From Robeats to Rock Band and Back Again

My youngest son plays a lot of Roblox. Lately he's been playing a lot of one particular game in Roblox called Robeats. What's Robeats? Well, I'll let this fandom page I found explain it for us:

RoBeats is an MMO Vertical Scrolling Rhythm Game (Commonly abbreviated as 'VSRG') ... You can buy songs with in-game coins, and buy harder versions using stars. The easiest songs are difficulty 1, while the hardest are difficulty 34. ... The gameplay is extremely similar to the Guitar Hero video games, with some elements inspired by osu! as well.

So basically, you zone into a city block filled with people and visit shops and chat to each other, and then queue up for head-to-head rhythm games on a difficulty scale where you press ASDF to the beat.

Ready to move my blox!

I've watched him play, and I've even played the game myself. The fact is, he's getting really good at this game. He even recently uploaded a video from his YouTube channel where he slayed this jam.

Knowing this, I had to have him play Rock Band. It's been on the top shelf of our garage storage for a long time just waiting for this moment. It's a totally different experience in that you are either on the drum set using 3 limbs (instead of 4 fingers), or holding a guitar and using both hands in different ways: one to press the buttons on the neck and one to strum.

So I went into the garage and got the Rock Band gear down, wiped all the dust off, brought it inside, and set it up. He was hesitant at first because of the style of the music, but after seeing me work through a couple songs, he gave it a shot and after a few tries managed to complete a song. 

Y'all, mission successful. Since that time the house has taken a liking to "I think I'm paranoid" by Garbage, and the I've caught all the kids humming it like it was the 90's. hahaha!

Dad and Son Jamming!

The highlight was being able to back my son up on drums at the same time he was playing, but the real surprise was when he committed himself to learning the drum part himself and beating my high score. Methinks the kid has some natural talent -- really glad we have him playing French Horn in band.

I highly doubt Rock Band will take the place of Robeats for him, but I was just happy to play it again with him and expose him to another rhythm game.

Happy Dueling!

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

Gaming with the . . . kids these days!

As some of you might know, I have three kids. On this blog I've referred to them by three names:

- Amber DeathSong (now 17 years old)

- Kyle SkyStaff (now 14 years old)

- Diapermancer (now 9 years old)

We might as well keep those names going, and it's been a while since I've talked about this amazing trio, so I snapped a few pictures yesterday as they were playing games and thought I'd talk for a bit about what they've been playing lately.

Amber DeathSong

It's all about the SPLATOON! Lately she's been playing Splatoon 2 (Octo Expansion) on the Switch.

There isn't a day that goes by lately where she doesn't comment to me about how much she loves playing Splatoon and listening to the Splatoon soundtrack. I'm all about that awesomeness.

Outside of Splatoon, she's also knee deep in a D&D campaign, a Starfinder campaign, and I don't even know how many GURPS games she's embroiled in currently, but I hear tales of her roleplaying a character named "Gef Dalby," a paranoid mongoose who's "really good at computers." Her gaming group is made up of artists like her, so they draw each other's characters, like this!

Kyle SkyStaff

Kyle has been playing a metric ton of Katamari Forever lately. I'm not sure why, but it's back in a big way. I was digging for a trailer for the game and found one, but you have to see this other (but related) trailer's intro for "Touch My Katamari" for the PS Vita.

Amazing. No other words can describe that.

This ball of goop has been rolling around on our TV for days!

Diapermancer

So . . . Diapermancer really only has one game of choice, and that's Roblox. This kid is a die hard Roblox player -- he's played it for . . . as long as I can remember . . . and I understand why. The variety of experiences and games you can find on Roblox is pretty intense, plus it's online, and as we all know here on The Friendly Necromancer, multiplayer online experiences is where it's at! He's a kid after his own father's heart.

Can you believe he's grown so much? And to think this kid's birth was announced on the Wizard101 launcher back on the day.  Wild.

He's invited me to play Roblox with him a few times, and I always have fun playing with him. Cops and Robbers is good one we've played together. 

~~

Anyway, these three have always had interesting game choices (outside of Roblox). Honestly though, I'm just waiting for the time that Paper Mario 1000-Year Door comes back into all of our lives. :) You know it will! It always does!

Happy Dueling

A blog about wood grain in Roblox . . . I love life

(continuing along with the #OneWeekDailyBlogging challenge from Emy . . .)

Yesterday I stumbled upon a blog that was linked to by the former Creative Director of Roblox, John Shedletsky.

My jaw dropped.

A blog . . . about wood grain . . . in Roblox?  Sure enough, I followed the links and visited the site, and this is a real thing! I present to you, Wood Reviewer Roblox.

Now now . . . it may seem incredulous at first I admit, but before you simply push Wood Reviewer Roblox into the meta-joke categorization of having blogs on the Internet about very esoteric topics, like odd QR code placement, Awkward Stock photos, and old people posting on Facebook . . . KNOW THIS!

He's serious, and I love it.

I've written about Roblox before and my youngest son right now plays this game a whole heck of a lot. He loves Roblox with a passion, and we've spent more money on Roblox for him than I'm willing to admit. In other words, I'm writing this as being someone highly invested in the product of Roblox.

1. My son doesn't care about wood grain direction in Roblox . . .
2. Probably 99 percent of the people who play Roblox don't care about the wood grain direction in Roblox . . .
3. . . . but Wood Reviewer is invested like a Dev, and I dig that.  These are the types of details that artists at video game companies are passionate about, and in a game like Roblox where people of all ages are learning to build worlds and think like Devs . . . YES . . . this topic is exactly what's needed.

I took it to an Internet search and found a great thread about Wood Reviewer on Reddit . . . what is up with the wood grain memes?  I, for one, hardheartedly agree with poster IWantGoreinPF: "ssshh... WoodReviewer is our hero... that we don't need. Let us praise his efforts"

I raise my morning glass of water to you, Wood Reviewer! I shall never look at Wood Texture the same in Roblox.  Job well done.

Now . . . dear reader . . . ask yourself this question . . . if you were to write an entire esoteric blog about something that bugs you in a video game, what would it be?

Happy Dueling!

Roblox Meets Wizard101: Wizard School

The other day one of Amber and Kyle's friends came over to play, and he just could not stop going on and on about Roblox. The end result was that my kids once again delved into yet another website to eek every last drop of fun out of it.


That's right, ROBLOX. I was quite surprised to be honest. I had looked up Roblox before since somehow I ended up following John Shedletsky, one of their lead creative designers, on Twitter. The characters will remind you A LOT of Lego's (although not related to the Lego Company). There's nothing too graphically outstanding here, but nevertheless, it's online -- it's free -- it's making money -- and people are hanging out here having fun.

You should go check Roblox out yourself if you haven't already! I'm late to the party since this site has been around for a few years. (Go ahead, laugh at me people who know all about Roblox ;-))

I guess what I had failed to put together about Roblox was that at its core, it's a really awesome builder game. I'm a fan of those anyway, and especially Little Big Planet. You may or may not remember my weak attempt to build a Wizard101 crossover game in LBP. yeah, that pretty much bombed, but HEY, it was a blast to make :).

Being the Wizard101 fan that I am, my mind instantly went to the spiral when I started surfing around Roblox and especially after my kids and I were rocking out all the Pokemon games builders had made. (So many future video game designers there ;-))

"Hmmmmmm," Friendly says to himself, "I wonder if there are any Wizard101 games made?" Oh yeah, there's like five pages of Wizard101 related things on Roblox, not to worry. There's a lot to explore there if you're a Wizard101 fan. Most are . . . meh . . . good, creative, I like it, really cool to see the fan creativity . . . but the one that really stuck out to me was not in that particular search on "Wizard101."

My daughter this morning found a Roblox world named "Wizard School," and I ended up playing this for a couple of hours with my daughter's character. hehe.


Props to Shadow580 for creating a really nice Wizard101/Roblox crossover level that simulates the Wizard City experience. A lot of nice thought went into this level, and you can tell Roblox players also like it based on the 5,500+ favorites it's received and the 111,000+ visits.

Check it out! Shadow580 has even simulated zoning into different areas of Wizard City like Unicorn Way, Triton Avenue, and Golem Court. Awesome!






(hehe. Yeah, don't ask about Amber's fashion sense on her avatar . . . I can't explain it.)

I was also quite happy to see that Triton Avenue even had a Kraken Pad on a lower level that you had to use a teleporter to get to! (I highly doubt you'll see this Kraken pad as crowded as the Real Kraken Pad since this Kraken here is TOUGH--he stomped on me a few times. XD)


You can just tell that Shadow580 loves Wizard101 when you play this level and that there has been a lot of hard work put into it. There's even a little bit of lore dialog to be had here!


And yes, you can even find Dworgyn hidden under a waterfall . . . although his spells are a little different than what you might expect.


Yup, I played a necromancer in Wizard School! That's just how I roll. :)

By the end of my play time I had made eighth level and gathered enough gold to buy all my spells and I was a lego-ish monster of DEATH POWA (in a tank top and shorts no less)!


I won't talk too much about how I eventually got bored and started hunting down other players . . . now there's something you can't do in Wizard101. ;-)

Anyway, simulating Wizard101 in Roblox must have been extremely challenging, and of course, it's not the same experience at all, but I think that's why I like it. Two thumbs up from the Friendly Necromancer, Amber, and Kyle!

Thanks again for the fun this morning Shadow580! My kids and I love your level!

Happy Dueling!