McWilliams’ World

I’m still alive. I’m still here.

So what have I been up to?

Ninja Gaiden 2

I’m on my third run through on Ninja Gaiden 2. I played my first two runs on the acolyte (normal) difficulty. Now I’m about half way through on warrior (hard). I’m just having a blast (albeit somewhat frustrating at times) blasting through enemy after enemy. Plus after finding the rod of trials – there are extra challenges throughout the levels where you clear out an area as wave after wave of powerful enemy keep coming at you still they’re all gone or your dead. I enjoy the challenge I’m also addicted to he achievements. It’s not one of those games that you get achievements for doing crazy outlandish things (okay playing the game through with only one weapon for 5 points is a little crazy) but they’re doled out fairly evenly. I have a ton of other game that on a general play though only doles out about 200 points and then you have to really work for the other 800 points. It’s just not worth it in some cases; especially if the game isn’t all that great.

Rockband

After getting my snapped-in-half Rockband kick pedal replaced (thankfully to EA’s newly extended open warranty); the family has been having fun rocking out together. My 6 (nearly 7) year old daughter is even getting into the act singing on easy. She can’t read the words that well (or that fast) but she holds her own. My eldest son, Jonah (11), has bumped himself up to hard, playing the drums, and doing great at it. Parker and I continue to bring the noise playing guitar and bass. I have also bought a ton of songs and we’re stoked to know that our investment will carry over to Rockband 2 come September.

Drum kit is expanding

I’ve been slowly improving my electric drum kit. I got a great deal steal on a Roland FD-8 hi-hat control pedal from a guy off of the vdrums.com forums. I’ve been on the hunt for a new hi-hat pad and have been trying to wrangle in a Roland CY-5. I’ve been watching eBay and the vdrums forums but refuse to pay more that $50 (since they go for $85 new). So I’m hanging tough on that.

I also purchased a bunch of new kit sounds from www.vExpressionsLTD.com for my Roland TD-6 (Hot Picks/Collective Combo). They’re not really new sounds, but finely tuned kits modeled after famous drummers or branded kits. There are about 65 kits that all sound great and can be customized further to suit your needs. I use a program called VDrumLib to make custom kits and transfer them back to my module – makes editing kits real easy.

The only thing I wish they had was a way to play the sounds/kits on the module via MIDI from the computer; otherwise you need to know which instruments you want to copy before you edit. So I typically play through some of the kits, and if I find a snare or tom sound I like, I have to make a note of it, go to the computer, find the instrument in the list, copy it to the custom kit and transfer it back to the module. Being able to play the sounds remotely would save the back and forth. If there’s a way to do that via some other method, let me know.

Aside from parts and sounds, I had an idea of maybe painting my cymbals gold. Right now, they come in black only. They’re made of a type of high impact plastic and I know paining plastic can be difficult but I think it’d look pretty slick to have more realistic looking cymbals. I found some ideas on the vdrums forums and I have some practice cymbals (non-triggered) I could test – so maybe I’ll try painting one and see how it goes. The trick would be masking off the trigger and striking pad.

Maybe I’ll get some gumption and do a video of me playing and post it. Maybe not. We’ll see.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Whatever. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.