2001 was a WEIRD year,
a year of even bigger change. I still had the idea of being a programmer
in my sights, yet was in school for networking. I still continued to
hone my older programs to keep my logic skills sharp mostly. I mean, I
always thought it would be cool to have one of my old QB programs
recognized by some retro group or something, but it hasn't happened :).
That's my explanation of why QB Stuff keeps showing up from the past
edits. This history section generally was originally created to document
what I had written overall, which in Jan 2003 was almost ALL QB stuff.
Now, on to 2001!
There were a couple
more
websites...the first I maintained roughly from November of 2000 through spring 2001 that doubled as the BWR
website and my personal site. It was, ironically, the only one I've had
that garnered rather heavy traffic...I had a larger social circle at the
time, between college, the HS friends that were still around (I had
graduated less than a year before, of course.) It was simply called
"Timmy Online!"
Right off the bat, I released Livin'
In Buddha 2.0. I had been working on it between October 2000 and January
2001. The reason it took so long was the fact that I was meticulously
digging through all the old LIB code and updating/correcting it. I fixed
every little weird quirk that I could find in the game. I took out the
cheat code(s), and added an ATM to the mini-mart, effectively copying the
"Ye Olde Bank" idea from L.O.R.D.. That way, a player wouldn't
lose all their money if they were killed, granted they had stowed some
away. I also added the "Hotkey" theory, thus you no longer had
to hit enter after a letter, it just automatically accepted the input.
Also, most importantly, I updated the user interface for the game's data
management system. Now, all you had to do was enter your first and last
name, and the first time you ran it, you also had to enter your gender. It
was that simple. No more making up or remembering file names. The only
thing it made different in game play was that you used your first name in
the game instead of one you made up. Here's a pictorial view of the
differences between 1.3 and 2.0:
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This is just the start of how the player
interfaced with LIB 1.0 thru 1.3...
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...and this is how it's done the right
way...In LIB 2.0.
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While LIB 1.x simply said "Saving your
stats...done!" when you exited, LIB 2.0 gives you the
nitty-gritty details about your saved status.
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I continued through the rest of '01
without much thought to programming, as I was preparing for my wedding,
working 35-40 hours a week, and attending school in Indianapolis. Once I
got married, I was able to once again find some time to get in front of
the keyboard and play with a little design.
I began work on a version of Livin'
In Buddha that I was going to call "Livin' In Buddha: Final
Edition". It's version at full release would have been 3.0. I
designed a scripting system, that , for lack of a better term and the
sloppy way the first version was written, I deemed TeRDreader. It reads a
.TRD script file, which I personally designed myself.
Here's an example of it's purpose:
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TeRDreader can take this
text...
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...and output it like this
in a game or whatnot! (This is a clip from LIB 3.0 Beta.)
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The entire game of LIB: FE was
finished, when I had a nightmarish hard drive failure, and none of my
backups worked. The game was finished, right down to the new goodies:
Converse w/Abel in Abel's Arsenal, the Animated Chevette Races, and the
new fighting routines that were rather Pokemon like in their design
(complete with lifebars!) The good thing is, a compiled Beta version
exists, and will be posted on this site for download in the near future.
For now, enjoy the following clips out of the game.
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The new and improved TeRD powered Stats
screen. Yes, the Bard, Races, and any flirtatious activity were
going to be limited to three times per clan. I've gotta stop the
cheaters somehow!
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The ever-so-sweet "Bar Code" at
work! This simple improvement alone makes LIB 3.0B three times the
joy to play as earlier versions. Expect to see this code (or a
variation of it) show up in other games as well.
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You finally actually get to "race the
clock" at Loudis' Chevette Races!
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One last thing for
2001: I did do a full-fledged BWR website once again after TOL...and it
survived the longest of the freyellow.com freebie sites. It had a full
description software section for each of my QB Games where they could be
downloaded and a few other goodies. This was redone as the first "Backwood
Realm" website in August 2002, just before backwood-realm.com went live
for the first time. It wasn't an oft-updated site, but I did manage to
preserve the html in the archive from freeyellow at one point or
another. This also started the tradition of the BWR logo first and
foremost on the site. I got the idea of "The Backwood Realm" from my own
quote at the top of this page. Page obviously had a heavy
developer/programmer's slant much like older sites. There was a news
section, but no journal, etc section (this was still before the term "blog"
came to be.)
Click
for page 7.
