My new game, "Blazer: Phantom's Revenge"

Hello everyone! As you can tell by the title, this post will be about a new computer game I made using Scratch Programming for a challenge I was in. Long story short, I didn't win but I got a donut! Anyway, this post isn't all about the challenge I was in. This is just about my game. And the coolest thing (to me at least) is if you scroll down to the end of this screen, or anywhere else you might be on my blog, you can play it. I'll go ahead and tell you how to get to it, and how to use it.

As I said, scroll down to the end of the screen, and you should see a big box that shows the "Start Screen" which says "Blazer: Phantom's Revenge." On the right side in this big box is a symbol that looks like a flag. Click the flag, and the game will start up. The game will tell you to push space (on your keyboard) to begin the adventure. If you want to stop the game there is a symbol right next to the flag that looks like a stop sign. Pushing it will stop the game. There are 3 levels and if you run out of lives, depending where you are in the game, the game will tell you to push 'r', 'a', or 'x' to restart. One last thing I would like to say is that all levels are possible to beat. Another way to play is you can go to this website and play my game from there.  https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/213520902/

Now that you know how to get to the game (hopefully I didn't make it sound complex) let's move on to talking about stuff like the inner workings, and some neat little facts about the game.

I'd like to start with the inner workings because throughout the game you come upon Demi Ghosts, Shape Shifters, Ghost Whisps, Tiki Ghost, and Phantom himself. Out of all of these characters, the one with the most codes, is the character you play, Blazer. I know it's hard to see on this screen shot, but there are two codes to move Blazer, three codes to activate the different "Game Overs," 5 codes to make him disappear when he needs to, and the rest are just for the cut scenes.

However, when it comes to the longest code, the award goes to Phantom because he has the most moves, and is doing them in different order. The award for the hardest character to draw goes to both Blazer and Phantom because I had to draw them in One Note just so I can get them to look right, and then find a way to transfer them over to the Scratch software.   

                               

Below is a screen shot of level 1. Now if you were to look at all of the backgrounds Scratch has to offer, you won't find this. Yes, you will find the buildings and road. However, I had to darken the sky so it was truly a city at night. Now this may not look like an exciting level, but the Demi Ghost does shoot fire, and unless you go all trigger happy, you will see him say, "Come, Death Shield." They also have the power to turn invisible, and re-appear somewhere else. Don't worry. You have the Conspiracy Guitar which is more powerful than most of your enemies.

The only enemy that is hard to beat besides Phantom is Tiki Ghost. It'll take some time to take him out. But as you continue the fight with Tiki Ghost, he will try to mess with your mind. Especially in trying to get Blazer's mind to think he is the villain. In truth, (and he knows it) he's not.

Well, I think I'll end this here. There is so much more to say like the Ghost Whisps power is to shoot lasers for instance. All I'm going to say now, is I hope you get a chance to try out my game. If not, then at least you were interested about this game a little. Why else would you be reading this? 

Adventure thru skiing

Hello again! Me and my family went up to Brian Head in Utah for a ski vacation, and it was great! There are so many stories to tell about our trip, but I'm just going to tell some of the ski stories. For one, it'll make this post a whole lot shorter.

The first couple days, we had nice weather conditions, and the snow wasn't all too bad. However, there wasn't very much deep snow, so you would sometimes have to avoid some small rocks that were still sticking out. One time we got off of a chair lift and started down to where you have access to a good amount of runs, when suddenly I hear this short scraping sound. I knew right away that I hit a rock. Aside from rocks, for the first few days, I would crash when I got off of the chair lift. Not a chair lift like Giant Steps Express, but like the ones for three people only. I would get up, turn real tight and maybe cross my skis or end up on someone's else's skis, and fall.

Moving ahead, we got extra snow on the mountain. We all knew that we had to get up to Brian Head first. The drive was only a few minutes, but me and my siblings wanted to be the first skiers, because there was fresh powder. We ended up first in line, on the far left. I say this because the people on the far left always get scanned first. So we were the first ones to rule the mountain! We did the Giant Steps face run, and kept to the powder. My favorite part was at one point, there would be these annoying bumps, and I would have to try to go around each one. But with the extra snow, they were all covered up! The only problem, was our skis weren't built to go through powder. So I would see my skis disappear, reappear, disappear, reappear. I'm just going to say I did ok. There were some comical crashes.

One time, I was going though the terrain snow park, and decided to go off of a jump and head straight for a snow wall you can go on right after I landed. The plan didn't work. I went off the jump, and I don't know how, but I somehow ended up facing the wrong way, seeing where I've been. I noticed that I was just sitting down on my skis, so I just got up, turned around, and kept going.

And the last ski story I'd like to share, is actually several in one story. There have been times where my brother would race my dad or sister, and I would count down, and try to race. I say try, because no matter what you do, my brother found a way to sit down on his skis and go really fast. One time, I was racing with my siblings, and as soon as I said go and my brother took off, it was just over. The only thing I could do, was try not to lose sight of him.

All in all, this was a great trip! So glad I got to go, and hope there is another adventure waiting for us. Hope you enjoyed reading this!