Horizons – Pointy Sticks

Recent Events

Last Friday and Saturday I went to the 2D or not 2D animation festival. It was awesome. I got to meet amazing people like Barry Cook and Dean Yeagle and Michel Gange. Of course, my DigiPen professor Tony White was there, seeing as he was hosting the festival in the first place.

After getting an exclusive first look on Gange’s upcoming game and getting a bunch of stuff signed by him, and watching some fantastic shorts like Chicken Cowboy, and listening to an orchestra at close range (they took up half the big room the final mingle was in) I went back to my car and found a car window and my backpack missing. Whoops.

Let that be a lesson to everyone: Don’t leave tempting unknowns sitting around where someone may see it. Save yourself some trouble. Now I gotta buy a new backpack, a new sketchbook, and some new charcoal. I feel kinda sorry for the guy who stole it… he risked the law for… well, nothing.

So I got home, and my good friend tek_hed who’d lent me a Wacom tablet for the past many years, finally needed it back. So I was now tabletless.

Feeling sorry for myself, and a bit stupid for getting my backpack stolen, I went and ordered a new toy. A 12″ Cintiq. Seeing as it was only $400 more than the $600 for a new tablet, I figured I might as well splurge. Man, this stuff is expensive. It should get here in a week or two.

But wait, that’s not all!

I got an email from Rick Simmons, CEO of Virtrium LLC about a press release he was making about my Seawolf dragons..

I think I’m getting ahead of myself, as I haven’t mentioned the dragons here yet. The dragons link above should explain a bit about them. They’re an avatar available for Second Life that use a bug (that hadn’t been exploited previously) to increase the size of your avatar. I don’t have any size references images or even videos handy, so I’m just going to give a link to an image of the vendor location. The top of the smallest dragon’s head is about as tall as a normal person. If you have Second Life, you can visit the location inworld by clicking this SLurl.

Oh, and Left 4 Dead came out. Valve’s latest masterpiece, and more proof that finding awesome people and buying them into the company is a very smart idea.

Horizons Screenshots

It’s been about two years, but I finally got around to sorting my Horizons screenshots. I even added a few to it that I took recently while participating in a 14-day trail they opened up.

The highlight of my screenshots is a poorly documented story (through intermittent screenshots and file names) of my journey to game coordinates 0,0. The trip there takes about two hours, most of it walking through … well… nothing. Though there are some interesting highlights, especially for those that play the game. For example, one-time quest NPCs are usually stored at 0,0, among other things.

As a reference the coordinates 0,0 are the Southwest corner of the game. Back in beta (if I recall correctly) the most Southwest corner of the actual continent is around the city Sslanis and is 15000,15000. (Currently it is still 15000,15000, but is an island. Sslanis is around 20000,22000. So I’m either confused, or the tectonic plates really drifted in the past few years.) The land point furthest Northeast are around 27000,40000, making a total of about 12000×26000 “meter” land area (except for all the water between the islands, so cut 1/3rd or so out).

Anyway, it’s a long walk to 0,0. Roughly equal to walking from one corner of the world of Horizons to the other. It is no longer possible to make this journey on foot because the water actually kills you when you drown instead of forcing you into a cancelable recall.

Anyway, here’s my Horizons screenshot directory:

http://stickman.mach5.org/0/Screenshots/Horizons/