“Bill Brasky is the father of every kid in this town!”

“Bill Brasky once showed me a video of him making love to my wife, and it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw!”

“One time I was with Brasky in the back of a pickup truck, along with a live deer. Brasky goes up to the deer and says, ‘I’m Bill Brasky! SAY IT!’ Then he manipulates the deer’s lips in such a way as to make it say, ‘Billbrasky’ … It wasn’t exactly like it, but it was pretty good for a deer!’”

“He’d eat a homeless person if you dared him!”

“His poop is used as currency in Argentina.”

“He sweats Gatorade”

“He once breast-fed a flamingo back to health.”

“He hated Mexicans! And he was half Mexican! …….And he hated irony!”

“I once saw him scissor kick Angela Landsbury.”

“He sheds his skin once a year.”

“He makes brooms somewhere in Georgia.”

“He did 3 tours in ‘Nam…… I was in Corpus Christi on business a month ago. I had this eight foot tall Asian waiter, which made me curious. I asked him his name. Sure enough it’s Ho Tran Brasky!”

“I once saw him eat a whole live chicken.”

“His favorite movie is ‘One on One’ with Robby Benson.”

“He sleeps eight hours a night! …….. well, he was pretty normal when it came to that.”

“Bill Brasky was a two ton man-mountain who could palm a medicine ball!”

“Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can’t find one. Finally Brasky takes me to a vacant lot and says, ‘Here we are.’ We sat there for a year and a half and sure enough someone constructs a bar around us. The day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Brasky yelled over the roar of the flames, ‘Always leave things the way you found em!’”

“Bill Brasky had a four day heart attack…a day for each chamber. At the autopsy, they said his heart looked like a basketball filled with riccotta cheese.”

“He once punched a hole in a cow just to see who was coming up the road.”

“He taught me how to make love to a woman, and how to scold a child.”

“They found $60 in change in his stomach.”

“He did all the makeup on the ‘Planet of the Apes’ movie.”

“He grew a 3rd arm and kept it in a vault.”

“Brasky drank a full glass of liquid LSD with his eggs. Then he slept for 8 months straight. When he woke he rubbed his eyes and said, ‘All in all, I prefer gin.’”

“They say Gene Roddenbery got the idea for Star Trek from listening to Brasky talk in his sleep.”

“He date raped David Bowie.”

“He once inhaled a seagull.”

“The Pope told him it was ok to have a mistress.”

“It was the sight of Brasky’s naked body that drove Brian Wilson insane.”

“He once had sex with a cigarette machine.”

“He killed Wolfman Jack with a trident.”

“He uses the Shroud of Turin as a golf towel.”

“He once ate the Bible while water skiing.”

“He drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.”

“He sired a baseball team.. an orchestra if you count the bastards!”

“You know, he would shoot whiskey into his neck with a syringe!”

“He has dandruff the size of mice!”

“He jogged with a fridge on his back!”

“Bill Brasky was a 10 foot monster who slept with all our wives! And punched us all in the face! And we loved him for it!”

“His first name is Bill! ……. I’m drunk.”

“He’s a ten foot tall beastman who showers in vodka and feeds his baby shrimp scampi.”

“He orchestrated the merger between Unicef and Smith & Wessen.”

“He went public with his own buttocks and made $7 million.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky went hunting? Brasky decides he’s going to hunt down all four of the Banana Splits. He stalks and kills every one of them with a machette. They all begged for their lives…except Fleagle.”

“We once had a bachelor party for Brasky. He ate the entire cake before we could tell him there was a stripper in it.”

“Brasky once hosted the Grammys and gave every award to Corey Hart.”

“He has a toenail on the end of his penis.”

“Brasky once got his wife pregnant and gave birth to a delicious 16 ounce steak. The after birth was sauteed mushrooms.”

“Brasky’s family crest is a picture of a baracudda eating Neil Armstrong.”

“Brasky ranked 18th in the AP College Football Pool.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky was in a production of, ‘The King & I?’ On opening night, Brasky chloroforms the entire cast and slowly eats them in front of the audience for two hours. The production got pretty good reviews.”

“He breastfeeds John Madden.”

“Brasky named the group Sha-Na-Na. They did NOT want to be called that.”

“If you drop a phonograph needle on Brasky’s nipple, it plays the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds.’”

“They use Brasky’s foreskin as a tarp when it rains at Yankee stadium.”

“Brasky directed that commercial where the women play basketball in high heels.”

“All the ‘Yes’ album covers are Brasky family photos.” “He wears a live rattlesnake as a condom.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time he taught his son how to drive? He did it by entering him in the Indy 500. The kid wrecked and died. Brasky said it would’ve happened sometime.”

“Brasky’s semen can form into a liquid human – like the guy from ‘Terminator 2′”

“Brasky still believes in Santa Claus, and he wants to put him in porno films.”

“He thinks then iron man is gay.”

“He framed Roger Rabbit.”

“The character of Johnny Appleseed was based on Brasky – except for the apple tree planting and not raping men.”

“He gave a handjob to a manta ray.”

And now, here’s how I come into this:

In 1999 the Internet was still a relatively new and exciting thing to my friends and I.  One of the people outside of my group of friends began playing a MUD – this gradually spread like wildfire and soon there were about 30 of us playing in our area.  I spent the next 4 years playing it, ignoring other graphical online games just because I had so much fun and enjoyed it with all my friends.  We always would tell stories of our exploits either killing other players or completeing quests, or our tragic down falls to some super NPC or even sometimes bitch to each other when one of us killed the other.  I always look back at that period of my life fondly, you could no doubt about it label me a geek.

Sometime in 2002 – our beloved game went offline without much warning.  We were all in shock – some of us began to bide our time, some of us went off to find new MUDs and then there was my friend Chris and I.  Sometime in June 2002, we pushed off the shore in his dad’s canoe with a notebook and brains bursting with ideas.  Together we drafted our initial idea for a game at that point we called “Mystic Shadows” – this was all great and all but neither of us knew the first thing about creating one of these games or the language that was used to make them.  It was later on in that summer I began to press myself to learn C, and after finding a suitable code base to build up from I began to slowly but surely make the changes to the code and add in the features we had discussed.  In the fall, “Mystic Shadows” would occasionally go online from my Windows 98SE box for a few hours a night on the weekend and my friends would come in and play and give me feedback.  Surprisingly, there was little bad feedback.

Around this time the game I mentioned that inspired me to work on this came back online – and is still online to this day, it is nearly 20 years old now!

I continued to write areas along with friends and put it all together until February 2003 we finally went online live as “Realm of Shadows”!  Within the first few hours people began to pour in, I think it was one of the proudest moments of my life.  Looking back on what the game was then compared to what it would be later after I continued to improve my skills, it was really not that impressive – I think one of our hugest successes was to have such a dedicated and friendly staff there to help people when they needed it.

From February 2003 – until January 2006 I spent thousands of hours working on making the game better and better.  The game was doing fairly well, much better than several other games I had seen and before it was over I even inspired a spin-off which still is online today running large portions of my code.

The doors were closed in January 2006 due to my increasingly busy life.  Being a firm supporter of the Open Source movement, I put my code where my mouth was and released it to the public.

3 years passed.  I often would think back on those days very fondly and how exciting it was to run to the library to check in on my world and see how everything was going.  I’ve made many friends, met many people and learned so much – and as I mentioned, spent thousands of hours on it.  I literally have 5,440 hours in game alone.

On July 1st 2009, the code base for Realm of Shadows was dusted off, recompiled and fired up again after buying my old domain name back and tracking down a new host.  It is open to the public and has been seeing steady amounts of new players coming in daily.

For those of you who used to play this type of game maybe when you were just a teen like me – or those who have no idea what it was like before WoW -  I invite you to come over and play with me!  I look forward to seeing you there!

Realm of Shadows

This week Ryan, Aaron, Jeff and Joe run with the show.  Ryan finally gets his hands on a game again (XBox 360/Wii), Jeff loves Madworld (Wii), Aaron is making a glock in Little Big Planet (PS3) and Joe is into Skate 2 (XBox 360).  Ryan and Aaron were watching the Watchmen, neither was overly impressed with the flick though – some spoilers here so be careful!  The guys also talk movies, skateboarding, fat girls, hacking and bailouts.

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Good night, or good morning I guess?
- Ryan

Ps.) The new phone is awesome, keep an eye on my moblog.

Sony Ericsson W810i

* 2 Mega Pixel Digital Camera
* MP3 / FM Radio
* Cell Phone (Obviously)
* Mobile E-mail

Dell Inspiron 6000

* 1.73 GHz Intel Centrino Processor
* 512 MB RAM
* DVD+RW Drive
* ATI Graphics
* 40 Gb Hard Drive
(Also I always have a USB thumb drive, and a blue tooth USB adapter)

Sony DSC-S40

* 4 Mega Pixel

Comments are appreciated.

Thanks,
Ryan

The end.

Getting in the Christmas spirit… yay.

- Ryan Kenward

Get it now!

Download!

- Ryan