Wednesday March 9th, 2011, Drillman


And now Part 4 of the Annihilation Chronicles is up. On Gauntlet's suggestion, I've also broken up all the chapters into multiple pages, so they're easier to read in more than one sitting. Turns out that despite my best efforts to be concise, every chronicle ranges 20-40 pages in Word, and my tendency to avoid making extraneous pages made for some ridiculously long chunks of text. Hopefully now the stories will be a little more accessible to you.

Besides that, check the Gallery for some new pics from Crys and myself.

Sunday September 26th, 2010, Drillman

Part 3 of the Annihilation Chronicles is up. That's all for now.

Monday August 2nd, 2010, Drillman


Coming at you live from the Mech's Meet where I can apparently make updates even on the road. It helps that I finished these two walkthrough pages before leaving and just needed to uncheck a box over here on the other side of the country. So today is the last two walkthrough pages that were stinking up the index page with their lack of linkage. Maps and Virus Breeder. Now I could probably say the walkthrough is finally complete, but there are a few more tasks to complete in the existing pages before that. At least now the links are all there so it looks complete to the naked eye.

Friday July 23rd, 2010, Drillman


Okay, so what's been going on the last six months? Well, not much here, evidently! I went back to school for a bit January to March, focused on projects for the Maniacs' 10th Anniversary April to May, and then kinda pissed away June on video games, only recently getting back to being productive for July. The primary result tonight is the Walkthrough's Miscellaneous section, containing lots of tables of boring data on what you can buy at shops, where to find all the power-ups, and stuff like that. There are also some weird obscure things thrown in at the bottom, like an explanation for the above image. That just leaves the Virus Breeding and Maps pages now. Looking back in the archives, it looks like it's been almost exactly a year since I said I had all this data waiting to be formatted and that it wouldn't take much longer. So much for that.

Speaking of archives, Gauntlet's been bugging me to get all the AXE updates reconciled with the main blog (okay, so he asked me one time and I ignored it for a few months), and I finally got around to it just now, so AXE updates are archived in the blog. Does it matter? I dunno. G seems to think so.

Story updates ought to be coming soon as well. And this is "soon" as in a week or two, being wrapped up right now, not "soon" like 2011. Honest.

Sunday January 10th, 2010, Drillman

Happy New Year. I had hoped this update could still make it in for December, but it was considerably more work than I expected. Par for the course as it would seem. The big new page this time is the EXE3 Walkthrough's Virus Guide. Like the NaviCust and StyleChange guides last month, I put much more research and effort into this page than was really warranted, but it's complete, and that's what I was aiming for.

Also check out Crys' gallery for a New Year's pic. And speaking of the new year, that means it's time to archive the old updates again.

Saturday December 13th, 2009, Drillman

Probably the last update of the year. The walkthrough now has complete info on EXE3's NaviCust and StyleChange systems. I spent considerable time pulling and testing the data for these sections rather than just copying off of GameFAQs, which turned out to be a good move since I ended up finding a few things the other walkthroughs got wrong or missed.

Still no more Inter-Missions yet. Gotta establish more story before we can properly play off of it.

Saturday November 15th, 2009, Drillman

Check out my art gallery for a couple new pics based on Crys' characters. That's the only added content for the moment. The main reason for this mini-update is to announce that Akutare has quit as Bubbleman. There will be no recruitment drive to replace him right away, as I'm leaning towards the scaled-down approach - same reason we still don't have a new Bowl or Yamato, I want to make sure I can mobilize a tight group of reliable members rather than continuously take chances on untested new ones.

An unsettling impact of my decision not to replace Aku is the blank spot it would naturally leave in the bio navigation bar up there. After weighing the options, I kept the button linking to the Bubbleman bio which now just describes Bubz as an NPC. It's a little off since all the other NPCs are listed on a separate bio page, but it's either this or completely redesign the navbar and I don't think this development is worth the effort.

No new Inter-Mission this update.

Saturday October 11th, 2009, Drillman

The second installment of the current chronicle storyline is up. There are a couple new pics in Crys' gallery as well. We also have a nice new updated navigation bar up there with rollovers, thanks to our good pal and landlord Gauntlet for the coding work. After the three month gap between updates, I at least put a couple more hours into the artwork for the last-minute InterMission comic. Hopefully that can also make up for it not being that funny, even to the few people that would know what it's referencing.

Saturday July 12th, 2009, Drillman

I've been spending the last month and a half finishing up the walkthrough, at least the storyline part. All nine chapters have been finished. There were ten chapters before, but that was just so it would match up with VI's EXE1 walkthrough, which is also numbered wrong. I just combined the "Helping Tora" and the "Plantman" scenarios as originally intended. Now I just need to add supplementary pages for the walkthrough, which shouldn't take much longer. I already have most of the data, just need to organize it.

Also updated today are Akutare's and Beastman's art galleries. My embarassing Inter-Mission comic experiment continues below with no discernible improvement, except perhaps in the lettering department.

Saturday May 30th, 2009, Drillman

I can scarcely believe it myself, but we did three, count 'em THREE updates this month! Now that's more like it. Check out the art gallery for more stuff from me and Crys, sprites of upgraded Drillman and Beastman's new operator have been added to their respective bios, and Chapter 3 of the EXE3 Walkthrough has gotten its in-depth overhaul (Even if you don't need to read it, be sure to scroll to the end of the page, blub).

The big part of the update is once again the Navi Marks section. The biggest change? I'm changing the name from "Navi Icons" to "Navi Marks". This'll be a tough transition for me since I've been in the habit of calling them icons ever since the advent of the series, mainly because I associated them with the similar circular emblems worn by similar cyberspace-dwelling characters in the cgi cartoon Reboot (incidently, I finally got around to making an homage to that show in this very section). I've found not many other EXE fans make the same connection; they're more likely to refer to them as "symbols" or "emblems". I've decided to go with "mark", which is the term Capcom uses, as I only just recently verified from their artbooks. Hopefully this will make it easier for fans to find the section.

But we haven't just rebranded the page, we've added a whole heap of NEW ico-er-marks. With the remaining Phantom of Network navis and the non-navi symbols like the Cybeasts and RedSun/BlueMoon, we've finally completed the official part of the project (ehhh, except for the Legend of Network navis like Rideman, Reverse Rideman, and Troy, assuming they don't all have the same mark since they're apparently all the same entity...don't suppose anybody could hook me up with artwork from this horribly underexposed game?). There are also several more additions to the collection of original marks relevant to team canon, some even from members that are not me! And because even that isn't enough, I added a new heading for marks that aren't even EXE related, just for the hell of it. Even with the official navi marks complete down to just one or two missing, the sky is the limit for these simple circles.

Oh yeah, the Inter-Mission. Uh, I'm experimenting with it right now. One lesson learned is...well, drawing a comic does not work well in conjunction with my usual "do it at the very last minute" approach to Inter-Missions. That's one thing I need to fix for next time, in that I should probably start on it now, instead of an hour before the next update.

Saturday May 16th, 2009, Drillman

There's more new pics of more new characters known as the Children of Vengeance in my gallery, and I made some new sprites for Flamechick's bio. The Icons section got an update, but no new icons yet. Instead I spent some time modifying old icons I found out were originally inaccurate. Sure, they're all inaccurate in the sense I'm giving them 3D lighting and shading effects, but I at least want the shape and colour of the symbol to be as close as possible.

In case you're keeping track, these are all the ones I changed: Roll, Proto, Number, Stone, Colour, Fire, Magic, Elec, Shadow, Toad, Gate, Magnet, Heat, Snake, Thunder, Napalm, Flash, Desert, King, Plant, Flame, Mist, Bowl, Punk, Bass, Top, Spark, Wind, Search, Junk, Cold, Kendo, Shade, Laser, Colonel, Tomahawk, Star, Turbo, Ring, Hat, Normal Navi, Netmafia Gospel, and Nebula Syndicate. The rest looked close enough for me.

The only one I regretted fixing was Turboman's. I put a lot of work into the original version, working off an image of a real hubcap to get the lighting on the metallic saucer shape juuuust right. At the time, people (who probably had the official icon image on hand but wouldn't show it to me) told me the design was wrong, that it was supposed to look more like a steering wheel than a tire, but I ignored them because I wanted my design to be right after all the effort that went into it (I mostly blame BCC for the confusion. I used the icon from the chip image there and upon recent closer inspection, the three holes that should be black were instead rendered transparent, making them appear brigther than the parts around them, making me think the holes were the metal part and the darker grey part represented the holes). Well today I did make that fix for the more accurate steering wheel shape (or differently shaped hubcap maybe), but I still couldn't part with the inaccurate original, so it was a simple matter to stick it in the Unofficial section and attribute it to some navi called "Tireman". I'll probably never design a Tireman to use the icon, but I'll still keep it on that page.

Thursday May 3rd, 2009, Drillman

After a long wait, the first chronicle is up. So begins the next Annihilation epic, let's see if we can finish it within the next millenium this time. On top of that, I've whipped up some interesting pictures featuring the current and upcoming characters for the gallery. And would you believe that EXE3 walkthrough has actually gotten some progress? Thanks to Koala, the storyline is complete, albeit looking kind of unfurnished. I feel like the guide still needs a personal touch to excuse its existence when GameFAQs has already done the job many times over with greater depth. I've gone over Chapters 1 and 2 with this in mind, adding greater detail, handy maps, and illustrative screenshots. I'll get to the rest in time, but at least the rest of the chapters are all up now.

Thursday March 12th, 2009, Drillman

Well it wasn't "very soon", but here it is. Check out the Fiction section for a couple stories introducing a couple of our new members, and another account touching us up on one of the guys that stuck around. These stories have been finished for a few months, but wouldn't you know it was MY job that kept getting put off for weeks and weeks. I finally brought over the rest of the old site though, which means it's shutting down. If you look around, you may find a few things that are relatively new in the sense they probably should have been on the old site but were instead just sitting unused on my computer for some reason. One such lost and found work is the Battlechip database which can be found under "Data". There's still a lot of unfinished projects laying around and hopefully we'll actually complete them some day. Next update should see the start of the new main storyline, some special artwork to accompany it, and if we're lucky, some other tidbits, and if we're really lucky, it will actually be done within the month.

Saturday October 25th, 2008, Drillman

Welcome to the new home of Annihilation. It has been a while since the first season finale, and we have a lot of changes in mind for the continuation of the team. For starters, we changed to a new site. I am also Snakeman on the Mechanical Maniacs, so it didn't take much to get a hosted position here, though as you may notice with the Mechs layout all over the place, it's more of a merger than a hosting situation. Right now it may not look too sharp, but after a while, and with some upcoming work on the MM3 end, the two teams ought to blend together seamlessly, and hopefully so will the layouts.

The old AXE site is going to remain open for a little longer, at least until I convert all the old pages and bring them over here. That sounds like something I should have done before making this update, but I felt like planting a firm foot down and letting the audience know where we're at.

And what better way to do that than with the quintessential MM team feature...Bios! A lot of work went into fine-tuning these, with each and every member flexing their creative muscles. Reading them can give you some hints about where the plot of the new story is headed. We've kept five of our original members and took on five new ones, leaving four slots out to dry. Just to be clear, I never intend to replace Punk and Serenade. Their status as characters threw off the balance a bit, like a classic series team with Protoman on it. As for Bowl and Yamato, they may return as occupied slots eventually, but for now I'm happy with the group we have. Tight, manageable, and reliable.

I'd like to thank everyone that applied though. I turned some of you down, but I'm glad you were interested anyway. It made me realize the team was worth continuing, and I wasn't entirely sure about that at the start.

By the way, the Mechanical Maniacs Forum (link in the upper-right corner) will be serving as our board from now on. The old board barely got any activity besides private team planning stuff, and we've had our private board at the Undernet for a while. I don't think we need a whole public board just for our little team, but if you have anything AXE-related to dicuss, don't hesitate to bring it up at the Undernet. With the visual theme of that place, it seems to suit us even better than MM3.

Hang on for the next update very soon when we'll have more content from the old site, and some brand-new stories from our eager writers. At the moment, you can also check out the Inter-Missions below. As always, you know the Drill!


Saturday, July 26th, 2008, Drillman

Here it is, 3.5 years after it was inititally scheduled for, the Season 1 Finale for Annihilation!

So things just got slower and slower to the point that 2007 only got two real updates? Well, I did actually do some minor updates back in June, but it seems I forgot to announce them. What I did back then was mostly backing up the site and fixing minor errors. Matt's pics took longer to download than expected. Turns out his filesizes were all nearly five times bigger than they needed to be. No wonder we were running out of space a while back! I went through and cropped, resized, and adjusted them to manageable sizes and even found one pic in the folder that wasn't posted yet. So his whole gallery got a significant update.

If you already read the first three finale parts, read them again before Part 4. You've probably forgotten them by now anyway, and a few small changes have been made to them since then. There were some things I was going to add from the start, but forgot about them until a reference in Part 4 reminded me. Yeah, not very professional, sorry. Heck, I'm just glad it's finally done!

In March of 2004, Rajal Tikana replaced Vidal as Darkman, and after the annoyance I experienced re-drawing the NG group pic and editing the Chronicles to make it look like Adrienne was there from the start, I decided that we would freeze the roster until the end of the season, a logical time for memberships to change within the story. At the time, I was sure we would finish the season by the end of the year. Well, before the year was through, Havoc, Rajal, and Novaman were all AWOL. The Chronicle schedule got its first huge delay when Cifnas was tagged to write the next one, but he kept coming back with ridiculous excuses as to why he couldn't post it yet. I kept giving him the benefit of the doubt, but eventually I had to give up on him and write it myself. I just wish I'd done that a few months sooner, maybe our momentum wouldn't have been so broken.

2005 was the year where things really started to fall apart. We hit our first big hiatus in July, which lasted until December. Bubble, Flame, Cifnas, Midoriman, and Gemini never really returned after the rest of us got back to work. Already by this point, the roster was reduced to less than half, which would seriously impact productivity for the next two years, but I was determined to keep that roster frozen. After all, we were so close to writing that finale!

It wasn't until late 2006 when the finale writing actually started, and multi-month hiatuses continued between every month-long surge of activity. Cyros became the last member to quit in July 2007, leaving the five that are here now. Part 4 started writing in November, and might have actually been completed before the end of the year, except my own writing talents were largely diverted to the Business of War event with the Mechanical Maniacs.

So the last hiatus ended a couple months ago. Even though I had four teammates willing to stick around, only one of them was currently up to the task of writing. Two people writing for a 14-member team. Fun.

Why didn't I call it quits two or three years ago? Well, I don't like to leave orphaned projects. Besides that, I just really loved the idea of the AXE Finale. I've had much of it planned out in my head ever since early 2005. A lot of the details have changed, but some things made it through almost exactly as I imagined them way back then. Even if things didn't turn out the best, I'm just glad I finally finished what I started.

So where does that leave us now? We have five members: Nijubu, Blackbelt, Koala, Beasty, and myself. A couple slots are being permanently retired: Serenade and Punk. We may bring Punk back later on, but Serenade is too special and powerful to be slumming it with the rest of these regular navis. So the characters we will be recruiting for are Flash, Dark, Flame, Metal, Yamato, Bowl, and Bubble.

There's no guarantee that we will admit anybody though. At this point I'm more inclined to convert the team to a more private project that the few remaining veterans and I will develop as we see fit. I know there are a couple of you out there eager to join, so I'm sorry if this crushes your hopes. I'll only keep AXE as a full, active team if we get a lot of good applicants to fill the void. If we only get a few people of passing interest, then there's no point. The same thing will happen all over again.

Regardless of this team's future, please read and enjoy the Finale. A lot of heart went into it.



Sunday, August 12th, 2007, Drillman

Any point in denying things are bad around here any more? Nah. Aside from the lack of activity from the remaining team members, I gotta say this "don't change rosters until the finale's over" plan has been a massive failure. Just think how much faster this finale could have been done if we actually replaced the dead weight immediately and got in some eager and active new members? By now interest has dwindled so much I'm not sure we're going to keep on going for a second season. It all depends on our ability to attract new blood.

That's not to say the season won't end as planned. Finale Parts 2 and 3 are both up for viewing. Part 2 was done a long time ago, but for some reason I kept putting off the update. One things for sure though, the next time we update (who knows when that'll be) Part 4 will be posted, and Season 1 will be complete. At that point we'll be recruiting and the future remains a mystery.

I would also have new Navi Icons and Navi Database stuff done by now if it weren't for the lack of EXE6 official art and concept art readily available to me. I might be able to order in an artbook in a month or two, but at this point I might as well wait and see if there's still a team by then.





Thursday, January 21st, 2007, Drillman

Looks like another year has gone by. Well, the long overdue season finale has finally started. It's a four-parter, and so far we have part one finished. Read it to finally see the introduction of the enigmatic Gamma.exe! More finale content including art of Gamma and the other finale characters is still coming.