Dungeon Craft Spells

Working on spell effects now... Here is the most recent screenshot.

Yet Another Belated Dungeon Craft Contest Entry

I am currently at work on yet another mod for a Dungeon Craft contest, the entry of which is due in December. Oops! Uh... it is already January, and I am still not getting near finishing this thing, but I do have a few new screenshots, at least... so here they are!

Although it is hard to say exactly what I have accomplished until now on my mod, you can see some new graphics (as usual, ulp!). Some highlights include new cursors, new area backgrounds, new icons, and a darkened background for the main window.

Obituary: Baguazhang Master Si Zhen

Si Zhen (司珍), whose courtesy name (字) was Shangjie (尚傑), passed away on 2009.10.10 1:26 in Beijing. He was 84 years old. As disciple of Ma Deshan (馬德山), who was in turn disciple of Cheng Youlong (程有龍), eldest son of Cheng Tinghua (程廷華), Si Zhen represented orthodox Cheng style baguazhang in Beijing, and was well respected by the baguazhang community. Si Zhen's lineage is carried on by his top disciple, Kui Enfeng (奎恩鳳), courtesy name Shehao (社浩).

Computer Forensics (and Other Favorite) Tools

Windows Tools (Free):
Truecrypt Version 6.3a (2009/11/23)
Sun VirtualBox Version 3.1.0 (2009/11/30)
FTK Imager Version 2.6.1 (2009/8/3)
Sysinternals Suite (2009/12/1)
7-Zip Version 4.65 (2009/2/3)
Scale2x Version 2.4 (2009/7/8)
Potrace Version 1.8 (2007/5/22)
Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools (2003/4/28)
Wget Version 1.11.4 (2009/4/29)

Windows Tools (Not Free):
EnCase Version 6.15 (2009/11/19)
Forensic Toolkit 3.0 (2009/9/23)
Tableau Firmware Update Version 6.50 (2009/9/22)
Tableau Disk Monitor Version 1.2 (2009/7/31)

Linux Tools (Free):
System Rescue CD Version 1.3.3 (2009/12/07)
DEFT Linux Version 4.2.1 (2009/10/20)
dcfldd Version 1.3.4-1 (2006/12/19)
The Sleuth Kit Version 3.0.1 (2009/2/2)
Gnuplot Version 4.2.6 (2009/9/3)
Partimage Version 0.6.8 (2009/9/29)
NTFS-3G Version 2009.11.14 (2009/11/15)

All About Ditangquan (地躺拳)

Ditangquan (地躺拳) is a style well-known for its spectacular acrobatics in wushu competitions, and is hardly even seen outside of modern wushu. But where did this athletic, exciting style come from?

Pan Qingfu (潘清福) and then-competitor Zhao Changjun (趙長軍) created the modern ditangquan together after the latter was rejected from the historic "White House Tour" of 1974 because his specialties were the monkey and drunken styles. As they believed that the original ditangquan was already lost, they "built" a new ditangquan using the drunken style as a base. As a result, modern ditangquan appears as something of a demonstration of fantastic acrobatics more than a martial art, and often features movements like the head flip (頭翻), pouncing tiger (撲虎), and tornado kick to fall.

Video of a young Zhao Changjun performing his ditangquan can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzubS_5dJww

In actuality, though, traditional ditangquan has in fact survived, and in various forms in both Taiwan and Mainland China.

In Taiwan, traditional ditangquan has been passed down via several old masters who escaped to the island during war. Of these, the most extensive ditangquan style is the digongquan (地功拳) passed down by Su Kegang (蘇克綱,名克剛,號起三) (1909-) from Qingdao City in Shandong Province, whose lineage is as follows: Li Ermiandazi (李二麵袋子) -> Liu Xiwei (劉希維) -> Su Kegang (蘇克綱).

His extensive digongquan curriculum consists the following:

Single Forms:

Linked Five Palms, with Extra Version and 2-Person Version (連五掌(附‧對打))
Kicking in Eight Directions (踢八方)
White Horse Descends Mountain (白馬下山)
Slippery Cart 1, 2, and 3 (滑車一，二，三段)
Drunken Style (醉拳)

Partner Forms:

Black Tiger Mountain (黑虎山)
Seizing Forgiveness Mountain (奪諒山)
Small Five Hands (小五手)
Hooking Parrying Fist (抅樓拳)

A video of the first form of Su Kegang's digongquan can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmpcuyKJpEI

A more thorough overview of Su Kegang's digongquan can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6UCqOH3qug

Watching the above videos, one can see extensive hand and leg attacking movements; in fact, the first form has very few acrobatics at all! Later forms do show various acrobatics, however, including the drop-kick from one-handed cartwheel, scissors kick from spin-up, and kicking from arm stand back to standing.

In Mainland China, traditional ditangquan has survived as well; one notable example that has been described in literature is the ditangquan (also called "ground hopping stomping" (地踅卡) or "plum blossom falls to ground" (梅花落地)) as passed down within the Beijing style of chuojiaofanziquan (戳腳翻子拳). This lineage, passed down by Wu Binlou (吳斌樓), includes an extensive ditangquan curriculum in addition to its large chuojiao (戳腳) and fanziquan (翻子拳) curriculum:

Single Forms:

Son and Grandson Cinnabar (子孫丹)

Flying Scissors (飛剪)

Swallow Stuck (燕子卡)

Five Hopping Feet (五踅腳)

Golden Thread Hands (金絲手)

Small Eight Immortals (小八仙)

Drunken Eight Immortals (醉八仙)

Weapon Forms:

Rolling Dragon Saber (滾龍刀)

Ground Prone Whip (地躺鞭)

This style of ditangquan seems to favor some unique movements such as toad jumping (蛤蟆式); as a part of chuojiaofanziquan, it also mixes in the unique kicks of that style as well, such as mandarin duck kicking. The existence of weapon methods in this style is also very interesting.

AD&D Commentary: Magic-user Weapons

Magic-users, or mages (as they were called in 2nd edition), have always been a staple of Dungeons & Dragons, or any other fantasy RPG. Although their selection of spells has changed a bit throughout the editions, I wonder about their weapon selection a bit (from Unearthed Arcana):

Caltrops, daggers, darts, knives, slings, staves

In 3e, wizards were given the following weapons:

Club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, quarterstaff

Unlike clerics or druids, whose limited weapon selection derives from religious views, magic-users have no real reason to avoid weapons like swords, spears, or maces. One reason for limiting their weapons selection might be to limit them to only simple weapons that can be learned easily, but of the weapons listed above, the staff is most definitely not a simple weapon at all, as I have been finding out through personal experience recently!

Any weapon requires some proficiency to be able to use it to kill someone; further, any weapon requires much more proficiency to be able to use it to attack, defend, and parry other weapons skillfully. I would not expect a magic-user to be able to do much with any weapon at the latter level, but some weapons require quite a lot of time to be able to be used at even the former level.

A sword, for example, can be quite heavy, but is rather simple to use in a lethal manner, even for a magic-user (as long as he has the requisite strength to lift it fairly easily). A blunt club is fairly simple to use as well, even though it lacks a blade. However, the long staff is a rather complex weapon that is hard to use in a lethal manner due to its great size and special manner of wielding (i.e. with two hands at different parts of the pole). With skill, the staff can be a very potent weapon, using both ends to attack and defend, by poking, swinging, and blocking; however, without skill, a staff is very hard to use at all.

Thus, although magic-users are often thought of as staff-toting old men, I think that learning to use a staff well would take days and days of training - something that they would probably prefer to spend in the old, musty tower, reading magic tomes.

Perhaps a better list of simple weapons would be:

Caltrops, daggers, darts, sling, crossbow, spear, club, mace, short sword, hand axe, hammer, short bow.

A few heavier weapons are simple as well, and so perhaps a magic-user with STR 13 or more could also use:

Long sword, bastard sword, footman's mace, morningstar, battle axe, staff sling.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with a magic-user using a staff as a walking stick!

Forays Into Other RPG Construction Kits: RPG Tsukuuru 2000

This is a most famous RPG construction kit in the English-speaking world, albeit known with a different name - "RPG Maker 2000." In general, this program is rather easy to use if one is inclined to make a Japanese console RPG-type game, but requires considerable work to change what is there (combat systems, etc.). In terms of community, this program likely has the biggest one - although a lot of art is ripped from Super Famicom games.

Years ago, I used to fiddle around in this program, although I never finished a game! (Ulp!) I do have some screenshots from what I was working on back in those days - basically, I wanted to have Korean-, Chinese-, and German-themed character sets and chip sets and work on a game with various languages and nationalities from there. Some screenshots from said game:

Character sets used sprite sizes of 24 x 36, while chipset tiles were 16 x 16; basically, character set sprite sizes in generally did not fill the entire area, instead using about 16 x 24 or so. Although small, the character sets required 12 frames total, or 3 frames for each direction, so making characters was a somewhat tiresome, if rewarding, task. (In general, the right frames could be flipped and used for the left frames, so in actuality one had to make about 7 frames total.)

In the end, I decided that I preferred the old PC RPGs compared to the old Japanese console RPGs, so I went in another direction (i.e., Dungeon Craft). Still, it was a good system for what it was, with a well-made interface and nice graphics.

Incidentally, many years back I was working on quite an ambitious game with this program, with lots of art (including big, anime-style pictures), but my hard disk basically blew up and I lost it all! Needless to say, that really sucked, and I had instantly lost many hours of work. I do sort of want to "revive" that somehow, but... I would have to redraw everything and all...