My first blog rant

oh man this is just brilliant.. I won't spoil it with an intro:



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Alright, in other news, I'm so broke right now that I'm taking on some freelance work and need to put Waterlollies aside for a week or two. It's just not funny anymore and we're talking about survival now.

Speaking of customer service (were we?), some random thing that happened:
I needed to buy some button cell batteries for my favourite LED light the other day. I went to the shop and the guy said "$8.75 each". They are tiny batteries and I needed 4 of them, so I said STFU to him and walked off..

As expected, it took me about two seconds to find a site that sells micro batteries in bulk. Meritline.com had exactly what I wanted so I ordered a card of 20 batteries for $5.50. Got to the checkout and how much do you reckon for shipping from the US to Australia?

$62.

I emailed them asking if it was a mistake. They replied saying 'unfortunately, we agree that shipping to your location is a little high' and then 'oh by the way, we only accept wire transfer for international orders'.

I fired back a terse reply and went back to Google.

The next micro battery site in the list was Microbattery.com.
Inside 4 minutes, I'd bought 25 batteries for $9.90. Shipping was $2.95. Paid with Paypal.
Yaye!

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you all this is because I told Meritline I'd blog it and they didn't give a shit, so this is my little "fkyu" to them. So if you're outside the US, don't buy online from Meritline.com
As if you would anyway... their international shipping price alone slams the door in your face, not to mention their narrow, archaic payment policy.

On the other hand, I highly recommend Microbattery.com because I got exactly what I wanted, zero fuss, all payment options available and I didn't need to go looking for the 'Contact Us' link at all (though it might be worth doing that to pass on some positive feedback).


It was my birthday the other day! Give me gifts please, thankyou (preferably gifts that I can swap for food outside my house).

Slingshots

I love home-made projectile weapons.. the more simple and silent the better. The slingshot has to be one of my favourite ever.. it's just so perfect.

I've often wondered what it would be like to be fired from a gigantic slingshot into a lake, and once (years ago now) I designed what I thought would be the next big thing: a theme park attraction that flings people hundreds of metres to the middle of a lake. Of course it never went further than diagrams in my school books.

Tonight looking through YouTube, I stumbled across this by complete accident.. it's absolutely incredible.

Special Effects DVDs

TechSmith, the creators of the fantastic screencapture software Camtasia Studio, have graciously agreed to sponsor the 'Bitey Castle Academy' lesson DVDs that I have been talking about on the Bitey Castle forum for the past few months.



I'll be using Camtasia Studio 4 to capture the video and audio from my computer, so you'll be hearing me explain stuff, and watch as I create it.

After taking a poll of which lessons everyone wanted, Special Effects lessons overwhelmed the other poll options of Flash Basics, Drawing Basics and Animation Basics. While the Effects lessons are aimed at 2D animators and illustrators, the same physical principles apply to other types of animation including 3D, stop motion, etc.

I am aiming for a March release of Waterlollies, so immediately after that's finished, I'll get to work on the Special Effects DVDs. A teaser chapter or two will be released in the brand new Academy section of Bitey Castle, but the remainder of the lessons will be available only by purchasing the DVDs.

I'm doing the Effects DVDs first but I will cover the others in separate "volumes" later. Each volume will consist of several DVDs.. so the Special Effects Volume will have separate DVDs that cover design, animation and treatment.

Stay tuned after Waterlollies (that's if the amazingness of the movie doesn't KILL YOU!!!) and I'll announce the DVD progress here.

Yes I'm addicted.

As always happens when you go live with a major project, the next few days are spent tweaking, fixing and changing stuff.

Since uploading BrackenSack I've been doing just that, which also happens to involve lots of playing. I've managed to get some good scores so I decided to capture the screen and post the video. The video below shows about a minute of my BrackenSack playing technique.. it's shrunk way down but you can see the score.

Also there's no sound in this unfortunately.. I couldn't figure out how to make Camtasia capture my sound card audio.

Win a Prize: I'll make a custom Bitey image for you.

I'd love to see other people's videos of BrackenSack. I'll make a forum sig or avatar for my favourite at the end of the month. Feel free to add your own sound, voices, subtitles, music or any kind of story. Host it on YouTube or googleVideo, send me the URL and I'll blog the winner here.

Just a small competition to get the BrackenSack word out there ;)

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BrackenSack

If you enjoyed Bitey of Brackenwood, I hope you like BrackenSack: the very first Brackenwood game, featuring Bitey and Fatsack.

Click the image to see the game: Coded from the ground up by the Brackenwood forum's resident Actionscript (and everything else) Guru, Daniel "Vector" Kerr, I'm really happy with how it's turned out.

The object of BrackenSack is kinda like what it sounds (think hacky-sack). You play as Bitey, trying to keep Fatsack in the air by bouncing him off your head.. just like in the movie. You don't get to slam him off into the distance with a stick though - maybe in a future version of the game :D

BrackenSack also has World Rankings for the categories of Rank (quality of play) and Height Records (how high you hit Fatsack). Soon I'll announce prizes for the best scores too.. I'm giving away two Heraldic-style Brackenwood t-shirts. One for the highest ranked player, and one for the Height record.

Watch the instructions movie first (built into the game) and go to it - -And more importantly, please make frequent use of the 'Send to a Friend' link on the BrackenSack page!

Oh yeah, and check out this awesome video review from The Daily Crumb: