Infomaniac95 @lebrickster - Tumblr Blog

An introduction, I guess?

Howdy! My name is The Brickster, better known as Infomaniac95, and sometimes Mr. Skeltal. I am a 20 year old male who has interests within LEGO (90s-2000s), Vintage Computing (90's-mid 2000's), Vintage Gaming (5th-6th gen of game consoles), VGM Soundtracks, old cartoons (mostly 90s-2000s), and much more! This is my Tumblr page, but you probably already guessed that. I'm not sure how often I will be using this page, but it doesn't hurt to have it on standby, considering recent events. If you'd like to check me out on other sites as well, you can find a link to my socials here: https://linktr.ee/brickster

I'm resigning from the Church of Kondo pastebin.com/xiWMvBmU

foodfightnovelization

Foodfight! The (OFFICIAL) Video Game

Yes, you read the title right! No it's not the fangame I made a couple months ago, this is the real deal, the whole enchilada, the ACTUAL Foodfight! tie-in game! Shortly after ROTTEN: Behind The Foodfight was released, its creator Ziggy, myself, and everyone else in the Foodfight! community thought we'd found everything there was left to find. After all, we'd uncovered the workprint, the novelization, almost all the original footage, Ziggy had interviewed countless people who worked on the movie, some character models had even been found...so that was it, right? But as I hinted at in my last few posts, the Foodfight! story wasn't quite over yet.

Reese, a friend of Ziggy's, had reached out to one of the developers involved in the Foodfight! tie-in game that was set to be released alongside the movie, and shortly after ROTTEN came out, Ziggy also managed to get in touch with them. One thing led to another and we were sent a HUGE 10GB folder of art, documents, models, and footage related to the game. What you see above is a concept submission trailer created to show off what the game would look like (similar to the pitch reel created for the movie itself). Needless to say, this blew our minds!! If you've read my previous post on the subject, you'll know that up until now the only thing anyone had EVER seen of this game was a few seconds of grainy footage from E3 2006. To go from that to a whole stockpile of material from its development was INCREDIBLE! To learn more about how this found its way into our hands, I'll direct you to a blog post from Ziggy himself, explaining a little more about the game's developers (and relaying a truly hilarious story about Larry Kasanoff)

A screenshot of the back alley level, 2006 In 1997 Larry Kasanoff and Joshua Wexler of Threshold Entertainment had the idea for a movie ti

However, I want to talk more about the INCREDIBLE plethora of material included in the folder that was shared with us. Ziggy uploaded everything we were sent on archive.org, so I'll link it here now if you'd like to peruse the files yourself, but keep reading if you want to learn more about what's included!

Between 2005-2007 Cat Daddy Games was developing a video game for the feature film Foodfight!After speaking with Cat Daddy's co-founder, Har

Just to start off with, the footage from the above concept trailer and the assorted screenshots- doesn't it just look awesome? It's far more visually appealing than the finished movie ended up looking, for one thing, and it's seemingly based more on the early pre-motion capture footage than anything that came later on. It's also just mindblowing to finally see this, to suddenly go from knowing basically nothing about the game to knowing so much about it! And best of all...doesn't this just look EXACTLY like a movie tie-in game from the mid 2000s? I mean, that shouldn't be too surprising, that's exactly what it is, but tie-in games of that era had a very specific look and feel and this just takes me right back to that. Remember the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game, where you're racing around on a trashcan lid, the Spider-Man game where you're running around Oscorp avoiding security robots, or the Incredibles game where you're rushing through a burning building fighting guys with flamethrowers? Doesn't this just look EXACTLY like one of those?

And you might be thinking "it's too bad we only have a few minutes of footage and some screenshots, I wish we could know even more about what the game would've been like". Well, your wish just came true! Buried deep in the folder is a copy of the game's design documents, telling us EXACTLY how each level would've played out! (If you're struggling to find it, it's in AUDIO> Final Drop> FF> Docs) So not only do we get to see a ton of what the game would've looked like, we also get to see how the whole thing would've come together, the types of gameplay we would've gotten to see, and how it would've differed from the movie. And reading about the different levels they had planned...this really is the ultimate stereotypical movie tie-in game. I mean just look at the levels they had planned! Isn't this every movie tie-in game you've ever played, all rolled into one? You can bet your boxtop if it had made it all the way through development, it'd easily have the honor of being one of the few tie-in games BETTER than the movie it was based off, although considering how the finished film turned out, that's not saying much. Based on what the developers said in the article linked above, it's unclear exactly how much of the game was finished before it was cancelled, and unfortunately it's incredibly unlikely they'll ever be able to compile a build together to send our way. However, there's just SO much included in this folder it's hard to complain. Not only do we get basically a complete picture of how the game would've gone together from all the documents, screenshots, cutscenes and footage included, there's all kinds of additional files that range from interesting to incredibly useful.

Not only are there models and environments from the game (unfortunately the only character model included seems to be Dex himself) there are also models of the ENTIRE CAST, directly from the early footage of the movie! Every main character is here, from Dex to Sunshine to Mr Leonard, as well as a bunch of other models such as Dan's plane and cockpit. This is HUGE, and I can't wait to see what talented artists will do with these resources. At the time I'm writing this, someone has already ported several of the models into SFM (Source Filmmaker) and another has made several animations in Blender.

I'm sure even more will happen soon, but right now this is pretty incredible. Who thought this would EVER happen? That one day we'd have models of the entire cast from the early footage of Foodfight!, a complete workprint of the film from 2005, a tie-in novelization, footage of the long-sought after videogame, and so, so much more. In the span of less than a year, Foodfight! went from some of the most obscure lost media of all time to some of the most well-documented lost media of all time. We have so much there's no way I'd ever even be able discuss it all, that's how far we've come over the past few months.

Seriously, I've barely even scratched the surface of what's in this folder. There are 3D cutscenes from the game, 2D cutscenes, concept art for the planned toy line, footage of prototypes of those toys in action, MORE gameplay footage, previously unseen storyboards not included in the workprint, raw audio of Charlie Sheen's voice sessions from the movie, tons of songs from the game, the entire score from the movie, and that's STILL not everything! I mean, holy chips! I STRONGLY encourage you to download the folder for yourself and take a look...maybe you'll even find something I haven't seen yet?

I really think that with this folder now out in the open, this is as much closure on Foodfight! as we'll ever get. I know I always say that and then there's some amazing discovery a few months later, but this is just such a huge smorgasbord of material that I don't even think we can count Foodfight! as lost media anymore...okay we haven't found absolutely everything so it's partially found media at best, but could you really ask for more than all this? We have countless models from the movie, design docs and footage from the planned tie-in game, early drafts of the script, we know EXACTLY what the movie was going to be like before everything collapsed...if you're so inclined you can take all that and make something out of all of it, but me? I'm pretty satisfied just having the knowledge. Knowing what could've been before it all fell apart, getting to see so much I never thought I'd get to look at... I'd say at this point my Foodfight! cravings have been entirely satiated. Unless another monumental discovery is unearthed sometime soon (at this point I wouldn't be surprised), I think there's not really much more to say. If nothing comes up in a month or two I'll make one last post showing off my personal collection of Foodfight! merchandise as an epilogue to everything I've been through with this movie. But in the meantime, I hope you all enjoy the absolute treasure trove that's been uncovered! Get creative! Make something out of all this! There's so much material available, you could make your OWN Foodfight!, with blackjack and hookers!

sodabytes

Visit Original Link

hey you guys were like really nice about the last music thing i posted so here's another one!! i don't really consider this one finished but i quite like it anyway. i might revisit it sometime

lebrickster

Vinyl: A format that baffles me

Within modern times, an old format called Vinyl has been making a comeback. Back then, this format was the best easy to use home music format, since the pressed records were usually higher quality and more accurate to the original source material, than that of compact cassette tapes, and 8 track tapes. This all made sense in an era that was ruled by masters being stored on analog formats, like reel to reel tape. However, music at one point shifted to being made digitally, which means how it sounds, is how it sounds. Because of this, modern produced Vinyl has none of the gains that older discs had, so I have to ask: why would someone spend so much on the format?

anosci

have you seen the vinyl pressing of autechre's tri repetae?

"complete with surface noise". the CD version is labeled as "incomplete"

its antithetical to the more common audiophile philosophy of trying very hard to hear the music as perfectly as possible, but sometimes I enjoy the physicality of imperfect playback. the extra surface noise.

it's not for everything though. tri repetae fits. the ideal instance is BoC's "Farewell Fire" slowly fading into the noisy signal of the medium. I don't think I'd like it to be my only method of hearing (sourcing?) music.

but aside from that, yeah its just a display piece thing for me. (said as if I've started my collection lol)

lebrickster

You know? That's entirely fair! Admittedly, I can be a bit of a sucker for something like cassette surface noise myself, personally, and know of a few songs that if they heard from a pure digital source, they wouldn't quite have the same feel. While most modern made stuff I'd still rather listen to in it's purest form, I can certainly see in some cases where the imperfections may make listening to those songs and albums more enjoyable. Thanks for your perspective on the matter!

Vinyl: A format that baffles me

Within modern times, an old format called Vinyl has been making a comeback. Back then, this format was the best easy to use home music format, since the pressed records were usually higher quality and more accurate to the original source material, than that of compact cassette tapes, and 8 track tapes. This all made sense in an era that was ruled by masters being stored on analog formats, like reel to reel tape. However, music at one point shifted to being made digitally, which means how it sounds, is how it sounds. Because of this, modern produced Vinyl has none of the gains that older discs had, so I have to ask: why would someone spend so much on the format?

#vinyl records #vinyl #audiophile

Emulating an old Phone System is Hard

For a moment in time there, I really wanted to get into emulating an old Phone system. Why? Because I wanted to, and I thought it was cool. Being able to use a vintage phone, and use dial up over a serial modem? Sounds awesome! But it's sadly not so simple. My god is it not...

#dial up #modem #oldphoneworks #old phones #model 2500 #voip #voip ata #retro computing

In regard to my Online name

From here on, I will be making a move to try and make all of my online names go under one name: Infomaniac95.

The Brickster and Mr. Skeltal come from when I was younger, and undeceive. Having my names be fragmented is confusing, so I'm stopping that, now.

I've debated on doing/not doing this for a while, but I feel like I should do it now, rather than later, as I'm tired of having to list all of the names I've previously gone by, throughout the years. I've forgotten several of them, and would rather be known only by one.

For the sake of links, handles on Twitter, Wetdry World, and other places, will remain the same, at least for now. But the display name will be changed.

I hope no one is bothered or offended by this change.

aqualiss-deactivated20250608

i'm still so obsessed with the art greta @loveycloud did of val in the official kirby lingerie they're soooooo pretty............

Is Lossless Music Really Worth It?

DISCLAIMER: The following is a repost of the one and only thing I posted about on my shortlived Blogspot page. I never really had the motivation to use the page at the time, and considering how I am using Tumblr now, I have even less reason to use it again. Never the less, I think this writeup may interest some of the folk who know me, and follow me. - Lossless music is something that many folk (including myself) cherish, and seek out, whenever they can, but is it really something to recommend to just about anyone?

Before the advent of compression algorithms, like MP3, Vorbis, Opus, and all those other ones, all you would do is put a CD into your CD Player, and just listen to the songs on the Disc, without much thought. But then, there eventually came a desire to have those songs as digital files on folk's own computers. However, due to the nature of CD Audio, the files ended up being huge, meaning if you wanted to digitize your CD collection in full quality, it would take up a decent chunk of hard drive space that, for most folk, was just considered too dang much. Enter compression tech like MP3, which was able to take those massive WAV files, and compress them to a much smaller size, that made keeping the songs on your hard drive, much more reasonable. For many folk, back then, and even now, they either couldn't notice the difference, or found it not to be a big deal, so many folk started ripping their music to these compressed formats, and even saving their original works in compressed formats, since the space saved was just too appealing to pass up on.

Overtime, however, folk slowly began to realize just how poor MP3 could sound, especially on lower compression settings. With bigger hard drives becoming cheaper with time, demand then began to rise for having music in it's original quality, without the audio quality being severely affected, as codecs like MP3 could do. This demand gave birth to codes like FLAC and APE, which could compress those large WAV files, while still keeping all of the relevant data intact, with no quality loss, unlike MP3. FLAC in particular continues to be a popular choice for ripping and distributing songs, since the space saved is undeniable, and there's little to no loss in audio quality, using it. (why else would it be called a Free LOSSLESS Audio Codec?)

With the background set, we now get back to the original question I asked, which is, can I really recommend Lossless music to just about anyone? This was something I was unsure of myself for a while, in truth. While I had long since been into Lossless music, and strongly urged all of my friends to also jump the same ship, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that may not be the best move for folk. Sure, someone like me can hear the difference between compressed audio, and a Lossless source, but will most other folk know the difference? Most folk usually cannot tell the difference between a compressed and Lossless source, either due to not having the ear to hear that kind of thing, their audio equipment not really making the difference apparent, or just simply not caring, if they can hear the difference. As a result, no, I can't really recommend Lossless audio to just anyone.

Unless you can hear beyond the general frequencies that compressed codecs are at, or can hear things like how compressed codecs can mess up how drums sound, recommending Lossless music to just about anyone is not something I suggest. Even with innovations like the FLAC format, Lossless music still takes up more space than compressed formats, which can be hard to justify, especially if for some of those songs, you only listen to them, once in a blue moon. To hear the full spectrum that Lossless audio can offer, you need to be able to even hear the differences between Lossless and compressed, and have the listening equipment to do so. Getting headphones that can properly illustrate that difference is not cheap in the slightest, and unless you use headphones 24/7 (like I do), it's not exactly a purchase I could push someone to make, as what if they end up not liking the headphones, or rarely using them?

While I struggle to recommend Lossless audio to that of normal users, I can, however, still recommend it to folk who make and edit videos. One thing I HATE hearing in YouTube videos is music for a game that just sounds awful, due to a really bad compressed YouTube source being used for the music in question. Due to the nature of videos, they get compressed, including the audio, so if you use a compressed audio source in the video, it will get compressed again by your video editor, and then AGAIN when it's uploaded to YouTube, which is awful. To try and avoid that sort of quality loss, using Lossless audio sources in your project (when possible) is something I strongly recommend, so those with an ear for that kind of thing, won't be going insane when a song comes on, due to how bad the compression on it is.

That was a lot of words, perhaps too much, but in summary, no I can't exactly recommend Lossless music to just about anyone. The space it takes up can only be justified if you can actually hear the difference, as if you can't, you're wasting precious hard disk space that could be used for other things. Though if you can hear the difference, and have the money to splurge on good headphones, go for it.

#flac #music #editing #lossless #mp3 #writeup

Twitter keeps falling apart, day by day, to the point where it's not a matter of if it will become unusable, but rather, when. While Twitter will probably continue to remain where I look at art and other content, it will probably move away from being my main platform to just... talk on, I guess? Due to certain rules in place on Tumblr's end, I don't want to ditch Twitter entirely yet (especially since not all of the folk that I know on Twitter, have Tumblr accounts), but it's looking like this will probably be the platform I switch to, when things finally become too cancerous, because Tumblr has a similar sort of energy to Twitter in my mind, except for the fact it's more blog based. In addition to the changes getting worse and worse, I'm frankly tired of seeing creators who get harassed over nothing. Bad folk are bad, and should be called out, yes. But folk who have private interests, and are being themselves, with nothing objectionably bad about them? No fucking need to harass them. One specific user has been suffering this badly for a long time now, and it just sucks to see. Granted, no platform is immune to mob mentality bullshit for stupid reasons, but I hope with Twitter kinda falling, that will in turn make some of that unjust harassment, die down, to an extent.

#twitter

2022 Year-in review but 6 days early

2022… that was certainly a year.

Truthfully, life has been a blur for me for a good while, so specific memories of 2022 are scattered and distant for me. Regardless, I wanted to go ahead and write up this post, about what I recall doing this year, and what I'm "proud" of. I have nothing better to do this day, and wanted to do something, so why not this?

The start of 2022 is not one I remember too well, but I do recall around early in the year, we finally started working on getting me my State ID, and Debit Card. Without these, I was more or less stuck at home, not able to get a job, or do online purchases without Gift Cards. Now that I had these, I was able to go job hunting, and in early August of the year, I landed a job, which I still maintain, now. The job has been filled with a lot of ups and downs, but overall, I'm grateful to have what I do as my first job, and not another job which would probably be rougher, and pay less. The freedom to finally buy things for myself, and to be able to help the family out with rent, has been nice, as I feel less like a useless nobody who does nothing but waste space, and bother people.

On the note of rent, after a long time of talking and planning, my brother's friend has finally moved into our house, taking the room my sister once had as her own. This friend didn't have the best of lives growing up, and long since wanted to get away from his miserable living conditions. Truthfully, I'm not sure if we're better or worse than his previous living arrangements, since he minds his own business, and doesn't talk to us much, aside from my brother, or asking one of us questions, but still, I hope he's at least a bit happier here, than where he was at, before. Hopefully he'll soon have a job and be able to help with paying the rent, too, but, only time shall tell when exactly what happens, I suppose.

One of the sad things that I learned of this year, is my father finally going to the doctors, only to find out he has some kind of gunk in his lungs. We believe it's to be asbestos, from his time at the Navy, which was recently further evidenced by this briefcase he's kept, where letters from his time during the Navy, warned of asbestos being in stuff like the water. Appointments will be coming soon to properly confirm what is going on. It's rather unfortunate, since I had been well aware of my father not doing as well, coughing a lot more, and having to leave work only. But one bright side to this is if it's found that being in the Navy is responsible for his current well-being, he can get disability funds, and retire from work, meaning he can rest easy during his final days, get medication to make himself to a better spot, and possibly even give us more money than we're currently making. I'm hoping that is able to go through in the end, but if it's not able to, I'll still be there for my Dad, and support him, regardless.

To go back to myself, well… I have a Yamaha PSR-E403, now, I guess? This musical keyboard is the same model that Club Penguin composer, Chris Hendricks, used in his earlier original compositions. It has a sound set that I am fond of, and wanted to own for myself. Above all else, I'm hoping I can use this keyboard to finally learn music, which is something I feel somewhat obligated to learn. Due to my status as project leader for the Church of Kondo, many assumed I was already a musician, when I wasn't. I'm hoping with this keyboard, I'll finally be able to learn music, and live up to some of what folk seem to expect out of me. Not that my friends have any issue with me not being a musician, but still…

Though on the note of that, to talk about something, I'd say my general confidence, and self view of myself has elevated, for the most part. There are still some doubts on my end, but overall, I feel less bad for being who I am. There's nothing wrong with having what may seem like unimpressive interests, or stuff like that, and to put myself down for not living up to high standards that none of my friends expect me to live up to, is just stupid. My friends have assured me time and time again that they're fine with me for who I am, and that I'm not a burden. It's helped me a lot, especially for feeling more comfortable with an interest of mine that I was afraid of for a long while, but have grown to accept it, since I have friends who are fine with it, and don't see me as weird for it.

What else is there… Well, I finally got a Fat PS2. Modded with a SATA adapter, and Noctua fan mod. Though in the process, the Disc drive seems to no longer work… I reckon a ribbon got disconnected, or torn, but I've been too afraid to open up the console again to check, since I did both mods kinda blind, which resulted in a lot of frustration, and confusion. I really should have just waited on my brother…

Though on a less frustrating note is my Windows 98 machine and N64! For the Windows 98 machine, I've been able to get a Sound Blaster AWE32 (CT3980) to replace the old Sound Blaster 16, and a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI to replace the old Voodoo 2/ATI Mach 64 combo I was using, which has boosted the sound capabilities of the machine, and got rid of the crashing issues I was having with the Voodoo 2 I had. I also upgraded the hard drive to use an SD2IDE adapter, and the floppy drive to use a GOTEK USB Floppy Emulator. For the N64, I got it out of storage, and got a good condition old controller for it (Blue), an Everdrive 64 X7, expansion pack, FRAM Modded Memory Card, and No Batter Modded Rumble Pack. I haven't had too much motivation or time to play it for the time being, but I've overall enjoyed my time with it, so far. (That analog stick is weird as hell, though. Hadn't used one in years, so it's still taking some getting used to, to use the N64 stick)

I can't think of much else to type, in terms of significant events from this year. There is one more big upgrade I hope to do before year end, but I'll post about that later. For now, I guess I'll move onto what I hope to achieve in the coming year.

For the new year, I'm hoping to generally just be a less annoying person to talk with? Not in the conventional sense, since most folk generally enjoy talking with me, but more so in the sense of… I need to chill out, and stop worrying so much. After I send messages, whether it be the same day, or a few days later, I get worried often that what I said was weird, offensive, or other things like that, when it most often isn't. For this coming year, I'm going to try hard to avoid these kinds of worry messages that just clog up DMs, and perhaps come off as annoying. I can trust my friends, so there's no real need for me to continue sending such messages, when I already have been told/know they have no issue with anything I say, or talk about.

On a similar note, I'm also going to just further embrace myself for who I am, and question myself, less. Some specific friends this year have helped me come to terms with who I am with something specific, and it's made me feel a lot more comfortable in myself, making me realize there's nothing wrong with what it is I like. Plus, having friends who have the same interest also helps in making feel less alien, and weird.

The coming year, I'll probably look for another job, too. While this current one works, it would be nice to have a higher pay rate, and one that has more… stable staff, I suppose. Dealing with people quitting all of the time, or not showing up, isn't really ideal, in the slightest, and just adds on a lot of stress.

Well, I think that might actually be all I have to say here. I wrote about way more than I expected, and it's reminded me that perhaps my life isn't as dull and boring as I figured it was, especially if there's this much to cover. I look forward to 2023, and hope it to be a better year than this one. Here's to hoping it is, and that the Mario Movie is ok, at the very least!

#year in review #windows 98 #n64 #nintendo 64 #sound blaster awe32

What do you think of Tumblr so far?

Don't really have a strong opinion on it yet, since I've not used it too much. But if one platform ended up taking over Twitter, this would probably be the one I'd use, since it feels like a good mix of art and general discussion.

A decentralized place like Mastodon may be good for discussion, but it seems far from ideal for artists, and for users trying to find artists. Tumblr seems to be close to Twitter in that regard, in being a good mix of art and general discussion.

So if Twitter really does end up going under in due time, this platform is probably what I'll end up using the most, I reckon. But for now, until that does happen, I'm not going to be using the site too much, for now. Still, the first impression isn't as bad as I expected. Plus, having folk ask me actual questions is nice.

ham

TBH, I prefer it over Turkey, but that could just be me. Also, thanks for the follow! Glad to see you here.

hey stinky!

Me? Stinky? Well, I did come from work a few hours ago, so that isn't unlikely... (On a bit of a more serious note, howdy! Glad to see a familiar face here.)

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