bracomadar

I'll still post art and journal entries on here every now and then, but I'm trying to get a daily blog going and get subscribers and people that will want to contribute with comments and what have you.  To check it out, go to www.bradnewsoftheday.blogspot.…

It's been a while since I posted something on my journal.  Not much has happened, except in about the last week everything started going crazy.  The family lost my uncle to lung cancer.  He had been a smoker nearly all his life and just couldn't quit.  This has been about the 6th uncle I've lost to smoking related illnesses.  It's a sad thing and I miss him, but what are you gonna do?  If people want to smoke, they're gonna smoke.  

It had been a while since I took my dog to the vet to get his shots, so I took him by there last Monday, or Tuesday.  Anyway, the vet gives him his shots and I tell him that I had ran out of his heartworm medication and needed some more.  So he got concerned and decided to do a test to make sure he didn't have any because the preventative medicine wouldn't work on adult grown heartworms, only the eggs.  Well, he came back positive for it.  So I had to leave him over there for about 3 days getting treatment to kill off the adult heartworms.  That was $175, plus about $40 for the rabies shots and other stuff I originally took him there for.  I have to take him back in about a week to make sure they're all gone out of his system.  I feel so awful letting him get heartworms.  I really feel like I've failed as a pet owner.  

So after that, Wednesday, I had to go to the orthopedic surgeon and get x-rays done on my broken wisdom tooth.  The surgeon wasn't there, so his nurses were doing the x-rays.  They did 2 of them and both of them were really faint and they didn't know if they could use them, so they scheduled me in the next morning to see the surgeon in person and let him take a look.  So the next morning I go back over there and find out that even though the tooth is through, he can't pull it straight out.  See, it has a big chunk missing in the front part of the tooth, so there's just a hole there.  It grew at a slight angle, just enough to where it pressed up against my molar and it cracked open.  To take it out, he's gonna have to cut it into two pieces (a front and back half).  Then he's gonna remove the back half and then move the front half back and pull it out that way.  Oh, and he's not going to be able to put me under because of medical problems, so to take the cheap route, I'll be awake during the whole thing, just local anesthetic. I have been suffering with this tooth for years now and finally decided to do something about it.  I even named it Pol Pot because it's been such a painful bastard.  The only reason I've put it off so long is because I don't have any dental insurance, but the pain got so bad I finally had to give in and get something done about it.

As far as art goes, I've been doing a little bit of drawing, but not much.  I've mostly been reading poetry and some books they were selling at the local library.  I've done a little bit of writing, but not as much as I should have been doing.  I haven't really been anywhere to take photos.  I guess I should have taken the camera with me to the vet and dentist, but my mind was too occupied on the condition of my dog and tooth to worry about taking any interesting photos.  There are some Carolina Chickadees nesting in a bluebird box outside my window.  Maybe I'll get some good pictures of them in a few days.  There are some wildflower pictures that I took that I might post up on here.

With my Christmas money, I finally got LittleBigPlanet.  I posted earlier about the beta, but I wanted to do a full review of the entire game.  I have beat the story mode and have been working on a map.  First of all, the story mode was fun.  They had a lot of great ideas in their maps.  As a guy who loves to make maps, some of the stuff they did boggled my mind.  The people at Media Molecule were really thinking outside the box.  The game does have a story, but you don't really realize it until towards the end.  Basically there's a guy kidnapping all the main characters in LittleBigPlanet and at the end you have to go free them and then defeat the bad guy.  The last two levels you play are really well done with some crazy mechanisms and robots and a bunch of cool things.  The story mode is set in different locations on the planet and they each have their own themes, you have a medieval England kingdom level, Africa level, Mexican Day of the Dead wedding level, Spaghetti Western level, New York metropolis level, Japan level, India level, and a Soviet Siberia level.  Each one is made up 3 main maps and there are secret keys in those that unlocks other little maps that you can get top scores on.  So overall, there are 24 main maps and then probably just as many, if not more, smaller maps.  Just a thought, but looking at the LittleBigPlanet map with all the levels on there, there's nothing on the map where Australia, Antarctica, or Hawaii are, so I'm guessing maybe they might be in an future expansion pack.  

For those unfamiliar with LittleBigPlanet, the gameplay is basically a 2D platformer, like Mario, only you can move forwards and backwards into 3D space, but it's limited.  It's like you're running on a racetrack with 3 lanes and you can move into either one of these lanes to avoid an obstacle in the lane you are in.  One of the gripes about the game is it can sometimes be hard moving back and forth.  The controls can be buggy at times, but it's not a huge problem.  I did play the beta and it seems like that is one thing they did improve on a little.  Anyway, you play as a Sackboy, or Sackgirl, which you can customize with clothing and stickers and a bunch of different stuff, and basically you go through the maps solving puzzles, pulling leavers, avoiding obstacles, jumping on stuff, destroying enemies, etc.  All the time you're trying to gather these little Score Bubbles, which adds points to your score.  Besides that, there larger Prize Bubbles you can find which gives you objects, materials, stickers, and clothing, to use in your level, or customize your Sackboy.  Some levels also have races built in so you can get points by getting to the finish line the fastest.  Anyway, at the end of the level you're playing, it will add up your score and it will show your rank so you can compare your score against other players all over the world.  Also, you usually get prizes at the end for accomplishing different stuff.  You can get extra prizes for just finishing the level, you can get prizes for collecting all the Prize Bubbles in the map, and also you can get prizes for finishing the map start to finish without dying once.  

The game allows for 4 player coop-multiplayer and encourages it because most of the story maps have some areas set aside with prizes that can only be accessed when 2, or more are playing at the same time.  You can play online, or just with extra controllers at home with your buddies.  Unfortunately, multiplayer is a lot harder than just playing by yourself.  If somebody lags behind, they end up dying and also the camera zooms out to view everybody at once.  This can be awkward.  Multiplayer does not make it impossible to finish a map, it just usually makes it impossible to finish a map without dying a few times.  This is the main drawback to the game IMO.  However, multiplayer can be fun watching and listening to your friends scream and get mad, but you can also die a lot too.  Sometimes, even your friends can cause you to die.  It can either be a lot of fun, or really frustrating.  Of course you do end up getting more prizes, so it's kind of a double edge sword.  I think they could help relieve some of the frustration by giving more lives when playing with more people.  I also wish they had the option of allowing you to switch the camera to being on just you the entire time, instead of the whole group.  There are advantages to seeing the whole group, to avoid being lost, but it can be a pain.

The best part about LBP is being able to create your own maps.  Now before you start making your grand masterpiece, I HIGHLY suggest doing the story mode first and gathering as much materials, objects, and stickers to use on yours and also to get some ideas for obstacles to put in your map.  It actually takes you a little while of playing the story mode to unlock the multiplayer feature anyway.  When you do decide to make your map, do not skip the tutorials.  Do them and you'll not only know what you're doing then, but you also win prizes for completing the tutorials.  It's fun when stuff works, but like playing multiplayer, creating your map can be very frustrating.  The worst thing about it is gluing stuff.  Pretty much everything you don't want going anywhere must be anchored to the ground somehow.  The game does provide you with some Dark Matter material that will float where you put it, but for most of the stuff you'll have to anchor it to the ground, or to other objects.  The problem is it can be a pain to get it to anchor and also to anchor to the thing you want it to.  Besides that, sometimes stuff just seems to get glued, or unglued for no apparent reason.  The good news is I heard they're working on a patch to fix some of these issues.  The more I work on my map, the less mistakes I make because I figure out the best way to avoid problems and how to construct my map back to front and test it out to avoid headaches later.  It will take you a few days, or maybe weeks to get the hang of the stuff.  You can't be a good map maker without patience though.  The other good thing is you can "rewind", or 'fast forward", so you can go back to earlier spots, or if you went back by accident, go forward in time. The only bug with this is sometimes it seems to take a long time to rewind, or fast forward than it would have just been to erase and fix your mistakes yourself.  I think it saves these points temporarily online, so it's probably overloaded servers that cause this, or my own ISP being slow.  The game provides you with motors, pulleys, pistons, switches, and a bunch of other little gadgets to get stuff to move in your map.  Getting stuff to move and work like you want it is basically trial in error.   Besides fast forwarding, you can also "pause", which stops everything from moving or falling.  You do most of your map making when it's paused.  In create mode you get to hover your Sackperson in front of the map and so you can move around fast and jump to areas you need to, unlike in play mode.  If you need to test out something, you can unpause it and even jump in like you were actually playing.  Just be sure to rewind after you've tested it out to get stuff like it was before you might have broken them, or blown them up.  Unlike most map editors, you can get in and work on something right there without having to compile your map and load it just to test out one little thing.  

Besides just creating a map full of obstacles, let's say you create a mechanical bear that will kill you if you touch it.  Well, you you can take that bear and save it as a created object.  Then you can put prize bubbles in your map and have the bear as the prize people get when they find it.   Then can then use it on their maps they make.  You can also set up prizes at the end of your map for players who finish it, or without dying, or find all the prizes.  They can win your stuff you make for them.  That's one of the great thing about the game is you don't just feel like your trying to beat a score, but you really feel like you're winning something.  After you've finished your map and tested it to make sure it doesn't have any bugs and is just like you want it, you can publish it online for others to play, rate it, and comment on it.  

I haven't played much of the online maps yet, but I have played a few that have made my jaw drop.  Somebody made a tic-tac-toe game for it.  Basically they built a map that was a computer that powered the game by moving switches and sensors around.  Another person made a calculator the same way.  People have made tanks that shoot explosives and move, and others have made complicated enemies you have to fight.  Others have made pianos and other musical instruments that actually play songs, note for note.  It might not sound spectacular, unless you realize how they got it to do that.  It will honestly brain fuck you!  It's just not a bunch of obstacle courses full of traps and pitfalls.  There's an endless number of custom maps to play on.  You can play them by yourself, or with friends.  Also, they load about as fast as the story mode maps load, so you don't have to sit and wait minutes just for one map to load.

Overall, LittleBigPlanet does have its fair share of bugs.  The controls are a little buggy, the multiplayer could be better, gluing stuff down can be a pain, and I think they need to work on their servers.  However, the pros far outweigh the cons and we'll probably be getting a patch soon that will fix some of the problems.  It's a very enjoyable game and probably the most uniquely thought out game that's come out in a long time.  If you're a creative person, like those old platformers you grew up on, like puzzle games that will make you think, or are just tired of playing your typical old RPGs and FPS, this is the game IS A MUST for you.  If you own a PS3 and have a some vacation time coming up, at least rent it for a week and try it out.  There's so much to it that I really couldn't explain it all and you have to experience it for yourself to get a real feel of it.  

PSN: bracomadar (add for LittleBigPlanet, Call of Duty: World At War, or just for shits n'giggles)

Just wishing everyone a merry Christmas   I'm sad to say that the Supreme Court ruled last week that there cannot be a Nativity scene in Washington, D.C. this Christmas This is not for any religious or constitutional reason; they simply have been unable to find three wise men and a virgin in the nation’s capitol.

There was no difficulty, however, filling the stable with asses

...and the only prescription...is more LittleBigPlanet!  Well, if you were wondering why I haven't posted much in the past few days, and I'm sure you've been wondering that (yeah, right!), I've been playing the beta for the new PS3 game, LittleBigPlanet.  

For those not familiar with LittleBigPlanet, it's a platformer game, like Mario.  It's kind of 2 3/4D in that all the shapes and characters are rendered in 3D, but when you're playing, you're looking kind of from the side, but you can move on 3 different planes (towards, or away from the viewer a few spots, not just left/right and up and down).  I wouldn't consider it a true 3D platformer since you don't rotate the camera around the playable character like a lot of the newer 3D platformers like Mario 64.  It does rotate some, but only by a few degrees.  I grew up on 2D platformers (Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man, etc.) where you played from a side view.  I don't like most 3D platformers because they feel awkward for some reason, so I instantly fell in love with game.  So what's so great about LittleBigPlanet if it's just another platformer?  Well, the great thing is that they give you the freedom to make your own levels.  The world your in has real physics and tools that allow you to make moving platforms, triggers, vehicles, enemies, all sorts of different things.  Some of the levels people have made so far are just amazing.  If you are a creative person (since you are on DeviantArt you probably are) and if you love video games, then this game should be right up your alley.  The best way to describe it is it's kind of like Mario crossed with Garry's Mod.  

You play as these stitched together characters called Sackboys, or Sackgirls and you can customize your character based on accessories and clothing you win in levels.  That's another great thing about this is you can win stuff at the end of levels.  Let's say you make a rocket car vehicle in your level, you can set that as a prize at the end they win for completing the level, or not losing any lives, or finding all the secret stuff, or just put it in a prize bubble for them to find in the level.  You can play with up to 4 friends at a time and some levels have areas where you need more than one person to get to and get extras.  In an era where video games are judged based usually on their graphics, this one goes for playability.  Usually you'll play a game through once, or maybe twice if it's really good and you might play the multiplayer for a while, but then it gets boring because you're playing on the same maps over and over.  LBP is one of those games that will keep being interesting and will always have something new.  So if you have a PS3, or are thinking about getting one this year, maybe for Christmas, this is a game you must get.  

If you do a YouTube, or Google search under LittleBigPlanet, you can find dozens of videos.