This blog isn’t supposed to have anything to do with games, but I managed to get myself addicted to Bejewelled Blitz and yesterday was by far my best score; I scored roughly 308k in that game, though I’m wondering how people can get scores of 500k plus in 60 seconds!  Anyway, that aside I’ve also signed up to a new browser game, much like Lord of Ultima (LoU), called Might & Magic: Heroes Kingdoms (MMHK).  It’s quite similar to LoU, except it reminds me more of the Heroes of Might & Magic series, except it’s in real-time.  Sadly, all games of these nature I end up dropping after a few weeks, sometimes months, so I’m likely to get back to Guild Wars and Lord of The Rings Online.  I might have to play a bit of Star Trek Online at some point soon too, seeing as I haven’t played it in a while and I pay for it monthly!  Anyway, still games related but in a different vein, I attended a Joystick Junkies (JJ) party for the first time in at least 3 years!  It was great to go there, although the venue was extremely posh… read that as I’d never be able to go there under my current, normal circumstances!  All that aside though, it was good to get back in touch with Chris as I hadn’t seen him since the second JJ party, the first being back in September 2004 after Game Stars Live… oh, those were the days.  I have pictures up online somewhere of the GSL Event, but damned if I know where they are on Fotki!

Of course back then, I was more obsessed with booth babes and freebies!  Oddly enough though, I was kind of working on stuff back then what would have fit into my current game site project; I still actually have some of the promotional materials from that as well.  This reminds me that I really need to get myself some business cards.  Anyway getting back on track, at the JJ party, I had the pleasure of meeting Ian Livingstone, the guy regarded as the father of Lara Croft (you may recognise him as being involved with Eidos, Fighting Fantasy or the Game Workshop).  Admittedly, I didn’t actually know what he looked like, which happens a lot with me.  I know of people, but don’t necessarily know how they look!  That said though, I imagine I’d have recognised Peter Molyneux and I know for a fact I’d recognise Jon Hare given I’ve met him a few times now!  Anyway, I asked him if I’d be able to interview him for the Gamed Up website and he said yes, so I’m happy about that.  I actually haven’t contacted him since then as I amn’t sure of what to say at present, though I might just send him an email to explain more about Gamed Up.

Given I want to have some features up for the site which will be sometime within the next couple of months (properly), I’m going to approach industry people and ask them if I’d be able to interview them sometime.  I eventually hope to do this on the Gamed Up site proper, even if it’s just a temporary blog on there – indeed I’m putting up the multi-blog system so I can start blogging about games somewhere; given that my games blog will take a different format to the rest of the site, I should be able to get away with using it while the site is still being built! – but for now, I’m going to field interview questions here, so if anyone reading has a question they’d like to ask Ian Livingstone, please comment below, or if you have my email address, you can send questions that way.  Please do title it “Re: Interview Questions” though so I know what it’s about.  In the future I’ll have a dedicated interview email address, but that’s a little time off yet, same for the other email addresses.  Please keep in mind though that I may choose to combine, rephrase or even not use questions to help things flow smoothly.  Lastly, if anyone is interested in Gamed up and either wants to know more about it, or sign up to it, they can comment here or email, and I’ll answer what I can.

I eventually plan on writing a nice long blurb about it, but that’s not going to be for a while yet as I need to think about how to word it, although admittedly I may have to come up with it sooner, so I have something to show people when they ask about it!  Watch this space for details and I’ll get back to you.  At the very least, I hope by the start of November to at least have my WordPress installs in place.  I will eventually be adding my project blog to here as well, but I need another few weeks to sort that out.  It’s becoming increasingly likely as well that this will be my only personal site for a while!  I do also plan on getting back into writing, but for now, that’s limited to games design documents that I’m preparing seeing as Notepad doesn’t quite cut it, no matter what I’d like to think!  I would love to code some sort of reader thingy though, so people can read what I write in a more linear format.  Anyway, that’s something that can be worked on in the future.  I’m going to let people in on a little secret though… I’m designing an RPG with a friend of mine of which we’re using RPG Maker 2003 (it’s simpler to use!) to design a concept with; it’ll be a fully playable game, though the full game mechanics won’t be present, due to the limitations of RPG Maker.  Also what won’t appear is the entire story, given we’d save that for a more professional release.  Still though, it’s better to have something basic down before taking it further… it’s a given the planned mechanics won’t work too well, but at least if nothing else the story, characters and maps can be fleshed out in this manner; it provides a means to see how well the basic components work.

Of course, the issue is that we need to work out how RPG Maker 2003 works although we’re making progress in that regard but we’re gonna make something basic first before expanding upon stuff, so we understand how the engine works and such.  I’ll eventually start a blog with regards to it going but again that’s a while off.  I imagine though that the independent (yet related) blogs will take off sooner than the main site will, which is by no means a bad thing… may as well get something started with it, right? Part of my plans though is to get a blog up for every section I have planned for the site, so there’s at least a placeholder, which saves me from doing anything later, plus has the added benefit of making sure that everything works correctly.  I’ve always been more about function over aesthetics, but in the case of Gamed Up, I really want to site to look professional and have something to show for when it’s up and running, hence why I’m gathering up staff atm, and preparing for interviews early as well.  Indeed, the sections are still being planned but I at least have a small idea of what I want to get on the site, although the list gets bigger as I realise the scope of what I’m doing.

I can’t really say anything else at the moment with regards to it, but I do hope that when it does finally get up and running, it’ll be something amazing… although given that my sites tend to have a slow takeoff, I’m going to have to accept that there might be a small userbase at the start; of course, it will help if I can start tying the site into other sites on my network and also places like Steam, Mypace, Bebo, Tagged, Facebook, etc. just to have some sort of presence there.  I do at least plan to have the site’s internal backbone working soonish, though there is already a clan presence at least; it’s all about the small steps.

All that’s missing on this new PC is an internal speaker and a couple of hard drives; my system has always been to have a smaller drive for the OS, then at least one larger drive to install games, put downloads on, etc.  I have some spare drives for the job, but one which was connected to the board I’m using in the “new” system has a corrupted partition, which is a bugger.  I’m working on fixing it and downloaded a utility to help me recover the bad sectors, if possible.  The worst thing is that I might have to just give up on the drive and get a new one, which isn’t cheap, especially as it’s an IDE drive.  And when I went looking on the Maxtor site (it’s a Maxtor drive), I found out that Maxtor and Seagate have merged!  That one completely passed me by!  Anyway, another problem with my laptop, coincidentally is that the speaker wire’s become loosened while it was bieng fixed, so I no longer get sound from it, apart from the sub.  However, this issue is easily repaired by the tech, but I figured I should add it as it’s leading to something and related to PC issues.  My laptop also now has a fly lead in place of the DC jack (though the DC jack is a part of it), which makes it a lot more resiliant and robust (do they mean the same?).  I was told that not everyone likes it as it doesn’t look as good (costs the same price as a replacement, which are rare for Acers I might add!), but as I value function over looks, it was perfect for me.

Oddly enough, it seems that the DJ jack gets the most strain of laptops and I can see why!  I was told my DC jack was cracked and that luckily I nipped it in the bud… even though I had to be creative till I could afford to get the repair and even then the contacts were a bugger, I smelt burning and the unit heated up round the DC jack.  It sucks when you can just about afford to do it… fact is, it needed to be done, so I did it.  Anyway, I hope to get all my PCs up and running properly again soon, so I can finally start on my websites.  I have a new idea for the radio site I want to implement and my Gamed Up project now has a look, but I can’t afford it, and need sections to come up with.  I’ll mention some stuff I’ve done in a later blog entry and where possible, even without the layout, I’ll be adding in a games blog to write to, so as always watch this space.

And lastly, before I forget, I’m gonna be using Google AdSense on this site.  I’m hoping to make sure it doesn’t get in the way, but I’ll have to see.  I also plan on opening up 2 more Zazzle stores as well; one is for the Radio site(s) and another is most likely for the paranormal group I’m setting up.  I may actually set one up for Gamed Up as well, but we’ll see what happens.  I have somany ideas, I find it hard to focus on just one, lest I forget about the others.  I’ll get something sorted eventually, but I’ll take things slowly.  I hope to have things mostly run themselves eventually, which is why the DiggerCast is being moved back to the Radio site, as it cuts down on multiple logins.  One day soon though, I plan to sit myself down and dedicate a whole page to each site and domain so I know what is going where, as frankly I need it!

Anyway, I’m just rambling now, so I’ll stop.  I’ll try to have an update on my sites for the next post, though it depends on what else comes up between now and then.

Anyway, expect videos from my assembling the stuff when I get an SD Card.