3 Weeks of Holidays confirmed

I kind of like the final weeks of school, yet the hatred is still there. Although the deadlines are there, each time I pass one I felt this great relief that it’s over and soon EVERYTHING would be too. The 3-week break between my FYPJ and study term is confirmed, putting an end to all those rumors floating around that there may be not.

I have been lurking around NewGrounds yesterday and stumbled upon this game by the Super Flash Brothers, well known for their Decline of Video Gaming series…said they spent 5 months (inclusive of school in between as usual) on it. I was pretty amazed. The game is drop dead simple, but the audio and art is what I wished my artists can create or even FIND. The atmosphere is totally well done imho. Quality like that don’t come by every flash game.

I haven’t been on much games recently. If I haven’t mentioned before, 2007 is a pretty slow year. Overlord is neat and stuff, but isn’t long lasting material. Tales of the World is probably the best game on the PSP right now to me RPG-wise…like there’s much RPGs in the first place. I really really REALLY need to get the R4 for my DS. I’m missing out why too much.

Expect reviews when I grow incredibly bored during FYP (which I half heartedly wish I would/wouldn’t).

3 weeks before semester ends!

As the week comes to an end, I managed to find one day to rest (this) and play a little. The end of the semester is coming and it has been a really tiring week filled with frustration from coding. Working with beta versions of certain libraries are really irritating, worse if you can’t implement a feature of the library due to a fault on the library’s developer’s side. This was the case with NxOgre…fucking piece of shit almost destroyed our Game Engine module project. Good thing Dom kept a copy of a previous version of the game.

Things haven’t been going too well on our game. I honestly feel that some of us are spending way too much time than I would usually expect to get a certain thing done. That could be implied that I think that they are lousy, I guess? That’s from a cruel point of view. I’m not going to hide it here.

The upcoming weeks will be harsher then this week. Tests, presentation, tons of assignments to be done and all these will affect my Game Engine project. The irony isn’t it. Here I am studying to be a game programmer and haven’t the time to play a game much. I already more or less think that this isn’t worth it. But are there better things I would rather do for a living?

I’ve been playing a bit to Puzzle Quest on my PSP. Great game to make you fall asleep. I swear the AI cheats though. It’s basically Bejeweled with RPG elements in it. Lots of RPG elements. It’s 50MB go see for yourself.

Miracles of miracles!

It’s a miracle, I actually passed my internal piano exam despite how badly I thought I had done (which is damn bad btw). 103/150 is the result (with 100 being the passing mark). Wow if playing that badly can get me a pass, those who failed must’ve really really sucked bad.

Hell of a week

Topic speaks for itself. All of a sudden I’m getting a bunch of assignments and projects at the same time. I barely have time to do anything recreational. BARELY. That’s why I still can blog a bit.

This semester has been great. I am taking a set of very interesting modules. Motion capture room is never ready as my assignment drew closer to its deadline, Audio Creation talks about things I was never curious about, and shader. Fuck all the damn idiots who voted for the shaders module. Look what you have gotten me, or rather, us into. I didn’t learn ANYTHING (useful) from that module. The first 5 weeks have ZERO relevance to what I’m learning after that, and that aftermath is no better.

What is shaders? To put it nicely, I call it ‘dynamic textures and lighting’. You know, the combination between textures, lighting and materials. Cool stuff. Behind it lies a bunch of equations I ‘do not need to know’ as quoted by my lecturer. Wtf is that supposed to mean? If it’s so difficult to teach why even bother giving us this module? All we (my friends, rather) do in class is copy whatever the lecturer’s (can’t be bother to remember his name) codes as he type, and compile. It’s like learning Photoshop again, where the lecturer handhold you step-by-step to get a desired result, only difference is that you don’t know what the fuck each bloody step does. “I am going to put this equation here, and call it ’sigma’, then I’m going to declare a global float3 variable here and call it blah blah blah”. I asked everyone about this equation he typed and named ’sigma’…no one knows what it does exactly, as if it’s some magical tool that does what it does.

Assignments are usually tedious but straightforward. Most of us just go through trial and error to get the result, without knowing wtf is going on. Grab this equation, grab that equation, multiply here and there, add here and there, pray that it works, etc. It’s frustrating and dumb. I could’ve been getting probably a FREE fucking A or B at Web Based Games but apparently not many people voted for it and that option just vanished. Now I’m going to struggle at this shaders module and pray I don’t fail.

And emoing is really bad. I think people should really get over things easier.