Live Publishing, the publisher who brought you Retro Gamer… seems to have gone bust! This ‘aint a major thing; Retro Gamer brought out 18 issues and they have been slowly deteriorating issue by issue. The real downer is that they owed me about £500 in freelancer fees, for the last two articles that I wrote for them… Delta4 and Gilsoft. Like I’m really in a position to not get paid money right now…. ho hum!

I guess the thing that’ll will annoy me the most, is that I never got round to ordering these rather excellent T-Shirts…

I’m red green colour blind and I love playing Tumblebugs. However, Tumblebugs relies on some amount of colour matching. Well actually it’s based on it! For the most part I can manage it. I can clear see the reds and the blues. Initially the yellow and greens were a little confusing when the action got a little frantic. However, when the purple ball was introduced, it became a nightmare. As it was practially blue, and I really needed to concentrate to distinguish between the two, and most of the time you just don’t have this amount of time available to you.

Anyway, I came up with a fix;

In the Tumblebugs directory \Program Files\Wildfire Studios\Tumblebugs\media is a file LB_Balls.xml, in here you can make a few changes that allow you to alter the light diffuse amount on the ball.


<material>
<name value="Ball_Purple"/>
<diffuse x="1.0" y="1.0" z="1.0" w="1.0"/>
<transparent value="0"/>
<twosided value="0"/>
<texmap value="LB_Ball_Purple.tga"/>
<restitution value="1.0"/>
<staticfriction value="0.0"/>
<slidingfriction value="0.0"/>
</material>


Now change the diffuse element to the following…


<diffuse x="0.5" y="0.5" z="0.5" w="0.5"/>


and the purple ball gets a lot darker! Play with the other colours to allow seperation of the colours.

All the config and level files are in the same directory as XML files, so it looks very easy to change the game. I guess you could make new levels for it pretty easily if you took the time to study the files further. But as a starter, check the tumblebugs.xml file. There are lots of easy changes you can make to alter the way the game plays.


<lives value="3"/>
<extralifestart value="25000.0"/>
<extralifestep value="50000.0"/>
<extralifestepinc value="25000.0"/>
<extralifestepmax value="500000.0"/>
<balldsename value="LB_Balls.xml"/>
<ballsize value="190.0"/>
<launcherdsename value="LB_Launcher.xml"/>
<launcherballspeed value="10000.0"/>
<eaterdsename value="LB_Eater.xml"/>
<ballscore value="10"/>
<comboscorebase value="150"/>
<comboscoreinc value="150"/>
<chainscorebase value="20"/>
<chainscoreinc value="20"/>
<speedquick value="350.0"/>
<speedreverse value="200.0"/>
<fireballcomboscore value="50.0"/>


See Also : Tumblebugs

In the turmoil that is my life at the moment, I was listening to the radio and Jem’s “Just a ride” got played. Now, it’s not the best record in the world, but right then at that moment, it made me go… Yes it is… and everything felt better.

Life, it’s ever so strange
It’s so full of change
Think that you’ve worked it out
then BANG
Right out of the blue
Something happens to you
To throw you off course
and then you

Breakdown
Yeah you breakdown
Well don’t you breakdown
Listen to me
Because

It’s just a ride, it’s just a ride
no need to run, no need to hide
It’ll take you round and round
Sometimes you’re up
sometimes you’re down
It’s just a ride, it’s just a ride
don’t be scared
don’t hide your eyes
It may feel so real inside
but don’t forget it’s just a ride

(more…)

I’ve been looking forward to Tim Burton’s version of CATCF for some time. I love Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and it’s a film that I can watch over and over again. Now, I knew not to compare these two films. Tim Burton was always going to do it differently, and indeed likely stay closer to the book. After the first trailer came out I was desperate to see the film, but when the second trailer came out I started to have doubts. Anyway, I watched it and here goes.

The film is good as a book adaptation. It has none of the magic of the first film, but as I said, that was to be expected. It’s much darker and gorgeously filmed. Johnny Depp plays a brilliant wonka, not the eccentric slightly sinister version played by Gene Wilder, much more odd and emotionally crippled. And this is where the problems with the film start. The screenwriter John August has openly stated that he made Wonka the protagonist of the film which means Wonka is going to grow with the film.

As I pitched it to Tim: Charlie gets a factory, and Willy Wonka gets a family. It’s the whole want-versus-need thing. Charlie doesn’t need a factory. Wonka really needs a family. Otherwise, he’s going to die a giggling misanthropic weirdo.

This really spoils the film. Cut throughout the films are flashbacks to wonka’s childhood. Flashbacks that tried to explain why Wonka is the way he is and why he was driven to become the best confectioner in the world. Only, they don’t work. All the do is distract from the rest of the film. I feel that they become “subtitles for the hard of thinking”. Wonka is an odd character and that is all we need to know, that’s his charm. We don’t need it wrapped up in some neat little parcel. Ultimately this leads to a different focused ending from the book, ie: “Charlie gets a factory, and Willy Wonka gets a family”

It’s a shame because the film goes from being a likable well done Tim Burton film, into a mediocre watch once and forget effort.

It’s been a lng time since I was really into a game… but I’m totally addicted to Tumblebugs