That's right. It's catch up time for me. I have caught up with my school work, caught up with my friends, caught up with my CS:S clan, and have basically caught up with life in general. Now its the blog's turn. [:P]

First of all, lets kick of with a funny picture I found (and edited).

So the Halo 3 Beta ended midnight sunday. [:(] Well, now it seems my mates and I aren't so keen to go and have a LAN bash round at Zekian's. The guys know why. Halo 3 is like a drug, and we are all experiencing the withdrawal symptoms. *twitches*

Lately I have been watching a lot of Family Guy on the intarnets. Great stuff. I have also abandoned Tribal Wars *Highfives browser game haters*

V3 sounds like it's going to be awesome, I can't wait. It's going to be like the beginning of a new era, now if only the quality of submissions are raised…. >_> I used to download pretty much all the front page submissions - just to check them out - but I only bother for the submissions that look interesting now.

Oh and….

Yeah, its pretty awesome. Its a Wacom Volito 2. Its only A6 in size, but it was pretty cheap. Also when its in 'pen mode' (where the location the pen is on tablet directly corresponds to the same location on screen), it doesn't need to be very big, in fact it would be a pain in the ass if I had to move my hand any more than now - I still get pixel perfect control so there's nothing to complain about really. If anyone else here owns a Volito 2, they would probably agree with me in saying that the 'tutorial' was incredibly patronising - it was more of a tutorial on how to use Windows. I could actually feel my brain cells being killed. Anyway PS already has built in pressure sensitivity support, and it rocks being able to control opacity and brush width with how hard you press the pen down. However it is going to take me a while getting used to, as you can tell from the picture above.

As for non-computer related news, my brother (17 years) now owns a car! YAYZ. He can drive me around now, and I no longer have to ask my mother - who is often too drunk to drive - to give me lifts. Its a 1.1l silver grey Peugeot 206 with a green (YES GREEN!) interior. WTF!?

Quiz!

1. Do you often find yourself experimenting with values / blend modes / primitives to find the right visual effect you want in GM?

2. Would it be cool if I made a GM utility that can be used to visually design concepts easily and quickly, with real time sprite / surface / primitive / particle system manipulation, all with complete control over blend modes? Would it excite you if I said it would also have built in sprite and particle system editors?

3. Would you use it?

4. What other features would you like to see in an all-in-one GM utility like this, designed to help / speed up the process of concept development for noob and pro game makers alike?

What do you think?

*looks up* Woah! Did I just type ALL that?! Well, thanks for reading.

~Noodle.