Como todos los años me di una vuelta por la calle de 6 de Marzo en Guayaquil. En este año que termina, es recorrido obligatorio para todos los que visitan Guayaquil.

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You can read about it here!

http://wii.kombo.com/article.php?artid=12136

And here comes my reaction. It won’t be nice though.

Times sure have changed. A few years ago I could read the news about a new Mega Man game, and my entire day would be devoted to speculate about it, look for fan reactions around the world, read every single comment dissecting every single detail about it. But now everything goes so fast, and unless the news are huge, I just quickly pass it as any of the other many news I want or have to check. New episodes to queue for download here, new announcements there, products, innovations, reports, rumors, vaporware, more and more hype.

But well, I still can make an exception for Mega Man 9.

Unfortunately, for what I’ve seen so far, I’m kind of disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see Mega Man 9 finally. It doesn’t bother me much that Capcom probably won’t even suggest any hint of the X series in this game. This is Capcom we’re talking about, after all. But from the technical stand point, it really is a letdown.

The 8-bit style may look stylish, and retro. But for me it looks cheap. And lazy. I mean come’ on. This is Mega Man 9. We have a gap of ten years of technical achievements and the best we’re going to get is this look? I can’t wait to see it in motion. I really hope the still screens are misleading and in motion this will look beautiful, as 2D Disney cartoons with pixeled character designs. But the comments so far seem to lead to an authentic  NES experience.

“We’re not just giving you Mega Man 9, we’re giving you a new NES game”

NES game? Do you mean like four frame running animations and stuff? And probably no connection at all with the X series, right? Can’t you guys make this game even more unremarkable? Capcom knows they can get away with this by placing the huge 9 number next to the mega man name to get enough coverage and hype for this game anticipated for 10 years. Try calling this ‘Mega Man 8-bit-out-of-continuity Lost Tales 1″ and probably no one would be expecting anything  else than a quick rehash of an old code base. I could have mocked it on its time, but even looking at Rockman Rockman’s build mode I could take some pride.

I guess the major reason I feel such I letdown it’s because apparently I won’t be able to look at this game for inspiration for my own developments. Here I am, taking the old sprites of the beloved games I played in my school days, making Flash games with them, trying to push them to their limits, reading about graphics post-process effects, beautifying maps with gradients,  glows and smooth transitions. Experimenting with classic gameplay using MP3’s for a experience with improved music, and opening the option for players to create their own levels, besides the many crazy things I have on hold. It’s really hard to look at this Mega Man 9 and share the hype. So bear with me on this one.

All in all, I’ll keep checking the further developments of this game. Probably the storyline will make it up for the graphics.
 

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These days I’ve been checking this out

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

I can’t way to try bloom and other post process effects with this.

Posted in Flash | No hay comentarios »

I moved again.

Jeez, I’d with I can forget these hosting problems and focus to work on actual content.

Give me some time. I’ve made arrangements to get a bit of free time to return to my artwork and games, but I really need to settle these hosting problems first.

Posted in IRAGINATION | No hay comentarios »

On March 4 my previous host executed a “temporary” block of my site because it was using too much CPU. It happens they wanted me to switch to a dedicated hosting plan, which was absurd considering my traffic.

So, after 3 days of ticket exchange hell, I decided to break up my relation with new and sign up with a new host. Yeah, I know, you may be wondering why it took me so long? Well, as usual I was busy with my work. And, hey, they said temporary block, like, we will enable you again, maybe? I was wrong, that was my mistake.

I hope this new host can handle better the sudden surges of traffic. I know they happen because of my flash games, but honestly, I have had them before, way larger, and my previous host never complained. I guess like all good host, they eventually oversell and the quality of the service vanishes.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I would like to have a better post but for the moment this is everything.

Posted in IRAGINATION | No hay comentarios »

I found these while making my usual tour at calle 6 de Marzo looking at the Año Viejo exhibition.

Tomorrow I’ll take and upload many more pictures.

Posted in Ecuador | No hay comentarios »

Calladito estaba por los resultados de la selección, y justo ahora cuando Ecuador gana actualizo.

Qué vaina, me he perdido TODOS los partidos de esta eliminatoria. Por lo menos terminaron ganando el último a Perú. Qué nostalgia!

Suarez era el salado? No sé nada, estoy desconectado, pero en fin, sí que me he muerto de la risa leyendo a los trolls en los foros de fútbol.

Posted in Ecuador | No hay comentarios »

Spanish (Traditional Sort)

I typed that just to remember it. The PC came with a regular English keyboard. At first I didn’t bother the lack of ñ or tilde, I have memorized their locations so I could type easily.But the brackets, equals, colons, and all the punctuation, for some reason I have to watch the keyboard to find them. I was even eager to learn to code with an English keyboard. The problem is that in my job I use a Spanish keyboard. So, after 8 hours of coding in my job, it was a nightmare to return to home and try to code with an English keyboard. I really tried.

So today I asked my boss, “do you have a Spanish keyboard to spare?”

Well, he gave me one. Then it was the issue to know what Spanish keyboard he was giving me. I used to remember this stuff first hand, Traditional Sort, International Sort, but not at that moment.

Anyway, traditional sort was just the one I used in Ecuador, and luckily this keyboard has the same layout. It has two slight modifications, a half sized Backspace key, and the right bracket key is up there taking that space. Once I get used to that, I expect to start some serious coding.

Posted in Game Development, Personal | No hay comentarios »