WRONG! There is so much for you to get ready and practice. You could be doing any of these:

• Draw some sprites for a random animation, either directly in a bitmap editor or on paper and scan them.
• Polish that basecode to fix that thing you found last compo that really bugged you.
• Install GIMP or Audacity or other development related application and practice how to use it.
• Pull out your microphone and record yourself and other sounds around the house to create a song in Audacity.
• Create a Towlr.
• Think of witty motivational posters.
• Rip CDs to MP3s and create a great 48hr in-the-zone coding playlist.
• Stock up on food for the weekend.
• Clean and organize your desk.
• If you are feeling adventurous, take your first steps with that new language.
• Vote!
• Spend some quality time with the family so they know you still love them when you ignore them over the weekend.

Whatever you do, please share it with us on Ludum Dare! And also, no matter how much or what it is that you do, you’re a winner in this pre-compo competition!

Of course, none of these things will actually be used in the LD competition since that is against the rules (except the basecode) however they can’t keep you from using the skills you just learned!

Download it here.

Goals are pretty much repeating what I said last time:

• Keep the same art style as last time.  I sketched things out on paper and scanned them in so I could colorize.  Keeping with bold colors and gradients is probably what I’ll do.
• KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid!  Making something too complex is just a recipe for a headache at 1pm on Sunday afternoon.
• Make useful additions to the basecode that can be used in later competitions.  The screenshot stuff is an example of something I did previously that helps out a lot.
• Finish most of the work by Saturday night so I can spend Sunday polishing.
• Don’t run into dumb problems that eat up eight hours.

Tools in use:

• Java 6 SDK (though last time I included a version for JDK 5)
• Eclipse IDE
• Photoshop, maybe some Illustrator
• DrPetter’s sfxr for sound effects
• Audition, if I can get it to play well with my sound card
• HP OfficeJet 6450 All-In-One for scanning doodles
• No Fear Energy Drink Sugar Free (Hopefully Boris Said and Carter Racing will run some Sprint Cup this year)
• Everlasting Gobstoppers
• mIRC for chattery
• Killer Game Programming in Java and the base code I mentioned above.

Can’t wait to see what the theme is.  Hope it’s a fun one!

This was probably the best Ludum Dare weekend I’ve had.  My game was more than just a tech demo or an ‘unfinished’ idea.  Of course, they never are truly complete after 48 hours time; there is always something else that can be tweaked or added.  When all was said and done, however, my entry was a playable game.

Background

The theme was not one that I had put much thought into before it was announced so I really had zero ideas at Go time.  One thing that kept popping into my head was the Kroz series of games by Apogee software back in the late 80’s/early 90’s.  They’re all pretty much the same engine with a new collection of levels, but one was called Caverns of Kroz.  The object of the game is to take your hero through twenty or thirty levels to find or capture some relic.  Along the way you had to run, whip or out-maneuver swarms of monsters and solve puzzles.  I had always thought those games were neat, and it would be interesting to try and ‘recreate’ some of that nostaliga.  Caverns of Kroz didn’t have anything special that made it more caverny than the rest in the series, but I thought I could do better with actual graphics instead of ASCII art.

Kingdom of Kroz

LoneStranger's Caverns

Graphics

One of the first things I do in a LD is grab a piece of printer paper and start sketching some objects.  More is better, even if I think I may not use them.  For LSC, I sketched a few doodles and scanned them in.  The designs were done in homage of the original ASCII characters and colors.  For example, my monsters look remiscent of the Ä, Ö and Ω characters.  The first problem I had to resolve was how big to make the map.  Kroz uses something like 60×24, but I don’t really like how smushed that is.  I wanted a square ratio on an 800×600 pixel window.  This led me to pick 16×16 as the tile size, which seemed small to me.   For the first couple tiles, the floor and the walls, I used 16×16 image to create them.  That went OK.  Next I took a look at my scans to turn them into tiles.  I did an overhead view of the player, basically just a head and shoulders.  I created the tile originally as a full 120×120 image with margins.  I colored him yellow and red like the Kroz hero.  I copied the merged image and pasted it into a new document that I then resized to 32×32.  Inside the drawing routines I have it again resized on the fly as 16×16.  The reason for this was that I may want to add a ‘zoom’ feature to the game in the future and it would be great if the images didn’t get pixelated.  I followed the same procedure for all the rest of the tiles.

The style of the art is not much different than the other LD entries I’ve done.  I don’t try to draw the straightest or the best.  I just draw to my ability.  Those are then scanned in and then modified in Photoshop.  Since I shrunk these down, you don’t see the imperfections as much, and maybe that’s better?  I don’t think some people ‘get’ that the imperfect art is part of my style and I think I get marked down for it sometimes.

Coding

This is the fourth time I’m using the same general base code for my LD entry.  I think it shows because I have a hang of it’s abilities and limitations and I can get what I need to get done faster and more efficiently.  Also, each LD I add more basic functionality to it so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time, as they say.  Additions this time are an unfinished menu system and a tile/map data structure.

Most everything that I coded worked fairly soon thereafter, even the changes that take 30 minutes in between builds.  I think I had only two major problems: monsters moving over walls and monsters not dying when they move onto the player.  The first problem was because I couldn’t figure out why my collision detection logic was failing for monsters.  And it wasn’t.  I had an errant semicolon tagging along the end of an if statement.  My logic was fine and the if was completing an empty statement.  Then the next line moved the monster anyway.  The second problem was weird in that the monsters would sometimes die when they moved into the player, but not always.  A majority of that problem was due to how I keep track of the monsters.  I have two references for them.  One is in a two dimentional array similar to the tile map.  Either the cell has a link to a monster, or it’s null.  The second reference is in a linked list.  The grid is used for monster-monster collision detection since I only have to check the cell next to the monster for another monster.   The linked list is used when I have to traverse each monster object and is faster than checking every cell in the grid.  It’s actually a great idea but I was trying to solve the monster-player collision problem without actually having a fully implemented monster-monster collision.  It turned out that the monsters were moving into the same spot and the second monster was overwriting the first monster’s entry in the grid.  It was weird but once I finished implementing that code the rest fell into place.

These two problems cost me about eight hours split over Saturday night and Sunday morning.  If I didn’t have those problems, then my game would have been that much more complete.

I didn’t try to do anything too fancy in my code.  I could have spent more time doing things in a more efficient way for the future, but instead I hardcoded some functions just to get it done.  For example, I have eight different functions for the different directions in many parts of the code.  Those could probably be pared down to one in each situation if I passed some variables in.  I’d also like to combine the collision detection and movement between the player and the monsters.  Maybe base them from the same Mobile class or something.

What I did Wrong

Other than those two issues that I mentioned above, there wasn’t a whole lot that I did wrong while coding.  I did have a few too many distractions over the weekend.  My folks came over on Saturday to swim (which is great because it was triple-digit weather) and have dinner so I lost a few hours there.  That by itself wasn’t a problem but when I was actually coding I had the TV on which split my attention.

I also forgot to tie the score in with anything being done by the player.  Not a big deal, since score isn’t really much in the game yet, but it should have added some points for killing monsters and grabbing gems and whips.

Apparently my sounds were a bit harsh.  I used DrPetter’s sfxr to create them, but I must have used some weird settings because they sound fine through my 5.1 speakers, but they are harsh through headphones.  I guess I’ll have to do sound through headphones next time and hope that translates through the speakers.

What I did Right

I think I was helped by trying to emulate the Kroz series of games and it wasn’t because I had a model to ‘copy’ from.  I think the key was that the limits on what I was setting out to accomplish were already fairly firm.  I didn’t have to try to build in some weird functionality for the future, since I already knew where I was ending up.  The other LD weekends started with an idea that was to be flushed out later.  The only problem is that later usually doesn’t come and I am stuck with an incomplete game or a complete ‘thing’ that isn’t fun.

What I Wanted to Do After Last Compo

I wanted to work on my basecode after LD48 #14, and I did that.  I also wanted to scale down my goals, and I think I was able to manage my goals this time around by not setting them too high.  I think it’s a win.

What’s Next?

I’d like to continue with this project and there are a few obvious things I can do.

• Make the code more efficient and easier to read
• Profiling execution.  I haven’t tested lots of monsters or animated tiles yet, but it will probably suffer from performance issues.
• Level editor
• More objects and tiles
• Better level file format
• Continue adding basic functions to the basecode

So Mortem?  This thing’s just getting started!

Driver Interaction with Fans

I’m not sure if my experience holds true for the rest of the tracks, but I’ve noticed over the past decade that it’s harder and harder to get near your favorite drivers.  When I started following NASCAR twenty years ago, it was real easy to get autographs at Sears Point/Infineon if you had the time to walk up and down the chain-link fence in front of the haulers.  In between on-track activity, the drivers would walk between the haulers to the fence and sign hats, cards, shirts and anything else.  I got to see some really neat things, like practical joker Sterling Marlin peeking over part of the fence blocked by a tarp, waiting to see how long it would take for the fans to notice him, or the fans talking to the catering company barbecuing Dale Earnhardt’s chicken.  Over the years more haulers showed up and they were placed closer together until the drivers couldn’t easily walk between them.  Eventually the garage area was built and now the fans are nowhere near the drivers.

I think this kind of accessibility was one of the things that grew NASCAR like it did in the 90s, and I think the sport needs to return to it’s grass roots.  I really like what Las Vegas has done with their Neon Garage, where the fans can look down on the crews from a second floor promenade.  Other tracks have similar things: Daytona, Kansas, Kentucky, Nashville, Iowa, and Pocono.  It would be great of other tracks could do the same thing.

The other part of this is actually being able to talk to the drivers.  The only way you can really get a good autograph or take pictures with the drivers is at sponsor events or special signings at the track.  These usually involve getting there early, getting a ticket and waiting in line.  That’s not so bad, but you lose some of the spontaneousness that there used to be. 

Driver Personalities

Something that has also been lacking in the past decade is new driver personalities.  Owners are looking for drivers who are good, but who can also be a spokesman for a sponsor.  Sponsors want someone who is perceived as a nice guy who stays out of trouble and can sell their product.  NASCAR wants to get over the conception that their sport is for rednecks.  This all adds up to drivers with little or no personality, or at least not much of a difference than the next guy.  As the older drivers have left the sport, they’ve also take with them the diverse personalities of the sport as a whole.  Few of the new guys are setting themselves apart from the rest.

What is missing?  One of the big things we don’t really have anymore are villains.  When Earnhardt Sr. was driving, the fans either loved him or hated him.  Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch all get (or used to get) similar reactions, but not to the level that Earnhardt did.  He was not afraid to spin people out to win a race, and NASCAR didn’t penalize him much for it.  If these guys did that week after week like Earnhardt did, you better believe NASCAR would be taking points away.  So they’re not allowed to be the complete villain.

It’s not bad when a driver plays the part of the good guy, but there are too many of them, due to the sponsor reasons I mentioned above.  They may have attitude issues or let their mouths run, but NASCAR is nipping that early on before they become another Tony Stewart.  The sport needs more Tony Stewarts.  It needs guys who aren’t afraid to get in the face of a guy who they feel wronged them.  Denny Hamlin, for example, could have become a big NASCAR personality, but it fizzled.  Is that his true personality or is it because NASCAR is keeping a close eye and wags their finger when someone starts to mouth off?

How does this get fixed?  I’m not sure.  It’s not totally NASCAR’s fault, as the sponsors tend to not sign deals with drivers who come off as jerks to some of the fanbase.  They don’t want to be associated with them, in case they do something that would hurt sales.  The only thing NASCAR can do is relax the penalties for off-track incidents and keep their hands off when drivers have beef with each other.  We’ll never see another driver like Earnhardt, since NASCAR doesn’t want racers spinning out each other on the last lap every week, but they can look the other way so fans can get the other interesting aspects of drivers and their interactions.  Most importantly, let the drivers be the wide range of themselves, which reflects us, the fans.

Yellow Line Rule

I understand why the yellow line rule was created, which states that you cannot go below the yellow line at Talladega and Daytona to make a pass.  If you do, you must give the spot back or be penalized, and if you are forced down there by another driver, he will get penalized.  It is a safety rule because drivers were ducking down there to make unsafe passes and causing wrecks.  However, I think the rule is not a fair one.  It has cost one driver a win in one situation which led to a dangerous wreck in another.    The only thing they have accomplished here is make themselves look stupid when they go against their own precedents, since Johnny Benson was allowed to keep his position after he went under the line to finish 2nd in a truck race on the final lap the previous year.

My take is that the rule is going to continue to cause wrecks that it was designed to stop, just as we saw from Keselowski/Edwards earlier this year.  If they want this rule, that’s fine. Keep it in there, but change it so that anything goes on the final lap so we can get an exciting safe finish instead of a horrifying one.

Cup drivers in Nationwide and Truck

Since the lower series were created Cup drivers have dropped down to race in them.  Sometimes they do it to learn about the track and car settings to take some of that knowledge to their Cup teams.  Sometimes they do it to gain racing experience on the specific track or just in general.  Sometimes it’s for the money.  But mostly it’s because they are racers, doing what racers do.

I think it becomes a problem when stars from the main series, successful stars at that, come down and run a full season.  It takes away money, wins and sponsors from less established teams and drivers.  The proponents of Cup stars in NW and Truck races say that the added starpower helps sell tickets and make the races more exciting as well as give the regulars someone to watch and learn from.  I think all of those reasons are valid.  However, when you look at the results of the race every week and seven of the top ten finishers are Cup drivers, it defeats the purpose of the lower tier series, which is to develop young talented drivers into stars that can be ’sold’ to the Cup series fans.  Not only do they need to develop racing skills, but they need build up a career portfolio for potential sponsors and for the fans so they can start to recognise them.

I think a decent solution would be to disallow any full time Cup driver from entering more than a certain number of lower tier NASCAR sanctioned races a year.  A number like 12 or 15 would be fine, and it would stretch across both NW and Truck.  Certain exceptions to the rule would be ok, such as full time rookies in Cup can run a full schedule in NW and a few in Truck.  This would be great for their learning experience and also let them focus on Cup full time once they get a year behind them.  There would have to be some kind of threshold to check against as the season went on to allow for drivers who started full time in Cup but ceased to race there would be able to run as many of the lower tier races as they wanted to.  There is also the situation where the full time NW or Truck driver gets a full time ride halfway through the season.  I would say give them a few races leeway before requiring the team to find a new driver.

The vacuum created by less Cup star in the lower tier series would allow for other drivers to rise to the top, show off their skills and be the face of a series built to grow new stars and give tired careers new life.  As a fan, I would be interested in watching the stars of tomorrow develop and grow instead of the stars of today stealing the show.

Car of Tomorrow….Today.

The COT has done exactly it’s primary purpose, and that’s increase the safety of the drivers.  Since it was introduced a couple years ago though, it hasn’t made racing any more exciting.  The new car and car rules take away some of the things that the teams used to do mechanically and body wise.  I’m hoping that will change as the teams learn more about the cars and try new things.  If NASCAR were to allow the teams more leeway, it certainly would allow a greater range of possibilities and the teams could set up their cars in more ways, meaning more variety on the track.

One of the problems with the new car is the common template.  Fan’s can’t relate to it.  It looks nothing like anything on the streets today, and certainly very little like the nameplates on the front from the four different manufacturers.  Only the front headlights area looks like the model.  They need to make changes over the next years so that fans can continue to get behind a particular manufacturer, or over time they will care less about it.  From the other side, you have the car manufacturers in financial trouble.  If they feel that NASCAR isn’t bringing them any new sales, they’ll be more likely to drop support for the series.  This may not hurt the bigger teams, but the smaller teams need the research that the manufacturers provide.

The Chase

I think the Chase has done a lot to make the final weeks of the season more interesting.  It’s not often we get the 1992 finish to a season, where six drivers were still mathematically within reach of the championship.  The Chase can help it come close year after year.  I think NASCAR did a great thing when they tweaked the rules each year to get to where they are now.  The best change is probably the way they seed the final twelve drivers.  Instead of giving them points on which position position they entered the final ten races, they are seeded based on how many wins they had in the first 26 races.  This change forces the drivers to go for the win when it’s within their grasp instead of just taking the lower risk option and going for the top five.  I can’t think of any way to change the points system to make it better, only that they should continue with this the way it is until it becomes stale or a situation arrives that warrants a change.

Cookie Cutter Tracks

Please, if you are building a new track, don’t make it a 1.5 mile like Atlanta Motor Speedway, Lowe’s Motor Speedway, Texas Motor Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Chicagoland Speedway and Kansas Speedway.  That’s nine races of the 36, a quarter of the season, that are mostly the same.  It gets boring.  Give us more short tracks or even a third road course.

I know some of the track owners want to buy other tracks to move those races to their newer 1.5 mile facilities.  Don’t let them do that.  If they want more races at their newer tracks, make them move one of their other track’s dates.  Or, an even better idea, rotate the dates each year.  One year, Texas has two races.  The next year, move one of them to Las Vegas so it gets two races.  The year after that, move one of those back to Texas.  International Speedway Corporation and Speedway Motorsports don’t have to limit their swapping to similar tracks, they can use it for all of them.  One way I see that this could help the sport is to control some of the saturation that NASCAR has into certain areas.  Instead of not selling out two races a year, don’t give the fans a choice between two races and sell out the one date that year.  They’ll be starved for racing the next year as well, and maybe you’ll get a second sellout out of it.  Rotate the track dates to get this effect in more than one area.

Television Coverage

NASCAR did a great thing in 1999 when they got all the Sprint Cup races on three networks, Fox, NBC and TNT.  Other than the swapping back and forth of the Daytona 500, you would have one network for a stretch of races with consistent coverage and you didn’t have to flip around to different channels to find the race.  The networks themselves did a great job by contracting former drivers and crewchiefs to do the play-by-play and color commentary.  This wasn’t new, as I remember Ned Jarrett and Benny Parsons calling races when I first started watching racing back in ‘89 and ‘90.  Hiring people from inside the sport gives the viewers a perspective similar to that of the drivers in the cars and they likely would make their interviewees more comfortable.  The coverage was swapped around a little bit in 2007, dropping NBC for ESPN/ABC, but it didn’t suffer any.

One thing that fans complain about is the commercials.  There’s a lot of them.  I don’t mind having commercials, but the problem is that car racing is not like other sports.  Most of the time there is action, whether it is on the track or in the pits.  You don’t want to throw a commercial while the cars are racing since you don’t want to miss a pass among the leaders or a live wreck, so the caution laps are the alternative time to show them.  Unfortunately, most of the cautions are also used for pitstops where sometimes the race is won or lost.  NASCAR has shied away from doing the side-by-side windows that ESPN used for the Indy 500 this past weekend.  A few reasons why they can’t do it have been mentioned before on the web.  TNT tried some wide open coverage last year at the Coke 400 and while I think it’s great, it still needs work.  The biggest reason that NASCAR says it hasn’t done it yet is that it is in the hands of each of the networks.  Since they don’t work together, there is likely never going to be a uniform side-by-side commercials.  That’s fine with me.  Each network should try their own methods of giving us the action during the commercials.  Like NASCAR does with it’s rules, the networks should tweak it each week and figure out what works the best.  Fans will comment on what they like and even if the networks start with widely different methods, they will move closer together as they learn what the majority wants.

The last thing I want to talk about in regards to the television coverage–start times.  It seems each year that the races start later and later in the day.  My family used to be able to go to church at 9am pacific and get home in time for the green flag to be thrown.  The race would be over in three or four hours and the rest of the day was open for whatever.  With the later start times, I’m finding that I either lose the day for other activities or I record the race and forward through the commercials later.  I’m sure the sponsors don’t like DVRs, but they can be a great friend to the race fan who finds most of today’s races full of boring.

The other thing that is not great is the actual green flag times.  The networks give us a coverage time, say 1pm Eastern.  More often than not, the actual race green flag time is over an hour or more after that.  I don’t mind a few hours of prerace coverage.  Sometimes I’ll turn on SPEED channel when I wake up just to see what they’re saying and leave it in the background while I do things around the house.  If you really want to get your NASCAR fix, it’s there and it’s great.  However, when a network tells me the time they’ll start their coverage at a specific time, I expect the green flag to be no more than 25 minutes after that.  It doesn’t take long to go over the important news of the week and the points to keep an eye on during the race.  If the networks want expanded coverage, then make it a separate pre-race show.  Sometimes I’m in the mood for an extra helping of NASCAR, sometimes I just want the ‘meat and potatoes.’  I’m stuck either way.  I’m too much of a fan to not watch the race.  It’s the casual fans who will grow bored of the details waiting for the real show to hit the track.

Today, all the NASCAR drivers and owners will be in a mandatory meeting with the NASCAR officials to discuss what they can do to make the sport better.  They want to know about what would make the races more exciting for the fans so that they’ll buy more tickets and keep the channel tuned to the race, but more importantly, make a new generation of fans.  I thought I would run down a list of the issues in the sport today and give my perspective from twenty years of being a fan of the sport.

Double-File Restarts

One of the more recent things NASCAR has been looking at is the double-file restarts.  When the races begin, the cars that qualified in an odd number position are on the inside and the even numbers are on the outside.  The best cars slice and dice until they get settled.  However, any cautions during the race go back to green with the leaders on the outside and the lapped cars on the inside.  This means that later in races when there are many lapped cars, the ones behind the leader actually have twice as many cars ahead of them.  Once they get settled, a car that started in fifth could be tenth in line.  In order to contend for the lead the car must fight not only cars for position, but those lapped cars who are fighting to stay ahead of the other lapped cars and hopefully pass the leader.  By the time he deals with the lapped cars, the leader is off and has a huge lead.

Switching to double-file restarts for the leaders would remove the problem with the lapped cars.  All the leaders would be bunched up together and would be comparable in strength.  Instead of dealing with only one lapped car to the inside, the leader would have a pack of hungry wolves nipping at his heels.  Imagine how exciting that would be after four-tire pit stops?  I could also see it help the racing at tracks where it is hard to pass since drivers wouldn’t have to waste their stuff on lapped cars.  The lapped cars would still race amongst themselves for the free pass.

Qualifying

NASCAR does one day of qualifying now, and if you don’t make the race, that’s it. There is no other chance.  Before the change to one day qualifying, there used to be a second round of qualifying the next day.  Cars who wrecked or who thought they could better their time could try again.  The catch was that the best you could be positioned was 26th place.  The advantage of a scheduled second day of qualifying was that if the first day was rained out, everyone went on day two and the field was set.  Only if the second session was rained out would the field be set by owners points.  Since there is only one scheduled qualifying session now, if it gets rained out, the field is set by the owners points with no second shot at it.  This would fine, except that now races aren’t the top 40 drivers on speed and three or four drivers with provisionals.  The top 35 in owners points are guaranteed a starting spot with the rest of the field required to make it on time.  This goes against the thought that the best teams make the race and those that didn’t cut it go home.  If the session is rained out now, the entire field is set by points and those who are outside of the top 43 starters go home even if they had the fastest car (as did happen to Boris Said at the Pepsi 400 in 2007).

I would love to see NASCAR go back to the days when the fastest cars made the race, regardless of where they were in the points.  If they want to give the top teams some kind of cushion, then make it the top 38-40 spots on speed and the rest based on points, starting from the top and go down until you’ve filled the 43rd spot.

Another possible change would be to switch up where the go-or-go-homers qualify.  Currently, they all qualify in a big bunch right at the end of the session so that track conditions are very similar.  However, as we saw in ‘07, if the session is rained out most of them would be screwed and have no shot at all to make the race.  I think a simple change would be to make them qualify at the beginning of the session.  If the session is later rained out, set the field by the top 35, but set the rest of the field by the qualifying of the go-or-go-homers.

The first suggestion would be the most fair, and the best in the spirit of racing.  The second suggestion is more likely to happen given the current state of NASCAR wanting to protect it’s top teams and their sponsors.  Either change would make the system more fair and put the best cars in the race.

Track Safety

This is less a concept that would make the racing better, and more of a preventative measure.  The last thing NASCAR needs is dozens of fans killed when a car or parts of a car leaves the racing surface and goes into the stands.  The Carl Edwards incident a month ago was a warning of what could happen if the worst situations happen at just the worst moments.  With the example incident, Carl Edwards was turned by Brad Keselowski because of the yellow-line rule (which I’ll be talking about) and when the car was sideways, it started to go airborne.  Usually at this point the roof flaps will deploy, sending the car back to the ground, but in this case, the car was hit by Ryan Newman’s car at full speed, sending it flying into the catch fence.  The only thing keeping the car from going into the stands was the steel-cable reinforced chain link fence.  I think NASCAR needs to mandate that all tracks, if they want to remain NASCAR sanctioned, need to have a minimum fence height and SAFER barrier walls on all walls where cars could possibly go, both inside and outside.

I say this is a preventative measure because if fans were to get killed at a race, NASCAR would be a huge target for the mainstream media and not in a good way.  Ticket sales would suffer and though it might give a small short term bump in the ratings (lookey-loos) it would probably take some time to build up the image of the sport again.

Come back tomorrow for part two of the series!

This year the big event hits the quarter century mark and at least on paper, it has a chance to be one of the best Wrestlemanias ever.

Chris Jericho vs. Roddy Piper, Ricky Steamboat and Jimmy Snuka (with Ric Flair) – Handicap elimination match

Jericho has been as good or better than he’s ever been with this clean cut anti-Y2J character.  What started as a feud with Mickey Rourke ended up as a feud with Ric Flair, who was retired after losing a match at last year’s Wrestlemania.  Since Flair is retired, three legends will fight for him: Roddy Piper, Ricky Steamboat and Jimmy Snuka.  I think it’s about time that Jericho moved back up to the main event, and I don’t expect this match to finish without at least a little bit of of Ric Flair in the ring, and while Flair might get the better of Jericho, the match will end with the three Legends defeated.  Jericho eliminates them all.

John “Bradshaw” Layfield (c) vs. Rey Mysterio – WWE Intercontinental Championship

Coming off of a feud with Shawn Michaels, he put out an open challenge for his Intercontinental Belt.  Rey Mysterio accepted JBL’s offer.  This match feels thrown together in a short time, and I originally thought that the Shawn Michaels feud should have ended at WM, however, they have better things planned for Shawn at WM25, so JBL gets the man from area code 619.  These two have had a few feuds in the past, which means maybe they don’t actually need to build the match up as they might between two other wrestlers.  Two years ago, Rey beat JBL to send him into a temporary retirement.  Much like their match on this past Raw, I expect JBL to beat the tar out of Rey but the underdog once again comes out on top.  Rey is the new Intercontinental Champion.

The Colóns (Carlito and Primo) vs. John Morrison and The Miz – Tag team Lumberjack match to unify the WWE Tag Team Championship and World Tag Team Championship

While I really like the feud between the two teams, I’m not so sure about unifying the tag belts.  Since the rosters are for the most part separated during nine months out of the year, the two different championships give tag teams something to shoot for on their respective shows.  With only one belt, I imagine that they’ll jump around either as champions without a particular show, or one show will be out of luck.

The Colóns have held their belts for the third longest reign since the belts were introduced in 2002.  Paul London and Brian Kendrik held it for nearly a year.  The other team, who held it for 250 days, is their opponents at WM25 and current holders of the World Tag belts, Miz and Morrison.  Along with their feud, there is the feud between the Bella Twins.  Nikki is with Miz and Morrison, and Brie is with Primo and Carlito.  I’m sure the Bella Twins will have an impact on this match.  I think these two teams will continue to fight it out well after Wrestlemania, so it doesn’t really matter who wins here; the other team will not give up.  I can also see the match ending in DQ and both retaining.  Being that it’s Wrestlemania, the chances are probably greater that the ‘good guys’ win, so I’ll have to stick with that.  The Colóns become new Unified Tag Team champions.

Matt Hardy vs. Jeff Hardy – Extreme Rules match

This match might have been rushed so that it could be on the Wrestlemania card, but big face-offs like this one should be on the big shows.  Since it is fairly early in what could be a really long feud, this match will settle nothing.  It could be a spot-fest, but they may also hold back for the eventual end of the feud match.  I don’t think Jeff gets his revenge today.  Matt Hardy wins.

25-Diva battle royal – Winner will be crowned “Miss WrestleMania”

This one should be the comedy match of the night, since I’m sure Santino Marella will make an appearance.  As far as the divas go, I have no clue who should be the winner.  I always thought Melina was better as a heel, so maybe she should win and then become full of herself.  Melina crowned Miss Wrestlemania.

Edge (c) vs. The Big Show vs. John Cena – Triple Threat match for the World Heavyweight Championship

Edge has been pushed to the side a little bit to allow Big Show to take more of the attention from Cena, which should extend the Edge/Cena story for a while longer.  If WWE wanted to really mix things up, they would have Big Show beat Edge cleanly for the belt and force Vicky to pick between the two; her husband and the new figurehead of Smackdown.  However, Cena will likely get the pinfall over Big Show, making him the odd-man out while resuming the feud with Edge.  Cena is the new World Heavyweight Champion.

Triple H (c) vs. Randy Orton – WWE Championship

Randy Orton is the best heel in the business right now.  Cold and calculating — and talented.  A loss to HHH at WM25 should make him crazed.  Moreso than he already is.  He should drop DiBiase and Rhodes to fend for themselves and really, they’re ready to cut their own path.  Let Orton get even more rabid in his pursuit of the championship and destruction of HHH and the McMahon family.  However, a win by Orton over HHH at WM25 could take him closer to heights seen only by others of the elite WWE circle.  The Rock.  Steve Austin.  Bret Hart.  Ric Flair.  Kurt Angle.  Only time will tell if he could be as big as Hulk Hogan.  This match could be the next big step.  I foresee a Rock-like face turn in the next couple years, just in time for the next rise in wrestling popularity.  In the meantime though, a championship run is probably in the cards.  He’ll continue on with an expanded Legacy covering his ass while feuding with the McMahon Clan.  I’m leaning toward an Orton win for this one, one of the few times a heel wins the belt from the face champion.  Randy wins his third WWE Championship and the new era of the WWE beings.

Money in the Bank Ladder Match – Winner gets title shot anytime in the next year

This match contains eight men who could easily be pushed to the main event level:  CM Punk, Kane, Mark Henry, Montel Vontavious Porter, Shelton Benjamin, Kofi Kingston, Christian, and Finlay.  They have been in many matches together over the past few weeks on all of the shows. It seems that Kane keeps coming out on top (except for the last ECW), so you have to like his chances to win.   I think the other two most likely winners are MVP, Mark Henry and Christian.  MVP has been pushed a lot since coming off of his losing streak.  If he gets the title shot, he’ll probably wait until winning a high profile feud with another top of the mid-card group before cashing it in.  Mark Henry could use it to insert himself into the Smackdown title shot, and would probably become the first Money in the Bank winner to lose after cashing it in.  Christian also could use it to get into the Smackdown main event against former tag partner Edge.  The good thing about this title shot is that they have one year to use it, giving the WWE writers enough time to put the pieces in place for a big surprise, meaning whoever wins would have a year to become believable main eventer.  MVP climbs the ladder literally and figuratively.

The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels

This match will probably close the show out.  These two have probably been the most associated with Wrestlemania than any other superstars, so it seems fitting.  They are both getting older and nearing the end of their careers, but don’t let that stop you from expecting a performance that will likely be one of the top five matches of the year.  Everyone in the locker room should be hovering around the television screens to learn something.  There is definately something to learn from these two masters of wrestling psychology.  We’re going to get many nearfalls, failed finishers, and desparate moves on the way to the final pin.

HBK’s entrance on Smackdown a week ago, similar yet opposite of Undertakers, was awesome to see and I think the light and dark should have been pushed weeks earlier.  The crowd will have a tough time figuring out who to cheer as neither one has been pushed as the bad guy and neither has been pushed as the good guy.

Shawn Michaels has been getting to much of the upper hand on Undertaker of late, and also got the big payoff after last year’s Ric Flair retirement match.  I expect the Dead Man to go 17-0.  The Undertaker is Mr. Wrestlemania.

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So those are  my predictions for tomorrow evening.  It should be a fantastic event full of memorable Wrestlemania caliber moments.  Feuds will be put to rest and hopefully seeds for new rivalries will be sown.  Enjoy the show!

The drive through Arizona into Blythe was fairly quick, only a couple hours.  We loaded up on gas and went right back on the highway for another couple hours until Indio, where we stopped for breakfast/lunch at McDonalds and to switch driving duties.  To not waste any time, we ate in the car and again, went right back on the highway.  After Indio we ended up in a little sandstorm.  It was really windy like it had been on the way to Arizona a week ago, only this time the wind was throwing sand at the car.  We could hear it pelting off the windshield.  A few minutes into that, droplets of water started coming down too.  We drove out of the sandy area and continued on, all the way through the LA area and almost through the Grapevine before stopping.

Right before the Grapevine ends, we stopped at the rest area in Lebec.  It was cold outside, a real change from the past week.  It started snowing, with small flakes fluttering down.  As soon as they touched anything, they disappeared.  Within a few minutes, however, the snow turned into hail and the wind picked up.  It wasn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but it was still fun to see.

The rest of the trip home was fairly uneventful.  Hunter slept most of the way from Buttonwillow, where we stopped for an early dinner.  Lots of 18 wheelers on I5 made it slower than normal since everyone has to move over to get around them.  But we finally pulled into the driveway… and are looking forward to a relaxing Monday.