Back on the 'net

Well it's been a few weeks for me without the Internet and it turns out keeping this blog has kept me focused on Fire Pro. I've written at least 10 entries in the last few weeks that I couldn't post because the blogger app I have is poo so I'll get all two of my followers up to speed...

First of all, I moved in to my new house at the start of September. It's near enough the opposite side of town but it was still a pain to drive. I'm closer to work and my gym now so that's all good. I no longer live in a basement looking out in to a possible Fallout 3 location. The house needs some care but we got out the old person smell (I'm certain someone has died here in the last 5 years). Three days after moving in I was back at work... sigh!

I focused a lot on cleaning up Fire Pro during September. I bought myself a nice little "Sonic the Hedgehog" notebook to write in to remind myself what I need to fix and do. My biggest problem was the glitched animation stuff with the press slam. This is all fixed now. I've also switched around costumes and made a couple of other minor changes. I hope to have a patch out as soon as I've fixed this dodgy leg stuff (See the Portable forum on FPC).

I spent some free time in October play testing. Very unlike me as I would normally just release the patch and hope for the best. This allowed me to fix additional bits and add to my notebook. I wonder how full my notebook would be if I'd kept one from the start? It would probably be full of cartoon pictures of Stan Hansen lariating my PGCE tutor...

I've also got back in to watching wrestling again. Between translating a wrestling game and being a pro-wrestler, you I found I stopped enjoying watching wrestling so much. This month I re-watched the IWA King of the Deathmatch, Best of Kenta Kobashi and disc two of the Tiger Mask collection. IWA was fun. The first time I watched it I was 16 and had just started looking outside WWE and WCW for stuff to watch. I bought a VHS off of eBay for about £3 and watched the thing in one sitting with a pack of beef jerky (This is a luxury in England as it is usually about £3 a bag!). I watched the Tiger Mask DVD as I'd bought it weeks before Misawa passed away and hadn't touched in since.

In other news I've been dead lifting like mad since August. My goal was to hit 200kgs before the end of October, that's about 441lbs or one Rikishi Phatu, or two and a half Rey Mysterio Jr's. Between moving, flu and a few weeks on full body training I don't think I'll make it. At my best I got to 180kgs for 5 reps. No one dead lifts in my gym really and I think it's an awesome exercise. A power lifter helped me tidy up my technique a few years back so hopefully I don't screw my back up.

Back to Fire Pro. My most recent projects have been trying to complete Management of the Ring with a created promotion, not an easy task. I've also started playing with FPR again. I downloaded a few awesome packs a while ago but I may realise my dream of creating a Fire Pro save that contains everyone from every Fire Pro game ever. In terms of stuff I may actually do, I'm going to start working a logos again. No promises but if anyone would like to help, please let me know.

All the best,

TM

CRITICAL'd

This weekend I've just completed fixing the "Press Slam" animation glitch. I had to start with a clean ROM, replace all of the wrestler, MOR, translation data and any images, making sure to update the pointers. The file size has returned to it's full 16Mb so you may need a clear ROM to run the newest patch when I release it.
I'm still doing a bit of play testing. I'm hoping to find the last Japanese-text screens and translate those. Screenshots to come!