Anybody that knows me will attest to the fact that I am always trying to work out ways to express my creative needs.  Be it writing, drawing, movie editing, map making, GMod posing, and the occasional website adjusting.  I’ve always got to be doing something.  I constantly feel like I’m not expelling this creativity fast enough, and it keeps on building.

So I have a new project for myself.  I’m calling it ‘Map Quest’, and it will a day by day telling of my current venture in creating a map.  I had the idea for a TF2 map a few days ago when they released the ‘Classless Update’, adding King of the Hill game mode.  The idea is a large hill centered on the map, with the KOTH point, real creative right?  But I want to blend the Control Point game mode with that of King of the Hill.  Here are some visual aids.

Atop the center hill is the KotH point, the four black dots are the Control Points.  There are underground tunnels that lead to the hill, as well as raised platforms above each teams final control point.

The game plays like this, as the round starts all the points are locked.  After 1 or 2 minutes the KotH Point unlocks and the battle for it begins.  Once a team takes the hill the control points unlock.  The hill point will have a 10 minutes timer attached to it.  If RED takes the hill, BLU will have 10 minutes to either take it from them OR take the control points.  All Control Points will start unowned, and will act as a separate chance for victory.  The match will end when a team either holds the koth point for the ten minute timer or captures all the control points.

This is Day 1, and I have my idea.  Time to get to work.  I’ll keep this posted as I make progress.

Get ready for the most controversial Bargain Ben yet; WarCraft II Battle.Net Edition.

I’ll start by saying that WarCraft has never really been my cup of tea.  I once got the WarCraft Battle Chest, containing WarCraft I, II, and an expansion.  Never played the first, played about half the singleplayer of the second, never touched the expansion.  A few years later a friend wanted me to play it with them, so I did.  Well, I had to go and buy a whole new copy of it, the Battle.Net Edition.  Played a bunch of multiplayer games and then it got lost in the collection.  When I saw early screens of WarCraft 3 I was impressed, but never bothered to play it.  I was involved in the beta for World of WarCraft, played that for a month or so, never saw the charm.

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I’ve changed the scale that the Bargain Bins will be graded on.  The old system, which was Binary influenced was just plain stupid.  I’ve scrapped it and created a new one.  The new grading system is a reverse scoring system, wherein the lower the score the better the game is.  Here are some examples:

 As you can see, the goal is to not spell ‘complete’.  Doing such delcares just how much of a complete waste of time, complete drain on your senses, complete BS.  The lower the score, the fewer letters recieved, the better the game holds out.

Changes have been made to all the past Bargain Bin Breakdowns; Quake 2, Oregon Trail, Sim City Classic, American McGee’s Alice, and Evil Genius.

Any questions?

In the Bargain Bin this week, Evil Genius, developed by Elixir Studios and published by Sierra Entertainment.  Evil Genius was released on my 21st birthday, making it just shy of five years old.  Not an incredibly old game, but again, game years are more like dog years.  Evil Genius is a take on the 60′s spy thrillers, mainly James Bond flicks.  You have an evil genius(you), a secret lair inside a mountain, a henchman or two, and a who boat load of traps and gizmo’s.  The whole point of the game is, as one would think, to be evil.

My first step at becoming an evil genius was browsing a few shady websites.  A few hours later, I had Evil Genius installed and ready to play.  The exact details of how are not important.  What is important is that from the very first splash screen, I knew that this game had stood the test of time.

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Forty years ago today, two men preformed a world first.  Two men, Neil Armstrong and Ed “Buzz” Aldrin, were the first people to land on the moon.  On this day, forty years later, I would like to show my respect to  these two men and the hundred others who helped to get them there.  They brought a dream alive, and gave hope to millions of Americans when they needed it most.  It was a major feat in human engineering and even more so in human will.  We set a goal and we achieved it.

Launch

Landing

Return

And experience the whole trip at:

We Choose the Moon