I ATE'NT DEAD.

These last few weeks have been rather busy for me, what with Final Exams and Christmas and all that, so I haven't really had much time to work on my Dungeons of Dredmor mod. But now that they're over, I'm happy to say that I now have plenty of time to play Saints Row The Third play Dissadia: Final Fantasy Duodecum 012  play Team Fortress 2  work on it.

So far I've managed to get the fist two skills done for the "Hipsterology" (Dave Strider's) skilltree: Flash Step and Unbelievably Ill Jams.

Flash Step is a simple teleportaion spell with no mana cost and a 15-turn cooldown. While this sounds like a potential game-breaker, using the spell significantly reduces your maximum spellpoints for a significant period of time. I'm still trying to figure out what the right cooldown and debuff times should be, but the concept appears to be sound.

Unbelievably Ill Jams (don't mind the typo) is a simple buff spell that increases your Melee power, dodge rate, Voltaic resistance, and overall nimbleness. The catch is that it reduces your trap sight radius to a an almost comical degree. Again, I'm still tweaking the numbers...

Now, as for the next skill... I'm a little stumped as to what it should be. It's going to be something along the lines of "You run a blog where you tell people they can be individuals by listening to all of your favorite music" or something like that, but I'm not exactly sure how that would translate into a game-play mechanic. After that skill I plan to have something involving either Lil' Cal or Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, followed by a skill that reflects Dave's status as the Knight of Time.

Ah well, I've still got time to figure that out.

Dredstuck: Drop it like it's Hot, Drop it like it's Hot, Drop it like it's Hot...

Today I finished up the sword-crafting recipes, and thought a little more about how the mod as a whole will work.  The way I envision it, there will be a series of four skills, each of which represent one of the four Homestuck kids (Dave, John, Jade, and Rose) as well as a distinct play-style (Melee/No Magic, Melee/Magic, Ranged/No Magic, Ranged/Magic). In addition to each skill having a unique set of abilities, players will start with one of 4 unique artifacts (A Sword, a Mace, a Crossbow and a Staff, respectively). While these artifacts start off weak, their real power lies in the fact that they are ingredients for much more powerful artifacts. To understand what I mean, take a look at the chart I drew up for the Caledscratch Family of weapons:

In this example, you start with the Broken Caledscratch, a poor weapon that's not much better than what you would normally start with. At smithing level 2, you can choose to upgrade this to the Snoop Dogg Sno Cone Machete, which is a pretty good weapon for the point in the game that you get it. At smithing level 4, you can upgrade the Broken Caledscratch to the regular Caledscratch, which is a great weapon by any means. If you were crafting this stuff without taking Dave's skill, this would be as far as you could go. BUT: If you fully upgrade Dave's skill, you get a bonus level of smithing on top of whatever other levels of smithing you already had, allowing you to craft the Scarlet Ribbitar, which is hands-down the best sword in the game.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "HEE HEE HOO, I'M JUST GOING TO TAKE ALL THE HOMESTUCK SKILLS SO I CAN GET ALL THE WEAPONS! ALL OF THEM!" Well you're certainly welcome to try... but it's probably not worth it. This is because each of these item families will use a different crafting skill, so you need to take more than one crafting skill if you want more than one "ultimate weapon". In addition, some of the skilltrees just won't be useful in certain character builds. Yes, I'm certain you can find a way to game the system so that you end up killing Lord Dredmor in one shot on the hardest difficulty, but given the way this game works you're probably going to be dead long before then.

Another thing I've been working on is something I'd like to call "True Alchemy". Basically this lets you "upgrade" an ingot by spending a new item called a "Build Grist" on it.  I'm thinking I should make this a separate mod, though, because while it is a neat idea I just don't think it fits Homestuck all that well.

I like swords!

Allright! I actually got some modding work done today!

Since I use swords most often in Dungeons of Dredmor, I decided to work on them first. So far, I've got the Broken Caledscatch , the Caledscatch , the Snoop Dogg Snow Cone Machete, the Sord....., the Scarlet Ribbitar, and the Broken Scarlet Ribbitar. In addition, I've made a "Build Grist" item that I plan to use for Homestuck-themed item recipies, as well as a couple other things.

First Post (YAY!)

So yeah. I'm just this guy. I play a lot of video games but I don't watch much TV even though I like Anime. I'm currently a Game Design/Compsci major at RensselearPolytechnic Institute. My favorite video game is The World Ends With You, my favorite comic is Homestuck, and my favorite movies are Army of Darkness and Casablanca, both for completely different reasons. 

For some unfathomable reason, I decided to start a blog. I don't know if it's beacuse I'm bored, loney, or just want to make myself seem significant somehow. 

Anyway, here's the stuff I'm working on:

The Legend of Jade: Turntables of Time is a Homestuck fan adventure based on The Legend of Zelda, Oceania of Time. It's kind of silly, to be sure, but it's a good way for me to stretch my limited artistic skills. You can see it here, and you can post suggestions here on the MSPA forums (though you can also leave suggestions in my blog's comments box).

The other thing I'm working on are a couple mods for Dungeons of Dredmor. The first one (pictured) is a graphical mod that replaces the female player with Saber, from Fate/Stay Night. Sadly, at the moment I only have frame done out of who knows how many, but I'm certain I'll get it done eventually.

The other mod (which I'm still working on) is a gameplay mod that adds Homestuck-themed items, skills, and enemies to an already silly game. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.