onOh my, this is embarrassing. Through careful play count and funtime analysis, it has been discovered that my fifth favorite album of 2012 was the one that I created, A Profoundly Sick Society by The Gates of Sleep. Stay tuned for a massive advertisement. In all seriousness, however, this album made my list not because I think it's a musical spectacular (in fact I have a bad case of creator's dismay), but rather because I had such a good time producing this album. Of course, by producing, I mean shitting around in Audacity, but, details.
This album wasn't a completely solidary project, however, like the first one was. For instance, there were several prospective cover arts for A Profoundly Sick Society, including the original random Flickr one, some weird Tellytubbies, and a vial of a dubious substance, but in the end, the final cover for the project was one created by my good friend Drifty, who combined these covers and several other pictures relating to work on the album. I really appreciate her work there, and I think you'll agree that the final cover came out very nicely:
Following the release of my first album, I Might Be Wrong, I almost immediately set into working on two new tracks: a playful ditty on drug abuse called A Cupcake In My Head and a mashup of an unfinished Imogen Heap song and a Lily Allen song called Back To The Song That Never Was. Production then ceased for about two years. How fun. It all started again, however, when I was listening to Valley of the Dolls by Marina & the Diamonds and playing with repeating the first second of the song. That's how Frigid Earth came to be.
The album itself is quite a doozy. While the name "A Profoundly Sick Society" was randomly generated back in 2009, it wasn't actually until I started creating music again (and in particular, I think, after the song Poland was created) that I really came up with the concept for the album being the cruelties of society. For instance, Poland is ostensibly about World War I, but it's actually about LGBT hate crimes. COHOSE YUOR CLOOR seems to be an insane song on dyslexia, but it's actually about the pressure to conform. The Breakfast Professionals appears to be a fairly innocuous ditty about buying cereal, but it's actually a propaganda ad for mind control cereal. You're loving this, aren't you?
Some tracks, like These Days, were created using the standard I Might Be Wrong formula of mashing up songs into something insane, and other songs, like Skinny Dipping 4 Love, were entirely written and recorded by me (though Skinny Dipping 4 Love also features the beautiful voice of Drifty). Some of the production I did was incredibly fun. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society is both badly autotuned and somewhat dubstep, and if that's not enough reason to listen to it, well, it's about vampire pumpkins, which are A Real Thing or so I have read.
Each track of this album is equally insane, and I almost worked hard on them so I think you should give the album a listen if you want you know don't feel pressured or anything it's okay I don't mind. There's also a plethora of album related work: These Days, Skinny Dipping 4 Love and Poland were all released as singles and have at least two B-sides each, and after a few more months I released a remix album containing surprisingly little remixes, and containing more really weird shit.
A Profoundly Sick Society was an intense project, as well as a personal and kind of depressing one, but in the end I had fun and I can actually enjoy some of the fruits of my labor. ThreadStop, in particular, is my favorite song. It also occupied a great portion of 2012, and this is why it fits into my favorite albums of 2012: because you can't help but love your children.
EDIT: This is my 400th post! Whoo!
onMerry Christmas everyone! I'm shivering in my fuzzy robe and slippers here as I bring to you my gift: a review of a lovely EP by a lovely lady. Lana Del Rey, oh, how do I begin? Well, I'm certainly not going to start with how I got into her---that's a story for later. Hint hint. Anyway, after the massive success of her début album, Born To Die, Lana shocked the world by announcing that she didn't think she would be making any more music. Children cried. How could we go on?
Thankfully, she later changed her mind and announced that she would be rereleasing Born To Die as Born To Die: Paradise Edition with 8 lovely new tracks. Now, for people who already own Born To Die twice,1 this was a bit annoying, but in another stroke of good luck, Lana also released the new tracks of Born To Die: Paradise Edition on its own cute little EP named Paradise. How fun. Let's appreciate that cover art, shall we?
She's beautiful, isn't she? The cover art really does make you think of paradise. Now, since this is an EP with not that many tracks, and because so many of the tracks are standout tracks, I'm going to talk about all of them! We'll begin with the first single from the EP, Ride. Ride has been both praised and criticized as being very reminiscent of the Del Rey style we saw on Born To Die, and indeed I do not like Ride very much because it just doesn't seem to mean much. Her smokey vocals and flowery music just does not seem different. The second track, American, however, sets a better tone for the rest of the EP: it feels contained, yearning to explode into passion in the chorus and her usage of her voice as an instrument in American works far better than it did in Ride. It feels more like a subdued, beautiful paradise than the forced one of Ride.
Now, of course, there's the infamous Cola. It starts off with the hook "My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola," and her sultry voice carries you through the rest of the banging tale of homewrecking. It of course has all of her standard Del Rey symbols like American flags and Daddies (the latter of which I must say really does unnerve me but whatever), but what I must say really gets me is the high-pitched warbling she does during the middle-eight---listening to it I was so shocked that she was able to hit those notes. It's really quite beautiful and impressive. Now, the next track, Body Electric, is one she's been performing at concerts for a while now. Body Electric sounds scared. She sings about Marilyn, Jesus, suicide and opulence, and while she then brings it back partying at night, that haunting line still repeats itself in our minds, "I sing the body electric." Of course, I Sing The Body Electric is a Walt Whitman poem about the human body, so we may infer that this song is about Lana's body insecurities and America's tendency to inflict body issues on young girls being the reason America is not Paradise. The song itself is very haunting and it does indeed grow on you.
Blue Velvet, of course, was not written by Lana---it is a cover of a 1954 single from The Clovers. Lana's rendition of this classic song, however, is simply beautiful. It sounds very different from the original because she adds her own personal paradisiacal flair to it. It takes you back, man. Grooving out of this mellow tune, however, we enter into a dark land, the land of Gods & Monsters, one of my favorite tracks on the EP. This celestial banger enters your soul and threatens to take it away, but as Lana sings, "No one's gonna take my soul away." It is perhaps the most powerful track on the EP, brimming with "innocence lost."
Lana completely takes it away with the next track, however. Yayo is a remake of a track from her fledgling record under her original name, Lizzy Grant. I have not been fortunate enough to hear the original recording of this track (though here is a very adorable live performance of it!), but this recording simply blows me away. It is so raw, so smoky and so sad. I also just learned that "yayo" is slang for cocaine. Okay. That's interesting. Finally, there is Bel Air, my favorite, favorite, favorite Lana song ever. The chimes, the children playing, the ambience is perfect. Her vocals, her lyrics, "I know your name." This song FEELS like paradise. Her voices manages to trail off in the most beautiful ways in this track. It is simply amazing, and it wraps the EP up so perfectly.
Paradise is truly an impressive EP, and it is a beautiful addition to Born To Die. 2012 truly has been Lana's year. Let's hope 2013 works for her as well.
I wanted the deluxe edition of Born To Die, and I was unaware that it was not being sold in the US so I purchased what I THOUGHT was the deluxe edition only to receive the standard version a few days later. It did contain an awesome 7" record with remixes of Video Games and Blue Jeans, though, which was so awesome I couldn't part with it. I later bought the correct deluxe edition internationally. ↩
onRegina Spektor has long been one of my favorite artists---in fact, before Marina & the Diamonds took over early this year, Regina Spektor had reigned as my favorite artist for over a year. From the quiet, soul-punchingly perfect imperfection of Songs, to the warm melodies of Soviet Kitsch (my personal favorite album of hers), to the chipper piano ditties of Begin To Hope, to the luscious, flowing production of Far, all of Regina's work has been absolutely amazing[1. An avid Regina fan may have noticed that I skipped her first album, 11:11, here, and that's because I haven't actually listened to it yet. I know, shocking. It's because of the fact that it's impossible to obtain 11:11 on CD, because it was self-released by Regina, and my rigid music listening schedule hasn't allowed me a time yet to buy the digital release from iTunes. I'm sure I will someday find the time to give it a try, as I have heard it's a very beautiful, very jazzy album, and I will make it my goal to one day own that beautiful first-edition CD from Regina's own handiwork, just as I dream of owning other such rare works such as Enchant by Emilie Autumn and Mermaid vs Sailor by Marina & the Diamonds. Ah, a girl can dream. A girl can dream.].
For the longest time, however, for some reason I can't even explain, I have been afraid that Regina Spektor had stopped making music. I do not know why. I can recall listening to Far for the first time (it was already out by the time I discovered Regina, and I discovered her through Begin To Hope) and thinking it sounded so strange that there was new work by her. You can imagine how surprised, albeit overjoyed, when Regina Spektor announced on Facebook the name of her new album, What We Saw From The Cheap Seats. I was even more overjoyed to see Regina release yet another breathtaking album cover.
If you couldn't tell, I'm quite into album art. Regardless, when I took a trip down to the music store on my birthday to buy Regina Spektor's new CD, I was very excited, yet I didn't really know what to expect. Here's what you should expect: the sound on WWSFTCS is very happy, very excited, but very contained. It feels very well produced, especially considering the fact that Don't Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas) is a remake of a song from her second album. My favorite tracks on the album were the darker, more electronic sounding ones: All The Rowboats and Ballad of a Politician. All The Rowboats compares museums full of paintings to tombs full of protected corpses and Ballad of a Politician compares important men shaking hands and doing nothing to prostitutes on the street. Both songs are beautiful. When I say that these songs are "electronic," I don't mean in a Lights kind of way. Regina customizes her style to each song. In Ballad of a Politician, she uses a vocoder to give the song that extra mysterious, sad feeling, and the effect, I must say, is stunning, and All The Rowboats emphasizes her classic piano melody with sounds and effects that make you feel like you're in the museum at night listening to the violins dying in their coffins. It's really quite beautiful.
Patron Saint is another of my favorite tracks on this album, but contrasting with the previous two, this is a very upbeat song with nonetheless a sad meaning. This song isn't upbeat in a similar style as Begin To Hope, however, the usage of other instruments like drums along with her classic piano gives the music an entirely different feel which is just lovely. Also mentionable is The Party, a short, happy song at the end of which Regina breaks into making trumpet noises with her mouth like in Lounge from Songs, the beauty of which makes me tear up sometimes. It's really an uplifting song. Listening to this album just makes me feel good.
I never really got into How, however, which many have praised as one of the highlights of the album, so your mileage may vary when listening to this album. I still recommend this as one of the best albums released this year, and if you're a fan of Regina you should definitely give it a listen: it's classic Regina while also going off in a completely new direction, and that's just the way we like her.
onRemember when I said that not all of my Best of 2012 albums were actually released this year? Well, here comes one of those. Lights Poxleitner (or just Lights) is a Canadian artist that I've really heard of before getting into Tumblr and making some Marina & the Diamonds friends. One of my Tumblr friends, who is probably below the age limit for having a Tumblr but whatever, seemed rather fond of this strange artist. Her most recent album (released October 4, 2011) Siberia seemed interesting--at least, it had cool looking cover art.
Wouldn't you agree? I also gave the title track of the album a quick listen, and it seemed pretty cool, throbbing baselines and such (yeah I have no idea what that meant but I hoped it would sound cool), so I put the album on my birthday list, and promptly forgot about it to the swirling vortex of other assorted nothings I have going on in my life. A few months later, however, I found a belated birthday package in my mailbox, and inside was good ol' Poxleitner, so I gave the album a whirl, and I'm quite happy I did.
Lights has a very electric, very synthetic sound to her music, and the album has a nice flow to it. The high energy of Everybody Breaks A Glass, as one of the album's singles, makes you want to dance (as do most songs on the album), but it also just has that element of beauty to it, especially in the chorus. In fact, it's one of my favorite songs on the album. My other favorite song is the slow, peaceful ballad Cactus In The Valley, which sweeps you up in its emotion and carries you off. This song is actually fairly unlike the rest of the songs on the album, however.
Some other standout songs are Peace Sign, a fast-paced pretty song, and Heavy Rope, a slower, gentler song that feels like a wave washing over you. Really, this album is pretty great, except for the Suspension, And Counting..., and Day One. I also dislike the rapping in Everybody Breaks A Glass and Flux And Flow. I've gotten used to it now and I can't say it really detracts much from the songs but I really don't feel like it adds anything either. Nonetheless, Siberia by Lights is a very good album for the most part and I would definitely suggest it for someone looking for some new music. I also feel like I should give her other album a look since I liked this one so much, so we'll see how that goes. :)
onJust a quick post to say, hey, I've finished the work I was doing on the website! Yesterday, after having spent some time looking around on the website after my Best of 2012 post, which was the only reason I've been on Four Island for six months, I decided that Four Island v6 was pretty ugly. I worked tirelessly through the night to produce the new layout that you can see with your very own eyes, Four Island v7!
While v6 was a heavily modified version of the WordPress theme K2, I wrote v7 completely from scratch, which was an interesting experience because I don't really think the WordPress Codex has enough documentation on how to make a theme. I had to pick through other themes to find out what I was doing at many times, and at others I just had to blindly feel my way around WordPress's Template Tags documentation to get a feel for what I was doing. I think it all worked out pretty well, though, and I think things look nice. Fun posts to check out include Annetenna, Using the Inflector, and Of Books And Memes, because they showcase some of the neat stuff the theme does like comments, pingbacks and syntax highlighting. Also, if you care to use the search box, it actually sort of works now. Thank you to Relevanssi, what a grand plugin.
Anyway, the Best of 2012 post will be coming up later (in fact I'll probably start writing it when I publish this) so keep your eyes peeled and I hope you all like the new theme! Leave comments, let me know, and try out the Wordpress.com-provided comment form which is kind of awesome! :D
on
Nelly Furtado is an artist I have long appreciated but have never really talked. Her hits "Maneater," "Say It Right," and "All Good Things Come To An End" from her album Loose are pretty well known and have been jams of mine for quite some time. However, I never really gave either of her first two albums a formal chance, and I ended up waiting for her next album to come out, which ended up being completely Spanish. Don't get me wrong, I did quite enjoy the songs "Más" and "Fantasmas," but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. The songs "Girlfriend In The City" and "Night Is Young" from her greatest hits album were my New Years anthem, but still, I needed a full Nelly Furtado album experience.
The Spirit Indestructible came out September 14th and it can't have been much later (though it was definitely in October) that my best friend and I ended up in a Target buying giant bags of candy on account of the fact that we're (by which I mean I am) massive candy whores. The CD section of the store enticed me. "Hello Starla," it whispered. "You haven't purchased a CD in a while. We've got some pretty little jewel cases for your shelf."
Still, it was only a 50/50 chance that I purchased The Spirit Indestructible: while I was dancing around the CD section of the store, I also noticed No Doubt's new album and I made my friend choose which album I should buy, and I proudly left the store with The Spirit Indestructible by Nelly Furtado, and a giant bag of sickening Wonka candy that I ended up throwing out a few days later because I'm a whore.
If you've been missing Furtado's catchy hits from Loose then The Spirit Indestructible is for you. It mixes her old, urban style from her first two albums with the modern pop style from Loose. Banging tunes like "Parking Lot," "Big Hoops (Bigger The Better)" and "High Life" make you want to get up and dance, while songs like "Miracles" and "Enemy" really set an emotional, yet still catchy, tone for the experience. The album has a very distinct feel to it and no song feels out of place. This is indeed the Nelly Furtado experience I've been looking for for quite a while.
onHas everyone had a happy (and uneventful) end of the world? Well you're not quite safe yet: if I'm posting, it MUST be the end of the world. Actually, for a while I've been listening to music, yah know, and there's so much music out there that I enjoy. Last year I attempted to write a "Favorite Albums of 2011" post and... got a little sidetracked. Or lazy. Or busy applying to colleges. Who knows. Well, this year has been a very good year in music and I want to share the albums that I enjoyed the most. I just want to note, however, that this is not a list of the best albums of 2012, it is a list of the top albums that I experienced this year. Most of the albums on this list did in fact come out in 2012, but a few did not, so keep your eyes peeled.
We're going to start out with a shocker. I first got into Emilie Autumn way back in March of 2010 when my good friend Amelia taught me the ways of being an Opheliac (really, Mad Girl was the first song I heard, but I digress). I listened the heck out of that album, and I still do, as it's quite a fantastic album and one of my favorites of all time. However, after a few months, I thirsted for more Emilie. Where would I get my fix? Clearly I was too stupid to listen to her first album, Enchant, or listen to any of the scads and scads of extra material and oddities she had released. Oh no, I had to wait. But what was I waiting for?
I was waiting to be able to Fight Like A Girl. I had long known that Emilie's third album would be called FLAG, but through 2011, I was forgetting her. With nothing happening, she simply slipped my mind. My first shock came on April 11th when out of nowhere, the songs Fight Like A Girl and Time For Tea were released as a double A-side single and I gobbled them up like warm oatmeal. My second shock came on July 24th when also out of nowhere, Fight Like A Girl, the album itself, was released! It was a joyous day, and I purchased it almost immediately, and what was in fact quite nice about this transaction was that fact that not only did I get a digital copy of the album, but later I received a physical copy in the mail. How nice.
This album is a real doozy. You could compare it to Opheliac, but it's both lighter and harder at the same time. Beautiful songs like Gaslight wrap you up in a cozy blanket of fear, and, well, let's just say that I was very scared the first time I heard the song Time For Tea. This album is difficult to explain on its own. It's a concept album, telling the story of Emilie's stay in a psych ward after her suicide attempt, only the story is dramatized as if it occurred in the Victorian era.
Standout songs include Fight Like A Girl, If I Burn, Gaslight and Goodnight Sweet Ladies. The latter is especially interesting because it quotes both If I Burn and The Art of Suicide (from Opheliac), the latter of which is perhaps my favorite Emilie song. Regardless, this is a very good, very crazy, and very mixed album. I must say that I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Opheliac, but nonetheless, it satisfied my craving for the very talented Miss Emilie Autumn. For a while. You'll see.
onWhoo, sorry I'm a bit late with today's post but today was a pretty busy day. Hopefully tomorrow is less so because Friday will probably be pretty busy and as Thursday is my birthday, it will be very busy :P. Didn't I just pick the perfect week to write a 7 day roguelike? Anyway, I did not get too much done today, but I did get the two things I mentioned yesterday done: you can now advance to higher floors than one, which get progressively larger in size, though the monsters do not yet get harder (need to make new monsters!), and I have also added an item system! Such fun! Let's see that picture!
Oh, wow, um, that is not the right picture. That's Patricia Hodge in Miranda. Sorry about that folks! Let's see the real screenshot:
Nice. As you can see, in this screenshot, I have pressed "i" to activate the inventory screen, and in the top left corner there is a list of my inventory items! You can press enter and use one, which means different things for different items: for the clothing, it means equipping the item (which can grant you defense and attack power (except for the crocs lol they're there for the lulz)), and the scroll of healing grants you 20 HP! How nice. There's also a wooden helmet on the floor right next to me.
Anyway, that's all I really have to announce at this point. Day 4 will likely consist of adding new monsters and items to the game. Until then, ciao! :)
onHey guys, it's day 2, and my game is coming along quite nicely now. I've actually got most of the core of the game done. Is it already time for screenshots? I think it is. First, a simple view of the start of the game:
Notice anything different about my game? Well, for one thing, I changed the color scheme to give the game a "colder" feel, and I think it worked. Second, the tiles have been changed to 12x12 instead of 16x16, which I'm not really sure why I was using because I was forcing 12x12 characters into 16x16 tiles and everything looked funky. This looks a lot cuter, and you can still resize the window and increase the size of the tiles. Next, there's a message window at the bottom! How fun. It tells you when people hurt you, among other things, which brings me to the next new feature: melee combat! You can actually hurt things now! There are now two hostile mobs, rats and spiders, which move toward you when you're in their line of sight. When you kill them, you gain experience, and when you have at least 1000 experience points, you grow a level! Nice. There's also a cute health counter in the top left corner now.
Now, that's a lot of work I've done in the last 24 hours, but it's not all. I've also added one of the main features that separates Frigid Earth from the other roguelikes: the rooms with the windows and the keys in them. If you don't know what I mean, go back to Day 1 and read my concept draft again.
Let's pick up that key, shall we?
Uh oh. All the windows shattered and snow is following you out of the room! Aaah! It's very terrifying. Every other turn that you are standing on snow, you lose 1HP. When you're not standing on snow, you gain at least 1HP every eight turns.
Anyway, I think I've made some good progress with my game. Most of the core is done, I think. The game only has one floor and there's no real item system to speak of, so perhaps those'll be my goals for Day 3, after which I can work on the intro and the ending and then new mobs and items that grant abilities and guys it'll be a lot of fun. Keep you posted! Check back tomorrow around 2pm for the next post :)
onHey guys! Look, I'm actually posting. I will (hopefully!) be posting a little bit more frequently now, due to situations and stuff awkward laugh. Anyway, I'd like to announce here that a little less than 24 hours ago, I started working on a 7 day roguelike! "What the heck is that?", you may ask. Well, basically, a Roguelike is a game such as NetHack (you've probably heard of that one) loosely based on the game Rogue, a game that usually doesn't have the best graphics (ASCII art is traditional!), a game that focuses on intricacy and replayability due to the fact that every game is different thanks to your local random number generator. A seven day roguelike is a roguelike that was written in exactly seven days. It's a sort of challenge, like NaNoWriMo for writers.
[caption id="attachment_3775" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Exhibit 1: A cat picture"]
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Anyway, yesterday, I was sitting around, glum and bored, thinking about what exciting things I could do with my life now that my sentence of four years in high school has basically expired. I haven't really been doing that much programming lately, so I somehow came up with the idea of making a seven day roguelike! It's the perfect idea, because it'll keep me busy while also fitting into my short attention span. Look, a cat!
Anyway, after coming up with the idea of making a roguelike, I spent a couple of hours trying to think of ideas for a roguelike. Yeah, nothing was happening. My most interesting idea was this one in which a small penguin with 1HP followed you around and he could fish in rivers and get you food and if he died then you would be sad idk it kind of sucked. However, another idea struck me. Approximately two years ago, I mentioned in a poll of the week a game called "Frigid Earth," and interestingly enough, no one asked me what it was, though two people did vote for it for some reason which I cannot fathom. Frigid Earth is an idea for a roguelike that I actually came up with on December 31st, 2009, while avoiding my family members who were all trying to coerce money out of each other for some reason. I went and found my original concept draft that I wrote up two years ago, which I will reproduce for you now:
You start out in a barren, snow-covered area that seems to go on for miles, although the rushing wind blowing snow into your face does obscure your vision somewhat. Staying too long in the snow can kill you, so hurry. The sun is still out (which is why you aren't yet dead) but it is getting darker every minute. You have to hurry before the sun goes down otherwise you will die in the cold. Eventually, you come upon an abandoned tower, but the door is locked. There is a dilapitated village southeast of the tower which contains the key. You let yourself into the tower and you may (and should!) lock the door behind you to prevent the cold from following you. The tower is old and has no heating, but it provides shelter from the wind which warms you up a bit. The tower is mostly empty but for some random stuff lying around and a few mice. The clothing you find can warm you up, but make sure you choose carefully what you wear, you can wear at most 5 items and what goes on last must be taken off first. Eventually, you find a key, but upon picking it up, you hear a soft click. Suddenly, the windows in the room shatter and the cold starts coming in. Tiles adjacent to the windows will begin to freeze and once each tile is cold enough, the tiles adjacent to those tiles will begin to freeze as well. As with the outdoors, the snowy floor will decrease your warmth and may kill you, so you have to run from the advancing cold to the next floor. You may lock the door behind you to prevent the cold from following you. There are ten floors (including the ground floor) in this tower that increase in size and difficulty. Some contain holes in the floor, some contain traps. Some of the higher levels may even increase in number of rooms. The monsters will become more difficult and though you can gain experience by battling them, it is not easy to train due to the time limit. Once you reach the roof, an ending sequence is played and you win.If you made it through that, congratulations. Basically, my idea is that you are the last remaining person on a planet that has become, for some unknown reason, too cold to sustain life anymore. You seek refuge in an old tower that you happen upon, where you find clothing and monsters. You fight your way to the top of the tower, where a helicopter will be waiting to take you away. Sound interesting? I think it does. :P For some reason, I'm enamored with the effects of cold weather.The main screen will have two parts. First, a 15x10 tile (32x32 tiles) game viewpoint. Second, room for three lines of messages (30 chars each) underneath that are the same width as the game viewpoint.
The outside world you start in will be barren and snowy. Broken remains of a path will direct you east and then south to a dilapitated village which contains a few broken huts generated roguelike. One will contain a key and another will contain a note mentioning a hidden tower. If you venture far enough north, a tower will suddenly appear before you (likewise, you move away, the tower will vanish). The door is locked, but can be unlocked via the key in the village.
Levels in the tower start out in an openish 20x20 room. The main staircase to the next floor will always be located in this room, but each staircase is protected by a locked door whoose key is located somewhere on the floor. There should be a few doors leading off of this main room that lead to roguelike generated small rooms and hallways which branch off even more. The floors will get more contrived and branch off a whole lot more as you get higher in the tower. Rooms can contain in-depth monsters and items. Eventually, you will find one of the rooms branch into a hallway with windows, a carpet and a key at the end. This is the key to the next floor. Upon picking up the key, a soft click will be heard and then all of the windows in the room will shatter, letting the frigid cold in. The cold will move exceedingly quickly, it will spread to all adjacent tiles every turn, so you must run.
The 7th floor will contain a room on the outside perimeter (in the corner) that is missing two walls and is covered in snow. Your first instinct may be to close the door and try to remove any cold that may have gotten through, but for players that have found ways to withstand cold, this room is particularily of interest. In the middle of the room is a pedestal with the Ring of Searching (which cannot be found anywhere else in the game) on it. When you wear this ring, any secret doors that exist will become visible when you walk by them. This is the only way to be able to use secret doors. Each floor contains a secret room containing a piece of a scroll. All 10 pieces form a story on how the Earth became so cold (it was a monster whose name will be decided later). When you reach the roof of the tower, normally, a floating rope will be present and you can climb it to enter a helicopter with rescuers in it and you will have been deemed to have "finished" (but not "won") the game. If, however, you have collected all 10 pieces of the scroll, the monster that froze the Earth will be present on the roof. If you defeat him, the world will unfreeze and you will win the game.
Anyway, as I said, I have spent that last 24 hours working on this game, and I think it's actually going pretty well so far. Of course, the first day was just the core of the game: UI, movable player, random dungeon generator, field of view calculator.... Some of that stuff was actually quite complicated and I'm pretty proud of it, teh lolz. I've got some screenshots in case anyone's interested so far (click to see bigger):
[gallery include="3777,3778,3779" link="file"]
I'm actually quite excited about this little project. It's written in Java, so when it (hopefully!) gets finished, you'll all be able to play it regardless of operating system, and guess what! I fixed the issue where this game would take up all of your CPU time and cause your computer's fan to growl at you! You're welcome!
If you'd (for some god forsaken reason) like to check out the progress of my code, I'm actually using GitHub for this project, which is quite strange for me because I've never really used Git that much before. I'm used to Mercurial. Anyway, check out my Frigid Earth GitHub project. I'll keep you guys posted on the progress of my game over the next six days. I hope you guys are interested in playing my finished product! I know I sure am. :)
