informer.

another late night at Obsidian. I am sitting here at my desk, listening to the janitor vacuum in the hallway, patiently waiting for my girlfriend to swing by and pick me up so i can go home and sleep (and return the next day). 9:43PM. I think it will be awhile 'till she gets here..

I finished up my latest level today. It took me no time to light, actually it was enjoyable to do that. I am getting pretty good with that (not great, but alright). Lighting was always something that I'd kind of did as an afterthought, and with good reason (the tech's not typically rewarded high-quality lighting in video games!) Not that it is quite there, yet, but it's improving. Anyway I consider myself fairly handy with the modeling and texturing end of things, I'd enjoy spending more time on making things light pretty as well. For this reason I intend to spend more of my own time building and lighting high-quality still imagery, go a few rounds with that and I should feel pretty competent. Mind you, I've spent more than my share of time figuring out how to make things look interesting, anyway..

I was keeping an eye on Zanac X Zanac on eBay but that thing went out today. $200+ !! Man. I want the game but.. not THAT bad. That's crappy when it's a game which is obviously only selling for it's rarity/collectibility. I just want to play the actual GAME. I might see if I can dig up an ISO somewhere. If my pocketbook was a little easier I wouldn't sweat the cash so much. Pretty hard to justify spending such money on a freakin' single game right now (ANY single game!) I was also watching Thunder Force Special Pack for Saturn. I am a HUGE Thunder Force fan, but again I don't wanna shell out upwards of $100 for a port of a game I already have (and beat dozens of times!) Whatever, watching eBay is fun.. just so long as you don't get too carried away spending money on crap you don't really need.

I stumbled across the webiite of this dude YOSHIKI OKAMOTO. He is one of the unsung old-timer heroes of videogames. He created Time Pilot at Konami, 1942 and the original Street FIghter while at Capcom.. among plenty of other things. He seems like a happy guy, one who's name most people won't recall (though I do remember seeing his "trademark" in many Capcom games, as a kid). He's since started his own company, Game Republic (not the magazine). I have no idea what they are up to or what they have released- he's got a pretty intensively detailed blog, i haven't really perused it too much yet but I want to dig in a bit w/ the Google Translator - this stuff kinda fascinates me (though as any blog-ready can tell you, that stuff can be sort of top-heavy at times).

Headache, just popped a couple Advil - it's been a long day and a long week. I look forward to getting home and being AFK for a couple of days.. rest my neurons.