Ready Player One and Snow Crash

I finally got around to reading a book I've been meaning to for a while now, Snow Crash.

Snow Crash is a light-hearted cyberpunk novel published in 1992 the same year the first photo was published to the web. The plot takes place in grim future of north america which as been broken up into a lawless land where the only rules are based on whatever corporation operates in the area. There are really two worlds that everyone operates in, the real world filled with dark scenery and lawless abandon, and the Metaverse a virtual reality world simulator where half of society (and the book) spend their time. A "snow crash" is an old term for a computer crashing while it was writing a bitmap causing the computer send jibberish to the screen looking like t.v. static, although more colorful. A good book, holds it's age well considering how much has changed in computer science since it was released.

And then we have Ready Player One, a video game themed book loaded with pop culture references from the 80's and 90's.

Ready Player One is about a bleak future, where half of the population spends time in a virtual reality MMO that is more game like. The creator of the virtual world has a program trigger when he dies that gives the rules for a competition to win his inheritance, a nerdy scavenger hunt of sorts. The basic plot structure is the same, big corporations want to take over the virtual reality world and by extension the outside world too, and the extremely talented, but not well off, protagonist has to stop them. They're both filled with nail biting action, tons of comedy, Ready Player One is probably the less serious but more fun of the two. I enjoyed Ready Player One way more than Snow Crash but that might just be because it was focused around early video game culture instead of religious tie-ins to computer science like Snow Crash was.

Both are excellent alternate reality cyberpunk books though, and both are definitely worth your time if you're interested in the genre. Snow Crash is clearly the inspiration for Ready Player One (and many others), but I really think Ready Player One was the better of the two books if you're looking for something funny and light to read.

Some of my Older Art

Haven't made much progress on Unity, still trying to get comfortable with inkscape to make some sprites for a small roguelike I'm working on. I'm probably going to abandon that project for a while to complete some smaller games first. I think that's the sensible idea, maybe some clones of classic games?

Not sure, either way I'm posting some of my older artwork, some sprite sheets and pixel art I've made previously.

This little guy was created to be a worm enemy in a collaboration project I was doing. Unfortunately the project lost steam and fell apart, but I still like the way he ended up looking.

This masked ghost was for the same game, I really like the way he ended up looking, he was going to be the "goomba" of the first world. Slow moving enemy you can jump on.

This was the logo I made for the collaboration that was making the game. They ended up not using it, but it's still one of the nicer looking pieces of pixel art I've done.

Fully animated flame enemy for use with RPGmakerVX ace. Super easy to recolor, 4 frames per animation which was handled by an add-on script. It's a copied and heavily modified version of a breath of fire III for SNES enemy.

My favorite books from last year

I know it's three months into 2015 already, but I'm just now starting my blog so, whatever. I'm going to post my favorites from the books I read last year.

The Android's Dream - John Scalzi

By far my favorite book from last year, it's a humorous sci-fi adventure. Scalzi has a slightly more realistic approach to the future while still giving outlandishly fun technology and characters in his world. The book is filled with spies, extremely advanced AI, farting assassinations, and my favorite part an entire religion based of making fictional prophecies come true. 

"not because they were divinely inspired but because they weren't. If a group actively working to make entirely fictional prophecies come true managed to pull off the stunt, the whole concept of divinely inspired prophecy was thrown into doubt, chalking up a victory for rational thought everywhere."

I enjoyed every moment of this book, it's lighthearted and fun with a lot of excitement. Strongly recommend. 

The Martian - Andy Weir

A fantastic series of catastrophes leads to an astronaut being stranded on mars. The main character is incredibly lovable, and with a very open personality. The book is written in kind of a mix of first person log entries and third person narrative. The technical details are very abundant, which adds to a sense of realism to the main character's struggle for survival. If technical details are not your cup of tea, you may want to skip it, however, if you want a really fun and exciting survival story this is definitely the one I'd recommend. 

There were some other great books I've read this year, but those two were by far my favorites. Both sci-fi which used to be only a guilty pleasure of mine now seems to be my genre of choice. 

First Post - I Discovered Inkscape

A couple days ago messing around with Unity 2D and trying to figure out the direction for a small game I want to make I realized I don't have any artwork necessary to make the game I want. Since the only game art I've made in the past has been spritesheets and pixely backgrounds I went seeking a new tool and found Inkscape a free vector graphics tool. 

I followed along with this tutorial and made myself a logo. I figured that'd be the easiest way to get used to the program. 

Then I found a great blog 2D Game Art for Programmers and messed around with his first blog post making similar characters. I plan on going a little further with that blog, hopefully I can get some decent art for some games soon.