Maniacle Plans for World Conquest

It all began with a smartphone...

Code Monkey: Jailbreak

Quiver before your Master!!
-Jack D.

Understanding the Enemy

Competitors are important and necessary to a free market capitalist system. I am not a capitalist; I am an Evil Overlord. In my line of work competitors simply distract me from my main task, taking over the world. There is an easy way to do this, dispose of them. Simple. Only they to will try to dispose of me, therefore I must engage in more cunning tactics. In the interest of showing the citizens of my soon to be Empire the truth about my competitors, I have had my minions compile a list of their pros and cons.

Title: Assassins Creed III
Genre: Storyline RPG
Likes: People who like to master gameplay, creating combination attacks for optimal kills and achievements. The game targets young men (as it seems most games do) through use of character class - Assassin; character skills - parkour and fighting; and Character setting - 'ancient' or 'rustic' cities, non-traditional (from an American point of view) cultures and values, and mercenary storyline.
Dislikes: Casual gamers who find the mastery of techniques tedious. Also the amount of cinematic material may discourage some players who are more interested in action than plot.
My Likes: I enjoy the gameplay, the engine they use allows for a wide variety of movement, though in this version of the game it seems to be somewhat 'sticky' at times. Its almost too easy to stay on platforms and climb walls making the gameplay less emersive as you must play around to get off of something. The world seems to be well built without many invisible barriers keeping you within the game world. The storyline is also interesting.
Dislikes: There is only so much cinematic material I can take before I will put the controller down and go eat ice cream. This game definitely surpassed that limit. If I hadn't been in class I would have made me a nice bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with Magic Shell and sprinkles on top. It was that bad. As I noted above I think the earlier games boasted a better physics engine than this version. Those are really my main peeves with this game as the set up of the series has been very well done.
Interaction: The player has rather good control over the character. The character will walk or run, climb, jump, and attack all at the whim of the player. There is also an almost unlimited combination of these commands allowing for a wide variety of actions to be carried out. Along with these base actions other special occasion commands are available in certain situations.
Story:

Techniques of an OverLord

   True Overlords know they are not immortal (yet anyways) and make plans for their eventual demise.  The most important of these is the training up an apprentice to one day fill their shoes.  Therefore I have set forth a series of techniques which any apprentice of mine, present or future, must master.
   Success means you are indeed learned in the Overlord ways and in position to one day take my place, therefore I must dispose of you before you dispose of me.  Failure means, well... failure.  Overlords do not tolerate failure and all who fail must be disposed before they bring to ruin the total work of the Overlord.
   Have you the discipline to master the techniques of the Overlord?  the cunning to outwit him her if you fail?  The raw luck to take the thrown disposing of you master and teacher before you yourself are fed to the wolves?!  Then read on brave apprentice, you fame awaits!

Technique	Description	Example
Game Description	A short description of the game that states the player objectives, object states, challenges, and other necessary details.	You play the role of Code Monkey: A programming chimp who has been sent to work on the new space station. While there the AI takes over the ship and kidnaps your beloved Pretty Girl. While everyone else escapes you stay behind to rescue her. You must survive multiple levels, fighting off Wandering Managers, Zombie Code, and Sentient Computers. Health can be regained by eating Fritos and you can get an energy boost from cans of TaB and Mountain Dew. You will be able to stand, slide, walk, climb, kick, fall, die, jump, hang rom platforms, and shoot a variety of weapons. To win you must rescue the pretty girl, defeat the AI and then escape before running out of air.
State Diagram	A diagram showing the different states (standing, walking, dying, etc,)that an object has in one game and how the object transitions between them
Parenting	Parenting is where you define the attributes of one object and use it as a 'parent' for other objects so that they (the 'children') inheret the attributes of their parents. Extremely useful as it takes less time than individualing programing every object and as it keeps the code neat.
Bracketing	Brackets group information. They can contain lists, commands, strings, tables, other brackets, or mostly anything. In GameMaker bracketing is done using Start and End Blocks and is useful for ordering commands after a Test Variable.	image of brackets in GameMaker

Until I am no longer sleep deprived,
~Jack D.

World Conquest Through Geeks and Monkeys

   What better way to take over the world?  On one hand there are the Geeks who already secretly run the world using there ninja programming skills, and on the other are swarms of simple-minded Monkeys.  Better yet, why not combine them into a Nerdy Ninja Monkey.  I'll call him Code Monkey.

I can picture it now...

Code Monkey must rescue the Pretty Girl from the clutches of evil Manager Rob!  He will kick, spin, and punch his way to his fair maiden.  On the way he must collect Fritos, Tab, and Mountain Dew to keep up his strength while battling... I don't know what he will have to battle yet.  Maybe I'll send him to space to fight aliens.

No matter what Code Monkey does he thanks Jonathan Coulton for an amazing song that inspired his game world creation.

Until I have better trained Ninja Geek Monkeys,
Your soon to be dictator,
Jacqueline

A New Toy

Welcome, Welcome to my not so humble abode. There is surely but one reason you have come to see me. You have heard about my new toy. I am right? Then come, let me show you this marvelous creation of geek-kind. Behold Game Maker!

I finally got this downloaded on tuesday, didn't have a chance to play with it till today (still haven't really messed around with it). Yes, this is my fabulous new toy. It has difficult to restrain my excitement and actually get some schoolwork done. But everyone needs a break, right? So in my "downtime" I checked out a few videos about GameMaker. The one featured below talks about how to program a pacman game. I've already covered how to make sprites, and objects and whatnot, but I know that barely scratches the surface. So I thought, PacMan, simple enough. Well I was not right (the All Powerful ect.. Jack D. is never wrong, just occasionally not right). Obviously there is a lot more in even a simple game than you would expect. Yet it seems that these are still basic functions, ones I'm going to use over and over again as I work with this tool. As soon as I get a real chance to play with GameMaker you can bet I'll be right back watching this tutorial. So, if you too are looking to learn some basic aspects of GameMaker, or just in the mood to watch a random tutorial, enjoy:

Seems I still have a long way to go before I subdue the Nerds from their Parents Basements and take over the world.
Until then,

Jack D.