A Reinhardt type of a weekend

I had a lot of fun over the weekend, both in real life and in Overwatch. Lemme break that down for you.

First up, it was my beautiful wife's birthday on Sunday, so we all celebrated with outings to a couple of great food locations like Waffle Love and Kerby Lane. We also worked hard planting a new tree and improving on a backyard project we've been working on this Summer.

Tearing up all that grass and laying down all that mulch was not easy, my friends

Secondly, the kids scored the new Super Mario Party game for the Switch. While I haven't had a chance to play this yet, I did spend some time watching over their shoulders, and it looks awesome. I'm thinking there will be more to say about this in a future blog post of mine.

Third, I worked just a bit more on my Roblox level finishing up the walls of level 2 from my epic Maze creation.

That big open area in the maze will be a "zombie village" eventually

Finally, after a break of a couple weeks, I played a lot of Overwatch over the weekend! Vanessa Mythdust and I finished up our Competitive Placement matches (yeah, as expected, I'm still in silver), and just had a lot of quick play fun, which is mostly what I do anyway. To those ends, I mostly played Reinhardt . . . it's what I do.  I sprinkled in a few bouts of Mei, Doomfist, Junkrat, and Pharah, but it was pretty much a Reinhardt type of a weekend.

A better version of me would purchase a new computer and spend time filming or streaming a lot more of my Overwatch play, but I'm happy to at least be able to show you a few of my highlights.

It's a lot of me swinging my hammer on or near the point. ;) There were a few great moments in there like when Leala and I combo'd our ultimates (totally planned . . . we wish) for an amazing quadruple kill and like when Ana boosted me up right after a shatter and many hammer swings brought me the tears of my enemies.

Unbeknownst to me, there was even some streaming going on where Chris beheld my more competitive side.

All in all I'd give the weekend, 4 Reinhardt Hammers out of 5.

Happy Dueling

Roblox Maze Crafting -- Day 2

Last night I was able to spend a bit more time with my Roblox maze and made some great progress! This is getting to be a proper Roblox level now.

  three things . . . that's all I ask . . 

Yup, I've put zombies in the maze, and the entrance instructions tell you exactly how to handle them when you encounter them . . . run! Luckily I've made them move pretty slowly and you'll be able to run right past them . . . except for when you can't. MUHAHAHA! *cough*

I really should name the Zombies in the maze . . . like "Inky" or "Blinky" or "Clyde"

The big revelation of last night was that things come a lot easier when someone else has already done the work for you. The real problem in crafting a Roblox level when you have no scripting experience is finding a free model that comes with, not only scripting built in, but the RIGHT scripting built in.

Case in point, I found an amazing zombie boss model last night, but the scripting on it was such that it was impossible to slow him down. As soon as he saw the player, he'd make a bee line for them and kill them in one shot. That's no fun!

Eventually I found one that I could slow down just a touch to make it easier for you to run past them, yet if they caught you, it was still dangerous.

The same holds true for the traps. At first I wanted a trap where spikes would poke out of the ground, and damage you, but none of the free models really worked well for what I was trying to do. What I did find as a replacement was an amazing fire spewing heat trap and a movement delaying bear trap. Both will damage you, and the heat trap can quickly kill you, but they're very easy to avoid in both cases . . . except for when they're not. MUHAHAHAHA! *cough cough*

A bear trap next to a zombie can be a very dangerous thing

Oh yeah . . . and the dart traps . . . watch out for those as well . . .

You might want to jump past those . . .

Next I was able to figure out how to stick a torch in the player's inventory, which gave them a traveling light source, which allowed me to make the dungeon a much darker place.

I also figured out a way to create a leaderboard that ticks up "money" based on how long you've been wandering around in the dungeon -- this also lets you see who else is in the dungeon (if there's more than just you)

Hello magical evil throne!

Finally I was able to create a one-way pressure plate that teleports you up above the dungeon when you step upon the throne at the end of the maze, which eventually will teleport you to level two of the maze, but for now it just traps you in an enclosed space with a zombie. MUHAHAHAHA! *cough cough cough* sorry about that evil laugh that keeps coming out.

See Mr. Zombie peaking through the tablets?

My little buddy played through my maze last night and this time he got completely lost, caught in a bear trap, stuck with darts, and chased by several zombies.  He was all abuzz from it (probably not the best thing for me to have him experience right before bed time), and he had tons of ideas for me to again . . . make it better.

He let me know that the sounds in the dungeon were out of control now, and we need to trim those down. He also told me he was going to forward me a tutorial on how to make a shop so we can do things like purchase a sword when we make it to level two . . . so we can actually fight the zombies!

Again, if you'd like to see the progress, hop over to the maze and check it out: https://www.roblox.com/games/2420801388/Maze-Trek

Happy Dueling!

Maze Crafting in Roblox

I've been wanting to play games with my youngest lately and mostly what he plays is Roblox, so this past week, we've been playing a lot of Roblox together . . . and Mario Party 8 as well, but that's a story for a different time! For today, it's all about Roblox!!

I've never messed around with the builder studio in Roblox, so I downloaded it over the weekend and started piecing together an epic maze.  At first it just started as a drawing that I etched out on a paper in sections until I had the completed maze.

 Close enough for Jazz as they say . . .

As I drew out the map, I'd simultaneously drag and drop walls on to the game board and lay them out according to the master map.

So many walls . . .

Total labor of love this one. It took four or five hours to completely drag and drop and resize and height adjust all the pieces exactly how I wanted them.

At the end of the day, I stuck a big throne chair (thank you free files built by other players) at the end of the maze and put a couple signs at the front saying, "Find the throne."  . . . in retrospect maybe I should change that to a toilet at the end of the maze?

Who's to say that isn't just a really fancy toilet anyway?

The next thing I did was throw down a bunch of torches in the hallways and covered the top of the maze, but not too much since I'd have to put down a lot more torches to actually see where you're going in darkness. (or perhaps put a torch in the player's inventory.)

At this point I had my son enter the maze and to my surprise he didn't wander around for 20 minutes like I thought he would . . . he got lost once, but soon was back on track and at the exit -- 10 minutes tops. He told me he liked my maze, and we instantly started brainstorming together on how to make it better.

To those ends I added some music to the game and a torch sound effect and laid down a couple of traps near the beginning . . . and here's where things started to get tricky. 

Pretty "straight forward" I think . . .

The programming language for Roblox is Lua.  I haven't studied a programming language since Basic. I'm not kidding, so in order to add cool things in to the maze, I'm going to have to hunt down code that other people have crafted or *gulp* learn some Lua.

Anyway, it's loaded out there for anyone that wants to wander around in it's current state, but we're plotting an epic maze yet to come with multiple floors, monsters, traps, and way cooler stuff . . . um . . . eventually! :)

https://www.roblox.com/games/2420801388/Maze-Trek

Feel free to give us a shout out in the comments if you made it through the maze. 

Happy Dueling