James Paige

Current mood: out-of-sync with something

I usually like to post here about art, and that art is usually in the form of drawings. But I also believe in games-as-art. For something crazy like 9 years now, I have been working on a program called the OHRRPGCE which lets you make your own game with minimal programming knowledge. It is only good for old-school console-style RPG games similar to the NES and Super Nintendo Final Fantasy games– so if you are not into that you won’t be interested– but if you ARE into that, by all means, do play with this new toy.

People don’t often thing of game-making as art, and I think that is partly because the tools of the medium are so hard to pick up, let alone to master. You don’t have to be Rembrandt to pick up a paintbrush and slap some paint on a canvas. Most art is very approachable, even if it isn’t easy to do well. Programming games on the other hand requires you to spend hours, days, weeks, even months reading tutorials and manuals before you can even learn and understand enough to blit your first pixel. That is part of why I do this. This is not the same kind of tool the professionals use, but it is a tool that anybody can pick up.

My game maker used to be a DOS program, but yesterday I released a version that runs natively on Windows, making it that much more approachable for average non-programmers. If you want to try it out, you can download it from http://HamsterRepublic.com/dl/ohrrpgce-win-installer.exe

Current mood: ATMA

Terra Branford, the main character from Final Fantasy VI (Final Fantasy III US). This was the last Final Fantasy game to use 2D pixel art instead of 3D. I think it was one of the best games ever made for the Super Nintendo. It was re-released as part of Final Fantasy Anthology in case you want to play it on your PS1 or PS2.Terra is usually drawn to look more like she did in Amano’s original concept art. I wanted something that was a little closer to the in-game sprites, but also inspired by Terra’s appearance in the Final Fantasy SGI demo

Current mood: gigantor-omega-happy

I love silly simple addicting games. A while ago, I programmed my own version of Push-Push using the OHRRPGCE, and today I re-discovered it.

Push-Push, of course, is the Samsung phone-game implementation of Sokoban

Like I said, I love silly simple addicting games. That of course reminds me of experimentalgameplay.com which my cousin directed me to a couple weeks back, and in particular, Flip Out, which is remarably simple, yet also very fun. In an age where mainstream games are so complex and involved… MMORPG’s come to mind, a genre I haven’t even dared to really sample, because as much as I love games, I don’t really like the idea of a gigantor-omega-h0nk game that tries to simulate a whole life in a whole alternate world where I get penalized for not playing daily. Real life takes up enough of my time already thank you ;)

Oh my goodness! I think I am getting old and crispy! I believe I just shook my fist at those gol’darned young whipersnappers with their newfangled games!

Whew. I’m gonna go play an emulator for awhile to clear my head.

Current mood: Alive

While I was watching Ryda play Baldur’s Gate II last night, it occured to me how incredibly useful it would be to have the powers of a necromancer in real life.

When I get to work in the morning, I would summon a skelleton, and say; Skully! Read and file my e-mail! And save anything important for me., and then skully would say yessss master.

Then I would be working on a programming project, and somebody would come to me with a spreadsheet project, and I would be all Skully! Do this boring spreadsheet for me!, and Skully would say Yessss master. Being an unholy damned creature of the netherworld, I have a natural proficiency with Microsoft Excel, and then I would say; But Skully, this is OpenOffice.org running on Debian GNU/Linux, and Skully would go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh!!! and he would catch fire and crumble into ash, and then I would be bummed, because I would have to use up half my mana summoning a new Skully, and then I wouldn’t have enough mana left over at lunch time to cast Fire 3 to heat up my Cup-O-Noodles, and I would have to walk all the way down to the break room to use the stupid microwave.

Current mood: Dusty

This weekend I will be unable to post any blog entries, because i am leaving on vacation to go to Dino-Bungee National Monument, where I will bask in patriotic awe of the awe-inspiringly awesome megasculptural monolith that is Mount Rushmore, after which I shall bungee-jump from Lincoln‘s nose. Originally I was planning on jumping from Washington‘s nose, but then I read in the brocure that the decent takes you just three and a half feet from his strong jutting chin, so you must jump with absolute precision to avoid simultaneously killing yourself and defacing a national treasure. They reccomend that only for advanced bungee jumpers, and since this is my first time, I think I will stick with good ‘ol Abe.

After that, I will tour the rest of the National Park, and see the National Park Service‘s bone-chilling re-creation of a bygone age millions of years ago, when the virgin continent of North America was terrorized by large plaster replicas of dinosaurs.

Current mood: Belly full of spice

My cousin Brian works for a game company, which semi-recently published a game called Wik: Fable of Souls which is pretty much the definitve work in the field of tongue-swinging-action-puzzle games… that is to say, it is the entire genre. If you are into games, you will know how tremendoulsy unoriginal and derivative 99 percent of games are out there (even the good ones), so making a game in that 1 percent that is unique and original, is pretty darn cool. They actually won a bunch of awards for it at the Independant Games Festival at the 2005 IGC in San Francisco.

[Image redacted due to internettyness]
All modern awards ceremonies are slaves to the Oscars Meme, so naturally whenever they won, they came up on stage to accept their award and say a few words into the microphone.

On their third trip to the stage, my other cousin, Andrew joined them, in spite of the fact that he does not work for the company, was not involved in the making of the game, and was only there to support his brother. This delights me. It delights me enough to blog it ;)

Guess who is who :)