Hiatus

Squirrel's busy. And that's created a dilemma.

Yes, my stockpile of posts in preparation for such an event has run short, and that means either thrilling changes in direction or... not much happening until the end of June. I was sixteen years of age when I started this blog, and back then I could afford to make writing questionable English a priority. Today that's less possible, and so, "Blog Squirrel spring break" or something... idk.

I'm also acutely aware that I may have spent the last six years completely wasting my time, so I don't want to be ploughing more hours into this project than I need to (that time's for Sega Retro!!). I've thought about bringing in other fun subjects like PROGRAMMING and UK POLITICS, or maybe use that Twitter account for something other than automated plugging, but it's all up in the air - there may not even be a future. Frightening!

Feel free to suggest things in the comments below or stay silent or whatever - I'll still be around, but unless something major happens, I won't posting reviews of video games for a couple of months.

As an aside, I've acquired a lot of pointless Sega knowledge over the last three years - I could start detailing finds if people care.

Shifting Stuff

Once upon a time I set up The Obscure Ripping/Research Project, a website which attempted to document unlicensed tat before better attempts emerged. tORP has always relied on crappy freebie hosting services because it was a hobby, and when I started beefing up this blog with "guides" and "specials" I recycled the hosting to avoid opening my wallet.

I chose 110MB.com as the host of tORP, and a couple of years ago, this made sense. The URLs were short, the uptime was reasonable, and 110MB of space was all I really needed. Unfortunately the owners of 110MB have allowed the service to deteriorate into something pretty horrible. Servers are constantly down, support is scarce, and even registering a new account is a pointless challenge, yet the team still have the audacity to promote their paid options. There are people who haven't been able to log in for over six months - what a great service!

In an age where uploading videos, making blogs, hosting large downloadable files and connecting with your friends can be done without paying a penny, it baffles my mind why uploading HTML documents requires an investment, but such is life - it's an issue nobody wants to address (or even acknowledge) for whatever reason, and I'm not going to fight it today. But I will be severing my ties with 110MB in the coming months and doing everything of value here.

My last guide was posted in blog form, as opposed to the usual method of hosting pages off-site. The plan in the next few weeks or so is to shift earlier guides and specials over to this blog to be absorbed, so you'll likely see a few repeat posts in the days ahead. I plan to update some of them during this process, but if you've got bookmarks (*cough*) you might have to update.

Vote 1924... yet again

Not that I'm expecting anyone to care, but I've redesigned the SHPMDBGWL4 mini site. It was something I was meaning to do quite a while ago, a.k.a. last year. It's nothing special, but certainly better than before.

Don't ever expect to see anything "new" from the series, but if you haven't played these games yet, I urge you to give them a try. Yes the file size is a bit excessive, yes there are many references to things you won't understand, but I am genuinely interested in whether there's a market for this sort of "joke" game. SHPMDBGWL4 has broken gameplay, rubbish graphics and stolen audio, yet it still resonates with people (or at least it did in 2008).

One day I'd like to bring Quackers to the big leagues, because five years on this stupid concept still makes me laugh. The implementation here is often lousy (most of the earlier games make me cringe) but I honestly feel it's a idea with potential. I'm still waiting for the video game equivalent to Airplane! but the best the industry has managed thus far is a Stan Helsing. It's a long-term goal of mine to change that.

Squirrel's Guide to Image Formats: Take 2

Hurray for more Sonic 2 screenshots!

I re-wrote large parts of this guide I made a year or two ago, partly to reflect the new blog skin (other pages will get a similar treatment in the coming days), and partly because despite claiming to host things forever, Imageshack felt the need to drop some of the images. The guide is "better" now, and although it probably still won't satisfy the hardcore technical people, it was always more of a visual demonstration rather than a lesson in computer science. I use these pages to combat MFGG stupidity.

In other news, we're partying like it's 2007 with Chrip Squirrel, the "official" Twitter account of myself (guess which names were already taken). Feel free to follow - it's effectively a condensed version of this blog but some like condensation. Like distillation plants.

+1

There's nothing I like better than polluting search results. The more times you find Blog Squirrel through Google, the higher up the index it shall rise, to forever deter those who seek advice on bushy-tailed rodents.

But now there's another method - the "+1" mechanism Google rolled out a couple of months ago. It's an opportunity to show the world that you think Blog Squirrel has gnarly potential... though seeing as this site doesn't average masses of hits a day, it'll be lucky to see any activity at all. But there's no harm in experimenting, so behold, an experiment.

And if it fails to prove any point at all as is probably the case, you can guarantee I'll remove it without warning several months down the line. And for the record, it's at the bottom right of this post. And all posts.

Much better

Slightly edited default templates are boring. Now Blog Squirrel has a heavily edited one. Generally I think it's an improvement but whether I'll keep those web 2.0 diagonal lines is a different story.

Feel free to point out gaping flaws. Things might break in old browsers... but you shouldn't be using old browsers.

TTFN tORP

All good things come to an end. Except this was never a good thing, and it hasn't technically come to an end. Fan favourite The Obscure Research Project, founded in 2006-ish by myself... isn't going to get any bigger, though you might have guessed this already. It's reached the end of its natural life and I probably won't be updating it anymore. I don't know if it did its job but hey, rest in peace you badly named mess. Keep reading for the autopsy.

If you too would like to link to Blog Squirrel

Here's a set of 88x31 buttons. The type the internet uses... for some reason (I mean really... 31 pixels tall?). For some reason I made ten.

Maximise those hits.

EDIT: And now have 20 more, seeing as they're so easy to make.

If you're into sprite sheets

I wrote a guide on how to make them not suck.

This was intended for the folks at MFGG (the first part covers MFGG's database system, TCSMS) but large parts can apply to any site that stores sprites for a living. I haven't mirrored it here (yet) because it's still a work in progress and I'm not sure if I'll be adding more.

It isn't completely related to this blog but it's good to try and spread a message.

Blog Squirrel, now in HD

Believe it or not but this blog uses a template! One designed by Google/Blogger in 2004, and though it's nice... it doesn't really make the best use of monitors designed after 2004. Perfect for those classic 800x600 and 1024x768 displays, but anything higher gets treated to big vertical borders at either side of the blog posts. Now I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem to be an efficient use of space to me, so I've converted those pixel widths into percentage ones.

The downside is if you're using an 800x600 monitor, this blog will look horrible. But to be fair, everything looks horrible if you're using an 800x600 montior. Things might still look a bit strange with crazy 1080p monitors, but the point is things shouldn't be as cramped anymore.

Guides (Mk. II)

I made a couple of non-Blog-Squirrel-branded guides to use against the uneducated users of Mario Fan Games Galaxy, but since it applies to far more people than Mario fans, I think it's only fair to pass it around a bit. It also gives me an excuse to try out Blogger's "Pages" option.

So, EDUCATION YOURSELF

(Now with 200% more off-site hosting!)

Now you too can rid yourself of JPEGs and run 80s games in composite colour mode. Who needs fast cars and young women?

The glitch that stole Christmas

It's safe to say I've worn out Clickteam's "The Games Factory". A follow up to 1994's "Klik 'n' Play", TGF was a reasonably successful game creation tool of the late 90s. In 2001, Multimedia Fusion rolled along, and nowadays MMF2/TGF2 are the ways to go about creating similar applications. TGF is, and has always been, immensely buggy, but somehow I've let myself get by. One such bug is this, which popped up for no particular reason this afternoon:

I can't adjust animation speeds anymore, which pretty much forces me to either upgrade or stop producing garbage for kicks. I've chosen the latter, since MMF's interface isn't half as fun and I'm on a course learning C++ anyway. The SHPDMGWL4 series owes its life to this program, as do many, many other early indie/fangame classics, some of which I may end up releasing for the hell of it (I do have half a decade's worth after all). 13 years is a very long lifespan, and to be honest, it was only really me keeping it alive.

One slight concern was that I was due to make my annual christmas special within the next month. TGF was unlikely to make its way to any future computers of mine, so it would have been abandoned in 2010 regardless, but now all I can give you for christmas is this screenshot:

We're all out of gum.

Afternoon

There's not going to be as much activity from yours truely for the next coming months. 'Tis the first year at university and I'm having to make do with a connection that varies between <1 and 20Mbps, as opposed to my usual constant 7.6Mbps. I call it the "kitchen dependant connection", because both the WiFi and radio seem to struggle when someone is cooking up a mess. The move affects my entire internet career and is likely to screw up the sending of emails and uploading of files so don't expect the craziness of the summer where I was able to do 42738942 internet tasks a day.

I'm likely to still be around at weekends though... such as now.