So, today's comic strip is a big one I know. See I thought it would be cool to color the comic strip to make it look like and old comic book. Once I get one of these bright ideas in my head there is no getting it out. I spent the better part of the day trying to figure out how to do it. Now that I think back there is probably some built in "old comic book" filter if I had just looked in the fucking manual. Anyway, I devised a system of layers, selections and channels that seemed to do the trick. Take a look at this image and you will see what I mean. Needless to say I was feeling pretty fucking smart at that point and I continued to create the panels for the strip using my special technique. Then as I began to assemble the panels together into the page I noticed that I was going to have to shrink them down quite a bit. Once I had shrunk it and saved it out I realized that all my hours of work creating those tiny dots was now lost to the Gods of 256 color optimization. I still think it looks okay, just not like what I had originally intended. I'll always have this image though to look back on and remember what could have been.
The official Metal Slug 4 website has a new video up showing off some actual Gameplay. The video shows off some really cool new stuff. Just the first part where they are sliding down a snow covered mountain on a huge log while shooting guys and helicopters is enough to win me over. What they need to do is take the Metal Slug license and make a game for one of the Next Gen systems. I know the word on the street is that their next game Metal Slug 5 will do just that but I am worried they are gonna fuck it up. Will they feel the need to make it fully 3D? Is it gonna turn into some kind of 3rd person action adventure game? God only knows what could happen to it. I can see it working in 3D if it were done like say Klonoa 2 or the old game Pandemonium on the PSX. Essentially give it 3D backgrounds but keep the gameplay 2D. The best option of course would be to keep it a 2D game and just make it high res but the chances of that happening seem slim.
I had some people ask for more information about my Kumite record in Virtua Fighter 4. So here is the breakdown:
Ring Name-Sweet Potato Pai
Rank-1st Dan
Wins/losses-50/31
Win Ratio-61%
I also had a lot of people write in and tell me that they too are getting their asses kicked at the 1st Dan level. It seems like they crank the difficulty way up. If someone ever comes over to my house and brings a 7th Dan VF4 character to play, I'd change my name and move to Mexico.
I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from Club PA members regarding part one of our behind the scenes look at Penny Arcade. There is still plenty of time to join this month if that sounds like something you would be interested in.
We are going to try a new feature here at the Arcade. LOVE & HATE : with Kara and Jew! is an answer column written by, you guessed it Kara and Batjew. They need your questions to get this thing started though. So please feel free to share your most embarrassing problems with them so that later we can all have a good laugh at your expense. Kara, being the kind nurturing person that she is will endeavor to provide you with actual real world solutions to your questions. Batjew being the sick bastard that he is will probably… honestly I have no clue what Jew is gonna do and it kinda scares me.
-Gabe out
