I started reading "The Once and Future King" by T.H. White about 3 years ago because it was mentioned at the end of one of the X-men movies (the first I think). Then I got distracted and bored, but I recently picked it back up and finished it off.

For those that don't know, it's one of the definitive tellings of the King Arthur saga. It includes accounts about his life as the child "Wart" which many would recognize from Disney's "The Sword in the Stone." And goes on through quests for the Holy Grail and Lancelot's affair with Arthur's wife Guenevere.

What I expected was a fun tale of fantasy and intrigue, but, surprisingly the main thrust of the book focused on different methods of government and how to avoid war, or use war to accomplish good (themes obviously related to the X-men comics and movies).

Much of it satired the notion of old-world chivalry because of the obvious hypocrisy of knights being obsessed with rules and politeness and then going off to murder people for sport.

From Arthur's tutelage under Merlyn, he's given the chance to see the world through the eyes of various creatures including ants, geese, and fish and to analyze how they govern themselves. He comes up with the theory that "Might does not always equal Right" ie: just because you can do something, and you're strong enough to get away with it, it doesn't mean your course of action is "correct." He then struggles for the rest of the book to find a way to effectively and pragmatically implement this idealistic philosophy in his "real" world of medieval England.

He starts off by trying to focus the frivolous energy of all the MIGHTy questing knights toward good causes, recruiting them to his round table and basically giving them a purpose other than pointless self-assigned "quests." Instead he sends them on quests that serve a higher purpose, righting the wrongs and injustices so prevalent in his country. In his words, he tries to "Use might FOR right."

Eventually this philosophy (and others he tries) have short-lived success, but don't bring about his desired results in the long-run, and the book ends off exploring what the root causes might be for war...whether it be the idea of possessions (maybe if everyone had all things in common war would go away), or territory lines, or what have you.

Overall, it was good food for thought, especially since we, in the U.S. have been confronted with the election of a new leader for our government. It was a good reminder that high ideals are not always easy to put into practice, nor should they be abandoned for pragmaticism, but good leaders are in constant struggle with both aspects of their responsibilities: to move toward "RIGHT" in a way that actually pays off in practice.

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EDIT:
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I just found this interview with Brian Singer, creator of the X-men movies where he's asked about the use of this book in the films:

T.H. White's Arthurian book, The Once and Future King, comes up a couple of times in the movie: Magneto is seen reading it, and Professor X quotes from it to his students.

Singer: There's a number of reasons. One, I definitely think that's a story of evolution. The Once and Future King is someone who goes through their young life believing they are one kind of person, and then is forced to discover that maturity comes with a price of evolution and destiny. ... And they factor into a lot of our characters. Yes, Magneto believing that he is the once and future king. Or perhaps the evolution of Jean Grey, someone who's discovering that their future may be very different from their present. And also, I look for ways to bind Xavier and Magneto. The fact that there are chess sets, you'll notice, in both studies. The fact that the relationship with Cerebro: [Magneto] helped [Xavier] build it. And betrayal and love of these two men, who must have at one time had a strong relationship. They read the same books. They believed in the same things. But one went astray, and the other is desperately trying to hold the course and inspire faith in his team.

Every once in a while, an idea really pans out well.

For Woogi World some co-workers and I were sitting around brainstorming ideas for our 1st "MMO within an MMO" game. The idea we came up with is called "Sharks in the Water."

You may have played this game as a kid on the playground, the rules go as follows. The game starts with 1 shark, and all the other players are fish. The shark can "tag" any of the other players to convert them to his side and be a shark also...so the game starts with one, and eventually ends up with a herd of sharks chasing a small group of spry fish.

We decided to merge this idea with "freeze tag" where tagged players can be "un-tagged" by people who are not "it."

We then transferred this idea into flash, so the game mechanics go like this:

1. Click with your mouse to move.
2. Press space bar to release a "radius" attack.
3. If you're a shark, any fish within the radius begin a long animated metamorphosis into a shark.
4. During the metamorphosis, any other fish can "save" a fish in transition.
5. If the fish goes through the whole anim without being saved, he turns into the shark and goes on the offensive.
6. Sharks and fish have a bar that has to recharge between radius attacks before they can strike again.
7. Points for sharks are awarded for successfully "tagging" a fish, more points for converting a fish to a shark.
8. Points for fish are awarded for saving other fish, and also based on how long you survive the game without being transformed to a shark. The last surviving fish "wins" and receives a bonus.

We then added in the RPG element with different "levels" of both fish and sharks, each with a corresponding accrued point value. The way these levels are displayed is through "hats" that the woogies wear during the game. Basically, it looks like a fish or a shark is eating the woogi's head. You have to see it to appreciate it.

So the woogies in Woogi World can hop into a SITW game (up to 50 kids in 1 game), or host a SITW game as they're doing the other activities in the main Woogi World game and have this whole new MMO within the main MMO.

The cool part, for me, is to actually play the game and have FUN. Lots of times, ideas like these don't end up as fun in reality as they seemed on paper, but this one lived up to my expectations and even surprised me with how engaging it turned out.

My friend Kelly is participating in Summit for Someone. It's a program put on by the 501(c)3 organization Big City Mountaineers the country's leading non-profit volunteer organization in providing wilderness mentoring programs for underprivileged urban youth.

In essence, an outdoors enthusiast (in this case my friend) agrees to raise a certain amount of money for the organization, ALL of which goes toward sending a group of these kids on wilderness outings and running the fundraising program. In return, the organization provides guides for the outdoor enthusiast to "summit" or climb one of many mountains they support. For many of the more technical mountains, a guide is necessary to reach the summit without problems so the program helps the climbers raising the money to be able to climb mountains they have always wanted to summit, but never could before ... all while helping a worthy cause.

After Kelly told me what he was doing, I looked into the program and felt like it was a worthwhile cause and something that can really benefit these kids by giving them an experience they would never have otherwise. I donated a big chunk of my own money, and decided I'd put the word out to the Newgrounds community also.

If you feel this is something worth supporting, then please donate by clicking the following link:

DONATE

Just so it's clear, your donation goes to the kids participating in this program, NOT to my friend, though the site does track who the donations come in under.

If you want to know more about my friend who decided to be responsible for raising this money, check out his website here.

One of my dreams for years has been to make a really solid and accurate platform game based around a "grappling hook" or, if you're a worms fan, a "ninja rope." I've tried time and again to get the physics right, but have always scrapped my work because the way the rope behaved just never felt right.

Well the rope swinging idea was re-kindled with the release of jmtb02's new game: Mr. Walter's Grand Excursion

I think jmtb02 would be one of the first to tell you that the rope swinging didn't feel quite "on" in his game, and that's because the physics of a pendulum are relatively difficult to translate into flash.

Well, luckilly, I mentioned my idea and frustration to Coaly and he used his big brain to build some actionscript 2 pendulum functions which were a snap to plug into my platform engine and are surprisingly accurate.

We were so pleased with the result, we decided to work on a game together. We both have some other projects we're working on for the next few months, but when those are done, get ready for one heck of a cool game...we're thinking kind of a Metroid-esque game where you wander around getting cool weapons and fighting bosses, with the grappling hook taking a large role in the gameplay. It should be interesting to see what parts of the game we each produce since both Coaly and I are in the limbo between being artists and coders.

Anyway, check out a demo of the engine, there are obviously things missing (like collision detection while swinging) but you'll soon see the "fun potential" for a game of this nature:

CONTROLS: WASD and MOUSE

http://www.bomtoons.com/grapple.html

Oh, and if you missed my post on Maul Balls, check it out!

And if you missed my attempt at animation for Luis' birthday, check out Luis vs. Ninja Turtle

In 1999 I made my first web-page...it was to advertise some antenna balls I made that looked like Darth Maul (the Jack-in-the-box "Jack" balls were a huge fad at the time). I thought that the sole fact of having a web-page would send my sales through the roof. I even spent hours making a stupid animation in a program that extended microsoft paint.

The way I manufactured the balls was this:
1. Ordered "blank" white styrofoam antenna balls from an antenna ball company (I ordered a full 100 to start with)

2. Spray painted the balls black on sticks in my back-yard.

3. I worked at a sign company at the time, so I used some scrap red vinyl and programmed our plotter to cut out the unique stickers with the Maul red paint pattern (some would argue that he's red with black tattoos, but the red area is smaller so I made that the sticker)

4. Stuck the stickers onto the black balls using a hot blow dryer to heat up the vinyl so the flat shape would conform to the round balls.

5. I bought a bunch of yellow toothpicks and hot glued them into the ball heads for the maul horns. I let the hot glue kind of build up around the insertion holes so it would look more gnarled like his real horns.

6. I hand-painted yellow dots into the center of the red eye stickers.

7. Since the blank balls came without noses, I got some high-strength foam and hand cut out triangle noses that I superglued into the balls (after spray painting them black)

8. I made up collector cards in paint shop pro and had them printed on heavy paper at kinkos.

9. I bought a kitchen vaccum/heat sealer (the freshlock turbo II) and used normal zip-lock bags to put the ball and collector card together in a nice store-looking package. (I cut off the zip lock part of the baggies so it looked like a normal heat seal you'd see in stores)

My Maul-Ball venture didn't pan out in the end (though I did sell enough to pay for the heat sealer), maybe it was the numerous trademark infringements, the fact that I hand-assembled all the balls, or the fact that, by the time the balls were delivered to me and assembled, Darth Maul just wasn't that cool anymore, and the Jack Balls were even less-so.

But I'm still proud of having finished off my initial vision and the web-page and animation were the early seeds of my current interest in flash.

FUN FACT: I attended a Star Wars premier and sold the balls to the kids waiting in line!

See the webpage here: http://tatooine.fortunecity.com/zenith /261/

Here is a picture of all the supplies together:

Fun news:

We made a bank for Woogi World. The kids can open up different accounts and earn various interest rates on money they leave in the account.

They have to log on each day, go to the bank and click "collect interest" or else their interest payment is lost for the day. Here are some pics:

Okay, I just launched my new site design!

New features include:

1. News Section
2. 1-5 Community-submitted Scores for all content
3. Community comments on everything

I felt like my all-flash site was getting a little dated so hopefully this is an improvement!

Please check it out and let me know what you think!

BoMToons.com

Coming soon, my first game made especially for the Christmas season, The Nutcracker!

Me on art, Glaiel on programming.

This game is turning out really well, we just put the final touches on the last boss who will rock your world. The game has really varied gameplay but, hopefully, comes across quite seamless in the transitions between each.

Glaiel is programming it in AS3 and I'm using the tablet given to me by Newgrounds for the art. I'm trying to relax on the visuals and just let it flow rather than being super anal retentive ... it's ending up with a kind of loose impressionist feel which I kinda dig.

Did I mention the game is set to a selection of songs from the Nutcracker ballet? Many of the gameplay elements are even timed to the music, it's quite a surreal experience.

All that's really left are the menus and some win/lose screens then it will be released! We're aiming for sometime next week so keep an eye out!

Oh, and don't forget to check out the trailer:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
414870

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7-Ngy4 hwzQ

The main focus of all my flash skillz these days is dedicated to Woogi World. It's come a long way since the contest here on NG with many new features and even a few real multi-player games being integrated.

We've also run into lots of challenges including having to switch to a completely different server software to handle the multi-player stuff because our version of Electro-Server had some show-stopping un-documented bugs (we extended it a bit beyond what it was designed for :P).

The real fun for me, though, has been learning how to manage other artists. It's so easy when it's just you because, of course, everything looks right. But working with people that have varied backgrounds and trying to maintain a "branded" look for the site has been a challenge. It's also been fun trying to manage productivity when we have several people who "clock in" from across the nation.

Overall I'm very proud of what we've been able to accomplish in less than a year, and the response to the site has been great with over 12,000 members and hundreds of new kids signing up every week.

Most of all, I really enjoy working on a project whose values fall in line with mine and is positioned to make a real difference in a lot of lives.

I just put together a video today oriented toward parents so they know what WW is all about before signing their kid(s) up. Check it out here:

http://www.bomtoons.com/ww_demo.html

Thanks again to Tom and NGs for supporting our arcade launch competition which generated a great boost in traffic and lots of buzz for the site.

Well, I've been wanting to post a pic of my mouse for a while, but have been super busy, mostly with completing Trick or Treat Adventure Quest and my full-time job(s) and family.

As you can see, it gets an insane amount of use, and anyone who sees it considers me an uber nerd with no life from that point on...they're not far off.