Site Updates

deviantArt isn't the only thing I've been beavering away at for the last couple of months; I've also found the time to add a few new bits and pieces to my web site, and by "new" I mean old crap I dug out of a zip file somewhere. (I do spoil you people.)

Mario 64 Wallpaper



First up is a revamped version of a Mario 64 WP I first put together in the Summer of 2000. Working only with images scanned in from the game's box and manual, the original ended up a bit on the rough side, despite the hours I must have poured into cleaning up that fucking logo. :D



I always liked the basic design though and a few weeks ago, thanks to Paint Shop Pro and two official renders I uh, borrowed from Boo Mansion and Super Mario Wiki, I was finally able to make the wallpaper I wanted to eleven years ago. Go, me!

Video Game History Slides



In 2003, I had to do a presentation for a communications class in college. Being a bit hazy on the pre-NES era of gaming, I decided to take that as my subject in an effort to broaden my gaming knowledge. I don't think the class were exactly enthralled by tales of the Odyssey and the awfulness of E.T., but I still managed to pass and I did actually learn a bit of video game history in the process.

The script I used on the day has been up on the archives page of the site for a few years, but I only got around to putting the slides up (in PDF form) a few days ago. They're nothing too extravagant (I wasn't exactly taking the class I made them for too seriously :D), but they do feature a damn sexy picture of Nolan Bushnell; surely worth a passing grade all on its own.

Pick-Ups 2008



Finally, I've bulked out the rather barebones features page with links to several amazing pieces of blog content from the last couple of years, as well as links to a trio of long, rambling Listal lists detailing my music, DVD and game purchases from 2008 - Lists that were meant to be a quick look back at the year in December, but ended up stretching out all the way until February....2011.:D

Site Update: It's a FAQstravaganza

Nobody remembers except me, but it's roughly nine years around now since my brief, pathetic tenure as a writer of gaming FAQS. In the couple of months I was screwing around, I managed to produce only one complete FAQ for Worms on the PC, as well as maybe 10% complete ones for Blast Corps and Mario 64.

Reading through the Mario 64 FAQ, it looks like I intended it to be my first one, but the size and complexity of both it and Blast Corps meant doing a FAQ for either without a TV of my own would be quite a bothersome task. Worms was a much more manageable undertaking. I had ready access to a PC at the time and I had played that game to death over the previous two years. In the end, I don't think it me too long to crank out the FAQ and I had it up on GameFAQs a day or two later. Of course, a bunch of other cheats site had nicked it for themselves within a few days, with only one or two actually bothering to ask permission. Bastards. :D

To celebrate this momentous occasion, as well as giving the Worms one a much-needed spelling, grammar and formatting overhaul, I've also unleashed the the two unfinished FAQS for the first time on the my web site. Why? Because what else am I going to do on an idle Sunday night? What? Get on with those Backlog Assault entries? Don't be ridiculous.

Site Update: Deep Blue Theme 1.3

TL;DR: A new(ish) version of this turn-of-the century desktop theme awaits on my web site. The shiny new wallpaper's up on my dA gallery.

Back in the Summer of 2000, I was way into desktop themes, well, that, NES ROMs and Limp Bizkit; It was kind of a strange time. I'd been throwing together bad wallpapers for more than a year, but the concept of themed wallpaper, cursors, sounds, etc. in a single, handy package was mind-blowing to my tiny, nerdy mind. Having assembled this bitchin'-lookin' 800 x 600 wallpaper from two royalty-free photos, I decided it'd be the perfect foundation to build my first theme upon.

By July that year, I had a bunch of accompanying cursors I'd made in Cursor Maker; a set of sounds I sampled from the shitty dance tracks I made the previous year (scroll down, if you dare); and a very blue colour scheme packed up with that insanely highly-compressed JPEG as the Deep Blue Theme.

As well as putting the theme on my own site, I sent it into download-behemoths-at-the-time, Tucows, where bizarrely, it got highlighted as the Theme of the Day for July 13, 2000. I was probably walking on air for a week after I found that out, I don't think I'd ever been as proud of anything I'd done up to that point. :D Not only that, but there were actually real people dropping by my crappy little site for the first time ever, leaving messages in the guestbook (remember those?) and even sending me email questions about a fucking desktop theme!

Now, I know no one else cares, but since I pulled down my old web site in 2003, my cerulean masterpiece has been missing from the internet. That's mainly because I've never been happy putting together a new version with the old wallpaper - it's small, heavily artefacted and maybe a bit dodgy copyright-wise. I needed a new one, and in classic JiliK style (in a number of ways), I finally threw something suitable together in Paint Shop Pro last July.

Tah-dah! It's quite a departure from the original, but it is actually original this time and I think it works pretty well. Well, that is if you want to rock a Windows Classic theme in this day and age. :D If that sounds good to you, Deep Blue Theme 1.3 is now up for download on my downloads page, appropriately enough.

Arty Screensaver

TL;DR Version: I've remade a screensaver from my old site, get it here.

Back in the Spring of 2000 I was in the middle of finishing up my Junior Cert. art project. The theme I'd picked for it was "Summer Memories", so in the run-up to doing the final painting, graphic design, 3D and craft pieces I was cranking out practice drawings and paintings of flowers, butterflies and the like as well as design ideas for my final project submissions.

In the Summer of that year I took some of those drawings (and some other stuff) and made them into a little screen saver. I called it the Artwork Screensaver and uploaded it to my old web site on the soon-to-be-closed-down GeoCities.

A couple of months ago, I set about remaking that screensaver with higher resolution images and lots of new screens. I put the finishing touches to it a few weeks ago and popped it up on my web site, where you can grab it, should you feel the need to do so.

After I'd finished, I thought it would a nice idea to go through the saver screen by screen and give a little background on the bits and pieces of feeble artwork it contained. And that's exactly what we're going to do. Hey, come back!



Screen 1: How abstract. This comes from a not-so-great design I entered in Telecom Eireann's Design a CallCard competition in 1997, in which I was one of many, many runners up. Seriously, there were about seven in our school alone. For the original screensaver I scanned in a photocopy of the design (TE kept the original), cropped it to this and messed about with the image a bit in a program called Repligator, I think.



Screen 2: Two flowers I drew one day at home while I was messing around with some pastels. I'm pretty sure I was finished with the whole art project at that stage, so I guess these were done on my own time.



Screen 3: A little drawing I did sometime early in 2000. After having seen this documentary on a modern artist one night, I decided that anyone could crank out the type of stuff he was doing. Within the next few days I set out to draw something as arty and pretentious as possible and this was what I came up with. I really liked the drawing so it got included as the third screen in my super-pretentious Artwork Screensaver™. I think they call that "hypocrisy"

Site Update: Timesplitters 2/Soul Calibur Review...Thing

Today, I've stuck another old college assignment up on my web site. It's a sort of review I did in 2005, comparing two games of different genres in terms of physics, AI and collision detection. I picked TimeSplitters 2 and Soul Calibur II for mine. As well as that, we had to do a walkthrough for the first level of one of the games to prove we'd actually played them first. A move you might think unnecessary in a computing course, but there were a lot more non-gamers among us than I would have ever imagined.

You can check it out, in all its glory here.