Nethermore

Many of you know that I’ve moved to Germany for the summer and am utterly swamped with the animation I’m doing for a game coming up for the Nintendo Wii–Space Station Tycoon. Sorry for the inactivity of the blog, but I do need time to sleep and eat . . . and explore places like Hamburg and Frankfurt and the Netherlands on the weekends.

In Hamburg last weekend I developed a cough that has superpowers. I’ve successfully called three whooping cranes and one barking seal to our apartment. The former came to the balcony and beat against the glass doors. The latter climbed up three flights of stairs and slapped its fins together in the hall for a half hour, much to the annoyance of our Turkish neighbors. After that, the seal disappeared. But the cranes are still there, and they’re larger than pigeons, so needless to say, the mess I’ll have to clean up later is a fairly large one. Curse this stupid cough!

I checked online, and out of a list of 20 things, I think I narrowed it down to these three: 1) bronchitis, 2) exercise-induced asthma, or 3) Tuberculosis. I’m ruling out #3, and think I have a combo of 1 and 2, which means I’ll be better in 2-3 weeks. I don’t know if I can handle the cranes on the balcony for that long. I’ve already run out of fish.

This weekend we’re going to the Frankfurt Temple to do a few sessions. It’ll be nice to get out of the house. I literally sit in the apartment, staring out a window to the world that is Germany, and I animate monkeys and barfing whales. I could be animating how to count to 31, like I did at my last job. I’ll take the barfing whale, thank you very much.

Here’s today’s stupid happening. I’m doing animation stuff when I hear someone beating on the apartment wall next door. It continues and pretty soon somebody rings my door bell. There’s a 6 foot 5 German guy spouting German at me and looking at me like I must be the dumbest person alive. So I tell him I don’t speak German. By the look in his eyes, my response seals the deal. I AM the dumbest person on the planet. So he asks me this question, in English. “You, a hammer?” I’m not that dumb. Of course I’m not a hammer. But the neighbors might be. They’re the ones pounding on the wall. So I pointed to the neighbors and told him to try there.

In other news, I tried to give a lesson (in German!) to a group of youth about gratitude today. I was very grateful that they corrected all my grammar and vocabulary mistakes. Maybe next time they’ll actually understand what I was talking about.

Last night, Jeff showed me a game called Truck Dismount. Place the little 3D guy anywhere on the truck, change the position of the ramps, and the truck speed. The press the Dismount button and watch the truck whip that little dude around. The more damage to the driver, the more points you get. I spent 45 minutes at it, and couldn’t get beyond 55,000 points or so.

Check the online scores–some of these are over 200k!

Find out why seatbelts were invented! What a weird, twisted, fun game!

Just learned that The Behemoth, creators of Alien Hominid are at it again, developing a game called Castle Crashers for the XBox 360 Live Arcade (XBLA).

British Gaming Blog weighs in on the game.

The game will support 4 players each with a different power for their Knight and be released on Xbox Live Arcade in High-Def complete with a heroic storyline and plenty of bosses, special moves and areas.

Joystiq even has a video of gameplay on their site. This will be a game to look for! The art, the animation, and the sheer earth-quaking power of the gameplay makes this look like a must have for XBLA users!