Oh shit. Why did I agree to re-work Lunacy Star? I forgot what a piece of ass this game really is.
The graphics are awful, the sound is awful, the gameplay is lacking ~ ~ ~
How will I ever do this in two months? D:

Well, I suppose I had better get started. I can probably put in that snazzy new font that I made for the new Lunacy Star title, which doesn't exist really.

But oh well.

I've decided to commemorate the occasion by continuing on with the Lunacy Star 1 Remix Project, with a new fresh version of the fifth stage theme, Odd Fortress.

Will I actually complete a game? Will it not be absolutely horrible? We shall see!

Because this... is lunacy! Lunacy! Staaaar~

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I made some new banners, but I'm a tad conflicted as to which ones exactly I enjoy the most.

See for yourselves:





If worst comes to worst, I'll probably just end up using ALL OF THEM AT ONCE OH GOD

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It's finally happening... I'm becoming a popular person!
Somewhat. I think.

I have to keep all of my social engagements in check using the calendar on my phone now. I had all of the last week's lunch periods taken up all by hanging out and going to lunch with different people, and this week is shaping up to have even more lunch with even more different people.

I picked a damn good time to get to know everyone at school, I'm supposed to be leaving in two weeks D:<

The number of contacts in my phone has ballooned from 50 to 80 in the past couple of weeks. I'm having more problems than usual trying to keep in, well, contact with them.

The whole Boyfriend-less-ness Deal is easing up, somewhat, as I've been told it would with the advent of college.

Even though I'm not going to college yet. (Dunno if I am at all, really.)

My number of gay friends has gone up from zero to three in one week. Don't worry, I'm not hitting on them all at the same time. I have a schedule for that :V

I can't believe high school is like, almost over. The thought of not ever seeing half of these assholes ever again makes me almost want to cry.

Almost.

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I think I'll change my banner.

New blog title because of the first comment below

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This has been a pretty productive week, as far as composition goes, anyway. I need to stop being distracted and finish Chaos Weapon at the very least, before my parents act upon their daft ideas to send me to the military or something.

Actually, this has been a really productive peak, period. Since about two months ago, I've produced nearly 30 straight minutes of listenable things. This has... never ever happened.

So, representing the past two weeks of free time I've thrown away to FL Studio, I present the seven newest things I've scribbled out.

Storia Strana: vs. Queen Fraeia

Lunacy Star: "Eve of Ragnarok ~ Familiar Places"

Storia Strana: vs. King Macaiah
( V V this goes hand-in-hand with V V )
Storia Strana: vs. Duchetis

Storia Strana: "Theme of Cesare"

Lunacy Star: "Antisanctuary"

Storia Strana: unused track

*sits down and patiently waits for criticism*

I admit, I didn't think about the feasibility of me ever producing two more hours worth of material before jumping at the upgrade plan.
But, I must say, it's pretty snazzy. I can see that since March the 25th, Mega's visited two of my tracks. This fills me with glee, because I can at least confirm that people who are more versed in composition are probably visiting my soundcloud for a sort of ego boost- "oh lol at least i don't write songs like this hahaha"

I've been trying out departures from the usual Taizen Style. I think.
I'd like to believe that I have one, anyway.

This one is meant to be similar to what Charlie does.
And this one just came out of nowhere.
My horrendawfubble pianos-only version of Nooodl's "Batteries"

I ask that you reserve about a third of your judgement as well and acknowledge that I spend at most, probably 80 minutes writing a track. A step up, I might point out, from the 20 minutes that used to be standard.

Something else that I get to do with an upgraded Soundcloud is direct people who visit my page to certain songs of my choice, the 'spotlight.'
It was... actually really, really difficult to come up with five songs that were simultaneously broad enough in tone and also of adequate quality to put up.
(I also didn't want both Theme of Mugestris and Theme of Corolena up there. I chose Mugestris in the end because I enjoy it better.)

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I never thought I'd come up with as many things to say about my music at once. It's almost shameful.

Anyway, I have an impending ART DUMP. Including but not limited to, random sketches, art class assignments, and my comic-form answers to my Ask Me blog that came out a long-ass time ago.
I'd tell you to 'stay tuned,' but I can't expect you to stare at this webpage for three weeks.

I need someone with a similar setup to Charlie Carlo to try out Chaos Weapon, and tell me if something's causing my game to lag horribly and glitch out my sound.



I'm also having a bit of an issue regarding my game's loading times. Although it might just be the debug function I have called at the games' initialization, giving me one of each item through the games' slow-ass inventory adding script and teaching me every skill to every playable character, I find that the game hangs a bit when I call for the window to restart.

It gets so bad that my Game Over music, which is 16 seconds long, gets almost enough time to play twice before the game snaps back to action. It really is rather upsetting.

So, any ideas on cutting down loading? Because I'm loading all of the BGM and VA externally, but the SE is stuck into the Game Maker form. This shouldn't be overly important, should it? I don't think the sound effects are anywhere over 4 MB or anything.

Could it be my images or something?
I'm not going to need to externally load my images, will I? .-.
There'll end up being a little over 1,500 sprites and images in general by game's end (Charlie is about 9% of the way there) so if my sprite loader is zonking out now it's probably cause for alarm :I

And the last issue, of course, is in balance.

I finally got around to implementing the ability to change what you currently have equipped:



Not that that will save you from this:



But this is something that I should be able to sort out for myself. After about three more weeks of re-play-testing everything.

If you end up getting stuck with me for the music competition, allow me to be the first to say that I'm genuinely sorry.

So you don't have to go and look, I present the pieces from my SoundCloud that aren't inherently crap.

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THE NEW ONES Y'ALL HAVEN'T HAD SHOVED AT YOU BEFORE, SO HERE IT IS
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/theme-of-corolena
I made this one in the car, on the drive down to Not Quite Mexico. It might be kind of loud, apparently.
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/theme-of-azarael
A reskinning of an old song that was previously untitled. Made to fit the Snow Empress, Azarel, from Storia Strana.
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/theme-of-mugestris
Mugestris would be a name that I aim to have come up very often in stuff I've made, like Corolena. Mugestris in Storia Strana is the princess of the neighboring kingdom Amalgest, your first hit in your quest to take over the entire world.

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https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/oceans
Kind of an old one, though. Made this a long time ago.

https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/forest-jade
I made this on a whim for no particular reason with no inspiration whatsoever. It's a shame I can't compose like that on a regular basis.

https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/let-us-begin-v2
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/war-zone-v2
From my attempts to de-ass the Lunacy Star 1 soundtrack. These ones are half-successes.

https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/the-worst-battle-theme-ever
It... kind of is, though. I find myself listening to it far too much more than common sense would dictate, however.

https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/dqm-big-boss-battle
Your ass assessment of this song may vary from mine. I happen to put it at Half Ass.

The requisite Pieces I Don't Hate from Lunacy Star Second:
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/stage-1-1-the-great-city
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/stage-3-1-weary-sex-express
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/stage-4-2-renegade-bedtime
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/thelastfantasyinthesky
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/neonmetalarena
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/radicallaserunderworld
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/boss-5-nuclear-sex-hell
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/stage-ex-2-radical-shotgun
https://soundcloud.com/taizenchisou/lss-credits-day-of-the-combat

I hate to sort of put a clamp on the pieces I do have to offer, but, uh, you really only need listen to one or two of the songs I don't have listed to see what I mean.

*sigh*
I hope the person I get assigned to has a song that's all black keys or something.

Like suddenly disappearing backgrounds or video outs or objects working in one run but failing in another, identical run.

I'm having lots of these and it's very discouraging to continue working in GM.

Anyway, that's not the point of this blog, the point of this blog is to ask for help on something that's been bugging me.

Attempting to replicate this sort of transition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udmY2ZvIHwE&t=3

and this sort of transition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D20C1a8B3Ps&t=131


has left me with this decidedly ghetto-ass looking copy:



Is this even possible to do in Game Maker?

*cough*
*hack*
*wheeze*
*extra line to push that expletive off the front page*

Damned parents, sick days exist.

Oh well. I'm effectively taking today off from school, at school.
Well, I took YESTERDAY off anyway.
I'm hacking together voice recordings (heheh) for my video game, the one that exists, and holy butts is this fucking ridiculous. I've compiled about 100 recordings now, out of the 240 I've received, out of the 700-ish total that will be in the game. I've fallen behind, and so have my voice actors.

Such seems to be the way of the indie developer, everything's late.

I'm considering opening a donations channel, but 1) nobody knows who I am, and 2) the people that do probably won't be throwing anything my way.
Which, I suppose, makes sense, given nobody plays RPGs anymore, and on the computer, no less!

*scratch scratch*
My throat's been bothering me. It's making my game engine recording demonstrations a chore to record.

Speaking of the game, it's now horrible bullshit.




I stole the sprite from Charlie's Credence Filter because there's not much sense in bugging him for enemy sprites when he's knee-deep in Other Things.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to return to listening to such magestical voice recordings as these.

I just got back from an interview with an alumni from Harvard :o

So, consider this, before anything else:

- I didn't crop up enough money at the time to even pay for the application (Nor have they bugged me about paying for it)
- I don't remember even requesting an interview
- I didn't send them the updated transcript from my school, featuring corrections to previously wrongly reported standardized scores

I'm in shock from the whole deal.
My resume wasn't the MOST illustrious-



So, I'm just left asking 'why?'
If there is a God, he has a hilarious sense of humor.

It went fairly well. I brought up my horrible efforts at game design and development and had to exercise all of the restraint not to show him what Chaos Weapon looks like as of this moment (for the fear that it would completely invalidate everything I'm riding on), and then we ended up talking about the industry and the mechanics of role-playing games at length for a good fifteen minutes.
What I liked about school (The realization that I'm learning things that others probably don't know)
What I disliked about school (Failing to live up to idiotic expectations)
What I wanted to do with my life (Spend 40 years in front of a computer entertaining 15 year olds until I die)
et cetera.

I don't know what to make of it, but if I do actually get accepted to any of these universities I'm vying for, I'll decide that there is some higher power and that he or she or it has decided that I don't Totally Suck.