I could sell character customization stuff, basic items, access to regions, etc. It would be harder to advertise without the name pokemon to catch peoples eye, but if the game is pokemon quality then word of mouth would be good enough.

But even more interesting, I could create a "monster collecting/battling game maker" which would essentially allow people to make their own games using my engine. Lots of people have decompiled PT and tried to make crappy games from it but just imagine if all they had to do was upload sprites, choose stats/moves/etc and then map out the game. Anybody could make a Pokemon style game with little or no programming knowledge and unlike with PT, half the source code would be server side so no theft. I could even let them customize basic pieces of the engine like the types.

I feel like this idea is almost kickstarter worthy =p

So yesterday I got a copy of Halo: Reach for $12 used, which is pretty insane considering it normally costs $35. It even came with an unopened dlc helmet code or something, I haven't used it yet =p. I also got 2 of those guitar hero ds games for $5 each and I'm pretty sure they were new not used. I wasn't too interested in actually playing them, but it seems like a good price for a new game + accessory. I also got Yoshi Story (n64) =D

Anyway, so inside the case of halo was this weird to do list which I can only assume was left in it on purpose as a joke. It's a bit hard to read in this pic but you can tell what it says.



Anyway, bukkit 1.4 hasn't hit the recommended build stage yet but here is a beta version of CheeseMod 1.4. It includes the basic support for new blocks/items/mobs and also some other stuff that I'll mention in the real releases changelog.

pycosites.com/cheesemod/files/chmod_1_4_2_b1.zip

Outside of CheeseMod, work continues on Pokemon Twilight and my shoutbox/forums. I've been pretty busy with class stuff though so not too much is getting done.

On that note, I know this is a long shot but if anybody needs anything big or small programmed in PHP/MySQL/Javascript like a blog/forum/admin panel/etc I need to earn some money =p The reason its a long shot is that I'd rather not have to do too much on the graphical side of the design.

Spoiler: This blog is for minecraft players

It was brought to my attention recently that CheeseMod and Factions don't really get along very well. So I figure thats as good of an excuse as any to finally finish the fancy chat group feature I started on long ago.

This update will come in 2 parts. First, I will be adding the basic clan features to CheeseMod to act as chat groups. Then, I will release a CheeseMod plugin called CheeseClans which will add the extra fancy features like land claiming and stuff. I've never actually used factions plugin though, so I'm turning to you guys for suggestions on how to improve/expand on the idea of clans. I don't want to just recreate the factions plugin, I was to improve upon the idea.

Here is the current function list I have written out:

CheeseMod
/clan join
/clan invite
/clan leave
/clan ban
/clan unban
/clan banlist
/clan uninvite
/clan list (list of clans)
/clan player [player] (gives clan info about the player)
/clan set rank [player]
/clan set name [name]
/clan set open/req/close
/clan info [clan] (information about a clan)
/clan set desc [desc] (clan description)
/clan chat (works like /chat clan)
/clan delete [/clan]
/clan create [clan]
/clan create [clan] official
/clan official (never gets deleted, even when empty)
/clan unofficial

CheeseClans Plugin
/clan enable (enables CheeseClans plugin features for the current itemset)
/clan disable
/clan claim [/type] (claims land, optionally including type of land so you can specify wilderness/etc)
/clan autoclaim (claims land as you walk)
/clan land (checks who owns the chunk you are in)
/clan set ally [clan]
/clan set neutral [clan]
/clan set enemy [clan]
/clan set peace (enables/disables peaceful mode)
/clan announce (enables/disables the zone switch messages for the current itemset)
/clan set spawn
/clan spawn (teleports to clan spawn)
/clan set owner [player] (set a player as the owner of a piece of land)
/clan remove owner [player]

I'm hoping to have some, if not all, of this done by the time 1.4 comes out. It all feels like it will be easy to program, the biggest thing is deciding how to store all the information.

Well bukkit finally did a recommended 1.3.2 build, though I'd hardly call it complete since it lacks obvious features that should have been done weeks ago. But regardless, here's the changelog. Its relatively tiny due to my lack of time and bukkits lack of progress, but I'm going to be working on all my big ideas hopefully for the 1.4 update. The first few things on this list were already available in the beta build of cheesemod.

Download Here: pycosites.com/cheesemod

Changelog
Added haxxy save file support for books (bukkit STILL doesn’t have an API for them), as well as proper per-world enderchests.

Added useDat property to world.properties. If on, it allows players to claim their inventory/xp from a .dat file in the current worlds /players folder. This is so that switching your primary world, or copying in a primary world from a different server will allow players to keep their items. Defaults to off. Note: This will not recover your location from the save file as there is no way to tell which world you were in. To claim items, just do /item claim in the world containing the dat files.

It is now possible to use /item clear in survival worlds (although I can’t imagine why you would want to =p)

Added /ridemob random mob1,mob2,mobetc, also works with stack. Ex: “/ridemob random cow,sheep,pig,chicken 20 stack”

Halved skeleton riding pig spawn chances (now that pigs don’t despawn, its causing overpopulation) and added a low chance of skeleton riding cow (still uses the spawnPigSkel property).

Made it so tamed animals have death messages if in a survival world, regardless of mobDeathMessages setting.

Added world size limitations: to turn on, set sizeLim=on in the world properties and then sizeX and sizeZ will define the width in blocks of the world. centerX and centerZ will decide where the center of the limit is. You can either set them to off, which defaults to the spawn point, or add your own X/Z if you don’t want the spawn to be in the middle of the level. This feature will be expanded on in the future

So I spent the last week sick, it was nothing major really but it somewhat ruined what was supposed to be a great week of playing video games and eating a ton of food. Even now 9 days later I still have a slight cough =/ But anyway, I got Oblivion on the 360 cause I had a good coupon so I've been playing that when I can.

I also got around to installing age of empires 2 and age of mythology on my laptop and despite many problems with graphics card drivers and screen aspect ratios I did manage to play both of them =p Imo they need to do something like Halo Anniversary for these games and update the graphics but keep the gameplay exactly the same.

No major programming progress since my last blog, but I did have some cool ideas for cheesemod which I will program soon. Minecraft 1.4 is looking amazing as well, they added bats =D

So I have a tiny suggestion for whoever is working on 64d code these days, when you edit a blog it should take you to the blog you edited and not to your main user page. I often get annoyed when editing my game collection blog because I have to go back to page 4 and scroll down to find it every time.

Anyway, half price books is having a 20% off sale for labor day weekend and I ended up buying Diablo 1 because it was a good price. Yeah, I've never played a diablo game. It looks like I'll need to download a fix to get it working on Windows 7 (its an original disc, even says windows 95 on it =p). I also got Sword of the Stars: Ultimate Collection which is supposed to be a fairly decent 4x game, I'm just a sucker for space strategy games =p

In the world of Minecraft, I learned how to program add-ons for CheeseMod. So now if I have a cool, but large or potentially glitchy, idea I can make a new plugin that extends CheeseMod. The first one I'm working on (with help from Jeremy) is called CheeseCity and will focus on npc village generation.

The advantage of this is the main cheesemod file wont get ridiculously huge and if one of my more experimental systems has a compatability problem it wont hold back the entire mod from updating. It also lets me keep the various events from getting filled with 5000000 lines of code.

For years I've wanted to make a tower defense game but I've always backed down because I don't want to deal with AI or balancing or graphics or etc. But I just spent the past week playing Starship Defense (DSiWare) and it helped inspire me with a new tower defense idea, which conveniently works as a spinoff for my oldest original game which was called Solar Security (don't play it, it sucks).

So essentially, you would have a star in the middle of the screen which you need to protect from the incoming asteroids (or other debris). Asteroids would come in rounds, orbit a few times and then crash into the star. It would have all the basics of tower defense: different types of turrets, different types of asteroids, upgrades, etc.

What is different is that the placement of your turrets is not static, each time a new round of asteroids comes in the game will show you the path they will take and then give you a short period of building time. You will need to rearrange your towers to match the path, if you are truly desperate you could even leave a tower in the path to sacrifice it as a makeshift wall.

I think this should keep the game from becoming boring because you cant just build up the ultimate tower setup based on a youtube video guide. Not paying attention for even 1 round would likely cost you towers and health, if not the entire game.

Other Random Stuff
My fall semester starts in 11 hours. One good thing about this semester is that I don't have any early morning classes, so once the start of semester parking situation calms down it should be ok.

I just got back home from an Indiana/Chicago vacation tonight. During the trip I got a few more cheap games for my game collection, including 2 ngage games. Ngage games are extremely hard to find in physical stores so that was a nice surprise. I've only seen maybe 5 or 6 of them since gamestop stopped carrying them years ago and I don't think I've ever seen the system itself. It might not be the greatest system ever, but its only got 58 games and they are cheap when I do find them =p

I actually decided to start using my Ngage Qd as my cell phone again because the phone I was using is pretty much the same but instead of playing games it has a really crappy camera which I don't need since I got my DSi/3DS. Not that I actually every use my cell phone, its just in case my car breaks down or something =p

I decided to spend the rest of my 3DS eShop money that I had lying around for who knows how long. I ended up getting Aura-Aura Climber, Candle Route and Trajectile. I've only really played Trajectile so far and its a pretty fun puzzle game. I've certainly gotten my $5 worth out of it. The other 2 games were only $2 each and I think they'll prove to be worth that much when I do play them =p

I tried waiting as long as I could, but Bukkit is really dragging their feet on the new 1.3 related APIs. So heres a tiny little 1.3 CheeseMod update. I'll do another update as soon as the ender chest api comes out, but until then you can do cantPlace=130 in each worlds property file to prevent item smuggling.

As usual, you can download it from pycosites.com/cheesemod

The Changelog
Added the new 1.3 item names for use in /item and other commands

Added adventure mode to /mode (use 2 or adventure to select it) Does not affect previous functionality (/mode with no arguments will still swap solely between creative and survival)

Added a creeperDamage=on/off mob property for worlds. If off, creepers will explode but they will not destroy blocks (it will still hurt entities though).

Added /time check and /time check [world] as well as /time [day/night/midnight/0-2400] [world] and /time add [amount] [world] and /time freeze [world] so that you can alter time for any world without having to switch.

Gave admins the ability to create enderdragon, ghast, endercrystal and tnt mob spawners using /block spawn [mobname]. Also added the ability to create boat, minecart, arrow, snowball, enderpearl, eyeofender, thrownexpbottle, fireball, smallfireball, and xporb spawners.

Added support for largeBiome worldType.

Added defaultMode property to worlds, defines which gamemode you will be in when you first visit a world. Defaults to survival. Also added forceMode, which when on will force all players in that world to be the default gamemode at all times (meant for survival/adventure worlds mostly) Note: If you update this property while the server is running, anyone currently in the world will not be affected until they log out or switch worlds

Made it so the default villager you spawn is the generic green shirt villager instead of the brown shirted farmer .

Made it so /sethome and /home can work in survival worlds, but instead of teleporting you it will tell you your homes coordinates.

Improved giant drops slightly since cookies arent as valuable anymore

Slightly increased spawn rate of cows in the plains biome (now that leather is required for books, cows need to be more common)

Made it so safe signs can be used to protect mob spawners from explosions