No update this week. Technical issues.

by on April 12, 2018 at 2:52 pm
Posted In: Antares Complex, Updates

I’m not going to be able to update the comic this week, not even sure I’m going to be able to stream on Thursday. I apologize for this, but it’s out of my hands.

I had to reinstall windows to correct some errors going and it’s been a nightmare since. I had to reinstall all my software and some of it I had to dig up out of bins buried in my closet since I moved rooms recently. Lost my fonts and had to dig up where I got them then the password for the account, serial numbers for the software.

Half my settings are missing despite backing them up.

And, to top it all of Microsoft released an update on Wednesday that made drawing impossible. A brush stroke would also move the canvas. It seems to be a wide spread problem if twitter is to be believed too. So, that was hours of fun to try to fix.

Hell, even when taking a break things were giving me problems. Agh.

In short, I can’t get the update out on time and a stream might be off limits tomorrow if I can’t get my settings right. I’m sorry, I didn’t think there’d be this many problems.

A Game Boy Advance project and story!

by on April 5, 2018 at 5:41 pm
Posted In: Other Projects, Video Games

I dunno what brought this on but, I decided to give the GBA SP I had a makeover. Some purists may scoff at this but, it was a project that was challenging to do but worth it in the end I think. Giving my ol’ GBA some TLC and a new better look.

The GBA is a platform that was quite an interesting rollercoaster of hate, love, quality and questionable decision making. The original lacking a backlight brought both many a frustration and many a questionable…odd accessory that would be found laughable in today’s world. Followed by the GBA SP something that should have been the obvious base model, with a front lit screen (yes, front lit) to it’s folded design to protect the screen, it was something that I, and many wanted day 1. Infact I sold my GBA the day it was announced and sat, waiting with a preorder ..so I could finally enjoy the games I bought without relying on sun or crappy accessories.

 

 

I vividly remember buying Golden Sun day 1 with my friend and sitting in his living room (which had only lamps and no ceiling lights of ANY kind) and playing it. Loving a fully realized RPG on the go …But…as the day went on we found ourselves desperately leaning toward the huge window in the back, more and more trying to get every last bit of light we could! Till we had to give up and play something else as night fell but our excitement peaked.

Finally I got my GBA SP and got to play a boat load of games any time I wanted with a freakin’ backlit screen (something my Game Gear sported years before, but yes that’s apples and oranges in terms of tech, we’ll talk about that some other time maybe). It’s one fatal flaw being, predating the iPhone‘s decision to ditch the headphone jack. Yes, you needed a freakin’ adapter to listen to your tunes in stereo! …AHEM …

What does this have to do with the project I mentioned in the title? Hell if I know, but it’s a fun bit of backstory to the GBA history, me and this GBA SP I decided to refit for the modern times. This GBA SP I got a few years back through a friend who managed to track down a AGS-101 which, if you’re nerdy enough will know is the backlit version of the GBA! Fancy, ass, shit.

So, the project? Well the AGS-101 came in a variety of ….three colors (black, baby blue and metallic pink), and I got the second worst of the lot…baby blue. Turns out on ebay there’s sellers offering a ton of options of shells that are surprisingly accurate and authentic to the original…down to selling stickers that say which version of the GBA you got. I grabbed one for the princely sum of $15 bucks which included the shell, battery, a glass screen cover, screw drivers (including Nintendo’s favorite tri-wing screw driver), stickers to tie it together and some minor extras.

Lemmie tell you, if this sounds tempting and it’s got you excited to fix up your ol’ GBA SP? Yeah, it’s totally worth it but the difficulty of doing is possibly more than you want to do it. 90% of it went smoothly but just ONE bit of it took a while. We’ll get to that shortly!

Ahh…Glorious. On the bottom is my original SP, a bit scuffed from it’s previous owner but about to get a new lease on life! All the parts are included that you need, but you’ll have to take some like the screen, mother board and, most importantly the hinge mechanisms from the previous unit.

Disassembly was mostly easy. You unscrew things, just remember where the screws went and how it went together. The problem points were the ribbon cable connecting the screen to the mobo and …the hinges, oh, my GOODNESS the hinges! ….

Look at that, all the parts have penciled in signatures! Which I’m sure are for quality control and …alright alright FINE. Hinges. Yes, they’re the biggest fucking problem with this swap out. They are the ONLY THING that keep me from saying “this is TOTALLY worth it!” because they were the biggest pains in the ass ever because you need to remove them from the old case and slap them into the new one.

Let’s put it this way, on youtube, I found 3 tutorials  and ALL of them either broke the GBA SP shell trying to remove them or they broke the hinges. Mind you , they all were trying to incorrectly force the hinge mechanisms out but holy crap they are so small and the area to get them out is even smaller. Trying to get them into the new shell was also a problem as …I’m not sure I can even describe it. They had these really hard to see slots that you needed to fit your tools into to remove them. They have little, tiny clips that you gotta work in while pushing the hinges out. I screwed this up once, my brother (who was helping THANKFULLY) screwed it up as well. So, you guessed it we were spending a while trying to get them out of the new shell. You gotta remember the angle and which side they were on. Making sure they go in how you took them out (open or closed).

Or, the better idea, look on ebay for a new set of hinges and spare yourself the torment. Because it’s NOT worth that headache. It’s 5 bucks. Had any of these videos shown the full process I’d have bought them up.

…Oooo! Look it’s done!

 

Seriously, look at the detail these shell clones go into. You can literally pick the AGS-101 (backlit) or AGS-001(front lit) stickers for the back, it comes with the nintendo logo for the shell otp. They aren’t screwin’ around. It feels a bit different, lighter I guess but it doesn’t feel any less durable. From the outside? It’s nearly impossible to tell. I mean if you’re a REAL maniac you can use a heat gun to remove your original sticker to slap on the new one. But me? I’m satisfied with this. It was apparently a bit beyond my ability, my brother coming in offering up another set of hands to hold parts while we assembled it and of course ….the fucking hinges!! …Ahem, yes. So, in the end it worked out nicely, cleaned out any goop that build up over the years of it’s use and it’s like a brand new unit.

Years of service and still dishing out fun. This is a DAMN fine handheld that lasted years and would have been fine if I wasn’t so picky about the dumb baby blue shell. It looks great, has a new lease on life and I already beat a game on my ‘new’ GBA SP (AGS-101, I GOTTA BRAG SOMEWHERE DAMMIT), Metroid Zero Mission! My favorite 2D Metroid in the series.

Ahh…Well that was an interesting project and diversion! Pain in the ass for sure but worth it. Love the new look and I’ll be using this for many years to come. I’ve got another retro project I’m looking to talk about but this blog post has gone on WAY too long as it is. So, for now I’ll say…

See you next mission.

-Mike

Live streams, recordings and so on.

by on February 21, 2018 at 9:06 am
Posted In: Antares Complex, Artwork, Other Projects

Hey guys, you may or may not know but I do live streams with my friends, Lu and Rolicious! We work on art, comics while talking about whatever, video games, life, artwork etc. We do so every monday & thursday at around 2:30pm or 3pm eastern time. But, if you didn’t know that and wanna know what you’ve been missing out on? I have a playlist of recordings. I haven’t recorded ALL of them as it was kinda a thing that I thought to do after. Learn as you go, ya know?

The playlist link:

I’m going to give you a warning here, I do work on Antares Complex on this and I’m ahead of the game. So if you’re scared off by spoilers but are interested in hearing what’s up? Well treat it like a podcast then! If you want to come hang out, I post alerts on twitter usually so it’s best to follow me there for updates or stream notifications.

In any case, I just wanted to get it on this site to some capacity that I’m doing this. I was thinking about making blog posts for each one but I wasn’t sure how interested you guys would be since there would be spoilers.

Shamless plug: If you want early access to these videos, comic pages and art work? Want to get on the donator wall on the main site and on the donator list on the current issue of Antares Complex?
Please consider my patreon where you’ll get early access to all this and help support the comic and my art going on! If you’re not too interested in patreon you can hit me up with a tip with Ko-Fi! Thanks to those who’re already supporting me, you’re awesome and have been a great help.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Hey, what’s going on with the comments section?

by on February 2, 2018 at 8:35 am
Posted In: Updates, Website

Well, I’m sure you noticed by now or you don’t care that the comments section has been altered on the site, why’s that?

Previously I was using disuqs which was pretty good for what it did and was at least clean. They didn’t have ads until they did- after they promised they’d only advertise on bigger sites. Recently Lu of Piece of Me Comic found ads on his site through disqus. Which they never informed him they were doing!

The thing is they did say they were going to do this but would only be doing this on large websites or sites with a lot of traffic. I really expected them to at least inform the site host if they were going to do something like this but, since they didn’t and offer no real alternative like …paying them (correction in edit) …They’ve convinced me they’re not trustworthy and I’ll be changing the comments to a new system.

EDIT: Apparently they do offer a payment option, at $10 a month I’m not sure I’m interested as that’s about half of the cost of my entire server cost by itself.

I get it, they’re a service and they need support to survive. However… An option to opt into that, or at least being informed they were going to start advertising on your site would have gone a long way. Or, just let us pay a fee or something.

Now, if you’ve seen ads on this site like this? Now you know why. Antares Complex has never, ever been ad support on this site for a few reasons.

1- I think they’re irritating and some often can be sneaky where they’ll have really dodgy ads that’ll try to fool visitors. I really, really hate sites that have ads that try and fool you. “Click here to download” and it’s a bullshit ad and not what you’re actually trying to get.

2- Even if you go with good ad services, they may show visitors ads with viruses. I won’t say which site because it’s less to do with them and more to do with the service but, they’re a pretty well known site and I white listed them on my adblock and 2 weeks later, virus warning. So, me doing that just seems dumb after something like that.

I’d rather do patreon/paypal or ko-fi support for Antares Complex and have it as an option vs potential virus bullshit for my readers.

ANYWAY, it’s not like DISQUS was being used terribly much here and I think I’ll be sticking with the built in one for my website. You may be wondering why I didn’t do this sooner. Well, there’s a lot of bots out there that target wordpress sites. Trying to hack them or post spam comments on them. I had this system up for a few weeks and I think in that time I got 50 spam comments trying to fool me to get past moderation. Really lame attempts like “Nice stuff! Also check out this totally not spam bullshit here at hardcoreXXXasianSchoolGirlsXXX.fart

Wow, what a deal Mr.Notspam! Thanks for informing me of such a great website!

ANYWHO! Just figured I’d let you know why this all changed. If you know of a better comment system, feel free to let me know in the comments below. But, this is the one I think I’ll be sticking with.